ISRAELI GOVERNMENT ISSUES SEVERE WARNING TO ISRAELI TRAVELERS

NYTIMES/AP:

Israeli security officials on Monday warned citizens traveling in Egypt, Jordan and other Muslim countries to leave immediately due to a ''concrete and severe'' threat of terror attacks.

Israelis anywhere in the world should also be alert to the danger of being kidnapped by operatives from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, according to the announcement from Israel's National Security Council.

Israeli tourists are allowed to visit Egypt and Jordan, which have peace agreements with Israel. But the council said any Israeli citizens in those countries should cut their trips short.

THIS WARNING EXTENDS ONLY TO MUSLIM COUNTRIES.

I WONDER: ARE THEY PROFILING!?

I HOPE SO.

SERIOUSLY: I FEEL LIKE NYC AND DC SHOULD BE ON THE SAME LEVEL OF ALERT.

UPDATE: BTW: DRUDGE is on this story now - an hour after us.

NUKING HIROSHIMA AND NAGASKI: COURAGEOUS, MILITARILY SOUND, AND MORALLY CORRECT

Learn stuff here at HOT AIR.
And HERE, at PJM with Crittenden.

FACT: an invasion would have led to worse losses for the Japanese and for US troops. (Recently declassified data proves that Japan had reinforced the main island with a huge amount of troops and and was prepared to defend it as they had Iwo Jima, but in spades. This would have led to the USA killing more of them, and to destroying more cities in Japan.)

FACT: Proof that we needed to nuke Japanese cities - and not merely invite the Japanese to a demonstration on some isolated unpopulated island - is the fact that the Japanese did not surrender after the first bomb on Hiroshima, or EVEN FOR A WEEK AFTER THE SECOND BOMB WAS DROPPED ON NAGASAKI.

If we had let Stalin take Japan - (some Leftist pseudo-historians have argued that we nuked them to prevent Stalin from taking it, as if that was a bad thing, a hegemonistic thing) - then it would look like North Korea today instead of being one of the richest, freest, healthiest democracies on human history. AND A GREAT USA ALLY!

On Hiroshima Day the Japanese should thank the USA. We taught them a lesson they needed to learn. And spared them a worse end.

THE BOTTOM-LINE ON RUDY'S DAUGHTER, OBAMA AND PATTI DAVIS - (REAGAN'S DAUGHTER)

The MSM is trying to do to Rudy what they tried to do to Reagan: turn typically rebellious children into weapons of political sabotage.

By reporting with BLARING HEADLINES that his daughter supports Obama. (More here.) Sheesh.

IT'S UTTER BS.

Patti Davis did not diminish Reagan as a man or as a politician or a statesman.

Neither will Rudy's daughter. Or his Wife. Or his ex-wives.

Nor can their BS about Jeri Thompson diminish Fred. VANITY FAIR is trying to hurt Fred and conservatism, but most people who don't have BDS can see it for what it is.

All it proves is that the Left-wing dominated/pro-Democrat MSM will stoop to anything: leaking national secrets, suppressing improving news from Iraq, hiding non-PC facts, AND SMEARING CANDIDATES WIVES.

They are scum.

WHY WON'T AL GORE DEBATE AGW WITH SKEPTICAL SCIENTISTS?

BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE WILL LOSE, AND THAT WILL UPSET THE LEFT'S DREAM OF TAXING THE CRAP OUT OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE.

FACTS HERE. EXCERPT:

the list of folks challenging soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore to put up or shut up continues to grow, of course, with little notice from an adoring media.

Next up wanting to take shots at the Global Warmingist-in-Chief is best-selling author Dennis Avery.

As reported by PR Newswire Monday (emphasis added throughout):

Mr. Avery is co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years. Both Al Gore and Dennis Avery have New York Times best-selling books on global warming, but with opposite conclusions. […]

Avery joins Lord Christopher Monckton (former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher advisor), Bjorn Lomborg (Danish economist), author Michael Crichton, Prof. S. Fred Singer (former director of the U.S. National Weather Service), Tim Ball, Ph.D. (historical climatologist), Prof. Ian Clark (University of Ottawa), and Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT) among others.

Of course, the media never report these challenges. After all, why should they? The debate’s over:

NOTE:

NPR SPONSORED AN OXFORD-STYLE DEBATE ON AGW.

IT FEATURED A BEFORE-AND-AFTER POLL OF THE AUDIENCE.

IT WAS BETWEEN A FEW OF THESE SKEPTICS AND A FEW FAMOUS FOLKS FROM THE AGW ECO-NUTSIE CROWD.

THE POLLING INDICATED THAT THE AGW ECO-NUTISES GOT CREAMED:

In this debate, the proposition was: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." In a vote before the debate, about 30 percent of the audience agreed with the motion, while 57 percent were against and 13 percent undecided. The debate seemed to affect a number of people: Afterward, about 46 percent agreed with the motion, roughly 42 percent were opposed and about 12 percent were undecided.

IOW: NEARLY HALF THE AGW ECO-NUTSIES IN THE CROWD SWITCHED SIDES AFTER ONE FREAKIN' DEBATE OF ALL THE FACTS.

THERE HASN'T BEEN A SERIOUS DEBATE EVER SINCE.

WONDER WHY?

THE LEFTIST AGW CROWD DOESN'T WANT YOU TO HEAR BOTH SIDES IF THE DEBATE.

IT'S SORT OF LIKE PROSECUTING A PERSON FOR A CRIME WITHOUT LETTING THE JURY HEAR FROM THE DEFENSE.

NOW, THOSE SNEAKY, OBNOXIOUS JEWS ARE INVENTING A GOD DAMNED TIME MACHINE

I'm sorry. I hope you all understand that that title is, to me, is funny as hell. And, I don't, at all, mean it to be anything but satirical.

Anyway, the weird thing is, while I don't actually believe that Jews are sneaky, and obnoxious, there is a Jewish man who is, apparently, on his way, to inventing a time machine. Or, so that is what this article claims. Check it out:

NETANYA, Israel — Researchers at the Technion University (Haifa, Israel) claim they have developed a theoretical model of a time machine that, in the distant future, could enable future generations to travel into the past.

The team's findings were published in the latest issue of Physical Review.

"In order to travel back in time, the spacetime structure must be engineered appropriately," explains Professor Amos Ori of the Technion's Faculty of Physics. "This is what Einstein's theory of general relativity deals with. It says that spacetime can be flat. That is " it has a trivial, simple structure. But it can also be curved with various configurations."

The team stresses the main question is whether — according to the principles of curvature development in the theory of relativity — a time machine can be created. "In other words " can we cause spacetime to curve in such a way as to enable travel back in time? Such a journey requires a significant curvature of spacetime, in a very special form."

The researchers explain that traveling back in time is actually closing time-like curves so we can go back to an event at which we were present in the past. In flat space, it is not possible to close curves and go back in time. In order for closed time-like curves to exist, there has to be a curvature of a specific form on spacetime.

The question Prof. Ori is investigating is whether the laws of gravity permit the development of spacetime with the required curvature (closed time-like curves).

In the past, scientists raised a number of objections to this possibility. Now, Prof. Ori is proposing a theoretical model for spacetime that could develop into a time machine.

The Technion researchers suggest their model overcomes some of the questions, which, until now, scientists have not succeeded in solving. One of the difficult claims against a time machine was that, in order to create a time machine, it would be necessary for it to contain material with negative density. And since as of now we do not have such material — and it is also not clear if the laws of nature enable the existence of such material in the quantities required — it is not possible to build a time machine.

The team's theoretical model does not require material with negative density -- the proposal is essentially a vacuum space that contains a region field with standard positive density material.

"The machine is spacetime itself," Prof. Ori explains. "Today, if we were to create a time machine " an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves " it might enable future generations to return to visit our time. We, apparently, cannot return to previous ages because our predecessors did not create this infrastructure for us."

Prof. Ori, one of the few scientists in the world investigating this issue, emphasizes that we still do not have the technology to control gravitational fields at will, despite the fact that the theoretical principles of how to do this exist. "The model that we developed at the Technion is a significant step but there still remains a number of non-trivial open questions," he stresses. "It may be that some of these questions also will not be solved in the future. This is still not clear."

Ok, so here's the thing, if it is possible to build a time machine, it would seem that we would already have been visited by human beings from the future. Now, I am going to have to admit how strange I am, but ok, here goes:

I have considered this possibility.

In other words, it does not seem completely implausible that, indeed, we truly have had our normal course of events interrupted, and helped along by the work of people who actually time-traveled and inserted themselves, with future knowledge, into the our political and artistic structure.

Abraham Lincoln and William Shakespeare stand out as two entirely unprecendented human beings, if you ask me. In other words, if you study their lives, it is my opinion, that they brought knowledge to their time which had no intellectual precendent in history. I have always wondered at this.

I understand a bit about Einstein, and I actually understand where his ideas came from, but, as much as I have studied Lincoln and Shakespeare, I can not fathom how they became who they were.

I know that sounds completely fucking nuts, but, hey, think about it for awhile and get back to me.

Oh man, I can not wait to hear the shit I'm going to get over this post.

:)

An Interesting Question

Commenter Cormac-ballz asks:

What I don't get is: Congress is less popular than Bush because they didn't stop the war/stand up to Bush etc.

But Bush should be less popular because he's the one persecuting the war in first place!

Is there something about U.S. citizens that I fail to grasp? Is it because they don't sympathise with people they view as wimpy (e.g., Congress).

The Democrats won Congress by replacing the Republicans in the South with Blue Dog Democrats.

Those Democrats who won in the South promised not to damage the war effort. This has disgusted 1/2 the Democrats. The Republicans are disgusted to begin with. The other 1/2 of the Democrats are disgusted with the disgusted Democrats and no one is interested in solving the overspending problem.

So you have the Republicans who still support Bush - 24% and no one who supports Congress.

There is also the wimp factor which underlies the attitude of the Southern Democrats. They come from a martial culture. It transcends Republican/Democrat.

In many ways the Republicans won the last election. Southern Democrats are closer to the Republicans than they are to San Francisco liberal Democrats.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

THE SCANDINAVIAN TREE-RING DATA

"Proxy" data from tree ring and other sources has been much used by Warmists in attempts to prop up their theory. The once prominent "hockeystick" study was allegedly (but not really) based on such data. Proxy data were used in the hockeystick study to give an air of legitimacy to what was in fact a mathematical fraud. So there is no doubt that proxy data has an important, and maybe vital role to play in climate studies.

Some new proxy data has recently emerged from studies of tree rings in Northern Scandinavia. In part because of the cold temperatures there, wood residues from the last 7,000 years have been well preserved at the bottom of muddy lakes. From that, Finnish researchers have been able to reconstuct a temperature record covering that period.

The results of the study are set out via many good graphics in a PDF here so I will depart from my usual practice and refer readers to the site concerned rather than reproducing the material here.

You will see that the temperature record over the period is one of alternating ups and downs with the present situation being well within the range of normal fluctuations. See particularly their figure 6 for that.

Figure 7 is also interesting. The researchers have looked at the cycles in their data and have plotted a projection into the future of where those cycles are leading us. You will see that, based on past climate cycles, we are headed for some global cooling soon.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

WHY THE 60s?

Rich Lowry has up an interesting essay in which he contrasts American "liberalism" of the present day with American liberalism in the era up to JFK. The two were of course very different and Lowry sees the death of Kennedy in 1963 as the watershed. At that time the American Left suddenly became anti-American and sympathetic to the Communist bloc and the Kennedy assassination was to blame.

Lowry is however resting far too much on a single event. It is good to see ANYBODY showing an awareness of how radically American Leftism has changed over time but Lowry fails to root his critique deeply enough. He shows no awareness that the pre-WWII American Left was characterized by much that it accuses conservatives of today. It was super-patriotic, interventionist in foreign policy, believed in eugenics and thought blacks and Jews to be obviously inferior. The pre-WWII American Left were less extreme than Hitler but not by much. You can find documentation of all that here.

Hitler's excesses, however, discredited all those ideas I have just mentioned and the Left needed new foci. But most Leftists could not abandon overnight ideas that they had so long and so vigorously advocated. They could not suddenly go from being super-patriots to being internationalists, for instance. And JFK, for one, did not even try. Anyone today who said: "Ask not what your coutry can do for you but ask what you can do for your country" would be regarded as quaint at best by today's Left -- if not "Fascist".

So it actually took the rise of a new generation without any memory of prewar committments and ideology for the Left we know today to arise. And the coming of age of that generation we now know as "The 60s". And that generation rebelled in such a vigorous and attention-getting way that the older quasi-Fascist Left rapidly and gladly changed its tune -- though a few migrated to conservatism.

Meanwhile, conservatives kept on with the moderate attitudes that had always characterized them. They remained patriotic but had no desire for war and conquest. They remained broadly tolerant but not mindlessly so and they remained allergic to tyranny.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Suspicious Lack Of Coverage

Eric at Classical Values is wondering why there is so little coverage of a story about a reporter murdered in Oakland California.

I think the answer is that the press does not wish to call attention to the connections of Barack Hussein Obama with the Nation of Islam's leader or the Nation of Islam itself.

Well it is a theory. Is it testable?

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Something Is Wrong

Here are some interesting quotes from American Judges who don't like mandatory minimums for drug offenses.

Judge Morris S. Arnold
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
Appointed by George H.W. Bush, 1992

"You may say that I said that many of our drug laws are scandalously draconian and the sentences are often savage. You may also quote me as saying the war on drugs has done considerable damage to the Fourth Amendment and that something is very wrong indeed when a person gets a longer sentence for marijuana than for espionage."

That is only one quote. There are more.

The Drug War shreds our Constitution and wastes resources. Apparently there are some folks in government who actually understand that we are in a real war and that the Drug War is a waste.

Taken from a study: Republican Judges Speak

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

THE ART OF HYPOCRISY

VIA POWER LINE.

DEMOCRATS IN HOUSE VOTE TO RAISE TAXES ON PEOPLE THEY THINK ARE BAD GUYS, AND LOWERS THEM FOR PEOPLE THEY THINK ARE GOOD GUYS

NYTIMES:

Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House on Saturday approved $16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.

Republican opponents said the legislation ignored the need to produce more domestic oil, natural gas and coal. One GOP lawmaker bemoaned ''the pure venom ... against the oil and gas industry.''

The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189. Earlier it had approved, 241-172, a companion energy package aimed at boosting energy efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable energy sources.

THE DEMS ARE AT IT AGAIN: RAISING TAXES ON FOLKS THEY THINK ARE THE BAD GUYS.

AND AVOIDING THE BASIC ACTION WHICH WILL HELP EVERYONE: MORE FREEDOM; GIVING COMPANIES IN THE ENERGY BUSINESS MORE FREEDOM TO EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT THE PROVE ENERGY ASSETS WE HAVE RIGHT HERE IN THE USA!

The Left is essentially an elitist bunch of control-freaks who feel they can pick winners and losers better than the marketplace.

This has been proven WRONG time after time after time after time.

Look at Zimbabwe, or Cuba, or North Korea, or Red China or the USSR: their economies under socialism under-performed their economies under freemarkets.

The freemarket doesn't just out-perform socialist markets on the profit-and-loss column; they also produce BETTER QUALITY goods and services.

And they also RESPOND BETTER TO POPULAR NEEDS - REGARDLESS OF WHAT THAT NEED IS.

If free consumers want more solar power, then companies which satisfy that demand will be rewarded by the marketplace.

And this reward far out weighs anything the elitist Socialists can do ON THE POSITIVE SIDE.

All the command-control freaks of the Left do is distort the marketplace; all they are REALLY DOING is rewarding their favorites - their pets. These tax ploys are JUST AS BAD AS PORK PROJECTS.

That's why we need a flat tax or a fair tax.

And we why we need to get rid of as many SOCIALISTIC DEMOCRATS AS POSSIBLE!

WE MUSTN'T LET "BIG BROTHER" (GOVERNMENT) PICKS THE WINNERS AND THE LOSERS, THAT'S WHAT THE FREEMARKET IS FOR.

Brazil: Homosexuals Try Censorship, Fail, and Get Investigated Themselves

More dim-wittedness from Google:

"A recent attempt by Brazilian homosexuals to silence two weblogs failed when Google, the hosting service, restored them after blocking them for several days. Now the contents of the blogs have drawn the attention of Brazilian prosecutors, who are investigating Luiz Mott, the leader of Brazil's homosexual movement, for pedophilia.

The first blog, by the anonymous author Jael Savelli, was blocked for only a few hours several weeks ago, but the second, authored by Brazilian Christian activist Julio Severo and hosted by Google's "Blogger" service at http://juliosevero.blogspot.com, was blocked from July 16 to July 19.

The site's contents were removed and replaced with a statement that read: "This blog is being reviewed for possible violations of the Blogger Terms of Service, and can only be opened by the authors." Although Severo states that Google never informed him of its reasons for blocking the site, the removal occurred after a bitter campaign against him by homosexual activists on Google's partner service, Orkut.com. The service is widely used by Brazilians to socialize and exchange information, and became an organizing point for opposition to Severo and his site.

Three days after Severo's site was suppressed, the eminent Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho blasted the campaign against Severo in his regular column for the newspaper Jornal do Brasil....

Carvalho went on to point out that, if anyone had violated the laws, it was the homosexuals attacking Severo based on his religion: "It is they who committed against him the crimes defined in articles 240 and 251 of the Penal Code: publicly defaming and ridiculing a citizen because of his religious belief. They added to this the crime foreseen in article 138: false imputation of a crime."

De Carvalho encouraged protestant church groups to support and defend Severo. "Julio Severo, as a reprisal against his moral crusade, now has his social and professional life totally destroyed. He is the most discriminated against and persecuted of Brazilians. He cannot confront, alone, a gigantic mass movement subsidized by billionaire foundations, that, having made itself out to be a victim persecuted by a solitary and poor adversary, now shows a monstrous, cynical, and perverse dishonesty."

According to Severo, numerous individuals responded by submitting complaints to Google. The day following Carvalho's article, Google restored Severo's website, again without any explanation.

The actions taken against the two blogs, however, drew attention to information contained in one of the blogs against Luiz Mott, the self-described "dean" of the homosexual movement in Brazil. The blog of "Jael Savelli" (the pseudonym of the blog's anonymous author), had published an article entitled "Pedophilia Now!", containing evidence that Luiz Mott is a pedophile.....

In the backlash against Mott's militant homosexual movement, information from Savelli's site has been given to prosecutors in the states of Bahia (where Mott lives) and Juiz de Fora. The Christian Apologetics Study Center (CACP) reports that a prosecutor in the Federal Attorney General's office in the state of Bahia, responded to their complaint with an assurance that he would initiate procedures to begin a criminal investigation and to remove the offending sites from the internet

Source

H/T Against Red - email me (John Ray) here.)

THAT RIGHTWARD SHIFT

A Leftist tries to cope

There is a book review in the NYT of "Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys". For the reviewing task, the NYT picked Stephen Metcalf -- well-known for vitriol -- and so the review is predictably hostile and, as such, very lightweight. There is no attempt to engage what the writers say at all. He summarizes two of the essays in the book as: "Pig popsicle, bad; babies, good"!

The purpose of the review is not of course scholarship of any kind. It is meant simply to prop up threatened Leftist egos. And the threat that enrages the Left most of all is the way conservatives connect so easily with ordinary mainstream white Americans -- something most vividly seen in the popularity of conservative talkshow hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. So how come? asks our reviewer. Is there some way Leftists can piss on that?

Our reviewer has the answer: Conservatives connect with the workers because conservatives were social failures at college who were marginalized and never got the girl: By experiencing failure conservatives learnt to understand others who are failures in life. The elitism and stereotyping of that explanation is breathtaking, of course. The claim that the ordinary mainstream white American feels a failure shows how little our Leftist reviewer knows about the people concerned. He has obviously lived most of his life in a little like-minded Manhattan social bubble. He seems quite unaware that most ordinary mainstream white Americans are hard-working people who find great joy in their families, their friends, their church, their hobbies and even often in their work. They do NOT consider themselves failures! They look at the "success" they see in places like Hollywood and are thankful for their own more wholesome lives.

I suspect that it is a dim awareness of that happiness which really makes Leftist elitists like Metcalf hate ordinary mainstream white Americans. He has to project feelings of failure onto them to boost his own feelings of superiority. Accepting that they may well be happier than him would be just too intolerable -- though even that he would no doubt be able to dismiss temporarily with some contemptuous adjective such as "bovine".

But all good lies have an element of truth in them and that conservatives often feel alienated and marginalized in their college days is no doubt true. I certainly did. I arrived at university having already read most of the Greek canon, from the miracle of Homer to the bright clarity of Plato, and already knowing such arcane things as what a Pindaric ode was. I met very few others as culturally grounded as that. Babblers like Sartre were what passed for sophistication and culture among most people I met and there were not even many of those -- even though I attended a major university.

But the major reason why conservatives feel alienated at university is the lack of intellectual diversity there. American universities seem to think that a thing as superficial as skin color is the only important sort of diversity. The lockstep Leftism that characterizes most professors (at least in the Humanities) would alienate and marginalize any conservative, no matter how well-adjusted he might be.

Fortunately, however, academe is just one rather deviant bubble within the wider world and conservatives often do well outside it. I myself particularly enjoyed my time in the Army -- where I reached the rank of Sergeant. Bitter elitists like Metcalf no doubt have in their heads a comforting stereotype of the army as a bunch of rockheads but reality is much more complex than that. The army in fact particularly values and rewards the all-round man (e.g. General Petraeus) and in my army unit I was far from alone in my liking for Bach and Palestrina.

That the real reason for the conservative communicative advantage might lie in the fact they do not inhabit the Left's mental cloud-cuckoo land Metcalf cannot of course concede.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

FOILED JIHADI JAIL BREAK IN GOOSE CREEK, SC?

JAWA:

CNN and local news are reporting that a car possibly carrying explosives has been stopped by police outside Charleston, South Carolina. Two men were in the van, both described as Middle Eastern.

The car was stopped in the community of Goose Creek, north of Charleston. The bomb squad and the FBI are on the scene. Highway 176, where the car was found, is said to still be closed.

WIS-tv/ via HOT AIR:

The FBI and the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department are investigating what they think are explosives found in a car in Goose Creek.

Police say part of Highway 176 in Berkeley County is closed, and traffic is limited to local residents around Mount Holly Road.

WIS News 10's sister station in Charleston, WCBD, reports authorities pulled over a suspicious car at around 6:00pm Saturday. Officers asked to search the vehicles, and discovered what investigators say are "possible explosives" located in the trunk.

USA TODAY/AP:

Goose Creek is home to the Naval Weapons Station and the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig, a military prison where enemy combatants have been held.

ME: PERHAPS THEY WERE GONNA TRY TO SPRING SOME ENEMY COMBATANTS?

BTW: I don't really think this was the result of a random car stop, or a traffic violation stop. That's just the cover; I bet they were either tipped of by a double agent, or got the information by EAVESDROPPING!

UPDATE/FLOPPING ACES:

Even more:

According to Lt. Vince Lombardo, deputies discovered the suspicious items in the trunk during a traffic stop. The two men inside the vehicle are detained at the scene. Lombardo also said information from an investigation in another jurisdiction raised the suspicions of the deputies.

A TIP! Like I said...

8/5 UPDATE:

Police have detained two men after finding and detonating a suspicious item found in their car during a routine stop for a speeding violation on a highway near Charleston.

Sources say a four-door sedan was stopped during a routine traffic stop Saturday only to find what was believed to be a bomb inside the vehicle.

The two people in the car were said to be of Middle Eastern decent.

H5N1 bird flu detected in Germany

TVNZ/REUTERS:

Two ducks found dead near Munich in southern Germany tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus and a third was contaminated with a milder strain, a state laboratory said.
... Globally, the H5N1 virus has killed nearly 200 people out of over 300 known cases, according to the World Health Organisation.

None of the victims were from Europe.

NOT YET...

EX-BIN LADEN SISTER IN LAW: OSAMA ALIVE ...

... AND IN TOUCH WITH HIS FAMILY IN SAUDI ARABIA - WHERE HE IS AS RESPECTED AS EVER.

More on her here. Her book HERE (2004).

IN OTHER BIN LADEN FAMILY NEWS: his son's FIRST wife is going to ditch him for marrying a 51 year old British granny, (who slept with George Best!).

HEY OSAMA: YOUR FAMILY IS A FREAKIN' JOKE!

APPEASEMENT: IT'S A CAUCASIAN THING

By Seth Franzman:

A recent article by a Caucasian ignoramus entitled ‘Four young Americans on a Journey into Islam’ - which appeared in the Herald Tribune on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 - noted how four white Americans had taken a ‘journey’ with a professor named Akbar Ahmed to a number of Muslim states including Pakistan and Egypt to understand the other.

Jonathan Hayden (of Alabama), Hailey Woldt (a ‘blonde Texan’) and Hadia Mubarek (an American born Muslim) were among the students that Ahmed brought with him to meet with Muslims and build cultural bridges.

We are informed of the lengths the whites went to please the other.

Woldt dyed her hair brown.

“As the trip progressed she began dressing more traditionally. Reaching Jinnah’s mausoleum [in Pakistan], she realized she had forgotten a head scarf, or hijab, and refused to enter. Ahmed and some Pakistani women assured her she did not need one, but she held firm until she could borrow a scarf.”

Hadia Mubarek, who wears a head scarf in America and in Muslim countries was almost refused entrance to a university in Istanbul because she was covering her hair, something secular Turkish institutions frown upon.

All the Muslims spoke about how their role model was Mohammed.

The group made sure to meet with all the anti-western, Jihadist organizations it could including members of the Deoband madrasa.

When, after many days of meeting with the friendly Islamists, one of the Islamists named Aijaz Qasmi, finally stopped referring to them as “American barbarians” the white women, Hailey, “was moved by Qasmi’s gesture and by what it portended.”

The white woman noted that “it’s like changing the rotation of the Earth.”

The moronic author of the article noted that Ahmed’s book ‘Islam Under Siege,’ “talks about dialogue, common humanity and the need for understanding."

Its always interesting to see how Westerners, particularly Western women, always think that the only way to have understanding between cultures is for westerners to become part of the other culture, to dress like it and act like it.

The western woman on the trip never once bothered to ask why she alone, rather than her male counterparts, had to dress differently in order to please Islam and why one should change their dress just to please others’ conception of ‘morality’. Note the hypocrisy of these actions. The Muslim women, Hadia, doesn’t conform to the west by taking off her head scarf when she comes to a western country. But the white woman, Hailey, makes sure to don the headscarf and even wears it when Muslims don’t.

The Westerner rejoices at getting people to perhaps not call them ‘barbarians’ to their faces. The westerner thinks that a book entitled ‘Islam under siege’ is really a book that speaks of a ‘common humanity.’

Can anyone imagine a black student who is interested in ‘building cultural bridges’ going up and spending a weekend with the KKK at one of their retreats and being ‘overjoyed’ because the KKK members stop calling her ‘nigger’?

Oddly enough, we don’t see too many blacks doing that.

But while blacks don’t show much interest in embracing their former slave masters and colonial overlords who still hate them, the whites seem intent on always embracing any culture that hates them, especially Muslims who formerly colonized half of Europe and enslaved its people.

Cross-posted here

FIDEL, MUGABE, CHAVEZ, CARTER AND HILLARY: LEFTISTS WITH A CAUSE

I think it is important top remember that when Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 he was seen as a benign force. BBC:

1980: Exiled Mugabe returns to Rhodesia

Rhodesia opposition leader Robert Mugabe has made a triumphant return to his home country after five years in exile.

Cheering crowds greeted Mr Mugabe's arrival in the capital, Salisbury, from Mozambique where he has been gathering support for his Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) or Zanu (PF) party.

The Rhodesian black nationalist leader, who spearheaded a guerrilla war against the Salisbury government, told a tumultuous rally of supporters there would be no more injustice based on race and colour. An estimated 200,000 or more people were at the Zimbabwe grounds in the Highfield black township of Salisbury to greet Mr Mugabe.

It was by far the largest crowd to attend a rally given by any of the black political parties taking part in next month's election.

"We will not seize land from anyone who has a use for it" - Robert Mugabe

Mugabe LIED.

Chavez gave a similar assurance. Chavez LIED, TOO - though commies claim it was an "evolution":

But the statement of Chavez that he is a Trotskyist reflects the leftward evolution of his political thinking and his personal growing radicalisation. At the beginning of the Venezuelan revolution in 1998 Chavez quite openly admitted that he was in favour of the "third way" and did not in any way challenge capitalism as such.

It was only in January 2005, at the time of the expropriation of Venepal, that he first said that "within the limits of capitalism there is no solution to the problems facing the Venezuelan masses" and that the revolution must go towards "socialism of the 21st century".

This change in his political thinking came about as a result of several things, he said, of the experience of the Bolivarian Revolution (trying to apply basic reforms such as free healthcare and education for all and being confronted by an armed uprising on the part of the capitalist class), reading and discussing.

Shortly before he declared himself to be a socialist, he had bought a copy of Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, at a meeting in Madrid where he spoke in front of an audience of workers and youth at the headquarters of the Workers' Commissions trade union (the CCOO). He obviously became very interested in the ideas of Trotsky, as these provided a socialist ideal, which was completely opposed to the Stalinist caricature that had fallen in the Soviet Union.

More or less at the same time, in an interview with Al Jazeera he explained that in his view, what had fallen in the Soviet Union "was not socialism, what was there had moved away a lot from the original aim of Lenin and of Trotsky, particularly after Stalin".

JUST LIKE FIDEL LIED:

Fidel Castro insisted his ideology was, first and foremost, Cuban. "There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy," he said at the time.

The current crop of leftists running for the Democrat Party nomination have given similar assurances - or have claimed that they only intend to:

raise taxes on the rich, or on hedge fund managers, or just lower the ratio of manager-to-worker pay, or just raise taxes on CO2. Or just on Big Oil. Or just on Big Pharma.

IT IS A MISTAKE TO BELIEVE ANY LEFTIST WHEN THEY CLAIM THEY HAVE A LIMITED AIMS AND MERELY WANT "ECONOMIC JUSTICE."

Or that they don't want less free speech, and just seek a return to the "fairness" doctrine.


















These lies are the exit ramp to the road to serfdom.

And as Zimbabwe once again proves, the road ALWAYS leads to a reduction in freedom and to poverty - for abundance is a by-product of liberty: ONLY FREEMARKETS CREATE ABUNDANCE.




REMEMBER: Mugabe's rise to power was facilitated by the same horrible leftist man who facilitated the rise of KHOMEINI: the "liberal" James Earl Carter. (Hat tip YID WITH LID.)






Hillary, and Obama and Edwards - the front-runners for the Democrat nomination - ALL promise similar policies to Carter - and Mugabe and Chavez:

more taxes; more regulations (less freedom in freemarkets); and appeasement abroad.

It will have the same results:

the MISERY INDEX will soar, and tyrannical regimes inimical to the USA and the Free World will proliferate.

We must do whatever we can to prevent such a disaster.

Some crime statistics

Post recycled from Dinocrat and Ralph Peters

In the 19-month period - over a year and a half - from Jan. 1, 2006 until the morning you read this, misbehavior by our troops resulted in a total of 59 scheduled court-martials in Iraq - 21 of them general court-martials, which are reserved for the most-serious crimes (murder, rape, robbery, assault, arson and so forth). The other 38 were special court-martials, invoked for lesser offenses, such as disciplinary infractions or petty theft.

OK: 59 trials in 19 months, among an average troop population of almost 140,000. Compare that to civilian crime statistics back home, and it's clear that any of us would welcome the chance to live among such model citizens - even though our troops are overwhelmingly within the age window where criminal behavior is most frequent.

Start with a city that Money magazine rated as "one of the 10 best places to live" in the United States: Ann Arbor, Mich. Home to a great university, the town has a population of about 113,300 - about 20,000 lower than our pre-surge troop numbers in Iraq.

In 2005 (the last year for which statistics are available), that ideal place to live recorded 1,476 crimes that, if committed by a soldier, would have required a general court-martial - plus a further 2,282 thefts and similar infractions that, depending on the details, would have been handled by either a general or a special court-martial.

Twelve months in Ann Arbor, 3,758 court-martial-equivalent trials. If all the crimes had been taken to court, which one doubts. Nineteen months in Iraq, under the complex stresses of combat? 59 court-martials. Guess that bastion of ethical liberalism in Michigan needs to go through basic training.

But let's give peace a chance: The most dogmatically left-wing city in the United States is undoubtedly (the People's Republic of) Santa Cruz, Calif. With a population of some 55,000 - about a third of our current troop numbers in Iraq - Santa Cruz, where the Age of Aquarius reigns, had 503 violent crimes in 2004 (the latest statistics available) and a total of 3,665 crimes that would qualify for court-martials.

Extrapolate those numbers to match our current troop strength, and you'd have a requirement for more than 10,000 court-martial equivalents. If Santa Cruz were as serious about punishing its criminals as our military is.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Coral bleaching on Australia's Great Barrier Reef in record cold snap

Hey! Wasn't coral bleaching supposed to be caused by global WARMING?? And what's this about record cold? Another case below of heads I win, tails you lose, it seems



A RECORD cold snap across southern Queensland has triggered coral bleaching normally associated with the extremes of hot weather linked to climate change. Scientists say the bleaching has been caused by a combination of cold waters, winds and air temperatures hitting exposed reefs around the Capricorn-Bunker group of islands at the southern end of the reef.

While other sections of the reef appear to have been spared by being fully submerged or far enough north to avoid the worst of the cold snaps in June and July, bleaching has been recorded by University of Queensland researchers on Heron Island, near Rockhampton. The area is regarded as having some of the most pristine sections of accessible reef. Coral expert Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, from the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies, warned researchers along the reef to look for bleaching after Townsville experienced one of its coldest days on record, on June 20.

Strong and sustained southerly winds that brought heavy rain to much of southeast Queensland in June and July exacerbated the chilly conditions for coral exposed at low tide and weakened the algae on the coral needed to keep it healthy. Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said the comfort zone for coral was between 19C and 27C but temperatures had fallen to 8C. While bleaching from extreme heat affects entire reefs, the cold bleaching appears to be isolated to the tips of wide areas of coral exposed to the chill. Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said the extreme variation in temperature might be more common as climate change caused hotter summers and colder winters. [Really? Funny warming then. Sounds like no warming at all on average]

CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin said the only noticeably cold currents were further south, around Fraser Island, suggesting water was being cooled at the surface by the air temperature.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

EXPOSED: ANOTHER BIG LIE AT THE NYTIMES

THE BIG LIE IS ALL THE LEFT HAS LEFT, EVIDENTLY.

BEAUCHAMP AND TNR WERE EXPOSED THIS WEEK AS LIARS. LIKE CBS AND RATHERGATE.

NOW IT'S THE NYTIMES CHANCE.

A FEW WEEKS AGO, THE NYTIMES AND THEIR GUEST COLUMNIST, NOAH FELDMAN, DELIBERATELY MISLED THEIR READERS ABOUT AN IMPORTANT FEATURE ARTICLE PENNED BY FELDMAN.POWER LINE HAS THE DETAILS.

THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE MSM ALTERING THE FACTS TO FIT THEIR TEMPLATE.

LYING SCUM.