100 bongs a day led to psychotic rampage And suffocation.

A man who smoked up to 100 marijuana bongs a day went on a violent rampage, hijacking cars and assaulting people because of his paranoid fear of police.

Suffering a drug-induced psychosis, Brett Stuart Matthews, 27, assaulted 12 people, including seven police, in September last year.

Magistrate Jelena Popovic sentenced him to three-and-a-half years’ jail with a non-parole period of two-and-a-half years.

She told Matthews that although he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she could not sentence him as a mentally ill person because he should have known the dangers of using “huge amounts of marijuana”.

For CNN, Fox’s open-&-shuttle case of piracy

During coverage of the space shuttle Columbia’s disintegration, people in CNN’s control room thought the picture they saw on rival Fox News Channel looked familiar.

So they tried a little experiment.

The producers superimposed a tiny “CNN” logo on the upper left corner of the network’s screen as it showed the shuttle breaking into pieces. Blip! The same logo appeared on Fox News Channel.

Then they decided to abruptly switch cameras so a picture of correspondent Miles O’Brien appeared. For two seconds ? until it was hurriedly replaced with a view of NASA’s mission control ? it looked like O’Brien was working for Fox, too.

The shuttle disaster provided a vivid example of the lengths to which television networks sometimes go to get the most compelling pictures for a big story.

Are War Protesters Really ‘Mainstream’?

Roughly 100,000 people crammed 20 city blocks in New York City this Saturday. Bearing signs proclaiming “Bush Is a Terrorist,” “Oil Is Murder,” and “Change Regimes in the U.S.,” demonstrators blocks away from the base of the rally strained to listen to the amplified remarks of Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, and other familiar activist luminaries.

While this demonstration and hundreds of others garnered page-one coverage across the globe, the attitudes and beliefs of the actual protestors received scant attention. In what has become an almost monthly ritual, mobs of protestors demonstrate in major cities against the Bush administration, and the mass media then vaguely infers that the protestors represent a cross-section of society.

CNN paraphrased its own on-scene reporter’s observations that “the crowd was diverse, with older men and women in fur coats, parents with young children, military veterans and veterans of the anti-war movement.” An AP story quoted a protestor at a Knoxville demonstration stating that he was “surprised it’s not just the usual suspects.” He maintained, “Bush must be really screwing up to bring out the mainstream.”

But did the mainstream really turn out in Manhattan?

Sovereign Nation of Blue Couch

Chirac blasts eastern Europeans over pro-American stance, warns on EU membership

French President Jacques Chirac launched a withering attack Monday on eastern European nations who signed letters backing the U.S. position on Iraq, warning it could jeopardize their chances of joining the European Union (news - web sites).

“It is not really responsible behavior,” he told a news conference. “It is not well brought up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.”

Chirac was angered when EU candidates Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined pro-U.S. EU members such as Britain, Spain and Italy last month in a letter supporting Washington’s line on Iraq against the more dovish stance of France and Germany.

Paris was further upset when 10 other eastern European nations signed a similar letter a few days later.

France argued that the moves aggravated splits in the 15-nation EU and backed the ideas put forward by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who had earlier spoke of France and Germany as “old Europe” in contrast to the easterners seeking to join the EU and NATO (news - web sites).

“Concerning the candidate countries, honestly I felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union implies a minimum of understanding for the others,” Chirac told reporters after an emergency EU summit on Iraq.

He warned the candidates the position could be “dangerous” because the parliaments of the 15 EU nations still have to ratify last December’s decision for 10 new members to join the bloc on May 1, 2004.

Chirac particularly warned Romania and Bulgaria, who are still negotiating to enter the bloc in 2007.

“Romania and Bulgaria were particularly irresponsible to (sign the letter) when their position is really delicate,” Chirac said. “If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining Europe they could not have found a better way.”

So, wait, France, let me see if I get this right. How dare the US say “you’re either with us or against us” and “split” the EU and NATO when, well, you can just jump up and down and say “if you don’t support France we won’t let you play anymore!!!!” And who the hell cares about France?

Pets with their heads in bags of food!

February 18th, 2003 at 1:57 pm | Tags: Uncategorized