A woman who hired a hitman to murder the wife of her lover, and then complained to police when he didn't do the job, has been arrested along with the hitman, police said.
"You have the right to remain silent â stop laughing, Dano!... You have the right to an attorney â Dano, I told you to button it!... Anything you say can â Cheeze! Somebody help Dano! He's having a fit!... No, not you, ma'am!"
The murderous intentions of Eriko Kawaguchi, a Tokyo Fire Fighting Department employee, came to light after she complained to police because the hitman didn't carry out the job, although she paid him about 15 million yen. "I came to know that the wife gave birth and then I felt betrayed (by the lover)," officers quoted Kawaguchi, 32, as saying about her motive for hiring the hitman.
"As soon as she got preggers, I know, knew beyond a doubt, that he'd been doinking her!"
Kawaguchi, from the Tokyo suburb of Tama, phoned Takaharu Tabe, 40, from Kunitachi, after she read Tabe's web page on the Internet in November last year, police said.
"All about me: I'm a tough guy. I like to kill people. Click here for photos of guys I've killed..."
In January this year, Kawaguchi met Tabe in Tachikawa, requesting that he murder the wife of her lover. In due course she paid him a total of some 15 million yen for the murder and the costs of tailing and keeping watch on the target.
"Nyah, baby! Bumpin' guyz off don't come cheap, y'know!"
Tabe offered to murder the target by taking her on a motorbike into a tunnel and pouring poisonous bacteria over her.
That's what I always do when I want to bump somebody off. Either that, or trap them in an abandoned silver mine and fill the place with poisonous fish...
Tabe then showed photos of the home and working place of the woman to Kawaguchi. He even gave white powder to Kawaguchi and said he used it to murder the 32-year-old target. But the wife of Kawaguchi's lover was never attacked and recently gave birth.
"On the bright side, the powder did clear up that scaly stuff between my toes..."
Six months later, Kawaguchi then went to the Tama Chuo Police Station and made a complaint, police said. Officers are grilling Tabe about the possibility of other murder contracts.
"Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!"
"Oh, yeah? How about this!"
"My footpowder! Where did you get that?"
Posted by: Fred ||
09/15/2005 15:25 ||
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#1
Either that, or trap them in an abandoned silver mine and fill the place with poisonous fish...
What about luring them to the dungeon of an old castle and pushing them into the inevitable vat of acid?
People have the most touching faith in the power of bacteria. Here you got yer poisonous bacteria; others go with that old standby, urine; and I heard of a case not too long ago where a couple tried to poison a coworker by smearing some candy with -- prepare to be shocked -- raw chicken juice! Fear the bacteria!
#2
This idjit reminds me of my short career as a 911 operator. One guy called in to complain that the hooker he just paid $20 to didn't perform the agreed upon services.
The officer almost got him, too. The moron realized his stupidity and took off seconds before the cop got there.
Lessee...there's the tried and true method of dunking the poor victim into a tank filled with man-eating sharks, then there's the sophisticated strap him to a metal table and turn on the automated laser designed to cut him in half, then there's the one where you chase him down the snowy mountainside with a horde of machinegun toting henchmen, and the one where you unleash a deadly poisonous spider in his bungalow room, or the one where you trap him between your beaters and the deadly man-eating tiger, or even the trap him in a room with pointy spikes on the floor and ceiling and then start the ceiling rolling down on him, or the one where the one where he triggers the trap himself and gets this huge rock ball rolling down the perfectly fit tunnel after him, then there's the one where he gets trapped in an elevator car that fills with poisonous gas, and the one where he (she in this case) has to go toe-to-toe with a roomfull of Yakuza swordsmen...
I could go on, but I'm sure Halliburtons' Evil Genius Deathtrap Division is already starting to take notes...
Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago, and authorities launched a search though health experts said there was scant public risk. The mice were unaccounted-for at the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government. Federal official said the mice may never be accounted for. Among other things, the rodents may have been stolen, eaten by other lab animals or just misplaced in a paperwork error.
Or they may never have existed at all if their paperwork is that screwed up
If the mice got outside the lab, they would have already died from the disease, state Health Commissioner Fred Jacobs said.
As long as they didn't have any fleas to pass the plague to another host, there's no problem
The possibility of theft prompted the institute to interrogate two dozen of its employees and conduct lie detector tests, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported Thursday. The FBI said it was investigating.
We're doomed!
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also investigating, the newspaper reported.
OK, I feel much better now.
University officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday morning. The mice were injected as part of an inoculation and vaccination experiment, investigators said. Health officials say 10 to 20 people in the United States contract plague each year, usually through infected fleas or rodents. It can be treated with antibiotics, but about one in seven U.S. cases is fatal. Bubonic plague is not contagious, but left untreated it can transform into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person.
Which is a very bad thing
The incident came as federal authorities investigate possible corruption in the school's finances. The FBI is reviewing political donations and millions of dollars in no-bid contracts awarded to politically connected firms.
In New Jersey? I'm shocked!
Posted by: Steve ||
09/15/2005 14:13 ||
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I'm shocked that the bribes didn't happen in LA.
#2
BIG FRICKEN DEAL!!! Out here in Colorado I can walk 15 min in any direction and find a Prairie Dog colony infected with it the Plague. Its very common out here.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
09/15/2005 15:30 Comments ||
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I was thinking the same thing, Sam.
Out here in California, we have the plague, Hanta virus, rabies, tularemia(sp?), you name it.
Just the press, again, going off half-cocked, with half a notion in half a brain.
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
09/15/2005 15:46 Comments ||
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#4
Well, the plague isn't endemic to that part of the East Coast, so this isn't exactly pleasant news. But not exactly a "Black Death Come Again - Populace Despairs, Burns Down Churches & Lynches Nearby Jews" kind of disaster.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
09/15/2005 16:23 Comments ||
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YS is correct. His neighbors down in New Mexico maintain the unoffical state motto of "Home of the Flea, Land of the Plague". Usually anywhere up to a dozen cases a year. The advantage is that our medicial people know what it is and recognize it immediately to begin treatment. If caught early enough, the patient can be saved. Now if it gets hold in major city that doesn't recognize it, it could get interesting. Some of our local NM natives made life exciting in NY not too long ago - http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5231a1.htm
A 20-year-old orphan who was living alone in his dead mom's Long Island home was murdered by his two best friends â because they wanted to use the house as a sex den to sleep with their girlfriends, police said yesterday. The young killers concealed the body of Michael Moore in the basement of the Freeport home, then drove around in his Lincoln Continental, hung out in the house, watched his large-screen TV and partied with their girlfriends, police said.
Investigators said the accused murderers, who had never been arrested before, wanted a trysting place because they lived at home with their parents. After the slaying, they also allegedly stole cash and valuables from the house, including a stereo. "This is the ultimate case of identity theft," because it involved murder, said Nassau County Homicide Squad Detective Sgt. Dennis Barry. Moore was working and going to college after his mother Margueritte's death from cancer five years ago.
On Aug. 11, Moore was at his home on Randall Avenue when his pals Antonio Pegues, 22, of Uniondale, and Keith Martin, 20, of Hempstead, allegedly attacked him in the living room. When he was unconscious from the beating, "they strangled him to death," Barry said. Later, when the smell of the hidden corpse became too strong, Pegues and Martin put it into plastic bags and dumped it into the East River, where it was discovered in The Bronx 12 days after the slaying, Barry said. Sorry if I got your hopes up, folks.
#6
They could have asked. I mean what kind of guy would refuse to let his friends makeout in his house if they had nowhere else to go. Methinks they weren't really very good friends.
A BEACHED whale was blown up in front of horrified children yesterday after rescuers failed to get it back into deep water.
Nuke The Whales!
Onlookers watched as explosives were strapped behind the 10-metre Southern Right whale's head and detonated, killing it instantly. Many of them shouted insults at police as the whale died.
SPLAT! "Damm, I just washed that car! What's good for removing whale guts from leather seats?"
Later, officials in South Africa defended the way the beast was killed on a beach near Cape Town. Carol Esmosas, of the Department of Tourism, said explosives were recommended for such cases by the International Whaling Commission. Other options, such as shooting the whale or injecting it with drugs, were considered riskier and more painful for the animal.
Dozens of local people and rescue workers had spent the night trying to get the whale back into the sea. But by daybreak the high tide had washed it further up the beach, where it became stuck on sand and was clearly suffering, officials said. The whale was either sick or had just became trapped.
#6
I blew up up a rotten dead horse in a creek early in my blasting career, but I never popped the top off a live whale with DooooooooooooooPont. Not even a dead whale. One hell of a way to put down a whale.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/15/2005 22:33 Comments ||
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For the second straight year, a sheep has been stolen from the Natural Resources Trust of Easton, abused, and left inside of a dormitory at Stonehill College. According to Robert Babineau, executive director of the trust, the sheep was taken Sept. 3, spray-painted in black, dressed in a bra, and placed inside a Stonehill dorm.
Posted by: john ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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racist sheep abuse
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/15/2005 1:07 Comments ||
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Oh Lordy, I hope they've not done the unmentionable.
Posted by: Ingrid Newkirk ||
09/15/2005 1:34 Comments ||
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Class 101: Doing the Unmentionable While Counting Sheep
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/15/2005 2:44 Comments ||
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Boston is a haven for liberals. You know anything goes. The liberal view is that it is OK to have rules and laws but they shouldn't apply to me.
#5
Oh Lordy, I hope they've not done the unmentionable.
"In the latest case, the sheep, as well as a chicken, were taken from an educational location of the trust's land on Main Street in Easton called the Sheep Pasture. While the chicken is unharmed, Babineau said, the sheep seemed distraught from the experience."
I guess this explains why sheep hate us.
Posted by: Steve ||
09/15/2005 8:28 Comments ||
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the sheep seemed distraught from the experience."
That is simply an MSM lie. I saw the sheep interviewed by Greta last night. When asked how it was feeling now that the worst was over , the sheep said " ... not bbbaaaddd"
Thanks for coming. I'll be here all week!
#8
" . . . the sheep seemed distraught from the experience"
I'm all for harmless college pranks, but think about it. The group of "we're SO cool" college guys were probably mean to the sheep. First it was taken from a familiar environment, then no doubt roughly handling it, getting it into a truck or dragging it along. I can only imagine them frightening it and kicking it or hitting it, laughing, making it drink beer, etc. And the paint would be really bad, depending on how much they used (and if you don't think so, go spray yourself with spraypaint--especially near the eyes). Animals also can understand a sense of "threat" when human (animals) are humiliating them. Such actions only prove the attackers' lack of maturity and character.
Terrorizing animals sucks, and anyone who thinks otherwise should examine their own fucked-up "ideology." The evidence that the animal was exhibiting signs of severe stress is nothing to be proud of, or to think funny.
The whole thing is outrageous, and if you don't think so, ask youself if volunteering your dog for the same treatment at the hands of these spoiled brats, would be something you'd be interested in.
#9
sounds like you had a bad experience once, ex-lib....shhhheeeesh
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/15/2005 11:14 Comments ||
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I agree with ex-lib.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/15/2005 11:49 Comments ||
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And I agree with Frank.
Having been on a tour of a Hallel kill floor, I can report that under any set of values, the sheep from Boston College is having a better day than those standing in lines all around the mooselimb world as I type this.
#14
Flav: So you'd volunteer your Rottie to be harrassed by a bunch of idiot teenagers -- oh, excuse me -- idiot twenty-somethings? Frat trash? Poor dog. Have you considered donating your dog to someone who deserves him? Because you don't.
Capsu: Just because people elsewhere are going through hell doesn't give license to abuse a helpless animal in the U.S. Duh.
Frank: Try to actually THINK, okay? The terrorists you diss here regularly, (no problem with that) have the exact same attitude toward women and children. The mistreatment of animals is one step closer to the mistreatment of physically weaker human beings. Besides, if someone did this on their own, they'd be considered a disturbed lunatic. But if it's a group . . . well, that's "okay." Not. And BTW, I wouldn't have commented, except that the report indicated that abuse had occurred and that the animal was stressed. See, Frank, we have LAWS against that kind of bullshit, in case you didn't know.
MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio - Two Amish buggies were crushed by 18-wheelers in separate accidents Sunday night and Monday morning about 50 miles east of Akron. Highway Patrol officials say buggy driver John Miller was airlifted to an Akron hospital with unspecified injuries. He is still in serious condition. Miller failed to stop at a red light late Sunday night in Middlefield. His passenger, Barbara Schmucker, suffered a broken shoulder and has been released.
Truck driver Walter Myers was cited after he attempted to pass Andy Kauffman's buggy Monday morning in Troy Township. Officials say Myers crossed back into his lane to avoid oncoming traffic. Kauffman and his passenger, John Weaver, had minor injuries. The horses in both accidents were killed.
You'd expect that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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With a name like Schmucker....naw, I can't pull the trigger on this one.
#4
Hmmmm ... horse and buggy. Yep, I've encounter these before near Lancaster and Intercourse, PA.
Just a thought, but what if those Islamists interested in living by 13th century standards insisted on riding only camels on some of our highways? Ummmm... do you see where this is going? LOL
#5
I can't see Amish road rage becoming an issue though the same can't be said for gun toting camel riding islamists I'm afraid. Don't let the beards fool you. The Amish are for the most part legitmately peaceful and tolerant as advertised. Oh vey, we wunder why Amish kinder grow up to be sharp used car salemen when they leave the fold. Darn "English" daresn't drive like knuckleheads on Amish lands!
#6
I see where this is going Angry Fliegerabwehrkanonen. Mmmmm. Intercourse, PA. Something about being screwed if your horse and buggy encounter an 18-wheeler on the road.
RIYADH - Saudi women will run in elections to the board of the Jeddah chamber of commerce and industry in a first for the kingdom, officials said on Wednesday.
The chamber was notified on Tuesday of a decision by Trade and Industry Minister Hashem Yamani to reschedule the board elections, which had been due at the end of September. The decision to reopen the door to candidacies, for two weeks starting next Saturday, will allow women to come forward, legal adviser Mustafa Sabri told AFP.
The chamberâs 40,000 members include some 3,000 women, Sabri said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday that U.S. authorities have denied visas to his security team, hampering his attendance at this week's U.N. summit in New York. U.S. Embassy officials denied Chavez' claim. "The United States is violating international accords ... they denied visas for my thugsgoonshomies security team," said Chavez who has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of backing plots against him.
He said he was still considering whether to go to New York after the visas were allegedly denied for his bodyguards and the military chief of his security detail. He accused the U.S. government of attempting to undermine his participation at the U.N. summit, which begins Wednesday. No. We simply don't care.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Brian Penn, denied Chavez' claim, saying the embassy "has not denied any visas to members of the (Venezuelan) delegation going to New York for the U.N. meeting," But visiting Uncle Ernesto in Queens is right out.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan leader also accused the U.S. authorities of allegedly changing "at the last minute" the location where his plane was supposed to land. He called the move "intervention" in Venezuela's affairs. Giving clearance to a foreign government airplane to a US airport is "intervention in Venezuela's affairs." Right.
Chavez said the alleged visa denials were particularly disturbing given the recent suggestion by American religious broadcaster Pat Robertson that he should be killed. Well, he should be, just not in any way traceable to the US. (Which means he should not be, I guess.)
Chavez has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of backing a short-lived 2002 coup against him, and recently alleged that Washington was preparing an invasion on his South American nation - a key oil producer. U.S. officials have denied the claims as ridiculous as Chavez himself. He plays the buffon, and probably is one, but a Cuba with oil revenue would not be a good thing for peace in the Americas.
#1
I love it, as paranoid as he is (With reason) going without his bodyguards is the same as saying "Go Away" without actualy having to deny him entry.
Didn't I hear about a very similar ploy used on Bush last year, the Secret service was told they had to leave their guns at the door (The SS told them to go to hell)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/15/2005 1:21 Comments ||
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Meanwhile, the Venezuelan leader also accused the U.S. authorities of allegedly changing "at the last minute" the location where his plane was supposed to land. He called the move "intervention" in Venezuela's affairs.
Clear him all the way to LaGuardia.
And shoot him down somewhere over the ocean.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/15/2005 7:29 Comments ||
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Lol, RC. Try out some of that Buck Rogers hardware so it will be appropriately "mysterious". This punk is tiresome.
the threat posed by China's demographics is known to most RBers ... it's interesting to see the IHT actually print an article, tho, which predicts the possibility of China invading another country as a result of excess young males. Been worried about that for a while now.
In a trend fraught with troubling political and social implications, China will soon find itself with a marriage-age population remarkably out of balance, with about 23 million more young men than women available for them to marry in this decade and the next - what demographers term a "marriage squeeze."
This impending surplus of unattached young men could be a driving force behind increased crime, explosive epidemics of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and even international threats to the security of other nations. Yet the Chinese government has done little to address its demographic destiny.
The coming squeeze is largely the legacy of the government's one-child policy, along with societal modernization. As a result, the nation's fertility rate has fallen dramatically, from around 6 children per woman in the 1960s to around 1.7 currently.
But the society's strong cultural preference for sons has not changed. In recent decades, ready access to ultrasound technology has enabled parents to learn the sex of their unborn children and has led to widespread female-specific abortion.
The demographic consequence is now apparent. Most societies exhibit biologically natural sex ratios at birth of around 105 baby boys born for every 100 baby girls, yielding roughly equal numbers of prospective brides and grooms as generations reach marriageable age. This normal pattern emerges where human interventions don't disturb biology.
But China has departed markedly from this natural pattern since the 1980s. Its sex ratio at birth has hovered between 115 and 120 baby boys for every 100 baby girls in recent years, a level that renders roughly one of every eight men in a generation "surplus." Many Chinese refer to the surplus boys as guang gun (bare branches).
Past societies with large numbers of unattached men have on occasion turned to a more authoritarian political system, perceiving threats of violence. Such societies have also sought to harness their surplus of men by recruiting excess males into military occupations, pursuing expansionist policies aimed at developing unexplored territories or colonizing neighboring ones.
The tensions associated with so many bachelors in China's big cities might tempt its future leaders to mobilize this excess manpower and go pick a fight, or invade another country. China is already co-opting poor unmarried young men into the People's Liberation Army and the paramilitary People's Armed Police.
No less disquieting are the social dynamics accompanying a severe marriage squeeze. In all likelihood, millions of young, poor Chinese bachelors never will marry. Many will migrate from rural areas to urban destinations, patronizing prostitutes there. In doing so, these unattached men could turn China's HIV epidemic - now confined to certain high-risk populations - into a more generalized one by creating "bridging" populations from high- to low-risk individuals. Such male bridging populations have fueled HIV epidemics in Cambodia and sub-Saharan Africa.
China's legal marriage age - 22 years for men, 20 for women - means that more than 23.5 million young men (by our estimate) will be unable to find Chinese wives during the period from 2000 to 2021, owing to the inadequate supply of Chinese women in the marriage market. Neither a spontaneous shift toward a later average age at first marriage nor lax enforcement on the supply side to allow teenage brides would substantially lessen this market imbalance.
Although the 23 million-plus surplus of boys exceeds the entire population of most countries, it represents but a tiny fraction of all 1.3 billion Chinese. However, these millions of "bare branches" will be concentrated in a generation born over a short 20-year period and living mostly in the cities of a largely rural China.
The surplus of boys and shortage of girls "made in China" could soon become not just a concern for China, but for the world.
(Dudley L. Poston is a professor of sociology at Texas A&M University. Peter A. Morrison is a demographer with RAND Corp.)
#2
Past societies with large numbers of unattached men have on occasion turned to a more authoritarian political system, perceiving threats of violence. Such societies have also sought to harness their surplus of men by recruiting excess males into military occupations, pursuing expansionist policies aimed at developing unexplored territories or colonizing neighboring ones.
See also the Muslim world, in which polygamy results in lots of men without any prospects for marriage.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/15/2005 10:36 Comments ||
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I dunno trailing wife; if I were a North Korean girl I might want to be exported. Beats eating tree bark.
#8
Women will be valued much more highly due to the shortage, so I think this will self correct.
Well, unless the chinese not only have mastered human cloning, but also are growing millions of cloned females who are maturing at the same rate as their males ....
#9
Such societies have also sought to harness their surplus of men by recruiting excess males into military occupations, pursuing expansionist policies aimed at developing unexplored territories or colonizing neighboring ones.
See above note about Zim-Bob's aparent intent.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/15/2005 14:18 Comments ||
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In societies that don't value females, scarcity doesn't necessarily increase their value. Instead you get girl-hoarding by the powerful, girl children kidnapped or sold into prostitution, gangs of "brothers" holding one female prisoner for the group to share, and general societal degeneration and warlordism. And North Korean women entering into whatever arrangement allows them more than tree bark to eat, while their brothers stay home and die of starvation, right, Secret Master?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/15/2005 15:35 Comments ||
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There is a solution for demographic war. India has the same problem: too many young males. Neither country can offer them either employment or even a chance at marriage.
So, how about a gigantic World War-I style trench war between China and India? Weirdly enough, there may be such a thing as purely demographic-driven war. And if this is the case, this might be the natural solution.
#13
And North Korean women entering into whatever arrangement allows them more than tree bark to eat, while their brothers stay home and die of starvation, right, Secret Master?
Very possibly. Or her parents will sell her for enough money to feed their family for a while. Or she will sell herself for the same reason. Or sheâll do it because there are no economic opportunities in North Korea. Thatâs human nature in the face of starvation and extreme poverty. Hell, thatâs human nature in the face of abundance and affluence. I used to live in San Franciscoâs Tenderloin District, where many young people raised in moneyed portions of America sell themselves for relatively small amounts of heroin. One would assume that they have significantly less motivation than a 14-year-old Korean girl watching her five- year-old younger sister die of malnutrition.
The horrifying possibilities of human behavior are nearly endless. Or, at least, thatâs what living in San Francisco taught me.
Of course, the smart thing for the Chinese to do would be to follow the example of horny Spaniards and Americans and invade the Philippines. You can bet they are giving it some thought.
#14
It's a bunch of bull. China has gone through this kind of thing for thousands of years. During times of famine, poor families tended to either sell their daughters into concubinage or prostitution. When they were unable to do so, they would simply withhold food from selected daughters. Periods of strife came not from sexual imbalances, but from famine and pestilence combined with a weak state, during which times desperate men faced with certain death undertook high stakes gambles with their lives and the lives of their followers. China is not currently in that situation - economic growth is lifting living standards in leaps and bounds and the state remains strong and able to enforce its edicts.
Sexual imbalances are a staple of Chinese history. Until the 20th century, when Western legal codes took hold, Chinese males could marry as many women as they could afford. Poor men sought the company of professionals.
This morning, NPR did a story on how much Gerd, the Comeback Kid, enjoys campaigning and how he had erased Merkel's lead. TGA has said it's safe, but I sense a nail biter. Now the Times says it will be decided by the Muzzies. Somebody better be ready for recounts in Westphalia.
AYFER DURUR is one of the most fashionable hairdressers in Berlin and a natural Christian Democratic voter â an entrepreneur worried about taxes, high labour costs and the sluggish economy. However, the 38-year-old is going to vote for the Social Democrats â one of 600,000 Turkish Germans who could throw a lifeline to Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, if the general election on Sunday turns out to be a dead heat, as the latest opinion polls suggest.
Of course he's gonna vote Social Democrat. He's a hairdresser, fergawdsake!
"Will the Turks decide the election?" the mass-circulation Bild asked yesterday, a question regarded as provocative, even racist, by immigrants in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. They do, after all, have German citizenship and are not, as one greengrocer put it, "some kind of alien invaders".
"The Social Democrats have always fought our corner," Ms Durur said in her salon, which caters for boybands and TV stars, "and Schröder is the only one campaigning for Turkish entry to the European Union." That issue is the key foreign policy difference between Herr Schröder and Angela Merkel, his conservative rival. Her Christian Democrats have angered Turkey by holding out the prospect of, at best, a "privileged partnership" with the EU. For Turkish Germans that smacks of second-class treatment and they fear that it would degrade their own growing importance in German society. There are 1.8 million Turks in Germany; almost one third are entitled to vote. That amounts to 1.2 per cent of the electorate — and the election could well be decided on such a slim margin. Indeed, the Chancellor won the 2002 election with a margin of 6,027 votes.
Herr Schröder has thus been casting his net this week for the Turkish Germans, anxious to mobilise every last vote. At the printing works of Hürriyet and Milliyet, the Turkish-language newspapers, he declared to a cheering crowd: "Turkey has fulfilled its entry requirements for the European Union — and I say that not only in the name of the Germans but of all governments in Europe."
The Social Democrats have traditionally had strong links to the Turkish community. The trade unions made the first attempts to integrate them as they arrived in West German factories in the 1960s. The past seven years of the Social Democrat-Green Government made it easier for the second generation of Turkish immigrants to become full German citizens.
Fewer than 5 per cent of Turkish Germans have considered voting for the Christian Democrats and so Frau Merkel hopes to drum up support from conservative non-Turkish Germans by emphasising Turkey's unsuitability for full EU membership.
Talks on Turkish entry to the EU are due to start on October 3 so the issue is slipping into almost every election speech.
Bild reprimanded the Chancellor for taking the election campaign into the Turkish community. It said: "If you manipulate the German-Turkish minority for election purposes you are dealing a real blow to the cohabitation of Germans and Turks."
Ms Durur said: "This is not really about voting. It's about binding us into society."
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/15/2005 08:02 ||
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For Turkish Germans that smacks of second-class treatment and they fear that it would degrade their own growing importance in German society.
So, anyone have a nice way to say that we don't trust Turkey not to fall Islamist and their immigrants in Germany with it?
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
09/15/2005 11:06 Comments ||
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The relatively small percent of Turks that have gone for German citizenship are very Westernized. It used not to be a step that was encouraged by Germany, and even more discouraged by Turkey -- anyone who took German citizenship gave up all rights of inheritance back in the old country.
NEW YORK (AP) - The former Soviet republic of Georgia will be invited to join NATO by 2008 and shortly after will become a member of the European Union, the president of the Caucasus country said Wednesday.
Mikhail Saakashvili, elected president in November 2003 after massive demonstrations against a rigged election, told a Columbia University audience it was inevitable such protests would spread further in the former Soviet Union. He said rulers who try to use force to hold back democracy "are on the way out."
Saakashvili, whose country of 5 million people has 860 troops serving in the U.S-coalition-led forces in Iraq, said his nation will enter both the North Atlantic defensive alliance and the European Union. "By 2008, it is absolutely realistic to count that we might at least get officially invited to NATO and I might even say become a member," he said. "Of course, it takes time, it takes a change of perception within the organization."
"NATO (membership), I think is decisive, and is basically very realistic, and as regards the European Union, in the longer run, every country that is European by its history and culture, European by its aspirations, by its self identity, by its goals will inevitable be part of every major larger European institution. This is irreversible."
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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Not a good idea, they elected Carter as governor, and Hartsfield International is a real pain in the ... oh, THAT Georgia ... never mind.
It's part of Ollie North's plan, as directed by the Bilderbergers and the Council On Foreign Relations to benefit Halliburton and Bechtel!
The war has come home to America, right here, right now and so have myriad questions so disturbing that most Americans, even if they know what the questions are, are terrified to ask:
Why is Blackwater USA, the principal mercenary force outsourced by the Pentagon to fight in Iraq, now patrolling the streets of New Orleans?
Why the disgraceful, ghastly slowness of response by the federal government to the Katrina disaster? Why FEMAâs destruction of communication lines and implacable refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into the city? (
Why have reconstruction and clean-up contracts conveniently fallen, with perfect timing, to Halliburton and Bechtel, the two U.S. corporations most infamous for their expertise in rebuilding Iraq and worldwide whatever the U.S. military has blown up?
Please, tell us why?
Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories of FEMAâs âguttingâ by the federal government as the agency became part of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some sort of altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only it had been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMAâs obstruction of assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and several European nations, but from humanitarian organizations inside the United States is mindboggling.
Funny, I could have sworn it was the state of Louisania that blocked the aid
In order to begin answering the endless disturbing questions, we must understand what FEMA actually is. In Sheila Samplesâ excellent September 10 article (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/samples7.html), she emphasizes the origins of FEMA in the 1980s under its architect, Oliver North. Northâs Operation Rex 84, or Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by which the the federal government would accommodate the detention of large numbers of American citizens during times of emergency. Through Rex-84 an undisclosed number of concentration camps were set in operation throughout the United States, for internment of dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state. Existence of the Rex 84 plan was first revealed during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987, and subsequently reported by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84)
For decades since Northâs operation was disclosed, many dissidents have assumed that as in Nazi Germany, concentration camps were being secretly constructed for the incarceration of Americans. While this may be more than merely an assumption, there has been little speculation about what specific purpose such camps might serveâuntil the Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the South Coast hurricane, we saw massive numbers of evacuees relocated throughout the nation.
Ah, so the Astrodome is really a consentration camp.
Particularly since 9-11, FEMA has been very little about disaster relief and very much about âpopulation management.â Katrina has underscored what the federal government and virtually all Americans already knewâthe chaos that results from natural disasters. What the federal government knows, but most Americans donât know is the pandemonium that will result as the consequences of Peak Oil exacerbate.
You just knew they'd find a way to work Oil into this
In the United States, all non-organic food growers use commercial pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural products. These have either a petroleum or natural gas base, thus insuring that as petroleum and natural gas prices increase, so will food prices. Moreover, what happens when trucking companies go belly up from gas prices, when truckers can no longer afford fuel, and when their axles break because interstates are in dis-repair as a result of the prices or shortages of the petroleum needed to build roads? What happens when the housing bubble bursts, when massive unemployment engulfs the nation, and when hundreds of thousands or millions of people must walk away from their mortgaged homes? Add to this, the likely crashing of the U.S. dollar and the certainty of more natural disasters. Anarchy may not even approach the description of such a scenario. Enter FEMAâs mandate and machinery, thanks to Blackwater, to maintain order.
Well, thank God they have a plan to save us. And thank you, Blackwater
One of the harshest realities of Peak Oil, but as old as the infanticide practiced by ancient civilizations is âdemand destructionâ, also known as population control. In a recent article, Mike Ruppert explained its integral role in a global energy crisis:
âDemand destructionâ has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak Oil but also to mitigate global warming. The United States, with 5% of the worldâs people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the worldâs energy. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless, unemployed ârefugeesâ (what a cold, depersonalizing term) donât buy gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and requiring energy to operate). They donât use air conditioning because they canât afford it. They are the embodiment of Henry Kissingerâs infamous term âuseless eaters,â a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary. If energy demand destruction, as acknowledged by the Bilderbergers and the CFR [Council On Foreign Relations], is a priority, then the only â I repeat only â beast that must be tamed is the United States.
As we witnessed the American Apartheid of relocating masses of African-Americans to cities throughout the nation, how chilling was FEMAâs promise of a $2,000 debit card for each person, then its decision to give these âuseless eatersâ a check for $2,000 when most have neither a checking account nor personal identification!
The fiends!
In addition, the very fact that so many of these individuals are living from paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of homelessness, underscores the likelihood that many of them will be forced into bankruptcy which may accelerate freefall into homelessness as the Bush Administrationâs Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act becomes law on October 17. Remember the Patriot Actâthat 300-page piece of legislation passed in the middle of the night on October 26, 2001 which almost no members of Congress had a chance to read? You know, the one that shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? How appropriate that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act will become law almost four years to the day after the Patriot Act was passed.
It appears that FEMA did not think this one through, but alas, things are not necessarily as they seem. Certainly, the ruling elite would not intentionally arrange for millions of indigent evacuees to suddenly âlitterâ the streets of America. A more likely scenario could be debt servitude. I can already hear the FEMA offer that no penniless refugee could refuse: âWeâd like to give you a job helping to clean up New Orleans or the South Coast. We canât pay you minumum wage, however, since the President cancelled minimum wage by Executive Order. We also notice that you have quite a bit of debt, but never fear, we will give you the opportunity to âwork off your debtâ by coming to work for us until you debt is satisified.â Will this be Readiness Exercise 2005, 2006, 2007, ad infinitum?
With every national emergency, the fascist agenda of this government will come more clearly into focus. On September 10, Tom Curry listed in his article, âHurricane Spawns Flurry Of Deregulation,â (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9259887) the Bush Administrationâs most recent rulings in the name of hurricane and oil supply relief:
Starting last Wednesday and until next Wednesday, the federal Department of Transportation has eased rules on how many hours truckers can drive when transporting fuel.
The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended until next Thursday certain federal fuel standards in response to possible diesel and gasoline shortages. The suspended rules are designed to combat high ozone and sulfur emissions.
Bush has ordered suspension of provisions of the Jones Act, which requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal waters.
Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Sen. James Inhere, R-Okla., said Congress would need to waive a law that limits federal emergency road building funds to $100 million per state per emergency and that limits full federal funding to 180 days.
The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college students who received Pell grants. Normally if a college student drops out of school, he must pay back the unused portion of his Pell grant.
On Thursday, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon law on all federally financed construction in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. That law requires the federal government to pay the âprevailing wageâ on construction projects, which is often higher than the local minimum wage. Suspending Davis-Bacon will allow the government to pay lower than prevailing wages, and Bush said, âwill result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw a need for a new energy bill as a result of the hurricane. âWhen one hurricane, as massive as it was, can knock out about 20 percent of our (oil and natural gas) facilities, it shows how vulnerable we are,â he said. In order to expand the long-term U.S. oil and gas supply, DeLay wants to open parts of the country that are currently off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Large swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts are under a federal moratorium on oil and gas exploration until the year 2012.
Congress does not need to approve these decisions. They have been pronounced by fiat, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitlerâs unilateral directives in Germany in the 1930s. As Sheila Samples notes, FEMA has not been gutted; it is the Patriot Act on crack!
And these guys know their crack
Posted by: Steve ||
09/15/2005 13:50 ||
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#1
Yeah, it's just like those anti-choice pro-lifer Christers to want to kill off "excess" population. Us lefties, we care about people's lives. That's why we snuffed Terri and give to Planned Parenthood, innat right Prof. Singer?
/sarcasam
Posted by: Mike ||
09/15/2005 14:37 Comments ||
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#2
I guess what I find the most amusing is that the 100,000 folks about to be turned into Soylent Green to appease the god of PEAK OIL Oil oil oil (end Gehrigesque PA reverberation) got trapped because they didn't have cars. So the net gasoline savings from offing 100,000 non-car owners will be...3 barrels a day? As far as the food argument, the U.S. grows so much food right now, farmers would love to cut back on production and raise prices; no need for genocide here.
And which is it: FEMA the incompetent or FEMA inheritors of the SS mantle?
Also, if my math is correct New Orleans accounts for about 0.1% of the U.S. population.
Good grief, if you're going to cook up a conspiracy at least drag the Jews into it.
#4
Has she talked to Farrahkan about Bush blowing up the levees? And what about the Soviet/Yakusa Woodpecker grid, which I've heard from reliable sources was outsourced by Halliburton's Earthquake/ Tsunami Division?
Dig, Lady! Dig!
#6
That's some quality batshit. Who the hell is "Global Research"?
FEMA seems to be under the impression that it was formed in 1979 by a Carter executive order, from a number of existing agencies.
Geez, googling for "Oliver North" and FEMA is like opening the wrong door in a cat-horder's home. Bottomless pit of decayed horror.
I have no idea of how to quickly search for real evidence one way or the other as to whether North worked on FEMA matters or not - the conspiracy wackjobs have passed around the same crazed sets of texts across so many lunatic websites that it's buried anything legitimate under forty tons of moonbat guano.
Incidentally, the majority of the material in this article is a re-worded and telephone-game-distorted variation on said widely prevalent moonbat guano. Or wing-nuttery - Blair's Rule seems to have come into effect here. As far as I can tell, the North/Rex-84 conspiracy has passed back and forth between the far left and the far right at least twice - from the original far left Reagan-haters, to the black-helicopter & Lew Rockwell crowd, and now back again to the KosKids.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
09/15/2005 16:17 Comments ||
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the conspiracy wackjobs have passed around the same crazed sets of texts across so many lunatic websites that it's buried anything legitimate under forty tons of moonbat guano
Which would be an excellent way of hiding a real program in plain sight. I've always had a hunch that explains a lot of UFO sightings. If one of our secret aircraft went off course and was spotted during flight tests, you have a bunch of guys call radio stations all over the place with outlandish reports. Bury the real sightings under a layer of BS.
Posted by: Steve ||
09/15/2005 16:41 Comments ||
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#8
googling for "Oliver North" and FEMA is like opening the wrong door in a cat-horder's home. Bottomless pit of decayed horror.
Remeber kids-- 2 layers, inner layer shiny side in to prevent your thoughts leaking out to the satilites, outer layer shiny side out to keep out the mind control broadcasts. This publick service message brought to you by the national tin foil council.
We now resume our regularly scheduled ranting.
end PSA
Posted by: N Guard ||
09/15/2005 16:58 Comments ||
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#10
Isn't it interesting that the only facility that resembled a Concentration Camp was the one established by the Democratic administration of New Orleans at the Superdome.
#11
"The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college students who received Pell grants."
This is nothing more than a crudely-disguised Rovian plot by the Rethuglican Chimpy McBushitlerites to... do something. Now all we gotta do is figure out what.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
09/15/2005 17:11 Comments ||
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#12
The really stupid thing in that last is that Pell Grants (or indeed any grants) need not be repaid. That's why they're called grants and not loans.
#13
One of the local free papers currently has an article asking whether Katrina was the result of weather modification. And pretends to be able to prove by references to more authoritative sources that it's a credible theory, without actually proving anything.
You would probably wind up having to dig to get to the point of finding out that she's either distorting what the sources are saying -or- the other sources are full of shit as well.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
09/15/2005 17:59 Comments ||
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#14
Just wondering, but was that the way propaganda was done back in Nazi Germany back in the day?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
09/15/2005 17:59 Comments ||
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Do a Google for 'Katrina' and 'HAARP' (atmospheric research that's made the tin-foil hat crowd (more) paranoid for years). It boogles the mind that anyone can hold the following thoughts in their head at the SAME time:
1) Bush is a stupid idiot cowboy with barely the wit to tie his shoes and chew gum at the same time.
2) Bush is a EVIL GENIUS conspiring to oppress minorities, enslave humanity, and gemerate vast profits for his cronies at the oil companies and Halliburton.
#1
If a guy who got elected twice as president of the United States is synonym of failure where do they put say John "I was in Vietnam" Kerry or Howard Aaaaaarrrrrrgh Dean? Walking disasters?
#6
PS Make sure you read through their long list of examples. Some of them are pretty funny. "Miserable failure" in Italian points to Berlusconi's page
PPS Those of you who were here in The Year of Boris can probably guess that much of his vile venom on Fred's bandwidth was just a pathetic attempt to manipulate his own rankings on the Google search engine...
#8
I thought he was just a hateful antisemitic troll based in San Fernando Valley... a serb punk....with a tiny penis and hairy ears
(there, that'll boost his google image)
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/15/2005 10:16 Comments ||
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#9
lol frank! we needer put him asswhole name up tho for it to werk.
boris pribich
mebbe im try doin "ima feel lukee" with him name sumtime.
#11
Dang, I searched my name both on wikipedia and on fr.wikipedia : nothing, nothing!
I am asking to you, does one have to be an antisemitic serb with a bad hygiena and unsual sex habits to be featured in wikipedia!!!???
I'm french, so the bad hygiena and sex habits thingies are already part of the package deal, and, still, nothing!
Damn! I feel so insignificant!
Oh, and this "miserable failure" search topic was brought up a while ago by Zhang Fei IIRC, with the same Google bomb explanation. Myself I'd rather search for interracial gangbangs+strap-on fetish+golden shower, that's how I get all the geopolitical stuff and all.
#12
Google Bomb, yes, and if you DON'T hit the 'lucky' button, you'll see ol' lard-ass Mikey is #2. Don't blame the tool! Some folks have figgered out how to manipulate it for their own ends.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/15/2005 11:23 Comments ||
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I know a better one. Type "French military victories" and click on the first one.
Posted by: Tim ||
09/15/2005 16:46 Comments ||
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jus notised ima farked that leenk. heerz boris url-
#15
Seafarious,
thanks for the clarity, I for one didn't know how that stuff works. It helps, as I do like using Google, but that type info isn't right.
Posted by: Jan ||
09/15/2005 20:28 Comments ||
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A lot of this was done in the run up to the 2004 election. In particular, the KOSsacks and the DUmmies spent a lot of time and effort Google Bombing and manipulating on-line polls. Fortunately for everyone else, it wasn't real effective.
#17
BTW, one of the early efforts in Google Bombing was against SCO - a company that's the bane of Open Source / Linux advocates. The campaign linked the phrase "litigious bastards" with SCO, at least for a while.
Via Drudge - No sirens or links, just this blurb:
Biden To Roberts: 'You're The Best'
Exclusive Drudge sources in the U.S. Senate's Hart Building heard Democrat Sen. Joe Biden say to Judge John G. Roberts in a private conversation on the hearing room floor: 'You're the best I've ever seen before the committee'...
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/15/2005 7:54 Comments ||
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#3
You're the best I've ever seen before the committee'...
Sorry, not buying it. After reading transcripts of Biden's bloviating, I suspect the three little dots stand for something like "...at avoiding answers to our stupid, and fatuous, self-important questions".
#5
Confirmation Hearings arenât exactly what I'd call entertainment but I find it particularly amusing to see Roberts give Johnny, Diane, Teddy, and Chucky basic civic lessons.
I envisioned a scrawny kid in a ring against a heavyweight boxer, eyes screwed shut, flailing away with both hands... but never landing because the boxer is standing their holding him at bay with one glove against the kid's forehead.
Roberts was so obviously the most intelligent person in the hearing room it was just amazing to see the D's even try to rattle him.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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The gropenator is not done yet. He'll be back
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/15/2005 2:45 Comments ||
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Arnie is about the best governor California is going to get at this point. Tom McClintock would have been better, but he only got 11% of the vote in the recall election.
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 14 -- Early tests on the floodwater that covered most of this city do not suggest it will leave a permanent toxic residue or render residential areas uninhabitable for more than a short time, officials of both state and federal environmental agencies said yesterday. The pollution consists primarily of fecal matter and slightly elevated concentrations of metals such as lead and chromium that were in the city's soil before Hurricane Katrina. There are also trace amounts of many petroleum-based chemicals and some pesticides.
Despite descriptions of the floodwater as a "toxic soup" and a "witch's brew" of contaminants, the preliminary tests reveal it contains little that is different from what has been seen after past floods in other cities and here.
The exception is a residential area in the suburb of Meraux southeast of the city, where 672,000 gallons of oil leaked from a refinery storage tank. Areas around six smaller oil spills may also require special cleanup, the officials said. "The early results do not indicate specific toxic pollutants at any levels of concern," said Chris M. Piehler, a senior environmental scientist at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Asked if residue from floodwaters posed hazards that would keep residents from moving back, he answered: "No. The limiting factor is going to be what structures are going to be salvageable and which ones are not." Piehler's observations were similar to those of Jerry Fenner, the leader of the environmental health team sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "So far, all the test results show there shouldn't be any long-term problems of health and habitability," he said, adding that the chemical and oil spills "are a special issue and will require abatement."
The generally optimistic view of the experts here contrasted somewhat with the impression given yesterday by Stephen L. Johnson, administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, at a telephone news conference from Washington. Johnson stressed the uncertainty over toxic hazards that remain in flooded parts of the city.
"What we are focused on is assessing what the problems are. It really is impossible to speculate on what it's going to take and how long it's going to take" to clean up environmental problems, he said.
The EPA is taking daily samples of floodwater both in the city and in the outfalls to Lake Pontchartrain. It is also sampling air and wet and dry mud at dozens of locations. Tests from Sept. 3, 4 and 6 showed levels of hexavalent chromium, lead and arsenic exceeding agency standards for drinking water. "These compounds would pose a risk to children only if a child were to drink a liter of flood water a day. Long-term exposure [a year or longer] to arsenic would be required before health effects would be a concern," said a statement on the EPA Web site. The city's drinking water comes from the Mississippi River and not from Lake Pontchartrain, where the floodwater is being pumped.
The most obvious pollutant in the floodwater is fecal bacteria. The city's sewage-treatment plant is not operating, and the standing water is mingling with the sewage in the underground system. Tests from Sept. 3 to 5 found that some sites had bacteria levels above the EPA's measurement scale. From Sept. 7 to Sept. 10, however, the amount of bacteria was falling. Fecal bacteria have a limited life span in the open water and will not cause lasting contamination. On land, the bacteria dies once the residue dries out. "The stuff will desiccate and you can clean it up. You fertilize your lawn? It's the same thing," Fenner said.
While the environmental findings so far have not been surprising, many potentially hazardous areas remain to be assessed. They include five Superfund sites in New Orleans. EPA inspectors have visited four, but one remains underwater. "One of the things we need to do is make sure that these sites have not been compromised," Johnson said. The agency and local officials are also evaluating numerable small spills and hazards, including more than 5,000 "orphan containers" found floating in the water. These include everything from gas cylinders to a drum containing medical waste, he said.
A U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said there have been seven oil spills of more than 100,000 gallons since the storm. The biggest is at the Meraux Refinery, operated by Murphy Oil Corp. in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of the city. During a sampling trip there two days ago, the EPA's Paul Doherty said the company estimated that about 9,600 of the 16,000 barrels of oil that leaked were recoverable and most of the rest had evaporated.
In a housing development nearby, workers in yellow safety suits scooped up samples of fine-grained mud that smelled partly of sulfurous decay and partly of petroleum. The houses were severely damaged. At several, the flood floated cars that came to rest with their rear ends on the roof and the front ends on the lawn. Even without the spill, the neighborhood seemed unlikely to be habitable anytime soon.
Posted by: Steve ||
09/15/2005 12:34 ||
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Early tests on the floodwater that covered most of this city do not suggest it will leave a permanent toxic residue or render residential areas uninhabitable for more than a short time
Ummm folks,
A quick Geology lesson, this is exactly the process that created New Orleans in the first place, (Flood, deposit silt, dry, repeat) and has only been temporarily interrupted by humanity building barriers.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/15/2005 14:32 Comments ||
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But will there be more mold than before the flood?
On today's episode of "The Island of Dr. Mugabe"...
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe plans to import four endangered Siberian tigers from China for the country's national park, a project condemned by wildlife experts as potentially cruel and dangerous.
In an interview published Thursday in the state-controlled Herald newspaper, Minister of the Environment Francis Nhema said the tigers were in return for Zimbabwe giving China breeding animals such as zebra, elephants and impala."We do not have the tiger in this country and we would like to benefit from the exchange program with China," he was quoted as saying.
"We are happy that three experts found our animal habitats friendly to the requirements that are compulsory for tiger breeding and we expect the animals would be here as soon as possible." ...and we consider them good eats.
The exchange program is the latest fruit of President Robert Mugabe's Look East policy meant to promote ties with China as an alternative to the United States and European Union. The West has shunned Zimbabwe because of human rights abuses and economic mismanagement. Dr. Peter Mundy, a biologist attached to the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Bulawayo, said the tiger plan made no economic or ecological sense. That's probably why Bob insists on it.
"The whole idea really is a complete load of garbage," he said. "We don't have any money to look after our own animals."
Zimbabwe is struggling to protect its own endangered rhinoceros and painted hunting dog, and its cheetahs are being poached from recently expropriated commercial game reserves. "It would be cruel," Mundy said. "Siberian tigers are not adapted to anything in Hwange National Park, not the seasons, nor the climate nor the vegetation. And they would certainly be dangerous over here." Siberian tigers are native to the pine forest of the remote Amur region, seasonally blanketed in heavy snow. Hwange National Park, 500 kilometers (1,200 miles) west of the capital, has little surface water for most of the year. Prides of lion and leopards compete for prey with packs of hyena and painted hunting dog. Okay. Pretty basic. Siberia: Cold and snowy. Zimbabwe: Hot, not snowy.
Dick Pitman, executive director of the Zambezi Society, which lobbies for conservation throughout the region's major river basin said "he had no problem" with the plan as long as it was confined to captive breeding, had adequate foreign funding and was run by tiger experts. Ummmmmmm...Dick? This is Zimbabwe we're talking about here.
Difficulties would arise if the tigers got into the wild, he said. Yeah, but that probably won't happen, right, Dick? ...Dick?...Hello?
Seizure of 5,000 white-owned commercial farms and game conservancies under Mugabe's "fast track" redistribution of land to black Zimbabweans has resulted in massive poaching, conservation experts have reported since its start in February 2000. Zimbabwe lost 3,000 black rhino to international poaching gangs in the 1980s but has fought for the right to trade ivory from its estimated 80,000 elephants. Hey, but it's Zimbabwe, so Bob gets a pass...
#1
" Siberian tigers are native to the pine forest of the remote Amur region, seasonally blanketed in heavy snow. Hwange National Park, 500 kilometers (1,200 miles) west of the capital, has little surface water for most of the year. Prides of lion and leopards compete for prey with packs of hyena and painted hunting dog.
Never mind having to compete with Bob's human predators
#2
Let's see
Aids is at 25%.
The white farmers got run out.
nobody is farming the land.
Tigers are to be brought in.
I think Mugabe has made a deal to deliver a relatively empty country to China to handle their population expansion.
Certainly a new twist on nation building.
Oh I forgot, it's been done before by giving the "Native Americans" smallpox infected blankets.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/15/2005 14:13 Comments ||
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#3
Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my!
Will we be seeing postings from "Tiger-ranching B. Hard?"
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said that women in Pakistan get themselves raped for getting a visa to Canada and becoming a millionaire. "You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a moneymaking concern...a lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped," the Daily Times quoted Musharraf as saying in an interview with The Washington Post. He further said that Pakistan should not be seen in isolation as far as rape cases are concerned, as it happens even in the US, Canada, France and the UK also. "Pakistan should not be singled out when the curse is everywhere in the world," he said adding that reports or figures about rape in the US, Canada, France and Britain show that "it is happening everywhere".
To a question about rape victim Mukhtar Mai, he said that she was free to travel now, and that he had no regrets about slapping on her to travel abroad. He said Mukhtar Mai had come "under the sway of organisations determined to harm Pakistan's image".
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
09/15/2005 07:11 ||
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#1
Something got left out in this article. How does getting raped lead to being a millionaire? Where do I sign up?
#4
Perv has a small point, but a point. The western left thrives on horror stories from the third and fourth world, because it helps their feelings of moral superiority.
If she just said she had been raped in Pakistan, so she wanted to move to Canada, she would have been given little sympathy. The left wants tales of "primitive inhuman barbarity" from filthy, ignorant, troglodyte men who oppress delicate, gentle, polite (even if coloured), and humble women. (She has to show humble appreciation to her noble liberal benefactors, or she is an ungrateful wretch.)
The emphasis being that Pakistanis (excepting the victim) are all inferior, and thus need the providential hand of the morally superior leftist.
The left has used this same modus operandi since Rousseau. They crave to find some "primitives", who either live in the "state of nature" in perfect harmony with their environment; but, failing that, they want to lord it over anyone they think they can lord it over. It makes them feel good to feel better than other people.
These same Canadians would be utterly upset to learn that there are PhDs who teach in universities in Pakistan, secular Pakistanis who are appalled at the low-rent behavior of some of their countrymen, and many Pakistanis who speak English with greater erudition then they, and with upper-class London accents.
These Pakistanis, and their Pakistan, is what Perv is defending, against this Canadian cabal of ex-English Lit and Social Work majors, who are the gatekeepers to what many Pakistanis see as "the land of plenty".
#5
#4 Uh, not everything comes down to those damn rascist Liberals. The Pak newspapers are full of stories of horrific gang rapes, often sanctioned by tribal or village leaders. Most of these stories never make the international news, and presumably most of these women live in shame in their backwards villages.
These rape stories have damaged Pakistan's image, and the only way for Perv to restore Pakistan's honour is to downplay the rapes and avoid taking any responsibility. The case Perv is talking about is that of Shazia Khalid, a lady doctor who was raped by members of Pakistan's military. In order to keep her quiet, she was spirited away to a psychiatric hospital, later on she was put under house arrest, where she was not allowed any visitors. After receiving death threats she fled to England, where she committed the cardinal sin in Perv's eyes - She talked to the BBC about what happened to her, damaging the honor of the Pak military. Since then her rapist has been released and she has been accused of being an Indian agent. Leaders of her clan have declared that they wish to murder her, but no action has been taken against them. But this brave woman, like Mukhtar Mai, has not backdowned to Musharraf's thugocracy.
Reducing this case to another club for use in the culture wars does a great disservice to her.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
09/15/2005 20:16 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON - More than 350,000 families made homeless by Hurricane Katrina would get emergency housing vouchers averaging $600 a month for up to six months under a measure approved Wednesday by the Senate.
Any displaced family regardless of income would be eligible for the program, expected to cost $3.5 billion over six months.
$600 * 6 months = $3600
$3600 * 350,000 = $1.26 billion
$3.5 - $1.26 = $2.24 billion
So where does the $2.24 billion go? (As if I need to ask.)
And the Dems want to raise taxes.
The Human Development Report 2005 issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ranked Pakistan 135th among the 177 world economies on the basis of a human development index. The report titled âInternational Cooperation at a Crossroad: Aid, Trade and Security in an Unequal Worldâ took stock of progress towards Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in health, education and income. The report, which was launched by the UNDP resident coordinator Jan Vandermootele, said that Pakistan had shifted to medium human development from low human developed countries by securing the 135th position.
Last year Pakistan was below Nepal and Bangladesh in the ranking, while in the current ranking it fared better than the other two countries. The report shows that Pakistan had a Human Development Index (HDI) value of 0.527, life expectancy at birth of 63 years, adult literacy rate of 48.7 percent, combined gross enrolment ratio of 35 percent and GDP per capita of $2097.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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#4
40 years of Great Society and War on Poverty Programs gets you exactly what any other socialism gets you -- low productivity and second class status.
"Last year Pakistan was below Nepal and Bangladesh in the ranking, while in the current ranking it fared better than the other two countries."
Thus demonstrating that there is little significance in the differences.
A novel hybrid material composed of diamond and carbon nanotubes could find use in everything from biological-weapons detectors to flat-panel displays, experts told UPI's Nano World.
Diamond is the hardest material known; it has the highest capability to resist scratches. Carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, are the strongest structures known, and the amount of force they can resist, pound for pound, is the highest ever measured.
"There was this kind of 'what if,'" said researcher John Carlisle, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. "What if you could integrate the strongest material known with the hardest known material? Would the sum of the parts be not only hard and tough, but maybe have other capabilities you wouldn't predict?"
Posted by: DanNY ||
09/15/2005 00:00 ||
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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.
A woman who hired a hitman to murder the wife of her lover, and then complained to police when he didn't do the job, has been arrested along with the hitman, police said.
Three mice infected with the bacteria responsible for bubonic plague apparently disappeared from a laboratory about two weeks ago, and authorities launched a search though health experts said there was scant public risk. The mice were unaccounted-for at the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and conducts bioterrorism research for the federal government. Federal official said the mice may never be accounted for. Among other things, the rodents may have been stolen, eaten by other lab animals or just misplaced in a paperwork error. 
A 20-year-old orphan who was living alone in his dead mom's Long Island home was murdered by his two best friends â because they wanted to use the house as a sex den to sleep with their girlfriends, police said yesterday. The young killers concealed the body of Michael Moore in the basement of the Freeport home, then drove around in his Lincoln Continental, hung out in the house, watched his large-screen TV and partied with their girlfriends, police said.
For the second straight year, a sheep has been stolen from the Natural Resources Trust of Easton, abused, and left inside of a dormitory at Stonehill College. According to Robert Babineau, executive director of the trust, the sheep was taken Sept. 3, spray-painted in black, dressed in a bra, and placed inside a Stonehill dorm.
MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio - Two Amish buggies were crushed by 18-wheelers in separate accidents Sunday night and Monday morning about 50 miles east of Akron. Highway Patrol officials say buggy driver John Miller was airlifted to an Akron hospital with unspecified injuries. He is still in serious condition. Miller failed to stop at a red light late Sunday night in Middlefield. His passenger, Barbara Schmucker, suffered a broken shoulder and has been released.
RIYADH - Saudi women will run in elections to the board of the Jeddah chamber of commerce and industry in a first for the kingdom, officials said on Wednesday.
