Whale Hunters V Wife Beaters: Cancelled

I just love this kind of story, they give me a smile and endorse a lifetimes view of human nature.
I wouldn't be holding me breath then on the Middle East, not at all at all.

It would appear that the whale hunting Christians of Norway and the dark forces of the Islamic wife beaters*** couldn't quite get it together to kick a ball about.

Unholy row at clergy soccer game.

A friendship-building football match between Muslim and Christian clergy in Norway was called off after a row over the participation of women players. more

  ***A ten minute film by Theo van Gogh that resulted in his murder, in English after the opening subs.

Iraqi Footballer

Removed by me. A humorous tale but not the direction I wanted to go with the blog, have a couple of "Well I nevers!" and a cartoon instead.

In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his
wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of
thumb".

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England,
when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints
and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's
and Q's"

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim
or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the
whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by
this practice

383 An Evocative Number

The previous post was # 383, I can never look at it and not think 383=cubic inches=first new car=brumm brumm beep beep=nee nar nee nar=three bags full.*

They Lost Their Souls.

Even then I recognized bad acting. I already thought that Bush was an incompetent fool. So I watched with a growing sense of horror



and disbelief as my badly frightened countrymen convinced themselves that they had a real leader in the White House, one they could count on and trust to make them safe again. more

Be Careful

"Be careful," warned a senior Iraqi government official living in the Green Zone in Baghdad, "be very careful and above all do not trust the police or the army."

He added that the level of insecurity in the Iraqi capital is as bad now as it was before the US drive to make the city safe came into operation in February.

The so-called "surge", the dispatch of 20,000 extra American troops to Iraq with the prime mission of getting control of Baghdad, is visibly failing.

There are army and police checkpoints everywhere but Iraqis are terrified because they do not know if the men in uniform they see there are, in reality, death squad members. Be careful...

Warning: I Thought I'd Pass It On

One day you’re gonna wake up, America, and you’re gonna find out what was happening while you were sprawled on the couch watching endless mind-numbing loops of CSI, Desperate Housewives or Dancing with the Stars.

One day you’re gonna wake up.....

Boy Meets Girl

A Story.

Faerie Boop

Titania Boop, Queen of the faeries.
My kind of Queen.

Betty and Dick

And that is the way of things with the silver spooners, it has to be a side by side don't you know.

Seven is Exploding

There are a hundred and one reasons why I find it hard to buy into a Twin Towers conspiracy, the two most obvious being that you can see the building fail at the point of impact and the whole thing collapse from the top down.

But Seven, my oh my, Seven is a whole different ball game, and this five minute clip aired on Italian TV a couple of weeks ago doesn't help the case for "It just fell down"
I don't know where the footage has been all this time but to say it's an eye opener would be a bit of an understatement.

Update: Just to clarify, the main footage has been around long enough, it's the closing few seconds that's new to me, whether it's new to the rest of the world, I wouldn't be knowing.

More Chalk Drawings From Julian Beever

How brilliant, or mad are these, of course the hose is a chalk drawing too.

Old Black Ladies and Bad Dudes With Nines

Two months before fatal drug raid, Atlanta cops encountered another elderly woman with a gunTwo months and a day before Kathryn Johnston, there was Frances Thompson.

On This Day 1994 Senna Killed. May 1

I'm a bit late with this one, Senna page. BBC

Dog and Chips!

Dog and chips.

Private Contractors, New Praetorian Guard?

How many contractors in Iraq? a lot.
In depth article from the Asia Times

A bedtime Story For Bush And The Christian Right

"This is a country of people who are fighting against the US occupation and everyone who supports them. Christians can leave Iraq without being hurt but if they insist on staying, we don't have any option but to kill them," said Abu Ahmed, who claims to be from a Sunni insurgent group called Al-Qa'idah.

"We have heard of cases of families who were taken from their homes by extremists to convert them to Islam. The brave ones who refused to convert were beheaded and their mutilated bodies were later dumped in front of their homes," Barini said.

A World Turned Upside Down

This just in. A tad ironic in light of my earlier post.

The former chairman of the fund for Iraq's reconstruction no longer believes the country can be saved.


There is no doubt that critical challenges have not been met by Iraq's leadership, but is it realistic that they ever could have been?

Mr. al-Maliki is an easy target for a U.S. administration that, in 2003, unleashed forces it should have known it could not control. more

Two Cute Boops

Ya figure.

Off to the feathers.

Ireland Abortion Church and State

Ireland has come an awful long way in the last two decades but the unholy alliance of church and state still keeps certain aspects of Irish life firmly entrenched in the bog. The infringement on civil rights regarding travel is mind blowing.story

Update: I should think so.

Betty Two in the Neighborhood. Such Joy

The Queen has arrived in the US to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia - although many Americans will still tell you it was in Plymouth, Massachusetts - 13 years later. more

21 July Suspect 'meant no harm'

One of the alleged 21 July bomb plot suspects has told a court he did not intend to hurt anyone when he detonated a device on the London underground.

Yassin Omar, 26, from north London, admitted setting off the rucksack device in protest at the Iraq war.

Fundi Gets Out-Fundied: Ahmadinejad

Ahmadinejad accused of indecency

Iran's president has come under fire from a conservative newspaper after he publicly kissed the hand of a woman who used to be his school teacher.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative by the standards of Iranian politics, was attacked by the Hezbollah newspaper for acting "contrary to Sharia law".

Jesus what a bleeding culture!

Benchmark Bullshit

Nothing fires the ire more than having to listen to the wankers, in both parties, talking about the Iraqi Government achieving benchmarks.
I wonder how well would fair themselves, these advocates and setters of "Benchmarks," in achieving any of the unrealistic tasks it sets for the Iraqis.

Iraq is broken, nobody is going to put it back together, not now, not for the foreseeable future, and realistically probably not ever.
Congress knows it and Bush knows it, if you think the troops are coming home before Bush leaves office and can wipe his hands of the biggest fuck up in modern history then think again.

Update; In reply to comment made by HH.
I hear all what you say H, I honestly don't think there is a solution given the present climate and the number of factions on the ground.
Morally we are obliged to try and fix what we have broken, but I truly believe the situation has gone far beyond what is fixable.
Stay and be damned, leave and be damned. There will be a bloodbath far worse than what we are witnessing now if we leave, the only scenario I can envisage on withdrawal is a greater regional war and eventually the strongest leader/country will take control, but that in itself could mean years if not decades of conflict.
All I know it's a mess of gargantuan proportions. But reverting to what I wrote earlier I don't want to see "failed benchmarks" become the modern day equivalent of Nixon's "peace with honour"

Have a read of Arthur Silber from a year or two back.

Keep the scope of this catastrophe in mind -- and never forget that we chose to launch an utterly unjustified, aggressive invasion and occupation of a nation that did not threaten us in any serious manner whatsoever. Given the incomprehensible horror that Iraqis now must live with every minute of every day -- horror that is the direct result of our actions -- who the hell are we to be making demands of anyone? We ought to beg their forgiveness, with every fiber of our being. But for Kerry, and for all our other national leaders, none of this matters and it is hardly ever discussed in any detail in terms of how it affects
the Iraqis themselves. Oh, no: it's all and only about us.

More

Got Kids or Just a Big Kid Yourself?

Got Kids or Just a Big Kid Yourself? then be off with you and click this link that will take you to BBC2 nature page or you might want to go direct to Prehistoric Life where kids of all ages will find lots of stuff. It won't however bring you closer to the Lord but I am sure you will find answers in science that explain things a tad differently to Answers in Genesis.

Boopy Blows

Boopy boopy boopy boopy doop.

Not today she don't, I guess the Booper don't like being blogged.

Iraq/American War of Independence

I'm too tired to comment on this a short clip from BBCs Newsnight, push it on to 17 minutes.
You will reach your own conclusions. Iraq/American war of independence.




Book and insight

Kathryn Johnston. Bent Cops. Update

The sordid details of the workings of Atlanta cops in the killing of old ladies.
If you remember one of these good Christian men read his goddamn bible in court.

According to federal documents released this week, these are the events that led to Kathryn Johnston's death and the steps the officers took to cover their tracks.

Three narcotics agents were trolling the streets near the Bluffs in northwest
Atlanta, a known market for drugs, midday on the Tuesday before
Thanksgiving.

Eventually they set their sights on some apartments
on Lanier Street, usually fertile when narcotics agents are looking for
arrests and seizures. more

The tale of the snitch.
This from the last paragraph in the snitch link:
With his identity exposed, White says he can no longer work as a snitch, which netted him up to $30,000 annually.
But if we read this from the first article:

To add credibility to their story, they (the cops) actually paid White his usual $30 fee for information and explained to him how he was to say the scenario played out if asked.

Now it's possible I suppose that for some tips White (the snitch) might receive a higher fee, but to take the figures at face value White is providing twenty tips a week.
Now this slimeball either knows an awful lot of bad dudes or the tips he comes up must be very very suspect to say the least, little wonder defence lawyers abhor the use of paid informants.

The IRA treated touts (informants) with the respect that was due to them, one in each kneecap.
Touts, no lower life form on the planet.

Baghdad is Finished. Up Close and Personal

It truly is, read this compelling piece.

ROVING IN THE RED ZONE

ATol's "Roving Eye", Pepe Escobar, is back in Iraq and in the Red Zone - that is, outside "Fortress USA", the Green Zone. This is the first of his unembedded, non-Kevlar-protected, bodyguardless reports.

Baghdad up close and personal
By Pepe Escobar

The Red Zone soundtrack is the hum of the power generator, punctuated by Kalashnikov shots, explosions, bombings, the sirens of police cars and ambulances and the roar of US choppers flying almost at roof level.

The air is heavy, dusty and the sun usually does not shine through the thick haze - a Hollywood-like special effect. The Baghdad gulag has the feel of an eerie version of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles - dusty and dead instead of glitzy palm trees, living-dead characters covered by a thick layer of sand and soot. The urban tissue is of a dissected cadaver - filthy, exposed parts separated from one another, fear and loathing impressed on blood, sweat, tears and viscera.

This is the real face of Bush's surgeland.

Was It all Because Of The 710?

If it was I don't know how the oil companies will manage to operate when the last wheel falls off.

There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they're looking for 10, 20, 50 years in the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq.

-- former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006 more

Fourteen Year Old Boy Prisoner Hangs Himself

Tragic.

Four Years On

Ava's fourth anniversary video.

Betty Boop At Your Service

Fancy a little something?

Juan Pablo You're Such a Bad Lad

Not quite a country stopping nipple flash, Monty flips a bird.
I suppose I'd better bite my tongue on this one otherwise it could well end up as a rant, so I will keep stum and just file it under Piety and Hypocrisy. more. 30 sec vid

It's a good job Raikkonen wasn't on track then.

Or there was a cameraman about.

An interview with Letterman.

Plastic Bag Free. Update

Original post.

Update,short clip.

Best tax ever.
From viewing the clip it would appear that Rebecca Hoskin had little trouble in convincing the town's traders to go plastic free after they had viewed a film she had made in Hawaii on the legacy of plastic rubbish. (How middle of the ocean is that.)
The film to be shown BBC2 Wednesday at 9.00pm, Natural World.

If you follow the links going back from this post you will "end up in Ireland" where I witnessed a bold move by the Irish Government on the introduction of a "Bag Tax" a great move that dramatically reduced plastic bag consumption.