Laugher headline of the day

The UN can't seem to find its ass with both hands, yet according to Reuters, 'U.N. urged to take action on asteroid threat'.

An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.

So let's see...the UN stands around with its collective dick in its hand while:

• Various thugs and dictators engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing
• The president of a militantly Islamic state develops nuclear weapons while advocating the destruction of Israel
• UN leaders profit from the Iraqi oil-for-food scam
• And so on and so forth...
  

And these guys want the UN to do something about asteroids?

Arab states, Iran equipped and trained AQ in Somalia

I guess the most surprising thing here is the sheer magnitude of the aid, some of it from our alleged allies.

MIDDLE EASTERN countries secretly armed and supported suspected Al-Qaeda recruits in the failed state of Somalia in a direct challenge to western interests in east Africa, according to a United Nations report.

Hundreds of Islamist fighters were flown, with Eritrean assistance, from Somalia to Syria and Libya for military training. Others were taken to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah, the report to the UN security council has revealed.

UN investigators also detailed military aid given to the Islamists by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Arab states friendly to the West. Iran also supplied 125 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, 80 of which arrived by sea in dhows and the rest by air.

A clandestine operation to smuggle the fighters out of Somalia began in July last year.

In an interview, Evgueny Zakharov, the owner of Aerolift, an airline with a fleet of ageing Antonov and Ilyushin transport aircraft, based in Johannesburg but registered in the British Virgin Islands, said: “We transported lots of men in uniform — Arabian men with masks.

“They were disciplined men and although none of them had rank badges there were obviously people in charge. They got on the aircraft as if they had done it many times before.”

Read the whole thing.

London "Mega Mosque" may be a no-go

The controversial London mosque with a planned capacity of 70,000 worshippers may be blocked by the British government.

That the group driving the project is Tablighi Jamaat should have been enough to spike the planned Islamic center. But it looks like the government will take the path of least resistance:

There are clear planning grounds on which the development could be turned down. It is so close to the main Olympic venues that it may interfere with preparations for the Games.

The Government source said that the planning application needed to be rejected "to give the Olympics a clear run".

Boost your self esteem

Pledging allegiance is for wimps...worship that thang!

It's a bitch being an American these days. The Europeans hate us, the Russians hate us (again), Latin America hates us, the Muslim world really hates us...it's all hate, all the time for us.

So if all that hate is grinding you down, head to the island of Tanna in the island nation of Vanuatu off the eastern coast of Australia. It seems they have a cargo cult there that worships -- are you ready for this? -- America. But you may want to bring some durable goods with you.

Village elders tell of how a mysterious outsider came to their forbears in a series of apparitions, telling them to go back to their traditional ways. The idea of a messiah-like outsider was given a huge boost during the Second World War, when hundreds of Tannese men were recruited by the Americans to build roads, airstrips and bases. They were impressed by the large amounts of cargo – tanks, weapons, medicine and food – brought by the US military. The shadowy spirit figure they already believed in gradually assumed a name and a nationality – Jon Frum is believed to be a contraction of John From America, a reference perhaps to a soldier who showed particular generosity.

There's probably a great comedy movie in the making here, but I somehow don't see Hollywood rushing to make a movie that has anything to do with America worship.

Religion of Polio

Not satisfied spreading hatred and violence, some Islamic militants and preachers in Pakistan are now responsible for spreading polio.

Claiming that a polio immunization program is a US plot to sterilize Muslims, militants detonated a roadside bomb, killing a physician and wounding three others.

A doctor was killed by a roadside bomb in Pakistan today as Islamist militants tried to halt a polio immunisation campaign which, they say, is an American plot to sterilise Muslims.

Dr. Abdul Ghani was killed and three guards wounded after he visited a mullah, or religious leader, in Salarzai, a village in Bajaur tribal region in the borderlands with Afghanistan.

[ ... ]

Last month, the parents of 24,000 children in Pakistan's Northern Areas bordering Afghanistan refused to allow health workers to vaccinate their offspring against polio.

Radical mullahs claim the polio campaign is an American bid to reduce the world's Muslim population by spreading sterility. This message is carried on local radio stations and from the loudspeakers of some mosques.

Health experts say the risks of a polio epidemic have increased. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded 39 cases of polio in Pakistan last year, compared with 28 in 2005.

[ ... ]

Muslim clerics in northern Nigeria spread the same message in 2003. They managed to halt all vaccinations in Kano state for about one year. By the time they resumed, 257 children had been paralysed and polio had spread into two neighbouring countries.

Un-freaking-believable.

Final observations on the Marcotte/McEwan debacle

The dust is settling on John Edwards' poor hiring decisions, so it's time for one last post on the topic.

Until the news broke in the conservative blogosphere about these two self-absorbed brats, I'd never heard of them. My ignorance of their existence didn't surprise me too much, since I don't read many of the "progressive" blogs. But still, I thought the names of a couple of bloggers important enough to be hired by a presidential candidate would have at least rung some sort of memory bells. But no, nothing.

So after reading some of the posts at Michelle Malkin's blog, Hot Air and a few others, I took a look at Marcotte's and McEwan's blogs. Ugh.

Now, understand that after 27 years in the military, I'm hardly priggish about colorful language. Neither of them use language I myself don't use on a fairly regular basis. I'm just a bit more judicious about where and around whom I use that language. Yes, I drop the "F" bomb here on my own blog from time to time. Six times, to be exact, over the course of over 500 posts. That doesn't include my earlier post on this topic in which I quoted extensively from Ms. Marcotte. But it wasn't the language that turned me off.

Far worse than the language was the bitter hatred directed at Christians, particularly Catholics. I'm not a religious guy (godbag or christofascist in M&M parlance), but it was hard not to take offense at the immaculate conception being referred to as God filling Mary with his "hot, white, sticky holy spirit". But even that didn't bug me that much.

What got me was that they're feminists, and apparently, that's why Edwards hired them. It's like being hired because you're...I don't know...a blacksmith or something. Like blacksmiths, feminists are quaint and evoke a certain nostalgia for days gone by, but these days they're irrelevant. Who needs 'em? In this age, what purpose do they serve?

But in the end, that's what it was all about for Marcotte and McEwan. The patriarchal society felt threatened by a couple of female bloggers (as if!) and they had to be put in their place. Not one moment of introspection over their own acts. Just the Catholic League and the "right-wing noise machine" keeping women in their place.

Pathetic.

'Struggle for the soul of British Islam'

The Times has a must-read column by Dean Godson on Islam's culture of victimhood in Britain. The net-net of it all is that the majority of British Muslims are growing sick and tired of the same handful of Muslim community "spokespersons" claiming to represent them.

The “anger” of some Muslim community “representatives” with the Independent Police Complaints Commission — after its “whitewash” of the Met’s conduct during the Forest Gate raid — deserves to be taken with one big pinch of salt. The terms of trade are slowly shifting against their brand of victim culture. And, deep down, they know it.

[ ... ]

The same sort of characters also peddled a narrative of a “community under siege” after the recent Birmingham raids. But for all the talk of an imminent explosion, there was no riot in Brum — or Forest Gate.

Birmingham will prove politically more significant in the long term. Since then, more and more British Muslims have piped up effectively to proclaim “not in my name”. They are fed up with the atmosphere of oppression and extremism in their neighbourhoods; as far as they are concerned, the main threat to Muslims are, well, other Muslims. And they believe that their “leaders” have done far too little to fight this.

Mohammed Naseem, the “moderate” chairman of the Birmingham Central mosque, personifies the problem. He attracted much attention recently when he opined that Britain is starting to resemble a Nazi state. Everyone pays court to him as a “community leader”. Yet whom does Dr Naseem actually represent? He ran as the Respect candidate for Birmingham Perry Barr in the 2005 election, against the impeccably nonsectarian Labour incumbent Khalid Mahmood. He won a mere 5.7 per cent of votes — compared with Mr Mahmood’s 47 per cent. Enough said?

In what way is Dr Naseem “moderate”? In comparison to troublemaking local factions such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir, he no doubt is. But there is very little in Dr Nazeem’s world view that divides him from the extremists. Like them, he propagates the myth of Muslim victimhood. He told Panorama after 9/11 that “in our mind, we are not convinced that those people who perpetrated these actions were actually Muslims”. He said similar things about the 7/7 bombers, much as he condemned that atrocity.

Dr Naseem can denounce 7/7 until el Andalus becomes Muslim again, but the fact remains that he caters to the sense of oppression that fuels jihadi violence. David Cameron rightly gave him short shrift when he visited the Birmingham Central mosque a few days after the police raids. The Government is no less contemptuous. Indeed, it was noted at the highest levels that the response of the Muslim Council of Britain to Dr Naseem’s enormities was a deafening silence.

Read it all.

'Husbanding his resources'

I couldn't resist snagging this image from FOX News' web site

Way back in 1991 during Gulf War I, Saddam Hussein started launching fighter planes by the score. Not to challenge allied air forces for air superiority, but to escape to Iranian air bases. When asked during a press briefing his thoughts on this odd tactic, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf replied "I suspect he's husbanding his resources". [No link for that quote...I'm quoting from memory. --ed.]

Iran, of course, never returned the aircraft to Iraq. In fact, it was only years later that they finally allowed the aircrews to return home. So Saddam would have been better off, dignity-wise, letting his fighter pilots put up a fight. He ended up 'husbanding his resources' for Iran.

There are conflicting reports now that Muqtada al Sadr aka "Mookie" may be continuing this peculiar Iraqi tradition. While an aide denies that Mookie has fled to Iran, I'm more inclined to believe earlier reports that he left Iraq for Teheran along with the top commanders of his Mahdi Army militia. Husbanding his resources, as it were, ahead of the surge.

This tactic will work for Mookie much better than it did for Saddam, unfortunately. Muqtada al Sadr is Iran's Shi'ite pet in Iraq and the mullahs will be eager to turn him and his Mahdi Army loose as soon as the Democrat-controlled congress is able to force the abandonment of Iraq.

American jihadi

An American by the name of Daniel Joseph Maldanado has been arrested in Somalia while receiving terrorist training from al Qaeda.

An American citizen charged with receiving terrorist training at an Al Qaeda camp in Somalia — including classes in how to become a homicide bomber [Fox News-ese for 'suicide bomber' --ed.] and "wage violent jihad" — was taken into custody by FBI agents and returned to the U.S. Monday night night, Justice Department officials told FOX News.

Which of course begs the question: Just how much training does one actually need to become a suicide bomber? I mean, it's not much harder than putting on a jacket and walking into a pizzeria, right?

'Disdain for the sun'

I'm still not ready to discard the notion that 6.5 billion people belching, farting and tooling around in planes, trains and automobiles have at least some effect on the world's climate. At the same time though, I'm not ready to listen to Al Gore's doomsday scenarios.

One reason for that is articles like this one, which when taken with so many others like it expose the Global Warming/Climate Change movement for what it is: a money-making industry that deals harshly with anyone or anything that threatens their cash flow.

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

[ ... ]

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

Read it all.

The Iranian connection

Bang

It's not just amped-up roadside bombs that Iran's been supplying to the insurgency. Shi'ite snipers have apparently also been receiving fancy Austrian-made sniper rifles, as well.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.

Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Over the last six months American forces have found small caches of the £10,000 rifles but in the last 24 hours a raid in Baghdad brought the total to more than 100, US defence sources reported.

But CNN's Jack Cafferty thinks Iran's meddling is just fair play.

Norway reclassifies Russia as military threat

In another sign that relations between Russia and, well, pretty much the rest of the world aren't all they could be, a report from a Norwegian defense institute classifies Russia as a military threat to Norway's security.

One wonders if Russian president Vladimir Putin is missing the "good old days" of the Cold War.

Hillary the communist

This is the hopefully soon to be infamous video clip in which Hillary Clinton vows she's going to "take those [excessive oil company] profits and put them into a strategic energy fund".

A note to the clueless: Those profits aren't hers or the government's to take. They belong to the shareholders.

I'm going to try and repost this clip once a week throughout the campaign season as a reminder of Hillary's communist proclivities.