NOT MANY KNOW IT, BUT THE SAME KEITH RUPERT MURDOCH AS IS THE BRAINS OF FOX PROLEFEED CHANNEL is also the brains behind Britain's top-selling "red top" tabloid daily, The Sun (which he acquired in 1969) ... and their top-selling Sunday paper, the News of the World (acquired 1967, yet with a long-established repute for nasty and hypersensationalised "dog whistle" journalism).

No doubt prompting the satiric fortnightly Private Eye to begin describing Keith Rupert as "the Dirty Digger" because of his fondness for oversexed scandal, as witness Page Three--the which was carried over from his mass-market tabloids in his native Australia.

In case anyone needs a clear and compelling example of the depraved "buckets-of-blood-pouring-out-of-peoples'-heads" stylee of journalism Keith Rupert considers as "respectable" (particularly on Fox Prolefeed)--not to mention defending such by playing thge patsy that "this is what the people want to read"--consider the following item from a recent edition of his British Sunday franchise, the News of the World, as a brazen example thereof (capitalisation and italics from original):

Shocking pictures of kids being forced to fight

THESE shock pictures will make every decent parent in Britain fighting mad—a GIRL OF FIVE sobbing her heart out as Dad forces her into a KICK-BOXING ring for a public punch-up.

REELING: A nine-year old under attack

And her shameful father Darren Flanagan has the nerve to call the dangerous, sickening spectacle SPORT.

But he's just one of hundreds pushing youngsters barely of school age into the frightening new craze for Thai boxing now sweeping the country.

Weeping Miah Flanagan was terrified of climbing through the ropes at the Gladiators club on Merseyside because she knew what was in store—it was her FOURTH public bout.

But dad Darren, who doubles as her aggressive coach, dismissed the sobs and yelled in her face: "Come on baby, just enjoy yourself! Come on!"

After a few minutes more crying he sternly barked: "Stop this NOW!"

Brawl

And tiny Miah, with no headgear to protect her delicate little skull, grimly clambered into the ring with tears still streaming down her cheeks on to her bright red boxing gloves.

AGONY: Thai, 10, belts Connor, 9, in cage

Within seconds she was locked in intense combat fists and feet flying like a terrifying street brawl.

Her opponent? A girl AGED SIX.

Darren, pouring with sweat, screamed: "Come on Princess, go forward! Kick 'em! Kick 'em Princess!"

But distraught Miah didn't kick quite hard enough and lost the fight.

Her disappointed dad admitted: "You're annoyed when your children lose. I'm not going to say it didn't bother me because it did.

"But I had a talk to Miah and told her, 'We don't have to do it any more. We could do something else like ballet dancing if you want.' She said she wanted to stick with it."

But how can a five-year-old possibly weigh up the risks of a sport that has NO official minimum age, NO universal rules and regulations among Britain's 500 clubs and NO requirement for protective headgear despite regular blows to the skull?

In the strictly-governed world of conventional boxing youngsters must be at least 11 to compete. But last night Thai fight fan Darren, 38, from Wigan, admitted he's been training Miah and her twin brother Kian to kick and punch since they were TODDLERS.

DANGER: Tough head blow rocks Kian

He told the News of the World: "They couldn't join the local fight club —Horwich Kickboxing Studio—till they were four so I taught them in my home gym. They had natural talent

"I train seven nights a week, mate. And when I'm doing my training I take them with me. The kids go on the punchbag and I go on the weights."

The twins' coaching borders on obsession. Darren admitted he fattens Miah up on pasta if she's up against heavier opponent and added: "I video every competition fight and watch it again and again. I'll show Miah and Kian where they've gone wrong and then we work to correct it."

And he raged at any suggestion the kids should wear head protection to save their delicate and still developing brains. "Miah doesn't NEED headgear!" he fumed. "They're not meant to have head contact. If they go too hard they're told to stop. And they're not allowed to headbutt."

He conceded: "Every time Miah goes in that ring there's a worry she'll start crying." Astonishingly, he added: "Sometimes that's the little push and injection she needs to get her motivated."

DAD'S AN ORDER! Weepy Miah is told to get in the ring

Even mum Lisa joins in the coaxing. She coatss Miah with glittery make-up and hairspray before a fight, like a child beauty queen, and warns her: "You're not to cry, are you, otherwise what happens and what comes off? Your sparkle."

The scandal of this dangerous craze sweeping the country is highlighted in a shock Channel 4 documentary Strictly Baby Fight Club.

Bizarre

But it was almost inevitable that Thai Barlow AGED TEN would become a fighter—his Leicestershire parents even NAMED him after the so-called sport. And on March 28 he took part in his first CAGE BRAWL a bizarre punch-up inside a 23ft metal cage in front of 1,000 £35-a-head punters at Bracknell Leisure Centre, Berkshire.

Adverts promoted it as "full contact fighting".

And as the fight started a string of potentially dangerous head punches were thrown between Thai—again wearing no head protection—and nine-year-old east London opponent Connor Butler.

Both sets of parents screamed their lads on.

SCREAMING MATCH: Ringside mum Lisa urges Miah on

But in the end Thai got beaten for only the third time in 59 fights—and his victories chillingly include TWO KNOCKOUTS.

Dad Mark and mum Maxine were angry and admitted their lives are dedicated to bringing their boy son to a physical peak. Mark said: "Our dream is for him to win a stadium title. I don't know what HIS dream is—probably to play with his soldiers.

"But everything we do revolves around Thai boxing."

Mum Maxine was a once successful fighter herself and giggled: "I like bashing people's faces up first. There was a girl once and I actually enjoyed splattering her nose all over."

With parents like these, what chance do the poor kids have?

It's for her own good!

THE dad who pushed his little daughter into the ring despite her tears last night insisted it was for her OWN GOOD.

Darren Flanagan amazingly claimed all the training he's giving five-year-old Miah now would prevent her becoming a teenage rape victim.

"In this day and age it's mandatory," he said. "If someone grabs Miah when she's 15 what do you think is going to happen? She knows all the defence moves. What if I'd never taught my kids Thai boxing from a young age, how guilty would I feel?"

Respect

Miah's mum, nail technician Lisa, admitted she finds it hard to see her daughter sobbing before a fight but told us: "It does upset you a little bit but if she didn't want to do it she wouldn't get in the ring.

"And it's about learning respect and discipline. It also keeps them fit. They're having a laugh, it's fun."

Lisa said fighting had brought them all closer together. "If the children finish fighting early you can go to the park afterwards then out to tea," she said. "It's a full day out as a family."

And THIS is what Keith Rupert Murdoch considers "responsible journalism" for the Great Unwashed? Puh-leeze!!!

see more crazy cat pics

(OR MAYBE NOT, @ LEAST HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI--ESPECIALLY SO AMONG farmers and planters wanting to get their planting in. Or as much as they hope to get in, unless they have designs on taking land out of production because of high fuel and fertiliser prices in exchange for Federal subsidies to that effect.)

Some thunder rumbled through before midnight last evening, but it's mostly just a haze as I write you here in the Minnwissippi. In any case, rain is being called for thru the day, and maybe the odd residual shower into tomorrow.

Still, though, trees and shrubs are starting to show their buds as we welcome the world, or as much of it as is willing to pay $3.50/gallon for gas of late, for the 100 Mile Garage Sale this weekend (encompassing the area along both sides of the Mississippi between Winona and Red Wing on the Minnesota such ... and, on the Wisconsin, between Fountain City and Diamond Bluff.

(Which, if you ask, is across the Mississippi from Red Wing, just past the Hager City/Bay City ur-connurbation.)

*************

FINALLY! RESULTS FROM ZIMBABWE'S MARCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS--and they're not pretty for pretty much anybody involved.

For starters, opposition Presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai (Movement for Democratic Change) won the majority of votes ... but the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission qualified the result, noting where Mr. Tsvangirai did not have the requisite 50.1% majority necessary to avoid a runoff round.

The runoff involving, more than likely, the longtime dictator Robert Mugabe (ZANU-PF) ... and in any case, expect a rather nasty brand of Katzenjammer ensuing in the runup. Unless some class of a power-sharing agreement can be brokered to avoid further violence and disorder as would make the Rwandan Genocide of the mid-1990's look like Six Flags.

*************

WHY YOU CAN'T EXACTLY TRUST ANYTHING LABELLED "MADE IN MACAU" TO BE THE REAL McCOY: Your Correspondent was listening this morning to the BBC World Service this morning, and took note of an item where the European Union announced imposition of penalty tariffs on shoe imports from the former Portugese colony-turned-Special Administrative Region of the so-called "People's Republic of China" per the "One China, Two Systems" doctrine.

The item noted in hindsight where Macau, whose economy has long been reliant on gaming-related tourism (especially after the long-standing monopoly on casinos by Stanley Ho's STDM group was abolished in 2002), has also been a rather convenient port by which Chinese manufacturers (and, to a minor extent, those in Hong Kong) can get around import quotas and tariff restrictions by having the surplus production of export goods shipped to special warehouses in Macau and then relabelled "Made in Macau" for the sake of deception. After all, Macau has never had much of a manufacturing base, even during its nearly 400 years of Portugese colonial rule; as just noted, gaming-related tourism (particularly so from across the Asia-Pacific region) has long been Macau's socioeconomic foundation, with the revenues surpassing those of Las Vegas in 2006 thanks, no doubt, to a weak and undermining dollar.

In any case, Macau has long been one of those "gray areas" in the foreign-trade arena as have been nothing short of embarrassment to customs inspectors and collectors over the years--particularly so as a "back door" by which China could secretly export goods to the United States between the start of Communist rule in 1949 and the abolition of trade restrictions in the early 1980's by relabelling such as "Made in Macau" when such wasn't the case. Especially so the likes of goods made under forced or convict labour, which are always denied entry into the United States.

Has anybody considered studying this potentially embarrasing "bait-and-switch" in Chinese trade by which China used and useth Macau to bypass trade restrictions and interception risks through clever relabelling?

*************

HOW FITTINGLY APROPOS FOR A CITY REBUILDING ITSELF FROM TORNADIC DEVASTATION exactly one year ago today:

Greensburg, Kansas has decided to take advantage of its name and, in rebuilding and reinventing itself after tornadic devastation, has taken a "green" (environmental) approach, and then some.

As in mandating the use of energy-efficent construction techniques and appliances and making the widest possible use of renewable energy sources, especially so wind and solar power, in Greensburg's reconstruction. Not just residentially, but also @ the local school and commercial and government buildings.

So much so, in fact, that local officials are hoping to use envirotourism as a socioeconomic tool to attract business, not to mention hoping to keep the local kids in and around Kiowa County and not move to "the big city" (as in the likes of Wichita, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Denver or even Kansas City) just to find decent jobs.

Not exactly Radiator Springs, Arizona ... but certainly, for Greensburg, the name is an apt fit. Even if their original claim to fame is being home to the World's Largest Hand-Dug Water Well.)

(As for driving down that way, it's off I-70, Kansas exit 159 @ Hays and then south along US 183 for 95 mile or so. And along the way, there's opportunity for worthwhile detours such as the Barbed Wire Museum in LaCrosse and Fort Larned National Historic Site.

(Traffic coming from the south and east should consider the Kansas Turnpike, a/k/a I-35, to Exit 53 on the east side of Wichita, thence following US 54/400 [known in Wichita as Kellogg Drive] westerly for about 111 miles.

(From the west, take I-25 to Colorado exit 100A in Pueblo, then following US 50 easterly via LaJunta, Rocky Ford, Lamar [whence US 400 picks up], Garden City and Dodge City [taking some time to stroll around Historic Front Street and other sites of note in the Queen of the Cow Towns], whence you continue on US 400 into Greensburg; 320 miles being the net distance.)

As for more specific driving directions from your particular neck of the woods towards Greensburg, try MapQuest for starters. 

see more crazy cat pics

YOUR CORRESPONDENT HATH IT THAT AUSTRALIA'S MINISTRY OF FAMILIES HAS ESTABLISHED A TRIAL OF A "QUARANTINE" FOR CERTAIN NEW MOTHERS entitled to a lump-sum allowance as may be considered "moral risks" because of prior histories of alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling or cases where the mother is under 18 years of age, in which case the allowance is issued in vouchers which can only be used for essential baby requisites such as diapers, baby food and baby care products; the better to discourage "imprudent" use of the allowance.

Currently, the quarantine applies in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory as are under Emergency Intervention Orders, and is being tested in the Kimberley region of Western Australia before a possible further rollout nationwide.

Some Australian politicos are considering having the new-child allowance "in-kind" apply to all new mothers in future, not just such deemed moral hazards.

No doubt the Zealots and True Believers of conservativism here in the "morally superior" United States would agree--or would they?!    

see more crazy cat pics

CONTINUING ON PREVIOUS ENQUIRIES HERE AND HERE IN THIS WEBLOG which had Your Correspondent wondering as to the likelihood and extent of the Religiopolitical Right's playing the singsong "Christian Persecution! Christian Persecution!" meme against the so-called "Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" (FLDS) following recent action by Texas child-welfare officials resident @ a compound thereof, along comes another exugenesis of the Dark Satanic Mills of Conservative Propaganda playing the card--as per last time, thanks to ConWebBlog:

Joseph Farah's quasi-defense of the polygamist cult in Texas continues in his April 29 column, in which he again tries to change the subject from sex crimes to government overreach.

While insisting that "I don't approve of this cult. I don't approve of polygamy. I don't approve of child brides," Farah again seems willing to condone it all, claiming, "The chances are very good there would be more evidence of child sexual abuse in government schools than has been produced at the Yearning for Zion Ranch."  He listed such benign evidence previously made public about the cult, such as "disturbed bed linens" and "12 of the kids have chicken pox" without mentioning a story on WND's own front page: that 31 of the 53 teenage girls in the cult that the state took into custody either have been or currently are pregnant.

Farah then rattles off some statistics:

According to the experts, 62 percent of girls are sexually abused by the age of 18–outside the YFZ Ranch.

According to the experts, 31 percent of boys are sexually abused by the age of 18–outside the YFZ Ranch.

According to the experts, most rape victims are under 12 years old–outside the YFZ Ranch.

Huh? Who are these "experts" Farah is citing? He doesn't say. Perhaps because they don't exist.

According to the National Institute of Justice, one out of three females and one out of five males have been victims of sexual abuse before the age of 18 years; among females, almost 30 percent of all forcible rapes occur before the age of 11 years. All of these numbers are much lower than the ones from Farah's "experts."

Farah claims to "believe in the rule of law" and not to "approve of polygamy." But polygamy is against the law in all U.S. states. Therefore, on that count alone he should be applauding the breakup of a polygamist cult. But he's not.

Why? As we previously theorized, Farah is willing to condone the abuse of the cult's children to prove a larger point about parental rights, just as he has turned a blind eye to the abused children in the California family at the center of a homeschooling lawsuit WND has turned into a cause celebre.

Which is to say, he doesn't actually believe in the rule of law after all.

Which begs the question of whether these same specimens of Zealotry and True Belief are really defending polygamy excused as much in His Name as in the name of "racial honour and integrity."

Especially when The Big Lie can be invoked, never mind Gerald Mohr's warning as preceded almost every episode of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe in the glory days of radio:

GET THIS AND GET IT STRAIGHT:
Crime is a sucker's road, and those who travel it wind up in the gutter, the prison or the grave. There's no way around it. They'll never learn.  

SCAN THROUGH ANY OF A NUMBER OF TITLES OFFERING VARIOUS "HOME BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES" TO SUCH IN NEED OF EXTRA INCOME, and you'll find plenty such as tend to the cloud-cuckoo-land model, replete with glowing generalities suggesting where one could retire within measurable distance by working but a few hours a day.

But when it comes to earning a fortune on the quick from a modest little business, perhaps the most unlikely concept would have to be from the British Sunday newspaper business, which is about as close as our frriends from Land's End to John O'Groats have to Time and Newsweek, for the most part.

Witness the case of The Observer, the longest-running Sunday gazetta in the world (founded in 1791): Motivated by the success of the first-ever Sunday gazetta, the British Gazette and Sunday Monitor (founded by Mrs. E. Johnson in 1779), W. S. Bourne founded The Observer in the simple belief that launching a Sunday gazetta would ensure him a quick fortune--only to lose £1,600 (something like $250,000 in modern purchasing power) on the notion within three years, whereupon Mr. Bourne offered to sell the title to His Majesty's Government--who would have no interest in the idea.

Never mind that Mr. Bourne's hopes were to see The Observer as a gazetta "Unbiased by Prejudice - Uninfluenced by Party...Whose Principal is Independence" when he launched same.

In any case, The Observer has seen a parade of owners in its 217 years, including a brief run under Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), as founded the Daily Mail, early in the last century; William Waldorf Astor, who would place The Observer under trust ownership for a time; Atlantic Richfield; Lonhro ... and, since 1993, by the Guardian Media Group, owners of the mainstream daily The Guardian (who has retained The Observer's editorial independence while pooling reporting staff).

Which, in any case, managed to outlive not only the aforementioned British Gazette and Sunday Monitor (which itself would close in 1829), but also other British Sunday gazettas in the Great Newsagents in the Sky, among them:

• Sunday Chronicle (dates unknown; first Sunday paper to begin the practice of coming out @ 4 am on Sunday morning)
• Sunday Dispatch (1801-1961; founded as the Weekly Dispatch)
• Bell's Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (1821-1886)
• Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, later Sunday Citizen (1850-1967)
• Sunday Pictorial (1915-1963; now Sunday Mirror)
• Empire News (?-1959; since merged into News of the World)
• News on Sunday (April-November 1987)
• Sunday Correspondent (September 1989-November 1990)

Nowadays, with the Information Stuporbahn becoming quite the news resource for many, who probably needs a separate and distinct Sunday newspaper these days?