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Iraqi Kurds may proclaim independence
Today's Headlines
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3 00:00 Old Patriot [1] 
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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Why I cut my tackle: rugby fan
A RUGBY fan who cut out his testicles with wire cutters to mark a Wales victory is at a loss to explain why he did it.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Geoffrey Huish, 31, performed the impromptu self-surgery in February when his beloved Wales beat world champion England. After performing the deed, Mr Huish put his severed anatomy in a bag and took them to his local social club to show fellow fans.
"Hey guys! Check this out!"
He collapsed with blood loss and was rushed to hospital but surgeons could not reattach his missing parts.
"Nope, ain't going to work. Toss 'em into the bin and call the speech pathologist; he's going to be singing soprano."
He was put in a psychiatric ward but has no history of mental illness and was at a loss to explain why he did it.

"I'd told my pal Gethin Probert before the game that Wales didn't stand a chance," Mr Huish said. "It wasn't a bet but I said I'd cut my balls off if we won.
So now we know why he did it.
"I listened to the game on the radio at home by myself.

"After the match I got up for a pee and saw the cutters in the bathroom. Gethin had left them after repairing the chain on my toilet.
That's what you get for leaving cutters lying around.
"I remembered what I'd said and thought he had left them for me.
You promised!
"I thought 'Oh no, I haven't got to do anything like that have I' and then I thought 'You can do it'.
Yeah, that's the spirit!
"So I started hacking away at my tackle. It took about 10 minutes and there was quite a bit of pain but I just kept going. The cutters were blunt so I had to keep snipping."
Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch ...
After picking his testicles from the toilet bowl, he went to the social club. "I went in and shouted out 'I've done it!'," Mr Huish said.
Not exactly what I would have shouted ...
"I took my balls out and passed them in the bag to a friend.
"Hey man, check this out!"
"Ow-w-w-w-w, gross."
Mr Huish continues to see a psychiatrist. "I think about what happened every day and still haven't come up with a good reason why," he said.
And I don't think you're likely to, either.
"I'd had a lot going on and felt a bit down. "I can't have kids now but still want a family - maybe I'll adopt."
Just don't let the social worker hear about the psych report, 'k?
Posted by: Steve White || 11/19/2005 14:04 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  How remarkable, a self-chlorinating genepool. What will they think of next? Do we even want to know?

Most definitely one of those "Let's not and say we did" moments.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 14:30 Comments || Top||

#2  Hard to believe that enormous quantities of alcohol weren't involved somehow...
Posted by: PBMcL || 11/19/2005 15:24 Comments || Top||

#3  Thank God For Darwinism
Posted by: OnlySaneAnonymouseLeft || 11/19/2005 20:10 Comments || Top||

#4  And you thought Neuticles were for pets only.
Posted by: ed || 11/19/2005 21:24 Comments || Top||

#5  Not the first time a soccer player cut his 'tackle' off; this also happened last year some time.
Somehow I just can't see a Yankees fan or NASCAR fan doing this: If the Yanks get beat, I'm cuttin' off my nutz..."
Posted by: USN Ret. || 11/19/2005 21:49 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
Castro: Parkinson's Diagnosis Wrong
Cuban President Fidel Castro has denied CIA reports that he is stricken with Parkinson's disease in a five-hour long speech in which he also vowed to keep the revolution alive and rid the island of corruption.
Five hours? Oh, the pain, the pain ...
The Miami Herald, quoting an unnamed source, said on Wednesday that CIA doctors were convinced Castro was diagnosed with the disease in 1998, and had begun briefing senior officials and lawmakers about it a year ago. Castro said that even if he had the degenerative disease, "It would not matter."

Cuba-watchers point out the once-brilliant orator at times slurs his words or loses the thread of his speeches. In 2001 Castro fainted during a speech in Havana, and last year, he fractured a knee and an arm when he tumbled off a stage.

Castro, who has ruled Cuba with an iron fist since 1959, warned Cuban youths in his speech that Cuba's destruction, if it should ever come about, lay at the hands of its own people, not the United States. He railed against the growing corruption in Cuba that has created a class of "nouveau riche" through the plundering of state resources and negligence of government officials.

"The revolution is going to fix this, and how," he warned referring to a recently launched government drive to stamp out price gouging at petrol pumps, supermarkets and other commercial establishments.
Posted by: Pappy || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  five-hour long speech+

every speech Fidel ever gave has been recorded. Great Xmas gift for inlaws this year.
Posted by: Red Dog || 11/19/2005 2:35 Comments || Top||

#2  "....every speech Fidel ever gave has been recorded. Great Xmas gift for inlaws this year."
Especially if they can't handle prescription sleep aids.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 11/19/2005 9:12 Comments || Top||

#3  Castro: Parkinson's Diagnosis Wrong

Sure enough. We all knew from the start that it really was advanced syphillis. Probably not even acquired through human contact.

He railed against the growing corruption in Cuba that has created a class of "nouveau riche" through the plundering of state resources and negligence of government officials.

"Negligence"? Try C_O_R_R_U_P_T_I_O_N. And how is this different from any other communist regime on earth? It is a surpassing irony that these tin-pot dictators can never look in the mirror when they rail about their country's woes. There is a startling and consistently perverted symbiosis between elitists and kleptocracies. That Fidel cannot bring himself to connect the dots is a sure sign of congenital retardation mental deterioration.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 11:15 Comments || Top||


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Turk Prof Kills Self in Jail
On Nov 1st, I mentioned that this case would be a test of the Turks' secularism. Now it looks like they might've cheated on the exam. Of course he might of killed himself, too. There's still open debate in the newspapers, which is always a good sign.
Posted by: 11A5S || 11/19/2005 00:10 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I can think of few US "perfessers" who might want to follow in the this guys footsteps.
Posted by: anymouse || 11/19/2005 9:37 Comments || Top||

#2  Yes, if you're hell bent on martyrdom, do it quietly, in the privacy of your own home. I encourage all you muslims out there to follow suit and get your 72 raisins.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 11/19/2005 10:00 Comments || Top||

#3  Maybe a case of "assisted" suicide?
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 14:18 Comments || Top||

#4  Turkey: an example of genuine Islamic Democracy.
Posted by: gromgoru || 11/19/2005 19:49 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
Protesters, riot police battle at APEC
Anti-American protesters and riot police fought pitched battles in the streets of this southern port city as thousands of people rallied against the APEC summit. Violence erupted as police barricaded roads and trained water cannon on activists trying to reach Busan's BEXCO convention centre where US President George W. Bush and 20 other Asia-Pacific leaders were meeting. Some 300 angry demonstrators armed with bamboo sticks and metal pipes burned an effigy of Bush with the slogan "No APEC, No Bush" attached to it along with rubber tyres.

Police reinforcements were drafted in as the activists attempted to storm through barricades and at least two protesters were injured including one who was carried away unconscious. But calm returned after police using riot shields managed to beat back the protestors. Several hours earlier police used water cannon to stop another group of protesters forcing their way onto a bridge 300 metres (yards) further up the Suyeong River that runs past the APEC convention centre.

The demonstrators, mainly farmers, took to the streets of Busan on Friday chanting anti-US slogans and waving colourful banners reading "No APEC, No Bush" and "Terrorist Bush Go Home". Violence flared early on when a group of around 100 frustrated protesters broke away from the main anti-APEC demonstration and tried to punch through police lines around one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the summit venue. Police responded by firing bursts from three water cannons as some demonstrators armed themselves with wooden sticks and steel pipes. Earlier police said they expected a crowd of up to 30,000, and used steel barriers and cargo containers to block off roads around the summit venue. Riot police in full body armour wielding clubs were stationed at key junctions. Protesters said they were angry at the South Korean government's plans to open its rice market to cheap foreign imports, a measure backed by the free-trade APEC forum as well as the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  No access to US markets. No US troops for their defense. I can live with that. Let's see how long it takes to regress to the state of their cousins to the north.
Posted by: ed || 11/19/2005 0:50 Comments || Top||

#2  I concur, ed. The SKors have been lovingly coddled and handed open access to the deep pockets market, us, and are responding to their good fortune just like you'd expect from spoiled little fuckers. Cutting them loose, making them compete and pay their own way in the world is the tough love they need to grow the fuck up, already. Enough.

The absurdity of the reportage regarding "protesters" is always sickly amusing. In many / most places where it occurs, it's so staged and phony that it is both universally expected and ignored - by everyone but the MSM, desperate to inject romanticism and legitimacy where none is merited. Professional Anarchist strikes me (heh) as an occupation that should be very short-lived with a very abrupt, make that brutally abrupt, end. No postscripts, no t-shirts, no romantic Che iconoclast BS, just the exceedingly final impact of soft tissues hitting a brick wall at very high speed. A splat, perhaps. Works for me.
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 6:37 Comments || Top||

#3  Regarding your Graphic.
A shotgun blast to the right hand, and watch him burn.
Should cut this shit to a minimum, very few repeat offenders.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 11/19/2005 8:17 Comments || Top||

#4  Retards of the world, Unite!!!
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 11/19/2005 10:11 Comments || Top||

#5  It's almost astonishing how the South Koreans can turn their faces to spit in our eye without so much as a backward glance towards the corruption and cannibalism lurking at their northern border. One can only wonder if reunification (as with Germany) will finally bring home the unspeakable horrors brought upon their people by the real terrorists.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 13:04 Comments || Top||


Fifth Column
French Lesbian Run Amock
The leader of a lesbian gang was jailed for 28 years last night for the murder of a country baker in a robbery described by the prosecution as revealing a clash of cultures between "two kinds of France".

The country has been shocked by the killing of Sylvain Bétrix, 22, who was shot dead as he rushed to the aid of his wife when Magali Rossi burst into their bakery in the old Roman town of Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert, near St Etienne, brandishing a hunting rifle.

Rossi got away with just £20 from the till.

The prosecuting lawyer, André Merle, contrasted the life of Mr Bétrix, who rose early each day and worked long hours, and those of Rossi and her two accomplices, "who don't work and don't especially look for work".

He told the court in St Etienne: "These are two kinds of France colliding with each other. It is for you to say which France we ought to protect and which one we must repress."

Rossi, now 34, lived with her lover, Anne-Sophie Royol, 33, Royol's daughter and a third woman, Emilie Després, 22, on unemployment benefits in what the judge called a "ménage à trois" in Marseilles.

Last night's verdict went beyond the demands of the prosecution, which had sought a 25-year sentence for Rossi for theft aggravated by violence leading to death. Royol was jailed for 10 years for complicity and Després for three years, two of them suspended, for destroying evidence.

Posted by: Captain America || 11/19/2005 00:58 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  lesbian gang banger sentenced to wimmins prison for 28 licks years..

Rossi: oh plz, not the Bastille, I can't stand the pain and pleasure of it all
Posted by: Red Dog || 11/19/2005 2:54 Comments || Top||

#2  Spell checkers can be a bytch, Cap'n.
Posted by: GK || 11/19/2005 2:57 Comments || Top||

#3  Charlize Theron can play this mookess in the movie. Got the Monster thingy down pat.
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 6:14 Comments || Top||

#4  France needs to bring the guillotine back into service. Off with all three of their heads, I say, and try to find a good home for the daughter.
Posted by: Bryan || 11/19/2005 6:32 Comments || Top||

#5  A case where truth is stranger than fiction. It's pretty sad.
Posted by: anymouse || 11/19/2005 9:06 Comments || Top||

#6  Robbing a bakery. How pathetic is that? No sympathy for these dykes.
Posted by: Unolunter Elmavish9494 || 11/19/2005 9:59 Comments || Top||

#7  Robbing a bakery. How pathetic is that? No sympathy for these dykes.

this is a lick stick up, gimmie all the tarts ya got!
Posted by: Wholumble Ebbineling6016 || 11/19/2005 10:08 Comments || Top||

#8  GK - em hooced yn foneecks
Posted by: Captain America || 11/19/2005 10:24 Comments || Top||

#9  "These are two kinds of France colliding with each other. It is for you to say which France we ought to protect and which one we must repress."

I wonder which of the two (baker vs. unemployed supplementing her benefits with armed robbery) the French people, if the verdict had been open to public referenda, would choose?

Wonder what the defense was, "solidarity with the unemployed by attacking the class enemy for making an honest living"?
Posted by: Edward Yee || 11/19/2005 10:24 Comments || Top||

#10  There are two Frances...John Edwards
Posted by: Captain America || 11/19/2005 10:55 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
The Actual Vote Tallies
Posted by: Anonymoose || 11/19/2005 15:25 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  What, the Donks are afraid to put their careers money where their loud mouths are?

Quelle surprise.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 11/19/2005 18:42 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Chicoms, Russia, Frankistan seek Syria refinery deals
From Geostrategy Direct, subscription.
ABU DHABI — Companies from China, France and Russia are bidding to construct oil refineries worth $4.4 billion to process crude oil from Iraq, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari told a news conference on Nov. 9. Dardari, responsible for Syria's economy, said France's Total would submit a formal offer to construct an $800-million refinery having a production capacity of 70,000 barrels per day.
"There is no reason why Syria shouldn't refine crude oil that's imported from Iraq," Dardari said along the sidelines of the Arab Business Conference in Manama.
Is Syria importing crude from Iraq again? That's news to me. I thought that the spigot was shut off after the invasion.
Dardari said Syria has signed a memorandum of understanding with China for the construction of another oil refinery with a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day and worth $1.2 billion. The minister said Damascus was also negotiating with Russian private investors for a third refinery having a production capacity of 140,000 barrels per day as well as a petrochemical complex. He said the two projects were worth $2.4 billion.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 11/19/2005 12:04 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Cool beans. Let these treacherous @ssholes build these expensive refining complexes, then we should bomb them into twisted rubble and topple Assad before the first payment is made.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 12:35 Comments || Top||

#2  And American consumers via Oil Companies assure a good market. Prices remaning low enough so we never develop alternate sources not needing US soldier blood as protection of these interests.
Posted by: Bardo || 11/19/2005 12:38 Comments || Top||

#3  Bardo - no doubt your house is only heated by solar, you don't have a car, you never travel for pleasure on on jet planes, and youre computer is operating on energy created by your hamster. Am I right?
Posted by: 2b || 11/19/2005 19:45 Comments || Top||

#4  perhaps that transjordan-israeli pipeline might be less suscepible to allied bombing?
Posted by: Frank G || 11/19/2005 22:49 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan-Pak-India
Pakistan Gets World Aid Pledge of $5.8 Billion
I'll bet the mullahs and maulvis are licking their chops...
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 21:27 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:


Africa: Subsaharan
Burkina Faso President Wins Re-Election
Ouagadougou (AP) - President Blaise Compaore, who has ruled this West African country for nearly two decades, easily won a third term as Burkina Faso's leader, according to provisional results released Friday.
Wow! I've been sitting on the edge of my seat for weeks, wondering how the election would turn out...
Compaore, a former army captain who rose to power through a bloody 1987 coup, captured 80 percent of the vote Sunday. His closest rival took only 5 percent of the 2.3 million votes cast, results showed. The electoral court must still certify the results after ruling on any changes to the provisional tally within the next two days, the electoral commission said. The opposition had argued that Compaore should not have been allowed to run for a third consecutive term because new election laws limit presidents to just one term in office. But the high court ruled the new law went into effect in 2000, after Compaore's last victory, and so it did not apply to him. The opposition failed to rally around a single candidate, and Compaore faced 11 contenders for what is now a five-year presidential term.
I have an abiding suspicion of Burkina Faso. I want to know how it got there. What did they do with Upper Volta? Where did they put it? Dahomey's gone, too. Which African nation is going to disappear next, to be replaced by someplace nobody's ever heard of? This madness must be stopped!
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Probably, he's done such a fine job of turning Burkina Faso into the jewel of subsahara africa that... Uh, yeah.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 11/19/2005 10:09 Comments || Top||

#2  Ima think Carmen San Dieago and crew ripped off Upper Volta.
Posted by: Shipman || 11/19/2005 12:51 Comments || Top||

#3  Burkina Faso/Upper Volta and Dahomey/Benin aren't half as confusing as Congo/Zaire/Congo?????? and the fun games the "Central African Republic" have gone through. Being a worldwide stamp collector DOES help keep it kinda straight, at least. To be fair, the original name of Dahomey was Benin, going back a couple of hundred years. The French changed it...
Posted by: Old Patriot || 11/19/2005 22:28 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Kurt Vonnegut Now More Than Half-A-Bubble Off Plumb
ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
"Like, wow, man! I'm, like, blowing up!"
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five, made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US President George W. Bush. Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism. But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs. "They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
Somehow, though, only Muslims tend to feel that way, so I suspect religion may be involved in some small way. Otherwise people would be looking askance at Lutherans and Taoists and Jehovah's Witnesses.
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes." He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Kamikaze pilots, I could understand. Truman, I can't...
On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back." Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."
Somehow, I don't imagine having your body ripped to shreds is painless. Admittedly, it's a brief experience, but there's a vast difference between brief and non-existent.
Vonnegut's comments are sharply at odds with his reputation as a peace activist and his distinguished war service. He served in the US 106th Division and was captured by German forces at the Battle of the Bulge. Taken to Dresden and held with other POWs in a disused abattoir, Vonnegut witnessed the appalling events of February 13-14, 1945, when 800 RAF Lancaster bombers firebombed the city, killing an estimated 100,000 civilians. The experience inspired his book Slaughterhouse Five - the title of the novel coming from the barracks he was assigned in the POW camp. The book became an international bestseller and made Vonnegut a luminary of the US literary left. But since Mr Bush was elected, Vonnegut's criticisms of US policy have become more and more impassioned.
"Impassioned" is apparently the same thing as "incoherent."
In 2002, he was widely criticised for saying there was too much talk about the 9/11 attacks and not enough about "the crooks on Wall Street and in big corporations", whose conduct had been more destructive. The following year he wrote that the US was hated around the world "because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".
Even while putting money in their pockets...
But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American letters.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  (Vonnegut).... used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
Perhaps the reason for the 'amazing high' is the opiates fed to the splodydopes by their handlers?
Posted by: GK || 11/19/2005 0:17 Comments || Top||

#2  because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".

kurt, Kurt: You're an idiot.

People hate corporations so much they work for them others buy their products and still others sell products and service. If people hate corporation I guess they don't hate them enopugh not to take jobs buy products and provide supplies, huh?

And let us at the top of every statement, article and debate state without equivocating that the left has zero idea what bravery is, if they consider sicide bombers brave and anything other than nihilistic bastards.

I believe it is important to point out that the left admires those who kill Americans, far more than the military folks fighting for Kurt's right to relive this feverish and maserbatory fantasy about Iraq being just like Viet Nam.

Kilo Mike Alpha, Kurt.
Posted by: badanov || 11/19/2005 0:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Suicide bombing was going on long before Bush was President. I think the Beruit Barracks attack was in 1983 and I don't doubt someone on this board can pull out an attack long before that.

Kurt is not a peace advocate, he is just for the other side. Bush derangement syndrom takes another. Beyond Slaughterhouse Five, a funny cameo in Back to School, and the misappropriation of the Sunscreen graduation speech what has Vonnegut done to be famous anyway?
Posted by: rjschwarz || 11/19/2005 0:52 Comments || Top||

#4  Cat's Cradle probably made Vonnegut famous and was definitely his best book. Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't that good and most of the rest of what he wrote was tedious and self-indulgent.
Posted by: phil_b || 11/19/2005 2:52 Comments || Top||

#5  "Bad chemicals."
- Breakfast of Champions - a reference used frequently to describe episodes of insane behavior by the character Dwayne Hoover.

Lol... Dwayne Hoover is a Pontiac dealer doomed to go insane because of the bad chemicals in his system. It's easy see the autobiographical parallels, and personal demons, Kurt invested in Dwayne... For example, did you know Vonnegut once ran a Saab dealership? That would cause most people to consider suicide, heh. Note, giving Kurt his due here, the wife of Dwayne Hoover commits suicide by eating Drano. Heard that one anywhere? Lol.

Vonnegut rides the razor blade above the "pit" of self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-indulgence - modern Western insanity - a Moonbat stew personified in Dwayne Hoover. I think he created Dwayne to describe his frequent falls. Consider that he got this published in 1973 - more than 30 years ago... a fact which impresses me, anyway. Vonnegut's another brilliant, but deeply disturbed and flawed man who projects his internal dementia and doubts.

He projects upon his characters, of course, when he writes, which entertains and enlightens us - about him and ourselves. He projects upon others, particularly those whom he can't quite fathom for their confidence and daring, when he speaks - offending everyone who chooses not to indulge aged demented adolescents. Not being able to connect the dots is one thing... Bad chemicals is something else, entirely.

He has said he was mortally terrified of failure, well beyond what most would consider the norm, and that he is completely stupefied by success. A heavy guilt and certainty that others should be wary of his unedited words lurks therein, methinks. It shows clearly when he's speaking instead of writing. We can easily forgive his characters. It's something else to forgive him.

I love to read him, and I read everything we wrote up through 2000. I don't think I'd much enjoy talking to him... when he's off his meds.

Bad chemicals.

My take.
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 6:04 Comments || Top||

#6  Continuing this RB literary criticism thread, what's with the whole Kilgore Trout thing? It's years since I read Vonnegut, but I never got KT.
Posted by: phil_b || 11/19/2005 6:50 Comments || Top||

#7  Heh, KT was his "sane" alter ego. You know, the one who thought mirrors were leaks...
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 6:59 Comments || Top||

#8  Need a good laugh? Check out this Dallas Observer review of the movie - from 1999. DO was a semi-underground 8 pager piece of self-indulgence that was most popular for the personal ads. Every "major" city has (had?) one of these, right? The clowns and kooks who wrote for them, decades past, are now the Kool Aid-swilling MSM staffers we know and love today. They polished their amatoor skillz doing moronic pre-Moonbat movie reviews and political punt pieces, wanking out magnificent total hash, such as this. Perfect training, no? Now they're professionals, Lol.

BTW, my favorite personal ad from the DO, the Men Seeking Women section, circa 1980-something, was:

man seeks woman
- minimalist

Indeed. Lol.
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 7:14 Comments || Top||

#9  You guys sound suprised to hear shit like this from a liberal. I don't, they are desperate to get back to power and will say anything to further their perverted cause.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 11/19/2005 7:50 Comments || Top||

#10  Surprised? Nahhh, not in the least. I'm a lomgtime Vonnegut reader, well wary of his mental states... Just having a little fun on this fine Sat morning. You don't happen to know Capt. Bringdown, do you? Just wondering - you sound quite a bit like him.

Hell I'll admit it - I'm in a fairly good mood... After yesterday's vote, I think we can expect RC's Good News Law to kick in this weekend, so put on your Troll Gear, lol.
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 8:21 Comments || Top||

#11  .com---you stole me thunder. My favorite book was Breakfast of Champions. Dwayne Hoover was a great character, and so was Kilgore Trout. He was the science fiction writer that could only get his stories published by being used as filler in porn magazines? Then there was Wayne Hoobler, whose only goal in life was to work at Dwayne Hoover's Pontiac dealership. Wayne would be by the lot from before sunup to after sundown. He would say, "Sun goin' up" and "sun goin' down," and that would be about it.
And Sugar Creek full of chemicals. That was an insane book, and very enjoyable.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 11/19/2005 11:00 Comments || Top||

#12  Vonnegut was an overrated bloated arse. Now he's an incoherent bloated arse.

Hurry up and die Kurt.
Posted by: Oldspook || 11/19/2005 11:36 Comments || Top||

#13  . It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

Well, at least he got that part about Arabs and Islam right.

I've always considered him to be rather tedious. Now I think I'll stop considering him at all.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 14:54 Comments || Top||

#14  I think the last thing I read and enjoyed by Kurt Vonnegut was "Chocolate covered manhole covers" - sometime in the early 1970's. Since then, I haven't been able to get past the first ten pages. I'd certainly not spend any money on anything he wrote after 1975 - even in a USED book store.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 11/19/2005 22:41 Comments || Top||


Africa: Subsaharan
Two Nigerians Convicted in $242M Fraud
Two Nigerians were convicted Friday in an international fraud scheme that led to the collapse of a Brazilian bank, anti-corruption officials said. Frank Nwude and Nzeribe Okoli were found guilty of working with an official of Banco Noroeste of Sao Paolo to steal $242 million over seven years — a fraud related to promised kickbacks on a bogus Nigerian airport contract. The Brazilian bank collapsed as a result of the fraud.

According to prosecution documents, a bank worker was promised $13.4 million in kickbacks from an $187 million airport contract if he paid certain fees up front. The bank worker withdrew his bank's funds illegally, transferring the money — up to $4.75 million at a time — to accounts around the world designated by the suspects, according to court documents.

Okoli was sentenced to four years in prison, while Nwude received five five-year sentences, to be served concurrently, and was ordered to pay the bank $110 million as well as a $10 million fine, said Ibrahim Lamode, a top official at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. A third defendant was convicted earlier in the scheme.
Ummm... They're supposed to give back $110 million of $242 million? What happens to the rest of the dough?
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I did notice a decline in the hundreds of "Dear Sire" letters from nigeria (Small n is not a mistake,) but I thought it was because of my habit of sending each and every one who writes a complete collection of the 250 or so "Nigerian" letters in my files.

Each as an individual E-Mail, of course.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 11/19/2005 8:11 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan-Pak-India
Quake survivors choose death over ‘dishonour’
SHANGLA: With bitterly cold winter about to heap more suffering on earthquake surivivors camped in this mountainous region of Pakistan, Abdul Hameed faces a stark choice: death or dishonour. Hameed, who lost his home in last month’s devastating temblor, says he would rather his family die from the cold than descend from the 10,000-feet high peak and risk being exposed to strangers at relief camps in the disaster zone. In the deeply conservative rural and tribal villages where women strictly adhere to wearing a “purdah”, or veil, it is considered a sin if they are seen by people they do not know, even rescue workers. “We are Pushtoon people. For us, the women’s honour matters more than life,” Hameed, 28, told AFP at Meira tented camp, which is believed to be the biggest in Shangla district. “What will I do with life if our women are dishonoured down in the valley? Clerics told people up in the hilltop that there is no respect for women (down there),” Hameed said. He said his mother, wife, and sister remained in the mountains. “We feel safer with them in the hills,” he said.

A cleric told the survivors on the peak that fleeing the disaster-hit areas was “un-Islamic”, 35-year-old Bakht Taj, a survivor at the tented village, told AFP. “I am not coming down simply because our women’s dignity will come under threat. I know winter is very harsh. I have lost my home to the quake and I know it is not possible to live in a tent in harsher cold weather,” he said. “But this is not question of life. This is the question of our women’s honour.”
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Darwinism.
Posted by: Pappy || 11/19/2005 0:45 Comments || Top||

#2  “We are Pushtoon people. For us, the women’s honour matters more than life,”

Hameed said. He said his mother, wife, and sister remained in the mountains. “We feel safer with them in the hills,” he said.

I have to agree, I believe my family will be safer too, if all Paki Pushtoon people stay at 10,000 feet this winter.
Posted by: Red Dog || 11/19/2005 2:17 Comments || Top||

#3  Hameed, who lost his home in last month’s devastating temblor, says he would rather his family die from the cold than descend from the 10,000-feet high peak and risk being exposed to strangers at relief camps in the disaster zone.

Fine. There are other more reasonable people that deserve the assistance that's available. The sooner these types die off, the better off everybody else will be.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 11/19/2005 4:53 Comments || Top||

#4  According to this BBC article

At times, even excellent quality beef, clearly marked halal, was turned down by the recipients because it was delivered by the Americans, such is the mistrust of the United States here.
Posted by: john || 11/19/2005 6:39 Comments || Top||

#5  Some people are just to stupid to live.
Posted by: raptor || 11/19/2005 7:43 Comments || Top||

#6  But this is not question of life. This is the question of our women’s honour.”

Your families frozen carcasses will thank you after your return from the nice, warm tents down below.
Posted by: Charles || 11/19/2005 7:43 Comments || Top||

#7  Islam has no Honour for women.
Posted by: newc || 11/19/2005 9:35 Comments || Top||

#8  Jim Jones, Islamic style.
Posted by: plainslow || 11/19/2005 10:09 Comments || Top||

#9  Improving the world, through Islam.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 11/19/2005 10:20 Comments || Top||

#10  We are talking RRRFSP here, the new political party of the frontier provinces.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 11/19/2005 10:48 Comments || Top||

#11  Hameed, who lost his home in last month’s devastating temblor, says he would rather his family die from the cold than descend from the 10,000-feet high peak and risk being exposed to strangers at relief camps in the disaster zone.

Gawd is indeed grate.

Posted by: Shipman || 11/19/2005 12:48 Comments || Top||

#12  Not to be picky with the site owner's very own choices, but wouldn't the article be better served by a lemmings graphic? There is about the same will-to-survive quotient... Or perhaps that double honor-dignity meter? It's because I'm sophisticated and nuanced, you understand.
Posted by: anonymous5089 || 11/19/2005 13:04 Comments || Top||

#13  Natural selection is our friend. Now if only Kennedy, Kerry, Gore, Pelosi, Carter, and the Clintons had such high principles...
Posted by: Darrell || 11/19/2005 16:27 Comments || Top||

#14  The sad thing is that is probably not the women making this choice. The men will survive.
Posted by: Unavimp Whainter8073 || 11/19/2005 17:57 Comments || Top||

#15  It is dishonourable to live when one is so stupid...!
Posted by: OnlySaneAnonymouseLeft || 11/19/2005 20:08 Comments || Top||

#16  I thought all this to be very inspiring... think of the poems... the songs... oops! songs are bad bad bad! it would be more inspiring if princess Osama bin M. Laden, Zawahiri, Omar the one-eyed wonder and their pet pig Zarqawi move on top of that there 10,000' mountain area and tough it out with their pashtoon baboons this winter. Now, that would be inspiring!
Posted by: Fun Dung Poo || 11/19/2005 20:45 Comments || Top||

#17  Inshal'lah assholes
Posted by: Frank G || 11/19/2005 21:20 Comments || Top||

#18  What a pleasant surprise to see stupidity actually be painful for a change. While I feel sorry for the women who must submit to this insanity, the sooner all these morons are dead the better. There is no helping those who cannot adapt to circumstances.

The clerics who have advised these idjits against heading downslope remind me of union negotiators who adamantly refuse to accept any wage cuts and suddenly find the factory closed down forever. These intransigent imams are about to see their flocks shrink rather dramatically. It's comforting to know that they won't have nearly as many sheep to program next spring.

As to the survivors refusing our food aid. Good news all around, let those who hate us the most starve to f&%king death. Serves 'em right.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 21:38 Comments || Top||

#19  Now if only the survivors would cut off THEIR testicles after losing ( family, goats, home, fill in the blank) we could maybe get us a two-fer...
Posted by: USN Ret. || 11/19/2005 21:53 Comments || Top||


Teenaged girl’s hopes doused in acid
LAHORE: Sonia’s pretty face as well as her desire for marital bliss were burnt when her idle fiancé threw acid on her for breaking the engagement. Her attractive eyes however remained intact.

The 16-year-old Shah Di Khui resident was severely burnt and is in critical condition at Jinnah Hospital. Sonia said her father Salamat Masih had engaged her a year ago to her cousin Patras Masih, who was unemployed and spent most of his time with his friends. When advice and several warnings to Patras to get a job fell on deaf ears, Salamat refused to marry her to Patras. The two families quarreled over the issue. Patras’ family tried to convince Salamat again, after a few days, but Salamat linked the marriage to Patras’ employment. Sonia was washing clothes in her house on Wednesday and her uncle and grandmother were indoors when Patras entered the house with an acid bottle. He asked Sonia to marry him, and on her refusal threw the acid on her face saying he wouldn’t let her marry anyone else either.

The left side of Sonia’s face and the upper part of her body were severely burnt. Her family came out on hearing her screams and rushed her to Jinnah Hospital where she is stated to be in a critical condition. Sonia’s family said the treatment and surgery would cost Rs 250,000, which they could not afford. They said Sonia was worried about her future. The Muslim Town police have registered case number 314/2005 under Section 324 and 452 of Pakistan Penal Code against Patras Masih. Sub Inspector Khadim Hussain, the investigation officer, said police were making raids but had not been able to arrest Patras so far.
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  *embrace* diversity.
Posted by: Red Dog || 11/19/2005 2:19 Comments || Top||

#2  Bastards.

Sherazade, A french-moroccan 18 years old girl was spread with gasoline and set on fire just a few days ago in a french suburb : she has declined her aggressor's marriage demand, a pakistani, and he and a friend chosed to "punish" her that (islamic) way.

Now she is in an artificial coma, and is burnt 2nd-3rd degree on 60% of her body, between life and death.

French msm have been exceptionally quiet about this, only an afp news and the internet reaction of feminist or anti-islam/secular orgs (see for example http://laminutedusablier.free.fr/derive7.10000073.html)... no national tv coverage at all (only in France 3 local news). Hear no evil, see no...

This is no new; a few years ago, Sohane was torched exactly for the same reason and died of this attack; when her "suitor" came back to the 'hood for police reconstitution, he was cheered as an hero by his homies...

I really don't get that "fire" thing!
During the riots, there was quite real - but unreported by the national msm - cases (at least 2) of women tentatively set on fire by rioters, plus that 56 years old disabled woman who was effectively burnt.
Add the torched car/gvt buildings long standing tradition, and you've got to wonder why there is such an unbelievebly strong arsonist tendancy among theses populations (even to the point of spreading to the pathological, cf. that nurse who lost her two hand after she was torched by a north african "madman" at Xmas).
Posted by: anonymous5089 || 11/19/2005 10:05 Comments || Top||

#3  If arrested Patras could face a sentence of up to 3 days in jail and/or a 100 rupee(.30 USD) fine.
Posted by: bigjim-ky || 11/19/2005 10:18 Comments || Top||

#4  Native American women had a rather appropriate and effective disincentive for maggots like Patras. They would tie down the offending male and use scallop shells to painstakingly scrape off every square inch of flesh from his body.

Too bad there's no way (short of skin transplants) to have this treatment performed repeatedly upon turds like Patras and his ilk.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 11:54 Comments || Top||

#5  Seems to me acid is a little easy to come by in the Islamic world. how about a 5 day waiting period or something.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 11/19/2005 12:24 Comments || Top||

#6  rjschwarz, I think they produce their own through glands in their armpits. All that seething, dontcha know.
Posted by: BH || 11/19/2005 12:43 Comments || Top||

#7  I wonder if he would pass the acid test?
Posted by: Fun Dung Poo || 11/19/2005 20:46 Comments || Top||

#8  typical muslim man.
Posted by: anymouse || 11/19/2005 20:49 Comments || Top||

#9  This is truely sick. Worse the asswipe who did it will probably not even be charged with a crime -- after all she's only a chattel woman.
At worse he might have to pay her family a camel or two....

Anyone seen 'Gentle' lately? Would love to hear her defense of this...
Posted by: CrazyFool || 11/19/2005 20:54 Comments || Top||

#10  I think Gentle ran off and married a muslim man who informed her that if she gets on the computer he would pour acid on her face.
Posted by: 2b || 11/19/2005 22:11 Comments || Top||

#11  There are places which are just so antithetical to women, so vile, so misogynist... so unappreciative of women, they just don't deserve to have any there at all. It's as if they want to drive out women, or kill them by honor-murders, or childbirth, or or dirt and ignorance, or whatever. It would serve them right if every female in Pakistan applied for political refuge someplace else, anywhere else. Let 'em screw their goats and figure out how to reproduce parthogentetically.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 11/19/2005 22:33 Comments || Top||

#12  f*&king cowards - if Islamic women got a Xena (or Lorena Bobbitt) thing going, the world would be a better and less cluttered place
Posted by: Frank G || 11/19/2005 22:58 Comments || Top||


ARD, Qazi won’t attend conference
The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal on Friday decided not to attend the donors’ conference being held today (Saturday). The opposition parties, in separate meetings, decided not to attend the conference, saying the decision had been taken after the government had failed to take the opposition in confidence over the relief activities in the earthquake-hit areas of northern Pakistan.

Talking to Daily Times on Friday, MMA Deputy Secretary General Liaqat Baloch said he had also consulted PML-N leaders Raja Zafarul Haq and Zafar Iqbal Jhagra and Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) Senator Raza Rabbani before the party meeting. About whether Maulana Fazlur Rehman would attend the conference, Baloch said he would not attend the conference as the MMA secretary general, but could be there as the opposition leader in the National Assembly.

PPPP Secretary General Raja Pervez Ashraf said the ARD had decided not to attend the conference because the government had ignored the opposition parties with regard to the relief operations. He said another reason for not attending the conference was that the government had appointed soldiers to look after the relief effort. The PML-N had decided not to attend the conference because the government had invited its leaders to sit in the audience and not take part in actual proceedings.
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


UN will monitor donations and rehabilitation
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced on Friday a plan to appoint a special UN representative to monitor the release of international donations and execution of rehabilitation programmes in the earthquake-affected areas.
What's the vig on that?
Not as lucrative as Oil-for-Food, but, hey! Times are hard!
He was addressing a press conference with Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri here. Annan said that the representative will assist him in keeping track of pledges made by the international community in the Donors’ Conference. Former US president Bill Clinton had a similar role in the relief effort following the tsunami, he said.

He urged the international community to respond to the UN’s call for more donations as they had done after the Asian tsunami last year. “If we do not achieve our targets, we have to keep pressing them (the donors),” he said on his return from a tour of quake-hit Muzaffarabad. He said that various factors, including a lack of understanding, contributed to the poor response of the international community to relief efforts. He hoped that the Pakistan government had put in place an effective mechanism to ensure transparency in rehabilitation projects, adding that President Musharraf had assured him that every dollar would be accounted for. He praised the Pakistan government and army for carrying out relief work in an organised manner with local and international agencies.
Posted by: Fred || 11/19/2005 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh No! Not another
"Donate-to-Rehabilitate" global test program.
It has that familiar despotic ring to it.
Does that mean if some benevolent super power
were to desire to free the oppressed people of Pakistan from the likes of Al Qaeda that the UN would insist in the status quo in order to be able continue a system of graft?
What would we do without the poor and the oppressed?
Posted by: Kristeen Kid || 11/19/2005 5:37 Comments || Top||

#2  I think of it as kleptocratic downsizing. The Vulture Elites will never again see pots o' money on the scale of OFF and Kyoto, that cat is out of the bag now, grid willing, so they're focusing on creating many more smaller pots that can be scammed and skimmed. Baby needs new shoes, doncha know...

The day we cut them off and throw them out for good will be Victory in America Day.
Posted by: .com || 11/19/2005 6:23 Comments || Top||

#3  While we're at it lets rid ourselves of USAID. Another giant waste of money and time. Or at least fire all the Burka wearing tree huggers running that org.
Posted by: 49 pan || 11/19/2005 9:02 Comments || Top||

#4  In other news: Fox appoints self to guard henhouse.
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 12:03 Comments || Top||

#5  What would we do without the poor and the oppressed?

Ummm ... lose the fundamental raison d'etre for every socialist bowel movement on earth?
Posted by: Zenster || 11/19/2005 12:06 Comments || Top||

#6  According to the BBC, Perv got pledges of 5.4 billion dollars.

That means he is now free to spend 4.5 billion on the F-16s and 1 billion on the AWACS.

Posted by: john || 11/19/2005 12:51 Comments || Top||

#7  And free to use some of those aid billions to rebuild the terror camps for the Jihadis he hosts.

Posted by: john || 11/19/2005 12:57 Comments || Top||



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Sat 2005-11-19
  Iraqi Kurds may proclaim independence
Fri 2005-11-18
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Thu 2005-11-17
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Wed 2005-11-16
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