This week’s installment of the Life, Liberty, Property community’s Carnival of Liberty is up over at Searchlight Crusade. Go read another fine collection of posts from a libertarian slant.
OBVIOUS PLUG: Mark your calendars for Carnival of Liberty XXVI, to be hosted by yours truly next Tuesday, December 27. Yeah, I took the Christmas holiday burden and its probability of little traffic. Hey, sometimes ya gotta take one for the LLP team. Expect more plugs to follow.
Long overdue, I’ve finally thrown in some additions to my links section and my blogroll. I encourage the reader to visit all of these fine sites.
Links added are as follows:
Blogs added — some relatively new and some glaring oversights and all excellent in their own way — are as follows:
As always, I’m always open to suggestions for other blogs to consider.
UPDATE: While your checking out my new blogroll additions, be sure to look at this tank porn over at the Officers’ Club. Ever wonder what the spawn of a cross between a tank and a battleship would look like? Well, apparently the Russkies did during WWII. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of this intriguing vehicle before now.
Tuesday, the twentieth of December, 2005 A.D. (or C.E. if you would prefer), has been absolutely craptastic.
Let’s just start with waking up, which is how I tend to start my days. Normally, though, I don’t wake up with a fever and what can only be described as an immovable wall of mucous in my sinuses. I notify work that I’ll be in late, if at all. Hours later, with fever now abating, I decide to head on in to the office. Well, that was the decision, anyway.
Flat freakin’ tire.
I could’ve just called it a day and given up, but that only would have been delaying dealing with the tire, and there’s no guarantee I’d be feeling better tomorrow. Maybe it was the slight fever, as I’m just as bad at procrastinating as the next man.
Did I mention it was 39 degrees out and raining? And let’s not forget the insidious biomass claiming squatters rights in my sinus cavity. Sure, I have covered parking, but there was no way I could maneuver the car completely under the shelter. I worked on the jack and tire in dry conditions but managed to get pretty darned damp while dealing with anything in the trunk (i.e. getting out the spare and jack, putting in the tire that had betrayed me).
Okay, the spare was now in place, and I inspected the flat. A screw. Well, screw you, too, screw! It was a pretty new tire and still under warranty, so I hopped in and drove to the nearest franchise of the tire store where I’d purchased it. No problem, they said. No charge, they said. Just leave the tire overnight, they said. What?!! There’s a few things I expect to find at place of business specializing in the area of automobile tires, things such as tires, wheels and patches. Patches? They apparently don’t need no stinkin’ patches. In an astounding failure of inventory control, this wondrous facility was completely out of patches. Quick thinkers that they were, they had ordered some from another outlet when they realized they had absolutely zero in stock. Delivery was expected in under two hours; as it was now around two in the afternoon, I told them to fix it as soon as possible and then went to get some lunch, pick up some means of self-medicating and run a quick Christmas-related errand in the neighborhood.
Eventually I checked back and was told my tire was ready. Luckily they were a little more efficient in actually putting it on the car and I was able to stroll into the office as the daily exodus home was beginning for most. Did I say stroll? Struggle would be more accurate as, by this time, I had realized that I had apparently strained something in my back while dealing with the flat. Stupid tiny-ass, manufacturer-supplied tire iron.
So now I sit, slightly feverish with an aching back and what may be a new form of life dwelling in my sinuses.
How was your day?
Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a convicted terrorist with American blood on his hands and long wanted by the U.S., sat for years in a German prison. Four days ago, Germany quietly set him free.
German authorities have paroled Mohammed Ali Hamadi after he served 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and the killing of a US Navy diver.
Hamadi has been released from prison and has left Germany, said Doris Moeller-Scheu, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office. She said she did not know his destination.
She said Hamadi’s case came up for a regular legally mandated review by a parole court and he was released after an expert assessment and a hearing.
TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome was hijacked to Beirut, where the hijackers shot US Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, 23, of Waldorf, Maryland, and dumped his body on the tarmac.
[…]
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Martin Jaeger, said there was no connection between his release and that of Susanne Osthoff, a German woman released at the weekend after spending more than three weeks as a hostage in Iraq.
Hmmm … tit for tat?
Stethem, 23, was beaten and shot on June 15, 1985, while the plane was in Beirut. He was the only casualty during the hijacking ordeal, in which 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days. He received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart decorations, and a US Navy guided missile destroyer is named in his honour.
Hamadi was arrested at Frankfurt Airport on January 13, 1987, when customs officials discovered liquid explosives in his luggage.
Germany insisted on trying Hamadi, refusing to hand him over to the U.S. in opposition to the American death penalty.
Well, ain’t that great. We don’t want to be overly harsh to killers and terrorists. Meanwhile, Hamadi has already returned to Lebanon and is in contact with the terrorists of Hezbollah.
In a further step toward returning to the radicalism of their 1979 revolution, the leaders of Iran have made a very dumb move.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has banned western music from state radio and TV stations, it was announced today.
In a move reminiscent of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when popular music was outlawed, Mr Ahmadinejad – the head of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council – ordered the implementation of a ruling prohibiting all forms of western music.
It means music including classical compositions will be barred from public service broadcast outlets, local media said. “Blocking indecent and western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required,” a statement on the council’s website said.
The move will silence the hip-hop that can frequently be heard blaring from car radios in Tehran’s streets.
It means music including Rush, by Eric Clapton, and Hotel California, by the Eagles, both of which regularly accompany Iranian broadcasts, will be outlawed.
Sending popular music underground will only further chafe large portions of the Iranian population already restless. As they race towards becoming a nuclear power, the radical Iranian rulers apparently weren’t satisfied with just stirring the international pot. Now, they’ve decided to kick some stones at home.
Make no mistake, the Islamist movement is not just about the destruction of Israel, but also the demise of Western culture and civilization. Unfortunately, the Iranian tyrants may find the many of their own populace want, at least to some degree, Western culture.