Subject: A problem with bicycle mittens
I have a pair of "lobster claws"; thickish bicycle gloves which hold my
index
and middle fingers in one sleeve, and my pinkey and ring finger in a
second.
This keeps all my fingers warmer.
However, my daughter asked how I could bike in these gloves.
I explained to her that you don't really need much manual dexterity to
ride
a
bicycle.
She said...
What do you do if a driver cuts you off?
*.*
My sister does a lot of telephone calling.
She called the phone company about something, and they were so polite
that she thought she had the wrong number.
Five minutes later a survey company called and said "They don't know but
we are conducting a follow-up survey."
"They know," she interrupted.
*.*
Man Who Plays Devil's Advocate Really Just Wants To Be Asshole
COLUMBUS, MO-Though area graphic designer Derek Sills says he plays
devil's
advocate to help his friends better understand opinions different from
their
own, sources close to Sills claim he takes on the dissenting role merely
to
be an asshole.
"Now, I don't actually believe this or anything but, for the sake of
argument, let's say your girlfriend is just dating you for your money,"
Sills said at a party last Saturday, after asking a group of friends to
consider that the telephone may have been a "stupid invention." "Just
playing devil's advocate here, guys, but perhaps slavery is the reason
African Americans are so successful in s****ts these days."
According to sources, Sills "crossed the line" when he asked if their
friend
Jamie's mother might have deserved to die.
*.*
Oneliners:
My old boss, spelled backwards . . . double s.o.b.
Am I getting older or is the supermarket playing great music?
The headlines nobody likes are wrinkles
When I saw my first strands of gray hair I thought I'd dye!
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined
When women enter middle age, it gives men a pause
Cheerios are really bagel seeds.
New potential career choice: "gas price changer technician".
If you're pu****ng 80, that's exercise enough!
I'm in a long-distance relation****p. I carpool to work.
*.*
The Department of Homeland Security
announced they will be ready
to deal with hurricanes in the future.
Like today, they called their cable company
and ordered the weather channel."
How come immigration has become a bigger issue
than the mismanaged war in Iraq,
the nuclear threat in Iran, energy independence, health care
and an environment that kills
more people every year than were lost on 9/11?
Following the birth of our daughter, the nurse told me
that I would have to take it easy
so for the next six weeks, "You can't do any lifting,
swimming, driving, ***. . . ."
I stopped her there. "I can't drive for how long?"
Issue of the Times;
Diego Garcia: Paradise Cleansed by John Pilger
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system
works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of
the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie.
To
understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial
history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego
Garcia.
The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony
lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is
one
of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon
of
natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing:
"American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the
uninhabited
British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the
word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done
there.
In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie:
"There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."
Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000
people lived there: a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a
school,
a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation.
Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why
every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy
sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered,
palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.
All this began to end when an American rear admiral stepped ashore in 1961
and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the
biggest
American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops,
anchorage
for 30 war****ps, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls,
bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice," the Americans call it.
During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labor government of Harold Wilson
conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the
islands: the words used in American do***ents. Files found in the National
Archives in Wa****ngton and the Public Record Office in London provide an
astoni****ng narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have
chronicled the lies over Iraq.
To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that
the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be
"returned"
to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their
ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim,
wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the
existing residents ... into short-term, tem****ary residents."
What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In
August
1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office,
wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the
exercise
was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous
population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by
D.H. Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some
Tarzans
or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," another
official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating
population" and to "make up the rules as we go along."
There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official
appeared
to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory"
that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as
belonging somewhere else." The do***ents leave no doubt that the cover-up
was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.
At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those
who
had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from
returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce
Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of
the "sanitizing," ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed.
Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from
American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the
people
worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs
were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."
The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were
loaded on to ****ps, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind
their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas,
the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children
were
forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles,
they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they
were trans****ted to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.
In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides
and
child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he
cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two
daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family
could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment,
drugs
and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged
them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from
the British government: less than 3,000 each, which did not cover their
debts.
The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In
2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled
their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office
announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia
because of a "treaty" with Wa****ngton - in truth, a deal concealed from
parliament and the U.S. Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a
"feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This
has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the
Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade." The "study" consulted
not
a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking," which was
news
to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the U.S.
Navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are
"unbelievable."
In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were
denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to
attack
and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring
to
"we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last
June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to
crush
the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned
forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used
to
expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his
illegal
attack on Iraq.
Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and sup****ted
by
a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are
going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7
of the statute of the international criminal court describes the
"de****tation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other
coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off
from
their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this
great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win."
Quote of the Times;
"The pretense that this nation respects the rule of law hasn't borne much
scrutiny for a long time. Now there's simply no denying the obvious facts.
The law is a tool to hammer the peons. It does not apply to political
parasites, mass murderers, torturers, sadists, or any other foul thing
that
infests the corridors of power."
Link of the Times;
http://darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html
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