Category Archives: Current News

This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.

Terrorist Check-In Policy

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I watched a lengthy segment on the news the other day about the recent liquid explosives issue.  We were told that airline passengers could no longer bring liquids, gels, etc. onto a plane as carry-on luggage, but rather should take such items on as checked-in baggage.  Translation:  Muslim terrorists are now required to load their liquid explosives onto your plane as check-in baggage.  I guess that means they’ll need delayed or remote controlled detonators rather than manually operated ones.  That’ll show ’em.

Effective August 10, 2006, the TSA has advised that travelers are not allowed to transport any liquids, gels, lotions, aerosols or similar items on their person or in their carry-on luggage. This includes items such as beverages, hairspray, toothpaste and shampoo. Customers are advised to transport these items in their checked luggage or discard them before entering the security checkpoints.

Emphasis mine.  Seriously, am I missing something important here or is that insane?  None of the news anchors appeared to think anything was odd about the story.

Ignoring the obvious

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Despite standing right beside the Muslim extremist who shot her and listening while he “ranted on the phone about Jews, Israel and the U.S. role in the war in Iraq and the Middle East” Ms Klein is concerned about all the wrong things:

Klein said she hopes the shooting will serve to renew local and national efforts to draft gun control legislation.

How and why Haq “was able to legally acquire two semi-automatic weapons in our state is still a very disturbing mystery to me,” she said.

…

“Naveed Haq has wasted enough of my time,” she said.

Huh? Haq is the reason she may not regain the use of her hand. His extremist religious beliefs are the reason he and millions of others want her dead. And she is distrubed because it’s legal to purchase firearms? Had she purchased and carried a similar firearm she and others might not have been shot. She should exercise her rights, her brain, and before pushing for more useless gun control legislation answer Just One Question.

For reference see:

It’s not surprising

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I don’t probably don’t blame Reuters as much as a lot of others do. People have a very strong tendency to hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. Reuters got caught and is apparently taking the appropriate action.

Someone from the culture in a war zone is going to find it much easier to get pictures and stories that a less biased outsider would be. But then they are going to have their own biases, because of their culture, in that war. If the people at Reuters biases tend to align with the incoming pictures and stories it would be easy to look at pictures and stories less critically as those that did not.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think we should look the other way when it happens. Just don’t try and arrange a lynching because of it. A light flogging should be sufficient.

Here’s the story for those that haven’t been reading the big name bloggers:

 

Conversion units

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From the UK Times:

Since Israel started to bomb Hezbollah targets in Lebanon last month, it has asked for faster delivery of JP8 jet fuel and guided bomb units (GBU28s). The jet fuel order could be worth up to $210 million and the 100 GBU28s, which are better-known as bunker busters, could cost $30 million. Other outstanding deliveries include F16 fighter jets and armoured troop carriers.

Just as computer programmers turn caffeine into code Israel converts jet fuel and bombs into dead terrorists.

Interesting times in Cuba too

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Castro is getting old and feeble. Some are even saying he is already dead. There could be fighting break out there too. A Cuba without Castro could be very interesting. It would be hard to imagine it being any worse than it is under the thumb of Castro.

Don’t be timid

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One of the things we teach in self-defense classes is to not be timid. If you take an aggressive stance, preferably with a loaded large caliber firearm, your attacker is far more likely to rearrange their to-do list such that causing you harm is placed at a much lower priority than previously. On the other hand if your voice quivers and you look like you are about to break and run that increases the odds of violence being committed against you. Apparently Israel understands this:

The Israeli cabinet has agreed to widen the country’s ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The decision, made at a closed door session, received unanimous approval, a senior political source said.

Earlier Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ruled out an immediate truce, saying Israel would continue its offensive as long as its security was threatened.

Good for them. I hope we are giving them satellite images and/or whatever else help we can without being too overt about it. Some good deals on bombs for their warplanes wouldn’t hurt my feelings either.

America’s OTHER Department of Homeland Security

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I would like to think that with last Friday’s tragic event we can wake the Jews up in this country to the benefits of sensible gun control (trigger prep, sight alignment, squeeze). Israpundit gives them a good shake here:

Now we remember why we have such little use for the Anti-Defense League: this is the same batch of Kumbaya-singers that supports gun laws like those enacted to disarm Jews in Nazi Germany and thus facilitates exactly the same kind of terroristic violence that took place last Friday.

I rather like this cartoon too:

Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper

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Remember when Kennesaw, Georgia, made it mandatory for all households to be armed, and the media viewed this with dismay?  Well note further that in Kennesaw, Georgia, where there used to be very little armed violence, there now seems to be none.

What was it that Heinlein said about an armed society?

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 3, No. 1
13 January 1995
[Barb, James, and I spent the evening last night with some Jewish friends that are loosely associated with the Jewish center that was shot up on Friday. More Jews need to be armed in this country when (not if) they are attacked again the response needs to be immediate and decisive. This will reduce future attacks. Taking a 13 year old girl hostage and shooting a pregnant women is a cowardly thing to do. It wouldn’t take much display of force to convince cowards such as these to reconsider their actions. I also give my endorsement of some Muslims condemning the attack and expressing sympathy for the victims.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ehod Danoch

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We will win because we are good and they are evil. We will win because we always came in peace and they came with a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

…

If the international community will not make an end to the Hezbollah, we will make an end to the Hezbollah. We are after the terrorists and we will be after them until Israel will be 100 percent, from all the world, secure.

 

Ehod Danoch
Israel’s general consul to the Southwest United States
July 19, 2006
Las Vegas Jewish community told Israel to prevail in current war
[Like no other country on this planet, Israel knows what we are dealing with in this world war. Just as Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews so do the Islamic extremists. Israel, you’ve got the ball, now run with it and don’t stop until you’ve won.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Michelle Malkin

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They want to destroy Israel and kill all Jews. That’s the truth. Got a solution Katie? We’d all love to hear your perky plan.

Michelle Malkin
Vent–July 18, 2006
On Katie Couric saying “We heard from many people that the news is just too depressing… I believe we can be a little more solution-oriented.”
[“Don’t be surprised if Katie’s “solutions” are socialistic, involved the loss of personal freedoms, and masquerade as “news”. Malkin introduces Couric to a cluebat.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ehud Olmert

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The murderous attack that took place this morning was not a terror attack. It was an act of war by the state of Lebanon against the state of Israel within its sovereign territory.

The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to undermine regional stability. Lebanon is responsible and Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions.

Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister of Israel
July 12, 2006
Chicago Tribune

I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act, but an act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason. The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to shake the stability of the region.

Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister of Israel
July 12, 2006
New York Times

[Regardless of which quote is more accurate (the Times Online of the UK agrees with The Chicago Tribune) the spirit is the same. This is war.–Joe]

A different approach

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There’s the good news that this animal was killed:

MOSCOW — Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, responsible for modern Russia’s worst terrorist attacks, was killed Monday when a dynamite-laden truck exploded in his convoy, Russian officials said.

Federal Security Service head Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin that Basayev had been killed overnight in a special operation conducted by Russian forces in Ingushetia, the area of southern Russia that borders Chechnya. Patrushev’s meeting with Putin was shown on Russian state television.

Basayev, 41, was behind some of Russia’s worst terror attacks, including the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 in which dozens of hostages and militants died, the 2004 school hostage taking in Beslan that killed 331, and the seizure of about 1,000 hostages at a hospital in Budyonnovsk that killed about 100.

…

The Interfax news agency quoted Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev as saying that Basayev’s body had been identified “through some of the fragments, including his head.”

Then the part that is most interesting to me is this line buried deep in the article:

Basayev was the most notorious of the Chechen warlords, eluding Russian forces for years despite Kremlin vows to hunt him down and an offer of $10 million and plastic surgery to anyone providing information leading to his death.

Do you notice anything a little different from what we are doing when we put a reward on a terrorist’s head? The Russians don’t waste time with the things like Club Gitmo. It’s, “If we find him we are going to kill him.”

I just hope they follow up on my suggestion for dealing with this type of vermin. It was the Russian school children incident that inspired me to come up with that disposal method so I think it would entirely appropriate for them to implement it with the fragments of this scumbag.

Quote of the day–Khaled Mashal

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Today, Israel is really terrorising our people … Israel and America, which talked too much about this terrorism in past are the worst, severest and ugliest examples of terrorism.

Khaled Mashal
The exiled supreme leader of Hamas
UK Times: Uncompromising message from exiled Hamas leader
July 10, 2006
[I’m sure Mashal can back up this claim with hours of video tape of Americans and Israelis doing more severe and ugly things than the beheadings of civilians, bombings of civilian aircraft in-flight, the torture and killings of school children, and violent, brutal, aircraft hijackings for the destruction of skyscrapers filled with innocent civilians.–Joe]

Slipping the leash off

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I been wondering if the U.S. quietly slipped the leash off of Israel and said, “KILL!”. They sure have been aggressive in the last few days. Here is the latest story:

Israeli warplanes struck the Palestinian Interior Ministry early Friday, setting it ablaze as Arab leaders tried to forge a deal that would halt the Israeli offensive and free a 19-year-old soldier held by gunmen allied with the ruling Islamic Hamas.

The bombing was one of more than a dozen across the Gaza Strip after midnight, though Israel called off a planned ground invasion of northern Gaza on Thursday in order to give diplomacy another chance.

If Israel were to draw some of the fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan into Gaza for extermination it wouldn’t hurt my feelings any. Show us how it is done. Just let us know if we are going to be downwind of any hazardous dust.

Iran and Russia

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I have to wonder why Russia is somewhat supportive of Iran. Iran backed terrorists just killed four Russian diplomats claiming it was because of the Russian involvement in Chechnya. Diplomats! Not just some low life engineers (like me) or soldiers, but diplomats–the official representatives of the Russian government. And with Iran helping with the conventional bomb building in Iraq what do you think will happen if Iran can produce nukes? And if nukes for Iraq isn’t worrisome enough for them what makes Russia think that Iranian nukes won’t be showing up in Chechnya and Russia?

Now Iran is saying the offer by Russia, the U.S., China, France, and Germany will be responded to in late August. The deadline given to Iran to accept or reject the offer was June 29. That’s two months to closer to having a nuclear bomb.

They are stalling for time. Time is something they must not be allowed to have. Perhaps Russia is getting a clue about that.

Protecting civilians from armed violence

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It’s already against the law to commit violent acts against innocent civilians.  More laws and/or treaties won’t help.  Allowing civilians to defend themselves is the only effective way for civilians to be protected.  Just the opposite of what the U.N. bigots are trying to accomplish:

Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) are pushing for a treaty to “protect civilians from armed violence.”

Those three groups — which have formed a coalition called the Control Arms Campaign — say their goal is to reduce arms proliferation and misuse — “and to convince governments to introduce global principles to regulate the transfers of weapons.” They are urging the United Nations to impose a “binding arms trade treaty.”

These guys want guns to remain in the hands of the governments.  And governments were the biggest perpetrators of violence against innocents in the last century and I expect they will be in this century too.  The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right.  It can only be infringed, not granted or denied.

Alan Gottlieb, of course, gets in right (in the same article):

Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the ‘great arsenal of democracy’ that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.

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We have done much for the U.N., and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself.

Now feed him to the hogs

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Fortunately the two 500 pound bombs didn’t reduce him to his molecular components:

 

In fact he lived for a few minutes after the bombs blew the house into rubble.  In his last minutes he had the opportunity to see the faces those who he should have worshiped–those who brought the fist of god down upon his head:

The house, and all inside it, was wiped out. However, Jordanian sources last night said Zarqawi did not die instantly. Though mortally wounded, he was alive when Iraqi and US troops arrived on the scene. His brutal reign ended 10 minutes after the bombs fell. Ten others died with him, among them a chief aide and two women.

There is video showing the bombs being dropped but the video I really want to see publicized is that of his remains being excreted from the ass of a pig.

Quote of the day–Muhammad Abdul Bari

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The danger is the trust between the community and the police may be broken. The community feels very vulnerable.

Muhammad Abdul Bari
Muslim Council of Britain leader
Terror raid could ‘damage trust’ 
BBC News–June 6, 2006
[And I thought that trust was broken July 7, 2005 when Muslim extremists blew up trains in The Tube and a bus.  Trust, but verify.  That’s my advice.–Joe]

Alien life

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There is a jar of red rain water in India that some are speculating may contain alien life:

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.


500x magnification

A few years ago I read a book in which the author(s) claimed to prove that intelligent alien life had an extremely small chance of existing.  They went through all kinds of different conditions that were “essential” for intelligent life or life of any sort for that matter.  A good friend of mine had recommended it to support his view that the Milky-way Galaxy and perhaps the entire universe was just waiting for humans to claim–no need to conquer it. 

I eagerly read the book but was extremely annoyed.  They made all these claims like “the temperature must be between X and Y degrees”, and the radiation level must be below such and such a level.  Just because life as we know it requires these conditions doesn’t mean all life has to require similar conditions.  In fact, why couldn’t life have evolved that required high levels of radiation?  Why not life that used radiation as an energy source?  Why not life that thrived in boiling water?  In fact there is life that thrives in “boiling” water.  There are certain organisms that live near geothermal vents on the ocean floor at temperatures above the normal 212 F temperature of boiling water.  The water isn’t boiling because of the great pressure but the temperature isn’t killing them.  And there are microbes, which evolved rather rapidly by the way, that eat stuff that is toxic to nearly all other life.  So why not alien life that thrives in environments that are impossible all life forms we know of?  No need to just “push the envelope” some in a direction or two.  Life, given enough time, could have evolved that is completely outside our realm of experience.

Think of it this way–We are immersed in an environment with rather tight constraints on it.  The temperature ranges from about -70F to about 120F.  Water is present at least in small quantities nearly everywhere.  Ionizing radiation is rare.  Sunlight of a particular spectral content and intensity is common.  How much experience do we have with conditions outside that realm?  It would be difficult for a water based creature, such as a dolphin or whale, to imagine how life could function on dry land.  They just don’t have the experience with it.  Or as one wag put it, “We don’t know who discovered water but we know it wasn’t a fish.”  The same with us and other, totally out of the box, environments.

This jar of red rain water may be enough to break a few boxes.

Bird flu scare

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There is some concern that the bird flu has just made the evolutionary jump to transmit between human easily.  It’s too early to say for certain but it looks like that concern is unfounded:

“This is not the first time, and we cannot conclusively discard or prove this to be human-to-human transmission,” Mehta said, echoing a statement made by the WHO.

On Tuesday, the WHO said limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu might have occurred in the family, but there was no scientific evidence that the virus had mutated to allow it to spread easily among people.

“What is reassuring is two of the human samples from Kubu Sembilang have shown no evidence of reassortment or significant mutations. The lineage of these viruses are very similar to H5N1 viruses from avian specimens from north Sumatra,” Mehta said.

It’s things like the bird flu that cause me to have near zero concerns about global over-population.  The glass is half-full, right?  I’m just naturally an optimist.