WTF?

Sorry, but some things just make me shake my head and think...Whaaat?

The following is and excerpt from a story about Hamas' winning the election in Palestine. It makes me wonder. Is peace really possible or have most world leaders gone completely bonkers?

Despite being behind the majority of attacks on Israeli targets during a five-year Palestinian uprising, Hamas has carried out no bombings for more than a year.

Yet international players in the stalled peace process made clear that Hamas would need to do more than hold fire if it wanted legitimacy.

OK, we see you aren't bombing things and all, but... How does this differ from the IRA?

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Snooping ain't just for Americans

It appears shrub is after Venezuelan president Chavez. Man this guy is nosy. It is also obvious he is a small, vindictive man, scratch that, it should read person (shrub is not a "man").

Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, has warned he could jail US Embassy officials caught spying after accusing them of links to Venezuelan officers suspected of espionage for the Pentagon.

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Chilling, frightening news

This should send chills up progressives' spines. A huge chunk of America is soon to get faux news style television.

Roger Ailes, the architect behind the right-wing tilt of cable news, is now remaking 35 local television stations -- broadcasting to nearly 40 percent of America's homes -- in Fox News Channel's image.

Via freepress (read more)

This guy's ready for national exposure

Los Angeles radio station KFI-AM 640 host Bill Handel enraged The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties group, for allegedly making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. CAIR has demanded Handel apologise.

Handel referred to this as his "Annual Stampede Report".

According to CAIR, Handel imitated the people screaming and then joked that the Muslims at the pilgrimage should use a helicopter to monitor pilgrimage traffic, as is done in Los Angeles with the freeways.

CAIR quoted Handel as saying, "This is Mahmoud Nolan. Hajj in the Sky. There is an accident ... Ali lost his sandal on the on-ramp to the Martin Luther King Jr. freeway ..."

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With a grain of salt...

Folks, I just saw this on Overheard in the Office.

Manager: He's so dumb he couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.

2000 North Andrews Avenue Ext.
Pompano Beach, Florida

The fact is, this is a direct quote from a blog posted yesterday. Wish I could link to it, but can't.

OK,I have to vent here. I HAVE NEVER FOUND ANYTHING WITH GOOGLE'S BLOG SEARCH!

Maybe you have a different experience, but I enter specific, fairly unique phrases/words and get shit. None of that shit includes the blog post I had read earlier.

He just does not get it

Juan Cole identifies the inherent danger with shrub.

Jan. 27, 2006 | The stunning victory of the militant Muslim fundamentalist Hamas Party in the Palestinian elections underlines the central contradictions in the Bush administration's policies toward the Middle East. Bush pushes for elections, confusing them with democracy, but seems blind to the dangers of right-wing populism.

Emphasis mine. The point is, shrub sees no danger to democracy as long as we have elections. This is, of course, bullshit considering it is probable shrub hasn't really been elected.

Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power.

Ah! There's the rub. Without "rule of law", the elections can easily produce dictators as well as effective, decent, democratic leaders. Shrub doesn't realise this. He doesn't equate his lawlessness with a threat to democracy. Oh yea, that "checks and balances" thing is probably important to a democracy too.

Or I could be completely wrong and shrub just doesn't really care.

Free long distance

If you should find the NSA has tapped your phone line and if you are not a terrorist, relax and take advantage.

Via I. Cringley, this from a former NSA employee:

"Here's one more tidbit on wire-taps: They get you free phone service! The feds tapped the phone of the Sisters of Mercy in Washington D.C. because of some anti-war stance or something they took in the 1980s. The good sisters noticed some kind of clicking on the phone at times, and finally decided that someone must have tapped into their phone. Their solution: Don't pay the bill so the phone company will have to shut off the phone. The phone never went dead, and they quit sending them bills! The Feds wouldn't let Ma Bell shut them down, and probably began paying the bills. The sisters talked long and free with their friends across the country!"

NASA feeing the heat...literally

This is a big no-no on a blog. I'm posting with no links to my source. I had them, but failed to link before posting. Now I can't, with Google and Google Blog Search, find the source of my quotes. That said...

A report released by NASA on Tuesday pretty effectively shows it is no longer debatable whether the earth is warming.

All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

And the hottest, with no assist from El Nino, was 2005.

"Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it's even fair to say that it's the warmest in the last several thousand years."

[snip]

Over the past 30 years, Earth has warmed by 1.08 degrees F (0.6 degrees C), NASA said. Over the past 100 years, it has warmed by 1.44 degrees F (0.8 degrees C).

Do the math, folks. It took 70 years for earth to warm by .36 degrees F and only 30 years to warm by another 1.08. That's 75% of the increase in less than 1/3 of the time.

I've always wanted waterfront property, but rising ocean levels isn't how I wanted to get it.

If someone can claim the above quotes or point me to their source, I would appreciate it and will update this post accordingly.

Building vs buying

As always, a great post today by James Wolcott.

He offers words from an inteview (in Le Figaro) with Emmanuel Todd in which he points out the US is a consuming nation, no longer a builder of things. Truth is, industrialized nations control the world and not nations whose people just partake of the spoils.

But what people have not wanted to see is that the dynamism of the United States is essentially a dynamism of consumption."

[snip]

The great weakness of this economic system is that it does not rest on a foundation of real domestic industrial capacity.

Considering the US's only real manufacturing is of weapons, what incentive is there to NOT promote war and conflict. Without these, where would we find a market for our "goods"?

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Don't quote the Pope

Boing Boing has this interesting post about how all words the Pope "utters or pens" will be copyrighted and require royalties be paid.

The Pope has announced that henceforth, and retroactively, the "divinely inspired" words he utters and pens will be governed by copyright, and only publishable after permission is secured and royalties are paid to the church.

via Boing Boing (Thanks, Adam!)

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Non-proliferation

This article raises far too many points for me to condense it appropriately. If you find the time, do read it. You will be glad/sad you did.

A Self-Vindicating Policy
Filed under:

* war - general
* nuclear

Building new nuclear weapons creates the threats they are supposed to avert.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24th January 2006.

In nuclear politics, every action is justified by the response it provokes. The US explains its missile defence programme by claiming that other states are developing new weapons systems, which one day it might need to shoot down. In response, Russia has activated a new weapons system, the Topol-M, designed to “penetrate US anti-missile defences”

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Iran Next? No. 2

This guy may have a good grasp of the Iran situation, but gawd I sure hope not.

Why the West will attack Iran
By Spengler

From Jacques Chirac to Mohamed ElBaradei, the Western establishment has rapidly formed a consensus on the eventual use of force against Iran. This is because Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons is based on its goal of imperial expansion through the oilfields of Southwest Asia, something the West and its allies will do anything to prevent.

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Very Long Must Read

Too many things for comments.

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OK, I buy it

This is pure bullshit.

"The President does not know him [Jack Abramoff], nor does the President recall ever meeting him," McClellan said.

If this is true, shrub is more dense than most of us thought.

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WTF?

Is the world going completely mad?

First Cherac says he would possibly use nuclear weapons against a country sponsoring terrorists. (read all)

And now Isreal hints they may attack Iran. (read all)

Hey people, don't use shrub's actions as a model. The guy is as crazy as a March hare. Destroying people is not moral policy.

Unbelievable...at least to me

Check out this picture?

(Via Neatorama via Digg)

Digby Rules!

If you read political blogs, don't even think about missing Hullabaloo.

Too Funny

Russia is trying to find anyone who can defend shrub.

Iran Next?

Why isn't this being discussed?

"Speculations have begun regarding whether the proposed March 2006 launch of the Iranian oil bourse (IOB), will become the catalyst for a significant blow to the position of the U.S. dollar?"

So its obvious Shrub and company have two reasons to attack Iran. The first is their oil and Iran's new oil exchange is the second. Seem like adequate reasons for war to me.

(read more)

However...

"It is therefore with wry amusement that I have seen a myth being widely propagated on the Internet that the genesis of this "Iran bourse" project is a wish to subvert the US dollar by denominating oil pricing in euros."

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This is Blogging

Blogger: Merc spies infiltrating UN ops in in Haiti

Kathryn Cramer is a blogger who uncovered an interesting story in Haiti. (Via Boing Boing). Well, if its good enough for Americans it must be good enough for Haitians.

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Boycott Microsoft

Oh yeah, this is gonna happen.

Microsoft boycott call over gay rights

Tuesday 17 January 2006, 14:39 Makka Time, 11:39 GMT

A US anti-gay marriage campaigner in Microsoft's home town has called for a national boycott of the software empire and other leading companies because of their support for a gay civil rights bill.

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Misplaced Priorities?

If you had the choice to spend $45 million for a significant chance at preventing a nuclear attack, would you? Well, the US government wouldn't.

North Korea, the 'Sopranos' state
By Todd Crowell

When US Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow recently called North Korea a "criminal regime", he was not speaking metaphorically. He was not talking about the North's abysmal human-rights record, illegal missile sales or efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

No, he was talking about crime - as in counterfeiting US banknotes and cigarette packages, money-laundering and drug-trafficking. These issues have suddenly risen to the forefront of Washington's agenda and become a major stumbling block in the renewal of the six-party nuclear-disarmament talks.

Hey, don't get me wrong. We should stop counterfeiting, but quietly and without jeopardising these talks.

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Why? Why Not?

Don't know why I'm doing this. I don't have a cat. Maybe that won't matter.

I won't post often. I will post when I think I know about something others might like to know.