The "Men in Black" take to the shadows:

Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.

All across IraqÂ’s second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military. The gunmenÂ’s reign had enforced a strict set of religious codes.

Yet after three years of being terrified of kidnap, rape and murder – a fate that befell scores of other women – Nadyia Ahmed, 22, is among those enjoying a sense of normality, happy for the first time to attend her science course at Basra University. “I now have the university life that I heard of at high school before the war and always dreamt about,” she told The Times. “It was a nightmare because of these militiamen. I only attended class three days a week but now I look forward to going every day.”

She also no longer has to wear a headscarf. Under the strict Islamic rules imposed by the militias, women had to cover their hair, could not wear jeans or bright clothes and were strictly forbidden from sitting next to male colleagues on pain of death.

“All these men in black [who imposed the laws] just vanished from the university after this operation,” said Ms Ahmed. “Things have completely changed over the past week.”

In a sign of the good mood, celebratory gunfire erupted around Basra two nights ago and text messages were pinged from one mobile phone to another after an alleged senior militia leader was arrested.

Raids are continuing in a few remaining strongholds but the Iraqi commander in charge of the unprecedented operation is confident that his forces will soon achieve something that the British military could not – a city free from rogue gunmen.

...

For the first time in four years local residents have been emboldened to stand up to the militants and are turning in caches of weapons. Army checkpoints have been erected across Basra and traffic police are also out in force.

...

The contrast could not be more stark with the last time The Times visited Basra in December, when intimidation was rife.

Here's a dose of hopefulness: I don't want to suggest Bush and the British planned that their initial incompetencies would bear fruit down the road.

However, sometimes a mistake turns out to have a benefit. Due to the Coalition's inability to control large parts of Iraq, many Iraqis have gotten a taste of what life is like under Al Qaeda or, in Basra, under Iranian/Taliban-style religious rule. They have not found this experience to have been a pleasant one, and they will likely not be forgetting what it's like when the "Men in Black" take over.

More at Hot Air, especially on the need to follow up these gains with positive improvements: "You can't eat or drink peace."

Posted by: Ace at 06:01 AM | Comments (10)
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Quagmire, JMF says. The first mass-firing of reporters in the paper's history is coming due to dismal sales and advertising.

By "mass," we seem to mean around 70 voluntary firees and 30 involuntary ones.

I didn't link this Vanderleun piece when it was published because I first thought the advice offered -- stop writing your newspapers to only serve 35% of your potential audience (and, by the way, the same 35% being competed for by every other news paper and network newscast) -- was a bit too easy and glib.

But he's right. Desperate times require desperate measures, and a few of these dying newspapers must, perish the thought, give a rigorous, management-enforced attempt at balanced, nonpartisan coverage a try, just to see how that might work out for them.

Posted by: Ace at 05:42 AM | Comments (43)
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ItÂ’s amazing how much we take for granted but in the big scheme of things, humanity wasnÂ’t always a sure thing to survive.

Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

Â… Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

Climate change 70,000 years ago? ThatÂ’s before SUVs, coal plants and private jets for rich liberals, right?

Posted by: DrewM at 06:34 PM | Comments (103)
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I am speechless. This is the creepiest video I have ever seen. No, let me restate that, the parts I was able to watch before turning it off were the creepiest things I have seen on these here internets. Watch it only if you have a strong stomach!

More Serious Content Warning [ace]: The "gag" from this fat Dutch singer is that he's singing a love duet with a seven year old boy and he starts putting the moves on him. In a "funny" way. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:40 PM | Comments (103)
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That was the Steve Martin defense.

Wesley Snipes sentenced to three years for tax dumbness.

I don't know if he deluded himself, or just took some really bad advice.

I seem to recall a chapter from a book by Andrew Tobias in the 80s, about taxes. It was a whole page, and it basically said "just pay them".

I think I remember that. I know I quoted it at my last audit, while smiling like an idiot.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:28 PM | Comments (37)
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Quoted not to denigrate the Brits' efforts, but just because it's nice that at least some major news outlets are confronting the awful truth of victory:

One month on and IraqÂ’s leader can justifiably claim to have scored a stunning victory, probably the first of its kind by the post-Saddam Iraqi army. The most notorious areas of Basra are now under government control, the Mahdi Army of Moqtadr al-Sadr has been roundly defeated and the long suffering people of Basra are celebrating freedoms they did not enjoy during the four years of British military rule in the city.

So how did a military novice, using untested troops, succeed where thousands of British forces had failed?

The hint came at the weekend from the unlikely figure of Hassan Kazemi Qumi, the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, whose country has in the past armed, funded and trained elements of the Mahdi Army.

“The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,” said the envoy. “This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive result in Basra.” The Iranian embassy in Baghdad is not given to making any public statements, certainly not comments that support operations backed by the Great Satan, as America is called in Iran. But in the arcane world of Shia politics his comments made perfect sense.

The article goes on to argue that it was in Iran's interest to cut the Mahdi Army's legs from under them, contributing greatly to the success. Either way, it's good to see someone actually acknowledge the action was a success.

Thanks to Dave P of Esmay's World.

In related news, the Paper of Record Retard finally gets around to noticing that the Sunnis are rejoining Maliki's government, just a week after everyone else did.

Posted by: Ace at 04:04 PM | Comments (40)
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Position: Mayor of District Heights (wherever that is)

Offense: Propositioning an undercover cop posing as a male prostitute.

Party Affiliation: Unknown.

By the way, compare to a story also running in today's WaPo:

Add this to the list of indignities Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has suffered since getting busted in an airport restroom last June: He now has to pay his legal dream team out of his own pocket.

Ah, so they can look up someone's party affiliation and "waste" a single letter ID'ing a misbehaving politician.

Thanks to Hoke Malokey.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (51)
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Then drags him to the kitchen and holds him at knifepoint until police arrive.

"I opened the door and just ran into him. I had him pinned in the laundry room and just kept pummeling," said [Allan] Kieta, a former wrestler in high school.

He said he grabbed the intruder by the belt and dragged him into the kitchen, where he put a knife at the man's throat and tried to dial 911.

"Being visually impaired, I couldn't get the buttons because I was using my left hand," he said. "It took me about 20 tries."

Police arrived within minutes and arrested Alvaro Castro, 25, on an initial charge of residential entry, Sgt. Matthew Mount said.

Castro claimed he was a former boyfriend of Keita's daughter and he was just there looking for his cat. Which is a) easily proven or disproven, and b) still stupid, even if true.

And no cat is worth getting your ass kicked over.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 02:12 PM | Comments (25)
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Alas, he doesnÂ’t seem to have been talking about the State of Louisiana or the City of New Orleans.

John McCain toured a New Orleans neighborhood still reeling from Hurricane Katrina and issued a new and scathing critique of the ``terrible and disgraceful'' failure of the Bush administration's response to the disaster.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said that had he been president he would have immediately visited the area after the storm hit in August 2005. While he's been critical of the administration's Katrina response before, the Arizona senator's remarks today were some of the sharpest he's used.

``Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in this terrible and disgraceful manner,'' McCain said after a walking tour of the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black neighborhood that was devastated by Katrina. ``History will judge this president,'' he said. ``This was an unacceptable scenario.'

I guess the reality is McCain feels he needs to spend some time distancing himself from Bush but to dump all the blame for what happened in New Orleans at the feet of the federal government is crazy.

UPDATE:

Commenter Z Ryan points Popular Mechanics took a look a the Katrina response and came to a very different conclusion.

MYTH: "The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."--Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005

REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.

I don't think anyone says the response was perfect but I also don't think any serious person thinks that is actually possible in a disaster of this magnitude.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:08 PM | Comments (215)
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"Ex"-radical, we're informed. Isn't really friendly with Barack Obama, despite Obama's campaign manager saying exactly that -- they were "friendly."

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (25)
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