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Aristide accorded state-of-head welcome in S. Africa
Was this some kind of UN sponsored activity?
Butchers are being threatened with fines if they give bones away to dog owners.
They are being sent letters telling them that a new European directive bans the traditional practice.
[…]
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs today confirmed the Brussels ban.
It said the bones are now considered “waste” which must be properly disposed of.
A spokesman said: “Customers can take bones away with them when they buy the deboned meat if it is for human consumption.
It’s OK to feed them to people but not to dogs?
That many Britons could do with losing weight is obvious to anyone who spends five minutes on a High Street. Nevertheless, it is wrong for the Government to target food manufacturers. If our food is high in sugar and saturated fat, it is only because the food industry is doing what the Government - with our money - pays it to do. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, farmers are paid generous subsidies to produce milk, butter and sugar beet. Fruit and vegetable farmers, by contrast, receive nothing. The British taxpayer is paying twice over: once to grow fattening food and again to be told not to eat it.
That’s what government does - create problems that require more government to “solve”.
Junkyard Blog has a great political web advertisement that’s worth checking out. It’s a Gore vs. Gore vs. Reality slug fest.
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As a Hollywood conservative, Chetwynd has long had a touchy relationship with the press. During a news conference last year for his previous docudrama — Showtime’s DC 9/11, about how the White House handled that terrible day — the murmurs of disapproval I’d been hearing from colleagues about Chetwynd’s pro-Bush sympathies came to a head during one remarkable exchange:
Question: “You did contribute to [Bush’s] campaign?”
Chetwynd: “Yeah, the limit was $1,000… Would it make a better film if I’d given $1,000 to Gore?”
Question: “Yes.”
Chetwynd: “Why?”
Question: “Because it would show less potential bias.”
My fellow hack was absolutely serious; if you’d donated money to Bush, you are therefore biased toward Bush, but if you’d donated money to Gore you are not therefore biased against Bush. Supporting Gore was just the normal default position, as everyone knows. Chaw!
The rules are just different for the other side.
The [Olympia, Washington] City Council on Tuesday voted 4-3 — with Mayor Mark Foutch and members Jeanette Hawkins and Doug Mah dissenting — to draft a resolution opposing the arrival of the USS Olympia and send the message that the vessel is not welcome here. A public hearing to consider the item is set for May 25.
The USS Olympia decided to cancel the visit.
Essentially, the activists robbed the sailors on board the USS Olympia of a chance for shore leave in their namesake city, which they had visited more than once before, with no problems.
Since John Kerry served four months in Vietnam, the “mainstream” media consider illegitimate to say that anyone on the left is unpatriotic or does not support the troops. But some on the left (and a few on the right) are unpatriotic. This action is one example, and I expect to see many others.
Whatever one may think of our foreign policy, there is no reason, in my opinion, not to support the enlisted men and women, who do not make that policy.
The lefties didn’t mean that they’d support troops who were so gauche as to have weapons.
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After the malfunctions of two of the three U.S. spacesuits aboard the international space station, a critical spacewalk to repair a broken stabilization system must now be made next month using Russian spacesuits. But the Russian willingness to step in and bail out NASA’s spacewalk comes at a price, outlined in documents obtained by MSNBC.com. “We agree to perform an EVA [extravehicular activity] provided that we receive the appropriate compensation from NASA,” Valeri Ryumin, the Russian head of the space station project, told NASA counterpart William Gerstenmaier in a memo dated Wednesday.
Finally, our nationalized space program is on par with the Russian nationalized space program. Maybe they’ll hold on long enough to be rescued by Space Ship One.
Atlanta Public Schools misspent or mismanaged nearly $73 million from a national program intended to give poor children access to the Internet, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation has found.
[…]
Now, Atlanta says it needs $14 million a year — three times the district’s textbook budget — just to run and maintain the network. And much of the promised benefit to students has yet to materialize.
[…]
At one elementary school, equipment powerful enough to operate a small school district runs just 20 computers. At another, Atlanta billed the program for electronics for twice as many classrooms as the school has. Millions of dollars were spent at other schools that were closed or demolished within a few years. Elsewhere, boxes of costly computer components, some still wrapped in plastic, gather dust in storage.
At three Atlanta elementary schools, the cost of bringing high-speed Internet access to classrooms reached about $1 million. Suburban Forsyth County, by contrast, paid about $200,000 for the same result at much larger schools.
[…]
The national program that financed Atlanta’s extravagance, called E-rate, won’t pay for computers but helps schools pay for Internet infrastructure they might not otherwise be able to afford. Now, amid charges of waste and fraud around the country, the program faces mounting scrutiny in Washington.
Americans everywhere have picked up the tab for E-rate through a surcharge on their telephone bills.
What, doesn’t the very act of spending money on that equipment improve students?
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Dr Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of North America, says “homosexuality is a moral disease, a sin, a corruption… No person is born homosexual, just as nobody is born a thief, a liar or a murderer. People acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and education.” Sheikh Sharkhawy, a cleric at the prestigious London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park, compares homosexuality to a “cancer tumour.” He argues “we must burn all gays to prevent paedophilia and the spread of AIDS,” and says gay people “have no hope of a spiritual life.” The Muslim Educational Trust hands out educational material to Muslim teachers – intended for children! – advocating the death penalty for gay people, and advising Muslim pupils to stay away from gay classmates and teachers.
What staggers me is how silent the gay establishment is about these obscenities. If a religious right figure had said them, there would be hell to pay. But the multi-culti left still has a stranglehold on official gay discourse and won’t condemn Islamist bigotry. Why not? These mullahs are fanning the flames of anti-gay violence with literally incendiary rhetoric. Burn gays? Yep, that’s what the cleric said.
Perhaps what the Christians fumilators should do is start quoting these guys - “in speaking on homosexuality, I will be quoting from the noted Islamic scholar Dr Muzammil Siddiqi …”.
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I was initially skeptical of the delayed-acceptance idea myself, thinking it too clever by half. But that was before I realized its diabolical tactical brilliance. You see, Kerry’s handlers have clearly been busy analyzing reams of scientific opinion research—and they’ve reached the same conclusion that pollster Scott Rasmussen reached a couple of weeks ago:
Senator Kerry loses a few points every time the spotlight focuses on him. Kerry’s numbers bounce back when the focus returns to the President.
A couple of weeks ago? I had that a couple of months ago.
Indeed, Kerry has been virtually invisible on the national radar screen lately—and he’s been slowly climbing in the polls.
But the Kerry camp faced what might seem to be an insurmountable challenge: the July Democratic convention in Boston, when the nation’s press surely plans to focus on the Democratic nominee, beaming his every word into the nation’s living rooms, allowing voters to get to know him and take the measure of his character and personality. Kerry’s highly-paid strategists instantly recognized that this would be a disaster for their client. So they have crafted a cunning plan designed to get the TV networks to avoid covering the convention entirely, while the reporters who might otherwise be exposing Kerry to the world are convinced to stay at home. (Give up ‘tons of free publicity’? Nothing’s more threatening to Kerry than tons of free publicity.)
But there’s more to the complex plan than just keeping Kerry off the air. By delaying acceptance of the nomination, Kerry can encourage speculation that he might just turn it down! Why, he may not be the nominee at all! This will result in wild journalistic scenarios about possible “Torricelli options,” distracting public attention from Kerry’s spirit-sapping persona much as chaff dropped from an airplane causes anti-aircraft missiles to veer off-target. Kerry’s vice-presidential pick, in particular, will get star treatment from the press—another plus, since he or she will almost certainly be more appealing than Kerry himself. Perhaps Kerry’s lawyers can even figure out a way for his vice-presidential choice to formally accept the #2 slot while Kerry delays—making the vice presidential candidate, in effect, the top standard-bearer and spokesman of the Democrats for a few precious weeks.
The “non-acceptance” gambit is not about campaign money. That’s just the cover story! (As if money spent in August made that much difference—a point Simon makes rather forcefully.) Nor is Kerry’s seemingly suicidal plan to draw attention to himself by giving a series of high-profile national security speeches over the next 11 days anything but another clever feint. The proof: Just see if he actually says anything memorable! According to ABC’s The Note, Kerry plans “town-hall meetings and discussions with military families, veterans, and fire and police personnel.” Heh, heh. No network news producer is going to bump Iraq off the air for those proven coma-inducers! If it seems like the Kerry planners are trying to put Mark Halperin to sleep, maybe that’s because they are.
A convention without an acceptance speech. “Who would tune in to watch such a thing?” Exactly! The Democratic wizards have tipped their hand. Their secret is out.Their game plan has been revealed to the world! It’s to keep the American public from realizing until the last possible moment the grim reality that Kerry really is the Democratic alternative.
A Royal Mail worker left an abusive message on a thank-you card sent to an elderly couple after opening it and finding that it did not contain money.
William and Grace Kill, of Bicester, Oxon, found the message stuck inside a card thanking them for giving a talk to a group of church goers.
The note said: “Dear customer, We had to open this letter to check for money or credit cards, there were none, so you can have the f***** back!!!
“Next time, make sure there is some money!! Love, Royal Mail.”
It’s better grammar and spelling than I’d expect.
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The “wedding singer” killed in the attack on a “wedding party” in the middle of the Iraqi desert apparently had two completely different names.
From the New York Times:
Among the dead, by several accounts, was Nazar al-Khalid, a well-known Iraqi wedding singer who often traveled to Syria.
From the Washington Post:
Among the dead was Hussein Ali, a popular wedding singer.
(Hat tip: M. Simon, via Stockholm Spectator.)
Yet another example of just how clumsy at propagandathese people are.
An official IDF source confirmed Amir Orens’ 21 May story this afternoon to IMRA that two Palestinian children who died in the Rafah procession incident were murdered by Palestinian gunmen and that the IDF photographed the shooting.
The official IDF source explained that the pictures have not been released to the media because information derived from the photographs would compromise security in the field at this time.
The following is a repeat of the excerpts from Oren’s original article:
Inside Track / Rafah is a nightmare.
By Amir Oren Haaretz 21 May 2004
… When the procession with armed men in its midst set out in the direction of the forces, (the commander of the Gaza Division, Brigadier General Shmuel) Zakaii tried to speak with the community leaders in Rafah. The head of the Liaison and Coordination Administration, Colonel Poli Mordecai, phoned Nasser Saraj, the head of the Civil Committee in the city. Had the Liaison and Coordination Administration sufficed, they would not have needed the tank commander. Saraj, a respected individual, formerly the director-general of the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the Palestinian Authority, listened to Colonel Mordecai’s pleas, but took no steps to prevent the disaster.
When men obeyed the calls over the loudspeakers to turn themselves in to the IDF authorities (and to the intelligence people who wanted to question them), they were confronted by members of the terror organizations, who opened fire on them and killed two children. A senior officer in Gaza reported yesterday that the IDF have in their possession pictures of this incident, of Palestinians killing their children. He expressed amazement as to why the army has refrained from publishing them.
Well, obviously because the shooters were really Mossad agents! As everyone knows, Hamas and the PA are Israeli front organizations who are creating this war to kill off the Palestinians. Arafat has been siphoning off PA funds not for personal benefit but to keep the movement on the edge of starvation. The ZOG controlled news media provide this biased fodder in order to keep the war going.
Not.
In an attempt to get the foreign media to report what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, the IDF’s spokesman’s unit pleaded with foreign news agencies to join IDF forces in their operations and see for themselves. By mid-week, the IDF had to admit that the attempt was an abject failure. Almost no one took them up on the offer. The foreign media is not interested in showing the truth.
Well, what’s the point of writing non-anti-Israel stories since they won’t get published?
Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.
The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 - the victims of multiple rape by militiamen - can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.
Testimony from girls and aid workers in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Bunia, in the north-east corner of Congo, claims that every night teenage girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining UN compound to sell their bodies to Moroccan and Uruguayan soldiers.
[…]
Dominique McAdams, the head of the UN in Bunia, said she believed that there was sexual violence in the camp, but said she had yet to see any evidence.
Because, you know, even if that kind of thing is going on there’s no point in doing something about it until McAdams has personally seen the evidence. Maybe she should tag along with The Independent reporters?
P.S. Does anyone know of a UN deployment in the last, say, twenty years that didn’t end up involving systematic sex crimes?
“There is something so liberating and exciting about it, you’ve got to try it out,” she [a 33 year old history professor] said recently as she fidgeted, fully clothed, on the couch in her friend Tasha’s Manhattan apartment. “I was teaching a class on imperialism, ” she continued, “and I was delivering all this material that was kind of new and upsetting, and everyone was getting all worked up and upset, and I was getting all worked up and upset, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was flash my underwear! It was crazy,” she said with a throaty giggle.
There’s the kind of relentless logic that’s made the anti-war protestors the intellectual force they are today.
Global warming is now advancing so swiftly that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world’s main energy source can prevent it overwhelming civilisation, the scientist and celebrated Green guru, James Lovelock, says.
His call will cause huge disquiet for the environmental movement. It has long considered the 84-year-old radical thinker among its greatest heroes, and sees climate change as the most important issue facing the world, but it has always regarded opposition to nuclear power as an article of faith. Last night the leaders of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth rejected his call.
Note carefully that the opposition to nuclear power is an article of faith. It’s rare to see that kind of admission in Big Media.
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NY Times reporter James Bennet makes his living presenting Israeli vs. Palestinian claims on the truth. Now everyone will have to weigh Bennet’s vs. the Palestinians’ account of what happened to him outside a Gaza hospital on Thursday:
Palestinian Authority officials and journalists denied over the weekend that Palestinians in Rafah had tried to kidnap New York Times correspondent James Bennet.
Bennet said he was talking on a cell phone at about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday night when a stranger approached him, smiled, offered a handshake and said, “Welcome.” The stranger then grabbed Bennet’s hand, while another man tried to force him into a Mercedes Benz that appeared at the curb. The men did not appear to be armed, he said.
Bennet said he tried to fight off the assailants and screamed for help. PA policemen stationed at the hospital arrived almost immediately and attempted to pull him away from the abductors. “It turned into a big scrum,” he said. The assailants got into the car and fled. Bennet said his shirt was ripped, but that he was not hurt…
Zakariya Talmas, a senior member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate in the Gaza Strip, described Bennet’s claim as “baseless.” He said that the syndicate looked into the case and discovered that there had been no attempt to kidnap the journalist. The gunmen only wanted to check his identity, Talmas added.
As you always insisted, Mr. Bennet, there are two sides to every story. ‘One man’s kidnapper is another man’s ID-checker’?
This episode should serve as an object lesson to foreign correspondents, who routinely quote dubious Palestinian sources to ‘balance out’ their reports. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Bennet, in future stories, grants legitimacy to the very PA figures who are now telling him his own harrowing ordeal was ‘baseless.’
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bennet accepts the PA version of the story, granting legitimacy to these PA spokemen over his own reporting and personal experience.
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The WaPo provides an update to the Valerie Plame Wilson investigation. Here is a link to the TIME story in question.
Intruiging excerpt:
The request to interview reporters may suggest that the probe is nearing a conclusion, because Justice Department guidelines require that prosecutors exhaust all other avenues before calling reporters before a grand jury. Attorneys for several grand jury witnesses and news organizations said it is not clear whether Fitzgerald is moving toward seeking indictments in the case or whether he is preparing to complete it without bringing criminal charges.
And apparently news organizations are fighting the subpoenas - this ghastly national security breach must be investigated, but not with their help. The schizophrenic quality of this scandal - the Administration must determine the identity of a leaker already known to the Big Media - has long been part of its charm. Maybe a network can bring back “I’ve Got A Secret”.
What more evidence is needed that this is a “gotcha” exercise, not actual indignation?
American commanders said early Sunday that insurgents loyal to a rebel cleric appeared to have given up control of central Karbala, where they had been shielding themselves at two shrines. According to the commanders, there were several strong signs that the armed supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the maverick Shiite cleric, have abandoned the area and ceded authority to the Americans and their allies after nearly three weeks of urban combat.
A large overnight raid met no resistance coming from a group of buildings where insurgents had been firing at American tanks with rocket-propelled grenades. Civilians were seen returning to homes in central Karbala that they had abandoned during fierce fighting. And in the afternoon on Saturday, tribal sheiks approached American commanders offering to persuade the militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay down its arms and leave the city.
“It looks like they just packed up and went home,” Col. Peter Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, said in an operations tent on the city outskirts where he monitored field reports. Referring to Mr. Sadr, Colonel Mansoor said, “I think his days are numbered.”
Maybe the Marine knew what they were doing all along. This kind of slow motion collapse will be more discrediting than a battlefield defeat and much less likely to generate a matyr. It seems that Iraqis are smart enough to figure out that claims of victory don’t mean much when the enemy is intact and steadily advancing while killing the “victors” in job lot quantities.
In a speech to an audience of chief executives, Mr Gates said the regularly updated journals, or blogs, could be a good way for firms to tell customers, staff and partners what they are doing. […]
Mr Gates made a point of dwelling on blogs and said that although they started in the technical community and have come to be a broader social phenomenon, businesses can use them too.
Bummer. Now people will think that having a weblog is geeky.
I want a War Sim
- where I spend two hours pushing across a map to destroy a “nuclear missile silo,” only to find out after the fact that it was just a missile-themed orphanage. I want little celebrities to show up on the scene and do interviews over video of charred teddy bears, decrying my unilateral attack. I want congressional hearings demanding answers to these atrocities.
- On the very next level I want to lose half of my units because another “orphanage” turned out to be a NOD ambush site. I want another round of hearings asking why I didn’t level that orphanage as soon as I saw it, including tearful testimony from a slain soldier’s daughter who is now, ironically, an orphan.
A very thorough design.
Abortion protesters have commonly publicized photographs of aborted fetuses, and one famous short film (The Silent Scream) even shows ultrasound images of an actual abortion. Yet these tactics typically result in criticism aimed not at the abortion providers, but at the protesters themselves.
Typically, these protesters are accused of sensationalism and exploitation. And it’s not always just criticism: Two political candidates were even arrested in Britain last year simply for peacefully displaying a picture of an aborted fetus.
In a sense, this is understandable. Pictures of abortion are gory and upsetting. No one finds them pleasant. As a result, the reality shown in the pictures is ignored, while displaying the pictures is treated as an offense against good taste.
But how does this square with the reaction to the pictures of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib? Recall that a few American soldiers forced prisoners to pose for sexually explicit pictures, images that were graphic and distressing.
Yet, disturbing as the photos were, opponents were adamant that they should be made public. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin said the photos “absolutely” should be released, and that “any effort to hide this kind of material will not work.”
What’s sad is that these people aren’t even embarrased by these flagrant lack of principles.
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The Israeli Court found the leader of the most recent Palestinian intifada, Marwan Barghouti, guilty of the murder of five Israelis.
[…]
Following the conviction, Barghouti issued a statement. He said that the Palestinians would keep fighting as long as Israel maintains its occupation of Palestine. “As long as Palestinian mothers cry,” declared Barghouti, “so too will Israeli mothers cry.”
Since Palestinian mothers are crying over their children killed as suicide bombers, this translates to “As long as we kill Palestinians, we’ll kill Israelis as well”. Seems like there’s a simple escape from that cycle…
The New York Times is joining the liberal media cabal in doing its level best to downplay the discovery of that artillery shell loaded with sarin gas near the Baghdad airport. The latest? It was only a “very small trace” that was discovered. About one gallon of sarin, in liquid form, is a “very small trace” to the Times. Yesterday on the Neal Boortz Show we learned that there is enough sarin gas in four liters to kill over 60,000 people. That would make just one gallon of this stuff an arsenal. To the Times, though, it was just a small trace.
One wonders if it would still be just traces if it were released in at the New York Times. Some of us still remember the panic in the media over the anthrax attacks.
Outnumbered British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.
The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.
Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.
The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.
After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.
When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway— and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.
An Army spokesman said: “This was an intense engagement.”
Those guys would be really scary if they were issued some ammunition.
The French government Monday described the 35-hour working week as a financial disaster that was costing the state billions of dollars and promised to reform the system despite fierce union opposition.
The finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that the 35-hour week had burdened the state with additional social charges and that it had demoralized millions of workers.
I’m stunned that a minister of the French government was willing to get his hands on some facts in public.
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Russia’s top scientists tell Putin to kill Kyoto, reports Reuters. Note that this is an official report from the Russian Academy of Sciences to the President of the Russian Federation. The reports as yet are slim on the scientific details, but it is clear that the scientists do not believe that the Kyoto Protocol will acheive anything meaningful.
We can assume, therefore, that any talk of there being a scientific consensus that Kyoto is necessary for the planet is mere cant. The representative body of Russian science has rejected this energy suppression plan as a means of mitigating climate change.
Personally, I think we can assume it’s cant if it’s spoken by a self-proclaimed “environmentalist”.
[In lectures at Cairo University and the American University in Cairo last week, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed] El-Baradei, who since the build-up to the war on Iraq has consistently projected the persona of the impartial technocrat, strongly criticised what he described as the Arab countries’ “emotive and non-realistic approach” to the issue of Israel’s nuclear disarmament.
[…]
He stressed that “Israel sees that it cannot give up its weapons of mass destruction [WMD] in the absence of comprehensive peace, as long as there are countries or individuals that say that it will be ‘thrown into the sea’, and that its existence is not recognised in the region.”
El-Baradei lambasted what he described as the backward “state of development” of the Arab countries, and the prevalent attitudes of constant “self-victimisation” and “always asking the attainment of peace from others instead of working towards achieving it ourselves”. The Arab countries have yet to create a “civilisational project allowing them to attain the necessary balance of interests needed to persuade Israel that it is in its interest to disarm”, El-Baradei said. “We must see how we can convince Israel that it is in its interest to have a Middle East free of WMD. After the events of Libya and Iran, it is time to start this strategic dialogue.”
Oooh, that’s gotta hurt! Note that he didn’t say it in some obscure forum but right in the face of the people he was talking about.
P.S. Yes, I know that El-Baradei has been soft on Iran but this is still a big deal.
Canadian medical clinics are quietly informing American patients they will no longer help them obtain prescription drugs, after stern warnings from a major insurer that doctors who are sued by Americans won’t be covered.
Trade war and empty shelves don’t phase the Canadians, but lawsuits - that’s serious. Here we see another collision of the modern citizen’s world view - free/cheap pharmaceuticals and the ability to sue for massive damages for the slightest imperfection in quality, delivery or use.
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Retired Maj. Gen. Mohammed Abdul-Latif rose to prominence after nearly monthlong battles last month between the Marines monthlong battles in April between the Marines and insurgents hunkered down in Fallujah’s neighborhoods.
“We can make them (Americans) use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it’s your choice,” Latif told a gathering of more than 40 sheiks, city council members and imams in an eastern Fallujah suburb.
[…]
The venue offered a rare insight into Latif’s interactions and influence over Fallujah elders. As he spoke, many sheiks nodded in approval and listened with reverence to his words. Later, they clasped his hands and patted Latif on the back.
Latif, speaking in Arabic to the sheiks, defended the Marines and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
“They were brought here by the acts of one coward who was hunted out of a rathole — Saddam — who disgraced us all,” Latif said. “Let us tell our children that these men (U.S. troops) came here to protect us.
“As President Bush (news - web sites) said, they did not come here to occupy our land but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay ten years and more by keeping fighting.”
Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, the Marine battalion commander, said, “No truer words have been spoken here today than those by General Latif.”
Latif also told the insurgents to “stop doing stupid things.”
“Those bullets that are fired will not get the Americans out, let them finish their job here so that they can return to their country,” Latif said.
“Our country is precious, stop allowing the bad guys to come from outside Iraq to destroy our country.”
This is the right approach. Don’t argue for the world community, or American interests, but for Iraqi interests to the Iraqis.
An Egyptian newspaper recently did a public poll to see who are the most popular figures among Egyptian youth. The results of poll showed that Egyptian singer Ruby and soccer player Khaled Beebo are the most popular and most interesting figures.
According to the London based daily, Al Hayat, Ruby is considered to hold more popularity than political and intellectual figures.
Egyptian singer Ruby is scheduled to stand trial after being accused of practicing the profession of singing without obtaining a permit from the Egyptian Music Syndicate.
Singing without a license! When American culture inspires that kind of degeneracy, no wonder they hate us.
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Secretary of State Colin L. Powell admonished Arab leaders yesterday, saying they should have shown “a higher level of outrage” over the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq after they had expressed furor over the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at a prison outside Baghdad.
“When you are outraged at what happened at the prison,” Powell said on Fox News Sunday, “you should be equally, doubly outraged” over the execution of Nicholas Berg.
Wow. I didn’t expect that kind of back bone out of Powell.
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Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God. And if they want peace, then let’s have peace.
This seems clear to me - terrorize your enemy until they’re willing to accept peace on any terms. What was that about negotiating in good faith again?
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The United States plans to withdraw an army brigade based in South Korea and deploy the 4,000 troops in Iraq, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported on Monday.
Washington had recently notified Seoul of the plan, which left open the possibility that the brigade would not return to South Korea after its mission in Iraq, the paper quoted a South Korean government official as saying.
About time. South Korea is easily capable of defending against any conventional attack by the North and in any nuclear attack our troops won’t help anyway. Does anyone seriously believe we wouldn’t defend South Korea even if none of our troops were killed? Oh wait - there’s that South Vietnam in 1975 thing … is that why successive South Korean governments want boots on the ground?
If Daniel Sumner’s actions be treason, as some of his critics contend, then he is glad the most has been made of it.
Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis, played a key role in an international trade case that is shaping up as one of the most significant defeats the United States has ever suffered on the trade front. An analysis that he wrote helped frame a preliminary decision issued two weeks ago by a World Trade Organization panel, which held that the federal subsidies paid to U.S. cotton farmers violate WTO rules because they cause overproduction, drive down world prices and impoverish farmers in developing countries.
What’s clear from the article is that the objection is about Sumner speaking up and not much about his being wrong.
The U.S.-backed investigation into alleged abuses of the United Nations’ Oil for Food program in Iraq has already collected more than 20,000 files from Saddam Hussein’s old regime and hired an American accounting firm to conduct the review. Documents obtained by The Associated Press show the U.S.-backed, Iraqi-run Board of Supreme Audit selected the Ernst & Young firm this week to oversee the audit of the documents gathered from at least 16 former ministries of Saddam’s government.
The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority also is trying to head off a separate investigation launched by former Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi, now an influential member of the Iraqi Governing Council, in hopes that a single, independent investigation will have more credibility.
Chalabi took an early lead in exposing alleged abuses by the U.N.-backed program and has been trying to force the coalition government to give him the $5 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the probe to pay for his effort. The move was strongly resisted by L. Paul Bremer III, who runs the governing Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA.
While it’s good that this is being investigated, I have to agree with some of the commentators about the need to have a single investigation and that might well be an indication of the data getting buried.
Flirting with young women and breaking into houses, Reza is not the sort of figure Iran’s clerical regime would like to celebrate. But he’s rapidly turning into a folk hero.
The Lizard is a comic film that tells the story of Reza, a thief who escapes prison by posing as a cleric. Well on the way to becoming the most popular movie in Iranian history, The Lizard is shown at 2am to meet demand, and cinemas are still having to turn away customers.
[…]
“The movie is part of a series of efforts to weaken the Islamic system and the clerical establishment, and the judiciary must confront such measures,” wrote the daily Jomhuri Islami, an ultra-conservative newspaper.
It’s not the mocking as much as the openness of the mocking. That’s never a good sign for an oppressive regime.
Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif., is the builder of SpaceShipOne, an effort led by aviation innovator Burt Rutan. The financial backer of the project is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
In a post-flight statement from the company, the SpaceShipOne team reported that their space plane flew to 212,000 feet altitude, almost 41 miles.
Launch conditions were 46,000 feet and 120 knots. Motor light off occurred 10 seconds after release and the vehicle boosted smoothly to 150,000 feet and Mach 2.5. Subsequent coast to apogee of 211,400 feet. During a portion of the boost, the flight director display was inoperative, however the pilot continued the planned trajectory referencing the external horizon. Reaction control authority was as predicted and the vehicle recovered in feather experiencing 1.9M and 3.5G?s. Feather oscillations were actively damped by the pilot and the wing was de-feathered starting at 55,000 feet. The onboard avionics was re-booted and a smooth and uneventful landing made to Mojave.
Mach 2.5! Yow.
Does anyone think NASA could form a comittee to study this for less than Rutan’s spent to build & fly it?
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Canada is officially beyond parody. The latest development in Flagscam is that those Sheila Copps Maple Leafs – the flags needed to keep Quebec in Confederation, the flags only a $6 million Government program could organize, the flags whose $6 million Government program ballooned to $45 million, the flags whose free distribution wiped out the profits of Canadian flag retailers, the flags that no-one in Canada could make fast enough and so wound up being secretly imported from overseas, the flags for which millions of dollars were paid to well-connected Liberal Party middle-men for doing nothing, the flags for which the luckier Grit cronies got paid twice over for doing nothing – it turns out these flags don’t even fly.
On the CBC the other night, Doreen Braverman, who runs Canada’s biggest flag retailer, held up one of the Sheila Maple Leafs. No eyelets, no sleeve, no halyard line for your rope and toggle, no nothing. The Canadian taxpayers paid $45 per “flag” for a “flag” that can’t be flown.
Well, the military forces can’t fly either so what’s the problem?
A Saskatchewan native band, the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, has recruited European investors to open a private, for-profit MRI clinic on their land. And the Toronto Star, not known for its opposition to aboriginal self-government, is demanding that Ottawa step in and put dem Injuns in their place:
The Saskatchewan government objects because it sees this scheme for what it is: An attempt to breach the Canada Health Act by introducing two-tier medicine in the province.
But the province fears it is powerless to stop it. First Nations, such as the Muskeg Lake Cree, are exempt from provincial rules. Aboriginal-run medical facilities do not have to live by the health act, which forbids queue-jumping for those who can afford to pay for medical service.
So, it’s over to Ottawa. Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew and the rest of the federal cabinet should put a stop to this immediately.
The Saskatchewan proposal is viewed as a test case for bands across the country. Already, in Alberta, the Siksika First Nation is prepared to start its own health-care clinic that may also offer for-profit services.
In recent years, Ottawa has moved toward granting native bands the right to self-government, including control of their health-care systems.
But surely the intent was to give bands the ability to tailor programs for their members, not to undermine the health system for others.
When the courts have exempted aboriginals from certain hunting and fishing regulations, as we’ve seen in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and British Columbia, I don’t remember the Toronto Star getting too upset about it. I must say, I’m shocked by how shallow their enthusiasm for aboriginal self-government has turned out to be.
I gotta admit, I kind of hope we see a major court battle over this, complete with native activists accusing the Star’s editorial board of “patriarchy” and “racism”. I wonder if Joseph Atkinson foresaw anything like this?
See, this is what’s wrong with letting people decide things for themselves. Soon enough they start deciding on issues that are too important to leave to the grubby demos.
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Another reason I hate stories with ‘real people’ in them: An Editor’s Note reveals the dirty little secret about where the New York Times finds those ordinary citizens sprinkled throughout public policy pieces to complain in homespun fashion about the dire effect of this budget cut or that government initiative: they are handed to the Times on a platter by (liberal) advocacy groups. Gee, no wonder they act like trained seals! … And of course Times reporters would never feel they owe anything to the groups for doing their legwork for them. (But accept a theater ticket from a similar group and you get fired.)
[…]
Here’s a productivity-sapping measure: How about a newsroom rule that Times reporters have to actually go out and find their own men-on-the-street?
Mix with the hoi polloi? That’s asking a bit much of the Times staff.
The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool, fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.
She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.
But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.
She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it.
How are these giggling editors really different from the abusive prison guards at Abu Ghraib, laughing at the hurting Iraqis?
“On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, ‘Who would prefer that Saddam’s torture chambers still be open?’” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. “Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management.”
Isn’t that a bit simplismé? Where’s the nuance?
Boston residents got more than they bargained for this morning when their copy of the Globe came complete with graphic photos depicting U.S. troops gang-raping Iraqi women.
Problem is the photos are fake. They were taken from pornographic websites and disseminated by anti-American propagandists, as first reported by WND a week ago.
There goes the argument that Big Media is holding back images because they’re too graphic.
The IraqNow News Service is issuing an Amber Alert for the following headlines reported missing from today’s media outlets:
- General Taguba: No Evidence Abusive Techniques Were Part of Policy.
- Red Cross Says US Officials Were Making Progress on Prison Concerns.
If you have any information as to the whereabouts of these headlines, please contact the ombudsmen of the media outlets who are missing them.
Do not attempt to apprehend the copy editors yourself, as they are highly volatile, and subject to wild hormonal swings when “in heat” over a story.
They’re probably just semantic wreckage on the mental roadblocks of Big Media.
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Note that I’m not necessarily complaining that they’re not showing the video [of Nicholas Berg’s decapitation]. But some of those same media outlets should be asking themselves to what degree showing all of the Abu Ghraib photos may have resulted in this, and why they considered that necessary. After all, couldn’t the viewers have understood what went on in the prison without the graphic images?
Given that Big Media will show anything that’s the result of American actions but not things which reflect badly on America’s enemies, how are they funtionally different from a foreign propaganda organization?
To achieve its vital war aims, in other words, America must abandon its dream of victory and accept the appearance of defeat. What does this mean in practice? Quite simply, the United States must take a cold, analytical look at the forces arrayed against us in Iraq and decide which leader should be allowed the glorious destiny of redeeming his country from foreign occupation. Once the United States has fixed on a credible resistance leader, our goal should be to cede him tactical, positional victories while denying them to his competitors. The U.S. military might be able to find and disable any resistance large enough to be a military threat, but this leader’s movement we should allow to grow. We should open a communications channel, and enforce a set of rules to limit the battlefield and minimize casualties.
This is the kind of idea so stupid that only a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service could believe it.
Junkyard Blog points out one of the secondary effects of the call for Donald Rumsfeld to resign - the Senate would have to confirm a new Secretary of Defense. Does anyone believe that wouldn’t turn in to a months long circus? Yet I suspect that those calling for the resignation will consider such a turn of events the fault of the Bush administration for nominating a “radical”.
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One of the first things Kerry did at the meeting was to blame his aides for the mention of Carter and Baker as possible envoys in his December speech—a claim that several participants double-checked as soon as they walked out the door. The names, Kerry said, had been inserted by mistake, and he had even asked that they be removed. The problem is, in the speech itself, Kerry said, “There are a number of uniquely qualified Americans among whom I would consider appointing, including President Carter. . . . And, I might add, I have had conversations with both President Clinton and President Carter about their willingness to do this.” Kerry spokesperson Stephanie Cutter even confirmed to The Boston Globe in December that he had spoken with Carter. Today, the campaign offers this explanation: The candidate eventually did speak with Carter—but only after noticing that a draft of his speech said that he spoke with Carter.
Now there is logo-realism in all its glory. Senator Kerry lives in a such a verbally constructed reality that not only does he do things because he reads about them in his speeches but sees nothing wrong with stating this in public. Even worse might be the admission that someone who aspires to be the chief executive office of the most powerful nation in history has a bozo filter so weak it lets the lunatic fringe idea of asking Jimmy “What dictator butt can I kiss next?” Carter about diplomacy.