Monday, October 24, 2005

Live blogging Wilma until the lights go out

From Palm Beach County FL

~7:00pm Sunday: Finished helping another fellow board up his place. This is the 3rd house I've helped board up. Am I the only one in south FL with proper tools to do this sort of thing? Seriously, jerking around without a good hammer drill takes forever. Some people are just pounding in masonry nails...makes a real mess of the stucco and concrete coming out. Might as well just shoot it with a Hilti gun if you're gonna do that and save a lot of time.

I've donated all the extra Tapcon's and washers I had to help other people. Home Depot is out of Tapcon's and fender washers. I was reduced to drilling holes in pennies and a bunch of electrical box knock outs I had been saving. FYI: drilling pennies is cheaper than buying real washers. With a drill press it goes pretty quick.

~1:30am Monday: Plywood was up on my crib yesterday. I still hear the sound of saws and hammers in the middle of the night though. Why do people wait like this? Working in the middle of the night sucketh greatly.

Still some houses in this neighborhood that haven't bothered to do anything at all. Too late now.

~2:30am Monday: Winds seem about 30mph. No rain yet. Leading edge of the rain looks about 2hr away on local radar. Streets are quiet now. People are either done or have given up.

~3:30am Monday: Winds seem about 35mph, guts to ~45. No rain yet. Trees getting whipped around a bit. Key West is getting hurricane force winds.

~4:45am Monday: Winds seem about 35 sustained, gusting to 50ish, light rain.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Iraq adapting fast to procedural justice

In a matter of hours we see a transition from a lust for summary justice to a willingness to allow the system to proceed. This is a significant change because it represents a level of faith that "the system" will likely converge on an acceptable result.

Saddam is nominally on trial here, but what is really being put on trial is the way he ran the country and the methods he used. In building the case point by point in public, rather than delivering a "summary bullet", the media perpetrated myths and apologia surrounding Saddam will fall along with him. It will no longer be possible for some to sweep this reality under the rug. Its very easy to say "oh, I know he was a bad guy", its quite something else to know exactly what "bad guy" means.

IRAQ THE MODEL
...“Why do we have to listen to this bull****?” said one of my friends.
“I prefer the trial goes like this:
Q:Are you Saddam Hussein?
A:Yes.
Then take this bullet in the head.”...

...As the prosecution went deeper into details and facts, the way we viewed the trial began to change an d those among us who were demanding a bullet in Saddam’s head now seemed pleased with the proceedings “I don’t think I want to see that bullet now, I want to see justice take place as it should be”.
We were watching an example of justice in the new Iraq, a place where no one should be denied his rights, not even Saddam.

We smiled seeing the news anchors lower their voices and nodding down when the prosecution grew stronger and more reasonable and convincing and they also abandoned the previous poetic sentimental tone that couldn’t stand in the face of facts and figures.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

UN office doctored report on murder of Hariri

Seriously, can there be any doubt left at all about the heights in the UN power structure to which corruption extends? Oil for food scandal and now this obvious (and inept) assassination coverup seal the deal.

It should be clear now the UN is incapable of cleaning itself up - it is institutionally corrupt and there exists no higher authority capable of rectifying this.

I hate to say this, but Bill Clinton is starting to look GOOD as a candidate for UN Secretary General. His zipper scandals would be a refreshing change from the dreary soul crushing scandals and corruption we have now - Bill's scandals have entertainment value.

Times Online
THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.
The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut...

...One crucial change, apparently made after the report was submitted to the UN chief, removed the name of President al-Assad’s brother, Maher, his brother-in-law, Assef al-Shawkat, and other high-ranking Syrian officials.

The final, edited version quoted a witness as saying that the plot to kill Mr Hariri was hatched by unnamed “senior Lebanese and Syrian officials”. But the undoctored version named those officials as “Maher al-Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamal al-Sayyed”.
H/T Ace

Make your computer run faster!

OK, So I put that site meter gizmo on this moron blog and it tells me things...all sorts of creepy semi-intrusive things about people reading this stuff...none of which I or anyone else really cares about.

However, site meter did tell me some stuff, that being an engineer, I now feel obligated to reflect back to my readers.

A) Most of you are using a 32 bit color depth on your video settings. FYI - the human eye is incapable of discerning 32 bits worth of color depth - it buys you nothing, zippola, zilch. Just a bunch of worthless data your machine is sloshing around that just costs performance. The human eye CAN distinguish more than 16 bits of color depth, but the difference between 16 and 24 bit color is almost undetectable for ordinary web surfing and playing of video clips. If you do a lot of photo realistic editing/retouching and such, maybe 24 bits makes sense - but for the vast majority of people 16 bit depth is perfectly acceptable and will probably run visibly faster than 32 bit. Give it a try, you will probably like it.

B) Most of you (90%+) are running Windows XP or Windows 2000. The installation DEFAULT for these systems is to ENABLE some completely retarded "feature" called "transition effects". What this does is make your fast computer feel like an old 286 when you're navigating through menus. Did you knowingly pay hard cash for Windows software with intentional delay loops in it to make it feel slow? Probably not, but that's what you got. Right mouse button click on the blank desktop. Select "Properties". Select "Effects". Then disable that transition effect brain deadness and watch your machine start to feel like a new machine.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Dead man gets parking fine

Accusations unfounded? Ahem...

Courier Mail
A COUNCIL has apologised for slapping a parking ticket on the car of a dead driver. Police found the 71-year-old man slumped in his vehicle in a shopping centre car park in Croydon, in Melbourne's east, yesterday afternoon.

The man had reportedly been missing for nine days.

...Maroondah Mayor, Councillor Paul Denham, said the man received a parking ticket around 10.30am on Tuesday, two days before his body was discovered...

...Cr Denham has angrily hit back at claims the council was over-zealous in its pursuit of parking fines to top up its coffers.

"The accusations regarding aggressive parking infringement actions are unfounded," Cr Denham said.

Dinosaur of the day: KOOLASUCHUS

In celebration of my TTLB designation as "crawly amphibian", the Purple Avenger presents for your viewing pleasure a little heralded, yet facinating dinosaur : KOOLASUCHUS
... Until 1989 it had been thought that the temnospondyls had died out some 100 million years earlier, at the end of the Triassic period. The find of Koolasuchus changed all that - here was a fossil "living fossil" - a survivor from a far-distant time in the past.

As a typical big amphibian, Koolasuchus was capable of crawling on land, but would have been more at home in water. At over 5 metres long and equipped with a massive skull, it was a powerful carnivore capable of eating crustaceans, fish, and even small dinosaurs like the young of Leaellynasaura. It is probable that it could detect the vibrations of prey in the water. As the prey passed by, it could just open it's huge gaping mouth and snap it up.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

"Journalists" who need to buy a vowel and get a clue

What's wrong with this SF Chronicle article?
An explosion set fire to a Houston refinery Sunday as workers tried to restart gasoline-producing equipment that had been shut down since Hurricane Rita...At full strength, the refinery produces 268,000 barrels a day of crude oil.
H/T Moonbattery

PETA dude freaks out over rat-boy

Hilarious.

Rat-boy/PETA vid

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

For your barfing pleasure - the Hillary egg seperator

Even I think this one is pretty gross.

Click here for QuickTime clip

You're busted with 1700lb of dope -- "Thanks, OnStar"

No more freeze pops for you kid.

Albuquerque Journal
A call made to OnStar by a 2-year-old boy helped him escape from a locked Cadillac Escalade. But his dad wasn't thanking OnStar. Police were. That's because when Bernalillo County Sheriff's deputies went to rescue the boy Wednesday night after being called by the vehicle security company, they found 1,700 pounds of marijuana worth more than $500,000 inside a trailer near the sport utility vehicle, investigators said...Sheriff Darren White said. "As the commercials say, 'Thanks, OnStar.'
OnStar logo

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Monday, October 17, 2005

The Ramadi attack from one who was there

Who you gonna believe? The dude who was there or some reporter regurgitating crap while cribbing in the al-Rashid hotel?

Warriors Voice

"Insurgents Died Last Night...Plain And Simple "

Revealed: IRA bombs killed eight British soldiers in Iraq

Why am I not suprised?

INDEPENDENT(UK)
Eight British soldiers killed during ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly sophisticated bomb first used by the IRA, The Independent on Sunday can reveal...

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Darfur explained - the REAL story?

Want to know why the FRENCH(oppose UN sanctions) and CHINA(abstains on Darfur UN vote) are being such assholes in the UN about Sudan? You see, Sudan has oil - quite a lot of it, and quite a bit of refining capability along the coast as well.

Being the treacherous weasles they are, the French would not jeopardize their claim to a $200B deal over a bunch of dirt poor folks down in the south. The Chinese are squishy on the genocide thing at the UN for the same reason O.I.L.

If one were just a tad conspiracy theory oriented, it would be easy to imagine a French/Chinese/Khartoum scheme to eliminate John Garang(check!) and eliminate the people who were supporting his movement(in progress, semi-check!) so the Garang/White Nile deal could be completely disavowed by the Khartoum government. After all, these are the same wonderful folks who bombed the Rainbow Warrior.

The French and Chinese are also looking to get "cozy" in WEAPONS SALES. Note that this French push for the Chinese weapons sales thing occurs in early 2004 -- coincidentally this is roughly the same time John Garang is putting together the White Nile deal with the Brits and roughly the same time the Janjaweed crew kicks into high gear eradicating/dislocating Garang supporters in the south. Pure coincidence? Maybe, maybe not...

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

BBC ARTICLE
Garang played an important role in a deal that gives White Nile a 60% stake in developing the Block Ba oil concession, a region thought to contain $200bn worth of untapped oil at current prices...

...founded by a former star of the England cricket team, Phil Edmonds, who developed a strong working relationship with the ex-rebel leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement...The company says Garang's death won't affect its exploration concession as the deal it signed is backed by other high-ranking figures in southern Sudan's semi-autonomous government...

...Meanwhile, the French oil giant Total claims to have rights over the same area under a 1980 agreement it signed with the other side in the civil war - the national Sudanese government.
Further, we see Garang disavowing the French claim to the oil fields HERE (gasandoil.com)
Total, along with partners Marathon and Kuwait Petroleum, says it is confident it will regain access to the stake, which it abandoned in 1984 after an employee was killed in civil-war related violence. Total executives say the central government is the only authorized body to grant oil concessions and that the provisional government of South Sudan wasn't a legal entity when it signed with White Nile.
Garang disagrees: "Total can cling to whatever (reasons) they like. We will cling to the oil, because it is ours."
THE CHINA CONNECTION

Harvard University feels strongly enough about the Chinese connection to the Darfur slaughter that they move to divest university investments in PetroChina in April 2005

The HARVARD GAZETTE had this to say about the divestiture action:
...Oil production is widely understood to be a crucial source of revenue for the Sudanese government, essential to the government's capacity to fund military operations, and an asset of exceptional strategic importance to the regime. According to a recent report of the U.S. Department of Energy, "With the start of significant oil production (and exports) beginning in late 1999, . . . . Sudan's economy is changing dramatically, with oil export revenues now accounting for around 73% of Sudan's total export earnings." [Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, Sudan Country Analysis Brief, July 2004.] As of January 2004, Sudan's estimated proven reserves of crude oil stood at 563 million barrels, more than twice the 2001 estimate. As of June 2004, crude oil production had risen to 345,000 barrels per day, up from 270,000 barrels per day just a year earlier. [Ibid.]...


Stay tuned - this saga will be updated as I find more

Friday, October 14, 2005

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Yemani AK47's traced to Saudi attack

To anyone who has been following developments in Yemen, this is hardly shocking news. But most of you haven't so I'll mention it. Its probably about time we do a little house cleaning in Yemen. I don't imagine the Saudi's are all that pleased with having a bunch of loons on their southern borders...

SJ MERCURY NEWS
SAN'A, Yemen - Two AK-47 assault rifles used in a deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia have been traced to Yemen's Defense Ministry, according to Western and Yemeni officials, raising new fears that the country isn't doing enough to fight terrorism.

The revelation comes five years after al-Qaida-linked militants bombed the USS Cole destroyer on Oct. 12, 2000, at the port in San'a, the capital, killing 17 sailors.

In other worrying developments, Yemeni militants are believed to be among foreigners fighting U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials have said.

No fun in Ramadi tonight

The Marines took all the party favors and the punchbowl.

CENTCOM

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Canadian homelessness 3X that of the USA?

Here we have the CBC pitching the notion that there's 250,000 canadians "living in the streets". OK, I'll take them at their word on that.

Given the Canadian population this works out to about 1:131 Canadians "living in the street".

Now we see a new HUD survey coming up with a figure of about 1:400 for homeless in the USA.

Ain't socialism grand? High unemployment, comatose economies, and now high homeless rates as well. I must admit, that's a real winning combination if you're trying to run a country into the ground. Kudos to Canada - the "plan" is working!

Washington Times: DPRK counterfeiting US $100 bills

Of course anyone reading this blog already knew this quite a few days ago when I figured this out while groking a BBC piece about some crusty old hardcore Irish commie being arrested.

WASHINGTON TIMES
The Bush administration formally has accused North Korea of manufacturing high-quality counterfeit $100 "supernotes" for the first time, according to an indictment made public yesterday as part of a 16-year probe.
"Quantities of the supernote were manufactured in, and under auspices of the government of, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)," said the indictment of Irish national Sean Garland and six others.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia

Worth a look. The guy was an amateur and obviously a little scared doing this preliminary recon and it shows in the writing and pics, but its still informative.

Might this be a muslim version of the whole David Koresh saga? It sounds odd, real odd.

GATES OF VIENNA

An Iraqi confronts the Code Pinkos

Yea, I know Free Republic and all that, blah, blah. Forget that shit - this man has a story to tell and its a good one. Click it. Click it NOW. Click it like a VIKING!

CLICK HERE

Assumptions

On various levels we all sleepwalk through the day making assumptions about things. As an engineer I may make a few less than other people, but I still make quite a few.

There is a sort of physical "shock" when our assumptions are proven wrong. Blood pressure, heart beat, general mental well being that day; all of these can change in a flash when one of our assumptions bites us.

Here's a "starter" basic everyday assumption list:

- We assume flipping a swich will produce light. There's many possible reasons I can think of instantly why a light might NOT go on. OK, you change the bulb, still no-go. Go see that all the breakers are on - still no-go. NOW WHAT? Your starting to get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach because this isn't something trivial. Its starting to look like a real problem. Which leads to a second "Assumption"

- We assume the electric in our house will continue to work tomorrow as it does today. Is this a valid assumption? Not really. Systems degrade and wear. Switches fail, wall recepticals fail, breakers occasionally fail etc.

- We assume the brakes in your car will stop us. Its a real bummer when the pedal plunges to the floor and the car keeps going. There's so many ways a brake system can fail that people really shouldn't assume its going to work. If you are prone to tailgating people, this is something to ponder.

- We assume water will come out of the faucet.

- We assume our shoes won't fall apart out on the street.

- We assume our keys will work in locks

- We assume the spare tire is present and inflated

- We assume the pathetic little kit the auto maker provided will be sufficient to change a tire.

- We assume when winter comes the furnace will work.

- We assume there will always be food at the store.

- We assume there will always be gas at the gas station

- We assume the roof will get through another year OK.

- We assume the other drivers on the road will behave somewhat sanely. This can be a fatal assumption. I always assume everyone is trying to kill me.

- We assume that our own reckless behaviors will be non-fatal, when the experiences of others proves otherwise.

- We assume the coffee cup doesn't leak.

- We assume that food isn't poisoned.

- We assume the toilet will flush down a bowl full of crap and make it go away.

- We go to bed at night assuming our neighbors aren't Ted Bundy.

- We assume that little used cabinet over the fridge isn't hiding a monstrous nest of spiders.

- We assume the water will continue to flow after soaping up in the shower.

- We assume the power will stay on long enough to take that shower without being in the dark.

- We assume a book we buy will have all its pages and in the correct sequence.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Watch Me Light This Fart On Fire...

Being one of those 60's 70's kids, I find this hilarious and 100% accurate.
Watch Me Light This Fart On Fire...
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies or DVD's, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good, and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Sunday, October 09, 2005

stench of thousands of rotting sea-urchin carcasses

Q: How could the neighbors not notice this previously?
A: The stench of MA politics has made them immune to bad smelling stuff.

LOWELL SUN
City health inspectors, drawn by the overpowering stench of thousands of rotting sea-urchin carcasses, uncovered what they say was an illegal seafood-processing plant on Middlesex Street.

I got a call (Tuesday) from an ambulance company saying ‘I drove by it and thought there might be a dead body in the building' because it did smell like a cadaver,” said city Health Director Frank Singleton. “You've got thousands of little bodies. It's almost like one big corpse.”

Hey Joe - you're smarter than the left thinks you are!

Read it all, I just clipped out the last few paragraphs. Bottom line: the "meme" the left constantly pitches about the public still believing Saddam was involved in 9/11 is largely B.S. and a product of flawed polling. Shame on them.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
After September 2001, pollsters switched from recording spontaneous responses to presenting respondents with “forced-choice” questions. This switch, “probably made in order to more efficiently process the survey data, had the unintended effect of exaggerating the degree to which Americans saw a connection between Hussein and the attacks,” Althaus said.

In addition, most polls only permitted respondents to assess the likelihood that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Only one poll allowed respondents a range of options. This poll, sponsored by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, revealed that about one in five Americans believed Saddam was directly involved in the attacks.

It appears that rather than becoming duped, as the popular account has it, the American public has gradually grown more critical of the idea that Hussein had a hand in 9/11,” the researchers wrote. “Rather than showing a gullible public blindly accepting the rationales offered by an administration bent on war, our analysis reveals a self-correcting public that has grown ever more doubtful of Hussein’s culpability since the 9/11 attacks.

ROK's spend $380M on 3 mile ditch

You thought the Army corps of engineers could make big cash evaporate like a sno-cone in the Sahara? Trust me - we're just amateur posers. I have to bow my head in shame when presented with profligate spending like this. The ROK's must be in total Phat City to buy into this. Of course the US plans on building a $280M bridge to an island with virtually nobody living there, so we may catch up yet...

taipeitimes
Hundreds of South Koreans gathered in downtown Seoul on Saturday as the city officially reopened a stream that had been hidden under cement paving stones for nearly 50 years.
The Cheonggyecheon, which runs 5.8km through central Seoul, was opened to the public after a two-year multimillion-dollar face-lift ordered by Mayor Lee Myung-bak, who had pledged to recover the city's ecological landscape.

"It seemed like a far-fetched dream when they first said they will restore the stream," said 59-year-old Yoo Young-koo, who runs a business in central Seoul. "It's really nice to have a place to rest and take a stroll right in the center of the city."

South Korea's drive for industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s has helped the country become the world's 11th-largest economy, but it has also trapped major cities like Seoul in walls of concrete.

The US$380 million project involved demolishing an elevated highway that was built on top of the Cheonggyecheon, which was paved over in 1958-61 to prevent flooding and pollution...

Chavez makes his first move - foreign corps being extorted

This is commonly known as "extortion" in less urbane circles.

AP Story
Venezuelan Tax Agency Orders Shutdown of IBM, Others

The Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's tax agency said that it had imposed fines and ordered the temporary closure of several foreign companies, including International Business Machines, due to tax irregularities.

Moonbat claims DHS is bugging your laptop!

Ummm, yea right.

Notice how the make/model/manufacturer of this supposed laptop have been completely omitted from this article?
Notice how he says the computer is an "almost brand new laptop"? It either is new or it was used. If it was used he has no idea what happened to it previously.

We're getting pretty deep into tin foil hat territory here...

HAL TURNER
GOVERNMENT AND COMPUTER MANUFACTURERS CAUGHT INSTALLING HARD-WIRED KEYSTROKE LOGGERS INTO ALL NEW LAPTOP COMPUTERS!
Devices capture everything you ever type, then can send it via your ethernet card to the Dept. of Homeland Security without your knowledge, consent or a search warrant each time you log onto the internet!
Freedom Of Information Act Requests For Explanation From DHS, refused.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

The coming revolution in lighting - the last lightbulb you will ever buy

LED's baby, L.E.fuckingD's. I've been keep loose tabs on this technology for a while now and its looking like its ready to bust into the mainstream in a big way.

Advantages?
- Long life ~100,00 hours
- Low volt D.C. (this means cheaper houses if lighting circuits can be done with lighter gauge wire)
- Low power draw. - lower operating lifetime costs. Lower than even flourescent or screw shell Compact Flourescents (which I highly recommend)

Lumileds.com(PDF spec sheet)

UK genetic engineers create mosquitos with glowing testicles

INDEPENDENT
...British scientists have made a breakthrough in the control of malaria: by creating mosquitoes with fluorescent testicles.

The team of researchers at Imperial College London has found a way to tell the sex of the mosquitoes - by genetically modifying them so that the males express a glowing protein in their testes. A laser beam then singles out the glowing larvae, which are then separated from the females...

North Korea in the counterfeit US currency business

The DPRK getting jiggy with Irish leftists is an interesting development.

If the DPRK is now in the counterfeit business, why do we need to give'em any aid or reactors? They can print up whatever cash they need to buy that stuff on the open market. I really get irked when someone tries to "double dip" me.

BBC
Sean Garland, 71, from Navan in County Meath, appeared at Belfast County Court on Saturday.

The US government alleges he and others bought, moved and either passed as genuine or re-sold high quality counterfeit $100 notes.

A defence lawyer said Mr Garland "strongly protested" his innocence.

The US authorites further allege that Mr Garland "arranged with North Korean agencies for the purchase of quantities of notes and enlisted other people to disseminate" the money, known as "superdollars", with the UK.

Idiot Dutch princess wants "negotiations" with AQ

Ah yes, the tired old "its the poverty" excuse for terrorism. What an abject CROCK OF SHIT.

Were this the case, the USA would be seeing waves of Haitian terrorists flooding into the country since Haiti is arguably poorer than any of the Arab countries. However, this is not the case. Haitians are indeed flooding in on all manner of dubious contraptions that (more of less) float, but they're NOT coming here to terrorize - they're coming here to grab a slice of the American dream for themselves - not to tear it down. The Haitians aren't stupid - if you want some help, the way to get it is not by blowing up the bank.

The grandness that is the USA was built by people who came here with NOTHING. Desperately dirt poor immigrants who came packing only hope, not material wealth. Never did they believe that they could terrorize themselves to prosperity. They did believe they might be able to work their way to it - AND THEY DID!

My suggestion to the princess is this: BUY A VOWEL, AND GET A CLUE.

de Volkskrant

For those not conversant in Dutch, like myself, you can CLICK ON THIS LINK to get an English translation.
The conflict between All Qa' ida and the West must become solved by peaces negotiations under supervision of an independent agent. This says princess Irene of Lip-Biesterfeld Saturday in the peoples paper...

...The causes of the islamic violence have to make according to Irene with poverty, trade barriers, wrong proportions. ‘The differences between the property and the property-nots its entire out balance.'

Friday, October 07, 2005

US penetrates AQ network in Iraq

This Col. Robert Brown interview is the first time I've ever heard anyone mention that we have managed to insert/flip assets into an AQ network.

This is a MAJOR DEVELOPMENT and the MSM has totally ignored it. Of course it may just be psyop - to get them paranoid and start whacking each other too. But I tend to suspect maybe not when taken in the context of the rest of the interview and Yon's most recent dispatches. There is "a sense" here that the population is starting to turn on the insurgents in a big way. It could be that last years insurgents(native Iraqi, not imported talent), after seeing that we really DO want to help them rebuild this country have flipped. Nobody wants to be on a losing side...

I mentioned this Brown interview in the roundup post below, but I know you lazy HeadlineReading™ bastards won't bother to read the whole thing.

I originally sent this to ACE (Cutaway == Purple Avenger) and Nicky snarfed it up from there. Spread the word, I don't care about attribution, JUST. SPREAD. THE. WORD.

MFN-IRAQ
"...One of the great pieces of information we got recently is 80 percent of the al Qaeda network in the north has been devastated. And those are not our figures, those came from the last six leaders in Mosul , al Qaeda leaders that we captured; they informed us of that. We also had a letter that was captured from Abu Zaid (sp) going to Zarqawi . We recently killed Zaid (sp) and we had that letter, and it also talked about the desperate situation for the al Qaeda and the insurgents in Mosul and in the north. And then also, sources we have inside the al Qaeda network up here have also informed us of that..."

WaPo : Dem study says democrats should "throw the moonbats overboard"

Ouch! Howard Dean and Algore must be having siezures after reading this.

WASHINGTON POST
...Democrats must "admit that they cannot simply grow themselves out of their electoral dilemmas," wrote William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, in a report released yesterday. "The groups that were supposed to constitute the new Democratic majority in 2004 simply failed to materialize in sufficient number to overcome the right-center coalition of the Republican Party."
Since Kerry's defeat, some Democrats have urged that the party adopt a political strategy more like one pursued by Bush and his senior adviser, Karl Rove -- which emphasized robust turnout of the party base rather than relentless, Clinton-style tending to "swing voters."

But Galston and Kamarck, both of whom served in the Clinton White House, said there are simply not enough left-leaning voters to make this a workable strategy. In one of their more potentially controversial findings, the authors argue that the rising numbers and influence of well-educated, socially liberal voters in the Democratic Party are pulling the party further from most Americans. [Avenger's note: Doh, it took'em this long to realize this?!?]

On defense and social issues, "liberals espouse views diverging not only from those of other Democrats, but from Americans as a whole. To the extent that liberals now constitute both the largest bloc within the Democratic coalition and the public face of the party, Democratic candidates for national office will be running uphill." ...

Middle east roundup post

Lots of news out of the middle east lately but nobody has collected some of the more relevent bits into one place so they can be groked as a whole. Plowing through all this will take a while and you'll really need to read all the pieces I'm going to link, BUT in doing so a puzzle starts to come together that the MSM is failing to recognize.

A) Gaza withdrawl - self explanatory, covered by MSM.

B) Palestinian looting/destruction of left behind infrastructure - covered by MSM.

C) Subsequent Hamas rocket attack and IDF retaliation - covered by MSM

D) Hamas announces cease fire - covered by MSM

E) Sunnis drop objection to Iraq constitution vote - covered by MSM

F) Lebanon requests FBI assistance in journalist bombing probe - covered (minimally) by MSM

G) The Iraq insurgency is collapsing rapidly - NOT covered by MSM at all.
    1Must read MICHAEL YON(The Battle For Mosul IV) I'm not going to excerpt Yon because I want you to read his whole dispatch. There's too much there to distill into snappy excerps.

ROBERT BROWN INTERVIEW

One of the great pieces of information we got recently is 80 percent of the al Qaeda network in the north has been devastated. And those are not our figures, those came from the last six leaders in Mosul , al Qaeda leaders that we captured; they informed us of that. We also had a letter that was captured from Abu Zaid (sp) going to Zarqawi . We recently killed Zaid (sp) and we had that letter, and it also talked about the desperate situation for the al Qaeda and the insurgents in Mosul and in the north. And then also, sources we have inside the al Qaeda network up here have also informed us of that. [Avengers note: this is the first time I've heard anyone mention that WE have penetrated AQ operations]
...
Like when we first got here in October, there was -- no hotline existed. We opened a hotline; we got about 40 calls a month prior to January. The last six months, we're up to 400 calls a month. Every day the citizens are stopping us on the street telling us where a potential suspicious individual is who may be a terrorist, and telling us where they tried to plant IEDs and those type of devices. So the population is clearly very confident.
...
Right now, 80 percent of the folks on the street in Mosul and Nineveh province in the north here say that they will vote. And very interesting -- these are -- many of the folks I talked to are Sunnis who are very upset that they were lied to last election, told not to vote, and they were very excited to vote this election.
...
COL. BROWN: We did face well-trained foreign fighters prior to January elections. We have not faced well-trained foreign fighters since. Since February of this year until now, we have not seen any well-trained, in fact, very poorly trained foreign fighters. So whoever was training them before, I don't know, but apparently they've lost their support and they're not able to train them and they've -- you know, now we're getting much younger -- we had 15- to 17-year- olds, very young. You know, we were estimating -- it's kind of hard, you know, when you see the remains of a suicide bomber, there's not much left. But from captured ones, and then reports from these folks, they were very young, 15- to 17-years-old; not well trained. And we have not seen well-trained foreign fighters at all since February. So wherever they were training before, I don't know, but it's sure not -- they're not doing it anymore that I'm aware of because they're not coming here and we have not seem them.


H) Kuwait is softening its stance towards Israel and softening its support for the Palestinians. The New York Times ran this! Can you fucking believe that? NYT This is a story that basically supports the whole "neocon" game plan of how things were expected to start playing out in the middle east!

This is a lot of stuff, particularly if you go read the whole Yon dispatch and all of Brown's interview WHICH I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Think on this for a day "grok" the totality. We'll come back to it tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Drunken watchman cuts cows’ tails

Dude couldn't imagine anything else to do but to cut their tails off? I've been drunk many times(not in the presense of cows though, at least not the 4 leg variety that is) and I can't say that slicing the tails off cows ever occured to me - even during the worst benders. This guy seems to have a seriously limited world view if disfiguring some hapless cows is the best idea he could come up with when drunk.

My suspicion, and its just that - a suspicion, is this guy was looking for a little "female companionship" and these gals were none too thrilled about his drunken advances. Now THAT sort of behavior might get you smacked up side the head by a tail because you'd be...well...in the general vicinity of the tail.

PRAVDA
The personnel of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ office in Poltavskaya region arrested 39-year-old milker and watchman of one of the farms for cutting cows’ tails, Ukrainski Novyny reports.

The arrested man was in the state of alcoholic intoxication and became angry when one of the cows lashed his face with its tail.

“He could not imagine anything else but to cut cows’ tails”, a representative from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ office reported.

The milker decided to cut the tails and realized what he was doing only after cutting the twelfth tail. Cows were crying from pain and lost a lot of blood.

The detainee explained that he had lost his temper.

Police officers initiated a case according to the article 299 of the Russian Criminal Code (cruelty to animals).

Monday, October 03, 2005

Volcano kills two in El Salvadore

Sounds ugly...could be the real deal.
TAIPEI TIMES
El Salvador's largest volcano, dormant for more than a century, shook the ground as it woke up on Saturday...

...Military emergency sirens blasted, calling for an immediate area evacuation...

...The volcano "has begun to expel magma on the side of the town of San Blas...

...Hot rocks belched out by the volcano ranged from the size of a football to the size of a car, a journalist on the scene reported.

...Two people were killed when 200 residents fled the hamlet of Palo Campana, located just 2km from the crater, Interior Minister Rene Figueroa said....

Politically correct colors

I wasn't aware frequencies in the visible spectrum had any particular political implications. However, now that this has become an issue its clear the congress needs to take this up with the sun and and light bulb makers. The sun must be forced to stop emitting these offensive frequencies, and bulb makers must similarly be forced to build filters into their products. Naturally Home Depot will be expected to stop selling pink building products like toilets and sinks, ceramic tile and paint. Owens Corning must immediately halt production and distribution of their "pink" line of fiberglass insulation products -- after all, nobody wants their attic to project the "girlie man" image. Mixing of a gallon of white paint and and red paint to produce the color which shall not be named will of course have to be criminalized and made punishable as a "hate crime".
LOCKER ROOM FLAP
A University of Iowa law professor said she has received death threats after voicing her objections over the pink visitors' locker room at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.

Erin Buzuvis, 29, who moved from Boston to Iowa City to begin teaching at the law school, said she and several friends, colleagues and neighbors have been concerned for months about the message behind the locker rooms. She said the locker room promotes negative stereotypes.

Former Hawkeye football coach Hayden Fry had the visiting team's locker room painted pink in the 1970s. University officials have kept the color and expanded its use with the renovation under way at the stadium.

The carpeting, metal lockers, brick walls, sinks, shower floor -- even the urinals -- are pink.

"I've heard this is a way to honor a great coach, and Fry was a great coach," Buzuvis said. "But I don't think it does him any honor to perpetuate what is seen by many as a sexist and homophobic gesture."

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Banned in England: Winnie the Pooh and Piglet

Alas poor Winnie and Piglet, we did enjoy you so until the vicious monster of political correctness popped like a 50 megaton airburst over your unsuspecting cartoon heads.

So THIS is what is has come down to folks. At what point do we, as a society, tell these knuckle dragging social extortionist cretins to simply "fuck off and die asshole, WE'RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT"?

I suggest that time is FAST APPROACHING. If you don't like our pig toys and Pooh calendars, go back to whatever dictator run, economic disaster, rathole you came from. I expect to have to abide by and tolerate the cultural mores, traditions, and laws of a predominantly muslim country when I go there. It is not unreasonable to expect muslims to reciprocate without this sort of bullshit whining when they are in a predominantly non-muslim country.

I'm sorry - this is like buying a house under an airport's approach pattern then voicing retard complaints about the noise. If you don't like the noise, its real simple - don't buy that fucking house.

THE SUN - retards on parade!
NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office — in case they offend Muslim staff.

Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan.

Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean.

Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: “It’s a tolerance of people’s beliefs.”

H/T to Dean Esmay via LGF

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Nuclear fart bombs

Needs Flash to view it.

NUCLEAR FART BOMB

FEMA cash buys 12 day coke binge

Don't get me wrong here - I can appreciate a week+ coke and hookers binge as much as the next guy. BUT, to do it on the taxpayer's tab in this kinda situation is well...just a bit on the opportunistic cold hearted scumbag side of things. I'm thinking this pair needs a nice splashy "show trial" and then get sentenced to the MAX - serving consecutive sentences.

LOCAL6
A man and a woman from Florida have been charged with fraud after allegedly pretending to be victims of Hurricane Katrina to get federal money.

Kenneth M. Hodge, 33, and Veronica Jaeger, 22, were arrested Thursday in Shreveport. Each was charged with one count each of conspiracy, theft of federal funds and mail and wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said...

...FEMA mailed Hodge and Jaeger each a check in care of the local shelter for $2,000, Washington said. None of the addresses exist.

Hodge and Jaeger allegedly used part of the FEMA funds to buy cocaine, Washington said...

...The couple spent the money in about 12 days staying at various local hotels, authorities said. Once the money was gone, they checked back into the Hirsch Memorial shelter...

...If convicted, each faces a maximum of five years in prison on the conspiracy charge, 10 years on the theft charge and 20 years on each of the fraud charges.

Rodney King back in the news!

This guy is the fucking energizer bunny - the gift that just keeps on giving!

LOCAL6

The man at the center of unrest in Los Angeles in 1992 has been arrested.

Rodney King has been jailed in Rialto, Calif., for allegedly threatening his daughter and ex-girlfriend. Police said King was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of making criminal threats. He's being held on $25,000 bail.

King is accused of threatening to kill his 23-year-old daughter and her mother after the two got in a fight with King's current girlfriend. All three women live in King's home.

The daughter, who called police, said King was armed with a handgun, but authorities said it turned out to be a toy.