HUMOUR
A strong American flavour to Cocky's this month, with ‘dubya' being the butt of much of the jokes; however the very first snippet has to be the biggest pain in the butt!
BACKSIDE FIREWORK BACKFIRES
A British man suffered internal burns when he tried to launch a rocket from his bottom on Bonfire Night (5 November) last year. Paramedics found the 22-year-old man bleeding with the guiding stick of a Black Cat Thunderbolt rocket lodged between his rear-end (butt) cheeks, when they attended the scene in Sunderland , North East England.
He suffered a scorched colon when he was rushed to hospital, where his condition was described as stable after treatment. A spokesman for the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) said that the prank could have been fatal. “There are a lot of major blood vessels around that area, so infection could be a huge problem for him. And also the body naturally produces methane gas; so combine that with the firework and the exploding effect with methane's flammability. It certainly could have been a lot worse than it really was. ”A spokesman for the Firework Association described the bizarre prank as “beyond belief.” He said, “We have spent a lot of time working with the government to create laws that make fireworks safer and better for the public. This incident is very disturbing but hopefully is also an isolated one.”
SNAKE Vs. GATOR - A DRAW
Astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park in Florida , USA found the remains of a death duel last October. One 6 feet (1.83 metres) long alligator had been swallowed whole by a 13-foot (3.97m) python. The latter swallowed the alligator before exploding, killing both giant predators.
The rangers say the find suggests that non-native Burmese pythons might be challenging the alligators' leading position in the food chain in the swamps. The python's remains with the victim's tail protruding from its' burst mid-section could be seen with the head of the python missing.
“Encounters like this are almost never seen in the wild; but here we are”, said Professor Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife expert working at the University of Florida . “They were probably evenly matched. If the python got a good grip on the alligator before he got a good grip on him, he could win”, said the Professor. He concluded that the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach, leading it to burst open. “Clearly, if these pythons can kill an alligator they can also kill other species.”
Burmese pythons (many of them dumped by human owners as they grew too big to be pets) have thrived in the wet and humid climate of Florida 's swamps over the past twenty years, and these creatures are fast becoming another hazard to human life in the area.
WHO SHOT OFFICER TIPPITT?
Everyone knows that President Jack Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza in Dallas , Texas on 22 November 1963. No so well known is the fact that Dallas Police Officer J D Tippitt was gunned down roughly half an hour later, supposedly by the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as he tried to escape the police net. Oswald was later arrested in a Dallas cinema by the DPD, and a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver was taken from him. The investigating Warren Commission concluded that as Oswald shot Tippitt, it was highly likely that he also shot President Kennedy from a window of the Texas Schoolbook depository overlooking Elm Street with a bolt-action 6.35mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a defective telescopic sight. Just after 12.31pm local time that day, Oswald allegedly fired three rounds in 5.6 seconds at Kennedy with fantastic accuracy. Tippitt was then shot at 1.06pm (13.06 hrs).
Reading Jim Garrison's book, ‘On the trail of the Assassins' (BCA), I became aware of many inconsistencies regarding the killing of Tippitt in the Commission's report. Louisiana District Attorney Garrison was the only person to prosecute anyone (a New Orleans businessman named Clay Shaw) with planning the presidential assassination; and this is illustrated in Oliver Stone's powerful film, ‘JFK'.
Oswald had a loaded revolver on him at the time of his arrest. Nitrate tests later proved that he had not fired a weapon in the previous 24 hours, and the handgun had also not been used either within that time frame: i.e. all six rounds were chambered.
Close to Tippitt's body were four cartridges cases, three of them manufactured by the Winchester Company and one by Remington. All four cases had crimping marks on them, proving that they had been ejected by one or more automatic pistol(s). Now a revolver does not automatically eject cartridge cases after they have been fired. To eject expended cartridges from a revolver, the user has to spring out the cylinder, and point it downwards, using gravity to drop the expended shells out of their chambers; or pick them out by hand.
When the Warren Commission queried this oddity, the Dallas PD belatedly sent them four cartridge cases, which ballistics experts matched to the Smith & Wesson revolver carried by Oswald. The Commission took these to be the casings of the bullets fired at Tippitt. To accept the Commission's findings, you have to conclude that (a) Oswald was the greatest marksmen in history; and (b) he shot Tippitt four times, then calmly broke open his revolver, dropped out the expended cartridge cases and re-loaded the four empty chambers with fresh bullets before hurrying away to the cinema where he was arrested. He somehow also had time to shower and thus wash all traces of nitrate from his body before being arrested. And the shell casings with crimping marks found near Tippitt's body? Oh, they were not related to his murder, concluded Justice Earl Warren's commission!
Garrison surmises that two gunmen shot the policeman, and neither of them was Oswald. Witnesses saw two men who sped away from the murder scene in a car after several shots had been fired in the Dallas suburb of Oak Park where Tippitt was slain. The difference in ammunition used strongly suggests that two men did the shooting. He contends that Oswald was set up as the murderer of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, and the killing of Tippitt strengthened the case against him. What I find chilling about this case is that members of a conspiracy were prepared to kill a police officer just to further implicate Oswald.
But then, if you have decided to assassinate the President of the United States , also killing a lowly policeman on duty as part of the game plan is obviously no big deal. Taking all these facts into account, the obvious conclusion is that Lee Harvey Oswald was exactly what he claimed to be: “A patsy.”
FIRST BALLISTICS TEST
The first recorded case of linking a gunshot wound to the weapon that inflicted it occurred in 1794 in Lancashire , England . Gunpowder in a crude paper cartridge had been placed in the barrel of a single-shot, flintlock pistol behind a round lead pistol ball. The charge was then rammed home with a ramrod which had a wad of paper at its tip. Part of the paper, which had a popular street ballad inscribed on it, tore in the gun barrel. When the shot was fired, it carried the paper wadding into the victim's fatal wound. In a jacket pocket worn by the suspect was found the remaining inscription of the ballad, which matched perfectly. Crime solved and suspect arrested.
TERMINAL MAN?
ON 4 January, Musir Salem Jawher of Bahrain (formerly Leonard Mucheru of Kenya ) won the famous Tiberias Marathon in 2 hours 13 minutes and 14 seconds (2:13:14) by just two seconds from Kenyan Joseph Kirwa after an exciting race. Now, as you know, Israel is not recognised as a legitimate state by many Arab countries, including Bahrain . The Bahrain Athletic Union acted swiftly: for the ‘sin' of racing in Israel , Jawher was instantly stripped of his Bahraini nationality.
Apprarently he entered Israel using his Kenyan passport, then competed in the race using his Bahraini name. In recent years, Bahrain and Qatar have become infamous for ‘poaching' Kenyan athletes; paying them handsomely to change nationality and even identities, using new Islamic names. At the Asian Games in Doha , Qatar in December 2006, every men's distance race from 800 metres to marathon, including the 3000 metres steeplechase, was won by former Kenyans.
Jawher/Mucheru left Israel with his prize money and headed for Kenya – before he could be trapped in the departures terminal at Tel Aviv Airport , just like Tom Hanks in the movie ‘Terminal'. (The character played by Hanks is rendered stateless by a coup in his Eastern European home country, and is forced to remain in the departure lounge at New York 's J F Kennedy Airport for several months).
Jawher then stayed in Kenya , protected and hidden by his family, as Kenyan Immigration authorities also disowned him. He is certainly a fine distance runner (best times of 3:49.75 for mile and 12:59.79 for 5000 metres and Asian Games silver medallist), but some will view what happened to him as poetic justice for ‘traitors' who choose to change nationality for financial gain. This time, it seems, Salem Jawher became a victim of sports politics due to his own greed.
GW BUSH BUMPER STICKERS
January 20 2009 – End of an Error.
That's OK; I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway.
Let's fix Democracy in the USA first.
If you want a Nation ruled by religion, move to Iran , buddy.
Bush. Like a Rock. Only dumber.
If you can read this, you're not The President.
Of course it hurts: you are getting screwed by an elephant.
Hey, Bush supporters: embarrassed yet?
George W Bush: Creating terrorists that our kids will have to fight.
Impeachment: It's not just for blowjobs anymore.
America : One Nation, under surveillance.
They call him ‘W' so he can spell it.
Whose God do you kill for?
Cheney/Satan for the White House in 2008.
Jail to the Chief.
No, seriously, exactly WHY did we invade Iraq ?
G W Bush: God's way of proving intelligent design can be full of crap.
Bad President! No banana.
We need a President who is fluent in at least one language.
We are making enemies faster than we can kill them.
Is it Vietnam yet?
Bush doesn't care about poor white people, either.
Where are we going? And why are we in this hand basket?
You elected him. You deserve him.
Impeach Cheney first!
Dubya, your dad should have pulled out, too.
When G W Bush took office, gas was $1.46.
Pray for Impeachment.
The Republican Party: Our bridge to the 11th century.
What part of ‘President Bush lied' do you not understand?
One Nation under Clod.
2004: Embarrassed. 2005: Horrified. 2006: Terrified.
Bush never exhaled.
At least Nixon resigned.
Are we kinder and gentler yet?
WANTED: A MOUNTAIN OF CASH
It turns out that during the early days of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, crisp US dollars were shipped into Baghdad to pay salaries of invaluable staff and help shore up the collapsing infrastructure there. The cash amounted to 12 billion dollars, flown to Iraq on six flights of military transport aircraft from Andrews Air Force Base to Baghdad ($2 billion on each flight). The total payload was over 360 tons; a huge mountain of cash the size of a very large building. Within weeks, most of it went missing. It seems that Iraqi middlemen passed it on without any method of accounting. The money was intended to be recouped by extracting the same amount in profits gained from Iraqi's seized oil installations, but American taxpayers ended up covering the massive shortfall. Senator Ted Kennedy asked, “Who in his right mind would ship 360 tons of cash into a war zone?” Answer: President G W Bush.
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