Vice Adm. Tim Giardina has been suspended as deputy commander of the Bellevue-based U.S. Strategic Command, StratCom officials confirmed Friday.
StratCom's commander, Gen. C. Robert Kehler, suspended Giardina in early September from all duties that include oversight of nuclear materials or nuclear issues, or that require a security clearance, said Capt. Pamela Kunze, a StratCom spokeswoman. She said Kehler also recommended to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Giardina be reassigned to another command.
Giardina is being investigated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Officials say Giardina is suspected in a case involving counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, according to the Associated Press. DCI agents stationed at the Iowa casino discovered the chips, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation special agent David Dales said. He would not say when the discovery was made or how much in counterfeit chips was found, only that "it was a significant monetary amount."
#2
You're close to the mark - deci - one in ten. Given we have far more general officer personnel per enlisted grade ratio than WWII, there's a lot of depth in that personnel pool.
#3
....might be interesting to compare / contrast Constitutional philosophical beliefs of those who have been suspended / relieved of command / resigned vis-a-vis Champ and the gang....
#4
Plenty of housecleaning needed at the General level; just not very confident at the motivations of the cleaners - a political reconfiguration of the military with a few legitimate bits of dirt swept up as well, to add cover of legitimacy?
The mounted armadillo that was stolen from Willie Nelsons road crew after a Sept. 19 concert at the Capitol Theatre was returned unharmed Friday morning, the theater happily reported.
The artists who play at the Capitol Theatre, we try to treat them like family, and no one messes with our family, Tom Bailey, the Capitols manager, said.
Shortly before noon, someone (Bailey did not describe the person, but said it was not the suspected thief) walked up to the theater and handed a sealed box to the attendant working at the box office. Inside his signature blue-glitter hat still fixed to his leathery head was Ol Dillo.
Everyone is relieved and delighted to be able to get the thing back to Mr. Nelson, Bailey said. He also said Nelson had decided not to press charges; fans had called for much worse.
The armadillos abduction launched a nationwide dillo-hunt. Texas Roadhouse, a chain of barbecue restaurants, offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the critters return. More than 1,500 fans posted condolences (and unprintable threats against the thief) on Nelsons Facebook page.
The Port Chester [NY] Police Department opened an investigation.
Ol Dillo had last been seen at his usual stage-side perch, standing atop a mixing console as crew members packed up equipment after the show. Footage from the Capitols security cameras showed a woman walking onto the stage, grabbing Dillo by his back and slipping away into the crowd. Bailey said he and his co-workers have identified the woman involved and have banned her from future performances at the Capitol.
#2
They didn't arrest the girl and charge her with a felony!
Of course not. She wasn't carrying a gun, or even a pop tart bitten into the shape of a gun....
#3
Not surprising really. It is all about incentives as the Freakonomics boys say.
Juveniles receive lighter punishment for crimes (assuming they even get charged), so you end up with 15 yr olds running the product. However, teenage bangers attract attention from cops (can you say "stop & frisk"). Luckily for the dealers, there is a huge supply of little school kids all walking around with backpacks.
[KPLCTV] A pastor was shot and killed during a church service on Friday night in Calcasieu Parish.
According to Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Kim Myers, it happened around 8:20 p.m. at the Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center at 307 Deshotel Lane in Lake Charles.
Myers said Pastor Ronald J. Harris Sr. was shot "as he was preaching."
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2013 00:00 ||
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Authorities say the motive for the shooting is unknown
I suspect there was a candlestick in play...
#2
"Karey was booked on a second-degree murder charge"
He walks into the church with the shotgun in his hands (which is premeditation) and shoots the guy and is only charged with second degree murder?
What's it take for first degree - badmouthing Bambi while he did it? >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/29/2013 10:45 Comments ||
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Maybe he was preaching hate?
That would be a "Get out of Jail free" ticket.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/29/2013 13:21 Comments ||
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Woodrow Karey is an ex-deacon. When I googled this, I came across another church shooting in Lake Charles earlier on June 23, 2009. A pastor shot another pastor in a church. Allegedly, he was smoking crack with some others before the shooting. I'm thinking its the drinking water--(and the crack).
So he gives back Churchill, now this cup, guessn' -- not for the same reason..... "please like me... look at what I've given you.....
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday brought home a 2,700-year-old Persian artifact the U.S. administration gave him as "a special gift" to Iranians, media reports said.
"The Americans contacted us on Thursday and said 'we have a gift for you'," Rouhani told reporters upon arrival at the airport in Tehran, the ILNA news agency reported.
"They gave it back as a special gift to the Iranian nation."
Rouhani was speaking of a 7th century BC silver Persian drinking cup in the shape of a winged Griffin, a legendary creature with the head of an eagle and body of a lion.
It is reported to be worth more than a million dollars. One does wonder..... thousands of artifacts confiscated yearly, yet, the O's admin knew of this one that has been sitting in a box, in a dusty warehouse, deep in the bowels of some Smithsonian museum since 2003, and suddenly, it becomes a gift...
After being looted from a cave in Iran, the cup was seized by U.S. custom officials in 2003 when an arts dealer attempted to smuggle it into the country, according to a State Department tweet.
Mohammad Ali Najafi, head of Iran's heritage organisation who accompanied Rouhani to New York, welcomed the news.
"We hope this will mark the beginning of the return of other artifacts," he was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
[An Nahar] In Bogota's Buen Pastor prison, age is not an obstacle to a beauty queen crown.
Maria Cristina Villareal, 56, was among six women competing Friday in this year's pageant for the title of "Reina Madre" or "Queen Mother." There is a separate category for unmarried women.
The 2,222-inmate women's prison in Colombia's capital has hosted pageants for 18 years, with TV and musical celebrities serving as judges.
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A three-month investigation into the June deaths of 19 firefighters killed while battling an Arizona blaze cites poor communication between the men and support staff, and reveals that an airtanker carrying flame retardant was hovering overhead as the men died.
The 120-page report released Saturday found that all procedures were followed and assigned little of blame for the worst firefighting tragedy since Sept. 11, 2001.
All but one member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots crew died June 30 while protecting the small former gold rush town of Yarnell, about 80 miles northwest of Phoenix, from an erratic lightning-sparked wildfire.
While maintaining that all guidelines were followed, the investigation found improperly programmed radios, vague updates, and a 30-minute communication blackout just before the flames engulfed the men.
The report provides the first minute-to-minute account of the fatal afternoon. The day went according to routine until the wind shifted, pushing a wall of fire that had been receding from the hotshots all day back toward them.
After that, hotshots failed to communicate their intentions to the command center outside the burn zone. Their colleagues thought the hotshots had decided to wait out the weather change in the safety of an already blackened area.
They were not heard from again until five minutes before they deployed their emergency shelters, which was more than a half hour after the weather warning was issued. They had left the black zone, though they had no reason to doubt its safety, and dropped into a densely vegetated area, heading toward a ranch, according to the report.
The report states that they failed to perceive the "excessive risk" of repositioning to this stop to continue fighting the fire.
"Nobody will ever know how the crew actually saw their situation, the options they considered or what motivated their actions," the report said.
The Arizona State Forestry Division presented the roughly 120-page report to the men's families ahead of a news conference Saturday morning in Prescott.
The fire caused little immediate concern because of its remote location and small size when it began June 28. But the blaze quickly grew into an inferno, burning swiftly across pine, juniper and scrub oak and through an area that hadn't experienced a significant wildfire in nearly 50 years.
The 20-member Granite Mountain Hotshots team arrived early on the morning of June 30 and headed into the boulder-strewn mountains. About nine hours later, the crew radioed that they were trapped by flames and deploying emergency shelters. Only one crew member who was assigned as the lookout survived.
The fire ended up destroying more than 100 homes and burned 13 square miles before it was fully contained on July 10.
Intermediately high creep factor. And yet Bill Ayers is still around...
A meteorologist who has covered weather for the Wall Street Journal tweeted that he has decided not to have children in order to leave a lighter carbon footprint, and is considering having a vasectomy.
He also vowed to stop flying after the world's recent climate-change report made him cry. A skinless man in a sandpaper world...
Eric Holthaus was reacting to the findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which released a report on Friday that found it was 'extremely likely' that humans are causing warming trends seen in the last several decades. Except the planet has not been warming. Funny, that.
Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist who has covered weather for the Wall Street Journal, cried over the phone to his wife before getting on a plane, vowing it will be the last time he flies After she hung up, I bet she wondered: "Why did I marry that loser?"
Holthaus was reacting to findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which released a report on Friday that found it is "extremely likely" that humans are causing warming trends I'm glad he's going extinct. I never liked him anyway. Whoever he is.
On Friday afternoon the weatherman tweeted: 'No children, happy to go extinct, which in and of itself, carries a certain sadness. #IPCC' How would you know about happiness? You cry at science reports!
His next tweet said: 'Its a very emotional decision. Mixed feelings. adios babies?' Hello, Jack Daniels? That's his only option now. That and a pistol...
According to another tweet from Holthaus, the Dutch artist known as Tinkebell, who calls attention to animal rights issues through works that use the remains of dead animals, had herself sterilised last week for a similar reason. Ewwww
Holthaus, who now writes for Quartz, has decided he will also reduce his carbon footprint by giving up on air travel. Taking the fun right out of life, he is.
'I just broke down in tears in boarding area at SFO while on phone with my wife. I've never cried because of a science report before. #IPCC,' was his first tweet on around 2pm on Friday. I cry, too. Some nice old songs, such as Jamey Johnson's In Color, and some old movies bring me to tears, but I promise you my genitalia is intact afterwards. I won't punish myself for my political views and I won't punish my family. This guy is doing both. Bastard.
'I realised just now: This has to be the last flight I ever take. I'm committing right now to stop flying. It's not worth the climate,' he tweeted a few minutes later. Dumbass. SMH The climate's not worth him... Once there were two cavemen, Og and Gug, who lived in adjacent caves.
Og was a mean old bastard. He occasionally dragged his wife around by the hair, holding his club in the other hand. His kids were afraid of him and called him names from a real safe distance. The neighbors thought he was nasty.
Gug was a more gentlemanly caveman. He was very sensitive, occasionally breaking down in tears because life was so short, nasty and brutish. He, his wife, and his kids were all vegetarians. He was actually sorry for having had kids. The world was such a nasty place he didn't want to inflict it upon them.
One day a sabre tooth tiger showed up. Gug broke down in tears, while his wife and kids ran away. The sabre tooth tiger killed him messily and ate him up on the spot.
Then the sabre tooth tiger turned his attention to the Og family. It snarled at Og. Og snarled back and bashed its big, flat head in with his club. Then he gutted it with a sharp rock, skinned it, and mounted its head on a chunk of wood in his cave, next to the eleven others he already had there.
All of the Ogs and the remainder of the Gugs feasted on the sabre tooth tiger's carcass. After that he grabbed his wife and dragged her around by the hair for awhile. Then he dragged poor old extinct Gug's wife around by the hair. He slapped both families' worth of kids, then sent them out to kill a mastodon.
#11
Bull. I bet his wife wants to get pregnant, but he doesn't want to be responsible for a family, and also can't bear to admit it. So he contrived a fashionably pious excuse to camouflage his cowardice as high-minded principle. He cried because he realized he's a spineless twat, and can't even be honest about it. Lotsa these types out there.
[Al Ahram] A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit southwest Pakistain on Saturday, killing at least 12 people in a region already devastated by a tremor which left more than 300 people dead this week, local officials said.
"At least 12 people have died and seven were maimed," Abdul Latif Kakar, head of the provincial disaster management agency told AFP.
Officials fear the corpse count in Saturday's quake in Awaran, the poorest district in the southwest province of Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... , could rise.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2013 00:00 ||
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ALLAH DOESN'T LIKE YOU.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/29/2013 0:34 Comments ||
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[BLOGS.DALLASOBSERVER] Now that the war in Iraq is officially over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, the Department of Defense found itself facing a conundrum. It had just spent billions of dollars buying heavily armored personnel carriers designed to stand up to myrmidon attacks only to find that it had run out of wars to use them in.
The initial plan was to shove the vehicles, called MRAPS (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) into a warehouse and let them collect dust. That changed when someone decided that, having served so admirably overseas, it would be only just to bring the MRAPs stateside and deploy them in the domestic war on crime.
And so, for the past couple of months, news reports have been popping up announcing that places like Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Ohio State University have been receiving their very own military-grade armored SUVs.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET]Egypt recalled its ambassador from Tunisia on Saturday after the Tunisian president demanded the release of deposed leader Mohammed Mursi, state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
reported.
The Egyptian foreign ministry recalled its ambassador for "consultations," state television
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09/29/2013 00:00 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Saudi women seeking to challenge a de facto ban on driving should realize that this could affect their ovaries and pelvises, Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan, a judicial and psychological consultant to the Gulf Psychological Association, told Saudi news website sabq.org.
Driving "could have a reverse physiological impact. Physiological science and functional medicine studied this side [and found] that it automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis. This is why we find for women who continuously drive cars their children are born with clinical disorders of varying degrees," Sheikh al-Luhaydan said.
Saudi female activists have launched an online campaign urging women to drive on Oct. 26.
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2013 00:00 ||
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You're an obstetrician now?
You know nothing about a woman's privates except how to Rape them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/29/2013 0:53 Comments ||
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We are not even going to consider the psycho-sexual implications of a manual transmission. Four on the floor, yeah baby!
#4
Researchers in Georgia had discovered that the gynecological "reverse impact" is significantly slowed when a cellie is used whilst motoring. In fact, everything is slowed.
#9
Researchers in Georgia had discovered that the gynecological "reverse impact" is significantly slowed when a cellie is used whilst motoring. In fact, everything is slowed.
[TELEGRAPH.CO.UK] The Prime Minister hardened his position on the ECHR at the opening of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
The convention, which is enshrined in British law in the Human Rights Act, is deeply unpopular with many Conservatives and some have suggested complete withdrawal.
"It may be that that is where we end up," Mr Cameron said, saying he was willing consider any option to ensure Britannia can remove foreign criminals. "Whatever that takes, we must deliver that outcome."
The ECHR has been invoked by foreign criminals and forces of Evil fighting deportation from Britannia. They argue that its provisions mean they are entitled to various rights to be considered, including the right to a family life.
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09/29/2013 10:26 ||
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Spain refuted Argentine claims they had reached agreement on "joint actions" against the UK to encourage them to negotiate on the Falklands' sovereignty. The Argentine announcement came after the two countries' foreign ministers met in New York where they were attending the UN General Assembly.
The Argentine foreign ministry, in the statement posted on its website yesterday said: "Hector Timerman and Spanish counterpart Jose Maria Margallo met in New York at the margins of the UN General Assembly to discuss bilateral agenda issues.
"In particular they discussed the common ground regarding sovereignty disputes over the Falklands and Gibraltar. They agreed on joint measures to press Great Britain to comply with the mandate from the United Nations to dialogue."
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#1
It was not clear last night whether Spain was refuting any agreement at all with Argentina - or was just annoyed about the timing of the announcement by Buenos Aires. Spain's relationship with Argentina took a battering when its president Christina Kirchner nationalised oil company YPF, a subsidiary of Spanish firm Repsol, in April last year.
nice try. Some people get annoyed when you steal their stuff. Kirchner is a lying whore Evita-lite
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/29/2013 11:02 Comments ||
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LOL... no.
Mostly locals... missed the open enrollment date again tho. :(
#5
D *** NG IT, IFF THE BAMMER ADMIN CAN DO A MIGHTY 1990'S CLINTONIAN "ATTACKATREAT" FROM BABY ASSAD + SYRIA, IN SUPPORT OF OWG "MULTIPOLAR/
POLYCENTRIC WORLD + SEVEN MULTIPLE GLOBAL "CO-SUPERPOWERS" FOR SEVEN GLOBAL FED UNIONS FOR SEVEN CONTINENTS, ETC. THEN UK CAN MOST CERTAINLY DO THE SAME VEE THE FALKLANDS + ARGENTINA [ssshhhhh include PAULA "TRIP TO BRAZIL" ABDUL'S BRAZIL]!
[FRANCE24] Greece on Saturday locked away You have the right to remain silent... the leader of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party and hunted for dozens of members as part of a crackdown launched after the murder of a leftist musician, a police source said.
Nikos Michaloliakos, 56, was arrested along with Golden Dawn politician and front man Ilias Kassidiairis and two other party members on charges of belonging to a "criminal organization," the source said on condition of anonymity.
Arrest warrants have been issued for at least five other MPs and dozens of members of the party, which has 18 politicians in parliament.
The arrests came a day after Golden Dawn threatened to quit parliament, a move that would prompt by-elections in the recession-hit country where the government is struggling to implement painful public sector reforms in return for international bailout funds.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/29/2013 00:00 ||
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The headline's statement isn't exactly true.
The German electorate moved to the right, parliament moved to the left.
The parties who command a majority in parliament (Social Democrats, Greens & Communists) lost voters and their combined share of the vote decreased compared to '09.
An unprecedented 15% (9% Conservative/Liberal) of the voters isn't represented in parliament at all due to the 5% threshold. Germany's electoral law stipulates a mode of representation that is supposed to be proportional in principle. It isn't 'first past the post.'
[Dawn] A man accused of raping a six-year-old girl in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... 's Orangi Town area was placed in durance vile You have the right to remain silent... on Saturday, a police official said.
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09/29/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak pleaded Saturday for Musselmens to unite against extremism, warning that sectarian violence risked tearing the Islamic world apart.
"I believe the greatest threat to Musselmens today comes not from the outside world, but from within," he told the UN General Assembly.
Najib voiced outrage at violence between the Sunni and Shia sects in Syria, Iraq and Pakistain, noting that nearly 5,000 Musselmens died in conflict in the three countries in the holy month of Ramzan.
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Posted by: Fred ||
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Meanwhile, the Malays are running a campaign of terror in southern Thailand, hoping to eventually take it over!...Typical mussulman's taquyia hypocrisy
Posted by: Herb Gloluger9960 ||
09/29/2013 22:34 Comments ||
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[Al Ahram] Miss Philippines, Megan Young, was crowned Miss World on Saturday amid tight security on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, where the final round of the contest was moved to following protests by Muslim hard-liner groups.
"I promise to be the best Miss World ever," Young, 23, said after winning the 63rd annual event, as a large number of Filipino fans who traveled with her celebrated by jumping and waving the country's flag.
Despite threats from the Islamic Defenders Front to disrupt the contest, police said no rallies were staged Saturday. The group has demonstrated for weeks, calling for the government to cancel the pageant because members say it shows too much skin and goes against Islamic teachings.
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Lebanese officials followed up on Saturday the sinking of an asylum boat off the coast of Indonesia's main island Java, which killed at least 21 people, including 14 Lebanese. Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati said after holding talks with a delegations from the relatives of the victims that the Lebanese charge d'affaires at the Lebanese embassy in Jakarta was tasked with issuing passports for all the survivors and return them to Lebanon.
"All the necessary measures were taken to return the survivors and their deceased relatives from Indonesia," Miqati told the delegation.
The boat capsized and sank in waters off West Java's Sukabumi district after being hit by high waves Friday. Survivors said about 100 people were aboard the vessel. The delegation told reporters after meeting with Miqati that 14 bodies that belong to Lebanese nationals were pulled from the water. The number of the Lebanese nationals, who were killed in the accident, reached on Saturday 40, while 25 others where rescued.
"Miqati pledged that the Lebanese state will not neglect the incident," the delegation said.
For his part, Speaker Nabih Berri expressed remorse over the "disaster." He offered his condolences to the families of the victims, hoping that Lebanon would offer it's people with a better life. The speaker followed up the accident with the competent authorities.
Survivors said they were trying to get to Australia's Christmas Island, closer to Java than mainland Australia, and are the latest to cross the treacherous stretch of water that has claimed hundreds of asylum-seekers' lives in recent years. Some 120 asylum-seekers from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen were believed to be on the boat.
Twenty-eight people were rescued and taken to the Sukabumi immigration office for identification, Brig. Gen. Tatang Zainudin, the National Search and Rescue Agency's operation chief, said. Among those rescued were three Lebanese nationals who were found early Saturday after being stranded on an island about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from where the boat sank, Zainudin said. He said 21 bodies were pulled from the water Friday afternoon, including seven children.
The general prosecution lawyer, Charbel Abou Samra, opened an investigation on Saturday into the incident to reveal those who lured the Lebanese to pay a large sum of money to illegally immigrate to Australia.
Media reports said Friday that the victims had tasked a person, known as Abu Saleh, to ensure their safe passage to Australia in exchange for about $10,000 per person. Local officials in Akkar said many of the Syrians have been lured by exploitative travel agents into making the high-risk sea trip to Australia in search of asylum.
Impoverished Lebanese from the Akkar region have also signed up for the treacherous voyages, hoping for a better life in Australia, the officials said.
"There were 68 Lebanese on board," Haytham Jomaa, who is in charge of immigration affairs at the Lebanese foreign ministry, told Agence France Presse. He said 18 of the Lebanese survived the ordeal while 21 bodies were retrieved from the sea.
Lebanese mother Nazime Bakour, 32, spoke of the tragedy to AFP after she was rescued by fishermen along with her son. She lost her husband and two other children, a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old. Bakour, speaking in broken English, said the boat was struck by a massive wave and broke into pieces.
"I have to swim. My husband swim very well, but the boat break and hit his head," she said, adding that she saw her surviving son in the water and managed to grab him.
Most of the Lebanese asylum-seekers hail from the town of Kabiit in Akkar, an impoverished and remote district in northern Lebanon across the border from Syria.
A response to this kind of thing from a retired JAG, not Rantburg's own RandomJD:
Here's what's really true. Nobody gives a crap about the civility of the [political] conversation. They care about who is dominating the discussion, who is kicking the crap out of the other guy. You think you are in a seminar at Princeton, when you are in a knife fight in the South Bronx. It's endearing, but worrisome, and it's hard for decent folks to watch.
If he calls you a Marxist, tell him that you are thinking of becoming a Marxist, maybe another Eugene V. Debs, but you think they were too tame and mild, you want to see stronger measures taken against the appropriators, maybe a few of them strung up from lamposts with piano wire, like in Banana republics in South America that go down hard.
Tell him that Fidel Castro and Che Guavara were just your type, or maybe Lenin, or Dershinsky, or General Strelnikov. They are going to call you names anyway, may as well be hung for a goat as for a sheep. Tell them that they are toady lick-spittles and abettors of the oppressors, and that you think they need re-education so they can stop being running pig-dogs.
They are goofing on you. So goof back on them. Humor is a weapon of the witty. What would Shakespeare do if somebody called him a Communist, or what would Cyrano de Bergerac do? Or Monty Python? Or Mr. Bean? Or Basil Fawlty? They would come back with far, far more than the name caller could possibly handle. They would clarify the reality which is that Marxism is a very tempting world-view that 3/4's of the world has fallen under, and that the USA could easily fall under, as it almost did during the Great Depression, and if the Insanely Greedy Rich don't straighten out and fly right fairly soon they may be hoist on their own petards, too clever by half, pushed the middle class over into radical Marxist confiscatory fervor, and now walk away with 1% of what they had. Koch = Czar, Middle Class = Kulaks and Proles. Intelligensia = Possible Saviors of Free Market Capitalism or Possible Bolsheviks with pitchforks at the Gates.
You tell the bully boys, "Go ahead: kick me around, see what happens to ya."
But this business about civility in conversation is just weak and pathetic. It's Dweebish. It's what Weenies do.
It's El Grauniad, so take that along for the read.
I really, really dislike being in the position where I have to acknowledge that Mr. Hersh is making some sense...
Even a stopped 24-hour clock gets it right once a day.
Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism -- close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider. It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth. Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" -- or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.
The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.
"It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian. "It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president."
He has said before that the confidence of the US press to challenge the US government collapsed post 9/11, but he is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush.
"Do you think Obama's been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What's going on [with journalists]?" he asks.
He says in some ways President George Bush's administration was easier to write about. "The Bush era, I felt it was much easier to be critical than it is [of] Obama. Much more difficult in the Obama era," he said.
He isn't even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect. He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden "changed the whole nature of the debate" about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence -- although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government's policy.
Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London's summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden. He says investigative journalism in the US is being killed by the crisis of confidence, lack of resources and a misguided notion of what the job entails.
Despite his concern about the timidity of journalism he believes the trade still offers hope of redemption.
"I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever ... Not that journalism is always wonderful, it's not, but at least we offer some way out, some integrity. The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it.
#1
I've got to agree with Hersh re journalists. The The lapdog media is doing a great disservice to the American people. It will catch up with them one day. A free people rely on a free press, (although this last line seems so foreign to what is really going on today.
#2
A free people rely on a free press flow of information.
FIFY. Never confuse the technology (printing press) that provided information with the social institution that, as we see, seeks to control, contort, constrict, and fabricate what you see and hear.
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.
Vice Adm. Tim Giardina has been suspended as deputy commander of the Bellevue-based U.S. Strategic Command, StratCom officials confirmed Friday.
The mounted armadillo that was stolen from Willie Nelsons road crew after a Sept. 19 concert at the Capitol Theatre was returned unharmed Friday morning, the theater happily reported.
[KPLCTV] A pastor was shot and killed during a church service on Friday night in Calcasieu Parish.
[An Nahar] In Bogota's Buen Pastor prison, age is not an obstacle to a beauty queen crown.
[Al Ahram] A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit southwest Pakistain on Saturday, killing at least 12 people in a region already devastated by a tremor which left more than 300 people dead this week, local officials said.
