And then, sometimes they just write themselves.

Baseball, moreso than any other sport, is predicated on, and ruled by, superstition. One of the stubbornest and most hallowed of all traditions is the firing of managers and coaches for the failed execution of coddled, spoiled and usually overrated and overpaid ballplayers.

Terry "Tito" Francona, the greatest manager in Red Sox history, was just shitcanned minutes ago by the Red Sox front office. Of course, the official line was that Francona wasn't shitcanned but that his options for the 2012 and 2013 seasons simply will not be picked up. But that's a distinction about as meaningful as refusing to throw a life-preserver to a drowning man versus throwing him an anchor. The John Henry Group, which hardly has a better track record than the Yawkey trust before it, simply housed the anchor and refused to throw Francona, a guy who brought home two pennants, two World Series and a division title to New England, a life preserver. No doubt, it came as a shock to Francona, who less than a week ago, publicly said he wasn't worried about his job status. Instead of nearly nine million in salary, Tito will get a check for just $750,000 and a hard pat on the back through the doorway.

Like Grady Little before him, Francona was essentially fired for one bad inning that capped off a month full of heartbreaking innings. But, unlike Little, who was obviously fired by the Henry Group for his disastrous decision to stick with his starter Pedro Martinez in the 2003 ALCS against the Yankees, Francona was fired for going with his usually trusted closer, Jonathan Papelbon, a decision that even a high school coach would make in a one run game with the postseason on the line. If your closer is available, you use him.

The Great Baseball Gods are still out on whether Little deserved to be fired the minute Jorge Posada hit that game-tying bloop double. But Francona's own so-called transgression, a decision that is logical according to conventional baseball wisdom, earned him a soft kick in the ass that can immediately be cited as a travesty of that selfsame wisdom.

The numbers speak for themselves: In his eight years at the helm of the Red Sox, Francona got us into five postseasons. In those five years, we won two World Series, going 8-0 in WS play. About the only thing Francona didn't do was win back-to-back World Series, a claim to which only Bill "Rough" Carrigan can lay claim (1915-1916 and Carrigan had to be talked out of retirement prior to the 1916 season). No other Red Sox manager ever won two and most never even got us into the postseason.

But we'd also finished in 3rd place in back-to-back years. And that, especially in a title-hungry town like Boston, doesn't get many contract extensions. But how much of that can be blamed on Francona?

As recently as August 22nd, after being in first place for roughly half the year, the Sox were just a half a game behind the Yankees and 7.5 up on Tampa Bay, their Rays logo looking like a guppy in our rear view mirror. By September 3rd, their lead stretched to 9 over Tampa Bay. Was that a pollywog in the rear view?

By the 29th, the Red Sox pitching staff had posted an ERA of 5.69 for the month while the team (led by Ellsbury, Scutaro and Pedroia), amazingly, maintained in September their season team average of .280, second-best in the league.

True, there was a lack of clutch hitting in the late innings. Yet considering that the Red Sox were blown out quite a few times this month, that points to a failure of the Red Sox rotation and bullpen. Papelbon became a circus act in the last week and his setup man, Daniel Bard, was a nightmare most of the month. Lester, Lackey and Beckett, the three Big Men of the rotation, became three of the worst starters in MLB. Tim Wakefield, after seven tries, barely got his 200th career win thanks to an 18 run blowout in which he still gave up five runs on six hits. Buchholz hadn't thrown in a game since June 19th and Tommy John candidate Dice-K was a lost cause right out of Fort Meyers.

Plainly, with a team still scoring 5.4 runs a game this month, a full run higher than the league average, it was the pitching. It was always the pitching.

You can be forgiven for casting an hostile sidelong glance at Curt Young, rookie pitching coach at Four Yawkey Way but that, too, involves a slippery slope. With what was essentially the same rotation as last year, one that also landed us in the 3 hole in the division standings, Curt Young certainly didn't do any worse than his predecessor, Toronto manager John Farrell.

But it makes Francona's ouster even more mysterious and certainly doesn't pass the smell test. Short of cloning or resurrecting Bill Carrigan or kidnapping Joe Torre out of the Commissioner's Office, who else that's available does the John Henry Group think can do a better job managing this team than a guy who'd brought home two World Series trophies in four years and got us into the postseason five of eight times?

This will just prove to be the latest in a series of dynasty-destroying disasters that will prove more costly than not signing Pudge Fisk after 1980 (who responded by slugging 214 of his 376 home runs for the White Sox), trading Bill Lee to Montreal for Stan Papi during the 78-79 offseason (Lee responded by winning 16 games for the Expos that year, posting a 3.04 ERA), releasing Roger Clemens (who responded by winning back to back Cy Youngs for the other Canadian team, the Blue Jays), letting Wade Boggs go (who responded with the first of four consecutive .300+ seasons for the hated Yankees) and, of course, selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

And don't even get me started on Theo Epstein trading two time batting champ Nomar Garciaparra, while he was hitting .321, for three nonentities who were gone when Edgar Renteria got thrown out by Keith Foulk in Game 4 of the '04 World Series. And don't you even dare mention in my presence Boston's shameful history of racism-by-exclusion (they were not only the last MLB team to integrate in 1959 but the Bruins even beat them to it in 1958).

Francona's numbers speak for themselves. He's the only manager in this and the previous decade to win two World Series titles. In his eight years as skipper, the Red Sox had won 744 games and lost 552 for a winning percentage of .574. Maybe not an eye-popping stat in and of itself but you can't ignore those two World Series trophies.

And the inarticulate and non-charismatic executives of the John Henry Group, which essentially destroyed the Marlins franchise right after they won their first World Series in 1997, think they have bigger and better options out there. They think in their executive wisdom that firing a manager who was a former player and had the loyalty, devotion and, yes, even the love of his guys is going to somehow stabilize a clubhouse already roiled by the most heart-breaking collapse in 34 seasons.

Good luck with that, John Henry. And good luck trying to extend that sellout streak next year when the Red Sox continue to loiter in the middle of the division pack. You've lost my loyalty.

This past week King Abdullah, the leader of Saudi Arabia, allowed women to vote in municipal elections starting in 2015 and recently overturned a court's ruling to lash a Saudi woman ten times for driving. But these advances in women's rights in the oil-rich nation weren't the only ones that had occurred. What other victories have Saudi Arabian women won of late?

10) A Saudi woman can now walk freely without a male relative provided they are with Tony Shaloub.

9) Wives now protected from domestic abuse under animal cruelty laws.

8) Women can now run for Advisory Council positions with the provision that every time the council convenes they must sit on the face of at least one male member of the Royal Family.

7) Black tweed and wool burqas can now be replaced in the summer months with charcoal gray cotton burqas.

6) No longer mandatory that Saudi female infants be born with hijabs.

5) No longer mandatory that Saudi women be immediately immolated with a blowtorch for speaking Gloria Steinem's name but it is still optional.

4) Saudi rape victims can no longer be whipped or executed for being victimized but they must promise to never again arouse the male libido with suggestive burqas.

3) Saudi women to be issued driver's licenses in 2014 but are restricted to bumper cars.

2) Wives and daughters no longer forced to eat with female camels in the barn.

1) Women now allowed to menstruate 12 times a year instead of five.

ASHTON DIVORCE TWEET?: What's an A-list celebrity do during a divorce? Take to twitter! Ashton Kutcher had a message for his Twitter followers: "Don't believe the hype." He Tweeted a link to a public enemy song of that name yesterday and said you shouldn't assume you know- quote- "that which you know nothing" about. 

This comes after Demi Moore decided to end their six year marriage because of Ashton's alleged escapades with other women.

HOLLY MADISON BREASTS INSURED: Reality star Holly Madison is doing what's in her "breast" interest. Madison told People magazine that she recently insured her breasts for $1 million. 

The 31- year- old says it's to protect herself while she's on Vegas shows such as peepshow. Other stars who reportedly insure their best assets include Jennifer Lopez with a $27-million protection on her rear and Heidi Klum with $2.2 million in insurance on her legs.

It's time to face the music. Newark-- the final stop for "The X Factor" auditions. "Stereo Hogzz" impressed the judges enough to move on to the next round. Now, now the real fun is going to begin. 

The judges have finally sifted through the talent pool and came up with a great crop of competitors. Next week, get ready to see "The X Factor's" boot camp where there will be more talent and even more drama. You can catch "The X Fctor" Wednesday at 8 p.m. on FOX 5.

  

http://currentsnews2011.blogspot.com/

If NJ Governor Chris Christie ever decides to stop the Sarah Palin political cock-teasing and throw his Mickey Mouse cap in the ring, I have the perfect idea for his campaign song: Denis Leary's, "I'm an Asshole."

Christie's speech a couple of nights ago at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, reverently covered by Roger Ailes' propaganda arm for the GOP Fox News, set the Twitterverse in flames or convulsed it in laughter, depending on your political stripe. It was full of sound and subdued fury, signifying nothing but this message: "I am not running." Oh, that and Reagan smashing PATCO was a good thing.

It's real easy to think of Chris Christie as an unfunny version of Ralph Kramden with Tourette Syndrome. He's become, in the perennially-fixed Republican hub of the political universe, this general election cycle's Fred Thompson. Thompson, you may remember, made people like Chris Matthews swoon just imagining the smell of Aqua Velva wafting from his neck wattles. Thompson provided a wrinkled but glittering Hollywood backdrop to a field of Republican pretenders who were hardly more palatable then than they are now. He was like some still virile, grandfatherly type who lived next door, the Clint Eastwood character in Gran Torino that the bored, desperate housewives on the block wanted but couldn't have.

Then Fred finally lurched into their bedrooms and fell asleep during the act of love and the fantasy was over.

But it may be too much of an oversimplification to look at Christie as 2012's answer to Fred Thompson, a man who nearly pulled Lunesta from every pharmacy the night he announced his candidacy on the Jay Leno show. Christie, in a literally and figuratively larger than life way, is more dynamic to Republicans than Thompson ever was on or off the silver screen.

Christie, for some as yet maddeningly elusive reason, has the ability or talent to basically tell people to go fuck themselves and to then brag about it by having his staffers post the results on Youtube. For most politicians (and yes, I'm looking in your direction, George Allen), these videos would be deal-breakers. But Christie is the Teflon Governor and no insult that he deals to public schoolteachers, their union or anyone else that gives him attitude ever sticks to him.

Maybe it's his James Gandolfini arrogance, his ability to warm the cockles of the Republican heart everyone who wistfully thinks of Tony Soprano, America's most beloved mass murderer. Perhaps they live vicariously through Christie's ability to tell his critics to go to hell when they challenge his most absurd pronouncements.

Short of comedians, the world's other class of people who get paid handsomely to be laughed at, no one likes to be laughed at while they're speaking. Christie views it as a sign of disrespect but what seems to elude him is that perhaps his critics laugh at him while he's speaking because they simply can't help themselves.

After all, this is the same guy who took a helicopter to his son's baseball game then drove in a limousine for the 100 yards between the chopper and the diamond. This is a guy who hobnobbed with Mickey and Minnie while his state was buried in snow. This is a guy who called teacher's unions "thugs".

And Christie's very hypothetical appeal to the Republican base, if anything, underscores the dissatisfaction that Republican voters feel with the current crop of psychopaths, some of them holdovers from the last crop of psychopaths (Romney, Santorum, Paul).

And, to anyone with even semi-functional synapses, Republicans swooning over Christie while daydreaming that he may be a plus-sized Reagan is itself worth guffawing over.

Scott McCartney’s story in today’s Wall Street Journal makes some excellent points about the special challenges of saving lives in aviation catastrophes.

First of all, let’s set aside the myth that an aviation accident  =  everybody dead. It’s not the case though it leads some people adopt the fatalistic and passive view that if anything goes wrong there’s little they can do about it.

But at a hangar at London’s Heathrow Airport, British Airways is giving select passengers a dare-I-say crash course in accident survivability. It’s a one-day class offered for the frequent-flying employees of companies who are customers of BA. Scott writes that the airline is considering whether to offer the training to the public for a fee or in exchange for frequent flier miles.

I’ll admit on first reading I was perturbed by Andy Clubb, the flight attendant who runs the class, who told Scott, "We teach people to react faster than anyone else so they are in the aisle first and down the slide first," but Clubb goes on to explain that when a confident passenger demonstrates the correct way to respond, others will follow.

Passengers as exemplars is a fabulous idea, a safety spin on the lesson of United Airlines flight 93 that once the door to the plane is closed the folks inside are a self-contained and necessarily self-sufficient community. In a crisis, survival depends on how well the community works as a whole.  

Evacuating a 777 is a little frightening

The last time I traveled by air, I sat at the over wing exit row and when the flight attendant asked me if I was willing to handle the door in an emergency, I answered confidently that I was. After all, I’d just spent a week in flight attendant training at Emirates reporting a story for The New York Times. Can I remove the door if required? Yes, indeed. (I could even sell duty free perfume if push came to shove.)

What’s a tad bit troubling is that British Airways is considering charging tuition of $220 for the school. If better safety on the plane becomes another source of ancillary revenue like better service at the airport  well, that would be wrong.

A crazed rugby fan in Air New Zealand's safety briefing

Passengers deserve some of the blame for being blasé about safety, but with a few exceptions such as Air New Zealand, Southwest and Cebu Pacific  (see their videos below) the airlines have done little to make the safety briefing relevant or interesting to passengers. For the most part, their flight attendants are up there droning on and on - boring us to death with information that could save our lives. 

So my proposal is this; how about all the airlines join BA in this innovative new program and invite their most frequent travelers to take a safety course for free? Then, in return, and "in the unlikely event of an emergency" these trained passengers would follow instructions text-book style and show the rest of us how its done.

Behold a real closer.

That's the late Dick Radatz, the first great closer in MLB, the kind of guy you'd feel comfortable putting into a bases loaded, no out situation against the Yankees with Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris on deck. The kind of guy who was so cocksure of himself he'd say to the starter on the mound, "Pop open a cold one for me. I'll be right back."

Then he'd do it. And if you needed him to pitch three or more innings for a rulebook save, you'd get it. Radatz would routinely pitch anywhere from 120-160 innings a year and would rack up more strikeouts than most starters nowadays get in 32-36 starts. And "the Monster" didn't demand through his agent $12,000,000 a year to do it, either.

There was no choking as with the pretender on the mound in Baltimore last night, one who reminded us that sometimes curses aren't broken, after all, but just temporarily diverted.


You know, this John Lithgow-looking loser who time and again toward crunch time couldn't keep a lead against some of the worst teams the major leagues had to offer.

And, thanks largely to Jonathan Papelbon, it was just like old times again and Pap joined the ghosts of Denny Galehouse, Jim Burton, Mike Torrez, Bob Stanley, Calvin Schiraldi, Tim Wakefield, and, yes, even the great Pedro Martinez.

They couldn't just let us walk away and write them off when they began the most titanic September slide since the '64 Phillies or the '78 Red Sox. No, they had to lead us on just long enough by barely coaxing out an 8-7 win the night before from a roster creaking with injuries, incipient old age and inexperience. It was a teaser of a team so close to falling apart, our little center fielder and leadoff hitter had to come to the rescue again and our backstop was a guy who'd never had a major league start at that position because our everyday and backup catchers were sidelined with injuries.

Papelbon almost blew that save, as well, but managed to keep the tying run from scoring and the romance was alive for another day, a pathological wallflower bereft of all social graces trying to crash the hall to become the belle of the ball.

And then, the inevitable happened. The champagne was ordered, we began filling out our dance cards and the Boston City Police Department was eagerly loading their guns in the interests of crowd control.

To add more of a Three Penny Opera dimension to this spectacle, the Red Sox depended on the division champion New York Yankees, who had zero incentive to win their last game of the year and essentially fielded a team made up almost entirely of Trenton and Columbus minor leaguers who couldn't even hit Karen Carpenter's weight let alone their own, to get us into the postseason.

A Mark Texeira grand slam in the early innings at the Trop made it 5-0 Yankees and when the lead went to 7-0 with the Sox ahead 3-2 against a last place team playing for naught but some misplaced pride, it looked as if we wouldn't have to go to Tampa Bay, after all. Either Michigan or Texas it was. Either way, no way would we be going home. We were going on a postseason-long honeymoon.

And then Papelbon happened and, suddenly, after being in first place half the year, we finished third.

Just his third blown save of the year, it couldn't've come at a worse time. And this past September, Papelbon and much of the pitching staff pitched as if they hated their fans and took sadistic enjoyment out of tormenting us as had their forbears in seasons past. Even Pap's reliable setup guy, Dan Bard, began training his 101 mph flamethrower on the Red Sox dugout. Maybe someone should call the DC police to see if his best friend disappeared again.

As the old saying goes, "The sons of bitches killed our fathers, now they're coming after us." Go buy a poster of Dick Radatz in between basilisk stares and Irish jigs, Johnny boy, hang it up in a prominent place in your home, study it long and hard, try to derive some inspiration from looking at a real closer who did the job when it counted the most.

Amazing appeared bizarre about the emails Christopher Ryan Smith was sending while on holidays in Africa pervious year. The 32-year-old traveler's talkative tone was subdued and replies were unexpectedly abrupt.

"The emails were small and cute," said Jim Amormino, an Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman. "They were only too generic."

The cause Smith didn't look like he is because it wasn't him. Officials say Smith not at all went to Africa, but had been killed in his Southern California office by his business colleague Edward Younghoon Shin, who seized Smith's email account and imitated he'd gone overseas.

Shin's allegation has been postponed awaiting Oct. 21 at the request of the defense.

Messages began arriving soon after Smith was last seen in June 2010. In one, he was sand embarking on South African dunes. In another, he was paragliding closed to Johannesburg.

Officials say Shin, 33, kept up the dishonesty pending the last message arrived in December.

"The last one said he was going to the Congo," Amormino said. "I suppose (Shin's) consideration procedure was the Congo was hazardous and something must have taken place to him there."

Smith and Shin had gone into business several year ago, establishing a firm namely The 800Xchange, an "advertising agency that intentions on superior-quality radio campaigns," according to Shin's now-defunct Twitter account.

Shin had a shady business earlier and had been criminal of fraud and ordered to pay $700,000 in compensation, officials said. When Smith revealed about this and a numerous of complaints his colleague was facing, he wanted out.

The two men discussed a takeover where Shin would give Smith about $1 million for his attention in the company.

But "on contrary paying Mr. Smith $1 million, he killed him in his company’s office," Amormino said.

Shin's attorney, Al Stokke, denied to remark. A number listed for Shin's wife showed to have been disengaged.

At last, Smith's family grew doubts and appointed a personal investigator, who evaluated with U.S. embassies in many African countries quoted in the emails and battered the worldwide press for signs of the missing American.

In April, domestic police took a lost person's report and the sheriff's department took over an inquiry on Aug. 17.

Prosecutors went to a business park in San Juan Capistrano, a picturesque community in Orange County where Shin and Smith had located their business. Although their previous office had been efficiently cleaned and renovated, detectives found traces of blood in the carpet. They utilized DNA testing to verify it was Smith's.

After placing Shin under inspection for many days, prosecutors detained him Aug. 28 at Los Angeles International Airport as he was about to leave on a flight to Canada. Prosecutors did not say if it was on a one-way or round-trip ticket.

Following a six-hour interview, Shin owned up to the murdering, though he did not say what he had made with Smith's body, authorities said.

On Aug. 29, homicide prosecutors captured another man, Kenny Roy Kraft, 34, on doubts of being an accessory after the reality and helping dispose of Smith's belongings. The victim's Range Rover was finally found in San Jose.

http://currentsnews2011.blogspot.com/ 

Scarlett Johansson has spoken out for the first time over the undressed pictures that were disclosed online, calling the raid at her personal life "unfair".

The FBI are presently prosecuting complaints of computer hacking, following the disclosed of nude images of celebrities.

In an interview with CNN, Johansson said superstars are no dissimilar to anybody else when it comes to solitude.

"Only due to you're an artist... doesn't mean you're not allowed to your have individual privacy," she said.

"If that personal life is hijacked in some way, it suffers unjust. It feels false," Johansson told US broadcaster CNN.

Quoting to her life in the limelight, the Bafta-winning celebrity said: "I think there are definite examples where you give a lot of yourself and ultimately you have to sort of put your foot down'."

The actress, last watched on the big screen in Iron Man 2, made her first communal manifestation since the photos were revealed last weekend, at Milan Fashion Week.

One leaked picture presented to show Johansson, 26, topless on a bed, while another actually shows her wearing a towel while enlightening her bottom.

The photos, in fact taken by the actress, follow the leaking of nude images of other superstars including Jessica Alba.

Hacked pictures of Justin Timberlake and his Friends With Benefits co-star Mila Kunis have also showed online, according to reports.

Previous this month, Johansson's lawyer dispatched letters out to all the websites that had posted the pictures within hours of them appearing, intimidating legal action.

The images have since been taken down by most channels.

The FBI said it was prosecuting "the individual or groups accountable for a numbers of computer impositions involving glamorous personalities".

 http://currentsnews2011.blogspot.com/

"The number of deaths linked to Colorado-grown cantaloupes keeps climbing, and it soon could become the second-deadliest U.S. outbreak of a food-borne illness," The Denver Post reports.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Post says, "13 deaths have now been confirmed, and three more deaths — in New Mexico, Wyoming and Kansas — soon could be confirmed as listeria-caused. ... The worst recorded listeria outbreak in the U.S. was in 1985, when 52 people died after eating tainted cheese."

The CDC previously reported that the outbreak has been traced to "Rocky Ford Cantaloupe shipped by Jensen Farms." It added that "Jensen Farms is voluntarily recalling Rocky Ford Cantaloupe shipped from July 29 through September 10, 2011, and distributed to at least 17 states with possible further distribution."

The company says that "the whole cantaloupes have a green and white sticker that reads: 'Product of USA- Frontera Produce-Colorado Fresh-Rocky Ford- Cantaloupe' or a gray, yellow, and green sticker that reads: 'Jensen Farms-Sweet Rocky Fords.' If the whole cantaloupe is unlabeled, please contact your retail store for sourcing information. Jensen Farms is requesting any consumer that may have one of these cantaloupes to please destroy the products."

One of the problems with listeria, as NPR's Paul Brown reports for our Newscast desk, is that "symptoms including diarrhea and fever may not show up for days or even weeks after the food has been eaten."

Paul adds that the CDC says listeria is more dangerous than other better-known food-borne diseases such as E. coli and poses a threat in particular to the elderly, very young and people with compromised immune systems.

It's important, officials say, to wash produce completely — before cutting it up — because a knife blade can transfer the bacteria from the surface to the flesh.

The CDC has more information about listeria posted here. It writes that other symptoms include fever and muscle aches.

http://currentsnews2011.blogspot.com/ 

The High Court decided the woman go-ahead to take legal action against the site.

A Country Antrim woman whose personal pictures showed on a website for prostitutes has got legal authorization to file a case its US operators. 

A barrister for the woman, who cannot be recognized, submitted a writ claiming destroys for the abuse of photos taken by a former-colleague.

The case is very uncommon in that the defendant is working in Belize - outside the UK court's control.

However, the woman's lawyers obtained authorization to issue the court order.

The woman is saying that the firm is accountable of vilification and hateful falsehood against her.

Her solicitor, Hilary Carmichael, said: "She is claiming that she never agreed to the publication of her personal pictures. She got in touch the website when she thought that her pictures were on it and called for that the material be eliminated.

"But they still remained on the website. On the website, the claimant is represented as a prostitute and/or a sex worker and we are stating that the defendant has earned as a result of the posting to which our customer did not give permission."

The pictures had been taken by a former-associate during the time that they were dating. The woman never permitted to the photographs being shown by anybody else other than her colleagues.

"They were published unkindly by her ex-partner. The applicant reported the mishap to the police who told her there was not much they could do," said Ms Carmichael.

She said the photos had caused her customer "extensive worries" and the reality that the firm had ignored her asks to take down the photos had added to her pain.

"We are saying that there is a very good debatable case," she said.

"In the event that the photos are not eliminated, now that the writ has been given out, we have the right to pursued in the next coming days to hunt for an injunction enforcing the defendant to maker definite the pictures are eliminated and forcing a responsibility on the defendant to begin observing this kind of site."

The woman's barrister Peter Girvan said his customer was left thinking distressed at being falsely linked with the vice trade.

According to the court documents, four images of the woman shown on the site.

The writ also unveiled that a fight of harassment which led to her leaving her hometown and moving into a shelter may be linked to the unofficial publication.

Mr. Girvan is now set to issue injunction takings place in an offer to have the images taken down. He has also safe an order to protect the ambiguity of his client and any utilization of the photographs.

As part of a largest lawsuit, the woman is in search of destructions for the violation of personal details and being falsely portrayed as a prostitute.

Her case has been advanced by the High Court granting leave to serve proceedings out of jurisdiction on a defendant with a listed address in New York.

The murder prosecution of the doctor blamed of assassinating the singer initiated yesterday to awful sights and sounds

Michael Jackson’s private doctor Conrad Murray is in court charged of murdering the 50-year-old singer. It is said he gave him an overdose of the sedative propofol.

The Los Angeles courtroom was the panorama of dreadful pictures and sounds yesterday as the prosecution started.

The jury was revealed an image of Jackson’s unmoving body. Afterward, they listened to a tape of the singer talking, sounding drugged up and indistinct.

The investigators say that Murray made prolonged phone calls to his girlfriend as Jackson put down for dying. They also utter that Jackson was agreed to pay Murray $96,000 a month.

David Walgren, Deputy district attorney said: "Conrad Murray neglected Michael when he required assistance.

"It was Conrad Murray's total carelessness, unprofessional hands and wishes to get this deal that led him to not only dispose of his patient, but to abandon all ethics of medical hospitality."

The disastrous singer’s family – including father Joseph, mother Katherine and chldrens Janet, La Toya, Tito, Randy and Jermaine - were in court to listen the trial lay out their case. Walgren added: You will find out that the duties and lapses of Michael Jackson's doctor straightforwardly led to his an early death. Michael Jackson's death was a murder. He believed his life to the expertise of Conrad Murray."

Murray had ordered huge quantities of the drug propofol in the weeks sooner than Jackson’s death. The drug is more commonly utilized as an anaesthetic in hospitals

Spectators told how in the days before his death Jackson they were worried about Jackson’s mental and physical health. The star was preparing for his biggest This Is It London shows.

The prosecution, planned to last six weeks, keeps on today.

http://currentsnews2011.blogspot.com/ 

Okay, I'm just a few years late in hearing about the otherwise famous Kyla Ebbert and her equally famous little-white-skirt both of which had a Southwest flight attendant hyperventilating back in 2007. Seems the lovely Hooters waitress -turned Playboy model was considered inapproprately dressed for her flight from San Diego to Tuscon and she was asked to change outfits or get off the plane. Well that was then.

Oh wait, is it now?



Yeah, in a bit of deja vu all over again, actress Leisha Hailey is whining about being asked to step off a flight out of Baltimore for engaging in some kissy-kissy with her girlfriend that some other passengers apparently found too-too much. That in itself wouldn't have sent the ladies packing. Leisha apparently matched the airline's purple and orange livery by letting loose with some colorful words of her own when a flight attendant told the couple to cool their jets, or Flight 2274 would be one jet the BFFs wouldn't be traveling on.

Change the name, change the problem, airlines telling passengers they can't fly seems to be cropping up on a near-weekly basis. It happens often on Southwest, but Delta, US Airways and Air Canada Jazz have had their moments too. And I'm wondering if the airlines are involved in a diabolically clever plot to keep us passengers off-guard.

If we don't know exactly what behavior or dress will get us asked to deplane prior to departure, will we all just start acting and dressing better when traveling by air?

At the risk of bringing up Pan Am the television show one more time, let me just suggest that in the not-too distant past, people didn't board airplanes wearing tee-shirts with the F-word emblazoned on them. They didn't reveal their underpants beneath teeny tiny skirts, or from above low-slung pants. Nor for that matter did people wear pajamas when they traveled, unless of course the traveler was pint-sized and the PJ's had feet and a snap crotch.

No, these choices are a product of the modern-age. Airlines, struggling to manage the sensibilities of an eclectic assortment of cultures, religions and orientations have a tough job trying to make sure no one is offended and too often it seems, they fail.

But air travelers, beware: To the question, "do we have a right to fly?" the answer seems to be "no".  In spite of the threats from the recently dis-boarded and their demands for apologies, airlines have a tightly constructed contract of carriage printed on every single airline ticket, which says, and I paraphrase here, behave yourself in a manner that will not disrupt your fellow passengers because on the airplane, the ultimate authority is the flight crew.

This week, Leisha Hailey is tweeting that her removal from the plane, along with her companion Camila Grey was "an outrage" and she's calling for a boycott of  Southwest. Homosexuals may be the newest but they're certainly not the last special interest group to ride the wave of publicity triggered by an involuntary departure from an airplane prior to push back.

The interest group I'd like to see start to agitate is the one demanding that everybody traveling by air board the plane, settle down, button up and pretend that we are in granny's parlor for the duration of the flight.

Rush Limbaugh says that Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll because he's "pedal to the metal conservative all the time." Rush went on to say Cain would be the first black president and that he wanted to rub his head to give him good luck.

The expression on the faces of these guests was illuminating. Varying from smug smiles, to fearful stares at the ground to unbridled anger mixed with fear. Mostly smug. Some amused. These are very rich people whose lives have been built on stepping on people. - Michaela, Let Freedom Rain

As I said in yesterday's post about the Vancouver Club, a swanky place for wealthy child molesters at which Dick Cheney spoke last night, I've been researching and drafting a novel about a global child abduction ring and a former Soviet/NYPD detective's attempts to take them down. I thought that, in this middle installment of this trilogy, I'd created some pretty horrible bad guys and set up a chilling scenario only based on historical fact.

But what I've been digging up on the Vancouver Club and the scumbags who protect them, including the highest levels of the Canadian government and judiciary, makes me feel as if I don't know anything, as if I'm relearning how to walk, speak and spell. Once again, imagination is trumped by real life. I have to rethink and reappraise everything I've come to expect from a world that creates such monsters. As cynical as I've been in my middle age, I now have to acknowledge that the world, especially Vancouver BC, is a much, much more evil place than we'd suspected. It's also more open about it.

If you want to know what I know, you can do worse than start with this nearly 5 year-old article in Canadian Dimension. It gives you the abstracts of the nightmare endured by Jack Cram and Renate Andres-Auger. Cram, you may remember from yesterday's article, is essentially Canada's answer to Susan Lindauer. Cram was once a respected barrister in the Vancouver area until he was dragged out of a courtroom while trying to present a case about the Vancouver Club and the complicity of the Vancouver Courts and Police Department. Cram was put in handcuffs, dragged down to the dungeon beneath the judge's bench and was prevented from presenting his case.

Also like Lindauer, Cram was jumped after giving a radio interview by ten Vancouver cops, repeatedly injected in a van with mind-distorting drugs and committed to the psychiatric ward of Vancouver General Hospital. That in itself immediately undermined Cram's once-sterling credibility. Later, Cram was disbarred for a year by the astoundingly and shockingly corrupt Law Society and could qualify for reinstatement only if he agreed to psychiatric counseling for that year. Renate Andres-Auger, the Cree attorney who'd hired Cram when her law practice was essentially destroyed by the Powers That Be in Vancouver, had faced similar treatment. Andres-Auger, obviously close to the indigenous population and knowing all too well about the abduction of native children, was the first Canadian attorney who'd first made the allegations regarding the connection between Vancouver's thriving child trafficking industry (they'd poach children from surrounding Indian schools) and the Vancouver Club.

To paraphrase Canadian Dimension, what Andres-Auger and Cram knew and were prepared to do obviously was going to hurt a lot of powerful people and they had to be stopped.

To those of you who think that Canada is some nice, bland, genteel country not given to violence, you're only partially right. Yesterday's protest at 915 Hastings Street featuring a surprisingly tiny police presence calmly looking at peaceful protesters without incident (in contrast to the travesty of law enforcement at the Occupy Wall Street encampment) would seem to bear that out.

But keep in mind this is also the very same Vancouver Police Department that engages to a shocking degree in something called "the hooker game." According to deposed witness Annie Parker, who called the police looking for protection from her abusive ex husband and wound up instead being victimized by that same VPD, one quarter of the city's police as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is in on "the hooker game" and the other 75% know about it yet do nothing. That number also includes the Mayor and the Chief of Police.

The first phase of "the hooker game", to them, is relatively harmless: It involves the abduction of women who are then injected with mind-altering drugs and hypnotic barbituates such as Scopalimine that incapacitate them and they're then raped and videotaped before being released. This brings to mind the footage filmed by Orwell's secret police in 1984 which is then recycled to the proles. What's most surprising is where these videos of rape and torture are filmed:

Soon after the assault of the witness by MICHAELSON in the spring of 2000, she was taken by MICHAELSON to one of the locations of the "hooker game": a "clubhouse" for policemen in either the penthouse of the Century Plaza Hotel or in the basement of the Hotel Georgia in downtown Vancouver. Witness claims that this clubhouse hosts a "pornographic film studio where woman are raped and tortured on film". MICHAELSON is described by the witness as "a pimp and drug dealer for all the Vancouver cops and their friends ... a lot of the dealing goes on at the clubhouse."

I haven't even gotten to phase two, which allegedly involves snuff films and body disposal sites. Two of the RCMP cops named in this second phase of "the hooker game" are or were members of a Missing Women's Task Force, thereby in a position to "investigate" the disappearances of the women they abduct.

If this sounds like hazy, drugged-fueled conspiracy theories, I ask you to judge for yourself whether or not the specificity is consistent with that of an unreliable witness:

12. Witness claims that both DAVE and STEVEN are also associated with BOUDRAIS and have raped and murdered women with him, including Brianne VOTH, age 19, who was abducted, raped and drowned in 2004 in Coquitlam by BOUDRAIS and STEVEN, in association with a prostitute named Stella MALLOWAY.

13. Witness was told by MICHAELSON that either DAVE or STEVEN own a cabin that serves as a body dumping site for women killed by them, BOUDRAIS and others. The cabin is located ten minutes' drive west of Horseshoe Bay on the Sea to Sky Highway, in a hunting camp off a dirt road. Bodies are dumped in a metal cistern at this site.

Aside from an exact address, this is about as specific as you can get.

If that sounds horrible, imagine being a small aboriginal child abducted from your safe, warm bed in your school in the middle of the night by men you don't know, smuggled through the back of a building (such as the Vancouver Club) in the dark where you're then molested by wealthy men.

Imagine never seeing your friends and loved ones ever again once you've served your usefulness.

Now imagine being a well-respected attorney who devotes his or her life to helping the downtrodden such as the indigenous native population victimized by crooked attorneys, land grabs by the Crown and children who are regularly poached in the middle of the night for the sexual gratification of the wealthy. Imagine trying to present your case through proper and legal channels, being ignored then abruptly handcuffed, thrown in a cell then kidnapped, tortured, drugged and committed, your career in tatters.

That is what openly goes on Canada, particularly Vancouver, British Columbia and all with the enormous resources of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Vancouver Police Department, the Law Society of Vancouver, the mayor, the chief and many other wealthy and powerful purveyors and defenders of violent porn and murder.

And now, Dick Cheney has already pimped his new book in the middle of all this, a man who in that very same book freely admitted to torturing people. I don't know about you folks but since last night, I've never been prouder to be an American.

David Walliams, the comic, is distressing from a fractured disc in his back after his current 140-mile charity swim along with the Thames.

After two weeks David Walliams finished his 140-mile swim along the Thames to collect more than £10 million for Sport Relief, the Little Britain actor carry on to pay the cost for it on account of his health.

He had to pull out of hosting a particular screening of UltraSuede: In Search of Halston, a film about the fashion designer which is directed by his friend Whitney Sudler-Smith, after his doctors advised him not to go away his hospital bed.

“He had a horrible back spasm,” Sudler-Smith told me at the after-party at Wyld at the W London hotel. “The innocent man can’t walk properly and is fixed in hospital.”

Sudler-Smith illustrated that Walliams’s wife, Lara Stone, had concerned for him since he ended his swim. Before Walliams start out on it, he had been given injections and a preventive course of antibiotics, but, due to severe rain, some 132 million gallons of raw dirt had go into the river over the last week.

By day three, Walliams was declining behind the program after becoming “very poorly” with a soar temperature, vomiting and diarrhea.

The 40-year-old actor and humorist artist said at the time: “This is by now very tough than I thought it would be, but this Thames stomach I’ve got is making the duty seem extremely difficult.”

Walliams has pointed out that he is improbable to be doing any more welfare swims. Yesterday his spokesman told: “He scratched one of his discs due to his swimming and is now out of hospital, but he is experiencing physio and has had to postpone some meetings.” 

 http://currentsnews2011.blogspot.com/

The wife of Joaquin Guzman, Mexico's most wanted drug magnate has given birth to twin girls at a hospital in the US.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Emma Coronel had her daughters at Antelope Valley Hospital in northern Los Angeles on 15 August.

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman is the chief of Mexico's most influential drug-trafficking gang, the Sinaloa cartel.

Ms. Coronel, an ex- beauty queen who holds US citizenship, come back to Mexico after the twins were born.

Due to born at California, the children will also have American nationality.

Birth certificates listed 22-year-old Ms Coronel as the mother of the girls, but the spaces for the father's name column were left infill, said the LA Times.

American law enforcement authorities, who pursued her movements even before she journeyed to the hospital in Lancaster in mid-July, said she was not detained because there were no allegations against her.

Ms Coronel is considered to be the third or fourth wife of Guzman, the 54-year-old of wealthiest person.

The couple wedded on her eighteenth birthday at a generous wedding in the uplands of central Mexico in 2007.

The American officials have located a $5m (£3.25m) bounty on Guzman's head, claiming that he and his cartel manage the largest part of cocaine and marijuana transferred into the US from Mexico and Colombia.

Guzman's call El Chapo means Shorty - he is about 5ft 6 in (1.67m) tall.

Guzman made Forbes magazine's list of the 67 World's Most Powerful People two years before. On the serial of 41, he was just lower Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

I don't know why we civilians don't wake up to the fact and realize that we vastly outnumber them.

By "them", of course, I'm referring to the donut-munching, fat fucks of the fascist NYPD who are doing a creditable impression of the basiji in the wake of the Iranian election of June 2009. And, while I understand the necessity of remaining peaceful, that tactic didn't exactly work for the Dodo bird and the NYPD counts on that.

Of course, it still doesn't stop them from making up the usual lies ("resisting arrest", "assaulting an officer", etc) when making arrests by the score. They're so desperate to justify arrests they've even begun citing an obscure 166 year-old law that, get this, bans masks in New York City, as if that's actually enforced on Halloween and New Year's Eve.

The fascist NYPD has even learned a thing or two from Goebbels and have started their own propaganda campaign in claiming the Occupy Wall Street protesters edited out their own illegal actions just prior to the now-infamous pepper-spraying of two woman. Well, here's video shot from a reverse angle and judge for yourself:


So much for that story.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are not occupying Wall Street any more than the rats and roaches on the streets of New York. If publicity was their aim, they've failed miserably. They were naive enough to think the corporately-driven mainstream media, which have lawyers tell it what it can and can't cover, would give them more than scant attention. The fat, pasty racists of the Tea Party are a sexier lead any day than a bunch of smelly hippies, don'cha know?

Often, when anyone deigns to cover the 9 day-old "occupation", they do so sneeringly, such as this Wall Street whore Julia La Roche, who prefers to focus more on the smell from some of the protesters and a couple of bare boobies rather than the actual reason for the protests (my comment got kicked to "the Bleachers" on Business Insider's worthless website but that's OK: I reproduced it in full on my Facebook page where it'll stay up forever).

So there's a lot of shame and blame to go around: The corporate mainstream media whose nightly telecasts are good only as night lights during fornication. The protesters, who are looking more and more like the defenseless airheads who got their brains smashed by other fascist cops in the 60's for protesting the Vietnam war. You're not occupying anything and no one is listening to you. Go to the Nexus Phase. Anonymous, you listening? Gentlemen, start your hacking.

And the cops?

Well, the cop mentality is timeless, eternal and is completely predicated on fascist paranoia and the scary knowledge that they are outnumbered. The cop mentality is also necessarily a low one because if they had any appreciable cranial capacity, they'd be Republicans on Capitol Hill. Cops are essentially so bereft of brains that they're insensible to the irony that the Wall Street they're protecting by macing innocent women has also looted their pension fund. Even Madison, Wisconsin police were smarter than their counterparts in the NYPD and stood with the protesters last winter even when their own collective bargaining rights weren't under threat (yet) from Scott Walker.

Nonviolence has its time and place but then sometimes it doesn't. We can all agree that John Brown was right and that blood and iron were what was called for to end slavery when he took over Harper's Ferry in 1859. Sometimes you have to get out and actually fight when you know you're dealing with an intractable enemy that would rather die than budge an inch and bring one more job to America, to fork over a extra ha'penny in taxes.

And I think it's time we finally justify that police paranoia.