Sunday - March 13, 2011

I’ve got the updating blues…

Yes, I finally decided to update to MacOS 10.6 Snow Leopard. (who names these things? Why the cat fetish?) As expected, some of my favorite third-party apps either no longer work at all, or are crippled. Sapiens is crippled. The ‘search’ function no longer works. Sticky Windows is completely busted. I expect I’ll have to buy the new version when available.

Meanwhile, to make up for the lack of Sticky Windows, I’ve increased my use of Spaces, an included function of MacOS.

Yeah, I know, Macker is laughing at me. Or with me. He may have had the same problems.

Which brings me to BMEWS. I had problems posting for the last two days. I normally use FireFox as my browser. I normally preview my posts. Three times I tried to preview a post in FireFox, it took me back to the Expression Engine page. Drew and peiper will know what I’m talking about. The post that I’d lovingly spent so much time on was lost.

I suspect I need to upgrade FireFox. Until then, I’ve found that Safari does the job.

Attack of the ‘Ations’

Leglisl-Ation
Regul-Ation
Tax-Ation

Wasn’t this a Moody Blues song?

Herman Cain, who is exploring a run for the Presidency, gives a great speech at CPAC this year.

There are many black men and women I would vote for. Herman Cain is one of those. Obama wasn’t, and isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t vote for skin color, I vote for content of character.

sunday eye candy

OK Look ...

First of all so nobody gets the wrong idea.

I sometimes look at Sports Illustrated but ONLY for the fashions and the interviews and info on baseball. Uh, has the season started yet? They don’t say.

Second ... Drew seemed disappointed in a previous comment that he hadn’t seen any redheads. Which is odd since I got the name of this lady from the man himself. lol.

I have to go out shortly ... we’re looking at a newer car, a bit bigger and we might not even keep it. I’ll save the story for another time once we have it. Apparently it’s a 2003 model and the owner is giving it to my wife.  So will be gone for awhile and leave you with ..........

EYE CANDY for Sunday

CINTIA

Just so everyone knows what a terrible influence Drew is, and of course I’d never look for this being all kinds of innocent. (I’m gonna make myself ill here if I keep that up)
Anyway, H/T Drew for this lovely too.  Whoever she is.

BATTLING BRIT TAKES OUT TWO WITH ONE STONE AND THEY AIN’T PRETTY BIRDS.

First of all Kudos to Drew for what I think was a terrific movie review and analysis on same and current conditioning. Would that fall under social engineering?

Happened to spot this early today and thought good news is a good way to start a Sunday morning and post. Hope you agree.
In fact, I think I’ll stick this one on top for a few hours today, cos everything else I came across while honestly NOT looking for them, I found a few items in our paper that as usual had me hopping mad.  What else is new?

Just this story.  Bravo Brits!

It says Book Review at the LINK HERE but it reads more like an article based on reporting.

Dead Men Risen: The snipers’ story

By Tony Harnden

Operating from a remote patrol base in Helmand, two British snipers were responsible for killing 75 Taliban fighters in just 40 days. In one remarkable feat of marksmanship, two insurgents were dispatched with single bullet.

The arrival at the newly-established Patrol Base Shamal Storrai (Pashto for “North Star”) in late August 2009 of Serjeant (CORR) Tom Potter and Rifleman Mark Osmond marked the start of an astonishing episode in the history of British Army sniping.

Within 40 days, the two marksmen from 4 Rifles, part of the Welsh Guards Battle group, had achieved 75 confirmed kills with 31 attributed to Potter and 44 to Osmond. Each kill was chalked up as a little stick man on the beam above the firing position in their camouflaged sangar beside the base gate – a stick man with no head denoting a target eliminated with a shot to the skull.

Osmond, 25, was an engaging, fast-talking enthusiast, eager to display his encyclopedic knowledge of every specification and capability of his equipment. He had stubbornly remained a rifleman because he feared that being promoted might lead to his being taken away from sniping, a job he loved and lived for. Potter, 30, was more laid back, projecting a calm professionalism and quiet confidence in the value of what he did.

Potter had notched up seven confirmed kills in Bara in 2007 and 2008 while Osmond’s total was 23. Both were members of the Green Jackets team that won the 2006 British Army Sniper Championships.

On one occasion they killed eight Taliban in two hours, ‘I wasn’t comfortable with it at first,’ said Osborn, ‘you start wondering is it really necessary?’ But the reaction of the locals soon persuaded him. ‘We had people coming up to us afterwards, not scared to talk to us. They felt they were being protected’.

Most of the kills were at a range of 1,200 metres using the 7.62 mm L96 sniper rifle.

The snipers used suppressors, reducing the sound of the muzzle blast. Although a ballistic crack could be heard, it was almost impossible to work out where the shot was coming from. With the bullet travelling at three times the speed of sound, a victim was unlikely to hear anything before he died. Walkie-talkie messages revealed that the

Taliban thought they were being hit from helicopters. The longest-range shot taken was when Potter killed an insurgent at 1,430 metres away. But the most celebrated shot of their tour was by Osmond at a range of just 196 metres.

On September 12th, a known Taliban commander appeared on the back of a motorcycle with a passenger riding pillion. There was a British patrol in the village of Gorup-e Shesh Kalay and under the rules of engagement, the walkie-talkie the Taliban pair were carrying was designated a hostile act. As they drove off, Osmond fired warning shots with his pistol and then picked up his L96, the same weapon – serial number 0166 – he had used in Iraq and on the butt of which he had written, ‘I love u 0166’.

Taking deliberate aim, he fired a single shot. The bike tumbled and both men fell onto the road and lay there motionless. When the British patrol returned, they checked the men and confirmed they were both dead, with large holes through their heads.

The 7.62 mm bullet Osmond had fired had passed through the heads of both men. He had achieved the rare feat of ‘one shot, two kills’ known in the sniping business as ‘a Quigley’. The term comes from the 1990 film Quigley Down Under in which the hero, played by Tom Selleck, uses an old Sharps rifle to devastating effect.

Potter and Osmond’s working day would begin around 7 am and end a dozen or so hours later at last light. Up to about 900 metres, they would aim at an insurgent’s head, beyond that at the chest.

Often, Potter would take one side of a compound and Osmond the other. Any insurgent moving from one side to the other was liable to be shot by the second sniper if the first had not already got him. Each used the scopes on the rifles to spot for the other man, identifying targets with nicknames to do with their appearance.

A fighter wearing light blue was dubbed ‘the Virgin Mary’ and one clad in what looked like sackcloth was referred to as ‘Hesco man’, after the colour of the base’s Hesco barriers. Both the Virgin Mary and Hesco man were killed.

Others were given a nickname because of their activities, like Hashish man, a Taliban who doubled up as a drug dealer. Occasionally, insurgents got posthumous monikers. If one target presented himself, both snipers aimed at him simultaneously in a coordinated shoot.

“Everybody you hit they drop in a different way,’ says Potter. ‘We did a co-ord shoot on to the one bloke and he just looked like he just fell through a trap door. So we called him Trapdoor Man.”

Major Mark Gidlow-Jackson, their company commander, describes Potter and Osmond as the “epitome of the thinking riflemen” that his regiment sought to produce. “They know the consequences of what they’re doing and they are very measured men. They are both highly dedicated to the art of sniping. They’re both quiet, softly spoken, utterly charming, two of the nicest men in the company, if the most dangerous.”

Serjeant Potter and Rifleman Osmond are identified by pseudonyms for security reasons.

   Saturday - March 12, 2011

I think I felt it

For A Moment There
I Had A Moment There



As I mentioned in my previous post - which is the next post here actually since the new ones go on top - I’ve been watching Laurel & Hardy films this week. Not that I’ve ever really considered myself a serious student of film, having only taken 2 courses on it in college, but Laurel & Hardy have this reputation as being the definitive comedy team from way back when. Perhaps in stand-up routines they were. In their 5 to 10 minute short films they certainly can be. But when it came to full length films, they bombed. That’s the saddening revelation I’ve come to after watching several. I can’t claim to have seen their entire body of work. That other post wrote a bit about Pack Up Your Troubles, which was far more of a “find the orphan girl a home” film than it was a war story. And aside from the barbed wire lasso scene, a few two-idiots-in-bootcamp bits stretched over several painful minutes, and one or two falling prats, the film wasn’t funny at all. What jokes there were, were both simple and far apart.  The slapstick bits I can get, even though I have outgrown Three Stooges antics. But this film, and the one I’m getting to, Pardon Us seem to be cobbled together out of 2 minute skits glued together with long and boring non-sequitor scenes. I’m trying to cut them a lot of slack, because these are old movies from the early days, and tastes have changed. But the pacing is so slow I found myself nearly falling asleep, while the “killer comedy” did little more than get a small chuckle out of me.

And then I was blown away. In a very not at all funny manner. I was watching Pardon Us. I don’t think I’d ever seen this movie before. It’s another one from the Hal Roach period, 1931, which are supposed to be golden nuggets. Nuggets is right, but not golden ones. In this one, the boys get sent off to jail for bootlegging, and it’s a dark and forbidding place. There are little bits of funny here and there, which just seem to be thrown in and glued on, like when they have to go to one of those prisoner improvement education classes and the teacher gets the class going with a question and answer session:

and so forth. When tough guy prisoner The Tiger attempts an escape, the boys walk out the other door when nobody is looking. And having previously mused, on one of their visits to solitary, about how great life would be down on the farm, after their escape that’s where they decide to make their hide out.

Cut to the farm. Not just any farm. Dat Ole Plantation, wid da cotton fields fa fa away. It’s an outdoor shot, and while the cotton plants look a bit scraggly and far apart [ Damnyankee boy here: even with red clay soil, wouldn’t the cotton plants be closer together than 4 or 5 feet? This field looks mighty poor ]. And in the field are dozens of black folk, dressed in the requisite Mammy and Big Jim clothes (this film was 8 years before Gone With The Wind), and they’re pickin’ that ol cotton by hand, and singing spirituals all de live long day. I was flabbergasted. I could not believe what I was seeing. And for one brief moment I felt White Guilt, right there in my own living room. Holy shit. I was stunned. But as the scene went on and on, and the Colored People went from singing By and By into Swing Along and then a rousing Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, hoppin’ and a boppin’, I realized this wasn’t anything racist at all. Hey, for all I know, poor black field pickers actually DID wear those Aunt Jemima outfits back then, and group singing at work was a black thing. I know that part was true. And then I realized that my immediate embarrassment was the result of cultural conditioning: in today’s world we deny the reality that such things ever even existed, and cry raaaaaacism whenever anything appears that shows that it actually did. We don’t just deny that black people were often portrayed in film as quaint or funny, we deny that black people ever even worked in the roles that these old films portrayed them in. And certainly not while happily singing on the job! And then the camera cuts to Laurel & Hardy, hiding out in plain sight. In the back of the cotton fields. In blackface. OMFG. Greasepaint faces and hands, with white lips and eyes. And their trademark hats. You know what the really funny part was? Neither one of them could pick cotton for shit. Stanley rips the whole plant out of the ground and stuffs them in his sack, while Ollie picks just one blossom at a time, and then plucks every last bit of dust and seed pod off before placing it softly in his bag. Meanwhile the field hands are filling up 100lb sacks, dragging them along behind, of course with the obligatory cute little black kid catching a ride on one while her momma worked. At day’s end the white guy on a horse, dat ol oberseer, calls off work ( I was almost expecting 2 boys swinging on a bell while Big Jim yells “Quittin Time!” Wrong movie ) and the workers link arms and happily dance themselves off the field and back to their shanties. Where the music continues, with an uncredited but much better and more Western dressed quartet doing some song about a train going north. How black. How soulful. People today would be outraged. The racism! The exploitation! The stereotyping! But you know what? The field hand singers were damn good, and the guys who did the train tune later on were even better. Even Ollie had a good voice, doing a very nice “Lazy Moon”, followed by Stan’s loose limbed soft shoe routine. While in blackface. A regular minstrel show. At the end of which he falls in the mud and all the black washes off. That’s the only real race joke in the whole bit, which lasts the better part of half an hour. The black keeps washing off, even when the Warden’s car breaks down by the field the next day and the boys try to fix it. Slap on a handful of automotive grease and nobody notices. They get caught and go back to prison not because anyone realized they were white, but because Stanley has a loose tooth that whistles, which everyone is insulted by because they think he’s giving them the raspberry, and the Warden remembers him from when that same thing happened back when the two were in the jailhouse.

So from my short moment, I had a bit of an epiphany about just how much social conditioning has got through my defenses, even though I’ve been aware of it and working against it for nearly two decades.

Later on I watched that scene twice more. The black washing off running joke was pretty funny, and whoever those singers were, they were really good. No reason to deny that at all.

Ha, some Tanks I get for all the work I do

You haven’t heard much from me this week. I’ve been busy with lots of things here at home. When I’ve been online, it was mostly working on some family genealogy research. I found a second cousin who had been a B-17 pilot in WWII and then ran an art gallery after the war. His son, my previously unknown third cousin, runs that gallery today. Boring to you, but fascinating to me. This genealogy stuff is very time consuming, even though so much of it is online these days which makes it much easier. And we got whipped again at bowling league. What else is new? And that’s 3/4 of what I’ve been up to this week that I’d bother to write about.

I was going to run a post on the IDF’s first successful combat use of their new Target/ASPRO-A vehicle defense system. I’d seen the news feed on this a week and a half ago, and I ran across a link or two to the story on other blogs.

The Israel Defense Forces Armored Corps successfully operated its new armor-defense system for the first time on Tuesday, defending a tank from an antitank missile attack on the Gaza border. On Tuesday afternoon, an antitank missile was fired at a Merkava 4 tank on the border with the Gaza Strip, near Kibbutz Nir Oz in the western Negev. The tank crew then activated the new defense system, Me’il Ruach (Windbreaker), and successfully foiled the attack.

This is actually a bit of history, it being the very first time an active automatic defense system has been used on a vehicle by any Western forces. Possibly by any forces, but there is a Soviet claim that they had a similar system that worked in combat, back when they were in Afghanistan. But you know the Soviets. They invented everything first, even water.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure this thing out, because I had some difficulty understanding how it was an different than the IDF’s similar, earlier Iron Fist system. The two are highly similar, and the tank mounted repulser guns look very much alike. While I may be wrong, I finally understood the difference to be that the repulser gun of the Target system uses something like a shotgun, while the Iron Fist system uses/used EFPs - explosively formed penetrators to do the job. That sent me down a huge research sideline, because an EFP is a variety of a shaped charge explosive, and shaped charge explosives - bazookas, RPGs, etc., are what brought the Era of Armor to a close. That seemed hugely ironic, that a giant armored tank would need to be defended with shaped charge projectors against other shaped charge projectors to which it was highly vulnerable. You see, those things don’t just blow up. They blow forward. Instead of blasting fragments in all directions, their cone shaped hollowpoint metal lined design creates a focused jet of sun-hot plasma which eats it’s way through armor in an eye blink. All of it; the latest designs can chew through armor to a depth 7 times their diameter. Which means an RPG warhead just 3” across can blast through the thickest naval armor plate ever made, with ease. So I did a whole research project on that part too, right back to a 1945 Popular Science article which explained the Munroe effect, and noted how it had been discovered in the late 19th century and then ignored by the military for nearly 50 years. Had it been put to use then, not a single one of the massively armored battleships of the WWII era would have ever been built. Not when three Cub Scouts in a rowboat could sink one, or at least seriously wound or disable it, with a boxful of RPGs.

So anyway, the Target system itself is technically fascinating because it shows just how fast and powerful computers have become. When they aren’t dragged down by Windows I mean. Target can spot, track, analyze, and if necessary defend against RPGs fired at it from only 20 or 30 feet away. Seeing that an RPG flies at just below the speed of sound, that’s mighty fast. And it can defend against HEAT rounds too, which fly faster than a speeding bullet. Pretty damn amazing. It really is a virtual shield, like the one depicted in the fanciful picture above. The other really amazing part is that the counter measure system is so minimal that there is hardly any risk even to nearby bystanders. The first time I heard the news story, it said the guys in the IDF tank didn’t even know the system had activated.

Is it scalable? Can a big one be built, a la Star Wars SDI, that will stop ICBMs? Can a tiny one be made that soldiers can wear that will deflect bullets? Time will tell.

But I put all this stuff together, and it just seemed boring. News item: one tank used a bazillion dollar system to stop one RPG in some dusty alley somewhere in the Middle East. YAWN? What I wrote here isn’t 1/10 of what I had, which covered everything, from the invention of armor and it’s entire history from tree bark and leather through iron and steel through “Harveyizing” through modern ceramic composites and depleted uranium, to defensive reactive explosives, and then on to the whole shaped explosive thing over 100 years, and a discourse on the history and future of tanks from Da Vinci to today. It was huge, but boring. Into the trash! I have to learn to try and be concise.

Speaking of tanks and their history, a guy from bowling league lent me several DVDs of early Laurel & Hardy movies, the ones done by Hal Roach. Yeah, the same Hal Roach who did the Our Gang/Little Rascals films. Ha, he even used the same tune in the Laurel & Hardy flicks.

In one of those movies, Pack Up Your Troubles from 1932, the boys get strong-armed into the Army in 1917 and go Over There. There is one scene where they’re out in No Man’s Land, in a shell crater, running back and forth like ducks in a shooting gallery, trying to get away from the explosions coming in left and right. Sitting in the middle of the crater, in perfect condition, is a Renault FT, the 3 1/2 ton mini tank the French built during the war. A real one.

The boys hide out in the tank for safety, but somebody left the engine running, Stanley leans against one of the control levers by accident, and away goes the tank. Hilarity ensues as he tries to figure out how to drive it, accidentally going up the crater and through the barbed wire, driving an entire company of Jerries out of their trench, tying them up with the barbed wire, and dragging them back to their side as prisoners. The two screw ups are heroes and get promoted. It’s actually about the funniest scene in the whole film. But what I didn’t know is that this little French chug-chug, with it’s top speed of 5mph, was actually still the US’s active duty tank in 1931. It’s little gun used the same anemic 37mm shell that the little pack cannon I wrote about last week used, because that tank served the same purpose, just wrapped in a somewhat mobile and slightly bullet-proof exterior. Here’s another picture and a video of R Lee Ermy taking one for a test ride with all his usual misinformation. That particular tank might be the American made post-war version.  Amazingly enough, the FT saw active duty as late as WWII, and perhaps longer, and they keep turning up in the oddest places. Come to think of it, I’ve actually seen the one there at Rhinebeck, but I can’t remember if it was out driving around as part of the show or just sitting on display.

So there you have it. History making tanks from both ends of the time line. But no redheads. No brunettes either, but I’ve got a comparison post in the works on that one. Maybe.

   Friday - March 11, 2011

A BRAND NEW ENGLISH NATIONAL ANTHEM

yeah ... I’m still here.

Drew kindly sent this last night among other interesting items. So I took it from him, and he got it from Theo who got from ....

H/T Grumpy Old Sod.  How’s that for credits?

I think you might like to visit his site. It’s pretty darn interesting.  Go here. GRUMPY

A New English National Anthem

This should be sung to the tune of;

“My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”

We’re English, and therefore we’re sorry,
For the things that we did years ago;
We’re the wickedest folk on the planet,
As the following verses will show.

We’re sorry we fought at Culloden,
To the Scottish we’ve always been mean;
We killed your King Jamie at Flodden,
And we cut off the head of your Queen.

We’re sorry, good people of Wales,
For all of those ‘sheep-shagger’ gags;
And we’re sorry if ever we called you
A nation of whinging wind-bags.

We’re sorry if you were a convict
Who we sent off to sunnier climes;
We condemned you to life as an Aussie,
When you’d rather have swung for your crimes.

We’re sorry we carved out an Empire,
And we’re sorry for giving it back
To people like Robert Mugabe
Who’s no better than Stalin ... but black.

We’re sorry we dealt in the slave trade,
And we’re sorry for stamping it out.
We’re sorry we fought with the Zulus;
- there’s so much we’re sorry about.

We’re sorry, dear French, for the longbow;
And ‘twas perfectly fair to cry ‘foul’
That we wouldn’t surrender to Hitler
When you eagerly threw in the towel.

We’re sorry for Queen Boadicea
Who just didn’t know when to stop;
We’re sorry we fought Mussolini,
And we’re sorry we called him a wop.

We’re sorry for beating the Germans
In two World Wars and a World Cup;
Most of all, we’re incredibly sorry
That we cannot stop bringing it up!

Not our fault? Even so, we’re still sorry;
We’re sorry John Lennon was shot;
And we’re sorry for saying we’re sorry
When it’s perfectly plain that ... we’re not.

Being the generous sort he is, as well as a bad influence, Drew has shared a bonus with us below the fold.

queers to Christians … fuck you and give us more of your money

If I say “trust me” you damn well can because I haven’t got time at my age, to waste time with bullshit. Or small talk, at which I’ve never been good at. I guess that implies I’m good at the former and lets be truthful, all of us have had to resort to that from time to time in our lives.

So, trust me when I say I had no intention of booting today and especially this early.
It’s this damn tooth/gum thing. Pain as you’d imagine and I should have called my dentist yesterday, the office is closed today. So earliest will be Monday. Oh this will be a fun wkend.  Headache won’t quit either and all made worse by page five of the Daily Mail. Maybe I should sue em.

My reason for booting is due to not being able to get page five of one of our papers today, without stopping what I was doing, including the coffee thing, because I just had to share this very frustrating article with you all.

Yeah. I’m pissed again. As in … RCOB!  Damn attention seeking queers. Yes they fuckin well are.  They are not normal so therefore they are queer. As in, very odd. Out of the normal scheme of things.  So let us forget this ‘gay’ shit. It’s queer behavior.

Remember the story a month or two back, some of you will.
A Christian couple who own a B&B, refuse to rent their rooms to unmarried hetro couples or queer couples. They will give them separate rooms but their belief doesn’t allow for two ppl who are not married to share one room, especially one bed. And certainly not homosexuals.

Oh what a coincidence that it just so happens a fag couple happen to choose this one B&B for a romantic getaway and are refused one room. So they sue and of course they win. Remember that?  Yeah well, the shits are back in the news again.
They each got £1,800 at the time but now say they want more because the old couple haven’t been punished enough!  Yes, really.  Read it for yourself.

Is it any wonder I’m pissed off?

Gay Queer pair who won cash from Christian B&B couple launch fight for more - and you are funding them
By STEVE DOUGHTY

The gay odd couple who won damages from Christian hotel owners for refusing them a bed are suing to get even more money from them, according to documents filed at the Court of Appeal.

Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall said the owners were let off too lightly because of their Christian beliefs.
Peter and Hazelmary Bull now face having to pay the couple thousands of pounds more in compensation.
Civil partners Mr Preddy, 38, and Mr Hall, 46, of Bristol, won their case in January and were awarded £1,800 each.

Their legal challenge to the amount of damages is being backed and fully financed by the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission, according to the documents.

The move led yesterday to fresh protests that the might of the State is being used to sweep away any remaining claim Christianity has to a hearing in the courts.
Mr and Mrs Bull, who run the Chymorvah Hotel in their seven-bedroom home in Cornwall, had turned away the men on the grounds that their policy is to let double rooms only to married couples.

In January Judge Andrew Rutherford, at Bristol County Court, ruled that the Bulls had broken sexual orientation regulations under the Equality Act, because in the eyes of the law civil partnership is the same as marriage.

Mr Preddy and Mr Hall have now applied to the Appeal Court to overturn the damages awarded against the Bulls and order much higher compensation. Their case is being presented by EHRC lawyers, according to court documents.

LINK TO MORE

Mister and Mister???? Surely that’s wrong. Isn’t one of em supposed to be a Miss? or Mz or Mrs ?
Now tell me that ain’t fuckin queer as a three dollar bill. Or billette as the case may be.

I have to confess to feeling a bit guilty for being so damned vitriolic in my response to the news.  That’s because in my many years, I have known a few homosexuals who really were nice people. They didn’t in any way resemble this pair of opportunistic bastards. And by that I don’t mean they were docile.
They were content with themselves, I only knew one who wasn’t, and said he thought he was more queer then ‘gay’ and didn’t think it was normal. But they were not bad people.  I have to keep things like that in mind when I lose it and tend to make it appear as tho I’m attacking everyone as an entire group.
I wonder if this particular pair of queens would be so quick to go to court if the taxpayer weren’t funding it all. Pissants.

33 FT. TSUNAMI HITS JAPAN … OFFSHORE QUAKE AT 8.9

For the ppl who boot puters before TV and haven’t seen this ... I was posting something else when this came across the news site.

MAPS,VIDEO, STILL PHOTOS AND SOURCE

This is an 8.9 quake in Japan.

The earthquake, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale and said to be ‘one of the great quakes’, sent ten-metre waves surging inland after striking at 2:46pm local time. Five people are reported dead so far. The tsunami struck off the coast of Sendai in the north-east.

Here’s the YT video BUT .... you can’t hear the English translation as it’s buried under Japanese speech. It’s that way in my case anyway.

   Thursday - March 10, 2011

A SCREWED UP CRIMINAL SYSTEM IN CALIFORNIA

Things like this drive me stark raving bonkers. Granted that my home state is known (embarrassingly) as the land of fruits and nuts, and they’ve elected Jerry Brown again as gov. So what the hell. I am not surprised.  Just plain disgusted and feel bad for the dad who passed away, and the victim’s mom.

Here ... you can read it for yourself. I’ll also post below, one stupid and infuriating comment from a Brit with no brains.
You’ll see what I mean.

The killer wins: Death Row murderer outlives victim’s father who campaigned for decades to see him executed

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 3:09 PM on 10th March 2011

He spent 27 years criticising a justice system that allowed his daughter’s killer to remain on death row with no fixed execution date.

Now Marine veteran George Cullins, 88, has fulfilled his prediction that he would die before seeing California serial killer Dean Carter, 55, executed.

Carter was sentenced to death in 1991 after Mr Cullins’s daughter Janette, 24, was raped and strangled in her San Diego flat in 1984 before being stuffed into a closet.

Retired Marine Corps pilot Mr Cullins died in hospital last Tuesday from complications after a car accident in October that left his wife, Helen, with a broken neck.

California is known for a slow execution process, with 712 inmates on death row and only a handful of executions since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.

But victims’ rights advocate Mr Cullins was responsible for changes in two California laws benefiting the families of murder victims.

‘He was a fine gentleman,’ Jeffrey Koch, California Deputy Attorney General, told AOL News. ‘I’m sorry that he did not see this case completed.’

Carter, who is on death row at San Quentin State Prison, has made many appeals in the last 20 years and his case is now in the federal appeals process.

He killed three women in Los Angeles the day before Janette’s murder and raped two others in a three-week spree after his sexual advances were rejected, a court heard.

The serial killer was also charged with a fifth murder in Northern California, but the case was dropped after his death sentence, reported AOL News.

Cullins was charged $65 by San Diego County for transporting Janette’s body to the morgue after her death, but the state passed a law one year later to drop such fees.

He was responsible in the 1990s for enacting a law to speed up the first step in an appeal process of court record certification in death penalty cases.

‘When the punishment of execution was actually carried out, the murder rate had decreased, but now we are just warehousing killers,’ Cullins said in 2007.

‘By drawing out the appeals process, the murder rate has been constantly on the increase,’ he told the North County Times.

But Carter has himself complained about the slow postal service, cramped conditions and visitor policies - while also commenting on social issues and O.J. Simpson.

He has written a blog since 1995 called ‘Deadman Talking’ to give an inside view about life on death row, which Mr Koch described as ‘extremely disturbing’.

Carter’s lawyers have unsuccessfully argued for his case to be overturned on alleged issues such as double jeopardy, prosecutor misconduct and judicial bias.

SOURCE

Why oh why don’t any of the lawyers who help to keep scum like this alive for so long, themselves become victims of serious and violent crimes?
If any do, I’ve never heard of it. Have you?  But I sincerely wish it would happen. Like maybe someone would wipe out a civil rights lawyers family, then ask to be defended by that piss ant lawyer. Yeah,yeah. Couldn’t happen.  Just my frustration with a shitty system mouthing off.
Then too, ppl who think like this idiot who commented on this case also contribute to keeping scum afloat. We have the American version of this fool.
See what you make of this jerk.

26 years in jail, he’s served his time so let him out now. How cruel to keep someone on death row for 26 years. Sounds like a third-world country.
- keith rathbone, lancashire, 10/3/2011

Law in Austria: Guilty for Questioning Islam.  This is now the way of our world. Sucks!

I am beginning to think I need to learn how to write articulate and literate editorials, because there’s so much I’d like to say about this story and can not find the correct words.

All I can come up with is ....

Shame on Austria!

OK, it isn’t Mark Steyn but it is articulate enough. I suppose. This is what Europe has come to. Austria for certain.

H/T Europe News and Hudson New York

Law in Austria: Guilty for Questioning Islam

By A. Millar

The European “elite” has increasingly asserted that any questioning of Islam is criminal. A few weeks ago Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was fined 480 Euros for the “denigration of religious teachings of a legally recognized religion in Austria.” In a three-part seminar Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff had referred to Islam’s prophet Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha. According to generally-accepted Islamic textual tradition, Aisha was six at the time of the marriage, which was consummated when she was nine. Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff asked rhetorically “if this does not constitute pedophilia, what does?”

Defending the doctrines, beliefs, and figures of various “legally recognized” religions is liable to have unanticipated consequences. As Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff observes, “the judge didn’t deny that Mohammed had sex with a nine year old. It is actually now proven in court that Mohammed had sex with a nine year-old.” However, she says, “it’s just that I am not allowed to say that he was a pedophile.” Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff is not allowed to, because, in the words of the judge, as she passed sentence, “pedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18.”

The fine – representing a sentence of 120 days – is deceptively low. It was reduced to the minimum allowed to take into account that Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff has no income. It is usually waived for first time offenders, however, the presiding judge claimed Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff was a “repeat offender” because she had, in her judgment, referred to Mohammed being a pedophile more than once. (...)

If this happens, a court in Austria will have set a precedent for the EU, and perhaps eventually even for the US: Question Islam, and you will be hauled into court, tried, and convicted.

HUDSON NY FOR ALL OF IT

a brief lecture on the arab spring from the left … make em feel welcome europa

OK ... We’re overdue for a liberal lecture on The Arab Spring ...  And naturally this comes from Europa, in fact if you want to visit the site you can listen instead of read, to this side of the libtard, hand wringing, bleeding heart side of things.  Meanwhile, in the papers yesterday there were photos of the boats landing on an Italian island with thousands more on the way.
But this post just shows how much their liberal heads are buried in the sand.  You’re darned tootin’ there’s something to worry about. Unless of course you live on the left.

I guess I have to do this.  H/T World Radio Switzerland

Dateline CH: Revealing reactions to the ‘Arab spring’

Journalist Imogen Foulkes examines Europe’s reaction to the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. And it’s not very flattering:

Europe’s response to what many are calling the “Arab spring” has been intriguing. I’m sure many listeners can remember the autumn of 1989, and the euphoria which greeted the fall of the Berlin wall, the jubilant scenes as East Germans streamed over the border into the west.

Obviously the analogy can’t be taken too far–nevertheless I think it’s understandable that many in north Africa and the Middle East were a bit disappointed by Europe’s initial reaction to the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya. So what were those first reactions? Italy warning of waves of migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Europe–and the EU border agency Frontex beefing up its presence in the Med to prevent such a thing.

Italy’s Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, was especially supportive to the democracy protests in north Africa–he predicted a biblical exodus towards the EU, asked for 100 million euros from Brussels to help cope, and suggested Italy would send migrants on northwards if such help was not forthcoming.

Newspaper headlines across western Europe advised us to brace ourselves for something akin to an invasion–Swiss television’s flagship weekly discussion programme Arena debated not the sudden flowering of democratic protests, but what Switzerland should do if it too faced a wave of migrants.

Granted, there were some low-key words of welcome for the change apparently sweeping across north Africa and the Middle East, but they simply weren’t as loud as the worries about immigration. And here in Geneva, another reaction to the uprisings which I have heard several times, from aid agencies who have been present in the region for decades is “we just didn’t see it coming.”

Why is that I wonder? Why was it such a surprise, that in a part of the world with a very young, relatively well-educated population, with widespread access to the internet but low employment prospects—there should be frustration and impatience with governments who have ruled autocratically for decades, and lined their pockets while their people remained impoverished. Could it be that our own attitude to North Africa and the Middle East is a little patronising?

Have we assumed for too long that the people in those countries are somehow not as interested in freedom of speech, in democracy, as we are in Europe? Or have our governments been too comfortable with the autocratic status quo in our neighbours to the south, and encouraged us to believe that in the interests of stability, those regimes are worth doing business with?

In fact, I think our reactions to the momentous events of the Arab spring are rather revealing–about Europe, not about north Africa–and not all the revelations are especially flattering. Because instead of an instinctive welcome for a wave of protests from people who simply want a better future in their own countries, our instinct has been to worry that these same people might decide instead to invade our precious European space, and to close our doors even tighter, just in case.

The Groundhog Was Right

We’re having another day of torrential rain here. This makes it the 8th heavy rainstorm we’ve had since about Valentine’s Day, when winter unofficially ended here. Before that it had been viciously cold, and we’d had more than double the usual amount of snow for the whole season. But the ice and snow here is long gone, washed away by the rains and the warmer weather. Large parts of the state have had serious flooding. Not Clinton, not yet. But the river is pretty high. Keep your fingers crossed.

Looks like the old groundhog Punxsutawney Phil was correct with his prediction this year. He didn’t see his shadow, probably because he froze to death the instant they pulled him out of his burrow. If all this rain since had come down as snow, we’d be buried. We’d have 10 feet of snow on the ground. More. Which would be cool. But not really.

awesome eye candy

Damn crashing tooth ache. Again.  I think I quit the meds too soon. Things felt really well and I thought all ok. Guess not. Good excuse as if I need one, to take my mind elsewhere. Like here.

EYE CANDY. What else?

Say hello to:

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