The Albuquerque Police Department has turned to the want ads for snitches. An ad this week in the alternative newspaper The Alibi asks "people who hang out with crooks" to do part-time work for the police. It reads in part: "Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK."
Capt. Joe Hudson says police received more than 30 responses in two days. He says one tip was a "big one" but wouldn't elaborate.
An informant whose tip helps officers arrest a drug dealer could earn $50. A tip about a murder suspect could bring up to $700.
It's not the first time department has run ads. In a program 10 years ago, police received so many calls they turned the phones off.
A senior police officer was hit with a brick during an attack by a gang of four people including a girl of 15 it has been revealed.
Detective Superintendent Gary Richardson, who leads Scotland Yard's Operation Trident which tackles black gun crime, was assaulted while walking along the road with his wife and son.
Two men abused the officer before hitting him on the back of the head with a brick. A scuffle followed, during which Mr Richardson, 49, blocked several blows with his arm and was hit in the back.
The attack in West Molesey, Surrey, took place on October 12, but it was revealed yesterday that the senior officer was the victim.
Scotland Yard confirmed Mr Richardson was assaulted. Surrey police refused to reveal details of the victim but released information about the attack.
The officer was taken to Kingston Hospital after the assault with minor injuries.
Two men aged 19 and 20 and a 15-year-old girl, all from West Molesey, were arrested along with a second girl, 17, from Wimbledon.
The four were bailed until December 20 pending further enquiries, a spokesman for Surrey Police said.
A 9-year-old elementary school student has been charged with seriously injuring a classmate by stabbing her in the back with a pencil on Wednesday, lawmen said.
Cumberland County sheriffâs deputies charged the boy after he stabbed the 10-year-old girl at Cliffdale Road Elementary School, a news release said.
Investigators say the boy stabbed the girl with a pencil, causing a puncture wound on the upper portion of her back.
The boy stabbed the girl after an argument over a pencil box, authorities said.
*** There are so many places one could go with this I don't know where to start ***
According to the release, the boy found his missing pencil box in the girlâs possession.
The girl did not require emergency medical assistance and returned to school Thursday, the release said.
Detectives could charge the boy with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury pending the outcome of the investigation, the release said.
He is in the custody of his parents at this time. School officials will handle disciplinary action against him.
#1
WHAT? no theft charges for the thief that started it all?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/24/2008 16:50 Comments ||
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#2
In a typical elementary school there are a few 'known troublemakers'. They break rules every day and do what they want and the school has given up on ever controlling them. If someone else happens to get fed up and do something about it, then the kid who is reacting will get the book thrown at them and holy hell breaks loose.
A first hand account. A perpetual bully at my sons school would beat him up almost every day. We had my son 'tell the teacher'. He was told to just say away from Billy we met with the teacher about it and were told well some kids you just cant do anything about
Finally I told my son (aged 8) well, you need to decide if you are going to get your ass kicked every day or do something about it. If the teachers wont give Billy a reason to not want to pick on you, then you need to.
Next day my son popped him back after the usual festivities began and gave him a fat lip. The school went totally ape shit. My son was suspended and we had to meet with the principal and some intervention team. They did not like that my son had crossed the line and made the problem worse. They remained steadfast that the kid who was the bully could not be controlled and that his parents didnt care. But to them the whole problem was that my kid had fought back. Idiots.
Billy never bothered my kid again the whole rest of the year so happy ending.
Oh yeah, and now we home school.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
11/24/2008 20:51 Comments ||
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#3
Abu, I have a similar tale. Our tiny daughter entered Jr hihg along with her great big friend. Older kids harassed, picked on, beat on them. Friends parents pulled her out of the school - which is how we found out anything. We asked our daughter if they did that stuff to her and she said "They did, but she waited until the teacher wasn't looking, and hit them back, and now they don't bother me anymore" (she was a lot stronger than she looked.)
A controversial ranking of U.S. cities' crime rates indicates New Orleans, Louisiana, has the worst crime rate, while a New York exurb has the lowest.
The CQ Press "City Crime Rankings" list named New Orleans its most crime-ridden city based on a reported 19,000-plus incidences of six major crimes -- including 209 murder cases -- in 2007. The Gulf Coast city of about 250,000, still grappling with the aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Katrina, was followed in the rankings by Camden, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; and Oakland, California.
The lowest crime rate was reported in Ramapo, New York, about 40 miles northwest of New York City, with only 688 total crimes and no reported killings in a city of about 113,000. It was followed by Mission Viejo, California, south of Los Angeles; O'Fallon, Missouri, outside St. Louis; Newton, Massachusetts, west of Boston; and Brick Township, on the New Jersey coast.
Previous editions have been criticized by criminologists and the U.S. Conference of Mayors as a misreading of federal crime statistics. The FBI, which compiles its own Uniform Crime Report statistics, warns that ranking cities against each other can produce "simplistic and/or incomplete analyses," and the American Society of Criminology called last year's CQ report "an irresponsible misuse of the data."
The study's publishers said they dropped previous characterizations of "safest" and "most dangerous" from this year's study, calling those qualities "perceptions of the individuals who live in these communities." But they defended the comparisons as a valuable tool for researchers and the public.
"The book provides the means by which individuals can compare local communities to other similar communities based on comparison to the national level of reported crime as well as crime rates per 100,000 of individual types of reported crime, violent and property crime categories, and overall," the company says in a statement accompanying the data.
The CQ report rated 397 cities larger than 75,000 and 356 metropolitan areas, some of which ranked very differently from their core cities alone.
The New Orleans area was third on the metropolitan-areas list, behind Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee. Camden, the second-worst city on the cities list, ranked 219th among metro areas. Among metro areas, Logan, Utah, north of Salt Lake City, had the lowest crime rate, followed by State College, Pennsylvania, and Ithaca, New York, the report said..
The data is drawn from FBI statistics on murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft.
#1
and those high-crime cities share what obvious characteristic?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/24/2008 13:47 Comments ||
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#2
Chicago is just going to have to try harder. After all, with their guy in the White House, they have an image to protect.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/24/2008 14:17 Comments ||
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#3
Gee, I couldn't say.
I mean, I REALLY couldn't say without everyone starting to wail. But It doesn't take a liberal Harvard graduate to connect the dots. Obviously, in this country we can't even discuss the problem yet. Whenever you even try to identify problem areas and problem populations you get the old excuses and accusations.
#4
The key here is getting away from these derisive, racially charged Euro/Franco-Algo associations and restoring peaceful Native American and multicultural identifiers. Example:
New Orleans becomes... Jambalaystan (translation - land too wet to build huts)
Chicago becomes... Checagouistan (translation - land too cold and windy to build huts)
As soon as these Changes are made, the killing will subside.
#5
When I lived in Savannah in the 60s the local media used to report a crime perpetrators race as part of the description. This drove the NAACF nuts because it sounded like there was a disproportionate problem in a certain section of town.
The media was cowed into discontinuing reporting race in crime stories as it related to perpetrators.
Posted by: chris ||
11/24/2008 18:37 Comments ||
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#7
In Tidewater Virginia they often showed the picture of the perp's face on the tube. It was a steady stream of black faces every night. Anyone who doesn't see the face of violent crime in America is black is willfully refusing to recognize reality. Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome were just well-publicized victims. There are hundreds of thousands of others on the receiving end of violent black crime that never receive one word of coverage in the press. To be fair, however, most of them are black.
#8
Victims
Based on 2002 SHR data provided (where age, sex, or race were known for the victims), 90.1 percent of murder victims were adults. Males accounted for 76.8 percent of murder victims. Just over 8 percent (8.2 percent) of male victims and 15.3 percent of female victims were under the age of 18. By race, 48.7 percent of murder victims were white, 48.5 percent were black, and 2.7 percent were other races.
Offenders
Of those who committed murder in 2002, 90.3 percent were identified as male; 91.7 percent of the male offenders were over 18 years of age. A racial breakdown of murder offenders for whom race was known showed that 49.8 percent were black, 47.8 percent were white, and 2.4 percent were persons of other races.
In 2005, offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites
#9
not to mention that every major shit hole of a city that I know of (Detroit for example) has been Dem controlled for the past 30 yrs...
Posted by: Clererong Oppressor of the Algonquins aka Broadhead6 ||
11/24/2008 19:48 Comments ||
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#10
IIRC - hispanics are included in the "white" category as "hispanic" is not a race (just like "muslim" isn't - heh). Blacks are overwhelmingly the perpetrators AND victims of violent crimes, far beyond their numbers. It's the elephant in the room that polite people (and those cowed by liberal guilt) don't discuss,....except for some with integrity, like Bill Cosby. It's a cultural and economic thing, but IMHO it has a lot to do with the breakdown in stable black family structure. No strong pro-family male role models at home = the kidz get their values from the gangs, TV, movies, hip-hop, et al
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/24/2008 19:53 Comments ||
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#11
Before the "War on Poverty" illegitimacy in the black community was 20%. Now it's 72.5%, something is not working.
#12
It's a lot worse than that GB. The stats have been manipulated to make it look like at first glance white and blacks have equal murder stats. Not even close or even 7X. Closer to 14X. The "White" category includes Hispanics who commit 1/2 of the felonies in the White category. Statistics are hidden by gov bureaucrats and a willing press and hard to find. But one hint is at NYC crime rates 1984 (pdf).
Adult rate per 1000 pop. (4 Burroughs)
Hispanic 17.7
Black 28.8
White 4.2
Breakdown by borough can be found on page 3 right side.
Another: NY Daily News 9/2008 Of the 244 murders between Jan. 1 and June 30 this year, 64.8% of the victims were black, records showed. Hispanics accounted for 23.4% of the victims, whites 7.4% and Asians 4.5%.
Using NYPD stats, the homicide rate per 1 million in population was 81.1 for blacks and 6.3 for whites. -- 12.9X
Among murder arrests, blacks accounted for 64.9%, Hispanics 27.2%, whites 7.3% and Asians less than 1%.
In all, 153 New Yorkers were charged with homicide through June 30 - the ethnicity was detailed in 151 of the cases.
The arrest rate for homicide per 1 million population: 50.8 black, 3.8 white. -- 13.4X
...
The racial tallies bear little resemblance to the ethnic makeup of New York City: 34.8% white, 27.6% Hispanic and 23.7% black, 2006 Census data shows.
Posted by: ed ||
11/24/2008 20:28 Comments ||
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#13
Hey, New Orleans crime rate was way down in late 2005-late 2006. All our criminals were living in hotels in Houston and Atlanta. But then they came back, and brought their new 'friends' with them.
REMINDER.... all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls.
...YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS
To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222
It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five (5) years.
You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.
HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.. It takes about 20 seconds.
#5
The "do not call" database idea has now been discontinued. There is no longer any such thing as a "do not call" registration for either land or cell lines.
#6
The Do Not Call registry is still valid. Instead of expiring after 5 years, it is now permanent.
Your registration will not expire. Telephone numbers placed on the National Do Not Call Registry will remain on it permanently due to the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, which became law in February 2008. Read more about it at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/04/dncfyi.shtm.
Posted by: ed ||
11/24/2008 15:33 Comments ||
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The US treasury department is to invest $20bn (£13.4bn) in return for preferred shares in Citigroup. The treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp will also guarantee up to $306bn (£205bn) of risky loans and securities on Citigroup's books.
The plan follows a $25bn injection of public funds in the bank last month.
#1
What I find remarkable is the almost complete absence of discussion of when and how the tab will be paid.
And I also find remarkable that no one is discussing how this is a huge experiment, which no one knows how will turn out in even a year's time.
It's an experiment amoungst other reasons because governments are throwing huge amounts of money at the problem in the hope that the economy will be growing again when the time comes to pay for it; governments debts won't run out of control; inflation won't explode; we won't get mired in deflation; government revenues won't crash as businesses go bust and people lose their jobs; and a few others.
The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.
#4
Actually, phil_b, I wonder if they aren't trying to set off an inflationary spiral.
The one big feature of that is that you get to pay off your debts with "cheaper" money. You also encourage people to spend what money they have, since who knows how much "x" is gonna cost next week? Better buy it now....
In the meantime, they get equity in these companies....which equal a certain amount of control....and we are talking politicians and bureaucrats, after all. It's nationalization with a twist. The normal way to do it is to confiscate the property, screwing the owners over. This time we're rewarding the owners and screwing over the taxpayers.
#12
One of the Aussie Accountancy groups think the following is going on. I am not an accountant or banker so I can't really judge if it is correct or not. If it is correct it is one of the largest scams in the history of the human race:
And now the credit crunch takes a strange banking twist. It may also shed a little light on all that Cayman Island activity.
Is the world about to see the greatest transfer of wealth in history - a looting on a global scale?
A tsunami of hope or terror?
As the world slips into recession, it is also on the brink of a synthetic CDO cataclysm that could actually save the global banking system.
It is a truly great irony that the world's banks could end up being saved not by governments, but by the synthetic CDO time bomb that they set ticking with their own questionable practices during the credit boom.
Alternatively, the triggering of default on the trillions of dollars worth of synthetic CDOs that were sold before 2007 could be a disaster that tips the world from recession into depression. Nobody knows, but it won't be a small event.
A synthetic CDO is a collateralised debt obligation that is based on credit default swaps rather physical debt securities.
CDOs were invented by Michael Milken's Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s as a way to bundle asset backed securities into tranches with the same rating, so that investors could focus simply on the rating rather than the issuer of the bond.
About a decade later, a team working within JP Morgan Chase invented credit default swaps, which are contractual bets between two parties about whether a third party will default on its debt. In 2000 these were made legal, and at the same time were prevented from being regulated, by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which specifies that products offered by banking institutions could not be regulated as futures contracts.
This bill, by the way, was 11,000 pages long, was never debated by Congress and was signed into law by President Clinton a week after it was passed. It lies at the root of America's failure to regulate the debt derivatives that are now threatening the global economy.
Anyway, moving right along some time after that an unknown bright spark within one of the investment banks came up with the idea of putting CDOs and CDSs together to create the synthetic CDO.
Here's how it works: a bank will set up a shelf company in Cayman Islands or somewhere with $2 of capital and shareholders other than the bank itself. They are usually charities that could use a little cash, and when some nice banker in a suit shows up and offers them money to sign some documents, they do.
That allows the so-called special purpose vehicle (SPV) to have "deniability", as in "it's nothing to do with us" an idea the banks would have picked up from the Godfather movies.
The bank then creates a CDS between itself and the SPV. Usually credit default swaps reference a single third party, but for the purpose of the synthetic CDOs, they reference at least 100 companies.
The CDS contracts between the SPV can be $US500 million to $US1 billion, or sometimes more. They have a variety of twists and turns, but it usually goes something like this: if seven of the 100 reference entities default, the SPV has to pay the bank a third of the money; if eight default, it's two-thirds; and if nine default, the whole amount is repayable.
For this, the bank agrees to pay the SPV 1 or 2 per cent per annum of the contracted sum.
Finally the SPV is taken along to Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch's and the ratings agencies sprinkle AAA magic dust upon it, and transform it from a pumpkin into a splendid coach.
The bank's sales people then hit the road to sell this SPV to investors. It's presented as the bank's product, and the sales staff pretend that the bank is fully behind it, but of course it's actually a $2 Cayman Islands company with one or two unknowing charities as shareholders.
It offers a highly-rated, investment-grade, fixed-interest product paying a 1 or 2 per cent premium. Those investors who bother to read the fine print will see that they will lose some or all of their money if seven, eight or nine of a long list of apparently strong global corporations go broke. In 2004-2006 it seemed money for jam. The companies listed would never go broke it was unthinkable.
Here are some of the companies that are on all of the synthetic CDO reference lists: the three Icelandic banks, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, American Insurance Group, Ambac, MBIA, Countrywide Financial, Countrywide Home Loans, PMI, General Motors, Ford and a pretty full retinue of US home builders.
In other words, the bankers who created the synthetic CDOs knew exactly what they were doing. These were not simply investment products created out of thin air and designed to give their sales people something from which to earn fees although they were that too.
They were specifically designed to protect the banks against default by the most leveraged companies in the world. And of course the banks knew better than anyone else who they were.
As one part of the bank was furiously selling loans to these companies, another part was furiously selling insurance contracts against them defaulting, to unsuspecting investors who were actually a bit like "Lloyds Names" the 1500 or so individuals who back the London reinsurance giant.
Except in this case very few of the "names" knew what they were buying. And nobody has any idea how many were sold, or with what total face value.
It is known that some $2 billion was sold to charities and municipal councils in Australia, but that is just the tip of the iceberg in this country. And Australia, of course, is the tiniest tip of the global iceberg of synthetic CDOs. The total undoubtedly runs into trillions of dollars.
All the banks did it, not just Lehman Brothers which had the largest market share, and many of them seem to have invested in the things as well (a bit like a dog eating its own vomit).
It is now getting very interesting. The three Icelandic banks have defaulted, as has Countrywide, Lehman and Bear Stearns. AIG has been taken over by the US Government, which is counted as a part-default, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are in "conservatorship", which is also a part default a 'part default' does not count as a 'full default' in calculating the nine that would trigger the CDS liabilities.
Ambac, MBIA, PMI, General Motors, Ford and a lot of US home builders are teetering.
If the list of defaults full and partial gets to nine, then a mass transfer of money will take place from unsuspecting investors around the world into the banking system. How much? Nobody knows, but it's many trillions.
It will be the most colossal rights issue in the history of the world, all at once and non-renounceable. Actually, make that mandatory.
The distress among those who lose their money will be immense. It will be a real loss, not a theoretical paper loss. Cash will be transferred from their own bank accounts into the issuing bank, via these Cayman Islands special purpose vehicles.
The repercussions on the losers and the economies in which they live, will be unpredictable but definitely huge. Councils will have to put up rates to continue operating. Charities will go to the wall and be unable to continue helping those in need. Individual investors will lose everything.
There will also be a tsunami of litigation, as dumbfounded investors try to get their money back, claiming to have been deceived by the sales people who sold them the products. In Australia, some councils are already suing the now-defunct Lehman Brothers, and litigation funder, IMF Australia, has been studying synthetic CDOs for nine months preparing for the storm.
But for the banks, it's happy days. Suddenly, when the ninth reference entity tips over, they will be flooded with capital. It's possible they will have so much new capital, they won't know what to do with it.
This is entirely uncharted territory so it's impossible to know what will happen, but it is possible that the credit crunch will come to sudden and complete end, like the passing of a tornado that has left devastation in its wake, along with an eerie silence.
#14
Crazy Fool:
Read the fine print on those offers. They reserve the right to charge usurious rates at their discretion and without warning. You can transer large amounts of debt, too, and what you thought was a good deal could suddenly go up to 128% annually.
#19
JohnQC,
I don't believe they will ever stop or even slow down until that very scenario plays out. The French and Bolshevik Revolutions were not THAT long ago.
#20
Nostradamus redux
SINGAPORE.
Although political forecasting and economic prognostication have long made astrology look respectable, there is still a latter-day Nostradamus who has defied the odds. "If Nostradamus were alive today," said the New York Post, "he'd have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente" - the man who tracks the world's social, economic, and business trends for corporate clients.
Mr. Celente's accurate forecasts include the 1987 stock market crash, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the 1997 Asian currency crash, the 2007 subprime mortgage scandal that he said would soon engulf the world at a time when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a macroeconomist and expert on the Great Depression, told us, "the worst is behind us." In November 2007, Mr. Celente also told UPI a massive devaluation of the dollar was coming and that some Wall Street giants were headed for total collapse. He called it "The Panic of 2008."
"Worse than the Great Depression," Mr. Celente opined. Beginning with a sharp drop in standards of living, and continuing with an angry urban underclass that threatens a social order that allowed the mega-rich to continue living behind gated communities with summer escapades to luxurious homes on the French and Italian Rivieras or to bigger and better and more expensive boats from year to year.
This time, Mr. Celente's Trends Research Institute, which the Los Angeles Times described as the Standard & Poor's of pop culture, can see a tax rebellion in America by 2012, food riots, squatter rebellions, job marches and a culture that puts a higher premium on food on the table than gifts under the Christmas tree.
#21
Remember "victory gardens"? Unfortunately, you can't grow them in Colorado without water. Lots of water.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/24/2008 15:14 Comments ||
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#22
No need to worry TB - I'm sure that The LightWorker(tm) would pay all my credit debts - and mortgage and gas.... just like he promised!
And yes I know about the fine print - tho I've never seen one go up to 128% :). The key is to read the fine print and know exactly what you're getting into and all the 'rules' which apply - like never being late on _any_ payments for debts - even unrelated ones.
#23
What a joke! C'mon Bush, Americans would be better off if Trustees in Bankruptcy were running these failed companies. Allow a Trustee to protect the depositors; those who invested in incompetence can go to hell. Bailouts prolong the inevitable. Face it, most loan assets will eventually be written down to one-sixth their book value. Now Obama can point to bi-partisanship when he bails out the UAW.
#24
Does anyone else feel like these bailouts are rash and feeble? The government needs a long-term plan, rather than trying to jump-start matters. They need to set a goal and see their idea through successfully!
I think another vital note from this bailout is that we now see the magnitude of this recession. We all should take the necessary steps to recession-proof our lives. In order to do so, I think a realistic estimate of the amount of money we need to cut back on is relevant. Additionally, we all should have a clear vision of our altered future- many people are still living as if were in the .com boom of the 90s! Heres a great resource I found helpful when reorganizing my future: www.thevisionboardkit.com. This kit actually outlines how to create a vision of your goals and dreams and explains how to execute them with success.
#25
Does anyone else feel like these bailouts are rash and feeble? The government needs a long-term plan, rather than trying to jump-start matters. They need to set a goal and see their idea through successfully!
Sounds like a centrally planned economy to me.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/24/2008 17:25 Comments ||
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#26
And the rest sounds like spam.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/24/2008 17:26 Comments ||
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#27
Vanessa's communism with capitalism got us into this mess.
The family of a 35-year-old Kuwaiti man identified as Mishaal Jali Al-Dhafiri also known as Abu Shujaa has received information that the man died in Afghanistan while fighting alongside other jihadists, reports Al-Rai daily. According to information the man died along with several other jihadis when a rocket fired by the American forces hit them at an unidentified location. Reliable sources quoting the family of Mishaal said the man resigned from the Ministry of Defence and left for Afghanistan after the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
#3
According to information the man died along with several other jihadis when a rocket fired by the American forces hit them at an unidentified location
JFM, the literary convention is, "the fleshy upper part of the thigh." I know it sounds like it's referring to the quadriceps muscle, but I promise it isn't. In case you should feel a bit more literary next time. ;-)
Yemen inaugurates the countries biggest mosque, named after its president, which has cost the country a staggering USD 60 million.
The mosque is named after Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The mosque is named after Robert C Byrd Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. It is surrounded by sprawling gardens and has space for 40,000 worshippers. The mosque has six minarets, four of which soar 525 feet into the sky.
Other than the newly inaugurated mosque, hospitals, schools and stadiums around the country bear Ali Abdullah Saleh's name.
The mosque's design follows a unique Yemeni style of architecture, with wooden roofs and 15 wooden doors, each 75 feet high and carved with copper patterns. Inside, a large crystal chandelier lights up the main prayer area. It has three floors, with libraries and 25 classrooms.
Meanwhile, some Yemenis have opposed the massive sum in a country that ranks as the poorest in the Arab world and is plagued by internal armed conflicts, terrorism and severe malnutrition. They say they should rather have adequate schools and hospitals.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/24/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Reminds me of Europe 500 years ago, when they built those huge cathedrals in every little town - they probably absorbed all the surplus productive capacity of the region. So I guess Yemen had more surplus capacity than I thought.
More than 100 Belgian and French tourists, mostly pensioners, are being "held to ransom" by a hotel in Turkey after their Belgian travel agency hit financial problems, trip organizers said Sunday.
Management at the resort in Antalya, a city on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, took drastic action on Saturday to secure payment of an 80,000-euro ($100,000) bill, said tour broker Richard Naujokas. He told Belgian television his travel company "Voyages a tout coeur" had sold places block-booked by another company Christophair which the TV report said had gone bust.
Half the bill was met by travel company insurance but with the tourists due to leave on Monday the hotel had decided to dig in its heels for the remainder, he said.
Naujokas said members of the party were charged 275 euros ($344) each in order to obtain access to their rooms and food. "You don't hold people to ransom," Naujokas said on RTL-TVI television. "You can't take it out on clients," he railed, adding "my clients are being blackmailed. This is wrong."
The website for Christophair made no mention of financial difficulties on its front page Sunday afternoon.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/24/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
No word yet on any Naval response to this latest band of pirates......
#3
The wonders of Eurosclerosis - no jobs are ever created or destroyed, except by retirement or death.
Betcha that 130,000 doesn't count 'attrition'.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/24/2008 14:35 Comments ||
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#4
Upon closer inspection (IE, my lazy ass actually went and read the article), the spokesdroid actually was talking about an increase in unemployment, not a decrease in employment. For those of you who don't pay attention to this sort of thing, they're two distinct and not-necessarily-related phenomena. We're talking 130,000 additional folks drawing unemployment. I don't think that includes perpetual students, perpetually trainees, or out-right NEET.
(I love that acronym, btw - 'Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training'. It's so much less judgmental than 'hikikomori' or 'unemployable bum'.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/24/2008 14:41 Comments ||
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#5
They can always send that million and a half Turks that don't plan to assimilate packing. That would open up a lot of jobs, cut the welfare rolls, and increase the habitability of Germany, all at the same time. Of course, it's not PC, but screw PC.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/24/2008 15:28 Comments ||
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FOX News Channels (FNC) Alan Colmes will relinquish his role as co-host of Hannity & Colmes at the end of the year.
In announcing his decision, Colmes said, I approached Bill Shine (FNCs Senior Vice President of Programming) earlier this year about wanting to move on after 12 years to develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network. Although its bittersweet to leave one of the longest marriages on cable news, Im proud that both Sean (Hannity) and I remained unharmed after sitting side by side, night after night for so many years.
Colmes will continue to have a presence on FNC as he will serve as a liberal commentator on a variety of FOX News programming, including Foxnews.coms The Strategy Room and continue hosting his radio program, The Alan Colmes Show on FOX Talk, a division of FOX News Radio. He will also begin developing a weekend program.
Shine said, Were very sorry to see Alan reach this decision but we understand his desire to seek other creative challenges in his career. We value his incredible hard work in making Hannity & Colmes the most successful debate program on cable news and were going to miss him on the show. Thankfully, he will begin developing a weekend pilot for us.
FOX News Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes added, Alan is one of the key reasons why FOX News has been such a remarkable success. Were sad to see him leave the program but we look forward to his ongoing contributions to the network.
Hannity & Colmes is the only FNC program which has remained in the same timeslot for 12 years, catapulting to number one in 2003 and never relinquishing the top spot. The second highest-rated program in cable news behind only The OReilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes averaged 3.3 million viewers nightly for the Nielsen month of October and is poised to mark 60 consecutive months at number one at the end of November.
Hannity added, Not only has Alan been a remarkable co-host, hes been a great friend which is rare in this industry Ill genuinely miss sparring with such a skillful debate partner.
Throughout his 12 year tenure on Hannity & Colmes, Colmes has interviewed numerous key political figures, including: President Elect Barack Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), DNC Chairman Howard Dean and former Vice President Al Gore.
#3
The left hated him and for that I have to respect him. On the few issues I was undecided on I found Colmes more persuasive than Hannity. Of course the ones I was decided upon usually were the same as Hannity's already.
College has long been bigoted toward conservatives. We have all seen it in the elevation of relatively untalented radical Leftists like Angela Davis, Ward Churchill, and William Ayers to professorships while genuine conservative scholars like Newt Gingrich were denied tenure. David Horowitz has built an entire organization simply to defend the individual rights of students against bullying by radical professors (professors, some of whom in their day overran college administration buildings and intimidated the campus faculty.)
The Leftist tilt of academia is an old story -- a very old story. As early as 1924, James Collins in the Saturday Evening Post was warning of the "spread of radicalism in our colleges." Edwin Hadley in 1932 wrote:
"It is a singular thing that college authorities who stress the fact that students should hear every side of every question generally take the precaution of having the radical side predominate... One of the favorite methods of the radical professors is what is called the insinuating method.' The words, Socialism and Communism, are carefully avoided. The professor moves by indirection. Skillfully, he presents his subject in such a way that the pupil thinks he is making up his own mind without the professor's influence."
Hadley also notes that the president of the University of Missouri was fired for trying to dismiss two radical professors. Eighty years ago the persistent push to the Left in college education being studied and discussed.
The ideological straightjacket of our campuses grew progressively worse over time. In 1975, Victor Hickem wrote:
"By 1970 the conservative point of view had virtually vanished from the American university scene...By 1968, academic liberalism reached the position that no applicant for a faculty job could be considered unless he or she possessed the standard precepts of liberal ideology...Distinguished conservative professors were forced to suffer indignities in silence. Sometimes unpersons' to their colleagues, they failed to match the promotions and salary increases of liberal and conforming colleagues."
Anyone who endured college life then, as I did, can confirm the utter intolerance of conservative thought in academia. I thought that I could not be shocked any more by the Stalinist mindset on college campuses. I was wrong.
My wife's friend, a middle aged woman going back to school to get a degree in Criminal Justice, took a course entitled "Ethics and Criminal Justice." She lives in a very conservative community in a very conservative state. The university she attends would never be considered a hotbed for radicals. Her course of study is not political science, sociology, psychology or some other field which may naturally attract idealistic Leftists. She rather took a course in criminal justice, more of a hard-line conservative discipline.
So imagine my surprise when she shared with me "Course Paper / Fall 2008" instructions. The mandatory topic of this paper was the firing of U.S. Attorneys by the Attorney General. The "Bush White House" is accused of using the Justice Department to suppress voter turnout (perhaps this professor never heard of ACORN registering Mickey Mouse and household pets to vote in presidential elections, or perhaps this is not an ethical problem.)
The professor's written instructions harangue students to rely upon facts, not political opinions, in writing the paper and to use at least fifteen different sources. All sources, however, were not equal. Three of those fifteen sources were required to come out of the New York Times; five of those sources were required to come out of the Washington Post; two of those sources had to be the Guardian. Ten of the fifteen mandatory sources, in other words, had to come from periodicals rabidly hostile to President Bush. Three of the citations had to come from articles by Dana Priest of the Washington Post. But that was not all. No credit at all would be given for using sources that "have a reputation within the news industry for distributing their own political views at the expense of the facts, e.g. Fox News."
The shocking thing about all this is that no one reading it is probably shocked at all. The creeping Leftist totalitarianism in academia is so ubiquitous and so mundane that when it appears in a discipline not thought to be overflowing with nutty Leftists, like Criminal Justice, we yawn. We students are told to do a "research paper" which explicitly directs them to sources that they must use and sources that they must not use, we shrug in indifferent despair.
Our colleges have adopted the same attitude toward intellectual inquiry and scholarly objectivity that colleges in the Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany. The Communist Party in the Soviet Union demanded, for example, that biologists use the fantastically silly theories of Lysenko, and those who did not ended up in the Gulag. The Nazi Party insisted that colleges use Nazi racial theories in every area of study, and with very few exceptions, the professors of Germany nodded in agreement.
Is Mein Kampus a more descriptive term for many colleges in America today? Once politically correct thinking was limited to those disciplines which deal directly with politics. Today biologists must have politically correct views on Darwinism, geologists must have politically correct views on global warming, and criminal justice professors must have politically correct views on President Bush.
A recent Zogby poll of Obama voters found disturbing (and controversial) results. These voters knew almost nothing at all, and that is hardly an exaggeration. I wonder how many of these voters graduated from college? I wonder how many of them teach at our colleges? I wonder how many of them spent their formative adult years in the bowels of Mein Kampus?
Posted by: Everyday A Wildcat(KSU) ||
11/24/2008 09:49 ||
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Lawyers representing accused in blasphemy cases are under constant danger from potentially militant elements, who consider defending a blasphemy accused as un-Islamic and unethical, said various lawyers.
Free Legal Assistance and Settlement (FLAS) Chairman Sheikh Anis A Saadi advocate said that he voluntarily defended people accused of blasphemy before courts throughout the province. He said that a lawyer representing an accused in such a case was usually considered an abettor and because of that, he was subjected to a social stigma. He also said that normally, in such a case, the accused was considered guilty even before the court gave judgment against him. He said that he, along with three colleagues, had been defending blasphemy cases since 2003 and they had not only faced criticism from their friends, but had also received constant threats from different religious sects. He claimed that he had been attacked and his office had been set on fire, adding that he had filed two first information reports for attacks on him by unidentified bearded men. He also showed written threats that were sent to him and his family from a 'jihadi' group.
Another lawyer, Aslam Pervaiz advocate, said that from the very start of his legal practice, he had been defending people accused of blasphemy. He said that he had received death threats and been assaulted for doing so, adding that such proceedings were regularly attended by religious men, who constantly attempted to threaten the defendant's lawyer. He also said that most Muslim lawyers avoided such cases based on their own beliefs.
Does not matter: Asif Ali Gujjar advocate said that he would not defend a blasphemer, as his religion did not allow him to do so. He said that it did not matter if the accused committed the offence or not, as the allegations are never raised without reason. He also said that his decision was not the result of pressure from society, as his conscience did not allow him to defend a person accused of blasphemy.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/24/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Well if she floats she's a witch and needs to be burned. If she sinks and drowns then she wasnt a witch.
#2
A crafty judge could turn this around by invoking a pseudo-Sharia decision that "interfering with a blasphemy trial is in itself blasphemy." Of course it's utter nonsense, but if you insist on logic in the first place, why are you hearing court cases about blasphemy?
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FOX News Channels (FNC) Alan Colmes will relinquish his role as co-host of Hannity & Colmes at the end of the year. 
