…DEE-LISH-ious!
EXILED Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed tried but failed to join the naval evacuation of British nationals from Lebanon’s capital Beirut, it was reported today.
Bakri attempted to join evacuees boarding a Royal Navy vessel on Wednesday, but was rebuffed “at the harbour gates by sharp-eyed officials”, The Sun said in a front page “exclusive”.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman in London could not confirm the report, but said: “Our understanding is that’s not true, and we’ve told The Sun that”.
Bombs and dangerous stuff just SUCKS when it’s coming at YOU, doesn’t it?
Omar Bakri Mohammed attempts to whistle “Rule Britannia” to prove he is not THAT ‘Omar Bakri Mohammed’. Saavy Royal Navy Tars are not fooled and he is forced to walk a cedar plank back to Lebanon. ©TPI
Argh!
Since you Germans have some experience, I hear, on dealing with these Zionists, not that anything bad ever happened to them, mind you, perhaps your country and mine can work out some sort of a solution?
A German government official said on Thursday that letter written by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to German Chancellor Angela Merkel asks her to help solve the Palestinian problem and deal with Zionism.
“There’s nothing about the nuclear issue (in the letter),” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the extreme sensitivity of the issue for the German government.
“It’s all related to Germany and how we have to find a solution to the Palestinian problems and Zionism and so on. It’s rather weird,” The official, who has seen the letter, said.
…“It’s not negative like Ahmadinejad’s letter to Bush. He is not criticizing Germany,” he said. “It’s basically about how we have to work together and solve the problems of the world together.”
Oh I bet he’d like to “work together” on some of those pesky problems.
…is reporting that the Israelis bombed a bunker earlier that was supposed to have contained Hezbollah’s leader. No word yet on whether the strike was a complete success or not, may he rest in pieces.
UPDATE: Ah. The JP has more on the elimination efforts.
And you know…honestly? It doesn’t bother me one whit ~ the thought of these f*ckers looking up at the sky in terror and foreboding or shreiking at the weird noise from the closet at night. I really can sleep soundly knowing that ~ just for once ~ it’s guys like us in the shadows.
UPDATE: Hmmm… It’s been over 21 hours since I posted this and mighty quiet. Anyone heard from the fat little sheikh himself yet? Captain Ed offers a little gem about why verifying the casualties is a smidge difficult:
UPDATE II: One of the reasons given for the lack of confirmation at this point explains a lot about the war itself:
Hizbullah has a headquarters compound in Bourj al-Barajneh that is off limits to the Lebanese police and army, so security officials could not confirm the strike.
Got that? The Lebanese police and army are not allowed to enter onto its own land. That’s not much of an excuse for a state, especially given that the land is in the capital city of Lebanon.
And people are questioning Israel’s show of force?
UPDATE: Rats.
At least someone appreciates what’s being done for them:
“Everyone was pushing and shoving, women were crying, saying, ‘Here’s my passport, here’s my children, take my children, just take them, take them,'” Esseily said. “It was absolutely horrendous.”
The Esseilys barely got through.
“My husband had the baby on top of his shoulders, to show that we had a baby,” Monika Esseily recalled.
“It was hot, it was humid, and we just kind of squeezed in. I squeezed in with one of my children at the gate, and I said, ‘Listen, my family’s on the other side,’ so they had to bring them in.”
Then, suddenly, things got much easier. “Right when we passed the second one, we were met with the Marines,” Esseily said.
“The Marines were just so sweet, they said, ‘Here, I’ll take your bags … you’re going to be on board pretty soon, you’ll have food, you’ll have a place to sleep, you’ll have a shower.'”
“They were just so wonderful and so sweet,” she said. “All of my emotions and all my anxiety — I just lost it there.”
Proportional Response. When will we finally deal with these vermin?
OO-RAH!!
U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon Thursday to help evacuate Americans onto a Navy ship bound for Cyprus as Israeli warplanes continued to bomb targets in Beirut and Israeli ground troops fought Hezbollah guerillas in Lebanon.
This headline’s been seen before and Marines have spent quite a bit of time there, unfortunately. And THIS sounds hugely risky…
No plans have been made yet for the several hundred Americans in southern Lebanon, where fighting has been fiercest and Israeli troops entered Tuesday.
Harty said the State Department will move them when it’s “safe and prudent … we’re always going to err on the side of caution,” she said.
A senior defense official told CNN on Wednesday that the military is considering using teams of Marines aboard helicopters to extract Americans who are stuck in remote parts of Lebanon. The official stressed that nothing has been decided.
Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, told CNN that one reason he is moving the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Lebanon is to give him the ability to get Americans out of other parts of Lebanon, if necessary.
God speed, Jarheads.
There’s this mildy interesting story in the BBC today:
Tut’s gem hints at space impact
In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.
Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.
But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?
…An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of an impact crater, even in satellite images.
The article than talks about how they think it was made by an ‘air-burst’ sort of meteorite. All fine and good.
But then I looked at the ‘related’ story links in the sidebar and I saw this:
Huge impact crater found in Egypt
06 Mar 06 | Science/Nature
Huge impact crater found in Egypt
The crater dwarfs the next largest known Saharan crater
A giant crater made by a meteorite impact millions of years ago has been discovered in Egypt’s western desert.
Boston University experts found the 31km (19 mile) wide crater while studying satellite images of the area.
It is more than twice the size of the next largest Saharan impact depression and more than 25 times the size of Arizona’s famous Meteor Crater.
The American team that found it says its sheer size may have helped it escape detection all these years.
…The heat from this impact may be responsible for the extensive field of “Desert Glass”, yellow-green silica glass fragments found on the desert surface between the giant dunes of the Great Sand Sea in southwestern Egypt.
How much do the editors at the Beeb get paid? Remember, folks: they’re the professionals. Do not attempt to be a “journalist” at home, and most certainly do not attempt it in your pajamas.
…that’re funny at midnight or there ’bouts: adjacent headlines on CNBC just now.
Investigators Inspect Ship That Tilted
House Fails to Override Stem Cell Veto
Investigators for a ship that tilted a house?
…’A Walk on the Wild Side Runs Amok’. His henna tattoo looks like it says: “???” (pronounced roughly “tou bao dz”). Thank God for John, who translates it to:
a pork bun made out of dirt
Sweet Jesus. That would have been tragic.
Even if my ship stayed upright, I don’t know that I’d want to watch THIS…
…the first evening of my dream cruise.
Someone at Carnival/Princess is smokin’ dope.
My favoritest Congresswoman might be on her way to not jumping any more turnstiles.
As election results poured in, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Democratic challenger Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. appeared headed for a runoff in the 4th District race.
With 90 percent of the vote counted, McKinney had 47 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 45 percent.
Looks like the Coalition and Afghan Army forces have recaptured those towns we talked about below:
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan and coalition soldiers reclaimed the second of two southern towns Wednesday that had been overrun in recent days by the Taliban, Afghan and U.S. officials said. A purported Taliban statement threatened “severe” action in coming days.
Hundreds of ground forces battled Taliban fighters before entering the Helmand provincial town of Garmser, which had been captured by insurgents on Sunday, said Gen. Rahmatullah Roufi, the Afghan army commander in the country’s south.
“Our troops launched an attack on Garmser and thank God we captured it,” Roufi told The Associated Press. He declined to provide details.
Good.
I also like the sound of this:
“The Taliban appears to be bullying their way around some of the smaller towns in remote areas but they have no capability to lay claim to any piece of ground,” Fitzpatrick said.
I know it’s scarier than dogsh*t BUT…There are 25 THOUSAND of you there. Chill the f*ck out and give it time to work. Logistics are a bitch thousands of miles from home in a WAR zone and, like it or not, you are the juiciest plum on the target tree. Ships big enough to haul substantial numbers and ships needed to protect those numbers don’t levitate where you want them in the blink of an eye. And while Hezbollah might briefly think a ferry full of Frenchmen or Greeks is tempting for the odd shot or two, the thought of a helicopter or boatload of Americans in flames brings a glaze to their eyes and drool to their chins. Other folks want out, too and some are being told “you’re pretty much on your own”, so quit pissing and moaning to the ABC camera crews. Use your heads, give it a chance to work, be where you’re supposed to be so someone can reach you, help those who are worse off than yourselves and be ready to leave when the flag goes up.
It’s not Kansas, people.
It’s the Middle East.
From the ‘Fly.
I never met a morning I liked. That’s why I preferred to sneak up on them slowly after midnight, easing my way to closing time and going home with the baker’s trucks. I figured that way, the day already started right, so I had a leg up on whatever happened after sunrise.
Read the whole thing. It is a thing of beauty.
…that I didn’t write this.
Damn, I wish the president would swear more. When his private conversation with Tony Blair was picked up yesterday on an open microphone, I was heartened, not shocked. “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” Bush said. Lebanon is in flames. Iraq is in chaos. Iran is enriching. Isn’t this a time for swearing?
Shouldn’t we hope that when he’s in private, Bush is throwing around the barnyard epithets? I don’t think anyone would have been comforted if his aside to Tony Blair had been about weight lifting or the soufflé they had for lunch. Tony, did you see what Jacques was wearing?
Everyone has fixated on the word “shit,” with cable commentators and news anchors expressing “concern” about the language “controversy.” (For language purists, of course, the real problem is the apparent misuse of the word irony.) According to some, the single dirty word is more proof that Bush is a dumb cowboy, but Bush’s unguarded remarks actually make the opposite case. They show that he understands the awkward steps of diplomacy and that, while he may be frustrated, he’s remarkably cool and multilateral for the supposed simple fellow from Midland. (The reaction has actually been fairly mild. If this were a Democratic president, the forces of moral rectitude would be swarming: What about the children?)
Wish I had, ’cause it sounds like what I was thinking.
Our beloved Susanna has got that most fashionable of links…a Manolo-lanche!
Woo-Hoo! Congratulations!
At least something good has come out of this Congress:
The House on Tuesday rejected a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, ending for another year a congressional debate that supporters of the ban hope will still reverberate in this fall’s election.
The 236-187 vote for the proposal to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman was 47 short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment. It followed six weeks after the Senate also decisively defeated the amendment, a top priority of social conservatives.
Good to know this is one of the most pressing issues facing the nation these days.
Retards.
13 are in New Jersey.
Would you break into a house in Tony Soprano’s neighborhood?
ConEd is asking all buildings to cut their power usage by 25%. It’s going to be close to 100 here today.
Yippee.
At least I don’t have to go into the subway.
Even YEARS later? Rev. Jesse adroitly fans the conspiracy flames in an misleading article about “piety” and “true faith”. (?)
…Poppycock. Democrats didn’t lose Florida in 2000 and the 2000 election because of the lack of a high faith profile. Al Gore won the popular vote nationally and the popular vote of the majority who cast ballots in Florida on Election Day. He lost Florida because the fix was in, because the Voting Rights Act was not enforced — and because Republicans turned the recount into an alley fight while Gore played by rules. Then a transparently partisan majority in the Supreme Court violated its own principles and shamed itself by ordering an end to a fair count, worried Bush might lose. This wasn’t about faith; it was about will.
Similarly, Democrats didn’t lose Ohio in 2004 and the 2004 election because of the lack of a high faith profile. They lost because the fix was in, and because once again, Republicans had a partisan zealot — Ken Blackwell — as secretary of state. Once again he abused the powers of his office in choosing voting machines and election schemes. Once again, a majority of people set out to vote for Bush’s opponent.
How can Bush be SO stupid, yet so diabolically CLEVER? So hamfisted and awkward in everyday LIFE, yet so omnipotent and transcendent that he covers the ENTIRE COUNTRY at will with his foul, loathsome mantle, thwarting the Constitution and twisting the most sacred of our institutions ~ from half blind, half addled geriatric voters in SOUTH Florida to disenfranchised busloads in East St. Louis to the very bench where Supreme Court Justices sit ~ like a Machiavellian puppetmaster of unimaginable scale and scope? If you flush at midnight, does Bush hear it in D.C.? DOES he? Yes. And never doubt he could cause said commode to pour forth it’s contents in reverse, should the whim strike him. Or to stop you from reaching the polling place in time to cast your Democratic vote. Such…is his power. Rev. Jesse’s “fix” is HIM…
Wild how this stuff starts resurrecting when campaign time rolls around. And thank you RCP for the morning gut-buster.
This is the headline on CNN:
The U.S.-led military confirms that the Taliban has captured two southern Afghan towns, and vows “decisive action” to reclaim them, The Associated Press reports.
What the hell is up with that?
Update: They’ve added a story:
Scores of Taliban militants chased police out of two southern Helmand districts near the Pakistani border.
“The Taliban extremists have taken control of the areas of Garmser and Naway-i-Barakzayi, however, coalition forces do have them under observation,” military spokesman Col. Tom Collins told reporters in Kabul.
“Decisive operations will begin soon,” he added without saying when.
I would hope.
…invented “the parking brake”.
A police dog that was left in a pickup with the engine running apparently knocked the vehicle into gear and ran down a woman who was walking to her mailbox.
Because this 
Read more »
…since Zarqawi couldn’t make it.
UN rights panel focuses on US record
US officials on Monday faced their second grilling in two months by United Nations human rights experts on alleged violations of international law in the fight against terrorism.
The 18-member UN human rights committee, which oversees countries’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, made it clear that it did not accept US arguments that the covenant did not apply to US actions abroad.
Humanity...or the Lack Thereof | tree hugging sister | 
July 20, 2006 10:17 pm | 
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