Trackback Spam Overload

People trying to access the Crabitat may have gotten a "suspended" error today. I have just spent a long time on the phone with the hosting company and there appears to be evidence that someone has been trying to hack the site. One URL has been totally banned by the hosting company as a result. That may or may not relieve the problem for now. But I have had to turn the anti-spam image back on as well. That effectively blocks trackbacks. So if you link here, I will try to link back if I see the link, but automatic trackbacks are effectively dead at the moment until we can figure out how to stop this attack.

Hooked On Phonics

Apropos this post at Powerline.

Isn't that 15 minutes over?

Exposing Lies

A lot of extreme pontification has been going on in the blogosphere over the reports of all the burned mosques. Curt over at Flopping Aces has been working very, very hard to get the to the truth of the matter.

And it is NOT at all what has been reported in the media.

BAGHDAD — Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.

Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.

The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.

While investigating the Al Meshaheda mosque, the patrol received small arms fire from unknown insurgents.  The patrol returned fire, and the insurgents broke contact and fled the area.  A subsequent check of the mosque found the mosque intact with no evidence of a fire.

At approximately 3:50 p.m., a local civilian reported to the patrol that armed insurgents had set the Al-Nidaa mosque on fire by throwing a gas container into the mosque.  The patrol pursued the insurgents but lost contact with them.  

I have already seen some left-leaning blogs saying "denial" loud and long.

If you need lies - not bad intelligence, lies -  to make your case, who exactly is denying what? The mosques that were widely reported as being destroyed are still standing. No fire damage.

How much else of what is being spouted as TRUTH™ is not quite what is is being sold as?

No Disrespect

Ann Althouse, who has long been one of my personal favorites in the blogosphere, has a rather pointed takedown of Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan is really on a bender over his personally-coined word "christianist" and, in this case, Mormons in general, Mitt Romney specifically. Althouse takes him to task over it:

"I mean no disrespect."

Says Andrew Sullivan, chided by a Mormon for his post about Mormon undergarments. Here's the post. Do you buy "I mean no disrespect"?

ADDED: And here's an earlier post. Sullivan is so sure of himself on the subject of religion. He seems to think he knows just where it's right to dish out contempt about religion. But his contempt is mostly for religious people who he thinks are too sure of themselves. [ADDED: But that is exactly his character flaw.] In this case, it seems that Mitt Romney's opposition to gay marriage makes it morally upright for Sullivan to attack Mormons:

Mitt Romney will surely provide a fascinating glimpse into the Christianist mindset in the coming two years. He will be the candidate for the Christianist right, but he's not a Christian. And many Christianists may well recoil at the man's Mormon faith…. I'm sorry if I have little sympathy for Romney's plight. Live by fundamentalism; die by fundamentalism.

I wonder how many people "recoil" at Sullivan's sanctimonious pronouncements about "Christianists." He's become so devoted to that word of his. Does he not notice how snide and hostile it feels even to people who are not fundamentalists?

The best part of the post is in the updates. Especially the last one:

AND: Glenn Greenwald is such an idiot. Am I supposed to respond to this foolishness? Glenn, you moron, in case you didn't notice, Sullivan is mocking Mormons in general. That's what bothered me. I don't object to the word "Christianists" if it is used fairly to refer to something that is the equivalent of "Islamists." I use the word "religionists" myself. See here, here, here, and here. Words like this mean something and have a place. The key is to use them in the right place. I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here. Why not take a little trouble to try to understand the person you are criticizing before you write, you disreputable slimeball? (And your writing is putrid.) [But I do love the pathetic jealousy of your post title.]

Now, frankly, I find Greenwald to be one of the most turgid writers blogging today. He never fails to find a way to say in 3,000 or so words what could have been said in, oh, say, three short sentences. And he's punctuation challenged in figuring out where to break sentences. That he also gets caught engaging in blatant sockpuppetry is just plain funny. I've said before that Althouse can deliver the definitive smackdown when she chooses. She delivered two at once here.

Not that I mean any disrespect or anything.

Miscarriage

Crimes involving children are extremely upsetting to me. So the so-called kiddie porn offenders are, to me, very serious criminals who deserve to be hammered with every day of prison time that the law allows. I care not at all what the person charged with the offense did that may have been "good" for the community before the offense. (The quotes are used because very often people who did "good" before being found out, did those "good" things for their own nefarious reasons.)I care not at all what political leanings the person involved had. Drop the hammer.

However, with the right judge and the right prosecutor, you can get away with one of the most heinous crimes imaginable.

ASHEVILLE — A community activist and actor pleaded guilty to 16 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after using the Internet to collect and share graphic child pornography.

A judge sentenced Andrew Douglas Reed, 53, to a minimum of 10 months and a maximum of 12 months in prison, District Attorney Ron Moore said Thursday.

Reed was arrested on June 10, 2005, during a statewide operation conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation.

According to a warrant authorizing a search of his Dogwood Road home, SBI agents determined Reed used an e-mail account to post 169 images and three movies containing child pornography on file-sharing networks from Jan. 13, 2004, to May 9. Most depicted children as young as 6 engaged in sex acts with adults or other children.

Reed was a regular community guest columnist for the Citizen-Times and involved in multiple community efforts including the Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville-Buncombe County and the League of Women Voters.

Six. Years. Old.

Ten months.

Jay at Stop the ACLU is righteously pissed about this. Let me make this perfectly clear. I do not care what party this guy belonged to, or who he was an activist for. This is sick beyond belief. The judge and the prosecutor should be run out of town. If I lived there, I would be campaigning to recall them both. Right now.

UPDATE: Others: Wizbang, Right Voices, Sister Toldjah, Clayton Cramer, Interested Participant, Nazh, Lost in Lima Ohio, RTACLU,

WordPress Upgrade

Ok, I just went through and upgraded to version 2.0.5. Everything appears to be functioning, but please leave a comment or drop me an email if you find some errors or malfunctions.

False Reports

Curt over at Flopping Aces has been running down some of the reports coming out of Iraq at the moment. And he's discovered that there appears to be outright lies being reported as complete fact by the media. This is not a little bit off, these are lies. The military has issued detailed denials of a number of the most lurid tales.

As we have learned quite well over the years the enemy will try to stir the pot with doctored photo’s or outright lies as Patterico documented. Now the story about those Sunni’s being burned alive appears to have been a fairy tale also.

You think we will hear that this raid on two houses maybe embellished also?

I mean the only think I can take away from this report that has a ring of truth to it is the fact that the US and Iraqi forces engaged the enemy north of town killing up to 60 more of the enemy.

In Diyala, Iraqi police killed 36 insurgents and wounded dozens of others during in clashes on Saturday in different areas of the province, police said.

And U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 22 insurgents and an Iraqi civilian, and destroyed a factory being used to make roadside bombs, during several raids north of Baghdad.

During three of the coalition raids, soldiers killed 10 insurgents near the city of Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad and home to a major U.S. air base. An Iraqi teenage boy also was killed and a pregnant Iraqi woman was wounded in the crossfire, the military said.

[…]In another area north of Baghdad, coalition forces attacked three vehicles carrying 12 insurgents, including one they were searching for because he allegedly was involved in the manufacture of car bombs, the coalition said.

But it appears that our MSM is getting the “anarchy” stories from the enemy themselves. That cannot be trusted. I mean the big story yesterday was these six burned alive and now no one can find any evidence that this happened except the word of the enemy.

Go over and read this all. Curt is all over this. There is a common thread running through a lot of these extremely lurid reports - one name. One "spokesman" - and as of right now, the military cannot confirm that this person exists much less is an authorized spokesman.

UPDATE: Others: Sparks From The Anvil, Gateway Pundit, Doctor Bulldog, The Jawa Report, Wake Up America, A Blog For All, Protein Wisdom, Dread Pundit Bluto,

When You Fire The Experienced Workers

And hire political supporters, you really shouldn't be surprised when maintenance is done improperly and accidents occur. You can just ask Hugo Chavez. There has been an "operational event" at Venezuela's Amuay refinery. This "event" could be heard and felt 10 kilometers away. Around these parts we generally call events like that "explosions", but we never were good a socialist-speak.

Three witnesses in the area of the refinery told Reuters on Saturday they felt and heard an explosion on Friday night.

"The explosion was felt from 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away," one resident of the area told Reuters by telephone.

PDVSA said in a statement that "an operational event was registered that affected a furnace of the Hydrosulfurization Unit Number 4 of the Amuay refinery" at 9:21 p.m. on Friday night."

The El Nacional newspaper on Saturday reported an explosion at Amuay and blackouts in the neighboring towns, citing witnesses in the area.

PDVSA's statement did not define the operational event and did not confirm whether or not it had been an explosion. The unit was in startup, PDVSA said, following a maintenance stoppage announced in September.

The "operational events" are coming fairly frequently these days.

PDVSA has suffered from frequent operational problems this year, including a massive fire at an Amuay crude distillation unit in July and an explosion at the neighboring Cardon refinery in March that killed two workers.

Having been involved in the energy field, I can be fairly certain that when things like this keep occurring, there is a maintenance issue at the root of it. And it will continue to get worse. Firing the experienced workers and putting your party faithful in the jobs will continue to pay dividends for Chavez.

Just not the good kind of dividends.

Scaremongering

I think the Daily Mail has gone a little bit overboard with this article. Calling polonium 210 "the deadliest poison known to man" and furiously clanging the alarm that nobody knows how many more will die from this is a bit over the top.

As the deadliest poison known to man was revealed to have killed Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko, the question last night was: How many more lives could it claim?

The 43-year-old former KGB officer was the victim of polonium 210, a radioactive element used as a trigger in nuclear weapons.

It is so powerful that a lethal dose can be passed on through the body in sweat or saliva.

So his widow Marina, 44, and ten-year-old son Anatole could have been contaminated just by kissing him as he fought for life in hospital. They are said to be at greatest risk.

But up to 100 other contacts will be tested among hospital staff, family members and restaurant workers who came into contact with him.

Chillingly, traces of polonium 210 have been detected at Itsu, the London sushi bar where Mr Litvinenko ate with a contact on November 1, at the four-star Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, where he met another associate that day, and at the family home in North London.

Look, this stuff is bad news, but it this is scaremongering. They could start a panic with this kind of irresponsible speculation. The health service has offered screenings to people to check for polonium contamination.

Desperados Waiting For The Train

I'd sing the Red River Valley and he'd sit in the kitchen and cry
Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'
Wonder Lord has every well I drilled ran dry
We were friends me and that old man
Like desperados waiting for the train like desperados waiting for the train
(Guy Clark, Desperados Waiting For The Train)

Since Wizbang is having a caption contest on a picture showing certain terrorist turkeys waiting for a train in New Jersey, we thought this was a fitting title. We, of course, already posted about the plot.

Good Riddance, Eh?

I what honestly reads like a parody, a man who moved to Canada with his wife after George Bush was reelected in 2004 writes the LA Times to tell the world why the happy couple is staying in Canada.

MY WIFE AND I AWOKE, as usual, to NPR. Before political correspondent Mara Liasson got to the end of her first sentence, I knew the news was disastrous. George W. Bush had been reelected.

"Honey," I said, "remember when we talked about moving to Canada?"

I'm sure a lot of other dyed-in-the-organic-wool liberals muttered something similar that dark morning in 2004, but unlike most of them, we meant it. Plan A: John Kerry wins, we build that dream ski house in Vermont. Plan B: Move to Vancouver, Canada.

So, Plan B it was. We'd had enough of Bush, the direction the United States was going, and this was the last straw. Never mind that we lived in Cambridge, Mass., arguably the most liberal city in the bluest of the blue states. We were packing our bulk granola into our diesel Beetle and heading out.

Eight months later, we were settling into a new home and jobs in British Columbia, when Canada had its own election. For those unfamiliar with the Canadian system of government, the prime minister is elected by parliament — not every four years but after losing a no-confidence vote. After a few of those there was a parliamentary election in January, which led to the election of a new prime minister, Stephen Harper, of Canada's Conservative Party.

Harper ran on cutting taxes and turning a federal child-care program into a monthly payment per child. The opposition's negative campaign ads sounded eerily familiar: He supported Bush's war in Iraq, was against signing the Kyoto environmental accord and wanted to "reexamine" gay marriage (which is legal in Canada). A shiver rippled down from our berets to our Birkenstocks.

"Our berets to our Birkenstocks". Oh. My. God. Well, all I can say is have fun up there. Hopefully you've also renounced your American citizenship. He mentions universal health care. One presumes he has not actually had the experience of dealing with it yet. When I lived in upstate New York it was astonishing how many Canadians who could afford to would come to the US for medical treatment and surgery rather than surrender themselves to the Canadian health care system. It can be very unhealthy to go into a Canadian hospital. As Canadians well know even if self parodying expatriates don't.

Losing Russia

There have been a lot of signs that Russia is rapidly sliding back into the old, totalitarian ways. It may not exactly be the old Soviet style, instead being a weird mixture of communistic ideas, oligarchy, cronyism and outright gangsterism. But it is becoming a very tyrannical country. Artemy Troitsky writes about the Russia he lost and what the world is rapidly gaining. It is not a pretty picture.

 At least in Brezhnev's time you knew where you stood. We had no illusions. Public life was black and white. Censorship was overwhelming. Journalists wrote under instruction and according to the social and political orders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Now, in the new Russia of sushi bars and oligarchs, the situation is more shameful and rotten than it was then. The attempted assassination of Alexander Litvinenko might not be all that it seems, and yet it does fit a pattern. It follows only a few weeks after the murder of my good friend, the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya. There have since been other, less publicised, cases. Another investigative reporter, Fatima Tlisova, was poisoned two weeks ago in north Caucasus; on 18 November the former head of security in Chechnya, who had fallen out with the region's prime minister, was gunned down in the centre of Moscow in broad daylight by Chechen and Russian police. And then this . . . the mysterious poisoning of Litvinenko (in a sushi restaurant, naturally), but this time in the centre of Russia's second city, London.

…. 

Democracy is on the retreat in Russia, from the nationalistic rhetoric and sub-superpower gestures of its leaders to the energy threats of Gazprom, to the millions poured into European soccer clubs. Now, instead of black and white, we have different shades of grey. In the media, self-censorship is in vogue. Journalists know what is good for them to write, and what is not. In an increasingly materialist society, they depend on the authorities' goodwill to keep them in their luxury lifestyles. They deliver the goods, convincing themselves that Putin - in the face of threats from afar - is the lesser of evils.

Troitsky believes the murder of Alexander Litvinenko is an act of revenge by the FSB, pure and simple. That Russia is taking a huge step backward is evident just from that return to Cold War behavior. Wet work is back in fashion in the new Russia. Old monsters are very hard to kill, aren't they?

“This Wasn’t Cooked Up By Amatuers”

The experts being consulted about the use of polonium 210 to poison Alexander Litvinenko agree on a number of things. This may have been the very first use of this radioactive isotope as a poison, which is part of the reason it took so long to discover. Polonium 210 is not readily available which strongly indicates a very well-resourced killer, quite like a state sponsor. And this was a particularly brutal way to kill someone.

Polonium-210, the isotope identified in Mr Litvinenko’s body, is known to be highly toxic and radioactive, and it is not easy to come by. It occurs naturally only at trace levels, and larger amounts that would be needed to kill are manufactured in nuclear reactors or particle accelerators by bombarding bismuth-209, a similar but inert metal, with neutrons.

Unlike certain other radioactive isotopes, such as caesium-137 and cobalt-60, it is not used in medical radiology, and therefore cannot be stolen from hospital waste. Its main use is in anti-static devices in industry, though in a form that could not be easily adapted for use as a poison. It is also sometimes used as a power source for satellites.

The difficulty of getting hold of polonium suggests that the killer was well resourced and possibly state-sponsored, scientists said.

Andrea Sella, lecturer in chemistry at University College London, said: “This is not the sort of thing that amateurs could have cooked up in a bathtub. You would have to go to a nuclear lab such as Oak Ridge, Los Alamos or Harwell — or to one of the Russian ones.”

Polonium-210 has a half life of 138 days, and emits alpha particles — helium atoms that are produced by radioactive decay. While these are easily stopped by the skin they become hugely damaging if they get inside the human body by swallowing, inhalation or through a wound. They cause extensive damage to tissues and to DNA, and could explain Mr Litvinenko’s symptoms.

The low hazards posed by alpha particles in the environment explains why the Health Protection Agency said that those who came into contact with Mr Litvinenko ought not to be at major risk. The poisoner would also have been little affected by the polonium.

Once inside the body the alpha radiation would have been difficult to detect and few toxicologists would have thought to look for polonium.

A commenter asked yesterday why would this be used as a poison. I think the answers are apparent now. Because polonium has not been used in this way before (at least it hasn't been recognized) toxicologists wouldn't look for it. Because the isotope is an alpha emitter, the radiation would not be readily detectable outside the body. (Alpha has extremely low penetration. Earlier reports suggested that Litvinenko forced himself to vomit as soon as he realized he had been poisoned. Had he not done so, he might have died very quickly and the authorities might not have discovered this at all. How often do they take a Geiger counter to an autopsy? (Bet they will from now on, though). Tests on animals indicate that death occurs very, very rapidly with a sufficient dose polonium 210. There is widespread systemic failure of internal organs.

London Rampage

A 30 year old Tunisian man went completely berserk in West London, very near the gates to Heathrow Airport. He beat one man to death, critically injured another and hurt scores of others. With his bare ands and feet. No weapons were involved.

A crazed murderer kicked a man to death in a road rage fight then viciously attacked seven others, leaving another man critically ill and scores injured including paramedics and a police officer.

In an horrifying ten minute rampage, the smartly-dressed attacker assaulted his victims using just his bare fists and feet.

Ambulance staff were forced to barricade themselves into their vehicle after he set upon them in the early hours of yesterday morning.

His fury is thought to have been triggered by an altercation with a car on a road just yards from Heathrow airport's perimeter fence at 4.30am on Friday.

The driver, an Asian man, got out of his silver Lexus and was set upon by his assailant, who was on foot.

Motorcyclist Gary Webb, 47, arrived moments after the attack and spotted the victim in the road in Harlington, West London as he made his way to work at Heathrow.

He said: "He was clearly dead so I went to help. There was a Moroccan-looking man standing over him.

"He was over six foot tall and smartly dressed in a suit and had a completely mad look in his eyes.

"His eyes were wild and he was really staring. It was frightening and I felt in danger. He started to approach me and put his hand up towards his breast pocket. I felt intimidated so I got back on my bike and sped off."

Police are not sure of the man's immigration status. But there is one troubling detail at the very end of this story.

One resident, who refused to be named, said she heard a woman scream early this morning. She said: "At about 4.30 this morning, I could hear a woman screaming. She was screaming for a good five minutes.

"It sounded like she was in terrible agony. I went to my window to see what was going on, and all I could see was an ambulance, so I went back to bed."

Remind you of an earlier post? How about an earlier crime?

PETA Buffoonery

PETA, never really living in what most of us understand as reality in the first place, has crossed over into their own little cartoon land. They have delivered a fierce email attack on a church in Anchorage, Alaska over the living nativity that the church puts on each year. The PETA spokesman explains that:

"Those animals are subject to all sorts of terrible fates in some cases," Vergerio said. "Animals have been stolen and slaughtered, they've been raped, they've escaped from the nativity scenes and have been struck by cars and killed. Just really unfathomable things have happened to them."

The one teeny little problem with this excessively hyperbolic rhetoric? The church uses no live animals. And never has, either.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The pastor at Anchorage First Free Methodist Church was mystified. Why was the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals chastising him? No animals are harmed in the church's holiday nativity display. In fact, animals aren't used at all.

People, however, do dress the parts — Mary, Joseph, the wise men, etc. The volunteers stand shivering at a manger on the church lawn in a silent tribute to Christmas.

The Rev. Jason Armstrong was confused by an e-mail this week from PETA, which admonished him for subjecting animals "to cruel treatment and danger," by forcing them into roles in the church's annual manger scene.

"We've never had live animals, so I just figured this was some spam thing," Armstrong said. "It's rough enough on us people standing out there in the cold. So we're definitely not using animals."

Jackie Vergerio, PETA's captive animals in entertainment specialist, said her organization tracks churches nationwide that use real animals in "living nativity scenes."

….

In the letter to Armstrong, Vergerio shared some sad fates of previous nativity animals — like Brighty the donkey, snatched from a nativity scene in Virginia and beaten by three young men. Ernie the camel fled a creche in Maryland but was struck and killed by a car. Two sheep and a donkey had to be euthanized after a dog mauling at a manger scene in Virginia.

PETA now protests non-existent animals that are not used or even present. But the church does use some puppet camels, which leads to the suggestion that PETA change its name to People for the Excessively Tortured Application of Spurious Shock. You can work out the acronym.