Dowbrigade

Hopefully
this will not catch on in the United States, at least at the Presidential
level. Actually, at the state and local level it might provide
revealing insights into some candidates. With this kind of exposure,
perhaps more young people can be turned on to politics. Maybe this is
something we should look at more closely…

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – A Hungarian TV hostess sat naked Wednesday to announce she
is running for a seat in the European Parliament as candidate of the upstart
Union Party.

Anettka Feher, with close-cropped black hair, sat atop a table, legs crossed,
displaying her petite and muscular body wearing nothing but a shy smile and some
jewelry.

She believes disappointment with the political establishment will give her enough
votes to secure a Brussels seat in the June elections.

Hungary joins the EU on May 1 and has been allotted 24 seats in the European
Parliament.
Anettka, who does not give her age but who media have estimated is about 30,
rejects comparisons with Ilona Staller, a former Italian pornstar of Hungarian
extraction, better known as Cicciolina, who was famed for baring her breasts
during a successful campaign for a seat in the Italian parliament with the Radical
Party in 1987.

"If they (Hungarian mainstream politicians) think I am just another Cicciolina,
they are in for a big surprise: I am smart, and I have a daily four-hour presence
on a national television channel," Anettka said.

from Reuters

A New York priest arrested after allegedly harassing a
Brooklyn bishop has confessed to stealing $50,000 from a church.

Detectives recovered a bag filled with $88,000 in cash during a search
of John Johnston’s apartment in Queens.

They also found an assortment of Second World War uniforms and backpacks,
busts of Nazi leaders, a collection of both gay and straight pornography
and an illegal handgun.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, Johnston pleaded guilty to criminal
possession of stolen property and will be sentenced to five years’ probation
when he returns to court April 16.

The 64-year-old priest has also agreed to pay $50,000 in restitution
to St Martin of Tours church on Long Island – where he had served for
25 years.

from Ananova

What
would motivate a baseball announcer turned restaurant to pay $113,842
for a baseball that represented one of the most painful and frustrating
sports moments of his career? And, after paying all that money, what
could motivate him to atomize that investment by subjecting it to intense
pressure, fire and explosives in a bulletproof tank on live television?

If the Restaurateur is the cross-culturally named Harry Carey, and
the baseball in question is the infamous Bartman Ball (for any foreign
readers not familiar with our national pastime, we are not making
up these names), the motivation is at least understandable.

Together with the Red Sox (there, we finally typed those six fateful
letters, and our computer didn’t crash) the Cubs are suffering from a
Baseball Curse which has kept them from the World Series since 1945.  This
year they came within one out of the Big Prize, failing due to fan Steve
Bartman reaching into the field of play and deflecting the baseball in
question.
According to Cubs fans, the baseball itself is cursed, and must be destroyed
to dissolve the curse. 

What ridiculousness! Who, in this modern age of digital enlightenment,
believes in such a thing as curses? Rumors to the contrary, the fact
that the Dowbrigade is taking a Babe Ruth Red Sox jersey down to Ecuador
next month, and into the territory
of the Huaorani indians, to attend a rarely performed ceremony with
a powerful blind Shaman featuring spiritual defenestration by powerful
psychic purgatives is purely part of our amateur anthropological research.

The cursed ball was pampered in its final hours.  It was feted
in a luxury hotel suite, featured this morning on the Today Show, and
presented
with a sumptuous last meal. Tonight, on live TV in Chicago, it will be
atomized. Hey, whatever works.

from CNN

Haiti
has long seemed an abandoned outpost of the Dark Continent encrusted
on the bucolic blue Caribbean. From our studies we know it to be, together
with indigenous Bolivia, the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere,
with all of the attendant ills that accompany extreme poverty; disease,
malnutrition, retardation, chronic mismanagement…the list goes depressingly
on and on.

On the brighter side Haiti has always had a special place in the
heart of Anthropologists and Ethnobotanists for its role at the heart
of one of the great emergent religions, Voudou, and its unique tradition
of Shamanism mind control (Zombieism). Some landmark ethnographic
works have some out of that mysterious isle.

Be that as it may, currently a bloody new chapter is being written
to the Haitian tragedy  In a completely uninformed but intuitive
way, we are getting the feeling that the major media coverage of what
is going on leaves MUCH to be desired.  Like, who are really the
good guys? Which side to the remains of the Duvalier gang support?
What do ordinary people like us, teachers, writers, flower shop owners,
think of what is going on?  What do the Haitian Bloggers have
to say? Are there any Haitian bloggers? Anyone knowing of an authentic
voice from INSIDE Haiti please post a comment, and we will pass it
on.

We have not been able to find any , so far. What we DID come
across, which the major media had not mentioned so far as we know,
was a number of accusations that the US, in the form of the CIA, was
supporting, training and arming the rebels aiming to bring down President
Aristide.

Wait a minute!  Didn’t we INVADE  Haiti specifically to
put Aristide INTO power. Yes, well, it wouldn’t be the first
time we have turned on one of our pawns or puppets, as the situation
changes and our priorities switch. After all, that was a different
government altogether – the Clinton regime. And it wouldn’t be the
first time we participated in a coup d’etad in Haiti, either. More
like the eighth, at least.  As far as we know. Up until now.

Meanwhile,
in some sort of perverse game of life-or-death tag, we keep retuning
desperate boat people to a fate worse than death on that Devil’s
Island, while friendly freedom fighters from nearby Cuba are free to
stay,
as long as they can get one foot inbounds, on dry land, before they
get flagged by the Coast Guard. Is it any wonder most Cuban Americans are Republicans. What a great country!

One independent news source covering this story from outside the lines
is called Democracy
Now. We haven’t had time yet to evaluate their track
record on the issues and the truth, so take the following with at least
as much skepticism as you reserve for Dan Rather.

The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that
the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against
the country’s democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel
to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting
to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.

from DemocracyNow