Wearing a jail bracelet? Check.
Car Chase? Check.
Drunk Driving? Check.
Cocaine possession? Check.
Supposed to be on Leno tonight? Check plus.
What a piece of work...
#9
What DoDo said up there JM- Paris was getting all the attention. Lindsay had to one up her. It's just the way women (or girls, in this case) compete with each other. I'm surprised she didn't swallow a handful of aspirin before getting behind the wheel.
#1
Judgement day will be when he will be sentenced to pay gazillions of dollars to university for damaging hetr image and by his former pupils for the damahe on their carreers due to Mr Churchill using their time for indoctrination instead of education.
Once teachers who use their peulpit for advancing their pet cause end losing their shirts universities will become again teaching centers.
#8
Unfortunately, he will become another in a long list of leftist martyrs that join the "Useful-Idiots & Seditionists Hall of Shame". Wonder what the prospects of him and Mother Sheehan hooking up? They could marry on the Bill Maher show and have Rosie and Michael Moore as their witnesses. Honeymoon in Venezuela. Job at UC Berkeley and tireless campaigning for Pelosi's seat. I can see it now.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
07/24/2007 16:23 Comments ||
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Spitzer made a big deal about cleaning up Albany ... previous Dem gov. Mario Cuomo's son is the new AG and released a scathing report on misuse of state police by top Spitzer staffers against the longtime Republican leader of the state senate. Unethical and probably illegal info gathering, followed by leaks to the press.
#6
I could never be a miner... too afraid of running into Sleestaks...
Posted by: Dar ||
07/24/2007 13:11 Comments ||
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#7
Saw the headline and immediately thought of binny and the doc holed up in a cave in Afghan/Paki-Waki border area. I then noticed you did say "human" and "civilization," and dismissed the thought altogether.
Posted by: BA ||
07/24/2007 13:17 Comments ||
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#8
Apparently Pravda (which means Truth) is trying to give The New Republic a run for its money when it comes to what we non-journos call "making stuff up". And let's face it - other than a molten nickel-iron core, there is no reason people could not live at the center of the earth. As long as they had a place to buy groceries and stuff.
#13
If they look anything like that Russian girl band Slivki, then I'm calling Virgin right now to make a reservation whenever Branson starts service to the "etherworld".
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
07/24/2007 16:26 Comments ||
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#14
PRAVDA has become the hyper-PCorrect post-USSR/Cold War Russian organ for saving the Russian Way including Russian-specific Communism- Globalism + of course criticizing the USA-West, however indirectly or subtledly.
Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say.
The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a complaint to be filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The petition compiles testimony from at least 44 workers who had planned to sign the complaint during a meeting Sunday. The signing was changed to a later date because of a logistical problem.
Jama Mohamed, 28, said he was fired in June for leaving a production line to pray. Supervisors would not allow him a break, he said.
"Some of them took the (prayer) mat from me; they started shouting, they started telling me to stop it, and one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt," Mohamed said through an interpreter.
"I was crying at the time this was happening to me, and when I finished I told them while they were doing that I was in the middle of a prayer."
Mohamed said he was then called to an office, where a supervisor fired him.
Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said Swift had fired at least two dozen workers for praying since May.
Donald Selzer, an attorney for Greeley, Colo.-based Swift, said only three Somali workers were fired for reasons relating to the issue, and that it was for walking off the line without permission, not for praying.
Unscheduled breaks can force unplanned shutdowns of lines, Selzer said.
"That is a significant number of employees, and there is not much of a way to accommodate that consistent with keeping the production online," he said.
The complaint reprises issues that boiled over in May, when 120 Somali workers abruptly quit for similar reasons. About 70 returned a week later, but union officials worried the issue would resurface through the late spring as sunset came later in the evening shift.
"For three days it was all good and we were praying; there was no hassle, no interference, nothing at all," said Ali Schire, 30, who said he returned to the plant but was later fired for trying to pray.
"All of a sudden after three days it just all got loose, and they were suspending people, they were firing people," Schire said through an interpreter. "Some of the people even had to give up praying at all for fear of being fired."
Said Selzer: "These people are absolutely entitled to pray, and they should not be interfered with for doing so. But on the other hand, the only situations that I've been made aware of are people that walk off the job without permission, and that's a different kind of an issue."
Dan Hoppes, president of Local 22 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said he had not heard of many Somali workers being fired or harassed since May. Prayer breaks are not in the contract, he said, but he hopes to revisit the issue in negotiations in 2010.
Swift rejected a suggestion by the Council on American-Islamic Relations to allow the Somalis who work evenings to leave in smaller shifts to avoid disrupting lines, said Rima Kapitan, an attorney with the group.
The company suggested phasing evening workers to shifts earlier in the day that did not interrupt prayer times, Selzer and Hoppes said.
"We're perfectly happy to try to pursue that angle so that we don't have this conflict," Selzer said. "But given the people who are on the second shift many of whom prefer to be there this sort of presents the operational realities."
Mohamed said it is important for Muslims to pray within scheduled times and not to postpone prayers or say them early.
"I would never forgive myself and God would not forgive me if I do not pray on time because I want to earn some money," he said.
Posted by: Natural Law ||
07/24/2007 12:17 Comments ||
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#3
Dan Hoppes, president of Local 22 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said he had not heard of many Somali workers being fired or harassed since May. Prayer breaks are not in the contract, he said, but he hopes to revisit the issue in negotiations in 2010.
Useful tools they are. Albeit, I've gotta wonder if the other Union employees may "enforce" their own sort of "negotiations" after this stunt. The perfect blending of the left and the muzzies.
"I would never forgive myself and God would not forgive me if I do not pray on time because I want to earn some money," he said.
If your "god" is that freakin' anal, maybe you should look elsewhere my friend. If God (capital "G") is really God, then He can take your prayers at any time.
Posted by: BA ||
07/24/2007 13:16 Comments ||
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#4
Somehow Grand Island and Muslim don't fit with the Grand Island I knew.... Oh well the invasion continues...
#6
Ima Ask The Imam for a fatwa on the hypocrisy of muslims working at one of the largest pork slaughter and processing plants. The moon god can't be pleased.
Posted by: ed ||
07/24/2007 14:01 Comments ||
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#7
Give every muslim that can't assimilate a 1-way ticket back to the islamic sh*thole they came from.
#8
Why don't the Somali's apply for jobs with schedules that match their prayer times? The conflict makes them unable to perform their jobs as required.
It's not possible to accommodate a muslim's prayer schedule. Not even a 9-5 shift can do it without a very "flexible" lunch hour as prayer times change with the lengthening and shortening of the day as the year spins by.
Here's today's schedule for Toronto:
24 Tue 3:51 5:58 1:24 5:26 8:50 10:56
A truly pious muslim who prays all five times a day is getting only just under 4 hours of sleep a night. That makes them unfit to work. Any muslim not praying all five times a day isn't "pious" enough to demand a floating prayer break at work. Rock and a hard place, muzzies.
#9
If you give muslims extra breaks, then you have to give everyone extra breaks. Pretty soon, you don't have anybody cutting meat at all, just smoking and praying. Swift should put this to bed with a "foot meets ass" type of solution.
#14
The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset
Complete and total BULLSHIT. All Muslims are absolved of wrongdoing if legitimate circumstances prevent them performing their worship in a timely fashion.
This is yet one more example of Muslims pushing the envelope in order to accustom Infidels to their incessant demands for preferential treatment. As bigjim said:
Swift should put this to bed with a "foot meets ass" type of solution.
Nothing else is required but filling out the pink slips.
#16
I'm picturing the first Islamic aircraft carrier: The AKBAR has turned into the wind. The first bird of the four ship flight is spun up, the catapault tensioned. The Cat Officer is about to signal Launch when, doh, it's time for prayers!
#18
What a mental picture, Steve; a minaret instead of the island, camels instead of tow tractors, and 5 times a day the thing could point towards Mecca. Might be kind of interesting of prayer ( and mecca-pointing) time coincided witha Suez Canal transit. those flowing robe thingies could be downright dangerous when the WOD numbers got up there (lots of sail area)
#19
Seems to be the Somalis are the vanguard of the Islamic pushin the midwest. Somali taxi drivers wouldn't take dogs or passengers with booze. Somali cashiers wouldn't ring up pork or booze. Now Somali meatpackers are creating their own schedule.
Normally during the hiring process you are asked "is there anything that would prevent you from doing your duties." Since the morning prayer is not a sudden thing they should have brought all of this up in the job interview. Methinks they came out of a mosque one day feeling they suddenly absolutely had to pray at this time and were probably told US laws would protect them.
Technology is something that has greatly evolved over time, but in order to find the good stuff we had to go through the bad stuff first. Computer World put together a great article today that details what they believe are the 10 biggest technology flops of the past 40 years. So I thought I would take a look at their list and make my own comments
#1
1) The newton was ahead of it's time. The paradigm shift it required has not yet happened.
2) The PC Jr was good for the little kids. (Ghostbusters and Honeybee and Mouser) I still got a working one with the printer sidebar and 640k of ram, NEC processor, wireless keyboard and IBM CGA monitor. (Its been on the shelf since 1989) Paid $500 new for the thing... someday it will be worth $10. Youngest kid used to worship it by inserting coins. Repair was shake the coins out.
Iridium -- main problem was not understanding physics and marketplace.
All those steerable antennas would throw them off orbit so they became fly by joy-stick. Should have used phased array antennas to talk to neighbor sats. Signal does not penetrate hillsides with pine trees (or much of anything) requiring large handsets.
Market analysis was very faulty. Evolutionary history even more troubling and a direct sign post to Motorola's current troubled times.
A corporate Prez and renegade division that did not listen to the corporate and Land Mobile R&D (now both MotLabs) advice. Bush Sr. deeply involved as orig plan was to launch with MX missiles. Oops...
VR - gives a large percentage of the public massive headaches and nausea. That needs to be understood before VR can progress.
#6
I'd like to find whoever invented the term "Paperless Office" and drag them through thumbtacks then dip them in rubbing alcohol.
New Coke
As an odd converse to New Cokewhich had to be the most monumental case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"I'd like to suggest 7UP's slogan of "Never had it, never will".
Pause to consider how a simple advertising campaign costing less than some ten million dollars or so managed to fragment the marketing stratagies of Coca Cola, Pepsi and almost every other major cola producer except Jolt. Suddenly, each of them had to create new recipes, packaging, advertising and shelf space for caffeine-free products.
The makers of 7UP did not have to introduce a single new product, alter its packaging or do anything but release a PR script. This had to be one of the most leveraged marketing campaigns in the history of advertising. Coca Cola and the other manufacturers probably lost untold millions of dollars in the scramble to realign their products.
#7
Zima - the worst thing to happen to maltose, ever.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/24/2007 20:47 Comments ||
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#8
8-track format tapes.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/24/2007 22:12 Comments ||
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#9
Beta video tapes.
I used to work at Woolworths years ago, I remember the first Laser Video Disks being sold. 8" plus inches in diameter. You could server a medium size turkey on them.
The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.
Many have arrived with large suitcases or bags holding their belongings, which they keep in sight. Several are smoking cigarettes. One works a crossword puzzle. Another bangs a tambourine, while several drum on large white buckets. Some of the men walking the line call out to passing women, "Hey, baby." A few picketers gyrate and dance while chanting: "What do we want? Fair wages. When do we want them? Now."
Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.
They're hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs. . . .
Supporters of the practice consider it a creative tactic in an era of declining union membership and clout. But critics say the reliance on nonunion members -- who are paid $1 above minimum wage and receive no benefits -- diminishes the impact and undercuts a principle established over decades of union struggles.
"If I was a member of the general public, and I asked someone picketing why they were there, and they said they don't work for the union and they were just hired to stand there, that wouldn't create a very positive impression on me, nor would it create a very sympathetic position," said Wayne Ranick, spokesman for the United Steelworkers of America. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
07/24/2007 11:00 ||
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#1
So the unions outsource picketing and thuggery. Jimmie Hoffa would weep. And what irony! Hey, maybe someone could organize the picketers and form the United Steel and Irony Workers Union.
The Reader's Digest survey results are found here . (PDF format)
Lose your mobile phone in Stockholm, and you are far more likely to get it returned than in most international cities, according to a survey by Reader's Digest.
The international survey was carried out in the largest cities in 32 countries. Reader's Digest researchers left 30 mid-priced mobile phones in busy public places, and observed the phones from a distance. They then called the phones and watched to see if anyone answered. If somebody answered the phone, they asked them to return it.
The most honest country in the world in the admittedly unscientific survey was Ljubljana in Slovenia, where 29 out of 30 phones came back to their owners. Stockholm was fourth - 26 out of 30 phones were returned.
The situation was very different in some other cities. The survey suggests that you should keep tight hold of your property in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, where only 13 of 30 mobiles were returned. This is not to suggest that Europe was universally safe - in Amsterdam and Bucharest, only 14 phones found their way back to their owners.
In honest Stockholm, one person to pass Reader's Digest's test was Lotta Mossige-Norheim, a railway ticket inspector. She found a phone on a shopping street and handed it back.
"I'm always calling people who've left a handset on my train," she explained.
Conrad Eichel, editorial director of Reader's Digest, said he was "surprised and intrigued" by the results.
"In every single city where the test was conducted, at minimum almost half the phones were returned. And despite the temptation that people must have felt to keep the phones, and the fact that the test imposed on everyone's time, the average return rate was a remarkable 68 percent."
#2
No kidding. KL is the capital of a muslim country. Finding a cell phone there is like the IRA finding a detonator at the local pub. Those guys have other uses for that phone. Just like those Indian Muzzies had in Scotland and London.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
07/24/2007 16:31 Comments ||
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(ANSA) - Milan, August 24 - Italy's great neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova had a guilty secret, according to a Milan art expert.
Canova broke one of the art world's key taboos by moulding from life parts of statues, art critic Maurizio Bernadelli Curuz claims. He used the prohibited technique for the breasts of his celebrated sculpture of Napoleon's sister Paolina (originally Pauline) Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (Conquering Venus), the critic says. The evidence, Bernadelli Curuz claims, is there to be seen in a preparatory cast of one breast on show at Rome's Napoleonic Museum.
The cast is suspiciously perfect and shows telltale signs of having been impressed on a young woman's skin, he says. What's more, the breast departs from Canova's usual idealised beauty, influenced by classical Greek models.
"The chalk shows on the one side the softness of the skin and on the other the healthy specific gravity that curves the plastic material on the lower part of the soft hemisphere," he says in an article to be published in leading Italian art magazine Stile Arte.
"In short, it isn't the conventional breast of Greek statuary, linked to the evocation of a perfect, platonic, ideal woman.
"It has something concrete, hardly idealised at all, for all that the form is sublime".
But the real giveaway is the nipple, which allegedly "presents an illuminating deformity".
The tip of the breast is "slightly squashed in such a way as to form the impression of two slightly parted lips" instead of standing proud and round, Bernadelli Cruz claims.
This can only mean wet chalk was applied to it to make a 'wet T-shirt effect', the critic says.
Whoa. Canova ... breast ... wet t-shirts ... Ft. Lauderdale ...
Canova (1757-1822) was an Italian sculptor who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh. The epitome of the neoclassical sculptor, his work marked a return to classical refinement after the theatrical excesses of Baroque art.
Despite only living to 40, Pauline Bonaparte (1780-1825) left a strong mark on her time. After her numerous young love affairs became an embarrassment, Napoleon had Pauline married to Charles Leclerc, one of his generals.
She accompanied Leclerc to Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in 1802 to remove the black general Toussaint Louverture from power. Despite her brother's position, Pauline continued to have affairs in Saint-Domingue, often with low-ranking soldiers and officers. However, she did attend her husband during his fatal sickness with yellow fever, which killed him in November 1802.
Napoleon then had her married off to a Bonapartist member of the famed Roman Borghese family, Camillo Borghese, and she changed her name from the French Pauline to the Italian Paolina.
The marriage was initially passionate but foundered on her affairs and eccentricities such as using ladies-in-waiting for footstools and African slaves to carry her to her bath.
After Waterloo Pauline moved to Rome, where she enjoyed the protection of Pope Pius VII, once her brother's prisoner. Pauline lived in a villa that was called Villa Paolina after her and decorated in the Egyptomania style she favoured. Camillo moved to Florence to distance himself from her and had a ten-year relationship with a mistress, but Pauline persuaded the pope to convince Camillo to return to her, three months before her death from cancer.
The famous statue of Paolina is one of the biggest attractions at Rome's Borghese Gallery.
Art history and Bonapartes. That gal was a F5 tornado.
#7
In this Age of Hillary, PAULINE, etal. = MADONNA, etal = OWG-GLOBAL CO-NAPOLEON. * NOSTRADAMUS > FUTURE TIME > "The greater part of the battlefield will be against HISTER [HIS SISTER]...". PHOEBUS CYNDI [Apollo] vz PHOEBUS CYNTHEIA [Cyntheia-Apollonia], i.e. GOD OF THE SUN vz GODDESS OF THE SUN. BLOOM COUNTY > "The Colonel" as Patton > "Men, Football is War - God how I love it so"!
Remember the young man on Britain's Got Talent that brought tears to eyes around the world? Who's YouTube video is the most viewed ever?
Just so you can be in the "in group" his album was released in Great Britain on July 16th and it's already #1. Amazon has a pre-release order for July 30, and his album is already #5 on Amazon music.
You just gotta love a "feel good" story. We need one ---
#4
I've had the album on order for over a week. Saw the YouTube videos. It's good to see a humble man bring his talent to the front. His voice isn't quite Andrea Bocelli, but it's a good one. I hope he does well, and I hope he stays humble.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/24/2007 9:05 Comments ||
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#7
No surprise he is Welsh. Is there another country in the world that has produced so many fine voices? Doubtful. Nothing like going to a Wales rugby test match at old Cardiff Arms park and listening to the crowd sing as an ensemble of 45,000. All in tune and harmony (except for me). Bravo for Paul Potts.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
07/24/2007 16:51 Comments ||
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#8
I like this email -- it describes the experience of this performance.
Paul Potts [Jonah Goldberg]
I've been getting emails like this since yesterday , but this one may be the best:
Jonah I came into work this morning, ran through my email, signed payroll, ran out to rake a couple of employees over the coals, went back to the office, pulled up NRO, and clicked on the Corner. Thats when I ran across your post about Paul Potts. The video came up and theres this dumpy guy with bad teeth. Then he started to sing. Now, Im not an overly emotional person, but halfway through I realized I was crying. Havent done anything like that in many, many years, and I wondered, as I dried my eyes, how in the world his singing could have caused such a strong reaction in me. The video has been on a loop in my head ever since, and I think Im ready to make a guess.
His expression before he begins to sing is that of a man resigned to disappointment. Even when he smiles, his eyes convey a profound sadness. He has been a nobody all his life. He, and perhaps only he, knows he has greatness inside of him, but he is obviously a humble man, massively insecure, afraid of rejection, unsure of himself outside the cocoon of anonymity. But you get the feeling he also knows that this may be the one chance he gets to escape the cocoon, and as he begins to sing, you can see him fighting down his fear. I think that is the wellspring of the emotion that pervades his performance. He is fighting against a life of obscurity. By the songs end, what was an average Joe has stepped up, beaten back his fear, and broken through. In those few seconds, he put the void behind him, and his life will probably be changed forever because he called up the courage at that moment to show what he was really made of. We saw greatness, long denied, finally being born.
It was one of the most heroic things Ive seen in a long time. My deepest thanks to you for posting it. Truly inspirational.
#1
Well that certainly brings back conflicting memories of when I lived for the first time in DC. This team is quartered in the 8th St. Barracks. I lived on the Hill near them. Somehow two of them got pissed one night at a local bar and walking back to the barracks needed to use a phone and literally kicked in my door to my apartment. Cops got a call and found them raiding my fridge and using the phone to call buddies at 29 Palms. When I got there the cops asked me to press charges and I refused. I told the cops and the Marines that when the 1st Sgt. found out what they had done, they would wish I had pressed charges. I think from what I heard later they both survived a little section 8 brig time and hard duty but stayed in (more sober I hope).
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
07/24/2007 17:01 Comments ||
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#2
This was posted here a few months ago. I think I commented that the fans cheered so hard because it was the first time they had seen actual teamwork in that arena.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
07/24/2007 22:58 Comments ||
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Japanese magician Princess Tenko, who has charmed North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, was seriously injured when metal swords trapped her in a box during a performance, her office said Tuesday.
Tenko, who has performed in North Korea at the invitation of the reclusive leader, broke her right cheek and ribs on stage in the central Japanese city of Sabae on Sunday. "It will take a month to heal the wounds," her manager Noboru Ochiai told AFP by telephone.
A fake metal sword "would have been stuck in her right eye if it were one centimetre (half an inch) higher," Ochiai said. "She is suffering tremendous pain but is more shocked that she had to call off performances," he said.
The doll-looking magician, who never confirms her real name or age, has won a fan base in Asia and North America with her extravagant shows in which she dresses in elaborate costumes and make-up.
She was injured as she failed at what was billed as "the spike illusion in the face of death." Tenko was supposed to escape from a box on the moment it was spiked with 10 fake swords, but instead they trapped her inside. She continued the performance for 30 minutes before the show was called off.
Tenko visited North Korea in 1998 and 2000 and met with Kim Jong-Il, who was reported to have gifted her a rare uneaten dog.
In an interview earlier this year with The Japan Times, Tenko said she spoke about entertainment with Kim, whose regime has tense relations with Japan. "He seemed to have thought I was American and he praised me for my success in the US despite being Japanese," Tenko said.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko helped Sunday in Germany to inaugurate a memorial to victims of the Nazis, completing Germany's drive to build museums at all former concentration camps. Yushchenko's father, Andrei, spent six months interned as a Soviet soldier at the site in Flossenbuerg, in Bavaria state close to the Czech border.
The Nazis treated Soviet prisoners especially badly, transferring them from stalags - or prisoner-of-war camps - to the atrocious conditions of the concentration camps.
"There is no way to explain away the deaths of thousands of people here. Our minds and our hearts refuse to understand such a mass of deaths," said the president. "History must never be allowed to repeat itself."
Polish-born Jack Terry, 77, was the youngest surviving inmate, aged just 15 when the camp was liberated. "We were thrown in here for only one purpose: to humiliate us, take away our humanity and murder us," said Terry, who now lives in New York. His parents and siblings died at the hands of the Nazis.
Down the years, some 100,000 inmates were held at Flossenbuerg and about 30,000 died there of disease or starvation, by execution or by being driven beyond exhaustion.
Though a memorial was erected at the camp cemetery in 1946, the site was largely ignored down the years and an industrial estate was built on most of the land. It was only in the 1990s that it was properly signposted. It is the last of the main concentration camps on present-day German soil to gain its own site museum.
"We need a space to make the past present," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the opening. "This is a place of German disgrace."
India's outgoing President, Abdul Kalam, has urged Indians to help transform the country into a developed nation by the year 2020.
He said that he wanted the country to be one of the best places in the world to live and work in. The president was speaking in a televised address to the nation, his last before leaving office. On Wednesday, Pratibha Patil will be sworn in as the new president. She is the first woman to hold the position.
Speaking on state television, President Kalam delivered a simple message to Indians. "Accelerate development, the aspirations of youth... and mobilise rural competence for competitiveness. Defeat problems and succeed," he said.
When he was picked as the country's president five years ago, the maverick scientist with stylised silver locks was a surprise choice.
A Muslim and a vegetarian teetotaller, he was the architect of India's missile programme and became a national hero when he oversaw the country's nuclear tests in 1998.
But he was not a politician - one reason perhaps why he became one of the country's best loved presidents. During his term, he left his stamp on the largely ceremonial presidency in his own unique way. He opened the doors of the majestic 340-room presidential palace to ordinary Indians, particularly children.
He was the first president to fly in a supersonic fighter jet and also dive into the sea in a nuclear submarine.
But above all, many Indians identified him as one of their own - a man with simple tastes who had dedicated his life to his country.
There is little doubt that he will be missed.
Posted by: John Frum ||
07/24/2007 17:20 ||
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Kalam (foreground) with Chidabaram, the head of the hydrogen bomb team
Posted by: John Frum ||
07/24/2007 17:44 Comments ||
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#2
Kalam in 1964
1965 - One of Kalam's payloads being carried to the launch pad
1980 - Kalam's Satellite Launch Vehicle
Posted by: John Frum ||
07/24/2007 17:55 Comments ||
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#3
"Defeat Problems and Succeed."
Now *there's* a legacy...and a pretty good campaign slogan.
A notorious bandit has been shot dead by police in India after evading them for more than 30 years, police say. The bandit, Shiv Kumar Patel, who was also known as Dadua, was killed along with several members of his gang.
Dadua was wanted on twelve systems in connection with more than 200 criminal cases, including murder, extortion and kidnapping. He and his gang operated for decades in ravines and forests on the borders between the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Separately, six policemen were killed in a clash with a gang led by another notorious dacoit, Thokia, in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday night.
Note to Thokia ... you're next
Don't buy life insurance ... don't start War and Peace ... don't try to win an argument with Cindy Sheehan ...
Correspondents say that Dadua was hailed by many as a modern-day Robin Hood. "After a fierce battle, in which [the bandits] also used sophisticated weapons, the police were able to kill Dadua. He has been identified by the villagers," inspector general of police AK Jain told the Associated Press news agency.
Mr Jain said that four of his accomplices had also been killed in the battle in the Chitrakoot region, some 300km (185 miles) south-west of Uttar Pradesh state capital, Lucknow.
A home ministry official told the AFP news agency that the bandits had been located following a tip-off.
"Psssst! You coppers will find Shiv down at the ravine!"
"Hokay, t'anks, and here's your one million rupees."
According to AFP, locals identified the badly-disfigured body as that of Dadua although officials say they are to have DNA tests conducted on it before handing it to relatives.
Locals said he managed to avoid being caught for so long because he was supported by villagers who often took a share of his spoils. "His words were diktat in ravines and people used to vote for candidates supported by Dadua and therefore political parties preferred not to rub Dadua on the wrong side," local aid group leader Ramesh Sharma told AP.
Plus they didn't want to end up dead. Shiv learned that trick from Capone.
But Dadua appears to have backed the wrong party in recent state elections. "The changed political equation brought the end of this dreaded bandit," Mr Sharma said.
The wrath of Mayawati.. don't mess with an 'untouchable' woman who rules a state of 167 million people
Correspondents say that bandits from another gang ambushed the police as they returned from the operation in Chitrakoot. "Two dacoits were killed. We also lost six of our men," the home ministry told AFP.
Talk to the RAB, they never have this problem. Course, they're always returning home at 6 am.
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati Kumari, said the 22-member police team involved in the battle would be given a collective reward of 1m rupees ($25,000).
This article starring:
Shiv Kumar Patel
Posted by: John Frum ||
07/24/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
The guy's name was "Shiv"? And he needed a nickname like Dadua?
#4
In the area where the dacoit Verrapan operated, villagers still search the forest for his cache of loot, believed buried, and worth millions of dollars.
Posted by: John Frum ||
07/24/2007 8:13 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
(ANSA) - Milan, August 24 - Italy's great neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova had a guilty secret, according to a Milan art expert.
A notorious bandit has been shot dead by police in India after evading them for more than 30 years, police say. The bandit, 
