Here’s a screen capture of my Newsgator feed aggregator from this morning. Check out the big headline and compare it to the small subhead.
In your dreams, AP!
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Category Archives: War on terror
The Drudge Report headline read: “Lady Thatcher to be honored with state funeral.”
I was surprised, to say the least. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard that Margaret Thatcher had died. Clicking the link, I arrived at the Daily Mail, which clarified things:
Margaret Thatcher is to be given the ultimate accolade of a State funeral when she reaches the end of her days – the first British Prime Minister since Winston Churchill to be afforded such an honour.
Oh, so she’s not dead. Maybe she’s on her deathbed? Well, no…
Although Lady Thatcher is currently in good health – she was with the Queen at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday – The Mail on Sunday has learned that plans are under way for her funeral, when the time eventually comes, to take place at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Okay. So is this really news? There is a plan in place for Margaret Thatcher’s eventual funeral. Thank goodness! I’m sure everyone had been worried about that.
So what was the point of the story? Believe it or not, it was this:
…[T]he possibility of a formal procession could be jeopardised by fears that there are insufficient troops available to line the route because the Armed Forces are so overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Is this what they call “flooding the zone?” Is this supposed to change someone’s mind about the current war? It must be, because it’s certainly not a newsworthy story.
I’m trying hard to imagine a bewhiskered peer of the realm reading this story. His monocle drops into his tea as he leaps to his feet. “By God, I was four-square with the Yanks until now, but the prospect of insufficient pomp at Lady Thatcher’s funeral? We must withdraw immediately. Consequences be hanged!”
Or maybe, it’s aimed at the Left: George Galloway is standing on an orange crate in Hyde Park, haranguing passersby with tales of war crimes committed in their name upon innocent Iraqis. A friend taps him on the shoulder and whispers in his ear, “Lady Thatcher probably won’t live more than ten more years. If we don’t withdraw any troops from the Middle East by then it may prove mildly embarrassing to the Conservative Party.” Galloway, without a pause, begins shouting, “Stay the course! We must not abandon our freedom-loving Iraqi friends!”
Nope. Doesn’t work either way.
A huge shipment of uranium arrived in Canada from Iraq on Saturday, according to the AP.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” – the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment – was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.
So let’s get this straight. British intelligence informs President Bush that Iraq had been seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger. The President mentions that fact during his State of the Union address. Joe Wilson writes an editorial for the New York Times that contradicts this intelligence. (Wilson had tea with Nigerien officials, and only a blackguard would lie while sipping tea.) Bob Novak wants to know who this Wilson fella is, and why he was assigned the job of checking out this information. Richard Armitage tells Novak it was at the request of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame (a CIA employee), who wanted her husband out from underfoot. All hell breaks loose, and Scooter Libby gets sentenced to 30 months in prison for contradicting Matt Cooper.
Confused? Don’t be. Just repeat after me: Saddam Hussein never had any intention of developing weapons of mass destruction and didn’t even have the means to do so.
Give or take 550 metrics tons of uranium.
UN web site hacked with anti-war post – Yahoo! News
Computer hackers posted an anti-war message on the U.N.’s official Web site, claiming that U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East were taking innocent lives, the United Nations said.
The hackers…left a message criticizing U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East and saying “Peace for ever No war.”
Apparently, the hack would have been discovered sooner had it not been so effectively camouflaged as an official UN policy statement.
As the son of a Glaswegian, I had to smile:
Glasgow cabbie tears tendon in foot from kicking jihadi–in the balls
“The guy in the passenger seat was wearing a white T-shirt. He got out carrying what looked like a petrol bomb and seconds later the Jeep was in flames.
“Then he kicked and punched a man to the ground before punching a policeman square in the face. That’s when I saw red. That sort of thing just isn’t on.
“I told my passenger to run for her life, then I went for the man in the T-shirt and managed to skelp him in the face. I followed it up by booting him twice…
“I’ve heard people say since that he was shouting ‘Allah!’ but I didn’t hear that. It just sounded like a lot of crap to me.
“I ran for the guy and punched him twice in the face with pretty good right hooks.
“Then I kicked him with full force right in the balls but he didn’t go down. He just kept on babbling his rubbish.”
A baggage handler at Glasgow airport got in on it, too:
Mr Smeaton described how his first thought on being confronted by the two suspects in the burning vehicle was: “What’s the score? I’ve got to get this sorted.”
Spotting a terrorist suspect grappling with police, Mr Smeaton thought: “You’re nae hitting the Polis mate, there’s nae chance.”
“So I ran straight towards the guy, we’re all trying to get a kick-in at him, take a boot to subdue the guy.”
Mr Smeaton, from Erskine, in Renfrewshire, physically fought with the attacker until he was brought to the ground.
Smeaton delivered a message to terrorists: “they can try and come to Britain and distrupt us any way they want, but the British people have been under a lot more things than this, and have stood proud.”
Demonstrating the “have-a-go” attitude typical of Glaswegians, Mr Smeaton continued: “Glasgow doesnae accept this, if you come tae Glasgow, we’ll set about you.”
Hear that, hirabah? You shouldnae go tae Glasgow.
Scientists: Finding mimics embryonic stem cells
What if scientists could find a way to produce embryonic stem cells without having to tamper with embryos?
On Wednesday, three teams of researchers said they had found a way to do just that — but in mice. They got ordinary skin cells to act like the embryonic cells.
Even if this procedure works with human cells, there are still going to be difficulties, of course. But these would be exactly the same difficulties researches face with normal embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells form tumors. But at least scientists may be able to “tinker” without having to visit their friendly local abortionist to restock their supplies.
These findings will be downplayed. (As have the proven results of umbilical and adult stem cell research.) The whole point of the push for embryonic stem cell research is not to actually cure the sick, but to provide a justification for abortion.
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Young clerk let Tiananmen ad slip past censors
A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday.
The tiny ad in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News on Monday night, read: “Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of June 4 victims”.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said a young woman on the Chengdu Evening News classified section had allowed the ad to be published because she’d never heard of the June 4 crackdown.
China’s censorship is so effective that it defeated itself here. Perhaps Google can work with the Chinese government to develop tools to enable low-level functionaries to censor information without even understanding what they’re censoring.
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Lebanese troops pound Islamic positions
Lebanon’s army on Saturday pounded al Qaeda-inspired Islamic militants hiding in a Palestinian refugee camp in renewed heavy clashes following a few days of intermittent fighting.
Black smoke billowed from the Nahr el-Bared camp in northern Lebanon where witnesses reported some of the heaviest army shelling since June 1, when the Lebanese army — using tanks and artillery — launched an offensive to drive the Fatah Islam militants from their positions inside the settlement.
I hope the Lebanese can finish the job. I miss those pro-democracy protests:
Stirring.
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The Lebanese obviously have an extra incentive to defeat the Islamists. If the Islamists win, what’s happening in the Gaza Strip since Israel withdrew could happen in Lebanon:
Gaza: Female TV staff get death threat
A radical Islamic group in the Gaza Strip issued a death threat over the weekend against women working for the official Palestinian Authority television station, accusing them of dressing immodestly and behaving in a way that violates the teachings of Islam.
Members of the group are also responsible for splashing acid in the face of a number of young women who had been accused of “immoral behavior.” The Righteous Swords of Islam is one of three al-Qaida-affiliated groups that have popped up in the Gaza Strip over the past two years.
A leaflet distributed by the Righteous Swords of Islam specifically referred to the women who appear on Palestine TV. “The saying these days is that the enemy has withdrawn from the Gaza Strip and so have our morals,” it read. “It’s indeed disgraceful that the women working for the official Palestinian media are competing with each other to display their charms.”
Referring to the fact that most of the female presenters were not wearing the niqab, a veil covering the face of Muslim women as a part of hijab, the leaflet asked: “Where are the decision-makers in this regard? Have we lost our conscience? Have the brothers, fathers and husbands stopped caring about their women?”
The group warned that its members would strike with an “iron fist and swords” against the women who are refusing to cover their faces. “We will destroy their homes,” it announced. “We will blow up their working places. We have a lot of information about their addresses and we are following their movements.”
The leaflet concluded by threatening to “slaughter” the women for allegedly spreading corruption in Palestinian society by appearing on the screen with their faces uncovered.
“The administration and workers at Palestine TV should know that we are much closer to them than they think,” it added. “If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people.”
It’s always “chop, chop, chop,” with these people!
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Odds & Ends
Bono tells Ugandan journalist: You don’t know how to fix Africa
A conference in rural Tanzania has produced a noteworthy contretemps involving pop star Bono over whether self-help or foreign aid is the best approach to helping Africa. MIT’s Technology Review blog reports that many speakers at the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference echoed the theme “that traditional aid and charity, whether distributed by nation-states or nongovernmental bodies, have failed.” The report continues:
Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist and social worker, now a fellow at Stanford, made the case most strongly. He argued convincingly that 30 years of Western aid to Africa has achieved nothing at all. More, he said that the persistence of African poverty could be explained, in part, by aid. He explained that aid had convinced the brightest Africans to work for corrupt governments rather than as entrepreneurs, and it had “distorted the incentive structure.”
“What man or nation,” Mwenda asked, “has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?”
Far better, he said, is finding Westerners to invest in African entrepreneurs or businesses, which would create wealth. Mwenda, like other speakers, described at length the investment opportunities in Africa. …
This line of argument enraged Bono, however, who began heckling Mwenda.
“Bollocks!” he shouted. “That’s bull****.”
I love that Bono is considered the intellectual rock star.
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I don’t get the glee surrounding the jailing of Paris Hilton. I do understand the satisfaction that comes when justice is done, and a Beverly Hills celebrity (besides Robert Downey, Jr.) actually doing jail time is a pleasant surprise. But why does her breaking down in tears make people feel so good?
But I have to say I like the comment someone e-mailed to John Podhoretz at the Corner:
The Right Man For the Job: Bush should immediately announce that the judge in the Paris Hilton case will be his next Supreme Court nominee.
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Robert Spencer has posted part 2 of his series, “Blogging the Qur’an.” It covers verses 1-39 of Sura 2. It’s long, and I haven’t looked at it yet, but I will.
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I just like this headline:
Protestors protest ordinance limiting counter-protests
I wonder if there were any counter-protestors? They’d be protesting…. themselves? I’ll betcha some wags from the local high school math club showed up with blank signs. I’d be disappointed if they didn’t.
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This is interesting. Take quizzes to see if you can tell the prose of Charles Dickens from his less talented contemporary. Or a painting by Jackson Pollock from a mess of bird droppings. (That one’s easy, though funny.) My favorite? Mozart vs. Salieri. There’s a bunch of other quizzes at the first link.
From PeoplePC – News:
MADRID, Spain – Iran has pledged to end years of stonewalling and provide answers on past suspicious activities to the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency probing its atomic program.
The answers will be provided in two years’ time, at a press conference held in Tel Aviv.
These are pictures of just some of the ”mischief” our friends on the left got up to this past Memorial Day. As you can see, they range from the juvenile to the unforgivable.
Flag vandalism and grave desecration in Washington state.
Swastikas spray painted all over an American Legion hall in Delaware.
Eggs thrown at veterans in Boston.
Is this what John Edwards wanted when he urged Americans to turn Memorial Day into a day of protest?
As patriots, we call on our government to support our troops in the most important way it can – by ending this war and bringing them home.
I’m sure the troops are thrilled to be supported by being called war criminals.
As citizens, let’s volunteer in support of our troops, and offer our service to honor theirs. As Americans, let’s take a moment to join in prayer for our troops.
I like the call to prayer–we all know that John Edwards is a profoundly religious man.
And as patriots, let’s gather together this weekend and make our voices heard. It’s up to us. If we are loud enough, and clear enough, we can end this war.
Well, the message this picture sends is loud and clear…
Last Veteran’s Day, a man named Charles Pinning wrote an opinion piece for the Providence Journal in support of John Kerry, who had just caused a stir by implying that US soldiers were stupid. Pinning, unlike Kerry’s other defenders, didn’t make the argument that Kerry’s remarks were nothing but a botched joke. He claimed that US soldiers are stupid, and that Kerry didn’t need to apologize for telling it like it is.
I wrote a response to Pinning here.
In the six months since, this site has been visited by many people googling the name “Charles Pinning.” Now, I’m starting to feel bad.
Here’s why:
Robert Spencer, whose books The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion and The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Islam (and the Crusades)
Here’s the link:
Hot Air » Blog Archive » Blogging the Qur’an
Mr. Spencer describes his plan this way:
So over the course of the next few months, I’m going to read it, and discuss it in a series of columns. All of it. Not “cherry-picked” or “out of context.” The whole thing, beginning to end. Some of you may be familiar with David Plotz’s series on Slate, “Blogging the Bible.” This series will be similar to that one, but rather than just write about what I think or feel about a certain passage, I will, unlike Plotz, refer to commentaries – all Muslim ones – on the Qur’an. I’ll try to explain how mainstream Muslims who study the Qur’an will understand any given passage, and what its import might be for non-Muslims.
His first post explains what he’s going to do, and why it’s especially important to be familiar with the Koran.
