You’re Completely Safe In New Zealand!

At least if the police are shooting at you. An incident in Porirua, New Zealand proves that. Police were called to a domestic disturbance and went looking for the man involved. They found him, and his assorted weaponry, in the backyard. After throwing a tomahawk, various logs and bottles at the cops, the man pulled out the big weapon: a rottweiler.

Police were called to the house, on the corner of Mungavin and Warspite Avenues, about 10.40pm to attend a domestic incident involving the man and the dog-owner.

The officers searched the property, finding the man in the back yard. He began throwing objects at police, before leaping over the back fence and re-arming himself with an axe and a baseball bat.

Inspector John Spence said the man then took his partner's rottweiler and "hyped it up, pulling its lead and screaming at the dog", and set it on police.

Officers at the scene tried to pepper spray the "large, lunging rottweiler", but the spray had no effect.

The young officers at the scene then began shooting at the dog as it ran around the property, he said.

When asked why police fired so many shots at the dog, Mr Spence said shooting at moving things in real life was different to shooting at targets at the range.

"It was a small, fast moving target. I am satisfied no members of the public were put at risk [by the shooting]," he said.

The officers fired 12 rounds at the dog. Never hit it. But rest assured, there was no danger to the public. Really? 12 bullets flying all over and no danger?Good lord. Well, maybe that's true at that. The officers involved might have a bit of trouble hitting the ground with their hats. (Eventually, the police set their dogs on the guy and the dogs brought him down. The rottweiler, however is completely unscathed.)

Rare Snake Located

As usual, the British media has this story all hosed up. It seems a snake was discovered in Wales that has everyone mystified. They are saying it is a 15-foot reticulated python.

The reptile is a breed of reticulated python which is known for its prickly personality and potentially aggressive manner.

It is not poisonous but is sufficiently powerful to inflict a serious injury.

An RSPCA officer was called out to collect the snake after it was discovered by a member of the public at Gwehelog, near Usk in south Wales…….

……"We would appeal to whoever this belongs to, to come forward," said the RSPCA. "Pythons do not occur naturally in south Wales so it must have disappeared from somewhere and you would think that the owner would notice."

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard Believe this is actually the rare Welsh pygmy python, a completely sophistical species that has long been thought extinct. The Welsh word for it is "bgfrggnsnkthttsshphrds." Or something like that.

Thousands Disappear Into Burma’s Gulag

The Times of London is reporting that thousands of people, monks and civilians alike, are thought to be incarcerated in what they term a "secret gulag" in Burma. It isn't all that secret, however. The Times knows exactly where it is:

With its rusty barbed wire fence, dense tropical foliage and acreage of decaying buildings, the former Government Technology Institute in Rangoon would be a spooky place at the best of times. In the past week, however, if reports circulating in Rangoon are correct, it has been transformed from an abandoned ruin to a place of mass suffering and repression.

According to Western diplomats and at least one Burmese government official, the technical institute has become a temporary concentration camp for 1,700 of the victims of last week’s brutal suppression of the democracy uprising. It provides a partial answer to one of the lingering questions about the Burmese junta’s crackdown: where are the monks, democracy activists and journalists who have been rounded up and spirited away over the past six weeks?

Despite the international attention given to the quashing of the anti-Government marches, the crackdown remains undocumented. Apart from admitting that 13 people have died, a figure regarded by most observers as an underestimate, the authorities have given no details of the numbers of those arrested and detained.

Thousands of people have simply disappeared since the crackdown began. There has been no word as to whether those people are dead or imprisoned. There are no neutral observers in place, either. The International Committee of the Red Cross refused to continue prison visits last year after the junta refused to allow them in without government thugs (they were pleased to call them "nominees") accompanying the ICRC.

Losing The Courts

The Anchoress has a post up that was picked up as a feature on Real Clear Politics (congratulations, my friend!). As always, it is beautifully written, sculpted, layer by layer into a towering edifice of reasonable discourse. And she blasts the people who are thinking of forming a third party challenge if the Republican candidate is not quite Christian enough. As she points out, running a third party candidate would be political suicide for the Christian right. We have seen all of this before.

Had Ross Perot not run in 1992 it is unlikely Bill Clinton would have been president. I suspect the Democrats would like nothing better than to see a third party of conservative Christians siphon just enough votes away from the GOP to do the same for Hillary.

We’re already watching the Clintons re-run all their moves from the ‘92 playbook. Triangulation Kitty is again being served up to feed the masses, this time with Bill as the Hard Left Outside and Hillary as the Softer, Chewy and Yummy Center. We’re already watching the press do what it can to bury any negative perspectives on the Clintons and their team. (Notice that Hillary said she gave the Hsu money back to the donors and the press said, “oh, fine…no story here anymore!” Next that money will be re-donated to her campaign). We’ve seen the reemergence of Sandy “Pants” Berger as a trusted advisor, and Harold Ickes as himself. The Clintons have no reason not to believe that what worked before will not work again. All that is needed now, is the “third party” mindset that brought Bill Clinton his presidency on a buckled platter.

And here it comes.

I’m going to hate watching Mrs. Clinton assume the presidency with 42% of the vote, like her husband did, and I’m going to hate watching her get sworn in in January ‘09, while her husband holds the big bible and bites his lip, and I’m going to really hate everything that comes after it. So will you.

The third-party pipe-dreamers will once again make the Clinton tag team victorious. And with a Supreme Court likely to need three quick replacements in ‘09, the third party folks will watch as the court becomes a permanent 5-4 liberal majority activist court - for decades. Decades, folks. The America you think you’re going to “preserve” with your third party candidate may become unrecognizable in a very short time. The Roe v Wade you think you’re going to reverse with your unelectable third candidate will seem almost quaint when compared with the “compassionate” euthanasia and the “practical, community-serving, environment saving” limitations on life you’ll be watching get handed down as law by an activist court determined to see the Constitution as a “living” and flexible document.

That is the looming disaster: losing the courts. We already see the Democrats blocking judicial nominees. You know they are balking so that they can pack the courts if they win the White House. And activist, leftist courts are already a problem. Conservatives watched all of this play out before. They watched as the courts leaned farther and farther to the left. They watched as third party candidates split the votes at a crucial time.

And they have lost the courts. I was appalled at the people who sat out the last election because their single issue - illegal immigration - was not solved to their liking. Hey, guess what? It was not solved to my liking, either. But I voted. Because I knew how very important it was. The opposition sat out the legislative elections in Venezuela, too. Those who boycotted gave Hugo Chavez a free hand and a compliant rubber stamp to give him whatever he wanted. And he wanted the opposition's freedom.

In this case, sitting the election out or running a third party candidate gives the election to someone who will pack the courts and have a powerful effect for decades. Go ye and read what Anchoress wrote. She is more lyrical than I am.

But if you support a third party run because your single issue trumps everything else, then I submit it would be a really good idea to take a look at the beam in your eye rather than looking at the speck in someone else's.

The Mystery Of The Big Stone Heads Solved

I Posted earlier about the mysterious appearance of close to 20 heads carved from stone in northern England. Well, it turns out that speculation that the heads were being left about as a publicity stunt has been confirmed. The rock noggins are the work of one Billy Johnson, an artist. His website is here. The latest wire story says this:

The sculptures, which all have a carved symbol which apparently spells "paradox" and a riddle, have been left outside homes and businesses across the northern county of Yorkshire over the last few weeks.

The story was picked up nationwide, with the stone heads appearing in a number of national newspapers and broadcasters including the BBC.

But the culprit was finally identified Tuesday as Billy Johnson, who makes the stone heads using fossils and rocks found on beaches.

"Using minimal hand tools, Billy works with natural materials in a fluid and responsive way, bringing out the beauty of each individual piece," said the website of Paradox Carving.

"Each of the larger head pieces is completed by twilight," it added. "Paradox Carving explores hypnagogic concepts love, madness and evolution. He started his latest work on 24 August 2007 and it is a long-term project."

He has some interesting stone heads available for sale. The news article says that another artist attempted to send an email to Johnson but got back a reply that stated : "the artist was out of the country for a few weeks, does not have a phone, does not use the Internet and does not have access to television."

But he sure knows how to work a publicity stunt.

Russian Mafia Government Strongarms Ukraine

Not that there really is much difference these days. The Russian government suddenly surprised the Ukraine with threats to shut off natural gas supplies unless they pay $1 billion right away. The Ukraine has absolutely no idea what the Russians are talking about.

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian gas monopoly Gazprom warned Tuesday it would cut gas supplies to Ukraine, which transports 80 percent of Russian gas supplies to western Europe, if Kiev did not pay over a billion dollars in debt this month.

The warning revived a longstanding dispute over gas supplies that led Russia to turn off the taps to Ukraine in January 2006, provoking supply shortfalls in western Europe and doubts about Russia's reliability as an energy provider.

"If the debt is not settled in October, Gazprom will be forced to begin to cut natural gas supplies to Ukrainian consumers," the state-run company said in a statement, putting the amount of debt at 1.3 billion dollars (900 million euros).

Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz, Gazprom's counterpart, expressed bewilderment at the warning.

"We don't understand what Gazprom means. We don't understand where (the sum) came from," spokesman Oleksy Fyodorov told AFP. "We hope that by tomorrow, at least, we'll understand what they're talking about and define our position."

There had been threats circulating that Russia would sharply raise gas prices if a pro-Western government was elected. One presumes that they now know that their favored party did not win.

The Biofuel Slaves

Brazil is spoken of in glowing terms by the alternative fuels true believers. Brazil, they say, has achieved a "stunning success" with its aggressive ethanol program. Democratic Senators in the United States have demanded more ethanol production in the US. Maybe it would be useful to look at Brazil a bit more closely.

BATATAIS, BRAZIL — As dawn cracks over seemingly endless fields of sugar cane, a ragged army of men and women sharpen their machetes to harvest the raw material for Brazil's "white gold."

The cane cutters gather five 8-foot stalks in the crook of one arm, bend over and cut them down with three swift machete whacks, a process they will repeat over and over again for as long as 12 hours a day.

"By the end of the day your entire body hurts so much you think you are going to die," cane cutter Raimundo Gomes da Silva said. "But it is all we know how to do, so we will continue doing the same thing, day after day, until we drop dead."

The pioneering use of sugar cane-based ethanol, which fuels about 30 percent of the nation's autos, has made Brazil a global leader in alternative energy.

Getting less attention is the squalid labor conditions of nearly half a million people who toil in the fields six days a week to supply the cane to the nation and a growing export market.

Some producers are getting quite rich. The workers, however, are living in appalling conditions. There are supposedly plans in the works to substitute machines for the human labor - which will have the downside of throwing all those people out of even that miserable existence. Some producers have been keeping workers in "debt slavery". But the government unti that tried to stop that sort of thing has been shut down.

The ministry has an elite unit dedicated to freeing workers from debt slavery.

But the unit shut down recently protesting "political interference" after lawmakers challenged its raid on Para Pastoril e Agricola, a leading ethanol producer. The raid in the northern state of Para it found more than 1,000 cutters working 13-hour days in what the unit said were slavelike conditions. The company has denied abusing workers. It was slapped with a $1.1 million fine and its directors charged with "submitting workers to conditions analogous to slavery."

The unit's shutdown leaves Brazil without an effective enforcement tool for cane-field conditions, the ministry said.

Yep. That's some stunning success. Add to that the destruction of the rainforest to clear more land for cane production and the practice of burning off the cane fields just before harvest to clear the undergrowth and kill some of the snakes and scorpions and the environmental benefits are not readily apparent.

The American ‘We’

Jonah Goldberg has a column up in the Los Angeles Times that examines the unspeakable in American culture - at least it is unspeakable to the media and political elite. That unspeakable aspect is the American 'We'.

I've come around to the view that the culture war can best be understood as a conflict between two different kinds of patriotism. On the one hand, there are people who believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from "progress." America is certainly an idea, but it is not merely an idea. It is also a nation with a culture as real as France's or Mexico's. That's where the other patriots come in; they think patriotism is about preserving Americanness.

Yet the strangest and most ironic aspect of our national culture is that we have an aversion to talking about a national culture. Samuel Huntington, one of the country's premier social scientists, has become something of a pariah for constantly reminding people (in books such as "The Clash of Civilizations" and "Who Are We?") that the United States is a nation, not just a government and a bunch of interest groups.

Many liberals hear talk of national culture and shout, "Nativist!" first and ask questions later, if at all. They believe it is a sign of their patriotism that they hold fast to the idea that we are a "nation of immigrants" — forgetting that we are also a nation of immigrants who became Americans.

As the host of the "Today" show in 2003, Couric said of the lost crew members of the space shuttle Columbia: "They were an airborne United Nations — men, women, an African American, an Indian woman, an Israeli. . . ." As my National Review colleague Mark Steyn noted, they weren't an airborne U.N., they were an airborne America. The "Indian woman" came to America in the 1980s, and, in about a decade's time, she was an astronaut. "There's no other country on Earth where you can do that," Steyn rightly noted.

Quite right. There is no other country where that is even possible. Goldberg points to Europe's (and the American left's) genuflection to multiculturalism as a large part of the problem. For that doctrine leads to a large unassimilated groups within a nation. America was once proudly referred to as a melting pot. That phrase is no longer popular with the media or political elite. Instead they look to a global "we' that may not really have any solutions, only more problems.

Forest Lump

In one of the more bizarre stories coming out of Britain lately, someone is leaving big stone heads on doorsteps all across northern England. These are well-carved, miniature replicas of the Easter Island heads, each one different and ranging in size up to 18 inches. Every one is accompanied with a card bearing the same riddle and nobody has a clue who is doing this or why.

As many as 20 artfully carved faces, miniature versions of the Easter Island sculptures, have been deposited in sleepy villages across northern England in recent weeks, leaving the recipients intrigued and confused in equal measure.

Each of the stone heads, some up to 18 inches high, is slightly different, but all of them have the same riddle attached, written on a thin blue card.

"Twinkle twinkle like a star, does love blaze less from afar?" it reads, with the word "paradox" written around the points of a star.

While a publicity stunt of some sort is suspected, not unlike the crop circle mysteries that obsessed the country a decade ago, there are no clues as to who may be leaving the heads around. Police, residents and recipients are all nonplussed.

"It appeared last Monday in the early hours of the morning," said Fiona Gould, the owner of the Forresters Arms Hotel in the village of Kilburn, North Yorkshire.

"I love it. We've nicknamed it Forest Lump. We've put him on the end of the bar and he gets a pat on the head before everyone goes to the races."

Valerie Hoyes, who runs the post office in the village of Braithwell, about 40 miles south of Kilburn, discovered hers back in August, but thought nothing of it. She didn't tell anyone until others came forward.

We suspect the aliens and figure there will be a live-action version of Shaun of the Dead happening any day now.

UPDATE: Sky News has a few pictures of the heads - and they look nothing like the Easter Island sculptures, so that initial report is flat wrong on that aspect. They are actually rather neat looking and rather well carved.

So far, 12 stone heads have appeared in Goathland and Kilburn, in North Yorkshire; four have been found in Arthington, near Leeds, West Yorkshire; and three in Braithwell, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

Each of the heads looks different but all feature the same carving - which appears to spell out the word "paradox" - and a note bearing the riddle: "Twinkle twinkle like a star does love blaze less from afar?"

Non-Proliferation?

The Opinion Journal takes a look at the long, strange trip negotiators have been on in dealing with North Korea. They do not like what they are seeing.

Granted, diplomacy requires some confidentiality, but transparency and verification are crucial to disarmament, especially when dealing with a regime like Kim Jong Il's. The February 13 six-party accord called for Pyongyang to deliver a comprehensive accounting of its nuclear program and arsenal within 60 days. We're still waiting.

Transparency is all the more essential given recent news reports about likely North Korean nuclear proliferation in Syria. Washington says the main goal of the six-party talks is to prevent proliferation, and North Korea promised to cease and desist. Yet Pyongyang seems to have been caught in the act in Syria only months after making that promise. The Israelis were worried enough to risk a confrontation with Syria by bombing the site, not to mention flying over Turkish air space. Notably, the Turks didn't object.

Syrian President Bashar Assad finally got around to confirming the air raid in an interview with the BBC yesterday, claiming the Israelis hit an "unused military building." North Korea had publicly denounced the bombing even before anyone had mentioned its involvement, and its chief nuclear negotiator last week referred to those who suspect a Pyongyang-Damascus connection as "lunatics." This is protesting a little too much.

President Bush dodged three questions on the issue two weeks ago, except to warn North Korea one more time not to proliferate, which sounds suspiciously like a confirmation. Meanwhile on September 21, the Washington Post quoted government sources as saying that "Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria."

Then there's the not-so-little matter of North Korea's continuing missile proliferation. Last week the State Department's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation announced new sanctions against a North Korean company for spreading missile technology. The company–Korean Mining and Development Corp., or Komid–is a long-time offender. The U.S. Treasury last year called it "Pyongyang's premier arms dealer and main exporter of goods and weapons related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons."

The State Department's quiet issuance of new sanctions is a troubling indicator. Especially since they were announced the day before the last round of talks kicked off. Given that North Korea has also missed every deadline for disclosure that they agreed to, there would appear to be a real problem. I've pointed out that unless there is meaningful verification and inspection that any agreement with North Korea is useless. The Opinion Journal is saying the same thing.