Red Alerts is going on the road today, I’ll be on a road trip to New England so blogging will be light but I’ll be sure to get some good pictures. Via Aztlanbusters I caught this report on sex slaves from Mexico in California. Remember when liberals talk about what illegal immigration adds to our society many are thinking about the women, and sometimes men, who are forced to have sex with them:
[youtube]W1x3sgr50cc[/youtube]
Maybe an exaggeration but link bait is what it is. From McClatchy:
JERUSALEM — A lone Palestinian driving a heavy construction backhoe went on a short rampage Tuesday afternoon, smashing into a bus and several cars before being shot dead within view of the Jerusalem hotel where Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is expected to stay this evening.
At least 16 people were injured before a driver and a police officer shot the attacker.
The attack appeared to be a copycat of an attack July 2 in which a Palestinian construction worker killed three people before being shot dead.
“He didn’t care for nothing, not even his own life,” said Eran Sternberg, a Jerusalemite who captured the driver’s final moments with a cell phone camera.
Police said the attacker was a 29-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem who had a criminal record and appeared to be acting alone.
The rampage came hours before Obama was scheduled to arrive on the final leg of his Middle East visit. The Illinois senator’s aides said he had no plans to change his schedule.
Hot Air has video, Winds of Jihad has more.
Eric Tavulares murdered his childhood sweetheart Lauren Aljubouri after watching about half of the overrated Natural Born Killers, a movie he claims to have watched 10-20 times. While it is a titillating part of the crime, it is overshadowing the likely true cause of Tavulares’ senseless murder of his friend, a history of drug use that is buried in the articles about the crime which instead decide to imply his viewing habits caused him to freak out.
From 620 WTMJ:
According to the criminal complaint, Tavulares told police that and Lauren, who he’d been dating off and on since 6th grade, had been watching the movie Natural Born Killers on Friday night. He told police he’d seen the movie about 10 to 20 times. Sometime in the middle of the movie, Tavulares says the two stopped the movie and went into the bedroom.
Tavulares told police that the two got into bed while holding a conversation. At some point, Tavulares says something caused him to “switch mentally” and he rolled over onto Lauren and began straddling her. He says he then started to choke her.
There was a struggle, at some point, Tavulares says he began to choke her from behind.
Tavulares says at some point he realized Lauren was dead and he jumped off her and then got up and started giving her CPR.
If convicted, Tavulares faces up to 60 years in prison.
He has two previous convictions in a case that accused him of drug use and one that accused him of resisting an officer.
Tavulares has a history of violence due to drug use, something that many reports gloss over but is important to understanding the crime. At 18 he already had two convictions for drugs and had resisted an officer; he was a ticking time bomb. A movie didn’t make that happen, a society that winks at drug abuse did.
Which isn’t to say that his obsession with Natural Born Killers, a movie produced by racist harpy Jane Hamsher of the Firedoglake, isn’t important at all. Natural Born Killers, the precursor to Rob Zombie’s awful House of a Thousand Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, is an immature glorification of drug fueled violence directed and filmed in such a way as to only appeal to people who are high. I’d put forward that all three of the movies are only enjoyable when the audience is high.
Hamsher may claim Natural Born Killers was a social commentary on our obsession with violence but the truth is it’s a movie that feeds into the stunted and misanthropic impulses that are so prevalent in drug abusers. Natural Born Killers may pretend to be art but it’s little more than the Hollywood equivalent of rough sex pron, a niche film made to appeal to those who think violent sex gets a bad rap. And just as Zombie’s films tend to heroicize the villains in an attempt to give a thankfully small section of our society the artistic justification for their misogyny, anger and self-loathing, Natural Born Killers shows audiences a wider world that deserves to have the two main characters attack it. That presentation is designed to appeal to the Eric Tavulareses of the world.
The movie didn’t cause him to murder Lauren, but his love of the movie was a by-product of his devolving personality and drug addiction. Just as you can judge people who think Jackson Pollack was a genius as bleating art groupies who form their opinions by reading the Village Voice, a person who can sit through Killers twice, much less 10-20 times, is probably picturing himself in the Woody Harrelson role and has some issues with the rest of us.
Smoking Gun has the police report. JS Online has another take. Mahalo already has a very handy quick reference.
Viva La Revolution, right lefties?
Each Cuban worker got two pairs of overalls, a set of sturdy boots, a helmet and food commensurate with how hard he worked.
Their labor fixing up American cruise ships at a Curacao dry dock was valued at $6.90 an hour. But the 108 Cuban shipyard hands who worked double shifts in a joint venture between the Cuban government and the Curacao Dry Dock Company did not get to spend their wages. Their earnings were applied to the Cuban government’s debt with the company, court records show.
Documents reviewed Wednesday by The Miami Herald in an ongoing 2006 lawsuit filed in Miami by the workers offer a rare glimpse at employment terms normally kept secret between the Cuban government and the firms with which it does business. The documents appear to offer proof that the government’s joint ventures abroad sometimes involve unpaid labor.
Instead of a salary, the men got money for food and 400 Cuban pesos a month — about $18 at the current exchange rate.
Three former dry-dock workers eventually escaped what their attorneys call a ”forced labor camp” in Willemstad, Curacao, and filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Miami, alleging the Cuban government offered them up as slave labor to pay off its debts.
Alberto Justo RodrÃguez, Fernando Alonso Hernández and Luis Alberto Casanova Toledo — who now live in the Tampa Bay area — sued the Curacao Dry Dock Company, saying it forced them to work against their will while Cuban agents kept an eye on their every move.
Their boss at the docks: Fidel Castro’s nephew.
I’m sure Michael Moore and Code Pink will be releasing statements lambasting the oppression of these poor workers very soon. But as evidenced by this video I found linked to by the excellent site The Real Cuba, forced labor has been a part of Castro’s regime since the beginning:
[youtube]LdjsWTtLevc[/youtube]
With organizations like Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart spreading all sorts of Socialist nonsense about how Wal-Mart is destroying the poor (by giving them access to goods at affordable prices) it’s never comes as a surprise when I see a story like this:
BOONE, N.C. — Officials are being tight-lipped on the details about an explosive device found at Wal-Mart. Police only told Eyewitness News it was “disrupted” and “diffused.”
Police say no one was injured by an explosive device that was detonated by a bomb squad at a Boone store.
Detective Matt Stevens of the Boone Police Department said the device was found at the front entrance of Wal-Mart by an employee about 5:40 a.m. Sunday. One worker said the package was smaller than a shoe box.
The store was evacuated for about five hours while a bomb squad from Wilkes County was called in to examine it. The store re-opened around 10:30 a.m. Sunday.
Stevens says the device was dangerous, but refused to further describe it. The only thing police said was the device would appear dangerous to the average person.
One shopper said he believed it’s just a case of teenagers trying to have fun. He says no arrests have been made.
Authorities ask anyone with information about this incident to contact the Boone Police Department at 828-268-6900 or the Watauga County Crime Stoppers at 828-268-6959.
If you’ve got any info let the authorities know before these would be bombers end up seriously hurting someone. What are the chances that the culprits are “fighting for change” trust fund babies who’ve never had to feed a family on the wages they get from working in Whole Foods? I say about 70%.
h/t N.T.A.