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Operation Yellow Elephant To The White Courtesy Phone…

Hey Rummy, we’ve gotcha recruit shortfall sewn up…

Teen fight clubs proliferate in US

USA Today : ARLINGTON, Texas ? The video shows two bare-knuckle brawlers brutally punching each other until one slumps, beaten, to the ground. The fight doesn’t end there: The victor straddles the chest of his fallen opponent, firing rights and lefts into his face.

[…]

This middle-class community of 360,000 residents between Dallas and Fort Worth is the home of baseball’s Texas Rangers and the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park and the site of the Dallas Cowboys’ planned football stadium.

Sitting in his office on a hot Texas afternoon, Hawthorne shakes his head as he watches the two-hour Agg Townz 2 (slang for Arlington) video, featuring teens mostly from Arlington and the neighboring town of Mansfield punching, kicking and stomping each other.

Hawthorne points out that many fights on the tape take place in daylight on pleasant, tree-lined streets with brick homes and well-tended lawns. One fight turns into a mini-riot with dozens of teens rampaging through the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant. Another running brawl spills into a busy city street, where the fighters slam up against rolling cars.

In almost every fight, there are dozens of teens cheering on the pugilists or snapping pictures. Sometimes their schoolbooks are spread out on the lawns. In one scene, an adult holds the hands of a toddler who watches a fight as if it’s another street game. In another, teens watch the tape as entertainment at a party like a music video.

During the most gruesome footage, one falling fighter strikes his head on a sidewalk and is knocked unconscious. While the defenseless teen’s arms jerk spasmodically and his eyes stare upward, his opponent continues to belt him in the face. As the injured teen is dragged away, his head leaves a bloody smear on the curb.

Police here learned about fight clubs after Kevin Walker, 16, was jumped and kicked in the head outside his grandmother’s house March 11, suffering a brain hemorrhage and other injuries. Arlington police arrested the producer of the Agg Townz series, Arlington resident Michael G. Jackson, 18, and five of his friends, ages 14-19.

Hawthorne says the group would pay teens a few bucks to fight, or attack other youths, then film the violence with video or cellphone cameras. Jackson edited the footage, set it to rap and sold two volumes through his own website for $15-$20 each. The footage of the Walker attack (seized by cops as evidence and never released) was part of a third volume Jackson was working on when he was arrested, Hawthorne says.

[…]

… and we wonder why the US is the way it is. Send the entitled, spoiled little Bible-belt fuckers to Iraq, and let’s see how brave they are then. Perhaps they could draft these little shits too.

Nepotism, Entitlement and Genocide, Oh My

Mummy bear, Daddy bear and Baby bear:

+ =

Jonathan Shwartz at A Tiny Revolution shines a light on the unsavoury stew of neoconnery that is the Podhoretz family:

A Sweet Family

I had to take a couple of days off to put down an attempted mutiny by my brain. But I see that during my absence, this recent column by John “I Give Nepotism A Bad Name” Podhoretz has been widely celebrated:

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

Among those finding this noteworthy were Tristero, Matthew Yglesias, Mark Kleinman, and Gregory Djerejian. They all seem to think genocide is a bad thing.

I’m not really in a position to criticize here, given the massive bloodshed that was required to quell my own mental insurgency. But I do think it’s worth recalling something related.

John Podhoretz is the son of Midge Decter. Back in May, 2004, Decter frankly explained the real reason we attacked Iraq:

“We’re not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We’re there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil.”

So there you have it, straight from the world’s most appealing family: we invaded Iraq for the oil, but we may have made a mistake by not killing millions when we got there.

BONUS: Decter’s daughter is married to Elliot Abrams, making him John Podhoretz’s brother-in-law. Abrams, now on the National Security Council, pleaded guilty to misleading Congress over Iran-Contra. He also tried to cover-up the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, in which 900 men, women and children were slaughtered.

I imagine big family occasions with this merry clan are really something.

“Has the caterer gotten here yet?”

“No. Let’s drop napalm on his town and then move house to house, shooting any survivors.”

“Sounds good! What about the band? Are they going to play standards, or more contemporary stuff?”

“I don’t know. Let’s pay a proxy army to rape and murder all the women and then go on a bloody rampage, killing thousands more.”

Imagine the pillow-talk between Midge and Norm – “Let’s do some blue pills and watch the Guatemala videos…” Ewww.

Podhoretz pics from the excellent PNAC compendium The Real Axis of Evil

Chase Me Ladies, But Do it Aerobically

I’ve been scouring the internets all morning on your behalf for pearls of wisdom and gems of lapidary prose (hey, don’t I recognise a phrase there?), and while there are many such, it’s all just too bloody depressing.

The Middle East is in flames, we’re teetering on the verge of a 30’s style world economic depression, the neofascists are in the ascendent worldwide – but there’s always the best named blog evah to cheer us up:

WE CAME HERE TO LEARN ENGLISH, NOT PRANCE AROUND LIKE A BUNCH OF KANSAS CITY FAGGOTS

If you showed this to an ordinary person he would say, “What, in the name of Beelzebub…?” But show it to an English teacher and he would say, “Ah yes. The audio-lingual method.”

This kind of nonsense is completely standard in the TEFL racket.

Almost as funny as the video itself was watching Martin laugh so hard he nearly fell off his chair.

Bwahahhahahah.

You Do The Maths

This:

Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

Published: February 4, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 ? The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.

The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback, said KBR would build the centers only in an emergency like the one when thousands of Cubans floated on rafts to the United States. She emphasized that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise.

“It’s the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration,” Ms. Zuieback said.

A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.

Plus this

Bush submits new terror detainee bill
By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 28, 6:53 PM ET

WASHINGTON – U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

A 32-page draft measure is intended to authorize the Pentagon’s tribunal system, established shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks to detain and prosecute detainees captured in the war on terror. The tribunal system was thrown out last month by the Supreme Court.

Administration officials, who declined to comment on the draft, said the proposal was still under discussion and no final decisions had been made.

…equals – what exactly? Bill O’Reilly thinks he knows.

Says It all, Really

Last pic of the day, I promise, but it’s a good one, from Tennessee Guerilla Women: