| January 2006 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
From Wired: "The number of fuel stations offering ethanol is expected to explode by 400 percent this year to 2500."
From NewsMax:
New Saddam Documents Detail Terror Training
The Bush administration is preparing to release never-before-seen documents captured when U.S. forces liberated Baghdad that chronicle the extensive training of thousands of radical Islamic terrorists by Saddam Hussein's regime.
...The existence of these documents, and the nature of what they describe, has been confirmed to the Standard by eleven U.S. government officials, Hayes says.
If true, the documents represent a bombshell finding that shatters the claims of Iraq war critics who have maintained for three years that Saddam Hussein had no connection whatsoever to Islamic terrorism.
If this pans out, the only thing more amazing will be watching the contortions MSM will go through in an effort to avoid printing a word about it.
Representative John Murtha has now actually said it out loud :
Appearing at a town meeting in Arlington, Virginia, with fellow Democratic Rep. James Moran, Murtha said, "A year ago, I said we can't win this militarily, and I got all kinds of criticism." Now, Murtha told the strongly antiwar audience,"I worry about a slow withdrawal which makes it look like there's a victory when I think it should be a redeployment as quickly as possible and let the Iraqis handle the whole thing."
He opposes anything that could make it look like he was wrong when he said the U.S. could have no victory.
He actually opposes anything that even 'looks like' a U.S. victory.
Nothing could more dramatically dramatize that Liberals who take positions saying that the U.S. cannot succeed, are forced to root for U.S. failure, so as to keep from having their own predictions proved wrong
Enraged Sunnis Blame Al-Qaida:
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The residents of Ramadi had had enough. As they frantically searched the city's hospital for relatives killed and wounded in bomb blasts at a police recruiting station Thursday, they did something they had never publicly done: They blamed al-Qaida in Iraq, the insurgent movement led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"Neither the Americans nor the Shiites have any benefit in doing this. It is Zarqawi," said Khalid Saadi, 42, who came to the hospital looking for his brother, Muhammed. Saadi said he hoped that sympathies in the city, considered a hotbed of support for the Sunni Arab insurgency, would turn against al-Zarqawi's faction.
Saadi later learned that his brother was one of at least 130 people killed in attacks Thursday in Iraq, most occurring within an hour's time.
...The attacks came a day after insurgents killed 42 people at a funeral in the city of Muqdadiyah.
Judge Edward Cashman of Vermont has gotten the goofy notion that his job is to support criminals. He doesn't want to see them punished, since he believes punishment won't improve them:
Claiming he no longer believes in punishment, a Vermont judge issued a 60-day sentence to a man who confessed to repeatedly raping a girl over a four-year period, beginning when she was 7 years old.
..."The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," Cashman told a packed Burlington courtroom made up mostly of people related to the victim.
Perhaps the judge is speaking of himself. He may feel that serving as a judge and handing out punishment has 'corroded his soul.'
That's specific to him. If he feels like that, he should quit being a judge -- which essentially is what he's doing by refusing to protect society by punishing criminals.
The judge has forgotten that removing punishment for vicious crime, will encourage others to commit similar crimes.
Judge Cashman should resign.
Click for a larger image.
Last night Ted Hayes, activist for the homeless, spoke at a meeting of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, and had a number of interesting things to say. From my notes:
As former slaves we will say to corporations that hire illegal immigrants, 'You will not pay illegal immigrants slave wages -- you will pay Americans prevailing wages.'
...Because I was born Black I was a Democrat. That's the way it is. But I noticed that along the way all the people who helped me were Republicans.
Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist was there, and said:
In California alone, 15 to 18 billion dollars a year goes to supporting illegal immigrants.
Gilchrist noted that these funds would be better used to address society's needs regarding the homeless.
If anyone would like yet another example of the stark contrast between Western culture, and the Jihadist culture such as that of the Palestinians, it can be found in the revolting response of various Palestinians to poor health of Ariel Sharon. Western nations don't hand out candies to celebrate the poor health of anyone. It's completely repulsive.
Cheney strongly defends eavesdropping:
Cheney said as more time passes since the September 11 attacks, "some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country, and to back away from the business at hand."
"This is perhaps a natural impulse, as time passes and the alarms don't sound," he said.
But he said "America has been protected not by luck but by sensible policy decisions by decisive action at home and abroad and by round-the-clock efforts on the part of people in law enforcement, intelligence, the military, and homeland security."
It's surprising that Liberals would oppose U.S. efforts to bring the Mid-East into the 21st century. Here's what we're dealing with:
Taliban Beheads Teacher for Educating Girls
The insurgents claim that educating girls is against Islam and they even oppose government-funded boys' schools because they teach subjects other than religion.
Many Islamic nations oppress women. Liberals should strongly support efforts to end such oppression.
British author Anthony Browne has published a book on the effects of political correctness:
He also claimed "political correctness" had "allowed the creation of alienated Muslim ghettoes which produce young men who commit mass murder against their fellow citizens" and public debate on how to provide better health care had been suppressed because "the NHS is one of the few organisations that actually runs on the principle of political correctness". Mr Browne said: "Political correctness is literally killing people. If someone is poor because they are lazy, ill-disciplined, addicted to benefits and resentful of those who aren't, then encouraging them to blame others rather than emulating them will in fact just perpetuate their poverty
Did the NY Times feel this wasn't worth mentioning?
In the book, which quotes extensively from anonymous sources, Risen said the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives overseas, and took their computers, cellphones and personal phone directories.
The CIA turned the telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the material over to the NSA, which then began monitoring the phone numbers - in addition to anyone in contact with the telephone subscribers, the book said, saying this led to an expansion of the monitoring, both overseas and in the United States.
The NY Times reported the spying as being on suspected terrorists communicating to or from overseas. They made it sound like the spying might be on innocent Americans. But according to the AP story quoted here, the book based on the same reporting used in the NY Times' story states that the phone numbers being tapped come directly from the computers, cell phones and phone books of captured al-Qaeda operatives.
Perhaps Hillary feels foolish now for "saying that she opposes spying on 'Americans.'"
Can you imagine a world in which a nation is not permitted to spy on the phone numbers from the phone books of captured terrorists who target that nation's citizens? If the Left had its way, that would describe the U.S. today.
Last October 26, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, called for the destruction of Israel:
At a conference on "The World without Zionism" in Teheran on 26 October 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded that Israel be "wiped off the map." He also menaced all peacemakers: "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury."
This is the same regime that is intransigent concerning Iran's right to develop a nuclear capability.
Yesterday Ahmadinejad spoke of genocide -- in terms he considers favorable:
"Don't you think that continuation of genocide by expelling Jews from Europe was one of their (the Europeans') aims in creating a regime of occupiers of Al-Quds (Jerusalem)?" the official Islamic Republic News agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "Isn't that an important question?"
So Iran is a state that seeks nuclear weapons, and has now taken a public position in favor of genocide.
In a recent article, René Wadlow and David G. Littman discuss the details of how this violates the U.N. Charter, as well as the U.N. Convention on Preventing Genocide:
Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide considers genocide to be those actions "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." Non-State parties - such as Hamas with its Charter, especially now that it is a key player in PA elections -are fully covered under punishment article IV of the Convention, and this should provoke "serious concern" at appropriate United Nations bodies.
The statements by Iran's president are in breach of the 1945 UN Charter's article II, 4: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
Iran's direct and public demand for the destruction of the State of Israel - with the extermination of a significant part of its population - is undoubtedly a call for genocide, whatever political explanations are put forward. Such direct and public incitement of genocide is punishable under article III of the Genocide Convention which states in its article III that "the following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide."
Wadlow and Littman note that hate speech, although considered absurd by other nations, when repeated within a nation for a sufficient number of years, has frequently led to genocide:
Those who drafted the 1948 Prevention of Genocide Convention had in memory the long incitement to hatred against the Jews by the Nazi machinery. Few took the Nazis seriously in the mid-1930s and did not foresee that hate constantly repeated would lead to systematic genocidal action. Likewise, in more recent times, few took seriously the constantly repeated verbal attacks against the Tutsis in Rwanda over the radio ("Mille Collines" ) and in the press. Yet these attacks prepared the ground for the physical destruction of hundreds of thousands of people and created the regional instability which is still weakening the African Great Lakes region.
Iran seeks nuclear weapons, and wants to use them, not only on Israel, but also on anybody who recognizes Israel. As quoted at the top of this post, Ahmadinejad stated: "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury." That includes every nation on earth that's not an Islamic dictatorship -- specifically every Western nation belonging to the U.N.
Best wishes to all, with thanks to our troops.
Reuters/Thaier al-Sudani: U.S. soldiers sing in the New Year in Iraq.
Reuters/Nicholas Roberts: Times Square, New Year's Eve 2006.
