Daisy Bell Would Just Be Turning 19!

An enormously funny article - a rant almost - from the Guardian of all places. Written by Marina Hyde, it points to the absurd campaign by Bono, the so-called man of the year, to extend copyright protection of music from the current 50 years to a staggering 95 years. To be fair, it isn't just Bono, he's only one of 4,500 artistes who signed on to the campaign. But, please, read what Hyde wrote.

There is a moment in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap when a reporter poses a crushingly direct question to the eponymous band's lead singer at the wrap party for their disastrous US tour. "Is this, like, your last waltz?" he wonders. "Or are you going to milk it for a few more years in Europe?"

This vignette was called to mind by the full-page advertisement placed by 4,500 artists in Thursday's Financial Times that petitioned the government to extend the copyright on sound recordings to 95 years from the current 50. Anyone who assumed that this was these musicians' last waltz - or perhaps an elaborate ploy by Kiri Te Kanawa to get her name in the papers again - should set their faces to stunned. Now that the government has accepted the Gowers review recommendation that changing the law will give little public benefit, this ragtag army of multimillionaires and wronged creatives will be milking this one all the way to the European courts, even if the suggestion that in 95 years anyone will be dusting down a Katie Melua recording seems a triumph of optimism over sanity.

It was, of course, barely a fortnight ago that readers of these pages were pleased to take a lesson in political theory from my temporary Guardian colleague Mick Hucknall, the lead singer of Simply Red and a signatory of the aforementioned ad, who opened a presumably self-parodic opinion piece with the statement "copyright is fundamentally socialist". Mick then contrived to conflate notions of intellectual property - and there's something about "property" that grates with our fifth-form Marxist's thesis - with solid leftwing values, though I'm afraid I'd rather lost track of his point by the second mention of "the free flow of ideas", and realised we were being asked to conceive of a Beverley Sisters track as such.

Now aside from the absolutely incredibly egotistical pose struck by Bono in his Time Magazine picture (look at me! I'm significant!), as Hyde says, "….that this increasingly preposterous man should have spoken out on the business is hardly a surprise." But consider for a moment what this campaign would accomplish! If this law had been in effect for more than the past century, the song Daisy Bell (also known as A Bicycle Built for Two) would have been in the public domain for only 19 years today. Rock on, Garth!

And it would be using a walker built for two. Why, that's even better than the real thing!

Pity The Poor Rats

This is really kind of sad. The Daily Mail has a real sob sister piece, masquerading as real news. They basically reprint a PETA press release as straight news. It's a complaint about the treatment of chinchillas, such as the ones that were used to make a coat that Madonna was seen wearing.

Stuck in the dingy concrete barn of a farm in Michigan, rows of tiny cages are stacked four high against the walls. Behind the bars of the cages are hundreds of chinchillas, furry rodents originally from South America that are popular as household pets.

But these animals, as reported by an undercover animal rights campaigner, are not being reared as pets - they are being farmed for their fur.

They will be killed by electrocution before being skinned and their fur sold to fashion chains to make coats, such as the one that Madonna was seen in this week.

A coat such as hers can sell for £35,000 and take up to 60 chinchilla pelts to make. But at what cost?

Even by the standards of the fur-farming business, the treatment of the chinchillas is particularly cruel, according to an investigator from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta).

Its researcher managed to get access to the chinchilla farm in Michigan (much commercial chinchilla fur comes from America), and they claimed the animals are kept in 'breeder' rooms where mothers are separated from their babies which are taken away to 'growing' rooms.

Inadequate diet, rough handling and neglect mean that the natural death rate among the caged animals is high. One in three generally perish before they are killed for their fur.

Any chinchilla which has chewed its fur - a sign of stress - and has thus made its pelt unsuitable, is moved from the main row of cages into a lower rack, known as 'Death Row'.

There, the Peta investigator watched as the farmer sat in a wheeled office chair and moved along the row, reaching into the cages and killing the animals by wringing their necks. He would then throw the still twitching animal on the floor. "I don't feel a thing," he said, 'I could do this all day.'

Love the way they work in the "popular as pets" thing. And the, "I don't feel a thing" remark. (Which is actually the exact same thing Markos "Kos"  Zuniga said about some human being. Isn't that odd?) But anyway, the PETA people have moved back to warm-blooded vermin this time, instead of cockroaches. Of course, they might want to look in a mirror before damning others for the same thing they do. Only worse.

Police in Ahoskie, North Carolina arrested Cook and Hinkle on June 15, 2005 near a shopping-center dumpster, from which they recovered 18 dead pets in trash bags. Thirteen additional dead animals were recovered from the PETA-owned van in which they were traveling. Witnesses from the Bertie County (NC) Animal Shelter and the Ahoskie Animal Hospital later confirmed that the two PETA employees had collected animals earlier that day — including puppies and kittens — on the promise that PETA would find them adoptive homes.

It's sad that the Daily Mail doesn't bother to screen out the press release crud and consider the source.

Comments Back On (For Now)

Ok, I found a plug-in that went back through and closed off comments on older posts, which will at least limit the target area the spambots have to hit. So I have turned comments back on for now to see how that works.

This has been a very trying day for me, I am not all that versed in the mechanics of the WordPress software and am having to learn as I go. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting a little more normally if this stops most of the onslaught.

Shooting Rampage In Chicago

Three people are dead so far, including the gunman. Several others are hospitalized. There is not a lot of detail yet, the story is very new on the wires.

The shootings in the top floor of the 38-story Citigroup Center, which also houses a train station, sent office workers fleeing and stranded rush-hour commuters.

Authorities said earlier that three people were hospitalized in critical condition and one was in stable condition; besides the gunman, it was unclear who died.

The gunman, armed with a snub-nose revolver, knife and hammer, shot the four victims over "several minutes," police Superintendent Phil Cline said.

He was holding the hostage when police shot at him, but "before the offender died, he may have also shot himself," Cline said. Police said they won't know for sure until an autopsy is performed.

Cindy Penzick, secretary in a law firm on the 37th floor, said that after a co-worker told her she heard gunshots, a police officer with his gun drawn on their floor yelled at them to get out.

Penzick said she is usually calm, "But I have to tell you this was scary as hell."

I'll update as facts come through. The AP link should be updated as they fill out the story.

“Pristine”

As AllahPundit points out, that is what Associated Press executive editor Kathleen Carroll expects us to believe the Iraqi stringers she employs are. She notes that government officials are suspected of complicity in ongoing violence and disseminating false information. But apparently none of her stringers could possibly be motivated by any of the same sectarian views.

Uh huh.

She’s all but accusing the MOI spokesman who challenged them of being a Sadrist tool, which I guess means we’re unwittingly doing the bidding of the Mahdi Army by extension. The AP’s been accused of doing the bidding of terrorists itself, of course, and in case not so unwittingly. So, touche. But here’s an idea: instead of issuing these snide Friday broadsides, produce Jamil Hussein. Snap a few photos and put them on the wire. Or, if that would endanger him, arrange a meeting between him and someone from MOI. Or, if that would endanger him, between him and the Centcom press director. If Hussein feels safe enough to have himself identified by name, rank, and precinct in AP news reports, he should be willing to chat with an American officer for 20 minutes. It’s exceedingly strange and suspect that the AP has available to it hard evidence that would explode its critics charges, yet so far as we know it’s made no attempt to produce that evidence. Not once have they offered to supply anyone with concrete proof of Hussein’s existence. Why not?

….

Funny too how Carroll understands that the sectarian loyalties of Iraqi government officials might render their motives suspect, yet it escapes her realm of possibility that AP stringers might be moved by the same passion. The Iraqi government, the Iraqi army — universally acknowledged to be crippled by religious partisanship. The Iraqi press corps, though? Pristine. To suggest otherwise is downright offensive.

All the AP had to do was produce this "police captain". I'm going to bet that for all her belligerence here that Ms. Carroll never personally met this captain. She is taking the word of her stringers that they have. If an actual American reporter was led to a meeting with this captain how in the world would he know if the "captain" wasn't just somebody dressed up to play a part? Whether Carroll wants to admit it or not, she really has no way of knowing that her source is any good. And she has official sources in the Iraqi government that are telling her - in no uncertain terms - that this "captain" is not who he says he is.

But it's all about that pristine bunch of stringers she employs.

Uh, huh.

UPDATE: This will sting a lot. Bruce Kesler draws a parallel between what Carroll is doing right now and another rather famous victim of a self-inflicted coverup wound, Richard Nixon.

The AP won’t produce its star source, Jamil Hussein, the policeman that neither the Iraqi Ministry of Interior nor CENTCOM can find record of, any of the immolated bodies or their names, the names and credentials of the local Iraqis the AP used as reporters of the incident and the AP’s follow-up, the purported conveniently located afterward anonymous witnesses, nor any Sunni leaders who are aware of the claimed incident.

Kathleen Carroll has experience, yes. And, Richard Nixon was an experienced politician. Leading Republicans, finally, told him the gig was up, the cover-up had doomed his credibility and position. Where are the responsible media leaders who will tell Ms. Carroll?

Ouch.

The Incredible Disappearing Georgia Trick

No, it isn't a David Copperfield plot. At least we don't think it is. But it seems that various places in Georgia are simply disappearing. Quite a lot of them, in fact. 488 places in Georgia are just gone.

A total of 488 communities have been erased from the latest version of Georgia's official map, victims of too few people and too many letters of type.

Georgia's Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere "placeholders," generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated and so small they are not even recognized by the Census Bureau.

The state began handing out the new map at rest stops and welcome centers over the summer.

Gone are such places as Dewy Rose, Hemp, Experiment, Retreat, Wooster, Sharp Top and Chattoogaville, a spot in far northwestern Georgia that consists of little more than a two-truck volunteer fire department, a few farmhouses and a country store where locals fill up their gas tanks.

"We're not under obligation to show every single community," department spokeswoman Karlene Barron said. "While we want to, there's a balancing act. And the map was getting illegible."

Oh, sure. That's a really convincing excuse. Personally, being the suspicious type, I suspect it's more than just bureaucratic indifference. Because, if the place names are gone, how do we know the places are still there at all? Hmmm? No, I rather suspect there's another agenda in action here. Is Georgia being paved over? Inquiring minds want to know.

The Christmas Angel From Hell

So you go buy a Christmas tree, set it up in your living room and decorate it nicely, placing the angel on top like you always do. Everything is fine for a couple of days, but then one evening, the tree angel is suddenly replaced. By a commando from the Animal Uprising™. Yes, all of a sudden an offensive opossum offensive begins right in your living room.

On Dec. 18, 2005, the family bought an 8-foot Douglas fir from a dealer in Seltzer and set it up in their living room at 132 N. Ninth St. Two days later, a furry white opossum crawled out near the top, knocking off the decorative angel.

O’Connor’s daughter, Mary Kathleen, now 17, was in the living room studying at the time and was quite startled, her mother said.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission responded, removed the 18-inch marsupial from the tree and released it in a wooded area five miles away.

Yes, that happened last year, but we were not yet documenting the Animal Uprising then. But this year, the family that was terrorized by the hellish opossum of doom has decided to go with an artificial tree. Unfortunately, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have a sneaking suspicion that the animals are ahead of them. That's right, this time they'll look up and see a mechanical opossum taking over the tree.

Gear Oil Martini, Sir?

In Vienna right now they are holding an unconventional convention of sorts. It is a gathering of cocktail robots. Complete with robot bartender that makes passes at the women (and insults the men). And mixes and serves drinks. The event, dubbed Roboexotica has been held since 1999. And people come from all over the world with their cocktail robots to participate.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Staring with glowing red eyes at a young woman strolling by, bartender Chapok slowly extends his arm to offer her a gin and orange.

She takes the glass, murmurs a flustered "thank you" and walks away while the cocktail-mixing robot turns his attention back to a row of bottles.

"People are interacting, they are actually talking to my robot," smiles David Calkins, who teaches robotics at San Francisco State University.

"This is fantastic, exactly what I was hoping for."

Chapok is one of around 30 robots at Vienna's annual Roboexotica, which showcases how home-built machines deal with the modern pastime of hanging out in bars.

Robots were invited to demonstrate their skills in categories like mixing cocktails, serving drinks and snacks, bar conversation and smoking cigarettes and cigars.

Engineering as performance art, so to speak. These robots are not meant to really be practical, per se, they are meant to be "cultured and urbane" as Magnus Wurzer, one of the original organizers puts it. It actually sounds like a lot of fun. Practical impracticality. Here's an interesting little bit of video from the Roboexotica. And here is the website for the event.

Comments Dead Again

Sorry folks, I've lost enough stomach lining today, comments are off for a while until this mass spam wave attack lets up. I'm tired of talking to the techs (even though they are as helpful as can be) and I'm quite sure they are tired of talking to me.

I'll try turning them back on later, but anything you really want me to see will have to be emailed.

Terror In Suburbia

FBI agents from the Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Force have arrested a man who appears to have been planning a lone-wolf terror attack at a shopping mall on the East side of Rockford, Illinois. They arrested the man when he tried to trade a set of stereo speakers for four hand grenades and a handgun.

Derrick Shareef, of Rockford, was arrested on Wednesday by FBI agents from the Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Force, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

He was apprehended after meeting with an undercover agent in a Rockford store parking lot to trade a set of stereo speaksers (sic) for four hand grenades and a handgun, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

Shareef was charged with one count of count of attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, authorities said.

Shareef allegedly planned to set off the grenades at the CherryVale Shopping Mall, near Interstate 90 and Interstate 39 on Rockford's east side. The mall has about 130 retail stores and is owned byy (sic) a Tennessee-based company, authorities said.

Authorities reported that the mall was one of several potential targets Shareef allegedly discussed with undercover agents, and the others were primarily local government facilities.

Earlier information said the case was connected to a terrorist plot against a Chicago mall, but that turned out not to be correct.

Federal authorities said the public was not in danger.

My family used to live not all that many miles from Rockford. Before this, Rockford was best known as the hometown of the band Cheap Trick. Authorities insist that the man was under observation and that the public was in no danger. They are also saying he was acting all alone and has no ties to any group.

UPDATE: More details including information from the afadavits that were filed with the court.

Shareef told an undercover informant that he wanted to attack a courthouse in DeKalb County and "smoke a judge," according to the complaint.

"[T]he courthouse in DeKalb where I be going every month …You go in there and you clock the first three [guards] at the door that they got, and you up in there, you know what I'm saying…I just want to smoke a judge," the complaint quoted Shareef as saying.

The informant then asked Shareef when he wanted to stage the attack. "What do you think? I like the holiday season," the complaint quotes him as saying.

On Nov. 30, Shareef and the informant met to discuss an attack, authorities allege. During that meeting, the informant suggested to Shareef that he might "hit the mall," the complaint states.

"I mean, alright, we gotta look at it this way, we want to disrupt Christmas," the informant told Shareef.

"Oh hell yeah, the mall is where it's at," the complaint quotes Shareef as responding.

The informant then asked Shareef if he needed hand grenades.

"You go in there and toss a grenade, and no one's gonna know who did it," the informant said.

Not a good thing any way you look at it.

Reality Versus The “Realists”

Senators yesterday did a bit of heavy clubbing on the Iraq Studies Group report. According to the Washington Post, there were a lot more people (Senators and Congressmen) unhappy with the report's recommendations than there were people pleased with them. And the strongest condemnation came from a Democrat.

Separately, in another indication of the difficulties the commission's recommendations may encounter in Congress, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, characterized the Iraq Study Group report as "theater" and "devoid of any basis in reality" because it offers what he considers overly ambitious plans that almost certainly cannot be carried out.

"The practical realities of these empty recommendations will be clear when we try to implement any of this stuff," Abercrombie said in an interview.

The only people who seem to be at least partially convinced of the rightness of the report are the two men who chaired it. But even they expressed a certain fatalistic "who knows?". It doesn't sound like they have completely convinced even themselves.

Baker and Hamilton proved to be unusual witnesses. They conceded that their 79 recommendations carry a good deal of risk, but they essentially said no one else had a better idea. "We think it is worth a try," said Baker, conveying the sense that the United States is down to its last chance in Iraq, and that the group had prescribed the least bad of several options.

"You don't have much to lose here," Hamilton added in defending the diplomatic recommendations. "Things are not going in a very good direction right now, and why not take some chance here in involving these countries?"

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Even the "realists" can't quite get behind the "reality" they are pushing.

The Gentle Sound Of Falling Cinder Blocks

It would appear that folks are coming forward with specifics on Jimmy Carter and his apparent plagiarism. Kenneth Stein specifically mentioned, "Material not cited," in his letter of resignation from the Carter Center. Those would be very, very kind words that mean Carter outright stole someone else's work and passed it off as his own. And lo and behold, here comes the author of at least some of the material. (Hint: it isn't Jimmy Carter).

But, in a telephone interview Thursday evening, Stein offered a narrower criticism. "It appears that at least two maps that came out of the Carter book were or are very closely similar, or unusually similar, to maps that were produced and published in Dennis Ross' book 'The Missing Peace,' " Stein said.

That book, published in 2004, is also about the search for peace in the Middle East. "This could be incredibly coincidental, or it could not," Stein said. "But it goes to the way history books should be written, and the way citations should be made when material is borrowed."

The maps in question appear on Page 148 of Carter's book, detailing the differing Israeli and Palestinian interpretations of President Clinton's peace proposal made in 2000.

Ross, who was U.S. Middle East envoy under Clinton and President George H.W. Bush, could not be reached for comment Thursday night; Stein declined to discuss the matter in any greater detail.

While the LAT wasn't able to get a hold of Ross last night, luckily FOX News was able to get him this morning. And in what seems to be an open and shut case of plagiarism, Ross explains that the maps in Carter's book were specifically created for his book "The Missing Peace"–and Ross created them himself.

That crashing sound is whatever was left of Carter's reputation. Even those on the left who want to nominate him for sainthood can't excuse this one. Well, they can't if they're honest, anyway.

Comments Back On

There are still a lot of weird things happening, but I've brought comments back on line to see if some new fixes have stopped the onslaught. I may be forced to kill them again if the site crashes out.

UPDATE: At this point I have four separate WordPress plugins operating and I am still getting stuff coming in. Comments may be going away again if things don't improve.

The AP - Slow Roasted

Robert Bateman is the latest person to slam the Associated Press for its stories extensively quoting a non-existent Iraqi police captain. (They are getting more bad press from more sources all of a sudden.) But Bateman also has direct personal experience with an earlier fabricated story that the AP spewed. In fact, he tried to get them to correct it and they tried to get him fired for doing so.

I have got direct experience of this - from challenging the AP's seriously flawed 1999 "scoop" about the masssacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.

Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians', as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred - there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.

But the AP's sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.

The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily's account was chilling. It was also - as AP should have known - a fantasy.

The AP story took at face value Daily's claims that he was a combat infantryman who won a battlefield commission just a few days after the events at No Gun Ri, and had been awarded the Distinguished Cross and three Purple-Hearts.

In reality, he was an enlisted mechanic in an entirely different unit, nowhere near No Gun Ri. He had fabricated his biography and credentials as well as his entire account of the events at No Gun Ri.

Bate goes on to excoriate the AP for their use of a fictional character as a source for news, but even more for their lame and self-serving defense of their stories. Read the whole thing, it is rather entertaining. The problem here is that the AP, given its recent history, is actively undermining faith in the media as a whole. That is bad for everyone and bad for the nation itself. They appear to be too arrogant to care, however. They have gotten away with this kind of fiction in the past and assume they will now, too. The difference these days is the pajama-clad fact checkers. This will continue to bleed the AP's only real asset - its credibility. They just do not seem to understand that.

We Report

You make whatever you want out of it. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research many men in India have a - er - small problem with condoms. The prophylactics are too large for them and don't fit properly.

The Indian Council of Medical Research, a leading state-run centre, said its initial findings from a two-year study showed 60 percent of men in the financial capital Mumbai had penises about 2.4 cm (one inch) shorter than those condoms catered for.

For a further 30 percent, the difference was at least 5 cm (two inches). A poor fit meant the prophylactics often didn't do the job they were bought for, and led to some tearing or slipping off during use.

"One of the reasons for a failure of up to 20 percent (of condoms) is the association of the size of the condom to the erect penis," the council's Dr. Chander Puri told Reuters, adding another reason was couples often put them on in a hurry.

Imagine the psychic damage that could be done by labeling the condoms, "small". On another note, which may or may not be related, the Indian government is starting a campaign to get citizens to stop spitting at tourist sites around the country.

The walls of countless buildings in India are streaked with dried red spit generated by people chewing paan, a mildly intoxicating preparation wrapped in a leaf and often containing betel nut and tobacco.

The tourism ministry wants to convince people to think of more discreet places to deposit their phlegm, and is spending 50 million rupees ($1.12 million) on a campaign to instill civic pride it says is widely lacking.

"Unfortunately spitting paan is considered an art in India," the ministry's Amitabh Kant told Reuters, adding that it was off-putting to many of the nearly 4 million foreign tourists that visit the country each year.

It might be a good idea to start by taking down the condom billboards in those locations.