Sunday, March 26, 2006
ALLAH LOVES JEEPS
North Carolina’s SUV terrorist did it for love:
The man who hit nine people with a sport utility vehicle on the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus wrote a letter to a television reporter saying he read the Quran’s 114 chapters 15 times and found that the Muslim holy book justified the attack.
The crucial passage: “Any gathering of crackers in numbers nine or more is ha’ram and shall be punished by Jeep Cherokee on short-term rental (try Enterprise on Glenwood Avenue—great winter deals).”
’‘I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead,’’ Mohammed Taheri-azar, 22, wrote ...
As Mark Steyn noted: “These days, whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves a fellow called Mohammed.” But for all their numbers, the massed Mohammeds aren’t exactly winning this war, are they? Five years ago Allah’s Love Brigades were slamming jets into the Pentagon and World Trade Center; now the best they can manage is bumping some coeds with a hired Jeep. Next: the Prophet’s elite rollerblade squadron shoves an ATM customer.
In the letter, Taheri-azar reiterated what he has told law officers and a 911 dispatcher, that the attack ‘‘was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic territories.’‘
Similar attacks? What, there are Jeeps cruising Gaza looking for students to nudge?
Taheri-azar wrote that he began his readings of the Quran in June 2003. He called the book ‘‘a scientific and mathematical miracle, so there can be no doubt that it is from a supernatural source.’‘
I’ll take your word for it, Jeep-Mo. In other lunatic news:
An alleged al Qaeda terrorist plotting a bomb attack on Britain told accomplices to sell contaminated beer at soccer games or poisoned hamburgers from street vending stalls, an FBI informant told a court Friday.
As if mere toxins would hurt anyone already immune to British hamburgers.
Waheed Mahmood, 34, accused with six other British men of plotting a terror strike, claimed during a meeting in Pakistan that he had already tested the poison plan, said the witness, Mohammed Junaid Babar ...
Babar, who had worked for a Pakistani software firm, said that in March 2003 Wahid Mahmood had asked for three computers for “the brothers,” which he said he took to mean for “members of al Qaeda.”
In late April 2002, he showed Mahmood a secret weapons store, close to his home in Lahore, and told him “to take them if he needed them,” Babar said.
“There were AK-47s and AK-47 magazines, about 2,000 to 3,000 rounds of ammunition and grenades,” Babar said. “We had buried them in the area outside Punjab University.”
Outside Punjab University? You fool! That’s where the student-bouncing Jeep training is held! This could end in disaster!
UPDATE. He drove in the name of love.
MARKET FOR MISERY
“More than a year after France legislated a 35-hour week,” wrote Adele Horin in 2002, “the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling, consumer confidence has hit a historic high and most French say their lifestyle has improved.” Let’s check the current mood in Happiness Central:
Outside the Grand Palais museum, people stood in line for hours in biting cold this winter to see the city’s most popular art exhibit—Mélancolie , a collection of paintings and sculptures evoking depression, sadness and despair.
“It doesn’t surprise me that this exhibition is such a success,” said Claire Mione, a 20-year-old Web site editor who joined the rush to the show in its closing days. “Melancholy is an overwhelming feeling in our society right now.”
Adele’s beloved Europhisticates aren’t merely sad; they’re also scared:
Ipsos, a French polling institute, recently asked 500 people between the ages of 20 and 25 the question: “What does globalization mean to you?”
Forty-eight percent of those surveyed responded, “Fear.”
To be fair, that’s probably a default option. Now we visit Sarcellles for a glimpse into France’s future:
“It’s blacks and Arabs on one side and Jews on the other,” said Sebastian Daranal, a young black man standing in the parking lot of a government-subsidized housing project with two friends.
Eight men beat the son of a rabbi here in March. Another Jew was attacked the next day ...
Ianis Roder, 34, a history teacher in a middle school northeast of Paris, said he was stunned by what he witnessed after Sept. 11, 2001. The next day, someone spray-painted in a stairwell of the school the image of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center beside the words “Death to the U.S., Death to Jews.”
When he told his class months later that Hitler had killed millions of Jews, one boy blurted out, “He would have made a good Muslim!” Mr. Roder told of a Muslim teacher who dismissed her class after a shouting match over Nazi propaganda. The students said the offensive images accurately depicted Jews.
Nice place.
DUPES DESCRIBED
Iraqis aren’t impressed by grandstanding CPT meddlers:
Iraq’s embassy to Canada lashed out at the Christian Peacemaker Teams Friday, calling them “phoney pacifists” and “dupes” after the antiwar group responded to the rescue of three of its kidnapped activists by condemning the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq.
The Iraqi embassy called CPT “willfully ignorant” and “outrageous,” and accused the Chicago-based group of being on the side of anti-democratic forces in Iraq.
“The Christian Peacemaker Teams practises the kind of politics that automatically nominate them as dupes for jihadism and fascism,” the embassy’s statement said.
A British-led special forces team on Thursday rescued three CPT members, who had been kidnapped in Baghdad nearly four months earlier.
LGF has tracked down a message posted by CPT in 1996:
We reject the use of force to save our lives should we be caught in the middle of a conflict situation or taken hostage.
Pre-emptive Stockholm Syndrome. Fascinating.
CINDY SHEEN
The Guardian’s Marina Hyde deals with a Hollywood intellectual:
Pay attention, civilians. Actor Charlie Sheen has been focusing his mind on the official explanation for 9/11. And you know what? He’s not buying it. “It just didn’t look like any commercial jetliner I’ve flown on any time in my life,” the Hotshots Part Deux star told a US radio station this week, “and then when the buildings came down later on that day, I said to my brother ‘call me insane’, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition?”
You’re insane. Next.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
PEOPLE POWER GRIPS FRANCE
The BBC’s Caroline Wyatt reports from a doomed nation:
“To the barricades!” is the cry heard again on the streets of France, as they ring to the sound of student chants.
Too bad they’re drowned out by the sound of smashing windscreens.
The crisp early springtime air on the Left Bank is filled once more with the heady scent of revolution, black coffee and Gauloises.
If only the French were stereotyped as an, er, aromatic people. Then I’d be able to make an easy joke here.
A delicious sense of people power has gripped the French and most of all, the students I mingled with a few days ago as they marched arm in arm through the boulevards of Paris, shouting their anger with the government.
Yay for people power!
To the barricades, they went, these revolutionaries, to fight for their rights - to pensions, mortgages and a steady job.
Such odd revolutionaries. No heartfelt cry to change the world, but a plea for everything to stay the same.
For France to remain in its glorious past: a time of full employment and jobs for life - a paternalistic state to take care of them from cradle to grave.
Modern leftoid movements the world over adore their fundamental and cherished institutions.
In an echoing stone courtyard at Paris University, Marion and other students are making banners to carry on their march.
“Mr Villepin, you are not the king”, they read, a reminder of what happened to France’s aristocracy after people power won out in times gone by.
Seeing as he isn’t the king, Villepin presumably has little to worry about.
“I haven’t studied hard to get nothing at the end of it,” says Marion, with indignation. “I’ve earned the right to a secure job.”
And you’ve got one: making banners!
A recent survey suggested that for most of the young in France, the real dream is to become a civil servant - a fonctionnaire. To work in government offices with regular hours, long holidays, and a 35 hour working week.
So now we know why the socialist revolution never happened; revolutionaries are lazy.
“The government must create jobs,” Victor, an economics student tells me as he prepares to march again.
I’m guessing he’s a first-year economics student.
France today does feel like a tinder box, a nation dancing on a volcano - just as it did in the troubled suburbs last year.
As the students march, the “casseurs” or hooligans are gathering again, but this time in the heart of the city.
Last week they indulged in an orgy of violence near the Sorbonne on the Left Bank, the intellectual heart of Paris.
Students: innocent. Hooligans (any background on these guys?): guilty. Interesting.
And yet, Paris still feels like the Paris of old ... just faintly comes the echo of May 1968 and a reminder that in France, even revolution for a mortgage and a pension has its own mysterious allure.
Only if you’re a sucker for an accent. Otherwise it’s just idiots setting fire to cars.
UPDATE. Le Pen-supporting French trouble magnets were among hundreds arrested following Friday’s carbake.
UPDATE II. Claire Berlinski in the Washington Post:
Last Saturday morning, needing help to move several heavy cartons of books from my apartment in central Paris to a storage room, I hired two movers and a van from the want ads. Students were in the streets protesting the Contrat de Premier Embauche (CPE)—a law proposed to combat unemployment by giving employers more flexibility to fire young employees—and the barricades and traffic diversions made our four-block drive into a half-hour ordeal. As we turned down one obstructed street after another, the movers—both Arab immigrants—became more and more incensed. “They’re idiots,” said the driver, gesturing toward the ecstatic protesters. “Puppets for the socialists and the communists.” He pantomimed pulling the strings of a marionette.
UPDATE III. Racism? In France?
UPDATE IV. The Hatchback of Notre Dame! Mark Steyn: “In France a business owner doesn’t have the right to fire but the disaffected youth do.”
BEAST LAUNCHED
New cat invented.
IRAQIS DENIED RESOURCES
Michael Coren on the freed CPT three:
What these men did accomplish was to occupy the time and resources of numerous politicians, civil servants, aid workers and soldiers. Time and resources that could and should have been spent on other people who were in trouble.
Time and resources that could have gone towards helping Iraqis, 10-20 of whom are kidnapped every day, but about whom we read and hear very little because they are not Western, middle-class and privileged.
And here surely is the point. These men were there, perhaps with noble intentions, because they could go there. Not so when Saddam was murdering Kurds or Syria wiping out villages. Because if well-meaning yet colossally naive Westerners had done so they would have been killed without a second thought.
Coren also makes the point that CPT leaders now seem to be “showing a staggering lack of grace and gratitude toward those who liberated their friends.” Read the whole thing.
RED (LIPSTICK) STATE
Acidman, currently recovering from a perforated stomach ulcer, reports a pro-military kissing swarm.
(Via Dave S.)
JILLHAD
Regarding Sydney woman Jill Courtney, whose bombing conspiracy charges were mentioned earlier, an update:
Speaking on condition of anonymity, detectives said Courtney appeared to have been acting on behalf of her boyfriend, Lithgow jail inmate Hassan Kalache, 28.
“For whatever reason, she’s hooked up and become besotted with him,” one officer said.
“She’s converted to Islam and apparently has his prison number tattooed on her thigh. It’s a pretty sad case ...”
So is her boyfriend:
Kalache was sentenced to a minimum 17 years behind bars in 2002 for the “callous, cold-blooded and senseless” killing of 25-year-old Wassim Chehade as he sat in a car with two of his brothers in July 2000 ...
Should be an interesting court case.
IMAGE SEARED
Blogger Jeremy Sear threatens legal action against anybody who publishes his cat pictures:
Theft of such an image is, of course, covered by the Copyright Act 1968. Those who claim their theft is “fair use” might want to read sections 40-42 of the Act. Simply copying a photograph of someone’s cat is extremely unlikely to qualify as “fair dealing for purpose of research or study” (s40), “fair dealing for purpose of criticism or review” (s41) or “fair dealing for purpose of reporting news” (s42).
Oddly, copyright hardliner Sear (below) frequently publishes borrowed images at his own site.
(Reproduced on the basis of “fair dealing for purpose of reporting news about a guy who is extremely protective of his cat photographs”, section 42 of the Copyright Act 1968)
UPDATE. A clarification from Sear on those Bolt images:
I’m only linking to the copies on the [Herald Sun] site. I’m not publishing my own copies ...
Bandwidth thief. News Ltd should bill him.
UPDATE II. Sear has also stolen bandwidth from a resource guide to the handicapped.
UPDATE III. An incomplete list of organisations and individuals from whom Sear has stolen bandwidth over the past year:
The Wichita Eagle (in the sidebar of his main page)
Booksamillion.com
Namco
The Age (at least nine times)
Saxton Business Speaker Bureau
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
NOW magazine
ABC (at least twice)
Answers in Genesis
NSW Education Department
The University of Kentucky
The University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ask Tog
Herald Sun (at least 16 times)
MontyPythonPages.com
Lisa Rein
The Washington Post
Princeton University
ReadyMade magazine
Collecting Books and Magazines
Ambience Entertainment
Victorian Liberal Party
Thanksgiving.org.au
Boing Boing
BBC (at least twice)
European Space Agency
Tracey’s Space
Moore Educational
The Sydney Morning Herald
Handicapped Hunting Resource Guide
And others.
WORLD GOES GAZA
A Sydney woman is charged with conspiring to bomb a “public place”. In the US, police are seeking Colorado man Robert Burke following three bomb explosions at Grand Junction homes. Also on the run, one bomb-prepping Jihadi:
Two members of Islamic Jihad were killed by Israel Defense Forces soldiers yesterday as they were planting a 25-kilogram bomb along the border between Gaza and Israel.
The incident occurred before dawn, when soldiers observed three Palestinians approaching the fence between Israel and Gaza. As the soldiers watched, the three dug a hole near the fence and placed a bomb inside. An IDF tank then opened fire at them, and later, Air Force helicopters joined in. Two of the three were killed, but the third escaped, apparently unharmed. Palestinian sources identified all three as Jihad members.
Friday, March 24, 2006
CITY ALIGHT
Car-b-q season in France begins early this year ...
This guy really hates hatchbacks. The destruction is happening only blocks from the Eiffel Tower, by the way:
Antoil Ethuin, 48, stood outside the shattered windows of his Bike’n'Roll rental shop on Thursday, stunned by the destruction of the worst violence in two weeks of student protests in Paris and other French cities.
“My country is broken,” said Mr Ethuin, gazing at the smouldering wrecks a few metres away and the carpet of glass shards, broken dishes and computer parts covering the footpath in the heart of one of the city’s most affluent suburbs.
“I never imagined I would ever see this in Paris.”
The cause: a proposed law that would allow employers to dismiss young workers without notice. Difficult to imagine anyone wanting to fire such evidently responsible and hard-working youngsters.
UPDATE. Jacques Chirac is deeply shocked.
UPDATE II. Run out of hatchbacks to stomp? Then attack each other!
UPDATE III. Paul Belien: “The French are reaping the harvest of their own stupid policies during the past decades.”
Thursday, March 23, 2006
GOVT PR REP GETS THE MESSAGE OUT
Unusually for an opposition leader, Kim Beazley is campaigning for John Howard’s re-election:
Mr Beazley, in an address to the University of Sydney Government and International Relations lecture series tonight, said he had no doubt Prime Minister John Howard would bring nuclear power to Australia if he won the next election.
Australians are already happy about this; nice of Kim to drive the point home, though. If only there was some way we could increase Australian uranium sales overseas ...
At the same time, Mr Beazley said, demand for Australian uranium would almost double if the government negotiated suitable bilateral safeguards with China.
How much is Howard paying this guy?
GET UP AND GO BACK HOME
Proving that the ABC is utterly without any lefty bias, lefty activist group GetUp! is campaigning for an increase in ABC funding:
We are at a turning point in the future of a fundamental and cherished Australian institution, the ABC.
It’s adorable when leftoids rave about “fundamental and cherished institutions”. They sound so ... conservative. At least it’s a change from them talking about cherished mental institutions, with which they tend to be not unfamiliar.
As it stands, the ABC is $264 million poorer in real terms today than it was 20 years ago.
They still haul in about $750,000,000 per year. The ABC is “poorer” in the sense that Bill Gates is “poorer” after his wife goes on an eBay binge.
The programs we rely on - from independent news and current and affairs to quality children’s content - are under extreme pressure.
Tell me; why should Australian taxpayers fund GetUp!’s ABC dependency?
In a very real sense, the integrity of the ABC is now at stake.
Integrity depends on money? I’m disgusted to hear this.
Sign this petition to restore the ABC’s funding. We need to act now before it’s too late.
I’d be fine with acting after it’s too late, but whatever. Please sign it, everybody. Sign it with your signiest signatures.
Let’s show politicians in Canberra that the ABC’s owners - the public - are prepared to stand up and defend it.
If we owned the ABC, we’d be able to sell it.
For this to work, every signature counts. We’ve set a goal of 10,000 signatures. Will you - and your friends and colleagues - help us get there?
The goal is only 10,000 signatures? I guess that reflects the current buzzless state of GetUp!, which launched last year to a media frenzy; the New York Times even ran a piece on GetUp!’s 7000-signature David Hicks petition. The hype hasn’t helped. Latest Alexa traffic rank for GetUp! is a get-down 535,920.
UPDATE: Excellent.
REAL TURKEY WAS IRRADIATED
The plastic turkey fable, traditionally an illustrative tale of US president Oiljesus W. Pretzlerstein’s attempt to feed troops an inedible petrochemical bird, now mutates into a cautionary story on the dangers of radiation:
Saddam Hussein’s former palace is now the middle of the Green Zone. It was bombarded with D.U. munitions before and during the invasion. So has greater Baghdad ever since. So Green Zone residents inhale and ingest depleted uranium every day. Perhaps that’s why, during President Bush’s Thanksgiving visit, he was served a plastic turkey.
For this we must thank Irving Wesley Hall.