THERE IS A BIT OF THE PERSONALLY EMOTIONAL IN WHAT I AM ABOUT TO DISCUSS: I have an older brother, by name of Doug, who resides outside Mobile, Alabama and has been retired from the Navy for almost 30 years now.

Who, in the last couple of years, came down with a form of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos or related products (e.g., asbestos insulation in water pipes aboard ship)--in medical terms, mesothelioma.

Which Doug thinks he picked up by way of his Naval service aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma during the Vietnam War period, what with the insulating pipes below decks especially having asbestos ... and for which he's receiving treatment @ the VA Medical Centre in Mobile.

The which was brought up recently in conversation with some close friends of mine discussing family developments ... in turn shifting to a broader likelihood of whether an entire generation or two of Navy veterans as served aboard ship (in particular below decks) may have unwittingly developed mesothelioma as a byproduct of Naval service thanks to exposure to asbestos-based insulating material dating to less politically- and medically-sensitive times.

Not to mention the possibility that Navy veterans with service @ sea for the most part may have higher-than-average rates of risk for developing mesothelioma cf. the general populace--or, for that matter, other occupations where risk of exposure to asbestos or asbestos-containing components was considered "part of the job" (among them plumbers, steamfitters, insulation contractors and heating/cooling-system contractors) and among the hazards of the game.

And whether Navy and Marine Corps veterans can apply for, let alone obtain, compensation for service-connected illnesses, injuries or disabilities thanks to asbestos exposure and ensuing mesothelioma.

Making you wonder if mesothelioma may rival veneral diseases as among the more common maladies of those serving @ sea, never mind the latter likely being contracted during shore leave liasons with Mrs. Warren's Profession and its practicioners.

IN SPITE OF THE PROBLEMS AS PREVENTED MANY OF YOU ACCESSING THIS WEBLOG MUCH OF YESTERDAY, I hope this finds you fine and well, readers.

Even if Your Correspondent did quite a bit of sweeping up grit from the low spots of the motel's car park and driveway--grit which accumulates following rainwater drying off, and then some. Not a very pleasant sight to look @ in all honesty.

Otherwise, somewhat mild and a tad breezy as I produce this item, with the likelihood for some thunderstorms later this afterlunch into evening and tomorrow morning.

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JUST SO YOU DIDN'T FORGET, letterpost rates in the United States will be going up from Monday, as follows:

• Domestic letters: 42¢ for the first ounce, 17¢ each additional ounce or fraction thereof.
• Domestic postcards: 27¢
• International letters and postcards (airmail to all destinations): 72¢ per half-ounce to Canada or Mexico; 94¢ per half-ounce to all other countries. (Mail addressed to American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau or the Federated States of Micronesia goes @ domestic letter rate. Likewise with APO/FPO addresses for United States military and some diplomatic personnel overseas.)
• Priority Mail: $4.80 for up to 2 pounds.
• Express Mail: $16.50 for up to 8 ounces.

(Those with more questions may want to visit the United States Postal Service website, or freecall 1-800-ASK-USPS.)

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IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE? (PART I): Brave New Films and MoveOn.org would like to call your attention to the following video, as reveals what amounts to an "echo chamber" with dog-whistle overtones on Fox Prolefeed vis-a-vis whipping up war hysteria against Iran, using the same lame bromides and platitudes to justify the original ur-RAHOWA against Iran:

Having seen it, ask yourself if we, as a supposedly "morally superior" nation and society, can afford further war fanaticism of the crudest and most pathetic sort (considering The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's late admission that the "real" reason for said ur-RAHOWA is to maintain dependency on oil imports as one with soverign identity).

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IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE? (PART II): Further from MoveOn.org is this rather interesting challenge for you, dear reader, to spot discernible differences, ideological and otherwise, between His Fraudulency and The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang.

(Good luck finding any as would make the difference come Indecision 2008's climax in November.)

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PUTINIST RUSSIA, DOMINATED AS IT IS BY WEIRD AND UNWHOLESOME ELEMENTS AND SYNDICATES AS IT IS, can't help but find new and innovative places by which to conceal their ill-gained wealth @ the expense of a post-Soviet people and society risking the likelihood of living under a new brand of xenophobic fanaticism as would make the Soviet era look like Disneyland by comparison.

One rather unlikely venue is in real estate along the Gold Coast of southeastern Queensland, Australia, some 30 mile south of Brisbane, the state capital, as the crow flieth. Especially so beachfront or beachview apartment in the likes of such "in" areas as Tweed Heads, Surfer's Paradise and Mermaid Beach.

The prospect of which, according to the BBC World Service, leaves local police agencies rather leery about money laundering (especially where proceeds of crime, corruption or graft are involved) being behind such large-scale Russian investment, not to mention many of the big investors being weird and/or unwholesome elements more than likely.

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IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT THE CYCLONIC DEVASTATION AS AFFLICTED THE SO-CALLED "UNION OF MYANMAR" @ THE WEEKEND may have been more serious than initial estimates first suggested:

New official estimates suggest that the death toll may have exceeded some 15,000, with many thousands more left homeless--and a corrupt and incompetent military regime facing heat diplomatically for understimating the extent of the devastation, let alone developing any semblance of logistics for delivering relief within its official self-reliant ideology.

That, and a national plebiscite called for the weekend to approve or otherwise reject a new and hastily-drafted constitution which, in theory, is expected to establish a timetable for the restoration of democracy.

Could it be that the Myanmari military regime may be about to collapse as a consequence of underestimated cyclonic devastation? Stay tuned.

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REMEMBER THAT APPEARENCE BY FRINGE GOP CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE TONY ZIRKLE @ a neo-Nazi gathering in Chicago recently in honour of Adolf Hitler's birthday, making all manner of Julius Streicher-stylee remarks claiming that Jews dominated the pornography business?

As Right Wing Watch notes, it's probably the tip of a more sinister and just as menacing iceberg, so to speak:

Tony Zirkle’s 15 minutes of swastika-draped fame were widely reported last month, when the Indiana congressional candidate spoke at an American Nazi Party celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Zirkle, whose campaign warns of a link between Jews and pornography, offered the comical explanation that, despite the oversize Hitler portrait and Nazi flags directly behind him, the swastika armbands of the men on either side of him, and the words “Seig Heil” on the cake, “he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.” The candidate was duly reviled by his opponent in the Republican primary race, as well as by everybody else, as an isolated racist crackpot.

However, the report on the matter by the right-wing WorldNetDaily—a product of the anti-Bill Clinton Arkansas Project that now hosts columnists such as Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and Chuck Norris—offered an unusual twist. After reviewing the story and printing a number of random comments from other websites (a common journalistic technique at WND), the article tried to put it in a kind of context: "Other congressional candidates have raised eyebrows with their speeches, too," it stated. But its only example was a quote from Rep. Keith Ellison comparing the time after September 11, 2001, when the Bush Administration asserted new executive privileges, to the time after the burning of the Reichstag, when Hitler consolidated his powers.

While Ellison took heat for using the metaphor, there is, to put it mildly, a pretty obvious distinction between making a rhetorical comparison of your opponents' tactics to historical events in Nazi Germany, and actually forging an alliance with present-day Nazis based on apparently shared values. So why did WND choose this as its only attempt at context?

Ellison, of course, was the first Muslim member of Congress, and after his election in 2006, the Right launched an effort to portray his presence in Washington as a dire threat to the nation. WorldNetDaily offered obsessive coverage through dozens of flimsy, paranoid articles with titles such as “Doubts grow over Muslim lawmaker's loyalty” and “Muslim congressman called 'security' issue.”

Since WND is so desperate for an example of an anti-Semitic political figure, it’s fortunate that Ted Pike provided a timely reminder. Pike, head of the National Prayer Network, has been a frequent source of quotes for WND whenever the site covered proposed federal hate-crimes protections, most recently in December.

Pike is best-known, however, for pushing out anti-Semitic propaganda along with his father, a radio talker in the 1980s. As People For the American Way reported in a press release from 1989, Pike was warning that there was “a tendency toward Jewish domination of society,” that “Jewish international bankers” were behind the Bolshevik Revolution, and that the state of Israel was “the first stage in Satan’s plan to take this world from Christ and give it to the Antichrist.” Twenty years ago, Pike was warning that the Jewish motivation behind hate-crimes legislation was to silence churches; today, he warns of the “homosexual agenda.”

We were reminded of Pike—and his place as a privileged WorldNetDaily commentator—after he sent out an e-mail alert two weeks ago complaining that the Southern Poverty Law Center had cited the National Prayer Network as a hate group:

Jewish activist groups want to increasingly broaden the terms "hate" and "anti-Semitism" to include evangelicals.…

Jewish activists thus display a truly hateful intent—to harm Christians and deprive them of freedom. Such activists work to warp public and government perceptions of Christian conservatives—demonizing us as potential sources of “homophobic,” anti-Semitic bigotry and possible violence. SPLC alleges a 48 percent increase of threat from the "radical right" since 2000. Jewish attack groups such as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, American Civil Liberties Union, and People for the American Way, smear “homophobic” evangelicals as being part of this “threat.”

After defaming Christians as "haters," Jewish supremacists want to actually outlaw Christian political activity and evangelism. The ADL created hate crime laws that will particularly outlaw reproof of sodomy and evangelism of non-Christians, especially Jews.

Which begs the question, dear readers, of where it necessarily follows that America's "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" is conditioned by an unswerving and fanatically unyielding brand of hate, bigotry, intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia and anti-Semitism--all to be conveniently packaged as "Christian Patriot Love" if and when the need requires.

Especially considering a target audience of the vulnerable and marginalised who, themselves, are easy targets for such fear and hatemongering in the first place.

AS FOR YOUR CORRESPONDENT BETWEEN TODAY OF TIME IT WAS PULLED UP by this weblog which cannot be utilized temporarily because of circumstance outside direct control of the host of blog, way or the network server is regretted, inconvenience.

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Work being able to begin the style Mallratz which, supplements this weblog with itself method he could use downtime for being able and that new online mall, with appointing.

For the second time, as for me you can suffer first and your perseverance and appreciation of understanding for all inconveniences which you apologize.

(Thanks in the meantime to Pigeond.net's English-to-Engrish Translator for making the preceding possible. I hope you liked this interesting new approach to apologising for what happened to this and other Blogdrive-hosted blogs for a time today.)

(WITH APOLOGIES TO SMUDGE FROM SURF'S UP THERE for the quote in the subject of this posting....)

Shortly after World War II, an ultra-conservative and @ once anti-Communist group published a treatise entitled The Road Ahead, which gained wide circulation thanks to Reader's Digest later reprinting same in condensed form, as no doubt helped shape the likes of the John Birch Society, the unholy terror of anti-Communist excess in the early 1960's especially.

One of its most widely-quoted lines was that which suggested that "a strike should be considered an offence against society," as if suggesting that America's "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" was conditioned by the defence of laissez-fare free-market capitalism based on corporatist models (which saw Industry expected to pacify Labour enough to the extent that the latter would not need to join "Communistic" labour unions), only to be ill-sorted thanks to Benito Mussolini's Fascists in Italy, who approriated corporatist thought.

And it seems there are still those who still see strikes--or, for that matter, industrial action of any kind by workers--as Crimes Against Society, as was the case among Communist regimes, with the added evil of such being looked upon as "giving aid and comfort to International Terrorism."

ConWebBlog explains:

Did you know that exercising your constitutional rights to take part in a strike is the same thing as terrorism?

That's what Lowell Ponte thinks. From his May 2 Newsmax column:

On May 1 a little-reported act of domestic terrorism struck the United States.

It cost our economy between $1 and $2 billion, equivalent to the theft of up to $26.66 from every American family of four–money you and your family will be paying in higher prices.

Even more troubling is that those who conspired to assault us have not been arrested, jailed, or even removed from their high-security-risk positions.

[...]

What happened along the West Coast on Thursday was sabotage designed to send an ideological message–and to intimidate both companies and politicians with a display of disruptive union power.

Two years ago Americans were concerned that the Persian Gulf nation Dubai was acquiring facilities in American ports, and that this might somehow open us to an increased risk of Islamist terrorism. These are not the only potential terrorists.

What terrorist event is he frothing over? The one-day May 1 work stoppage by dock workers on West Coast ports in protest of the Iraq war. Ponte offers no evidence to back up his assertion that the strike "cost our economy between $1 and $2 billion." Indeed, a 2002 report on the possible effects of a port strike projected a $4.7 billion impact in lost wages over a four-week strike, going on to note:

[A]ttempts to track down the source of the $1 billion a day and $2 billion a day figures widely quoted, which in each case turned out to be inaccurate reporting. To actually lose a billion dollars a day for two weeks, "we'd have to sink the ships," said [report author Patrick L.] Anderson, "the impact here is large enough to be reported without exaggeration."

Nevertheless, Ponte went on to claim that "In October 2002, the ILWU flexed its muscle through a work slowdown that cost shippers up to a billion dollars a day."

The rest of Ponte's column is largely guilt by association, attacking the alleged "radical leftist ideology" of the founder of the longshoreman's union. Ponte concluded: "We should remove security risks and saboteurs from America's ports, starting with the 6,000 longshoremen who conspired to cause May Day's shutdown."

Ponte isn't the only conservative to have recently expressed unorthodox views about constitutional rights. Last week, the Media Research Center's Brent Baker declared that "the First Amendment doesn't apply in North Carolina" because a couple of TV stations there decided not to air an inflammatory anti-Obama ad.

Come to think of it: Since when did workers participating in industrial action become seen as one with "security risks and saboteurs," let alone "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," which is considered treason?

And besides: Methinks Lowell Ponte must've been drinking the old Kool-Aid (as it were) reading Matt Sevetic's I Was A Communist For The FBI (which would later become a radio drama starring Dana Andrews and a movie starring Frank Lovejoy) and/or Herbert Philbrook's I Led Three Lives, not to mention the aforementioned The Road Ahead and other specimens of enforced McCarthy-era patriotism, for way too long off his Five-Foot Shelf....

Thanks, Smudge, for being spot-on right with the "dirty trash can full of poop" remark.

A COUPLE OF ITEMS IN "ENGRISH," SO TO SPEAK, AS MAY INTEREST SUCH SPECIMENS OF RELIGIOPOLITICAL ZEALOTRY AND TRUE BELIEF whose homophobia serves as cheap and cheerful raison d'etre for their cause of Defending the Sanctity and Purity of Marriage by making same the sole and exclusive monopoly of a heterosexual relationship:

• Sign posted @ a campground in Germany's Black Forest: "It is strictly forbidden on our Black Forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose."
• Sign posted in a Swiss hotel: "Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose."

As if that weren't enough, considering the Religiopolitical Right's seeing women as nothing less than sex machines subject to the husband's will, some actual signs (again, in "Engrish") appealing(?) to the weaker sex:

• Notice in a Norwegian cocktail lounge: "Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar."
• Sign outside a Hong Kong tailors' shop: "Ladies may have a fit upstairs."
• Sign oustide a Romanian doctors' office: "Specialist in women and other diseases."
• Sign in the window of a Paris department store: "Dresses for streetwalking." (Cf. a German junk-mail flyer for a mail-order house: "Dresses for street walkers.")
• Sign ouside a Rome laundry: "Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time."
• Sign spotted in an Acapulco hotel: "Our nylons cost more than common, but you'll find they are the best in the long run."

And seeing as how the Chris Matthews crowd is forever expecting women to "recognise their place," consider these instructions posted in the laundry room of a Tokyo hotel--in Engrish!

To everyone of the use, Laundromat.

Many people use a Laundromat. Let's comply with the next item to use it for the cleanness safety.

1. Let's read the explanation of the way of using it well, and use the washing machine, the dryness machine properly.

2. Let's wash a hand well before and after a wash.

3. Don't wash the person who get's an epidemic, and clothes which contacted with the person.

4. Don't wash a diaper which urine stuck to, sports shoes, an animal's rug because an unpleasantness is given to the person handled later and it is un-sanitation.

5. Let's bring it back after you spread the wash from the dryness machine and a state is done.

6. Please ask a satellite control person in charge for the inquiry about the establishment, the contact of in case of emergency.

see more crazy cat pics

A RATHER NICE, IF COOL AND HAZY, DAY UP HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI REGION as I prepare this entry for your edification and enlightenment. Plenty of filtered sun and trees starting to bud outside to herald spring's arrival.

Even if there's talk of serious rain likely late tomorrow, along with the onset of slightly cooler temperatures.

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AS FOR THE NEW ONLINE MALL I AM DEVELOPING TO HELP COMPLEMENT THIS WEBLOG, Your Correspondent is only now starting to work on it, as you can see here at its (eventual) online home.

Think of it, for now, as a "work-in-progress," so just be patient. And as e-tailers get added, feel free to shop around. Which, hopefully, should be more convenient than presently. (But it's not to say online shopping will disappear entirely from The Exaggerator; expect a somewhat limited presence all the more, which should help speed up page download times.)

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ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF "GOOD CONCEPT, BUT NO SENSE:"

His Fraudulency's Great Within, for the sake of leaving a positive and "glowing" legacy aside from the misadventures known otherwise as ur-RAHOWA against International Terrorism, wants the post-9/11 tax cuts (based, know, on discredited "supply-side" socioeconomic thought holding that "low taxes=jobs=social stability") to be made "complete, final and binding" after they are set to lapse in January of 2010.

Which, considering a National Debt as has already worsened all the more thanks to these anti-terrorist misadventures and an unyielding Zealotry and True Belief in discredited socioeconomic thought as has failed to create real jobs and payrolls (especially so stateside), begs the question of how the State can expect to finance itself without taxation.

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A NEW (AND, PERHAPS, BITTER) PILL FOR SUCH SEEING PRIVATISATION AS A MAGIC BULLET for promoting innovation, competition--and lower taxes:

The New Zealand government has finally acknolwedged that it made errors of judgement when it sold the state-owned rail, road and Cook Straits ferry services to a private investment house in Australia in 1993 for NZ$400 million (now worth US$314 million/C$318.27 million/£159.2 million/€202.38 million/CHF330.5 million/INR12.75 billion/¥32.92 billion/A$332.06 million) in the hopes of encouraging innovation and flexibility as were then deemed infeasable under State ownership.

Which, unfortunately, was anything but: Services were cut to laughable levels, deferred maintenance was allowed to set in, waste and inefficency held high carnival, and repeated requests for fare increases were turned down. In turn creating a state of affairs as led the Crown to purchase the track and infrastructure for a symbolic NZ$1 while the private operator was allowed to continue providing services under an Open Access Agreement.

Now, Wellington has purchased back the rail and ferry services for NZ$665 million (US$510.87 million/C$517.92 million/£259.14 million/€329.35 million/CHF537 million/INR20.73 billion/¥53.54 billion/A$539.6 million) as part of a greater government agenda towards sustainable transport policy.

In the meantime, the likely state of affairs for Kiwi commuters is best summarised in this cartoon posted on Stuff.co.nz:

(In any case, expect the New Zealand Government to invest substantially into refurbishment of existing track and equipment over the coming months as part of renationalisation.)

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"CHRISTIAN IN NAME ONLY" DEPARTMENT: Your Correspondent understands that a number of shady "mortgage rescue" and debt-consolidation/-factoring companies targeting the vulnerable of late have taken to using the "Christian business" angle to create an aura of sincerity and credibility among such caught up with substantial debts and yet unable to resolve their dilemma without resorting to the new, stricter bankruptcy laws.

(As in "using Christian principles" and invoking various passages of Scripture on their websites and other business materials.)

Come to think of it, the "Christian" angle turns out to be cheap and cheerful back-door means by which they can get around consumer-protection laws proscribing advance fees for their services as turn out, more than likely, to result in foreclosure or referral of past-due accounts to collection agencies, what with the creditors not having any knowledge of such "Christian" entities or the arrangements in question.

Thus leaving consumers falling for such (mis)adventures in Emotional Mortgage Rescue with loss of home and difficulties in finding jobs or livelihood because of the ensuing damage to their credit histories.

Could much the same thing be possible if the targets of such complaints were holding themselves out as "Jewish" or, for that matter, "Muslim" businesses? "Think about it."

AMONG THE CRUDER STEREOTYPES AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS USED TO WHIP UP HOMOPHOBIC FEELINGS AND TENDENCIES is that of homosexual men being all the more into bodybuilding and physique.

With that in mind, Your Correspondent would like to call your attention to the following recent article from the Intelligence Report, a quarterly magazine from the Southern Poverty Law Centre devoted to reporting on the latest trends in bigotry, hate and extremism, noting where the white-supremacist element (as would prefer to be called "white nationalists" in a rather pathetic attempt @ lily-gilding) has started becoming fond of using Mixed Martial Arts to attract attention and (alas for it!) a certain notoriety:

Melvin "Man-o-war" Costa has a classic Nazi eagle and swastika insignia tattooed across his chest and a prison gang spider web inked on his right elbow.

Costa, 26, also is a convicted felon, self-avowed white nationalist and currently the 10th-ranked light heavyweight fighter in King of the Cage, one of the most popular semi-professional "mixed martial arts" (MMA) combat leagues in America. MMA is the fastest growing sport in the country. Television ratings for its preeminent league, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, routinely outdraw every other sport except NFL football among men aged 18-34.

Not surprisingly, this rapidly rising blood sport is likewise wildly popular among racist skinheads and other young extremists with a thirst for violence. Many white supremacist online forums have recently established discussion groups devoted specifically to MMA; skinhead gangs across the country are raising money by hosting illegal backyard tournaments; and retired white supremacist cage fighter Mike Buell runs a major MMA training school in Arizona whose logo is a Celtic cross (often used as a white supremacist symbol) and the phrase "Hail Victory" (the German equivalent is "sieg heil").

Costa, however, is the first openly white nationalist MMA fighter to become a Top Ten-ranked competitor in a sanctioned organization like King of the Cage, which is a proving ground for up-and-coming fighters, a select few of whom go on to fame and fortune in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

"A swastika, as far as I hold it true to my own, it stands for the purity of my people's blood," Costa told leading MMA sportswriter Sam Caplan last October. "I do believe in the purity, security, and the survival of the white race. … When I come down that [fighter entrance] ramp and people see me, they know I'm white power." Costa did clarify, however, that he considers himself a white nationalist rather than a neo-Nazi because "[a] neo-Nazi holds Hitler's beliefs to be true down to a T. I don't. I believe in Hitler's point of view as far as racial consonance but I don't believe a lot of [his] things as far as controlling the economy."

By Costa's own account, he was frequently incarcerated for burglary and assault from the time he was 15 until his most recent release from prison in March 2006. His first King of the Cage fight occurred the following April. Costa knocked out his opponent at 1:06 into the first round.

"I don't feel pain. No [N4BSK]in' brain, no pain!" he said then. Over the next six months he reeled off three successive knockout victories. Southern California skinheads in full dress—boots, suspenders, bomber jackets—began showing up at King of the Cage events in droves to cheer on the Aryan warrior, whose swastika tattoo, outspoken white nationalist ideology and growing skinhead fan base presented MMA promoters with a public relations dilemma.

Last Oct. 18, shortly after Costa's comments and pictures of his tattoos were republished widely on MMA fan websites, Gary Shaw, the live events president of the parent company that owns King of the Cage, issued this statement: "I try not to allow anyone to fight in the cage or the ring that has anything inappropriate either on their gear or tattooed permanently on their body. And that means either ethnic, or racial, or anything offensive to the general public. I was unaware of the situation but I'm in the process of handling it now. Hopefully, it will never happen again."

But it did, less than two months later. Costa fought in a King of the Cage event held last Dec. 18. For the first time, though, he lost. Davis, for his part, did not return two E-mails seeking clarification on his league's regulation of fighters with "inappropriate" tattoos.

Judging by online forum discussions, Costa's growing legions of white supremacist fans seemed far less concerned with his swastika or spider web tattoos than a third tattoo, circling his navel, that boasts, "I have a small penis." The common theory is that, as one fan said, "He might be going for a bit of sarcasm, depending on the actual size of his penis, given the false stereotype about us."

Be that as it may, Costa says, "At least God blessed me with a strong jaw and a big head."

Something which ought to be watched by such who regulate combat sports, Mixed Martial Arts among them--especially because of the potential for MMA tournaments and exhibitions degenerating into neo-Nazi rallies attracting elements weird and unwholesome, let along Bringing the Sport into Disrepute.

Especially when literature tables for neo-Nazi and white-supremacist groups sit cheek-by-jowl alongside the official souvenir stands.

And certain sections of the audience look strangely like a company of SS officers from back in Nazi Germany, right down to the swastika armbands, the "death's head" logotype on the cap, and the belt buckles inscribed Gott Mit Ons ("G-d is With Us")--and did I mention the steel-toed bovver boots as could be deployed "just in case," not to mention cleverly-concealed blackjacks, rubber-coated truncheons, brass knuckles and sjamboks? 

26 hours old

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