Tommy Shaughnessy

Tommy Shaughnessy enters the confessional box and says, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose woman."

The priest asks, "Is that you, little Tommy Shaughnessy?"

"Yes, Father, it is."

"And who was the woman you were with?"

"Sure and I can't be tellin' you, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation."

"Well, Tommy, I'm sure to find out sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now. Was it Brenda O'Malley?"

"I cannot say."

"Was it Patricia Kelly?"

"I'll never tell."

"Was it Liz Shannon?"

"I'm sorry, but I'll not name her."

"Was it Cathy Morgan?"

"My lips are sealed."

"Was it Fiona McDonald, then?"

"Please, Father, I cannot tell you."

The priest sighs in frustration.

"You're a steadfast lad, Tommy Shaughnessy, and I admire that. But you've sinned, and you must atone. Be off with you now."

Tommy walks back to his pew.

His friend Sean slides over and whispers, "What'd you get?"

"Five good leads," says Tommy.

So there's this Pirate with a parrot.
And this parrot swears like a sailor, he can swear for five minutes straight without repeating himself.

Trouble is, the pirate who owns him is a quiet, conservative type, and this bird's foul mouth is driving him crazy.
One day, it gets to be too much, so the guy grabs the bird by the throat, shakes him really hard, and yells, "QUIT IT!"
But this just makes the bird mad and he swears more than ever.

Then he gets mad and says, "OK for you." and locks the bird in a cabinet.
This really aggravates the bird and he claws and scratches, and when the guy finally lets him out, the bird cuts loose with a stream of invective that would make a veteran pirate blush.

At that point, he is so mad that he throws the it into the freezer.
For the first few seconds there is a terrible din. The bird kicks and claws and thrashes.
Then it suddenly gets very, very quiet.
At first the guy just waits, but then he starts to think that the bird may be hurt.

After a couple of minutes of silence, he's so worried that he opens up the freezer door.
The bird calmly climbs onto the man's out-stretched arm, smiles a parrot smile, flutters his eye lids and says, "Awfully sorry about the trouble I gave you. I'll do my best to improve my vocabulary from now on."

"By the way, what did the chicken do?"

Mediterranean Living...http://www.med-liv.com
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from Daily Mirror Comment
Mirror.co.uk

I REFUSE TO WASTE MY TIME ON GREEN MYTH

Sue Carroll

THIS week a man knocked on my door and asked me if I might like to discuss my "motivation towards recycling".

I was, frankly, rather surprised. I didn't know I was supposed to have any "motivation towards recycling".

I could have lied and told him I run my car on panda blood and dine only in restaurants that serve endangered species. But on the basis that life's too short to irritate super-annuated council waste disposal officers I explained that I didn't feel the urge to discuss my pivotal role in saving the planet today, or any other.

I suppose I'm now marked down as a subversive and soon, I predict, the refuse Gestapo will be round to inspect my bins. I hope every householder in my street politely told the berk with a clipboard where to stuff his rubbish survey. But I doubt it.

There's an orthodoxy about the "green issue" which means anyone daring to question it becomes a pariah. In the same way that, until recent spectacular U-turns, anyone who stepped out of line to condemn the government's multicultural policy was branded a racist.

Green is the new religion and we're all meant to be cowed by the propaganda preached by evangelical MPs who've taken to howling the message like zealots at a prayer meeting. Speaking after apocalyptic reports of impending doom were released in the Stern Review of global warming, the PM told us sagely that the consequences for the planet are "literally disastrous".

Well, don't you worry about scaring the children, Mr Blair. Meanwhile the Environment Secretary, half-man, half-android David Miliband, has rushed in to announce he'll save us all from a disaster greater than two World Wars by taxing us to kingdom come.

Just a minute, sunshine. The British public can be extraordinarily gullible but we know when the green wool is being pulled over our eyes. While we're asked to pay an "eco tax" on electricity, petrol, energy-inefficient electrical appliances and holiday flights, the Chinese plan to open more than 500 coal-fired power stations.

In other words even if we sat in the dark for two years, every power saving made would be wiped out by China's growth. Surely Miliband realised that once global warming became top of the political agenda the genie would be out of the bottle?

Britain uses just two per cent of the world's energy. More to the point, if carbon emissions mean global suicide why is this government hell bent on another terminal at Heathrow Airport?

Shouldn't we be told, since we're being encouraged to fuel our cars with melted chip fat, what plans are afoot to trade in the fleet of ministerial gas-guzzling Jags and Range Rovers in favour of electric ones?

And where will the windfall from all this green tax go - on armies of recycling motivation specialists? The unpleasant whiff of "do as I say, not do as I do" has just become more pungent.

Happily, out of all this ideology comes some sanity from scientists prepared to stick their heads over the parapet and tell us carbon emissions may have little to do with climate change.

Perish the thought, but perhaps it's time we stopped swallowing the melting ice-cap theories and put it all down to natural cycles as Orlando Whistle-croft, who chronicled country life in the 19th century, did.

I leave you with observations from his book, The Climate of England, in which he wrote how the "fabulous weather" of 1846 saw kitchen gardens continuing to grow through the winter. "Overcoats were superfluous, fires quite disagreeable and walking in the moonlight was preferable to sitting in the chimney corner."

In March, Whistlecroft noted that young people in his village were gathering cowslips. A drought set in till November "which made us feel we had two long summers in one year".

No blame attached then to people driving 4X4s or flying off on easyJet to Majorca. Something to remember before you start bottling the chip fat.

Mediterranean Living...http://www.med-liv.com
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from Daily Mail Comment

Blair must face his day of reckoning

1st November 2006

Fearful and flustered, the Prime Minister goes on the offensive as the Conservatives call for a public inquiry into his gross mishandling of Iraq.

Accusing them of nothing short of treachery to our servicemen, he asks through his spokesman: 'When troops are serving overseas, in whose interests is it to make such an announcement?'

Well, we all know who would stand to lose most from public scrutiny of the Government's conduct - and we don't mean British troops, struggling bravely to do the impossible job with which Mr Blair has saddled them.

No. There is nothing remotely unpatriotic about David Cameron's demand for a thorough investigation into every aspect of the war.

True, he and his party backed the invasion - an honourable position at the time, although one with which this paper profoundly disagreed. But there is no inconsistency about voting for the war then and insisting on an inquiry now, when the Government's handling of it has been so disastrous.

Indeed, it is a sign of political maturity that Mr Cameron is seeking to loosen the Tories' attachment to a foreign policy virtually dictated by the White House.

The truth is that the case for a truly independent inquiry is unanswerable.

It must look into the abuse of the democratic process, which saw parliament and people deceived by a 'sexed-up' dossier put together by a spin-doctor.

It must examine how and why the Government fell totally under the spell of Washington. It must investigate what appears to have been a complete lack of planning for equipping our troops or reconstructing Iraq.

Above all, it must find ways to ensure that a catastrophe like this misbegotten war can never happen again.

Last night the Commons rejected the call for an immediate inquiry. But now even Defence Secretary Des Browne is forced to admit there must be one 'when the time is right'.

Mr Blair's day of public reckoning is coming.

Freedom to differ

This newspaper has long campaigned for an end to the secrecy that shrouds our family courts, whose decisions to remove children from their parents so often cause anguish and despair.

We therefore applaud Lord Justice Wall's call for wider Press access to the courts, so that the public can see how these heartbreaking cases are decided.

But it is profoundly disturbing that this senior Appeal Court judge goes on to suggest the authorities should have the right to pick and choose which newspapers should be admitted.

In his speech to a conference on family law, Lord Justice Wall cites his disapproval of the Mail's reporting of a case in which an Essex couple had their children removed by social workers and put up for adoption after a secret hearing.

As the court heard, the parents were 'entirely decent and respectable people', who loved their baby son and four-year-old daughter, keeping them well-fed and well-dressed. The children were removed only because their mother was considered too slow to care for them properly.

We thought then - and we still do - that the court's decision was cruelly wrong. Even the Government agrees our coverage highlighted concerns over how such rulings are reached.

Are newspapers to be blackballed for bringing such injustices to public notice?

Lord Justice Wall appears to have difficulty understanding the concept of Press freedom. Let us explain. It means the freedom to draw public attention to the truth as we see it - whether judges happen to agree with us or not.

Mediterranean Living News Update
http://www.med-liv.com

Colombian drugs boss arrested in Spain

· Sabogal 'played part' in many murders by gang
· Cartel accounts for up to half of world's cocaine

Giles Tremlett in Madrid and Sybilla Brodzinsky in Bogota
Wednesday November 1, 2006
The Guardian

One of the world's most wanted and violent drugs traffickers, the Colombian Orlando Sabogal Zuluaga, has been arrested in Spain as police around the world try to break up a cartel that accounts for up to half of the global cocaine market.

Sabogal was picked up in the Madrid commuter town of Majadahonda on Thursday as part of a global crackdown on the violent Norte del Valle cartel and its offshoots, which are thought to be responsible for some 1,000 murders.

"Investigators believe that, as a Norte del Valle lieutenant, he has taken part in many of the murders carried out by this organisation," the Spanish police said yesterday.

US authorities claim the cartel has exported more than 500 tonnes of cocaine to the United States since 1990.

"Norte del Valle regularly uses violence and brutality to further its goals, including the murder of rivals, individuals who failed to pay for cocaine and associates who were believed to be working as informants," the US state department said.

Sabogal was one of a group of four Colombians who took over the reins of the country's biggest drug-trafficking outfit after the arrest and deportation to the United States of drug baron Luis Hernando Gómez Bustamante in 2004.

Sabogal, known also as "Alberto" or "The Monkey", and fellow trafficker Johnny Cano Correa had since become leaders of their own sections of the cartel.

"After Gómez Bustamante's arrest, Johnny Cano Correa and Orlando Sabogal Zuluaga rose in the cartel to become leaders of their own drug-trafficking organisations," a US treasury spokesman said.

Cano was arrested and deported to the US in September.

The US state department had offered a $5m reward for information leading to Sabogal's arrest, but refused to say yesterday whether anyone had been given the money.

"Orlando Sabogal Zuluaga ... is responsible for arranging the logistics of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine to the United States and Europe," the state department said when it offered the reward.

Sabogal, who was carrying false identity papers, was arrested at a shopping centre in Majadahonda, 15 miles north-west of Madrid.

Spanish police said they had been asked by their US counterparts to track down Sabogal after they were tipped off that he was in Spain.

US embassy sources in Madrid confirmed yesterday that the arrest had been made on the request of New York public prosecutors.

On the day of his arrest the US treasury department announced that it had frozen Sabogal's assets and those of several family members.

Sabogal and Cano were indicted on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges by a New York court in July 2003.

The Norte del Valle cartel, based in the Cauca valley and the south-west of the country, has become Colombia's most notorious group.

Colonel Cesar Pinzón, deputy director of Colombia's judicial police, said Sabogal "was the last of the strategic line of leadership of the [Norte del Valle] organisation that had yet to be captured".

"He could be deported to Colombia where he will be processed and then we would begin the process of extraditing him to the United States. But Spain also has an [extradition] agreement with the US," he said.

A Norte del Valle leader called Diego León Montoya remains on the FBI's 10 most wanted list, alongside Osama bin Laden.

The FBI rates the cartel as "the most powerful and violent" trafficking group in Colombia.