Monday, August 28, 2006
MAN NEEDS ANFALIZING
Remember Saddam Hussein? Dark-haired chap, lived in a hole in the ground, killed a bunch of people? No? Had a couple of psychopathic sons, invaded Kuwait, liked firing rifles from balconies? Still nothing? Umm ... George Galloway’s friend? YES! Yes, that’s the guy. Well, seems he’s still on trial for one thing or another:
A Kurdish woman testified Tuesday in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein, breaking down in tears as she described how foul smoke billowed across her village in a 1987 poison gas attack and how her male relatives disappeared at a prison camp.
Najiba Khider Ahmed was one of two survivors who took the stand in the second day of Saddam’s new trial over the Anfal campaign, a military sweep across northern Iraq in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed and hundreds of villages leveled ...
The 1987-1988 military offensive was so notorious among the Kurds that it entered their vocabulary. Ahmed and Hama often described relatives as having been “anfalized” referring to those who disappeared only to be found later, if at all, in mass graves.
Via reader Mental Floss. Beats me how anybody could ever have believed this man had an interest in chemical weapons.
POWER OF THE TILT
Pathetic-looking head-tilts work. At least in Estonia.
EMMY WON
You know how sometimes you’re walking past the television and by chance you happen to see a friend of yours winning an Emmy? Happens to me all the time.
Well, once. Congratulations to Jason Ross, who with the team from The Daily Show last night won the comedy-writing prize. I knew him when he was poor! Which is to say, I know him now, what with the minimum wage Jon Stewart pays. You see a guy at the lights tomorrow washing your windscreen with an Emmy? That’s my man Jason, trying to cover rent.
NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS
The Boston Herald’s Jules Crittenden on the release of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig and journalism in war zones:
My profession is an easy one to kick around. It isn’t brain surgery: going places, asking questions, taking pictures, writing it up, broadcasting it. There are some skills. There are some things you have to learn. But it isn’t hard for anyone, looking at what we do, to say, “I could do that.”
Nor is it difficult for anyone, looking at the mistakes we make or the assumptions and biases that color our reports, to say, “I could do that better. That guy’s an idiot.” Whether you work at the New York Times, CNN, the Boston Herald or the Fox News Channel, you are guaranteed to make someone angry almost every time you tap a key or open your mouth. It is part of the job. You will be reviled. You can never win.
There are some other things that go with the job.
Read on.
JUMPED-UP ANTY BOY
Antony Loewenstein—improving cultural relations by tirelessly working to bring down that whole “intelligent Jew” stereotype—finally realises he isn’t being silenced after all. This required two years of research.
INFLUENTIAL ADAMS
Phillip Adams’ new-found belief in the danger of terrorism seems to had a knock-on effect throughout the nation:
Most Australians believe we are locked in a losing war against Islamic terrorists and an attack on our home soil, most likely Sydney, is inevitable ...
Three quarters of the Australian public believe we are losing the war against terrorists, while more than half believe it is “very likely” or “fairly likely” we will be attacked in the next 12 months.
Scroll down to the end of the article for this comment:
Anyone who beleves the three amigos - Bush / Howard and Blair regarding a world threat by terrorist is naive and idiotic - one should look at the past to see the future. As the USA scared its people about communism and Russia is about to nuke the USA that people and children in the 1950’s where practising what to do if Russia nukes their town, they even built underground shelter to protect themselves (from what) - pathetic is it not. What have we learnt since than - NOTHING. The government after not having Russia as a pretend threat it must pretend there is another to keep people afraid for the governments own benefit and not to protect the peace loving people of its nation - one must ask the question: What sort of democracy do we live in?
Posted by: Alan Moore of sydney 3:55pm today
Speaking of pretend threats, I wonder what Alan thinks about global warming.
MAYBE HE THOUGHT IT WOULD LEAD TO FREE CARS FROM OPRAH
Regrets, he has a few:
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to such a war.
“Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it,” he said in an interview on Lebanese TV.
Which explains why Nasrallah so quickly ordered that the soldiers be returned. Oh, wait …
CRUEL ICE IN RETREAT
Global warming is turning Greenland green again:
Stefan Magnusson lives at the foot of a giant, melting glacier. Some think he’s living on the brink of a cataclysm. He believes he’s on the cusp of creation.
The 49-year-old reindeer rancher says a warming trend in Greenland over the past decade has caused the glacier on his farm to retreat 300 feet, revealing land that hasn’t seen the light of day for hundreds of years, if not more. Where ice once gripped the earth, he says, his reindeer now graze on wild thyme amid the purple blooms of Niviarsiaq flowers ...
“We are seeing genesis by the edge of the glacier,” he says.
Genesis? The way Al Gore sees it, those happy reindeer and thriving vegetation represent the apocalypse:
In former Vice President Al Gore’s recent film “An Inconvenient Truth,” the melting of Greenland’s ice cap, along with a similar cap in the Antarctic, is portrayed as one of the greatest threats of global warming. If the layers of ice and snow holding billions of tons of water were to melt, scientists warn that global sea levels would rise by 40 feet, submerging lower Manhattan, the Netherlands and much of California.
But to many of the people who live here in Greenland, the warming trend is a boon, not a threat.
Lay off with the environmental imperialism, Al! Let the people of Greenland live ice-free! Meanwhile, Al warns that democracy is under attack, which isn’t exactly news. Except that Gore is more worried about TV networks than terrorism:
The former presidential candidate said television networks in the world’s biggest and most powerful democracies must do more to foster debate, which he said was crucial for democracy to flourish.
He may have a point; after all, the last time Al Gore was involved in a series of debates, it resulted in the election of George W. Bush.
UPDATE. Mr. Hackenbacker:
My God! All the polar bears will be dying of obesity! They’ll become a species of floe potatoes as they’ll only have to reach over to gnaw on a passing reindeer. Soon they’ll be too big to fit through all the ice-holes, and then the eskimos will all starve because their fish holes are all clogged with fat lazy bears.
NIXON JR
It’s not the crime that nails you, it’s the cover up. Someone who was 26 in 1974 should be aware of this.
“LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE”
Rod Liddle notes progress in the UK:
This is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that some 40% (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Sir Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”
My guess is this: if such a statement had been made by a member of the Tory party’s Monday Club in 1984 — or, for that matter, 1994 — he would have been excoriated and quite probably would have been kicked out of the party. “If you don’t like it here then go somewhere else” was once considered the apogee of “racism”.
Not any more. Nor should it be. Australia has also come to terms with the pack-your-bags argument, alarmed media types notwithstanding.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
“CONVERSION” COERCED
Via reader Larwyn, a report that kidnapped journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig have converted to Islam:
Fox news alert broke few minutes ago.
Amy Kellog describes new tape as showing Steve and Olaf “under duress”. The tape shows them dressed in Islamic clothes and READING FROM SCRIPTS. They announce that they have converted to Islam. They criticize the policies of the West. They ask Bush and Blair to also convert to Islam.
Well, that’s one way to win converts; kidnap people and threaten to kill them. An earlier report here.
UPDATE. They’ve been freed:
Fox said correspondent Steve Centanni, a 60-year-old American, and New Zealand-born cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, were in a hotel in the Palestinian coastal strip.
In a videotape released earlier, Centanni and Wiig were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading statements announcing that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes.
“I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah,” Centanni said.
About that conversion ...
A separate statement from the captors had said the two journalists had to choose either Islam, a tax imposed on non-Muslims to be paid to a Muslim ruler, or war.
“They chose Islam and that is a gift God gives those whom he chooses,” the statement said.
UPDATE II. Fox reports:
“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint,” Centanni told FOX News. “Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.”
‘BOLLAH LOATHED IN LEBANON, LOVED IN WEST
Bridget Johnson meets the Hollybollah:
You may have missed the march in downtown L.A. on Aug. 12, but I was there. I expected the Palestinian flags, the jaunty kaffiyehs, the drum-beating and brow-beating. But I nearly dropped my pen in the gutter when I heard cries of “Long live Hezbollah!” from the marchers.
It’s one thing to protest the Israel-U.S. alliance, to think Israel’s a big bully, etc. I don’t agree, but a free country is open to varied political discourse. Call everyone with whom you disagree a Nazi if it makes you feel better.
But it’s quite another to cheer on a terrorist organization.
Brilliantly, while these and other bollah boosters celebrate murderous goons, the Lebanese are turning against them:
They pushed, shoved, shouted and cursed one another.
In the end, Hezbollah supporters were turned back from an attempt to plaster posters of their leader around Marwaheen, a Sunni Muslim village in southern Lebanon that is mourning the loss of 23 residents from an Israeli air attack during the war.
“Why do you want to put up an image of someone who is killing us?” a man screamed as dozens of villagers brandished fists and thrust open palms at Hezbollah loyalists clutching posters of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s bearded and bespectacled chief. “We don’t want to see it!”
Those villagers might be surprised to learn that Nasrallah recently turned up in front of San Franciso’s City Hall. More from Lebanon:
“Nobody wants Hezbollah here,” Adel Abdallah said. “They don’t want to fight for Lebanon. They fight for themselves, for Iran, for Syria.”
Residents talk bitterly of Hezbollah turning their village into a battleground.
When the war broke out, people said, Hezbollah fighters in civilian clothes entered the village and set up launchers to fire rockets south into Israel. The guerrillas moved the launchers around, putting one on top of a house that was subsequently destroyed, they said ...
“Nobody knew they were using our houses to store weapons. We were surprised to find them” after the war, said Wassim Abdallah, 24. “How could they keep weapons in the middle of all these civilian houses?”
The New York Times reports from the same Hezbollah-hexed village:
“There is no way for us to stop them,” said Ibrahim, who lost several relatives in the attack and who asked that his last name not be used for fear of retribution. “These are not people you can say no to.”
And the peace movement loves them.
DO NOT PANIC
Even bigger news than the previous biggest news ever:
Playwright Harold Pinter revealed yesterday that he has given up writing altogether.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
FORCES OF DARKNESS CONFRONTED
The ABC condemns Islamofascism as “ignorant”, a “stalking monster”, and a “force of darkness”. Actually, no; those terms in fact describe intelligent design, in an ABC promotion for a new Robyn Williams book:
Intelligent Design has found its way into the headlines, has been spruiked in the Parliament and is now trying to slink into our schools. So where did this wilfully ignorant sibling of creationism and its anti-scientific arguments spring from? And why is it refusing to go away?
Using all the richness of the scientific and natural worlds, Robyn Williams takes on the stalking monster in a short, wicked and witty debunk of ID. Why make the earth, the solar system, our galaxy and all the rest, he asks, when the Garden of Eden was all that was needed? And then there’s lifespan. During long periods of human history, the life expectancy of men was a mere 22 years and children were lucky to toddle, let alone grow up. Why the waste? And shouldn’t we sue God for sinus blockages, hernias, appendix flare-ups and piles, not to mention bad backs?
This is a book to infuriate the forces of darkness, and anger and amuse the rest of us.
I’m not religious, so I don’t have a God in this fight, but I’d sure like to read a “short, wicked and witty” book by Robyn Williams exposing all the scientific flaws in fundamentalist Islam (and the ABC’s aggressive promotion of that book). Williams better write it quickly, though, before intelligent design militias hunt him down and kill him for his heresy. Only has days to live, does Williams; an entity known as the forces of darkness likely doesn’t mess around.
(Via reader Cuckoo)
CROSS WITH RED CROSS
Reader James C., of Fredericksburg, Virginia, emails:
So far I have read 110 comments to this post and no one seems to have noticed what could be a larger implication in the story. Zombie Times reports that the ambulance hoax started with a press statement from the Red Cross on July 24th, which was then picked up and expanded upon by the media. Zombie Times quotes the press release as saying that on July 23rd in Cana, two Red Cross ambulances were struck by weapons fire in violation of international conventions (in other words, a war crime).
What I want to point out is that it looks mighty apparent that the Red Cross (or at least the local chapter owning the two ambulances) was at least partly complicit in perpetrating the hoax. I mean, they were the first to issue a press release which started the whole thing. What we may have here is a very large, international NGO involved (partly or wholly) in a fraud intended to bring down a U.N. recognized nation. That should be big news to everyone.
As far as I am concerned, this event should hurt the Red Cross as it appears they were used (possibly knowingly) to perpetrate a massive war-time fraud against a nation allied with the West in the War on Terror. Why should anyone now trust the Red Cross?
Over to you, Red Cross, should any representatives wish to reply.