Chris At Home

August 22nd is only a few days away.

• Photojournalism is in crisis, as you would expect after the Lebanon/Palestinian Authority fiasco:
  

  The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks on the people who take news pictures and on the basic premise that nonfiction news photo- and videography is possible.
  
  I'm not sure, however, if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both.

  
  I am going with suicide, myself.
  
  
• Remember those 2 bombs in suitcases found on German trains 2 weeks ago? They were supposed to detonate but were badly made.
  

  According to reports circulating throughout the German media today, two suitcase bombs placed by two unidentified men very nearly went off on regional trains in Dortmund and Koblenz at the end of July. A deadly simultaneous bombing was only averted because the bombs were technically defective. Had they fully detonated, German authorities believe that a mass casualty event similar to the recent attacks in London could have been the result.
  
  Police believe that a terrorist motive is probable, particularly because the suitcases contained Arabic writing and telephone numbers from Lebanon. The men who placed the bombs also strongly appear to be of Middle Eastern origin. German authorities have published further images of clues, the bombs and the suspects and are offering rewards to anyone with key information on their identities and/or origins...
  
  Our take: This is yet another wake up call for all Germans who believe that terrorism at home can be averted through a policy of appeasement and pacifism at all costs. One has to wonder how the far left can continue to collaborate with Islamic extremists in their quest of anti-American, anti-Israeli hatred. Hopefully it doesn't have to come to a horrific attack before the German media and politicians get realistic about the threat Islamic extremism poses to the modern world.

  
  
• Christian and Muslim conflict history for you revisionists out there.
  

  Catholics who do know history may remember the following:
  Islam has embraced armed military expansion for religious purposes since its earliest decades. In contrast, Christianity struggled in its divided attitudes toward military force and state power for its first 300 years. No “theology of Crusade” existed in Western Christian thought until the 11th century. In fact, the Christian Byzantine Empire had already been resisting Muslim expansion in the East for 400 years before Pope Urban II called the First Crusade — as a defensive response to generations of armed jihad.
  
  Much of the modern Middle East was once heavily Christian. Muslim armies changed that by imposing Islamic rule. Surviving Christian communities have endured centuries of marginalization, discrimination, violence, slavery and outright persecution — not always and not everywhere; but as a constant, recurring and central theme of Muslim domination.

  
  
• Bomb-turning-out-to-be-makeup update: racist, Islamophobic dogs!
  

  Never mind that carrying liquids onto planes is still banned in the aftermath of the foiled trans-Atlantic bombing plot. Never mind that one-way tickets come under automatic suspicion nowadays. Never mind that two tests came up positive for explosives.
  And never mind that the canine team got a positive hit: Rover is racist, you see, and needs sensitivity training.

  
  60's-flower-child-pissing-in-the-plane's-aisle update. She did have screwdriver in her carryon and she hinted about Al Qaeda.
  
  
• 6 more martydom videos found from the UK airline plot suspects. Let's hope they contain confessions regarding the bombings. Even if so, some will claim hoax or government lies, count on it.
  
  
• Palestinians attempt to form Fatah/Hamas unity government, declare unilateral ceasefire. Expect it to be very temporary, as hudnas usually are.
  
  
• France wants safety guarantees for its soldiers. Think about it for a minute, let it sink in. Peacekeeping force between Lebanon and Israel. Safety guarantees. Soldiers. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
  
  
• How not to implement a peacekeeping force (besides not relying on the French to supply meaningful numbers of troops or allow them to go into harm's way):
  

  Israel says it would be "difficult if not inconceivable" to accept nations which do not recognise its right to exist as part of a UN force in Lebanon. Israeli UN envoy Dan Gillerman was speaking after Indonesia and Malaysia, which do not recognise Israel, pledged troops for the UN deployment.
  
  Malaysia said Israel should have no say in the make-up of the force.
  ...
  He said they would be "very happy" to accept troops from Muslim countries they have friendly relations with.

  
  
• WaPo doesn't agree with the NSA ruling.
  

  Unfortunately, the decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit, striking down the NSA's program, is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting. The angry rhetoric of U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines. But as a piece of judicial work -- that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restrains or permits the NSA's program -- her opinion will not be helpful.
  
  Judge Taylor's opinion is certainly long on throat-clearing sound bites. "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," she thunders. She declares that "the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution." And she insists that Mr. Bush has "undisputedly" violated the First and Fourth Amendments, the constitutional separation of powers, and federal surveillance law

  
  The NY Times disagrees; after all, it was their article that started this.
  
  NRO notes duplicity: did the terrorists already change the way they communicate because they knew about NSA surveillance or did the revelation of the program cause them to change?
  
  
• Communists organizing demonstrations for illegal immigrants and Hezbullah.
  

  At the same time, it is crucial to recognize that some in the Muslim community and among leftist organizations such as ANSWER operate a global network that not only provides public support to the likes of Hezbollah but may provide a recruitment pool for suspected terrorists such as those apprehended in Great Britain and Michigan.
  It is also important to understand precisely what causes ANSWER serves. The organizer of Saturday's outrage was Brian Beker, leader of the Liberation and Socialism Party, which recently split from the (Stalinist) World Workers' Party.
  ANSWER supports and promotes jihadi terrorism and seeks to help defeat the U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its leaders also refuse to acknowledge Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism and advocacy of the destruction of the State of Israel.

  
  
• VDH thinks the West might be waking up, thanks to Iran and Hezbullah:
  

  Three years ago no one was talking about profiling at airports. Now the British are exploring how best to do it. Indeed, one of the stranger developments in recent memory is now taking place the world over: Young, Middle-Eastern, Muslim men are eyed and studied by passengers at every airport — even as governments still lecture about the evils of the very profiling that their own millions are doing daily. Muslims can thank al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and an entire culture that won’t condemn terrorism for such ostracism, which only increases with each suicide bomber, human shield, hijacking, kidnapping, and macabre reference to genocide and Jew-killing.
  
  In an amorphous war of self-induced Western restraint, like the present one, truth and moral clarity are as important as military force. This past month, the world of the fascist jihadist and those who tolerate him was once again on display for civilization to fathom. Even the most timid and prone to appeasement in the West are beginning to see that it is becoming a question of “the Islamists or us.”

  
  
• An interesting post which asks what will happen if the terrorists succeed in blowing up the Taj Mahal or destroying 10 planes over the Atlantic.
  

  The Arabs and Muslims do not really comprehend what warfare is. They have lost only to tiny Israel, a country determined not to use its full armory, and so far very solicitous of the enemy -- partly because of that supposedly impressive but actually maddening doctrine of "purity of arms" (which gets them no points outside of Israel, none). Israel has never been permitted by the outside world, or by its own scruples, to inflict the kind of damage that the rest of the Western world can and will inflict, and not only militarily.
  The plotters in England, or in a hundred other places, do not know this. No one has told them that there will be consequences. No one has told them that this can and will by many be treated as an act of war, an act of war by all those who participate in, or support financially or morally or demographically, the Jihad. This has to be discussed.
  Again, I ask: if ten airliners had blown up in midflight over the Atlantic, what would have been the consequences, not merely for "increased security measures" and attempts to monitor specific individuals who are members of identifiable Muslim terror groups, but consequences for Muslims in Dar al-Harb, and Dar al-Islam? There cannot be any kind of deterrence for some thoroughly demented fanatics. But others will refrain from attacking. Egypt does not attack Israel, nor does Jordan, nor does Syria, and not because the first two have signed peace treaties. They do not attack because they are deterred. Deterrence may not work for all Muslims, but it will work with a great many. But they have to know that a price will be paid -- a price comparable to that paid by Nazi Germany, by Imperial Japan.

  
  
  
• Love Mark Steyn, 'the destroyer of nation states and destabiliser of entire regions,' as much as I do? A long, long article about him is here. I find it odd that they dismiss so many of his ideas as crazy. It is a must-read.
  
  
• Another UN peacekeepers prostitution scandal.
  

  Last year, the U.N. barred peacekeepers in Congo from fraternizing with local people after investigations found some soldiers and civilian staff were guilty of rape and paedophilia including enticing hungry children with food or money in exchange for sex.

  
  Lebanon welcomes you, UN pedophiles!
  
  
• China tells America to shut-up. Literally.
  

  Sha Zukang, China's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, launched his diatribe in an interview with the BBC yesterday during a progamme about China's booming economy and military strength.
  "It is much better for you to shut up, keep quiet," the ambassador said, referring to America, raising his voice to a high-pitched yell. "Are you the number one? Is it true that the US has almost 50 per cent of the world's military budget? The Chinese population is five or six times bigger.
  Why blame China? Forget it. It's high time to shut up. It's America's sovereign right to do whatever is good for them. But don't tell us what is good for China."

  
  
• Iraqi terrorists use Michael Moore's 9/11 as propaganda tool. Yet another intersection of Left and terrorist talking points.
  
  
• Little Green Footballs named as “the most powerful enemies Muslims have faced in a thousand years". I am so friggin' jealous that LGF and Mark get the cool appelations. Lebanese Christians name Iran as their biggest threat.
  
  
• British-born Muslim speaks honestly on CNN, with video.
  
  
• Civil rights leader Andrew Young is a racist.
  

  The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.”
  
  In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods.

  
  James Taranto takes on Ben and Jerry's.
  

In other serious news, herioin-soaked panties.

A 42-year-old woman, Wang Zhiqin, is facing charges that she transported heroin soaked into her panties. According to the China Daily, Wang had 1.44Kg of heroin in 15 items of underwear.

Update: One German train bomber caught:

GERMAN police detained a 21-year-old Lebanese man yesterday who they believe planted a makeshift bomb on a German train last month as part of a failed terrorism plot.

Federal prosecutor Monika Harms said in Karlsruhe that the suspect had been seized in the early morning hours at a train station in the northern city of Kiel, where the man had been living and studying.
She said the suspect's fingerprints and DNA matched that taken from one of two abandoned suitcases that were discovered on July 31 on separate trains in the cities of Dortmund and Koblenz.

The suitcases contained crude bombs that police say were set to go off 10 minutes before the trains arrived in the two cities. The explosives failed to detonate, but if they had, police say they would have killed a "high number" of people.