Sunday - August 07, 2005

Suds Trivia

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 11:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Are We Hungry Yet?

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about food in America ....

• 1621 The first Thanksgiving is celebrated.
• 1773 After 342 chests of tea are dumped into Boston Harbor, coffee becomes the colonists’ drink of choice.
• 1803 The first home icebox is patented, and the iceman (below) is born.
• 1812 The first recipe for ketchup based on tomatoes instead of soy is published by James Mease, who calls it “love apple or tomato catchup.”
• 1845 Visitors to Poland Spring, Maine, begin paying for bottles of spring water.
• 1853 A patron at a New York resort complains that his french fries are too thick, so chef George Crum intentionally slices the next batch too thin and fries the potatoes too crisp, inadvertently inventing potato chips.
• 1858 John Mason invents the screw-top glass jar.
• 1860 Chemist Louis Pasteur heats milk to kill germs and bacteria, a process that will become known as pasteurization.
• 1868 George Pullman rolls out the first dining car on trains.
• 1874 Harper’s Magazine writes that using a knife as a fork is “regarded as a vulgarism.”
• 1886 John Pemberton begins selling medicinal syrup as a fountain drink, creating Coca-Cola.
• 1886 Josephine Cochran invents the first working dishwasher.
• 1888 The first vending machines in the U.S. are introduced on New York City subway platforms, selling tutti-frutti gum.
• 1897 A cough medicine manufacturer creates an 88 percent sugar gelatin dessert that his wife names Jell-O.
• 1901 Satori Kato invents instant coffee. (It be-comes popular only after the Nescafé brand of freeze-dried crystals is introduced in 1938, however.)
• 1902 Horn & Hardart opens the first Automat in Philadelphia. For a couple of coins, patrons can open a slot and grab a freshly made hot meal.
• 1902 The Kellogg brothers push boiled wheat through a roller and bake the thin flakes. Looking for a tastier version, they switch the base ingredient, and cornflakes are born.
• 1905 Eleven-year-old Frank Epperson leaves a stick in a cup of soda outside overnight, accidentally inventing the Popsicle.
• 1918 Having gone from 200 pounds to 150, Lulu Peters writes the first diet book to endorse caloriecounting—and sells 2 million copies.
• 1920-1933 Prohibition
• 1922 Stephen Poplawski puts a spinning blade on the bottom of a container, inventing the blender.
• 1937 The shopping cart makes its debut.
• 1946 Percy Spencer stands next to a magnetron, and the candy bar in his pocket melts. A year later he debuts a 750-pound microwave oven.
• 1953 Swanson marries a postwar demand for time-saving devices to the country’s newest obsession, and voilà: TV dinners.
• 1964 Ron Popeil pitches his Veg-O-Matic on TV, pioneering the infomercial.
• 1972 The Spa on Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., puts yogurt through a soft-serve ice cream machine, producing frozen yogurt.
• 1973 Carl Sontheimer introduces the slicing, dicing, all-in-one kitchen juggernaut Cuisinart.
• 1976 California’s New Albion Brewing Co. starts the microbrew trend.
• 1979 Chef Paul Prudhomme opens K-Paul Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans. His blackened redfish sparks a national fad—which depletes the state’s supply of the fish.
• 1988 Researcher James Anderson finds that oat bran lowers cholesterol. Soon after, oat bran is added to everything, from muffins to beer.
• 1993 The Food Network goes on the air, ensuring that the celebrity chef is here to stay.
• 2003 Congressional cafeterias change french fries to freedom fries after France refuses to support the war in Iraq.
• 2005 Fed up with gooey stickers and running inks, the produce industry introduces laser-tattooed fruit.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
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Asshat Of The Day Award

Ya gotta hand it to this clown, he has an abundance of chutzpah (even if he ain’t Jewish) ....

(DAILY MAIL - UK)—An extreme Muslim cleric whose family have been living on benefits in Britain for 20 years says it would not be ‘fair’ to deport him. Speaking after the Prime Minister announced his clampdown, father-of-seven Sheik Omar Bakri said: “I have wives, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law. It would be hard on my family if I was deported.”

Since Syrian-born Bakri settled in Britain, he and his extended family have raked in benefits amounting to at least £300,000. He is registered disabled because of an injury to his leg during his childhood, and was recently supplied with a £31,000 Ford Galaxy under the Motability scheme. Bakri, who lives in a £200,000 home in North London, tops up his £250-a-week benefit payments with an extra £50 incapacity allowance.

He has praised the September 11 terrorists as ‘magnificent’, called Israel ‘a cancer’ and said homosexuals should be ‘thrown from Big Ben’. In January, he declared that Britain had become a ‘land of war’, and called on Muslims to unite behind Al Qaeda. He has supported suicide bombings and urged his followers to kill non-Muslims ‘ wherever, whenever’. He also claimed he has no wish to stay in Britain, but his family would suffer if he was deported.

“If they want to change the law and say that people who are here must live within the framework of those rules, then that is fine,” said the 45-year-old cleric. “But they cannot punish people by backdating it for 20 years or so. That is not a smart or fair system. Tony Blair should have charged me years ago if that was the case. He did not because I had done nothing wrong.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 07:40 AM   
Filed Under: • Outrageous • RoPMA •  
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Pirates In My Neighborhood?

DANG! I got a real live movie pirate right here in my neighborhood - at least he’s a few miles north of me .... and I didn’t even know it. The pirate in question, is a 19-year-old teenager who has been making “cam-jobs” of first run movies. These “cammers”, as they are called, secretly film movies with hidden cameras and upload them to the internet “warez” groups. This kid, however, is probably going to jail .... for filming (at least what I heard) are two really lousy movies ....

(AP) --A Missouri teenager is the latest to be indicted by a San Jose federal grand jury in a string of prosecutions involving members of a secretive computer-piracy group. Curtis Salisbury, 19, of St. Charles, Mo., was charged Wednesday with using a video recorder to make copies of newly released movies and uploading them to a computer network for distribution. He is the first person to be prosecuted under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which was signed by President Bush in April.

Salisbury is charged with conspiracy and copyright infringement for copying two movies, ``The Perfect Man’’ and ``Bewitched.’’ The films were then distributed through ``warez’’ sites on the Internet—secretive, member-only sites where illegal copies of software and pirated entertainment are available for download. He is also accused of downloading ``Madagascar’’ and computer programs sold by Sony and Adobe Systems. He is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Patricia V. Trumbull in San Jose Aug. 19 at 1:30 p.m.

The maximum penalty faced by Salisbury if convicted is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for counts of conspiracy and violating the copyright act, and three years and $250,000 for a count of unauthorized recording of movies. Warez is a source of illegally copied computer programs and, more recently, first-run movies and DVDs. It was targeted by the FBI in a two-year undercover Operation Copycat investigation and a larger investigation called Operation Site Down.

In the argot of warez members—pronounced ``wares’’ and derived from the word software—Salisbury is accused of being a ``cammer.’’ Cammers are specialized warez members who record first-run movies with concealed camcorders and then place them on Internet servers after removing data that could be traced. Cammers are entitled to three movie downloads from the illegal sites for every uploaded movie. The indictment states that Salisbury also discussed payment with an unnamed individual.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 07:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Hollywood •  
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Russian Submariners Rescued

Earlier today, the Russian sub that has been snarled for several days on antenna cables at a depth of 600 feet off the Kamchatka Peninsula was finally liberated from its entanglement by a British underwater, remote-controlled vehicle. The crew of seven was fast running out of oxygen. It’s amazing what nations can do when they cooperate. Those who died on the Kursk years ago would probably agree ....

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia (AP) - Seven submarine crew members trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean were rescued Sunday after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled the vessel. The seven crew members, whose oxygen supplies had been dwindling amid underwater temperatures in the mid-40s, appeared to be in satisfactory condition, naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said. The seven were being examined by ship medics, he said.

The sub surfaced late Sunday afternoon, some three days after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast on Thursday. “The rescue operation has ended,” Rear Adm. Vladimir Pepelyayev, deputy head of the navy’s general staff, said in televised comments. Russian authorities had hoped that the British unmanned submersible could help free the sub and avoid losing a sub crew as they did with the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank almost exactly five years ago, killing all 118 aboard.

In sharp contrast to the August 2000 Kursk disaster, when authorities held off asking for help until hope was nearly exhausted, Russian military officials quickly sought help from U.S. and British authorities. Earlier Sunday, a British remote-controlled Super Scorpio cut away the cables that had snarled the vessel in Beryozovaya Bay, about 10 miles off the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula. The United States also dispatched a crew and three underwater vehicles to Kamchatka, but they never left the port.

Officials said the Russian submarine was participating in a combat training exercise and got snarled on an underwater antenna assembly that is part of a coastal monitoring system. The system is anchored with a weight of about 66 tons, according to news reports.

Russia’s cash-strapped navy apparently lacks rescue vehicles capable of operating at the depth where the sub was stranded, and officials say it was too deep for divers to reach or the crew to swim out on their own. An earlier attempt to drag the vessel to shallower waters failed when cables detached after pulling it some 65 yards.

The submarine’s problems indicated that promises by President Vladimir Putin to improve the navy’s equipment apparently have had little effect. He was criticized for his slow response to the Kursk crisis and reluctance to accept foreign assistance.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 06:02 AM   
Filed Under: • International •  
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Sunday Morning Funnies

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/07/2005 at 05:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Humor •  
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   Saturday - August 06, 2005

Politically Correct

HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT WOMEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT:

1. She is not a “BABE” or a “CHICK” - She is a “BREASTED AMERICAN.”

2. She is not a “SCREAMER” or a “MOANER” - She is “VOCALLY APPRECIATIVE.”

3. She is not “EASY” - She is “HORIZONTALLY ACCESSIBLE.”

4. She is not a “DUMB BLONDE” - She is a “LIGHT-HAIRED DETOUR OFF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY.”

5. She has not “BEEN AROUND” - She is a “PREVIOUSLY-ENJOYED COMPANION.”

6. She is not an “AIRHEAD” - She is “REALITY IMPAIRED.”

7. She does not get “DRUNK” or “TIPSY” - She gets CHEMICALLY INCONVENIENCED.”

8. She does not have “BREAST IMPLANTS” - She is “MEDICALLY ENHANCED.”

9. She does not “NAG” you - She becomes “VERBALLY REPETITIVE.”

10. She is not a “TRAMP” - She is “SEXUALLY EXTROVERTED.”

11 She does not have “MAJOR LEAGUE HOOTERS” - She is “PECTORALLY SUPERIOR.”

12. She is not a “TWO-BIT HOOKER” - She is a “LOW COST PROVIDER.”

HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT MEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT:

1. He does not have a “BEER GUT” - He has developed a “LIQUID GRAIN STORAGE FACILITY.”

2. He is not a “BAD DANCER” - He is “OVERLY CAUCASIAN.”

3. He does not “GET LOST ALL THE TIME” - He “INVESTIGATES ALTERNATIVE DESTINATIONS.”

4. He is not “BALDING” - He is in “FOLLICLE REGRESSION.”

5. He is not a “CRADLE ROBBER” - He prefers “GENERATIONAL DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS.”

6. He does not get “FALLING-DOWN DRUNK” - He becomes “ACCIDENTALLY HORIZONTAL.”

7. He does not act like a “TOTAL ASS” - He develops a case of “RECTAL-CRANIAL INVERSION.”

8. He is not a “MALE CHAUVINIST PIG” - He has “SWINE EMPATHY.”

9. He is not afraid of “COMMITMENT” - He is “RELATIONSHIP CHALLENGED.”

10. He is not “HORNY” - He is “SEXUALLY FOCUSED.”

11. It’s not his “CRACK” you see hanging out of his pants-It’s “REAR CLEAVAGE.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/06/2005 at 06:04 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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Death Throes Of The Democratic Party

Byron York has an excellent editorial at National Review detailing the latest casualty in the ongoing death of the Democratic Party. America Coming Together, the “527” group that took $200 million of George Soros’ money is currently imploding. Some would say it was a case of assisted suicide. It looks to me like they just removed the feeding tube from a brain-dead patient ....

(NRO)—A few days after the 2004 election, America Coming Together, the giant pro-Democratic voter turnout group that had raised about $200 million from George Soros, Peter Lewis, and a variety of Hollywood moguls, released a list of its accomplishments. Obviously, ACT, as big as it was, had not put John Kerry over the top, but the group had “held conversations at 4.6 million doorsteps about the truth about the Iraq war, about the state of our healthcare system, about the economy.” It had registered half-a-million new voters. In the last days of the campaign it had made 23 million phone calls, sent out 16 million pieces of mail, and delivered 11 million fliers. And on top of it all, it had “launched the largest get-out-the-vote effort the Democratic Party has ever seen,” turning out “unprecedented levels of voters in the battleground states.”

It all sounded very, very impressive. And then ACT listed its accomplishments at the polls, and the results seemed far less impressive. ACT had “helped ensure George W. Bush’s defeat in several of the key states and made the race close in others.” It had “enabled Democrats to take back the Oregon state legislature for the first time in 10 years.” It had helped Missouri Democrat Robin Carnahan win election as Missouri secretary of state. And finally, “In New Hampshire, we saw wins for the presidential race and the governor’s race, as well as a gain of four state senate seats.”

And that was it. Soros and all his colleagues had spent $200 million to elect a Democratic secretary of state in Missouri.

The question that hung in the air at the time was whether, after such a defeat, the big donors would continue to support ACT — to get ready for the next big campaign — and help it grow into an even larger turnout machine. And now we have the answer: No.

On Tuesday ACT, which had already downsized dramatically in the months since the election, pink-slipped most of its remaining staff and shut down all its state offices. The money had dried up, the donors were on to other things, and the “largest get-out-the-vote effort the Democratic Party has ever seen” was over.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/06/2005 at 09:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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On This Day In History

In Their Own Words:

-- Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, age 84: Navigator on the “Enola Gay”

The day before the mission we sat through briefings on Tinian island where they told us who was assigned to which plane, and we ran through what we were going to do. About 2pm we were told to get some sleep. But I don’t know how they expected to tell us were we dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan and then expect us to sleep. I didn’t get a wink. Nor did most of the others. But at 10pm we had to get up again because we were flying at 2.45am.

They briefed us that the weather was good, but they were sending weather observation planes up so we would have the best information on targeting Hiroshima. We had a final breakfast and then went down to the plane shortly after midnight. There was a lot of picture-taking and interviewing going on - by the military - and it was a relief to get in the Enola Gay about an hour before we took off.

We flew in low over Iwo Jima while the bomb crew checked and armed Little Boy (the uranium bomb) and once we cleared the island we began climbing to our bombing altitude of just over 30,000 feet. It was perfectly clear and I was just doing all the things I’d always done as a navigator - plotting our course, getting fixes to make sure we were on course and reading the drifts so we knew the wind speed. As we flew over an inland sea I could make out the city of Hiroshima from miles away - my first thought was ‘That’s the target, now let’s bomb the damn thing’.

But it was quiet in the sky. I’d flown 58 missions over Europe and Africa - and I said to one of the boys that if we’d sat in the sky for so long over there we’d have been blown out of the air. Once we verified the target, I went in the back and just sat down. The next thing I felt was 94,000lbs of bomb leaving the aircraft - there was a huge surge and we immediately banked into a right hand turn and lost about 2,000 feet.

We’d been told that if we were eight miles away when the thing went off, we’d probably be ok - so we wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the blast. All of us - except the pilot - were wearing dark goggles, but we still saw a flash - a bit like a camera bulb going off in the plane. There was a great jolt on the aircraft and we were thrown off the floor. Someone called out ‘flak’ but of course it was the shockwave from the bomb. The tail-gunner later said he saw it coming towards us - a bit like the haze you see over a car park on a hot day, but moving forwards at great speed.

We turned to look back at Hiroshima and already there was a huge white cloud reaching up more than 42,000 feet. At the base you could see nothing but thick black dust and debris - it looked like a pot of hot oil down there. We were pleased that the bomb had exploded as planned and later we got to talking about what it meant for the war. We concluded that it would be over - that not even the most obstinate, uncaring leaders could refuse to surrender after this.

In the weeks afterwards, I actually flew back to Japan with some US scientists and some Japanese from their atomic programme. We flew low over Hiroshima but could not land anywhere and eventually landed at Nagasaki. We didn’t hide the fact that we were American and many people turned their faces away from us. But where we stayed we were made very welcome and I think people were glad that the war had ended.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/06/2005 at 08:02 AM   
Filed Under: • History • War-Stories •  
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Land Snatch In DC

After the recent Supreme Court ruling, the District of Columbia proceeded at warp speed to acquire land for a new baseball stadium which will be home to the Washington Nationals. The team is currently playing in RFK Stadium. Evidently, that wasn’t good enough. Yesterday, a federal judge slapped down the owners of the property in question and said the city could proceed. He also had some nasty remarks about the city’s methods ....

(WASHINGTON POST)—A federal judge yesterday declined to issue an emergency 30-day injunction that would have stopped the District from purchasing or taking 33 properties it needs to build a baseball stadium in Southeast Washington.

U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts said the three property owners seeking the injunction failed to show that they would be irreparably harmed if the city was allowed to proceed in trying to buy the parcels required for the stadium project. He said the group also failed to convince him that it would prevail in its lawsuit, which alleges that the city’s efforts to acquire the property are illegal.

“The loss of property is easily compensated by monetary damages,” Roberts said. “Clearly, the city council has concluded a stadium is in the public interest. . . . The public interest is not served by blocking the city’s effort to build the stadium.”

The judge’s decision means that the District can continue working to meet its deadline, under an agreement with Major League Baseball, to obtain the 33 properties by the end of the year. His ruling also suggested that it would be futile for the property owners to pursue the case.

The plaintiffs argued that the District was violating a city law that places a $165 million cap on the amount that the city can spend for land acquisition, infrastructure and environmental remediation for the stadium project. They contended that land acquisition estimates by Natwar M. Gandhi, the District’s chief financial officer, were too low because the city failed to do individual property appraisals as required by the legislation.

But the judge also chided the District during yesterday’s two-hour hearing, saying it had not explained to the owners the city’s timetable for trying to obtain their property. The owners said they feared that they would get a city offer with no warning and have only 24 hours to accept it or face condemnation. If the city and an owner do not reach agreement on a purchase price, the city can take the land through eminent-domain proceedings.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/06/2005 at 07:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •  
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   Friday - August 05, 2005

Viewpoint: Media Bias

just finished reading this story about the Department Of Defense being forced to release pictures of flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The DoD was forced to do this because of a lawsuit filed by Ralph Begleiter under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). Now, I don’t know for sure what Mr. Begleiter’s political leanings are but I can guess, considering he worked for many years as a corespondent for CNN and currently is a tenured professor at the University Of Delaware, teaching journalism. My guess, based on that and his background is that he leans strongly to the Left in his opinions. A journalism major who worked at CNN and is now a tenured professor at an elite East Coast univeristy. Three strikes and he’s out.

For the record, I managed the team of developers and database administrators who built the FOIA tracking and monitoring software for the US Air Force back in the early 90’s (if you’re in the USAF and using that software, please don’t call me - I just did what I was told to do). As such, I gained a lot of insight into the FIOA law and all the intricacies of its implementation. The requests have to be recorded diligently and follow-ups maintained and archived until the end of the world. Every path the request takes and all persons signing off on release of documents has to be recorded. Redacted information has to be maintained side-by-side with the released information in case of further legal entanglements.

As far as I’m concerned FOIA is a piece of crap law that should never have been implemented. We all want a certain degree of transparency in our government so we can keep an eye on the critters who are spending our money up in DC but again (as I have asked here many times) where do we draw the line? There are certain pieces of information that, if released, can cause damage to our country through leaking valuable information or just having a bad effect on morale of our troops and their families. The latter is what, in my opinion, Professor Begleiter’s lawsuit has accomplished.

No one wants any of our troops to die in battle, especially their families. What purpose does it serve to show flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers? Is it a sign of respect for the brave troops who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country? I wish that were so but it ain’t necessarily so (with apologies to George Gershwin). No, you hear the Liberal Left (and Professor Begleiter) say that war is evil and we should not be in Iraq and by showing the coffins of the dead, they can remind Americans of the tragedy of war and hopefully change US policy with these constant reminders of the cost of war, and get our troops back home before more get killed .... .... .... That, of course, is rampant bullshit.

Perhaps there are a few idealists on the Left who believe that party line. If so, they are being misled by the elites of academia and entertainment as well as the Democratic Party. The real purpose of filing lawsuits to gain possession of these pictures and display them all over the media is simple: to discredit George W. Bush and the Republican Party. To hear it from them, the entire Democratic Party and all of the media were opposed to this war from the very beginning, even as all those Democratic Senators stood on the steps of the Capitol just after 9/11 and sang “God Bless America” before going inside and voting the President power to take the war to the enemy and providing massive funding to do so (everyone except John Kerry, who still hasn’t decided whether he voted for it or against it or when he did either).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this FOIA request is a sucker punch directed at the troops, their families and the American people, in general, especially those in red states. The object is to lower morale back home as well as in the barracks overseas. It has to be hurting the troops because you know their families are writing them with the news from home and they have to watch their dead comrades in arms being blasted across the TV screens back home and they have to be wondering if they’ll be next.

So what does Professor Begleiter and the Liberal Left have to gain from this abuse of FOIA (and that’s all it really is, an abuse of the law for personal gain)? They want to destroy the war effort, plain and simple and what they hope to gain is even simpler: discrediting President Bush and the Republicans so the American people will vote in the next elections for the Democrats who would never have gotten us entangled in this mess and who have a better plan for America than the evil anti-abortion, religious fruitcake, fascist Republicans.

What’s the difference between a Leftist college professor with an agenda and a terrorist “insurgent” in Iraq? Not much. Not much at all.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/05/2005 at 11:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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Tony Blair Gets Tough

Altogether now, repeat after me: IT’S ABOUT TIME! Tony Blair just announced new measures to crack down on crackpot clerics preaching Islamic hatred and new deportation rules for Britain ....

LONDON, England (CNN)—British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced new measures to deport and exclude from UK for those advocating hatred and violence. Blair, speaking nearly a month after deadly bombings on London’s transit system, said Friday the UK’s human rights act would be amended if necessary to counter Islamic extremists. The government also plans to draw up a list of extremist Web sites, book shops and organizations that promote these extremists, he said.

“Let no one be in any doubt that the rules of the game are changing,” Blair told a London news conference, his last before breaking for a summer holiday. The prime minister said the Government plans a one-month consultation period to determine new criteria for excluding and deporting people from Britain.

“We will establish, with the Muslim community, a commission to advise on how, consistent with people’s complete freedom to worship in the way they want, and to follow their own religion and culture, there is better integration of those parts of the community presently inadequately integrated,” Blair said.

Blair said new legislation, which is expected to be passed by the end of the year, will also outlaw “indirect incitement” of terrorism. The measure is seen as an effort to crack down on extremist Islamic clerics who glorify acts of terrorism. In addition, the law would ban the training of terrorist techniques in Britain or in any other country.

“This is not, in any way whatever, aimed at the decent law-abiding Muslim community of Britain,” Blair said. “But if you come to this country from abroad, then don’t meddle in extremism,” he said. “Because if you meddle in it, and engage in it, you’re going back out again.”

Blair named two radical Islamic groups that would be banned from operating in Britain—Hizb ut-Tahrir and the successor organization to al Muhajiroun. Later, a spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir said the ban would stifle “legitimate political dissent.” “There will be serious repercussions in terms of community relations if this ban goes ahead,” Imran Waheed told the UK’s Press Association. “We have a lot of support among the Muslim community in Britain and it will be seen by the Muslim community as stifling legitimate political dissent.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/05/2005 at 10:37 AM   
Filed Under: • International • Terrorists •  
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Joke Du Jour

A Marine squad was marching north of Basra when they came upon an insurgent Iraqi soldier badly injured and unconscious.

Nearby, on the opposite side of the road, was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state.

The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the Marine was asked what had happened.

The Marine reported, “I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. Seeing each other we both took cover in the ditches alongside the road. I yelled to him that, ‘Saddam Hussein was a miserable low-life scumbag’, and he yelled back that ‘Teddy Kennedy is a fat, rich, good-for-nothing drunkard’.

We were standing there shaking hands when a truck hit us...”

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/05/2005 at 09:52 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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Protest: 101

Don’t know how to protest?  Want to be able to teach your kids the fine art of making paper mache “protest puppets”?  Well, this camp is for you!

BEN LOMOND — While most summer camps get kids out of the house and give parents a break, a group called Art in Action is nurturing the next Michael Moore — the controversial filmmaker who created “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Art in Action’s “art and empowerment” camp is being held at the Quaker Center nestled in the redwoods of Ben Lomond. Campers at the 10-day retreat attend workshops on cultural activism, nonviolent action and alternative media.

“The reality is that the media is not actually showing what’s really going on in Iraq,” said Jouse Bustos, 19, of central Los Angeles. “By doing this mural, I’m showing what’s going on.”

Bustos is one of 25 young people attending the camp. For 10 days, they learn to say “no” to military recruiting, racism and war, and “yes” to eco-justice, community and love.

Campers spend their time making banners, writing poetry and choreographing dances that represent a vision of “positive alternatives to the madness of war and oppression.”

The hours spent building giant puppets and talking about how to influence the rest of the world culminate with a performance for the community Thursday night at The Attic on Pacific Avenue.

[snip]

“Queer, working class and youth of color are strongly encouraged to apply,” an Art in Action postcard states.

Oy.  Only in California.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/05/2005 at 07:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
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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