200 billion barrel oil field in ... North Dakota?

Frank J. at IMAO posted this news item, and a quick Google search turned up a lot of information about it. Nutshell: there's enough crude oil in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota to tell the Saudis and Hugo Chavez to fuck off. The formation is estimated at anywhere from 100 to 400 billion barrels of oil.

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

We've apparently known of this oil for a long time, but back when oil was $10-$20 per barrel, the horizontal drilling required to get at it wasn't worth the cost. Now with oil hovering around $100 per barrel, that's all changed:

High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort. Computer analysis and remote sensing systems, plus smart drills that can probe horizontally or snake left and right, vastly improve the odds of locating new pools and putting them into production. And though oil is unlikely to remain priced at current stratospheric levels, prices won’t drop to much lower levels, which happened several times since the 1970s, and cause new exploration to dry up. Even if prices fell by half, many barrels of oil could still be produced -- profitably -- from the region.

The Kiplinger article goes on to note that Marathon Oil recently acquired 200,000 acres there and will drill some 300 wells over the next five years. Yeah, yeah...we still have to boost our refining capacity, but I'm sure that will ramp up once Bakken oil starts flowing in earnest.

Boo-yah.

Amazing Bass

Victor Wooten at State Theatre, Falls Church, VA.

Update: I recorded this on my cell phone and posted directly from my phone using Blogger's mobile blogging feature, more to see if I could post video that way than for any other reason. Obviously, you can, though I was somewhat limited to the amount of text I could post with it.

If you ever get a chance to catch Victor Wooten live, do it. The guy is amazing, and the rest of his band, including his brother Reggie on electric guitar, rocked the house.

The State Theatre in Falls Church is a great venue. Fashioned from an old movie theater, they offer the option of reserving tables and serve pretty good food. We ended up with a table at the front on the left-hand side only about 30 feet from the stage.

'In the end, the price was too high'

Liveleak has pulled Fitna from their site, due to threats of a "very serious nature". Here's what they said:

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.

Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.

We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high.

This just proves that Geert Wilders was right. I won't pass judgment on Liveleak's decision, especially without knowing exactly what the nature of the threats were. Employers do have a level of responsibility for the safety of their employees.

Here it is from Google video.

A tunnel between US and Russia?

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has plans to purchase the world's largest tunnel drill, and there's speculation now that he wants to build a tunnel across the Bering Straits (would it be called the 'strunnel'?) between Russia and the US.

Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich plans to buy the world's largest drill, sparking speculation that he intends to make a Channel Tunnel-style link between Russia and America.

Moscow media reports claim that the Russian billionaire is purchasing the £80 million drill-bit to tunnel a subterranean passage across the Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska.

The machine the oligarch has his eye on is 19 metres wide and eclipses by nearly five metres the world's existing biggest tunnelling drill.

Few details of the purported scheme have come to light, but industry insiders in Germany are said to believe that the plan is for a rail link between Chukotka, Siberia, and Alaska in the north-west United States.

Abramovich is also governor of Chukotka.

'Fitna' by Geert Wilders released

Released today, a Thursday, meaning it'll be fresh in the minds of the imams for Friday prayers and generalized riot incitement tomorrow.

Not as incendiary as many feared (or hoped) it would be, but powerful stuff just the same. There were those who speculated that Wilders would commit some sacrilege against a copy of the Qur'an...you'll have to wait to the end for that.

Update: Since Liveleak was cowed into, er, submission by the Islamist freakazoids, here's the video from Google.

Whither the English language?

An article in the Daily Mail says that the English language as we know it today will change dramatically over the next 100 years or so, influenced by the many people around the world who now speak English as a second language. Most astonishingly, the article claims that by 2010 -- just two years from now -- only 350 million people world-wide will speak English as their first language.

A new global tongue called "Panglish" is expected to take over in the decades ahead, experts say.

Linguists say the language of Shakespeare and Dickens is evolving into a new, simplified form of English which will be spoken by billions of people around the world.

The changes are not being driven by Britons, Americans or Australians, but the growing number of people who speak English as a second language, New Scientist reports.

[ ... ]

By 2010 around two billion people - or a third of the world's population - will speak English as a second language. In contrast, just 350 million people will speak it as a first language.

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. Consider for a moment that between the world's major English-speaking countries -- Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States -- there are roughly 415 million people, the majority of whom speak English as their primary language. The math just doesn't work. And then there's this remark on Singaporean English:

Singaporean English, for instance, combines English with Malay, Tamil and Chinese and is difficult for English-speaking Westerners to understand.

Wrong again. I've been to Singapore, where English is the official language of commerce and government, and had no trouble understanding and being understood.

I think these linguists need to get out more.

Breaking: Hillary vindicated

Whew. Am I ever glad I held off on any Hillary-bashing for her alleged fantasizing about a dangerous trip to Bosnia when she was First Lady. The video above should put to rest that smear job from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy™.

Al Gore may be looking for new work

Roger over at XDA linked an article from The Australian which drives a giant stake through the heart of the global warming/climate change fear-mongering. It's from an interview with Jennifer Marohasy of Australia's Institute of Public Affairs, and her observations on new data available to climate scientists and the impact on the climate debate.

There's way too much great material to copy here, so here's a little taste...

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

[ ... ]

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

[ ... ]

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could be considerable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

My personal favorite comes from the article's writer:

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

Read the whole thing.

Happy first Sunday following first full moon following first day of Spring!

Why is it that Easter, considered by Christians to be of greater religious significance than Christmas, the best example of the Roman Catholic Church's compromise with paganism?

Moonbat: Conservatives can't produce art

This New York Post column was linked over at Hot Air headlines today, in which Jonah Goldberg covers playwright David Mamet's move to the ideological right, as Mamet himself disclosed in an essay published in the Village Voice, no less. One paragraph in it jumped out at me:

Michael Billington might have a different response. "I am depressed to read that David Mamet has swung to the right," wrote the Guardian's theater critic of more than three decades. "What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position."

No surprise that this comes from a writer at the Guardian, the British fishwrap whose leftist leanings are the stuff of legend. And I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a supposedly intelligent person would actually believe that one's shift in political beliefs would negatively affect his artistic work. But it does.

But, as Goldberg points out, this could be just the reliably left-wing arts community setting up Mamet's inevitable banishment to the gulags on ideological grounds:

Mamet has committed the sin of free-thinking in a world that defines it as "ideological rigidity" while dubbing conformity "diversity." Already, critics are saying his work is slipping. Soon, they will say his work was never that great to begin with (that's what they've been doing to Dennis Miller for his heresy). The more Mamet rejects the divine pieties of the left and thinks for himself, the more the Greek chorus of straitjacketed "free thinkers," their heads shaking in unison, will tsk-tsk Mamet's rigidity.

Absurdities and atrocities

I snagged this from Zombie's photo essay on the latest peace march and troop-bashing festival in San Francisco.

If Voltaire was around today, I'm sure he'd have considered the whole 72 virgins thing an absurdity.

Obama's got the Wright stuff

The spin coming from Barack Obama's supporters on the Rev. Wright affair has been fast and furious. Those who question Obama's sentiments in light of Wright's hate-filled rants are accused of judging Obama guilty by association:

“The fact of the matter is people would like to move on to other things,” said Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, characterizing remarks by Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as “outrageous,” but saying they are not relevant to Obama’s candidacy.

“He’s rejected it. He said no– he doesn’t have any association with it. He finds these comments outrageous,” Dodd, an Obama supporter and former presidential candidate, told “FOX News Sunday.” He added that “guilt by association is not typically American.”

I, for one, don't want to "move on to other things". Wright's remarks are very relevant to Obama's candidacy.

It's not like Wright was caught dipping into the church's till and Obama's political opponents are projecting the crime on to Obama. That Obama considered Wright a "spiritual adviser" makes Wright's "spirit" worth examining. When Jeremiah Wright's "spirit" moves him to say the hateful, divisive things he said, what does that say of those he spiritually advises?

The racial healer mask slipped when Michelle Obama said she'd never been proud of America until her husband started winning primaries. Now I think it's safe to say that mask has been pulled completely off.

'Asian youths' involved in 'faith-hate' crime against British priest

It took two writers for the Daily Mail to write this entire article on "Asian youths" who attacked a Christian priest in a "faith hate" crime without once using the word "Islam" or "Muslim", or any variation thereof.

A vicar was in hospital last night after being attacked in his churchyard by two youths in what is being treated as a 'faith hate' crime.

Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was kicked and punched in the head as one of the attackers screamed "f***ing priest".

[ ... ]

The incident happened outside St George-in-the-East Church in Wapping, East London.

It has regularly had windows smashed by youths - who on one occasion shouted: "This should not be a church, this should be a mosque."

Naturally, certain "community leaders" say it's just, well, boys being boys.

But some youth leaders and councillors in the community played down the faith hate attacks and said drink and drug problems in the area were often to blame.

Kamil Ahmed, leader at the Ensign Youth Club, based on a council estate close to the church, said: "There are a lot of 14 to 16-year-old Asians, drunk and high on cocaine, wandering round the estate.

"It might be the people responsible for this attack reacted badly to being told off rather than targeting the church in a faith hate way."

Danish banks offering sharia-compliant loans

I've often wondered how one mortgage can be compliant with Islamic law and another not. After all, there's no incentive for a lender to loan money to a borrower without getting more money back than what is loaned. Money, after all, costs money. So I read with some interest this article in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten which gave a rough description of how the loans work.

What makes this loan different from an ordinary loan is that Amanah [the 'lending' company] buys the property that the customer is interested in and then sells it to the customer with a conditional deed, so that the buyer can use the property but will only own it outright after the last mortgage payment is made, typically after 30 years.

This model is based on the Sharia-approved Islamic financing system, which involves 'Musharaka' (partnership), 'Ijara' (rent) and future ownership, 'Tamalluk'. The property buyer does not pay interest on the loan and therefore does not create debt.

So it seems that the problem with conventional lending as we in the west know it is the creation of debt. But how does this sharia-compliant loan not create debt? If the borrower must "rent" the property for a period of 30 years, has he not taken on a debt equal to the yearly rent times 30? I don't believe for a moment that there isn't a clause in the "lease" providing for stiff and substantial penalties if the "renter" terminates the "lease" before 30 years are up.

If the issue is the interest on the loan, then this amounts to nothing more than pulling a fast one on Allah by paying someone else to pay the interest on behalf of the borrower.

The company he keeps

It may be a bit unfair to cast guilt by association on someone, but when those associates are your pastor and your wife, well, it's hard not to. In Barack Obama's repudiation of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's more fiery and controversial statements -- posted appropriately enough at the Huffington Post left-wing hate site -- Obama claims to have never heard any of Wright's more inflammatory hate speech.

Since Obama has been a member of that church for 20 years, he must take a Homer Simpson-esque approach to church attendance, slumbering in the pews with drool dangling from his lip during the sermon. With the sheer volume of Jeremiah Wright videos now coming forth, there's no other explanation. As for his wife Michelle's similar America-bashing and Afro-centric utterances, one can further extend the Homer Simpson analogy ("Homer! Are you even listening to me?").

D'oh.

Weather Channel founder: Sue Al Gore

The founder of the Weather Channel thinks Al Gore should be sued for fraud in order to bring the debate on global warming into court. He's pretty sure the global warming argument would lose.

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."

I hadn't thought about it before, but maybe such a challenge in court will make the global warming industrial machine put up or shut up.

Spitzer? I never touched her!

One of my least favorite Democrat politicians, Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), has been brought low in a prostitution scandal. The righty blogosphere is redolent with the sweet, sweet fragrance of schadenfreude.

Charles Johnson at LGF has been particularly merciless in blasting the media's failure to identify Spitzer's party affiliation (compared to similar MSM coverage of Republican faux pas), but the best post there is on the verbal and mental gymnastics of a Daily Kos diarist who suggests that Spitzer should get a pass for being a Democrat. As a Democrat, you see, Spitzer should be held to lower standards:

Kevin Drums suggests that the usual charges of hypocrisy in prostitution/infidelity scandals come into play here, but I don't think that accusation is quite as fair this time. As a prosecutor, it was expected of Spitzer to bust prostitution rings and it's not as if he (like the Republicans) touts his commitment to sexual morality-- over that of his political opponents-- in order to get elected. He may be a hypocrite if (as is presumable) he tells his wife he's faithful to her, and he tells people that they should stay faithful to their spouses, etc. But politically, he's not a hypocrite, and it doesn't have it anything to do with his politics the way it does for some others who got caught.

Holy shit. If this is the modern voice of the Democratic Party, they're well and truly fucked.

Update: Thanks for the link, Theo!

Unlikely coincidence watch

The FBI says that the bombing of the military recruiting station in Times Square and the letters received by Democrats in Congress with pictures of the station and the phrase "We did it" are unrelated.

The FBI said yesterday that a man who mailed rambling letters to Congress this week featuring a photo of a Manhattan military recruiting station was not linked to Thursday's bombing outside that station.

Scores of congressional Democrats received identical antiwar letters in recent days that declared "We did it" and included photos of a man standing in front of the iconic Times Square recruiting station, officials said.

But the FBI interviewed the Los Angeles man who sent the letters and concluded he was not the person captured on cameras riding a bicycle before and after a crude bomb exploded at the station, officials said. The FBI also searched the man's house.

"The letters had no connection to the bombing," said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI field office in Los Angeles. "It appears to have been a matter of coincidental details and unfortunate timing on his part."

[ ... ]

Officials said the "we did it" language referred to the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006. "This was a citizen exercising his right to make a political comment to his representatives," Eimiller said.

Judging by comments left by readers on some righty blogs there's plenty of skepticism about the FBI's conclusion, but I'm inclined to agree that someone who just bombed a recruiting station wouldn't provide his name and return address on the envelopes.

But I still can't help but think that the denizens of Daily Kos and Democratic Underground would have been much happier if the guy had ended up in Gitmo. This story just proves that we don't live in the Bushitler fascist totalitarian state they all claim we do.

Democratic party base: al Qaeda a fabrication

A web site called polidics.com blows the lid off the CIA's fabrication of al Qaeda. The group never existed, you see, until George W. Bush wanted an excuse to wage war on Islam. I haven't fully plumbed the depths yet of polidics.com, but at first glance, it appears to be a confluence of ultra far-right, ultra far-left and 9/11 Trutherism, with a dash of every global conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure.

The DUmmies over at Democratic Underground, of course, have taken the bait. Some sample comments:

This is what I have been saying for years...

Yeah, they think that so called 'terra ists' that live in caves, are coming to get us?????
The dumbest thing I have ever heard.........

Bush Senior split off and privatized various factions of the CIA back in the 80s so that they could operate outside of Congressional oversight. He also helped build up Saudi intelligence and military. The Shadow Government has been up to no good ever since.

Every day these people vindicate my analysis of the complete inversion of reality that we are experiencing. Bushco invented AlQaeda.

Remember...these are the same brainless idiots who want to elect a Democrat for president.

Iran's proxy war with Israel

A Hamas military leader has confirmed what most have already suspected: that fighters from the Palestinian party's "armed wing" (number 8 on the top 10 signs your group may be a terrorist organization) are being trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Israel has long insisted that Iran is behind this training. Last week Yuval Diskin, the head of the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, said as much when he claimed that Hamas had “started to dispatch people to Iran, tens and a promise of hundreds”. He provided no evidence.

The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.

The details he gave suggested that, if anything, Shin Bet has underestimated the extent of Iran’s influence on Hamas’s increasingly sophisticated tactics and weaponry.

And that's not all. While the curdled cream of the Hamas crop go to Iran for advanced training, the rank and file infantry grunts are being trained in Syria.

According to the commander, a further 650 Hamas fighters have trained in Syria under instructors who learnt their techniques in Iran. Sixty-two are in Syria now.

But have no fear. I'm sure that just as soon as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton get elected, they'll engage in substantive dialog with Syria and Iran and all this will come to screeching halt.

Putin: New Russian boss same as the old Russian boss

In an exercise in stating the obvious, outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin said that the West shouldn't expect an easier time with Russia's new president, Dmitry Medvedev, when he takes office.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West that it would have it no easier under his successor Dmitry Medvedev, who he said would actively defend Russian interests on the world stage.

Mr Putin said he had the feeling some world leaders were waiting for his presidency to end, as they found it uncomfortable to work with a former KGB spy.

But he said Mr Medvedev, who was elected president in the March 2 election but will not take office until May, was a Russian patriot who would defend the country’s interests.

"I do not think our partners will have it easier with him," he said.

The angry left

When I heard a news snippet this morning while waiting for my flight out of LaGuardia, I couldn't wait to see what the reaction from the far left would be. The news item was about Rep. Steve King's (R-IA) comment that al Qaeda would be dancing in the streets if Barack Obama got elected.

So I checked that repository of left-wing anger and vitriol, Huffington Post, to see what their readers' take on it would be. Imagine my disappointment to find that comments were already closed. Disappointment, but not surprise. This is standard procedure for HuffPo, whose readers' comments are often so over the top that HuffPo's editors can't bear the thought of them seeing the light of day. So on those topics that elicit the more deranged responses, comments on the article are closed, casting all earlier comments into oblivion.

I have to admit to being a bit baffled by the anger and hatred on the far left. If ignorance is bliss, they should be the happiest little wankers on the planet.

Power failure

I almost put up a post this morning about this fawning article on Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser Samantha Power from the London Telegraph. But I was getting ready to leave for the airport for a day trip to New York (which is turning into an overnighter) and, quite frankly, I didn't know where to begin. Between the sighing over her basketball games with George Clooney and her undying love for his holiness, I was having a hard time keeping down my breakfast. A few samplings:

"Any British leader is harmed domestically in terms of public standing by association with President Bush, the reverse will happen with President Obama. Obama reminds people of the better angels [sic? Did she really mean winged things with harps, or did the Telegraph intend to transcribe it as 'angles'? --ed.] of America."

[ ... ]

Miss Power is the self proclaimed "genocide chick", [Snicker. --ed.] who won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting from Bosnia.

She plays basketball with George Clooney [Cue the swooning. --ed.] and is the inspiration for the latest David Hare play.

This auburn haired Irish journalist is a professor at Harvard, the founder of a human rights think tank and was cited by Men's Vogue as one of the most beautiful women in the world. [Uh, it's not like I'm gonna leave my wife and write bad checks. --ed.]

[ ... ]

In America, Miss Power has been compared to Condoleeza Rice.

"I'm nothing like her," she says. "I don't have any conventional political ambition." [Nor any, you know, actual foreign policy experience. --ed.]

But if Mr Obama wins the Presidential race she is likely to remain a powerful force. "I'd do anything he asked me to do. It's not about working for the next President of the United States, it's Obama. If he ran General Motors I'd be working for him."

It's not about what Barack Obama can do for America or humanity, see, it's all about Obama!. Makes one wonder how many Obama posters she's got on her bedroom walls.

Alas, Ms. Power has been banished from His Holy Presence for, well, for calling a spade a spade.

Samantha Power, a senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Barack Obama, resigned Friday morning after calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster" in an interview with a European newspaper.

I love the smell of the Democratic Party melting down in the morning!

Questionable science turns air travel into news

When American Airlines flew a nearly empty Boeing 777 from Chicago to London recently, it became a news event.

A major airline is under fire from environmentalists for flying an aircraft across the Atlantic with only five passengers on board.

The flight from Chicago to London meant that the plane, a Boeing 777, used 22,000 gallons of fuel.

It led to American Airlines being accused of reckless behaviour by green lobby groups.

The latest "eco- scandal" flight took place on February 9 after American was forced to cancel one of its four daily services from Chicago to London.

While it was able to find places for nearly all the passengers on the fully-booked flight, five still had to be accommodated. Those who did fly were upgraded to the business class cabin.

But while they enjoyed lavish hospitality, the airline was accused of an "obscene waste of fuel" by Friends of the Earth.

Of course, this kind of thing happens all the time due to aircraft scheduling. Yet the idiots in the environmental movement make it sound as if American Airlines didn't care about losing some $60,000 on the flight. According to these know-nothings, they did it only because they don't care about the environment.

Of course, had the airline chosen to cancel the Chicago to London flight, a consumer group would have grabbed headlines over a crass, money-grubbing American corporation stranding hundreds of travelers at Heathrow because they didn't want to spend a few bucks to provide an aircraft.

All in a day's work for the blame America first crowd.

'Crime wave' hits Swedish city

English language Swedish news site The Local describes a 'crime wave' that hit the city of Malmö this morning. Generally, a crime wave is regarded as a spate of muggings, assaults, robberies and the like. The crime wave that hit Malmö was, er, a bit different.

Police in Malmö have created a special unit to investigate a wave of crimes in the city on Thursday morning that included the discovery of a car bomb, a bank robbery, a burning car and a suspicious bag.

"We got a tip-off that a number of explosive devices were to be detonated in Malmö and at the same time we were also alerted to the bank robbery, which was soon followed by a new alert and an explosive device outside the police station," said police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford.

"We think the car explosion was a diversionary maneuvre for the bank robbery. That's our hypothesis but we are also open to other possibilities," she added.

A city centre pre-school was evacuated early in morning after a car bomb exploded outside the premises.

The car belonged to a parent who had just dropped a child off at the daycare centre on Carl Gustafs Väg, Skånska Dagbladet reports.

Police later confirmed that an explosive device had been placed under the rear section of the vehicle.

Sounds to me more like a coordinated terror attack, although the diversionary tactic theory makes some sense.

One of the annoying things about Scandinavian news sources is that they rarely, if ever, describe suspects, and surely there were witnesses to the bank robbery. But Malmö has a huge Muslim immigrant population, and there are parts of the city that are "no-go" areas for emergency services due to attacks by the good citizens there.

Explosion at NYC recruiting station

An explosion this morning at a military recruiting station in Times Square was apparently caused by an explosive device, possibly thrown by a bicyclist. Thankfully, there were no injuries and the damage is described as minor. This was almost certainly the work of one of those peaceful, non-violent, anti-war moonbats.

I've got a meeting in Manhattan just a few blocks from Times Square tomorrow...I hope they have the traffic mess cleaned up by then.

Forced marriages causing mass truancy in Britain

Dozens of 'Asian' school girls under the age of 16 have been missing from classes for at least two months in Bradford, England. It's believed their families have married them off.

Dozens of children are missing from school amid fears they have been forced into arranged marriages, it was revealed yesterday.

In Bradford, 33 children remain "unaccounted for" after being off school for at least two months with no explanation.

The Government is also concerned about another 14 areas of the country where it is feared children under 16 could also be missing from school rolls.

A reader's comment on the article is priceless:

Bradford does NOT have a substantial Asian population, it has a substantial MUSLIM population. It really annoys Hindus and Sikhs that we're always put in the same boat. The social problems within Bradford (forced marriage, honour killings, genetic recessive disorders, lower social, economic and educational standards) are almost all exclusive to the Muslim Pakistani, not the Indian Sikh or Hindu community. Stop avoiding the issues!

- Rav, London

Obama: Americans ashamed to say they're Americans

Link: sevenload.com

This was posted at Hot Air last night as their quote of the day, with no explanation given and none required. According to his holiness, Americans traveling abroad today are ashamed to admit they're American.

I've got news for Mr. Obama: I travel abroad several times each year, and have never had a problem saying, with pride, that I'm an American.

Barack Obama and his wife become more offensive to me the longer they campaign.

Russia elections 'not quite worthy of Stalin, but not bad'

Is good friendly Russian police help citizen who fall down, da?

As expected, Russian president Vladimir Putin's protégé Dmitry Medvedev was elected by a wide margin in Russia. And, just as expected, the jails are filling up with Russians protesting the rigged election.

Riot police arrested dozens of opposition supporters protesting Russia's flawed election shortly after Gordon Brown warned president-elect Dmitry Medvedev that he would be judged by his actions.

The clashes in central Moscow came as world leaders offered Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor lukewarm congratulations but stopped short of condemning an election win that critics have described as stage-managed.

[ ... ]

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, was much more scathing about an election that has left the world uncertain as to who will really lead Russia. Mr Putin will return as prime minister after his protégé is inaugurated on May 7.

"The election was conducted Russian-style, with a victory known in advance," Mr Kouchner said, adding that Mr Medvedev was elected with "very surprising figures, not quite worthy of Stalin, but not bad." Mr Medvedev won Sunday's election with 70 percent of the vote, matching the figure that analysts have long said the Kremlin wanted him to receive.

As long as the Russian economy remains propped up by inflated oil and gas prices, the citizens will stay pretty quiet and go along with the sham democracy. But if and when those prices collapse, it's going to get very interesting there.

Chavez spoiling for a fight

Colombian forces killed a commie narco-trafficking rebel leader in a raid yesterday on a camp across the border in Ecuador. As a result, Venezuela's batshit commie president Hugo Chavez ordered a massive deployment of military forces to their border with Colombia. A rather bizarre response from a country not involved in the dispute.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez moved tanks to the Colombian border and mobilized fighter jets Sunday, warning Bogota could spark a war after its troops struck inside another of its neighbors, Ecuador.

Reacting to Colombia's killing Saturday of a Colombian rebel over the border in Ecuador, a Venezuelan ally, Chavez also withdrew all of his diplomats from Bogota in the worst dispute between the neighbors since he came to office in 1999.

"Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the frontier with Colombia immediately, tank battalions. The air force should mobilize," Chavez said, adding he will bolster his military's presence along the 1,400-mile border.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air wonders whether this is tacit admission of a Venezuelan alliance with FARC, the Colombian communist rebel group. I'm inclined to think so.

Nearly two years ago, I posted this item about Hugo's arms buildup and the possibility of some of those arms ending up in the hands of FARC rebels.

Danish PM cautions Clinton and Obama

Yeah, it's dampened somewhat by the fact that it's coming from one of the few countries in Western Europe with a bit of backbone, but when any European prime minister warns that the foreign policy platforms of the two Democratic candidates are dangerous, it's noteworthy.

The prime minister's support of the Bush administration was evident during his US visit as he warned Democratic presidential candidates about changing America's course.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Ramussen spoke out Thursday against the Democratic presidential candidates' platforms during his visit to Washington DC, cautioning them against radically altering the nation's current policies.

While the PM refused to get deeply involved in the US presidential elections, he spoke out against a new administration tinkering with the country's economic and military courses. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have criticised a number of the current administration's policies, including the NAFTA free trade agreement and the war in Iraq.

I'm sure John Kerry would say that Mr. Rasmussen fails the 'global test'.