Michael Demmons reports something is going on in Birmingham. Jeff Quinton has more.
*** Update ***
Umm.. By request, I would like to note that this is the Birmingham overseas, not the one in Alabama.
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
Michael Demmons reports something is going on in Birmingham. Jeff Quinton has more.
*** Update ***
Umm.. By request, I would like to note that this is the Birmingham overseas, not the one in Alabama.
by John Cole| 21 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
More information is released about the explosions in London, and, true to form, Raimondo disappears the timeline he was using as the crux of his conspiracy theory. The post (2206-0-1-0) used to be here.
The post before (2205_0_1_0) is there, the post afterwards (2207_0_1_0) is there, but the post with the timeline he was using to advance the notion that Netanyahu was warned after one bombing but before an another is, quite simply, disappeared.
I wish I had a screenshot.
And now, magically, it is back, and with an update:
UPDATE: The new timeline that we are now being told is much closer to the truth — that the explosions in the London terror attack were mere seconds apart — obviously makes the analysis herein invalid.
In all the rush and emotion of Terror Thursday, I had forgotten the number one axiom for a libertarian journalist: if a government says something, we have to assume they’re lying. This goes double for the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which has turned “for you own good” paternalism into an excuse for a worrying authoritarianism.
Given the new sequence of events we are presented with, the Israelis’ claim that Finance Minister Netanyahu received a warning after the first explosion makes sense — that is, if their denial that they received a warning before the blasts can be believed.
The analysis is invlaid, but the rumor mongering continues in earnest.
by John Cole| 22 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Via OTB, I see that Kos has decided to rid his site of the lunatic fringe:
Today I did something I’ve never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I’d never had to do.
I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories.
I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones — Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can’t imagine what f—ing world these people live in, but it sure ain’t the Reality Based Community.
So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake — this is a purge.
The right wing of the blogosphere is agog, with the usual condemnations and/or statements “I used to read Kos, but…” I still read Kos. Every day. I even have a handle there- ‘John not Juan Cole,” for the obvious reasons. In fact, I read as many lefty sites (perhaps more) than I do righty sites, if only to keep up on what is going on on the other side of the fence.
Do I agree with Kos? On about one out of every 15 issues, he and I see eye to eye on things, and that hasn’t changed since back in the days when the Daily Kos was a wee tiny site and it was me, Tacitus, Steve Soto, Glenn Kinen (whatever happened to Glenn?), Kos, and a few others flailing away at each other mercilessly. Like James Joyner, I also wrote for Kos’s other site at the time, the Political State Report.
I stopped visiting both at some point, but went back a couple months after I went hopping mad insane at Kos for the whole “screw ’em” imbroglio. Other than the usual partisan vitriole I dished out during the election years, that was the one time I was so damned angry I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
At any rate, do I find the comments section at Kos to be a swirling fetid cesspool? Sometimes. Same goes for Little Green Footballs. And every damned forum I can think of, including here. But I don’t blame Kos or Armando or Hunter, and I don’t blame Charles Johnson. I do blame myself, because I go off the damned deep end too much.
The point of this post was not a trip down memory lane, but to just note that they are cleaning house over there. Good. One Democratic Underground, one What Really Happened (aka Jews Really Did It!), and one anti-war.com is enough. If you are a Republican, and you want to know what the other side is thinking, you should be reading the Daily Kos, and not just dismissing it as evil leftist trope.
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: Military
A soldier loses his arm in combat, and fights to get back on his Special Forces team.
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
Lifehacker reports that Google toolbar is now availble for Firefox.
Firefox users, rejoice.
This post is in: Military
An update on the missing SEAL in Afghanistan:
A purported Taliban spokesman said Saturday that the group has beheaded a missing American commando, but he offered no proof and the U.S. military said it was still searching for the Navy SEAL.
The commando is the last of a four-member elite commando team missing since June 28 in Kunar, near the Pakistani border. One of the men was rescued and the other two were found dead.
“This morning in Shagal district in Kunar province, the Taliban killed the American soldier and cut his head off,” Mullah Latif Hakimi, the purported spokesman, told The Associated Press in a telephone call. “We left the body on a mountainside in this area so Afghan or U.S. soldiers there can find it.”
Hakimi repeatedly has said the rebels were holding the commando. But information from him in the past has frequently proven exaggerated or untrue, and his exact tie to the Taliban leadership cannot be independently verified.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara said “the search for the commando continued.
“The only proof we have is that he is missing,” he said. “We will run down these reports to see if anything thing pans out.”
Hope they find him, and fast.
by John Cole| 29 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
This is too funny:
A film festival being organized by left-wing director Michael Moore has some right-wing competition.
A local activist and a conservative group from Texas said Wednesday they were putting together an alternative to the Traverse City Film Festival, which Moore and residents of this Lake Michigan community are organizing.
“People are fed up and tired with the extreme left-wing radical fringe
The Battle Against ‘Evil’ Must Be Fought on All FrontsPost + Comments (29)