What color are the skies in their world? I imagine some sort of cotton-candy swirl.

In a letter to Mark Thompson, the BBC's Director General, the group complained of a "systematic hostility" to the anti-war movement by the BBC.

"We estimate that 80-100,000 people attended the London protest," said the letter.

"Speakers at the concluding rally included the chief foreign representative of the al-Sadr movement in Iraq, a major force in that country's politics, parliamentary figures from the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru and Respect parties, the well-known musician Brian Eno and the parents of several of the British soldiers who have died in Iraq, as well as an SAS soldier who had recently served there.

"It defies belief that you found this event unworthy of the slightest mention. Such an attitude can only undermine belief in the power of peaceful democratic protest."

Emphasis added. "Speakers at the concluding rally included the chief foreign representative of the al-Sadr movement in Iraq, a major force in that country's politics..." The "al-Sadr movement." The thuggish militias of Moqtada al-Sadr who routinely kill political opponents.

What the most diseased members of the leperous left don't get is this: When a very left-liberal organization doesn't cover their more outrageous doings, it's out of a desire to protect the general left-liberal agenda from the fury of public opinion.

They're not reporting on this not because they're pro-war or pro-government, but precisely because they're anti-war and anti-government, and they realize that showing these jerkoffs marching with the "pro-peace forces" of the terrorist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr can only hurt the cause.

The hard left is forever complaining that the media doesn't adequately cover them. I agree.

They are, however, quite wrong as to the motive of the media's inattentiveness.

The media should cover them more, every viciously insane word they say, and stop attempting to santize the left-liberal agenda by embargoing coverage of its most unhinged fellow travellers.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (22)
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Riehl World View has taken the just-released 9/11 tapes and edited them down to a more download-friendly running length.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (1)
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If there is a war, expect to lose an American ship thanks to Russian know-how. As usual.

Iran just test-fired the ultra-fast torpedo, noting that only one other country-- Russia -- has a torpedo that can move through the water at 225 miles per hour.

That's because this Iranian weapon -- called the "Hoot," or "whale" -- is based on the Russian Shkval, according to former Naval Intelligence Officer Edmond Pope. "I was informed in late 1990's by a Russian government official that they were working with Iran on this subject," he tells Defense Tech. "A cooperative demonstration/program had already been conducted with them at Lake Issy Kul in Kyrgyzstan."

The Shkval goes so fast because it creates an air bubble around itself, essentially. The process, known as supercavitation, keeps friction to a minimum. "Instead of being encased in water," New Scientist noted, the weapon "is simply surrounded by water vapour, which is less dense and has less resistance."

Defense Tech notes that Germany is developing an anti-torpedo torpedo which is itself ultrafast, again based on supercavitation technology.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (38)
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Can hardly blame a cop for wanting to see her ID. First of all, she has a new haircut, and it doesn't exactly scream "Congressperson."

Second of all -- she's got the crazy-eyes. Those are eyes that say either "I've been up for six days straight on crack and Nyquil" or "I've just been hypnotized by Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian."

So, you've either got someone jumping out of their skin on drugs, or someone likely to be carrying a snake they can turn into an arrow.

It's a manufactured racial incident, of course. It always astounds me when someone who has either broken the law or otherwise done something wrong (here, attempting to get into the Capitol without proper required ID) claims "racism" as the cause for their troubles. The charge of racism would be a lot more credible if you'd been following the rules and still got hasseled, wouldn't it?

Via Lime Shurbet.

Posted by: Ace at 08:47 AM | Comments (57)
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I didn't get to cast "Lightning Bolt," but man, was it fun.

Jeeze. This is worse than criminals videotaping their own crimes.

Thanks to OgreGunner.

Update: Met a cool chick, too. Check out this awesome tatoo she has:

That thanks to Scott.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (22)
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Very left rag The Boston Phoenix takes the Times to task.

The 8”-by-10” photograph was hard to miss. Appearing on page A-3 of the Sunday New York Times on March 19, the black-and-white image of Erno Nussenzweig — a retired New Jersey diamond merchant and a member of the orthodox-Jewish Hasidic sect — stared out at readers just cracking open the morning paper. Taken in Times Square in 1999 by artist Philip-Lorca diCorcia, the picture hung in a well-received 2002 exhibition of diCorcia’s work at Chelsea’s Pace/MacGill Gallery, and it appears in the show’s exhibition catalogue. Nussenzweig, however, was not pleased with this notoriety: like virtually all ultra-orthodox Jews, he embraces the biblical injunction against “graven images.” And so Nussenzweig brought to the New York courts a legal challenge against such types of “street photography,” alleging that his privacy was violated when diCorcia snapped his picture and the gallery and catalogue displayed it. The Times chose to run the picture yet again — indeed, millions of times — to accompany its March 19 story on the lawsuit. This, from the same paper that elected — allegedly out of respect for Muslim sensitivities — not to republish any of the satirical Danish cartoons of Mohammed that caused an international uproar just last month. As Dorothy Parker might have said, “What fresh hell is this?”

On February 7, Times editor Bill Keller told USA Today that publishing the Mohammed cartoons would be “perceived as a particularly deliberate insult” by Muslims, and that, moreover, not publishing them “feels like the right thing to do.” A Times staff editorial published the same day similarly intoned that the Times’ refusal to publish the Mohammed cartoons “seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”

So why publish something offensive to Jews — and, especially, to the orthodox Jew who was the unwitting and unwilling subject of the photograph — while refusing to publish something offensive to Muslims? It can’t be that the publication of Nussenzweig’s image isn’t sacrilegious. The same injunction against graven images causes observant Jehovah’s Witnesses to refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag. For that matter, it also caused Muslims around the world to protest the depiction of their prophet in the now-famous cartoons. It’s true that the greatest offense was given by the several that depicted Mohammed as a terrorist, yet the underlying prohibition against any depiction remains the same across the board.

The insult is all the greater, in this instance, because the harm was so easily avoided. Last Sunday’s Times article covered two other examples of “street photography” by famed portraitists, and the exhibition catalogue contained many other diCorcia street portraits, so diCorcia’s Nussenzweig picture was hardly needed to illustrate the genre.

The man's lawsuit was properly dismissed (you generally don't have any privacy rights as regards your photograph when in public; ask any celebrity). But -- why would the NYT repeatedly run a photo the subject objected to on sincere religious grounds?

If they ran it just to make the point they had the right to run it (which they did)-- why not do the same for the Mohammad cartoons?

The Boston Phoenix was quite up-front about its reasons for not running the pictures, as they note. The Times, apparently, lied.

When the Boston Phoenix decided not to republish the cartoons, it admitted candidly that it was taking that highly unusual (for this paper) step out of fear of provoking violence against its staff (see Editorial, News and Features, February 10). Either the Times engages in a double standard as to whom it will or will not insult gratuitously, or it has been less than candid about the real reason it refrained from publishing the cartoons.

Emphasis added.

There can be little doubt that the Mohammad cartoons were more newsworthy-- they provoked worldwide riots, after all. This man's picture, on the other hand, was merely an illustration of a subgenre of photography with little news value.

But the Times ran his picture multiple times, knowing he objected on religious grounds.

It's hard to come to any other conclusion that the Times doesn't fear Hasidic lawsuits but does fear Muslim violence against its staff and stringers.

But they won't admit that.

This from the paper that endlessly chides its political opponents with not be forthright and candid with the American public.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 AM | Comments (19)
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From Feisty, natch:

Three men have been arrested on charges of performing castrations on apparently willing participants in a sadomasochistic "dungeon" in a rural house, authorities said Friday.

...

"This right here beats anything I have ever seen," Sheriff Tom Alexander told the Asheville Citizen-Times, which reported that victims may have come from as far away as South America.

More at her link.

In related news, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's name has surfaced in connection with the ongoing investigation. Sources say he visited the "dungeon" to have his testicles removed and replaced by adorable, milk-lapping kittens.

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (83)
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Funny little D&D/Jesus joke. It's probably very old, but then, you know I only hear about this stuff a year or two later.

Thanks to Blog Idaho/Retired Geezer.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (31)
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Say Anything wants to know why any month with high US casualties is filled with media stories about the "ever-escalating spiral of violence" and months with very low casualties merit nary a mention.

It's a puzzler, all right.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (18)
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It's got a good beat and you can spread democracy to it.

Pretty fun song.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 10:24 AM | Comments (44)
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