billcoe

Thinking Mike and Scott Christmas gifts here.

The full text of that article was quoted by me about 20 posts up @ 3 days ago. Did ya just wake up Off or was my post too many words to read? LOL

Proof positive that Tractor Beams exist even if we can't see them. LOL

Mods are like Priests and NW Hikers that way I guess, nobody turns their back. I (as have most of us but I'm not confessing for you all here) have probably done stupider things than the alleged dumbasses as recently as last weekend. (grumble). You think I'd know better by now. At least I have the bloody pants to prove it. All they have is the good memories. I probably should crank up Rainier one more time before I get old older. What a great mountain. Good times boyz, good times.

LOL! As soon as I saw your avatar, but before I'd read word one, I was going to preemptively say something for Kevin and then I get to the last paragraph about Kev! Saw it coming:-) However, there is an interesting symbiosis between the 2 of you, I've noticed that most people do not respond to a classic Kevbone troll, but you do. Everytime, all the time, without fail! You have a lot time time in out there JH. I'd like to come out and spend some time with a lawnchair (still limping severely:-() out there this weekend with you if you could use me at all in any way, when will you be there: let so-ordinate -IF you can use me at all. ps, think I saw 2 Bald Eagles through the trees last weekend, but they could have been Osprey. Triggerhappy (why "triggerhappy btw?) -July.

but thanks:-) PS, check your emails in 5 min now hey. Good article btw!

?? explain why?

Just adding to the collective wisdom. lol

Bingo

She road him hard and put him away wet....tsk tsk.

Here's one that Mexicans are objecting too. Can't say why though. At least they didn't have the squat lil Mexican guy swimming the Rio Grande to get his El Gigitica Whopper.

LOL!

It was tax day. Should have posted this one. [video:youtube]

Nice one STP. This is but the faux crisis de jour

Wax on, wax off. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/14/somalia.pirates/index.html

Maybe Kevbone "developed" this one.

Speaking of funny ads: LINK "NEW YORK – A clothing company known for its racy ads is fighting a $10 million lawsuit brought by Woody Allen, arguing that it can't have damaged his reputation by using his image because the film director has already ruined it himself." I think they'll be paying for this one! or this one They appropriated his image for monetary gains without his permission. They'll pay. Not that funny....except maybe Raindawg might find some Haddasic humor in there. But it doesn't sell underwear, but what do I know?

Bring it here Patrick! Show this stuff, you know how lazy we all are.

And the price is right, instead of PAYING, ya get PAID!

hmmmmm link "Hairdresser turns robber into sex-slave 14 April, 2009, 14:05 A hairdresser from the small Russian town of Meshchovsk has subdued a man who tried to rob her shop, and then raped him for three days in the utility room, Life.ru reports. The incident occurred on Saturday, March 14. The working day was coming to an end at a small hairdressers, when a man armed with a gun rushed in and demanded the day’s earnings. The frightened employees and customers agreed to fulfill his demand, but when the shop’s owner, 28-year-old Olga, was handing the money to the robber, she suddenly knocked him down on the floor and then tied him up with a hairdryer cord. The 32-year-old Viktor couldn’t have known that the woman was a yellow belt in karate. Olga locked the unlucky robber in the utility room and told her colleagues that she was going to call the police – but didn’t do so. When everybody left home, she approached the man and ordered him to ‘take of his underpants’ threatening to hand him over to the police if he refuses to cooperate. Olga After that Olga raped her hostage for three long days. She chained Viktor to the radiator with pink furry handcuffs and fed him Viagra. She eventually let the man go on Monday, March 16, saying: “Get out of my sight!” Viktor went straight to hospital as his genitals were injured, and then to the police. Olga was resentful when she was taken by the police. “What a bastard,” the woman said about Viktor. “Yes, we had sex a couple of times. But I’ve bought him new jeans, gave him food and even gave him 1.000 roubles (around $ 30) when he left.” After that she wrote a notice to the police claiming the man tried to rob her shop. Both Olga and Viktor may now face prison terms. The woman could be convicted of rape, while the man of robbery."

the 2 parts to every story version here. "We're Being Lied to About Pirates By Johann Hari, Independent UK Posted on April 13, 2009, Printed on April 13, 2009 Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side. Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages. Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century". They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves. The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas. Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention." At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters." This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence". No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand. Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats. The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber? © 2009 Independent UK All rights reserved. http://www.alternet.org/story/136288/

Well, I thought we warned you about using too many words? Seriously, I read every one of them. Whats your point? What should be done? We may actually agree on this, but I'm not sure. My thoughts are this: we tried to provide food aid to the Somalis and they kicked us in the balls when our "Peacekeeping" troops were attacked. There was a movie out of it called "Blackhawk Down". The most notable thing about the movie is that when Somali people saw it, they cheered at what we perceived as all of the wrong places. They are in the middle of some serious internal violence involving religions, resources and tribes. Why TF should we run in there and get involved again when most of them do not want our assistance and don't trust us either? The UN sends food and some asshole warlord immediately hijacks it and distributes it as a political statement in support of himself. Perhaps killing every damn thug who attacks a US flagged vessel is the best we can do right now? Somehow, they fuck up their country and we get blamed for it doesn't work for me. There's plenty of poor country's that do not turn to illegal activity's that no one should give these asswipes a pass just because they've trashed their country and can't get their shit together to pull it out. The hourly cost to run a Navy vessel is huge. Would we be better served putting Seal crews for rides on US flagged vessels who could then call in the calvery in the event of an attack larger than they wanted to deal with. We (the US) would send a cease and desist order via this method. If any Panamanian, Liberian or non- US flagged vessel needed help, the owners can call us in and pay us up front. ps, NPR is just another tool of the US government.

That's not a question a Canadian needs to concern themselves with sir. We'll take care of the worlds oil issues.

I'm fine when we use the full power of our countries military might to attack, punish, save and release a kidnapped vessel AS LONG AS ITS A US FLAGGED VESSEL! WTF is up with letting ship owners flag their ships in Liberia to avoid the more expensive US laws and maritime requirements and then not expect to get a bill from the US Navy when we spend millions of dollars and risk US lives to help them get out of paying a ransom to pirates? Screw them. Let them pay the ransom and let us teach the pirates that attacking a US flagged vessel is not part of the play book for survival or profit. Why the hell are we running all around the globe being the worlds policeman? This patrolling the horn to protect the worlds shipping is damned expensive and gets us exactly what? Stupid.[/RANT]

The more people randomly invited in without passing the attitude test = the increased likelyhood of various crazy assed viewpoints and personalities popping in is what I was reflecting on Doug. I totally agree that it's nice to have discussions like this online, in an appropriate forum: which was something Raindawg really had trouble with. I wish this crew well, sounds like they are on a good path, and sure, it would not be for everyplace, but it is for this location. Regards to all