...can be downloaded here. Legally, as Stone and Parker have given permission.

It's a big download, obviously. It's a little light on comedy content, as a lot of its anti-religious shows have been, but it explains the beliefs of Scientologists. They don't make it up; they accurately report what Scientologists believe. Body Thetans and galactic overlord Xenu and all that.

It's seriously goofy.

I don't know why it is that miracles and magic and resurrection should be less objectionalble in a religion than spaceships and parasitic alien ghosts, but they just are.

Posted by: Ace at 08:34 AM | Comments (28)
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In Afghanistan. Wonderful.

A MAN detained by police for converting from Islam to Christianity could face the death penalty if he refused to become a Muslim again, an Afghani judge said today.

Islamic sharia law proposes the death sentence for Muslims who abandon the religion. Afghanistan's new constitution says "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam".

Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada said the suspect, Abdur Rahman, was arrested after members of his family informed police of his conversion.

...

Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic country and 99 per cent of its more than 25 million people are Muslim.

99% Muslim? No previous prosecutions? Well, yeah, I guess a death penalty for apostacy can get you that kind of dominance.

His family members informed on him to police. His family.

Literal Islam -- and I'm not sure how else Islam can be interpreted but literally, as it was supposedly dictated verbatim by God's messenger Gabriel himself -- is simply not compatible with democracy or, for that matter, freedom and human autonomy.

You exist to serve Allah. And, in fact, everyone exists to serve Allah, and if they don't, you force them to serve Allah, you kill them, or your simply make them subordinate dhimmis. And furthermore, this commandment shall be enforced by the state.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 08:24 AM | Comments (32)
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It's the new Red-Green alliance, and it's happening all over Europe as well.

Europe is already committing demographic suicide. It's compounding that by committing economic suicide as well.

Wouter Bos, the leader of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), the Dutch Labour Party, is worried about the high number of immigrants in the ranks of his own party. Bos won the Dutch municipal elections on 7 March by catering for the immigrants, who consequently tipped the balance in favour of the PvdA. Almost half the elected PvdA politicians in major Dutch cities where the PvdA is the largest party, such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, are now Muslims.

...

In many West European countries the parties of the Left are actively catering for the growing Muslim vote. The Left realizes that the Third World immigrants guarantee its power base because these immigrants moved to Western Europe attracted by the generous welfare benefits that the parties of the Left promote. However, Bos said he had been obliged to put so many immigrant candidates on the PvdA list because otherwise the immigrants might start their own parties. “I consider a Party of Immigrants, with no indigenous voters, dangerous. But if we hold on to our strategy, we will manage to remain a party that defends the interests of everyone.”

In this monthÂ’s municipal elections 80% of the Muslim electorate voted for the PvdA. If this happens in next yearÂ’s general elections as well, BosÂ’s party will become the largest party in the Netherlands and the current center-right government will lose its majority. This will allow BosÂ’s PvdA to put together a left-wing coalition with the far-left Groen Links (Green Left) party and the Socialist Party (SP). The latter two parties are also popular with immigrants.

And, of course, once the coalition understands it can guarantee its political dominance by simply creating new voters by allowing even more immigration, it will do so.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (11)
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I'm not sure why I'm linking this, as I'm pretty sure every reader of this site has sent me this narrated demo of Spore already.

Everyone who sends it says it's amazing; maybe you'll be interested too. It takes you from evolving as a single-celled whatsit into a sentient race which first conquers its own planet and then tries to conquer the whole galaxy. It's sort of like the Sims, but with alien protozoa and galactic wars.

Personally, I don't have much interest. But obviously a lot of people's mileage differs.

A GameSpy article can be found here.

Thanks to George for the most recent tip. I can't really remember everyone who sent this before, but thanks.

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 AM | Comments (2)
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All it took was yet another genocide for the dime to drop:

After the Holocaust, the world vowed it wouldn't stand back and allow genocide to happen again. Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda showed how empty that promise was. Darfur was yet another reminder that when it comes to standing up to stop the slaughter of entire peoples, the nations of the world remain pitifully inadequate.

And now, as if the hundreds of thousands of Africans killed in Sudan weren't enough, the Arab militias financed by the government of Sudan to "cleanse" Darfur of blacks are moving across the border into neighboring Chad. Our colleague Nicholas Kristof reports that the janjaweed — the name given to the Arab militias — have unleashed their fury on villages in Chad, riding in and killing and raping, accompanied by their standard shouting of racial epithets like "black slaves."

...

Is this really what we have come to? The United Nations has described the carnage in Darfur as the world's biggest humanitarian crisis but continues to prove itself completely useless at doing anything to stop it. In the Security Council, China protects Sudan. Europe, for its part, has been inert.

And what's this? The United States is actually on the right side of things?

That leaves the United States, where the Bush administration has made a few strides. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick appears to be close to getting the United Nations to supplement, if not replace, the woefully ineffective African Union peacekeeping force in the region with United Nations peacekeepers.

Why, you'd almost think the UN was a dysfunctional organization existing mainly to protect the client-tyrants of Russian and China or something.

I wonder what those black Sudanese did to anger the Arab extremists. Maybe it was all their support of Israel. That's my hunch.

As usual, the New York Times only seems to rouse itself from its slumbers when non-Americans are being attacked. It's laudable to want to protect non-Americans. I just wish maybe they'd have had a similar reaction when Americans are slaughtered.

Thanks to Allah, who got it from Beltway Blitz.

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 AM | Comments (15)
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Not sure what Jewel is doing as the musical accompianment, but this is a pretty effective reminder of that black day and why we're fighting.

Thanks to Scott.

Posted by: Ace at 07:48 AM | Comments (9)
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No connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Part 8,594:

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.

The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.

Liberals are always complaining that we don't "debate" issues. They always say that it's impossible to have an actual "dialogue" on key questions.

Actually, we could, if not for their cowardice. They want a "debate" to occur, but they don't want to be a part of it. They fear the political consequences of announcing their real beliefts. That's why they only "raise questions" -- "questions" don't necessarily tie you to an answer that can be used against you. Well, sure, I mean we all know the answers they're hinting at. But they don't want to provide answers, just "raise questions" and "encourage debate."

Well, maybe it's about time we had a real debate about Saddam's support for Al Qaeda, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (216)
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Can't hardly wait.

It's called "Al Franken: God Spoke." It's a movie about Al Franken. That's the premise. Just film Al Franken's daily routines and the people will come to see it.

Shit, you couldn't get people to watch Al Franken when you could see him for free on SNL for 63 years. And you can't get people to listen to him for free on Air America.

Thanks to Frank.

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (27)
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No wonder you can't get a straight answer out of them. They're all doped up on goofballs:

IndiaÂ’s economic boom but the countryÂ’s growing number of call centre staff handling British and American customer inquiries have a guilty secret.

According to senior police officers and pollsters they are also leading a social revolution against traditional Indian values by having extramarital affairs and taking party drugs.

A survey found that one in five of those questioned had had a workplace affair and that the majority of those were married. In another recent poll one in four call centre staff said they regularly had casual affairs.

...

According to insiders the centres are generating a work-hard, play-hard culture where liberal attitudes to sex and club drugs are thriving. The staff work under high pressure and are rewarded with “team-building” parties.

One of IndiaÂ’s most senior police officers said the western companies behind the call centres were causing a breakdown in the fabric of Indian family life.

“The companies should insist on certain standards,” said Shankar Rao, deputy commissioner of Delhi police. “I want to make sure these call centres do not become dens of evil."

Too late. These places are like Mos Eisley without the exotic entertainment.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (24)
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Multiple layers of painstaking editorial fact-checking. But they'll take the word of any hustler out for publicity, eh?

It was a dramatic front-page story to match an infamous photo: the chilling shot of an Abu Ghraib prisoner, hooded, standing on a box, electrical wires attached to his outstretched arms.

He is Ali Shalal Qaissi, the New York Times said last Saturday, and the Iraqi told the paper that his wounds are still raw.

But after questions were raised by the online magazine Salon, the Times acknowledged last night that the story was flat wrong. The prisoner in the photograph was not Qaissi, who has belatedly admitted that to the newspaper.

"The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph" and "should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military," the paper said in an editor's note.

Susan Chira, the Times foreign editor, said in an interview earlier this week that Salon had "raised legitimate questions" about the newspaper's story. "Any time you talk to someone like this, you worry: Are they telling you some kind of story?"

In a story published in today's editions, Qaissi is quoted as saying in a tearful telephone interview that he was photographed in a similar position. "I know one thing," Qaissi told the Times. "I wore that blanket, I stood on that box, and I was wired up and electrocuted."

The Army, however, says that only one man was mistreated that way, a prisoner whom guards nicknamed "The Claw," according to the Times report. Further undercutting Qaissi's account, the Times reported, is that he never claimed to have been the man under the hood in the first months after his release from Abu Ghraib or in a July 2004 lawsuit that he joined.

Salon is now a more accurate and reputable source than the New York Times.

How about them apples?

But He Had Proof! The discount buisness card deal at Kinko's is considered the most unimpeachable form of evidence at law:

From Captain's Quarters, who's not happy about the Times' typical "the dog ate my homework" "correction," either:

The correction, quite frankly, stinks. First, it appears in its Saturday edition when the fewest readers will be likely to see it. Second, when reading the actual text of the correction, the Times only takes partial responsibility. It starts out by accepting responsibility for shoddy research, but then blames everyone else for getting suckered. PBS reported it first. Vanity Fair did the same thing. The Times even blames activist attorneys who would have been delighted to get any bad press against the US military on the front page of the Times -- instead of scolding itself for using them as a corroborating source from the beginning.

But the worst part of this correction comes when the paper blames the military for not doing the reporter's research for them. "The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it." It then says it should have been "more persistent" in getting an answer from the Pentagon, but in the same paragraph notes that the military named the correct detainee two years ago -- and that the Times reported it!

Is it the Pentagon's fault that the original reporter, Hassan Fattah, is too incompetent to do a search through the archives of his own newspaper?

And wait 'til you see where they put the correction.

Posted by: Ace at 08:24 AM | Comments (16)
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