BUSH NEPHEW ARRESTED

The Bush clan seems to have a thing for alcohol:

The youngest son of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and the nephew of President George W Bush, has been arrested in Austin, Texas, on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Just imagine the reaction if cocaine was involved.

HELLO, CAN I SPEAK WITH MOHAMMAD, PLEASE

A new phone for Muslims is all the rage:

With the new gadget, worshippers are able to listen to chanted Quran verses, be summoned to prayers on time, and get an indication of the exact prayer direction they must face - the holy Saudi city of Mecca.

The service, which proved hugely popular in several Muslim countries, will hit the shelves in Holland starting next Monday. The device will help God fearing Muslims rid themselves of some common worries: Not only does the phone ring whenever it is time to attend prayer, it also automatically switches to "vibrate" mode while prayer is in session.

Cellular and Internet technologies have become issues of great concern in the Muslim religious world in recent years. It was lately reported that public pressure was being applied in the Gulf countries and Mauritania against Third Generation mobile phones. These gadgets enable users to take pictures and take part in chats, with Many Muslims worried that these features might encourage women to have affairs with men, or that women could be secretly photographed.

That vibrate mode must be a bit of a worry.

Rumour has it a phone that can ring the 7th century is in development.

Via: Clear and Present.

BUSH'S BRAIN IN PAIN

There could be a simple explanation for Bush's poor recent performance:

Washington insiders have been buzzing that President Bush's guru-in-chief - often called "Bush's Brain" - has been suffering from the painful urinary-tract malady for the past couple of weeks, causing him to miss some key Katrina strategy sessions.

I'm told that the 54-year-old deputy White House chief of staff - who apparently was feeling well enough yesterday to travel outside the nation's capital - visited the hospital, possibly twice, to relieve his agony since Labor Day.

Kidney stones.

HORRIFIC RAPES NOT WORST CASE

The New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeals has reduced the sentences of evil, racist, scumbag gang-rapists Bilal and Mohammed Skaf:

When Bilal Skaf was sentenced to 55 years in jail for orchestrating a series of gang rapes, it was the longest sentence ever imposed for sexual assault crimes.

His brother Mohammed Skaf was originally sentenced to a maximum of 32 years in jail for his role in the attacks on several young women in Sydney's south-western suburbs in 2000.

But after the latest in a series of appeals, the Court of Criminal Appeal has today reduced Bilal Skaf's maximum sentence to 28 years in jail, while the longest his brother will now serve is 19 years.
The court found the attacks were not in the worst case category and that the sentences had been manifestly excessive.

Sure the crimes could have been worse but that's not the point; these unrepentant pricks have destroyed the lives of a number of young women and have no doubt profoundly affected the women's families:

The separate gang rapes were, in chronological order:

August 10, 2000 - Two females aged 17 and 18 accepted a lift from Chatswood, lured by the offer of marijuana. They were taken to Northcote Park, Greenacre, where they were forced to perform oral sex on eight males.

August 12, 2000 - Another victim was raped at gunpoint by two males at Gosling Park, Greenacre, having been lured there by one of the rapists, who was an acquaintance. She escaped before she could be raped by another twelve males waiting their turn.

August 30, 2000 - A woman, named C at the trial (she later revealed her identity on the 60 Minutes television program) was lured from a train at Bankstown by the promise of marijuana. She was then raped at three separate locations by 14 males over a period of six hours. As a final humiliation they hosed her down with water.

September 4, 2000 - Two 16 year old females were lured from Beverly Hills train station to a house in Lakemba, were they were raped by three males over a period of four hours.

These guys will never be functioning members of the community and should not be released, ever. And, there's no blaming their crimes on Iraq or Abu Ghraib.

GLOBAL WARMING DECREASES NUMBER OF CATEGORY 4 AND 5 STORMS

New Scientist reports:

A massive global increase in the number of strong hurricanes over the past 35 years is being blamed on global warming, by the most detailed study yet. The US scientists warn that Katrina-strength hurricanes could become the norm.

Worldwide since the 1970s, there has been a near-doubling in the number of Category 4 and 5 storms – the strength that saw Hurricane Katrina do such damage to the US Gulf coastline late in August 2005.

Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, says the trend is global, has lasted over several decades and is connected to a steady worldwide increase in tropical sea temperatures. Because of all these factors, it is unlikely to be due to any known natural fluctuations in climate such as El Niño, the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Okay, I'm no expert on hurricanes or statistics but I have looked at the number of hurricanes to have struck the United States and the strengths of these storms. This supposed massive increase in category 4 and 5 storms didn't seem quite right.

To check the figures, I went to the National Hurricane Center's list of the most intense hurricanes to strike the United States during the period 1851-2004. (Bear in mind that the study above is for global hurricanes and the figures I cite are only for storms that actually struck the United States.) I then broke the figures into the following year groups to parallel the study as closely as possible. The breakdown for category 4 and 5 storms by period is as follows:

1901-1935 – 7
1936-1970 – 6
1971-2005 – 4 (Includes Katrina, not on NHC list)

It looks to me like the incidence of category 4 and 5 storms is actually decreasing. Then again, maybe this is nothing more than flawed Beck Logic™ – see at

http://timlambert.org/2005/09/hypocrisy/

If so, here's Fact-Check Boy's chance to set me straight.

SCARY POLL RESULTS

The BBC recently commissioned a poll, The Gallup International Voice of the People 2005, that questioned more than 50,000 people in 68 countries. Many of those surveyed obviously aren't too bright:

About a third of those asked thought more power should go to writers and academics.

WARS OF THE WAYS

A former marine attempts to describe the current conflict once known as the global war on terror (GWOT):

I suggest that we have entered an era that might be called, at least provisionally, the Wars of the Ways. Across the planet and its increasingly irrelevant national boundaries, three sets of human beings are involved.

• Those nations, peoples, regions, groups, and movements who partake of the 21st century, its freedoms and diversities and possibilities: those whose ways are those of prosperity, tolerance, and humane aspiration.

• Those who want out of the 21st century: jihadi, political extremists, violent racial and ethnic separatists, terrorists of other ilk (animal rights, ecological, etc.), male supremacists, leftover Marxist and traditional tyrants, and the gurus and gauleiters of philosophies and movements yet to be espoused—those whose ways would bring upon us new Dark Ages of hate, intolerance, oppression, and worse.

• Those who can't get into the 21st century: the three billion of us who live on under two a day, amid conditions of overpopulation, disease, and starvation, havoc, degradation, despair; most of the women of this planet; youth with no sense of opportunity and place—in sum, all those who may choose to live by the motto, "When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose."

The Wars of the Ways will pit those who partake, or desire to partake, of the 21st century, against those who want out, who will deliberately and cynically ally with those who can't get in, who will deliberately and cynically accept their help.

Read the whole thing.

BANNED NETS NOW BIGGER AND DEADLIER

European fishermen are Hoovering-up fish like never before:

Fishermen are continuing to use large scale drift nets in the Mediterranean despite an EU ban on the practice, while an environmental group claims to have proof that the fishermen are spending EU anti-drift net funds on new drift nets, or simply to fill their own pockets.

In a report sent to EU fishery ministers ahead of the fisheries council on Monday, maritime protection group Oceana accuses the EU of wasting tens of millions of euros on nothing.

The group has collected evidence that some of the fishermen take EU buy-out money to buy bigger and more damaging nets.

The fishermen claim the nets are the sole reason the industry doesn't flounder.

EMOTIONAL INVOLVEMENT RECOMMENDED

John Bruton, the EU's ambassador to the US, offers a suggestion to improve the Union:

He said that citizens should be able to elect one major figure in the EU, such as the commission president, which may bring them closer to the union.

"The President of the Commission might be elected by the people and put to the European Parliament for approval. People would feel there is at least one person they can change."

This should tell anyone with even half a brain the EU's a farce.

TAKE FROM THE RICH, GIVE TO THE LESS RICH

Lefties are all for sharing wealth, right? Well then, they should share:

It’s time for an egalitarian revolution. Liberal professors at Harvard, Princeton, Amherst, and Williams should follow the principles they proclaim and strongly support action to end campus disparities by redistributing educational wealth.

Congress should pass, and President Bush should sign, a hefty and progressive tax on large per student endowments. The funds should be transferred to poorer schools. The same tax should apply to future gifts from alumni.

And why stop there? If redistribution is good, the same concept should apply within universities. Why should the law schools at George Washington and Georgetown live in splendor just because their alumni make more money than theology or economics or anthropology majors? The wealth of these law schools should be transferred to poorer departments. Particularly economics!

Professors at rich schools will splutter that such taxes will sharply reduce incentives for alumni to make gifts. Are we to believe that graduates of Yale are so narrow-minded and selfish that they only want to help Yalies? Surely Yale, Princeton, Williams, and Grinnell alums will give just as freely knowing that their gifts are helping students at poorer schools, particularly since they were taught primarily by liberal professors devoted to income redistribution.

It ain't gonna happen.

COMMENTECTOMY PERFORMED

Tim "Fact-Check Boy" Lambert recently attacked Tim "Ban-Boy" Blair for attacking Antony "Leftard" Loewenstein. Lambert wrongly alleges Blair called Loewenstein a coward for refusing to telephone debate irate caller Austen Tayshus. Actually, Blair calls Loewenstein a coward for refusing to accept Tayshus's challenge to a public debate.

Lambert also accuses Blair of misrepresenting Loewenstein by quoting him out of context. When challenged on this in comments Lambert refused to respond. Lambert eventually updated but only after Blair picked up my comment and posted it as an update to the original post attacking Loewenstein. Lambert's update attacks my logic as flawed but does not elaborate. He also modified his position on Blair's post, now claiming Loewenstein's post had been doctored.

In amongst this activity I posted a response at Lambert's to a comment from Ian Gould – as usual he'd become involved to take the pressure off Lambert by drawing the thread off topic. My response was perfectly reasonable but did include something like, "Crtn. (I disemvoweled that to save TL the effort.)" I was taking a shot at both Gould and Lambert: I was insinuating Gould is a cretin – or cretan depending on your understanding of the Christopher Sheil inside joke – without actually calling him a cretin; I was also making light of Lambert's stated policy of removing the vowels from trollish comments. Anyway, Lambert removed the whole post. Despite my repeated requests, Lambert refuses to explain which of his commenting rules I violated. Is this guy scared or ashamed, or both. I mean, getting it wrong is no crime.

Lambert bounces my links so you'll need to copy and paste

http://timlambert.org/2005/09/hypocrisy/#comment-9702

to read Lambert's post and comments (my last is #72) – it has all of the relevant links. Decide for yourselves who the real hypocrite is, Blair for posting an excerpted quote or Lambert for performing a petty commentectomy and then refusing to explain.

Update: Comments are now up to 75 and Lambert still refuses to address me directly but does answer questions asked on my behalf. Must be a computer-geek academic, lack-of-maturity thing.

TRUE AGENDA REVEALED

Just when lefties had almost convinced me the war is all about oil, I come to find out Iraq is about selling weapons. I feel like such a fool.

CIGARETTES, MEDICATION AND CHEESE

Over the past few days there's been heaps of traffic back and forth across the Gaza-Egypt border:

With the Israelis gone, Gazans dug under walls and climbed over barriers to get to Egypt, where they stocked up on cheap cigarettes, medication and cheese. Egyptian forces on Monday fatally shot a Palestinian during the mad rush, witnesses said.

Egyptian cheese, it's to die for.

Via: Watch

Update: Man, that must some good cheese:

Hamas militants have destroyed a section of a concrete barrier erected along the Gaza-Egypt border.

In chaotic scenes, thousands of Palestinians have streamed over the border in the last few days without undergoing official checks.

PALESTINIANS FALL INTO JEWISH TRAP

Those crafty Jews scored invaluable public relations points by leaving intact Gaza synagogues for hapless Palestinians to destroy. This was in conjunction with a paid public relations campaign:

Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses yesterday, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps, and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million last month and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own money.

Yep, Jews are cunning like rats.

THE VIOLENCE AND MAYHEM COME LATER

Straight from the lefty dictator playbook:

State governors and the rural poor are moving quickly to implement President Hugo Chavez's vision of a social revolution, carving up and redistributing large landholdings and threatening to take over the premises of internationally owned companies.

There has been none of the violence and mayhem that accompanied land seizures in Zimbabwe in recent years, but economists and angry land owners fear that -- as in Zimbabwe -- the takeovers will destroy a productive agriculture sector and undermine the economy.

Fidel can help with cheap sugar.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

Last night on Lateline Tony Jones asked John Pilger if he'd risk possible imprisonment by reiterating that Australian forces in Iraq are "legitimate targets". Pilger responded, "I'm always prepared to go to jail for speaking the truth".

What are the chances Pilger will ever tell the truth about anything? He could have answered the question with a simple yes or no but wouldn't, despite being asked three times.

CHILDREN CAGED, BUSH BLAMED

Abu Ghraib's repercussions continue to ripple through America:

Sheriff's deputies removed 11 children from a home where they were locked in cages less than 3 1/2 feet high, authorities said.

The children's adoptive and foster parents, Mike and Sharen Gravelle, denied that they'd abused or neglected the children during a custody hearing Monday in Huron County. No charges had been filed as of Monday night.

Just thought I'd beat the lefties to the punch on this one.

MERCENARIES INVADE NEW ORLEANS

Mercenaries just sounds so much better than security guards:

Hundreds of mercenaries have descended on New Orleans to guard the property of the city's millionaires from looters.

The heavily armed men, employed by private military companies including Blackwater and ISI, are part of the militarisation of a city which had a reputation for being one of the most relaxed and easy-going in America.

Two Israeli mercenaries from ISI, another private military company, were guarding Audubon Place, a gated community. Wearing bulletproof vests, they were carrying M16 assault rifles. Gill, 40, and Yovi, 42, who refused to give their surnames, said they were army veterans of the Israeli war in Lebanon, but had been living in Houston for 17 years.

Yikes, Texas Jews with guns! Blood will replace water in the flooded streets of New Orleans.

Update: In the sense that these security guards are hirelings they are mercenaries. They are, however, not mercenaries in the accepted sense:

Main Entry: mer·ce·nary: one that serves merely for wages; especially :a soldier hired into foreign service.

Update II: Those arriving via Tim Blair's link might want to click here to read about my ongoing stoush with Tim "Fact-Check Boy" Lambert. Blair started it.

WILL EUROPE FIGHT?

What does the future hold for Europe?

As the Muslim populations -- and their level of cultural and religious assertiveness -- expand, European geography will be "reclaimed" for Islam. Europe will become pockmarked with "little Fallujahs" that effectively will be impenetrable by anything much short of a U.S. Marine division.

Not only will Islamic cultural aggression against a seemingly passive and apologetic indigenous population increase, but the zone of safety and support for the actual terrorists will expand as well.

If the current leaders of Europe do not respond to the Islamist threat boldly and effectively, the common European people might decide to defend their culture as vigilantes. In that case, Europe again will become a bloody urban battleground.

This would be a temporary tragedy for liberal principles of governance, but at least would secure Europe from Muslim domination over the next half-century.

The harm of a vigilante effort against the radical Islamists can be mitigated, if not avoided, if the governments themselves will lead the struggle for European cultural survival.

Another European war? Nah, it could never happen.

ENDOWING HELPLESSNESS

Academic John McWhorter on black poverty in America:

As it quickly became clear that there was a certain demographic skew among the people stranded in New Orleans, journalists began intoning that Hurricane Katrina had stripped bare the continuing racial inequity in America.

The extent to which this was hidden is unclear, actually. An awareness that a tragic disproportion of black Americans are poor has been a hallmark of civic awareness among educated Americans for 40 years now.

The problem is less a lack of awareness than a lack of understanding. The publicly sanctioned take is that “white supremacy” is why 80% of New Orleans’s poor people are black. The civics lesson, we are to think, is that the civil rights revolution left a job undone in an America still hostile to black advancement.

In fact, white America does remain morally culpable — but because white leftists in the late 1960s, in the name of enlightenment and benevolence, encouraged the worst in human nature among blacks and even fostered it in legislation. The hordes of poor blacks stuck in the Superdome last week wound up there not because the White Man barred them from doing better, but because certain tragically influential White Men destroyed the fragile but lasting survival skills poor black communities had maintained since the end of slavery.

There is no such thing as a free ride.

FISK SCHTICK, LIVE ON STAGE

The inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Adelaide University will be delivered in October by – drumroll – the winner of numerous journalism awards, Robert Fisk.

Regarding Fisking, or to Fisk, it's worth noting:

While the term seems to imply that Fisk is a habitually bad reporter, Fisk has received several journalism awards, including the British International Journalist of the Year award seven times although, as famously demonstrated by Walter Duranty and a long list of others, journalism awards are not always proof of ethical standards or truth in reporting.

There may well be a great reporter in there somewhere but the guy's been nothing more than a lying lefty for as long as I can remember.

Update: Those arriving via Tim Blair's link might want to click here to read about my ongoing stoush with Tim "Fact-Check Boy" Lambert. Blair started it.

EVIL BUSH CUTS CONSTRUCTION WORKER WAGES

Bush has upset lefties by using a provision of the 1931 Davis–Bacon Act to issue an executive order allowing contractors in Katrina devastated areas to pay less than prevailing wages:

Bush's action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid, and drew rebukes from two of organized labor's biggest friends in Congress, Rep. George Miller of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats.

"The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities," Miller said.

Jeez, the left is always upset about something Bush has done. This, as usual, is another anti-Bush beat up:

On September 8, President George W. Bush exercised the power granted to him in the Davis-Bacon Act and suspended that Act’s application to federally funded construction projects in the Gulf Coast areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. With this step, President Bush eliminated the wage premium that Davis-Bacon effectively requires for those hired to work on federal construction projects, reducing the costs of reconstruction. As a result, federal aid to the Gulf States will now yield more benefits to the region’s beleaguered residents and hasten the recovery effort.

As written, Davis-Bacon requires that contractors working on federally funded construction projects pay all of their workers the area’s “prevailing wage,” as determined by the Wage and Hourly Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. Study after study has demonstrated that these so-called prevailing wages are much higher than an area’s market-based wages and thus lead to higher costs for federal projects. Recognizing that this cost inflation can be especially counterproductive (as opposed to merely counterproductive) during an extreme emergency, the law allows the president to suspend its application when tragedy strikes. Since the law’s enactment during the Depression, it has been suspended three times previously: once by President Roosevelt, once by President Nixon, and most recently by President George Herbert Walker Bush in the aftermath of hurricane Andrew in 1992.

President George W. Bush is to be commended for showing the courage to take this important but controversial stand as the Gulf Coast region enters this difficult period of recovery and reconstruction. In the days that follow, he will confront many similar challenges and have to make many similarly difficult decisions, and not all of his choices will be popular with influential groups. In the case of the Davis-Bacon suspension, for example, some union leaders and their supporters in Congress will certainly be angry at the prospect of losing an unfair advantage, even if that advantage would have come at the expense of those whose lives have been destroyed by Katrina.

While the potential cost savings from suspending Davis-Bacon are significant, the moral dimension of the President’s decision is also of consequence because he took the initiative to suspend a federal regulation which was originally intended to deny economic opportunity to African-American workers in the South. Introduced in Congress in the early days of the Depression by Senator Davis of Pennsylvania and Representative Bacon of New York, the bill came in response to a building contract that the federal government awarded to a company whose low bid was based in part on its intention to use lower-cost African-American workers from the South on the project. By forcing all contractors to pay above-market wages, contractors no longer had the incentive to use less costly Southern workers—and could thus afford to discriminate by race because there was no longer any incentive to hire less expensive labor. As Alabama’s Rep. Clayton Allgood noted at the time, “Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”

Well, that puts that in perspective, don't it.

Via: Tim Dunlop.

THERAPY NATION

Pity the poor Poms:

Richard Layard, the eminent professor and Labour peer, will say tomorrow that people suffering from depression are given little 'except a few minutes with the GP and some pills'.

Layard, who wrote the Downing Street strategy paper, 'Mental Health: Britain's Biggest Social Problem?', will say there is a 'mass of suffering' with half of all those with clinical depression receiving no help. He will call for 10,000 new therapists to be trained over the next five to 10 years.

What could be more depressing than the thought of 10,000 new therapists?

AUSTRALIA'S FIRST POLITICAL PRISONER

Visiting American school teacher Scott Parkin has been arrested and will possibly be deported:

[Parkin] was arrested yesterday after the Department of Immigration (DIMIA) revoked his visa because, the Anti-Deportation Alliance says, he is considered a threat to national security.

Mr Parkin's legal adviser, Marika Dias, says he has attended a number of protests in Australia but has done nothing wrong.

A tourist school teacher with a legal adviser, cool. American's obviously pay their school teachers better than I thought. Anyway, plenty of lefties are upset about Parkin's arrest:

Dan Cass, from Greenpeace, says Mr Parkin is Australia's first political prisoner.

"The detention and expulsion of Scott Parkin is the thin edge of the wedge," Mr Cass said.

Greens leader Senator Bob Brown wants to know who ordered Mr Parkin's deportation.

"I'd like to know whether the orders for his arrest came from the Pentagon," he said.

Pathetic Aussies obviously can't think for themselves. Or just maybe Parkin's arrest has something to do with his activities here in Oz:

At least 10 anti-globalisation protesters have been arrested in clashes with police during a demonstration against an international conference of business leaders in Sydney.

Protest organiser Scott Parkin said the demonstration outside a Kent St building was aimed at a company called KBR, which he described as a subsidiary of the US oil energy group Halliburton, headed in the 1990s by Dick Cheney, now the US Vice President.

Wonder who Scott Parkin is taking his orders from? No matter, send him packing.

Update: There's a discussion over at Lavatory Rodeo.