Clarence Mitchell to Spin the Sinking of The Costa Concordia

I can't wait to hear Clarence Mitchell spin this lot. Yes you heard right, Mitchell has got the job of spinning the sinking of the Costa Concordia.

It should be quite hilarious, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a certain house in Rothley, where the occupants can sit back and enjoy Mitchell in full cringe factor warp nine.

Every time Mitchell opens his gob, people are going to associate it with the McCanns.

A public relations masterpiece. Drive on!

Sounds familiar.

Clarence Mitchell, who is representing Costa Cruises, said: "Mr Foschi confirmed the captain had been approaching the island of Giglio to 'make a salute'.

"The company says this (incident) was caused by an attempt by the captain to show the ship to the port.

"But there's a criminal investigation going on and we're not going to say anything that's going to compromise that or the captain's case." The Scum

- - -

Burson-Marsteller MD Clarence Mitchell started working on the comms last night.

- - -

Port Authority to cruise ship captain: 'Get on board, damn it'
January 17th, 2012

Recordings between the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship and the Livorno Port Authority, which is part of the Coastal Guards, have given new insight into what happened on the ship when it hit rocks Friday night just off Italy's western coast.

A total of 23 people remain missing following the wreck, which led to 11 deaths, Italian officials said Tuesday. Capt. Francesco Schettino is under arrest and may face charges that include manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning a ship when passengers were still on board, according to an Italian prosecutor.

Questions abound for captain of doomed cruise ship

Below are several transcripts of recordings between authorities and the captain published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and translated by CNN's Hada Messia:

Livorno Port Authorities: "Concordia, we ask you if all is OK there."

Concordia: "All is well."

-----------------------

Port authority: "Concordia. We ask you if all is well there."

Concordia: "All is well. It is only a technical failure."

Port authority: "How many people are on board?"

Schettino: "Two-three hundred"

Port authority: "How come so few people? Are you on board?’

Schettino: "No, I’m not on board because the ship is keeling. We’ve abandoned it."

Port authority: "What? You’ve abandoned the ship?"

Schettino: "No. What abandon? I’m here."

-----------------------

Port authority: "You must return on board. Climb the ladder (rope ladder), return to the fore (stem) and coordinate the work."

Schettino does not reply

Port authority: "You must tell us how many people are on board, how many women, how many children. You have to coordinate the rescue operation. Commander, this is an order. Now I’m in charge, you have abandoned ship and now you are going to go to the stem and coordinate the work. There are already dead bodies."

Schettino: "How many?"

Port authority: "You should be the one telling me this…What do you want to do? Do you want to go home?...Now go back on the stem and tell me what to do.."

-----------------------

Port authority: "Listen, this is De Falco from Livorno. Am I speaking with the captain?"

Schettino: "Yes."

Port authority: "Tell me your name."

Schettino: "This is Captain Schettino, commandant."

Port authority: "Listen Schettino, there are people trapped on board. Now, you have to go with your lifeboat and go under the boat stem on the straight side, there is a ladder there."

Port authority: "Get on board on the ship and tell me, you tell me how many people there are."

Port authority: "Clear? I’m recording this conversation, Captain Schettino."

Schettino: "Well then commandant, I need to tell you something."

Port authority: "Speak loudly."

Schettino: "The ship now…I’m here in front of it..."

Port authority: "Captain, speak loudly."

Schettino: "Commandant, at this moment the ship is tilted."

Port authority: "I understand. Listen. There are people who are coming down the stem ladder. You must take that ladder in the opposite direction. Get on board the ship and you tell me how many people are on board, and what do they have. Clear? You tell me if there are children, women, people with special needs. And you tell me how many there are of each category..."

Port authority: "Is that clear?"

Port authority: "Look Schettino, you might have been saved from the sea, but I will make sure you go through a very rough time…I will make sure you go through a lot of trouble. Get on board, damn it."

-----------------------

Schettino: "Commandant, please…"

Port authority: "No...please. No, you get on board. Assure me that you are getting on board."

Schettino: (Hard to understand) "I’m here with the rescuers. I’m here. I’ve not gone anywhere. I’m here."

Port authority: "What are you doing captain?"

Schettino: "I’m here coordinating the rescue."

Port authority: (Speaks over captain): "What are you coordinating there? Go on board and coordinate from there the rescue operation. Are you refusing?"

Schettino: "No, no, I’m not refusing."

Port authority: "You are refusing to go on board? And why are you not going on board?"

Schettino: "I am going because now there is the other motorboat (Lancia) that has stopped now."

Port authority: "You go on board. It is an order. You cannot make any other evaluations. You have declared abandoning ship. Now I’m in charge. You get on board. Is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commandant..."

Port authority over captain: "Are you not listening to me.."

Schettino speaks over Port authority: "I’m going..."

Schettino: "Call me immediately when you get on board. Our rescue officer is there."

Schettino: "Where is your rescue officer?"

Port authority: "My rescue officer is at the stem…Go …(can hear captain saying OK)…There are already bodies, Schettino."

Schettino: "How many dead bodies are there?"

Port authority: "I don’t know. I know of one. I’ve heard of one. You are the one to tell me how many there are. Christ!"

Schettino: "Are you aware that it is dark here and we cannot see anything?"

Port authority: "So? Do you want to go home Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Climb the ladder and get on the stem."

Port authority: "...and tell me what can be done, how many people are there, what do they need. Now."

Schettino: "Commandant, we are with the second in command…"

Port authority: "Then both of you climb up. What is his name?"

Schettino: "Dimitris Christidis."

Port authority: "You are your guard. Go on board, now!"

Schettino: "Commandant… I want to go on board, it is just that the other lifeboat here…there are other rescue operators... it has stopped and it is stuck there... now I’ve called other rescue operators..."

Port authority: "It is one hour that you are telling me this. You go on board. On b.o.a.r.d (says the word slowly almost spelling it out). And you immediately tell me how many people there are"

Schettino: "OK."

Source and videos

The Costa Concordia, a plank with a block of flats on top! Otherwise known as ''top hamper.''

(Sheriff) Patrick J Sullivan Jr Incarcerated in the Patrick J Sullivan Jr Detention Facility

If you have a taste for irony, bring your spoon, this story is dripping with it.

Not to mention sex, corruption and hypocrisy. It's the American way!

And if after reading the story, which includes this:

Sullivan was released Tuesday after a judge reduced his bail from $500,000 to $50,000 for past service to the public, including his heroic rescue of two deputies.

Do go to this previous story on Chicago police lieutenant Jon Burge, who by comparison makes Sullivan look like a pussy cat, and includes this:

They say the judge should take into account his military service and decades fighting crime.

Which, if you read the story, is absolutely mind blowing. Decades of fighting crime! stroll on! you couldn't make it up, not even in America. Trust Me I'm a Police Officer

When the Cop Is the Criminal: Preying on Drug Addicts

Patrick J. Sullivan's experience as a cop is making him an exception when it should make him an example. The former "Sheriff of the Year" has a very shady past.
By Kristen Gwynne
December 11, 2011



Patrick J. Sullivan, 68, was the sheriff of Arapahoe County, Colo., near Denver, for nearly 20 years before he retired in 2002. Sullivan was considered such an exemplary police officer that, in 2001, the National Sheriff's Association named him Sheriff of the Year. In a hugely ironic twist, last week Sullivan became an inmate at The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility, and yes, the jail was named in his honor.

After several informants tipped off police that Sullivan was involved in drug trafficking, investigators watched as Sullivan agreed to meet a male informant and swap him methamphetamines for sex. That's when the cuffs came on. He was charged with felony distribution and possession of meth, in addition to a misdemeanor charge of soliciting prostitution.

Sullivan was released Tuesday after a judge reduced his bail from $500,000 to $50,000 for past service to the public, including his heroic rescue of two deputies. But the details of his arrest, as well as another shady incident involving an unsolved drowning, raise questions about the impunity with which law enforcement acts in the drug war.

It's also yet another example of people in authority — such as the football coaches at Penn State in the Sandusky molestation scandal, and the basketball coach and chief of police in Syracuse — using their positions of power to prey on vulnerable people, and then having the system give them protection when ordinary civilians would have the book thrown at them. Sullivan, too, used his position of power for sexual exploitation, and during pretrial proceedings, his authority worked in his favor.

Sullivan's attorney, Kevin McGreevy, argued against the $500,000 bail requested by prosecutors, saying, "Given the amount of good he's done, not just for Colorado but for Arapahoe County ... (I ask) that his bond be reduced to $50,000." The judge agreed, slapped a gag order on the case, and Sullivan posted bail and walked.

But the fact that Sullivan was a police officer is exactly the "public service" that should make him an example, not an exception. Having been a decorated cop does not mean that you deserve special treatment, just like having been a good parent or an otherwise upstanding person does not commute sentences for drug offenses. A crusader to keep drugs away from kids, Sullivan locked up people for crimes he evidently was not above himself.

Perhaps more importantly, Sullivan used his experience as a police officer to prey on the weak — and, as he was later charged, to influence a public official. Sullivan allegedly hung out at a home for recovering meth addicts, where he traded meth for sex with young men. Beyond prostitution, the activity raises questions of consent. A drug warrior who worked to keep drugs away from kids, Sullivan should know the plight that addicts face, as well as the great lengths they may go to to score drugs fueling their addictions.

Dillon Grilley, 25, called the cops on Sullivan in September because the "old guy" refused to leave his home. Grilley told CALL7 that Sullivan visited his two roommates as much as two to three times daily, and the three would disappear into a bedroom together. Having seen his roommates smoke methamphetamine, Grilley feared Sullivan had coerced his roommates back into drugs. As he called the cops, Sullivan reportedly shoved a badge in his face and said he was the police. He was gone by the time police arrived, but police report that he was stripped of his badge following the incident.

And still, it may get even worse for Sullivan. Current Araphoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said last week that police contacted him to inquire about interviewing Sullivan. They were investigating the Jan. 26 unsolved drowning of 27-year-old Sean Moss, a former gay porn actor, and the autopsy for whom showed intoxication from meth and gamma-hydroxybutryic acid, or GHB, best known as a date rape drug. Less than two weeks before Moss's death, Sullivan reportedly posted bail for Moss's arrest in a domestic violence case involving another man in a Denver suburb. Police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Morris's case remained open because the coroner could not determine the cause of death. Was it an accident, suicide, or homicide? Go to page two.

Insiders Voice Doubts About CIA’s 9/11 Story

Perhaps not perfect irony, but it's as good as it gets as far as a graphic is concerned.

And I haven't ended the article where I have for no reason. Again, perhaps not perfect irony, but it's as good as it gets as far as language is concerned. J'adore ironie!

Insiders voice doubts about CIA’s 9/11 story

Former FBI agents say the agency's bin Laden unit misled them about two hijackers
By Rory O'Connor and Ray Nowosielski
October 14, 2011

A growing number of former government insiders — all responsible officials who served in a number of federal posts — are now on record as doubting ex-CIA director George Tenet’s account of events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Among them are several special agents of the FBI, the former counterterrorism head in the Clinton and Bush administrations, and the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, who told us the CIA chief had been “obviously not forthcoming” in his testimony and had misled the commissioners.




These doubts about the CIA first emerged among a group of 9/11 victims’ families whose struggle to force the government to investigate the causes of the attacks, we chronicled in our 2006 documentary film “Press for Truth.” At that time, we thought we were done with the subject. But tantalizing information unearthed by the 9/11 Commission’s final report and spotted by the families (Chapter 6, footnote 44) raised a question too important to be put aside:

Did Tenet fail to share intelligence with the White House and the FBI in 2000 and 2001 that could have prevented the attacks? Specifically, did a group in the CIA’s al-Qaida office engage in a domestic covert action operation involving two of the 9/11 hijackers, that — however legitimate the agency’s goals may have been — hindered the type of intelligence-sharing that could have prevented the attacks? And if not, then what would explain seemingly inexplicable actions by CIA employees?

As we sought to clarify how the CIA had handled information about the hijackers before 9/11, we found a half dozen former government insiders who came away from the Sept. 11 tragedy feeling burned by the CIA, particularly by a small group of employees within the agency’s bin Laden unit in 2000 and 2001, then known as Alec Station.

Among them was Gov. Thomas Kean, co-chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which was responsible for investigating 9/11. He agreed to an on-camera interview for our documentary in 2008. He surprised us by voicing many doubts and questions about the CIA’s actions preceding Sept. 11 — and especially about former CIA director George Tenet.

Four years after Tenet testified to the commission, Kean said the CIA director had been “obviously not forthcoming” in some of his testimony. Tenet said under oath that he had not met with President Bush in the month of August 2001, Kean recalled. It was later learned he had done so twice.

Did Tenet misspeak? we asked the New Jersey Republican.

“No, I don’t think he misspoke,” Kean responded. “I think he misled.”

A tale of two hijackers more

George Carlin on Language

Feeding The Hungry and Protesting Wall Street In The Land of The Free

This picture gallery is to accompany the post above. (God, hate and hypocrisy)

SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST AMERICAN TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY–

Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony. "It was weird," Fullmer said. "I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and he pulled a face and said, "Great weather, eh?" and I thought "Wait a minute, no way is it great weather." Fullmer then realised that the other man’s "mistake" was in fact deliberate. Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8 and 3, plans to use irony himself in future. "I’m, like, using it all the time," he said. "Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them to shit and I said "Hey, great weather!".

''We’re a nation of laws'' Says Obama As He Declares Manning Guilty

This is just one of the excellent links from Glenn Greenwald's main article at Salon. Another link leads to this irony of ironies where the writer has this to say about Obama's unconstitutional remarks declaring Manning guilty. Here he is talking about a similar gaffe by Nixon in declaring Charles Manson guilty pretrial.

What I didn’t recall from that time was that John Mitchell, easily American history’s crookedest Attorney General ever, was at Nixon’s side when he made that statement in Denver. He recognized right away that there was a serious problem with Nixon’s statement: article

But for the article proper you have to go to Salon where other links abound that shouldn't be ignored. I found the five links embedded in this one paragraph alone more than interesting, for exactly the same reasons as the writer notes.

But even more fascinating is Obama's invocation of America's status as a "nation of laws" to justify why Manning must be punished. That would be a very moving homage to the sanctity of the rule of law -- if not for the fact that the person invoking it is the same one who has repeatedly engaged in the most extraordinary efforts to shield Bush officials from judicial scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution of every kind for their war crimes and surveillance felonies. Indeed, the Orwellian platitude used by Obama to justify that immunity -- Look Forward, Not Backward -- is one of the greatest expressions of presidential lawlessness since Richard Nixon told David Frost that "it's not illegal if the President does it." More Salon President Obama speaks on Manning and the rule of law

All this, and I have never mentioned the ''H'' word once.

Obama on Manning: “He Broke the Law.” So Much for that Trial?
By: Michael Whitney
April 22 2011

President Barack Obama made stunning accusations about accused Wikileaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, directly asserting that Manning “broke the law.” Apparently the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.

In a discussion yesterday with Logan Price, a Bradley Manning supporter who was part of a group of activists who sang a song during the President’s San Francisco fundraiser, President Obama flatly stated that Bradley Manning “dumped” documents and that “he broke the law.” A rough transcript follows, provided by UK Friends of Bradley Manning:

OBAMA: So people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works.

And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law.

We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

Q: Didn't he release evidence of war crimes?]

OBAMA: What he did was he dumped…

Q: Isn't that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?]

OBAMA: No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way. (see main article where this particular argument falls apart)

This is the President of the United States speaking about a US military soldier detained for almost a year on charges of leaking classified (but not top secret, the level of files released by Ellsberg) documents. Manning’s lawyer is considering considered (corrected: his transfer made the writ moot) filing a writ of habeus corpus for the length of time and totality of abuse suffered by Manning while in military custody.

President Obama has already made up his mind. He thinks Manning “broke the law.” It’s no wonder he considered Manning’s abuse to “meet our basic standards” when he thinks Manning is already guilty.

This is vile.

As a reminder: the Pentagon plans to hold Manning indefinitely. Might as well, since they think he’s guilty already. source FDL

Bleedin' Kansas! Too Bleedin' Right

By far.

‘Bleeding Kansas’ Threatened with Bloodshed by Anti-Abortion Extremists: Just Remember Dr. Tiller
by Bill Berkowitz

During the 19th century, the state became known as ‘Bleeding Kansas,’’ and was a staging ground for abolitionists. Years later it was a stronghold of late-nineteenth century Populism and host to the largest selling socialist newspaper in the country. It recently celebrated its 150th year of statehood. For the past century it has been a citadel of conservatism.

Kansas: a place, a state of mind, a state of contradictions. Kansas is John Brown’s liberation army and Sam Brownback’s conservative crackdown. Its storied history encompasses critical pre-Civil War battles over slavery, the rise of populism and the home of the largest selling socialist newspaper in the country. One-hundred fifty years later and the state embodies a curious blend of the Religious Right’s “culture wars” with Koch Brothers free-market fundamentalism, which over the past decade has produced a school board immune to scientific data, and a ruthless anti-abortion movement.




Nearly two years ago, Dr. George Tiller, who ran Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas, was gunned down while attending worship services at the Reformation Lutheran Church. Tiller was one of the few doctors who, in accordance with Kansas state law, was willing to perform late-term abortions. Tiller, whose clinic had been bombed and who already had been a shooting victim in 1993, was a long-time target of harassment and violence by the anti-abortion movement. This year, as it marks its 150th anniversary of state hood, “Bleeding Kansas,” once ground zero in Free State vs. Slave State battles of the mid-19th century is now a modern-day battleground over abortion. And abortion opponents have shown that they are willing to spill blood in pursuit of their cause.

Named after the Kansas River that flows through it, which in turn was named after the indigenous Kansa Indian tribe.....

Next follows a quite lengthy and quite interesting history of Kansas, which is I'm sure, a great deal more interesting than Kansas per say. Continue or read on.

The Wichita crusades

Wichita was once home to a thriving aircraft industry. According to Wikipedia, Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech and Bill Lear “began projects that would lead to Wichita's nickname as the Air Capital of the World. “ Such corporations as Stearman, Cessna, Mooney and Beechcraft were all founded in Wichita in the late 1920s to early 1930s. While some companies remain, Wichita has fallen on economic hard times.

Since the early 1990s, Kansas has become a modern-day version of “Bleeding Kansas.” No Wyatt Earp-like gun-battles in the streets, but the anti-abortion movement, centered in Wichita -- the largest city in the state and home to Koch Industries – has used disruptive, harassing, intimidating tactics, as well as murder to press its cause.

In the summer of 1991, as part of what it called the “Summer of Mercy,” Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion organization known for its vigorous protests – including harassing clinic workers and patients outside abortion clinics -- conducted “a seven-week occupation of three women’s clinics in Wichita,” according to a historycommons.org timeline.

Dr. George Tiller owned one of Operation Rescue’s targeted clinics. In 1993, an anti-abortion activist shot Tiller. Nearly ten years later, Operation Rescue moved its offices from Southern California to Wichita, when it “began a campaign to expose the abortion industry there,” according to its website. more

The concluding paragraph however, is the one that should give concern, signed with supreme irony, “Kansan’s for Life.”




I'm not going to link to my previous posts, but they are not few, where I ask why these pro-life instruments of God aren't picketing the White House and the Pentagon, demanding an end to the slaughter of children in their tens of thousands by the US military? These previous posts can be found no doubt under the Hypocrisy tag, but, as you can well imagine, that is quite a large tag here.

I will however direct you to quite a comprehensive previous post regarding George Tiller, Paul Hill, Billo and various others. Oh! and the Soldiers of the Army of God, did I mention those?
"..after the slaying of Tiller the Killer"

What is there to thank our soldiers for?

Still trying to bring a promised piece by Arthur Silber, I am yet again sidetracked and failed in mission. Sidetracked on Silber's instructions though I must add, where he recommends reading the complete article from which he himself took the following.

What is there to thank our soldiers for? They are not defending our freedoms. They are not keeping us safe from our enemies. They are not protecting us from terrorists. They are not guaranteeing our First Amendment rights. They are not defending U.S. borders. They are not guarding U.S. shores. They are not patrolling U.S. coasts. They are not enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies. They are not fighting "over there" so we don't have to fight "over here." They are not avenging 9/11. They are not safeguarding the American way of life. Oh, and they are not ensuring that I have the liberty to write what I do about the military.

Of that, more in a moment. Firstly, a little something from myself to set the mood; part of a previous article.


Tawdry Tears and Tombstones
January 20, 2007

Tawdry. Taw-dry adjective
1. showy but without real value.
2. of finery: gaudy; showy and cheap.
3. low or mean; base: tawdry motives.
4. noun. Cheap, gaudy apparel.

The first description I feel best befits this image of Bush as he sheds a tear, or do I do the man a disservice and the tear is genuine? If it is, I can but only think that it is not shed for the marine who was being honoured, but shed for George W Bush.

And is that marine buried at Arlington Mister Bush? You are hardly likely to know are you, not for you the funerals of those that you sent so eagerly to their needless deaths, no Mister Bush, for those who’s lives you ended so prematurely, just a cold patch of earth and a tombstone.
Tombstones Mister Bush, those tombstones that caused me to write these comments some time ago in a forum other than where I write this.

Shame and decency are not to be found.
Yet they offer the parents of the dead a free headstone if it bears the inscription "Operation Iraqi Freedom"

Shameless, and overflowing with abject hypocrisy. Bush knows all too well why the troops died, I hope the spirit of the countless thousands, the spirit of every dead man woman or child haunts the son of a bitch to the grave and beyond.

But he cannot see the irony of this “magnanimous” gesture, forever and a day will that inscription, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” etched in stone, mock the man and his presidency for what they truly are.

But the bitterest of ironies is lost on this fool, because forever and a day those words will be synonymous with:

“They died for nothing.”

- - -

The above, in contrast to much I have written on America's armed forces, and in contrast to the crux of the featured article. is about the most forgiving thing I have ever penned on the subject of the Pentagons hired killers. But what is writ below is something that I couldn't hold truer in my own heart.

Thank a Vet?
by Laurence M. Vance

We've all seen the bumper stickers: "My son is in the Air Force," "If You Can Read This in English, Thank a Marine," "Proud Vietnam Veteran," "Fly Navy," and of course, "Thank a Vet."

Why should we?

Why should we call them heroes, give them military discounts, grant them veterans preference, express our support for them with ribbons on our cars, honor them with a holiday, hold military appreciation church services for them, and thank them for their "service"?

Veterans Day began as Armistice Day to commemorate the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. It had nothing to do with honoring current and former members of the military like Veterans Day is celebrated today. And if the sole purpose of Armistice Day was to honor World War I veterans, it should never have been celebrated since no American soldier did anything honorable by intervening in a European foreign war. And it doesn't matter if he was drafted or not.

Britain's last World War I combat veteran, Harry Patch, died last year at the age of 111. He boasted that he hadn't killed anyone in combat. "War isn't worth one life," Patch said, it is "calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings." In his autobiography The Last Fighting Tommy, Patch wrote that "politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder." In the last years of his life, Patch warned some young naval recruits that they shouldn't join. more

Further Tales of Child Abuse From One Nation Under God

I think the moral to this post, apart from not abusing your kids by cladding them in Armor of God Pajamas is, don't start opening old links when you are trying to have a clear out. Plus a little altruism on my behalf, that I might avert a colleague sinking in to the abyss and subsequently preventing him from opening his veins with a blunt spoon. But that's another story entirely.

I have in the past featured this fine example of American astronomic abuse, the post seems a tad elusive for the moment, but I shall track the rascal down given a little time.

Bad enough that any parent should lever their kids at all into pyjamas preposterous as these, but spare a thought for the poor little buggers were it ever to become common knowledge among their peers that, "he wears Armor of God jimjams." (and doesn't he look a proper sad bastard in 'em) Spare a thought indeed, because as we all know, Mummy's and Daddy's little darlings can be 'orribly cruel little bleeders when they have a mind to be. Putting it somewhat mildly.

So a little fashion show then, courtesy of the batshit crazy Fundamentalist Christian Right of Ameriki.

The whole Armor of God Pajama set will help your children to depend on God to protect them from their fears, doubts, and uncertainties at night so their sleep can be restful and peaceful.

Although we are a new company, our desire is to grow
into a well-known Christian Organization whose main goal is to reach as many children as possible by providing the Word of God, offering top quality products and excellent customer service along with offering parents the means and support to help their children grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

And what fundi parent could resist seeing the next generation of Jesus warriors attired so? Funny then, that the website should no longer be available, bankrupt? surely not; raptured perchance?

I had a few randomly chosen sites that I intended leaving links for, but on reflection, perhaps not. Just the the two then, and both irresistible. The first one chosen for... well it's pretty obvious really.


 Man with a muck rake:

Surely, every born-again and oh-so righteous family will want to clothe their children in the Armor of God 24/7 so that ‘S’ and secular humanists as well as atheists and communists do not lead them down the pathways of sinfulness.

But wait! That’s not all. For every set of PJ’s well throw in a coupon for 25% off of our exclusive KKK ceremonial, demonstration and cross-burning outfits. When Robbie gets older, he can wear real men’s clothing that will remind him of his younger days and nights, in the Armor of God pajamas. Man with a muck rake

What words might I choose to describe our second featured site? A goldmine? Yes, that will do, a goldmine.




I originally thought this fellow was taking the piss, well you would, wouldn't you.



I can't find words for general content in this, but towards the end? Just give me a minute. Here you go, I knew I had it somewhere.

SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST AMERICAN TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY–

Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony. "It was weird," Fullmer said. "I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and he pulled a face and said, "Great weather, eh?" and I thought "Wait a minute, no way is it great weather." Fullmer then realised that the other man’s "mistake" was in fact deliberate. Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8 and 3, plans to use irony himself in future. "I’m, like, using it all the time," he said. "Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them to shit and I said "Hey, great weather!".

And the same site bringing us these two gems.


Only in Ameriki folks, only in Ameriki.


From this day forward it's gonna be

Bob Blog Goldmine

Cross-posted

What's Wrong With Lourdes Then? Oh Sorry Wrong Cult

.
But just as batshit crazy as the Buggery Club, stroll on! is there no end on this earth to all this incredible mumbo jumbo, mankind really is a complete bollox.



But it's this little paragraph further down the report does it for me.

The "cure" is simple - each visitor takes a pinch of salt from one of the many small bowls and eats it. It is believed that the salt has a special connection with the dead and will cure any illness.

Irony, solid twenty four carat irony, I just loves it. And it would appear that it's not only Missouri that has miracles, Afghanistan has them too.

"Several paralysed people have left the cemetery walking on their own two feet," says Sangeena.

Yes of course.

Drive on.

At Kandahar's Arab cemetery, victims of the US "war on terror" are revered by many as shaheed (martyrs) and their graves are believed to possess miraculous powers.

Each day, hundreds of sick people visit the graves of more than 70 Arab and other foreign fighters and their family members who were killed in US bombing in the southern Afghan city in late 2001.

Soon after their burial, a cult developed around them and the graves became centres of pilgrimage for many in the area.

People started seeing them as miracle workers, healers and intercessors for others before God.

Six.years.after.US-led troops ousted the Taleban, devotion to these "foreign guests" is still alive.

"Most of the visitors are sick people seeking blessings from the dead while others come hoping their social or financial problems will end," says Sangeena, a woman in her 50s who lives nearby and looks after the graves.more

Lower graphic, Turner shortlist
Too Bloody Right There Won't

McCanns: More Fury And Oh The Bloody Irony

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All this story needs to make it perfect irony is for someone to mention bad taste.
Oh Comical you do come out with some pearls, what a player.

A sick mother is touting her daughter as a £600-an-hour Madeleine McCann lookalike.

Her tot has strikingly similar eyes to the missing four-year-old. And she is offering her youngster as a “starlet” – ideal to play the missing British girl in a movie.

We revealed earlier this week how Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39, were considering selling the film rights to the story of four-year-old Madeleine’s disappearance.



And last night, the family reacted with fury (again!) to the “rent-a-Maddie” plan being promoted by an agency advertising on the internet.



The couple’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “This is an offensive way to make money out of Madeleine’s disappearance. This is deeply offensive to parents Kate and Gerry.”more

Same crap the Daily Wail.



I, and three parts of the country know just how they feel.
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Boy Buggery Club's Book Boycotting Beastly Behaviour

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This was just too good to bundle up in the last post.

NEW YORK (AFP) - New York's Roman Catholic Church is trying a novel approach to alert children to the danger of being sexually assaulted by a priest, with an abuse-themed coloring book, officials said Tuesday.

"Being Friends, Being Safe, Being Catholic," was distributed earlier this year to several hundred schools in the New York area as part of the church's Safe Environment Program, a spokeswoman from the city's Archdiocese said.

One image in the book features a guardian angel hovering over an altar boy with a priest lurking in the background.

"For safety's sake, a child and an adult shouldn't be alone in a closed room together," the angel counsels. In another, the angel warns of a sexual predator attempting to chat with a child over the Internet. more

Ahmadinejad, Irony and Deja Vous

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Crooks & Liars has a clip of Scott Pelley interviewing Ahmadinejad for 60Minutes, what I reported on back in January (below) turned up today in the interview today.
Direct link to videos, the relavent section is in part two (4 minutes total)
Part one is 9 minutes, and having watched it in its entirety, Pelley is a Bush whore.



Delivered by Pelley to Ahmadinejad was what Bush would have said to Ahmadinejad had they been face to face.

What is writ below is virtually word perfect for Bush's direct quote that was delivered to Ahmadinejad.
Today as then, it would appear that irony, bloody irony even, is a complete stranger to this dimwit of a man.



Originally posted January 20th 2007

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. (and fools)

Who speaks of whom?

"You've made terrible choices for your people. You've isolated your nation. You've taken a nation of proud and honourable people, and you've made your country the pariah of the world. You've threatened countries with nuclear weapons. You've defied international accord. And you're slowly but surely isolating yourself."
Honestly, you just can’t make this stuff up.

He then went on to say a couple of other things. . (link dead) but look in the left hand sidebar at the first Bush Quote.

Irony, Oh The Bloody Irony

Oh Leeza you do come out with some pearls.

"It's very hard to imagine a partner for peace that refuses to renounce violence and refuses to recognize the right of the other partner to even exist," says Rice of Hamas.


You may wish to view the short video below before you read on.

Sowing And Reaping

The Origins Of Terror. Two minutes


Diplomacy

1.	the conduct by government officials of negotiations and other relations between nations.

2.	the art or science of conducting such negotiations.

3.	skill in managing negotiations, handling people, etc., so that there is little or no ill will;

Well one things for sure there' not much danger of saying the wrong thing.



The wedding that never was. Perhaps Straw's ardour cooled a tad after Leeza had Blair sack Straw from his job as Foreign Secretary.

Little Leeza got the fear when she saw all the brown people that made up a good proportion of Straw's constituency (district)

And in case you missed it.

Condi Fights Dirty. Pussy Power Rules

Tawdry Tears and Tombstones

Tawdry Tears and Tombstones

Tawdry. Taw-dry adjective
1. showy but without real value.
2. of finery: gaudy; showy and cheap.
3. low or mean; base: tawdry motives.
4. noun. Cheap, gaudy apparel.

The first description I feel best befits this image of Bush as he sheds a tear, or do I do the man a disservice and the tear is genuine? If it is, I can but only think it is not for the marine who was being honoured, but for George W Bush.

And is that marine buried at Arlington Mister Bush? You are hardly likely to know are you, not for you the funerals of those that you sent so eagerly to their needless deaths, no Mister Bush, for those who’s lives you ended so prematurely, just a cold patch of earth and a tombstone.
Tombstones Mister Bush, those tombstones that caused me to write these comments some time ago in a forum other than where I write this.


Shame and decency are not to be found.
Yet they offer the parents of the dead a free headstone if it bears the inscription "Operation Iraqi Freedom"

Shameless, and overflowing with abject hypocrisy.Bush knows all too well why the troops died, I hope the spirit of the countless thousands, the spirit of every dead man woman or child haunts the son of a bitch to the grave and beyond.

But he cannot see the irony of this “magnanimous” gesture, forever and a day will that inscription, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” etched in stone, mock the man and his presidency for what they truly are.

But the bitterest of ironies is lost on this fool, because forever and a day those words will be synonymous with:

“They died for nothing.”


How different then can two epitaphs read but achieve the same purpose?

Those that fought in this travesty, I can but call it such, for to call it a war lies uneasy with me, those that took up arms and fought and now lay in the cold earth do mock.

But there is another, probably unknown to many readers here, or if known, soon forgot.

He was a strange little man, little in stature that is.
Far from being handsome, far from being movie star, but a star he was a man of great integrity, his name was Robin Cook

What follows are two five minute clips is ten minute clip of Cook’s resignation speech as Leader of the House, given in the House of Commons.
I cannot urge you strongly enough to view them. Cook was under no illusions about the situation in Iraq and that Britain was getting dragged, with indecent haste by the United States, into a war we did not want and for which there was no justification.
As I re-watch his performance I cannot help but wonder how we did in fact end up being party to this mess.

Rhetorical I admit, my last sentence that is, for it is known to all.
I shall write on Blair’s culpability in these war crimes, but another day.

Cook’s address to the Commons, a snippet:

“That explains why any evidence that inspections may be showing progress, is greeted in Washington, not with satisfaction but with consternation because it reduces the case for war.
What has come to trouble me is the suspicion that if the ??? in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected we would not now be about to commit British troops…”



I think then that you might care to agree that Cook was a honourable man and continued to sit on the back benches until his untimely death in August, 2005

But Cook, even in death had not finished with Blair. The commendable steps taken by his widow and two sons, steps which I am sure would have met with Cook’s full approval, resulted in…I will let the print article take it from here.

“In life Robin Cook was the most outspoken Parliamentary critic of Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
In death he will remain the scourge of the Prime Minister forever."

The headstone on Mr Cook’s grave carries the legend:”

“I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of Parliament to decide on war.”