Tuesday - September 19, 2006

What’s In A Word?

“The usual translation of jihad as ‘holy war’ is misleading; ‘exertion ’or ‘struggle’ is more accurate. From: ‘A general injunction to strive in the way of God’ (Albert Hourani: A History of the Arab Peoples, Faber and Faber, 1992)”

-- Global Security, “Jihad”

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2006 at 10:55 PM   
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Through The Looking Glass

You have all probably seen the breathtaking pictures of the Grand Canyon over the years but this is one view I bet you have never seen. It is from India’s Resourcesat-1 satellite which is in polar orbit 817 kilometers (507 miles) above Earth. If Ferde Grofé were still alive he might be tempted to add another movement.

“Grand Canyon From Space”
_{Source: India Resourcesat-1 - Space Imaging
(Click image for larger 1280x960 in popup window)}

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2006 at 10:30 PM   
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Caption Contest

Posted by Rancino     on 09/19/2006 at 01:24 PM   
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Yo-Ho-Ho!

Listen up, ye soddin’ bunch of scalawags! Today be our day, lads! An extra tot o’ rum for all bloodthirsty hands! Drink up while I go bury me booty! An’ if’n ye can’t talk like a real pirate, then be off with ye, afore we keelhaul yer sorry ass. Aye!

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2006 at 10:22 AM   
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In Harm’s Way

If Pope Benedict XVI goes ahead with the trip to Turkey, he will be surrounded by millions of angry, easily offended Muslims who are already boiling mad at him and the rest of the world in general. If anything at all happens to the Pope during this visit, there will be hell to pay ... literally. If he even so much as gets a scatch on his head, it will be time to rain fire and brimstone down on the sorry bastards. They have been begging for a fight for decades now. This could be the match that lights the fuse that blows it all up. Stay tuned ...

_{Steve Breen — The San Diego Union-Tribune}

Pope’s Turkey Visit Still On Despite Muslim Anger
_{(IRISH EXAMINER) - September 18, 2006 7:39 PM}

Catholic bishops met in Istanbul today and decided the Pope’s visit to Turkey in November should go ahead despite anger in the Islamic world over his comments about Islam and holy war, Vatican spokesman George Marovic said.

Marovic, spokesman for the Vatican in Turkey, said the trip was expected to be held as planned and the bishops had discussed details of a religious ceremony the pontiff is to lead in Istanbul.

A chorus of voices in Turkey has been calling for Pope Benedict XVI to cancel his visit – his first to a Muslim country as pontiff – if he does not apologise for his remarks, which have been interpreted as derogatory to Islam.

Also today, police detained a pro-Islamic protester who forced his way into the International Protestant Church in Ankara with the threat of a fake gun and locked himself in a room, threatening to blow up the church if the pope visited Turkey, private CNN-Turk television reported.

Police captured and detained the man. The man reportedly did not possess any explosives and it was not clear if he was mentally unstable. State Minister Mehmet Aydin, who oversees religious affairs in Turkey, said that he expected Turkish authorities to cancel the pope’s visit if Benedict did not offer a full apology.

“We are expecting the authorities to unilaterally cancel this visit. The pope’s coming to Turkey isn’t going to foment the uniting of civilisations, but a clash of civilisations,” Aydin said.

The bishops’ meeting in Istanbul was scheduled long ago and was closed to the press, Vatican officials said. There was no official announcement after the meeting.

The pope’s comments – in which he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who linked Islam and violence and characterised some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman” – have dominated news coverage for several days in Turkey and across much of the Muslim world.

_{Jeff Koterba — Omaha World Herald}

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/19/2006 at 08:35 AM   
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   Monday - September 18, 2006

Through The Looking Glass

“Global Hawk - Block 20”

The Block 20 Global Hawk represents a significant increase in capability over the Block 10 configuration. The larger Block 20 aircraft will carry up to 3,000 pounds of internal payload and will operate with two-and-a-half times the power of its predecessor. Its open system architecture, a so-called “plug-and-play” environment, will accommodate new sensors and communication systems as they are developed to help military customers quickly evaluate and adopt new technologies.

Following a final series of systems tests and a flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., the new Block 20 air vehicle will be delivered to the Air Force’s 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif.

Operating autonomously from takeoff to landing, Global Hawk flies at altitudes up to 65,000 feet for more than 36 hours with a range of 13,500 nautical miles. Using its synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical and infrared sensors, the RQ-4 Global Hawk provides high-quality reconnaissance imagery even in adverse weather conditions, as demonstrated during sandstorms in Iraq. Its high altitude and long endurance allow it to conduct surveillance over an area equal to the size of Illinois in just 24 hours.

Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk program is based at Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems’ Unmanned Systems Development Center in San Diego, Calif. The company performs Global Hawk sub-assembly work at its Unmanned Systems Center, Moss Point, Miss., and final assembly at its Antelope Valley Manufacturing Center in Palmdale.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/18/2006 at 06:23 PM   
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Workplace Stress Reliever

It’s Monday morning and you’re back at your desk, chained to the grinding routine again after a perfectly wonderful (but short) weekend. Unfortunately, there is only a tablespoon of coffee in the pot because the jackass two cubicles down filled his cup and neglected to start another pot. 

On top of that the boss just dropped in unexpectedly and caught you reading the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System blog site. For some reason, he didn’t believe your story about “training” and “online education”. Stupid boss.

To make matters worse, the jerk in the next cubicle is on the phone having a shouting match with his wife and the entire office is cheering for her because no one likes him.

Trying to tune out all the bad vibes, you turn on your workstation and check your e-mail. Unfortunately, the stupid blonde in accounting has forwarded you a silly e-mail that infects your computer with the W32.Fuggit_bigtime virus and there went all your hard work from last week as the nasty bug formats your hard drive.

The solution? Lean back in your chair and play the song below. You may want to turn the volume down or use your headphones. You don’t want the rest of the office to know what you’re smiling about. Nope. Keep this stress reliever all to yourself. Trust me.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/18/2006 at 09:46 AM   
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Grumpy Old Men

The question on everyone’s minds nowadays is: what happens to homosexual men when they grow old? Well, maybe it’s not on your mind (mine either) but the Washington Post took a look at “The Village” in New York and was surprised to find that the “gay” men have turned into grumpy old men who frown on the younger homosexual crowd’s behavior.

Yes, it seems the homosexual crowd in Greenwich Village are now rich, retired and mad as hell at the young whippersnappers wandering the streets at night raising hell. I’m sure an often heard phrase there is “back in my day we were better behaved” ... followed by “dude, can you spare me a dime bag of weed - I’m low?”. Some things never change ....

Race, Class and Sex Breed Contempt in Greenwich Village
A Neighborhood Grown Older and Wealthier Is Tired of Today’s Rowdies
_{NEW YORK (WASHINGTON POST) - Monday, September 18, 2006}

A pair of shapely legs in low-slung jeans strut through Greenwich Village, sequined rainbows stitched onto the back pockets jiggling from side to side. A lanky teenage girl with red-dyed braids, wearing baggy red basketball shorts, gazes at the rainbows and yells, “I like your jeans.” The rainbow-wearing girl yells back: “I like you .”

The girls trade flirtatious smiles and rejoin the nightly parade along Christopher Street, past Village Pleasure with its inventory of gay erotic toys, past a church, and a gay bar with an older black and Latino clientele, and another frequented by white gays. Just beyond is Badlands, once a notorious leather bar and now a triple-X video shop.

They stroll toward the Hudson River and the action on Pier 45, where the gay teenage crowd practices vogue moves (runway poses immortalized by Madonna), flirt and gossip. But at 1 a.m., when the pier shuts down, the crowd that looks and oozes fabulous chic strolls back up Christopher Street. Their screaming and music drives the locals nuts.

“The young people . . . are raising holy hell,” said David Poster, 68, president of the Christopher Street Patrol, a neighborhood watch group. “We pray for rain and snow.”

Forget the image of the Village as gay haven; forget the gay liberation movement that rose from its cobblestone streets. The scene has moved north to Chelsea, and what’s left in the Village is a gay neighborhood gone older, wealthier and stodgier. Some in the area of $4 million townhouses and lofts says it is under siege by gay kids of color who bring loud talk, drug dealing and prostitution.

It is a conflict, thick with issues of race and class within the gay community, that is now coming to a head. “They didn’t want black faces on the street,” said Bob Kohler, who is white, explaining the outcry against the pier crowd. Kohler, a longtime Village resident and former business owner on the strip, took part in Gay Liberation Front that organized some of the first gay rights protests.

He remembers the methadone-clinic houseboat docked at the piers. And the junkies who shot the real deal through their veins and nodded out on brownstone stoops. That generation now visits the gay senior center where Kohler regularly gets into heated arguments about the teenagers. “Those kids . . . get them off the street,” says Kohler, feigning the whining voices of seniors at the center. “They come here and mess up the Village. They steal.” Then he adds wearily, “Meanwhile, these old men are trying to score for pot.”

- More silliness in the Village at WAPO ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/18/2006 at 08:12 AM   
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Morning News Brief

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/18/2006 at 03:22 AM   
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We Win, They Lose

_{John Darkow - Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri}

Iraq: It’s Kill or be Killed
- by Michael Reagan

One of my dad’s more memorable lines was his response to the question about what his strategy was for fighting the Cold War. Simple, he said, “We win, they lose.” That’s the way it worked out; we won, they lost.

We won because the Reagan strategy was to apply relentless pressure on the Soviets with unflinching resolve, to never let up, and to grind the Communists’ faces in the mud at every opportunity while the world looked on, no matter how much it shocked the media and the go-easy-on-the-Kremlin liberals who feared giving offense to our sworn enemies by treating them unkindly and incurring the condemnation of the world’s wimps.

We are now fighting a war that demands similar resolve and a rigid determination to defeat the enemy, whatever it takes, without regard to how it will shock the media and the anti-war left. We are not meeting those demands and as a result the mightiest nation on the face of the earth - with the finest military force ever assembled in all the world’s history – is losing the war, not by being defeated in combat, but by default.

In Afghanistan, as both the media and the Defeatocrats have joyfully proclaimed, the Taliban we drove out is back and giving the NATO and coalition forces arrayed against them a very hard time. Nothing could drive a stake in the heart of that reborn Taliban insurgency better than the killing of their top leadership, yet when faced with a golden opportunity to do just that we did nothing but stand by and watch.

According to NBC, 190 top Taliban leaders attending a funeral and packed in a tight formation were seen by an eye-in-the-sky drone, presenting an easy target for a quick air strike that could have decimated the Taliban leadership and perhaps brought an end to the insurgency in Afghanistan. A black and white photo published on the front page of the New York Post shows what NBC told the Associated Press are the Taliban militants standing in several rows, like cattle being led to the slaughter pens.

It would have been an easy kill and a major victory in the fight against the Taliban, yet our military were forced to sit and do nothing but watch because the oh-so-sensitive rules of engagement forbid attacking cemeteries. And that’s not all. While U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan were still raging about the lost opportunity, the military brass was up in arms - not because of a missed chance - but because the embarrassing drone photo was leaked to the media.

According to the Associated Press, Lt. Tamara Lawrence, a spokeswoman with the U.S. military in Kabul, said the photograph was released to NBC by someone who did not have the clearance to hand it out. “It is an operational security issue and the photo was released at an inappropriate level,” she sniffed to the AP. “Inquiries are being made into how it was released.”

This incident is an example of the out-of-control political correctness that is driving the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Out of fear of offending the people whose freedom we are fighting to ensure, we are waging a war by half-measures. Our enemy is a furtive force lurking hidden among the civilian population, using civilians as human shields. The only way to deal with these fanatical insurgents is to kill them all, and in order to kill them all you have to be willing to inflict unintended damage on the civilian population, just as we did when we bombed Berlin and Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When you fight this kind of war, you incur the wrath of the media and the anti-war left, who remain ever-alert for any chance to charge the U.S. with committing “atrocities.” When you allow fear of their reaction to dictate the rules of engagement, you allow them to lead you to defeat. “War is Hell,” Sherman once said. It still is, and always will be. Live with it, or go hide someplace and hope the victorious enemy won’t find you and cut your head off, a form of political incorrectness that doesn’t bother them one bit.

---

_{Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s new book “Twice Adopted”. Order autographed books at http://www.reagan.com. Email Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com. ©2006 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561.}

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/18/2006 at 02:59 AM   
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   Sunday - September 17, 2006

The Barmy Army

Who says you have to take war seriously? Not our friendly blokes in the British Army in Iraq. They have come up with some rather “unusual” ways to de-stress after combat. The picture below is pretty self-explanatory ... and quite possibly painful. (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) Go watch the ”Barmy Army” for more cracked-up playtime in Iraq. God bless every one of the lads. I’m sure glad they’re on our side ... otherwise they might be considered Barking Mad™ ...
 

 

GET ME OUT OF HERE ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2006 at 02:50 PM   
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Religion Of Peace, Part MMDCXIX

How do you prove you are a member of a “Religion Of Peace” and that anyone, especially the Pope, who thinks differently is completely wrong? Easy .... you go find a nun working at a children’s hospital and shoot her four times in the back. Maybe now the Christians will think twice before accusing Muslims of being “violent”, eh?

Italian Nun Shot Dead by Somali Gunmen
_{MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - 9/17/06, 1:05 PM EDT
-by MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR}

Two gunmen killed an Italian nun and her bodyguard at a hospital Sunday, and a security official for an Islamic militia controlling the capital speculated the attack was linked to worldwide Muslim anger over a speech by Pope Benedict XVI.

The nun, whose identify was not released, was shot in the back four times at the entrance to the Austrian-run S.O.S. Hospital in northern Mogadishu, said Dr. Mohamed Yusuf, a physician at the facility, which serves mothers and children.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned remarks by the pope that quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman.”

The head of security for the Islamic militia, Yusuf Mohamed Siad, said one man had been arrested and a second was being hunted. He said the killing might have stemmed from the uproar over the pope but stressed he didn’t know for sure.

“They could be people annoyed by the pope’s speech, which angered all Muslims in the world, or they could have been having something to do with S.O.S,” he said. “We will have to clarify this through our investigation.” A Vatican spokesman called the nun’s slaying “a horrible episode,” the Italian news agency ANSA said.

“Let’s hope that it will be an isolated fact,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. He expressed hope Muslim anger would ease following Benedict’s explanation Sunday that the quotation he cited did not reflect his personal opinion about Islam.

The nun, who spoke fluent Somali, was believed to be around 60 and had been working at the hospital since 2002, people at the hospital said, insisting on anonymity for fear of reprisals. She taught at the hospital and also looked after children, said one doctor. Her body was being flown to Nairobi, Kenya, before being returned to Italy, he added.

Posted by sdkar     on 09/17/2006 at 02:02 PM   
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Ninety Miles Away

Ninety miles south of Florida a meeting is going on. Two-thirds of the nations on Earth are represented there by their national leaders. That is 66% of the world’s countries. Which is 100% of the pisspot craphole countries of the world who contribute 0% to the overall good and peace and quiet of our world.

There are exceptions ... like India and Pakistan and a few others but the vast majority of these countries are run by tinpot dictators disguised as democracies - and they all seem to hate our guts for some reason. Like we really give a s**t, OK?

If the United States was as mean and evil as they seem to think, we would have solved all of our problems by now. Let’s do the math ... It is 1321 miles from Whiteman AFB at Kansas City, Missouri to Havana Cuba. The B-2 stealth bombers stationed at Whiteman travel at just under Mach One or approximately 700 MPH and they carry tons of nukes.

If the flyboys suit up and take off at 0500 hours, they can be back home sipping coffee and the world will be a whole lot quieter place by the time the TODAY show starts airing at 0700. Well .... I can dream, can’t I?

U.S. and U.N. Bashed At Cuba Summit
_{HAVANA (Reuters) - Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:16pm ET148}

Washington’s biggest enemies, from communist Cuba to North Korea, called on developing nations on Saturday to challenge U.S. dominance through a revived Non-Aligned Movement labeled a Cold War relic by critics. More than 50 heads of state and leaders from over 100 Third World countries, among them Iran and Venezuela, rejected U.S. use of the “axis of evil” label and supported Tehran’s right to nuclear technology for peaceful use.

“American imperialism is in decline. A new, bi-polar world is emerging,” Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez said. “The non-aligned group has been relaunched to unite the South under its umbrella,” Chavez, who will host a visit in Caracas by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday, told Venezuelan television from Havana.

But governments with friendly ties to Washington, among them India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Chile, Peru and Colombia, sought to steer the summit way from confrontation and finger-pointing at the United States. “I don’t regard this summit as anti-U.S., or for that matter anti-anybody,” Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a news conference.

Cuba, which hosted the summit under the new leadership of Raul Castro because his brother and iconic revolutionary Fidel Castro was still recovering from life-threatening surgery, said the movement was reborn. “The idea that the movement must go beyond statements and take action in international forums has gained force here. Our strength must emerge from our numbers,” Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. NAM nations are almost two thirds of the UN.

Leaders took turns at the podium to criticize global poverty, unfair trade practices and “arbitrary” actions by powerful nations that—they complained—controlled the United Nations. Some said NAM should be strengthened as an alternative. North Korea took the opportunity to blast the United States for unilateral actions against individual countries and joined the call for a revitalized NAM to raise a united voice.

“The United States is attempting to deprive other countries of even their legitimate right to peaceful nuclear activities,” North Korea’s second-ranking leader, Kim Yong-nam, said. North Korea, which defied international warnings by test-firing ballistic missiles in July, will not return to talks on ending its nuclear programs under growing U.S. sanctions, he said.

Kim, who heads North Korea’s parliament, said in a speech that United States was “abusing the human rights issue” to interfere in the internal affairs of countries not allied to it. The NAM, founded in 1961 by nations that wanted to assert their independence from both Washington and Moscow, backed Iran’s right to development, research and production of nuclear energy. It also urged Iran to continue cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2006 at 01:41 AM   
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Through The Looking Glass

“September 11, 2006”

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/17/2006 at 01:33 AM   
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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