Phyrfight Intel

You’ve got to love Photoshop.

From: Ace of Spades HQ

Vladimir Putin just wet himself with joy.

From: Internatonal Herald Tribune

Absolut apologizes, ends ad showing California, Texas as part of Mexico

MEXICO CITY: The Absolut vodka company apologized Saturday for an ad campaign depicting the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers.

The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan “In an Absolut World,” showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence.

But the ads, which ran only in Mexico and have since ended, were less than ideal for Americans undergoing a border buildup and embroiled in an emotional debate over illegal immigration from their southern neighbor.

More than a dozen calls to boycott Absolut were posted on michellemalkin.com, a Web site operated by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. The ads sparked heated comment on a half-dozen other Internet sites and blogs.

From the LA Times:
Absolut Vodka has begun running ads in Mexico that shows a map of North America in a “perfect” world. The ad shows Mexico covering most of the western United States.

The quote below is from a Wired Blog. The comments are much more interesting than the post it’s self.

Hundreds of Dutch citizens have uploaded videos to YouTube showing themselves holding signs with apologies for the film. In other anti-Fitna clips, the subjects simply say the words, “I’m sorry.”

From:Radio Netherlands

Jordanians protest against Fitna

Published: Sunday 30 March 2008 20:00 UTC
Last updated: Sunday 30 March 2008 20:53 UTC

Amman – Following the release of Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, a group of 53 Jordanian MPs have delivered a petition to their government in Amman, demanding that it break all diplomatic ties with the Netherlands. They also want the Dutch ambassador expelled from the country. The Jordanian parliament consists of 110 members, 60 of whom were present when the petition was delivered.

more

Fitna Wikipedia page.

Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders’ film about the Quran (English)

This contains disturbing images. Watch it anyway.

The cowards over at Network Solutions pulled the Filmmakers website. Glen Beck talks about it.

UPDATE (3-31-08) LiveLeak pulled the film because of threats. Here is a link to YouTube. We’ll see how long YouTube can hold out.

From: WSJ

…Race helps Mr. Obama in another way — it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America’s tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America’s redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?

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From MiamiHerald.com

It’s possible to pinpoint the exact week that the switch turned off. The war averaged 30 minutes per week of coverage last year on the three network evening newscasts up until Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces, testified in September about the surge’s progress, according to news consultant Andrew Tyndall. In the last 15 weeks of the year, the broadcasts collectively spent four minutes per week on the war.

From: Kinky Friedman via Texas Monthly

…The combined might of our government appears capable only of criminalizing trivia. You’d think George Washington crossed the Delaware expressly to keep Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and Groucho Marx at least twenty feet away from the entrance to Katz’s Deli.

…I respect anyone with genuine intentions regarding the welfare of all people. What I object to are officious little hall monitors who use health as a smoke screen to promote their agenda and themselves. What I want these people to put in their pipes is this: Spain, Israel, Japan, Italy, France, and Greece all have more smokers per capita than the U.S. They also have longer life expectancies than we do. What can we conclude from this? Speaking English is killing us!

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From: WorldNetDaily

A gun rights organization in the United States is accusing the media of trying to conceal the fact that a gunman who attacked students at Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav seminary was stopped by an armed student at the school.

Authorities report that Ytizhak Dadon, 40, was a “private citizen who had a gun license and was able to shoot the gunman with his pistol,” according to a statement released today by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

In its earlier reporting on the tragedy, WND confirmed, “One terrorist reportedly was shot to death by a student who was armed…”

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The Mexican flag was flown above the US flag at a Mexican restaurant in Reno NV, but not for long. Our thanks to veteran Jim Broussard for setting things right with the help of his KA-BAR.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. – George Orwell

I find this fascinating, via the Technology Liberation Front:

From: Investors Business Daily

As Northern Illinois University restarts classes this week, one thing is clear: Six minutes proved too long.

It took six minutes before the police were able to enter the classroom that horrible Thursday, and in that short time five people were murdered, 16 wounded.

…as happens time after time in these attacks when uniformed police are there, the killers either wait for the police to leave the area or they are the first people killed. In Kirkwood, the police officer was killed immediately when the attack started. People cowered or were reduced to futilely throwing chairs at the killer.

Just like attacks last year at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and the recent attack at the Tinley Park Mall in Illinois, or all the public school attacks, they had one thing in common: They took place in “gun-free zones,” where private citizens were not allowed to carry their guns with them.

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The Words:
“Fears that Muslims want to introduce Sharia law and make Islam the supreme religion in this country are false and only meant to generate hostility between us and our Christian and Hindu brothers. Islam does not suppress other religions.”

-Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga (claims to be Obama’s cousin )

The Actions:
As reported by the Australian in January, a crowd of some 2,000 Kenyans attacked Christians in Eldoret, a community about 300 kilometers west of Nairobi, where the Christians were being hunted down by machete-wielding assailants and hid inside pit latrines and fled for refuge to the community’s Assemblies of God Christian church.

The crowd set fire to the church, terrifying the hundreds of family members outside who listened to victims’ screams as flames engulfed them.

According to Red Cross witnesses, about 50 died in the attack.

In recent years, a number of Islamic attacks on Christian churches have been reported in Kenya, where the population of some 30 million is about 85 percent Christian and only about 15 percent Muslim.

Islamic violence in Kenya broke out once again in the aftermath of the disputed Dec. 27 election.

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From: Wired

Researchers with Princeton University and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have found a flaw that renders disk encryption systems useless if an intruder has physical access to your computer — say in the case of a stolen laptop or when a computer is left unattended on a desktop in sleep mode or while displaying a password prompt screen.

From: UPI

DALLAS, Feb. 21 (UPI) — The Secret Service told Dallas police to stop screening for weapons while people were still arriving at a campaign rally for Barack Obama, a report said.

… Several Dallas police officers — speaking on condition of anonymity because the order came from federal officers — told the newspaper it was worrying to see so many people get it without even a cursory inspection.

UPI filters links from blogs (morons) so you may have to copy and paste the link below if it doesn’t work.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/02/21/report_security_relaxed_at_obama_speech/8649/

Thats right. Miami Police are going to deploy hovering UAVs a la Dark Angel and Minority Report. Finally, something I can shoot down with my shot gun that PETA wont give me grief over.

Full Story

From: Celsias.com

The phenomenon is recent, dating back to autumn, when beekeepers along the east coast of the US started to notice the die-offs. It was given the name of fall dwindle disease, but now it has been renamed to reflect better its dramatic nature, and is known as colony collapse disorder.

It is swift in its effect. Over the course of a week the majority of the bees in an affected colony will flee the hive and disappear, going off to die elsewhere. The few remaining insects are then found to be enormously diseased – they have a “tremendous pathogen load”, the scientists say. But why? No one yet knows.

… the few bees left inside the hive were carrying “a tremendous number of pathogens” – virtually every known bee virus could be detected in the insects, she said, and some bees were carrying five or six viruses at a time, as well as fungal infections. Because of this it was assumed that the bees’ immune systems were being suppressed in some way.

“It may be that the honeybee has become the victim of these insecticides that are meant for other pests,” he said. “If we don’t figure this out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food supply.”

Just a few miles down the sunlit road, it is easy to find farmers prepared to agree with his gloomy assessment.

Whole Article

The Falling Man

September 11, 2001

72 minutes.