The truce between Israel and the Palestinians seems to be holding, despite two attacks by militants todayOn MSNBC. [source]
Congress barred military aid to countries that had failed to agree by July 1, 2003, not to bring U.S. personnel before the International Criminal Court established last year.Human rights groups and NGOs are in a dither at the mean US "trying to blackmail smaller, weaker nations". Bummer. You want the cash, you play the game. [source]
the majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war [in Iraq] in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong. They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong. And many of these same people had gotten it wrong in much the same way a year-and-a-half earlier, portraying U.S. forces in Afghanistan as facing the most inhospitable kind of terrain imaginable, not to mention the most dug-in and difficult-to-find enemy ever confronted.[source]I remember joking on FOX News Sunday during the Afghanistan conflict that pretty soon someone in the media would report that our bombing of the enemy was actually helping the enemy. And sure enough, about a week later, there was a story in the Washington Post […]the thrust of which was that U.S. bombing was making the Taliban more popular! […] This level of imperviousness to reality is remarkable. It is consistent and it continues over time.
"I'm not sure where Arnold [Schwarzenegger] gets his political instincts. People often say that for Kennedys, it's in the water."--Sen. Ted Kennedy, quoted by the Associated Press, June 27[source] It's certainly in the water for Ted, as if he weren't a major political figure he'd been rotting in jail. But that's just water under the bridge now…
Newly discovered documents show Arab states orchestrated the persecution of their Jewish citizens after the creation of Israel, then kept more than US$1-billion in property belonging to the 850,000 who left, Canadian experts said yesterday.[…]Gosh, I wonder why those Jews prospered while the Palestinians rotted? Lack of UN refugee status? (Further commentary)For example, in 1947, pogroms in Syria drove 7,000 of the 10,000 Jewish residents of Aleppo from their homes. In Iraq, "Zionism" became a capital crime, while bombs in the Jewish quarter of Cairo killed 70 Jews.
After Algeria gained independence from France, it "issued a variety of anti-Jewish decrees prompting nearly all of the 160,000 Jews to leave the country." In Aden and Yemen, at least 82 Jews died in pogroms.[…]
David Matas, a Winnipeg lawyer and one of the report's authors, agreed descendants of many of the displaced Jews had prospered elsewhere despite losing the equivalent of US$1-billion.
"Any Jew who tries, from now on, to buy a lot of land or a house in Iraq should be killed," the decree [by Iranian cleric Kazem al-Husseini al-Haieri] said. "Selling any lot of land or a house in Iraq to Jews is forbidden."Those modern Islamic clerics, always addressing the most serious problems in lands in turmoil, like Iraq. [source, source]
The Australian government on Thursday branded multilateral forums such as the United Nations "ineffective and unfocused" and said its foreign policy will increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq.It's good to know that the leaders of Australia have been reading my weblog. [source, source]
the European Commission is considering a law to ban sexist television programs and advertising. […] The draft directive, revealed in Tuesday’s Financial Times, would leave it to the courts to decide whether programs or advertisements were sexist or “did not respect human dignity”. An explanatory note says: “The purpose of this provision is to avoid throughout all forms of mass media all stereotypical portrayals of women and men, as well as any projection of unacceptable images of men and women affecting human dignity and decency in advertisements"I think that this is great. It shows what the EU is really about. [source, source]
The U.S. Senate Rules Committee moved closer on Tuesday to issuing this warning to lawmakers: Do not remove from the U.S. Capitol furniture, paintings and other historic items.The best quote on this was “Hillary's been a senator for 2½ years, and they're just now getting around to this?” [source, source]
When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day.- [source, source, source]
"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.Will these be called "Hatcher attacks" in the future? "Sorry, I lost my archives because someone Hatched my computer"? [source, source]"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
Three European commissioners, including the vice-president, Neil Kinnock, were hauled up by the European Parliament's budget control committee, accused of ignoring warnings dating back to the 1990s of widespread corruption in Eurostat, the European Union's data office.– [source, source]Chris Heaton-Harris, a Tory MEP, said millions of pounds of public money had vanished into the hands of a clique of officals serving as directors of related companies.
the French stymied yesterday an attempt by the European Union to blacklist the group's leadership.That's some serious cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, Villepin wants to talk to Hamas. On the other, he distrusts the Hamas strategy of cutting off dialogue asserting that only the destruction of Israel will end the conflict."It is in our interest to have Palestinian interlocutors," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said. "I distrust a strategy based on cutting off dialogue."
Cohen defrauded Kremen out of the domain sex.com - which is worth $500,000 a month just in advertising space - by sending a blatantly forged letter to VeriSign asking that it be handed over to him. This VeriSign duly did without checking the letter or contacting Kremen.Why is VeriSign not bankrupt? Who would do business with them after a stunningly simple minded stunt like this worked that then took 6 years and $30 million in legal fees to fix?It took Kremen nearly six years in the law courts to regain possession of the domain […] Cohen […] has always admitted forging the letter
"was not prepared to send either civilian or military officials to Nato if they were going to be harassed [by the courts]. […] It does not make sense to have a new headquarters [in Brussels] if you cannot come to meetings– [source]
France's preeminent institution for Eastern language studies (INALCO), commonly knows as "L'Ecole des Langues O.", is falling prey to an unprecedented Islamist surge in its Arabic department. Students have described unimaginable incidents : students wearing burqas, women refusing to pass exams with male professors, female Muslim professors harassed for not being modest, professors told not to quote the Koran
To put it mildly, Sultaana Freeman of Florida is wrong. Going to court to have a veiled picture of her on an official document such as a driver’s license is utter madness. She might as well ask for an exemption.The author notes that in no Islamic country, not even the Saudi Entity, is remaining veiled for a photographic identification permitted. Women who refuse simply don’t get the ID (such as a passport). This makes the ACLU more concerned with Islamic propriety than the Saudi's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. One would be tempted to call the Freeman / ACLU position objectively wrong as one would think that a practice followed by all Islamic organizations on the planet is properly Islamic. [source]
Suzanne M. Wilson, a Carnegie senior scholar and education professor at Michigan State University who attended the meeting, said Mr. Imig circulated the exam to rally criticism.Oh my stars and garters – direct instruction! Actually teaching at children. And most likely in public [schools] as well. Just shocking.It wasn't good. ... The test for [the American Board] had running through its bones the ideology of traditionalists ... the framework of direct instruction," she said.
A letter to US President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair: Many people accused you of waging the war over Iraq mainly because of your own benefits (oil).However, I (a Burmese girl) strongly believe that the main purpose of this war was to eradicate "the dictator" Saddam Hussein.
If you wish to prove that the Iraq war was just for "the liberation of the Iraqi people" not for "your own benefits," please eliminate the Burmese dictators immediately. We need only one missile. Help us, please.
Thank you very much.
Konmari (exiled Burmese)
An article yesterday about the dismantling of a rusty tower by an Israeli settlement in the West Bank as a gesture of compliance with the American-led peace initiative misstated the origin of Israeli control of the territory. During the 1967 war, Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan and took Gaza from Egypt, not from the Palestinians.Even for the Paper of Ill Repute that's a stunning display of historical ignorance.
terrorism, terrorist – Terrorism is the act of causing terror, usually for political purposes, and it connotes that the terror is perpetrated on innocents. Thus, the bombing of a civilian airliner clearly is a terrorist act, but an attack on an army convoy, even if away from the battlefield, is not. Do not ape government usage. The Israeli government, for instance, routinely refers to PLO actions as terrorist. A journalist should use independent criteria to judge whether the term is accurate.This is the money graph from an article with a fews days in the life of this policy in action. [source]
Throughout the entire 20th century, the French seemed to spend most of their time desperately craving being crushed by some kind of foreign totalitarian power. Their dreams, obviously, were shattered by the Americans, who rescued them from the Nazis and subsequently protected them from the Soviets. But now the French have cleverly figured it all out: to be taken over by Islam from within
The Company's core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment. [emphasis added]Way to go, guys! That's the first step in recovery. Time to move on to reporting news instead of "enhancing society" by creating it. [source]
In the wake of the New York Times resignations, NBC News looked at declining trust in the media and identified two culprits: Conservative, pro-corporate bias and the Fox News Channel.I suspect that there's corelation if not causation. With Fox News, it became clear that there was an alternate point of view and once that meme is launched, people will start to wonder who's right. That's not the kind of thing that reflects well on Big Media.
The reasons the US entered WWII were many and varied, but I would not be out of line to say they included the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Anglophilism (is that a word?), and fear of a resurgent Germany. At the time we joined in, there were many patriotic Americans who believed that Europe was only getting itself into another one of it's wars, for which it had a long inglorious history, and that the US had no reason to choose sides. Given what we knew at the time, they had every reason to believe they were right. I am pretty sure that there were only a few people, if any at all, who said that Hitler represented an evil that should be destroyed.Now, in retrospect, the clearest most recognized reason for celebrating the Allied victory over Nazi Germany was because, in fact, Hitler was evil and he was bringing his nation to ruin because of his psychotic, unrestrained capacity to inflict harm on Germans and people of other nations. All of the original reasons for defeating Nazi Germany, all of the reasons that people understood at the beginning of the war, all of the reasons that the soldiers who fought the war knew of as they boarded the transports to cross the English Channel, or as they lay shivering in their foxhole in the cold Ardennes winter night, every single one of those reasons, pales in comparison to what we now accept as the real reason we should celebrate that great victory. Our world is better because Hitler is dead, the evil he was, is gone.[…]
– Major Diggs Cleveland, US Army, Camp Doha, Kuwait
Laura Callahan, the deputy CIO of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was placed on paid administrative leave last week […] On her resume, Callahan, who was appointed to the position on April 1, said she received her academic degrees, including a doctorate in computer information systems, from Hamilton University in Evanston, Wyo.Hawspipe commentsHowever, the congressmen, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), contend that according to published reports, Hamilton isn't licensed by that state, nor is the school accredited by the U.S. Department of Education. The congressmen said Hamilton is a "diploma mill."
[…] In March 2000, she was one of two White House officials accused of threatening Northrop Grumman Corp. workers with jail unless they kept quiet about the disappearance of thousands of White House e-mails, according to press reports at the time. Callahan was the White House webmaster under the Clinton administration
In this case, a three minute Google search might have raised suspicion of her purported academic credentials. According to her previous employer's website she was a sales coordinator with a BA in psychology from the University of Washington. [source]- [source, source]
Almost all of the priceless items feared stolen from the Baghdad Museum when it was ransacked by looters have been found safe in a secret vault, the U.S.-led administration for Iraq said on Saturday.–[source, source]
I got a telemarketing call to renew my NYT home delivery the other day, and I said, "Nah, that paper just makes shit up." The guy chuckled wearily and said, "Yeah, that's what people tell me all day."Jesus! All day long this guy is calling people who used to pay for the paper and now they're telling him, "No thanks, we don't want your lies."
Far from being sinister, that's actually quite reassuring. If, as Wolfowitz suggests, the only thing the various squabbling members of the American foreign policy establishment could agree on about Iraq was that it possessed WMD, then the evidence they saw must have been pretty compelling. The State and Defense Departments, it is widely known, are locked in a fairly constant struggle with one another. Yet according to Wolfowitz, they were both ready to concede the fact that Iraq's WMD programs posed a threat large enough to justify war.
[The Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, Riah Abu Al-Assal] said he would also be discussing the issue with Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, who headed the committee that produced the draft constitution. "There is a way out of this. I know that the majority are Muslims in Palestine but it did not mean that Islam [should] be the religion of Palestine. Palestine needs to be the most democratic state in the Middle East, I hope and pray."Ok, he's basing it on the democratic nature of a future Palestinian state. I was wrong, he's just not serious. [source]
In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths.That's one of the nice things about being a conservative: when you look at what your fellows believed decades earlier it's the same as you believe today. Imagine how embarrassed folks on the Left must be when they reread any of the statements they issued in the '60s.We, as young conservatives, believe:
That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;
That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
That the genius of the Constitution--the division of powers--is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;
That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;
That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies;
That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;
That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and
That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?
Hughes was fired from WEMU because he refused to run National Public Radio news headlines at the top of the hour and because he repeatedly expressed his political views about the war in Iraq (pro-war and pro-President Bush).Hughes considers himself better off because
Ironically, a station owned by the largest radio chain in the United States is giving Hughes what he couldn't get from a Public Radio station: complete creative control.Of course, it doesn't seem ironic to those of us who've been following NPR's crushing of dissent in the past. [source, source]
Arafat devoted his remarks to encouraging the children to be “shahid” (die for the cause), noting that one shahid who dies for the sake of Jerusalem has the power equal to 40 of the enemy dying.
The New York Times has since revealed it is also investigating the work of several other reporters, prompting speculation Raines may be forced to resign over the affair[source]