Saddam To Hang?

It appears as if the Iraqi government is set to hang Saddam Hussein. While it really isn't something to celebrate, the sentence is justified, I think. There are some people who forfeit their right to live in the world by their own actions. Saddam is one of those.

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins at sundown Saturday.

The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.

The U.S. military received a formal request from the Iraqi government to transfer Saddam to Iraqi authorities, NBC reported on Thursday, which is one of the final steps required before his execution. His sentence, handed down last month, ordered that he be hanged within 30 days.

I don't disagree with the sentence or the act of carrying it out. That stance will be unpopular with some folks. I can live with that. Saddam was a brutal dictator and has been playing for time. If time is up, fine.

UPDATE: Todays events are posted here and are being updated. I'll leave the comments turned on on this post, but the newer one is more up to date.

The Year In Blogs

KT Cat over at The Scratching Post looks back at traffic and what it means. Interesting analysis. Yeah, I stopped checking the rankings a while ago, too. Frankly, I have been spending an inordinate amount of my time trying to stay on line these past three or four weeks. Worrying about rankings is kind of silly. Although I have not personally been stalked by single cell organisms (I think), so KT is one up on me there. Take KT's poll while you're visiting, too.

Outright Fraud

Look, this kind of story should, in a rational world, act to discredit the entire global warming scare-mongers. Because it flat-out makes no sense at all. This is probably the most insane credulousness on the part of a of a reporter I have ever seen. This bull is stated as a flat set of facts and it never occurred to the reporter to even question the absurdity of the claims.

Ice mass snaps free from Canada's arctic

TORONTO - A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said. The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 497 miles south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and could not believe what he saw.

"This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are loosing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead," Vincent said Thursday.

In 10 years of working in the region he has never seen such a dramatic loss of sea ice, he said.

The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 155 miles away picked up tremors from it.

The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 41 square miles in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic.

Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in Canada in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor.

"It is consistent with climate change," Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906. (Emphasis added).

It is the biggest event of its kind in 30 years? So there were as large or larger events back in 1976? And the ice shelves are only 10% of what they were 100 years ago? Then why are icebreakers still needed in the north? Why are there not tropical resorts in Greenland? The ice mass in question measures out to about 23 square miles. Big? Sure. Unprecedented? Not even close. Back only a few years scientists were saying that some of these large chunks of ice were badly overdue to be shed free. But the 90% thing should be a huge red flag. There is no way the North is only covered in 10% of the ice it was 100 years ago.

This is insane. No, this is fraud. Straight up fraud.

Senator Johnson Remains In Intensive Care

South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson, who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage earlier this month, is still in intensive care. The Washington Post reports that he is responding to his wife's voice, but has not spoken since the emergency surgery to save his life.

Julianne Fisher, a spokeswoman for the senator, said Johnson will not be present in the first days of the new Congress next week but is continuing to improve. She said he is responsive to directions from his wife but has not yet spoken

It is too soon to tell how long recovery will take, Fisher said.

In a statement yesterday, Johnson's doctors said he remains in intensive care at George Washington University Hospital. They have released few new details about Johnson's condition and prognosis since the days after the Dec. 13 surgery to stop bleeding in his brain.

Vivek Deshmukh, head of Johnson's surgical team, said in a statement that the senator's overall condition has improved and that he is gradually being weaned off sedation to help his brain heal.

Johnson's wife, Barbara, said that her husband "continues to give us great hope" and that two of the couple's three grown children were at the hospital on his birthday.

Please keep Tim Johnson and especially his family in your thoughts. He is fighting for his life, but the stress on his family is enormous right now as well.

Potentially Huge News

In the Duke "rape" case. The North Carolina Bar Association has filed ethics charges against District Attorney, Mike Nifong. The prosecutor, although "persecutor" seems to fit better here, is being accused of some pretty gross prosecutorial misconduct. Specifically, the charges say Nifong told the media misleading or inflammatory information.

In a statement, the bar said it opened a case against Nifong in March 30, a little more than two weeks after the party where a 28-year-old student at North Carolina Central University hired to perform as a stripper said she was raped.

Nifong did not immediately return a call for comment.

Another of the rules Nifong was charged with breaking forbids "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." The bar said that when DNA testing failed to find any evidence a lacrosse player raped the accuser, Nifong told a reporter the players might have used a condom.

According to the bar, Nifong knew that assertion was misleading, because he had received a report from an emergency room nurse in which the accuser said her attackers did not use a condom.

Quite frankly, this persecution has been very, very suspicious right from the start. If it does turn out that Nifong did this to win election, he really should sit in a jail cell for an equivalent period of time to what he tried to railroad innocent people into prison for. If he has ruined these young men's lives for political gain, he needs too be punished. Harshly. Because the three men will never, ever get beyond what they have been charged with. It will dog them for the rest of their lives.

Website Attacks

I've been doing a number of changes to the website structure as a result of the ongoing attacks against the site. I am not seeing anything that is malfunctioning at this point, but I'd sure appreciate any feedback is readers encounter any problems. Either leave a comment (which has had a noted bug, by the way) or send me an email, please. It would help locate any bugs. Email addy is on the "About" page.

More To Think About

Earlier today I linked to an article at Real Clear Politics by Jack Kelly. It pointed out that Iran's failing oil infrastructure could touch off a regional war. Murdoc Online points out the same fact. The old saying desperate times call for desperate measures comes to mind.

But there is a third side that I think we need to be aware of and prepared for: Desperation.

Desperate times require desperate measures, they say, and the mullahs are finding themselves in desperate times that promise only to become more desperate. They will be facing increased pressure internally from their repressed population and they will be facing increased pressure externally as their nuclear program progresses and their hand in the Iraqi insurgency gets more spotlight. In short, things are bad and getting worse by the week in ol' Persia.

Desperate times? Check.

One thing to keep in mind when discussing Iran's bad position, though, is that they won't be "out of oil" soon. They will be just be out of oil to export, which will cut 70% of their revenue. But they'll still have oil for, say, tanks and stuff.

Iran needs oil exports for 70% of the nation's income. Where will that income come from if the oil infrastructure fails? There are a lot of people arguing that the fact of declining oil income will make Iran more tractable in the future. I rather suspect that there is good reason to believe the exact opposite. And there is also a nagging question: what are they planning as an alternative source of revenue when their infrastructure does fail. They have known full well the condition of their oil industry better and for longer than the researchers at Johns Hopkins.

So what are they working on?

Broccoli-Jacking In Illinois!

Police in Villa Park, Illinois are baffled by the hijacking of a tractor trailer loaded with more than $50,000 worth of fresh broccoli.

VILLA PARK, Ill. - Someone got way more than the recommended daily serving of vegetables when a refrigerated trailer loaded with $50,000 worth of broccoli was stolen.

The 48-foot trailer disappeared from its rented parking space in the Chicago suburb of Villa Park sometime between Sunday and Tuesday morning, police said.

Detective Ed Zorich said the thief was probably after the trailer, not the vegetables.

We hate to tell the detective that he's completely, utterly and foolishly wrong about this, but since we aren't planning on driving through Villa Park anytime soon, we figure we're safe to criticize him without fear of a ticket. But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have the real scoop. As usual - sorry, our modesty got the better of us there. Our sources in Villa Park put down their cocktails long enough to let us know that there is a very, very active mob presence in Villa Park. That's right, it was the vegan mafia that pulled off the broccoli-jacking. You heard it here first.

Experts Detect Alarming Rise In Chatter

Terrifying news has just been revealed. As has been the case before many terror attacks in the past, an alarming increase in chatter has been detected. At least 1,000 messages have been intercepted so far by increasingly sensitive intelligence gathering techniques. The remarkable increase comes at a time when tensions are rising everywhere. The most bothersome is the message just deciphered.

Those seahorses shouldn't be talking.

Increasingly scientists are discovering unusual mechanisms by which fish make and hear secret whispers, grunts and thumps to attract mates and ward off the enemy.

In just one bizarre instance, seahorses create clicks by tossing their heads. They snap the rear edge of their skulls against their star-shaped bony crests.

This and other discoveries made in recent years come as the focus on the sounds that fish make is growing beyond "really loud sounds that last a long time," fish behaviorist Timothy Tricas at the University of Hawaii at Manoa told LiveScience. "Seahorse clicks are brief, only about five to 20 milliseconds," he said.

1,000 voices

There are more than 25,000 species of fish living today, more kinds than any other animal form with a backbone in the history of the planet. A lot of them appeared to have done well in school.

"We know so far that at least 1,000 fish species make sounds, with a huge diversity of means by which they generate and listen to sounds," Tricas said. "There's only a handful we know well so far."

This is no surprise to longtime readers, of course. Terrorists from the Animal Uprising™ have been increasingly active. And chatter with a lot of those species is completely normal. But because we here at Blue Crab Boulevard are so in tune with the uprising, we immediately called the Department of Homeland Security and shouted and screamed warnings at them until they promised to send someone right around to see us. Hey! I hear sirens! Wow, that's a lot of police vehicles…..

Liechtenstein Expanding Its Borders

The small but aggressive miniature European nation of Liechtenstein has begun a rapid expansion of its territory. This expansion must come at the expense of its neighbors, Switzerland and Austria, of course.

More accurate measuring techniques have revealed that its border is 77.9 kilometres (48.3 miles) long, 1.9 kilometres longer than the last recording in 1980, according to an annual statistical report published this week.

As a result, the German-speaking country's 35,000 inhabitants have around half a square kilometre (a fifth of a square mile) more territory, giving the country — Europe's fourth smallest — an area of 160.4 square kilometres.

According to our crack team of calculator-wielding rhesus monkeys (who have been taking a break from their work on cracking the Shakespeare code) at this alarming rate, Liechtenstein will be the same size as Rhode Island in a mere 132,392 years. Better visit Switzerland while you still can.

Ethiopian Forces Take Mogadishu

Ethiopian and Somali government forces have entered Mogadishu without opposition. Fleeing islamist militias vowed to make a last stand in Souther Somalia. The Ethiopians should grant them their wish as soon as possible. The UN is making creaking noises and may stir its corrupt carcass at any moment.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian forces rolled into Mogadishu without firing a shot Thursday, a striking gain in its bid to recapture the country from an Islamic movement that had once seemed nearly invincible.

Hours earlier, the Islamic militants fled Mogadishu, pledging to make a last stand in southern Somalia.

"We are in Mogadishu," Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi said after flying from the government's temporary base in western Somalia and meeting with local clan leaders to discuss the handover of the city. "We are coordinating our forces to take control of Mogadishu."

The Islamic movement took control of Mogadishu six months ago and then advanced across most of southern Somalia, often without fighting. Ethiopian troops then went on the attack in support of the U.N.-backed government last week in attempt to push the Islamists out of power.

If the Somali government forces can bring order to Mogadishu now, this war might actually end quickly and with a happy outcome. We can but hope.

Comment Problems

There are some people who are having problems adding a comment. There appears to be a bug of some kind in the challenge plugin. Every once in a while it says the answer is wrong even when it isn't. It is intermittent, however. Generally, trying again will let you get the comment in. Sorry for the inconvenience, but this site is still being hammered with attacks and I need to keep all the defenses up until this lets up - if it ever does.

Arafat Ordered Americans Murdered

After 33 years, the US State Department has declassified an internal document that shows that the American government had clear information that Yassar Arafat personally ordered the murder of American diplomats in Khartoum in 1973.

The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

Read the whole post over at It Shines for All. The US State Department continued to pimp Arafat as a peacemaker even though they knew for a fact that he ordered the murder of Americans. Frankly, given this information, the Nobel Prize committee should be looking into revoking his Peace Prize. And we as a nation should be demanding that the State Department will ensure that something like this is not covered up again. Jimmy Carter cuddled up to this murderer at every opportunity. Kind of makes you sick.

Regional War

Jack Kelly has a column up over at Real Clear Politics that gives a history lesson. It also points to the increasing prospect of a regional war in the Middle East. Iran is experiencing a loss in oil production, but that may actually be the trigger for the regional conflict, not an excuse for them to negotiate in good faith.

So why the history lesson? On Christmas day, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report which indicates Iranian oil production is about to plunge.

Iran currently earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. Oil profits account for about 65 percent of Iranian government revenues.

But Iranian oil exports could decline by half within five years, and virtually disappear within ten, said Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The effect on Iran would be catastrophic. Thanks to mismanagement by the mullahs, and corruption on a scale so vast as to make even an Iraqi blush, Iran's economy is already a basket case. According to the CIA World Factbook, more than 40 percent of Iran's people live in poverty; the unemployment rate is 11 percent (more than double that for people under 30), and the rate of inflation tops 13 percent. Oil exports are just about Iran's only source of foreign exchange.

Impending fiscal catastrophe could make the Iranians more tractable, Prof. Stern thinks. If the U.S. can "hold its breath" for a few years, it might find Iran to be a much more conciliatory country, he told Barry Schweid, the AP's diplomatic writer, in an interview.

But one of the big reasons why oil production in Iran is declining does not suggest a happy outcome. Iran is spending so much on its nuclear program that next to nothing is being invested in modernizing oil production. Though the West has made it clear it will assist in developing nuclear energy if Iran will forswear its nuclear weapons programs, Iran would rather have the nukes than the carrots the West is offering.

Read the whole thing. There is a lot of background about the current state of affairs in the region. There is also a lot to worry about. Iran may experience a catastrophic financial meltdown that crushes the mullahcracy. Or Iran may resort to a more traditional solution to internal economic woes. Taking what it needs. Other countries in the region need to start acting to stop this from happening or risk being swallowed by a new Persian Empire.

Fundamentally Undemocratic

The Opinion Journal reports on the latest move by organized labor to increase their membership. They want the time-honored rules allowing for a fair election to decide whether workers want a union overturned. Instead they want to be able to use intimidation and peer pressure to force workers to sign cards publicly to support the union organizing efforts. All the fancy justifications aside here, this scheme is a fundamental attack on democracy.

Thus not-so-Big Labor, which has dumped millions into organizing campaigns without much success, is scrambling for new ways to beef up its membership rolls. The latest hot idea is "card check," in which unions demand to be recognized as the bargaining unit for a workplace if a majority of the workers merely sign a card indicating their support. Under current law, companies are required to recognize a union only after a secret ballot of the workers–and unions have been losing an increasing number of those elections.

Now that Congress is back under Democratic control, unions sniff a win. Card-check bills sponsored by Democratic Rep. George Miller and Sen. Ted Kennedy last year had 215 co-sponsors in the House, just shy of a majority, and 42 co-sponsors in the Senate. Union political operatives made it clear during the recent election campaign that any Democrat who opposed card check could forget about campaign backing in the future.

Republicans still have the strength to filibuster such a measure to death, and President Bush might veto it. But a weakened GOP and president might be tempted to let it through, particularly if it's attached to something they want. If so, it is likely to be seen as a fundamental reversal of the anti-union trend unleashed by Ronald Reagan's crushing of the Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981.

The card-check tactic already is being used with some success. More than half the workers who joined unions last year did so in card-check sign-ups to which companies had "voluntarily" agreed, according to the AFL-CIO. Congressional action would make the card-check procedure routine.

Sen. Kennedy, whose bill is titled the Employee Free Choice Act, claims federal card check legislation "would level the playing field" by removing "large loopholes" in existing labor laws that supposedly allow employers to fire union organizers and intimidate workers prior to organizing elections. Union officials like Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO's organizing director, complain that elections "just don't work."

The secret ballot allows workers to make a real choice. Card checks allow organizers to use outright intimidation against those who prefer not to work in a union shop. I really have no objection to a union winning one of these elections fairly. I do have a problem with this assault on democracy, however. The secret ballot is fundamental to maintaining the fairness of these elections, pure and simple.

UPDATE: Paul Silver, posting at The Moderate Voice, is on the same page.