Problems In Hungary

A frequent commenter here is Roland, who hails from Hungary. I'll be interested in his take on what is going on over there right now. Because the press is not being helpful. There has apparently been a major ruckus over the release of a tape recording made at a private meeting of the ruling party's cabinet. Demonstrations against the government resulted, and now police have broken up riots.

Rescue services said at least 50 people were injured as police fired tear gas and water cannon at rock-throwing protesters, who have been demanding the government resign.

The violence followed a mainly peaceful demonstration that began a day earlier outside parliament, after a recording made in May was leaked to local media. On it, Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted officials lied about government finances to win April's elections.

Despite the surge in violence involving dozens of the protesters, Gyurcsany said that he had no plans to resign.

"The street is not a solution, but instead causes conflict and crisis," the prime minister told MTI, the state news service, early Tuesday. "Our job is to resolve the conflict and prevent a crisis."

Socialist members of parliament voted unanimously to support him and the government called for an emergency session of the cabinet for Tuesday morning.

As the crowd grew by Monday night to more than 10,000, according to an estimate by MTI, several hundred broke away and marched over to the nearby headquarters of state television, demanding to deliver a statement in a live broadcast.

While most of demonstrators watched, a few dozen broke through police lines and into the TV headquarters.

Police tried to disperse them with water cannon sprays but the truck was quickly disabled by the rioters, some of whom escorted the police officers operating the vehicle to safety. Several cars near the TV building were set on fire, their flames scorching the building.

The rioters appeared to control some areas on the ground floor of the block-square television building. Police said they were preparing to drive them out and were ordering several thousand police reinforcements to the capital.

The tape was made at a closed-door meeting in late May, weeks after Gyurcsany's government became the first in post-communist Hungary to win re-election.

It seemed to confirm the worst accusations leveled at him by the center-right opposition during the campaign — that Hungary's state budget was on the verge of collapse and that Gyurcsany and his ministers were concealing the truth to secure victory.

Adding spice to the scandal, Gyurcsany's comments were full of crude remarks and called into doubt the abilities of some of Hungary's most respected economic experts.

"We screwed up. Not a little, a lot," Gyurcsany was heard saying. "No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have."

The prime minister also told colleagues the government needed to end its duplicitous ways.

Speculation now seems to center on whether the right or the left actually leaked the recording. AFP carries this with the headline: "Hungarian police teargas far-right demonstrators", while Reuters says, "Hungarian anti-PM protesters clash with police". So take your pick. Hopefully, Roland will weigh in and tell us what is going on from a Hungarian viewpoint.

UPDATE: The BBC coverage quotes someone comparing this small riot to 1956. We'll have to throw the flag on that one folks. Roland from Hungary weighed in in the comments section. This was not 1956, more like a football thug riot. It's worth your time to read what Roland wrote and look at the pictures he linked before believing the hyperventilation from the BBC.

World’s Smallest Violin Department

The world's smallest violin playing a rousing rendition of Hearts and Flowers. Can you hear me now? No? Good. CAIR held a press conference to trumpet the "surge" in anti-Muslim incidents in the past reporting year here in the US.

The incidents "skyrocketed" from 1,522 in 2004 to 1,972 in 2005.

The heartbreaking story of woe includes 17 percent fall into what they call "due process" complaints such as racial profiling and overzealous arrest or interrogation practices. Another 15 percent, are denial of religious accommodation accusations and the next biggest category is 14 percent concerned employment discrimination.

How many murdered nuns shot in the back? Why, none at all. How many burned out mosques? Why, none at all. How many burned effigies of Mohammed? Why, none at all. How many burned embassies? None. None. None. Just wounded feelings. Oh my.

You get my point. Well, at least CAIR showed one thing today. They showed how no serious publication can treat any of their nonsense as anything approaching serious news. I rather hope that is the last time the Washington Post sends a reporter to cover their propagandistic nonsense unless and until they really address the real problems in the world.

CAIR being one of them.

UPDATE: Don't hold back, KT, tell us how you really feel.

The REAL Secret Interrogation Techniques

Bah. As usual, the Guardian has it all wrong. They trumpet that they have found out the super-duper, tippity-top secret interrogation techniques that John McCain chose to block (by way of saying "ta-ta" to his presidential ambitions, incidentally). Those hideously brutal techniques?

The techniques sought by the CIA are: induced hypothermia; forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods; sleep deprivation; a technique called "the attention grab" where a suspect's shirt is forcefully seized; the "attention slap" or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage; the "belly slap"; and sound and light manipulation.

Gee. How. Awful.

Well, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have the real scoop of the day. We obtained the real list while the Guardian obtained the official red herring list of silly things to get the leftists spun about™. We called out ultra-reliable sources at the Magic 8-Ball Intelligence Agency and Cut Rate Tires, Inc. and got the actual list of inhuman tortures that the CIA will really use, once McCain realizes he's screwed in 2008. Without further ado, the real list of Hideous, Inhuman Tortures®:

The McCruelty: Subject will be forced to consume twenty seven cups of a certain fast-food establishment's coffee in a row. Then will find out the restroom is out of order.

The TeleHorror: Subject will be strapped to a seat in front of a wall sized flat-panel television. Barney will be playing. On endless loop.

The Nosmo King: The subject, if a smoker will be sent into a room with 500 cartons of cigarettes, all his favorite brand. No matches will be provided. If a non-smoker, subject will be strapped to a chair in a sports bar during the playoffs. Of several sports. 

The Endless Wait: A subject will be made to stand in a grocery checkout line with a bag of potato chips and $3. Each of the twenty people in line ahead of the subject  will have a minimum of 35 items in their carts, will use 73 coupons, will require a minimum of five price checks AND will pay with a check.

The Infantifada: Subject will be placed in the coach section of an airliner in the middle seat between a 400 pound insurance salesman with terminal halitosis and a 450 pound conspiracy theorist who loves to talk and has not bathed in six months. Minimum. Every other seat on the airliner will be filled with mothers carrying screaming babies. Non-stop, New York to Tokyo. And back.

He'll crack. Trust me. Nobody could live through that last one without spilling.

Update: Evil, evil Jim Treacher. You'll go straight to Hell for these brutal techniques. You monster.

UPDATE: Ace Chimes in with more horrors beyond imagining. He has one factual error however. I did not personally "sell the soul of conservatism" to the devil for 600 pieces of silver. I only leased it. With option to renew.

Did Chavez Make A Mistake?

At least some analysts think Hugo Chavez may have hurt his country's chances at a seat on the UN Security Council with his aggressive defense of Iran's nuclear ambitions at the Non-Aligned Movement meeting. One can but hope.

With trips abroad, speeches championing poor nations and generous bilateral oil deals, Chavez has devoted his foreign policy for months to winning a vote next month for a rotating seat on the top U.N. forum over U.S. objections.

His embrace of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a two-day visit that ends on Monday put him further at odds with the West and could alienate developing nations that welcome his anti-U.S. stances but worry about Iran's atomic ambitions.

Chavez's support for a fellow OPEC country in the same week that he will go to the United Nations to lobby for a seat on a council is typical of the risk-taking style of a president whose confidence is buoyed by high oil prices.

"In making an alliance with Iran, Chavez's calculation is that whatever governments think about Iran, he believes they dislike the United States more," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

"It's a big gamble," he added.

The big problem for Chavez is that the vote is secret. He won't know who reneged on any deals he has made.

But some moderate African nations might now withdraw support for Chavez in the secret U.N. vote, said Larry Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs think tank.

Neighbors such as Chile and countries across Europe and Asia that were not solidly behind the Venezuelan candidacy, face a fresh argument against Chavez, Shifter said.

Venezuelan officials say widespread support in Latin America and Africa, as well as backing from the Arab League and major powers such as Russia and China should assure victory.

But Birns was skeptical.

"Even though the U.N. vote is the most important item on his agenda, he may well have overplayed his hand at the expense of some votes that he had every reason to count on," Birns said.

That would be a very funny day to watch, It would be a very bad day to be a cat anywhere near Chavez, though.

Senate Will Consider Border Fencing Bill

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled a maneuver that will force the Senate version of the just passed House border fence only bill to the floor. The howls are already beginning.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., used a legislative maneuver to get the bill to the floor as early as Wednesday, when the Senate could decide whether to move forward on the legislation.

"Border security is the essential first step of any effort to enact immigration reform. Only when we have convinced the American people of our commitment to securing our borders will we be able reach a consensus on comprehensive immigration reform," Frist said in a statement.

Democrats are likely to try to block the bill. They may try to attach the comprehensive immigration bill the Senate passed in May as an amendment and push debate into next week. A delay could be a problem as Congress tries to wrestle with legislation addressing treatment of terrorism suspects.

"This smacks of desperation and a clear repudiation of President Bush's support for comprehensive immigration reform. It's obviously designed to play to the base. Sen. Frist was for comprehensive immigration reform before he was against it," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

House Republicans, trying to keep the illegal immigration issue before voters, passed the fence bill last week by a vote of 283-138. The House had approved the same amount of fencing last December as part of a broader bill that would have made being in the country illegally a felony. That bill is stalled.

The statements from Reid's spokesman shows just how worried the Democrats are that this is going for a debate and vote. Because they know darn well it does not "play to the base", it plays to an absolute majority of the American public. This could be devastating for the Democrats if they oppose it. Frist just painted them into a corner. I predicted a long time ago that the first party to understand that Americans want that border controlled will win in November. (Gee, I wonder if Bill Frist reads the humble Crabitat?)

UPDATE: Here's Frist on the bill from his Volpac website.

He Should Not Have To Give This Warning

And he would not have to give a warning like this if people like John Murtha were not so intent on partisan political gain. In order to counter the irresponsible statements of Murtha, General John Abizaid warned today that any country that believed that the US Military was stretched too thin would be making a "dreadful" mistake.

General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, would not comment in an interview with CNN on US contingency planning for military options against Iran.

But he warned against underestimating US military might in the region.

"We've got 200,000 in my area of operation. Not all of our sea power, not all of our air power, by any stretch of the imagination, is committed to my area," he said.

"Any opponent that would think that we're over-stretched and we can't deal with our military obligations would be making a dreadful mistake," he said.

If people like the stupid and irresponsible Murtha would not release information specifically designed to undermine the US military, Abizaid would not have to warn the thugs of the world not to try anything.

Muslim Charity Raided By FBI

Federal agents served warrants and raided the offices of a Muslim charity in Detroit today. Records were seized and removed by anti-terrorism task force members at the Life for Relief and Development offices in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. 

Federal counterterrorism agents raided a Muslim charity in Southfield on Monday morning, according to the FBI.

Agents with the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force executed search warrants at the headquarters for Life for Relief and Development, a Southfield-based charity that works in Arab and Muslim countries around the world.

The warrants were based on a criminal predicate, said William Kowalski, assistant special agent in charge for the Detroit office of the FBI. The affidavits in support of the warrants are sealed, he said.

At about 9 a.m., agents raided the Southfield office, hauling away documents, letters and ledgers, said Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Agents told officials with the charity that the raid was related to some sort of criminal activity, Walid said.

Debbie Schlussel has a lot more background on Life for Relief and Development.

The Hawk From Ipanema

Residents of Rio de Janeiro are strongly advised to get a copy of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds. Or better yet, read the original short story by Daphne du Maurier. Just to help put the hawk attacks into perspective. Not that we're trying to alarm people, but they should be aware that if they don't do something at once, they're all going to die!

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Residents of crime-plagued Rio de Janeiro have a new kind of predator to worry about — hawks. A pair of hawks have attacked more than 100 residents of the upscale Ipanema beach district over the past year, scratching peoples heads and faces, doormen working at buildings in the area said Monday.

"People leave the building carrying umbrellas to protect themselves from the attacks," said Luis Honorato, a doorman in a building near where the hawks have built a nest. "At first, they think that someone is throwing something, like a can, onto their heads from the floors above."

Honorato said that one day he saw five attacks in 20 minutes.

"Every time I leave the building I keep waving my hands over my head," said Mario Roxo, a 75-year-old chauffeur who had his head badly scratched by a hawk.

The O Globo newspaper reported that one woman lost part of her scalp to a hawk and another man mistook an attack for a stray bullet.

They're scalping people. Now do you believe us about the animal uprising?

If You Want To Be Arrested, Press “1″

An Italian thief who dropped his cell phone while mugging an elderly woman ended up turning himself in to police. The thief called his own phone and arranged with the "finder" to meet and retrieve it. Unfortunately, the "finder" turned out to be the police.

The 77-year-old victim handed over the phone that the bag snatcher had dropped to police, who lured the thief to a meeting where he was arrested, news agency Agi reported on Monday.

Agi said the man had been freed from prison recently under an Italian mass pardon meant to ease congestion in jails.

By the time police were waiting for him at the meeting point, the 35-year-old had already robbed another old lady and was riding a stolen scooter, Agi said.

He was on a one man crime spree. Boy, if you don't think that release program blunder isn't going to come back to haunt the Socialists, you're dreaming.

Health Warning Update

The FDA is advising that consumers eat NO raw spinach whatsoever. I mentioned this in comments back on the original post on this subject, but it seemed important enough to make a new post on as well. The E. coli outbreak is spreading at this point, and they still do not have the source pinpointed.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Food and Drug Administration said Monday consumers should not eat any fresh spinach as investigators look for the source of E. coli bacteria that has sickened at least 109 people.

The initial FDA advisory late last week focused on bagged spinach.

Dr. Robert Brackett of the FDA told CNN, "We've expanded the warning actually to all of the fresh spinach. That's because we learned that some of the companies that produced the consumer bag spinach also produced larger food-service size.

Brackett said another concern is that restaurants or stores may use consumer-size bags of spinach to stock their salad bars or bulk bins.

"We want to make sure consumers are aware that they don't consume any of the fresh spinach. We don't know whether it came from the bag or another state. We just don't have the focus down that much yet," he said.

Spinach producers are voluntarily recalling their products. Brackett said the FDA does not have the power to order a recall but is working with the producers.

They do have the power to seize contaminated products, but Brackett said investigators can't do that until they determine the exact source of the contamination.

"It could come from the irrigation water, animals in the field, from the workers, from a piece of equipment that's contaminated. We just don't know," he said. "Until we figure that out, we don't want to go down the wrong road. We're looking at all possibilities."

So if you need a spinach fix, I'd advise going the Popeye route.

“Work With Me Here”

Donald Sensing, being a minister by trade, has an excellent perspective on many things having to do with religion in general. Today is no exception. He rounds up a lot of links and information about the whole enormous - and apparently still escalating - uproar over the speech that Pope Benedict XVI gave in Germany last week.

As may be expected, this inflames the fabled "Muslim street" (but what doesn't these days?). Muslims clerics and leaders of Islamic nation demanded apologies from the Pope. Fair enough. But then they loosed their people into the streets to riot. Oh, please face the fact that in almost every Muslim country in the world, no one riots or even demonstrates without prior government approval or instigation. There are exceptions, such as (maybe) Turkey, but they are very few.

What are they protesting? Why, the Pope's apparent accusation that Islam is a violent religion….

Read the whole thing, especially if you've missed the entire mess unfolding over the weekend. He cites one particular article written by Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald. I had a private email exchange with Crittenden about that article in which we disagreed with one another's takes on this whole issue. You know what? Neither one of us went after one another with violence. Funny how that works, isn't it?

UPDATES: LOTS of activity in the blogosphere on this. Read Tim Blair (Crittenden makes an appearance in comments), Hyscience, (Actually it's more properly 7th century, not 14th), Dr. Sanity, Rightlinx, Dean's World, Slapstick Politics, Rightwing Nut House, Liberty and Justice, Confederate Yankee,

Dancing Out Of Depression

In the world of science, it is a source of endless amusement to see what in the world they will come up with next as a way to spend money on frivolous studies. So it is with the latest effort about to get underway in Britain. Scientists want to know if salsa dancing can help beat depression.

University lecturers are to investigate whether Salsa dancing can help beat depression.

Researchers at Derby will be testing to see if the Cuban step can boost mental health.

The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), a system used to record depression levels, will be used by participants before and after Salsa classes over a two-month period.

The findings will then be compared to see if the dance has a positive effect on people's moods.

Mental health lecturer Matt Birks, a keen Salsa dancer, said: "It's been documented that exercise can help mental health sufferers in their fight against depression.

"With the physical benefits of Salsa, together with the social interaction and the need for full concentration during a session, I believe Salsa dancing could have health benefits for depressed patients."

So they know exercise can help with depression. Salsa is exercise. So why study it? What do they plan to do with the knowledge? Figure out the dosage of dance classes? Prescribe two cha chas and call me in the morning? And then what about the tango? Why, there's no end to the money they can throw away. And not much point to the exercise.

Japanese To Slap Sanctions On North Korea

Saying openly that dialog alone will not work, Japan is set to slap a new group of economic sanctions on North Korea. Besides the missile program that North Korea continues to provoke Japan and others with, there is also the lingering issue of the Japanese citizens that were kidnapped by the North Koreans.

The sanctions — called for in a U.N. Security Council resolution that denounced the missile launches — would ban withdrawals of money and overseas remittances by groups and individuals suspected of links to North Korean weapons programs.

"As it has become obvious that the problem cannot be resolved only through dialogue, pressure is unavoidable," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said Monday on NTV network. "In order to get them to change their behavior, we cannot help but apply the pressure."

The planned sanctions include measures targeting 12 groups and an individual that officials say have links to North Korea's weapons development programs, according to Japanese media reports.

Tokyo stepped up trade restrictions on North Korea in July following Pyongyang's test-firing of seven missiles, including one long-range rocket, into the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The launches drew international condemnation.

Communist North Korea's moribund economy is heavily dependent on cash infusions from a large community of sympathetic ethnic Koreans in Japan.

Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic relations, but the two have maintained limited economic ties. Following the latest sanctions, trade between the two plunged nearly 40 percent, the government recently announced.

If the nationalist party wins the upcoming elections (as appears to be widely expected) they have promised to appoint a cabinet level office to address the issue of the kidnapped citizens.

Losing The Ability To Discriminate

A very sharp commentary from the Telegraph on the uproar over remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI. Comparing reactions to two incidents, the Pope's remarks and a playful slap by Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, on a laughing teenager, they conclude that we are losing the ability to discriminate. Without the ability to separate the important from the trivial, we are losing our ability to deal with either.

The Pope quotes a barbed medieval criticism of Islamic violence in the course of a scholarly discourse, and Muslims all over the world go into uproar; churches are firebombed. The Prime Minister's wife delivers a playful slap to a cheeky teenager, and six detectives rush to question her.

We are living in a world that has lost not only its sense of proportion but also its ability to discriminate.

In the case of Cherie Blair – who aimed a slap at a 17-year-old fencing champion while both of them giggled – it is hard not to conclude that it served her right. In her role as a trendy human rights lawyer, she has helped foster the nosy paranoia that led the Child Protection in Sport Unit to call the police. That said, however, Mrs Blair was clearly guilty of nothing more than a sense of humour.

By contrast, it is not immediately apparent how much blame to attach to Benedict XVI for the worldwide furore over last week's lecture. On reflection, the answer must be: not very much. Presumably, the Pope regrets quoting the Byzantine emperor's opinion that aspects of Islam were "inhuman". Moderate Muslims have been upset by it, and Benedict reiterated yesterday that he was sorry that they had taken offence. But he is even more sorry that this offence has been exacerbated by the deliberate manipulation of his words by Islamic firebrands and their slick media operation.

The media has had a major role in this mess, too. They breathlessly reported the remarks the Pope made, making sure to quote the most inflammatory words without the full context. Then they shoved a microphone in the face of every reliably hateful Islamist they could to get more inflammatory quotes. They have been stirring the pot mightily throughout this incident. Even the murder of an elderly nun is just more grist for the media mill.

Are The Voices In My Head Bothering You?

Dutch researchers have been surprised to find that hearing voices, or auditory hallucinations, are not the sole property of schizophrenics, people with bipolar disease or depressives. People who are, by all appearances, perfectly happy and well adjusted hear voices, too. Perhaps as many as 4% of the population.

Traditionally these auditory hallucinations, as psychologists call them, are associated with mental illness. They can be a symptom of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and sometimes depression.

But studies by Dutch researchers that began in the 1990s found that some healthy people also regularly hear voices. The scientists ran a program on Dutch television asking for volunteers who heard voices, and they got a surprising response. Many of the people who contacted them did not find the voices disruptive and had never felt the need to consult mental health services. Some even said they found the experience to be positive or inspirational.

The resulting studies found that more people might hear voices than psychologists had thought, perhaps around 4 percent of the population.

Aylish Campbell, a psychologist at the University of Manchester, is hoping to expand on the Dutch study by investigating why peoples' reactions to hearing voices vary so widely. Campbell has just begun looking for study participants in Britain.

"We're looking for people who hear voices who have a range of experiences," she said.

Campbell and her colleagues suspect the variation could be caused by different life experiences. Childhood traumas, beliefs that other people are untrustworthy or dangerous, and feelings of vulnerability might react with fear to cause people to hear voices.

The experience might be enjoyed by people who have positive outlooks, they figure.

Campbell thinks anyone can hear voices, particularly when stressed. For example, those who are grieving over the recent loss of a loved one might hear that person's voice.

"It might just be a normal human experience," she said. "People are susceptible to different degrees."

So, if you do hear voices, you are not necessarily suffering from any mental disease. If the voices begin singing Barney songs, however, please check yourself into the nearest hospital. At once.