Tuesday - June 10, 2008

WHAT IN THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THESE JERKS?  oh, right. THEY’RE FREEKIN IDIOTS!

I would be sorely tempted to come back with a gun!  OK, I might not if I had time to think about it.  But this is so damn fuckin nannyish and stupid.
Are the Brits getting dumber?  And for the company to defend this is equally outrageous .

2 fuckin percent booze in a BB sauce?  This is maddening. Really it is.

Barbecue sauce madame? Do you have any ID?
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:34 AM on 10th June 2008

Controversial: The offending bottle of sauce

Cashiers at a Tesco refused to sell a woman barbecue sauce --because she did not have any ID.

Claire Birchell, 25, was told she could not buy the Jack Daniel’s sauce because it contains 2 per cent alcohol and she could not prove she was old enough to buy it.

Staff even refused to sell the bottle to her brother-in-law, Philip Dover, 27, who was with her at the time and did have ID, because they said he would just give it to her.

Miss Birchell had been hoping to stock up on the sauce while she was visiting her parents in Flitwick, near Bedford, as the shops near her home in Liverpool do not sell it.

So she was astonished to be told she could not buy the condiment because it contains a small amount of whiskey.

Mr Dover said: ‘We just could not believe it. It’s not as if we were going to go and sit down the park drinking it.

‘Claire lives in Liverpool and she can’t buy the sauce up there so she was really
disappointed she couldn’t get it in Flitwick. It just seems crazy over a sauce.’

Mr Dover added that he had gone back to the store a few days later and bought a bottle of the sauce without any problem.

It is not the first time Tesco staff have been accused of being overly-strict in policing sales to minors.

Last month the store stopped selling alcohol to parents if they were with their children in case they passed it on to them.

This meant many shoppers who took their children on their weekly shop found they were denied the beer and wine in their trolley.

At the time Tesco defended the move saying they preferred staff to ‘err on the side of caution’.

Supermarkets have become increasingly strict over the selling of alcohol as the Government has imposed tougher rules and penalties.

Any shop caught selling drink to under-18s three times in three months faces a £10,000 fine.

Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1025362/Barbecue-sauce-madame-Do-ID.html

Posted by Drew458     on 06/10/2008 at 11:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Nanny State • Stoopid-People • UK •  
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Belgium’s dwindling churches to be converted into mosques

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 12:38AM BST 09/06/2008

Churches in Belgium are to be turned into mosques as Christian congregations decline while Muslims demand more places to worship.

Philip Heylen, Antwerp’s deputy mayor, has called on the city to “break the taboo” over the many empty and unused churches.

“It’s a looming issue yet it seems impossible to have a debate about this,” he said. “Churches were built as places of worship and they should not be used as shopping malls. We’ve had a positive response from members of the Muslim community, which is open to the idea of converting them.”

Antwerp has 36 mosques but many are located in old buildings that are too small or lack emergency exits. Meanwhile, the building of new mosques is sensitive in terms of planning.

However, some Antwerp Muslims fear that the scheme could heighten ethnic and religious tensions. “This is dangerous and will only lead to resentment,” said one. “It’s better to keep places of worship strictly separate.”

Many of Antwerp’s 80 churches were built in the mid-19th century during attempts by the Roman Catholic Church to engineer a religious revival.

Father Jan, at the Sint-Willibrordus Church, conceded that the pews are “far emptier than 50 years ago”, but rejected the argument that Antwerp Christians are a dying breed.

http://tinyurl.com/6fzuvw

Posted by Drew458     on 06/10/2008 at 04:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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   Monday - June 09, 2008

Amid Barack Obamamania, John McCain could still win

Amid Barack Obamamania, John McCain could still win the US presidential election

By John O’Sullivan
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 08/06/2008

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton exited the presidential race, pledging loyal support to Barack Obama. In reality she was shaking her fist defiantly at the victor. Her prolonged farewell, though undignified, is not hard to understand.

Unless she bullies Obama into making her his vice-presidential candidate - which looks unlikely - she is leaving national politics as well as the 2008 campaign.

Despite all the praise for her gallant uphill fight, Mrs Clinton blew a sure thing. As the candidate of inevitability, she lost. As the candidate of competence, she won most major battleground states, but lost the nomination because her campaign failed to organise in the smaller states. As the candidate with an unrivalled Democratic Rolodex, she lost the “super-delegates”.

Even her late emergence as the friend of Joe Sixpack reflected her loss of most other Democratic constituencies rather than her recruitment of a new political base. She is a very implausible leader of a white working class that is drifting steadily towards the Republicans.

Her campaign’s excuse for defeat - that sexism trumped racism - implicitly accuses all Democrat voters of being bigots. It leaves behind a poisonous atmosphere of internecine identity politics on the Left. None of this augurs well for her post-2008 presidential prospects - whoever wins in November.

John McCain is probably the only Republican who could win the presidency in a year when almost any Democrat should beat almost any Republican. Voters prefer Democrats to Republicans by 15 per cent.

Even if McCain makes it to the White House, their opponents may win the Senate majority sufficient to override a presidential veto. McCain might well campaign in the final days on the theme “Help me to restrain a rampaging Democrat Congress”.

He could make such a pitch persuasively because he has spent the past eight years restraining the Republican Congress. McCain has repeatedly voted with Democrats against his own party on tax cuts, election finance, immigration, and much else.

Thus, he appeals to those voters who like a “maverick” and who would vote against any Republican representing continuity with George Bush. That potential support gives McCain a chance of winning - he is currently only a few percentage points behind Obama.

Unfortunately, many Republicans are annoyed with someone who apparently loves sticking his finger in their eyes. They may not vote for a Democrat, but they may not turn out for McCain either. And the same independent voters who admired McCain have been flocking to Obama since he won the opening contest - largely over the Iraq war.

In other words, party divisions are splintering. Both candidates need to assemble a new electoral coalition. In this, Obama is having as much difficulty as McCain. His coalition includes first-time voters, blacks, the higher educated and upper-income independents. But is he losing such Democratic staples as Hispanics and the white working class?

There is growing tension between Hispanics and blacks, and because an Obama victory could be seen as a triumph for blacks, the prospect pushes some Hispanics towards the Republican. But the Hispanic vote is less than a quarter of the white working class vote. It would be more serious for Obama if white workers rejected him massively - and far more damaging to America if they did so out of racial prejudice.

Neither seems to be the case. White workers have been shifting to the Right since Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, so a Democrat can lose their support yet win overall. Recent polls show Obama losing white workers to the Republicans by smaller margins than Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004. By that test, race has not harmed him here - he is doing better than previous Democrats.

Indeed race has probably helped him overall. Many more Americans are likely to vote for Obama to demonstrate (to themselves as well as others) that they are free of racism than will vote against him from bigotry. And the media coverage of Obama as rock star implies that voting against such an emblem of hope may itself signify racism. That is a real threat to McCain, and one difficult to counter.

But if Obama gains from race, he is threatened on another front. He had been gaining more and more votes from whites until his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, emerged to dominate the news with cranky anti-American sermons. That aroused fears that Obama was not a shaper of a post-racism America, but more radical, less trustworthy, and - worst of all - anti-American.

American patriotism, strong in all classes, is universal among blue-collar workers. McCain, a war hero, is its embodiment. And by taking too long to disavow Wright, Obama sowed doubts about his own patriotism that still linger. If not dispelled, those are McCain’s single best hope of achieving a win against the odds.

http://tinyurl.com/4zqzxz

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2008 at 03:27 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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100 British dead in Afghanistan: A moment for sombre reflection

Because I think it’s important enough.  The numbers may be small by comparison, but the consequences and the angst of the families are the same as ours.
And maybe more so because so many really don’t understand why they are there. 

By Con Coughlin
Last Updated: 1:27AM BST 09/06/2008

The confirmation that the British death toll in Afghanistan has officially reached the 100 mark should be a moment for sombre reflection on a mission that has far exceeded expectations in terms of the demands it has made on our Armed Forces.

It is just two years since the government first committed British troops to southern Afghanistan as part of Nato’s mission to assist the Afghan government with the reconstruction of the country after thirty years of almost incessant civil war.

At the time Downing Street’s spin-doctors went into over-drive in their attempts to persuade a sceptical British public that, if all went according to plan, not a shot would be fired in anger as the mission was all about reconstruction and the eradication of the country’s poppy crop – which accounts for 90 per cent of the heroin sold on Britain’s streets – rather than joining battle with the Taliban.

Thankfully senior British officers on the ground such as Brigadier Ed Butler, who commanded 3 Para battlegroup during Britain’s initial deployment in the summer of 2006, realised that nothing would be achieved in the country’s lawless and inhospitable Helmand province unless British forces physically evicted the Taliban from the towns and villages it had been allowed to re-occupy in the south of the country.

Brig Butler, 48, whose untimely resignation from the British Army was announced at the weekend, went on to cause the government further embarrassment by unhelpfully pointing out that the invasion of Iraq had prevented British forces from securing Afghanistan much sooner because vital resources were diverted to overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime before the Taliban had been properly dealt with.

Consequently, far from failing to fire a shot in anger, for the past two years British front line troops have been involved in the fiercest combat operations experienced since the Falklands war, and suffered significant casualties in the process.

While British forces have succeeded in destroying the Taliban’s fighting capability, they have also paid a heavy price in terms of dead and injured.

The lengthening death toll will no doubt lead to calls for Britain to end its contribution to a war many argue can never be won. But to do so would not only have catastrophic consequences for Afghanistan, it would seriously compromise our national security.

The reason our troops are fighting in Afghanistan is to prevent Islamic extremists rebuilding the terrorist infrastructure that enabled them to carry out the September 11 terror attacks against the United States.

Many of the subsequent terror plots against the West – including attacks against Britain, such as the London bombings of July 2005 – originated from the lawless tribal areas on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is no time for the government to lose heart. Instead it must ensure that it provides our dedicated and courageous service men and women with the support and equipment they need to ensure the sacrifices of the past two years are not in vain.

http://tinyurl.com/46jy6w

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2008 at 03:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Military • UK • War On Terror •  
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Today In GOP History

On this day in 1964, Everett Dirksen (R-IL), the Republican Leader in the U.S. Senate, condemned the
Democrats’ 57-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Leading the Democrats in their opposition to civil rights for African-Americans was Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Byrd, who got into politics as a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, spoke against the bill for fourteen straight hours. Democrats still call Robert Byrd “the conscience of the Senate.”

In his speech, Senator Dirksen called on the Democrats to end their filibuster and accept racial equality.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/09/2008 at 01:13 PM   
Filed Under: • History • Republicans •  
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   Sunday - June 08, 2008

Mass Murder to celebrate anniversary of mass murder

Man on ‘murder mission’ stabs 17 in Tokyo

A man police said was on a murder mission plowed into pedestrians with a truck in a crowded Tokyo neighborhood Sunday and then stabbed 17 people in three minutes, killing at least seven in a grisly attack that shocked Japan.  The lunchtime assault—on the seventh anniversary of a mass stabbing in Japan in 2001—sent thousands of pedestrians into a panic in Tokyo’s crowded Akihabara district, an electronics and video game area wildly popular among the country’s cyber-wise youth. A 25-year-old man, Tomohiro Kato, was arrested with blood on his face. Police said Kato provided no motive for the attack—other than he wanted to murder strangers.

“The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people,” said Jiro Akaogi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. “He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything,” Akaogi said.

The violence began when he crashed a rented, two-ton truck into pedestrians. Kato jumped out and began stabbing the people he’d knocked down with the truck, then turned on horrified onlookers, police said.  Police confirmed seven deaths—six men and one woman—but they could not say whether the victims had died of injuries from the truck or were stabbed to death.

Once rare, stabbing attacks have become more frequent in Japan in recent years as violent crime has increased.  In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan.

UPDATE: Do I even need to write this? You know what happens next. It’s part of the script, carved in stone. When asked to comment on this horrific episode of “knife crime” the government’s response implied more Knife Control. Which completely ignores the fact that this killer started his attack by using a truck to run over a bunch of people first, then finished them off with a knife. A “base e ballru” bat would have worked just as well. I guess bat control is next?

Government officials scrambled to respond. The ruling coalition held an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to come up with ways to secure crowded public spaces, and the government is considering limiting access to large knives like the one used on Sunday.

“Obviously, the suspect possessed the knife without a legitimate reason,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said. “I think we have to seriously consider what we can do to step up the restrictions.”

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 07:27 PM   
Filed Under: • Insanity • International •  
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Smells Like Leftist Dhimmi Indoctrination To Me

A textbook monitoring group said that Maryland middle and high school students will be required to read about Islamic teachings that have been dumbed down and are products of political correctness.

According to the New York Examiner, a new report issued by the American Textbook Council said that administrators who approved books for use in the Montgomery County school district caved into pressure by pro-Islamic groups seeking to present a less violent interpretation of Islam.

Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, stated that, for example, the definition of jihad has gone through ”amazing cultural reorchestration” in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence, the Examiner wrote.

Other terms, such as sharia law, have been adjusted or removed from lessons to avoid what he called “inconvenient truths.”

Montgomery County Public Schools defended the decision to use the books, saying in a statement that all texts used by teachers had been properly vetted and were appropriate for classroom uses.

“Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade,” wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for “adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths.”

Maryland state delegate Saqib Ali refrained from joining the fray. “The job of assigning curriculum is best left to educators and the school board, and I trust their judgment,” he said.

Just what the $&% does the Montgomery County MD school district think it’s trying to pull here? Maybe they could use your meangingful and kind advice, eh what what?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 07:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Education • Politically-Incorrect • RoPMA •  
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Today in GOP History

On this day in 1866, the U.S. Senate passed the 14th Amendment,
guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens. 
All Democrat Senators voted against it.
Nearly all Republican voted in favor, while the few who abstained did so because they believed the amendment did not go far enough. 
The principal author of the 14th Amendment was Rep. John Bingham (R-OH).

Remember that one. When given a chance to stand up for equal rights under the law, not a single Democrat voted in favor. Not. One.

brought to you via Grand Old Partisan.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 06:21 PM   
Filed Under: • History • Politics •  
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Meanwhile in Fwance

French army falling apart, documents show
Most of France’s tanks, helicopters and jet fighters are unusable and its defence apparatus is on the verge of “falling apart”, it has emerged.  According to confidential defence documents leaked to the French press, less than half of France’s Leclerc tanks – 142 out of 346 – are operational and even these regularly break down.  Less than half of its Puma helicopters, 37 per cent of its Lynx choppers and 33 per cent of its Super Frelon models – built 40 years ago – are in a fit state to fly, according to documents seen by Le Parisien newspaper.  Two thirds of France’s Mirage F1 reconnaissance jets are unusable at present.

According to army officials, the precarious state of France’s defence equipment almost led to catastrophe in April, when French special forces rescued the passengers and crew of a luxury yacht held by pirates off the Somali coast.  Although ultimately a success, the rescue operation nearly foundered at an early stage, when two of the frigates carrying troops suffered engine failure, and a launch laden with special forces’ equipment sunk under its weight.  Later, an Atlantic 2 jet tracking the pirates above Somali territory suffered engine failure and had to make an emergency landing in Yemen.

“External operations, in the Ivory Coast and Lebanon are a fig leaf: we are able to keep up the pretence but in ten years our defence apparatus will fall apart,” one high-ranking official said.  The disclosure comes just ten days before President Nicolas Sarkozy announces a major reform of the armed forces, with a defence white paper outlining France’s military priorities for the next 15 years.  He is expected to argue that the situation can only improve by reducing the number of France’s operational troops from 50,000 to 30,000, and its fighter aircraft, as well as closing military bases.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 05:19 PM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons • Military •  
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Vikings 15, Towely-Ban 0

Just checking the latest scores from Afghanistan ...

Ok, this one is a bit more recent. Nice soundtrack. Good pics of the Danes in and around Helmund, doing their part. And paying the prices, sadly.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 04:50 PM   
Filed Under: • War On Terror • War-Stories •  
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Sign Newt’s Petition?

Good old Newt and the gang have a petition going. They’ve got nearly half a million digital signatures already. It’s an attempt to send a message to the government to cut the crap as well as the red tape and to get moving on some energy solutions, instead of just generating endless hot air that isn’t even hooked up to a wind turbine. Gosh, this sounds exactly like what we’ve all been saying around here for a long, long time!

Anyway, here’s The Link if you’d like to add your name to the list.

It’s now a cliche: fat-cat oilmen control our destiny by holding back supplies, letting prices soar, then pocketing the profits. But if any fat cats are to blame for the energy crisis, it’s those on Capitol Hill.

Funny how so few, especially our friends in the mainstream media, seem to notice Congress is the culprit. When it’s not stopping the development of the energy resources we need, it’s busy demonizing the very entities — such as the oil companies — that can go get them…

That oil has surged to $130 a barrel is no surprise: The supply is shrinking. Yet, Congress refuses to let our oil companies tap the massive assets that lie offshore and under our mountains — reserves that dwarf what we have today.

Our Outer Continental Shelf contains as much as 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service. That’s more than 10 times the oil and 20 times the natural gas we use each year.

Then there’s oil shale. At least 1 trillion barrels of crude — possibly as many as 2 trillion — lie in formations across the Rocky Mountains and into Canada. “This,” the Institute for Energy Research said recently, “is more than seven times the amount of crude oil reserves found in Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet current U.S. demand for over 250 years.” Yet we don’t want to disturb it.

No, a petition probably won’t do much. But what else can you do? It’s not like it’s a sane idea to run around setting fire to gas stations to protest the prices. No, that’s a looney reaction.

DANVILLE, Calif.—A Danville woman faces arson charges after police say she set fires at two gas stations and a Starbucks outlet in a protest over high gas prices.

Diane Craig, 64, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of premeditated arson and burglary.

Police said Craig used a fireplace log and a lighter to set fires in the restrooms of an Arco station, a Chevron station and a Starbucks. No structural damage was reported at the locations.

Police later found Craig at a nearby fast food restaurant with eight fireplace logs with her. She told officers that she was behind the fires and said she woke up that morning wanting to do something about high gas prices.

Police said they don’t know why Craig targeted the Starbucks.

Ok, the Starbucks I can understand. Worst damn coffee on the planet. The whole place is staffed by snotty little leftists, and their prices are outrageous.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 04:31 PM   
Filed Under: • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •  
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DIVIDED STATES of AMERICA ?

A comment by an editor of The Telegraph, reporting from the USA

The Divided States of America

By Simon Heffer in New York
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/06/2008
Page 1 of 3

The next five months may prove something of a shock for America - both for its political class, the two high representatives of which are now joined in battle for the presidential election on November 4, and for the American public.

Both parties to this process - the electors and the would-be elected - have, since February, had a distorted picture of what is at stake. John McCain, having secured his own nomination, simply stood back and watched his Democrat rivals tear each other to shreds. Personality superseded policy. If America is to pick itself up, all that must change.

For the past few months, since it occurred to Hillary Clinton in Iowa that she might not be the automatic choice for her party’s nomination, the real issues affecting and, more to the point, dividing America have only been seen - if at all - through the prism of the fight between the rival Democrats.

Now, the man who wants to become the 44th president must show an electorate that Time magazine last week described as “surly” that he has not only engaged with the issues that are making the lives of many a misery, but has a convincing idea of what to do about them.

Given the global nature of some of the problems - notably high oil and food prices, and America’s unpopularity abroad, caused by its role in the Middle East - this may be easier said than done. Moreover, those difficulties that are home-grown, such as the sub-prime disaster and its legacy of house repossessions and new poverty, are now so deep-seated as to have inflicted structural damage on the American economy.

Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama will present themselves over the next five months as unifiers: but the gulf between the possessed and the dispossessed is but one of many divisions that the next leader will struggle to heal.

I spoke to a prominent New York businessman - himself a member of an ethnic minority - who highlighted some of these gulfs. “Among young people, I would say 90 per cent of the ones I know are Democrats. Among black young people, I would say 99 per cent will vote for Obama.” Polls suggest that this is not merely true in wealthy, cosmopolitan New York but nation-wide.

But just as Mr McCain will need to find a means of trying to connect with the under-35s, Mr Obama has yet to show that he has anything to offer the constituency that almost secured the prize for Senator Clinton - the elderly, the white working-class, women and the significant Hispanic population.

The very nature of presidential campaigning cannot help but be divisive. This week both candidates have spoken to a meeting of the American Jewish lobby, proclaiming Israel’s right to exist and America’s duty to defend it. Mr McCain, as his rival was securing his own nomination, went straight off to Florida, a swing state with high concentrations of Jewish people and Hispanics, who had until this week supported Mrs Clinton and whom the Republicans now regard as fair game.

Mr McCain has visits planned to states such as Pennsylvania, with big working-class populations that backed Mrs Clinton. The unspoken phrase in the Clinton campaign - that because he is black, there are certain constituencies to which Mr Obama can never appeal - looks like becoming one of the McCain campaign’s main strategies. Where that leaves “unity” is anyone’s guess.

“I’d say that 20 per cent of people in this country, mainly among the more elderly who grew up under segregation, would still rule out voting for a black man on the grounds that he is black,” a former diplomat told me. “That means Obama has to get 51 per cent of the remaining 80. It’s not so tough as it looks, since most of that 20 per cent would vote Republican whoever the candidate was. But there will be some natural Democrats, notably in the south, who will go against him.”

Race, though, is hardly the main issue: that remains the economy. Because Mr McCain has not yet needed, or felt qualified, to engage on this - his distinguishing feature is as a foreign policy specialist - and because Mr Obama has had other distractions, the “surly” voters felt that no one was taking account of their suffering.

Both candidates now have apparently beefy proposals to deal with these problems: both talk of relieving the tax burden for the middle classes, of securing homes from foreclosure. How this would be funded is unclear, especially in Mr Obama’s case.

Mr McCain talks about cutting spending and reducing the size of the state: he, too, is vague about the form this would take. The Republican nominee has also suggested cutting tax on petrol, which at $4 (£2.10) a gallon is making eyes water in a country where people are used to driving long distances in cars that do 15 miles to the gallon.

http://tinyurl.com/49qy5n

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 03:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Politics •  
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SO, IS SHILLERY FINISHED?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 02:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Politics •  
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Aarrgh, Pirates: It’s Your Fault

A rising surge in pirate attacks along Somalia’s east African coast is primarily rooted in the policies of the United Nations and Western countries, an Islamist spokesman said Friday.

Mohamud Sheikh Ibrahim Suley, spokesman for the Islamic Courts, told Mogadishu media via a teleconference that a recent UN resolution targeting Somali pirates had “taken the wrong route.”

“This decision is backed by Western nations whose agenda is to steal Somalia’s land and sea resources,” Suley said, while referring to UN Security Council Resolution 1816 that effectively authorized foreign countries to use “all necessary means” to combat piracy along the Somali coast.

The Islamists’ spokesman blamed the UN and unnamed countries in the West for allegedly “strengthening piracy,” saying: “As the Islamic Courts fought against piracy, the UN allowed an [Ethiopian] attack against the Courts’ administration, which was known for restoring peace in Somalia.”

During the Islamic Courts reign in south-central Somalia, between June and December 2006, piracy hit an all-time low along the Horn of Africa country’s coastline.

Currently, two foreign-owned vessels are being held hostage by Somali pirates, who have demanded million-dollar ransom payments.

An international force led by the United States Navy has been patrolling Somalia’s coast for months, although critics quickly point out that the presence of naval warships and supporting aircraft has yet to deter pirate attacks.

Are these guys effin kidding me? I’m laughing myself right off my chair here. Right, we’re “strengthening piracy” by deposing another tyrannist government, the African Al Qaeda calling itself the Islamic Courts. But wait, that wasn’t even us, it was the Ethiopians! Ok, we helped a little. The only reason there was almost no piracy under the IC rule is because they decided that boats were haram, and probably shot all the people who knew how to sail them.

And it is true that multinational naval patrols haven’t done much to avert piracy. Because they’re playing nice. Pretty stupid, huh? These assclowns don’t understand nice.

How about if we took a few of those neat new Littoral Warships and a gross or so of PT boats or whatever they’re called these days, and interdicted every single boat that put out from Somali shores? And if we found one gun, one bullet, one RPG aboard, we sunk that boat right on the spot. That would end piracy pretty damn fast.

Or we could set up arms stations in the Gulf, and around the other side of the Horn. “Oh, heading down Somalia way? Here’s your 6 M2 machine guns, 10,000 rounds of ammo, 5 dozen RPGs, 6 sets of night vision goggles, and 6 TOW launchers. And 2 video cameras. And two crates of AK-47s and a few cutlasses. Better hang on to the receipt, because you have to give it all back when you get to the the other side. Or else we sink your ass on the spot. We expect you to fight to the last man, and not get hijacked. Have fun!”

Posted by Drew458     on 06/08/2008 at 09:37 AM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

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
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

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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