I'm stumped as to how this could possibly have happened. If Teheran bought them, how on earth did they find their way into the hands of a lethal terrorist sniper in Iraq?

I call shenanigans on this story. It just plum don't make no sense.

Three British soldiers have been killed by single shots in the past six weeks - two of them in the last two days - and five injured.

The marksman is believed to be using a powerful rifle which can penetrate body armour.

Insurgents in Iraq are believed to have got hold of more than 100 Austrian sniper rifles which had been sold to Tehran.

...

A senior Army officer recently backed claims by local leaders that Iranian agents are paying Iraqi men in Basra £250 a month to attack UK troops. Iranian security forces are believed to have infiltrated the city.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (17)
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Like Arthur suggested to me and as I said in the post about Wonkette, no one else picked up on this story except for this sketchy Russian outfit RIA Novosti, suggesting that it was an April Fools Day joke that erroneously got picked up by them without bothering to get confirmation.

The government of the region in question says it's not true.

The government of Wallonia has refuted allegations of plans to introduce a tax on barbequing in this Belgian French-speaking region.

Reports appeared in local media earlier in the month that a law had been approved to charge residents of the 4-million-strong region 20 euros for each grilling session beginning in June.

"We have repeatedly denied this information, which is nothing but an April Fool's Day joke. But we never imagined it would create such a fuss," said the press secretary of Wallonia's minister for agricultural, rural affairs, the environment and tourism.

The media had said the new law was needed as an environmental measure and cited experts as saying that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, was emitted during barbequing. Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.

So, not true. Thanks to DaveS for that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 AM | Comments (12)
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Ahem.

TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would free the 15 detained British sailors and marines Wednesday as an Easter holiday "gift" to the British people.
Iranian state television said the 14 men and one woman, who were seized while on patrol in the northern Persian gulf on March 23, would leave Iran on Thursday.

I am kind of curious what kind of finagling prevented the Iranians from following through with their threat to try the captives for espionage.

Ahmadinejad asked Blair not to "punish" the crew for confessing that they had been in Iranian waters when they were seized by Iranian coast guard. Iran broadcast video of some of the crew giving confessions, angering Britain.

He also criticized Britain for deploying Turney in the Gulf, pointing out that she is a woman with a child.

"How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don't they respect family values in the West?" he asked of the British government.

My emphasis.
I hate to say it, but you know what Iran could use?
The Lifetime Channel.

It's about time Feminists invested themselves into knocking the nuts off our enemies for a change.

Posted by: LauraW. at 09:08 AM | Comments (12)
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Thanks, Nancy!

The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.

This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committeeÂ’s Democratic leadership doesnÂ’t like the phrase.

A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”

The “global war on terror,” a phrase first used by President Bush shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., should not be used, according to the memo. Also banned is the phrase the “long war,” which military officials began using last year as a way of acknowledging that military operations against terrorist states and organizations would not be wrapped up in a few years.

Committee staff members are told in the memo to use specific references to specific operations instead of the Bush administration’s catch phrases. The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”

“There was no political intent in doing this,” said a Democratic aide who asked not to be identified. “We were just trying to avoid catch phrases.”

...

“You have to wonder if this means that we have to rename the GWOT,” said a Republican aide, referring to the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medals established in 2003 for service members involved, directly and indirectly, in military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

Democrats have approved a list of acceptable euphemisms for the Global War on Terror, including "The Global War For Oil," "Bush's Unilateral Illegal War of Choice," "PNAC's Pwnage," "the recent unpleasantness," and one euphemism suggested by Rosie O'Donnell, "the thing we're doing that's just making more terrorists (Google It!)."

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (39)
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I'm putting that up top because I really want you to know -- the link here has a serious, three-alarm all-points-bulletin content warning on it. It's in bad taste (ahem), so you're all on notice.

A while ago Megan Mullaly was on Letterman (I think), plugging her line of celebrity perfumes and beauty products. They were all fake. The funniest one was a perfume, which she had named, with exquisite subtlety, Third Base.

I think she said her marketing tagline was "A first date is the perfect time for Third Base." Or maybe I'm making that up.

Now, this is almost certainly (at a 99.9% confidence level) an April Fools Day gag. When I try to click on the "Order" menu, I'm invited only to enter my email address, which is a pretty good tip-off it's a fake. Someone really trying to sell me something would want my credit card, right? Even for a pre-order. If they ain't takin' credit card numbers, it's because they have no product to sell, and don't want to get nailed for mail fraud.

I withhold that last .1% of confidence, because 1, the site looks pretty professional, and 2, because the thing is, people really would try to sell this, and people really would buy it. Sure, 90% of them would buy it as a goof, but still, they'd sell some stock.

Nevertheless, fake or real but almost certainly fake, it's still kind of funny. But vulgar. With naked pics. A lot of naked pics. And a movie of naked chicks which is, yes, officially pornographic.
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Posted by: Ace at 01:28 AM | Comments (25)
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Remember that rather obvious photoshop? Not only did Wonkette run it, claiming it to be real, but even after it was proven it wasn't Michelle Malkin at all -- the girl whose flickr account it was taken from identified herself -- but then childishly simply refused to admit they had erred.

Here's what the, um, guys at Wonkette wrote when they first ran the pic:

And yet … there appears to be a picture of Malkin doing the “Girls Gone Wild” semi-boob flash, while cavorting about in a string bikini like a common hussy, from 1992!

A Wonkette tipster sent this possibly legitimate snapshot as proof that Malkin’s the last gal who should care about asking “Where have all the good girls gone?”

After they were embarrassed by their error, they did not have the decency to issue an apology to Malkin, and certainly not a confession of error. Instead, they hissed:

Michelle, You Ignorant Slut ...

[11/06/2006 UPDATE: Six weeks after we posted this hilarity about the world’s smartest political columnist ever, she still doesn’t comprehend that a) we did not “forge” or “Photoshop” the image posted below (it was found on a Flickr gallery by a Wonkette reader and then e-mailed to us on the Internets) and b) we made no claims as to its authenticity — in fact, we comically over-qualified every reference to said image so it would be extra obvious. But now, at the behest of an alleged lawyer, we will bold all the relevant original wording that makes it abundantly clear to those familiar with the English language that we neither created nor vouched for said comical image. Malkin and her lawyer say the image is “forged,” and we have no proof to the contrary, as we made abundantly clear in this original post, which now features helpful bold type but is otherwise unchanged beyond this update. God bless America.]

See the bolds up in what I quoted above? Those bolds were added upon advice of their lawyer; the bolds did not appear in the original post. Also note the scare quotes around "forged" -- see, they doubt it's actually forged (or, um, "forged"), despite the actual girl who took the photo coming forward, but they had far fewer doubts this was actually Malkin when they ran it.

Basically Wonkette's claim was that "We didn't say with 100% certainty it was real, we just proceeded as if it was and mocked Malkin based upon this assumption, because we're really too busy being all hip and gay to check whether ridiculously bad photoshops are real. But, as you can see from our now bolded up edit, we never were completely sure, ergo, we did not make any errors at all."

Ah. I see. Run any stupid bullshit that comes your way, and then when called on, just say you're far too fabulous to bother confirming stuff and therefore owe no apologies or retractions for your mistakes.

And then they begin running their own photoshops, only slightly more absurd than the ones they were taken in by, to prove they were really in on the joke on the whole time. (In which case, they're actually guilty of malice and therefore of libel, but they ain't too sharp over there.)

Okay, so that's Wonkette's practice. This, by the way, is "Wonkette," or at least one of the various boychiks pretending to be 15 year old high school girls:

Should this creature of indeterminate gender identity really be tossing off cracks about Malkin's secret life as a "white man," and suggesting Ann Coulter "loves young boys" or about Coulter really being a transexual? Or constantly running that shot of Giuliani in drag, with subtle gay allusions like this?

NewsweekÂ’s latest poll shows the thrice-married opera-loving cross-dressing gay-roommate-having Manhattan dandy at the top with a whopping 59% of support from registered Republicans.

I dunno. For a guy who's had more cock in and out of him than a Purdue regional distribution center, you'd think he could manage to lay off the constant gay/transexual "jokes" for five minutes.

Okay, back to my point, and I do have one. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 AM | Comments (61)
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Sorry for all the Python stuff. But See-Dub sent me the tip. Not a new story, but of a piece with the Jones-bashing.

Look, I think he's a terrible director and always thought so. Brazil? Fey, precious drivel. Boring. Not funny, and I don't care how many people insist to me that it is funny.

I remember being pretty psyched to see this as a kid -- I was a bit of a Python fan, as you may realized -- and sitting through it slack-jawed at the cutesy absurdism, lack of any real humor, and incoherent storyline. It's a bit like Fifth Element in the sense the script seems written in order to accomodate costumes, sets, and a production design that's already been finished, rather than the normal way of doing things in which superficial elements are crafted to agree with the script.

Baron Munchausen, Fisher King... awful, nonsensical, pretentious precious wankbait. Please, someone point out to me evidence of Gilliam's directorial gifts.

He is a good production designer, which is, you know, kind of an important part of movie-making. Especially in fantasy/sci-fi type movies, where a very big part of the suspension of disbelief comes from how plausible things look.

But he's a good production designer who has been disasterously elevated to director, a job he's just not very well suited for. Kind of like Tim Burton, but even Tim Burton looks at Gilliam's films and thinks, "Good Lord, did anyone spend any time at all putting this script into shape?"

Okay: I completely forgot he did Time Bandits. I dunno. I think more people have fond memories of this movie than actually enjoyed it. I mean -- come on. The ending is fun but honestly who the hell can watch a movie about dwarves and annoying British children?

Someone else mentions 12 Monkeys. Okay -- that movie I liked a lot. No compaints on that one.

Still, I think he's like Burton, an art director whose mistakenly been put behind the camera. Burton has blundered into making a decent movie himself, though I confess at the moment I can't think of what it was.

Posted by: Ace at 05:00 PM | Comments (194)
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So really, who are we to judge? One man's 9/11 suicide pilot is Cindy Sheehan's freedom fighter.

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

Who are these sources, and can they be arrested and hanged?

It's amusing, isn't it, that the left is forever exercised over the "outing" of Double-Oh Soccer Mom Valerie Plame but never seems to have a problem with leaks about seriously classified covert operations.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.

...

"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said.

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.

I think our intelligence officials need to watch Fight Club a few times again. They seem to have forgotten the first rule of covert operations is you don't talk about covert operations.

Posted by: Ace at 03:38 PM | Comments (71)
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This is pretty famous, and yeah, really old. But as we're on the topic (light language warning):

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Posted by: Ace at 02:32 PM | Comments (13)
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As we see in the case of former barely-a-Python Terry Jones continuing to do what he's always done, which is to say, try to be funny and fail miserably at it. His most recent attempt at the laughs is to parody the British sailor kidnappings.

The big laughs spring from Jones' writing as they've always done.

I didn't want to touch this, because the only way I can respond is to knock on his career, and that gets old. But let me knock on this miscreant's career anyhow.

First up, Allah Bryan at Hot Air is wrong that Terry Jones "jumped the shark." Jumping the shark implies a heyday, a high-water mark (ahem) prior to the shark-jumping. Terry Jones never had that.

I know, I know: He was in Monty Python. Was he? I mean, was he really?

Quick: Rank the Pythons in order of genius. Pretty much everyone would rank them Cleese, Palin, Chapman, Idol, Gilliam, Jones.

The middle section depends on whether you're more of a fan of Chapman's deadpan delivery (and considerable writing talents) or Palin's greater versatility as a comic actor. And whether or not you're a big fan of Idle's stuff.

But the first and the last names on the list -- Cleese, first, Jones, last -- will be pretty much the same for everyone. Except most people probably won't even be able to name Jones at all. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:03 PM | Comments (88)
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