Forgive the bandwidth, Fred, but I was busy and did not get to respond to the Nukes debate of a few days ago. People were ignorant of nuclear accidents, and the costs of the nuclear industry, mistakenly believing that Chernobyl is about the only Nuke accident ever. Here are some facts and resources for people. Bear in mind this is brief: what I found in 5 mins on the internet. I once had far more resources at my disposal once but at present I am far from home.
HEALTH EFFECTS of exposure to radiation:
âRadiation exposure, like exposure to the sun, is cumulative.â
Source: CDC
CUMULATIVE means that the harmful effects build up over time they donât go away. Every small bit of radiation you are exposed to increases your chances of getting cancer or passing on genetic defects to your children. There is NO SAFE DOSE OF RADIATION. It is a lottery as to whether the radiation strikes out a gene in your DNA that is harmless or one that causes the cell to malfunction and become cancerous.
SOURCE: greenie site but medical doctors agree and despite controversy evidence is good.
People already suffer cancers simply as a result of the background radiation that everyone is exposed to from the Sun and radioactive particles in the air and water. This is unavoidable. But even small leaks of radioactivity from nuclear power plants increase the background level of radiation. As it is CUMULATIVE, this increases the rates of cancer and birth defects in populations exposed to it. You cannot get it out of the environment either once itâs out there in the food chain. Hereâs a brief discussion of some of the health effects of radiation written about the Hanford accident: Link
NUCLEAR REACTORS HAVE PLENTY OF ACCIDENTS NOT JUST CHERNOBYL:
In response to the poster who made the claim that France relies on N-power and has no accidents: The froggies have never been ones to admit when they make mistakes. Theyâd much rather cover it up. But in case you think the French are so superior that unlike the other developed nations that use N-power and have had thousands of accidents, they have had none, here are a selection (ie: not all just some):
22-09-1980: Pump failure causes accidental release of radioactive water at La Hague reprocessing plant (France)
6-01-1981: Accident at La Hague reprocessing plant (France)
1-10-1983: Technical failure and human error cause accident at Blayas nuclear power plant(France)
19-08-1986: Flooding at the Cattenom nuclear power plant (France)
28-04-1988: Release of 5000 Curies of tritium gas from the Bruyere le Chatel military nuclear complex (France)
1-04-1989: Control rod failure at Gravelines nuclear power plant (France)
28-01-1990: Pump failure during a shut-down at Gravelines nuclear power plant (France)
26-05-1990: During refuelling, five cubic meters of radioactive water spilled at the Fessenheim nuclear power plant (France)
16-09-1990: Superphenix Fast Breeder Reactor is closed down due to technical failures (France)
4-12-1990: 2 workers irradiated during refuelling at Blayais nuclear power plant (France)
1-06-1991: Failure of core cooling system at Belleville nuclear power plant (France)
22-07-1992: Two workers contaminated at Dampierre nuclear power plant (France)
20-01-1993: Technical failure at Paluel causes subcooling accident (France)
22-10-1993: Instrumentation and Control failure at Saint Alban nuclear power plant (France)
SOURCE:
Note: this is sourced from Greenpeace who I disagree with on many issues (eg: global warming), but this is a simple list of facts that are easily independently checkable: Link
EXPENSIVE INEFFICIENCY OF REACTORS:
Unlike conventional power plants, nuclear plants have a relatively short life-span -- 30 years -- before critical reactor components become irreparably radioactive. At that point the plant must be decommissioned (`mothballedâ) at a cost of over $100 million, or else its entire reactor core replaced. [oh, so cheap, so efficient!]
Compounding the storage problem is an accumulation of spent radioactive fuel rods, which have a life-span of only three years. [Oh but theyâre so small, they hardly take up any space!!!! Just a little problem, easily solvable⊠just not in my backyard, thanks!] SOURCE: as below.
PARTIAL LIST OF ACCIDENTS AT US REACTORS (there have been thousands of minor and mid-level accidents but for brevity and laziness here are just a few.) SOURCE: Link
28 March 1979
A major accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. At 4:00 a.m. a series of human and mechanical failures nearly triggered a nuclear disaster. By 8:00 a.m., after cooling water was lost and temperatures soared above 5,000 degrees, the top half of the reactorâs 150-ton core collapsed and melted. Contaminated coolant water escaped into a nearby building, releasing radioactive gasses, leading as many as 200,000 people to flee the region. Despite claims by the nuclear industry that "no one died at Three Mile Island," a study by Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, showed that the accident led to a minimum of 430 infant deaths.
11 February 1981
An Auxiliary Unit Operator, working his first day on the new job without proper training, inadvertently opened a valve which led to the contamination of eight men by 110,000 gallons of radioactive coolant sprayed into the containment building of the Tennessee Valley Authorityâs Sequoyah I plant in Tennessee.
25 January 1982
A steam generator pipe broke at the Rochester Gas & Electric Companyâs Ginna plant near Rochester, New York. Fifteen thousand gallons of radioactive coolant spilled onto the plant floor, and small amounts of radioactive steam escaped into the air.
15-16 January 1983
Nearly 208,000 gallons of water with low-level radioactive contamination was accidentally dumped into the Tennesee River at the Browns Ferry power plant.
1988
It was reported that there were 2,810 accidents in U.S. commercial nuclear power plants in 1987, down slightly from the 2,836 accidents reported in 1986, according to a report issued by the Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc.
25 February 1993A catastrophe at the Salem 1 reactor in New Jersey was averted by just 90 seconds when the plant was shut down manually, following the failure of automatic shutdown systems to act properly. The same automatic systems had failed to respond in an incident three days before, and other problems plagued this plant as well, such as a 3,000 gallon leak of radioactive water in June 1981 at the Salem 2 reactor, a 23,000 gallon leak of "mildly" radioactive water (which splashed onto 16 workers) in February 1982, and radioactive gas leaks in March 1981 and September 1982 from Salem 1.
28 May 1993
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a warning to the operators of 34 nuclear reactors around the country that the instruments used to measure levels of water in the reactor could give false readings during routine shutdowns and fail to detect important leaks. The problem was first bought to light by an engineer at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut who had been harassed for raising safety questions. The flawed instruments at boiling-water reactors designed by General Electric utilize pipes which were prone to being blocked by gas bubbles; a failure to detect falling water levels could have resulted, potentially leading to a meltdown.
HEREâS A LIST OF MORE ACCIDENTS FROM THE 1990s Link including that of Hanford, Washington, where wildfires burnt the reactor.
GIVE UP on the nuclear fantasy, it isnât the great powersource of the future that itâs cracked up to be. The other alternatives may not ALL be applicable in EVERY situation. They may not be cheap â in fact they are expensive. But they come without the social cost of Nukes. This fantasy is a dead-end path. Forget it, itâs over. Nobody wants the waste, it cannot be safely stored and even if you can guarantee that you can store it for a thousand years you cannot guarantee that human beings will remember where it is or understand that they cannot go digging there. As Gandalf said (loosely paraphrased) in Lord of the Rings: âyou think only of yourselves, and this time. But there are people yet to be born and time still to be. They are also my concern.â
You cannot guarantee against human error. You cannot guarantee against outside events such as the fire that caused the Hanford disaster: sabotage, flooding, earthquake, terrorist strikes. You cannot guarantee the stability of civic society beyond the next 100 years let alone the next 10,000. This means that you cannot guarantee the safety and efficiency of Nuclear reactors as a source of power. They are too expensive and Iâm not willing to pay the price! Find another way.
Posted by: Anon1 ||
06/07/2004 7:25:14 AM ||
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#1
Wow! I am shocked nuclear power is not totally safe! (/sarcasm).
Look you dimwit nobody argues that nuclear power is totally safe. Nothing is totally safe. The issue is its relative safety compared to the alternatives. Even if all the accidents and deaths you cite are accurate, and the relationship between long term exposure to radiation and cancer is a lot more complex than you imply, A quick calculation using this source makes nuclear power between 4 and 5 orders of magnitude safer than the only feasible alternative fossil fuels. That means that for every person nuclear power kills, the alternative kills between 10,000 and a 100,000 people.
It really burns me that greenie dimwits like you are murdering millions of people.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 22:52 Comments ||
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#2
I teach operators in the Nuclear Industry and we use a lot of these events (accidents, catastrophe, meltdown - hah, the usual buzzwords!)as examples. Most of the crap you have here is an extreme exaggeration of what actually happened. Which is what happens when you download some anti-nuke stuff. Worse liars than the Global Warming crowd.
#3
Phil B: I don't appreciate your ad hominem attack. Calling me a dimwit doesn't advance your argument.
Only facts and logic score points.
Relative safety and relative expense is exactly what I'm arguing. I think on balance that the relative lack of safety and expense of nuclear reactors make them a bad choice.
I think it was you who made out the French never had any accidents. You were wrong.
The reportage of accidents here is accurate.
There is no safe dosage level of radiation. Though the health effects of carbon pollution also cause people to die, they do not remain a problem for hundreds of thousands of years.
Global warming cannot be stopped now anyway, so using that as an argument against fossil fuels is redundant.
The argument for not using fossil fuels due to it causing us to give money to the people who are trying to kill us (Islamic Fascist states) IS relevant however.
I want us weened off Saudi Skag as much as the next person. But there are other alternatives to Nuclear power. They are also expensive but on balance I find the price paid for those alternatives is less both socially and in dollar terms than that paid for nuclear power.
Davemac: as you can see from the simple and factual list of some accidents at French reactors, this is not an exaggeration.
You will note that there are other more extensive lists which detail the thousands of accidents both minor and mid-level (if you take Chernobyl as major) that occur every year at nuke reactors.
You cannot guarantee against human error, faulty equipment, exogenous events or the impact of time (ie: 1000 years down the track you don't know what society will be like).
The same problems exist for other fuel sources but the difference is if you get a problem with ANY of these other fuel sources, it ceases to be a problem at worst case within a couple of decades.
There are parts of Russia that have been fenced off as uninhabitable for millenia. Do you think those fences will stay up? No! of course they won't. Future generations will suffer.
They will pay the cost. But you are short-sighted and think only of now now now.
#4
Yawn! You don't refute my arguments, you don't produce relevant facts. You attribute stements to me I never made, and then you substantiate the statement I did make - "France has never had a serious nuclear accident".
Enough! Come back when you have a cogent argument. Multiple posts empty of content is just a bore.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 23:37 Comments ||
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#5
anon1 - you usually post sensible stuff, but I fear you've taken the no-nuke bait on this - my minor was in radiation physics. These are exaggerated, out-and-out fabrications and pure bunk. No energy production is without hazard, the fact that the workers stay employed and don't die of radiation poisoning should give a clue - with all due respect....
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/07/2004 23:42 Comments ||
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#6
With all due respect to all, (ie: respect for Frank, but none for Phil B) the hazard of nukes lies in the longevity of the radiation.
I have listed some straight verifiable facts.
They directly contradict the argument that nuclear power is safe, efficient and cheap.
To die of radiation poisoning would involve extremely high doses of radioactivity. Workers have died as a result of this during accidents at nuke plants around the world and not just at Chernobyl.
It is the thousands of N-plant workers who die of cancers, who have down-syndrome children or leukaemia, who maybe worked at the reactor for 5 years then moved to a different state and weren't tracked that are the problem. Those figures don't get traced back to the reactor because oh no then we'd have to admit there was a problem.
The russians relocated thousands after Chernobyl and didn't keep records. There was a reason for that. Who wants to admit the real death toll?
Another Chernobyl is inevitable sooner or later.
But regardless of Chernobyl (a low probability event), I wouldn't want to be living in a city where there was a small accident (a high probability event) involving accidental release of radioactive gas into the atmosphere (happened at Lucas Heights in Sydney), or similar into the water supply, because I am smart and I know that will increase my risk of cancer or of passing on genetic defects.
#7
I wouldn't want to be living in a city where .... release of radioactive gas into the atmosphere
This is what burns me about greenies. They are so ignorant and clueless. I guarantee whatever city you (Anon1) live in there are substantial emissions of radioactive gas (Radon) happening right now. And this problem is orders of magnitude bigger than releases from nuclear facilities.
Memo to self - stop posting to dead threads!
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/08/2004 3:31 Comments ||
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#8
Your arrogance is your greatest obstacle, Phil B, since you think anybody that disagrees with you is simply clueless and ignorant.
I provided evidence to back up my claims, which were logical and well-reasoned.
In answer to that you respond with an ad-hominem attack and a vague generalisation.
Guess what Phil B.... I already stated that background radiation is unavoidable and is already responsible for cancers.
The trick is not to add more to it because the effect is cumulative and that means more cancers and birth defects as a direct result.
You've earnt my ad-hominem attack on you:
You are ignorant. You have only vague ideas to back up your position. You haven't refuted my argument with evidence and logic.
Where's the source to back up that there are "substantial" (whatever that means) emissions of radon. Where is your source that proves that the emission of Radon gas is not a problem in and of itself. Where is your evidence that this is actually a "bigger" problem than releases from nuclear facilities (which facilities? which spillage? how many milliseiverts of radiation in the water supply/atmosphere/food chain is it worse than?)
#9
Thx, davemac! It is the purpose of RB to allow those who know WTF to clarify issues and inform those lacking the firsthand info. Please come back often!!! Your comment made me LOL - again, thanks!
But he did not provide any facts, evidence or logic.
For all YOU know he could be a streetcleaner.
If I told you I was an astrophysicist and then told you I had invented a time machine, would you believe that, too? Even if I WAS an astrophysicist I could STILL be either mistaken, biased or lying.
#11
AW - No I wouldn't believe you because you're a link whore who dumps tons of text from links you skimmed off of idiot sites, instead of just posting the URLs so people can judge the source for themselves. You eat lots of bandwidth that doesn't belong to you. BTW, davemac is really an alien. And your 28+ HOURS LATE.
#12
actually, I DID post the links so you could check them out for yourself.
You'll also note that I originally had a lot more resources but that I am far from home and have no access to them now.
I am not prepared to spend hours researching it for your benefit but am content to skim for a short while to find a few facts and figures to back up my argument, which I did.
I'm 28 hours late: yes, I have a life.
I respect that you provided the new server it was good to provide Fred with extra as Rantburg is a really important site.
But don't think that changes the rules of engagement. Facts and logic rule. Agreeing with faulty logic is simply idiotarianism even if it appeals to your opinion on the topic.
While we all (well most of us) laughed at how implausable the plot of the Day After Tommorow was, there is a scenario that causes a abrupt drop of temperature in temperate latitudes and that is a major volcanic eruption. 70,000 years ago a volcano on Sumatra erupted and many people believe killed almost all the humans on the planet and caused temperature drops of 15C in a matter of weeks.
More than 7,000 people have been evacuated from the slopes of Mount Awu volcano in northern Indonesia after it showed signs of erupting, police and a vulcanologist said yesterday. Villagers have been moved to Tahuna, the main town on Sangihe island north of Sulawesi, and the evacuation is continuing, said a policeman on duty in Tahuna, 15km south of Mount Awu. The policeman, who identified himself as Ronny, said the refugees are being sheltered in government buildings. He said smoke could be seen rising from the mountain early yesterday. The vulcanology office on Sunday raised the status on the 1,320-metre Mount Awu to âbewareâ, the highest alert level. âIn light of the heightened volcanic activity, the âbewareâ status is still maintained,â said Samuel Dolompaha, from the vulcanology monitoring station on Sangihe. Dolompaha said the mountain has been spewing flames and thick smoke since the second week of May. The level of volcanic earthquakes have also intensified since early on Sunday. Mount Awu last erupted in 1992 but caused no casualties. A major eruption in August 1966 killed 39 people and caused thousands to flee. The Indonesian archipelago sits on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire noted for its volcanic and seismic activity.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 8:58:53 PM ||
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Reader Andrew has located a firm that can convert virtually anything useless, whiffy or rancid into hydrocarbon fuel- This technology actually turns things such as plastic bags and other things such as sewage, guts, paint and insecticide back into oil, water and gas! Turns people back into oil too, you could heat your home for a year off one Mike Moore or Phatty.
Just think of the potential- all those bad artists, ferals, welfare jockeys, public broadcaster employees (and board members), the bicycle set, geezers- itâs better than bloody soylent green, and for once the utterly useless could become useful- doing their bit for the betterment of mankind; wouldnât you be proud to know that despite being long-term unemployed and riddled with self-inflicted diseases you helped send Brett Stevens up the quarter mile at Calder in a sub- four second run. I donât know about the extraction plants though- given some of the likely subjects they would want to be paying well, not to mention the risk of environmental disaster.
Posted by: tipper ||
06/07/2004 11:31:28 AM ||
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#1
This company has yet to have anything substantive on its web site. Maybe they've done some small scale trials but there is no evidence they've done anything commercial.
#3
Actually they have done a pretty sizeable commercial plant with ConAgra that has capacity to output 500 barrels a day from Turkey guts. They say they're producing the oil at 15$ a barrel as opposed to the previous situation where ConAgra was paying a waste management company to haul away it's turkey guts.
Now that they've completed proof of concept they're in negotiations to build several more full scale plants. They estimate the larger scale plants will output 5000 barrels a day as opposed to 500.
#5
mhw, basically this tech has been around for a long time. With enough pressure and heat pretty much everything we manufacture will break down into simpler carbon-hydrogen bonds plus some metals etc. Mostly carbon-hydrogen molecules though... which depending on configuration and size of the molecule makes up the range of fuels we use.
Historically the problem has been the inefficiency in the process because of the need to remove the water which in itself is an energy intensive task and then through removing the water you end up removing the heat in the water and tossing it away which is more lost energy.
These guys figured out that by instead of removing the water immediatly you can actually use it to distribute the heat in the waste more efficiently (thus quickening the process)... then instead of releasing the waste heat they recycle it back into the system (in the form of water vapor) and use it again for the next batch. The result is an 85% efficiency... in other words the plant uses 15% of the energy it produces from the waste material to run itself... the rest becomes oil.
These engineering improvements took a system that wasn't profitable and made it competitive. They estimate the larger scale plants that output 5000 barrels a day could reduce their costs to $8-10 a barrel.
#8
Only problem is scale. Just to make a dent the capacity will have to be 10 million barrels a day. The other side of the scale coin is if the supply of waste is sufficient and dense enough to provide for 10 million barrels a day
#9
Whoa... 10 million barrels a day is about half of our entire oil usage! That's a little more than a dent. If this technology could increase the oil supply by 10% it would have a huge stabalizing effect on the oil markets.
#10
Eh the hangup that a lot of people seem don't seem to get around of is that they see the words "turkey guts" and automatically assume it can only be used for biowaste. Yet what about plastics and leftover computer hardware. Those would be richer in petroleum products as well as other minerals.
Anyhoo the only big problem I see is how do you transport enough of the garbage to a big enough plant? NIMBY always applies here guys and it often times tends to kills great ideas like this.
#11
I believe the idea behind these plants is that thee would be many smallish ones distributed around the country. Each would be placed near it's source material. For instance, the pilot plant is located next to the turkey rendering plant that supplies it. Similar scenarios would play out elsewhere.
When you consider that this thing can use old tires, sewage, plastic, pretty much anything with a carbon based chain, it is pretty bit news.
By the way, I believe that the current factory produces #4 heating oil: very easy to refine into other products.
#12
This is very unlikely to make a dent in our energy needs; as Steve DenBeste notes, unless you can do something on the order of 1% or more of our energy consumption, it's likely not to make a difference.
The real value of this is converting a negative (need to pay for waste disposal) into a positive (something they can sell). Even at 5,000 barrels a day -- or year -- that's something that the poultry rendering plant didn't have before, and it's a net savings to them. Useful and certainly worthwhile, but don't, er, bet the farm.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/07/2004 17:03 Comments ||
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Steve - you beat me to it. (Glad I read down all the comments before jumping in! :-p)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/07/2004 17:43 Comments ||
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But Steve... if it's capable of turning a cost center into a profit center don't you think it will catch on across all industries and become fairly widespread? If that occurs then it will produce far more than 1% of our total energy consumption.
#15
Actually the reason I said it needed to scale to 10 million barrels per day (mbd) is because by the time something like this becomes mainstream ( think 30 year capital depreciation cycles) in about 30-45 years the US oil demand will be up to 40-50 mbd so 10 mbd wil be 20-25% of oil consumption. This doesn't count non-oil energy needs.
#16
Steve White is right. SDB has explained at lenght why this doesn't scale and it is a solution to a waste disposal problem. As an end to end process I am wiling to bet that it consumes far more energy than it produces. People make the same mistake about fuel cells (and electric vehicles). They are a solution to a pollution problem, not an energy supply problem.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 19:55 Comments ||
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It's actually really simple to measure it's end to end energy efficiency. It's costing them $15 a barrel to produce with this plant. Obviously they could be lying about their cost, but assuming you're willing to take them at their word then you have your answer.
There is also the question of how are they determining the $15 dollar number. Are those their marginal costs or does it include depreciating their initial capex and over what time period? I'm going under the assumption that it includes capex depreciation being that this would be standard GAAP accounting. Once again if they're just giving their marginal costs then this is another issue.
Now assuming their GAAP cost per barrel is $15 with this smaller less efficient plant then by definition this does scale... extremely well.
That's why capitalism is so great, you can actually fing the answer to these questions because everything is measure the same way... dollars ;)
#18
DPA you are confusing energy effiency and economic efficiency. I don't doubt the $15 cost quoted is correct, but it depends on the cost of the raw material. In this case it will be somewhere between free and they are paid to take it away. Lets face it, the market for turkey guts is limited. The supply is determined by the demand for the primary product of turkey raising. I don't know how much turkey guts the USA produces but I'm sure that even if all of it were converted int oil, it would have a minimal effect on the total energy supply. To go beyond that point you need to increase the supply of turkey guts. This will result in the value of turkey meat falling and the value of the oil produced would have to increase and you would quickly reach the point where the cost/value of the energy imput/produced becuase the primary component of the economics of the process.
So what this process is doing is increasing the economic effiency of the Turkey industry, but it says nothing about its energy efficiency.
Sorry not a great explanation but I'm (supposed to be) busy right now!
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 23:56 Comments ||
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The market for specifically turkey guts is limited but the market for waste is huge. I think you're confusing what this process is. It takes any carbon based waste and converts it into oil. Animal (in this case turkey) guts were just the first application.
In actuality plastics and other forms of waste provide a higher yield.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation declared the entire town of Granby a crime scene Saturday as authorities released more information about the events that unfolded a day earlier when an armored bulldozer began knocking down buildings in town. The Grand County Sheriff's office said that the D9 Caterpillar bulldozer was totally encased in armored plating with only small peepholes.
D9 Cat, the Official Bulldozer of Rantburg. Accept no subsitutes!
They said the driver, who was identified Friday as Marvin Heemeyer, 52, had installed TV cameras connected to three monitors so he could see where he was going. Investigators believe he spent several months planning and building the quarter- to half-inch concrete box that no police bullet could penetrate. "How he built this was amazing," said Grand County Commissioner James Newberry. "This was a very intelligent man. Once you saw the way his workshop was set up it's possible."
Everyone needs a hobby.
The bulldozer destroyed a concrete batch building, ran over a police vehicle and pushed over a wall where two state troopers were hiding, the Grand County Sheriff's office said. The troopers escaped. The bulldozer then proceeded eastward on Highway 40 to the Mountain Parks concrete building, where it caused heavy damage. The sheriff's department said the bulldozer next destroyed a building housing the town hall and library, then rammed the Liberty Savings Bank. It also destroyed the Sky-Hi News building, the Xcel Energy building, and a business owned by Thompson Excavating as well as the home, located on another street, of the owner of Thompson Excavating.
Seems like Marvin had "issues".
Numerous rounds were fired from a .50 browning semi-automatic rifle from inside the dozer at some propane tanks and electrical transformers at another business, the sheriff's office said.
Armored dozer with a .50, Marvin had serious issues.
Around 5 p.m., which was about three hours after the rampage began, the bulldozer got stuck inside the Gamble's department store. Soon afterwards, a shot was heard coming from inside the dozer. However it wasn't until 2 a.m. that deputies, police and SWAT officers using explosives, were able to penetrate the concrete and steel plates that were welded onto the bulldozer. The sheriff's office said the body of a man, believed to be Marvin Heemeyer, was found inside, dead from an apparent self-inflicted gun shot wound. Investigators said they also found four weapons, a .50 caliber rifle, two military style assault rifles and a handgun. Crews had to use a crane to pry open the reinforced box and remove Heemeyer's body, which was recovered around 10:30 a.m. At a media briefing later in the day, authorities said they believed Heemeyer committed suicide about 20 seconds after he lost control of the hydraulics on the home-made tank. The Colorado State Patrol said it is looking for accomplices. They said the attack was well planned out and they don't think that Heemeyer could have done it all on his own.
Sure he could, all it took was time and a lot of rage. Glad no one but Marvin lost his life. Expect call for dozer gun control in 5..4..
Posted by: Steve ||
06/07/2004 11:15:22 AM ||
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#1
. . .events that unfolded a day earlier when an armored bulldozer began knocking down buildings in town.
That Marvin Heemeyer was kidnapped and forced by the bulldozer to ride inside while the BULLDOZER went on a rampage. Logically how could they know for sure he killed himself? Maybe the bulldozer killed him with the shotgun?
The anti-SUV crowd is now attacking bulldozers as a menace.
It should have said : Marvin Heemeyer, 52, upset over a zoning dispute, drove an armored plated bulldozer into several buildings and knocked them down in Granby, Colorado, before taking his own life.
An earlier report said that the weight of the bulldozer collapsed the floor of the hardware store, so that it fell into the basement. Ain't no way out from there.
The earlier report also made Ian Daugherty out to be a lot more sympathetic to Heemeyer than this story makes out.
A reverse 911 call? What the hell? What kind of emergencies do they get in Granby, anyway?
Friday's images of a man plowing through Granby businesses with a bulldozer were oddly similar to an incident that happened six years ago in a smaller Colorado mountain town.
Residents of Alma, in Park County southwest of Denver, are still rattled over what caused town native Thomas Leask to go on a deadly bulldozer rampage in February 1998.
Unlike the rampage in Granby, Leask claimed a victim. He shot a former mayor of Alma, Willie Morrison, to death and plowed into the town hall, fire station, post office and water-treatment facility, claiming he was following God's orders.
If old Marvin was once jilted by a girl named Rachel, I don't want to know about it.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/07/2004 13:25 Comments ||
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remember the mbt-60 tank in san diego about a decade or so ago......
Posted by: Dan ||
06/07/2004 13:44 Comments ||
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Armored bulldozers...why do they hate us?
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 13:46 Comments ||
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#1 Logically how could they know for sure he killed himself?
Logically, when the deputy sheriff sat atop the killdozer (thanks Angie) and fired several clips of 45 cal or 9mm rounds through a hole in the roof that should have finished off ole Marv. Can you imagine how those things must have ricocheted throughout the inside of that cat?
Channel 4 out of Denver showed the deputy firing his weapon as part of their live coverage.
#11
they had clips on the local news here in Denver - he gave a tour of it some time back. In it he had a .50 cal rifle, several other rifles and a pistol. The news also showed him plowing down the town with the cops in an "OJ" slow persuit behind him. It was crazy.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
06/07/2004 14:06 Comments ||
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#12
Damn, I ant to see that! Coverage on the major news channels were all over Reagans funeral.
This makes me wonder two things: 1, where the hell did he get a C9 bulldozer? Those things cost a lot of money. 2, what's his affiliation too ANSWER? It's very unlikely he just "randomly" decided to take down Corporation buildings with the IDF's choice pancake maker.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/07/2004 15:21 Comments ||
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#13
The son of a bitch took out a LIBRARY?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
06/07/2004 15:52 Comments ||
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#14
The son of a bitch took out a LIBRARY?
Yeah, those overdue charges on that "Make Heavy Armor in the Privacy of Your Own Home" reference book are what finally tripped his trigger.
#2
It is possible for 6 teams of viewers using sensitive chronometres and a decent telescopes set up for sun projection to calculate closely the Moore mass and thus finally figure out how come teddy float so good.
But he was, and it was bad news for you wasnât it, El Jefe?
Cuba harshly criticized former President Ronald Reagan and his policies on Monday, saying he should "never have been born." In the first reaction to Reaganâs death from the communist government, Radio Reloj said: "As forgetful and irresponsible as he was, he forgot to take his worst works to the grave," the government radio station said. "He, who never should have been born, has died," the radio said. The statement did not mention Cubaâs relationship with the United States under Reagan, a staunch foe of communism. It also did not mention Reaganâs decision to order U.S. forces to invade the tiny Caribbean country of Grenada on Oct. 25, 1983, because Washington feared the island had grown too close to Cuba. Oh yeah. Believe they got their asses kicked there, didnât they? Nice convienient memory lapse.
Since the early 1960s, Cuba and the United States have been without diplomatic relations, and Cuba has been under a U.S. trade embargo. But relations between the two countries were especially tense when Reagan was in office from 1981-1989. Radio Reloj lambasted Reaganâs military policies, especially the "Star Wars" anti-missile program. The initiative, launched when the Soviet Union still existed, rejected a long-standing doctrine built on the idea that neither superpower would start a nuclear war out of fear of annihilation by the other. And one of the reasons their Soviet sugar daddies went away, never to return again.
The radio also criticized Reaganâs policies in Central America, where Washington backed a counterrevolutionary rebel army that fought against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The United States also supported a conservative government that battled Marxist guerrillas during El Salvadorâs civil war. Strike two and strike three. Take a seat on the pine, Fidel.
"His apologists characterize him as the victor of the Cold War," the radio said. "Those in the know knew that the reality was not so, but rather the destroyer of policies of detente in the overall quest for peace." Sounds like they liked Jimmy Carter better. Your timeâs coming, El Jefe. Donât expect to be sitting around with Reagan arguing politics. You ainât going where heâll be.
After his arrival at Bolivar Avenue, President Hugo Chavez Frias predicted the triumph of the Bolivarian Revolution that he leads, and accepted the challenge of the recall referendum against him. During his speech, transmitted on national TV, he warned the opposition that he will remain in power until 2021. He also kicked off his electoral campaign. âI predict that the Venezuelan opposition and their foreign masters will face the most overwhelming defeat that they have received in all of history. Prepare yourselves for what will come. In 2021, Iâll go to the Cajon de Arauca. Here we are, accepting one more challenge; the defeat weâre going to give them the day the National Elections Council (CNE) sets for the recall referendum will be a defeat that will remain written with indelible letters in Venezuelan history. Thatâs what I say, and thatâs how it will be. Write it, then,â Chavez said, challenging his opponents.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/07/2004 10:25:21 PM ||
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What is this, Hugo Chavez' 17-year Reich?
Posted by: Mike ||
06/07/2004 8:45 Comments ||
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#2
If this is what he truly believes, I believe that he will have a close encounter with a 12.7mm piece of metal before the year is out. The Venezuelan opposition is playing by rules that Chavez believes are only for suckers. Once the pretense of rules is gone, it will get remarkably ugly remarkably fast. No vacations in Venezuela for a few years.
Bill of INDC Journal has a brief and unsatisfactory interview with Michael Berg, Nick Bergâs father, at an ANSWER rally in DC.
On Saturday I attended International ANSWERâs latest "EMERGENCY MOBILIZATION" to protest the Bush administrationâs "criminal wars, occupations, torture and assault." According the flyer, thousands of protestors would "Speak Truth to Power" in a march from the White House to Donald Rumsfeldâs front lawn. The highlight of the event was to be a celebrity speech by Michael Berg, the father of terror victim Nick Berg. Given Mr. Bergâs recent rhetoric espousing what he regards as the Bush administrationâs culpability in his sonâs death, I saw the rally as a good opportunity to ask him a few questions.
Michael Berg: "... I donât think that my sonâs murder was solved, if you know what Iâm saying ..." Much much more. Photos too.
#1
This guy (and I dont mean to insult guys out there) is, by his own admission, an active member of the Socialist Workers Party who is using his son's death to advance his socialist cause -- a cause his dead son disagreed with.
#2
This article merely confirmed my suspicions that Leftism is primary a mental health issue, not a political issue. Michael Berg's problem is obvious.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/07/2004 16:05 Comments ||
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#3
After that answer, Mr. Berg stopped taking questions, but another man insistently asked him, âIs it possible to get your contact information, to follow up?â
Michael Berg: "Who are you?"
Socialist Workers Party Reporter: "Iâm with the Socialist Workers newspaper."
Michael Berg: "Socialist Workers newspaper? (Enthusiastically) Oh, yeah , oh yeah, oh yeah ⦠(gives info) my e-mail is the best way to contact, because my wife probably will slam down the phone on just about anyone who calls; sheâs still in a very emotional state. My son was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, yes he was, my son David, not my son Nick, my older son David. I supported his efforts working with the Socialist Workers Party, and I went with him to the headquarters in NY and I attended the rallies and I supported his trips to Cuba and ⦠I donât really want to say (gestures to me) because heâs (got a tape recorder)."
He's pretty RED in my book, and what you can expect to hear from him is pretty obvious pro-commie bullshit.
#4
I didn't know Berg was a member of the Socialist Workers Party. They are seriously whacky Lefties. Trotskyite I believe. Even the Communists think these people are out to lunch. The Berg story gets stranger and stranger.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 20:22 Comments ||
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#5
Fuck the son-of-a-bitch. Someone needs to whip his little candy ass. Fuckin' punk! What a mealy-mouthed opportunistic parasite he is. Nick Berg IS ashamed of this idiot.
Posted by: Halfass Pete ||
06/07/2004 20:57 Comments ||
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#9
Kerry may not be eligible to be president. I read in a blog the other day about section 3 of the 14th amendment. The part that says no one who has given aid or comfort to any enemy of the US is eligible.....
#14
Ted Rall was nominated for a Ruben Award at the National Cartoonist Convention. And the crowd gave a near standing ovation for a "Bush can't read" quip. Jeesh...pretty sad stuff from guys paid to be funny. Bush can't read....ha,ha, good one. A real knee slapper. Original too. Give that man an award!
Posted by: B ||
06/07/2004 23:33 Comments ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
06/07/2004 08:15 ||
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#1
Way to go, NYT. He's not even cold yet and you're already busy trying to smear Bush infer that Hitler Bush would consciously attempt to "use Reagan's death" to further political goals.
Not to NYT: Nobody on the right side of the issues has to "use" the death of another person on the right side of the issues in order to further themselves. We already know Bush is superior to his competition, whether or not the Gipper died.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
06/07/2004 10:58 Comments ||
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You have got to view this through the liberal prism. If Reagan were a Liberal Icon (yuck, spit) then they would exploit it to the hilt! If you were listening to the multitude of Reagan policy triumphs and follies you could see that Bushâs policies are EXACTLY like his. Reagan was bold, ran up a deficit, despised by much of Europe (save England), and challenged the Evil empire to âtear down this wall.â Bush likes to think outside the box, runs a fair sized deficit, despised by Europe, and challenges the Islamofacists to âbring it on.â I remember the tear down this wall speech. There was some liberal group that moved the âdoomsday clockâ to one minute or something close to that. The liberals didnât sleep until Gorby came for a state visit (it was carried live on TV). Little did they know that the Soviet Union was already on its way out when Gorby showed up and the Soviet âthreatâ was a paper tiger. Any of this sounding like the LLLs and press of today? They canât say it, but they know the administrations are similar and watch as they try to contrast them. Bush won't have to exploit it, the truth speaks for itself here.
#5
Damn them--is the NYT even fit to line a bird cage? Bastards...
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 13:54 Comments ||
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#6
Hmm, I don't recall Senator Wellstone's death helping the Democrats, either -- of course, the Dems overtly tried to exploit that and it backfired, whereas GWB seems to be smart enough to be respectful and reverent to Pres. Reagan, and let everyone draw their own conclusions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/07/2004 16:59 Comments ||
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#7
it would help if they let Gore speak...what a nutcase
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/07/2004 17:06 Comments ||
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from Time Magazine
And to answer the misleading gibberish title? No.
Monday, Jun. 14, 2004 Issue
After the 2000 presidential-election debacle in Florida, state and county election officials there agreed to examine whether the names of more than 19,000 people should be restored to the voter rolls because most of them may have been mistakenly identified as convicted felons and thus ineligible to vote. (In Florida, convicted felons must apply to get back their voting rights after their sentences are complete, though few manage to do so.) Those disenfranchised voters took on increased significance when Bush won the state by just 537 votes. Have the snafus been fixed? Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has now told county supervisors that 47,000 more names are likely to be purged from the voter rolls this year, and election watchdogs fear that Florida is poised to repeat the mistakes of 2000 on a much larger scale. The onus is on the felon to have his/her voting rights re-established. That the 19,000 felons dropped is in question is merely that. Re-instating en masse would also abrogate state law. Donât buy the whine. Prove they belong or STFU.
Hood argues that the criteria for removing people from the rolls are more stringent than they were in 2000 and that supervisors are now required by law to inform those named. "New safeguards assure that error rates will be kept to a minimum," Hoodâs spokeswoman says. But critics say the state is using the same flawed database that misidentified so many voters in 2000 and has done little to improve its accuracy. Hood staunchly denies that politics is at play, but her critics point out that almost a third of those listed reside in the heavily Democratic South Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Polls show that Democratic contender John Kerry and President Bush are running neck and neck in the state, where the Presidentâs brother Jeb is Governor. Note that the database is allegedly flawed - here Time states it as fact. Iâm so dizzy! And big surprise, heavily Donk Dade has a disproportionate number of people who are dropped for the myraid possible reasons? F**kinâ Duh.
The chads may hit the fan this week when Floridaâs 67 county elections supervisors meet in Key West and debate how to handle Hoodâs purge list of 47,000. Confirming the listâs accuracy is now their responsibility, and some elections supervisors are eager to avoid a replay of 2000. "We already found one person [on the list] whose [criminal] charges had later been reduced to a misdemeanor," says a G.O.P. supervisor. Given what happened in 2000, he adds, "Iâm going to err on the side of the voter this time." So there are convictions, deaths, expired registrations, out of state emigrations, etc. for another 47,000 now ex-voters. So? Sounds like it will be handled at the local level, which makes sense. Much sound and conspiracy-ish fury - but not a single fact. Oh, yeah, there was ONE voter confirmed to belong on the list, Lessee, 19 + 47 = 66,000 - 1 = 65,999 drops. Hang this, Chad. Lol, much ado about nothing.
Posted by: .com ||
06/07/2004 4:54:54 AM ||
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#1
Democrats - the party of Jerry Springer. So concerned that their felons won't be able to vote. It just says so much about how low they are willing to admit that they have sunk.
#3
they already have their army of myrmidon lawyers (is that redundant?) ready to contest this election til May if possible
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/07/2004 8:14 Comments ||
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But God forbid that one absentee ballot sent by our servicemen now deployed to defend this country would have a date stamped received on its envelope but lack a stamp cancellation mark, like thousands of pieces of mail we find in our mailboxes everyday, and that vote will be thrown out care of the DNC. Convicts have rights, our bloodied defenders have none.
Posted by: Don ||
06/07/2004 8:27 Comments ||
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#5
The (far Left) Democrats are losing the American public. They are doing so in a dramatic and enormous fashion. This loss is so gigantic even they know they're losing. That's what this "felon voting" is about. (On the other hand, I do have some reservations about who is labeled a "felon" based on our weirdo drug laws...but that's another rant...)
Look at the list: Felons voting, votes for 14-year-olds (bandied about in California), instituting a draft (even though the public is quite obviously opposed to such) -- nothing indicates "Losing out forever" for the Democrats like these inroads against voting rights. What's next? Voting "rights" for those in other countries who have a "stake" in what the U.S. does? We already know that "dual" citizens vote here.
Time for some heavy satire, I think. Or a couple of drinks. Mebbe more.
#6
fact is according to the civil rights committee report those heavily democratic areas ignored the list entirely because they didn't trust them. That meant that heavily democratic areas had an increased chance of felons voting, while heavily republican areas had the problem Democrats whine about, as well as the shutdown of voting in the Republican dominated Florida panhandle because the media called things early.
#8
AZcat...sigh. Next the Paleo's will say the same thing.
Posted by: B ||
06/07/2004 10:33 Comments ||
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#9
Quana--Nice list, but don't forget their proposal to allow non-citizen immigrants to vote, too! After all, why should only Americans vote in American elections? :-P
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 10:51 Comments ||
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#10
"Felons for Kerry" has a nice rign to it.
As Dave Barry lives in Dade county he might say "Felons for Kerry" would be a great name for a rock band.
#11
Voting "rights" for those in other countries who have a "stake" in what the U.S. does?
I've been flaming an Irish moonbat on another forum the last couple of months, and she asserts fiercely that Europe "ought to have a say" in who the next US President is because "our rights are at stake too." Being it's the Usenet I can't see her face, but I assume it's straight.
Just another step on the road to world guvment, folks, that's all.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/07/2004 11:55 Comments ||
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#12
what about the military votes thrown out in california? no dem is screaming about this..just a disgrace..
Posted by: Dan ||
06/07/2004 11:59 Comments ||
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#13
*chuckle* "ought to have a say", eh?
Pearls before sows, Steve, pearls before sows.
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
06/07/2004 13:07 Comments ||
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#14
The private firm hired to vet the felon lists did a sloppy job. We know that. Combine that with the typical 'sewer service', and you have a real problem.
I know the one time I was turned away from a polling place (in NJ) I was furious. It turned out that they had misfiled my registration card; somebody had put 'Jablow' with the 'JU' names. No, I'm not a felon. If I hadn't been persistent in getting them to look further, and if they hadn't found it, or the misfiling had been worse, I would have been disenfranchised.
Can we all agree that these decisions about voter-eligibility should be handled as carefully as possible?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
06/07/2004 13:17 Comments ||
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#15
Has anyone seen the website theworldvotes? PLENTY of "outlanders" think they have a right to tell us (stupid Americans) who we should vote for...
#16
Look, guys, ALL databases of this sort have errors. It's the nature of the beast - a combination of GIGO and bad maintenance/bad design, usually. There is NO WAY to fix them, short of verifying each individual entry, and by then you've got new errors input.
The federal government will be closed Friday in honor of former President Ronald Reagan, the White House announced Sunday. Exempt from the closing are operations department and agency heads determine ``should remain open for reasons of national security or defense or other essential public business,'' according to a proclamation issued by President Bush.
Heh. Ronnie would get a hoot out of that -- if the government is closed it won't be spending any money!
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/07/2004 1:26:14 AM ||
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Alert the eastern locksmith corps for an emergency deployment.
#2
That is a fine tribute to Reagan but to really do him justice, don't reopen!
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/07/2004 9:33 Comments ||
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#3
Actually closing the government for this holiday does not save much money (a few less a/c units will be operating). On the contrary, it generates extra cost in overtime (for the postal service, the US health service and others who have to operate).
Whatever happened to that brutal "suppression of dissent" we were hearing so much about?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A newly minted deck of cards of President Bush and members of his team akin to the Saddam Hussein cards hawked during the Iraq war are selling at a brisk pace in New York. Locals are snapping up the cards at Marc Jacobsâ chic clothing store and other shops in Greenwich Village, retailing for as much as $11, store officials said. Street vendors and Internet outlets are also peddling the cards, which portray the Bush administration in a comically negative light. "Oh, yes. The Bush cards? Theyâre right over there next to the butt plugs. Youâre welcome."
For the past week, the Jacobsâ Bleecker St. outlet has drawn crowds of gawkers to look at huge blowups of the playing cards hanging in the window. Riffing on the Saddam playing cards that were sold in the run-up to and early days of U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the cards depict Bush as the ace of spades, with Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rounding out the four aces. Each "carefully stacked deck" features a picture and some negative tidbits about the depicted party. Cheneyâs ace of clubs lists his 2000 Halliburton income ($36 million) and the figure 13,500 -- the number of pages of energy-related documents he has withheld from the U.S. Congress. Better get a deck before they sell out, Mucky.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is the queen of hearts. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is the six of clubs and carries a quote from his brother the president; "Jeb has assured me we have Florida," made during the hotly contested 2000 presidential election. Yeah, it was all part of the plan.
The jokers in the deck are both Bush -- one of the president missing an attempt to hit a T-ball, another of him decked out in a flight suit, when he declared an end to major combat in Iraq a year ago. So in the same deck heâs the evil mastermind and a buffoon? Make up your minds, willya?
The Greenwich Village store display also includes bumper stickers reading "Nobody died when Clinton lied" and "GOP -- Greed, Oil and Plunder," assorted anti-Bush buttons and even toilet paper featuring the presidentâs image. The display was the brainchild of Marc Jacobs President Robert Duffy, who had the approval of the high fashion designer. The "high" fashion designer? I like that.
Itâs 1983; Iâm working at the Minnesota Daily, in the editorial department. Smart friends, common purpose, and by God a paper to put out! It gets no better when youâre in your 20s.
We didnât hate Reagan; we viewed him with indulgent contempt, since he was so obviously out of his depth. I mean, please: an actor? As president? (This from a generation that got its politics from âAll The Presidentâs Men.â This from a generation that would later embrace Martin Sheen as the ne plus ultra of all things presidential.) He was in a movie with a talking monkey, for heavenâs sake. That was all you really needed to know. âBedtime for Bonzo,â youâd say with a smirk or a conspicuous rolling of the eyes, and everyone would nod. Idiot. Empty-headed grinning high-haired uberdad. Of course he was popular among the groundlings. It would be laughable if it werenât so typical - he was just the sort of fool the voters could be trusted to elect.
Reagan was worse than stupid â he was conspicuously indifferent to our futures. It was generally accepted that he either wanted a nuclear war or was too dim to understand the consequences. It went without saying that he didnât read Schellâs âFate of the Earth.â It went without saying that he didnât read anything at all.
Oh, it was a scary time. You have no idea. Reagan sent jets to attack Libya, for example. Something to do with a bombing of a nightclub in Germany â that was bad, sure, but raising the stakes like this was madness. Sheer madness. If they were angry enough to bomb a nightclub, how angry would they be now? We put nuclear missiles in Europe. Nuclear missiles! Sure, they were put there to counter a Soviet deployment, but if the Soviets ever used them we could use our other missiles. Responding to a provocation was so . . . provocative. And then there was the whole Central American situation â Vietnam, all over again. Grenada? Pathetic muscle-flexing just to make us feel good. Weâre Number One! USA! USA!
Sometimes it all you could do was just put on âThe Wallâ on the headphones and take a long hit and find cold hollow solace in the music.
The miserable, depressing, cynical, defeatist music.
Dark times. The world might actually end not with a whimper, but a bang. The scenarios were many, but you got the gist â the Soviets made a move, and Reagan screwed everything up by pushing back. Thatâs how we saw it happening. He was just that stupid, just that stubborn. Heâd blow up the world.
âThe people have spoken, the idiots,â I wrote in my journal after he was elected in 1980. I was living in a boarding house a block from the Valli, an English major at the U, a college paper columnist taking all the usual brave stances: Republicans are repressed hypocrites, Playboy insults women, etc. (Interesting side note â my ratio of happy-fun-ball essays and tiresome polarizing screeds was, as now, about 3:1.) But then Reagan got shot. I didnât like the guy; no, not at all, but he was the president. And hence he was my president. And I was down in the Valli Pub, watching the news. Andrea, a flatfaced barfly who sat in the dark basement all day drinking coffee and smoking Marlboros and watching TV, was hideously pissed that she was missing her soaps. âWhy couldnât they have shot him a few hours later?â she said. Grunts of amusement from the rest of the slugs.
I wrote a column with her quote as the title. If I remember correctly it was well-received. Because her sentiment was, to use an archaic work, indecent. We were better than that. He was our president, after all.
Those were the days.
1984. We all believe that Mondale will win, because Reaganâs stupidity and inadequacies are manifest to us. We are thrilled when Mondale announces he will raise taxes. Stern medicine, America! But Reagan wins. I repeat: Reagan wins in 1984. Somewhere Orwell is smiling, man. You can smell the karma curdling.
1988. The world has changed; Reagan and Gorbachev The Savior were photographed in a chummy moment in the New York harbor. The world feels less dangerous, for reasons that seem indistinct. The Times runs one last picture of the Gipper walking down an open-aired hallway in the Rose Garden; his head is down, but he looks tall and broad and strong and content. I thought: Iâm going to miss him.
Stockholm Syndrome! Stockholm Syndrome!
Vote Dukakis! Now! Fast! Ahhhhh.
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. I wasnât aware of it at the time, but thatâs when I started to turn.
2004, June 5: I am reminded of the thrill I got when I heard the words âMr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.â Because you can sum up Reaganâs legacy by polling any random high-schooler and reading that line.
âWhat wall?â theyâd probably ask.
The wall, kid. You know: The Wall. The fortified gash. The thin lethal line that stood between tyranny and freedom. I mean, we lived in a time when there was a literal wall between those concepts, and we still didnât get it.
What you donât know when youâre 22 could fill a book. If you write that book when youâre 44, you havenât learned a thing.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/07/2004 12:01:13 PM ||
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I forget who said it: "If your not a Liberal when your 20 you have no heart and if your not a Conservative when your 30 you have no brain."
Posted by: Mike ||
06/07/2004 15:11 Comments ||
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Chirac says history is not replicated. In other words, Iraq is not comparable to D-Day and WW2. But read these concluding words:
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits-not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
That was Reagan and he was talking about the Soviet Union not Al-Q and the threat of terrorism but you could pin it on W's teleprompter and it would serve today as it did in Ronnie's time.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/07/2004 16:41 Comments ||
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#4
Cyber sarge: Amen.
Posted by: Evert V. in NL ||
06/07/2004 17:07 Comments ||
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#5
Cyber Sarge: is usually (an incorrectly) attributed to Churchill. Funny thing, I had always remembered it as being his - so who knows?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
06/07/2004 18:03 Comments ||
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#6
The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to
mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot:
Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
Variations on this theme were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw,
Churchill, and Bertrand Russell. (I misquoted Churchill to this
effect for years.)"
found it on the web, but don't ask me where.
You canât smoke at the Legion any more. The veterans have been told to butt out almost everywhere, and municipalities wonât give Legion Halls exemptions from the proliferating anti-smoking by-laws, because that would invite legal challenges from private bar-owners wanting exemptions, too.
Think of this for a moment -- think of our half million surviving vets, many of whom (as my late grandpa) were going there for decades to drink and smoke with their cronies. (Old friends are the best.) Almost all of them smoke, or would smoke -- itâs a social thing. Everybody smoked in the Second World War, everybody smoked in France -- read any diary, look at the snapshots, from that age before the triumph of tight-assed political correction. And especially in bars, which have been smoking zones since they were invented.
This is all about freedom: why our vets went to war. In case youâve never heard, Adolf Hitler was a non-smoker. He was the pioneer of anti-smoking regulations (as Bismarck before him was the pioneer of the welfare state; we âre all German now). Hitler tried to ban smoking throughout the German civil service. To be fair to the man, he gave up when he realized that he didnât have the power.
To the non-smoker, the right to smoke is a minor thing, surely not worth defending. Why should anyone persist in smoking, if I decide I donât like it? After all, whatâs another personâs freedom? Democracy rules, and now that a majority are non-smokers, they can vote to make the minority behave. (Itâs an excellent example of democracy and freedom in direct conflict.)
My non-smoking readers -- not all of them, just the "health fascists", the ones with the ants in their pants -- may well argue I am being petty by bringing this up. Smoking is "minor", death on the battlefield is "major", why should I reduce the 60th anniversary of D-Day to some irrelevant rant about smokerâs rights? But for the guys who landed in Normandy, smoking was not a minor thing. It was a poignant symbol of freedom.
We blew the Nazis off the cliffs, and then we had a smoke. We ducked into the trench under a Moaning Minnie, and then we puffed. We liberated Paris, and after weâd done that, we lit a Gitane. The baguette and the glass of Bordeaux were optional.
A dear friend in the Yukon has compiled the memoirs of a certain Sgt. Red Anderson, Calgary Highlanders, transcribed from oral source. It is a most wonderfully entertaining document -- hysterically funny, yet clanging everywhere with the ring of truth. It cries out to be read, by generations who know nothing of war -- which alas is the very reason no Canadian publisher today would have the guts to print it. For it is utterly free of neurotic moral posturing.
Take, for example, this succinct explanation for a place marker, somewhere inland from the Norman beachfront:
"I remember one German soldier that was shot in the middle of the road. All the tanks, trucks, and Bren gun carriers (even me) would run over him. After a while (five days) he was nothing but a spread-eagled grease spot. ... It was at a road junction, so everybody called it âFlat Manâs Cornerâ."
Itâs the stuff they talk about in Legion Halls, where the old guys go, or used to go, to smoke and drink. To talk about stuff that people who werenât there wouldnât understand, wouldnât want to understand -- the "boomers" and their progeny, the people raised in luxury and peace, who havenât heard that evil exists, who no longer know what it takes to contain it; the people of the mall culture.
Red Anderson again, after a good shelling: "When it was over, I went to check on the boys. I was no braver than anyone else, but being a sergeant, you were supposed to act brave, so the men would think you were okay. Checked each man and everybody was scared and shook up. I asked Mac how he was doing. He said: âRed, I am so yellow I could give a blood transfusion to a lemon.â That broke the tension and we all had a good laugh."
Sixty years later, the world is changed. Peace has brought the tyranny of the jackass, aptly symbolized by his anti-smoking by-laws. We have forgotten everything. For instance, that freedom is laughter. That itâs a glass of whisky, an off-colour joke. That freedom was freedom when freedom was a smoke.
Posted by: tipper ||
06/07/2004 3:09:59 AM ||
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#1
While I respect the argument put forth, he's right when he says, "may well argue I am being petty by bringing this up."
We aren't allowed to do lots of things in public places. We can't walk around buck naked nor can the vets still shoot someone prior to lighting up.
It's not that big of a deal to step outside to have your smoke. Non-smokers are indeed the majority these days....so it seems logical to me that the minority of smokers don't selfishly demand all the non-smoking veterans be the ones to suck it up.
This falls under the, "deal with it" category. Move on to bigger issues.
#3
Whilst bigger issues exist this is one symptom of the all pervading political correctness currently blighting society and posing the same threat to personal liberty as the WOT - what will they try to stop us doing in bars next? - loud conversation can sometimes become irritating... so ban talking. Thin end of the wedge B... before you know it you're living in some Orwellian nightmare behaving like automata. (aka The EEC) Be warned!
Posted by: Howard Uk ||
06/07/2004 8:33 Comments ||
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#4
A non-issue? What happened to the freedom of a club owner or restaurant owner to decide whether or not his establishment is smoking or non-smoking? We don't need the f'ing Nanny State telling us every business is non-smoking, nor do we need them telling us we have to wear seatbelts and we have to wear helmets. This is about personal freedom. The issue is not about smoking.
Of course, if we pass Hillary's grand vision of government-paid (i.e. taxpayer-paid) health care someday, then I will agree with all these rules and more. For example, I want skateboarding, hang-gliding, skydiving, BMX, rock climbing and all those other extreme sports BANNED in this country--why the hell should my tax dollars go to patch up somebody willfully doing something so stupid and dangerous? I want kids covered in pads and helmets 24/7, too! Little nits are always getting banged up...
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 8:47 Comments ||
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#5
that's bs howard, someone talking loud does not directly affect my health, someone smoking does. your right to smoke ends where my nose begins, just like your right to swing your fist
#6
a million freaking people are going to die in Sudan this year. North Koreans are starving as dear crazy leader makes a nuke.
Jeeze...pick your battles. If they say you can't smoke in your own home or you can't smoke period...then get upset. Otherwise step outside and quit whining. Nobody else likes your stinky smoke.
#7
:-) and cigarette smoke really doesn't bother me much. JMHO...but if you're looking for a poster issue to illuminate our sinking into a nanny state - stick with the skateboarding or "supersizing" issues. You'll get more support when you don't alienate half your supporters from the get-go.
#8
How many people actually end up in accident and emergency because of smokers in bars? And how many people end up there because of drinkers in bars? And how obnoxious is a silent whiff of smoke compared to a drunken, abusive and aggressive lout? Seems to me before banning smoking in bars, they ought to ban drinking. Drinking is by far the greater 'evil'.
How long till someone, somewhere, starts banning alcohol, now that they've managed to ban smoking?
How long till the government and/or local authorities ban games machines? Ban swearing? Ban distasteful jokes? Your right to make a joke I find offensive ends at my earlobe.
Why should the authorities protect us from the choices we are free to make, e.g. which private bar or restaurant we chose to have a drink or a meal in? Can't drinkers and smokers choose for themselves? Do you want people to have the freedom to choose, or not? Do you want all of us to pay to uphold laws protecting you from having to make a choice, because you don't like smoking?
#9
You're right B and dccreeper.
So since loud noises above 100 decibels, which a loud bar can get to easily, have been shown to cause long term hearing loss then we shouldn't allow loud music either.
Oh and we'll have to outlaw all fireplaces in all public places as well. Smoke is smoke after all and since occasional contact is so devastating....
This is a government versus personal responsibility issue. If I want to have people smoke in my establishment the government should have no damn right to tell me that I can't. It really should be that simple.For the moment smoking is still a legal activity. I do love how people are OK of the curtailment of freedoms as long as it doesn't affect them.
By the way, laws against public nudity I think are just as wrong, but even if I didn't, using two completely related subjects and saying the one is OK to ban because another is banned is beyond stupid.
Posted by: Kelvin Zero ||
06/07/2004 9:39 Comments ||
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#10
Kelvin Zero - I accept your point that "If I want to have people smoke in my establishment the government should have no damn right to tell me that I can't"
My point is you should pick your battles wisely. This is one you already know you're going to lose. Knock your head against the wall if you want to...but the majority of people don't understand why the non-smoking vets (majority) have to suck up unwanted smoke because the smoking vets are too damn selfish to take the simple step of stepping outside. How hard is that really?
Not much is really lost here, except your battle to win hearts and minds on the bigger issues at stake.
Posted by: B ||
06/07/2004 10:19 Comments ||
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#11
just to lighten things up a bit and because I'm really not all that personally invested in fighting this battle -
isn't it funny that the left tries so hard to legalize marijuana smoking while at the same time it tries so hard to make cigarette smoking illegal?
Posted by: B ||
06/07/2004 10:27 Comments ||
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#12
I'm a non-smoker, so personally I like going into smoke-free businesses, but my point of contention is that it's the business owner's right to determine if his business will allow smoking or not--it is NOT the government's!
As far as the health aspects, you are entirely within your right to walk out of a business that allows smoking and patronize a business that bans smoking. That's capitalism--vote with your feet and your dollars! And nobody is forced to work there either--they can just as well seek employment elsewhere.
If the government wants to ban smoking in government buildings, fine! But they have NO right to extend it to the private sector. Personally, I think they have more right to ban smoking in a house where there are minor children living than they do to private business.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 10:42 Comments ||
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#13
ahhh...but this is an argument about the American Legion. Not exactly "private" establishments and I'm guessing the majority of the ol' vets are non-smokers these days.
Enough for me. Don't know why I'm fighting this one as I could care less either way.
Posted by: B ||
06/07/2004 10:45 Comments ||
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#14
The bad effects of secondhand smoke are a myth, based on junk science and pushed by health Nazis. And those of you who say it's no big deal most likely have never smoked. A truly free society should let owners of bars and clubs decide what they want to allow in their establishments. (If it's legal.) And those who don't like it can take their business elsewhere, or get a job in a smoke-free environment.
This is akin to the FCC trying to regulate "decency," when the viewer/listener who doesn't like it is always free to change the station.
When they come around trying to pass legislation to regulate obesity, then maybe you'll listen.
#15
Growler--If they ever do pass a universal health care, then in addition to banning those extreme sports I listed above they had better regulate weight as well. After all, we shouldn't be taxing the fit to pay for the fatties and their resultant health issues from being so overweight!
My chief issue in this thread is the more government interference, regulation, and presence in your life the less free you are. It's a necessary evil, but it needs to be contained--somehow it keeps extending and creeping into our lives and our personal business more and more!
B--Point taken. If the American Legion is not private enterprise, then my arguments don't apply.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 11:04 Comments ||
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#17
kelvin, I agree, when you go out to a bar you should not have to stop and wonder if your ability to hear stuff is going to be permantly damaged as a result. At the very least the places should be force to put up signs publicly notifying you that the sound levels are kept at X level and your ears can be damaged by too much exposure and add in a requirement of free earplugs for any employees who want 'em (yeah pennies, but if the company creates the hostile enviroment it should supply the safety gear for the employees)
after that you dipped into satire, buh I guess I'll comment on it anyway.. smoke from fireplaces is vented and the little bit that you do get is not a health threat of any sort.
I personally have no problem with permitting group health damaging activities provided there is some kind of big sign, making it clear that by entering the establishment you are endangering your health in X ways due to X causes
(it goes with the whole right ends at the nose thing, you can swing your fist at my nose if I like it / say it's ok, you just can't do it if I don't say it's ok, the big ol' sign makes it clear what sort of activity occurs within the establishment and then it's up to the consumer to enter or not and thus saying they are kosher with the health risks)
the direct restriction stuff is a little heavy handed tho
#19
To paraphrase Kim du Toit, "Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms" is a great name for a store, not a government agency!
Posted by: Dar ||
06/07/2004 12:29 Comments ||
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#20
I'm a non smoker, always have been. I used to have chess matches where my opponents would light a cigerette and hang over the board to make me lose concentration, I was once told by a karate instructor that, in matches, guys would attempt to have offensive smells, bad breath and body odor, so I respected this tactic.
I love the smoke free space, but I hate, with all my heart, the nanny crap about smoking. The blokes are making the best points in this thread for me.
And another thing. Smokers, god bless them for they have paid and paid and paid and paid. (Taxes)
On picking your battles wisely, tactics dictate you pick the enemies softest spot, closest to the home front. Certainly anti smoking laws are an easier target than afganistan.
Now bars are private places, not public places - its a common error to assume that a place the public can meet is a public place, but since the public can meet at your house, this is obviously wrong. Guests patronize the bar at the bar owners grace, not their own.
So do you want the Gov to regulate your behavior at home? If you support the smoking ban, you have given them that right. Enforcement is a problem today, but technology advances...
Am I overreacting? Yes, I am, because I'd like to see it stopped now, and the limits set. Stop smoking, drink water, excercise daily, no fatty foods are all valid health concerns, and could all be implemented based on this thinking.
#23
The Smoking/Non Smoking question should be left up the to owners of the businesses in question. Customers, like dcreeper, who don't want to be exposed to smoke can go to other establishments that cater to nonsmokers.
I think it's funny that those who want all-out bans on smoking engage in all kinds of "unsafe" behaviors that damage, or are potentially damaging to themselves and/or others. They are usually very defensive about those behaviors, I might add.
Personally, I used to be against smoking in restaurants. At this point, I think personal liberty interests outweigh any other concern. Otherwise the "thought police" think they've got a green light, and begin encroaching into other areas of life. Most restaurants have nonsmoking sections anyway, and enough have banned smoking all together.
But here's the weird thing: we used to like to go to a certain Outback Steakhouse--good atmosphere, good food. Then they banned smoking, even in the bar. Now it's bad atmosphere, and we don't go anymore. We go to another Outback Steakhouse, which still allows smoking. But, I'm glad there is no smoking on airplanes.
Hey--I wonder what the terrorists are up to today? I could be wrong, but I don't think they differentiate between smoking and nonsmoking "infidels"! Also, if our soldiers need to be able to smoke to deal with them more effectively, then so be it. The whole nonsmoking hysteria from the left is probably aimed at removing the privilege on the fields of battle so our soldiers are compromised.
#24
How long till someone, somewhere, starts banning alcohol, now that they've managed to ban smoking?
That's been tried before. I hope they do it again so I can become an instant millionaire.
Posted by: Rafael ||
06/07/2004 15:04 Comments ||
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#25
Maybe we should start a civilian security force and give them black turbins and sticks. They can smack people who smoke and drink and take excessive liberties.
#26
The really pathetic thing about the anti-smoking hysteria is that a lot of it was ginned up to support the Big Tobacco Lawsuit which started out as a way for the Democrats to defund the Republicans by demonizing a contributor and got out of hand when the trial lawyers and the States AGs realized how big the pot could be. I grew up when half the country smoked. Now I live in California where you can smoke marijuana but not tobacco. The sign at the airport says "Welcome to Smoke Free California - Breathing Easier Yet?" It has become a power trip out here for shrill shills to campaign against the evils of smoking by continuing to increase the tobacco taxes and decrease the number of places you can smoke. And yes, they are trying to make it illegal to smoke in your home or in your car if you have children (second hand smoke = child abuse). It's just one more atrocity brought on by an educational system that turns out people incapable of rational thought and totally devoid of scientific, mathematical, or historical knowledge. They learn PC pseudoscience and the history of obscure tribes, but they can't balance a checkbook. The truly funny thing is that since they have made smoking so onerous, the amount of tobacco sold is dropping and, consequently, so is the amount of revenue leached from smokers. The anti-tobacco types are upset at the loss of income and want to increase the taxes to replace the lost revenue. (I guess the fable about killing the goose that laid the golden egg wasn't pc enough for their curriculums)
By the way I don't smoke, but I'm tempted to light a cigar just to blow smoke in the faces of the anti-smoking Nazis that run loose in California. There is a simple rule at work here, if you don't like smoking in a place, don't go there. It's not like your life would be forever damaged if you can't go into a place and impose your will on all the people there. The sneering condescension with which the anti-smoking crowd addresses normal people is the sort of thing that destroys respect for the law and belittles us all. If the SOBs were really concerned about second hand smoke, they would shoot the environmentalists so that we could have rational forest management and prevent wildfires that fill the air with soot and ash.
#27
Dunno where this guy is, but our Legion Hall and our VFW you smoke all you want at the bar. Nobody says jack - if they aren't members, they aint getting in to bitch about it anyways.
#2
I looked at this in detail some years ago. There are some interesting anomalies that give the theory some substance like ratios of isotopes. If the Russians are indeed producing substantial oil from igneous rocks then that is very interesting, but I recall about 20 years ago Sweden tested the theory by drilling in the debris of a meteor impact crater in an large area of igneous rocks i.e. far from the sedimentary rocks that biotic orgin says oil/gas formed in. They found only trace amounts of oil and gas.
BTW, the theory says the reason you find oil/gas in sedimentary rocks is they have gaps in which the oil can accumulate that igneous rocks don't have.
Much as I would like this theory to be true, I don't think it is. Although the idea that some natural gas has an abiotic origin is more plausible.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 8:58 Comments ||
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#3
There is a related theory that oil may be coming from deep rock microbes. I blathered a little about it on my site, but the authority on the matter (at least as far as Google took me) is Thomas Gold at Cornell. Here is another article on the microbes that's not about oil per se.
Also on the same site as the linked Rantburg article is this which claims that the Russians have recovered oil with no biological markers. There's supposed to be some conference in July that includes this subject amongst the topics. Perhaps we'll see more information in the near future.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/07/2004 14:56 Comments ||
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THE EARLY PREPARATION for the genocide in Darfur, Sudan's vast western province, played out behind a veil of ignorance: Almost no foreign aid workers operated in the region, and the world failed to realize what was happening. Stage two of the genocide, the one we are now in, is more acutely shameful: A succession of reports from relief agencies, human rights groups and journalists informs us that hundreds of thousands of people are likely to perish, yet outsiders still cannot muster the will to save them. Unless that changes, we are fated to live through the genocide's third stage. There will be speeches, commissions of inquiry and sundry retrospectives, just as there were after Cambodia and Rwanda. Never again, we will be told.
It is already too late to prevent death on a scale that taxes the imagination. Sudan's murderous government and its allies in the death squads known as the Janjaweed have killed an estimated 30,000 people in Darfur since a rebellion broke out there a bit over a year ago. The crackdown has chased more than 1 million people from their homes and villages. Refugees crowd into camps that the Janjaweed encircle, as food supplies dwindle and their children die for lack of clean water and medicines. The rainy season, now beginning, will make it hard to deliver relief supplies, and starvation seems probable. On Thursday, Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, declared that in an optimistic scenario -- meaning one in which significant relief is delivered -- some 300,000 people might perish. That is the equivalent of Sept. 11, 2001, 100 times over. The worst-case scenario, according to Mr. Natsios, is a death toll that approaches 1 million.
Sudan's government is delighted with this slaughter. It perfected the art of ethnic cleansing in its long war against the country's southern rebels, and it has expertly repeated the process in Darfur. The formula is to destroy villages using a combination of informal militias and government air power, then to deny relief organizations access and let starvation do the rest. When international protests heat up toward the boiling point, some humanitarian access is granted, but it's always late and inadequate.
So it is now in Darfur. The United States recently landed nine planeloads of relief supplies, and the government has relaxed visa restrictions that had kept aid workers out. But the Sudanese regime still demands that relief supplies be transported on Sudanese trucks and distributed by Sudanese agencies, and that medicines not manufactured in Sudan undergo time-consuming testing. The only plausible explanation: Sudan's government wants people to die by the tens of thousands. Meanwhile, Darfur's rebels do not make things easier. Sketchy reports over the weekend indicated that the rebels took 16 aid workers hostage before releasing them Sunday.
The United States, Britain and Norway have been anxious to broker and implement a north-south peace and so have shrunk from pressuring the northern government for greater access to Darfur. Outsiders pretend to believe that a team of 60 or 100 observers from the African Union will be enough to end the atrocities in Darfur, a region the size of France, and they pretend to hope that Sudan will grant full humanitarian access without being bullied into doing so.
The tragedy is that aggressive diplomatic pressure would have a good chance of working. In the past, Sudan's government has been pushed into expelling Osama bin Laden, negotiating with the southern rebels and signing a paper cease-fire in Darfur. The United States and its allies should press for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding full and immediate humanitarian access. They should encourage Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general, to force the world's attention onto the crisis; a letter by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) calling upon Mr. Annan to visit Darfur has attracted 45 signatures in Congress. And they should authorize the use of military escorts for emergency aid. The United States is overcommitted militarily in Iraq and elsewhere. But this is a mission for which European countries ought to make troops available.
"Non, non! Certainement pas!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/07/2004 12:25:20 AM ||
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#1
and the world failed to realize what was happening. BS! We have known about this for 6 months to a year. The silence from the 'international community' and the UN has been deafening.
Also note the tone of the article that no fault attaches to the UN for having done nothing. Just like Rwanda! God forbid the UN should actually be responsible for anything.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 0:42 Comments ||
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#2
Sudan's government is delighted with this slaughter. It perfected the art of ethnic cleansing in its long war against the country's southern rebels, and it has expertly repeated the process in Darfur. The formula is to destroy villages using a combination of informal militias and government air power, then to deny relief organizations access and let starvation do the rest. When international protests heat up toward the boiling point, some humanitarian access is granted, but it's always late and inadequate.
Is there some reason why a genocidal government like this shouldn't be treated to a quick visit with Mister Cruise Missle? What more harm could it do? It's not like these b@stards aren't a waste of skin already.
This is murder writ large. Any legislative body that condones such crimes against humanity needs to be wiped off of the map. Where, oh where is Arab outrage at this mass slaughter of Islamic people. What's that? "They're black," you say? But isn't Islam all embracing?
#3
Zenster: I'm afraid it's a case of dealing with them to secure cooperation in the WoT. Regime change might get the same thing but the trouble would be excessive for not much gain (for our intests mind you!) I think...
#4
Heartbroken with despair over the plight of the "Palestinian" people, Sudanese Arabs transfer their seething wrath to the nubians. As every schoolboy knows, the Zionist entityis really to blame!
______borgboy
#5
Zenster: I'm afraid it's a case of dealing with them to secure cooperation in the WoT. Regime change might get the same thing but the trouble would be excessive for not much gain (for our intests mind you!) I think...
If cooperation in the war on terror comes with a pricetag one hundredfold that of the World Trade Center atrocity, then we should be ashamed to condone it. Wipe these sh!ts off the slate as a message to all genocidal maggots. A fresh start is better than having an albatross like this hung 'round our necks.
#6
Any .... body that condones such crimes against humanity needs to be wiped off of the map. You mean like the UN that elected Sudan to its Human Rights Commision?
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/07/2004 5:59 Comments ||
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#7
I always thought it was the Islamist north against the Christian/Animist south.
Racism of colour had less to do with it than Religious fascism.
#8
The Islamist North versus Christian/Animist South has quited down of recent, Darfur consists of Arab Muslims against Black muslims.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/07/2004 7:39 Comments ||
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#9
You mean like the UN that elected Sudan to its Human Rights Commision?
That's why it's imperative that "The United States and its allies should press for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding full and immediate humanitarian access"
#10
The UN (and the MEDIA) has known about this for at least a year and Kofi has done nothing siginificant and the media has entirely, and deliberatly, ignored it. We here on Rantburg have known (and Ranted about it) for at least as long.
You would have think the media might have mentioned something when Sudan was elected to the U.N. Human Rights destruction Councel.....
Sending relief supplies - through the government. How much of those supplies do you think actually get where they are needed. Hell the Militants are probably snacking on the 'relief' supplies between rapes.
But -by-god- put one woman's panties on an 'insurgants' head and there is hell to pay from the U.N. and the media..
#11
I think there would be some interesting revelations about this situation, as seen through international *realpolitik* eyes.
In other words, the international "community" (that is, the foreign services and governments), have obviously come to two conclusions:
1) The extermination of the people of Darfur, or at least their "reduction", is small loss. And,
2) Once the situation in Sudan has been "stabilized", as in "the genocide is over and there is peace between north and south", the international "community" will profit in some way.
#12
Where are Danny Glover, Julian Bond and Harry Belafonte on this issue? How come they are not rousing the black community to put pressure on the media to raise awareness of the blatantly racist pogrom? I don't get it. Are they hypocrites or do they just not care?
Posted by: remote man ||
06/07/2004 12:08 Comments ||
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#13
Where are Danny Glover, Julian Bond and Harry Belafonte on this issue? How come they are not rousing the black community to put pressure on the media to raise awareness of the blatantly racist pogrom?
Because it's a black on black fight with no US involvement.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/07/2004 12:16 Comments ||
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#14
You mean like the UN that elected Sudan to its Human Rights Commision?
As a matter of fact, yes. That little abortion disguised as world politics has voided all moral authority the UN ever might once have had.
However obscene it might sound, I am beginning to wish those airliners had slammed into the UN building. This is the first time I've ever voiced such a thought but my disgust with the oil-for-food scandal, Rwanda and the UN's utter inability to outrightly condemn Palestinian terrorism (and international terrorism in general) have all pushed me past the least iota of tolerance for these diplomatic dilettantes.
The UN is rapidly assuming direct complicity in crimes against humanity and as a matter of principal should be evicted from American soil. Let's see how quickly all those fat-cat UN ambassadors would flock to a congress in, say, Bangladesh.
#11 I think there would be some interesting revelations about this situation, as seen through international *realpolitik* eyes. In other words, the international "community" (that is, the foreign services and governments), have obviously come to two conclusions: 1) The extermination of the people of Darfur, or at least their "reduction", is small loss. And, 2) Once the situation in Sudan has been "stabilized", as in "the genocide is over and there is peace between north and south", the international "community" will profit in some way.
I tend to think that there is merely a degree of flat-out bigotry in much of the world community that could be arsed about another African on African slaughter. However frustrating and nearly futile it is to intervene in Africa, to sit by idly in the midst of so much human suffering reduces us all.
For a body like the UN whose specific charter is to interdict such global unrest it is simply pure moral bankruptcy.
#15
Kofi isn't fiddling. Are you kidding? He's sitting on plush cushion, eating Toast di foie gras con kiwi while a full harmonic orchestra fiddles for him.
Posted by: B ||
06/07/2004 12:55 Comments ||
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#16
Rock on everyone! Great rants! Nice ones Zenster (#14) and B (#15). Liberals--the same the world over.
A Tunisian opposition leader, Abderrahmane Tlili, has been jailed for nine years for abusing power when he was head of the aviation authority. A court convicted Mr Tlili of profiting illegally, failing to declare properties abroad and trying to sell properties without authorisation. He was also fined $2.7m. Mr Tlili, who denied the charges, is secretary general of the Unionist Democratic Union, which has seven seats in parliament. Mr Tlili was head of the Civil Aviation and Airports Bureau when the offences took place. He was sacked in August last year prior to his arrest. The court in Tunis found him guilty of awarding contracts to acquaintances for renovating three Tunisian airports.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/07/2004 10:49:20 PM ||
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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.
