Just a note, I am a Raymond Chandler fanatical reader; everynight I read from The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely. I read these works as intensely, as fervently as those fanatical Pakistani muslim students do in a madrassa school, kneeling on the floor swaying back and forth, with my forehead hitting the floor after each passage.
“…they found the 26-year-old standing naked over his friend’s body with parts, including an eyeball, strewn around the blood splattered room in Klamath, California…” Here.
Direct quote: It’s …telling you that what you think you know is a lie. “Just because they write it down and call it history doesn’t make it the truth. / We live in a world where seeing is not believing.” In other words, what you think happened – what the official story is – isn’t the truth, because these Black Ops are off the books.
“The waters of Falcon Lake normally beckon boaters with waterskiing and world-record bass fishing. But this holiday weekend, fishermen on the waters that straddle the U.S.-Mexico border are on the lookout for something more sinister: pirates.Twice in recent weeks, fishermen have been robbed at gunpoint by marauders that the local sheriff says are ‘spillover’ from fighting between rival Mexican drug gangs…” Here.
“…At 7:20 local time the pool was holding at Woodlawn and 49th, next to a large sandstone mansion that the Chicago reporters say is the home of one Louis Farrakhan. Our Secret Service agent allowed us off the bus (Air!) and as a dozen of us congregated on the sidewalk, inevitably some shoes touched grass. Immediately a polite man in jeans and Tshirt emerged to ask us to stay off the grass. Though this grass was the curbside city property, we obliged. Soon, however, he was pacing and talking on a cell phone. He went inside the mansion’s black wrought iron fence, crossed the well-landscaped yard, lifted a water bucket behind rose bushes and, voila!, a walkie-talkie. He was heard to refer to “the CIA” once he began speaking into it…” Here.
I can’t help it but I’m convinced we are in the midst of another incompetency collusion between the Corporation and the Government [pipe in sarcastic laughter here]. Why here’s a quote from an article on this very subject: “A litany of half-truths, withholding crucial video, blocking media access to the site and a failure to share timely and complete information about efforts to contain the largest oil spill in U.S. history have created the widespread impression that BP is withholding information about the April 20 oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico…” Read more here.
“…Where Hirsi Ali is exactly right, I think, is in her focus on education as a remedy. It’s the best way to open minds, promote economic development and suppress violence. In the long run education is a more effective weapon against terrorists than bombs are…” From NY Times’ book review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new memoir (her first of course was Infidel), Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations. Here.
American war crimes are nothing new, from the so-called revolutionary war to the Indian wars to the civil war up through WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq American forces have shown their “unpleasant” side (though this certainly does not indict every American soldier by any means)…in other words, Americans are really no different than any other nation at war. The grotesque sadism and emotionalism intrinsic to human nature has no bounds of nationality, religion, or race. Below is just a short rundown on some of this controversy.
Here is an example: The Allied practice of collecting Japanese body parts occurred on “a scale large enough to concern the Allied military authorities throughout the conflict and was widely reported and commented on in the American and Japanese wartime press.” The collection of Japanese body parts began quite early in the war, prompting a September 1942 order for disciplinary action against such souvenir taking. Harrison concludes that, since this was the first real opportunity to take such items (the Battle of Guadalcanal), “[c]learly, the collection of body parts on a scale large enough to concern the military authorities had started as soon as the first living or dead Japanese bodies were encountered.” When Japanese remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands after the war, roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls. In a memorandum dated June 13, 1944, the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) asserted that “such atrocious and brutal policies,” in addition to being repugnant, were violations of the laws of war, and recommended the distribution to all commanders of a directive pointing out that “the maltreatment of enemy war dead was a blatant violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention on the sick and wounded, which provided that: After every engagement, the belligerent who remains in possession of the field shall take measures to search for wounded and the dead and to protect them from robbery and ill treatment.” These practises were in addition also in violation of the unwritten customary rules of land warfare and could lead to the death penalty. The U.S. Navy JAG mirrored that opinion one week later, and also added that “the atrocious conduct of which some US personnel were guilty could lead to retaliation by the Japanese which would be justified under international law”. Here.
Here’s another example (from the European theater): General Eisenhower’s death camps: “When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again tossing food to the Germans … Some of the men were really only boys 13 years of age…Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch stand … I understand that average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was 90 pounds…I have received threats … Nevertheless, this…has liberated me, for I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one of ‘Ike’s death camps’ along the Rhine.” (Betty Lou Smith Hanson)
Also see Other Losses.
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Related: How much of Band of Brothers was bullshit? Here.
“To use art is not enough, to describe your view, in the old traditional forms, such as painting, sculpture… as a citizen you need to express your views, writing, blogging, giving interviews, is a part of that, otherwise you will very easily be misinterpreted, or misunderstood, by the society, by the establishment I should say. “
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Related: Past posts on Chinese internet:
“…Then night descended and horror. Ahmadinejad’s “victory” was celebrated with brutality worthy of a putsch. Thugs prowled, armed with the license of the Islamic Republic to beat women. Lofty clerics bound by those beautiful words — “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate” — showed no mercy, no compassion, in unleashing the forces who reduced the pre-electoral vitality to a hallucination and thoughtful intellectuals to whimpering wrecks prepared to “confess” to plotting velvet revolution…” Here.
Beware the priests: As this article above implies, for Muslims who rebelled against the Order of Orthodoxy it must’ve been like the pain felt by Christian heritics under the Spanish Inquisition: “The man intones, ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. …’ Mohsen braces himself. There is a terse whisper and the instrument comes crashing onto the soles of Mohsen’s feet. An unimaginable pain shoots through his body to his temples, a pain to drive one mad. Mohsen is dimly aware that he is screaming. His wrist and ankles are being cut up as he thrashes against his bonds. “The beating continues. Before each blow, the man calls, ‘Ya! Hossein!’ After a while he stops to catch his breath. He speaks to Mohsen. He calls him a Hypocrite and a traitor to God. Then he starts again.”
Note: basically the above article/quotes are a synopsis of Death to the Dictator.
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Related: let’s not forget these great tributes to the Iranian Dictator himself: Mockmood 1, Mockmood 2
“…In France, cinema is widely referred to as “the seventh art”, along with architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music and poetry. “Seventh art” is not a phrase one hears often in Britain,* or America** for that matter. But, in France, they view cinema as a form of artistic expression, worthy of study and discussion…” Here.
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*You should keep in mind that today’s Britain, excluding a few niches, is a cultural wasteland.
**You should keep in mind that America today, excluding a few niches, is a vast cultural wasteland, as it has been in the past (except for a niche here and there) and as it will no doubt be in the future (except possibly for a surviving niche here and there).
Let’s roll, y’all……
I WATCHED CROSSBOW KILLER EAT LIVE RAT
16 YEAR OLD GIRL BULLY KILLED IN HAIL OF BULLETS
APPLE IPAD OUTSHINES MONA LISA AT LOUVRE (and that’s in Paris)
DOES KOBE BRYANT’S WIFE LOOK ILLEGAL?
LET THE BATTLE OF THE TEAMS COMMENCE (including the A-Team, fool)
IS CHERYL COLE TOO CLOSE TO HER MOTHER?
Conclusion after roll? Everything normal.
…Yes, six word stories are cute for about five minutes, as are Tweets of all kinds, but how valuable (intellectually speaking) is the Oxford tradition of the one word exam? “…The exam was simple yet devilish, consisting of a single noun (“water,” for instance, or “bias”) that applicants had three hours somehow to spin into a coherent essay. An admissions requirement for All Souls College here, it was meant to test intellectual agility, but sometimes seemed to test only the ability to sound brilliant while saying not much of anything…” Here.
Update: Six words too much? One word not enough? How about four-word reviews…Review of a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performance: “Conservative, but right on.”
Update: Yes, we were missing a five: now remedied. Five word speeches.
I’m not a big fan of patriotic T-shirts or patriotism in general (you know, …last refuge of a scoundrel) , but this does go to show how immigrants, illegal or otherwise, at least probably many, do not think of themselves as American citizens but as extensions of their own original community, even if they had been born here. Let’s go deep back in time to, well a couple of weeks ago, Cinco de Mayo day, to be exact: ”Tensions mounted at a Bay Area high school Thursday, a day after five students whipped up emotions by wearing t-shirts depicting red, white and blue American flags on Cinco de Mayo . A group of 50-60 Latino students walked out of classes at Morgan Hill’s Live Oak High early Thursday, marching to city hall and rallying to show their support for a school official. That unidentified assistant principal had ordered the students who wore t-shirts with American flags on Cinco de Mayo to either go home or turn the shirts inside out..” (here). This is just one of a thousand similar stories in the naked country.
Note: here’s a longer piece on the subject, giving more detail and opinion than I have time for.
“…I posit that this cartoon fiasco may look as trivial now as did the silly Berkeley sidewalk dispute back in 1964, but it could very well morph into a new Free Speech Movement which could affect the course of history just as much as did the first one…” Let’s roll… Read rest here.
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Related: What’s worse than Muslims taking offense at religious cartoons? A Hindu that gets too close to a mosque in Bangladesh (caution: this is a horrible story).
Workers at an American dairy farm beat cows with crowbars, stab them with pitchforks and punch them in their heads. Here.
“Ah, girl, blond whore!” ‘Josephine’ was met with these words on the first school day at a high-school in an immigrant-dominated suburb south of Stockholm. Josphine was quite baffled, since aside from her hair color there was nothing about her appearance that would indicate she was promiscuous. She didn’t use makeup and had completely neutral clothing. It was exclusively her hair-color that branded her a ‘whore’. Read more here.
“…in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system. And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona’s that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally. “There (in the United States), they’ll deport you,” Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. “In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first.” Read the rest of this article here…
MEANWHILE, back at the ranch, pardner… “Last winter,” says Terrie, “as we walked the hills looking for quail with our dogs, I kept thinking, ‘What if we come upon a drug encampment? What’s going to happen to us?’ I carry a camera, my husband carries a 12-gauge for quail, and we have four hunting dogs. It’d be the end of us. It’d be no contest against drug runners carrying rifles and big weapons.” Here.
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Update: Racism in Mexico.
When every persona has been taken, you gotta still try to up the ID ante.
The new Cheers? Who says sorority girls can’t throw a wild party (not me): plates as missiles, vomit on carpets, defecation in urinals, clothes [almost] torn off bartender, engaging in sexual congress while surrounded by a cheering throng, bathroom sink broken (well, after all this can happen when a sorority girl and her date have sex on said sink), students totally obliterated, behaving like immature children… Get all the tantalizing details right here…By the way, I’m going to go in search of posted videos of this for the next 56 hours non stop.
I can’t say I’m part of the tea-party movement, but I do appreciate the frustrations that gave rise to it. I also can’t say I agree with all of what conservative Pamela Geller says on her site Atlas Shrugs but this video offers a condensed view of what free speech is and how it should not be pummeled by the politically correct.
“…Commanders have ordered a U.S. military unit in Afghanistan to patrol with unloaded weapons [this is ther er... part], according to a source in Afghanistan. American soldiers in at least one unit have been ordered to conduct patrols without a round chambered in their weapons, an anonymous source stationed at a forward operating base in Afghanistan said in an interview. The source was unsure where the order originated or how many other units were affected…” Here.
Ah, spring beckons the morality police, who, with the arrival of the awakening greenery, are beginning their “annual spring crackdown on women wearing too much makeup, daring to show their hair or dressing in a way that shows their body contours too clearly…” Here.
It’s hard for me to believe but it seems president Obama is as inept at responding to disasters as former president Bush was (and Bush was the dumbest prez guy on the planet). Obamas’ ineptness is coming through as clearly and as quickly as those torrents of oil gushing up in the Gulf. This is certainly worse than Bush’s response to the Katrina disaster. The present administration’s response has been such that some people in Louisiana feel it incumbent to take matters into their own hands, “heading out in boats to lay protective booms around [for example] a bird sanctuary threatened by a black tide…Our crews are out there laying the absorbent boom…” People can’t understand why BP and the Coast Guard aren’t doing more to protect the coastal parish…” It’s evidently so bad that in a neighboring area to the one above that an emergency manager has taken it upon himself to commandeer all 40 boom-laying boats hired by BP which were sitting idly at Grand Isle as oil sloshed onto beaches…” (here).
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Related: now here’s something that could rile a good enviornmentally concerned Louisianan’s innards (that includes liver, spleen, bowels, and assorted bodily juices).
Related: “…It has been an hour since our sport-fishing boat started streaking through the freshly oil-soaked marshes of Pass a Loutre, but we’re still only halfway through the slick. Eighteen miles out and the stink of oil is everywhere. Rashes of red-brown sludge are smeared across vast swaths, between them a swell rendered faintly psychedelic with rainbow-coloured swirls. Cutting the engines, we slide to a stop near Rig 313. We’re not supposed to be in the restricted zone, but other than the dispersant-spraying aircraft passing overhead there’s no one to see us. Despite the thick oil, we’ve seen only two clean-up boats out of the 1,150 that the response claims to have on site: one was broken down, the other was towing it…” Here.
Related: Oily Obama and oily Bush: “Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week.” Here.
“The book (A Clockwork Orange) has three parts of seven chapters each. [Anthony] Burgess has stated that the total of 21 chapters was an intentional nod to the age of 21 being recognised as a milestone in human maturation. The 21st chapter was omitted from the editions published in the United States prior to 1986. In the introduction to the updated American text (these newer editions include the missing 21st chapter), Burgess explains that when he first brought the book to an American publisher, he was told that U.S. audiences would never go for the final chapter, in which Alex sees the error of his ways, decides he has lost all energy for and thrill from violence and resolves to turn his life around (a slow-ripening but classic moment of metanoia—the moment at which one’s protagonist realises that everything he thought he knew was wrong). At the American publisher’s insistence, Burgess allowed their editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the U.S. version, so that the tale would end on a note of bleak despair, with young Alex succumbing to his darker nature—an ending which the publisher insisted would be ‘more realistic’ and appealing to a U.S. audience. The film adaptation, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is based on this “badly flawed” (Burgess’ words, ibid.) American edition of the book. Kubrick called Chapter 21′ an extra chapter’ and claimed that he had not read the original version until he had virtually finished the screenplay, and that he had never given serious consideration to using it.” The above synopsis is from here.
Saul becomes Paul moment (proves you don’t have to fall off a donkey).
When civilization breaks down so too do the formalities
“…In suggesting that bloggers create original content, Dennis A Mahoney writes, “The web is a tremendous hodgepodge of media. There are sites about books, sites about music, and sites about sites.” Yes! But to move toward “original content” is to move in exactly the wrong direction. People are hungry, they are positively salivating, for sites that intelligently dissect the plethora of sites that in turn deal with sites, books, music, and sites on sites. In every other medium critics write from secondary, tertiary, even quaternary degrees of removal. The critics analyse the original content, sure; but then the critics are themselves analysed; and then that analysis is analysed by someone else; and then the real genius wakes up, carbonates his own cola product, turns on his computer, and analyses the shit out of everything that preceded him. And that’s what students write awesome, timeless papers about…” Here.
“I developed that (a fear of flying) when I turned 20. I had to come up with a way to deal with it because I didn’t want to have panic attacks every time I get on a plane. I know for a fact it’s not in my destiny to die listening to a Britney Spears album, so I always put that on in my (headphones) when I’m flying because I know it won’t crash if I’ve got Britney on.” Megan Fox
“I love cigarettes. Love them. I think the more positive approach you have to smoking, the less harmful it is.” Sienna Miller
“I carry condoms in my purse, even though I haven’t had sex in a long time. I’m hoping for luck! And I carry them so I can give them to other people who might want or need them, or who might want to have a conversation.” Sharon Stone
“I’ve been noticing gravity since I was very young.” Cameron Diaz
“I have masturbated myself out of serious problems in my life … It has a true market value, like gold bullion. … I do it because I want to take a brain bath. It’s like a hot whirlpool for my brain, in a brain space that is 100 percent agreeable with itself.” John Mayer
“I don’t brush my teeth. No, really! I just use Listerine — and sometimes I’ll use my sweater. I do brush every now and again, but my teeth are extremely powerful. Fine, maybe when I’m 60 I’ll be all, “ow!” Jessica Simpson
If you think illegal immigration and drug crime is bad now just wait till Mexico becomes a failed state (that is, more of a failed state than it is now): “…Frightening as the cartels may be, Mexico faces far more formidable challenges. On the current trajectory, these troubles could very likely make our neighbor dysfunctional within less than a decade. The following challenges would exist even if there were no drug problems…” Here.
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Related:
WH does lovey dovey scene with Mex pres
Illegals continue into Arizona
Arizona to pull plug on LA power? (Let’s all hope)
Since we live in a big ugly banana republic shouldn’t we be wearing big ugly banana shoes?
From If Shoes Could Kill
That is, Freakonomics applied to tattoos: “…One possibility is that people just enjoy them for their intrinsic beauty, just as they might enjoy a work of art in a museum. The frequency with which people get tattoos in places they can’t easily see (in particular the lower back), makes me think this isn’t the primary answer. Rather, it would seem that the irreversibility of tattoos must be at the heart of their popularity. The fact that tattoos are (essentially) permanent makes them very powerful signaling devices: the more costly it is to take an action, the more powerful the signal that action carries. If I get tattoos on my face that look like the ones that Mike Tyson has, it sends a strong message to society about me…” Here.
Tattoos, statistically speaking
“Hey, this guy is going to die if we don’t medevac him,” the corporal said. “His guts are hanging out.” Here.
“…’Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city’s leadership,’ Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. ‘A few days later, my automobile was blown up’…Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence. ” Here.
The question is being asked by some, is this horror movie, The Human Centipede, the sickest horror movie ever made? Well, as far as horror films go is there anything sicker or more nauseating than watching rotting zombies eat stringy gooey clumps of human innards? These kinds of movies are very common anymore, starting with that b/w one back in the sixties–Night of the Living Dead. But what makes one horror movie more “sick” than another? I guess it not only lies in the details of gore but in the unrelenting grotesque quandary of the victims, in this case, those done in by a truly psychopathic German doctor. Well, here’s the trailer.
How do you go about fixing a broken heat exactly? Caution: this borders on the cynical approach. “…Find the stressful and painful thoughts that you have about your relationship, write them down, and challenge them one by one. Anyone can do this and, with effort and diligence, see a real change. It’s as if you are going to the source of stress in your mind and flipping a switch from on to off, so the pain is no longer produced, even though the external circumstances appear the same. That’s the power of seeing your situation more clearly…” (read more here).
Incident 1: “…To see resistance from a woman [in fascist Saudi Arabia] means a lot… This is just the beginning and there will be more.’ ” Here.
Incident 2: … 60-year-old female lawyer rips off Muslim woman’s Islamic veil during a row in what French police are describing as the first known case of ‘burqa rage’. Here
New Miss USA, Rima Fakih, a Lebanese “Muslim immigrant” who grew up in New York, told judges at the Miss USA Contest that “her family practised both Christianity and Islam“.
Multiculturalist ideology thrives on categorization, especially racial and religious classification, so this sort of thing could be their worst nightmare.
Update: MS Fakih, it turns out was, ahem, also a great stripper. (And the vote is in… The crowd chants: Long live beautiful Arab-American stripper muslim christian bikinied women and their supporters…Praise the Lord and pass the beer, wafers and goat meat.) Note: ironically, MS Fakih was wearing more clothes in the stripping contest than she did at the Miss USA competition.
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Related material…
Note: not all right wing bloggers think alike. While some, like Daniel Pipes and Debbie Schussel, think the “Muslim Miss USA win” is either religious affirmative action or conspiracy, others, such as Atlas Shrugs blogger Pamela Geller, consider it a purely stunning win against muslim Sharia’s strict anti female codes. To wit: “Don’t let her lack of a headscarf and her donning a bikini in public fool you. Miss Michigan USA, Rimah Fakih is a Muslim activist and propagandist extraordinaire…as we all know, and as one source confirms, Muslims frequently go against Islam in this way for propaganda purposes. It’s a form of taqiyyah, the Muslim concept of deceiving infidels…”–-Debbie Schlussel (read more here). Here’s Pamela Geller: “Excelsior! Here is an icon for the advent of modernizing the Muslim world. She embodies everything sharia and the Islamic world deplore — free women. Burn those burkas, baby, and come on in. The water is just fine.”
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Note: Whether you’re a devout muslim woman who wears a burka or an orthodox Jewish woman and detest donning a bikini in public rest assured you can still be just as sexy as MS Fakih in her skimpy two-piece; the examples below from Sexy Burka Magazine and Orthodox Jewish Cleavage give us some good examples:
But let’s face it, people, I mean if the truth be told, nothing exemplifies a religious woman’s sexiness like a Christian nun; she may not wear a bikini or low cut blouses but instead combines the attributes of both modesty and sexiness (from the ezine Hot Christian Women in Heat):
“Please, dear, enough fun time, you’ve just shot your two-timing father several times in the head already.”
Caution: text block coming up, read quickly:
Scot Tshirt shop owner bloke puts out some funniness (jokey stuff)…T shirt wishes happiness to English rivals at World Cup and all that: “Anyone But England” (you know, ABE) and all that. Ink printed right on T shirt front (right where the Blokes of England can see it)…Call is made by blokes that can see it after racist foulness comes into play…Racism police knock on door…Officers check merchandise for racism ingredients…Finally nix it all with a jaunty jokey “It’s not racism – it’s football” (but lo and behold Scot Government rep bloke says: “It’s important to recognise people could take offence”)…All in all happy ending: T shirt owner bloke escapes the Tower. Tally ho (and all that)…
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Related (three items):
Are Mac owners racist? Survey says only seven percent of Mac computer owners are non-white…Non Mac owners say, Remember Rodney King, baby. Steve Jobs reluctantly admits it could be a long hot summer.
Physics professor fired for saying you can’t mix apples and oranges. Teacher says she was simply talking of logical restrictive constraints in the application of mathematical indices in quantum components. Insists there was nothing racist about the analogy. “The whole apples/oranges thing was taken out of context,” she says. Civil rights advocates disagree, say she will burn in legal hell.
Anti Arizonians say new racist anti illegal immigration bill has already reduced lettuce consumption by ten million heads of lettuce per capita, resulting in the nutritional deaths of almost ten thousand school pupils per day. News anchor Katie Couric says it’s the worst disaster since the racist global warming mass deaths of the past ten years.
“…The other two were not so fortunate. From the wreckage the troops pulled an unconscious, mangled figure. His name was Zamin, but as American medics began desperate efforts to save him some of his Afghan comrades wept at what they saw. The devastating blast had deformed his body and made his face all but unrecognisable. His form had lost the rigidity of bone and muscle and moved, instead, like a bag of flour. The medics could only speculate on the number of bones that were broken. Somehow he clung to life, sucking in air and choking on blood…[Later] As the hands of the bemused men were swabbed, the chemical test indicated that all might not be the innocent civilians they insisted they were. Two young men, including the man in black, tested positive for TATP, a substance exclusive to explosives, as well as for nitrates used in explosives.” Here.
As political correctness is changing the Wes’t idea of what’s acceptable speech so too is China’s powerful economic reach changing the rules of the game: “…Chong [Egg on Mao] had underestimated the fear of offending Beijing — not in China but in the West. She cited some strongly uncomfortable reactions. A Canadian nonprofit economic development group that had invited her to appear at a fund-raiser began playing down its association with her book once learning of the title, Chong said. (The organization was trying to encourage Chinese investment in Canada.) A reporter for a Chinese-language television station backed out of an interview because of fear of Beijing, according to a conversation Chong had with a producer there…The nervousness wasn’t limited to Canada. The United States Library of Congress declined an invitation to hold an event with Chong…” Here.
“…But when she gets to Voice of America, Ellie sees that VOA is not what she or the other Persian broadcasters at PNN had thought. The agency, managed by people who have little regard for VOA’s mission to promote the values of the United States and freedom in Iran, treat their professional broadcasters like circus animals. Either they jump, like performing circus dogs, through the hoops they want – which is to kiss the derriere of the Iranian radical Islamic mullahs in Tehran – or they will be destroyed. In fact, the father of the senior managing editor of PNN, Ali Sajjadi, is a mullah, and he is forced to admit as much when on a recent television show. His anti-American, pro-radical Islamic bent infects the programming of the entire network and subverts the mission of VOA…” Here.
“…The little girl said she believes her fellow students single her out ‘because I’m white.’ Her mother said she couldn’t help wonder if race was a factor when Lyric came home from the predominantly black school asking to take a bath. ‘I asked her why and she told me it was because the kids were calling her a ‘dirty white girl,’ added Jacqueline, who added that several members of her family are African-Canadian. In one of the worst incidents, Lyric’s mother claims three first-grade boys threw Lyric on the ground and took turns ‘dry humping her.’ ” Here.
Old Andy may be older than God but his braincells are still buzzing with synaptic networking.
“…Initially funded by the Navy, the project set out to study the effects of brain concussion. Soon after, scientists noted that a blow to the head prompted amnesia, leading to the pursuit of a drug-based technique to ‘induce brain concussion … without physical trauma.’ Shortly thereafter, the project was transferred entirely to the CIA, because it involved ‘human experiments’ … not easily justifiable on medical-therapeutic grounds…” Here.
Related:
London brothel owners lug around their prostitutes in cages… Here.
In “War,” Sabastian Junger writes about the war in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan. ”…Kalenits started to fade out from lack of blood and he handed his weapon to another man and sat down. He watched a friend named Albert get shot in the knee, and start sliding down the cliff. Kalenits’s team leader grabbed him and tried to pull him back, but they were taking so much fire that it was going to get them both killed. Albert yelled to his team leader to let go and he did, and Albert slid partway down the cliff, losing his weapon and helmet on the way. He finally came to a stop and then got shot three more times where he lay…” Read more of this long excerpt here.
“…This evidence — that even the microseconds of decision-making attention demanded by hyperlinks saps cognitive power from the reading process, that multiple sensory inputs severely degrade memory retention, that overloading the limited capacity of our short-term memory hampers our ability to lay down long-term memories — is enough to make you want to run right out and buy Internet-blocking software…” Here.
