Batting Cleanup In Somalia

Ethiopian and Somali government forces are now heading toward the last remaining stronghold of the islamist militias. The Somalian port city of Kismayo holds an estimated 3,000 islamists since the only place left for the islamists to walk very briskly to is right into the Indian Ocean, the Ethiopians finally have a chance to catch up.

Some 3,000 Muslim militiamen have taken a stand in the port city of Kismayo, wedged between the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. government believes they may include four suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Islamic movement's leader, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, pledged to continue its fight despite losing capital and other key towns in recent days. "I want to tell you that the Islamic courts are still alive and ready to fight against the enemy of Allah," he told residents in Kismayo.

The military advance on Kismayo marks the latest move in a stunning turnaround for Somalia's government, which just weeks ago could barely control one town, its base of Baidoa in the west. Since Ethiopia's dramatic entry into the war last week, however, government troops have retaken the capital, Mogadishu, and pushed the Islamists from much of the territory they held for six months.

The Somali and Ethiopian troops, riding in 16 Ethiopian tanks and armored vehicles, were positioned about 75 miles north of Kismayo on Saturday. A trickle of Somalis began to leave the city in anticipation of an attack.

Um, that is one heck of an armored fist, isn't it? 16 whole vehicles. Are you starting to get the impression that the overall reporting coming out of the Horn of Africa is abysmal? The press touted the islamists as the mightiest thing since Quinn the Eskimo. And 16 tanks annihilated them or sent them out to earn the brisk walk land speed record. Someone should tell them that if they are brisk enough they could actually briskly walk across the water. I saw it on a cartoon once. It must be true. At least as good as some of the reporting, anyway.

Bad Day For Blogging

Well, obviously, today's big topic - pretty much to the exclusion of everything else - is the execution of Saddam Hussein. There are a couple of posts from others out there that should be looked at, however. Gateway Pundit has a roundup of stuff from the left side of the sphere. Contrary to what one commenter wrote here yesterday, I think, there actually is much wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from that side of the sphere.

Redstate has a takedown of the mendacious and pernicious meme that keeps popping up. As he points out, things change over time. One of the things the left is very good at is cherry picking a certain event out of its historical context and judging it in light of today's standards. That is a particularly egregious way to lie.

UPDATE: Yuck. This is unhinged. A news anchor in Orlando calling Saddam's execution an "assassination. Anchoress calls it a new low in broadcast journalism. Its probably even worse than that.

The Conquest Of Florida

We regret to inform our readers that the state of Florida is rapidly falling to the assaulting forces of the Animal Uprising™. First it was the alligators torching tourist traps, then the python legions advancing from the Everglades. Now the next, and grossest, wave has landed in central Florida, just a short distance from Disney.

The mouse brigades are advancing.

But while Mickey Mouse's fans may be welcome, the residents of Apopka, a tiny town 25 miles north of the theme park, are disgusted by the hundreds of thousands of real mice that have overrun their community.

The thumb-sized house mice have chased people out of homes and offices for the second time since 1999, said David Overfield, environmental administrator for the Orange County Health Department.

"It's pretty nasty," said Overfield, whose job includes trying to determine the cause of the infestation.

His current theory says an overabundant crop of acorns may have encouraged well-fed mice to mate — and mate some more.

Dee Sincavage, owner of one of the many ornamental plant nurseries for which Apopka is known, is hard pressed to pick her worst mouse experience since the infestation began last summer by chasing kids out of Camp Wewa.

Was it the morning she walked into her nursery and felt the squish-crunch of fresh mouse carcasses underfoot? The night mice chewed through plumbing, flooding her office and soaking her business records? Or just the daily ordeal of drowning and disposing of dozens of live mice caught in traps overnight?

Once Apopka falls, they'll swarm on down to Orlando. People won't be so fond of Mickey after that, let me tell you.

Yet Another Escape

The Australian animal confinement facility where they keep all the worst detainees of the Animal Uprising™ has had yet another escape. (For some reason, the Aussies like to call this prison the "Adelaide Zoo", but we here at Blue Crab Boulevard know all the euphemisms by now.) After the February, 2004 escape by the squirrel monkey and this past April's breakout involving Wanda, the baby meerkat (a stone cold killer that one), they promised much tighter security. But yesterday, the great escapes continued. This time it was the brains of the outfit. The two African grey parrots busted out.

THEY came under the cover of darkness, silently cutting the wire fence and searching for their prey. Within the hour, staff were alerted, but too late. Adelaide Zoo's prized pair of African grey parrots was gone.

The birds, worth tens of thousands of dollars, were stolen between midnight and 1am yesterday.

Zoo officials expressed fear that the thieves would try to sell the parrots interstate or overseas.

"It's likely that they were stolen for their dollar value and their relative rarity," said Kevin Evans, director of the zoo's conservation programs.

"I think these African grey parrots were specifically targeted … because they're in a quiet location in the zoo grounds, and there were many other species around of value that they could have pinched.

"I would say that they (the thieves) knew what they were doing."

Often referred to as the brainiest of birds, African grey parrots can live to about 60 years and learn hundreds of words. Originally from central Africa, they are commonly kept as pets overseas but number only a few hundred in Australia.

They keep up the charade that someone stole them to avoid panicking the populace, of course. Now that they are on the loose, Australia's supply of crackers is in serious danger.

Career Over

Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong can kiss his career goodbye at this point. When your fellow prosecutors turn on you, you are pretty well toast.

Dec. 29, 2006 — In yet another moral blow to Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys called for the prosecutor to step down from the Duke lacrosse case.

The group, which represents district attorneys from across North Carolina, said in a statement that "it is in the interest of justice and the effective administration of criminal justice that Mr. Nifong immediately withdraw and recuse himself from the prosecution."

"It's extraordinarily unusual and it means a great deal," said Joshua Marquis, a district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore.

The district attorney group also called for the case to be reassigned and handed over to "another prosecutorial authority."

It won't make up for the lives he has ruined, of course. But the politically-driven witch hunt after the three lacrosse players is about over with now. Expect a complete dismissal of all remaining charges very shortly. Don't expect all the people who drove it, including the media, to actually apologize, however.

Reality Rears Its Ugly Head

The New York Times reports a real "duh" moment. At least it is a duh to any longtime readers here. They have finally noticed that there are real problems with wind power.

The reason is that in Texas, and most of the United States, the hottest days are the least windy. As a result, wind turns out to be a good way to save fuel, but not a good way to avoid building plants that burn coal. A wind machine is a bit like a bicycle that a commuter keeps in the garage for sunny days. It saves gasoline, but the commuter has to own a car anyway.

Xcel Energy, which serves eight states from North Dakota to Texas and says it is the nation’s largest retailer of wind energy, is eager to have more. Wind is “abundant and popular,” said Richard C. Kelly, the chairman, president and chief executive, speaking at a recent conference on renewable energy.

But Frank P. Prager, managing director of environmental policy at the company, said that the higher the reliance on wind, the more an electricity transmission grid would need to keep conventional generators on standby — generally low-efficiency plants that run on natural gas and can be started and stopped quickly.

He said that in one of the states the company serves, Colorado, planners calculate that if wind machines reach 20 percent of total generating capacity, the cost of standby generators will reach $8 a megawatt-hour of wind. That is on top of a generating cost of $50 or $60 a megawatt-hour, after including a federal tax credit of $18 a megawatt-hour.

By contrast, electricity from a new coal plant currently costs in the range of $33 to $41 a megawatt-hour, according to experts. That price, however, would rise if the carbon dioxide produced in burning coal were taxed, a distinct possibility over the life of a new coal plant. (A megawatt-hour is the amount of power that a large hospital or a Super Wal-Mart would use in an hour.)

Without major advances in ways to store large quantities of electricity or big changes in the way regional power grids are organized, wind may run up against its practical limits sooner than expected.

They make a lot of the same observations that I did when I wrote this post not long after I started the Crabitat. You should read the article in the Times, though. There are a lot of different initiatives to try to address storage. To my eye at this point, most of them wont work out really well, but they are at least trying a few creative ideas. The biggest problem is the sheer loss of efficiency of converting wind into electricity into some other form of energy and then back to electricity.

Emu-Napping In The News

Authorities in Britain are reporting that emu was kidnapped from the animal center he lived at. Now, the emu, named Rod, was five feet tall and fairly hefty at 45Kg. So the emu-nappers used a wheeled garbage bin to take Rod for a ride.

Rod the emu, named after the late entertainer Rod Hull, was removed from a fenced enclosure at the animal centre near Blackburn, Lancashire, before he was stuffed into the bin.

Staff at Lords House in Rishton fear the fully-grown creature may not have survived his ordeal and that his mating partner, Penny, who was untouched in the raid, may be "traumatised".

The eight-year-old emus are among the animals at the farm who provide therapy for youngsters and adults with special needs.

Police said burglars broke into the premises in the early hours of yesterday morning and used a bin from a neighbouring property to make off with the creature.

They are thought to have wheeled Rod through fields for up to a mile before they crossed a main road and onto a track which led to a disused railway bridge.

The bin was found dumped in a nearby stream. Karen Hamer, the farm's animal care supervisor, said she feared Rod may be dead.

Now if the police had read the news today oh, boy, they be looking in one of the four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. But we digress. This story, oddly, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Animal Uprising™. Instead, our informants tell us this was actually a professional hit job. Note where the trail of the wheelie bin led - to the nearest bridge. Yes, the hit had been ordered by none other than Penny. She'd caught Rod making eyes at the ostrich.

Birdman

Yves Rossy is either a genius or a lunatic, you decide. Rossy dreamed of flying, not in an aircraft but rather as an aircraft. And the 45 year old Swiss has done just that. He has invented what amounts to a four-engined, strap-on parasail. And he flies.

Back in 2003 Rossy, now a commercial airliner captain, began his Flying Man project, when he strapped a pair of stubby wings to his back and leapt out of a plane, swooping eight miles in freefall for the loss of just 1000ft in altitude.

Strapping on the contraption, which is made of various metals, fibreglass, Kevlar and carbon fibre, Rossy climbs into the small aircraft which is to launch him into his flight.

At an altitude of some 7750ft, he leaps out, just like a skydiver. But unlike a skydiver, he does not plummet to the Alps below.

There is just enough lift generated by the 10ft aerofoil strapped to his back to negate the effects of gravity. At first, after the wings are unfolded electrically, he becomes a glider then, when the four kerosene-powered engines are turned on, he becomes a jetplane.

Thanks to the engines, each of which develops 22kg of thrust, he can not only maintain altitude but actually gain height, he says, at a rate of several hundred feet a minute - until the fuel runs out six minutes later. He lands with a conventional parachute.  

"There have been no proper aerodynamic studies of how to simulate this sort of flying," he says. "All simulations involve a rigid aircraft. My wings are rigid, but of course I am not." He steers the contraption, he says, 'purely by intuition'.

You have to see the video to really get a feeling for this (YouTube alternate here - it is the same video). It might give you a bit of vertigo to watch. The wings are actually very complex internally, as you can see in the footage. Rossy's website is here.

Arab News Services Report Saddam Has Been Hanged

Al Jazeera and al Arabiya have reported that Saddam Hussein has been executed, Fox News is reporting. There is no other confirmation.

FOX News has not yet confirmed that the execution has taken place. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya wire services reported his death.

This is just breaking - will update as more comes out.

UPDATE: Hot Air (See-Dubya) is also watching this as it develops. The Associated Press is confirming the execution has taken place.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein has been hanged, state-run television reported Saturday. "Criminal Saddam was hanged to death," state-run Iraqiya television said in an announcement. The station played patriotic music and showed images of national monuments and other landmarks.

UPDATE: Apparently, I am not the only news junkie around tonight: Michelle Malkin, Sensible Mom, Captain's Quarters, Ed Driscoll.com, Macsmind, Mary Katharine Ham, Jihadi Du Jour, Bill's Bites, Assorted Babble, Right Voices,  The Jawa Report, Lord Nazh, The Sundries Shack, Texas Rainmaker, The Broken Chair, The Moderate Voice, Pirate's Cove, BizzyBlog, Seven Stripes, Webloggin, A Blog for All, Babalu, Gateway Pundit, Redstate, Democracy Project, Atlas Shrugs, Power Line, Riehl World View, Gay Patriot, TigerHawk, Clarity & Resolve, The Belmont Club, PrairiePundit, Tammy Bruce, Dr. Sanity, Verum Serum, Demon Blog, Citizen Journal, The HILL Chronicles, RightWinged.com, Confederate Yankee, Speed of Thought, Gun Toting Liberal, Church and State, The Anchoress, Stuck On Stupid, Peoria Pundit, MsUnderestimated, 

UPDATE: Telegraph coverage. The Australian.

UPDATE: Telegraph coverage. The Australian.

Men, Read At Your Own Risk

For all males reading this post, this is your last warning. We mean it. Honest. You won't enjoy this story.

Woman charged with malicious castration

LILLINGTON, N.C. - A woman was charged with malicious castration for allegedly attacking a man during a Christmas party, police said. Rebecca Arnold, 34, is accused of grabbing the genitals of a 38-year-old man during a fight that erupted early Tuesday morning at a party hosted by the man's girlfriend. All three were heavily intoxicated, Lillington Police Chief Frank Powers said.

"This was a very unique situation, to say the least," Powers said, describing the man's injuries as moderate.

Witnesses gave conflicting stories to police, who were called to the house for a domestic disturbance, Powers said. Other details weren't provided.

We are eternally grateful that they were not. Thank you very much. We already have far too many details. Although the North Carolina criminal code defines the offense thusly:

§ 14‑28.  Malicious castration.

If any person, of malice aforethought, shall unlawfully castrate any other person, or cut off, maim or disfigure any of the privy members of any person, with intent to murder, maim, disfigure, disable or render impotent such person, the person so offending shall be punished as a Class C felon.

Class C? That's all? Don't say we didn't warn you!

Oops.

I would never have suspected it, but apparently the very best porn site on the internet is the official British tourism site, Visit Britain! Who Knew!

Visit Britain said they thought pranksters had hacked into their Internet site after the porn link was reported by net surfers who got more than they bargained for when searching for what Cardiff has to offer.

"In the immediate term we have corrected the link and, while we cannot be responsible for the content of external sites, apologise for any distress caused," said a spokesman for the website.

Jeff Rees, a Welshman living in Finland, logged on and said he was left absolutely disgusted.

"I was shocked when I saw that — very surprised," he told the South Wales Echo newspaper.

"I wanted to see what kind of things were being done to promote Cardiff and I was just amazed when I saw this website link; I couldn't believe it."

(Boy, are they going to get some weird traffic until this dies down.)

Friend Of The Bride Or Friend Of The Buffalo?

A water buffalo charged into a wedding party just outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, injuring six people.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Six persons were injured when a rampaging bull buffalo gored guests at a wedding ceremony and passersby, police said Friday.

The buffalo charged from a nearby field into some 100 guests who were attending a wedding Thursday of the daughter of a Cambodian tycoon on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh, said Chey So Sila, a district police chief, declining to reveal the name of the tycoon.

After goring four guests he ran off to attack two passersby, the officer said. All were hospitalized, some with serious injuries. He said the buffalo's owner fled his home after learning about the incident for fear of being held responsible.

This is why Emily Post said you should never invite a buffalo to the wedding. They have terrible manners. Ok, she never really said that. But she should have.

Hey! Wanna See Tony’s House?

This is very cool. A virtual tour of 10 Downing Street, the official residence of British Prime Ministers for many, many years. It is very well done, too.

Users get a 360-degree perspective of each of the public areas, can zoom in on works of art and find out fascinating facts about the interior design.

Welcoming the launch of the tour, Tony Blair said:

"This is an excellent way of showing the tremendous history of this building. I feel very lucky to live and work here and if we can share just a fraction of the fascination of this extraordinary place, then this tour will entrance a great many people online."

A Downing Street spokesperson added:

"This year has seen the Downing Street website grow and develop - with the introduction of podcasts, e-petitions and more online interviews and webchats. In 2007 we will build on these initiatives, with greater interactivity and access for the public to the work of the Prime Minister."

Aral Balkan, the founder and director of Ariaware, and a renowned expert in the field developed the tour. He used the latest Flash multimedia software (although a Flash-free version of the tour is also available).

A historical time waster!

Saddam’s Lawyers Ask US Court To Stop Execution

Saddam Hussein's lawyers have just filed papers asking a US court to grant a restraining order to stop the US from handing Saddam over to the Iraqis.

Hussein's lawyers filed documents Friday afternoon asking for an emergency restraining order aimed at stopping the U.S. government from relinquishing custody of the condemned former Iraqi leader to Iraqi officials, a spokeswoman for a federal court in Washington D.C. said.

I rather doubt that will work.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting that all of the official witnesses chosen to attend the execution of Saddam Hussein have gathered in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Officials say the hanging will be carried out sometime before 10 PM EST time (6 AM local time). American officials have made it abundantly clear that they do not want Saddam mistreated or abused, either before his death or after he has been pronounced dead.

An adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saddam would be executed before 6 a.m. Saturday, or 10 p.m. Friday EST. The time was agreed upon during a meeting Friday between U.S. and Iraqi officials, said the adviser, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

"Saddam will be handed over shortly before the execution," the official said. The physical transfer of Saddam from U.S. to Iraqi authorities was believed to be one of the last steps before he was to be hanged. Saddam has been in U.S. custody since he was captured in December 2003.

Al-Nueimi said U.S. authorities were maintaining physical custody of Saddam to prevent him from being humiliated before his execution. He said the Americans also want to prevent the mutilation of his corpse, as has happened to other deposed Iraqi leaders.

"The Americans want him to be hanged respectfully," al-Nueimi said. If Saddam is humiliated publicly or his corpse ill-treated "that could cause an uprising and the Americans would be blamed," he said.

UPDATE: A grim catalog of Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity. It is only a partial list.

UPDATE: You know, it really is frustrating that it takes an event like Saddam's imminent execution for the Associated Press to run some of these stories about what Saddam did to Iraq:

Saddam's reign leaves destruction behind

"People overlooked their political deprivation and lack of participation, they only saw buildings sprouting here and there," said Iraqi economist Ghanim Hamdoun, who researched Iraq's 1970s economic experiment.

Under Saddam, imprisonment or summary execution of political foes was common. Political parties, unions and civic groups not controlled by Baathists were banned. Traditional bonds were reshaped to support a one-party state.

Millions of Iraqis, though, were able for the first time in their lives to wear designer clothes and vacation in London, Madrid or Paris. Others started tasting imported foods and driving Japanese, German or French cars — all at government subsidized prices.

Baghdad was a hub for Arab writers and artists who gathered at annual festivals. An Iraq-based foreign development fund provided economic aid to poor nations in Africa.

Tens of thousands of young Iraqis were sent to colleges in the West on state scholarships.

"Saddam seemed to be building an empire and only waiting to declare himself its emperor," said Hamdoun.

But the oil boom also ushered in an era of heavy-handed, centralized decision-making. In the 1975 state budget some $13.7 billion, or 27 percent of public expenditures, went to the army, police and other security forces.

Saddam suppressed opponents at home and embarked on military adventures abroad.

His 1980 invasion of Iran, portrayed as a fight against the Persians on behalf of all Arabs, set off an eight-year war that drained Iraq's economy and killed hundreds of thousands on both sides.

Weary soldiers returned home to few or no jobs. Soon the regime found itself in the throes of deep crisis. Iraqis protested the presence of millions of Arab workers, mainly Egyptians, brought by Saddam to run the factories, construction projects and farms while Iraqis were away fighting Iran.

Saddam wreaked havoc on Iraq and its people. The West, and Americans in particular, need to remember that. Some have pointed this out all along. Kofi Annan's massively corrupt leadership of the UN made the situation in Iraq much, much worse.

UPDATE: 9:27 EST, a Federal judge has refused to grant a restraining order to stop US forces from transferring Saddam into Iraqi custody. That is literally all the information I have, it is flash traffic with no links yet.

UPDATE: Here is the order. One sentence from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. Applicable word is "denied".

UPDATE: Iraqi media reports Saddam Hussein has been executed. That is all the information available at the moment.

Newest Ship In The Navy

A new ship is set to join the US Navy. The aircraft carrier Harry S Truman. No, not the aircraft carrier that joined the fleet in 1998. The all new, improved and miniaturized Harry S Truman. Oh, and it happens to be built entirely out of Lego blocks.

300,000 or so Lego blocks.

The real thing is one of the largest ships afloat - and this amazing copy is the biggest one ever made out of Lego.

Father-of-two Malle Hawking, 36, used more than 300,000 lego bricks to build his scale model of the USS Harry S Truman from scratch.

The Harry S Truman is one of the largest carriers in the US fleet. The full size nuclear powered aircraft carrier carries 85 warplanes and more than 5000 airmen and crew.

Hawking's scaled down version is the same down to the smallest detail, and took him more than a year to build.

The IT Consultant from Munich, Germany, said: "I used to play and build Lego models when I was a boy, all my friends did.

"I stopped building in my teens, but in February 2005 almost 20 years after my so called Dark Ages began when I did not have any Lego for 20 years, I watched a documentary about Aircraft Carriers.

"I was so inspired I ran down to the cellar, poured my two boxes of Lego on to the floor and immediately started trying to build one of my own." Using pictures from the internet, he tried to copy the Harry S Truman over and over again until he got it right.

He did get it right, too. They have pictures. Here are the photos Hawking posted on Brickshelf.com. Hawking is actually going to take his ship to visit the real Truman, incidentally.