The Comedy of the British Hostages?

I guess from the “tragedy” of the British hostage crisis arises the comedy of it….

A sailor compared to Mr. Bean…the story of the stolen IPODS…It is amazing how awesomely brave and “stiff-upper-lipped” the soldiers had to be. My heart bleeds for them…the horrors! Enough to keep my baby up at night! This comment at the Althouse blog pretty much sums up my feelings ;)

British hostages released

I know I am a little late to the game, but this is good news!

Iran to Release 15 Britons Seized at Sea in March - New York Times

I think Britain played this good and safe - they could have escalated this to no end, but restraint seemed to have helped towards a quick resolution in a way Iran’s moron President could claim victory even while he gave the hostages up.

My only concern is that this might be seen as an actual victory and pay-off for stupid moves and might end up encouraging more of this nonsense from attention-seeking idiots like Ahamadinejad.

Another Iranian Hostage Crisis?

Looks like the Iranians got themselves a few British hostages this time (the link has a good roundup of reactions and reports). This is just so brazenly provocative towards England, I just cannot make any sense out of it. What are these people thinking? Especially dangerous is that this might exactly be the provocation the Bush administration is looking for to strike at Iran.

Think about it - if I were the Bush admin, I have a war in Iraq going badly, I have an ally in England trying to drop off from my war, I suspect Iran could be causing a lot of my problems in Iraq - this is the perfect excuse to not only strike back at an enemy, but to also turn British opinion and force against Iran.

Either the Iranians were incredibly stupid with this decision or incredibly foolhardy - something tells me they might have been both when they did something this open. I have a feeling at the end of the whole thing, Ahmadi-whats-his-name would have wished he had just stuck to organizing conferences for Holocaust deniers and weird fashion. He might have grossly miscalculated this decision.

Tolerance for you...not me

This comment by a certain Sanjay on Ann Althouse’s blog prompted me to make a post out of something that I normally would simply ignore. The issue is a set of Muslims asking to be allowed to pray in a church that was apparently a mosque forcibly converted to a church many eons ago.

Althouse: Muslims praying in the cathedral.

(btw, “the tiger” is wrong: I’d have a hard time not assigning most of blame to “strife over holy sites in India” to Hindu nationalists —- NOT Muslims. I have vivid memories of dropping in on the normally freakishly calm and impassive Hindu holy man who married us, and seeing him choking and weeping over the pettiness of our co-religionists).

You know what is really interesting about the comment? The fact that the commentor thinks Hindu Nationalists are pigs for demanding essentially the same thing that the Muslims are in the linked story, and…he is defending the Muslims. Go Figure!

This is really true

How crazy is this? Seriously….what am I doing up this late? Definitely NOT watching the Mavs lose miserably to the Jazz :(

Fodor’s Travel Wire | Japanese Tourists Suffer “Paris Syndrome”

It could only happen in France. MSNBC recently carried a story about Japanese tourists who become so overwhelmed by the contrast between the Paris they imagined at home and the real city that “psychological treatment” is required. “Paris Syndrome,” as the malady is called, passes quickly for most, but others experience lingering psychoses and paranoid delusions. Indeed, MSNBC reports that four Japanese tourists this year required “repatriation” after complaining that their “hotel was bugged and that there was a plot against them.”

Searching for Islam's soul

Here is part 2 of a soul searcher of an article from Dr. Alamgir Hussan about the “perpetual victim syndrome” that seems to have been infecting a lot of Muslims lately - Desicritics.org: Islamic Terrorism and the Injustice Myth, Part 2. There is a link to the first part within the post. I applaud this man’s honest attempt to look inward and hope that other Muslims join him on the journey.

It was pretty interesting that the usual apologizers at DC were already scoffing at the effort or missing in action completely. Not exactly a heartening sign when people think that debate is somehow forbidden unless it is about someone else’s faith.

Don't "Sheikh" it, baby!

Seriously, even if you don’t shake it, it is your own goddamned fault if you happen to get raped! Don’t you know you are just an “uncovered pice of meat”? Don’t blame the “cat” for eating you. Not even if you are an Australian teenager who has been brutally raped by a few racist “cats”. Don’t you get it? You asked for it by being a woman, an Australian and by showing your flesh around!

I have absolutely no words for how angry this makes me! No more than for all the PC-police already out in full-force trying to explain the fucking shit away. Remember the double standard. Always do! Publishing of cartoons making fun of a religion? Horrendous and worthy of rioting and murders. Calling teenage gang-rape victims as brining this upon themselves? “Diversity”!

Do you think it will be worth it for me to try and hold my breath for the “feminists” who defended the hijab will be outraged at this misogyny? I don’t think so!

Like, Duh?!!

Read the rest for some nanny-state stupid tricks in school…

Glorious Food? English Schoolchildren Think Not - New York Times

Schools that have tried to win students over appear to have fared better than those that impose bans, Professor Morgan said.

Ghastly China

I guess today is one of those days when people like me and possibly a few more who will read the link below spare a few thoughts for the poor Tibetans who are being systematically massacred and kicked out of their lands by the Chinese - Massacre in Nangpa La.

I admit it - it is really hard for us to spare too much time and sympathy for those who are defenceless - maybe they need to strap on a few bomb belts and fantasize about eradicating the entire nation and population of China before the world takes notice…

San Francisco Rising?

San Francisco was a city that I was once proud of being able to live in for over a year - I am absolutely disgusted with stuff like this now - .

It is quite unsettling to see someone holding the Hamas flag and wearing a mask in such an admiring way. I guess it takes some guts to pay homage to terrorists who intentionally target civilians and try to kill as many of them as possible. More pictures like this at Zombietime… It is one thing to be pissed off at Israel - which is completely fine, mind you! Israel isn’t perfect in any way and they have their own demons to answer for. What I find totally offensive is the pro-terrorist part. Does one really have to support cold-bloded killers to speak up against Israel?

Racism in Australia

Awesome post by Sakshi about racism in Australia at Desicritics - Desicritics.org: And Yes, Australia Is Racist. My sister lives in Melbourne and I have spoken to her multiple times about this issue and not too surprisingly, she feels the same way as Sakshi.

Gangraping 13-year-old white girls just because they happened to not conform to the rapists’ sick views of what a woman should be wearing is not a culture that should be defended by any measure of intellect. The same situation has made appearances most famously in the case of the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was brutally murdered for the sin of making a movie with Ayaan Hirsi Ali - another brave woman who refuses to surrender. I am not saying all this to paint Islam in a bad light - I am saying that these ghettoized immigrants need to be brought back into the fold and their distorted views of reality be dealt with realistically and not be brushed under the mosaic carpet of multiculturalism or be explained away. Enlightened people, feminists and true liberals must stop aplogizing for bigots and work more to ensure equality for their sisters of different religions - be they Hindu ladies killing their female children in the womb, Muslim women dying to “preserve honor” or European women being humiliated for not being chaste enough while appearing in public.

Good reference to media on the Palestinian issue

Remember that post I wrote recently about the “myth of Al-dura” ? Here is a site that provides the background material for the article I quoted from. There is actual footage that was discussed in the article for us to see and evaluate for ourselves. I think this is great that we get see and decide who we choose to believe or not.

(much appreciated link via Solomon)

Spin City

Remember the “legend of Muhammad al-Dura”, the little boy who was killed by the “Israeli forces” while crouched in fear by his dad who valiantly tried to protect his baby? Here is a truly shocking expose on the events that transpired on the day. It is incredible how much of this information is not available or its existence even acknowledged in the regular accounts of the myth that is “al-Dura” from the media. A bit of a teaser to perk your attention up -

And what does the filmed news report show? The answer is staring us in the face, cinched by the collapse of France-2’s four-year concealment of its lack of evidence. As even Charles Enderlin has tacitly admitted, the al-Dura report was not some brief excerpt from a longer stretch of filmed reality but a scene with no depth, no duration, no origin, and no continuation. The 45 minutes? Gone. Abu Rahmeh’s 27 minutes? Gone, too. We are left with approximately a single minute of Jamal and Muhammad al-Dura filmed in continuous time.


In that minute, the two crouch behind an upended culvert and contort their faces in fear. Guttural screams are heard, but they do not come from the man or the boy; they come from men standing within range of the France-2 cameraman’s microphone. Jamal bobs his head. Muhammad stretches out at his father’s feet. Then, in the brief portion that was carefully edited out but that can be seen in the outtakes, the boy changes position several times, using voluntary muscles that only living people can activate.

As they say, read it all and then come back and tell me what you agree with in the report and what you find hard to believe.

Isn't this rich!

The awesome and esteemed UN once again proves to the world that an organization can go only as low as the lowest scumbag member.

The United Nations bankrolled the production of thousands of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the slogan “Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem,” which have been widely distributed to Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip, according to a U.N. official.

The U.N. support of the Palestinian Authority’s propaganda operation in the midst of the Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip has provoked outrage from Israeli and Jewish leaders, who are blaming Turtle Bay for propagating an inflammatory message that they say encourages Palestinian Arab violence.

How sick and stupid must they be those that fund this kind of craziness and insanity in the name of International law?

A UNDP spokesman, William Orme, said his office gave money to the Palestinian Withdrawal Committee to “help the Palestinian Authority communicate to the populace about the withdrawal and its economic and social impact.”

Yeah - right! How best to communicate the impact of a major compromise Israel is making to the Palestinians but by making inflammatory banners and hang them high enough to provoke and taunt. What kind of a bizarro world is this when this is the kind of disgusting organization that we have chosen to represent our interests. Truly pathetic!

Have another baby?

Does this mean I should just bite the bullet and have another baby? For the sake of saving the world?

(link via Instapundit)

Jokes aside, this article is probably the most heart-wrenchingly pro-life one I have seen in my life.

I had a baby just a few months ago. I saw him since he was nothing but a few cells of tissue at the age of 4 weeks. I have felt him move when he was 12 weeks-old, the usual time you get an abortion. I saw him move on the ultra-sound at my 12-week-exam. I saw his tiny heart beat hard and fast and I thought, this is my baby. I didn’t know if it was boy or a girl - I had no name for him, yet he was my baby. He was not a fetus to me even at 8-weeks-old when I saw his tiny little self for the first time via ultra-sound.

I would ask you all to be very careful when you read the article I mentioned above - it is really hard to read, especially if you have had babies. I almost burst into tears and still cannot get myself to finish reading it. For the life of me, I don’t think I could have an abortion now. I have seen my baby alive and kicking at 8-weeks. How can I try to kill him at 12-weeks or even later? How many women do you think would try to abort their babies if they were shown an ultra-sound of the little one before the procedure?

We live in a culture where people howl about the mistreatment of animals (I am one of them) - how can we let things like saline abortions and late-term abortions happen to little babies? Are we really that selfish as a group that we will kill living beings without any compunction just so we can carry on with our lifestyles? As mothers, we flinch when our baby gets a shot - what of the babies whose lungs are burning while dying slowly due to the saline injections? As pet owners and lovers, we feel bad and rush them to the vet the minute a little thing goes wrong with them - how can we let babies with a heartbeat and a life in them be torn apart in pieces?

I guess once I start, this is an issue I cannot stop talking about. Let me keep venting. Here is another thing - we women claim it is a choice - it is our body. Great! But about the choices of the baby? Did the baby ask to be conceived? You, consciously or not, voluntarily or not, made the decision. You decided you wanted to do something that ended up being a baby. As a woman, you are in a unique position of being responsible for not just yourself but for another life. Deal with it, or get your uterus taken out. I will not say every woman has to have and raise a child by herself - have it put up for adoption. Maybe, you will learn to be a little careful the next time around.

Yeah, I know there are people who will argue that it is better for a child to die rather than have a tough life growing up. That is a bullshit argument. There are also a lot of people who had a tough childhood but grew up to be great. Ultimately, the decision is to take a life or let it be. We cannot be crying out for the rights of convicted murderers while murdering our babies by the dozen without appeals or even a hearing.

p.s. I don’t agree with a lot of things in the article linked above, but there were a lot of things in it that really moved me.