Three More Charged In Airplane Bombing Plot

British authorities have charged three more people in the foiled plot to bomb aircraft headed to the US. This brings the total charged so far to 15, with about five more suspects in custody but not formally charged yet.

The three — Mohammed Yasar Gulzar, Mohammed Shamin Uddin and Nabeel Hussain — were also charged with preparing to commit terrorism by helping in an alleged plan to smuggle explosives aboard the planes, police said.

Eleven people have now been charged on those two counts. Four others were charged with lesser offenses, including having knowledge of a terrorist activity but not disclosing information about it.

A Scotland Yard statement said Gulzar, Uddin and Hussain conspired with eight other suspects in the alleged plot and had intended to commit "acts of terrorism engaged in conduct to give effect to their intention to smuggle the component parts of improvised explosive devices onto aircraft and assemble and detonate them on board."

All three men will be arraigned on Wednesday.

Of 25 people originally arrested, 15 have been charged and are being held by police, five others remain in custody without charge and five have been released.

Chief Magistrate Timothy Workman earlier ordered Nabeel Hussain's brother Mehran Hussain held in custody until Sept. 19. Mehran Hussain, and his other brother, Umair, are charged with failing to tell police about Nabeel's alleged involvement in what prosecutors say was a plot to down airliners using plastic and liquid explosives.

Workman also ordered Cossar Ali, 24, held in custody until Sept. 5, when her lawyer David Gottlieb said he intends to apply for bail. Ali, the only woman charged so far in connection with the alleged plot, is accused of failing to disclose information about a possible terrorist attack.

There is not word on whether the AP will be emulating the New York Times and blacking out their article from appearing in Britain. (Not that we're not in favor of the NYT moving to some other country where their fine standards will be much appreciated. After all, Cuba could use a good paper.)

Charming Tyrants

David Ignatius, who I have disagreed with on a number of occasions, today writes a column that falls into a trap of his own making. It is almost always a bit dangerous to reason by analogy, especially in the short term. Ignatius likens the situation between the West and Iran to Iranian driving habits. Chaotic, menacing, but ultimately usually successful.

TEHRAN — Drivers here play a high-risk game of chicken at every intersection. They barge into the frantic stream of traffic and you think there's going to be a crash for sure. But at the last moment someone usually gives way, and a collision is avoided.

Watching President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a news conference here Tuesday, I had the same mesmerizing anxiety as a passenger in a Tehran taxi. He has moved boldly — recklessly, it seems to Americans — into the international traffic flow. He keeps revving his motor, and it looks as if he and the West might be heading for a dangerous crackup over Iran's nuclear program. Will there be a collision, or will leaders produce a compromise at the final instant? Normally, drivers here stop in time — except when they don't.

Well, it's as good an analogy as any other in an imperfect world, I suppose. Ignatius goes on to explain that the average Iranians don't want sanctions, but also are not really very worried about them. Where Ignatius falls into a trap of his own making is here, I think:

Seeing Ahmadinejad up close, you appreciate the fact that he is a formidable politician. He played the roomful of 150 journalists like a master performer. He has the look of a bantamweight fighter — compact and agile, punching well above his weight. He's quick on his feet, answering a broad range of questions, including some critical ones about the Iranian economy, but he came away unscratched. He speaks more softly than you'd expect, making jokes and, on this occasion, avoiding some of his usual anti-Israel bombast. But the hard edge is never far away. His eyes can twinkle one moment and then suddenly become dark as night. My strongest feeling at the end of his performance was: He may be cocky and eccentric, but don't underestimate him.

So Ignatius, falling for the immediate charm of the performance fails to see the other analogy that is present in the room. One of the most common traits tyrants have is that people who talk about them after meeting them is that they were charming. Quick and witty and able to play a room to the hilt. Ignatius, who I think has been more than a bit of an apologist on a number of occasions recently, seems not to see that Ahmadinejad is no different than any other charming tyrant with Messianic visions and dreams. Ignatius falls under the spell of the charming tyranny.

And doesn't see that his traffic analogy is more apt than he realizes. But it is a collision that is coming, not a last minute slamming on of the brakes.

Because charming tyrants have a poor record for yielding the right of way.

“The Minnow Would Be Lost”

Among the most long-lived of the silly '60s sitcoms is, of course, Gilligan's Island. Mindless entertainment that lasted for around three years on the Network and for what seems like centuries in syndication. I'm sure it's still playing somewhere. Well, now you can be the proud owner of one of the four boats that played the part of the SS Minnow. That's right shoppers, the 37 foot mahogany Wheeler Express Cruiser SS Minnow can be yours for a mere 99,000 Canadian dollars (89,500 US).

The SS Minnow set out on a "three-hour tour" with actor Bob Denver (Gilligan) and his gang, which wound up as castaways for three years on US primetime television, and their buffoonery replayed around the world for many decades.

"It's the same boat that was on Gilligan's Island … They used it when they went out on the water," said agent George Schultz, who is selling the boat for a retired friend, Scott Taylor.

The vessel, named after former US Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow, whom show creator Sherwood Schwartz was quoted as saying "ruined television," is the third of four boats used in the sitcom, according to a fan website.

One was towed to Kauai for beach scenes. Another was rented for the opening credits in Honolulu Harbor and the other was a prop built by television studio CBS in the second season.

Taylor's Minnow was filmed in the opening credits of the second season at Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles, Schultz said.

According to the show's theme song: "The weather started getting rough/the tiny ship was tossed/if not for the courage of the fearless crew/the Minnow would be lost."

Indeed, the real Minnow capsized off Canada's West Coast during a trip from Alaska in 1993 after hitting a reef, rendering all of its electrical systems useless.

Yup, I checked. They got fans. A Wikipedia entry, too. And you thought Trekkies were dedicated! Here's the boat's listing, by the way. If any reader buys it, I expect and invite on a cruise. Just not a three hour tour, ok?

Hit And Run Spree In San Francisco

At least 15 people have been injured and one (so far) killed in an intentional hit and run spree in San Francisco. The incident began in the East Bay area and continued into San Francisco proper, lasting approximately 20 minutes. The driver of the SUV swerved onto sidewalks and intentionally ran pedestrians down in crosswalks.

This report identifies the driver as Omeed Aziz Popal of Fremont, California. I am not sure but a Google search indicates the name may be Afghan in origin.

 SAN FRANCISCO — As many as 14 people were injured this afternoon by a motorist who drove around San Francisco running them down before he was arrested, authorities said.

Seven of those injured were in critical condition, police and firefighters said.

Authorities have identified the man who was arrested as Omeed Aziz Popal, who has addresses in Ceres (Stanislaus County) and Fremont.

Authorities said they believe Popal was the same driver who ran over and killed a 55-year-old man walking in a bicycle lane in Fremont, at Fremont Boulevard near Ferry Lane, just after noon. That crash scene is just blocks from Popal's Fremont address, where he had most recently been living.

Popal was arrested at a Walgreens at Spruce and California streets.

In San Francisco, the attacks began around 1 p.m., but it was unclear in what order:

• Two people, one of them a child, were critically injured around by a sport-utility vehicle on the 3500 block of California Street in Laurel Heights.

• Three people were hit at California and Fillmore streets. Witnesses said they included a man with a broken hip and a woman with a gashed head.

• Two people were seriously hurt at Bush and Pierce streets and one person was seriously injured at Bush and Buchanan streets, police said. One person suffered minor injuries in an incident at 1850 Fillmore Street.

• Two other people suffered minor injuries when they were hit at Pine and Divisadero streets, and another two were hit and suffered minor injuries at Divisadero and Bush Street.

"It was like 'Death Race 2000,' " firefighter Danny Bright said at California and Fillmore streets, as an ambulance stood nearby. "Guys were walking down the sidewalk and the guy just came up and ran them over. The guy went crazy.''

We have a serious problem and people better wake the hell up.

UPDATE: First mention of this by the AP appears at about 8 pm CDT.

The New Socialist Gulag Opens For Business

The mayor of Caracas, Venezuela who just happens to be from Hugo Chavez's political party has ordered the confiscation of two golf courses. He says they'll be nice sites for low-income housing. The courses happen to be in districts where members of opposition parties hold elected office.

Mayor Juan Barreto's decision to expropriate the Country Club and Valle Arriba golf courses, located in wealthy neighborhoods in the capital, was published in the official city gazette Tuesday.

Last week Barreto said the golf courses were be suitable for new residential complexes for average Venezuelans.

Both are located in municipal districts led by politicians of parties in opposition to Barreto's Movimiento Quinta Republica, the party of leftist-populist President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez is following closely in the footsteps of his hero, Fidel.

If You Thought Things Were Confusing Before

Wait until you see this. Ok, so the Texas Democrats filed suit to keep Tom DeLay's name on the ballot. They won. Then they won on appeal. Then the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal. So the Republicans threw their support behind a write-in candidate with an unfortunately long, hyphenated name, which is going to play hell with the write in process.

Now the Governor of Texas has called a special election to fill the rest of Tom DeLay's term. Which will be held on the same day as the regular election.

Got all that?

The Democrats were counting on voter confusion at the polls. They just got a whole lot more than they wanted.

You can't make this stuff up. Lord knows, we've tried and it never comes out quite this funny.

All The News That’s Fit To Blackout

If you live in Britain and tried to read the New York Times story on what evidence the terror investigation turned up, you probably got a nasty little surprise. The New York Times chose to use its advertising software that targets ads to where someone lives for a new - and positively chilling - purpose.

They blocked people in Britain from reading the article, saying it was against British law to let people there read it.

NEW YORK - The New York Times' Web site is blocking British readers from a news article detailing the investigation into the recent airline terror plot, turning its Internet ad-targeting technology into a means of complying with U.K. laws.

"We had clear legal advice that publication in the U.K. might run afoul of their law," Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said Tuesday. "It's a country that doesn't have the First Amendment, but it does have the free press. We felt we should respect their country's law."

Visitors who click on a link to the article, published Monday, instead got a notice explaining that British law "prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial." The blocked article reveals evidence authorities have in the alleged plot to use liquid explosives to down U.S. airliners over the Atlantic.

The Times site already targets ads based on a visitor's location, but McNulty said this was the first time the technology was used in an editorial capacity. The Times also blocked U.K. access to an audio summary of the top Times stories, which included the article in question.

Other news organizations have blocked content before, mostly for financial reasons, said Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

For example, the British Broadcasting Corp. has been testing online access to landmark television reports of major world events from the past half-century. But it said it cannot make the video available for free outside of Britain because it is funded through an annual levy on British TV owners.

The BBC and other organizations also have blocked audio and video of Olympics competition because they bought licenses only for specific geographic regions. Likewise, to protect broadcast contracts, Major League Baseball has used similar technology to prevent live online access to games involving hometown teams.

The underlying blocking technology, known as geotargeting or geolocation, checks the numeric Internet address of a visitor's computer against databases showing the company or service provider to which that address was assigned.

The technique is not foolproof.

A British computer modem could, for instance, make an international call to make the visitor appear to be coming from, say, the United States.

I have no idea why an American newspaper would suddenly try to comply with another country's laws first of all. More importantly, this is supposed to be the mighty defender of the free press and the right of the people to know. And this is what they are doing? Blacking out news based on where you come from? Anyone else see the deadly danger this presents?

The New York Times has the potential to turn the whole world into China. Think about it. This is a particularly bad move on the part of the Times.

Folks in Britain better be thinking of ways to spoof this technology. So had we all.

UPDATE: Don't miss this beautiful irony. It seems the Times of London has no problem publishing the same information the NYT did and even credits the NYT as the source! The NYT can't even get the legal facts straight.

Many thanks to those who have linked this post.

NASA Brings Shuttle Inside

NASA is moving the Atlantis back into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Concerns about tropical Storm Ernesto prompted the move.

"It was about the weather and keeping the vehicle safe," said NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young.

The move, started shortly before noon, was expected to take about 12 hours.

NASA rules say the shuttle should not be outside in winds of more than 45 mph.

The Weather Service is projecting winds of between 39 and 74 mph. Kind of a wide spread, isn't it?  By the way, if you have never seen the VAB, you've really missed something. It is one of the largest buildings in the world. You simply do not comprehend how huge it is until you realize that that little, tiny gray mark at the base of the building is a normal sized door!

UPDATE: Well, never mind then. NASA suddenly reversed itself and has sent the Atlantis back to the launch pad after warnings about Ernesto were downgraded further. While it sounds as if they are confused, it is actually a matter of launch windows and how long it takes to get the shuttle ready once it is on the pad.

That Didn’t Take Long

The White House has publicly rejected Iranian president Ahmadinejad's latest bit of egotistical showboating, demanding a televised debate. The US called it a "diversion". (I'm surprised they stopped laughing this quickly).

The White House dismissed the idea of a debate, describing it as a diversion.

The Security Council has given Iran until Thursday to suspend enrichment, a process that can produce either fuel for a reactor or material for weapons, or face economic and political sanctions.

"The U.S. and Britain are the source of many tensions," Ahmadinejad said at a news conference. "At the Security Council, where they have to protect security, they enjoy the veto right. If anybody confronts them, there is no place to take complaints to.

"This (veto right) is the source of problems of the world. … It is an insult to the dignity, independence, freedom and sovereignty of nations," he said.

Ahmadinejad challenged Bush to a live, televised debate on "world issues and the ways of solving the problems of the international community."

He said such a debate would show "the proposals of the Iranian nation on how to run the world better, different from the U.S. method of use of force."

In dismissing Ahmadinejad's proposal, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the United States was willing to talk to Iran in the context of a "positive response" to the package of incentives offered by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

"Talk of a debate is just a diversion from the legitimate concerns that the international community, not just the U.S., has about Iran's behavior, from support for terrorism to pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability," Perino said, adding: "Iran may want to look first to allowing free expression and open debate within its borders, as opposed to the current practice of crushing dissent."

As Mike Wallace would say, what a charming fellow. Nice of him to openly offer to run the world, isn't it?

UPDATE: The Political Pit Bull: Heeeeeere's Mahmoud.

Terror Group Claims Bombings

A shadowy terrorist group calling itself the Kurdish Freedom Falcons (TAK) is claiming that it is responsible for the bombings in Turkish resort areas. This fits a pattern attributed to the group of attacking tourist destinations.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, which has threatened to harm the country's tourism industry, said on its Web site that it carried out the attack Monday and vowed that the "fear of death will reign everywhere in Turkey."

The same group has taken responsibility for a Sunday bus bombing that injured 10 Britons and 11 Turks in Marmaris, another Mediterranean resort town.

Attacks on the tourism industry are very sensitive in Turkey and authorities would not immediately confirm that the attack in Antalya was the result of a bomb attack. But the Milliyet newspaper and other reports said police had drawn up sketches of two suspects from descriptions of men seen fleeing the scene, suggesting that the explosion was the result of a bomb.

Last year, 21 million tourists visited Turkey, which brought in some $18 billion in revenue.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons is a small militant group believed to be an offshoot of the much larger Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

Here's the problem with this group. They appeared out of nowhere in 2004. Although there are a lot of people who suspect they are part of the PKK, there is no proof whatsoever and the PKK denies the TAK is affiliated in any way. (Not an unusual response, but still interesting). The TAK also uses radically different strategy than the PKK by all accounts.

So, if you wanted to stir up trouble in a neighboring country for your own ends, would you be willing to fund a group to act as agents provocateurs? I bet you would.

Chopped And Channeled

Need a good laugh? Iowahawk can help you out with an absolutely genuine Reuters Quality™ story. Illustrated with 100% real true Hajj Grade® photographs.

Honest. Would we lie? We're not the media, after all.

Hard Choice

William Stuntz, writing in the Weekly Standard spells out the choices available in the Iraq war. A specific analysis of what the consequences of each possible scenario indicates that the choices boil down to win or get out. The repercussions of getting out would be enormous and all negative. Winning leads to a number of much brighter outcomes.

There are three plausible grounds for pulling out of a war. First, the status quo might be both acceptable and stable; something resembling victory might already have been achieved. That is roughly the decision the United States made in Korea after 1951: The North Korean and Chinese invasions of South Korea had been repelled, and the South's government was unlikely to fall if the fighting ended. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations both decided to stop fighting as soon as the Chinese and North Koreans were willing to accept the continued division of the peninsula.

Plainly, this condition doesn't hold in Iraq today. Iraq isn't stable; it's radically unstable. A pullout now risks a regime controlled by radical Shiites like Moktada al-Sadr–another ally for Iran, to add to Baathist Syria and Hezbollah-ruled Lebanon. That isn't near-victory; it's total defeat.

Second, success may be worth too little to justify the effort. A good many opponents of the Vietnam war argued that our side was no better than the Viet Cong, that the fight was between two sets of thugs–and the thugs on the other side had more popular support. The "our side is no better" line pops up a lot these days in connection with Iraq, but it simply isn't true.

….

On the other hand, if American forces were to leave Iraq now, the likely result would be an escalating civil war that would radicalize Iraq's Shiites, leaving Sadr and his ilk in control of either the whole country or its Shiite-majority region–along with most of its oil. That would give Ahmadinejad's Iran a chain of likeminded governments stretching from Afghanistan's western border to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A jihadist Shiite superpower with nuclear capability at the head of such an alliance is a truly terrible outcome, comparable in world-historical terms to Hitlerite rule over Europe. It is well worth fighting to prevent this–indeed, it is worth fighting harder than America has fought to date.

There is one more possible reason to head for the exits in Iraq: Victory is either impossible or (what amounts to the same thing) prohibitively expensive. And there is a sure-fire test of whether or not victory truly is impossible: See whether a rising number of American soldiers in a given city or neighborhood tends to produce more violence or less. If the answer is more, then it is pointless to send more soldiers; the ones who are already there are doing net harm. But that is not what the evidence shows.

Read the whole thing it spells out good reasons why losing in Iraq would be a very bad idea for the country and for the world. And I suspect that the American electorate is a lot more interested in winning this than is running away now that we are in it.

Another Airbus Setback

Another setback for the Airbus A-380 has occurred. only a few minutes into a test flight, the monster, double-decker aircraft had to return to the airport when a problem occurred in the landing gear.

"Shortly after take-off the crew noted a discordance between two light signals, making it impossible to know whether or not the main landing gear was lowered," said a spokeswoman for the aircraft manufacturer Airbus on Tuesday.

"That sparked the launch of a security mechanism stopping the undercarriage from being retracted, and it returned to land without difficulty in Toulouse."

The plane, which left the southwestern French city of Toulouse at 0500 GMT to Tozeur in southern Tunisia, was forced to turn back after just 34 minutes, airport authorities in Tozeur said earlier.

The technical glitch is the latest of several to be detected on board the A380, the world's biggest commercial airliner, whose deliveries worldwide have been seriously affected.

The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), which owns 80 percent of Airbus, announced in June that deliveries would be delayed by six to seven months because of a production problem involving wiring connections.

Only nine of the aircraft are to be delivered in 2007, an announcement that caused EADS share price to slump and led to top management changes at both Airbus and its parent company.

Just another reason not to fly in one of these enormous aircraft until they have many more flight hours. That is if the seating arrangements for over 800 passengers doesn't keep you away.

Yeah, That’ll Happen

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for a public, televised debate between himself and George Bush. I'm sure the White House staff will drop everything it is working on right away.

So they can roll around on the floor laughing.

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on U.S. President George W. Bush to participate in a "direct television debate with us," so Iran can voice its point of view on how to end world predicaments.

"But the condition is that there can be no censorship, especially for the American nation," he said Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad blamed "special concessions" granted to the United States and Britain as "the root cause of all the problems in the world."

"At the Security Council, where they have to protect security, they enjoy the veto right. If anybody confronts them, there is no place to take complaints to."

His comments came during a news conference in Tehran, two days before a deadline set by a U.N. Security Council resolution for the Islamic republic to suspend uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions.

Although he did not directly address the U.N. deadline, Ahmadinejad said '"nobody can prevent" Iran from its right to a "peaceful, nuclear program."

"I think the time has passed to speak of the Security Council and the tools they can use to force a country to do certain things," he said.

Ahmadinejad said he would reject any suspension of enrichment, even if requested by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan during an upcoming visit to Iran.

Well, he's telegraphed his intentions quite clearly. Also his complete contempt for the UN. Kofi Annan will just love the guy.

A Final Debunking

Oh, I know that's overly optimistic. The professional victim team of Plame and Wilson are approaching their fifteenth minute of fame asymptotically - they will never get to that end point if they have anything to say about it. But Jack Kelly, writing in Real Clear Politics has written what should be the last word on the Plame affair, although it won't be. 

Mr. Wilson's charge was important because it marked the beginning of the "Bush lied" meme about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee; the Robb-Silberman Commission on prewar intelligence, and the British Butler Commission all concluded it was Mr. Wilson who was not telling the truth. Saddam had indeed tried to buy uranium in Africa, as even Mr. Wilson himself had acknowledged to the CIA officers who debriefed him after his Niger trip.

One of the false claims Mr. Wilson made was that he had been sent to Niger at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney. In his July 14, 2003 column, Robert Novak disclosed that he had been sent instead at the insistence of his wife, Valerie Plame, who worked at the CIA.

Ms. Plame had once been an undercover operative. Concern was expressed that the leaker had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Mr. Wilson blamed the leak on White House political guru Karl Rove, claiming it was payback for his "whistle-blowing." A special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed to investigate the charge. Mr. Fitzgerald eventually indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then the chief of staff to the vice president, on a charge of having lied to a grand jury about from whom he had learned of Ms. Plame's occupation. He is awaiting trial.

No indictments have been brought on the charge Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate, because it is clear there was no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The act applies only to those who are operating under cover overseas, or who have done so within five years of the disclosure of their identities. Ms. Plame had been manning a desk at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. for longer than that.

Mr. Isikoff and Mr. Corn disclose that it was then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to Bob Novak, which is not exactly news to those who have been following the case. But Mr. Isikoff and Mr. Corn provide details which reflect poorly on Mr. Armitage, Mr. Fitzgerald, and the journalists who knew the truth at the time.

This is a very thorough, and very harsh debunking of the foundation for the "Bush Lied" meme. But as in the idiotic jihad against Wal-Mart, too many people have too much invested in the meme to let it go. So they will continue to bluster about it, even to the point of making themselves laughing stocks. As Kelly points out, the journalists knew full well that Armitage was the source for a long time, but only now speak the truth in exchange for money. Armitage never spoke out and let the media and the left bring endless false charges against people that were not guilty of anything.

That says a lot about the whole situation if you really think about it.