Heartless "Progressivism"

From Blunderford over at the "Progressive" site Blogritics.org :

I just stopped at the grocery store to pick up a candy bar. They only had one line open, plus the do-it-yourself area where you have to play amateur cashier. I hate that do-it-yourself area, but the other line was too long so I used it.

After I managed to get the candy bar's bar code to fit perfectly over the little laser and figured out how the machine worked so I could waste twice the time it would normally take me to buy a candy bar, an employee approached me and said, "Would you like to give a dollar for Hurricane Katrina?"

I said, "No."

First off, I'm offended that the store employees are wandering around fundraising instead of helping customers, especially when it's so obvious that the store conglomerate uses these do-it-yourself machines to cut down on the number of employees necessary to help customers so that the store conglomerate can turn a larger profit while having fewer of those pesky union workers to deal with.

But beyond that, I'm sick of footing the bill for George W. Bush and the rest of his so-called compassionate conservatives.

And from the equally "Progressive" Joseph Cannon at BradBlog :

So why was I thinking of starting a movement against giving aid to the stricken areas?

Because these are red states. They voted for Bush. These ninnies obviously wanted these policies, and they deserve to live with the consequences of their votes.

A large part of me still believes that many of these W-worshipping numbskulls deserve to suffer and to die. They brought it on themselves. Let them look to Jayzuss for aid: It's time they stopped leeching off the more productive blue staters.

(Californians stupidly give much more to the federal government than we receive from it; the money flows in a very different direction in the red states.)

So, at least, I started to write. But then (to paraphrase the old song) I thought I'd better think it out again.

Many of the victims, the ones who have suffered the most, are poor. The hardest hit were the blue state folk living among the red state maniacs. New Orleans, we should note, went heavily for Kerry.

And that's why we must help. Although it was very tempting to say otherwise.

Not because they're poor, or human, but because they voted the right way.

Me? I'm with people like these.

And with Leftists like Skippy :

this is not about red states v. blue states...this is not about left v. right...this is not about liberal v. conservative...

the people in louisiana, mississippi and alabama are americans. this is about america. and americans have historically always rolled up their sleeves and pitched in to help out their fellow countrymen in need.

skippy has donated $100.01 to the red cross for hurricane relief. and now, skippy challenges everyone who writes a political blog, no matter what side of the spectrum they inhabit, to do the same.

I'm not american. But it's unlikely I'll earn enough this year to claim any tax back anyway for charitable donations, so I may as well put in my 2c. Plus $19.99

This will probably be the last credit card purchase ever made by "Alan Brain", as I'll be changing the name of the bank accounts etc shortly. And an appropriate last one too, he was a nice guy in many ways, however flawed.

Helpless

As the scale of the disaster that has hit the Gulf Coast of the USA is becoming more obvious, I feel so helpless at not being able to make a difference.

The US government is by no means the most generous with Foreign Aid per Capita, but that's more than made up for ny the mind-bogglingly huge rescue and relief efforts the US armed forces provide worldwide. It's then doubly made up for by the enormous generousity of US citizens and corporations.

Well, now it's some Americans who need help. Lots of it. From my appreciation of the situation, the number of deaths is going to rival all US combat deaths in Iraq put together, and the magnitude of the task involving in rebuiilding infrastructure is going to be of similar cost, and will take a similar time, at least a decade.

There won't be much change left out of a Trillion dollars, after all payouts by insurance, Federal and State Aid, and uncompensated losses are considered.

Giving a few bucks to the US Red Cross seems utterly trivial, an exercise in making myself feel good rather than actually doing something constructive. But what the heck, even though my prospective medical bills are huge, and I need every penny I can get, others' need is greater.

Then there's this. which I've quoted in its entirety.
Hello,

As many of you know CoffeeCup Software is a socially active company. In the past our users have raised over 1 million dollars for September 11th efforts and over $50,000 dollars for victims of the Asian Tsunami.

Hurricane Katrina has given us a different challenge. We have accessed the situation and have found a way we can all help. Since CoffeeCup Software is located in Corpus Christi, Texas (a couple of hours south of Houston), we are calling upon anyone who receives this e-mail to send 'Goods' to our office. This will directly help the thousands upon thousands of American refugees that will be entering Houston, Beaumont, and througout Texas within the next days and weeks.

Our office will collect what you send and will drive these items by cargo truck to the refugees where they are located. Over 25,000 people will arrive at the Houston Astrodome tonight and we expect many waves of refugees over the next month. We will collect items for the next 60 days and will make trips once a week or more as needed.

Currently many Charitable organizations are overwhelmed and we want to make sure the Families and Children will be given what they really need without wait. Send as much as you wish, we have plenty of storage.

Some items we believe they need are:

Diapers, Baby Wipes, Infant Care Items
Personal Care Items (soap, razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, hygeine items)
Clothing (socks, underwear, shirts, shoes, pants, shirts)
Long Distance Calling Cards, Batteries, FM Radios, Walkie-Talkies
Toys (coloring books, crayons, puzzles, any activity toy)
and more....

Our Address is:

CoffeeCup Software
c/o Hurricane Aid
226 South Tancahua Street
Corpus Christi, Texas 78401


You can also order things online at places like Amazon.com, WalMart.com, Target.com, and others and have them sent directly to our offices as well.

Please do not send food, water, or money. This will be handled by Organized Charities. Send what you would personally want if you were placed in a very uncomfortbale position for a very long time with little or no money (use your best judgement).

We will be documenting our efforts by Web Cam and Pictures and these will be posted on our Website soon.

If you would like to Donate money you can do that here:
http://www.houstonredcross.org/ or http://national.unitedway.org/


"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."
- Sir Winston Churchill


Thank you so very much again,

Nick Longo
CEO CoffeeCup Software, Inc.
-------------
www.coffeecup.com

I've known this firm for years, and can vouch for their bona-fides.

Every little bit helps, and ten cents now is worth more than a thousand dollars later. Maybe I'm just doing this for the "feelgood" factor, not because it will actually do anything useful. But right now I don't care about my motives, I just need to do as much as I can.

Unclear on the Concept

From Space Daily :

The ex-Soviet Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan claimed to have joined the ranks of the world's space powers by sending a container into Earth's orbit carrying a spiritual guide written by the country's idiosyncratic leader, newspapers reported Friday.

"Idiosyncratic" is a polite way of saving "Stark Staring Bonkers".

"The book that conquered the hearts of millions on Earth is now conquering space," said the official daily Neitralnyi Turkmenistan.

"The sacred text of Rukhnama was chosen because it contains all the wisdom of the Turkmen people, thanks to its creator, Turkmenbashi," the article said, using the name the country's president, Saparmurat Niyazov, has given himself, meaning "Guide of All Turkmens".

Can proclaiming his own Divinity be far behind? There's plenty of precedent, from Caligula to Idi Amin, not forgetting Kim Jong Il. This appears to be a common affliction of humankind. Give someone absolute power and they become a little... odd. Power tends to corrupt : Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely. And that's been true for so long it's boring and cliched. The process of descent into madness and chaos can be long and drawn out though. Once even Zimbabwe's President Mugabe was an evil little man, but not actually psychotic.

The container was launched on Wednesday aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket that blasted off from the Russian launch facility at Baikonur in Kazakhstan on a mission to place two Japanese research satellites into orbit.

In addition to the Turkmenbashi's book Rukhnama, or Spiritual Guide, a Turkmen flag and a presidential standard were also placed in the container, a new "artificial satellite" for the planet, Neitralnyi Turkmenistan reported.

The project "confirms that Turkmenistan has joined the club of space powers," it added.

The Glorious Turkmenistan effort can be contrasted with the Japanese contribution, two satellites that actually do boring Science Stuff. But wait, it's worse.

Niyazov, the object of a personality cult, has also penned several collections of poetry.

Typical Vogon. And need I mention:

The president also holds the posts of prime minister, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and leader of the Democratic Party, the only legal political party in the country.

The Democratic Party. Oh Dear, Oh Dearry, Dearry Me.

The Triumph of appearance over substance. A bit like the Democratic Party in the US these days.

Male Mail Difficulties

My ISP has had a major meltdown of its mail system, and I haven't been able to reliably send or recieve at all for the last 18 hours or so.

Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Ego Boo Made Easy

Bloggers get few rewards, apart from the knowledge of a job well done. But you can get some Ego Boo (short for Boosting) by finding out who's been reading your posts, who's been linking to them, and who's been quoting them.

Now there's a one-stop shop for all your link-finding needs : Clusty.com. :

You may ... search by URL to see which blogs are linking to a particular site and Clusty will automatically send your query to each search engine's link search.

It managed to find a few that linked here that even I, monster of arrogance and ego that I am, didn't know about. Some of which will be making it into my blogroll, they're worth reading.

MSM Bias and Conspiracy Theories

From James Lileks :

Please get this straight: there are no marching orders. There is no RoveHive to which everyone buzzes in the morning for a scrap of Royal Jelly we carry off to our blogs. If there sometimes appears to be a unaniminity of subject matter, that'™s because certain ideas appear, flower, bloom, take root, and spread. Like kudzu. But kudzu is not taking orders from some dark shrouded mastermind made entirely of cellulose and chlorophyll. If you honestly think that everyone to the right of Noam Chomsky is part of some dark soulless cabal dedicated to extirpating all photons and replacing them with negative matter that strips the flesh from the bones of the poor, I envy you; the world must make perfect sense.

A similar argument applies to MSM - Main Stream Media. The reasons why there's such seeming unanimity in only reporting stories with an anti-Bush spin are:

1. Most newspapers just get their foreign stories from a few sources: AP, AFP, BBC, Reuters. What appears to be a thousand different independant outlets is just the same half-dozen, or less than half dozen, sources re-badged and repeated endlessly.
2. Corporate Culture : I forget the exact figures, but well over 75% of US journalists identified themselves as "progressive", "liberal", or "Democrat". A similar survey in Australia would find a far more diverse mix - all parties, "Labor", "Green", and "Democrat". Well, that's all the parties that matter, surely? Opinion is divided on Howard being a Coward, a Liar, an Incompetent, or a Murderer. That's enough diversity, right?
3. And finally, "if it bleeds, it leads". The story of a thousand schools being rebuilt is boring. The story of a suicide bombing isn't, even if the only casualty is the hapless bomber. Especially if it can be spun to show that "The Iraqi War continues, as Bush's popularity plummets amidst growing outrage at his false reasons for going to war, yada yada."

There is no "conspiracy", just a group of like-minded individuals getting the data from a tiny handful of sources, all of which is written by people who think just like them. Any contradictory data is obviously the result of bias, corporate groupthink, or ignorance. I mean, no-one they know thinks like that.

Let's not fall into the same trap as the Looney Left has. Anyone who thinks the systematic MSM bias is the result of some vast nefarious conspiracy really should take a look at how the Left sees the Right, and learn from their mistakes.

That involves reading things other than Right-Wing blogs. You can learn a lot - sometimes your opinion can be changed, sometimes you find it confirmed because the opponents are far more reality-disconnected than you'd possibly imagined. Either way, don't just read the opinions of people who agree with you.

The Prehistoric Simpsons

Before they became rich-and-famous, the Simpsons appeared in a series of shorts on a US TV show, the Tracey Ullman show, between 1987 and 1989. Well, Bart was in shorts, anyway.

Now, thanks to the Wonders of the Steam Age Internet, these are now available for download. Enjoy.

(Goon reference here)

It was 20 Years Ago Today

Seen via Utterly Boring : the cutting edge of gadgetry and hi-tech toys, circa 1985. The Engadget BBS.

---

_____ ___ _ / _ / ___ ___ / __\_ __ __ _(_)_ __ \// / / _ \ / _ \ /__\// '__/ _` | | '_ \ / //\ (_) | __/ / \/ \ | | (_| | | | | | /____/\___/ \___| \_____/_| \__,_|_|_| |_|

Ascii Art by the Ascii Generator.

This is a Satire

From the Marxist blog Harry's Place :

Back in Autumn 2001 some of the Comrades on the editorial board of the Leninist Vanguard went for a coffee with their fellow protesters after the demos against the disgraceful imperialist intervention against the sovereign state of Afghanistan. They had some interesting things to report afterwards. According to them a worldwide movement for change had been developing over the last decade or so, almost unnoticed by the Western Left. Implacably hostile to US Imperialism, it was also anti-Zionist and believed in spectacular direct action to change the rotten society we live in. At the time I didn’t really see the opportunities for much beyond joint activity with the new social force these people represented because I had failed to understand the movement of the dialectic amongst semi-imperialist neo-colonies since the fall of Stalinism. After a protracted political struggle at the Vanguard, threats of a split by others on the editorial board, and a series of self-criticism sessions I finally saw the light and am pleased to announce some exciting new changes at the journal which will be printed by Mr Desmond just as soon the latest print run of Dusky Tottie is ready for the shops.

From September’s edition the Leninist Vanguard will be renamed ‘Jihad Today‘. ‘Jihad’ means, er, ’Struggle’ in Arabic which I am sure you know is the contemporary language of the oppressed and insurgent worldwide. There will be a wider focus to the contents at the magazine and we have dispensed with our previously narrow understanding of what the working class actually consists of. From now on if you are against the incursion of infidels into the Dar al Islam you are a member of the proletariat. Readers will also notice a less dogmatic attitude to questions of faith in the pages of the magazine and I’m sure you will all welcome our new guest contributors who write deliberately provocative articles on the place of women , Jews and non-believers in post-capitalist societies. I’m sure most readers will welcome the new look journal - those who don’t are kindly requested to keep their mouths shut, please, as we have invested a significant amount of political capital in the relaunch and we don‘t want anyone rocking the boat.

On a sadder note I have to announce the departure from the editorial board of my long time political and life partner Josephine Tamara De Bourgeois who has been involved in various capacities with the Vanguard since she was sent down from Lady Eleanor Hall back in ‘68. Jo was not able to grasp the exciting possibilities of the new political terrain and has decided to join the Labour Party instead of continuing her work at the renamed journal. It wasn’t as if she had to wear the headscarf all the time I explained to her - only when our friends from our new sister magazines visited.

Anyway, let’s not live in the past - onward to the future.

Until Victory, Until Victory, Until Victory in Jerusalem !

But if I hadn't of told you, would you have known?

As I stated in a previous post, there are two Civil Wars going on at the moment. The one within Islam, between the sane and the bloodthirsty fanatics, and in the Far Left, between... the sane and the "objectively pro-Fascist" anti-US fanatics.

Just as John Howard's Muslim Summit is an attempt to enrol the great majority of the sane against the Islamofascists, so those on the right should make common cause with those on the left who have proved their credentials. They may be wrong, but they're ethical. Worth listenining to and learning from. Because amongst the left these days, the Lunatics have taken over the Asylum, and the still, small voices of reason are very small indeed.

I'll start by remedying an oversight, long overdue for correction: Harry's Place is now on my blogroll.

New Image

Taken from my Driving Licence.

Cutting Remarks

From the New York Post :

DESPERATE housewife Eva Longoria says she only discovered her sexual self after she got some pruning done in an intimate area.

Funnily enough, a lot of transsexual women say the same thing...

This is too serious not to, er, crack the odd joke about it.

B-B-B-B-Bang!

From Space Daily :

Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite say they have found newborn black holes, just seconds old, in a confused state of existence.

I can relate to that...

The holes are consuming material falling into them while somehow propelling other material away at great speeds.

These black holes are born in massive star explosions. An initial blast obliterates the star, yet the chaotic black hole activity appears to re-energize the explosion several times in just a few minutes. This is a dramatically different view of star death, one that entails multiple explosive outbursts and not just a single bang, as previously thought.

"Stars are exploding two, three and sometimes four times in the first minutes following the initial explosion," said Prof. David Burrows of Penn State, University Park, Pa. "First comes a blast of gamma rays followed by intense pulses of X-rays. The energies involved are much greater than anyone expected," he added.
[...]
Until this latest Swift discovery, scientists assumed a simple scenario of a single explosion followed by a graceful afterglow of the dying embers. The new scenario of a blast followed by a series of powerful "hiccups" is particularly evident in a gamma-ray burst from May 2, 2005, named GRB 050502B.

This burst lasted 17 seconds during the early morning hours in the constellation Leo. About 500 seconds later, Swift detected a spike in X-ray light about 100 times brighter than anything seen before.
[...]
"The newly formed black hole immediately gets to work," said Prof. Peter Meszaros of Penn State, head of the Swift theory team. "We aren't clear on the details yet, but it appears to be messy. Matter is falling into the black hole, which releases a great amount of energy. Other matter gets blasted away from the black hole and flies out into the interstellar medium. This is by no means a smooth operation," he added.

With planet-sized chunks of matter being annihilated, it would be fairly energetic too.

there's so much about the Universe we don't know. And that's just the physical bit, let alone the answer to the ultimate question about Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Monty Python meets Star Trek

Here.

...LT. CMDR. JADZIA DAX towelling off and revealing a cream leopard-spotted bikini connected with a strip of cloth down the navel;

LT. BELANNA TORRES buckling on a yellow halter top and wearing bikini shorts;

and finally, NEELIX lying across a table and wearing a two piece lacey bikini.

NEELIX

And now for something completely different ...

CUT TO ADMIRAL McCOY wearing an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini.

ADMIRAL McCOY

It's ...

CUT TO animation and music, Dennis McCarthy arrangement of The Liberty Bell Overture over scenes of starships getting squashed by giant feet and 16-ton weights. Somewhere in there is the title:

PYTHONTREK VI:
THE UNDISCOVERED CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION

Mother Sheehan in a Nutshell

Cindy Sheehan, or Mother Sheehan to her friends, had her son killed in Iraq.

A life-long Democrat, here's what she had to say the first time she met President Bush :

"We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled," Cindy said. "The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached."

The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place.

But in the end, the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act. In addition, Pat noted that Bush wasn't stumping for votes or trying to gain a political edge for the upcoming election.

"We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and I have a new respect for him because he was sincere and he didn't have to take the time to meet with us," Pat said.

Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.

"I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis," Cindy said after their meeting. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
[...]
The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.

For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.

For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.

"That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said.

But after a while, and some little thought about how to really make a political point, this is what she said on CNN :

In an interview on CNN, she claimed Bush "acted like it was party" when she met him last year.

"It was -- you know, there was a lot of things said. We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey.

"He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, 'So who are we honoring here?' He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him 'him' or 'he.' He called him 'your loved one.'

Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party.

BLITZER: Like a party? I mean...

SHEEHAN: Yes, he came in very jovial, and like we should be happy that he, our son, died for his misguided policies. He didn't even pretend like somebody...

You see, the "sincere" image of Bush just didn't fit the party line (so to speak). Naturally, history had to be re-written and the photos of Mother Sheehan being kissed by President Bush had to be removed from public view. But not from Google's cache...

And now from the Washington Post's Dana Milbank :

Baltimore, Md.: Do you think its wise for the antiwar movement to rally around someone who has made so many strange comments about the Iraq War being a war for Israel?

For "strange" read "anti-Semitic" by the way. Not just about how Israel should give Palestine back, all of it, but that Israel and the Joos control the US Government...

Dana Milbank: Certainly it's a risk. And Sheehan has, whatever her current position, taken some highly controversial stands regarding Israel. They key for the antiwar movement is to use Sheehan as a symbol but not to make the movement about her. Last night was an effort to broaden beyond Sheehan to other parents. That's why MoveOn told people to bring pictures of children even if they aren't in the military, and organizers handed out stickers saying 'mom' and 'uncle' and so forth, even if the 'son' or 'nephew' wasn't in Iraq.

New Headline : MoveOn hits Rock Bottom, Digs!

San Francisco, Calif.: Why so little coverage on the candle-light vigils throughout the U.S. yesterday evening? I could not find an article on The Washington Post Web site, or the NYTimes. Thousands of San Franciscans met in quiet groups of 100 to 1,000 in neighborhoods throughout the city, as I assume other citizens did elsewhere - not only to support Sheehan in her request for a meeting with our vacationing president, but also to encourage an end to the war. But mums the word, at least on the WP Internet edition. The Dana Milbank video I just watched offered no coverage. What's up?

Dana Milbank:

Well, I had 22 column inches of coverage on Page 3, and the story is on this very Web site for you to peruse.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: Have Bush foes really turned Cindy Sheehan into the symbol of the antiwar movement? Seems to me like the media has done that. The extent to which the media has gone to promote her has been sickening. The extent of fawning coverage she has gotten (and absence of reporting on her past statements) is out of all proportion. One almost begins to wonder if the media doesn't like the current administration. Moreover, has anyone even bothered to ask her how her proposed solution (pulling out of Iraq now) would impact the U.S., much less Iraq?

Dana Milbank: Maybe you and San Francisco can sort this out. Has the media been "mum" or "sickening" in its excess?

Well, on one hand, you have "22 column inches", and on the other hand, you have... Zip. Nada. Tiddly-squat.

The extent of fawning coverage she has gotten (and absence of reporting on her past statements) is out of all proportion. One almost begins to wonder if the media doesn't like the current administration.

Yes one does, doesn't one? Almost.

As for Mother Sheehan's past, er, controversial statements, there's this one :

“And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the tėrrorism,” she exclaimed.

“There, I used the ‘I’ word – imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.”

And this one, as quoted admiringly by one of hr supporters, Neo-Nazi and Jewbaiter extraordinaire, David Duke :

Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by George [W.] Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy… Not for the real reason, because the Arab-Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy.

Of course, she now denies it :

Another "big deal" today was the lie that I had said that Casey died for Israel. I never said that, I never wrote that. I had supposedly said it in a letter that I wrote to Ted Koppel's producer in March. I wrote the letter because I was upset at the way Ted treated me when I appeared at a Nightline Town Hall meeting in January right after the inauguration. I felt that Ted had totally disrespected me. I wrote the letter to Ted Bettag and cc'd a copy to the person who gave me Ted's address. I believe he changed the email and sent it out to capitalize on my new found notoriety by promoting his own agenda.

Using her e-mail address of course. I wonder who forged the CNN videotape, where she expressed similar sentiments?
Then there's this :

We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It’s not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter!

Also appearing at the same function, various luminaries, such as Lynne Stewart

The terrorist lawyer, who billed herself as a “Civil Rights Lawyer and Political Prisoner,” was recently convicted of conspiracy and for passing along fatwas (Islamic religious edicts) from Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to his terrorist followers in Egypt’s Islamic Group. Rahman is the blind sheikh responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 that left six Americans dead and more than 1,000 people injured.

Her trial lasted seven months, and the jury deliberated 13 days before convicting her and two co-conspirators, one of whom (Ahmed Abdhel Sattar) was wiretapped making calls to al-Qaeda while the other (Mohammed Yousry) translated messages to be sent to a terrorist leader overseas.
[...]
Pointer was convicted of assaulting some Jewish women during the attacks carried out by black militants in New York in the late 1960’s during demonstrations in the Oceanville-Brownville area demanding that Jewish teachers not be allowed to teach black inner city school children. Lynne Stewart married him afterward, but voiced approval of his physical attacks on Jews.

Any questions?

I want to be a Presbyterian

...like my Father.



The complete story of how a copy of "Revenge of the Sith" was translated into Chinese, then back again to English, is courtesy of Matthew in Beirut


Exactly.

Global Warming Proved!

There's even pictures taken over 40 years showing the ice-caps are shrinking.

On Mars.

Their Germans are better than Our Germans

That's what President Eisenhower was supposedly told when he asked about why the Russians were ahead in the space race. ( Source : entry for VfR )

There was a joke going around after the shock of Sputnik in 1957 -- the President of the United States called in his experts and asked ``What happened? How did the Russians get so far ahead of us in rocket technology?'' His advisors answered:
``Their Germans were better than our Germans.''

This was mirrored in the Movie The Right Stuff when the Russian Grand Designer said "Our Germans are better than their Germans.".

Anyway, the contribution of the German Rocket Scientists and Engineers to the space programmes of 3 nations - the USA, USSR, and oddly enough, France, is revealed over at the Encyclopedia Astronautica. As is how the UK managed to lose a golden opportunity. :

Von Braun led a group of 108 leading engineers who chose to surrender to the Americans...
[...]
29 of the team moved to private industry in the United States, 21 returned to Germany. A few new engineers were recruited from Germany, having stayed behind to complete war-interrupted education.
[...]
There is no complete documentation, but at least 234 rocket engineers and technicians went to the Soviet Union

The largest contingent, over 129, worked in Filial 1 of NII-88, creating rocket designs in competition with those of institute leader Korolev. They also provided advice to the Russian engineers ordered to copy the V-2 rocket. 23 others worked within Glushko's OKB-456, transferring V-2 propulsion technology and building a subscale prototype of the advanced engine that would later power Soviet ICBM's. Small groups of others were working in other design bureaux and offices of the Aircraft Ministry, transferring technology related to other specific missiles or rocket aircraft.
[...]
The British staged an enormous effort in firing three V-2 rockets from Cuxhaven in Cuxhaven in 1946, then lost all interest in pursuing ballistic missiles until the mid-1950's. By late summer 1945 some two hundred Peenemuende scientists, 200 V-2 firing troops, and 600 ordinary POWs were transported to Cuxhaven. Upon arrival, they were split into two groups and interrogated. The information given by each group was then compared to ensure inaccuracies and deceptions were eliminated.
[...]
After this event, the British government lost all interest in ballistic missiles. Some of the leading experts they had detained were employed by the French. It was only in the late 1950's that Britain decided to pursue a ballistic missile, the Blue Streak.
[...]
The V-2 launch bunker at Wizernes had been dynamited by British commandos on 9 May 1945 in order to keep the French from ever being able to put it to use. The French began to recruit German experts then working for the British at Project Backfire at Cuxhaven. By 15 May 1946, Herbert Weiss had convinced 35 German engineers at Cuxhaven to 'defect' to the French. Others soon followed, signing contracts to work in France. By October 1946 the French employed nearly 90 German experts, working in groups at Emmendingen and Puteaux in the French zone.

There's more, with many more links, over at Slashdot.

Lest anyone think this is all Ancient History, there's this:

Baum and Groettrup's engine and rocket designs led directly to the Soviet R-7 ICBM. This awesome rocket started the space race, and is still in use today as the Soyuz 11A511U space launcher.
[...]
Although many of the German team were laid off in 1952 and returned to Germany, others, notably Bringer, continued to work for LRBA and its successor organisations, developing the Viking 2 engine that would power the Ariane.

And the Canadian Arrow X-Prize contender is basically a crewed V2.

Early Retirement

...for the Shuttle? From Space Daily :

On Wednesday, NASA said that the fuel tank needs to be redesigned, scratching a planned launch of Atlantis in September.

If the shuttle becomes too difficult to repair or too expensive to fly, many experts, former NASA engineers and members of Congress want to rethink current plans to retire the shuttle in 2010 -- and possibly even mothball the three surviving shuttles immediately.

"When your design stinks, Engineering 101 says admit your mistakes and go back to the drawing board," said retired NASA engineer Homer Hicham.

"The space shuttle is ... never going to be reliable no matter how much money, time and engineering careers your throw at it. Let's put the shuttle on the shelf right away and give engineers the gift of designing new ships to carry humans into space," he said.

Roger Pielke, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder agrees.

"NASA is rolling the dice with the future of the US space program by continuing to hold unrealistic expectations for shuttle performance.

"If history is any guide, then we should expect that the shuttle will fly less and cost more than we think. It is unclear what would be gained by continuing to fly the shuttle rather than moving to the next phase of US space policy sooner rather than later," he said
[...]
"There is going to be no room for margin of error in terms of flying again if there is not a high level of confidence that the problems we know about are solved," said Representative Bart Gordon, leading Democrat on the House Science Committee.

His Republican counterpart, Sherwood Boehlert, who chairs the committee, said the tipping point comes when problems take too long to fix.

"Then we have to rethink everything. Maybe the shuttle will be no more," he said.

Of course, there's a little matter of the replacement, and that the ISS (International Space Station) was deliberately engineered to require Space Shuttle launches for it to be completed.

Bluetooth EnDisabled

Courtesy of reader Shaun comes a worrying article illustrating just exactly how insecure WiFi communications such as Bluetooth are. How To Build a BlueSniper Rifle

With some basic skills and a couple hundred bucks, you can build your own Bluetooth rifle, just like the guys at Flexilis.
[...]
We will also interview the Flexilis staff on what their custom software is capable of doing. As John Hering says, "Our goal is to make the public more aware of wireless security issues and bad policies. Bluetooth is wide open and most people have no idea what can be done to their devices."

The reaction of the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group)?

If they are concerned about that their device is vulnerable to security threats, check with manufacturers and possibly request a software upgrade to a version without vulnerabilities. Following this advice, they are in no more danger of exposure by a long range antenna than with a normal range hacking device. As a general rule, we also recommend that users not keep confidential information on mobile devices since the most common security threat is actually the many thousands of devices stolen or lost every day across the globe.

So you can't say you haven't been warned.

MSM Catches Up

Or Two Civil Wars Parte Deaux.

An article by Leftist Neil Cohen, in the Guardian, which reads in part:

The liberals who say I have deserted the left should ask themselves where they stand on Islamism
[...]
Auden noticed a retreat from universal principles in the 1930s - communism was fine in 'semi-barbaric' Russia but would have been a screaming outrage in a civilised country. He should have been alive today. With no socialism to provide international solidarity, good motives of tolerance and respect for other cultures have had the unintended consequence of leading a large part of post-modern liberal opinion into the position of 19th-century imperialists. It is presumptuous and oppressive to suggest that other cultures want the liberties we take for granted, their argument runs. So it may be, but believe that and the upshot is that democracy, feminism and human rights become good for whites but not for browns and brown-skinned people who contradict you are the tools of the neo-conservatives.

On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq any more than the Auden generation could form alliances with the victims of Stalinism.

This isn't simply about international relations. Who is going to help the victims of religious intolerance in Britain's immigrant communities? Not the Liberal Democrats, who have never once offered support to liberal and democrats in Iraq. Nor an anti-war left which prefers to embrace a Muslim Association of Britain and Yusuf al-Qaradawi who believe that Muslims who freely decide to change their religion or renounce religion should be executed. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to suggest the same treatment for renegade Christians all hell would break loose. But as the bigotry comes from 'the other' there is silence.

Obviously a premature Anti-Islamist.

Why the title "MSM catches up"? Because it was obvious to even a blogger on the other side of the world several weeks ago that a split like this was happening. I didn't create it, I just observed it. And it wasn't as if I had nothing else on my mind at the time. But at least it only took weeks, not years, for the Guardian to do the same. They're getting better.