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January 16, 2007
Saddam Died Beautiful
By Gary Brecher
SOURCE: eXile
FRESNO -- A lot of office boys like to talk about "old school." I'll tell you who was old school: Saddam Hussein. Saddam died beautiful. It's the truth and you know it. Fact is, the longer we stay in Iraq the better Saddam looks. He never had a tenth of our money or weaponry but he did what we can't: kept that bag of snakes in order.
And what a way to go! Damn, did you see that cellphone video of his death? A bunch of Shia monkeys in ski masks woofing at him -- safe behind their masks, with Saddam handcuffed and under guard -- woofing like cockapoos at a pit bull heading for the Pound's death cell. And Saddam laughed at them, especially when they chanted the name of their pissant Imam, Moqtada al-Sadr. You can hear him on that jerky cellphone video sneering, "Moqtada?" And Saddam earned the right to laugh; he killed Sadr Sr. and kept Junior so terrified he didn't dare show his fat face until Saddam was gone and only the wimp occupiers were in charge.
Saddam told the ski-mask monkeys they weren't real men. And he had the right to say that too. Call him what you want, but Saddam was a man, a real man. One of the last. To me, watching that execution was like watching Planet of the Apes: a bunch of de-evolved primates killing the last man. Saddam looked like the 20th century in that overcoat and hat. He'd lost weight in prison. Never flinched, not once. You try that: going to the gallows with your blood enemies screaming insults at you. See if you can hold your bladder, never mind answer back as fast and calm as he did.
Continue reading "Saddam Died Beautiful"
Posted by andrewanissi at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2007
Science and the Seance
Dated: August 30, 2005
SOURCE: BBC News
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But some of science's biggest names have not only dabbled in, but been entirely convinced by the world of the seance.
Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird are familiar to most for the household indispensables they invented. But the attraction to spiritualism they all shared is definitely not part of the GCSE science syllabus.
All three men, and many other Victorian scientific pioneers, became involved with the religion, which depended on strange forces being demonstrated through bizarre phenomena.
Legitimacy
But how did the world of certainty and precision collide and, in some cases, fuse with that of levitating spiritualists and voices from the "other side"?
To some, it was simply down to chronology. When the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York State - widely considered to be the founders of modern spiritualism - first claimed to have communicated with the dead, the world was awash with scientific endeavour.
Just four years earlier a communication of a very different sort - the first electric telegraph - was sent across the Atlantic.
Science was challenging the old certainties about life - making the impossible, possible.
According to the biographer of the Fox sisters, Barbara Weisberg: "There was so much that was exciting and so much that wouldn't have been thought possible two decades before.
"If people could communicate over the telegraph, why couldn't this world and the next world communicate?"
This gave the sisters' claims greater legitimacy, she says.
As the spiritualist craze grew people from every level of Victorian society crammed into dingy parlours, where knocks and raps indicated the presence of spirits.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2007
Social Security Agreement With Mexico Released After 3 1/2 Year Freedom of Information Act Battle
Dated: December 29, 2006
SOURCE: PR Newswire
WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After numerous refusals
over three and a half years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has
released the first known public copy of the U.S.-Mexico Social Security
Totalization Agreement. The government was forced to make the disclosure in
response to lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act by TREA
Senior Citizens League, a 1.2 million-member nonpartisan seniors advocacy
group.
The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexican
workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust
Fund.
The agreement between the U.S. and Mexico was signed in June 2004, and
is awaiting President Bush's signature. Once President Bush approves the
agreement, which would be done without Congressional vote, either House of
Congress would have 60 days to disapprove the agreement by voting to reject
it.
For the full article, click here.
Posted by andrewanissi at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)
January 01, 2007
Saddam tended birds and plants in jail, nurse says
Dated: January 1, 2007
SOURCE: Guardian Unlimited
Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006. [ed.]
A military nurse who cared for Saddam Hussein said the former dictator saved bread crusts to feed birds and tended a small plot of weeds while in jail.
Master Sergeant Robert Ellis was under orders to prevent the former Iraqi dictator from dying in US custody. "That was my job: to keep him alive and healthy, so they could kill him at a later date," he told the St Louis Post-Dispatch after Saddam's execution on Saturday.
"I knew all along what they were going to do. This went against my grain as a nurse, but as a soldier - well, that was my job," Sgt Ellis said.
When he was allowed short visits outside, Saddam would feed the birds crusts of bread saved from his meals. He also watered a dusty plot of weeds, Sgt Ellis said.
"He said he was a farmer when he was young and he never forgot where he came from." The nurse, who cared for Saddam from January 2004 until August 2005, checked on him twice a day and wrote a daily report on his physical and emotional condition.
Saddam insisted on smoking cigars and drinking coffee to keep his blood pressure down, Sgt Ellis told the paper. "He had very good coping skills." But he also revealed that Saddam came close to being killed when he was being transported. He was apparently shot at and once escaped a roadside bomb.
Saddam shared with his nurse memories of when his children were young, and how he would tell them bedtime stories. When Sgt Ellis told Saddam he had to leave for America because his brother was dying, Saddam hugged him and said he would be Sgt Ellis's brother.
"I was there to help him, and he respected that," Sgt Ellis said. Saddam never discussed dying and expressed no regrets about his rule.
"He said everything he did was for Iraq," Sgt Ellis said. "One day when I went to see him, he asked why we invaded. Well, he made gestures like shooting a machine gun and asked why soldiers came and shot up the place."
He told the nurse that the laws in Iraq were fair and the weapons inspectors didn't find anything.
Posted by andrewanissi at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)