Wednesday, September 28, 2005

NASA Admits Space Station is a Bloated Waste

USATODAY.com
The space shuttle and International Space Station — nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades — were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

NYT Fudges Figures

The Daily HowlerThis guy makes a mockery of the NYT piece lauding a near doubling of Wake County black schoolkids pass rates, from 40% to 80% in 2003-2004. Apparently the NYT omitted one tiny piece of information from the story.
But here’s what Finder didn’t tell you—across the state of North Carolina, 77 percent of all black kids scored at grade level on those same tests! That’s right; the Times devoted this front-page story to a three-point difference in passing rates—a three-point difference in passing rates on tests almost everyone passes!

Friday, September 23, 2005

Walls? What a disgrace...

Those whacky Europeans - complaining that Israel builds a wall to keep out terrorists, and then putting up their own wall to keep out poor folks who might compete for their jobs. Yes. It's a disgrace.
Spain announces it is to make its frontier fence with Morocco as high as the Berlin Wall after 12 men are badly injured trying to get across existing fences into Melilla.

In all 70 tried to break through the three metre-high fences which are topped with row upon row of barbed wire.
Expatica - Spain builds own Berlin Wall to stop immigrants

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Staging a Police State

The NYT headline "An Antiwar Speech in Union Square Is Stopped by Police Citing Paperwork Rules" for the police stopping the Sheehan speech in NYC is either inexplicably uninformed, or deliberately deceptive. You have to read the NY Sun to realize that the event was obviously setup precisely in order to stage a police shutdown:
It was the third time Mr. Zulkowitz has been arrested in the past six months. His most recent arrest was on August 29 at Union Square, for leading a similar demonstration without a proper permit.
How did the NYT overlook this crucial piece of perspective. Either incompetance or bias. With job cutbacks at the Times, I guess things are likely just to get worse...

Pork Busting

Simon Wiesenthal Dies

SWC News Items - Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi Hunter has died in Vienna at the age of 96, the Simon Wiesenthal Center announced today (September 20th).

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

New Border Makes Shopping Hazardous

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World
Egyptian and Palestinian security officials met on Tuesday in an attempt to ease tensions between the two sides after thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip crossed into Egypt over the past 48 hours.

On Monday, Egyptian border policemen deployed along the Philadelphi route shot and killed a Palestinian man as he tried to infiltrate into Egypt. Another three Palestinians were injured in the incident.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Holocaust? That's nothing chum...

Here's how to respond to the subway attacks in Britain:
A team of advisors appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the cancellation of the British Holocaust Memorial Day in order to avoid offending the country's Muslim population.

According to the Sunday Times Blair has promised to respond to the plans, but the threat to the Holocaust Day has provoked a fierce backlash from the Jewish community.

The committee's proposal suggested that the memorial day's name be changed to 'Genocide Memorial Day,' thereby commemorating the large numbers of deaths of Muslims in Israel, Chechnya, and Bosnia. It would encompass genocides of other peoples as well.
Jerusalem Post

Friday, September 02, 2005

Centuries of taking our land

Al-Zawahiri taking responsibility for the London attacks:
'I talk to you today about the holy attack on London, which came as a slap in the face of the arrogant British crusaders,' he said, in Arabic.

'Now you can taste a sip from the glass Muslims have drunk from for centuries. This attack adds to the attacks before in Washington, New York and Madrid. We have moved the battle to the land of the enemy after they battled us in our land for so long.

'After centuries of invading our land and occupying it ... this is for you to taste some of what you have made us taste before.'
CNN.com - U.S., UK investigate 'bomber tape'
Very 'clash of civilisations'. What can you do about an ideology that is seeking retribution for 'centuries of invading our land'.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

The Forgery that Started Intifada 2

Commentary - Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair
Luc Rosenzweig, a retired Le Monde journalist who had doubted the veracity of the al-Dura news report from the first, completed an investigative article in which he formally accused France-2 of an “almost perfect media crime.” His essay was scheduled to appear in the mainstream newsweekly l’Express on the fourth anniversary of the intifada. But the magazine’s editorial director, Denis Jeambar, decided to delay publication in order to double-check Rosenzweig’s facts.

Given his position, Jeambar was able to arrange a meeting with France-2’s news director. He was accompanied there by Rosenzweig and Daniel Leconte, a prize-winning TV producer. Asking simple questions about Abu Rahmeh’s satellite feed, the trio got shocking answers. They requested the 27 minutes of raw footage showing the al-Duras pinned down by Israeli gunfire; they were shown a half-hour of fake battle scenes similar to those described above. They asked why there were no pictures of Israeli soldiers aiming at the al-Duras; they were told that on this point the cameraman had retracted his testimony, given “under pressure” to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. They asked to speak to the cameraman, then said to be undergoing medical treatment in Paris; they were told he did not speak French and that his English was too rudimentary (patently untrue). They asked to see the scene of the child’s death throes, professedly edited out by Charles Enderlin because it was “too unbearable”; they were told that no such images existed. They in turn produced pictures of a dead child, identified as Muhammad al-Dura, who had been admitted to Gaza’s Schifa hospital at noon or 1 PM on September 30, several hours before the alleged incident occurred; his face did not match that of the boy in the shooting scene, his wounds did not match the eyewitness descriptions. They were told that the channel’s forensic specialists would look into the matter.