Friday - October 21, 2005

Trick Or Treat

_{Jeff Koterba, Omaha World Herald, Nebraska}

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/21/2005 at 04:12 AM   
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   Thursday - October 20, 2005

NEWS FLASH!

SADDAM PLEADS INNOCENT
BAGHDAD (AL-JIZZ)

In a surprise statement issued to the Iraqi People’s Court today, Saddam Hussein denied any knowledge of the deaths of 300,000 Kurds and Shiites. The former “Benevolent Dictator” wept in his cage in the courtroom and declared that the murders had most likely been commited as part of a drug deal that went bad. Saddam vowed that if released he would pursue the real mass murderers to the “ends of the earth”.

President Hussein, who was re-elected with a mandate from 98% of the Iraqi population in 2000, was visibly shaken as descriptions of torture and genocide were read aloud. He stated for the record, “These were my people. How could anyone do this to them behind my back? I have vowed to hunt down these vicious drug dealers who commmitted this horrible crime.”

Hussein’s lawyer, Yahanni Al-Kaquan, issued a brief statement as the proud leader of Iraq was led away in chains, “It is a travesty of justice to charge this noble leader with these crimes simply because he was there when they were committed. I say to the jury that if the WMD don’t fit, you must acquit!”

Al-Kaquan then introduced a motion to the court to have the trial moved to Los Angeles, stating that it would be impossible for President Hussein to get a fair trial in Baghdad. Iraqi judge Al-Ans Yto denied the request and scheduled testimony to begin November 28 with prosecution witness Mahk Al-Fuhman, a Kurdish policeman, to take the stand first.

- Stay tuned to BMEWS for further developments in this breaking news story ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/20/2005 at 01:32 PM   
Filed Under: • Iraq • Satire •  
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Crime Increase In Britain

Here it is in a nutshell: Britain passed laws taking away ordinary citizen’s rights to own guns, so what happens? Gun-related crimes increase 6%, that’s what happens. What does the British government do to correct that? Well, the Liberal government in Britain is poised to pass a law allowing pubs to stay open 24 hours a day so everyone can stay drunk and hopefully not notice they’re being robbed or killed. This takes stupidity to a new level ...

Violent Offences Top Million Mark
LONDON (BBC)

Violent offences in England and Wales reached record levels in 2004-5 with police recording one million crimes - up 7% from the previous year. Police figures show 1,035,046 violent incidents against the person, excluding sexual offences and robberies.

Total recorded crime fell 6% to 5.6m incidents, but gun crime was up 6%. Minister Hazel Blears stressed overall crime fell, saying the apparent rise in violent crime merely reflected better reporting and recording of offences.

Ms Blears, a Home Office minister, also told the BBC that the separate British Crime Survey, which interviews people to ask if they have been crime victims, showed a decrease in violent crime.

But shadow home secretary David Davis said the police figures were “further evidence that the government continues to fail on violent crime”. “With violent crime continuing to spiral out of control, it beggars belief that the government’s only response is to unleash 24-hour drinking on our town and city centres,” he added in a reference to proposed drink law changes.

There was no great demand for extended drinking times, he told the BBC. “I see no reason to go ahead with 24 drinking until we’ve actually piloted, tested out some of the methods the government is proposing.” For the Lib Dems, Mark Oaten said violent crime was “directly linked” to drink.

“Our concern is that extending opening times for up to 24 hours will make the problems of alcohol-related crime worse, not better,” he said. Ms Blears said the government had already promised to keep 24-hour licensing under review when it is introduced in November. She rejected the call by Mr Davis to pilot the liberalisation in selected areas arguing people from outside would flood in to take advantage of longer drinking hours.

The police figures show there was a 20% fall in burglary and a 17% drop in car thefts. There were just under 11,000 gun crimes, up 6%, and 73 people were killed with guns over a 12 month period - five more than the previous year. Sexual offences rose by 17% to 61,000 but this was said to be partly down to reforms of sex crime laws and efforts by police and politicians to encourage more victims to come forward.

- Read More On This Sorry State Of Afffairs Here

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/20/2005 at 08:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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Most Outrageous Item Of The Day (so far)

I’m afraid it doesn’t get more outrageous than this. There are just too many people in this world with defective brains. Darwin and the law of “survival of the fittest” used to keep that portion of the population under control but today’s society not only protects them and allows them to live but they are allowed to have children. That only leads to more tragedy and suffering ...

Woman Accused of Tossing Kids Into Bay
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)

A woman who was hearing voices tossed her three young children off a pier into San Francisco Bay, authorities said. Rescuers had found one body, and the two other children were feared dead. Lashaun Harris, 23, of Oakland, was booked on three counts of murder, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in Thursday’s editions. Her children were identified as Trayshaun Harris, 6, Travante Greely, 3, and Joshua Harris, 1.

A child’s body was found about four hours after a witness reported seeing a woman drop the children into the bay Wednesday near Pier 7, said Jonathan Guerra of the U.S. Coast Guard. The identity of the body was not immediately able to be confirmed. The San Francisco Examiner reported Thursday that the body was that of the 3-year-old.

While rescuers searched for the children, an empty stroller was visible on the pier. A small inflatable Coast Guard boat hugged the water front as rescuers used hand-held flashlights to search under the pier. Larger Coast Guard and San Francisco police boats searched the water with high-powered flashlights.

Mayor Gavin Newsom came to the scene to get briefed by authorities, telling reporters, “I’m sick to my stomach,” before leaving. Lashaun Harris told authorities that voices had told her to throw her children into the water, the Chronicle reported. It was not immediately known whether she had an attorney. Police contacted Thursday by The Associated Press declined to confirm the report. The department’s spokeswoman, Maria Oropeza, did not immediately returned a message.

She had been staying with her children at a Salvation Army shelter in Oakland, the Chronicle reported. “I just talked to her yesterday,” Mary Ann Ramirez, the shelter’s social services manager, told the newspaper Wednesday. “We had our usual how are you doing, how’s the kids. I would never have guessed in a million years that today she would do that.”

The pier is in the Embarcadero area, which draws tourists to the historic Ferry Building within view of Coit Tower and the landmark Transamerica pyramid. It’s about a mile from Fishermen’s Wharf.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/20/2005 at 08:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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Cards Choke

Astros Win Pennant, Face White Sox In Series
(ST LOUIS)

A dramatic National League Championship Series, a remarkable Cardinals season and beloved Busch Stadium all deserved better, but Roy Oswalt was all business and in no mood for sentiment.

Oswalt and the Astros beat St. Louis, 5-1, in Game 6 of the NLCS on Wednesday, stopping the Cardinals two wins short of their second consecutive NL pennant. The game was the last that will ever be played at Busch Stadium. The old ballpark will be replaced by a new one with the same name for next season.

It was an anticlimactic defeat, with Houston taking an early lead and St. Louis never mounting a serious threat against Oswalt or the Astros bullpen. Mark Mulder lasted only 4 2/3 innings, and Jason Marquis was touched for a pair of runs in relief.

Wednesday’s story, as was the case for much of the series for St. Louis, was an offense that just couldn’t put runs on the board. Oswalt deserves a great deal of credit for handcuffing the Cardinals over seven innings, but that took away little of the sting for the team that finished third in the National League in runs scored in the regular season. The Cardinals were held to four hits, three of them singles.

- More On The Cardinals’ Meltddown Here

- The Astros Story Is Here

- Preview Of World Series Here

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/20/2005 at 08:01 AM   
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The Arab “Street”

Here is an interesting cross-section of the trial of Saddam Hussein from the “Arab Street”. It looks like they each remember what they want to remember about ol’ Sod-Boy ... in spite of the facts ...

Arabs Still Divided Over Saddam’s Legacy
CAIRO, Egypt (AP)

To some, he is a wrongly accused Arab hero. To others, he is the embodiment of evil at last facing justice. As Saddam stood in the dock accused of murder and torture, one thing was clear: The former Iraqi leader can still rile emotions and cause division in this region forever changed by his 23 years of brutal rule.

Anyone in the Mideast within range of a television or a newspaper found the trial’s opening day hard to ignore Wednesday. The big satellite channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, broadcast the hearing from start to stop. The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat splashed it on its front page: “The trial of the 21st century.”

Those with a personal history were especially engrossed, particularly Iraqi exiles in neighboring Jordan and also Kuwaitis, who knew Saddam’s iron fist through his seven months of occupation before the first Gulf War. Their voices rang out in vengeance. “Saddam killed my uncle and my cousins. ... God willing, he will be executed,” said one, Mohamed Aziz, a 23-year-old Iraqi Shiite from Nasiriyah, now living in Jordan.

Another, Wadha al-Abduljader, a 48-year-old homemaker in Kuwait, said: “I hope before they execute him, they bring him to Kuwait, put him in a cage and drive him around so that we can hit him with shoes.” That is the ultimate Arab insult.

But opinions cut the other way, too. One former Iraqi soldier who went to Jordan two years ago looking for work, Mohammed Ali Kadhem, called the trial illegitimate and futile. “Saddam Hussein is not a criminal. He is a hero. I hope he will be acquitted and return to power,” he said. Khaled Abdul-Khader, a 40-year-old taxi driver in Amman, the Jordanian capital, also called Saddam a great hero. “He’s the only one who hit Israel. He’s the only one who said ‘No’ to America.”

In Israel, where Saddam fired 39 Scud missiles during the first Gulf War, the trial was viewed with obvious satisfaction and a look forward to what might happen to other Arab dictators. “I’m sure it will provide food for thought in Damascus. ... I’m sure (Syrian President Bashar) Assad is watching in trepidation,” said one Israeli, Yuval Steinitz, the chairman of the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee.

But elsewhere, Palestinians, whose uprising against Israel had Saddam’s full support, mourned the Iraqi leader as a fallen savior. “He supported the martyrs’ (suicide bombers’) families and he helped many students in Palestine,” said one, Wael Naser, a 42-year-old Gaza vegetable-shop owner. Another, 32-year-old Palestinian taxi driver Saed Souror, was more ambivalent about Saddam but still strongly against his trial.

“I am not a Saddam supporter,” Souror said. “But I am against this trial because it came upon American orders. If Saddam was a murderer, what can we call the American acts there?” For their part, Iranians remembered the death and destruction they suffered after Saddam invaded their country in 1980, setting in motion a war that bled both nations for eight years.

- Go Read The Rest ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/20/2005 at 07:46 AM   
Filed Under: • Iraq • RoPMA •  
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Dictator Myths

_{Day By Day}

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/20/2005 at 07:33 AM   
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   Wednesday - October 19, 2005

Photo Du Jour

I’m sorry but I just love looking at this picture again and again!
Die, blasted smurfs! Die!
The purple dinosaur is next!

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/19/2005 at 05:22 PM   
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Canoe Girl Speaks

Remember ”Canoe Girl”?

She has made a statement defending her toe-deep flood reporting:

“When it happened, it was funny and embarrassing, and I just thought, ‘O.K., this probably looks a little bad, or it looks unusual at least, to the people who are watching,’” Ms. Kosinski told The Observer four days after the segment aired.

By then, the clip had made the rounds in e-mail forwards and on cable news shows.

Heh heh, yeah, like on BMEWS! 

“It’s kind of painful,” she said, “because you want to explain yourself. The most important point for me to get across is: Yeah, it looked really stupid, but there was never any attempt to make it look like it was worse of a storm than it really was.”

Fake, but accurate.

Streets were flooded. Residents and rescue workers were riding around in boats. It made perfect sense.

They bought a boat and had it delivered the following morning. Ms. Kosinski arrived early to practice paddling around. She had been in a canoe before, she said, but never by herself, and never in waters any rougher than a slow-moving stream. They tried to set up the shot at an intersection where the water was waist-high and the current was strong, but “they couldn’t light it,” Ms. Kosinski said. “The microphone was wireless and it wasn’t working, and with all the equipment, they couldn’t wade out into the deep water.”

So producers asked Ms. Kosinski to paddle to where the water was shallower. She did. She wasn’t happy about it. But she did.

“Even though I wanted to show deeper water, in the end I said O.K. I didn’t really think it was inappropriate,” she said.

At the top of the 7 o’clock hour, Matt Lauer introduced the report:

And with that, history was made.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/19/2005 at 04:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Media-Bias •  
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Myths About Gun Control

An article from John Stossel today that says little to the choir, but may sway some fence-sitters

Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths about guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad laws kill people.
“Don’t tell me this bill will not make a difference,” said President Clinton, who signed the Brady Bill into law.

Sorry. Even the federal government can’t say it has made a difference. The Centers for Disease Control did an extensive review of various types of gun control: waiting periods, registration and licensing, and bans on certain firearms. It found that the idea that gun control laws have reduced violent crime is simply a myth.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/19/2005 at 04:18 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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A Nation of Sheeple

A good read from Dr. Williams today.

President Bush informed the nation, during a press conference, that he might seek to use the U.S. military to quarantine parts of the nation should there be a serious outbreak of the deadly avian flu that has killed millions of chickens and 60-some people in Southeast Asia. That’s the second time Bush has expressed a desire to use the military for local policing. The first was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. 1385) generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the U.S. National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the U.S. Constitution or Congress.

Enacted during Reconstruction, the purpose of the Posse Comitatus Act was to severely limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for local law enforcement. Would Americans tolerate such a gigantic leap in the federalization of law enforcement? I’m guessing the answer is yes. In the name of safety, we’ve undergone decades of softening up to accept just about any government edict that our predecessors would have found offensive. Let’s look at some of it.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/19/2005 at 04:16 PM   
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The Stain In Spain

Remember Spain? The country in Europe that cut and ran from the coalition in Iraq after the Madrid train bombings? Surely you remember the voters putting a socialist government in place after the bombings because they promised to withdraw all troops from Iraq (which they quickly did)? Well, that same nation of gutless girly-men now wants to arrest three American GI’s whose tank fired on a hotel during the invasion of Iraq which killed a Spanish citizen. How many of you are of the opinion that Spain sits a wee bit too close to Fwance (aka, “cheese-eating surrender monkeys") ... ?

Spanish Judge Issues Warrant for Three GIs
MADRID, Spain

A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and one other, a court official said Wednesday.

Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrant for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, all from the U.S. 3rd Infantry.

Jose Couso, who worked for the Spanish television network Telecinco, died April 8, 2003, after a U.S. army tank crew fired a shell on Hotel Palestine in Baghdad where several journalists were staying to cover the war.

Reuters cameraman Taras Portsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed. The Spanish judge said he issued the arrest order because of a lack of judicial cooperation from the United States regarding the case.

U.S. officials insist the soldiers believed they were being shot at when they opened fire. Following the Palestine incident, Secretary of State Colin Powell said a review of the incident found that the use of force was justified.

In late 2003, the National Court, acting on a request from Couso’s family, agreed to consider filing criminal charges against three members of the tank crew.

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/19/2005 at 09:42 AM   
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Justice In Baghdad

Memo to Amnesty International: Don’t worry your empty little heads. We’ll make sure he gets a fair trial. Then we’ll hang the son of a b**ch ....

Rights Groups Concerned Over Saddam Trial
(TIME)

Amnesty International spent years campaigning on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s victims; now the international human rights group wants to make sure the former dictator gets a fair trial. Amnesty is sending three observers to Saddam’s trial, which starts Wednesday in Baghdad. Their mission? “To assess the trial’s fairness,” says Beth Ann Toupin, an Iraq specialist for the human rights group. “And to make clear we are committed to insuring that victims of human right abuses gain access to justice.”

The Iraqi Special Tribunal before which Saddam is to appear will, on Wednesday, begin hearing only one of what could be many cases brought against Saddam. It concerns the torture and murder of 143 people in the town of Dujail in 1982 after some local men attempted to assassinate Saddam. If the former dictator and his seven co-defendants are convicted, Iraqi law calls for them to be executed within 30 days of their last appeal.

Amnesty International, which objects to capital punishment in all cases, contends that a rush to judgment and early executions will cut short the investigations of a long list of atrocities, including the massacres of 3,000 Kurds 1983 and the disappearance of a further 182,000 during the 1988 Anfal campaign, as well as the massacre of tens of thousands of Shiites during a 1991 uprising in southern Iraq and the persecution of the Marsh Arabs throughout the 1990s.

On Monday, Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shiite whose brother and other male relatives died at the regime’s hands, called for a quick trial and, according to the Associated Press, told reporters, “The Saddam trial is not a research project.”

Go Read The Rest Here ...

Update I: Now Iran wants a piece of Saddam for the Iran-Iraq war.

Update II: Saddam’s lawyer says court is “illegitimate”, requests three-month adjournment.

Update III: Outlawed Baath Party issues statement: “The dear leader Saddam Hussein ... will make a stand on the 19th of this month for justice, freedom and defiance, as a fighting leader, a jihadist resister, a patriotic Iraqi, an Arab nationalist, and a progressive humanist.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/19/2005 at 01:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Iraq •  
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Flintstoned

AT 2 AM EDT...0600Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE WILMA WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 17.0 NORTH...LONGITUDE 82.2 WEST OR ABOUT 170 MILES… 270 KM...SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF GRAND CAYMAN AND ABOUT 400 MILES...640 KM...SOUTHEAST OF COZUMEL MEXICO.

WILMA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 8 MPH...13 KM/HR. A TURN TOWARD THE NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 150 MPH...240 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. WILMA IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. THE HURRICANE COULD BECOME A CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE TODAY.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 15 MILES...30 KM… FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 155 MILES...250 KM. NOAA BUOY 42057 RECENTLY REPORTED A WIND GUST TO NEAR 60 MPH...96 KM/HR.

LATEST MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE JUST REPORTED BY AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE PLANE WAS IS 901 MB...26.61 INCHES.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Posted by The Skipper     on 10/19/2005 at 01:05 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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