Wednesday - July 23, 2008

Stealing makes you tired

The Daily Einstein Award

MONROE, Wash.— Police say a trail of pillows and backpacks led to two sleeping men who were arrested after a department store break-in. Kyle Burress, 25, and Allen Pierce, 27, have been charged with second-degree burglary.

Police spokeswoman Debbie Willis says a break-in was discovered July 9 at a Fred Meyer department store northeast of Seattle. The two were still being held on bail Monday, and it was not clear whether they had lawyers.

Willis says police followed a trail of cardboard and items from storage containers in a locked area behind the store that led to the two men. One was sleeping in a stolen hammock and the other on a pile of stolen pillows.

Police photographed the men before waking and arresting them.

Maybe they should had just a little less to drink, you think?

   Monday - July 21, 2008

GREETINGS TO ALL COMRADS AMERIKA/ENGLAND, GOOD NEWS COMRADS.

THE BRIT HOME IS STILL A BRIT’S CASTLE.  HE/SHE IS JUST SUB-LEASING TO THE GOVT.  SEE HOW EASY THAT IS?

Labour has nearly doubled the number of laws that give officials access to your home
By Andy Bloxham
Last Updated: 11:09PM BST 20/07/2008

More than a 1,000 laws now exist that allow the authorities into homes, it has emerged.

The 1,043 laws – nearly half of which have been introduced under Labour – include the right to inspect pot plants for pests, to measure the height of hedges, to search bedrooms for asylum seekers and to look at fridges for their energy rating.

The information will heighten fears among campaigners that Britain is becoming a “Big Brother” society. The Conservatives claimed that the list of powers of entry was “quietly slipped out” without a press release on the Home Office website.

A total of 420 new powers of entry have been introduced by Labour since it came to power in 1997. Sixteen more are contained in laws due to be approved by Parliament in the next few weeks.

The Plant Health (England) Order 2005 allows inspectors to enter homes to see if plants have pests or if certain types of plants have been smuggled in without a “plant passport”.

Section 74 of The Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 allows councils to check if a hedge is too high.

The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 can be used to allow officials to ensure accommodation provided to asylum seekers is not being used by others.

Although it is aimed at business, the Energy Information (Household Refrigerators and Freezers) Regulations 2004 can also be used to seize fridges with an incorrect energy rating.

Council bin inspectors already have the authority to enter homes and take photographs for evidence. Those who obstruct them face the threat of a £5,000 fine.

The Tories said the development was proof that Gordon Brown was reneging on his promise to curtail such laws by introducing a “liberty test” to limit state intrusion.

Eric Pickles, the shadow communities secretary, said: “Day by day under Labour, the rights and liberties of law-abiding citizens are being eroded.”

http://tinyurl.com/6jds53

   Tuesday - July 15, 2008

Firms must promote union membership to win government contracts

Excellent strategy Comradeski. Today England, tomorrow ? Who knows.  Looks like more union bs. They failed to totally ruin the country in the past. (but came close enuff) Well you know the old saying, if at first you don’t swindle, cajole, threaten and succeed ...  lie and browbeat some more til ya do.

By Rupert Neate
Last Updated: 7:42AM BST 15/07/2008

Companies will be told they must promote trade union membership if they want to win government contracts.

Businesses will today be told that they must demonstrate how they will “build good relations” with unions if they are to win a share of the £115 billion worth of public service contracts on offer.

Employees working on government projects in the private sector must also be given literacy and numeracy training if they lack basic skills. The new rules will apply to public-service delivery contracts awarded by central government but not to suppliers of equipment or other goods.

The announcement comes after Unite, Britain’s biggest union, gave guarantees underwriting Labour’s accounts.

Tom Watson, Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Cabinet office, will outline the rules in joint statement between ministers, trade unions and business leaders at Downing Street this morning, before submitting a written statement to parliament.

Mr Watson said: “We all have a challenge to increase the skills of British workers.

“This will help us to improve the employability of British workers in organisations that receive government contracts and deliver on the government’s skills agenda.”

(No Comrade fish breath. It’ll allow unions to force ppl to become members even if they don’t want to. The usual union ploy.)

Public-sector contracts account for nearly 6 per cent of the gross domestic product and employ more than 1.2 million people.

Union membership has halved over the past 25 years. Many large firms that undertake government contracts do deal with unions but the staff of smaller contractors, such as those who operate care homes, are not unionised.

The new rules come as Britain faces a summer of strikes over below-inflation pay increases. Thousands of schools are set to close tomorrow and up to 600,000 council workers will go on strike for 48 hours.

Gordon Brown insisted the government was not bowing to union pressure. The Prime Minister said. “I have made it absolutely clear we are not returning to the 70s or the 80s, we are not returning to the days of secondary picketing, we are not returning to trade union legislation which is written by trade unions themselves.”

http://tinyurl.com/67fhmf

   Sunday - June 29, 2008

We’re gonna need a bigger bus

It looks like they’re running out of room under the ObamaBus ...

One More Commie Who Worked For Obamie

Yeah, I’m a couple of days behind with this story. Looks like Michael Klonsky, former leader of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society [a 60’s radical commie group]), from a family of communists, Obama campaign worker with his own blog on the Obama webpage ... and a teacher, naturally ... has been thrown under the bus.

One by one we winkle out the Marxists, Stalinists, Maoists, anarchists, and assorted bomb-throwers all closely working together with Obama, and he makes them dissappear. For now. When the hell are people going to wake up? This Obama has more nasty baggage even than Bill Clinton did. At least with Clinton it was “just” his philandering and his association with some rather shady characters back in Arkansas. Obama seems to know every ultra-radical in the country. And all the preachers of hate. And the Che True Believers, even federal judges!! ... and it comes to light, at least the little light generated by the VRWC ... it gets put down as “swiftboating” and “smear” and at best gets 10 seconds on the news once. And then it gets forgotten about.

I can’t cover this better than C&S and Gateway Pundit did, so please visit them both and get the facts. And take a look at what Wikipedia has to say about him, knowing how PC edited WikiP can be. This guy is about as hard line a communist as has ever been in America.

Did we win the Cold War for nothing? Does anyone even have any idea anymore what Communism means? “When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”, except Obama seems to be the Teflon Terrier^tm and none of this sticks to him, or even to people’s awareness. This is just as bad a case of Willfull Blindness as we witnessed earlier in the week with Heller, as Jeff at Alphecca points out. I guess that’s what comes of living in the “Reality based” community - you get to fashion your own reality and live inside it, regardless of any of those annoying facts.

   Wednesday - June 04, 2008

Brigitte Bardot fined for inciting racial hatred.  (Again)

Damn it I feel sorry for her and am so pissed off (again) at the French for their ... for their ... ??
Help me here guys.  This is the fuckin pits and sorry about the bad language but ... the woman hasn’t said a damn thing that I can see is inciting anything other then total disrespect and revulsion for the French legal system for making her a victim of their damn multi-cultural pol.correctness.

By Peter Allen in Paris
Last Updated: 9:43PM BST 03/06/2008

Legendary sex symbol Brigitte Bardot has been fined £12,000 for inciting racial hatred against Muslims.

In December 2006 the retired French film star-turned-animal rights activist wrote a letter to France’s then interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing that Muslims should stun animals before slaughtering them during the Aid al-Kabir holiday.

She outraged anti-racist groups by saying: “I’ve had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, and destroying our country by imposing their ways.”

(Hey, that’s another thing the French soviet doesn’t want. The truth and woe to those who tell it.)

Miss Bardot, now 73, made it clear that she was referring to Muslims in the letter.

She was absent from today’s court hearing in Paris, but wrote to prosecutors saying: “I’m sickened by how anti-racist groups are harassing me.

“I won’t shut up until stunning is carried out” on animals before their ritual slaughter.

Miss Bardot, who shot to wordwide fame in the 50s in the lead role in And God Created Woman, already has four convictions on similar charges.

In 2004 she was fined £4000 for inciting racial hatred in her book “A Cry in the Silence”.

(apparently one must not write and publish a book in France unless it’s approved by the local soviet)

France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, estimated at five million people.

http://tinyurl.com/4gvz6p

   Monday - June 02, 2008

U.S. accused of holding terror suspects on ships (do we care? I sure don’t.)

Don’t ya just love when they say, “citing sources?” Who exactly. Schmucks never say.  They make it all up and the USA always has to be the villain.

Reuters - 1 hour 3 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been secretly detaining terrorism suspects aboard floating “prison ships,” a British legal charity charged on Monday, but the Pentagon described the report as inaccurate.

The charity Reprieve, citing sources including U.S. military officials, parliamentary bodies and former prisoners, said it believed the U.S. government had operated as many as 17 shipboard prisons, particularly in the Indian Ocean region.

( This must be yet another one of those ass wipe lefty anti-USA groups. Never heard of em before this. Screw em. I wish we could take out these sort of mindless lying bastards.  And even if they weren’t lying, I’d like to see em dead anyway.  I really do hate these ppl. )

“Prisoners have been interrogated under tortuous conditions before being rendered to other, often undisclosed locations,” Reprieve said, adding that it would issue a detailed report later this year.

Department of Defence spokesman J.D. Gordon called the report “inaccurate and misleading.”

“We do not operate detention facilities on board Navy ships. DoD detention facilities are in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo,” he said.

The United States has denied torturing terrorism suspects, but a Justice Department report last month cited FBI agents as warning that some CIA questioning techniques were “borderline torture.”

The military has acknowledged holding John Walker Lindh, a U.S. citizen accused of being a Taliban and al Qaeda supporter, on ships after his capture in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Lindh was held on two ships, the Bataan and Peleliu. The government says he was given medical treatment and was not tortured. Gordon said the ships were a considered safe place to question Lindh away from the battlefield.

Reprieve named three others, including Australian David Hicks, as suspects believed to have once been held on U.S. “prison ships.” It cited a former prisoner held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as saying about 50 others were held on the Bataan.

Gordon said fewer than 10 terrorism suspects were held, on the Bataan and Peleliu, in late 2001 and early 2002. He also dismissed Reprieve’s count of up to 17 ships as misleading. (Reporting by Randall Mikkelsen, editing by Alan Elsner)

http://tinyurl.com/5sk4bx

   Sunday - May 25, 2008

A liberal tells the truth

So, ‘this liberal’ wants to take over the oil companies? At least she was honest: she identified herself as a ‘liberal’ (semantically equivalent to ‘thief’).

I issue the same challenge to Maxine Waters: if you did nationalize the oil companies, can YOU guarantee that the price would go down?

   Friday - May 16, 2008

Save The Earth: Stop Breathing Right Now!!!

Ok, now that Global Warming has wimped out and become Climate Change, and now that the Carbon Credits thing has begun to show itself as the scam that it is, the Eco-freaks have come up with a new gas we should all be afraid of. Nitrogen. Which makes up a mere 78% or thereabouts of our atmosphere. Nitrogen. You know, that stuff that plants can’t live without. The stuff that everything can’t live without actually. So now there’s too much of it, in the wrong form. And it’s all humanity’s fault, although the blame really ought to be given to Bush!! Well, just because. Why not, everything else is.

Studies say reactive nitrogen a growing hazard in the environment

While carbon dioxide has been getting lots of publicity in climate change, reactive forms of nitrogen are also building up in the environment, scientists warn.

“The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world’s peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge,” University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway said in a statement.

“We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this may prove to be as serious as putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Galloway, author of a paper and co-author of a second on the topic in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

While nitrogen alone is inert and harmless, reactive nitrogen compounds — such as ammonia — have been released by its use in nitrogen-based fertilizers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels.

Various forms of nitrogen contribute to greenhouse warming, smog, haze, acid rain dead zones with little or no life along the coasts, and depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, the researchers concluded.

The researchers propose ways to reduce nitrogen use, ranging from encouraging its uptake by plants to recovering and reusing nitrogen from manure and sewage and decreasing nitrogen emissions from fossil fuel combustion.

Let’s start a betting pool to guess which gas will be next in the Fear The Air shellgame. I’ll take hydrogen by next February. But I can guarantee you somebody is going to make a lot of money off of this. That’s how it always works. Raise the Fear, Reap the Profits. What a bunch of ester releasing, nitrogen rich, organic compost. Mooo!

Read all about this terrible problem right here at the INI (International Nitrogen Initiative) webpage brochure:

The Problem
There are two major problems with nitrogen: some regions of the world do not have enough reactive
nitrogen to sustain human life, resulting in hunger and malnutrition, while other regions have too much
nitrogen (due mainly to the burning of fossil fuel and to the inefficient incorporation of nitrogen into food
products) resulting in a large number of major human health and ecological effects.

The Challenge
The challenge of nitrogen is how to optimize the use of nitrogen to sustain human life while minimizing the
negative impacts on the environment and human health. It is critical to the health of humans and
ecosystems that this challenge be met. It is doubly critical because without action, future populations will
be more stressed either due to nitrogen limitations or due to nitrogen excesses.

So you can tell already what The Solution is going to be, right? OF COURSE it will be “fairer distribution” and the only way to make that happen is Worldwide Socialism! This Greenie Bullshit is so damned transparent. Shine a light under any bush and you’ll find that the roots are Red.

( I can see another solution. The general gist of the nitrogen movement will be to ban artificial fertilizers. Guaranteed. The hippies have been crying about that for decades. But the Turd World doesn’t have enough nitrogen in the soil for their agriculture. And nitrogen is released by organic decomposition. So let’s clean up our act, and send all our raw sewage to these countries. Spread it around evenly, about a foot deep. After that nobody will be able to say that they’re Piss Poor anymore, they’ll have plenty of nitrogen, and the odds are they won’t notice the smell anyway. )

   Tuesday - May 06, 2008

Osamie the Commie?

Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas

This is what I’ve been saying for months. Dreaming of his father, little Barry wants to be just like daddy. And mommy, come to think of it. Moonbattery and Nice Deb put it all together and cross every “t” and dot every “i” except for the very last one. Communism is as far left as you can go, isn’t it?

Communists for parents. Communist backers today. Associates with actual anarchist bomb throwers. Trained by communists. Favored by Marxist dictators. Weblog run by communists. Communists on his campaign staff, at least in Baltimore. 20 year member of a pro-Marxist church. Follow the links and read; it’s too easy to connect the dots because they’re only 1/8” apart.

If it looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, dives like a duck, and hangs out with ducks, then it’s probably at least a waterproof chicken that swims really well. Or maybe the pond is just so polluted you can’t tell what kind of birds flock there. Yeah, that’s it.

   Friday - April 18, 2008

Gossip Blogging

Ask a stupid question:

“So, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, what do you see in a 24-year-old, sensationally beautiful gymnast with a penchant for posing semi-naked that you don’t see in your lovely, middle-aged, matronly wife Ludmilla?”

Ha, look at that sly old dog! What could he possibly be thinking? Uh, yeah! Some thoughts don’t need translation, they don’t even need to be said out loud. Some things are just about universal.

This sudden frenzied interest in a woman who, until yesterday, was frankly a rather obscure Russian athlete, comes after a Moscow newspaper reported that Mr Putin recently split with Ludmilla and is preparing to marry the young and very pretty Miss Kabaeva.

Mr Putin today appeared to relish being linked to a beautiful gymnast less than half his age as he gave a press conference alongside Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi - himself no stranger to allegations of womanising.

Denying the claims of a divorce and marriage plans, 55-year-old Mr Putin seemed to enjoy playing up the image of a ladies’ man.

“In other publications of the same type, the names of other successful, beautiful young women from Russia are mentioned,” he said. “I think it won’t be unexpected if I say that I like them all - just as I like all Russian women.”

He called women of his homeland “the most talented and beautiful” in the world - adding diplomatically: “If anyone can compete, it may be only Italian women.”

There is added piquancy in the fact that, despite her youth, Miss Kabaeva has recently been made an MP. The gymnast is one of a number of young and beautiful Russian dancers and athletes who, under Mr Putin’s patronage, have lately become deputies in the Duma - Russia’s lower parliament.

Vlad ... you da dawg!!

Neither the Kremlin nor a spokesman for Miss Kabaeva were prepared to comment. Some even suggest the story has been deliberately leaked by the Kremlin to allow them to impose further restrictions on Russia’s mass media.

It’s said that power is quite the aphrodesiac. I guess the proof is in the Putin.

UPDATE:

So much for freedom of the press in Russia. The paper that ran this story has been shut down. Guess old Pooty was pissed the word got out!

A newspaper that defied the Kremlin by reporting that President Vladimir Putin was planning to marry an Olympic gold medal-winning rhythmic gymnast half his age was shut down Saturday.

The closure of Moskovski Korrespondent, whose editor Grigori Nekhoroshev was forced to resign, was a sharp reminder of the perils of invoking Kremlin displeasure.

Rumors of a romance between Putin, 55, and Alina Kabaeva, 24, who is also an MP in his party, have been circulating in Moscow for months, but until last week no one had dared to print them.

   Thursday - April 17, 2008

North Korea can’t feed itself, as usual

Oh noes!! The Krazy Korean Kommies under ‘lil Kim me so ronery Jong Il are running out of food. Again! Just like they do every year for nearly two decades!! What shall we do, what shall we do? Oooh, the poor and starvin’!!!

Anybody got that recipe for Rock Soup?

North Korea faces a looming food crisis due to floods last year, the U.N. food agency said.  Food prices at North Korean markets have doubled while state rations are dwindling, the World Food Program said Wednesday.  Key donors such as China and South Korea are not expected to send as much direct assistance to the North as they have in the past.

“The food security situation in the (North) is clearly bad and getting worse,” Tony Banbury, WFP Asia regional director, said in a statement. “It is increasingly likely that external assistance will be urgently required to avert a serious tragedy.”

Jean-Pierre de Margerie, WFP’s country director in North Korea, said by telephone from Pyongyang that North Korean officials were admitting for the first time that the state ration system—already erratic in providing food to the country’s 23 million people—was breaking down.  “It’s a bit of a perfect storm shaping up,” he said.

Prices of staple foods have doubled in the past year in the capital. A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice now costs about a third of a typical worker’s monthly salary of 6,000 won (about US$2), WFP said.

Well pardon me if I don’t give a damn. Maybe if they allowed a bit of free enterprise people would grow more food. Maybe if they invested a bit of their money in farming instead of the military they’d have something to show for it. Maybe if they weren’t trying to destabilize the rest of the world by shipping nuke material anywhere they could people might have a little bit of concern for them. But no. Lil Kim-chee has to spend all his money on his army, as if anyone would want that desolate frozen overflowing outhouse of a country.

And you know what else? Rice costs more here. A kilo for a third of $2? That’s not even 31 cents a pound. Shut up, that’s a great deal in my opinion!! But 3 kilos of rice as your entire monthly salary? Hey ... I see a solution!!! Kick out the friggin Mexicans and let’s get the whole damn country over here as illegals. They’d work harder and only cost a tenth of a percent as much! Woo hoo, recession avoided! Everybody could afford to hire 10 or 20 of them. Homeless guys could have servants!

In another blow to the food situation, direct aid from North Korea’s two top donors—China and South Korea—is also expected to decline this year.

Due to rising food prices, China has restricted its exports and is not expected to send as much to its communist ally as in the past, de Margerie said.

South Korea has a new conservative president who has said he expects North Korea to reciprocate for aid, a change from the previous decade of liberal South Korean governments. The new policy has angered Pyongyang, which has claimed it does not need Seoul’s help.

So this means less handouts from the neighbors. And CNN and the UN seem to be Ok with that. Guess who will get the Guilt Guns turned on them now? That’s right, Tibet! Um, no, sorry. Not Tibet. It’s gonna be the USA again, as usual, as always. And you know old spineless will not only send them food, he’ll give them oil. And probably more. And they’ll keep right on being our steadfast enemies, only with full stomachs now.

Since the 1990s North Korea has suffered regular food shortages caused by natural disasters, mismanagement and the loss of the country’s Soviet benefactor. As many as 2 million people are believed to have died from famine.

Remember how the CCCP had food shortages every year for 50 years because of bad weather? Uh huh, I think that cloud system has moved to the South East and is stalled. Don’t send them a grain of rice. Let them fall. Let the axle of the Axis of Evil grind to a rusting halt. Next. But what about the pore n starvin? Hey, maybe they’ll use their last burst of energy to have a revolution. Or maybe they’ll just die. North Korea is a secret closed world. Nobody knows what goes on there and they ain’t tellin. Let’s let them stay closed, forever. It will be our little secret.

   Wednesday - April 16, 2008

Chinese Army in Zimbabwe?

Odd things are going on over in Mugabe’s alternate dimension. And not just the mess of an election. Now it appears that a large arms shipment has been recieved from China. Complete with Chinese soldiers. Not that many of them, but hello? Just what the heck is going on?

Armed Chinese soliders police Mutare streets

By David Baxter

HARARE - A general strike called by the MDC to pressure the Zimbabweans government and the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) to release presidential results appeared to have faltered in all major cities despite the despair within the majority over the lack of results, almost three weeks on.

People were seen going about their usual business, maybe due to fear the weight of the state security officers deployed ahead of the strike could descend on them or because the economic crisis does not allow people to drop earnings at all.

Soldiers and police fanned out across Zimbabwe early in the day with army trucks, some equipped with water cannon, moving through opposition strongholds around the cities. The riot police and other officers even set up checkpoints.

zimbabwejournalists’ correspondent, David Baxter, reports from Mutare that it is calm in the city as the MDC stayaway failed to attract many people.

“Residents are going about their normal business despite a call by the opposition to stay at home. Businesses were operating as usual but there was a heavy police presence in the city centre and in all the high density suburbs,” he said.

The police are armed with AK rifles, teargas canisters and baton sticks. Water cannons were being driven throughout the suburbs. There were no incidents of violence as of mid-morning. However, says Baxter, there was a surprise presence of Chinese soldiers armed with revolvers in the city.

You would think, after the protests we’ve seen with the Olympic torch procession, and the recent crackdown on Tibet, that they would be a lot more circumspect about actively getting into bed with an aging despot, never mind lending support to his repression.

I can’t offer deep insightful political analysis on this, but my layman interpretation is that they must be there to protect their economic interests.

Remember Mugabe’s ‘Look East’ policy?

Zimbabwean’s joke, bitterly, about how Mugabe is allowing the Chinese to colonise our country. They refer to the Chinese products flooding our shops as ‘zhing zhong’. ‘Zhing zhong’ has now become a term used to describe anything that breaks or doesn’t work when you buy it.

Chinese traders are given more advantages by the Zanu PF government to do business in Zimbabwe than locals do.
...
But if the Chinese government is actually sending in soldiers, and actively lending some level of military support - advice or otherwise - to Mugabe’s efforts to subvert democracy and cow the population, then their involvement must be exposed.

The world is a pretty small place these days. It’s getting harder and harder to hide things, even in Africa. The word just gets out. So what is going on here? Is Mugabe arming up just in case the election results go against him? Is this just a typical arms shipment - 6 or so shipping containers worth really isn’t that huge a pile of weapons - or is it something special? And why on earth are armed Chinese soldiers patrolling the streets of the city? Perhaps they are just there as “advisors”. Perhaps they are just there to provide security for the arms shipment. Perhaps. But it is still very odd.

thanks for the tip and the pre-post, DWMF.

UPDATE:
As word gets out, the protests start. Looks like quite a few people believe these arms will be used by Mugabe against the people:

A large arms consignment bound for Zimbabwe remains on board a ship at the South African port of Durban after running into a political row.

South African dockworkers are refusing to unload the Chinese vessel, which is anchored off the port.

And a local lobby group has asked the High Court to block the shipment in case it leads to human rights abuses.

South Africa’s government says it cannot legally prevent the arms being transported through the country.

The row comes amid continuing tension in Zimbabwe over the failure to publish election results.

Critics say Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF government will use the weapons to further suppress democratic rights, as accounts continue to emerge of the beating of opposition supporters.

Another reason is platinum. Just like nickle, copper, and molybdenum, China wants a slice of this precious ore too, and Zimbabwe is the world’s #2 producer.

   Monday - February 25, 2008

Don’t bet on it

CNN: “North Korea lifts nuclear veil”

CNN Editor’s note: CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour recently toured North Korea’s nuclear plant. CNN was one of only two U.S. news organizations at the facility.

YONGBYON, North Korea (CNN)—The North Koreans haven’t seen this many Americans since the Korean War, but they are pulling out all the stops.

CNN was one of only two American news organizations ever allowed to visit the main nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

For a nation President Bush labeled as part of the “axis of evil,” it was not an impressive sight: a dilapidated concrete hulk, built with few resources back in the early ‘80s.

But it did produce plutonium, enough to make a few bombs and to test-fire a nuclear weapon 18 months ago.

Today is a very different story though. North Korea shut down Yongbyon last summer under an agreement with the United States and four other nations in the nuclear disarmament negotiations. We were shown the extraordinary sight of heavy metal pipes, chopped down and laid on the ground: They had been part of a coolant loop that sent steam to the turbine generators to produce electricity.  We saw the distinctive bell-shaped cooling tower, just a shell, the inner guts of the system cut out. We saw the vital nuclear fuel rods being removed and neutralized under 20 feet of water.  And we even were shown the reprocessing plant where plutonium was extracted from the rods, plutonium that was used for nuclear weapons, the chief engineer admitted. Parts of the plant are now dismantled, wrapped in plastic and put into storage.

And there are American technicians from the Department of Energy on-site helping with all of this. It seems a far cry from the hostility conjured by the axis of evil.

For all of this, North Korea expected a million tons of heavy fuel oil, a lifting of sanctions and removal from the U.S. list of terrorist sponsors. This has not happened yet, so North Korea has slowed down the disabling process at Yongbyon.

CNN, the most gullible name in news. When it suits our purposes of course.

   Tuesday - February 19, 2008

castro retires

CASTRO RETIRES

He isn’t yet completely dead, but the old bearded bastard has finally stopped even pretending he can still run Cuba. He has passed the baton of tyranny to his brother Raul. Raul is said to be a reformer, but I suggest a serious wait-and-see approach before anyone changes their attitude towards Cuba. But we can allow ourselves one or two small grains of hope. Just one or two.

We take you now to our non-affiliate Free Cuba blog on the spot, Babalu Blog:

**BREAKING NEWS** fidel castro “retires”

To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief.

Read it in Granma, and below the fold, in Spanish, followed by the English version.

Right now, at this late hour, my emotions are in turmoil.

Prepárense

One would imagine that news of the official retirement of the beast who ruled an island nation ruthlessly for almost half a century would be announced with a little more ceremony. Instead, Granma slipped the announcement into their online edition in the wee hours of this morning as if it were filler. Ziva, who has the advantage of being on Pacific Time, caught it immediately, however.

Now will begin the new barrage of castro puff pieces—the wonderful, benevolent, tenacious freedom fighting bearded devil.

Prepare yourselves, my friends; it is going to be a love fest of epic proportions, which will be topped only by the orgy that will take place when the dictator finally kicks the bucket.

The news trucks have already lined up and raised their satellite thingies in front of Versailles. Local reporters are already shoving their microphones in front of mouths in search of opinions. The experts have been called and their take has been taken. The news is spreading like wildfire - all over the radio airwaves, on every TV station, scattered about the internet like spam.

fidel castro has “officially” stepped down.

I certainly dont want to rain on anyone’s parade, there is, after all, a little bit of happiness buried deep down inside because of the news, but, at the risk of sounding cliche, this is a tempest in a teacup.

We’re going to hear hopes that this is the beginning of change in Cuba. We’re going to hear arguments for the lifting of the embargo. We’re going to hear wishy washy eulogies and praise for the bearded bastard. We’re gonna hear a lot of crap today and in the next few days. Cuba experts will be coming out of the woodwork with their own particular theories and there will most certainly be editorials galore.

A commenter said it best in this post:

Much ado about nothing. What does this change? Nothing. Cubans are still oppressed, the island is still a hell hole and the man in command still bears the last name (c)astro. All this means nothing.

I wholeheartedly agree. This changes absolutely nada. For all intents and purposes, for the past year or two, fidel castro has been but a blurb in the book of Cuba’s political leadership. The man who held the world in terror in the sixties reduced to writing editorials for a mouthpiece “newspaper.”

There is very little that I can say about this news that Val Prieto over at Babalu can’t say better, and hasn’t said a million times before. But if you do see some useful idiot wearing a Che shirt today, feel free to give them a nice punch in the face. Stay tuned to Val’s blog for any and all updates.

Cuba is not going to turn into a free country overnight because of old Fidel stepping down. His little brother Raul has been with him since the beginning, and is just as much a repressive, murderous thug as he is. You will be able to play “spot the leftist” very easily for the next few days, as the MSM and various political candidates wax orgasmic over how wonderful Fidel was, how marvelous Cuban health care is, how all the little brown Cubans now know how to read, et cetera et cetera ad nausium. The raw truth is that Cuba is the shithole of the Caribbean soley because of nearly 50 years of marxist rule by a bloodthirsty dictator. The people have no freedom. The people have no rights. The people have no opportunity. The people lack damn near everything and the world has passed them by. Whoop-de-do, they can make some really nice cigars. Too bad smoking is about the worst politically incorrect activity going these days.

A free Cuba would be almost Edenic. It’s a great big island with good soil, a really nice climate, and a population eager to get ahead if they would be allowed to. Plenty of room for agriculture, plenty of room for industry. Given a free Cuba, I would like to see the USA’s Sugar Act disemboweled. Given a free Cuba, I would like to see a whole lot of industry currently sending zillions to communist China redirect to a much more local place, like this one. It is abhorent that so much of our goods are made by our enemies. Sure, Mexico could be a viable alternate, but the corruption there is just epidemic. A free and democratic Cuba could make trillions. But this is not going to happen under communism, nor under anyone named Castro.  Switching one Castro for another is not going to change much of anything. Raul needs to go too, along with the entire thugocracy that runs the place. Until that happens Cuba will remain a paradise in potentia.

The South African newspaper Pretoria News quotes the Prime Minister of Denmark, who has a realist view on the whole Fidel situation:

Copenhagen - Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday hailed Fidel Castro’s decision to give up Cuba’s presidency, saying he would not miss him on the political stage.

“There is reason to hail with great satisfaction” Castro’s decision to renounce power in Cuba, which “can only be a step in the right direction,” the head of Denmark’s centre-right ruling coalition told reporters.

Rasmussen said he hoped Castro’s departure would lead to “the beginning of reforms in Cuban society and gradual liberalisation for the population.”

The former leader of the island nation “will not be missed politically,” he added.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Castro’s departure gives rise to the possibility that the island nation will shift towards democracy.

“Even if the switch to his brother Raul Castro probably won’t lead to any immediate large changes, we hope this will introduce a shift towards democracy,” Bildt said in a statement.

“Fidel Castro’s resignation marks the end of an era that began with huge hopes but ended with oppression,” he pointed out.

“The people of Cuba have the same right to freedom and democracy as all other people,” Bildt said, adding that “our great hope is that new possibilities to develop in this direction will also create new possibilities for cooperation between Cuba and the rest of the world.”

Alexis Gainza Solenzal, a Cuban exiled in Sweden who edits the magazine Miscelaneas de Cuba, said “I don’t expect any development towards democracy."”

sources
FoxNews
CNN
BBC
Associate Press
Rueters

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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:

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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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