Amsterdam to get statue to world’s prostitutes

Amsterdam’s red light district is reportedly to receive a bronze statue dedicated to prostitutes around the world.

According to the Dutch agency ANP, sculptress Els Rijerse made the statue at the request of a former prostitute Mariska Majoor, who a decade ago founded a centre on prostitution in the Dutch capital.

Majoor was quoted as saying by ANP that the statue would be a first of its kind and that it had received the blessing of the city authorities.

The statue represents a self-assured woman, her hands on her hips, looking sideways towards the sky, and standing on a doorstep, ANP said.

The precise place where the statue will be laid and its title have not yet been announced, it said.

N. Dakota Man Aims to Be 1st Hemp Farmer

State legislator David Monson began pushing the idea of growing industrial hemp in the United States a decade ago. Now his goal may be within reach – but first he needs to be fingerprinted.

Monson turned in an application Monday to the state Agriculture Department to become the nation’s first licensed industrial hemp farmer. State Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said Monson provided fingerprints with his application, which will be used for a background check to prove he is not a criminal.

The farmer, school superintendent and lawmaker would like to start by growing 10 acres of the crop, and he spent part of his weekend staking out the field he wants to use.

“I’m starting to see that we maybe have a chance,” Republican State Rep. Monson said. “For a while, it was getting really depressing.”

Last month, the state Agriculture Department finished its work on rules farmers may use to grow industrial hemp, a cousin of marijuana that does not have the drug’s hallucinogenic properties. The sturdy, fibrous plant is used to make an assortment of products, ranging from paper, rope and lotions to car panels, carpet backing and animal bedding.

Applicants must provide latitude and longitude coordinates for their proposed hemp fields, furnish fingerprints and pay at least $202 in fees, including $37 to cover the cost of criminal record checks.

Johnson said the federal Drug Enforcement Administration still must give its permission before Monson, or anyone else, may grow industrial hemp.

“That is going to be a major hurdle,” Johnson said.

Another impediment is the DEA’s annual registration fee of $2,293, which is nonrefundable even if the agency does not grant permission to grow industrial hemp. Processing the paperwork for Monson’s license should take about a month, Johnson said.

A DEA spokesman has said North Dakota applications to grow industrial hemp will be reviewed, and Johnson said North Dakota’s rules were developed with the agency’s concerns in mind. Law enforcement officials fear industrial hemp can shield illicit marijuana, although hemp supporters say the concern is unfounded.

North Dakota is one of seven states that have authorized industrial hemp farming. The others are Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana and West Virginia, according to Vote Hemp, an industrial hemp advocacy organization based in Bedford, Mass.

California lawmakers approved legislation last year that set out rules for industrial hemp production, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. The law asserted that the federal government lacked authority to regulate industrial hemp as a drug.

In 2005, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced legislation to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana in federal drug laws. It never came to a vote.

Monson farms near Osnabrock, a Cavalier County community in North Dakota’s northeastern corner. He is the assistant Republican majority leader in the North Dakota House and is the school superintendent in Edinburg, which has about 140 students in grades kindergarten through 12.

In 1997, during his second session in the Legislature, Monson successfully pushed a bill to require North Dakota State University to study industrial hemp as an alternative crop for the state’s farmers.

Canada made it legal for farmers to grow the crop in March 1998. Last year, Canadian farmers planted 48,060 acres of hemp, government statistics say. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the provinces along North Dakota’s northern border, were Canada’s biggest hemp producers.

“I do know that industrial hemp grows really well 20 miles north of me,” Monson said. “I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t be a major crop for me, if this could go through.”

Castro Reportedly in ‘Grave’ Condition

WHAT THE HELL KINDA MEDICAL TREATMENT IS HE RECIEVING OMG….???

Fidel Castro has had at least three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, and the Cuban leader faces “a very grave prognosis,” a Spanish newspaper reported Tuesday. A Cuban diplomat in Madrid said the reports were lies and declined to comment.

“It’s another lie and we are not going to talk about it. If anyone has to talk about Castro’s illness, it’s Havana,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of official policy.

The newspaper El Pais cited two unidentified sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro.

In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: “A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave prognosis.”

Cuba has released little information on Castro’s condition since he temporarily ceded power in July to his brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, until he could recover from emergency intestinal surgery.

El Pais’ report, which could not immediately be confirmed, was a rare detailed description from a major media outlet about Castro’s condition.

The report was not made public in Cuba, where the government runs the media and Cubans have become accustomed to very limited details about their ailing leader’s health. Some criticized the unofficial reports by sources outside Cuba, saying they were speculative and likely false.

“If Fidel is exercising his right to keep everything concealed, well then, let him keep things concealed,” said Ana Casas, who hadn’t seen the El Pais report. “It’s for his own good, so people don’t talk such nonsense like they’re doing in other countries.”

The U.S. government had speculated that Castro could suffer from cancer _ a supposition denied by Garcia Sabrido. Some U.S. doctors believed Castro was suffering from diverticular disease, which can cause bleeding in the lower intestine, especially in people over 60. In severe cases, emergency surgery may be required.

That idea was supported by El Pais, which reported that its sources said Castro had suffered a bout of the disease.

“In the summer, the Cuban leader bled abundantly in the intestine,” El Pais reported. “This adversity led him to the operating table, according to the medical sources. His condition, moreover, was aggravated because the infection spread and caused peritonitis, the inflammation of the membrane that covers the digestive organs.”

The recovery from the first operation, in which part of his large intestine was extracted and the colon was connected to the rectum, did not go well, resulting in peritonitis, the report said.

A second operation to clean and drain the infected area was conducted. Doctors removed the remainder of Castro’s large intestine and created an artificial anus. But this operation also failed, El Pais said.

The Cuban leader was then hit with inflammation of the bile duct. He developed a condition called cholecystitis, which is an inflammation of the gall bladder. El Pais said this condition has an 80 percent mortality rate.

A prosthetic device made in South Korea was implanted in the bile duct and failed, and was replaced with one made in Spain, the report said.

El Pais said that in December, when Garcia Sabrido visited, Castro had an abdominal wound that was leaking more than a pint of fluids a day, causing “a severe loss of nutrients.” The Cuban leader was being fed intravenously, the report said.

Garcia Sabrido’s secretary said he would not comment on the report.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the El Pais report appears to be “just sort of a roundup of previous health reports. We’ve got nothing new.”

A statement attributed to Castro was released on Dec. 31, saying his recovery was “far from being a lost battle.”

Cuban officials told visiting U.S. lawmakers last month that Castro does not have cancer or a terminal illness and will eventually return to public life, although it was not clear whether he would return to the same kind of absolute control as before.

Porn is OK in the Mission, but housing isn’t…

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco seems to have a particular fetish for finding obscure reasons to block new development and housing. But prohibiting porn? No way — that would be like stepping on someone’s thigh-high, leather boot-covered toes.

In that frequent act of reality arriving on the shores of San Francisco’s fantasy land, it was reported in The Examiner on Wednesday that an online fetish company purchased the landmark State Armory building at 14th and Mission streets as a site for producing kinky porn flicks. While that might not get many hot and bothered here in Sin City, it should serve as a reminder of the lunacy that’s been surrounding that historic site for decades.

But I will say this — after lying empty since the National Guard abandoned the stately brick fortress in 1971, it appears the armory is about to see some considerable action. Its new owner, Kink.com, is a burgeoning porn conglomerate, with a dizzying array of submissive and dominant-related hardcore Web sites, ranging from “Men in Pain’’ and “Hogtied’’ to “Water Bondage’’ and “Ultimate Surrender.’’

Yet it is developers, housing activists and commercial investors who have made the ultimate surrender over plans to make over the Moorish-influenced building. In the last 20 years, so many groups and entrepreneurs have tried — and failed — to take over the building that one local newspaper did a story talking about the armory’s “curse.’’ And the reason for the hex is that a list of nonprofit community groups have fought every proposal under the froth-inducing flag of blue-collar job displacement and gentrification.

If any argument deserves a ball gag, it’s the one that suggests a thriving commercial and housing development will somehow ruin a neighborhood’s character. But at the armory, the only thing that has thrived is the rhetoric dished up by groups such as the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, which led the backlash against dot-coms in San Francisco.

Back as far as 1980, Delancy Street, the national model for organizations trying to rehabilitate ex-cons through gainful employment, was interested in taking over the building. But community activists objected because Delancy Street wasn’t based in the Mission district. Not long after, several film companies became interested in the site, and August Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola’s brother, wanted to turn it into something like the Metreon, with shops and entertainment.

But there were always objections. Seven years ago, a Planning Commission meeting over a proposal to turn the building into a dot-com office complex for 600 workers resulted in a near-riot when the plan came up for a vote. Later, the developer offered to turn the building into a giant computer-server farm — an idea that was also rebuffed.

A few years ago, Supervisor Chris Daly and attorney Sue Hestor sought to rezone the area around the armory to keep it from being built out. And recently, a plan to build 169 condominiums ran into trouble with the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board over whether luxury housing was a good fit for the neighborhood.

The City hasn’t been able to build much-needed housing there and virtually every commercial enterprise proposed for the armory has been shot down. So to say there is irony in the fact that a porn production company is poised to turn a landmark into a rough, edgy movie palace would be a major understatement.

Kink.com founder and CEO Peter Acworth told reporters that “I am looking forward to an exciting restoration project and helping to revive San Francisco’s movie industry.’’

It should be some revival. The company’s Web site said Acworth left academia to devote his life to “subjecting beautiful, willing women to strict bondage.’’ But for the politically correct masses in San Francisco, please note that Kink

.com’s models “are never told to act or artificially struggle.’’

It’s too early to tell if their plans will turn out to be a struggle. Yet clearly company officials are pumped up about the prospects. Kink.com reported that the details of the historic block-long armory will be utilized for its films, from its “dungeonlike basements,’’ to its stone staircases and its drill court.

Is it a good idea to have a porn production company in a dense residential neighborhood? San Francisco, after all, is not Chatsworth, or any other nondescript community in the sprawling San Fernando Valley, porn’s undisputed capital.

But by city standards, it may be far less controversial than something truly objectionable — such as offices or high-rise condominiums.

Bandita’s is HOT HOT HOT

Basically ya got your lesbian fantasy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid….woooowhoooo….

See the trailer HERE

Tattoo Sings