Pirates ahoy!!!

More pirate news.

These fellas just don't want to make friends with anyone. Last month some adventurous pirates hijacked an Iranian merchant vessel, the MV Iran Denayat and it's "mysterious cargo".

From the article:

"The MV Iran Deyanat is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) - a state-owned company run by the Iranian military that was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on September 10, shortly after the ship's hijacking."

The "minerals and industrial" products it's carrying are apparently making the pirates who inspected the cargo develop strange health issues, such as skin burns, loss of hair and a number of them have died. It is widely believed that the ship is carrying weapons for the Islamic insurgents in Eritrea.

Question: Why isn't the mostly Iranian crew suffering from the same problems?

It looks like that the Iranian government has ponied up some money to facilitate the release of the ship and crew, however the Iranian press has claimed that the US government has offered much more for the ship. The Somali official involved in the negotiations with the pirates has said: ""I can say the ship is of interest to a lot of people, including Puntland."

The Iranians have said they can't send help as the waters are being patrolled by the multinational Combined Taskforce 150 with elements of the US Navy's Fifth fleet.

So the pirates have become victims of their own success. This year near the Gulf of Aden, there has already been two rescues undertaken by French commandos, with one of the missions chasing and shooting the pirates down on land. There are currently ships from "Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States" (source: wikipedia) and now we have a Russian missile frigate steaming her way there.

The Gulf of Aden and the pirate port (aaaar) of Eyl

It's worth noting that every country has an interest in stopping piracy. The reasons for the current surge in piracy around the Horn of Africa are many, however one critical factor is that Somalia has not had a functional government for abour 17years.

I wonder how long ye pirates will last when all countries that warships in the area decide to take the gloves off?

Prejudicial Projections

Further to debunking the argument that Western foreign policy IS THE cause of all this terrorism malarkey, there's this story about Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT graduate who is in US custody, after being captured in Afghanistan.

This ivy-league educated neuroscientist had 3 US born children, allegedly disappeared in 2003 in Pakistan, just about the time the FBI wanted to question her about connections to al-Qaeda.

Aafia Siddiqui, graduating from one of her two US university degrees	Aafia Siddiqui, Terrorist Mom
Before the Bin Laden Jihadi Make-over	After the Bin Laden Jihadi Make-over

Memo to the FBI: next time you want to question someone about terrorists ties, maybe don't tell them why you want to question them beforehand. Just a thought.

Allegedly caught outside "outside the governor’s compound in the central Afghan province of Ghazni on July 17" with a bag full of questionable material (bomb-making books, instructions on how to make certain chemicals, and the oft-media-repeated notebook with US landmarks and something about a "mass casualty attack") this highly educated women was then transferred to US custody whereupon she grabbed a rifle and attempted to shoot her interrogators:

“The warrant officer heard Siddiqui exclaim, ‘Allah akbar!’ Another interpreter heard Siddiqui yell in English, ‘Get the f*** out of here!’ as she fired the rifle.”

An M-4 Assault rifle.

"Allah akbar", "Get the f**** out of here" could perhaps sound similar. I'm not sure I'd be focusing too much on the enunciation if the enunciator was firing an M-4 rifle at me. Personally, I hope she said she said "Get the f*** out of here" as it sounds much more Hollywood.

Which brings me to my point: how exactly did the West oppress this clearly academically bright individual? A graduate of one of the most prestigious Western tertiary institutions, comfortable enough to have 3 kids in her adopted homeland, and clearly quick enough to rattle off a movie action hero line under duress, if interpreter #2 is to be believed.

The answer to my rhetoric question is of course: the West did nothing of the sort. It may have been the lack of job vacancies at the Bin Laden Neuroscience Institute, or perhaps one of her classmates called her "veily-head" one too many times and she thought "f** this, I'm going on jihad and make this dude and a whole bunch of random innocents pay" or maybe it was the fact that she was married to a nephew of a Khalid Sheik Mohammed (the 'mastermind' of September 11).

Either way, I doubt a couple comments in the classroom could really "radicalise" (jihadise?) someone to that extent. And I have real difficulty believing that even if you felt that strongly about the Iraq-Afghanistan-Chechnya-Palestine-Lebanon-[insert "islamists as the victims conflict" du jour here] that it would necessarily motivate you to go and work out how to blow up a whole bunch of random civilians.

The thought that the West (ok , mostly US) military action over the last 20-40 years is the cause of all this discontent is dangerously deluded at best. It also ignores the actual history of this conflict. We so desperately DO NOT want this to be a clash of civilizations, because in such a conflict, none of the options are good. But to say it is not so, because you want to believe it so, without taking into account what "the other guy" believes, is being shall we say, a little bit intolerant of other belief systems.

Ascribing your own world view on people that clearly do not share it, is dangerous and leads you to making bad decisions.

Suicide bombers, evil masterminds in Afghani caves, fundamentalists of all stripes do. not. want. an. iPod.

Anything you could possibly want, a family, a house, a maserati, fame, fortune, nice clothes, lots of $$$$, all of it is inconsequential to submission and devotion to "the one and only" (and I'm not talking about Obama). To suggest that Western "oppression" and military action today is the sole reason for these grievances, is really an exercise in projection.

Let's contrast the foreign policy expert Traceeeee Hutchinson who "is the author of 3 books – the Australian Music Anthology, ‘Your Name’s On the Door’ (ABC/1992), Rock Chefs for Mirabel – a fundraising cookbook for the Mirabel Foundation featuring over 30 musicians and their recipes – and Laughing Stock: Comedy Chefs for Mirabel – a sequel to Rock Chefs featuring local comedians." (link here) with Ed Husain, who was a member of the openly islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK and then decided jihad didn't suit him wrote one book "The Islamist"

Tracee Hutchinson	Ed Husain
("co-host of the weekly music program DIG TV with Australian rock icon James Reyne.")	(ex-Islamist)
"Or perhaps they were just disenchanted Muslim men reacting with misguided empowerment to the prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the Coalition of the Willing at the time. "	"Islamist terrorism started long before foreign policy blunders of Western government. "
link	link

I leave it up to you to decide who's word carries more weight.

The problem with such intellectual luminaries such as Traceeeee repeating these tropes, is that she and her ideological fellow travellers, want to frame ALL Islamic terrorism as a reaction against Bush, Blair, Howard, [insert hated conservative political figure of choice here]. The reason they do this is because they are too scared to think about the options if they are wrong.

Their world view is strictly binary: "It must be because of misguided conservative policies that these people want to kill us, because a: I hate conservative policies, and b: "Imagine all the people, Living life in peace..." I mean isn't that what EVERYONE wants?" I'm sorry Traceeeee (and John Lennon), but no, that is not the case.

To quote Alfred in the "Batman, The Dark Knight" (Warner Bros, 2008):

"Some people just want to watch the world burn"

It will be interesting to see how the West evolves to deal with an adversary who truly does not care what happens to him/her on this particular plane of existence. And it will be truly enlightening to the Traceeeees of this world when they realise the same.

Maybe not so stupid?? Or maybe incredibly stupid?

So, our Somali pirates have now captured a Ukrainian ship, with 33 T-72 Russian tanks on board plus a whole bunch of ammunition.

One Russian T-72 tank

As a consequence the Russkies have ordered the missile frigate Neutrashimy to the Somali coast.

The missile frigate Neutrashimy

The Russians aren't really known for their subtlety, so it will be interesting to see what happens when they get there.

Could you be more stupid?

Re: this
a Somali pirate skiff	VS	The USNS John Lentham

.

The Melbourne Seven

A very scary-looking beard

Australia's biggest terror trial has just concluded, and the jury has found that 7 scary beards men of a certain non-christian religion GUILTY of conspiring to blow up a couple of Melbourne landmarks. And of course the media fall over themselves to prove what a tolerant society we are, that this does not reflect our attitude to all scary bearded non-buddhists, blah blah blah.

The Rhodes scholar Traceeeeeee Hutchinson from the Age writes an interesting opinion piece in the Age, suggesting a hypothetical equivalence between a Smith Street junkie and member of a terrorist organisation. Because you see the heroin the junkie uses could easily have come from Afghani poppy fields, and they then could be charged with being a member of terrorist organisation, because their $25 hit could be funding the Taliban.

"And, voila, shrieking from the little paper would be: Smith Street junkie in Terror Plot. "

Here, I assume Traceeee having a go at The Herald-Sun, which is mostly on the other end of ideological spectrum than The Age. The attempted snipe "little paper" is particulary funny in this context as The Herald-Sun has well over twice the circulation numbers than The Age. In fact, the "little paper" has the highest circulation of any paper in Australia. Not so much "little" as "the biggest".

"The actual plan was never, and never had to be proved, such is the wording of the Howard government's amended terror laws that refer only to proving the existence of a terror act."

You see, dear readers, it's the fault of John Howard that this bearded dole bludger was caught up in the dragnet that is the previous Government's "anti-terror" laws. It has nothing, NOTHING AT ALL to do with their particular non-buddhist beliefs. And of course, no one in the current Government ever voted for this legislation....

"Perhaps these men really were on a path of violent jihad. Or perhaps they were just disenchanted Muslim men reacting with misguided empowerment to the prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the Coalition of the Willing at the time. "

You know, opposed to that cuddly wuddly peaceful jihad that we hear so much about. The real frightening thing about this paragraph is that it reflects current western thinking about scary beards. They (us?) desperately want to believe that it is only the current oppression of Western culture and governments that is causing this blow back. The itsy-bitsy problem with this is that there is very good evidence of over 1,400 years of conflict between Islam and the West to kind of, you know, destroy this argument. But that's OK Traceeee, once the The Obamamessiah takes the Whitehouse and redeems us all, all these problems with scary beards will just...disappear.

Unfortunately, the Herald-Sun also bends over backward to not antagonise the remainder of the scary bearded population. In an otherwise mostly balanced article there's this little gem:

"But does this make these otherwise peaceful people vulnerable to charges similar to those laid against Benbrika? "

otherwise. peaceful. people.

Well, let's just say after I picked my jaw up from the floor, the counter-argument to this wishful thinking is I believe that the onus of proof of peaceful intentions lies with the scary beards, and not with the authorities who quite rightly investigate them. And conversations like the following:

"BENBRIKA: "You shouldn't just do, kill one or two or three, you need some good ... like close to the station, the train."

MERHI: "Yeah, like what's been going on in ..."

BENBRIKA: "Do a big thing."

MERHI: "Like Spain. I've been thinking about this heaps, a lot, a lot, a lot, but the thing is, all this stuff is pleasing to Allah. It's pleasing to Allah."

...

BENBRIKA: "When you, in here, in Australia, when you do something they stop to send the troops. If you kill, we kill, here a thousand, the Government is going to think ..."

kind of suggest that their intentions are not all that peaceful.

The colour Purple

Further to my previous post on the Turban effect, we now have researchers that find racism translates to virtual worlds as well.

STOP THE PRESS! Racism exists in the real world and gasp, shock-horror, it also exists in the virtual world.

Why this should be a surprise, as if the interface of a computer, mouse and keyboard can somehow make an unpleasant aspect of human nature vanish, is beyond me.

You will find racism online, in fact you will find every -ism under the sun in cyberspace (sexism, communism, islamism, botulism, etc..) and weirdly enough, for a man-made venture, online games will also have their fair share of isms brought over from the real world.

To sum up the "research", the authors contrived a social manipulation scenario in an onine forum, where people control avatars, human-like characters that can interact with other characters. The details involve 'manipulating' people to do favours, and then seeing if they will do one further favour, all done in the online world. They found that if the researchers asked for favours when they were 'driving' white-skinned avatars, they were 20% more likely to get a positive response when asking for a second favour, than if they were 'driving' black-skinned avatars.

So does that mean there's 20% racism in this online world?

From the article:

The researchers added a second layer on top of these two methods of manipulation by using avatars with skin tones set at the two extremes of light and dark that the environment, There.com, allows. This let them check for whether another pervasive social influence, racism, holds sway in the virtual world. "

Other than the sheer folly of "proving" a real-world phenomena in a virtual world, what really gets my goat is that these "researchers" prove their preconceived agenda with their awesome social science skillz, adding to the meme that Americans are racist.

The media has been very busy setting up the narrative that should Obama lose, it will be because of racism. Research such as this has one purpose only: to prove how bad (racist) the white man is. It must be remembered that the only form of racism on Earth, is the white man's prejudice against the others. Any other form of "racism" is simply evidence of your cultural insensitivity.

"The authors don't seem to know whether to celebrate the finding, since it opens up new avenues for pursuing social research, or to condemn the fact that racism has been dragged from the real to virtual worlds."

A cast picture from There.com. If you like anyone other than the
two darker-skinned homosexuals standing behind the couch, then you're a racist.

Crying over broken Ice

So a really really big ice sheet broke off from Canada, and whilst the world recovers from it's total indifference, let me put forward my denialist 2c.

This could be a bad thing, especially for shipping near Canada, however the authors of the article assume things that many believers in The Warming take to heart, even though facts and history tend to show that it's something that happened before and will most likely happen again. And the world will continue to turn.

"These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present," said Mueller."

So are you saying that this ice shelf has been a permanent feature of the Canadian landscape since Gondwana land broke up? If not, then clearly this breakage has never happened before and it's only since the evil capitalists discovered the steam engine that ice-shelves break off? And that use of the word "balance"...are you saying that the current climate is in "balance"? Who's to say that this climate is the "optimal" climate? Has the earth's climate actually ever been in "balance"?

"But today, warmer temperatures and a changing climate means there's no hope for regrowth. A scary scenario," said Mueller."

Note he is talking about the regrowth of an ICE SHELF. So scary, you could make a movie about it...oh wait a minute..

"Now that it's disappeared, we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of extinction,' said Mueller"

Note to Mr Mueller and the writers at Wired: 99.9% of all plant and animal species that have ever lived, have gone extinct. It happens all the time. Humans wouldn't be here if it hadn't. I don't know if the world economy will recover if the two species of Arctic Canadian Krill disappear forever.

In other news, it snowed last week in Kenya. I wonder how many of Al Gore's climate models predicted that particular phenomenon?

The failure of beards

You may have heard that this week, a jury failed to to convict three men accused of conspiring to blow up transatlantic airliners. The narrative that the news agencies have decided on is that this was once again an overreaction by the authorities acting against brown-skinned men with scary beards and funny names, and the jury verdict therefore vindicates the politically correct worldview that these gentle souls from the only peaceful monotheistic religion are being oppressed by evil Western forces.

Mohammed Gulzar (left) with a suspicious lack of beard, will most likely be let off.
Abdullah Ahmed Ali (right) was not found with plane tickets, but did have a beard; he's going to jail.

The real story is...a little different. The take-away points are:

• 9 defendants were charged.
• 4 of them had made martyr videos
• 3 of them had viable home made bombs that consisted of a bottles filled with concentrated hydrogen peroxide (the main charge), hollowed out AA batteries filled with hexamethylenetriperoxidediamine (HMTD) (a commercial grade detonator) with flash bulb filaments ready to be connected to a flash camera to deliver a strong electrical pulse to activate the detonator.
• Most of them had beards

A little YouTube of what 50g of HMTD can do.


The jury did in fact did find that three men were GUILTY of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions and they will all be going to prison for a long time. The reason why they weren't convicted of the apparently more heinous crime of blowing up planes is that they did not have any flight tickets on them when they were arrested. Also, they stated during the trial that:

"they intended to let off a small bomb inside a Heathrow terminal as a political statement. But they say they never wanted to wreck planes in flight, killing innocents by the hundred."

Yes officer, we were making bombs, but we were just going to let them off in the airport terminal...not on an actual plane. See, heaps better!! Now serve me some halal prison food or I'll report your government to the EU Human Rights commission.

If it walks like duck, talks like a duck, and builds bombs like a duck, then, in all probability it's a duck. The article does make the point that a "you don't deter suicide bombers by custodial sentences (or even death sentences)." Therein lies the rub. How do you stop people willing to die for their cause? Can you?

At the very least, the cops didn't lock them in dog pens...

Don't cross the streams!!

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad”?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
--Ghostbusters (1984)

So two things.

1. I got the time wrong. It the LHC experiment was run at 5pm today.
2. The world didn't end!!

So apparently they only turned it on. They didn't do any exciting stuff like crossing the streams. Apparently they're going to do that in a couple of months. I don't know how many more 150ft marshmallow men we need, but I'd like to know those "scientists" check, double-check and recheck their calculations.

Here's a picture of some part of this machine. More at the link below....


Links:

• Pic from http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html
• Ask a Cern expert about black holes here.

End of the world?

Tomorrow morning, around 5am Australian Eastern Time, the propellerheads at the CERN laboratory in Geneva will be activating their Large Hadron Collider

A Large Hadron Collider.

What this means to non-nuclear physicists is that they are essentially turning on a machine that is 27km in diameter, and then "throwing" two particles at each other and watching them go boom. Why? well to "provide new insights into the mysteries of our universe."

There is apparently an infinitesimally small chance they might accidentally create a black hole. In Geneva. But don't worry, the men in the white coats and hard hats assure us that this has been "universally ridiculed by the experts involved in the project"

To commemorate life on earth, I present a YouTube sent in by a reader. Happy Life everyone! and if there's a world around tomorrow, I'll be sure to keep annoying you.

Sad sad Hippies

Via David Thompson:

Seriously, WTF?


Emotional Hippies - Crying Over Dead Trees - Watch more free videos


Can you imagine what these people could do if they invested half the time of this emotional masturbation, into say, thinking about ideas on how to live more environmentally friendly?

Just a thought, but can you imagine the same scene, with say, Russian speaking hippies? Chinese speaking? How about Farsi? Yeah, thought so.

Witness one of the many reasons why the West is dying.

Oh the Trees. Won't somebody think of the trees?

The Blogging Revolution

I was given this book to read and I struggled to get past the introductory chapter. Of the 50 sentences in the first four pages, 14 sentences contain the words Bush, George W Bush, the US president, universally with a sneering aside. What this means is that in a book allegedly about blogging in repressive regimes, the author wastes 28% of his space in the first four pages criticising Bush and the US.

An example:

"Bush believed that saluting and supporting dissidents around the world, men and womeon who battled petty dictatorships or autocracies, would 'achieve human rights'. That these autocracies were often Washington-backed was a truth conveniently overlooked by the president."

Really?!!? These conveniently undefined autocracies are often backed by the US government?!? Burma? China? Iran? Russia? I'm pretty sure that's news to them. Note also the use of sarcastic quotes ( ` `), they're like scare quotes (" "), but more cynical. And the entire chapter is liberally sprinkled with them.

China get's a mention, along with the "complicity of Western companies" enabling repressive censorship regime, and of course Bush's administration "spying on citizen's internet traffic" does as well, although surprisingly Brown governments' ability to spy on all electronic communications of UK citizens is not. That these things are true and are worthy of discussion doesn't change the fact that the way it is phrased is to suggest there is some equivalence between "real" repressive regimes and the US and of course, evil capitalism.

To whit:

"Sharafedin loved his nation [Iran] and it's people but railed against its hijacking by mullahs and extremists in Washington"

It's about this time I switched off. In Iran, bloggers risk imprisonment, torture and their lives to write things that the government does not want reported on, but the "extremists in Washington" respond to the daily attacks and critical blogs of it's citizens by...writing their own blog.

"I was determined to reclaim words such as 'democracy', 'human rights' and 'freedom', beliefs that have been utilised to justify years of violent policies designed to subjugate nations to US foreign policy interests and Western markets"

Aha! The BIG evil of "Western markets". I do believe that the irony of writing about reclaiming "'democracy', 'human rights' and 'freedom'" in a country where the author has all the above, is lost on our earnest little communist.

I believe Mr Loewenstein is a West-hating socialist (note the revolution themed book cover...I doubt red was coincidental choice), who despite his travels to really repressive countries, can't help viewing the world through Bush-hating glasses (probably because all the ills in the world are Dubya's fault, ya see?) It will be interesting to see how he and his ideological comrades will have anything to write about after November.

NEWSFLASH: Socialism died in 1989. Get over it.

Community Organizer vs Hockey Mom

Democracies often of provide tepid choices as nominations for leaders, and as a voter you have a choice between someone you don't want to vote for, and someone worse.

The current US election is fascinating in that finally they have some candidates with a bit of excitement. With the introduction of McCain's choice for VP, Governor Palin, people on both sides of the aisle are going beserk with a mixture of admiration, rage, fear and awe.

I'm not really one for nuance, and I'm decidedly pro-West in most situations. So for me, the choice between the Chosen One and an old white male, is not so difficult. I just look at the enemies of the Free World and see who they're Baracking for (pun intended), and I choose the other guy.

So it's really a no-brainer. When Hamas endorses Obama, any and all reservations I have for the other guy just...disappear. When Obama has to sack an adviser for talking to Hamas, I know I'm on the right track (no pun intended). And finally, when Iran starts repeating Democratic talking points re: Gov. Palin, well, I feel almost energised enough to start campaigning for the Republicans.

A regular contributor at Ace of Spades, Gabriel, put's it best:

"Let me put it this way. Do we want to elect men and women whose first response to a terror attack is to ask "Why do they hate us?" Or perhaps something more along the lines of "Don't we have a carrier group in the region right now?"

A little bit of perspective

Re: this story from The Australian

Instead of a profanity laden post which I really feel like writing, I have found some appropriate pictures of Taliban type activity, contrasted with comments from the article. Apologies for the graphic nature of the pictures. It was either that or a post with FUCK YOU ARSEHOLES!!! copy and pasted 100 times.

“To be honest, I am appalled that Australian soldiers have been implicated with such disgusting treatment of human beings,” he said.
“No human bring should be in any way placed in a dog pen.”
--Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Iqbal Patel

“For Australia to find itself keeping prisoners in dog kennels, dog pens, even overnight, is a big mistake,” he told reporters in Canberra. "
--Australian Greens leader Bob Brown

"The situation in Afghanistan was “very nasty” and the Taliban were ruthless and destructive, but they should not be kept in dog pens, he said."
--Australian Greens leader Bob Brown

Links:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/8742
http://retorika.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/taliban-sisi-gelap-kemanusiaan/
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/04/30/world/30policy.inline.ready.html

Debunking Georgia

(illustration source: The Red Primer)

The commonly reported story (which even yours truly repeated) was that the whole Georgian thing started when Georgia 'invaded' South Ossetia on the 7th August this year, however, would it surprise you to know that in fact it was Russia who started the whole thing on the day before?

"It wasn't about taking Ossetia back, it was about fighting their way through that town to get onto that road to slow the Russian advance."

Read the whole thing.

Why is Georgia important? Because it is the resuming of the civilizational rift between superpowers since the Cold War. It is also bringing back to the fore the intellectual dishonesty of those that blame America and the West first for everything. You think Iraq was bad? Read the above article for heartwarming details on how the Russian soldiers watched while the irregular troops committed atrocities.

On the completely inadequate response from NATO and the West (which by the way, will have major repercussions down the track), Christopher Hitchens has this to say:

"It is now we, sunk in the banalities of democratic discourse, who stammer to find an apt form of words in which to defend and justify ourselves and our once-again menaced friends to the east."