“I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,” he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.
“All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning across the land as far as you could see.
”We shouted ‘Merry Christmas’ even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again.”
The “War Against Breaking Down and Buying a New Car” continues.
Santiago Alvarez was charged Saturday with possession of automatic weapons, including some with the serial numbers erased, and possession of a false passport, said Matthew Dates, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.
His lawyer, Kendall Coffey, said his client has not broken any U.S. laws.
A Dutchman accused of supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq with ingredients for chemical weapons went on trial for alleged complicity in the killing of thousands of Kurds and Iranians.
Frans van Anraat, 63, is the first Dutchman to be tried for complicity in genocide, Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch public prosecutor’s office, said today. Among the chemicals he allegedly supplied was a component of mustard gas, which destroys the membranes of the nose, throat and lungs.
Van Anraat was arrested in Amsterdam last December and is accused of supplying materials used in chemical-weapons attacks including the most devastating, which killed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. He admits providing chemicals and denies knowing they’d be used to massacre people.
So he didn’t know that the WMD’s that he didn’t supply to Saddam (who never had them) would be used to kill people. Gotcha!
~*~
Whataya make of this, RepubAnon?

Use it in a sentence.

“Suddenly she started screaming, ‘F**ker! Here f**ker! Come to Moma, F**ker!’
Fuckin’ howling here! That’s what I call our Rumsfeld all the time!
FARK: ...Navin Johnson’s dog Sh*thead starts barking nearby, for no apparent reason...

Four Marines from Camp Pendleton’s pantheon of war heroes will appear on a special collection of commemorative stamps to be issued next year by the U.S. Postal Service.
The faces on the “Distinguished Marines” stamp series include Medal of Honor Recipient Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone of Iwo Jima fame; Medal of Honor Recipient Sgt. Daniel Daly from World War I; Lt. Gen. John Lejeune, the World War I commander and Camp Lejeune’s namesake; and Lt. Gen. Lewis “Chesty” Puller, one of the most famous Marine commanders of World War II and Korea.
***BTW, they’re going to look a bit different than this when they’re finally issued, though.
SparkS
Nice job, Basil and co-Cotillion ladies.
Why quit when you are ahead?
Ok. Buying stuff made in China is bad. Buying stuff from WalMart is bad.
I just had to replace my alarm clock today and bought one from WalMart for $5. Yes, it was made by prisoners in China.
Here’s what got me:
Whereinhell you gonna find anyone anywhere who’s gonna get me an alarm clock for $5 that’s made by an American prisoner???
Ours are too busy doing radio shows and stuff.
FWIW, the one I had to replace was given to me about 12 years ago, used, by my friend Bill who got it from my friend Jennifer who got it out of the Co-op free box.



















