The Mystery Of The Three Right Feet

Authorities in Canada are more than a bit concerned after the third shoe dropped, so to speak. A third severed human foot - size 12 and wearing an athletic shoe, just like the first two - has washed up on a beach in Western Canada. 

A severed right foot has been found on a beach in western Canada - the third such find in the last six months.

The latest foot, still wearing a trainer, was washed up on Valdes Island, a tiny, isolated community in British Columbia, earlier this month, the Victoria Times Colonist reports.

Local police are calling it one of the most bizarre cases in recent memory, but are unclear whether any foul play is involved.

What's oddest about this is that feet don't normally float once detached from the rest of its previous owner. Well, the case is at least 1/3 solved, at any rate. After all, three rights make a left. 

Swamp Stompers Alert

Via Swampstompers and Dread Pundit Bluto:

Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Blogs of War: U.S. Companies Hosting Terror Supporters (HELP NEEDED!)

The Jawa Report and The Dread Pundit Bluto declare war on the jihad forum that recently brought you "Does this bomb vest make me look fat?" and "Beheading Suspected Supporters of the Afghan Government is fun". The forum is run by Taliban supporters in Pakistan, but its membership is a mixed group of Salafi e-jihadis and infidel fellow travelers who support anyone willing to kill an American.

We call upon all able bodied patriots to complain to the American service providers that allow this forum to operate. Service providers should be e-mailed, called, or faxed until they agree to stop facilitating the enemies of the United States of America.

The forum features at least two videos which clearly violate the webhost's Terms of Service (TOS) and arguably U.S. and International Law. A gruesome "exclusive" Lee-Media Taliban beheading video, images from which are too graphic to post here but which can be referenced at: Lee-Media: Taliban Behead Three "Spies". A second graphic video which begins with a Taliban terrorist being outfitted with a suicide vest; not shown on the short clip posted is the Taliban homicide bomber blowing up a vehicle.

In addition, the site routinely encourages the murder of civilians and the killing of U.S., NATO, Coalition, & Russian troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Chechnya. It also distributes al Qaeda propaganda.

The full details of the forum are at Internet Haganah. Highlights:

Description: Dedicated to the distribution or re-distribution of high-quality jihadi recruiting videos, with a particular focus on subtitling videos to make them accessible to audiences of expatriate Muslims living in Western countries (for example from Urdu to English, or Arabic to Turkish). This network is notable for the considerable effort they have made from the very beginning to hide their existence. They obviously have not succeeded, but we give them an "A" for effort….

Membership: By invitation only, so there are no "innocent" members and no deniability for the administrators. Core members are known to scour other, better known sites for talent which they then recruit to the LEE Network.

More details here.

Another specialty of the group is uploading Taliban murder videos which are sold in Pakistan's tribal areas but not officially released on the internet. They have become the de facto distribution network for Taliban propaganda not officially produced by the group's central Shura Council.

Frames from the video can be found here and might be sent to webhosts as evidence of what happens behind Lee-Media's closed forum doors. This suicide vest video can also be used. Service providers can also be directed to the Internet Haganah's detailed analysis of Lee-Media here.

Please, we need your help on this one. Spread the word and encourage every one you know to complain to the service providers listed below. In any letter or conversation you have with these service providers please let them know that Lee-Media violates the TOS (terms of service), encourages acts of violence against U.S. troops, and encourages terrorism.

Several service providers for Lee Media, many of which are in Burlington, MA, and seem to be companies owned or operated by Endurance International Group.

leemedia.net = 65.254.250.106

Host/Registrar: Endurance International Group (Shared webhosting)
Burlington, MA
Contact: domains@yourhostingaccount.com
(866) 642-4678

Domain Admin: Powweb.com
Burlington, MA
Contact: support@powweb.com; domreg@powweb.com
(877) 476-9932

DNS/Registrar: Tucows, Inc.
Ontario, CA
Contact: domains@accountsupport.com
dnsadmin@tucows.com
Form contact.

Nanny State Enables Stupidity

Well, whenever I think the British nanny state really can't get more ridiculous, they prove me wrong. The latest act of "genius" for wrapping the populace in absolute safety from their own stupidity? Wrapping lampposts and other hard objects on the street with padding. Why? Well, to prevent people who are walking while sending text messages from hurting themselves.

Britain's first 'Safe Text' street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a "walk 'n text" street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.

The 6.6million accidents have caused injuries ranging from mild knocks and embarrassing cuts and bruises through to broken noses, cheekbones and even a fractured skull.

Almost two thirds - 62 per cent - of Brits concentrate so hard while texting that they lose their peripheral vision, researchers found.

Given the apparent dangers of "unprotected text", over a quarter of Brits - 27 per cent - are in favour of creating a 'mobile motorway' on Britain's pavements.

Texters could follow a brightly coloured line, which which would act like a cycle lane, steering them away from obstacles. 

Oh, that will be so much fun. I can already see pranksters painting new lines so texters will be led into caroming off various padded objects. It'll be a game of pedestrian pinball. 

It is not the place of government to take away people's responsibility for their own stupid actions. If they walk into enough lampposts, they will either learn to stop walking and texting or they'll break their silly cell phone. Government should not be enabling foolish behavior. 

Define “Win”

Jackie Calmes over at the WSJ points out that barring a knockout blow from the Obama campaign on the Clinton effort, things are going to get murky, fast. The delegate math gets screwy if the primaries today are close. While I have predicted Clinton would get hammered today, that was before Obama suddenly was set upon by the press over the Canadian-NAFTA story and by the building buzz about Tony Rezko's trial.

The latest polls suggest, however, that the outcome is likely to be muddier than either of those scenarios. The surveys show Sen. Clinton with a solid, even expanding, lead in Ohio. In Texas, two polls released yesterday, show Sen. Obama with a slight lead, while a third puts Sen. Clinton somewhat ahead. Texas's results will be complicated by separate caucuses held after the primary polls close. Sen. Obama is favored to win the caucuses even if he loses the primary.

Should the senators split the states' contests — or if Sen. Clinton wins, but only by narrow margins — the debate will turn to how to interpret the results. Two smaller states, Rhode Island and Vermont, also vote today. Clinton aides have started to imply that even just one big win today would allow her to claim she had broken Sen. Obama's momentum, justifying a continuing competition.

Meanwhile, Dana Milbank at the Washington Post describes the howling pack of reporters that set upon Obama: 

The day before primaries in Ohio and Texas that could effectively seal the Democratic presidential nomination for him, a smiling Obama strode out to a news conference at a veterans facility here. But the grin was quickly replaced by the surprised look of a man bitten by his own dog.

Reporters from the Associated Press and Reuters went after him for his false denial that a campaign aide had held a secret meeting with Canadian officials over Obama's trade policy. A trio of Chicago reporters pummeled him with questions about the corruption trial this week of a friend and supporter. The New York Post piled on with a question about him losing the Jewish vote.

Obama responded with the classic phrases of a politician in trouble. "That was the information that I had at the time. . . . Those charges are completely unrelated to me. . . . I have said that that was a mistake. . . . The fact pattern remains unchanged."

When those failed, Obama tried another approach. "We're running late," the candidate said, and then he disappeared behind a curtain. 

And then there are reports of large numbers of Republicans crossing over in Texas - presumably to vote for Clinton. (Although it might not be quite that simple).

Poll watchers throughout Ohio are noting large numbers of Republican voters crossing over to vote in the Democratic Primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

In the Republican roost of Chagrin Falls, veteran poll worker Liz McFadden was amazed at the number of people jumping the party's ship. Democrats accounted for 70 percent of the voters in her precinct, one of seven at the village's high school.

"That's a complete reversal of what it normally is, even more so," she said. "I've never seen a switch like this."

The defectors had motives both pure and sinister.

One woman voted for Clinton in hopes of delivering John McCain a weaker debate opponent. Another picked Obama because her vote could help deny Clinton and her husband a return trip to the White House.

It seems that things are suddenly turning on Obama in a very big way. This is getting interesting. I really don't mind if Clinton and Obama keep savaging one another right up to the convention, so this could be fun. 

Avalanche!

NASA scientists have captured images of actual, active avalanches - on Mars. 

Pasadena, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. It is one of approximately 2,400 HiRISE images being released today.

Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who works on targeting the camera and has studied hundreds of HiRISE images, was the first person to notice the avalanches. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years."

The camera is looking repeatedly at selected places on Mars to track seasonal changes. However, the main target of the Feb. 19 image was not the steep slope.

"We were checking for springtime changes in the carbon-dioxide frost covering a dune field, and finding the avalanches was completely serendipitous," said Candice Hansen, deputy principal investigator for HiRISE, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

All of the images are available here. One has to wonder what triggered the avalanches. Martian skiers?

Britain’s “State Seer”

Newly declassified documents reveal just how desperate Britain was in the early days of the Second World War. They hired an astrologer. In short order, they had a problem on their hands.

In the battle against Hitler, he was one of the more unlikely figures - a German astrologer who claimed he could predict the Fuhrer's war plans.

Astonishingly, Louis de Wohl was hired by British intelligence after convincing spymasters that Hitler was obsessed with horoscopes and had tried to recruit him to provide readings.

Secret documents released yesterday show that de Wohl, who arrived in Britain in 1935, persuaded MI6's forerunner the Special Operations Executive to employ him so he could tell them what German stargazers would be telling the tyrant.

After the outbreak of war he was hurriedly made a captain in the British Army and put in charge of the new Psychological Research Bureau, effectively a department for astrological warfare.

Between 1941 and 1943 he submitted hundreds of would-be horoscopes for Hitler to British intelligence chiefs and outlined what impact he believed these would have on Nazi plans.

In wartime papers released by the National Archives in Kew, officials concluded that he made some "useful predictions", although it is unclear how much information was acted on. 

The AP report mentions some of the problems the British had:

"I have never liked Louis de Wohl — he strikes me as a charlatan and an imposter," reads the first line in the astrologer's file. The letter is typical and appeared to be signed by Dick White, who went on to become the head of Britain's domestic spy agency, MI5, in the 1950s.

In order to keep him from talking about what he had done for them, the British elected to keep him employed - effectively buying his silence.  

Chavez Paying FARC?

Colombia says it has evidence that Hugo Chavez has given some $300 million to FARC and is truning that evidence over to the Organization of American States. They are also refusing to send troops to their border with Venezuela.

Colombian officials said Monday that they do not plan to send troops to the borders with Venezuela and Ecuador. But they contended that the raid proved their long-held suspicion that Colombian guerrillas have been using neighboring countries as havens from which to attack Colombian forces.

"We are accustomed to the Colombian government's lies," said Ram¿n Carrizalez, Venezuela's executive vice president. "They can invent whatever they like to try to cover up the violation of Ecuadoran territory."

Gen. ¿scar Naranjo, director of Colombia's national police, said computers recovered from the camp revealed numerous links between the rebels and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, including evidence of more than $300 million in payments from Ch¿vez to the FARC. Colombia's government, led by U.S. ally ¿lvaro Uribe, has accused the populist administrations of Ch¿vez and Correa of sympathizing with the FARC's stated cause. 

And yet Chavez can't understand why the economy of Venezuela is in a tailspin. Colombia is smart to refuse to play Chavez's game, I think. Not sending troops avoids an unintentional confrontation - or one staged by Chavez on purpose. It also sends a message that they don't take Chavez seriously. 

Hatchet Job

Well, the Washington Post actually is reporting on the meeting of global warming skeptics in New York City. Primarily they do so to snark at those who are refusing to agree with the "consensus". The reporter includes a number of quotes from people belittling the skeptics and taking shots in general.

When Christopher Monckton, who served as a special adviser to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, ponders the current political push to curb greenhouse gases linked to climate change, he thinks of King Canute.

According to Monckton, Canute — the Viking who ruled England along with much of Scandinavia nearly a thousand years ago — took his courtiers to the ocean's edge one day, set down his throne and ordered the tide not to come in. The tide, of course, came in, and the king got his feet wet.

The lesson? The king taught his advisers "humility," Monckton said, by showing them that even he, a king, could not control nature. In the same way, he argued, modern-day politicians should not fool themselves into thinking that humanity is having a big impact on climate.

Monckton, along with other high-profile global warming skeptics such as University of Virginia professor emeritus S. Fred Singer and Virginia state climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, are gathered in New York this week for a conference aimed at challenging the idea that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank funded by energy and health-care corporations as well as conservative foundations and individuals, the 2 1/2 -day session poses a stark contrast to the near-unanimous chorus of concern expressed by top U.S. politicians and most of the scientific mainstream.

I'll send you over there to read the rest. It gets pretty bad toward the end. Meanwhile, more freezing weather is gripping the Midwest. The arctic cold front is colliding with warmer air streaming up from the Gulf of Mexico and is triggering storms across the south. 

A powerful storm system crossing the country through midweek has sparked an outbreak of tornado-producing thunderstorms across the South. Meanwhile, a wintry mix of snow and ice will develop on the cold side of the storm from Texas to northern New England.

The Severe Weather Center reports a strong cold front moving across the southern Plains will slice into the warm moist air flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico.

Strong storms developing ahead of the front will produce flooding rain, hail, damaging winds and the potential for a large-scale tornado outbreak.

Too bad the environment didn't obey the consensus.