Written by: Beck

What could be better than Jeff Goldstein and Ace teaming up to do a Webcast?

No need to answer that question.

They're coming on at 4pm Eastern time. You have been notified.

Details here.

Written by: Beck

Final proof, if any was yet needed, that Genetically Modified food is a good thing.

Geneticists have mixed DNA from the roundworm C. elegans and pigs to produce swine with significant amounts of omega-3 fatty acids — the kind believed to stave off heart disease.

That's right folks. Bacon that's good for your heart. Talk about living in exciting times!

(Hat tip: Laurence Simon)

Written by: Beck

How does a group of people--close to a fifth of the world's population--arrive at the point where it's actually possible for them to be completely and utterly derailed by... cartoons? The latest bit of proof that the world has gone mad:

A group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations plan to sue Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in a Danish court and file a complaint against Denmark with the UN Commission on Human Rights over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten and other European newspapers. Group lawyer Michael Christiani Havemann told AP Friday the group will bring a defamation suit against Jyllands-Posten in the Danish court. The declaration comes on the heels of an announcement by Danish top prosecutor Henning Fode Wednesday that he will not charge Jyllands-Posten because the cartoons did not violate Denmark's laws against blasphemous and racist speech.

Note, this isn't 27 Danish Muslims bringing a law suit, it's 27 Danish Muslim organizations. It should also occur to the observant reader that there's something wrong with Denmark having "laws against blasphemous and racist speech" in the first place. But most of all, it boggles the mind that these Danish Muslims fail to realize how profoundly silly they look claiming that a cartoon constitutes a human rights abuse.

What a strange world I live in.

Written by: Beck

From Investors Business Daily:

The government is finally getting around to unloading some of Saddam Hussein's secret documents. A look at just a few pages already leads to some blockbuster revelations.

In the early stages of the war that began three years ago, the U.S. captured thousands of documents from Saddam and his spy agency, the Mukhabarat. It's been widely thought the documents could shed light on why Saddam behaved as he did and how much of a threat his evil regime represented.

Yet, until this week, the documents lay molding in boxes in a government warehouse. Now the first batch is out, and though few in number, they're loaded with information.

Among the enduring myths of those who oppose the war is that Saddam, though murderous when it came to his own people, had no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist designs outside his own country. Both claims now lie in tatters.

As we've reported several times, a number of former top military officials in Saddam's regime have come forward to admit that, yes, Saddam had WMD, hid them and shipped them out of the country so they couldn't be detected. And he had plans to make more.

Now come more revelations that leave little doubt about Saddam's terrorist intentions. Most intriguing from a document dump Wednesday night is a manual for Saddam's spy service, innocuously listed as CMPC-2003-006430. It makes for interesting reading.

Here, for instance, are the marching orders for Directorate 8, the Mukhabarat's "Technical Affairs" department: "The Eight Directorate is responsible for development of materials needed for covert offensive operations. It contains advanced laboratories for testing and production of weapons, poisons and explosives."

It goes on. Directorate 9, we discover, "is one of the most important directorates in the Mukhabarat. Most of its work is outside Iraq in coordination with other directorates, focusing on operations of sabotage and assassination."

The document also discusses the Mukhabarat's Office 16, set up to train "agents for clandestine operations abroad." The document helpfully adds that "special six-week courses in the use of of terror techniques are provided at a camp in Radwaniyhah."

Got that? Terror techniques.

Even as the media studiously avoid these new documents — just as they avoided 500 hours of Saddam's personal tapes showing his scheming on WMD — it's clear the U.S. did the right thing in invading Iraq and taking out a formative terrorist threat.

Read the whole thing, as a man says.

I expect plenty more revelations will be uncovered in the coming weeks as the public begins providing the government with the translation services which have been thus far lacking. I also expect we'll have cause to regret that a more vigorous translation effort hadn't been launched much sooner.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

Written by: Beck

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Written by: Anonymous

This picture appeared on CNN under the headline "South Dakota bans nearly all abortions". Well almost, on CNN, the woman was completely shaded in ominous black, but for some reason she came up pink when I uploaded it.

Anyway, it seems to me that if I was creating a graphic for a story on abortion I might have included something else that is missing from this montage, like, oh I don't know, maybe an image of a FETUS. But clearly CNN didn't want a fetus to interfere with this dramatic display of a clearly distressed woman contemplating the loss of the free exercise of her womenhood and gazing at her last line of defense against tyranny - the courts.

Written by: Anonymous

Wal-Mart is going to stock the emergency contraceptive pill in all its stores now that a couple of States have forced it to stock it in stores within their borders. As Wal-Mart explains, it's a legal drug, and what one State makes us do, others will soon make us do.

What did I tell you? Soon enough, wherever there is legalized marijuana, there will be your local Wal-Mart to provide it for you. Think about how much more convenient it will be to pick up your marijuana at a friendly, efficient Wal-Mart. Think about how much easier it will be to make yourself as incoherent and confused as Speculator in Amsterdam.

Written by: Beck

Today is the 2nd anniversary of the creation of the humble weblog known as INCITE. Isn't that nice?

In celebration of that anniversary, Speculator has published the first thing he's written on the site in ages. I leave it to you, dear reader, to interpret just what that signifies.

Written by: Anonymous

Two Thursday's ago I was into my 6th hour of an indefinite delay at ORD and into my second bottle of super shitty wine at the "Chili's Too" in Terminal U Concourse 37, where, I proudly admit, I waited in line for 48 minutes to patronize.

So, the story goes something like this: I was pissed and hated my job. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the impending weekend was a 3-day bonanza, the February Labor Day, if you will (Why this had not happened on me sooner is admittedly odd). So, I booked a roundtrip ticket and one night hotel at the Renaissance Hotel Amsterdam for materially under $1K (it was 3X this to have 2 nights). A Thu evening European booking for a Sat departure... not bad.

Below is my effort to put pen to paper following my daily recommended dose of vegetables in AMS. Nothing extraordinary, nothing necessarily of merit, just a whole bunch of...

Note: nothing was doctored - this is how it sat on my screen when I finally slept like I was guilty.

I’m worried how the euro sign wilthatsonly one l

This is what I think about computers

Time – it was always time – I never lost sight of the fact that this had an end.. and im n ot there yet

Holy shit this is gonna read like I wrote this a

Cause I thought why is it hatt these damn software providers allow me to tyope like a jakcass but still provide ayou with discernable streams

That last one took me a whiule – but this one is zipping right through>>

What is it that I am telling that im an analyst to? (And don’t infer anything by the selection of “what”) (I need to find a better way to say that_)

I guess I am sobering up now – I now know that I need to remain certain that I am not going to die central Amsterdam

I am an analyst

That is the only way I just got through that [that on second read noted as a classic pronoun this is going to read horribly ]

It wanted to delete the entirty of the last assemb =ly of words

I cannot believe how bad it just got

Why didnt jesus actually write anything down himself?

lI still feel raw

The thought would come, but there was no allocation of capacity to the walk

Im done with it – why would I ever want to go back there again – ever – you lost all ability to assume that the summary of your action swould produce a predicted net result, i.e. you deferred it – you couldn’t handle it saved locally 1904

I never want to see that again –

i need

I remember beign frightened for my life – I did not know htat I could guarantee the next several minutes wouldn’t pass by without my complete loss of control –

I regcognize that I have to get this completely understood…thjis being the just had experience - I recognized I had fucked up – I bit off far (past any estimate) more than I could chew

And i

Written by: Beck

Quoted in its entirety:

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

(Hat tip: PW)