Please tell me the flags I see flying at half mast, in the most conservative county in the nation, are not for Teddy Kennedy. If I had a flag pole I would be finding a way to extend it as high as possible. The absolute last thing we should be doing right now is celebrating the life of that man. This isn’t a political thing. I don’t celebrate the life of Richard Nixon. Both men were two peas of a pod. Their lives were about power and nothing else.
This article and video show how debased we can become when exposed to narcotics. Drugs seem to take your heart from you and leave a shell with no emotion, feeling or conscience.
I honestly don’t think we have enough common ground with the rulers of this country to have a working relationship.
Saudi Woman, 75, Sentenced to 40 Lashings
March 09, 2009 Associated Press
The sentencing of a 75-year-old widow to 40 lashes and four months in prison for mingling with two young men who were reportedly bringing her bread has sparked new criticism of Saudi Arabia’s ultraconservative religious police and judiciary.
Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi, was convicted and sentenced last week for meeting with men who were not her immediate relatives. The two men, including one who was Sawadi’s late husband’s nephew, were also found guilty and sentenced to prison terms and lashes.
The woman’s lawyer, Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, told The Associated Press on Monday that he plans to appeal the verdict, which also demands that Sawadi be deported after serving her prison term. He declined to provide more details and said his client, who is not serving her sentence yet, was not speaking with the media.
Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam prohibits men and women who are not immediate relatives from mingling and women from driving. The playing of music, dancing and many movies also are a concern for hard-liners who believe they violate religious and moral values.
A special police unit called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice enforces these laws, patrolling public places to make sure women are covered and not wearing make up, sexes don’t mix, shops close five times a day for Muslim prayers and men go to the mosque to worship.
But criticism of the religious police and judiciary has been growing in Saudi, where many say they exploit their broad mandate to interfere in people’s lives.
Last month, the Saudi king dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing of TV network owners that broadcast “immoral content” — as part of a shake-up signaling an effort to weaken the kingdom’s hard-line Sunni Muslim establishment.
In Sawadi’s case, the elderly woman met the two 24-year-old men last April after she asked them to bring her five loaves of bread, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported.
The men — identified by Al-Watan as the nephew, Fahd al-Anzi, and his friend and business partner Hadiyan bin Zein — went to Sawadi’s home in the city of al-Chamil, located north of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. After delivering the bread, the two men were arrested by a one of the religious police, Al-Watan reported.
The court said it based its March 3 ruling on “citizen information” and testimony from al-Anzi’s father, who accused Sawadi of corruption.
“Because she said she doesn’t have a husband and because she is not a Saudi, conviction of the defendants of illegal mingling has been confirmed,” the court verdict read.
Sawadi had told the court that she considered al-Anzi is her son, because she breast-fed him when he was a baby. But the court denied her claim, saying she didn’t provide evidence. In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers.
Sawadi commonly asked her neighbors for help after her husband died, said Saudi journalist Bandar al-Ammar, who reported the story for Al-Watan. In a recent article, he wrote that he felt the need to report the case “so everybody knows to what degree we have reached.”
Others have also spoken out against the case against Sawadi, accusing the religious police of going too far.
“How can a verdict be issued based on suspicion?” Saudi doctor and columnist Laila Ahmed al-Ahdab wrote in Al-Watan on Monday. “A group of people are misusing religion to serve their own interests.”
Richard Cooey was convicted in the sexual assaults and slayings of University of Akron students Dawn McCreery, 20, and Wendy Offredo, 21, in September 1986.
The evening before his execution, which had been delayed because he was too fat, Cooey was given a feast fit for a king.
“Cooey dined Monday evening on the special meal he ordered, including T-bone steak, onion rings, french fries, four eggs over easy, toast with butter, hash browns, a pint of rocky road ice cream, a Mountain Dew soft drink and bear claw pastries.”
Did the girls he murdered get a feast before their deaths?
An indigenous tribe that is believed to have never been contacted by the outside world, has been discovered in the region between Brazil and Peru. The governments have jointed together to keep the tribe isolated. I think it is ridiculous. They are treating them like they are children. Actually, they are treating them like animals. They believe they need to be observed in an isolated environment. These are people for Pete’s sake. What is the purpose of keeping them primitive? The whole world demands health care. Why shouldn’t they have the benefits of a doctor or dentist. I bet if you hand them $100 and access to a Home Depot they would be happy to spend it.
If a decent cold forged axe could greatly improve their lives, what about penicillin? What about a Wii? Don’t they deserve access to education?
Don’t we believe in progress? We are constantly inventing new ways to make life better. Nobody wants to go back to the dark ages. Why should we keep these people in the stone age? I think it is criminal.
Brazil Discovers Uncontacted Indian Tribe in Amazon Jungle
Friday, May 30, 2008
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — One of Brazil’s last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday.
The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai.
Funai said it photographed “strong and healthy” warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known to which tribe they belonged, the group said.
“Four distinct isolated peoples exist in this region, whom we have accompanied for 20 years,” Funai expert Jose Carlos Meirelles Junior said in a statement.
The tribe sighted recently is one of the last not to be contacted by officials. Funai does not make contact with such Indian tribes and prevents invasions of their land to ensure their autonomy, the foundation said.
Survival International said the Indians are in danger from illegal logging in Peru, which is driving tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated 500 uncontacted Indians now living on the Brazilian side.
There are more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, most of them in Brazil and Peru, the group said in a statement.
“These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist,” Survival director Stephen Corry said.
“The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct.”
http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/0,4644,4088,00.html#5_0
Wow! Is that a title for a blog or what? Before you start thinking I’m one of those nuts who believe the government is using jet contrails to mass vaccination on the public; please read the following article:
By Matthew Daly Associated Press
Published: Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 12:21 a.m. MST
WASHINGTON — Dennis Slaugh and his brother were riding all-terrain vehicles when they noticed what looked like a survey stake, marking federal land in Utah’s rugged Cowboy Canyon.
Curious, Slaugh touched the stake, and it exploded, spewing a cloud of sodium cyanide in his face and chest. Slaugh, 65, said he suffers long-term health effects from the 2003 incident. He has difficulty breathing, vomits almost daily and can no longer work driving heavy equipment because he is too weak.
The cyanide device, called an M-44, is one of two poisons used by the federal government to kill coyotes and other wild animals that threaten sheep and other livestock. M-44 and sodium fluoroacetate, more commonly known as Compound 1080, are distributed by the Wildlife Services agency, an arm of the Agriculture Department. The poisons killed more than 14,000 wild animals in 2006, including coyotes, foxes and wolves, the agency reported.
The Agriculture Department says the devices are a relatively humane way to kill predatory animals, adding that because the poison is contained in specific delivery devices, the risk to non-target animals is reduced. Compound 1080 is used in “livestock protection collars” strapped onto sheep or goats, while sodium cyanide is used in an ejector that has bait designed to attract predators but not livestock. It releases poison into the wild animal’s mouth.
After years of complaints by environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency said last week it is investigating Slaugh’s poisoning, which critics say is only one of a host of incidents in which hundreds of dogs and other pets have been killed and dozens of people have been poisoned or injured.
“It’s only a matter of time before someone is killed,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, an Oregon-based group that works to protect coyotes and other wildlife.
“These devices cannot differentiate between a coyote, a wolf, a dog or a person,” Fahy said. “When pulled on, even lightly, the device spews enough sodium cyanide to kill a person.”
The EPA investigation comes as the agency considers a proposal to prohibit use of the poisons on federal land. A bill by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., would go further, banning the poisons altogether.
“Compound 1080 and M-44 sodium cyanide capsules are lethal, dangerous and unnecessary poisons. They pose a very serious threat to our nation’s citizens, wildlife and domesticated animals,” DeFazio said.
He called the two toxins “super poisons” that could be used by terrorists to harm Americans. Compound 1080 is so lethal that a single teaspoonful could kill dozens of people. There is no known antidote. Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., called DeFazio’s fears overstated.
A farmer and cattle rancher, Salazar said both pesticides are safe, “environmentally sound tools registered by the Environmental Protection Agency and used only by trained and certified applicators.”
Use of the pesticides “is highly target-specific, in limited applications, and in compliance with the regulations of the EPA and local jurisdictions,” Salazar wrote in a letter urging colleagues to defeat DeFazio’s bill.
Without effective tools to protect them from predators, livestock losses from coyotes and other wildlife could be two to three times higher than current levels — estimated at $16.3 million per year in the sheep industry and $51 million in cattle losses, according to the Colorado Wool Growers Association, which represents the state’s 1,600 sheep farms and ranches.
“Regardless of the size of operation, each sheep farm or ranch needs protection against predators, and many operations rely on the assistance and expertise” provided by the Wildlife Services agency, the group said in a letter opposing the ban.
Salazar encouraged colleagues to “stand up for the thousands of livestock producers in our country who provide the world’s most abundant food supply and oppose this legislation.”
DeFazio said it’s unfortunate that the bill’s leading opponent is a fellow Democrat and Westerner but said he would push forward with the measure, the latest in a years-long effort to ban the two poisons.
The bill comes as the EPA has taken a long-delayed step toward banning use of the poisons on federal lands. The agency has set a March 5 deadline for public comments on a proposal drafted in response to a petition from a coalition of environmental groups.
The EPA has not reached a decision on the petition and is conducting its own analysis to determine if the pesticides “pose unreasonable adverse effects on the environment,” said Dale Kemery, an agency spokesman.
Compound 1080 is made primarily by Alabama-based Tull Chemical Co., while M-44 capsules are produced by the Agriculture Department’s Pocatello Supply Depot in Idaho. Warning signs in English and Spanish are required near locations where the poisons are used.
I spend a lot of time in Utah’s mountains with my family and as a youth leader. I am completely against this method of controlling predators. The image below shows you what to watch out for.
Saudis defend punishment for rape victim
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — The Saudi judiciary on Tuesday defended a court verdict that sentenced a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape to six months in jail and 200 lashes because she was with an unrelated male when they were attacked.
The Shiite Muslim woman had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted of violating Saudi Arabia’s rigid Islamic law requiring segregation of the sexes. But in considering her appeal of the verdict, the Saudi General Court increased the punishment. It also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of raping the woman, Saudi news media said last week.
The reports triggered an international outcry over the Saudis punishing the victim of a terrible crime. But the Ministry of Justice stood by the verdict Tuesday, saying that “charges were proven” against the woman for having been in a car with a man who was not her relative.
USAToday November 20, 2007
Ok, I’m a little late on this. But I didn’t hear about this until today.
FEMA paid $115,000,000 to rebuild the Superdome.
“Well, here’s who footed the bill for the new and improved Superdome:
Total: $184 Million”
Source: www.armchairgm.com I don’t know much about this source but I found this link after it was reported on CNBC.
I found very few sources of this information on the web. I could find no references to it in a Google News search.
