Martin World News

No offense, Bobby G., but I think I found a new symbol more appropriate to the type of people I usually report on...

Whaddya mean, it don't work this way?

ITEM:  When you keep switching between capitalism and communism, you get stuff like this- from the Phnom Penh Gazette:

Free-market competition turned into a market free-for-all in Phnom Penh’s Prampi Makara district on Friday.
According to police, two fruit vendors were arguing when one grabbed a cleaver and took a swing at the other.
He missed, but the intended victim grabbed the cleaver and allegedly hit his attacker in the head and arm, injuring the man’s nephew in the process.
Police apprehended the vendor, but could not offer a motive. Onlookers, however, said the two often vied for customers.



Me, I think we can safely blame it all on arugula.

ITEM:  A story on North Korean News- always a fount of fun stuff- talked about the "human rights racket" the US of A was running.  By this, as I learned, they didn't mean a racket in the "racketeering and corrupt activities" sense, but in the "making a lot of noise we don't want to listen to" sense.  In the midst of this, a couple of things cracked me up caught my eye.  The first:

Such frantic racket is aimed at tarnishing the image of the dignified DPRK at any cost and bringing down the ideology and social system chosen by the Korean people in the long run.


(DPRK standing for "Democratic People's Republic of Korea, of course.)

After downgrading US attempts to get human rights issues into the UN agenda as "such nonsense", they go on to this vivid description:

Great irony was that they let such riff-ruffs as so-called "defectors to the south" appear at UN Security Council and European Parliament in a bid to stir up an atmosphere of accusing the DPRK.
As far as those riff-ruffs the U.S. considered as "witnesses" are concerned, they are the criminals who fled after committing thrice cursed crimes against the country and its people. They are terrorists who stood up against the social system in the DPRK where the popular masses are leading a happy life as masters of the state and society.


Uh, yeah.  Moving on...


ITEM:  Headline from The Australian:

A MAN who attracted police attention after he scaled the outside of his inner-city Brisbane apartment block was found with a “brick’’ of cocaine in his unit, a court has heard.

Apparently our young brain surgeon, one Damian Noel Mayfield-Smith, 33,  climbed up the side of his own apartment building, into his own room.  When the police arrived to explain that this was an unsafe and illegal means of entry, they also discovered a half a kilo (aprox. 1 lb) brick of cocaine, as well as:
-an 11.5 g rock of coke;
- marijuana;
-scales;
- a taser concealed inside a torch;
-and stolen jewelry.

They also found a brick press and clip-seal bags- everything for the young cocaine entrepreneur save two things, apparently- a brain and a room key.


ITEM:  Another chapter in "You Think Your Congressman Is Bad", this one from Zimbabwe:

Mike Gava, Zanu PF’s Mhondoro Ngezi Member of Parliament, is being held in police custody after running amok at the Kadoma Hotel and Conference Centre on Thursday, firing a volley of bullets, before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend.
The Daily News is reliably informed that Gava was arrested after he fired three shots in the sky in the hotel casino following a heated altercation with his ex-girlfriend, only identified as Thandeka.
The legislator, who was said to be tipsy, reportedly met Thandeka at the hotel and started charging that she had refused to sire a child with him.
After getting a cold shoulder from the girl, the former youth leader allegedly used force, threatening Thandeka, verbally and physically abusing her.
Witnesses in the casino said there were attempts to restrain the lawmaker from assaulting and insulting the woman, but Gava allegedly pulled out his gun and fired three shots in the sky, causing pandemonium in the casino.
After causing havoc at the hotel, it is alleged Gava kidnapped Thandeka and drove to his farm in Kadoma, where she managed to escape.
 
The legislator is facing charges of discharging a gun in public and kidnapping.
 

About all you can say is "smart girl... unless she voted for him."


ITEM:  Yesterday, there was a story that a drunken passenger tried to hijack or make a terrorist strike aboard a Virgin Australia jet en route from Brisbane to Bali.  Truth of the matter is...

Matt Lockley told Bali police after his arrest that he banged on what he thought was the toilet door for a last-minute bathroom break before the Boeing 737-800 aircraft landed.
The door was actually the cockpit door and the pilot, Neil Thomas Cooper, responded by alerting Indonesian traffic controllers of a possible hijacking. Crew members then seized Lockley and handcuffed him.

But was he drunk?  No, just highly medicated:

After taking blood samples from Lockley, police said the Australian had taken several painkillers, including four Panadol and two Voltaren pills. Police initially had said Lockley was drunk.


Apparently as of Saturday, Lockley was still in police custody, as "He is depressed and needs to rest."


ITEM:  Like eating au fresco?  Not in this neighborhood in South Africa:

One Soshanguve resident got a rude surprise for lunch.
Koketso Mabunda of Soshanguve's Block M was enjoying lunch under a tree in his yard a loud explosion sent sewage spewing out of the ground - and onto his plate.
Mabunda - and his lunch - are the latest victims of blocked drains in the township about 25 kms north of Pretoria. He says these kinds of bursts happen often, and that he and his neighbours are tired of reporting the same thing all the time.
Residents say that block drains frequently send human waste, and used condoms and sanitary pads gushing out onto the ground - sometimes near the Tipfuxeni Primary and Tiyelelani Secondary schools.


And he is p.o.ed:

"Our health is in danger," Mabunda told OurHealth. "Imagine the consequences of eating human waste from your plate?
"The thing just spoiled my lunch," he added.


ITEM:  Gotta love animal stories, right?

First, I found a 2-year old story of three deer joining a horse race in Washington, PA. 

Race announcer Roger Huston didn't miss a beat. He began calling the race as it unfolded, saying things like: "As they race down the track, Bambi has the lead. Here comes Rudolph from the outside."

Huston declared Bambi the winner.

Next, in Barnaul, Siberia, a husky puppy was upset over being left in the car whilst daddy went into the Siberian version of Home Depot.  In his rampage, he managed to accidently hot-wire the car and drive it into a couple of parked cars.


An eyewitness who worked in a nearby store said: 'It was about 3 pm when the driver from the 2106 VAZ left a husky puppy inside the car. The puppy went mad and managed to pull the wires which led to the engine's ignition. 

'The car was parked on a small hill which helped it get going. The puppy was even steering the wheel, so that the car made a small semicircle and crashed into a parked Mercedes and then a SsangYong car.'

Onlookers said the normally stern traffic police 'were in stitches of laughter when they realised what had happened'.


'When (the owner) came he put all the blame on the puppy, much to the fury of the drivers of the Mercedes and Ssang Yong cars.'


Finally, another criminal dog was caught in Brampton, Cumbria (UK).  His crime?  On unattended morning walks, he went on a six month spree of biting the tires on cars parked along his way.

Caught by CCTV was a border collie named Jess.  Their young JD committed at least ten "tire-slashing", and the elderly couple have gone around and paid for the damage once their young vandal was arrested.


ITEM: An article I found a couple weeks ago pointed out "the 13 worst predictions from the first Earth Day" in 1970.  Among them:

- According to Harvard biologist George Wald, we ceased to exist no later than 2000.
- Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich (author of The Population Bomb, 1968, and several of these lovely prophecies) said between 1 to 2 billion people should have starved to death by 1980.
- "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." - North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

- By 1980 we would have to wear gas masks, outside, and by 1985, sunlight would be cut by one-half, according to Life Magazine.

-Ecologist Kenneth Watt said we ran out of gas 14 years ago.

- And Watt one more time:

 "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." 


Of course, current PC science tells us that the temps have actually went UP about 0.6 C (around one degree F.)  Thank God for global warming, eh?

ITEM THE LAST:  In a matter of great concern to this blog, Spanish forensic scientists are going to try to find the lost body of Author Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, who wrote Don Quixote- without which this blog wouldn't have a name.  The author, who died penniless in 1616, is allegedly buried in a pauper's grave at the Convent of the Trinitarians in Madrid.  The team is going to use satellite tech to scan the grounds for the gravesite.  The supposedly-teetering-on-the-edge-of-bankruptcy government will be forking over in excess of $100,000 for the search.  There seems to be no real motive for the search, which makes it a perfect candidate for a government grant.

Mr. Magoo as Don Quixote, 1964.  He'll be playing Forensic scientist Jose Diego de la Vallencia in this remake.