Flannel Shirt

But what about Ken?

Apparently, some feminists are still not happy with Barbie.

Feminist activists were among several dozen people who demonstrated against the opening on Thursday of Europe’s first life-sized Barbie Dreamhouse, slamming it as a sexist cliche.

Just a few steps from Alexanderplatz, the main shopping district of east Berlin, the 2,500-square-metre (26,900-square-foot) attraction transports the young visitor to a pink-hued Barbie universe.

“We don’t want children having dreams that are impossible to attain without cosmetic surgery or I don’t know what other physical change,” Lars, 28, complained to AFP.

On a fountain in the form of a high heel, a Femen activist had her naked breasts covered by the slogan “Life in plastic is not fantastic” while burning a Barbie doll on a cross.

Later another protester went to throw the crucifix into the fountain, prompting members of the site’s security to intervene and resulting in some brief jostling in front of news cameras.

Another demonstration organised by the Facebook faction, “Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse”, created with a wink at the New York anti-greed movement Occupy Wall Street, drew several dozen people, passing off without incident.

Barbie’s Dreamhouse was conjured up by Vienna-based Event Marketing Service with a licence from Mattel, the creator of Barbie dolls, and has a twin sister at a shopping mall in southern Florida.

 

Interesting Infographics on tax havens

If you want to know where Mitt and his constituency hide their money, check this out.

Publicity plug pulled

It seems like every day there's a bicycle ride raising funds for something, or somebody doing something to bring attention to something while bringing attention to his or herself. Now, a lot of these fundraisers are good things. 

But these things are sprouting up all over the place. For ex:

A Seattle man dribbling a soccer ball from Seattle to Brazil for charity died this morning after he was struck by a car in Lincoln City.

Lincoln City Police Lt. Jerry Palmer identified the man as Richard Swanson, 42, and confirmed that a blue ball similar to one Swanson was shown with in a photo posted on the Internet was found with him. 

"I've heard that his parents indicated he was going to be dribbling a ball from Seattle to Brazil," Palmer said. 

Swanson's website, "breakawaybrazil.com" said he left Seattle May 1 and hoped to reach San Paulo, Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. A map with a soccer ball allowed visitors to follow his route. 

Swanson described himself as "an avid runner, soccer player and all around lover of the Pacific Northwest." He planned to visit 11 countries during the one year trek. He carried a One World Futbol, an indestructible soccer ball. For every one bought, another is given to a youth in disadvantaged communities, such as refugee camps, war zones, disaster areas and inner cities, according to the website.

Swanson was struck at about 10 a.m. while walking on the southbound shoulder on the south edge of Lincoln City. The man's parents have been notified, Palmer said.

We Neanderthals have arrived

Yeah, you know that Neanderthals have arrived when there are op-eds in The New York Times defending them. Er, us. 

MOST Westerners think of Neanderthals as stumbling, bumbling, mumbling fools who aimlessly wandered the landscape eking out a miserable, forlorn existence. Yet Neanderthals lived longer in Europe than modern humans have, by several hundred thousand years, and survived good and bad times.

The “Neanderthals are inferior” attitude traces back to their earliest descriptions in the mid-1800s when the first Neanderthal was labeled as “freak” or an “idiot” or “incapable of moral and religious conception.” For many, the discoveries after 1865 confirmed these labels. Even the majority of human paleontologists supported this view.

But in the last 10 years there has been a major reassessment of the Neanderthals, and it turns out they share a lot of the behavior and capabilities of people in Europe today. This revolution in the way academics think about Neanderthals arises from discoveries in archaeology, re-evaluations of their anatomy and revelations about their genetic makeup.

The most amazing is the extraction of nuclear DNA sequences from Neanderthal remains, which show that Europeans derive up to 4 percent of their genes uniquely from Neanderthals. Some 80 gene sequences come directly from Neanderthals and include regulators of smell, vision, cell division, sperm integrity and smooth muscle contraction.

One gene we share with Neanderthals is FOXP2, part of the gene complex associated with language production. We know variants of this gene in modern people cause language dysfunction and it was long assumed Neanderthals had a nonmodern form. This was partly based on the general assumption that Neanderthals were not like us — and some argued that Neanderthals lacked the ability to produce the essential vowels of language — “a,” “e” and “u.”

New anatomical work refutes this, and the evidence from FOXP2 shows that Neanderthals had the exact genetic sequence found in fully vocal moderns.

Another key to the language question is brain lateralization. Language is mostly on the left side, in the ear region. Someone who has suffered a stroke in this region often has impaired language ability, as well as paralysis on the right side of the body, because the left side of the brain controls that, too.

This lateralization is a hallmark of modern humans and is reflected in handedness. All humans have a right-hand-to-left-hand ratio of 9 to 1. Our nearest ape relatives lack this hand laterality, along with the modern FOXP2 sequence, but Neanderthals had both. Their 9-to-1 ratio was identical to all modern humans. The implication for all this is that Neanderthals could speak.

What did they talk about? Perhaps what colorant to use, since manganese dioxide blocks, and red and yellow ocher, have been found at some of the sites where they lived. In the Netherlands, early Neanderthals were liquefying these colorants, as seen in red ocher drops found at one site. Were these colorants dripping out of skin bags? No one knows, but it is unlikely they were dissolving red ocher in their hands.

Or were they talking about what feathers to decorate themselves with? At a site in Italy, feathers were removed from the wings of the bearded vulture, Eurasian black vulture, golden eagle, red-footed falcon, common wood pigeon and Alpine chough, based on cut marks found at the wingtips of bird bones.

Possibly they spoke about the strategies involved in catching them. Or maybe Neanderthals spoke about the power of eagle talons. Pendants made from these claws have been found at numerous sites in France and Spain spanning nearly 60,000 years. Some of the latest Neanderthal sites turned up modified and sometimes pierced tooth and bone pendants and other art objects.

Or maybe Neanderthals spoke about their dead. Newborns, children, adolescents and adults have been found in prepared graves, in a few cases with grave goods and other items to prepare them for whatever was to come.

There is even a site where the forehead of a Neanderthal woman from Croatia was marked with a series of 35 parallel lines — presumably some kind of ritual, since the marks do not match any other type of bone modification at the site. Were the Neanderthals telling a story about the person? Were they tallying up the woman’s accomplishments? Who knows, but the marks likely signify some ritual behavior.

They could have talked about hunting and gathering techniques. We know at some sites they collected shellfish, hunted porpoises and seals, probably scavenged beached whales, and ate fish. At least in some areas there is evidence they must have taken to the open water, since islands never bridged to the mainland at the lowest sea levels have stone tool types made only by Neanderthals.

We know that they were hunting game similar to the ways of moderns and that they were traveling long distances or had exchange systems set up to trade stones over many kilometers.

Recent work on microfossils imbedded in dental tartar on Neanderthal teeth in Belgium and Iraq reveals starchy vegetable items in the diet. At another site in Spain, dental tartar revealed evidence of consumption of nuts, seeds, green vegetables and cooked grains. One of them had traces of nonedible bitumen in the tartar, presumably used for hafting stone tools to spears or handles. Intriguingly, another Neanderthal showed evidence of the use of plants with medicinal value.

Neanderthals lived much richer lives than ever presumed. They were not exactly like us, but they bred with us and their genes and behavior are part of our heritage. So, be careful when you call someone a Neanderthal. You’re speaking about part of yourself.

US backing al Qaeda again

Before al Qaeda called themselves al Qaeda they were the "freedom fighters" battling the Russians in Afghanistan. They called themselves the Mujahideen.  Now they're freedom fighters again, in Syria. Gotta get them a new name, though.

In an astounding admission, the New York Times confirms that the so-called “Syrian opposition” is entirely run by Al Qaeda and literally states: 

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

From the beginning, it was clear to geopolitical analysts that the conflict in Syria was not “pro-democracy” protesters rising up, but rather the fruition of a well-documented conspiracy between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to arm and direct sectarian extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda against the Syrian government.

This was documented as early as 2007 – a full 4 years before the 2011 “Arab Spring” would begin – by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article titled, “”The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” which stated specifically (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

For the past two years the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Turkey have sent billions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into Syria along side known-terrorists from Libya, Chechnya, neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. In the Telegraph’s article titled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’,” it is reported:

It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November. 

The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.

The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.

British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.

Additionally, The New York Times in its article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid,” admits that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

And more recently the US State Department had announced hundreds of millions of dollars more in aid, equipment and even armored vehicles to militants operating in Syria, along with demands of its allies to “match” the funding to reach a goal of over a billion dollars. The NYT would report in their article, “Kerry Says U.S. Will Double Aid to Rebels in Syria,” that:

With the pledge of fresh aid, the total amount of nonlethal assistance from the United States to the coalition and civic groups inside the country is $250 million. During the meeting here, Mr. Kerry urged other nations to step up their assistance, with the objective of providing $1 billion in international aid.

And as this astronomical torrent of cash, weapons, and equipment was overtly sent by the West into Syria, the US State Department since the very beginning of the violence has known that the most prominent fighting group operating inside Syria was Al Qaeda, more specifically, the al Nusra front. The US State Department’s official press statement titled, “Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” stated explicitly that:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

The State Department admits that from the very beginning, Al Qaeda has been carrying out hundreds of attacks in every major city in Syria. Clearly for those who read the 2007 Hersh piece in the New Yorker, and then witnessed the rise of Al Qaeda in Syria, the explanation is quite simple – the West intentionally and systematically funded and armed Al Qaeda to gain a foothold in Syria, then overthrow the Syrian government in an unprecedented sectarian bloodbath and subsequent humanitarian catastrophe, just as was planned years ago.

However, now, according to Western leaders, the public is expected to believe that despite the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Turkey flooding Syria with billion in cash, and thousands of tons of weapons, all sent exclusively to “secular moderates,” somehow, Al Qaeda has still managed to gain preeminence amongst the “opposition.”

How can this be? If a 7-nation axis is arraying the summation of its resources in the region behind “secular moderates,” who then is arraying even more resources behind Al Qaeda? The answer is simple. There never were any “secular moderates,” a fact the New York Times has now fully admitted.

In its article titled, “Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy,” the New York Times admits:

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

However, in an explanation that defies reason, the article states:

The Islamist character of the opposition reflects the main constituency of the rebellion, which has been led since its start by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, mostly in conservative, marginalized areas. The descent into brutal civil war has hardened sectarian differences, and the failure of more mainstream rebel groups to secure regular arms supplies has allowed Islamists to fill the void and win supporters.

To “secure regular arms supplies” from whom? According to the West, they have been supplying “mainstream rebel groups” with billions in cash, and thousands of tons of weaponry – and now according to the BBC, training as well.Where if not intentionally and directly into the hands of al-Nusra, did all of this cash, these weapons, and training go?

The NYT also admits (emphasis added):

Of most concern to the United States is the Nusra Front, whose leader recently confirmed that the group cooperated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and pledged fealty to Al Qaeda’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s longtime deputy. Nusra has claimed responsibility for a number of suicide bombings and is the group of choice for the foreign jihadis pouring into Syria. 

Not only is the Syrian government fighting now openly admitted Al Qaeda terrorists, but terrorists that are not even of Syrian origin.

More outrageous still, is that the New York Times fully admits that the very oil fields the European Union has lifted sanctions on and is now buying oil from in Syria (see BBC’s “EU eases Syria oil embargo to help opposition“), are completely controlled by Al Qaeda – meaning the European Union is now intentionally exchanging cash with known international terrorists guilty of horrific atrocities, in exchange for oil.  The NYT reports:

Elsewhere, they [al-Nusra] have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.

And:

In the oil-rich provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasaka, Nusra fighters have seized government oil fields, putting some under the control of tribal militias and running others themselves.

The Times continues by admitting (emphasis added):

Nusra’s hand is felt most strongly in Aleppo, where the group has set up camp in a former children’s hospital and has worked with other rebel groups to establish a Shariah Commission in the eye hospital next door to govern the city’s rebel-held neighborhoods. The commission runs a police force and an Islamic court that hands down sentences that have included lashings, though not amputations or executions as some Shariah courts in other countries have done.

Nusra fighters also control the power plant anddistribute flour to keep the city’s bakeries running.

This last point, “and distribute flour to keep the city’s bakeries running,” is of extreme importance, because that “flour” they are “distributing” comes admittedly, directly from the United State of America.

In the Washington Post’s article, “U.S. feeds Syrians, but secretly,” it is claimed that:

In the heart of rebel-held territory in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo, a small group of intrepid Westerners is undertaking a mission of great stealth. Living anonymously in a small rural community, they travel daily in unmarked cars, braving airstrikes, shelling and the threat of kidnapping to deliver food and other aid to needy Syrians — all of it paid for by the U.S. government.

The Washington Post then claims that most Syrians credit Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra with providing the aid:

“America has done nothing for us. Nothing at all,” said Mohammed Fouad Waisi, 50, spitting out the words for emphasis in his small Aleppo grocery store, which adjoins a bakery where he buys bread every day. The bakery is fully supplied with flour paid for by the United States. But Waisi credited Jabhat al-Nusra — a rebel group the United States has designated a terrorist organization because of its ties to al-Qaeda — with providing flour to the region, though he admitted he wasn’t sure where it comes from.

Clearly, the puzzle is now complete. Indeed Mr. Mohammed Fouad Waisi was correct, Jabhat al-Nusra, a listed terrorist organization by the US State Department, is supplying the people with flour, flour it receives by the ton directly and intentionally from the United States in direct contradiction to its own anti-terror laws, international laws, and the US State Department’s own frequent denials that it is bolstering terrorists inside of Syria.

Clearly the US and its allies are propping up terrorism, and more alarming is that the “aid” they have been providing the Syrian people, appears to have been used as a political weapon by Al Qaeda, allowing them to take, hold, and permanently subjugate territory inside Syria. It should be noted again, that the New York Times itself admits that the ranks of al-Nusra are filled with foreign, not Syrian, fighters.

Revealed is a conspiracy so insidious, so outrageous, and a web of lies so tangled, that Western governments perhaps count on their populations to disbelieve their tax money is being used to intentionally fund and arm savage terrorism while purposefully fueling a sectarian bloodbath whose death toll is sounded daily by the very people driving it up to astronomical heights. The cards are down – the US has been exposed as openly funding, arming, and supplying Al Qaeda in Syria for two years and in turn, is directly responsible for the death, atrocities, and humanitarian disasters within and along Syria’s borders that have resulted.

While the US attempts to sell military intervention on behalf of Al Qaeda in Syria, using the flimsy, yet familiar pretext of “chemical weapons,” it appears that before even one American boot officially touches Syrian soil, an already horrific crime against humanity of historic proportions has been committed by the US and its allies against the Syrian people.

 

Goodbye, Cruel World

Sometimes it seems like it's just an excuse to say goodbye, cruel world.

Authorities in Ohio say they aren’t sure what motivated a 42-year-old man to jump out of his car during a traffic stop in March and suddenly fire 37 rounds at two police officers. What seems clear, however, is the case is yet another example of the danger posed to unsuspecting officers who confront individuals steeped in extremist antigovernment ideas.

James L. Gilkerson had a library of antigovernment, homemade munitions and firearms books in his vehicle — along with an AK-47 assault rifle, five loaded 40-round magazines for the weapon, knives, five pounds of gunpowder and a black mask and gloves, authorities say. He was unemployed, spent his time caring for his ill mother, and apparently had no history of mental illness.

One of his books, Resistance to Tyranny, espouses a lone-wolf  “underground movement of secret freedom fighters, each acting individually and independently to ignore, evade, resist and thwart the increasingly heavy hand of government power.”

When his car was stopped after running a stop sign on March 10 — a quiet Sunday in Middlefield, Ohio — Gilkerson exited through his driver’s side door and began firing his assault rifle before officers could even get out of their police cruiser.

Gilkerson fired 37 shots at officers Erin Thomas and Brandon Savage, who both returned fire, shooting 54 rounds at Gilkerson as he shouted, “Kill me.” He died at the scene. The unnerving gunfight, captured on a dash cam in the officers’ bullet-riddled patrol car, is now a high-hit posting on YouTube.

“He was a scumbag, and a terrorist, and he’s dead,” Middlefield Police Chief Arnold Stanko said at a news conference last week, according to The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer.

“I don’t know what he had planned or where he was going,” the chief said. “I just know he got out of his car intending to kill my officers. The AK-47 rounds he was firing would go right through a policeman’s bulletproof vest.”

Both officers were wounded. Thomas lost the index finger of her left hand, and has not returned to duty. Savage had minor injuries to his left thigh and has returned to patrol work, the chief said.

After an investigation involving the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Geauga County Sheriff’s Office, the officers’ actions were found to be justified.

“When you see what he had, how much ammunition he had, these officers may have prevented a tragedy down the road,” Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz told Cleveland television stationWKYC-TV.

The investigation showed that Gilkerson, who authorities described as a “loner,” had no known connections with extremist or antigovernment groups and had no criminal record. But he apparently did have an appetite for reading, particularly books about bombs, firearms and antigovernment activism.

It was so exciting, I can't describe my feelings!!!

The new ABBA museum.

You can thank ABBA for the music. And so much more.

A museum devoted to the pop superstars opening in Stockholm on Tuesday will celebrate the band's long list of hits. But it will also show off paraphernalia, including the helicopter featured on the cover of its "Arrival" album, a star-shaped guitar and dozens of glitzy costumes the Swedish band wore at the height of its 1970s fame.

Some gear is definitely not on show. With a smirk on his face, band member Bjorn Ulvaeus says certain items are "mysteriously ... forever lost," conceding only that among them are "embarrassing" tight costumes he wore when he was "slightly overweight." He declined to say more on the matter.

Some 40 sets of the trademark shiny flares, platform boots and knitted hats are on display in the museum. But visitors can also see digital images of what they would look like in costumes, record music videos and sing such hits as "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia" on a stage next to hologram images of the band members. A telephone also has been placed in a corner and ABBA members have promised to "Ring, Ring" and speak to visitors occasionally.

But the museum also shows a less glamorous, more everyday side of the history of a band that has sold 400 million records and consistently topped the charts in the decade after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with "Waterloo." The band — made up of Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Faltskog — started out as two married couples, and continued performing after their divorces, before eventually drifting apart in the early 1980s.

The collection includes models of the band's kitchen, a cottage where they used to compose their songs and the small, rustic park venues Bjorn and Benny played when they first met in the 1960s. Visitors can listen to the band members' recollections and one section is dedicated to the breakup and the story of the divorces.

"It (touches) on those things as well because we think they are important in telling the story," Ulveaus said.

The museum also includes a Swedish Music Hall of Fame, detailing other Swedish artists.

It was a long time coming, eagerly anticipated by fans and visitors to the Swedish capital. Ulvaeus said they needed the time to reflect on their careers. "You need some distance, you need perspective to be able to tell a story like that and I guess you can say that we have perspective now, 30 years on," he told reporters.

Outside the newly built wooden museum scores of international ABBA fans gathered Monday, singing the band's songs and hoping to get a glimpse of their idols arriving for a gala dinner. All were expected except Faltskog, who is currently promoting her comeback album "A'' in Britain.

Nikita Stolyarov, a 21-year-old student from Russia said he got a glimpse of Lyngstad on Sunday when she came by for an early view of the museum.

"It was so exciting, I can't describe my feelings," he said.

The ricin guy

I'm putting money on the ricin guy being a little crazy.

So it turns out that Paul Kevin Curtis, the Tupelo, Mississippi, guy arrested yesterday for (allegedly) sending letters containing ricin to President Obama and to Sen. Roger Wicker, is a real piece of work. It would appear that, in addition to urging Ted Nugent to run for President and worrying that the liberal media covering up the shocking truth about nekkid photos of Barack Obama’s mother, Mr. Curtis was seriously cheesed off that no one ever took his Personal Conspiracy Theory seriously. The most complete version of his story can be found in a rambling 2007 post to the consumer fraud website “Ripoff Report,” in which he tells a tale of being fired and harassed after finding a “refrigerator full of body parts” in a Tupelo hospital. Now we just need to figure out how the Cigarette Smoking Man fits into all this.

The hints of skullduggery start in the first paragraph, which says that the hospital, North Mississippi Medical Center, merely “fronts itself as a ‘not-for-profit’ charity hospital” — though Curtis leaves it to the reader to suss out what the hospital is a “front” for (black market organ smuggling, duh). After a bit of self-promotion about how he ran such a super-awesome cleaning service that the local paper even wrote him up, Curtis gets to the first hint of dark doings at the hospital:

After about a year and a half of employment, I questioned management about unfair employment practices & work ethics involving Hispanics, who did not speak English working excessive hours & off the clock each day, while non-hispanic’s were being sent home and/or written up for not having his/her “nametag”.

Maybe he is complaining that the hispanic’s were exploited victim’s here, but it look’s like he think’s the white’s were. Not to mention the innocent apostrophe’s. But the true horror is yet to be revealed! After cleaning a morgue where the floor drain had backed up (“Unthinkable things washed back up through the drainage system”), he became thirsty, and looked in an ordinary-looking refrigerator to see if there was maybe a bottle of water or something. Cue the Bernard Hermann music here!

I opened the dor to a small refrigerator located to the right of the autopsy table. I assumed I might find some water or anything to drink as I was dehydrated.

What I discovered, changed my life forever! There were dismembered body parts & organs wrapped in plastic. A leg, an arm, a hand, a foot, hearts, lungs, tissue, eyes and even a severed human head! I guess I was in a state of shock when I rushed out of the morgue because a physician asked me “What’s wrong”?

I told him exactly what I had seen & asked him what they did with so many body parts? He looked very strange & did not answer me. Instead, wrote something down on a piece of paper. I suddenly became a prime “person of interest” where my every move was watched & video-taped.

After this Shocking Discovery, everything changed. He was surrounded by security guards — at a discreet distance, of course. But they were everywhere. And suddenly, because this is just how technology works, “I could hear video camera’s zooming in on me as I walked down the hallways that night.” Yes. The cameras were so loud he could hear them. And of course, the very next day, he was summoned to an office, “questioned by men I had never met in my life” (he doesn’t say they were wearing dark glasses, but you just know they were), and “asked to sign several false documents stating I was in an area of the NMMC that I was not authorized to be in.” (He bravely refused. We would like to think he might have thrown the pen across the room, too.) After this act of defiance, he tried to speak to the hospital CEO, but before reaching his office, Curtis was seized by security officers, handcuffed, and escorted from the hospital “in front of all of my friends and co-workers” (who were, presumably, assembled to see his humiliation).

Like any Little Guy Who’s Stumbled Onto A Vast Conspiracy, Curtis then got to work — cue the Research Montage! — and found out just what a rotten den of thieves and crime the so-called “charity hospital” was. For instance, he “discovered thousands of lawsuits” had been filed against NMMC. Imagine! Lawsuits! Filed against a hospital — in this day and age? It is truly a shocker! And yet Curtis’s efforts to bring this perfidy to public notice were rebuffed by the politicians, the judicial system, and the press.

Still worse, he found out what happens when you go up against the Man:

3 Years of research lead to countless court battles, cops harassing me weekly, death threats, personal & financial losses, several thefts, my home burned down, car exploded, marriage dissolved & bankruptcy. You can imagine how helpless I felt the day I found out my attorney dropped my case & represented the very hospital I filed suit against?

Betrayal everywhere! Even from the Highest Places!

I sent letters to State Representative Roger Wicker, Senator Trent Lott and Thad Cochran. I never heard a word from anyone. I even ran into Roger Wicker several different times while performing at special banquets and fundraisers in northeast, Mississippi but he seemed very nervous while speaking with me and would make a fast exit to the door when I engaged in conversation leading up to my case against NMMC.

We can’t possibly imagine why a politician would be the least bit put off by some random guy getting in his face and ranting about refrigerators full of body parts. Clearly, Wicker was part of the cover-up!

There’s more: an assistant DA supposedly pushed him and put a gun to his head (after which Curtis was unjustly charged with assault, because, of course, the cops always side with the Rich And Powerful), and yet no media outlets would expose the truth. We take Curtis at his word when he says that he has “personally sent out more than a million emails in one year” about the body parts; as blogger Charles Johnson found, Curtis even spammed his story to a Ukrainian website. And just like the signature that helped track him down, Curtis closes the screed with “This is Kevin Curtis and I approve this report.”

Beyond this thrilling narrative, Curtis’s Twitter feed and Facebook page, at least as long as they remain active, should provide a trove of information to officials, bloggers, and conspiracy theorists. Just imagine what fun can be had with his Facebook profile photo (updated Monday — just before the ricin letters were discovered!), for instance:

Is this evidence that he is one of those murderous Democrat Liberals? Or is he pointing to the bumper sticker in shocked disbelief that any Democrat could claim to also be a Christian? We are inclined to think it is the latter, since another recent post, a photo of the 8 year old killed in the Boston bombing, says “We have let God down. We removed prayer from schools in 62…” We’ll let Alex Jones sort that mystery out.

In any case, just like the end of a movie, now the world is finally paying attention to Paul Kevin Curtis.

 

Unfettered capitalism

Sorrow Tears and Blood by Fela Kuti