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Viewing 1 - 7 out of 7 Blogs.
S. Koreans use tattoos to escape draft
Koreans have a curse — "You should be tattooed!" — that reflects the ancient practice of using tattoos to brand thieves and slaves.
Young men with large tattoos are arraigned at police station in Daejon, south of Seoul, Sunday, June 8, 2003, as South Korea crack down on men who use tattoos to evade the country's mandatory military service, crucial to its defense against North Korea. [AP] But a nationwide police search launched this month for men with tattoos has rounded up a new breed of criminals — young men who use the body art to try to evade the country's mandatory military service, crucial to its defense against North Korea. About 170 men have been arrested for "willfully tampering with their bodies to avoid military duty" — a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. National media showed the disgraced young men, handcuffed, heads bowed and shirts removed to reveal large tattoos of dragons, scaled fish, birds and roses. Although there is no law against tattoos, South Koreans consider them symbols of disgrace, often associated with gangsters. Likewise in Japan, tattoos carry a stigma for their association with the "yakuza" gangsters who cover their bodies with them. South Korea (news - web sites)'s conscription law rules men with large tattoos unfit for the military because they cause "abomination among fellow soldiers." Before they reach 30, able-bodied men must serve for at least 26 months in South Korea's 650,000-member military, which faces the North's 1.1 million troops across a heavily guarded border. Most see military service as a sacred duty of manhood. By law, those seeking top government jobs or running for parliament must reveal not only their own service records but those of their children. n until you finish your military duty," says Chang Myong-ki, 40. "If you don't behave in a manly manner, they might ask you, 'Have you been to the military yet?'" But some complain of having to interrupt careers and schooling to serve. Disenchantment has grown after repeated scandals showed many of the country's rich and powerful pay bribes or help their sons get U.S. citizenship to keep them out of the military. Authorities regularly hunt for draft-dodgers. To win exemptions, some turn to overeating or fasting. Some have doctored X-rays or had surgery to damage ligaments or knee cartilage. A few have even feigned insanity. With old perceptions fading fast, tattoos are increasingly popular among young South Koreans. Hundreds of tattoo artists operate illegally — without medical degrees, as required by law — soliciting customers through the Internet, and offering a new loophole for young men seeking a way out of the draft. "There is a need to warn those who would do anything to avoid military service," Judge Kim Sung-keun said this month as he sentenced a 24-year-old father of two young children to eight months in prison for using tattoos to avoid conscription. Authorities base their arrests in some cases on a suspect's history of military physicals. If a young man goes through one exam without overly large tattoos, but comes back for another round with an outsized dragon and secures an exemption, he would be under suspicion. Investigators also have questioned tattoo artists about their customers' motives. In the early 1980s, the country's military junta launched a crackdown on political dissidents and organized crime under its "campaign for social purification." Many with tattoos were sent to military-run camps, regardless of their criminal history. "I am afraid that the draft-dodgers are bringing back the bad image to tattoos," said an operator of a Web site for tattoo-lovers, who gave only his last name Song. In ancient times, Korean fishermen turned to full-body tattoos believing they brought protection from sea beasts and shipwreck. In old Korea, authorities tattooed "Thief" or "Stealer of Government Money" on the foreheads of criminals. Slaves wore tattoos on their forearms showing who owned them. Confucianism, the centuries-old primer on social behavior, urged Koreans to "preserve the body, hair and skin inherited from ancestors." Today, however, plastic surgery, hair dyeing and piercing are booming industries. When soccer star Ahn Jung-hwan scored his winning goal against Japan earlier this month, he threw off his shirt and flashed tattoos on both shoulders. "In the following days, I had 10 times more people visiting my Web site," said Kang Ho, a Seoul tattoo artist who calls South Korea's regulations on tattoos "out of date" and "ridiculous."
Tags: Escape Draft
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Hunting
Posted On 05/26/2009 16:59:37
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Presidential candidates and their gun lust  In her column in today’s New York Times, 2/23/08, “A Bad Year to be a Mallard,” Gail Collins quotes several of the current and former candidates regarding their liking for hunting:
“I’m pretty sure there will be duck hunting in heaven, and I can’t wait.”
— Mike Huckabee “I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life.”
— Mitt Romney “I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints if you will.”
— Mitt Romney, amending the record once it was pointed out that he had never had a hunting license. “Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard.”
— John McCain
“My father taught me to shoot 100 years ago.”
— Hillary Clinton I’m particularly distressed by Governor Huckabee’s statement. This man was a minister. Here he is suggesting that the Lord would allow the murder of animals in the Heaven that he imagines to exist. Its one thing to suggest that hunting is ok if you are going to eat what you shoot, or if you shoot an animal because it is killing your livestock (wolves or foxes for example), but it is quite another to justify it for mere sport. Surely, Governor Huckabee, doesn’t believe that there will be a problem getting a good meal in Heaven. Hmnn, perhaps he had the other place in mind. Now former Governor Romney has some justification for his alleged hunting. You can eat rabbits, and they aren’t readily available at supermarkets in Massachusetts where he was Governor, but you can’t eat varmints. Why shoot them. Why not wake up that dog that is doing absolutely nothing around the house and send them out to hunt; by themselves. Terriers, for example were specifically bred to hunt varmints. Why not buy them and let them do it. I had an Irish Terrier once and he loved nothing better then going after varmints, even if he almost tore your arm off with the leash when he did so. Let your terrier do varmint hunting and get your ducks, geese, and rabbits at the butchers. That way you’ll know that they died with a minimal amount of pain.
THE COON DOG EULOGY
Eulogy written by William W. Ramsey
Introduction by Bradley W. Ramsey
A group of solemn men, dressed in black mourning coats and hip boots, wearing carbide lamps on their heads stood beside a mound of soil and a freshly dug hole. A hunting horn sounded and the bay of hounds filled the air. Four similarly dressed men walked slowly toward the gathered crowd, a small wooden box carried between them
When the box was lowered into the ground one of the men spoke the following.
Let not your hearts be troubled,
for in his master’s swamp are many den trees.
If it were not so, I would have told you.
He has gone to prepare a place for you
and where he has gone Ole Red will go also.
Dogs, they say, do not have souls.
They only have hide and bones.
But I believe there is a coon dog heaven
and Red is gone were the good coon dogs go.
Anybody that coon hunts has to believe in God.
If you have known the music of coon hounds on a trail
and heard the excitement in their voices when they strike,
and seen their eagerness and determination when they tree,
if you have seen their courage and bravery
in a tough fight with an old boar coon,
if you have heard their anguished cries and howls,
if you have seen the ugly gashes
and bleeding wounds
and witnessed their resolve to never quit,
you know there has to be a God to make an animal like that.
And a God that that would make a coon dog
won’t forget him when he is gone.
There is a coon dog heaven and Ole Red is there.
And every night he runs
and the den trees are there in the old swamp
and the old hunter’s moon hangs low in the west
and the coons don’t go up no slick barked trees
and the carbide don’t run out
and there ain’t no bull nettle and saw briars
and old master always knocks the coon out
and lets Ole Red grab him and give him a good shake;
and then he gets a pat on the head
and climbs back into the kennel in the back of the pick-up truck
and goes home and sleeps all day.
‘Cause he knows in coon dog heaven he can hunt again
when the sun goes down and the tree frogs holler.
May the bones of Ole Red rest in peace,
through the mercy of God
and may the coon hunters light perpetually shine upon him.
AMEN
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Posted On 04/28/2009 04:12:17
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I was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones that everyone has clipped onto their belt or purse. I can't afford one. So, I'm wearing my garage door opener. I also made a cover for my hearing aid and now I have what they call blue teeth, I think. You know, I spent a fortune on deodorant before I realized that people didn't like me anyway. I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans! I was thinking about old age and decided that old age is 'when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it.' I thought about making a fitness movie for folks my age, and call it 'Pumping Rust'. I've gotten that dreaded furniture disease. That's when your chest is falling into your drawers! When people see a cat's litter box, they always say, 'Oh, have you got a cat?' Just once I want to say, 'No, it's for company!' Employment application blanks always ask who is to be notified in case of an emergency. I think you should write, 'A Good Doctor'! I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older. Then, it dawned on me, they were cramming for their finals. As for me, I'm just hoping God grades on the curve.

Enjoy Your Days & Love Your Life,
Because Life is a journey to be savored.
Tags: Unnone
Ed Freeman You're an 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 - 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He's coming anyway.
And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses.
And, he kept coming back.... 13 more times..... And took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient , Ed Freeman , died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise , ID ......May God rest his soul..... I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing. 
Medal of Honor Winner
Shotgun preteen vs. illegal alien Home Invaders:
Butte, Montana November 5, 2008
Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably
believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia
Harrington after her father had left their two-story home.
It seems the two crooks never learned two things: they
were in Montana , and Patricia had been a clay shooting
champion since she was nine.
Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke
through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father's
room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.
Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to
be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the
11-year-old's knee crouch aim . He suffered fatal wounds to his
abdomen and genitals.
When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to
the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to
death before medical help could arrive.
It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a
stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion
robbery. That victim, 50-year-old David Burien, was not so lucky.
He died from stab wounds to the chest.
Ever wonder why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or
ABC news.........an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her
home, and herself......against two A-hole, illegal immigrants.......and
she wins, she is still alive.
Now that is Gun Control !
Thought for the day:
Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a
drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist
Please send this to everybody on your list... this is Obama's gun control by secrecy. Very Important for you to be aware of a new bill HR 45 introduced into the House. This is the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sale Act of 2009.... We just learned yesterday about this on the Peter Boyles radio program. Even gun shop owners didn't know about this because it is flying under the radar. To find out about this - go to any government website and type in HR 45 or Google HR 45 Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sales Act of 2009. You will get all the information. Basically this would make it illegal to own a firearm - any rifle with a clip or ANY pistol unless: It is registered, You are fingerprinted, You supply a current Driver's License You supply your Social Security # You will submit to a physical & mental evaluation at any time of their choosing Each update - change or ownership through private or public sale must be reported and costs $25 - Failure to do so you automatically lose the right to own a firearm and are subject up to a year in jail. There is a child provision clause on page 16 section 305 stating a child-access provision. Gun must be locked and inaccessible to any child under 18. They would have the right to come and inspect that you are storing your gun safely away from accessibility to children and fine is punishable for up to 5 yrs. in prison. If you think this is a joke - go to the website and take your pick of many options to read this It is long and lengthy. But, more and more people are becoming aware of this. Pass the word along. Any hunters in your family - pass this along. Peter Boyles is on this and having guests. Listen to him on KHOW 630 a.m. in the morning. He suggests the best way to fight this is to tell all your friends about it and "spring into action". Also he suggests we all join a pro-gun group like the Colorado Rifle Association, hunting associations, gun clubs and especially the NRA.This is just a "termite" approach to complete confiscation of guns and disarming of our society to the point we have no defense - chip away a little here and there until the goal is accomplished before anyone realizes it. (Did Obama promise transparency? It seems his motives are more and more transparent while his methods are hidden in back rooms.) This is one to act on whether you own a gun or not. If you take my gun, only the criminals will have one to use against me. HR 45 only makes me/us less safe. After working with convicts for 26 years I know this bill, if passed, would make them happy and in less danger from their victims. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.45: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h45/show http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-45 Please.. copy and send this out to EVERYONE in the USA .
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