Posts from — November 2007

Dr Cole looks at foreign fighters in Iraq:

A treasure trove of guerrilla documents, according to the NYT, shows that 41% of the foreign jihadis in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia, which is also a major source of funding for them. Another big group comes from Libya, with Yemenis the third largest cohort. There were none from Lebanon, despite constant US accusations of Hizbullah involvement. Of the some 25,000 alleged insurgents in US custody in Iraq, only 390 are foreigners. 4/5s of the Iraqis and nearly all the foreigners are Sunni Arabs. (The US appears to have never captured a Shiite Iranian fighter in Iraq.) The statistics raise the question of why US military officials are always focusing on Iran and Hizbullah so much, when they clearly are not very much of the problem, while never, ever, mentioning the Saudi issue. The Guardian has more.

All of the hard evidence says Saudi Arabia is the problem, but nothing is done about it. The Saudis finance every Sunni whacko in the world, but Saudis are exempt from scrutiny. Saudi Arabia is a theocratic kingdom with an abysmal human rights record that flogs and imprisons victim of rape, but not a peep from the State Department. Is it any wonder that Islamic moderates don’t want to engage with the US?

Tryptophan Tripping

Yo, dude, what was that?

[Editor: The weather is getting colder and they overdid the turkey, so all of the indoor cats are sleeping.]

Friday Ark

As Mustang Bobby put it: McClellan Tells What Happened.

Essentially Scott McClellan has confirmed what everyone with more than two neurons firing had already figured out, even if a jury hadn’t found, beyond reasonable doubt, that the White House leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the media, and then lied about it.

So the question becomes why is he writing about it in a book? There has to be more money in working for some rightwing foundation than in a book, and he knows from personal experience in the White House what nasty people he is dealing with. So, Scott must have his own score to settle.

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My view of Thanksgiving was skewed by my Father’s attitude. Having grown up on a poultry farm, he viewed the holiday as the culmination of weeks of work “processing” dozens of turkeys to be frozen and readying a few dozen more for fresh delivery. We generally ate ham when he was alive.

Having been on my Grandfather’s farm at this time of year I can understand my Dad’s attitude: our meal was subject to interruption by people picking up a fresh turkey at the last minute. A sale is a sale when you are business for yourself.

The Foxistas have forced YouTube to take down the funniest Thanksgiving show ever, the WKRP Turkey Give-away, and the writers are on strike, so read a book, or, gasp, talk to your family.

Enjoy your meal and try to forget about the world’s problems for a day: they’ll still be there on Friday.

Update: Undeniable Liberal at Maru’s has located part of the WKRP show.

Update II: Aha, Pachacutec at the Pyro Poodle Puddle supplies the punchline bit in the second cut: “As God is My Witness, I Thought Turkeys Could Fly”.

It was afternoon and I was on my way to a chemistry class. I had stopped for a drink of water when the news came over the speakers in the classrooms.

For those who weren’t alive at the time: remember what you felt on September 11, 2001 for a taste of November 22, 1963. It was a massive change for the worldview of my generation and it marked the beginning of a period of disruption and decline in the civility of American society. Arthur had died and Camelot fell.

At his inauguration John Kennedy made the point: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

The colors of my world will never be as bright as they were on November 21, 1963.

The last seven years have been a nadir in American life. Hopefully we can recapture some of the greatness America once represented.

KTK at Lean Left is not being very civil when he hands out his Annie Jacobsen Award, 2007. He is so nasty, that he brings in facts, and we all know about the liberal bias in facts. He even prints a chart:

This is totally unfair. He shows us that we are absolute fools to spend the gazillions of dollars to protect the Shrubbery from terrorists, and then let him ride his bike or go out on his Dad’s boat. Fortunately he doesn’t walk much.

Everyone interested has seen the report on the research that seems to seems to show Skin transformed into stem cells. An amazing piece of work, if it can be replicated and verified in other labs by other people, and doesn’t turn into another South Korean cloning disaster.

There is a major misconception being voiced by those who oppose embryonic stem cell research, i.e. that embryonic stem cells don’t need to be studied, and all the labs doing this kind of work can be shut down without loss. Wrong!

The researchers wouldn’t have known what they were looking for without the embryonic stem cells as a guide and example. What they have created seems to be the same as embryonic stem cells, but it will take some time and effort to find out if that is true. I hope that it is because being able to grow stem cells in the lab will really speed up research on a lot of diseases and promises to make the repair of organs and the nervous system a reality, but we don’t know that yet, and the embryonic stem cells are the model against which the new cells must be tested.

Seen on a store while I was out and about:

Anti-Black Friday Sale!
We will open at our normal time
Everything is priced as usual!

to Kevin Hayden at American Street who has been at it for five years, while I’ve only been doing it for three.

Scout notes that the New Orleans newspaper lets the debate commission have it with both barrels: Times Picayune Blasts Presidential Commission on Debates.

The Times-Picayune editorial, A Shameful Rebuff makes sure that the commission knows that its “excuse” isn’t fooling anyone.

Claiming that New Orleans can’t handle a debate, but the University of Mississippi can, is absurd on its face.

If you don’t own your own plane you have to fly into Memphis and then travel 80 miles to get to Oxford, Mississippi, only 50 of those miles are Interstate. Thanks to a recent annexation, the population of Oxford is a whopping 19,000 people, over 30% of those people live below the poverty line.

The Repubs didn’t want to be put on the spot over the lack of Federal response to Katrina, or the fact that it was Federal levees that caused the death and destruction.

The Associated Press has a report out indicating that: Crucifixes allegedly made in Chinese sweatshops.

Crucifixes were once made in monasteries, and if you were looking for something special you would buy the ones with olive wood from Israel. You could also buy them from Christian craftspeople at church bazaars in the South. These were articles of faith as much as craft, and they usually came from long family traditions.

Apparently the profit margin is more important and they are made, like most other things, in China, by workers who have no idea what they are working on, only that they must produce so many every day.

You really have to wonder who thought this was a good idea? Did they ever read the story about the people who were required to make bricks without straw by their boss?

Update: CBS News has a piece on Apalachicola: Florida’s Oyster Industry Drying Up?

FallenMonk is rightfully a bit concerned about the drought in Georgia, and is interested in knowing: What’s the Plan?

Other than hold a prayer meeting for rain, the only other idea would seem to be shutting down the outflow on the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers which would reduce the flow of Florida’s Apalachicola River to a trickle, and shut down several hydroelectric plants.

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In the last century relatively few people were actually affected by a new administration. Normally only the top two or three levels of management were political appointees, with the mass of people being career government service people. This all changed with the Hedgemony which turned back the clock to the days before civil service reform and made every possible appointment and job political.

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The US isn’t the only one losing peoples data, as reported by the BBC: UK’s families put on fraud alert

Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing.

The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25m people.
…

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