Seven Brookfield Police officers broke up a fight that involved as many as 40 people, according to police reports. The altercation broke out after an uninvited guest showed up at a child's birthday party. No one was arrested. (See police report.)
Flint, Mich.: Jan. 26, 2008
Flint Township police responded to a call about a large fight at Chuck E. Cheese's that involved as many as 85 people, according to police reports. A fight inside the restaurant between three females erupted, pepper gas was sprayed and people flooded outside the restaurant into the back parking lot. (See police report.)
Toledo, Ohio: Feb. 4, 2007
Police responded to the scene after a fight broke out. Several parents complained about children who were having their picture drawn at one of the machines and then continued to sit there after the drawings were complete. Parents began calling names and then throwing punches. Several people were injured and several cited for disorderly conduct. (See police report.)
Matteson, Ill.: 2007-2008
Police have responded to 12 disturbance calls at Chuck E. Cheese in the last year, said a local law enforcement official. The disturbances ranged in seriousness and included one in which two men attacked another man at a birthday party.
Milwaukee, Wisc.: Aug. 11, 2006
Upon officers' arrival at a south side Chuck E. Cheese's, they spoke with a male who stated that during a verbal argument, an elderly female threw a shoe at him, according to police reports. He stated the fight started over someone calling his child "ugly." He stated he was not injured, his pride was just hurt.
Topeka, Kan.: Jan. 17, 2005
Topeka Police responded to a disturbance call around 5:30 p.m., according to a department spokeswoman. Two adult females were involved in an altercation prior to police arrival. It was reported that one small child was either bumped or stuck by another child. The mothers of the girls began to argue and an altercation ensued. No one was charged.
In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.
Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
12/10/2008 11:13 ||
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#1
For some reason, gangbangers and their associated scum families like to go to Chuck E. Cheeses, I've no idea why. Anyway, they aren't like they were back in the 80s, they're dangerous now.
In Milwaukee, the store posted a sign outlining a dress code that prohibits what it calls "gang-style apparel."
Yup.
This most recent assault, described in police reports, occurred after a woman in her 30s approached a 6-year-old boy who was playing a videogame. When the boy went to insert more tokens to continue playing, the woman grabbed the tokens out of his hand and told him to stop hogging the game. The boy went and got his 26-year-old mother, who walked over to the woman. The woman began screaming at the boy's mother, and another suspect, a man in his 30s, grabbed the mother by the throat and pushed her against the videogame machine.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/10/2008 13:06 Comments ||
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#3
Chuck E. Cheese is an ideal expression of once-a-year parental feelings for most lowlife assholes. The place ain't bad (I remember taking my kids there occasionally, but I stopped once they could drive themselves....whiners), just the customers ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/10/2008 19:31 Comments ||
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#4
heck, I remember when that place was like the best arcade on west side of Detroit in early 80s. They had every arcade game you could think of in every part of the restaurant and a huge game room - it was awesome for a 10 yr old, now it's a sham, very few games but lots of clowns.
#6
And the damned leftie fools wonder why normal people don't want anything to do with mass transit. Far too much of the "public" consists of lowlife bastards without the slightest respect for themselves, others, or their surroundings. Moreover, they're ready to threaten--or engage in--violence at the drop of a hat. This Chuck E. Cheese stuff is far more common in far more places than people want to believe.
When there is again general acceptance of the propriety of some "acting-out" jerkoff getting his ass beat bloody by bystanders--or widespread applause for Bernie Goetzes plugging armed robbers--maybe "public" areas can possibly again become acceptable venues for normal people. Given the direction our society is headed, however, I don't see that as likely.
Make no mistake: the general crudity of public behavior and the widespread, although sotto voce recognition of the black violent crime tsunami are the major reasons for the explosion of concealed carry permits in the U.S. Prudent people, where they can, are taking the steps necessary to protect themselves because they know that responsibility rests on them. Society is falling apart and the idea of police protection is truly nothing more than a myth.
GREEN campaigners called police after discovering an illegal logging site in a nature reserve only to find the culprits were a gang of beavers.
Environmentalists found 20 neatly stacked tree trunks and others marked with notches for felling at a beauty-spot in Subkowy, northern Poland. But when officers followed a trail left by a tree which had been dragged away, they found a beaver dam right across the river, as reported by the Austrian Times.
A police spokesman said: "The campaigners are feeling pretty stupid. There's nothing more natural than a beaver."
Posted by: Mike ||
12/10/2008 17:41 ||
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A German cruise ship planned to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them today to the next port of call to avoid possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia.
Several other cruise operators said they also would shift or cancel tours that would have taken clients past Somalia, as nations and companies around the world debate how to confront the piracy. The European Union said its anti-piracy mission would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships, the first deployment of military personnel during international anti-piracy operations. That deployment will not cover cruise ships. After the German ship drops off the 246 passengers in Yemen, they will fly to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel before rejoining the ship in Oman.
#4
Really. You could make this like an "adventure tourism" cruise and make some serious coin. Choice of weapons, instruction in chosen weapon. It'd be fun to see pirates cruise up to a fat, happy target and have like 500 people unload on them with everything from blunderbusses to bazookas.
#5
Steve, that would be happy hour. Could even set it up in a comfy chair, operate the water cannon by remote, bottle of Reisling chilled in a bucket sittin there. The controls for our rig's front monitor is just like my PC control stick for flight games. Wife would even enjoy it, she could make a batch of her ham chowder for the pre-game and pour the boiling soup over the side if the pirates do get a line on. I think its a great idea.
Posted by: ed ||
12/10/2008 13:03 Comments ||
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#7
I envision many different packages. For example, I have not had the chance to use Greek Fire for example. Others may have a certain purchase they have not yet had a chance to use.
And instead of them being "Q-Ships", it would be "R-Ship Cruise Lines".
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/10/2008 15:14 Comments ||
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#9
Actually I have a scoped Match M1A that needs exercise. Good Match ammo, spotter, ect. would work well in daylight. Would need night vision upgrades though.
At least with the passengers offloaded there will be plenty of crew to stand watch 24/7.
#10
"You could make this like an "adventure tourism" cruise and make some serious coin. Choice of weapons, instruction in chosen weapon."
Hell, I'd sign up for that cruise! Even pay extra. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/10/2008 18:38 Comments ||
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#11
I can offer systems that you could easily operate from a chaise lounge. The pirates would not have a chance. An M240 can make swiss cheese of a small boat very quickly.
#13
Mrs. Ret has coerced me into taking a cruise this spring, so to get back at her i sent her the story from a couple of weeks ago about the Aussie ship outrunning the pirates and the obligatory gunfire / waterhose exchange. she still hasn't forgiven me for that, but i think if i suggest that we can have 'skeet practice' as discused above, i might be able to bag out of the damn thing. at least for 26 years when i went on a cruise i got paid to do it........
Is it that time already? Every year, it just kinda sneaks up on ya...
(AKI) - Morocco's King Mohammed VI has pardoned 502 prisoners for the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice or Eid al-Adha, being celebrated this week. The king usually grants a pardon to inmates to mark religious and national holidays.
A royal pardon was granted to 15 inmates over their remaining prison term, while a reduced prison term was granted to 299 inmates, said the Moroccan Justice Ministry in a statement. Other royal gestures of goodwill included the reduction of fines, or release upon the payment of a fine.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika also pardoned an unknown number of convicted criminals ahead of the Eid al-Adha festival, reported official news agency Algerie Press Service. However, prisoners sentenced for terrorism, subversion, murder, theft and drug trafficking were excluded from the amnesty.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Kind of resembles pardoning turkeys for Thanksgiving here in the Dar-al-Harb.
ACCRA (AFP) The head of Ghana's ruling party Tuesday held a slim lead in a presidential election that observers said reinforced the country's democratic tradition and could set an example for the rest of Africa. With ballots from three-quarters of the country's constituencies counted, Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) moved ahead of his rival by 259,589 votes.
Official results from 175 of the 230 electoral constituencies put Akufo-Addo in the lead with 3,551,662 votes against 3,292,073 votes for John Atta-Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). Unofficial results from 224 constituencies gave Akufo-Addo the edge with 49.5 percent of the votes against Mills' 47.6 percent. A candidate needs more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a run-off.
The NDC, whose candidate Mills is making his third bid for the presidency, said it was poised for victory. Earlier it had accused the ruling NPP of trying to rig the election with the help of the country's security forces. Both the NPP and the military denied the allegations.
Despite opposition claims of vote rigging, independent local and international observers called Sunday's vote open and credible. The elections "have, so far, been conducted in an open, transparent and competitive environment," the team of observers from the European Union said Tuesday. EU chief election observer Nickolay Mladenov said Ghana has consolidated its democracy for more than a decade and "the December 7 election reflects that democratic culture."
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/10/2008 00:00 ||
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When her 3-year-old son begs for pizza, or when her family is shivering through yet another night in the Mexican highlands, those are the moments when Rosario Araujo misses America the most.
Just three months ago, Araujo and her husband, José Zavala, were still living comfortably, though illegally, as migrant workers in Gilbert.
He hung drywall for $10 an hour, and she cleaned houses. They had a small apartment, a washing machine and an occasional night out with their two American-born children.
But when work dried up in the economic crisis, they were forced to head south. Now, they live in a cinder-block house, huddle near a space heater and wash clothes by hand.
The family is part of a small but growing number of Mexican migrants who are heading home because of the U.S. recession and finding Mexico is barely prepared to receive them.
"It was a difficult decision," Araujo admitted. "We took a lot of risks to get (to America). We miss it."
Even in bad times, most illegal immigrants - they number 11.9 million, according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates - are staying put. U.S. salaries average about four times as high as those in Mexico, and Mexico's flat job market and drug-war violence have made home inhospitable.
But the collapse of the U.S. economy - particularly the housing industry, which relies heavily on migrant labor - means that some workers could simply run out of cash in the months ahead. That could push many to return to their homeland, where at least family can provide shelter and food.
"We have to face the possibility of a very large number of Mexicans (coming home)," Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said last month.
The trend eventually could ease some of the strain that illegal immigrants place on services such as schools and hospitals in U.S. border areas, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank.
The impact in Mexico could be enormous because the country has long depended on emigration as a kind of safety valve for the economy, which doesn't produce enough jobs for those entering the labor force. Espinosa said the government is trying to prepare schools and social agencies for an influx of poor migrants.
That will be difficult. Many children who are returning home don't even speak Spanish. Other migrants bring expectations shaped from having lived in a developed country for years.
Zavala worries about his children's education. "The schools there (in the United States), they take the children in a bus and give them food, books, everything," he said. "Here, you walk to school and you get nothing."
For now, the couple are barely scraping by off their dwindling savings. Zavala spends his days tending his father's three cows, waiting for planting season and worrying about the future. Article is strongly sugar-coated. Often, the local Patron just says, "Take off the Nikes, put on your sandals, and get back to work in the fields, you high-school educated Peon dog, before I flog you." This order is not well-received.
#6
Amazing Spot isn't it. Instead of making excuses for the illegals, how about the usual wankers spend more time pressuring other governments to adopt the model that attracts so many of their people here. Of course, same said wankers just bitch and moan about here never acknowledging that even in its imperfections that it is way and far ahead of most of the rest of the world, and willing, for those who do go through the legal process, to accept any color, race, or creed [even as suicidal as it seems some day].
#7
Gee, if they liked it here so much maybe they ought all go back and turn Mehicco into something more like the US. Then would not only they be happier but so would all the other Mehiccans.
#11
Without the safety valve perhaps Mexico will see some political reform and start their journey towards being a first world nation. A century late but better late than never.
#12
Sorry, but I doubt 10% will return. Even the criminal life here is easier than the peasant life there.
Posted by: ed ||
12/10/2008 12:29 Comments ||
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#13
The crime levels in Mexico are truly world-class, with US drug money and weapons mixing with the Mexican nation's dysfunction in a real devil's brew. It's just a matter of time before it spills over the border into the USA.
#15
Yes they have. It's around most of their estates to keep the smelly peasants tourists out.
Posted by: ed ||
12/10/2008 13:16 Comments ||
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#16
That's an Air Force thing.
"When in trouble,
when in doubt,
run in circles,
scream and shout.
MEANING, fly in circles and radio for help.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
12/10/2008 13:24 Comments ||
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#17
Without the safety valve perhaps Mexico will see some political reform and start their journey towards being a first world nation. A century late but better late than never.
Or we could find ourselves with a completely collapsed / failed state on our border, where there is little in the way of natural barriers and across which the dysfunction and violence is already pouring.
#18
I'm surprised the Messikan government (sic) isn't demanding repatriations from US to cover the costs of bribes ..uh.. welfare and caregiving. Yeah, that's what I meant!
#20
Zavala worries about his children's education. "The schools there (in the United States), they take the children in a bus and give them food, books, everything," he said. "Here, you walk to school and you get nothing."
Okay, Jose. How about we consider it payback for all those taxes you never paid up here for your kids getting all that swell free gringo stuff?
#24
It's not just an economic safety valve. The most pro-active, energetic, risk-taking, unsatisfied folks make the trip north.
Stuffing that crowd back into Mexico and into poverty is going to be a problem for Mexico.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
12/10/2008 15:42 Comments ||
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#25
Stuffing that crowd back into Mexico and into poverty is going to be a problem for Mexico.
Good. All the more reason to jam their asses back across the border faster. Build the damned wall, build it immediately, and put bullets in anyone who tries to go over, under or through it.
Screw Mex. They've tried to hurt us every way possible and been successful at most of them. We should long since have broken diplomatic relations and told them to enjoy their trade with Guatemala. The U.S. needs to start treating them and their invaders like the national enemy they are.
#27
But the collapse of the U.S. economy - particularly the housing industry, which relies heavily on migrant labor -
How about if some of our home building companies go south and get some drug lord to invest in the kind of massive housing tracts they build up here down there? Do you think the Mexican government is stupid enough to pass a Mexican equivalent of the Community Reinvestmant Act?
#28
Living here in Katrina-land I gained a lot of respect for our illegal Latino immigrants, and would happily keep them and swap a like number of our legal citizens to Mexico instead. Illegal Mexicans living in tents or six to a motel room, eating tortillas and canned beans while they gut nasty flooded houses for citizens who are fed and housed in unaffected cities at MY expense - the whole process bugs the heck out of me.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/10/2008 19:46 Comments ||
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#30
Glenmore,
I completely sympathize. However, the worthless, feckless bastards that you're wishing to exchange are American citizens. The illegals aren't. There's the difference. The former are just parasites. The latter are knowingly breaking our laws as well as being parasites. Either that open flouting of the laws ends or the country does. It's that simple.
Fabiana Nunes Rodrigues didn't know much about trains. But she wanted a good job, she said, something stable, maybe as a mechanic, like her grandfather. Brazilian college courses didn't offer much in the way of technical instruction. But one company in her home town did, and she already knew it well.
Since she was 15, Rodrigues had spent her afternoons in technical classes sponsored by the mining giant Vale, the world's largest producer of iron ore. So it made sense that when she graduated from high school she would enroll in Vale's nine-month train maintenance course on this vast corporate campus on a rise above the Atlantic Ocean.
"I've always wanted to work for Vale," said Rodrigues, 18, standing in a maintenance facility where cranes were lifting hulking metal tubing from a train engine. "Now many of my friends want to take this class, too."
Vale also wants people like Rodrigues, and is willing to do a lot to get them. With more than 150,000 employees worldwide, it is one of several large corporations in fields such as mining, aerospace and construction that are driving Brazil's ascent in the world economy. But the firms' ambitious plans for growth have bumped into a problem hampering development across Latin America: a higher education system that does not churn out enough engineers and others with technical skills, even as the global economic crisis depresses demand.
Despite being one of the world's most populous countries, Brazil does not have a single university ranked in the top 100 internationally. Of its college graduates, 5 percent are engineers, far below the rates of countries such as China and South Korea, according to Brazilian businesses.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2008 00:00 ||
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OTTAWA, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Quebec separatists were in an upbeat mood on Tuesday, despite a third consecutive election defeat, saying the Parti Quebecois's surprisingly strong performance was good reason to be optimistic. The party, which wants the largely French-speaking province of Quebec to break away from Canada, won 51 of the 125 seats in the provincial legislature in Monday's election, up from the 36 seats it had held previously. It also won 35 percent of the popular vote -- around 5 percentage points more than expected.
The ruling Liberals won 66 seats, up from the 48 they won in March 2007, and will form a majority government. They took 42 percent of the popular vote. The Liberals and the Parti Quebecois gained at the expense of the right-leaning Action democratique du Quebec, which came close to winning in 2007. This time the ADQ won just seven seats, down from the 39 it held when the vote was called.
Liberal premier Jean Charest called the election less than two years into his mandate on the grounds he needed a majority in the legislature to tackle what he described as "the economic storm" hitting Quebec. "The issue of the election was the economy, and is still the economy. That hasn't changed. That transcends all other issues," Charest told a news conference on Tuesday.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/10/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Yawn.
"The Parti Quebecois's surprisingly strong performance" was to be expected.
Whatever it takes to steal the money from productive parts of Canada and award it to themselves.
Just wait for the federal budget in January, the defeated government in May or June and the following election. Clarity coming. Everything west of the Ontario/Manitoba border teaching Quebec what "Separatism" really means.
#2
Everything west of the Ontario/Manitoba border teaching Quebec what "Separatism" really means.
Ya think? Ovis Canadensis is too a prevalent species that the Quebecois racket would continue unabated and no one will turn blue holding breath for Westerners to say "nuff!"
#11
Quebec provides a lot of electricity to the American northeast.
Most of Quebec (~80%), is Cree and other 1st nations (f.e. Mohawk) territory, and these electricity producing facilities are in it. If Quebec separates, they'd separate from it, being anglophone, and likely join rest of Canada. So instead of Hydro Quebec, NEUS may be doing biz with Hydro Cree. That is all to it.
India's ruling Congress party has won control of three states in local elections, officials said Monday, a surprising victory as public attitudes toward the government sour in the wake of last month's attacks in Mumbai.
That's because they handled the Mumbai attacks so competently. People remember that sort of thing.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2008 00:00 ||
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Wearing nothing but feathers and a long, tapering gourd jutting from his groin, Papuan tribesman Suroba says the Indonesian government cannot force him to wear pants.
Suroba, who estimates his age in his sixties, remembers the last time the government launched a campaign to eradicate the penis gourd, known here as a koteka, in the 1970s. It was a dismal failure. "Back then we were wearing our traditional clothes, like the koteka, and we're still wearing them now," he said.
The latest threat to the koteka, and traditions like it, is a new anti-pornography law passed in October by mostly Muslim lawmakers in the capital Jakarta, 3,500 kilometers (2,000 miles) away.
The law, which criminalizes all works and "bodily movements" deemed obscene and capable of violating public morality, was pushed through by Islamic parties despite stiff opposition and years of rancorous debate.
Opponents of the law say its definition of pornography is too broad and could threaten local traditions, from nude temple carvings on Hindu-majority Bali island to tribal dances and phallic totems on Papua, a vast territory of untouched forests and mountains on the western end of New Guinea island.
Thousands of people on Bali have protested, and activists and politicians from Indonesia's far-flung non-Muslim regions, such as mainly Christian and animist Papua, have begun murmuring of civil disobedience.
Ancient traditions
In Kurulu, the koteka is an old tradition. The village sits in the remote Baliem valley, a fertile bowl carved out of the mountains running down Papua's spine that had no contact with the outside world until after World War II.
The 370-year-old smoke-blackened mummy of one ancestor, Wimintok Mabel, which squats in the grass-roofed hut where the village men sleep, wears nothing but the remnants of a headdress, a necklace and a shattered koteka.
But traditions here are slowly giving ground to modernity. Children and younger adults already wear Western clothes, and Suroba conceded he sometimes wears pants on cold nights. But it's the suggestion that outsiders can force locals to abandon their culture that raises hackles.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Can I wear one of those in a Starbucks? If a woman wears one, is that cross dressing? What do you do with the extra space inside one of those things? So many questions. So little time.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
12/10/2008 9:22 Comments ||
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#2
Starbucks Koteka mugs? Your Toffee Nut Latte will never quite taste the same Richard.
Wearing nothing but feathers and a long, tapering gourd jutting from his groin, Papuan tribesman Suroba says the Indonesian government cannot force him to wear pants.
That has got to be one of the all-time greatest opening sentences. That's worthy of an old-school New York Post byline.
As was the later reference to "stiff opposition".
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
12/10/2008 14:50 Comments ||
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#6
a fertile bowl carved out of the mountains running down Papua's spine
Couple with that line, it starts to get a little too steamy.
Personal deal here, though a sorted story to bring it up in. All those people here who cry for the Native Americans and the loss of their culture, well here it is going on right in front of the world and they do nothing. Same thing with all those people who claim they have the Buddhist spirit sat and did nothing while Myanmar reloaded. Perhaps they should go and do something about it over there where it is happening instead of supporting this by drinking fancy coffee from this region and bitching.
"Oh, the poor orangutans being forced off their ancient forest..boo hoo. Hey, is that a Sumatra coffee bean? I love that stuff gonna go have another. Ugh, can you believe they still have the Cowboys vs. Redskins games? Yumm chocolate..Aztecs, what else did they do that I don't know about?"
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.
In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.
A German cruise ship planned to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them today to the next port of call to avoid possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia. 
Wearing nothing but feathers and a long, tapering gourd jutting from his groin, Papuan tribesman Suroba says the Indonesian government cannot force him to wear pants. 
