Laws Of Physics Reversed ?!

Thankfully I know, as Prof. O'Donnell has taught me, that this a scientific impossibility.

Maybe it's a false flag operation.

The New York Times Helps Iran build the Bomb

It seems that flacking for them isn't enough.

Virtual Means It Ain't A Fence.

A high-tech "virtual wall" will detect more than 95 percent of illegal crossings at the busiest jumping-off point along the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S. Border Patrol chief said Thursday.

"We will be able to identify, detect and classify more than 95 percent of illegal entries with the virtual wall," Aguilar said.

"Will detect"? "Able to identify, detect and classify"? Give me a good pair of binoculars, some shade and a bottle of water and I could stand out all day an "identify, detect and classify" illegal immigrants. How this translates into stopping them I'm sort of unsure.

Is it border enforcement or bird watching.

One of the main attributes recognized in a "fence" is its non-virtualness.... i.e. it should actually exist.

Phil Spector: How The A-List Feed On Everyone Else

What you have here is the tawdry tale of a dangerous man who was allowed to continue to be a danger to everyone with whom he came in contact. A man whose actions by any standard were dangerously insane but because of our cult of celebrity was allowed to continue off the rails until someone died.

As a self-proclaimed “rock chick” photographer, Stephanie Jennings was overwhelmed when she met the veteran record producer Phil Spector while snapping celebrities at a New York party.

Spector was full of intimate stories about working with the Beatles and Leonard Cohen. He was charming and funny. But when he started drinking, she claims, he pulled a gun on her and held her against her will for 48 hours.
//////////////
This week Jennings, who is in her mid-thirties, is expected to tell the jury how Spector could “flip” from being a colourful raconteur - recalling how he created the “wall of sound” as heard on Ike and Tina Turner’s hit River Deep, Mountain High, or the Beatles album Let It Be - into a possessive gun-wielding bully.

This, the prosecutors claim, is how Spector ended up killing Lana Clarkson, a blonde 40-year-old B-movie actress, as she tried to escape from his Los Angeles chateau four years ago. Spector, now 66, says she shot herself while playing a game called “kissing the gun”.

Saturday Grab Bag III

Will Global Warming reverse Europe's fertility drop:

LONDON (Reuters) - This month is set to be the warmest April in Britain since records began nearly 350 years ago and all over Europe tourists are slapping on the sun cream several weeks ahead of schedule.
////////
In Germany, one newspaper said soaring temperatures could inflame libidos.

"Skirts are getting shorter and there is more bare flesh flashing," Germany's biggest selling newspaper, Bild, wrote, warning Germans to keep a close eye on their partners.

"The heat excites the sex hormones much more strongly, disturbs the sleep and stimulates lust."

British book chain Waterstone's does poll of top 100 books since 1982. Now spends all their time apologizing for lack of women authors:

The company asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982, the date Waterstone’s opened its first store. The resulting list of the top 100 favourites is dominated by male authors.
////////
But the men outnumber women writers by a staggering 66 to 27.

The chain, which polled its sales staff to celebrate its 25th anniversary, denied suggestions yesterday that its book tills were manned by male chauvinists. But it said that it was at a loss to explain the heavy bias in favour of male authors. Company spokesman Jon Howells suggested, however, that the figures could be explained by what he believed were markedly different reading habits of men and women.

Paging Naomi Wolf...There Are Things Afoot In Toledo

If Naomi Wolf really wants to see evidence of a Fascist plan to take over this country then she need look no further than the Op-Ed pages of the Toledo Blade, where former ambassador Dan Simpson explains to us where he thinks our constitutional rights begin and end.
Obviously things were done a lot different back in good ol' Central Africa.

Tallinn Squabble Escalates

The controversy over the Bronze soldier of Tallinn has heated up considerably with violence, rioting and an alarming ratcheting up of the rhetoric from the Russians.

It rather reminds me of the way the Argentine Junta used the Malvinas (i.e. Falkland Islands) as a distraction, and as rallying point for their regime. This time it is the horde of President Vladimer Putin's yes men, who are behind the escalating tensions in the Baltic. Among them is this rather strange youth movement whose main motivating factors seem to be Russian Nationalism, Anti-Fascism, Anti-Americanism and an admiration for Putin that verges on the personality cult.

Atrocities Then And Now

While reading through one of the Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia of WWI volumes I happened across an article on the British propaganda effort to demonize the German Empire through atrocity stories in the press. You've probably heard some of them before; the hacking off of Belgian children's hands, the hacking off of Belgian women's breasts, the crucifying of Canadian soldiers, etc, etc. The author of the article gave the Germans rather too much of the benefit of the doubt in my opinion, but that wasn't what struck me about subject. What struck me was how the British press seems to have reinvented the atrocity campaign anew and aimed it at the United States. Guantamino Bay, Abu Gharib, secret prisons, torture, they seem to be willing to believe the worst about the US and not only that they report it with an almost gleeful relish.

Oh, the name of the article is the "Campaign of Hate."

Arbor Day

You notice how Arbor Day seems to be coming around sooner and sooner each year....

Cool Fridays

The best Nazi robot attacks American military base computer animated video you've ever seen.

Musings On Gun Control And The World

The question shouldn't be why doesn't the American government insist on the disarming of its population, but instead why doesn't the population of the rest of the world insist on the disarming of their governments.
All in all the American people have a much better record over the past century with their firearms than most European governments let alone the rest of the globe's governments.

Naomi Wolf And The Beauty of The Fascist Myth

Naomi Wolf reveals us the Great Rove/Bush/Halliburton Road To Fascism Plan in the pages (OK in this case the screen) of the Guardian. You see there are ten ways you change a democratic government into a fascist state (Boo. Hiss) and the United States has seemingly just completed all ten on Ms. Wolf's checklist. The short version of the list...

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2. Create a gulag

3. Develop a thug caste

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

5. Harass citizens' groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. Target key individuals

8. Control the press

9. Dissent equals treason

10. Suspend the rule of law

Most of the said article consists of Ms. Wolf twisting and dare I say torturing the anit-terrorism measures of the Bush administration into a rough approximation of a Nazi putsch. All done with the lack of proportion and intellectual honesty that would warm the cockles of the heart of her freshman PoliSci professor.
Far be it for me to ruin the hilarious joy of reading the whole piece intact, but I feel forced to hit for you some of the....for lack of a better word "highlights."

Number 3 on her hit parade is "develop a thug caste." Now while most of us probably have not noticed the gangs of politically motivated ruffians roaming the streets of America (unless you count these earnest fellows) the eagle eyed Wolf has scoped out the threatening malcontents...

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000.

Ah yes, Germany had its brown shirts, Italy its black and America will one day tremble under the.....white shirts. White shirts and blue slacks to be exact. Maybe a red power tie to set it off.

Number 8, "control the press." Mmmmm, I think President Bush needs to work a bit longer on this one.

And my favorite, "Engage in arbitrary detention and release."
Her frightening example.....

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

If only the Weimer Republic had had more ticket agents brave enough to speak the truth to overly gulli...ugh, I mean deeply probing professors, well, certainly it would still exist today.

And finally number 10, "Suspend the rule of law." Ms. Wolf has rather unique viewpoint on what consists of suspending said rule of said law...

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.
Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement.

See this is where sharp perception kicks in. A less perceptive person would think this had something to do with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the inability of the President to move swiftly due to his needing the approval of state officials before moving certain federal assets into an area. But no it is in fact a clever scheme to unleash the ironsides of Michigan on the unsuspecting peoples of Oregon.

Also I always thought the Posse Comitatus Act was designed to keep the Federal government from interfering with the unreconstructed Southern states as they tried to "Redeem" themselves.

It is nice however for Naomi Wolf to lighten our Spring with such a humorous prose work...

...but the English don't read this for actual political insight do they ?


Some other views on "Fascist America."

April the Twenty Fifth

Since I honored the Canadians on the anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge how could I fail to give a notice to our allies down under on this Anzac Day.

The Ethnicity That Dare Not Speak It's Name

Cornell mourns in a very strange way...

We are one," said Cornell President David Skorton. "We are one community, one people, one planet. We are here today to affirm that oneness ... We are here to bear witness to the passing of the 33 members of our family at Virginia Tech University who have met an untimely and terrible fate."

And, he said, "We are here for all of those who are gone, for all 33. We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another place, not by their own choice. We are also here for the one who has also passed."

"the one ?" "the one who has also passed ?" Wasn't that a Jet Li movie.
Hey! Isn't Jet Li Asian too!
Or is it something from the new Mass ?
Or is it I the new, official, double secret, academic way to refer to a crazed killer when they hail from one of our, shall we say, "minority" groups.
It seems so...

He added that those present were there to "join with our friends in the Korean and Korean-American communities for we are all one family, most especially today we share the same sorrow and the same need for comfort and reassurance."

Hmmmm....

Hat tip to Hot Air

In Your Dreams

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.

Whew, that's a relief. Now china will take the heat(so to speak) from all those professional environmentalists and their celebrity groupies.

Right ?

That is what will happen.

Won't it ?




Oh almost forgot...

China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.

China. They're special.

More On The Home Of The Mexica Mural

UPDATE: Some more information on Theodore Roosevelt High School in LA. An eye opening account of a woman and her efforts to stop military recruiting at the high school.
Note this paragraph...

But more important than the numbers were the experiences that came out of this campaign. One student, Michelle Villegas, initiated passing out counter-recruitment flyers with her student club (MEChA, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) this past year. The principal stopped her, saying that she needed administrator approval. Her mother joined her effort, searching on the Internet and found CAMS. Mrs. Villegas wrote to us and asked for help. I received her email, wrote a response, and copied it to the ACLU. After a meeting with the district lawyer, the administration changed its position and allowed students to distribute flyers wherever they wanted. But it didn't stop there. This incident energized Michelle and her mother to join CAMS and take the leadership at their high school.

So it boils down to...

US miltary=the bad guys

MEChA=the good guys

The Mexica Mural

An interesting take on where the great Immigration flood is taking us.
A mural at the Theodore Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles (paid for by tax dollars of course) shows the "indigenous peoples" of America being massacred by Europeans.

...they couldn't help but notice the churning stream of skulls in the wake of Columbus' Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. They would read that Europeans used smallpox like a WMD and that "Spaniards took babies from their mothers breast and smashed their heads against rocks." They would learn that the Aztecs and other civilizations of native North America were among the most successful on Earth but that "this greatness and wealth was stolen from us by Europeans."

Of course the mural leaves out the empire building of the Aztecs (or any other "indigenous" empire) as well as these pesky little habits. but then you wouldn't expect someone named Toltecatl to give an unbiased report. Not after he had...

attended a lecture by Tezcatlipoca(which if you ask me is a rather strange name to choose if you want to celebrate your ethnicity), whose own views of history had changed late in life, when he began to read radical reinterpretations of the American conquest, including "American Holocaust."

That book, by David E. Stannard, teaches something most historians dismiss as egregious overstatement: that "95% of our people were killed by Europeans," Tezcatlipoca says. "I'm 57 years old. I grew up in East L.A. I didn't know any of this as a kid."

Apparently their ideas originate from the Mexica Movement, but are nothing new in academia.


UPDATE: An interesting tidbit Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is graduate of Theodore Roosevelt High.

Laurie David To Head CIA In Clinton Presidency

Laugh.
Cry.
Do what thou wilt...

According to a series of unclassified CIA reports, the spy agency has managed to enhance significantly the fuel efficiency of the vehicles used by its operatives. It has been avidly working to decrease the amount of gasoline the agency’s LDV’s consume. An LDV is the CIA acronym for “light-duty vehicle,” or in non-spyspeak, a car.

ah yes... let us check that scorecard.

Pakistan A bomb........nope
India A bomb..............nope
September 11.............nope
Wmds in Iraq..............nope
Iraqi insurgency.........nope
Melting icecaps*...........right on it



* or whatever dire thing Global Warming is supposed to be responsible for this week.....rain, drought, snow, blue crickets, abnormally tall field mice.

hat tip to Power Line and TigerHawk

The Philly Rules

From the Philadelphia Enquirer.
You will notice the lack of Stars of Davids to distinguish our Jewish Justices.

That would be bigoted.

The Low Moral Expectations of The Internet Inudstry

And if you're thinking of changing from Google due to their fanciful artwork you can hardly change to Yahoo with a clean conscience. When it comes to the moral failings of search engines Yahoo has raised the bar...

SAN FRANCISCO: A Chinese political prisoner and his wife have sued Yahoo in a U.S. court, accusing the company of abetting acts of torture by helping Chinese authorities identify political dissidents who were later beaten and imprisoned.
//////////
Wang Xiaoning, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence in China, according to the lawsuit; his wife, Yu Ling; and other unidentified plaintiffs seek damages and an injunction barring Yahoo from identifying dissidents to Chinese authorities.
/////////
When government officials present the company with a request for information about a Yahoo user, he said, "Yahoo China will not know whether the demand for information is for a legitimate criminal investigation or is going to be used to prosecute political dissidents."

Several U.S. Internet companies, including Cisco Systems, Google and Microsoft, have been criticized by some politicians and human rights groups, which accuse them of helping the government monitor and censor the Internet in China.

All in all a nasty little business that the founders of these respective search engines probably never considered when they started their enterprises.

Google Celebrates Lenin's Birthday

Google, which couldn't bring itself to decorate for a little ol' holiday like Easter, brings out it's apocalyptic best for that pagan-feel-good fest know as Earth Day.
Not that there's anything wrong with liking the Earth.
Hey, I like the earth.
It's where I keep all my stuff.

The EU and You II....or The Scarlet H

Brussels Journal on the Thought Crime legislation that is before the EU Council of Ministers and some of the unique punishments that they are dreaming up...

1. Each Member State shall take the necessary measures to ensure that a legal person held liable pursuant to Article 5(1) is punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions, which shall include criminal or non criminal fines and may include other sanctions, such as:

(a) exclusion from entitlement to public benefits or aid;

(b) temporary or permanent disqualification from the practice of commercial activities;

(c) placing under judicial supervision;

(d) a judicial winding up order.

Sort of a modern day ostracism...


Here's an interesting piece on how the EU Council does its "business".

A Little Bit Of Paranoid Delusion From NBC

Here we have NBC's statement justifying their airing of the Va Tech killers macabre video...

The pain suffered by the Virginia Tech community and indeed the entire country is immeasurable.

Upon receiving the materials from Cho Seung-Hui, NBC News took careful consideration in determining how the information should be distributed. We did not rush the material onto air, but instead consulted with local authorities, who have since publicly acknowledged our appropriate handling of the matter. Beginning this morning, we have limited our usage of the video across NBC News, including MSNBC, to no more than 10 percent of our airtime.

Our Standards and Policies chief reviewed all material before it was released. One of our most experienced correspondents, Pete Williams, handled the reporting. We believe it provides some answers to the critical question, "why did this man carry out these awful murders?" The decision to run this video was reached by virtually every news organization in the world, as evidenced by coverage on television, on Web sites and in newspapers. We have covered this story — and our unique role in it — with extreme sensitivity, underscored by our devoted efforts to remember and honor the victims and heroes of this tragic incident. We are committed to nothing less.

Several points in this little missive need to be addressed.

1)"We did not rush the material onto air." We'll I guess that depends on your definition of the word rushed. It was mailed 9:00 am Monday and apparently arrived at NBC headquarters on Wednesday morning. NBC then aired segments of the video in time for their six o'clock news. So a few hours at most. No grass grew under their feet.

2) "...but instead consulted with local authorities, who have since publicly acknowledged our appropriate handling of the matter." Yet this from the head of the Virginia State Police...

Virginia State Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty told a news conference at Virginia Tech he was disappointed NBC had decided to air the video.

"The victims and their families, the entire university campus and even the international community have certainly been afflicted by these horrific events and this horrific tragedy and this intense media attention," he said. "I am sorry that you were all exposed to these images."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

3)"we have limited our usage of the video across NBC News, including MSNBC, to no more than 10 percent of our airtime."
That's a joke, right ?

4) And then that final paragraph. "our unique role," "extreme sensitivity," and "our devoted efforts." Well. They must have thrown out a shoulder patting themselves on the back like that.

See What I Mean

The Left And Gun Control

How strange is it that the same people who denounce every anti-terrorism security measure (such as the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping program) as a fearful attack on our civil liberties that will bring a dark night of fascism to America also believe that the only people who should possess firearms are the agents of our "proto-fascist regime."

Europe's Idea Of Gun Control

If you type 'America "gun culture" into Google you get 269,000 hits.

I hope people realize that when the rest of the world talks about America's gun culture it is not the possession and use of guns in itself that they find so objectional, it is the possession and use of firearms by the individual. It is the loss of the state's monopoly on violence that they find so incomprehensible in the United States.

Their desperation to make their point leads to garbage like this from the Independent...

16 children and teenagers are killed by gun accidents in the US each day

Do they own calculators in Europe ?
That's 5840 deaths a year.

The actual number (for 2000) is 193. A terrible number but only 3% of the above figure.
Here's some more data...

Classification of firearm-related fatality			Fatalities among all persons ages 0-19
Assault			1,776
Suicide			1,007
Accident			193
Unexplained			36
Total			3,012
Average daily number			8.3

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, 2000, the most recent year of complete data available.

Two Points

OK.
Two points.

1) How did this guy make it as far as he did in college ?

2) A really strange thought just occurred to me as I was watching Cho Seung Hui's video "testimonial" on NBC.
No joke intended, but does he or does he not sound just like Napoleon Dynamite.

Tim Russert On High Capactity Magazines

I've roundly criticized ABC's Brian Ross for his blatant falsehoods regarding the "assault weapons" ban provision of the 1994 Crime Bill, but it appears that not only has ABC News refused to retract these false claims, it appears that the lie is spreading among other members of the ignorati.

Enter one of the least, shall we say, "mentally agile" disciples of this profession at MSNBC.
////////
Allahpundit has the video of Olbermann parroting of Ross' falsehoods.

At least one of the weapons used by the shooter is believed, as we said, to be in nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol, which would be like this one, with a clip designed to hold more than 10 shots. Clips like those were banned under the Assault Weapons Law of 1994, but Congress and President Bush allowed that law to expire more than two years ago.

He's right about the ignorance spreading. I was watching Jay Leno last night and the first guest was Tim Russert who said the same thing as Olbermann within moments of coming out.

The truth from Confederate Yankee...

The AW Ban provision of the 1994 Crime Bill in no way restricted the sale, purchase, or ownership of magazines of more than ten rounds during the 1994-2004 period, and only restricted the sale of high-capacity magazines manufactured after this date. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of high-capacity magazines were bought and sold during the 1994-2004 time period in retail stores, via catalog sales, or online, and all sales and purchases were completely legal.

What's a Serious Matter And What's Not...

Foreshadowing at Virginia Tech...

"Once I realized my class was scared, I knew I had to do something," she said.

She approached Cho and told him that he needed to change the type of poems he was writing or drop her class. Giovanni said Cho declined to leave and said, "You can't make me."

Giovanni said she appealed to Roy, who then taught Cho one-on-one. Roy, 51, said in a telephone interview that she also urged Cho to seek counseling and told him that she would walk to the counseling center with him. He said he would think about it.

Roy said she warned school officials. "I was determined that people were going to take notice," Roy said. "I felt I'd said to so many people, 'Please, will you look at this young man?' "

Roy, now the alumni distinguished professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program, said university officials were responsive and sympathetic to her warnings but indicated that because Cho had made no direct threats, there was little they could do.

What's so frightening to me is the thought that if he had used the language of Don Imus or Isaiah Washington he probably would have been placed in mandatory counseling.

Corzine's Accident

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The SUV carrying Gov. Jon S. Corzine was traveling about 91 mph moments before it crashed, Superintendent of State Police Col. Rick Fuentes said Tuesday.

The governor was critically injured when the vehicle crashed into a guardrail on the Garden State Parkway just north of Atlantic City last week. He apparently was not wearing his seat belt as he rode in the front passenger's seat.

The state trooper-driven sport utility vehicle was in the left lane with its emergency lights flashing when a pickup tried to get out of its way. Instead, it set off a chain reaction that resulted in the crash.

Now someone needs to get their stories straight...from the NY Times of April 12...

In a 9 p.m. news conference at the hospital here, Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said that a red pickup truck entered the highway “erratically from the shoulder,” causing a white Dodge Ram pickup truck to swerve left.

Colonel Fuentes said neither weather nor speed appeared to be a factor.

Going 91 miles per hour down the road at night so that you can do a meeting with........Don Imus and the Rutgers' basketball team ?

NUJ Jumps the Megalodon

The British National Union of Journalists at its annual meeting has voted to flex its economic muscle(?) at the hated Israeli occupiers....in a completely professional, non-biased way of course...

The resolution, which passed by a vote of 66 to 54, "calls for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and the TUC [Trades Union Congress] to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations."

And that was their watered down response. They originally wanted to condemn...

...the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel" last year.

Even discussing the kidnapping of BBC journalist Alan Johnston they still bow (or should I say wallow) to the superior victim status of the Palestinian people...

Passing on a message of thanks to the NUJ from Alan’s family, John Williams said that the tributes to Alan that meant the most were those from his fellow journalists, especially those in Gaza and Ramallah, and he emphasised that it was the Palestinian people themselves who suffer most from this sort of attack on freedom of expression.

No, actually I think Alan Johnston and his loved ones are the ones suffering most.

Now Derbyshire Puts His Foot In It

John Derbyshire, who is probably the most interesting writer over at the Corner, should have thought a bit longer before he posted this...

Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.
//////
Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

Watch him get eviscerated over at Time...

The last time we checked in with NRO's John Derbyshire, he was expounding on his own hypothetical bravery regarding Iranian hostage-takers. Today, we learn that he also is completely fearless in imaginary domestic scenarios as well:

....and the comments section show him even less mercy...

Now I must admit that my first thought when I heard of the shootings was the same as Derbyshire's. The first reports talked of people being lined up and shot, and I wondered why someone after he had started shooting didn't break out of line and try to stop him.
But he apparently didn't line up people. There was no time for calculation. He burst into rooms and started shooting people. The first reaction of someone..... OK,my first reaction.... would be to throw themselves to the floor.

"Duck and cover" seems a perfectly natural reaction to a scary, shocking and yes noisy situation like that. Especially to a group of young people with no military training who had believed up to a second before that they were in safe surroundings.

he problem is of course that this position puts you at the complete mercy of a cold, methodical killer who has plenty of ammunition.

Conjectures Over "Ismail Ax"

Ismail Ax ??

Could that have been an online gaming name he used ?

I understand that online games over high speed are huge among young people in South Korea.

How often did he return there?

Is that where he picked up his shooting "skill" ?

Australian PM Puts His Foot In It

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the shooting underscored the problems of a U.S. ''gun culture.''

Howard staked his political leadership on pushing through tough laws on gun ownership in Australia after a lone gunman went on one of the world's deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago in his country.

''We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country,'' he said.

Rather nervy considering that the Port Arther Massacre of 1996 resulted in the death of 35.....

Musings

10:30....

I wasn't sure how I felt about blogging about this but something just set me off....

A Fox News vulture, a ninety lb. blond, just asked a student if he was "cowering behind a desk."

The Civilized Bits Of The US Comment On The Sticks

Giuliani does the Country Club Two-Step...

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani warned GOP activists in Des Moines on Saturday that if they insist on a nominee who always agrees with them, it will spell defeat in 2008.

Now isn't the whole point behind political parties so that you can have someone to vote for who you at least agree with most of the time ?
More hole digging follows...

Republicans can win, he said, if they nominate a candidate committed to the fight against terrorism and high taxes, rather than a pure social conservative.

“Our party has to get beyond issues like that,” Giuliani said, a reference to abortion rights, which he supports.

Here is the response from some clowns posted at the Corner...

...in the long run a Giuliani GOP will pick up far more economic conservatives in the civilized bits of the US than it will lose social conservatives in the sticks, who have nowhere else to go.

Well shucks, some of those brilliant "Mainstream" Republicans would rather have the vote of five people down at the country club than fifty at the Wal-Mart.

I Think Danny Glover Has Found A New Screenwriter

More fun from the looking glass world of Pravda.
I wish I could say I found this on my own in my usual Pravda trawling, but alas it's from the Corner...

Unable to attack such a powerful media figure as Don Imus, directly, the US War Leaders, and as we have seen many times before, resorted to a massive media attack against him using as the reason a racial slur against a US woman's basketball team, but which has been pointed out by other media outlets was not by any means a rare occurrence for the legendary radio icon to make.

But, to the US War Leaders, Don Imus represented the most serious threat, to date, of the growing assault against them by America's media personalities threatening to expose the truths behind the events of September 11, 2001 and the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars; and to such an extent that another American media personality, Rosie O'Donnell, has expressed concern that US Military Leaders could actually imprison Mr. Imus.

First they came for Imus, Rosie will be next on their list and then we know who they will come for...

It is expected, also, that the US War Leaders actions against Don Imus will have a further chilling affect upon other American media personalities questioning their authority, such as the popular US movie actor, Charlie Sheen, and who was one of the first to question the events of September 11, 2001

Am I An Alarmist ?

A strange crime out of Central Virginia? Or a scary one? It certainly doesn't seem to be getting much news coverage.

A Delta (not the airline) fuel truck loaded with 1,700 gallons of home heating oil was stolen sometime Monday night into Tuesday morning from a company in Petersburg.

Scary because...

The fuel is used primarily for furnaces and for heating homes, although Petersburg police quickly contacted State Police and Homeland Security. If combined with the right chemicals the fuel could have been turned into a bomb, although FBI does not believe the truck was ever going to be used as a terrorist device.

but the truck shows up...

The empty truck was found yesterday after it was ditched in a business district in Northeast Washington.

Now I know heating oil is expensive nowadays, but considering the recent scenes out of Iraq....

And how often is this happening?

Voyage Of The Prancing Prius

George F. Will on how the Prius (which we have talked about before) is the opiate of the environmental masses...

Speaking of Hummers, perhaps it is environmentally responsible to buy one and squash a Prius with it. The Prius hybrid is, of course, fuel-efficient. There are, however, environmental costs to mining and smelting (in Canada) 1,000 tons a year of zinc for the battery-powered second motor, and the shipping of the zinc 10,000 miles -- trailing a cloud of carbon dioxide -- to Wales for refining and then to China for turning it into the component that is then sent to a battery factory in Japan.

....and then the Prius is constructed at Toyota's plant in Tsutsumi, from there the cars are shipped across the Pacific by container ship to California. Then the cars are moved by rail and car carrier across the continent.

So if you live in somewhere like, let's say, Minneapolis your car battery has traveled completely around the world to get to you..... spreading your carbon trail across the globe.

Softselling Third World Thugs

Notice the weird terminology used to describe the plans of Venezuela's El Jefe Numero Uno, Hugo Chavez....

Chavez: Troops to Escort Oil Takeovers

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that soldiers will accompany government officials when they take over oil projects in the Orinoco River basin next month.

This is from the Guardian but it originates from an AP source that uses the same phrasing, and papers as far a field as Bismarck and Houston say the same way.
Now wouldn't a clearer report be...

Venezuela to Expropriate Oil Production

Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez announced Thursday his intention to use the army to seize all oil facilities in his country

Cool Fridays

Google Maps UK, the ironman edition...

......... Go to Google Maps. Click on “Get Directions.” Type “New York” in the first box and “London” in the second. Look at the results, particularly step 23. (via Stephen Pollard)

UPDATE: Hey,it works both ways.

Make That Two Guides...UPDATE

Will wonders never cease. Only twenty four hours after I mentioned the lack of a Freddy Fashion Mart post at the Al Sharpton entry at Wikipedia......... suddenly there it is.

USA Today Makes Me Go Hmmmm....

Now explain to me why it is that the Don Imus fiasco (or is it more an imbroglio?) is the lead story above the fold in USA Today but the dismissal of the charges against the Duke Lacrosse players only ranks one of those side strips ?

Le Affaire Imus

Why does all the current lathering and beating of breasts by America's pundits and politicos over the Don Imus watchamacallit (certainly not scandal) remind me of this ?

Those Wacky Baptists....

Kevin Smith is about to start filming again. The film will be called.........Red State. Hmmm.

While there’s no word on when shooting will commence, Smith told a London crowd at one of his stand-up…err…speaking gigs that the film would be about extremist church groups, particularly those wacky Baptists. According to Smith (via Cinematical), “The movie's called 'Red State' and it's very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme.”

I wonder if he means these guys.

Make That Two Guides...

Dirty Harry at Libertas gives his view on the whole Imus/Rutgers/Nappy head controversy, which just happens to nicely coincide with my own. My favorite part being...

Uh-oh.

Could someone send me a guide? And be real sure to include phrases black people use affectionately towards each other that would offend coming from me but not from Tarantino or not from me in a Tarantino movie if Tarantino directed but it had black people where he was acting and not only directing and I said the line to a black person but there was more than three white people in the room and Sam jackson said it was okay and not on the radio.

Though just as important as the do's and don'ts is who is making up the list of do's and don'ts, specifically who died and gave that job to Al "Freddy's Fashion Mart" Sharpton.

If you haven't heard of Freddy's Fashion Mart don't feel bad. There has been a conscious effort on the part of the Mainstream Media to toss the episode down the memory hole. And not just the MSM. Check out Al Sharpton's Wikipedia entry. Search for any mention of Freddy's Fashion Mart (or of anything Sharpton did in 1995 or in fact anything he did between 1991 and 1999). Look anywhere on Wikipedia for Freddy's Fashion Mart.
Nothing.
Here's a little background from FrontPageMag...

...it took eight lives. The murderous rampage was set in motion when the United House of Prayer, one of the largest black landlords on 125th Street, raised the rent on the Fashion Mart owned by a Jew, Freddy Harari, who then raised the rent on his subtenant, Sikhulu Shange, who ran a record store. Recognizing that the quickest way to gain support in a landlord-tenant dispute is to turn it into a racial issue, Mr. Shange went to Mr. Sharpton's National Action Network, which in turn knew that the quickest way to build a crowd in Harlem is to rouse racial hatreds. Mr. Sharpton and the daily picketers did their job brilliantly. He opened his public campaign against Freddy's on WWRL radio, warning: "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street."

After two months of rhetorical violence, protester Roland Smith ran into the store with guns blazing and burned it down. When it was over, Smith had killed himself and seven others. Armed with a .38-caliber revolver, he shot three whites and a Pakistani in cold blood—he had mistaken the light-skinned Pakistani for a Jew, and then set the fire that killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese, and one black, a security guard whom the protesters had taunted as a "cracker lover."

UPDATE 4/12/2007: The Wikipedia entry has been changed.

Bahrain Update: April

An interesting piece from the Gulfnews that speaks of the growing Wahhabi or as they call it here Salafi influence in Bahrain. A disturbing trend in a society which has seen a growing Sunni-Shiite fissure.

Manama: The Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs has come under heavy criticism from religious figures for its failure to commemorate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Local and regional religious leaders from the Sunni and Shiite sects, ministry officials, dignitaries and ambassadors have regularly attended the annual ceremony, which included speeches paying tribute to the Prophet and highlighting his life.

But the birthday this year was not marked, prompting claims that the failure of the ministry to conduct the annual ceremony at Bahrain's largest mosque was the result of pressure from radical Islamist groups that have repeatedly expressed their objection to the event. Salafi groups claim that Muslims celebrated only two feasts annually and the addition of any religious commemoration would be a violation of Islamic precepts.

The birthday of Mohammed known as the Mawlid is considered to be shirk under Salafism ie Wahhabism through its conflict with Tawhid, the Oneness of God.

The Wahhabi doctrine is grounded in the concept of the unity of God, a concept that allows no veneration or anything that can be confused with veneration for any other being living or dead. This includes great religious teachers of the past, Shiia saints and even the prophet Mohammad. So no celebrations in their honor, no shrines and even under the strictest views no headstones to mark their graves.

Talk About News With A Slant

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain's youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

You see...

For the BBC,... his story is "too positive" about the conflict.

More Sunni-Shia Clashes...

More Sunni-Shia clashes this time...

...the trouble began Friday when unidentified people began shooting at Shiites near their mosque in Parachinar, about 150 miles southwest of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier province bordering Afghanistan.

Some of the Shiites blamed rival Sunni Muslims for the violence, and burned down Sunni-owned shops and homes. The ensuing riots left at least 40 people dead, said a security official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

With some background from Counterterrorism Blog.

For The Canadians

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. And so from YouTube here is a piece called From The Ridge

The Missing Member of The Family

Mayor Giuliani's Position on Abortion

Rudy Giuliani supports reasonable restrictions on abortion such as parental notification with a judicial bypass and a ban on partial birth abortion - except when the life of the mother is at stake. He's proud that adoptions increased 66% while abortions decreased over 16% in New York City when he was Mayor. But Rudy understands that this is a deeply personal moral dilemma, and people of good conscience can disagree respectfully. Ultimately he believes that it is a decision between a woman, her doctor, her family, and her God.

Apparently the baby/fetus doesn't figure in his equation...

And then there is the public financing of Abortion...

BASH: So you support taxpayer money or public funding for abortions in some cases?

GIULIANI: If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right, yes, I mean, if that the status of the law, then I would, yes.

This Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

The illegal immigration enforcement merry go round draws blood in Tidewater Virginia.

An illegal immigrant is charged with killing two Virginia Beach teenagers in a drunk driving crash despite previous alcohol-related charges.
(SNIP)
When Alfredo Ramos- an illegal immigrant - allegedly drove drunk and crashed into a car in Virginia Beach killing two teenage girls --he had already been convicted of being drunk in public in Virginia Beach and chesapeake, and dui in chesapeake, never received any jail time.

Chesapeake Police say they never contacted immigration officials after his arrests in their city, even though they knew he has no social security number, no license, nothing but an illegal ID.

Their spokesperson, Christy Golden, says part of the problem is getting ICE agents to respond and react when police do call. She says the Chesapeake Police Department is now looking into creating a new policy regarding illegal immigrants. And she said quote "we all need to step up to the plate."

For some reason the use of baseball analogies during the discussion of the senseless deaths of young girls leaves me rather cold.

This Is Your Brain On Saltwater...II

More reaction from the British naval leadership...... from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band who...

said British boarding operations being carried out in the Gulf had been "absolutely proper", but there would be a "complete review".

So basically everything was done properly... and they'll never do it that way again.

Cool Fridays: Fairies Found Faux

Alas there are no Fairies in Derbyshire. It is all a rather well executed hoax.

Cool Fridays

Continuing our Lego theme from a couple of months ago we have the ultimate Lego display... a working model of the Allianz Arena the home stadium of FC Bayern Munich.

When You Can't Tell The News From Sarcasm

From the Evening Standard...

They were kept in the VIP presidential suite at the airport before catching a British Airways Airbus to Heathrow.

The entire business section of BA flight 6634 was cleared for the 15 marines and sailors.

Passenger Cheryl Motevali, 49, said passengers who had been booked on Business Class were bumped down to economy to make room for the freed sailors. "We did not see the sailors at all. After landing we came off the plane first, then they were let off," she said.

A 57-year-old Iranian businessman who was downgraded to economy class when business class was cleared for them said: "We understood the reason. We are happy this has been concluded." (big of him)

Among the gifts given to the captives in Iran were handicrafts, books, pistachio nuts, a Persian sweet called "gaz" and a vase.

I Have Met The Enemy And He Has Given Me A Nice Suit

"Thank you Mr. Ahmadinejad may I have another?"


Take 500 years of the traditions of the Royal Navy and just toss them on the garbage heap because we have now entered the Flashman era of military ethics.

Defence Secretary Des Browne defended the conduct of the marines during their time in captivity.

He said the current rules of engagement were "robust", but they would be examined.

"You've seen for yourself these are very young people," he told BBC News 24. "I think they have acted with immense courage and dignity during the time that they have been detained."

An era when being captured without firing a shot, happily cooperating with your captors, and then shaking hands with and thanking them upon being let go elicits nothing more than a collective yawn. In fact more than a collective yawn it actually brings praise for "immense courage," and swift damnation upon him who expects maybe a somewhat more soldierly response to captivity. More soldierly,and less acting as if you were participating in Big Brother the Iranian Edition.

I know we live an era of low expectations, but "low expectations" is still somewhat higher than "no expectations."

And no I have never been held captive by the Iranians.......but then again neither have you.

...Read It To Believe It...

The headers of this "Comment is Free.." from the Guardian leave me slack jawed...

The US can learn from this example of mutual respect

The outcome of the crisis between Iran and Britain provides a lesson on how to deal with the wider international standoff

If I may quote from that inestimable political tract The Thing From Another World, "What can we learn from that thing except a faster way to die."

An Editor In The Hot Seat

Great, Great, Great fun from the Independent...and interview with the Editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger by GQ Magazine's Piers Morgan...a selection from about halfway through...

PM: What's your current salary?

AR: It's, er, about £350,000.

PM: What bonus did you receive last year?

AR: About £170,000, which was a way of addressing my pension.

PM: That means that you earned £520,000 last year alone. That's more than the editor of The Sun by a long way.

AR: I'll talk to you off the record about this, but not on the record.

PM: Why? In The Guardian, you never stop banging on about fat cats. Do you think that your readers would be pleased to hear that you earned £520,000 last year? Are you worth it?

AR: That's for others to say.

PM: Wouldn't it be more Guardian-like, more socialist, to take a bit less and spread the pot around a bit? We have this quaint idea that you guys are into that "all men are equal" nonsense, but you're not really, are you? You seem a lot more "equal" than others on your paper.

AR: Er... [silence].

PM: Do you ever get awkward moments when your bonus gets published? Do you wince and think, "Oh dear, Polly Toynbee's not going to like this one."

AR: Er... [silence].

PM: Or is Polly raking in so much herself that she wouldn't mind?

AR: Er... [silence].

PM: Are you embarrassed by it?

AR: No. I didn't ask for the money. And I do declare it, too.

PM: But if you earned £520,000 last year, then that must make you a multimillionaire.

AR: You say I'm a millionaire?

PM: You must be - unless you're giving it all away to charity...

AR: Er...

PM: What's your house worth?

AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.

PM: You think it's all private?

AR: I do really, yes.

PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.

AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.

PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.

AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.

PM: Well, only because you seem so embarrassed and confused about it.

AR: I'm not embarrassed about it. But nor do I feel I have to talk about it.

PM: Do you like money?

AR: I remember JK Galbraith saying to me once: "I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better." You can have an easier life if you have money.

PM: I heard you bought a grand piano for £50,000.

AR: £30,000 - the most extravagant thing I've ever bought.

PM: Are you any good at it?

AR: I can play quite well, I suppose. I rarely inflict it on anyone else, though.

PM: Is it true you play naked?

AR: No. I usually play fully clothed in the mornings.

PM: What about your cars? Are you still driving that ridiculous G-Wiz thing around?

AR: Yes, and I love it.

PM: But I also read that you use taxis to ferry your stuff to and from work, which sort of negates the green effort, doesn't it?

AR: That story was a bit confused. I used to cycle to work sometimes, and if I was too tired at the end of the day then I would fold up the bike and get a cab home, yes. But about a year ago I was nearly killed in a nasty accident on my bike so I gave up cycling and bought the G-Wiz.

PM: Any other cars?

AR: A company Volvo estate.

PM: A big gas-guzzler.

AR: Yes.

PM: Bit of a culture clash with your G-Wiz, then?

AR: Let me think about that. The problem is that I also have a big dog, and it doesn't fit into the G-Wiz.

PM: I'm sure the environment will understand. Any others?

AR: My wife has a Corsa.

PM: Quite an expansive...

AR: Fleet...

PM: Yes, fleet.

AR: But I've got children as well.

PM: They're privately educated?

AR: Er... [pause].

PM: Is that a valid question?

AR: I don't... think so... no.

PM: And you went to Cranleigh, a top public school.

AR: I did, yes.

PM: Do you feel uncomfortable answering that question?

AR: It falls into the category of something I don't feel embarrassed about, but you get on to a slippery slope about what else you talk about, don't you?

PM: It's not really about your private life though, is it? It's just a fact. And I assume by your reluctance to answer the question that they are privately educated.

AR: [Pause] Again, I am trying to make a distinction between...

PM: You often run stories about Labour politicians sending their kids to private schools, and you are quite censorious about it. Are you worried that it makes you look a hypocrite again?

AR: No. I think there are boundaries. It goes back to this question of whether editors are public figures or not.

PM: And you don't think they are?

AR: Well, again, I've tried to draw a distinction between making my journalism accountable, but I have never tried to go around talking about my private life and therefore making myself into a public figure.

Hugo's Little Red,..... I Mean Blue, Book

Where Hugo Chavez came from and apparently where he is planning to go...

CARACAS (Reuters) - How far will President Hugo Chavez press his effort to install Cuban-inspired socialism in oil-rich Venezuela? The answer may well have been written in his failed coup plans 15 years ago.

Chavez spent more than a decade conspiring with other leftist officers before leading the putsch in 1992, during which time he helped draft a set of decrees for a revolutionary government.

(SNIP)

The decrees themselves are attributed to Kleber Ramirez, a long-time guerrilla and leader of the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution, a division of the communist party that first drew Chavez into the circle of armed forces conspirators.

Chavez's own political manifesto, written several years before the coup, described a "concrete utopia" built on the ideas of Venezuelan liberation hero Simon Bolivar, the namesake of Chavez's leftist movement, which he calls the "Bolivarian Revolution."

The political treatise known as The Blue Book offers an outline of citizen-driven "participative democracy" that formed a key plank of his 1998 anti-poverty presidential platform.

It seems the "Blue Book" referred to is actually a miniature copy of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution, known by most in Venezuela as the Bolivarian Constitution. "Non-Official English translation" here.
Flashback to this classic take on Chavez from John Pilger...

Chávez is, of course, a threat, especially to the United States. Like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who based their revolution on the English co-operative moment (!!!!), and the moderate Allende in Chile, he offers the threat of an alternative way of developing a decent society: in other words, the threat of a good example in a continent where the majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington-designed peonage.

An End To The IranianHostage Crisis ?

FOX News is saying at 10:15 Eastern Time that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has announced the the 15 British Naval Personnel are being released and are on their way home.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

DENVER (AP) -- A top researcher predicted a ''very active'' 2007 Atlantic hurricane season Tuesday, with at least nine hurricanes and a good chance one will hit the U.S. coast.

The forecast by William Gray predicts 17 named storms this year, five of them major hurricanes. The probability of a major storm making landfall on the U.S. coast this year is 74 percent, compared with the average of 52 percent over the past century, he said.

Episcopal Jihad: Coming To A School Near You

At least I know now what Bill Maher, Rosie O'Donnell, and Keith Olbermann do on their off time (besides visiting Loose Change web sites)......... they work for the Burlington, New Jersey police department....

BURLINGTON TOWNSHIP — The scenario has played out in real life across America: Gunfire echoes through a school and students are held hostage.

But police, faculty and staff lived out their own make-believe version yesterday of just such a tragedy at Burlington Township High School, complete with Kevlar-clad officers, armed suspects and students portraying the wounded and dead.

The purpose of the drill was to test the reactions of police, faculty and administration.
(SNIP)
Two Burlington Township police detectives portrayed the gunmen. Investigators described them as members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the “New Crusaders” who don't believe in separation of church and state. The mock gunmen went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class.

The next line is of course...

To make the drill more realistic, about 10 students volunteered to act as hostages or wounded victims.

As if realism was their chief concern.
But what do you expect from a world where fire doesn't melt steel ?



Hat tip to Relapsed Catholic

......Making The World A Safer Place For Anti-Semites

The wit and wisdom of the UN Human Rights Commission. That is when it's not busy saving us all from the horrors of religious defamation.

King County Jumps The Shark, Misses The Landing, And Lands In Mouth Of Giant Ray Harryhausen Monster

I thought this was an April Fool's joke, but I was wrong. It's just a plain old fool's joke.
From the Seattle Times...

What would an MLK County look like? Now we know. In a word, it looks like us, the 1.8 million residents of King County. The new logo's powerful black-and-white rendition of the slain civil-rights leader represents this county's greatest asset: its diversity.

Soon, citizens will see the logo on new county park signs and, for a few, on corrections-department uniforms. Over time, the King logo will appear on official stationery and on Metro buses.

And then the kicker...

it's an overdue moment worth the wait.

Logos are important symbols. They promote a visual representation of a region's greatest aspirations.

Laugh. Cry. Take a moment.

The "decades-long effort" partly results from the fact that the county was named after our thirteenth Vice-President, William Rufus deVane King. King you see was a Senator from Alabama and......insert evil,background music here....a slaveholder. Yes, he participated in the institution that dare no speak its name.


Though to be entirely honest he was pretty.......well....lame, even for a Vice-President. He never even made it to America during his term of office. See the story here.

Engage The Enemy More Closely......Not

From Mario Loyola at the Corner who puts it rather succinctly...

Tony Blair appears to be in a daze.

....and in case you're wondering about the flags.

The UN Hate Speech Ban or..... How We Should Let Guatemala Handle Iran

The UNHRC (that's the UN Human Rights Council to you and me) has decided to save us all ( well not all of us, not British sailors for example) through a resolution from the evil of Religious Defamation, "and in particular on the serious implications of Islamophobia on the enjoyment of all rights."

It also notes "deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."
And they apparently meant that without a shred of irony.

For the Flying Imans they also threw in deep concern over "the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001"

Here is how the voting went:

In favour (24): Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.

Against (14): Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine and United Kingdom.

Abstentions (9): Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Peru, Uruguay and Zambia.

We're not a member of course...

Here is the actual press release so you can peruse the whole thing at leisure as well as read the official comments of the member states, of whom I think the Guatemalan representative says it best when he says ...

This draft resolution was unbalanced and gave importance to one single religion over all others. It was a selective document that did not take account of the situation of discrimination against other religions around the world. The Guatemalan delegation would vote against this draft resolution and any other that was not inclusive in its content.

No word yet on what they think of chocolate Jesus.


More from Dhimi Watch ....

The Other Chocolate Jesus

The Easter season seems to bring out the religiously irreverent/socially conscious artiste more than any other season of late. Certainly more than Eid or Ramadan.

Some call it art. Other(sic) call it blasphemy. A new piece of art showing Senator Barack Obama as Jesus Christ is now on display at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Let us just consider ourselves lucky he isn't made of licorice to signify the obesity epidemic among America's youth, or perhaps coal to bring into light our dependence on fossil fuels.

I wonder, is 1995 so long ago that New Yorkers have forgotten this?

Persians and Brits......

The kidnapping of the British sailors by the mullahocarcy of Iran is fast reaching the stage where we will find out whether this will be remembered as a fiasco or as a crisis. Here's the Telegraph with the rather clear point that Blair's "point of not swaggering on the world stage as if he were the leader of a militarily powerful country, willing and able to use force unilaterally" has not given the British personnel a get-out-jail-free card. The editorial misses the boat however (pun intended) on the charge that the US media is ignoring the Fiasco/crisis because we have no desire to help militarily. Luckily plenty of people in the comments section called them to task for this.

Also from the Telegraph we have Niall Fergusson's opinion along with a little history...

Iran targeted the Security Council's weakest link: us