Target Centermass

Category: General

  • The $10,000 Question

    Hat tip to Wizbang! for finding this challenge about the new CBS documents:

    So, for anyone still willing to consider that these documents are anything other than cheap, childish forgeries, I am offering $10,000 right now to anyone who can find for me a typewriter from 1972 that could have reasonably made those documents. Payment will be made in the form of a cashiers check to the first individual who can do this. The typewriter must be using the same proportionally spaced font as the CBS documents, the same curly-quotation marks, the same impossible superscripted “th”s, the same 13-point line spacing, and create a document that looks as much (or more) like the alleged forgeries than does a Microsoft Word document with default fonts and margins.

  • Old vs. New II

    According to the often-but-not-always accurate Drudge Report, CBS is launching an internal investigation after today’s fun-filled activities. It seems the work of the new media is sending the old media into a rather confused situation.

  • Old vs. New

    Media, that is. It was certainly an exciting day in the blogosphere.

    If you missed it, Little Green Footballs, Power Line, INDC Journal, Allah and others squared off against none other than Dan Rather, 60 Minutes and CBS News.

    It’s not a knockout yet, but it was a 10-8 round for the bloggers. And the mainstream media need to remember to not have the AP as their cutman in the corner.

  • City Falls to Muslims

    Afghanistan is moving towards elections. Iraq pacification and democratization is in motion. Whither next in the war on Islamic terror? So many targets to consider. Syria. Iran. Sweden.

    Sweden?!!

    This read is as disgusting as it is alarming. (hat tip to Rusty Shackleford)

  • Confusion Over Fate of French Hostages in Iraq

    The terrorist scum holding two French journalists are apparently claiming that they neither asked for a $5 million ransom nor set a 48-hour deadline.

    An Internet statement purportedly from the Islamic Army in Iraq militant group holding Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot dismissed a statement that appeared on the Web on Monday in the name of the militants.

    “There is absolutely no truth to the statement carried by the media on the Internet … comprising financial and other demands,” said the statement, posted on a Web site identified as belonging to the Islamic Army in Iraq.

    Another statement on the same Web site said the group was warning “any party whatsoever from interfering” in the case of the French hostages, who were both seized on Aug. 20.

    “The Islamic Army’s legal committee will announce its decision soon, God willing,” said the statement.

    France, oblivious to the reality that is the global threat of Islamist terror, remains befuddled.

    France was stunned by the kidnappings because it had opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq and has not sent troops to the country.

    I’ve searched, but it seems there’s no truth that a new Maginot Line is being constructed. Apparently, even that would be taking too strong a stance.

    Can we please stop referring to France as an ally? Two-plus centuries ago, fine. Since then, only at their need, not ours. Hell, they bailed out of the military side of NATO in the darkest hours of the Cold War.

  • A European Conversation

    Maggie Gallagher writes of a recent discussion she had with a Swiss mother, and the column takes a look at the opposing American and Euroweenie worldviews. (Hat tip to Blackfive)

    “People hate you. Everyone hates you. The whole world hates you.” The pretty middle-aged woman, a Swiss mother and scholar, at the dinner table in Geneva earnestly wants to make that perfectly clear.

    She isn’t angry with me. She thinks the American people are totally ignorant, misled by the media and a criminal president. She also thinks the United States invaded Afghanistan in order to grab an oil pipeline.

    This is my test of whether conversation is possible. I can understand how Europeans can believe the war in Iraq was about oil. After all, European nations like France and Russia had been benefiting from sweetheart oil deals in Iraq for years. But Afghanistan?

    Go give it a read. I found this snippet rather telling:

    Does it sometimes take a war in order to achieve justice? Fifty-five percent of Americans strongly agree. Only 18 percent of Europeans do.

    Trust me, I know how these “conversations” can go. Worse yet, my girlfriend’s Swiss brother-in-law drinks the Michael Moore brand of kool-ade.

  • They Shoot Children, Don’t They?

    In his latest column, Dennis Prager examines the current primative, barbaric state of radical Islam and the validity of “Muslim bashing” as a political hot potato.

    According to The New York Times, when the terrorists took over the Russian elementary school, they shouted “Allahu akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”).

    Does this surprise you, dear reader? Does it shock you that the people who deliberately attacked a school and then systematically shot and blew up little children did so in the name of Islam?

    Unfortunately, the question is rhetorical. Having targeted little children for death, there is no atrocity, no barbarity, no act of evil that the human race cannot imagine fanatical Muslims committing.

    We have already become almost inured to:

    The slaughtering of innocent human beings as if they were animals while chanting Muslim prayers.

    The reintroduction of black slavery and genocide against blacks.

    The murder of daughters and sisters for imagined or real sexual behavior.

    The stoning of women accused of adultery.

    The burning of Hindu temples and Christian churches, and the destruction of among the greatest Buddhist sculptures.

    The ban on women driving cars or learning to read.

    The idolization of young men who blow themselves up while murdering and maiming innocent non-Muslims — and the theology of sexual rewards in heaven for doing so.

    Prager is not painting with too broad a brush here. He specifically is targeting the Islamist radicals that are a pestilence on the face of our planet.

    It is, of course, only a minority of Muslims that engages in such horrors, but it is only Muslims who are doing all these things. Christians aren’t — even among Palestinians, there are no Christian terrorists. Jews aren’t — and when one Jew did deliberately kill innocent Palestinians in 1994, the rest of the Jewish world was horrified and demonstrated its revulsion in word and deed. Buddhists aren’t — despite the destruction of Tibet by the Chinese Communists, no Buddhists have murdered innocent Chinese, let alone non-Chinese who deal with China.

    Since 9/11, critiques of Islamic radicals and the general silence of non-radicals have been blunted by political correctness. Prager questions how long this should continue after the massacre of schoolchildren.

    … have we reached the point where people of goodwill can ask serious questions about Muslims and Islam? Or are any challenging questions still to be dismissed as “Muslim bashing” or, even more absurdly, “racist,” as if religion were a race?

    The truth is that everyone with a conscience has questions about Muslims and Islam. But the most powerful religion in America, the religion of tolerance, has rendered it almost impossible to ask any such questions.

    Have we reached the point? This must be another rhetorical question, because we reached that point, passed it, and can now barely see it as a speck in the rearview mirror.

    Yes, some people do shoot children, and good people have a right to ask why.

    Exactly!

    However, I disagree with Prager at one point where he states that “the only people asking these questions aloud [are] conservative and religious.” I stand here as an atheist exception, and I’d wager there’s a sizable portion of liberals or non-religious who would concur. After being careful with his brushstrokes on Islam, why did Prager have to go and get paint on me?

  • Hot off the Mudville Gazette presses

    Looks like one of my favorite MilBloggers — Hell! the founder of the MilBloggers — has received the summons. Best wishes and happy hunting, Greyhawk!

    EDIT: Grayhawk needs a little help if he is to keep blogging on his “trip.”

    Update: By the way, if everyone who wanders by here would see fit to hit that paypal button for a modest (really, 5 bucks would be great) donation this site will continue to provide you with the insights and diversions that I hope are your reasons for visiting. Honestly, if not, it will likely vanish within a few short weeks. That’s not a threat, it’s just an unavoidable truth.

    And whether you contribute or not, I’ll take this time to note that if you don’t vote this year I will find you on my return to the states and personally kick your ass.

    Thanks for stopping by.

    Update 2: I would consider it a great favor if fellow bloggers would kindly link this post. Thanks.

    Update 3: I suppose I should point out I’m going on a trip (ahem) and without some proper gear will be unable to continue updating this site – just to clarify. Said gear is not cheap, (think laptop and digital camera) and I think you might be interested in my reports from my destination.

  • Latest on F9/11

    I’ll be honest: I haven’t seen Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 and have felt little inclination to do so. The trailer, reviews, reports on the web and words with coworkers have so far sated any curiosity save one — I suspected but was too lazy to verify an October DVD/VHS release. Well, now I know.

    Michael Moore says he won’t submit “Fahrenheit 9/11” for consideration as best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. Instead, he’s going for the bigger prize of best picture.

    Moore’s critically acclaimed film slams President Bush’s war on terror as ill-advised and corrupt. The movie has cheered Democrats but enraged the president’s supporters, who booed Moore when he visited the Republican National Convention last week.

    “For me the real Oscar would be Bush’s defeat on Nov. 2,” Moore told The Associated Press during a phone interview Monday from New York.

    The $6 million film has become a sensation that collected $117.3 million in the United States this summer, despite an early roadblock when the Walt Disney Co. banned its Miramax Films division from distributing the political hot-potato.

    In the midst of the presidential campaign, Moore’s announcement is a strategic move for his Oscar campaign. Documentaries and animated films have their own categories, but the conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that those niche awards can limit a film’s appeal in the overall best picture class.

    Moore said he and his producing partner, Harvey Weinstein, agreed “Fahrenheit 9/11” would stand a better chance if they focused solely on the top Oscar.

    He also said he wanted to be “supportive of my teammates in nonfiction film.”

    So many documentaries — such as the gonzo fast-food satire “Super Size Me” and the sober look at Arab television news in “Control Room” — have made the rounds in theaters recently that Moore, who won the best documentary Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine,” said he wanted to give others a chance.

    “It’s not that I want to be disrespectful and say I don’t ever want to win a (documentary) Oscar again,” Moore said. “This just seems like the right thing to do. … I don’t want to take away from the other nominees and the attention that they richly deserve.”

    Moore also hinted in a recent interview in Rolling Stone he would like the movie to play on television before the presidential election. According to the rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, playing on TV would invalidate its contention in the documentary category, but not for best picture. With the movie coming out on DVD Oct. 5, it’s not clear whether the TV deal would happen.

    I suspect there’s more to this than Moore’s desire for television. First, this maneuver would dodge the is-this-really-a-documentary controversy that buzzed around his award-winning Bowling for Columbine, especially important as such a controversy would dwarf the previous one. Second, win or lose, nomination or no, this allows Moore to backburner Academy Award issues to well after election day. All he has to do is ride any storm in October, doing what damage he may to the president.

  • Russia, Israel Agree on Anti-Terror Union

    Based upon the shared burden of what is increasingly, albeit belatedly, recognized as a common enemy, Russia’s foreign minister has welcomed an offer by Israel of assistance against terror. It seems, however, that Russia isn’t quite to the point of understanding the story being played out on the global stage.

    While showing willingness to work with Israel against militants, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said any counter-terrorism alliance would have to include Arab countries — in a nod to Russia’s traditional allies in the region.

    “We appreciate the very strong readiness of the Israeli people to help Russia at this hour and this will certainly strengthen the counterterrorist coalition these days,” Lavrov said.

    “We certainly are taking into account the need to be more effective,” he told reporters during a visit to President Moshe Katsav.

    In a meeting with Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, Lavrov said terrorism is one of the biggest challenges facing the international community.

    Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news – web sites), in a telephone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin (news – web sites) on Sunday, proposed expanded intelligence coordination between the two countries.

    However, Lavrov was careful to point out that Israel was one of several Middle Eastern countries with which Russia coordinated on security issues, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab states.

    “Terrorism doesn’t have any nationalities,” he said. “I believe the key to the solution of the problem is to bring all countries to fight terror and I can assure you that in addition to our very close counterterrorist cooperation with Israel we have similar counterterrorist cooperation with Arab countries.”

    Yes, I see some value in saying any mideast alliance would have to include Arab nations. That value would be the maintenance of Russia’s traditional regional allies, who are, unfortunately, part of the problem currently. Also, the insistence of the inclusion of an Arab state precludes the inclusion of Israel.

    I also note the “terrorism doesn’t have any nationalities” portion. While this is true, it would also be true, and in my mind crucially important, to finally admit that Islamic terrorism most assuredly has tendencies towards a small number of nationalities.

    The global war on Islamic terror is currently being fought in four theaters:

    • Israel and the Israeli-controlled regions
    • Afghanistan, involving the U.S., NATO and other allies
    • Iraq, with the U.S, British, Polish, Australian, Japanese forces, among others
    • Russia, with essentially anywhere and anyone in that vast region a potential target

    Unfortunately, short of the Afghani and Iraqi theaters, there is little if any realization that these four hotspots are related. In fact, the American and Euro left have worked feverishly to separate Iraq from the campaign against Islamic fascism. This is essentially akin to arguing that Operation Torch, the invasion of Vichy-controlled Northern Africa in 1943 was not part of WWII because Hitler was in Berlin.

    No, these four areas must certainly be linked if the radical and expansionist Islamist movement is to be stopped. In fact, future battlegrounds assuredly lurk in the near future (e.g. Sudan, Syria, Iran, heck, many, many more, potentially). The sooner the good guys (and I have zero qualms phrasing it that way) realize the scope of the situation and that we are now entering World War IV, the sooner the Allies can intertwine and bolster each other’s efforts. The more radIslam spreads, the greater the eventual bloodbath will be.

    I’d wager that even some in France realize this.