Duplicate story. I'm leaving it for the photo. AoS.
Inside photos at site
Long before he was deposed and publicly executed, lavishly living Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein commissioned several mega-yachts, including the "Qaddisat Saddam," built in 1981 and shrouded in mystery ever since. But the 269-foot floating palace, widely believed to be moored in Saudi Arabia, has surfaced in the South of France with an innocuous new name ("Ocean Breeze"—it's calming, not all murdery and rapey!). The price tag: $34 million.
The Middle Eastern despot-chic decor features plenty of gold, silver, and marble, Arabesque arches, fancy fountains, gold-tap bathrooms, table and silverware for 200, a medi-clinic with surgical suite (who wants to play doctor?), helipad, 14 cabins for 28 passengers, bunk space for 35 crew members, and—because god made this all possible—prayer rooms.
And because the former dictator had reason to be paranoid, the boat has bulletproof glass, closed-circuit television, storage space for a large cache of weapons, including heavy machine guns and surface-to-air missiles, and a secret passage that runs the length of the boat for easy access to a fast patrol boat and a mini-submarine pod for emergency exits.
Posted by: John Kerry ||
12/20/2007 16:43 Comments ||
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#5
Of course the yacht Saddam did take delivery will not fetch as high a price. Resale value plummets when a 500 lb bomb explodes on the bridge.
Posted by: ed ||
12/20/2007 17:01 Comments ||
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#6
Twisted hulk is Saddam's testament Local bystanders counted 16 different bombs, shells and missiles - dropped from the air and fired from the ground - plough into it during the two-week siege of Iraq's second city.
Measuring 350ft long, the boat weighed 7,359 tons
Posted by: ed ||
12/20/2007 17:06 Comments ||
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#7
Guy from Guam to US ARMY-NSA > TOLD YA SO, DIDN'T I"?
All together now, wid feeling, TIME TO PAT THE ARMY, etc. TIMES ON THE HEAD LIKE BENNY HILL WOULD! Carroll o'Connor as THE GENERAL > YOU'RE THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, BOOKER, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE ... I'M COMING DOWN THERE [downstairs], BOOKER!
GUWAHATI, India - A man trying to take a close-up mobile phone photo of a rare Royal Bengal tiger at a zoo in northeast India on Wednesday was mauled to death by two of the animals, a zoo official said. The 50-year-old father of two jumped over a protective barricade and was attacked by the tiger and another of the big cats inside the enclosure after he put an arm through the bars.
Pro'ly never touched a hot stove when he was a child ...
“The person crossed over a barricade and went near an iron cage to take photographs using his cell phone,” Narayan Mahanta, warden of the Guwahati city zoo in Assam state, told AFP. “There were two tigers and one of them pounced and tore apart his hand. The other tiger also attacked.”
"Hey, wait for me!"
"Sorry, cousin, but he jumped in front of me."
"Yeah, yeah, you always get the good bits."
The man, who was at the zoo with his wife and children, bled to death after the tigers tore off his left arm despite attempts by bystanders to save him. He was declared dead on arrival at hospital.
“It was an unfortunate accident,” said Mahanta.
Of stupidity.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/20/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Since he has already reproduced, does he still qualify for the Darwin Award?
#7
This is why telephoto lenses were invented, people. Use one of those, and a sniff real camera, and you can get inside a tiger's nostril from the comfort and safety of the coffee shop.
Candice Williams The Detroit News
HOWELL -- The Salvation Army of Livingston County received a pleasant surprise when an anonymous donor dropped a gold bar in a Salvation Army Red Kettle Monday night. This is the third year in a row that someone has given a gold bar donation, Captain Derek Rose, administrator of the Salvation Army in Howell, said today. The one-ounce bar, which was wrapped in a $100 bill, is valued at about $650. "It's really great that someone believes in the Salvation Army so much," Rose said. "We appreciate every dollar. Sometimes people donate hundreds of dollars, but when someone donates a gold bar it draws attention to the cause and what we're trying to do."
Bless the person who did this, and may we never know his/her name.
The donation was made at the Wal-Mart on Grand River in Genoa Township. Rose said the organization has seen a 60 to 70 percent increase in request for help in its programs, such as food and rental assistance. "With the loss of jobs as well as the severe shape of the economy we're going to see an increase of need for assistance coming in," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/20/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
I drop the occasional large cent into the kettle.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
12/20/2007 7:07 Comments ||
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#5
If I have spare change from any situation, such as when I went to see I Am Legend tuesday, and see a red kettle then I drop the change in. If every person in America had did this those unfortuneate this season would be feasting better than us during Christmas.
Posted by: Charles ||
12/20/2007 12:50 Comments ||
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#6
Bless the person who did this, and may we never know his/her name.
Gold bar was wrapped in a $100 bill. Obviously returning a portion of blessings already awarded by Providence, thereby placing themselves under the protection of the higher laws that govern matters like this.
Good heart. Wise head. Killer combination.
Methinks Providence has already smiled upon this individual.
#2
"Helicopters hovered constantly overhead to monitor the huge crowds; they were assisted by hundreds of high-tech cameras, all connected to a control room run by security authorities."
Too bad they outsourced the helicopter maintenance to some non-Arabs - it would have been interesting to see Al-Jazeera show disintegrating rotor bits tearing into the crowd like shrapnel.
#3
Did they ever get the power system under control in their capital city? I remember reading a few years back that it was sort of an endless slow motion eruption of blowing transformers and trunk lines underground.
#4
Atmospheric EM flashes observed here on Guam + low rumblin' quake noises. UNLIKE AS PER ALASKA, HEARD THE TREMORIN' BUT DIDN'T "FEEL" THE TREMORIN' - SAW THE SKY FLASHIN'/BLASTIN' THOUGH.
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.
Him again? Must be a slow news day.
A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old. The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free - provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, Mr Means said. The treaties signed with the U.S. were merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists said.
Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.
Umm, wrong. Article VI says treaties are supreme over the state constitutions. Nothing is supreme over the Constitution. A treaty has the same power as a federal law.
"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.
The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence — an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England. Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.
One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples — despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws. "We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.
#1
Does this mean American taxpayers can cut off their welfare payments?
Posted by: ed ||
12/20/2007 9:09 Comments ||
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#2
This can't possibly end well for anyone. I feel for the whichever President that will have to deal with the mess this will become. Especially after the UN sticks its nose in. Which,maybe this will be a blessing in disguise? There is no way an independent Lakota nation can be viable. So it's only a matter of time before the UN starts carping on the US, so maybe that will be what it takes - Active Interference in Our Country - to push Americans over the edge and finally kick those UN bastards out.
#3
Take them at their word, then declare war on them, conquer them and annex the land. This time with no welfare BS afterwards.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/20/2007 9:25 Comments ||
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#4
OK. So now they need to get visas to cross into US territory, and can be deported. They should also be cut off from any federal and state money, and, until trade agreements can be reached, no goods should cross into their territory.
Oh, and as foreign nationals, they shouldn't be eligible for any scholarships or other programs intended to assist Americans of native descent.
If they want to play the "sovereign" game, well, we can too.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
12/20/2007 9:36 Comments ||
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#5
Did Russel Means bother to ask the legitimate, duly elected Lakota Sioux tribal council or any of the actual Lakota Sioux if they were on board with this? I suspect he's off on a frolic of his own.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/20/2007 9:43 Comments ||
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#6
Spent a few hours one day, eons ago, talking to Russell Means brother.
Interesting chat. I started out on a bad note though. He was upset that a bunch of us white guys from Lincoln were getting some free booze in Rapid City. Said he had told the Sioux, at that time, that any of them getting drunk was a bad example and here we were drinking free booze from the best restaurant in town...
heh..
Oh well, he didn't scalp us and we all had a good time. Even ended up on friendly terms.
#7
While I agree that this is nonsense, it might lead to correcting some of the real problems with all US tribes.
#1 of which is that there is a black hole of business law on reservations, that excludes corporations from making deals with tribes they both want. They literally can't do it, because there isn't any written law that permits it. This is why most tribal lands are very underdeveloped.
To make matters worse, the BIA was created as a buffer between US federal and State governments and businesses, and the tribes. By any reckoning, it has been a disaster since its inception.
#2 is that a lot of the treaties that were made are literally nonsensical. Broad sections were cut and pasted from unrelated legal and non-legal documents and others are babble, random words strung together that make no sense now and didn't then.
#3 Though many of the inter-tribal and tribe-State border disputes have been hammered out in federal court, lots still remain. Many borders were not surveyed, or were based on transitory landmarks, like "...the third tree down from the ridge line."
#4 Only tribes were afforded treaties by US law, which means that other indigenous peoples, such as the Hawaiians, Samoans, Eskimos and Inuit, are in legal limbo, though only a small group of Hawaiians seem to be annoyed with this.
#9
It hasn't mattered whether its been Donks or Trunks in the White House or Congerss, the 'Indian' matter has been screwed for a long time. At least the Trunks don't play the high morality game like the Donks in this dirty situation. Part of the problem is that there are hundreds of tribes, each under 'treaties' depending upon when their territory/state entered the Union and the conditions specified. Odds of a 'uniformed code' to cover them all. Between slim and none. The only agency that seems to be able to get 'tribes' to cooperate and work together and has on the ground and contemporary experience is [for all its irony] the Army. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor.
BTW, we can be sure Mr. Means didn't consult the Crow before making the 'Lakora' territorial claims.
#12
I sort of agree with Anonymoose. I think we have dealt harshly with the Lakota. Of course, they were vicious enemies and murdered hundreds of our early settlers. Yet,I only wish we would deal 1/10 as harshly with the tribes in Wazooland and Iraqistan.
- Withdraw from US treaties.
- Implement Mouse-That-Roared gambit
- Bring white devil to itÂ’s knees
- Appoint Ward Churchill poet laureate
- Sport shiny medals, like ZimBob
#15
"Does this mean American taxpayers can cut off their welfare payments?"
"The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.
"
They are trying to get financial aid outside the US. Maybe free gasoline from Venezuala, support from the UN - remeber the Palestinians? Just send in the G-Men to go after these types for not paying their taxes and the gig is up.
#17
How long before they press for their Legitimate Rights™? At what point will they announce that Mount Rushmore is the spiritual center of the Lakota Nation and begin Resistance™ activities?
#19
Not every reservation that the Lakota are on are belong entirely to the Lakota. Sting Rock in SD for one. That's Lakota and Dakota.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/20/2007 13:41 Comments ||
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#20
Sting Standing Rock.
Sry
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/20/2007 13:44 Comments ||
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#21
Businesses can & do enter into agreements with tribes over various matters, this is subject to negotiation & agreements between the two, sometimes involving what is called "waiver of sovereignty" on the tribe's part so that the businesses have recourse in case agreements don't work out as planned. The various Sioux branches have a rep as being intractably disorganized. I worked at Pine Ridge for a week in 1977. There were no bank branches in town, I was told banks had tried opening branches before, but gave up after being robbed multiple times. Car rental agencies forbade renters from taking cars onto the Pine Ridge Reservation. One of the PHS docs at the local hospital had insulted someone's relative, and that night armed masked men showed up at his door & suggested he resign his position there, which he did forthwith. It's a different world there. I found some of the people suspicious of me, but the great majority were delightful to know.
Some states & localities contribute greatly to the disorganized operations of tribes by harassing and suing various tribal entities & corporations, even though the law is rather consistently interpreted in favor of tribal sovereignty. Kansas for example is still in litigation in federal court over tribal-owned trucks full of gasoline that Kansas seized and wants to collect state tax on. All the court precedents indicate Kansas is out of bounds in this matter, but the state continues to pursue court action. The affected tribe is out the cost of the trucks & their gasoline until the matter is closed.
Sometimes matters work out for the tribe because of sovereignty. The tribe I belong to leases space on high points of its reservation for radio & cell phone antennas because it is not subject to county zoning & land use laws. The county is a primo example of NIMBYism and cronyism at township & county levels. Townships have sued the county over the location of the county courthouse & even sued to prevent the location of radio antennas to be used by county public safety forces, so that the sheriff had to rent space from the tribe to locate antennas for his operations. That tribe itself has been sued multiple times by local governments over business & treaty matters. The level of litigation has eased somewhat in recent years since the tribe has become the major employer of county residents.
#23
Anguper Hupomosing9418: I agree with what you said, but it is hard to convey the sometimes Looney Tunes nature of the relationships the tribes have with the federal, State and local governments. And also with themselves.
Arizona being a reservation heavy State, I have seen examples of tribal governments doing things across the gamut from ordered and brilliant to East St. Louis idiotic. And non-reservation city governments behave like petulant 5 year olds.
And almost everybody agrees: "Somebody should do something about this!", generally with no idea about who should do what.
#24
Once again we pretend that natives are not assimilated. Displays of aboriginal culture are no different than re-creations of medieval jousts. Its all an act, played out to get easy money.
Posted by: Caesar Choluck3299 ||
12/20/2007 16:29 Comments ||
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#25
"Somebody should do something about this!"
Dissolve the reservation system and apply the same laws that everyone else lives by. Distribute the land among the tribal members if you want, but get rid of the fiction that the reservations are sovereign in any way.
Posted by: ed ||
12/20/2007 16:38 Comments ||
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#26
They withdraw, that means the peace treaties are no longer in effect and a state of war exists. Send in the military and crush them utterly, take no prisoners, leave none alive and then annex the land.
Considering the lack of jobs, income taxes are a non-issue.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/20/2007 19:58 Comments ||
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#28
D *** NGED 1960's sexy WHITNEY HUSTON videos, besides of course Oliver Stone, LITTLE BIG MAN, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, MEL GIBSON'S APOCALYPTO, JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP, and PREDATOR VERSUS ALIEN series [Indian Pyramids].
No surprise here - A DREAM/VISION > Throughout the AMERICAS, indians were calling on the Great Spirit, their Gods, andor their ancestors IN DANCES/LOUD SONGS-PRAYERS OF WAR AND LIFE. IMAGE VESTIGES OF LONG AGO GHOST DANCES, COUNCILS, ETC. Ditto for various ethnic/indigenous peoples of Asia + Africa + Oceania.
* MADONNA > "LIVE TO TELL" - the "Writings on the Wall" lyric > MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN [Bible, etal]??? VISION QUEST > "I SEE YOU IN THE SMOKY AIR...WEIGHT OF MY STARE...STANDING STILL IN TIME IF YOU CAN READ MY MIND".
#29
Oh for the pre 9-11 long ago time when a young man and US Army soldier from Guam asked a young BRUNETTE ANN COULTER > "IS COULTER PRONOUNCED THE SAME AS HITLER'S KULTUR"?.
#31
As Comanche David Yeagley says, tribes lost and we won the Indian war--we were better warriors. He suggests they should get on with their lives and look to the future, not dwell in the past.
MEHRABPUR, Pakistan - Plunged into darkness and chaos, Shahid Khan used the light from his cell phone to escape the wreckage of an express train that had been taking holiday travelers home. It was 2 a.m., and what was left of the train, crowded with 900 people heading from Karachi to near Lahore in southern Pakistan, lay scattered about a waterlogged field, with cries from the trapped and injured ringing out.
At least 58 people died and 150 more were injured when about 12 of the 16 cars came off the rails near Mehrabpur, about 250 miles north of Karachi. "The train was going at full speed. Then there was a sudden jerk and we felt the train sinking into the earth. There was chaos everywhere," said the 25-year-old Khan, sitting next to bundles of luggage he had salvaged from a car lying on its side. He had been traveling with six relatives.
Another passenger, Mohammed Yusuf, sat on a pink blanket next to a pile of shoes and clothes, wailing in grief at the death of his younger brother. Yusuf, 26, said his brother survived the impact and was crying out in pain, but was unable to free his trapped leg from the wreckage. "It's unbearable. Don't say that he is dead," he pleaded, as other relatives tried to console him.
He said his wife, two children and another brother were injured and taken to a hospital, their conditions unknown. It was unclear what caused the accident, which left hundreds of terrified passengers trying to claw their way out of the wreckage in total darkness. Mohammed Khalid, a railway official who was traveling in one of the rear cars that stayed on the rails, said he suspected a problem with the track. "My guess is that there was some piece of rail missing and the engine jumped the missing track and the following wagon got stuck," he said.
Excessive speed coupled with poor maintenance might have been to blame.
After the crash, a section of one rail had been torn loose. The engine came to a halt about a mile farther up the line.
Brig. Nazhar Jamil, the army officer in charge of the relief operation, said an initial inspection of the track found no sign of sabotage. He said excessive speed coupled with poor maintenance might have been to blame. The train had been full, but not overcrowded.
Rescuers brought 58 bodies to three nearby hospitals, said Mumtaz Ali, an official from the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan's largest privately run emergency service.
Col. Abbas Malik, an army doctor, said about 150 people were injured. Many of the passengers were heading home for the holiday of Eid al-Adha, when Muslims commemorate the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/20/2007 00:00 ||
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Studding fossilized bones is not an exactly an exact science.
OK sure some Paleo researcher comes up with:
"let's see whales cavort in water.. mouse deer love water..
Water + Mouse Deer = Wales"
We believe you professor! It sounds so theoretical dude! [*whistling* don't look now, he's got a hammer with a sharp pointy thing on one end. pretend everything is normal]
/"I knew a moose-deer and he wasn't no Ted Kennedy."
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.
Tigers kill would-be photographer at Indian zoo
MEHRABPUR, Pakistan - Plunged into darkness and chaos, Shahid Khan used the light from his cell phone to escape the wreckage of an express train that had been taking holiday travelers home. It was 2 a.m., and what was left of the train, crowded with 900 people heading from Karachi to near Lahore in southern Pakistan, lay scattered about a waterlogged field, with cries from the trapped and injured ringing out.
