A Benton City man pleaded innocent Thursday to allegations he beat up a partially blind man walking with his service dog when the victim spurned his request to buy some "dope."
Christopher James Gilchrist, 39, faces a Sept. 14 trial in Benton County Superior Court for second-degree assault.
On July 23, Ryan Harman was walking on Stevens Drive to a friend's Richland house. Harman is blind in one eye and partially blind in the other, and thus requires use of a service dog, said Deputy Prosecutor Anita Petra. That's when Gilchrist stepped out from the driveway of the Tumbleweeds restaurant and asked if he could buy drugs from Harman or knew where he could get some, court documents said.
The victim said, "No," but Gilchrist continued to follow him demanding drugs, documents said. Gilchrist then allegedly punched Harman on the left side of his face and told the man he "would come and kill him" if he alerted the police.
We're told that a great many of the criminal class have problems with impulse control.
Harman was able to get away and had a friend drive him to a hospital. He required several stitches to his face, Petra told the court.
Gilchrist has been in the Benton County jail on $10,000 bail, but Petra asked the court to increase it to $20,000 "based on the nature of the charge" and the defendant's lengthy criminal history.
Bail? BAIL? BAIL?
Gilchrist has had multiple violations of no-contact orders and has a problem showing up to court hearings when ordered, Petra said. He also has a pending second-degree assault case in Spokane County in which the victim required surgery to his face, she said. "This individual is a dangerous man," Petra told Judge Bruce Spanner.
Spanner agreed to bump the bail up to $20,000, noting Gilchrist's problems with the law and inability to abide by court orders.
Gilchrist then asked for a copy of police reports, saying he is entitled to any paperwork in his case. Petra argued that the victim is in fear of retribution from Gilchrist and said the defendant must let his attorney, Sal Mendoza Jr., handle the case. Spanner denied the request.
For JoeM and other fans of the late Mr. Gygax:
Gary Gygax, co-creator of the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and father of the roleplaying phenomenon, gave millions of men and women a gift: husbands, wives and lifelong friends. Gygax's wife, Gail, and his children want the local gaming giant to be remembered for his immeasurable contribution by erecting a memorial statue of him in his hometown.
Gygax died March 4, 2008, at his home in Lake Geneva. He was 69.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
08/01/2009 11:36 ||
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#1
Gary Gygax, co-creator of the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and father of the roleplaying phenomenon, gave millions of men and women a gift: husbands, wives and lifelong friends.
Mr. Gygax gave even more socially awkward boys a semi-plausible excuse for not having girlfriends. "I don't have a girlfriend right now, but my 25th level fighter/magic-user is unbeatable!"
If all of us donated a dollar to this statue, it would be so awe-inspiring that it would put fear into the pyramids themselves.
#2
It wasn't just a nerdy guy thing. And it was a good way for nerdy guys to practice sharing a non-intellectual activity with females who weren't relatives.
#3
Gygax is beloved because he always exuded a sense of fun and excitement to everyone he met. I believe someone once said that if he talked about the weather, everyone would be happy about the weather for days.
[Straits Times] FORMER Philippine leader and democracy icon Corazon Aquino died on Saturday of cardiac arrest after battling colon cancer for more than a year, her son announced. She was 76. 'Our mother peacefully passed away at 3.18 am, August 1, 2009 of cardio-respiratory arrest,' Senator Benigno Aquino Jr, said in a statement outside the Makati Medical Centre in Manila, where his mother had been hospitalised. 'She would have wanted us to thank each and every one of you for all the prayers and the continuous love and support,' he said.
'It was her wish for all of us to pray for one another and for the country,' Mr Aquino said.
A close family friend, Boy Abunda, said funeral arrangements would be announced later in the day. He said Mrs Aquino had been surrounded by members of her immediate family when she passed away. Presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde the government had declared a week-long period of national mourning and would give Aquino a state funeral.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
remember the revolution. This girl did some good.
That's probably the worst time to find it...
Bethlehem - Maan/Agencies - A one foot crocodile was found aboard Egypt Air Airbus A320-200 flight MS-917 from Abu Dhabi to Cairo Friday, prompting flight attendants to chase the animal around the cabin and capture it. FILTHY INFIDEL BEAST!
One foot long? I'll bet it was adorable!
And it would make a lovely pair of ladies' shoes ...
According to The Aviation Herald the crocodile was brought to the local Cairo zoo after the plane landed in Egypt. They said police started an investigation into how the creature got on the plane. All passengers reportedly denied having anything to do with the incident. This your crocodile, Mahmoud?
Ummmmmm...nope.
"I'm a size five!"
I'm sure it just crawled aboard while nobody was looking, following the smell of the dinners keeping warm in the galley.
[Mail and Globe] A lawmaker from Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party was arrested on Friday, accused of playing music denigrating veteran President Robert Mugabe, the party spokesperson said.
Stewart Garadhi, who represents Chinhoyi in north-western Zimbabwe, was arrested as a court in the capital remanded in custody a fellow MP in a case involving the theft of a cellphone. "Another of our MPs, honorable Garadhi of Chinhoyi was arrested early this morning [Friday]," Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said. "We are still gathering the facts but the information we got is that he was playing an MDC party song on his car radio," Chamisa said. "We believe this is the work of people who are trying to undermine the MDC."
The MDC said in a statement that Garadhi was travelling from Harare to Chinhoyi when he was arrested by police who accused him of playing a song, Nharembozha, which means "cellphone", alleging it denigrated Mugabe by supporting Tsvangirai's rise to power.
Garadhi's arrest came three days after Deputy Youth Minister Thamsanqa Mahlangu was detained in custody to August 13 after being implicated in the theft of a cellphone. Several other MDC lawmakers and officials have been charged in different cases, while three are still detained in what the MDC says is a "systematic crackdown on MDC members and activists in recent months".
"Some government officials are bent on decimating the party majority in Parliament and its structures," the party said in a statement.
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08/01/2009 00:00 ||
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The sun is setting and its dying rays cast triangles of light on to the bodies of the Indian workers. Two are washing themselves, scooping water from tubs in a small yard next to the labour camp's toilets. Others queue for their turn. One man stands stamping his feet in a bucket, turned into a human washing machine. The heat is suffocating and the sandy wind whips our faces. The sprinkles of water from men drying their clothes fall like welcome summer rain.
All around, a city of labour camps stretches out in the middle of the Arabian desert, a jumble of low, concrete barracks, corrugated iron, chicken-mesh walls, barbed wire, scrap metal, empty paint cans, rusted machinery and thousands of men with tired and gloomy faces.
I have left Dubai's spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.
Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.
Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.
In a neighbouring camp, a group of Pakistani workers from north and south Waziristan sit exhaustedly sipping tea while one of them cooks outside. In the middle of the cramped room in which 10 men sleep, one worker in a filthy robe sits on the floor grinding garlic and onions with a mortar and pestle while staring into the void.
Hamidullah, a thin Afghan from Maydan, a village on the outskirts of Kabul, tells me: "I spent five years in Iran and one year here, and one year here feels like 10 years. When I left Afghanistan I thought I would be back in a few months, but now I don't know when I will be back." Another worker on a bunk bed next to him adds: "He called his home yesterday and they told him that three people from his village were killed in fighting. This is why we are here."
Hamidullah earns around 450 dirhams (£70) a month as a construction worker.
How is life, I ask.
"What life? We have no life here. We are prisoners. We wake up at five, arrive to work at seven and are back at the camp at nine in the evening, day in and day out."
Outside in the yard, another man sits on a chair made of salvaged wood, in front of a broken mirror, a plastic sheet wrapped around his neck, while the camp barber trims his thick beard. Despite the air of misery, tonight is a night of celebration. One of the men is back from a two-week break in his home village in Pakistan, bringing with him a big sack of rice, and is cooking pilau rice with meat. Rice is affordable at weekends only: already wretched incomes have been eroded by the weak dollar and rising food prices. "Life is worse now," one worker told me. "Before, we could get by on 140 dirhams [£22] a month; now we need 320 to 350."
The dozen or so men sit on newspapers advertising luxury watches, mobile phones and high-rise towers. When three plastic trays arrive, filled with yellowish rice and tiny cubes of meat, each offers the rare shreds of meat to his neighbours.
All of these men are part of a huge scam that is helping the construction boom in the Gulf. Like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, they each paid more than £1,000 to employment agents in India and Pakistan. They were promised double the wages they are actually getting, plus plane tickets to visit their families once a year, but none of the men in the room had actually read their contract. Only two of them knew how to read.
"They lied to us," a worker with a long beard says. "They told us lies to bring us here. Some of us sold their land; others took big loans to come and work here."
Once they arrive in the United Arab Emirates, migrant workers are treated little better than cattle, with no access to healthcare and many other basic rights. The company that sponsors them holds on to their passports - and often a month or two of their wages to make sure that they keep working. And for this some will earn just 400 dirhams (£62) a month.
A group of construction engineers told me, with no apparent shame, that if a worker becomes too ill to work he will be sent home after a few days. "They are the cheapest commodity here. Steel, concrete, everything is up, but workers are the same."
As they eat, the men talk more about their lives. "My shift is eight hours and two overtime, but in reality we work 18 hours," one says. "The supervisors treat us like animals. I don't know if the owners [of the company] know."
"There is no war, and the police treat us well," another chips in, "but the salary is not good."
"That man hasn't been home for four years," says Ahmad, the chef for the night, pointing at a well-built young man. "He has no money to pay for the flight."
A steel worker says he doesn't know who is supposed to pay for his ticket back home. At the recruiting agency they told him it would be the construction company - but he didn't get anything in writing.
One experienced worker with spectacles and a prayer cap on his head tells me that things are much better than they used to be. Five years ago, when he first came, the company gave him nothing. There was no air conditioning in the room and sometimes no electricity. "Now, they give AC to each room and a mattress for each worker."
Immigrant workers have no right to form unions, but that didn't stop strikes and riots spreading across the region recently - something unheard of few years ago. Elsewhere in Mousafah, I encounter one of the very few illegal unions, where workers have established a form of underground insurance scheme, based on the tribal structure back home. "When we come here," one member of the scheme tells me, "we register with our tribal elders, and when one of us is injured and is sent home, or dies, the elders collect 30 dirhams from each of us and send the money home to his family."
In a way, the men at Mousafah are the lucky ones. Down in the Diera quarter of old Dubai, where many of the city's illegal workers live, 20 men are often crammed into one small room.
UN agencies estimate that there are up to 300,000 illegal workers in the emirates.
On another hot evening, hundreds of men congregate in filthy alleyways at the end of a day's work, sipping tea and sitting on broken chairs. One man rests his back on the handles of his pushcart, silently eating his dinner next to a huge pile of garbage.
In one of the houses, a man is hanging his laundry over the kitchen sink, a reeking smell coming from a nearby toilet. Next door, men lie on the floor. They tell me they are all illegal and they are scared and that I have to leave.
Outside, a fistfight breaks out between Pakistani workers and Sri Lankans.
The alleyways are dotted with sweatshops, where Indian men stay until late at night, bending over small tables sewing on beads.
A couple of miles away, the slave market becomes more ugly. Outside a glitzy hotel, with a marble and glass facade, dozens of prostitutes congregate according to their ethnic groups: Asians to the right, next to them Africans, and, on the left, blondes from the former Soviet Union. There are some Arab women. Iranians, I am told, are in great demand. They charge much higher prices and are found only in luxury hotels.
Like the rest of the Gulf region, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are being built by expat workers. They are strictly segregated, and a hierarchy worthy of previous centuries prevails.
At the top, floating around in their black or white robes, are the locals with their oil money. Immaculate and pampered, they own everything. Outside the "free zones", where the rules are looser, no one can start a business in the UAE without a partner from the emirates, who often does nothing apart from lending his name. No one can get a work permit without a local sponsor.
Under the locals come the western foreigners, the experts and advisers, making double the salaries they make back home, all tax free. Beneath them are the Arabs - Lebanese and Palestinians, Egyptians and Syrians. What unites these groups is a mixture of pretension and racism.
"Unrealistic things happen to your mind when you come here," a Lebanese woman who frequently visits Dubai tells me as she drives her new black SUV. "Suddenly, you can make $5,000 [£2,800] a month. You can get credit so easy, you buy the car of your dreams, you shop and you think it's a great bargain; when you go to dinner, you go to a hotel ... nowhere else can you live like this."
Down at the base of the pyramid are the labourers, waiters, hotel employees and unskilled workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines and beyond. They move deferentially around the huge malls, cafes, bars and restaurants, bowing down and calling people sir and madam. In the middle of the day, during the hottest hours, you can see them sleeping in public gardens under trees, or on the marble floors of the Dubai Mosque, on benches or pieces of cardboard on side streets. These are the victims of the racism that is not only flourishing in the UAE but is increasingly being exported to the rest of the Middle East. Sometimes it reminds you of the American south in the 1930s.
One evening in Abu Dhabi, I have dinner with my friend Ali, a charming Iraqi engineer whom I have known for two decades. After the meal, as his wife serves saffron-flavoured tea, he pushes back his chair and lights a cigar. We talk about stock markets, investment and the Middle East, and then the issue of race comes up.
"We will never use the new metro if it's not segregated," he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighbouring Dubai. "We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell," his wife explains.
Not for the first time, I am told that while the immigrant workers are living in appalling conditions, they would be even worse off back home - as if poverty in one place can justify exploitation in the other.
"We need slaves," my friend says. "We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids - they were slaves."
Sharla Musabih, a human rights campaigner who runs the City of Hope shelter for abused women, is familiar with such sentiments. "Once you get rich on the back of the poor," she says, "it's not easy to let go of that lifestyle. They are devaluing human beings," she says. "The workers might eat once a day back home, but they have their family around them, they have respect. They are not asking for a room in a hotel - all they are asking for is respect for their humanity."
Towards the end of another day, on a fabulous sandy beach near the Dubai marina, the waves wash calmly over the beautiful sand. A couple are paragliding over the blue sea; on the new islands, gigantic concrete structures stand like spaceships. As tourists laze on the beach, Filipino, Indian and Pakistani workers, stand silently watching from a dune, cut off from the holidaymakers by an invisible wall.
Behind them rise more brand-new towers.
"It's a Green Zone mentality," a young Arab working in IT tells me. "People come to make money. They live in bubbles. They all want to make as much money as possible and leave."
Back at the Mousafah camps, a Pakistani worker walks me through his neighbourhood. On both sides of the dusty lane stand concrete barracks and the familiar detritus: raw sewage, garbage, scrap metal. A man washes his car, and in a cage chickens flutter up and down.
Come the pandemic, the rich will catch whatever is incubated in unhealthy slums like this.
We enter one of the rooms, flip-flops piled by the door.
Inside, a steelworker gets a pile of papers from a plastic envelope and shoves them into my lap. He is suing the company that employed him for unpaid wages. "I've been going to court for three months, and every time I go they tell me to come in two weeks." His friends nod their heads. "Last time the [company] lawyer told me, 'I am in the law here - you will not get anything."
Economically, Dubai has progressed a lot in the past 10 years, but socially it has stayed behind," says Musabih. "Labour conditions are like America in the 19th century - but that's not acceptable in the 21st century."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
08/01/2009 13:53 ||
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The "welfare" state is the lefts monument built by slavery.
#2
Whenever anyone touts leadership by the UN, or other forms of "internationalism", remember this. Only fools equate any of the people in this story with Americans. Most of the rest of the world are either slaves or slaveholders.
#2
A certain lack of foresight in setting up the program, which we've come to expect from the current administration, but this one gets rid of excess car inventory and quickly gets money circulating through the economy.
#3
What it does is it destroys productive assets. And you could get money circulating through the economy by leaving buckets of cash on street corners.
This is a subsidy to GM etc disguised as a Green policy.
#4
I read the article, what they're doing is crazy, they're destroying the engines and shredding the body.
These morons don't know the engine's not the problem, it's the final gear ratio, take an oil burner yes it's in need of either scrapping or rebuilding, but to simply destroy it is nuts.
These idiots obviously know nothing about the way a car works internally.
I had a ford Station wagon with an automatic, I prefer a Standard, so I switched the trans, the mileage jumped to 28 mpg, because the axle ratio on an automatic is Higher than a standard shift
Take identical cars a standard shift may be geared 3.48 and the automatic will be geared 3.08 a built in overdrive right there.
When they went to locking torque converters this stopped(Same as a clutch, locks up with no built in slippage).
This way the engines cannot be used for parts or rebuilt, STUPID.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/01/2009 21:23 Comments ||
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#5
The problem being worked on putting autoworkers to work. To do that you need to increase demand, which happens when you reduce supply.
Removing these used cars (which are replacement goods for new cars) reduces the supply.
While the waste reduces the overall wealth in the system, it should help the automakers.
#7
Someone also pointed out that if you bought a car several years ago that got good mileage, you are not eligible for the 4500 bucks. If you were selfish and bought a gas guzzler, you get rewarded now.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
08/01/2009 22:59 Comments ||
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HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- Canada's defense minister said Friday the Canadian government is closely watching Russian plans to drop paratroopers in the Arctic next April.
Defense Minister Peter MacKay said any country approaching Canadian airspace will be met by Canadians. MacKay didn't give any specifics on what Canada will do in April, but he said Canada is prepared to protect its borders.
A Russian general announced plans this week to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first parachute drop at the North Pole by sending paratroopers to the same site.
Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway have been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to contain as much as 25 percent of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas. All five nations have agreed to abide by international law while scientists map the Arctic seabed.
The dispute over the Arctic has intensified amid growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice, opening up new shipping lanes and new resource development possibilities.
In February, Canada sent fighter jets to intercept a Russian bomber flying toward Canadian airspace.
MacKay said there have been no recent intrusions of Russian bombers. "We have scrambled F-18 jets in the past, and they'll always be there to meet them," he said.
Many countries have beefed up their military presence in the Arctic. I get a deep sickening feeling in my stomach, knowing Canada may need our help, and won't get it from The One.
[The News (Pak) Top Stories] The chief minister of held Kashmir, who quit over allegations of involvement in a sex scandal, resumed office on Friday after the state governor rejected his resignation, officials said. "Dey got nuttin' on me! Nuttin!"
"Based on the information supplied to him by the Union Home (interior) Ministry, there is no basis for Shri (Mr) Abdullah seeking to resign," state governor NN Vohra said in a statement. "I advise the chief minister to most vigorously devote himself to discharging responsibilities of the chief minister, Jammu and Kashmir."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2009 00:00 ||
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[The News (Pak)] A group of lawyers, under the supervision of an office-bearer of the Lahore Bar Association (LBA), on Friday banned the entry of all journalists in the premises of all the subordinate courts of the city for showing live video footage of thrashing of an ASI at the hands of the custodians of the law. They warned if any journalist dared enter the premises of the subordinate courts he or she would receive treatment not different from the one received by the ASI, a family court judge and two media men. Inmates running asylum. Film at eleven...
On Thursday, a group of lawyers gave a good thrashing to a reporter and a cameraman of a private news channel at the Sessions Court for making footage of some lawyers who were beating an ASI of Nishtar Colony police station three days back. They also manhandled an Additional District & Sessions Judge when he refused to cancel the FIR registered against them on the complainant of the victim cop.
Two days ago, the lawyers thrashed senior court reporter Shaheen Attique and his camera man Nasir Hussain. The latter fell unconscious due to the brutal torture by the violent lawyers who were led by M R Awan, vice president the Lahore Bar Association. Rule of Law? What's that?
You should know that, M R.
The lawyers involved in the incident were identified as Sajjad Afzal, Mehar Jahangir, Malik Mohammad Hanif and Rana Asif. After the incident, journalists community announced to boycott all functions of the lawyers until the high ups take against the lawyers. The high ups? Better off hiring some goons to kick some lawyer ass.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2009 00:00 ||
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#4
We here in Central Texas are considering a "Bring Big Al to Texas" fund since we have just witnessed the breaking of a 149 year old record with July now the hottest month ever in our history -- also moving fast forward in our two year drought.
Farmers and ranchers are losing billions and billions of dollar.
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.
