But it is apparently not just women who can be sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia: as the same report notes, a pharmacist from Egypt was beheaded by the sword last November for the "sorcery" which he allegedly employed in order to separate a married couple.
I have no idea if they use computers in Saudi courts, but still, this is the 21st century - so imagine this, if you can: a court clerk at the keyboard, typing away that the accused was found guilty of practicing witchcraft and sentenced to death "on a discretionary basis, for the benefit of public interest and to protect the creed, souls and property of this country" (click, save as Folder: Witchcraft trials, File: Another witch sentenced to die). And imagine this, if you can: "this country" is the very same country that the West regards as its moderate ally in the fight against terrorism; it is the very same country that has no problem to go shopping for the most sophisticated weaponry the West has for sale.
"Evian" is "Naive" spelled backwards.....
Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser. "We have to make people think that it's unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong," said Tim Lang, the Government's naural resources commissioner.
This is the article I was referencing. Britain spends more time on bottled water than it does on kitting out its soldiers.
Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water "borders on being morally unacceptable".
Their comments come as new research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometre. Conservation groups and water providers have started a campaign against the £2 billion industry.
A BBC Panorama documentary, "Bottled Water: Who Needs It?", to be broadcast tomorrow says that in terms of production, a litre bottle of Evian or Volvic generates up to 600 times more CO2 than a litre of tap water. I might be more inclined to support this pronouncement if it were a real person rather than a pointy-headed bureaucrat making it. In fact, the global shadow government known as the "environmental movement" has launched a major campaign to demonize this admittedly dubious product. One sure sign: trendy restaurants in Californai are ostentatiously serving up tap water to their guests.
It's a win/win: the bottled water scammers take it in the shorts and it keeps the eco-wackies away from nuke plants and sonar ranges.
#1
Anywhere there is no tap, water in some kind of a container is sort of a necessity. We shipped a bazillion pallets of the stuff to Kuwait before the first and second Iraq wars. I'd assume a man on the ground in a hot, thirsty place doesn't give a damn how much CO2 was involved. Dying of dehydration is just unfashionable...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/17/2008 8:47 Comments ||
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#2
Bottles of 12-16 oz with screw caps are convenient ways to have water at one's desk, in the car etc.
The big issue with bottled water (besides the fuel to ship it) is how many people just toss the bottle away and buy another. These end up (maybe) in a huge pile at the recycling center or (more often) in mountains of garbage, where they will last approximately as long as the Rockies.
At Chez Lotp we do use bottled water when we're out and about, but in most cases we keep the empties and refill from tap or filtered water as needed.
Plus, bottles of frozen water make good crate coolers for dogs on long trips in the summer time. ;-)
#5
By all means refill water bottles but only if you do not drink from them directly. They are very difficult to wash properly and make a great vector for all sorts of nasty bacteria.
#6
Good warning, Excalibur. We have a routine for that sort of thing, since we also store emergency water supplies for occasions when our well pump might lose power.
#8
Concur 'moose. I think buying bottled water is a waste of cash so I don't buy it anymore, unless the fam & I are taking a car trip - then it makes good sense to have it for road trips as we have a dog to or some in storage like LOTP said.. Both times in Iraq that was the only kind of h2o I drank - no potable tap water. In conus I think it's dumb to waste $$$ on bottled water as a daily thing, but that's just IMO.
#9
I happen to think that bottled water is an expensive fad in certain regions BUT: If you lived or passed through Coalinga, CA you wouldn't do without bottled or processed water. Their water is really nasty stuff. And it is my understanding that good water is at a premium in Europe as well.
Thankfully I live in Idaho where the biggest concern is mineral content and it doesn't taste like you are downstream from a poorly run oil refinery.
#10
San Diego's water is mostly Colorado River, and while safe, has a distasteful amount of salts and minerals. I drink bottled or filtered. Best water I ever tasted is at Lake Tahoe - better than any bottled. Like Crystal Geyser bottled (from Olancha alongside highway 395 in the Owens Valley)
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2008 14:02 Comments ||
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#11
As a geology student, I'm in the field alot so water is always a concern, but instead of buying bottled water, I have some 1 L nalgene bottles I take along. They're easy enough to clean and I fill them with filtered water from my house, so it's quite cheap compared to buying bottled water.
#12
Drinking bottled water is immoral, but not for the reason given.
In large parts of the world, many millions of poor people are faced with the choice with buying water that doesn't make them sick or buying food. They choose safe water over food, because it is better to be hungry than sick.
Contaminated water is the number 1 killer of children worldwide. I can only imagine being a parent giving my child water that will make them sick or kill them because I don't have bottled water to give them.
Contaminated water kills more people in one day than global warming will in a century.
What is immoral is the delegates at the Bali climate conference drinking vast quantities of bottled water, surrounded by millions of poor people whose tap or well water will likely kill them.
And these clueless f@@kwits think bottled water is about their lifestyle choices. Comment not directed against anyone here.
#13
Is bottled water allowed under sharia? This is the level of theological discussion in today's Britain.
Posted by: regular joe ||
02/17/2008 14:34 Comments ||
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#14
excellent point, Phil B
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2008 14:39 Comments ||
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#15
I have a reverse osmosis unit to give me running ("basically distilled") water for coffeemaker, cooking and drinking. Nothing really wrong with our water but the coffee maker doesn't get deposits and lasts forever this way.
#16
Compare wid COASTTOCOASTAM > Dr. LEONARD SAX - THE FUTURE OF [CHILD] MEN. More and more, males are being taught by society to be "more like girls", and are increasingly find solace and recreation in VR SEX, NOT VV REAL SEX = RELATIONSHIPS WID WOMEN. BOTTLED WATER > leading to decline in MALE SEXUAL POTENCY/PRODUCTIVITY.
IOW, FUTURAMA > DON'T DATE ROBOTS, DON'T GET IMMORAL, SICK "METAL FEVER/LUSTS"!
IN 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, Castro's brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston.
Obama has been widely compared to JFK, most notably by the late president's brother and daughter. President Kennedy, a stalwart anticommunist, despised Castro and his gang of totalitarian thugs. But when word broke last week that Obama's supporters in Houston work under a banner glorifying Che, the campaign's reaction was to brush it off as an issue involving volunteers, not the official campaign. After two days of controversy, the campaign issued a statement calling the flag "inappropriate" and saying its display "does not reflect Senator Obama's views." Would JFK have reacted so mildly?
In December 1962, Kennedy offered a blunt summary of the Castro/Che record. "The Cuban people were promised by the revolution political liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the campesinos, and an end to economic exploitation," he said. "They have received a police state, the elimination of the dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech and a free press, and the complete subjugation of individual human welfare." Eleven months later, in a speech intended for delivery on the day he was assassinated, Kennedy regretted that Castro's "Communist foothold" in Latin America had "not yet been eliminated."
Were he alive today, it's hard to imagine JFK feeling anything but contempt for those who extol a dictatorship that has been crushing freedom and human beings for nearly 50 years. And it would surely pain him that so many of the cheerleaders are members of his own party.
The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol Pot. A celebrity who was spotted with a swastika-festooned cap or an actress who revealed that she had gotten a tattoo depicting Timothy McVeigh would inspire only repugnance. No presidential campaign would need more than 30 seconds to sever its ties to anyone, paid staffer or volunteer, whose office was adorned with a Ku Klux Klan banner. Yet Che's likeness, which ought to be as loathed as any of those, is instead a trendy bestseller and a cult favorite.
A few years ago the New York Public Library gift shop sold Che wristwatches. These it described as "featuring the classic romantic image of Che Guevara, around which the word 'revolution' revolves." But Che's idea of revolution was anything but romantic. What he cherished was hatred and murder: "Hatred as an element of struggle," he wrote in 1967, "unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine." It was a sentiment he expressed repeatedly - and lived up to.
With Che at his side, Castro toppled Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. "As soon as they had seized power," notes "The Black Book of Communism," a magisterial survey of communist crime in the 20th century, "they began to conduct mass executions inside the two main prisons, La Cabana and Santa Clara." As chief prosecutor of the new regime, Che oversaw the bloodbath, ordering hundreds of executions in the first months of 1959. Those he killed, "The Black Book" records, included "former comrades-in-arms who refused to abandon their democratic beliefs."
Like totalitarians of every stripe, Che didn't scruple at the death of innocents. "Quit the dallying!" he ordered Jose Vilasuso, a conscientious government lawyer who was seeking evidence against several prisoners. "Your job is a very simple one. Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute from revolutionary conviction."
Time magazine once called Che the "Brains of the Cuban Revolution," and saluted his "icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence, and . . .perceptive sense of humor." A better description comes from journalist Humberto Fontova, who observes in "Exposing The Real Che Guevara" that Che was for Castro what Heinrich Himmer was for Hitler and Lavrenty Beria for Stalin - "the snarling enforcer." Fittingly, a massive drawing of Che adorns the headquarters of Cuba's secret police in Havana.
That this sadistic thug's face also adorns the office of a US presidential candidate's supporters is appalling and disgraceful. That the candidate couldn't bring himself to say so is even worse.
If the cold-warrior JFK were alive today, he would be a staunch conservative. What would he do about these moonbats? A box of exploding cigars probably wouldn't work these days. Since these are lefties, how about a modern version: a gift-pack of radioactive condoms?
#2
Good plan, Grom, simple, easily distributed and no doubt effective. A funny aftertaste will not faze organi-food dupes. I prefer radioactive stuff though because I am, well, Atomic Conspiracy.
I love the Bomb, too, but it's a strange love.
#3
That this sadistic thug's face also adorns the office of a US presidential candidate's supporters is appalling and disgraceful. That the candidate couldn't bring himself to say so is even worse.
#4
"While watching the endless pundit blather on TV tonight after the Republican Michigan Primary and Democratic Nevada Debate and reading the various opinion meisters commentaries online, I had one of those rare zen moments of simplicity. It all comes down to a simple question:
Who would you like to be in the White House if Pakistan fell to al Qaeda and the Islamists gained control of its nuclear arsenal?
Answer that question and you will know your candidate. All the rest, as they say, is commentary."
#5
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Having said that, I don't think JFK would find much in common with today's Democratic Party.
#6
I had one of those rare zen moments of simplicity: Who would you like to be in the White House if Pakistan fell to al Qaeda and the Islamists gained control of its nuclear arsenal?
Answer that question and you will know your candidate.
Two thoughts: 1) although Roger L. Simon asks the right question, he has no clue about Zen (unless he's talking about the Zenster) and 2) it's doubful the American electorate will be that thoughtful in selecting a president. At one time I thought the Dems would pay for all their shenanigans they've pulled during wartime; but today people seem more focused on the "morality" of bottled water.
Posted by: regular joe ||
02/17/2008 12:24 Comments ||
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#7
Iff various January 2008 News aricles on "CAMELOT" + JFK are to be believed, JFK was increasing/fortifying the US commmitment to Vietnam and agz Cuba, NOT decreasing it.
Sounds like this was written by an exceptionally Angry White Man, but it's got some good points. Points that W knew about seven years ago and the MSM is still having PTSD/denial over even to this day.
There is a great amount of interest in this years presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates a woman and an African-American while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their partys nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.
Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.
There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.
His common traits are that he isnt looking for anything from anyone just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.
The victimhood syndrome buzzwords disenfranchised, marginalized and voiceless dont resonate with him. Press one for English is a curse-word to him. Hes used to picking up the tab, whether its the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.
He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a living document open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.
The Angry White Man owns firearms, and hes willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesnt bother him.
The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.
His last name and religion dont matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.
Hes a mans man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesnt ask for a penny. Hes the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.
Women either love him or hate him, but they know hes a man, not a dishrag. If theyre looking for someone to walk all over, theyve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says Yes, sir and No, maam.
He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.
Hes not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. Hes willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.
Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who dont pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.
He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. Its not that she is a woman. Its that she is who she is. Its the liberal victim groups she panders to, the poor me attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.
There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.
He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.
#1
Well, I guess theis'd be why my post 15 minutes ago didn't show up. Mine came in an e-mail from my Father-in-Law.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/17/2008 16:59 Comments ||
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#2
Atleast half of those millions of angry white men, Gorb, wake up next to a white woman, one way or another so what is your beef? Is it against white women for siding in a 1 in 45 chance for their champion in the last 200+ years? Is it against blacks for dreaming of a day when a non white man governs the country for the first time after the founding of the nation?
Evidently white men are not all that angry entirely; with blacks numbering only 14% in America, white women number 50% of the remaining 80% or so, and if they voted in a block with percentages rivaling blacks at times, we would have had a woman president by now, atleast since the Amendment to give women the right to vote! The white majority in America is fractured between 3 ideological constants (McCain, Hillary or Obama) because of what whites have done with the country up to now. The Hispanic factor is skewing the white vote more so than the black vote, and there perceived voting pattern of "like white is right" hurts Obama also, but 'sides' with angry white men nonetheless!
'Angry' White Men have nothing to worry about other than thinking about 2050, when the Hispanics (voting like whites) will take over this country (from birth rates and immigration overruns) and shove them and their women to majority minority status, where blacks will smile, hold there hands and sing "...we shall overcome..again!" someday!
Liberals would seem to believe that Bush strategist Karl Rove is a monster genetically engineered from the DNA material recovered from a fair copy of Il Principe, Pat Nixon's cloth coat, and one of Lee Atwater's old guitar picks, while moderates regard him with a vague but considerable sense of respectful queasiness. I will not pretend to understand what our friends on the Right think of the man, but the president of the United States calls him "Boy Genius," and those nicknames have got to count for something. All concerned parties must be a bit unnerved by Rove's recent performance as a contributor to Fox News.
#1
My take was his TV persona made him the Bob Costas of political analysis...nerdy, non threatening and spot on.
I like Dick Morris, and agree he comes off from time to time as a "blown dry weasel", but his analysis tracks reality. I think Karl is the new "smartest guy in the room".
#2
If Karl is so smart, why, after 7 years with the President's ear do we have such a political disaster in the making for 2008 ?
What has Rove, the political advisor, done to expand the Republican party ? What has Rove done to assure that every voter is alive and properly registered ? What has Rove done to assure that every vote will count once and only once ? What has Rove done to attract quality people to run for office ? And finally, what has Rove done to keep his boss from placing illegal Mexicans before his own citizens ?
Not a damn thing. After 7 years, Bush has become our worst enemy and the idiot doesn't even know it.
NOTHING seemed very remarkable about the short, bearded man who mingled with other guests on Tuesday evening at a reception in Damascus, the Syrian capital, to mark the 29th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeinis Iranian revolution.
Yet before the night was over he was dead in the twisted wreckage of his car and the inevitable assumption was that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, had killed him with an ingeniously planted bomb.
The news spread rapidly that the dead man was Imad Mughniyeh, an elusive figure known as the Fox who had been one of the worlds most feared terrorist masterminds.
Robert Baer, a former CIA agent who spent years on his trail, said Mughniyeh was probably the most intelligent, most capable operative weve ever run across. There has been all sorts of speculation about this, but know the lion by his claw:
This kind of device, a bomb placed in an innocuous object close to the targets head, is almost a Mossad trademark.
If this had been some sort of inter-terrorist squabble, the bombers would have put a massive charge in a nearby vehicle and detonated it without caring how many others were killed.
Israel has to deny this publicly for various reasons but they want the terrorists to know.
#3
Thing is, G&T, this kind of placement requires either a lot of luck or very good fieldcraft, especially compared to a roadside bomb.
There are some other suspects but I don't think this was a work accident or inter-terrorist squabble.
At the far end of the thread, I think the Argentine secret service is an outside possibility. They just might know something useful about Syria through their legacy knowledge of Nazi war criminal hide-outs.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
IN 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, Castro's brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston.
NOTHING seemed very remarkable about the short, bearded man who mingled with other guests on Tuesday evening at a reception in Damascus, the Syrian capital, to mark the 29th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeinis Iranian revolution. 
