I have a new blog that I use for more "polished" commentary. If you're interested in following me, you can read me here: http://ikilled007.wordpress.com

Also, if you have a "serious" blog for discussing politics, economics, finance, culture, science, specific fields of interest -- not so much a personal blog if you know what I mean -- go ahead and link to it in the comments and I'll check it out and add it to my blogroll if I like it.

If anyone wants to connect, my Facebook is: http://www.facebook.com/ikilled007

Lots of photos of my new life here in Sicily and frequent blog-like updates and stuff.

Apparently, it's civil war in Iran. Follow this guy: http://twitter.com/persiankiwi

Looks like there's a fight for control of Iranian internet going on too. Good luck to the Iranian people as they fight their government.

I have a Twitter account but don't really use it. If you have a Twitter account, you should add Lew Rockwell: http://twitter.com/lewrockwell

"I'm off to Afghanistan this summer. Damn, this is more dangerous than Afghanistan," Parry said.

NEW ORLEANS – An infant and at least five other people were shot Tuesday along a parade route packed with Mardi Gras revelers, police said. Two suspects were in custody and the victims were recovering. The shootings happened near the Garden District about 1:40 p.m. after the last major parade of the celebration, Rex, had ended. Hundreds of truck floats that follow the parade were passing when gunfire broke out.

"It sounded like a string of fireworks, so I knew it was more than one shooter," said Toni Labat, 29, a window company manager. She was with her two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. "Everybody was petrified. They hit the ground, the floats stopped, everybody on the floats ducked," Labat said. Labat said one man dragged himself on the ground screaming for help after being wounded and another man was gasping for air and bleeding from his mouth. Police spokesman Bob Young said the victims were taken to local hospitals. The infant was grazed by a bullet and not seriously hurt, Young said.

Dr. Jim Parry, 41, a surgeon who was with a gathering of doctors near the shooting site, ran over to tend to one man who he said had been shot in the abdomen. "He kept asking me, 'Was I shot? Was I shot?'" Paramedics arrived and took over for the Air Force reservist.

"I'm off to Afghanistan this summer. Damn, this is more dangerous than Afghanistan," Parry said.

Two male suspects, ages 18 and 20, were in custody and three weapons believed used in the shooting had been recovered, Young said. The violence along the oak-lined Uptown streetcar line marred what had been a generally peaceful day of revelry in which hundreds of thousands of people partied in the streets on the final day of Carnival. Another shooting was reported on Friday night after an argument, but otherwise, the event was generally problem-free. Beau Beals, 45, said he was outside a house party on St. Charles Avenue when the shooting erupted. He said he and other revelers tossed children over a metal fence to get them to safety, but others kept waiting for beads and other trinkets being tossed from the floats as if nothing had happened.

"They had an ambulance out here picking the guy up off the street and people didn't stop vying for throws," Beals said.

New Orleans is still a war zone.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/new_orleans_has_highest_crime.html

A national study released today has named New Orleans the most violent city in the country.
The annual crime ranking, compiled by researchers and published by CQ Press, examined statistics for six major types of crime in nearly 400 cities.

With more than 19,000 incidents of crime last year, New Orleans ranked number one, ahead of Camden, New Jersey, and Detroit, Mich.

The rankings are calculated using crime statistics and population data. The editors of the ranking included a special note about New Orleans, highlighting the city's dramatic changes in population over the last few years.

Ramapo, N.Y., garnered the lowest ranking of all cities.

Police and civic leaders across the country have previously criticized the rankings for their methodology and use of federally reported crime statistics.

The on-site team is blogging live here from the datacenter in New Orleans: http://gustavbloggers.com/
Lots of pictures, lots of live info, and soon the live-cam.

Good luck, New Orleans.

I'm not sure if you guys were aware or not, but I no longer live in Florida, so Storm Fay is not an issue for me. Crys, Illy, and I live in Sicily. Instead of worrying about Fay, then, let me share this feel-good story from New Orleans:

New Orleans house wrongly torn down

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A New Orleans city contractor apparently never got the word a vacant house had been given a reprieve and demolished it this weekend, the home's owner alleges.

Erica DeJan, a pregnant mother-of-three, said miscommunication was the likely culprit for the contracting error that resulted in her New Orleans home being reduced to a pile of rubble, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported Sunday.

DeJan said while she immediately contacted City Hall officials upon learning of the scheduled demolition of her home Friday, the order to rescind the demolition was never properly executed.

"It's just a lack of communication," DeJan said. "It's not being on the same wavelength."

DeJan acknowledged the home she and her husband Brian bought in New Orleans had been deemed a public nuisance because of damage from Hurricane Katrina.

Yet she told The Times-Picayune they had plans to renovate the house back to its former glory.

A city official told the newspaper the case would be investigated fully before any in-depth comments on the matter could be made.

Let the good times roll!

Born: 5am 6/24/08 in Patti, Sicily, Italy.





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N.O. police show off new crime-fighting equipment

by Walt Philbin, The Times-Picayune

Wednesday February 13, 2008, 6:28 AM

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley on Tuesday used the floor of the Superdome to display more than $1 million in new armament and other equipment, largely for use by the SWAT squad in emergency and riot situations, including a fully equipped mobile command post, two armored cars and modern assault rifles.

Nearly all of the equipment was financed from a $6.6 million state allocation to New Orleans police that was earmarked for crime-fighting items or strategies, Riley said.

The city officials said the new equipment reflected a determination by the Police Department to root out and arrest criminals and make New Orleans safer, as well as to help police handle any emergency situation encountered.

The money will also pay for 600 bullet-proof vests.

The 27- and 14-ton armored cars, costing about $380,000 and $270,000 respectively, will provide cover to officers in SWAT situations and help them safely evacuate citizens from dangerous situations, Riley said.

The vehicles, Lenco Bear and BearCat models, will also enable SWAT officers and negotiators to get closer to barricaded suspects.

The city's police have never had a "state-of-the-art" command post for SWAT and other situations, the city officials said. The assistant commander of the SWAT team, Lt. Dwayne Scheurermann, vouched for the equipment and said the two armored cars come with features that "are extraordinarily helpful to us," such as winches to help knock or drag down walls and other barricades.

Nagin used the occasion to welcome the NBA All-Star game to New Orleans, scheduled for Sunday night at the New Orleans Arena. He said the annual clash between West and East All-Stars has "had a little bit of a rough time in other cities, but we are looking forward to it and don't expect any problems."

Riley pointed out that after this weekend members of the NOPD will have worked 12- or 16-hour shifts for 23 days -- nearly half of the first 48 days of the year -- to provide security for public events on a national stage, including college football's BCS championship game and Mardi Gras.

"We had a little break after Mardi Gras, but will go into that mode again Friday," Riley said. He said there will be so many police this weekend in the Central Business District and French Quarter "it will look like Christmas down there."

 

Sickening:

Hunterdon County man must pay support for child not his

TRENTON, N.J. - Paternity doesn't count when it comes to a Hunterdon County man's bid to lower child support payments for a child that's not his. An appeals court upheld a lower court which denied the man's request in 2006 after he said he discovered he was not the father of the 10-year-old girl.

The appeals panel found the judge put the best interest of the child first. It's not clear whether the man would appeal to the state Supreme Court. The man is identified in court papers as W.S.Y. Jr. to protect the child's identity. The girl was born in 1997 and the man and his ex-wife divorced in 1999.

The man raised the issue of paternity in 2006 after he claimed his ex in 2003 started making statements that he wasn't the father.

The man claims a DNA test showed he wasn't.

This is slavery, nothing less.

Photo surfaces of smiling Clintons with Tony Rezko... MORE... Clinton injected the indicted developer's name this week in heated debate with Obama: 'I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago'... Clinton tells NBC 'TODAY' show on Friday: 'I probably have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures. I don't know the man. I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door'...


'I DON'T REMEMBER MEETING REZKO'


A politician is a person who would sell his or her own children into sex slavery for the chance to rule.

I understand casting a ballot in favor of or against an ordinance or tax or amendment to a constitution, but how can you not feel like a complete douchebag when you go into a voting booth and cast a vote for a politician. They are laughing at you. You are colluding in your own suckering. You are a "useful idiot". Just say no to voting, lest you demonstrate that you're the fool they take you to be.

If you vote, you have no justification to complain when you get screwed. You're complicit in this sinister and corrupt enterprise called government. You're validating it. You're an accomplice to deceit and theft and murder. Only those who refuse to take part in the system run by duplicitous, scheming hypocrites have cause to complain. Oh, I know -- your guy (or gal) is LESS BAD than theirs. Sure. You are a sucker.

This is absolutely fucking absurd and infuriating:

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

Intellectual Property is a colossally hideous notion in the first place, not unlike Marxism or Creationism (not only do they not "work" in practice, but the theories themselves are fundamentally unsound -- obviously so; the Labor Theory of Value, for instance, is pure bullshit, yet it's a cornerstone of Marx's economic analysis). The economic arguments in favor of Intellectual Property are all unsound. What Intellectual Property amounts to is a violation of property rights for everyone not receiving its privileged protection. The idea that some people ought to be able to tell other people what patterns of light, sound, motion, or language they (the other people) may engage in with their own bodies or their own property is absolutely idiotic and tyrannical.

And the idea that you think you still own something you sold to me -- a compact disc, for instance -- and can then tell me what I can do with it (I can't store the data on it to my computer) is the height of arrogant entitlement.

Property Rights are a bundle of rights:

• Use Right - If you own something, you have the right to use it anyway you see fit, provided your use of it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others.
  
• Exclude Right - If you own something, you have the right to exclude others from using it.
  
• Abandon Right - If you own something, you have the right to cease being its owner.
  

When the RIAA sells you a compact disc and then tells you what you can do with it, they are violating your property rights (see above). When some asshole patents a method of swinging back and forth, he is violating your property rights. 

There was art before there was Intellectual Property: literature, paintings, drawings, sculptures, music, what have you. There was technology before there was Intellectual Property: mathematics, exploration, invention, biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, botany, military, medicine, etc.

Intellectual Property is just another form of protectionism similar to tariffs, quotas, subsidies, barriers to entry, and other special privileges. It's bullshit and it needs to end. The RIAA doesn't own me, it doesn't own my computer, it doesn't own my compact discs, my tape decks, my radio, my vocal cords, or my middle finger -- which is currently shooting the bird at those fucking douche-bags.  Don't let those assholes use the coercive force of government to strip you of your property rights.

"Do not judge her, until you know her whole story."

Um, what story is that? She had unprotected sex with at least 18 men in what, a 28 day period and now has a child without a father because she can't narrow down the suspects? Thanks, Maury, but I feel comfortable judging her. After all, you're the one exploiting her for ratings (read: money).

Have you heard about Jamie Leigh Jones? She was gang raped inside the Baghdad Green Zone in July 2005 while she was working for the Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc, which has support contracts with the US military. Here's the latest:

Jones told committee members that on her fourth day in Baghdad some co-workers, who she described as Halliburton-KBR firefighters, invited her for a drink. "I took two sips from the drink and don't remember anything after that," she said. The next morning Jones woke up groggy and confused, and with a sore chest and blood between her legs. She reported the incident to KBR and was examined by an army doctor, who confirmed she had been repeatedly raped vaginally and anally.

The doctor took photographs, made notes, and handed all the evidence over to KBR personnel. "The KBR security then took me to a trailer and then locked me in a room with two armed guards outside my door," Jones testified. "I was imprisoned in the trailer for approximately a day. One of the guards finally had mercy and let me use a phone." Jones called her father in Texas, who called his representative in Congress, Republican Ted Poe. Poe contacted the State Department, who quickly sent personnel to rescue Jones and flew her back to Texas.

The rape was so brutal she is still undergoing reconstructive surgery, Jones said.

Jones tried to get her case resolved first through KBR channels, then through the US Department of Justice. When neither course seemed to work, she gave an interview with ABC television news. KBR has been silent on the matter, though according to ABC News the company circulated a memo among employees signed by company president and CEO Bill Utt saying that it "disputes portions of Ms. [Jamie Leigh] Jones' version and facts."

Jones said that she knows of at least 11 other women who were raped by US contractors in Iraq.

Jones' KBR contract however included a clause which prevents her from suing her employer, Poe said, which will likely force her into arbitration, which he described as "a privatized justice system with no public record, no discovery and no meaningful appeal." There are many laws that the Department of Justice (DOJ) "can enforce with respect to contractors who commit crimes abroad, but it chooses not to," Democrat Robert Scott said. The DOJ "seems to be taking action with respect to enforcement of criminal laws in Iraq only when it is forced to do something by embarrassing media coverage," he added.

"This is outrageous that we even have to be here today," said Conyers, adding that it shows "how far out of control the law enforcement system in Iraq is today." There are 180,000 civilian contractor employees in Iraq, including more than 21,000 Americans, Conyers said. While the DOJ says it is committed to law enforcement in Iraq, "they can't even give us one example of a prosecution where the victim was a civilian contractor employee in Iraq," Conyers added. Poe was equally caustic. The department's silence on the case "speaks volumes about the hidden crimes in Iraq," he said.

Now according to Wikipedia, "The Justice Department has brought no criminal charges against the alleged assailants. Neither the U.S. or Iraqi legal systems can be applied to contractors in Iraq, and thus her assailants have likely broken no laws. Jones has filed a civil lawsuit against KBR and former parent corporation Halliburton. KBR has requested a private arbitration, and claims this is required by her employment contract."

What kind of kindergarten bullshit is that? If no US or Iraqi legal systems can be applied, why doesn't some commander in the area send in the fucking Rangers or Marines to bring the rapists' heads backs to be impaled on stakes as a warning to would be rapists? And whoever gave the order to put her in a shipping container with no food, water, or medical attention for a day needs to be shot in the face. This civil lawsuit as the only recourse nonsense has got to go. What the fuck is going on in Iraq?