#4
A fellow told his mother she needed a hearing aid. She replied that it was her burial money. His response was "mom the states not going to leave you lying around to stink up the place!". True story. "I swear on the Bible!".
#5
not apparently, it is. Elko is a Northern ranching community. My Uncle had a ranch in Winnemucca, which is a similar area. This is a bank agent failure, pure and simple
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/25/2011 23:15 Comments ||
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A young Australian man has been charged with exposing himself and being a public nuisance as Britain's Queen Elizabeth II passed by, police said Monday. "Don't look, yer majesty!"
Tens of thousands of people turned out to see the visiting monarch as she toured the Queensland capital, her first visit since the state was hit by devastating floods which killed more than 30 people in January. "My Gawd, Phillip! What was that?"
"It looked like a buttock, m'dear! Maybe two or three of them!"
But among the crowd was one man who allegedly exposed himself. "Aaaar! Hey, Queen! Ever seen one o' these?"
"A 22-year-old man has been charged with wilful exposure and public nuisance," a Queensland Police spokeswoman told AFP, adding that it was "in the vicinity of the procession." "Into the paddy wagon wit' yez!"
"I'm goin'! Just lemme pull me pants up! An' hand me m'beer!"
ABC News reported that the man allegedly flashed his buttocks at the queen. "Ahah! There were two of them!"
"I have always heard that they come in pairs, Phillip."
"Hmmm... Y'know, I believe I've read that somewhere, too."
He will appear in court later this month. "Y'gotcher choice: Judge Doom? Or Judge Jeffries?"
The queen is warmly regarded in Australia, a former British colony, though from time to time debate rages about whether ties to the monarchy should be cut and the nation become a republic. ... which would make it different from what it is now. If somebody moons the queen it'll be an international incident, rather than just a stoopid incident.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/25/2011 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
If somebody moons the queen it'll be an international incident, rather than just a stoopid incident.
Speaking of stoopid. One of our Hells-Angels- turned-Navy-Postal-Clerk decided to get drunk and shout rude things about the Queen at the base of a gangway to a British destroyer. Their crew was nice about it. They went at him - one at a time. All forty-odd of them.
Yesterday, turned down help from Israel --- even tho, in their last earthquake, with over 20,000 dead, Israel was there, first, to help.... Folks complaining about the gov turning down international help... It's the Kurds, ya' know. Temps at night below zero.... To be fair, they turned down help from everyone else, too. Let's not be fair. Governments are supposed to provide for their citizens, and part of that is accepting help when you're overwhelmed. Erdogan's refusal of offered help demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for his people. That's something that the people would note in a democracy...
Officials said 12,000 more tents would be delivered to the cities of Ercis and Van and also to nearby villages.
Ankara has been criticised for failing to help some of the most needy who spent the second night in freezing conditions without heating and tents.
At least 279 people are now known to have died and some 1,300 were injured after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake.
Rescue teams with sniffer dogs continued through the night to search for survivors under the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings.
Cranes and other heavy equipment have been lifting slabs of concrete, and many residents have been joining in the rescue effort, digging with shovels.
But hopes to find more survivors are fading now, with the officials warning that the death toll is expected to rise further.
'We're freezing'
Tented encampments have grown up in Ercis and the regional capital Van to house the homeless and those terrified of aftershocks, but this is a high plateau and the temperature falls below zero after dark at this time of year.
So for those camping out and struggling to survive under the broken concrete, it is a long, cold night.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, in charge of the relief operation, said late on Monday that "from today there will be nothing our people lack".
Officials also were setting up more field hospitals and kitchens to help the thousands left homeless or too afraid to return to their homes amid continuing aftershocks.
But some survivors in the ethnic Kurd areas complained that not enough help was reaching them.
"Tents will not be enough - we do not have food, no rescue teams have reached here yet," said Serif Tarakci, an official from the village of Halkali, about 50km (30 miles) from Van.
"It's cold at night, everybody is outside and we're freezing here," the New York Times quoted him as saying.
Another resident of Van said that even tents were in short supply.
"All the nylon tents are in the black market now," Ibrahim Baydar, a 40-year-old tradesman from Van, told Reuters news agency.
"We cannot find any. People are queuing for them. No tents were given to us whatsoever," he said.
Opposition politicians earlier decried what they called "a lack of crisis management", saying that many people still lacked food, heating and tents. It takes a while to assess needs, organize supplies, then get them to the area and distributed. Plan on living for a week or two on your bug-out supplies and whatever can gotten from the rubble.
They also said Ankara was wrong to refuse offers of foreign aid.
Ercis, population about 75,000, has been the worst hit, with some 80 collapsed buildings. Much more at link
#3
Yeah, like that. People noticed, too, when Obama pulled that stunt.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/25/2011 10:19 Comments ||
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#4
Anytime this kind of disaster happens, you need help - no matter whom. Pride is currency in Islam. It is all so easy now. They let their people freeze to death rather than asking the US or the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS for help.
Grow up Turkey, you were aborted as an ottoman supreme, and no islamic country will EVER thrive.
Televisions, fridges and furniture pieces are heading for Hawaii, as a huge amount of debris from Japan's earthquake sails across the Pacific. Up to 20 million tons of debris from the earthquake in March is traveling faster than expected and could reach the U.S. West Coast in three years.
Three years?!? Quick -- duck and cover!!!
A Russian ship's crew spotted the debris - which included a 20ft long fishing boat - last month after passing Midway Island.
Experts have revised predictions to say the debris will now reach Midway by winter and Hawaii in less than two years.
Abandon island! Abandon island!!1!1!
Crew members on the Russian training ship STS Pallada spotted the debris 2,000 miles from Japan, including a fishing boat from Fukushima, reported AFP.'They saw some pieces of furniture, some appliances, anything that can float - and they picked up a fishing boat,' Mr Hafner told KITV. A crew member told AFP: 'We keep sighting things like wooden boards, plastic bottles, buoys from fishing nets [small and big ones], an object resembling a wash basin, drums, boots, other wastes. We also sighted a TV set, fridge and a couple of other home appliances.'
#2
I wonder why nobody has ever come up with a flotsam harvester? A ship somewhat like a kelp harvester, but designed to methodically reduce large amounts of naval hazard flotsam.
I gather it wouldn't have worked with the great "plastic island" in the ocean, as most of that plastic was just a fraction of an inch in size. But for something like this Japanese tsunami flotsam, it would be a heck of a lot cheaper to police it up at sea than when it lands on beaches.
#3
Cheaper? I kind of doubt that - the fuel & labor costs to get a ship out & back to the garbage patch must be very high. Some of the floating debris will rot or sink before it can make landfall.
#4
A TV and a refrigerator are still floating after 2000 miles?!
You'd think they'd be embryonic coral reefs by now.
Posted by: Barbara ||
10/25/2011 14:07 Comments ||
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#5
This reminds me of the Pacific's famous garbage patch. A lot of talk, but it seems that every picture turns out to be of some garbage dumped somewhere else.
I suspect the Russian ship dumped a lot of garbage and were spotted near the location and came up with cover story.
in a Turkish Newspaper
A group of Armenians, raised as Sunni Muslims, was baptized 10/23 as Armenian Orthodox christians at the historic St. Giragos (Surp Giragos) Armenian Church in Turkey's southeastern province of Diyarbakır.The names of those to be baptized were not revealed for security reasons.
A religious service was held at the church, one day after it was re-opened following the completion of the restoration work.
Among the participants in yesterday's service were guests from Armenia and the United States, including former foreign minister of Armenia and the leader of Armenia's Heritage Party, Raffi Hovhannesian, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardione and Archbishop Vicken Ayvazian, diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church of America.
Other participants at the ceremony included Dositheos Anagnostopulos, spokesperson for the Istanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, Yusuf Çetin, patriarchal vicar of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Istanbul, Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir and Sur Mayor Abdullah Demirbaş.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
10/25/2011 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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Russian Mi-28N Night Hunter has lost a tender on the delivery of 22 attack helicopters to the Indian military in strong competition with the American AH-64D Apache, an Indian Defense Ministry source said on Tuesday.
We decided not to choose the Mi-28 for technical reasons. Our experts believe that the Mi-28N did not meet the requirements of the tender on 20 positions, while the Apache showed better performance, the source said.
The future contract, worth at least $600 million, envisions an optional delivery of additional 22 helicopters.
Posted by: john frum ||
10/25/2011 19:15 ||
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Link ||
[11128 views]
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#1
This notification is being made in advance so that, in the event that the Boeing- U.S. Army proposal is selected, the United States might move as quickly as possible to implement the sale. If the Government of India selects the Boeing-U.S. Army proposal, the Government of India will request a possible sale of 50 T700-GE-701D engines, 12 AN/APG-78 Fire Control Radars, 12 AN/APR-48A Radar Frequency interferometers, 812 AGM-114L-3 HELLFIRE LONGBOW missiles, 542 AGM-114R-3 HELLFIRE II missiles, 245 STINGER Block I-92H missiles, and 23 Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensors, rockets, training and dummy missiles, 30mm ammunition, transponders, simulators, global positioning system/inertial navigation systems, communication equipment, spare and repair parts; tools and test equipment, support equipment, repair and return support, personnel training and training equipment; publications and technical documentation, U.S. Government and contractor engineering and logistics support services; and other related elements of logistics support to be provided in conjunction with a proposed direct commercial sale of 22 AH-64D Block III APACHE Helicopters.
The estimated cost is $1.4 billion.
This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to strengthen the U.S.-India strategic relationship and to improve the security of an important partner which continues to be an important force for political stability, peace, and economic progress in South Asia.
Posted by: john frum ||
10/25/2011 19:34 Comments ||
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Posted by: john frum ||
10/25/2011 19:35 Comments ||
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#3
...did not meet the requirements of the tender on 20 positions
You mean like having to kickback even more money just to get the crafts flying for more than 10 minutes before needing serious maintenance above the original contract? /rhet question
#4
So IOW Indjuh is reserving its Pilots' right to qualify for their PLA "Ace" Wings by self-crashing the more expensive US-NATO stuff, eh - okay-y-y, iff thats what Indjuh wants?
On a separate, more serious note ...
* INDIAN DEFENCE FORUM > CHINESE "GLOBAL TIMES" CONTINUED THREAT [repeat]: DON'T TAKE [China's] PEACEFUL APPROACH FOR GRANTED | [China should = be willing to]TAKE MILITARY ACTION OVER SOUTH CHINA SEAS DISPUTES.
SCS Nations should "prepare for the sound of cannons" iff they refuse to resolve the disputes diplomatically.
* SAME > TAKE MILITARY ACTION AGZ INDIA OVER [Disputed] SOUTH CHINA REGIONS: GLOBAL TIMES.
* SAME > [Asahi News = 2010] PLA PLANS TO SEIZE SOUTH CHINA SEAS ISLANDS BY SURPISE.
Again, RISING CHINA = sees itself as the SOLE = ONE-N-ONLY SUCCESSOR TO THE "WEAK/DECLINING" US SUPERPOWER - whether it publicly or officially admits or not, ITS GOVT = TOP MILPOL LEADERSHIP KNOW IT WILL NEED OVERSEAS LAND, AIR, NAVAL, + SPACE? PORTS TO PROJECT POWER + INFLUENCE. IT WANTS "SOLE" MILBASES THROUGHOUT THE "FIRST ISLAND CHAIN" [+ beyond], FROM NE ASIA TO SOPAC TO THE INDIAN OCEAN, + ITS NOT TAKING "NO" FOR AN ANSWER.
IMO ARTICS > Taken collectively, it appears the GT is trying hard NOT to say or infer that ANY CHINA-INVOL MIL CONFLICT IN SAME WILL LIKELY BE A MULTI-FRONT WAR, where the sufferance of potentially massive combat casualties by the PLA is secondary to post-US Beijing's need/requirement to forcefully simultan break various strategic bottlenecks along the "First Island Chain". CHINA MAY ATTEMPT BLITZKRIEG WAR BUT ISN'T AFRAID TO USE THE PLA AS EXPENDABLE "CANNON FODDER" AS PERTINENT.
* CHINA > ECONOMIC "EEZ/SEZ" IS SYNONYMOUS WID "SOVEREIGN STATE/NATIONAL TERRITORY" - as the various SCS = ASEAN States slowly but steadily modernize their armed forces, espec wid US-Western MilSys/Techs [Russia?], it will become that much harder for China per se to enforce its overseas claims of sovereignty.
SUB-SUB-IOW, GLOBAL TIMES = is indirectly saying that its BETTER FOR CHINA [post-US interests] TO FIGHT ANY SUCH WAR(S) SOONER THAN LATER, i.e before Year 2020-2025.
The last parts of the B53 will be disassembled today at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas. The plant is managed and operated for the United States Department of Energy by BWXT Pantex and Sandia National Laboratories. BWXT Pantex is a limited liability enterprise of Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group, Honeywell and Bechtel.
First put into service in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighted about 10,000 lbs, and was designed to destroy deeply buried underground facilities when dropped by a B-52 bomber.
Since the engineers and technicians who designed and built the bomb have long since retired or died, developing a safe disassembly process took a long time, and tools had be fabricated along with procedures to remove some 300 lbs of high explosive and a large amount of radioactive material.
Many B53 bombs were disassembled in the 1980s, but they were not officially removed from the inventory until 1997.
#5
Tactical warheads for artillery have long been passé, but means to attack deeply buried, hardened targets are not.
If, however, you're wondering about the timing of both announcements, this may be relevant:
The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns with President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the number of nuclear weapons.
#6
Pappy, but why make two different announcements from the same plant, in two different forums?
I dunno. The first article (in the WoT/Page 1 section and posted first) would have likely been moved by a mod to the proper page, had not 'someone' commented about it. Moving it now, IMNSHO, would just look dumb.
Courtesy to the first poster and prior practice would indicate that the second, duplicate article be deleted. Deleting your, later, article is impossible now, since other readers have commented on it.
Again, why did you post yours nine hours later and then act like it's someone else's fault that there's duplicate articles?
#7
Well going back to my prefix 5 courses at O'gau, a 9+ Mt nuke is pretty m uch major overkill. A 1 Mt nuke can kill any major city and destroy large areas outside the urban area with radiant heat and the blast wave.
The 9Mt nuke goes back to the fascination with size that resulted from the Soviets blowing up half of central Asia with 10,20,50 and even a 100Mt(!!!) weapon. As an aside, I bet the film of the detonation of the 100Mt nuke would be very interesting...but I digress.
We'll proven that a conventional 10K bomb with a penetrating nose dropped from 20,000 feet can defeat most any underground bunker. Using 9 Mt to kill a bunker when 1 Mt can wiped out the equivalent of Southern California makes no sense.
It was/is as assinine as having enough nukes targeted at each Soviet city to kill it 100 times when we knew the Soviets had no way of stopping one ICBM/MIRV.
I'm more worried about the loss of our tactical nukes. When you can take out a highway and a major alpine bridge with one nuke assembled in short order and detonated by remote control, it is not sound strategy to have to pack several tons of TNT in a pre chamber designed for a tactical nuke...by the time you get that much crap wired up and checked, you've got an AK stuck in your ear...the tactical nukes should stay and I bet NATO is having a hissy fit over that idea.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
10/25/2011 15:37 Comments ||
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#9
Pappy: I was not trying to be critical of the other post or poster, in fact I didn't notice it until after I had posted, and because it was not a duplicate, but parallel to mine I was a bit perplexed about why Pantex made the announcements the way they did.
#10
the tactical nukes should stay and I bet NATO is having a hissy fit over that idea.
The W70s were mothballed 2 decades ago, in accordance with the INF treaty.
Wasn't the 9MT weapon for EMP?
No - it was for massively hardened, deeply buried targets. You might be thinking of the W70-3 variant of the tactical warhead, which was specifically a 'neutron bomb' anti-tank design.
#12
Since the engineers and technicians who designed and built the bomb have long since retired or died, developing a safe disassembly process took a long time...
A lot of people complain about the cost of military items. Some of that cost is due to massive documentation and testing requirements. Those reqs are a PITA to comply with and often seem not only expensive but just plain overkill.
Until a new threat arises, that is, and we need to figure out just what effect that threat would have on armor or chem-bio suits that our reservists still use, or old electronics. Then that expensive documentation turns out to be valuable.
And if you think it's scary that we had trouble ensuring safe disassembly of old nukes, don't pay any attention to the fact that, with the nuclear test ban treaty in effect, we use *models* and *simulation* to decide whether other nuclear weapons are still safe and would be effective to deploy.
#14
The CTBT is not yet in force. Signatures from India and Pakistan are required.
Posted by: john frum ||
10/25/2011 19:27 Comments ||
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#15
The US is complying with the terms of the CTBT pending Senate ratification and has done so since 1993. You're right that I shouldn't have said the treaty was in effect; however the net effect is the same with regard to safety and assurance of the stockpile.
#16
No need for such super-Nukies since, as contrary to history, the Govt-DOD says there will be no more major wars thru at least 2050, + perhaps even 2100.
IOW, asteriods + 2012 Solar storms aside, any and all future mil conflicts are mere MINOR/BRUSH WARS = UN-LED "POLICE/PEACEKEEPING/
HUMANITARIAN" ACTIONS.
SNAFU > UNO OWG MINOR WAR(S) meet RADICAL ISLAM'S GLOBAL JIHAD, aka MUSLIM/MOHAMMEDDAN GLOBAL-WORLD CONQUEST.
That weirdly + mysteriously, but only PDeniably coincidentally, also involves Radical Commie-Socialist militant groups.
Lest we fergit, 911 + GWOT > among other, aka WAR FOR PRO-US-VS-ANTI-US OWG = PRO-US-vS-ANTI-US GLOBAL SOCIALIST ORDER.
#17
See also WAFF > 2,350 OR 3500? HOW MANY NUKE WARHEADS DOES CHINA [really]HAVE?
Ditto Mama Russia???
Doubts on the true size of China's nuclear arsenal, as per US-West estimates vee the "Underground Great Wall".
Pragmatically, wid the decline of the former USSR, Beijing's post-COLD WAR rationale for covertly maintaining more Nuke Warheads than acknowledged or allowed by treaty would be to offset US-NATO MilTech superiority iff not dominance. In any case, post-Soviet Mother Russia + China still fear one another more than they do the US.
* ARTIC > Comments by PLA GEN, ZHU CHENGDU, to the WSJ back in 2005 on how China will launch nuclear missles agz hundreds, perhaps two hundreds, of US Cities iff the US came to the military aid of Taiwan during war with the mainland, SHOWS ANDOR INFERS HOW IMPORTANT OR CENTRAL TAIWAN IS TO CHINA + PLA PACIFIC STRATEGY.
HAINAN may have the big, offshore PLA bases but its Taiwan that Beijing truly wants.
and
* INDIAN DEFENCE FORUM > CHINA NEEDS [counter/anti-UIGHUR] BASES IN PAKISTAN, in the Pak FATA + FANA regions close to Xinjiang.
A Filipino factory worker in Saudi Arabia was arrested after allegedly drawing a dirty finger with a caption that disrespected Muhammad.
The 32-year-old worker was "supposedly caught by his supervisor with an illustration of a dirty finger on a piece of paper under it a caption that says F**k you Mohamad," said the chairman of the Riyadh-based local chapter of Migrante in Saudi Arabia.
The worker and his supervisor had a dispute that day after the former complained about the latter's decision to transfer him to another job site.
On Tuesday, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona was able to see the jailed worker and said that the supervisor allegedly reported the "dirty finger" illustration to a Mutawa or religious police who arrested him. Monterona added, "It is unfortunate that because of what he had sketched, he was sent to jail and might probably face a case over violation of customary prohibition."
The group is planning to consult a local Shariah lawyer to see if the drawing constitutes an offense of the host government's customary prohibition. Monterona stated, "It is totally wrong to equate that what he had drawn is in reference to Mohamad, the prophet, as we OFWs had high regard and respect to the Muslim prophet. Blasphemy must be ruled out."
The group is working with Philippine embassy officials in Riyadh to provide assistance to the jailed worker.
#5
Saudi Arabia has factories. Designed and staffed by a variety of foreigners with a few Saudi names on the doors of never-occupied offices. Mr. Wife had the pleasure of several times being offered a transfer to work at his company's facility there. He was ever so glad to turn it down on the grounds of his wife's religion...
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.
A young Australian man has been charged with exposing himself and being a public nuisance as Britain's Queen Elizabeth II passed by, police said Monday.
A Filipino factory worker in Saudi Arabia was arrested after allegedly drawing a dirty finger with a caption that disrespected Muhammad. 
