BEEN OUT ON a meeting, came back and did some paperwork, now I'm out for one of these three-hour lunches (used to be three-martini lunches, but years go by and now it's going to be one at most...). After lunch I'll be in another meeting, so it's quite possible that there won't be any posts until later in the afternoon / early evening. It's one of these days, you know. Be back later or, if things turn out to be longer than expected, tomorrow. Don't miss me much, though...

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THE RUMORS of Fidel Castro's death were clearly exaggerated.

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WHAT GLOBAL WARMING, AGAIN?

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AN INTERESTING POST by Dave Kopel on the right to self-defense in different cultures and contexts. It follows the news of Nazanin, an 18-year old Iranian girl who's been sentenced to death after she killed one of the three men that were trying to rape her and her 16-year old niece.

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A GERMAN MAGAZINE reports that Saudi Arabia is developing a secret nuclear program with help from Pakistan. Our friends indeed.

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DUTCH MPs fear Venezuelan invasion of the Antilles:

Members of parliament in the Netherlands have urged the Minister of Defence to re-evaluate the defensive capabilities around the Netherlands Antilles. According to the government parties CDA and VVD, there is a growing threat coming from Venezuela, which has made several claims on the islands. The Minister of Defence, Henk Kamp, attempted to reassure the parliament by claiming that the Venezuelan armed forces would pose no threat. However, parliament members do not shore the minister’s optimistic view and claim that the forces currently present would not be sufficient in case of an invasion attempt by Venezuela and have therefore asked for a new strategic analysis of the region. Depending on its outcome, they have also asked the minister to re-evaluate the forces currently present and, if necessary, strengthen the capacity.

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BELARUS protestors arrested after last weekend's pro-democracy demonstrations have gone into a hunger strike.

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RUSTY SHACKLEFORD at The Jawa Report has much more on the Saddam document that I mentioned yesterday.

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WATCH THAT RECOIL!! A funny short (16 seconds) video in .wmv format. Heh™.

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ANOTHER DOCUMENT from the Saddam Docex files; this time it's a memorandum by Iraq's intelligence services about a trip in Iraq, on January 2003 (that is, almost in the brink of war) by two European businessman, both well known for being engulfed in the Elf bribe scandal. Loïk Le Loch-Prigent, former chairman of the corporation, and Dieter Holzer, the unofficial representative of the German establishment. There's no earthshaking revelation, at least there's nothing that we didn't know already: Chirac against the war, Schroeder aknowledging he won the last election thanks to being opposed to Bush and Blair plans, Chinese reports that WMDs were move to Syria, etc. But it makes a very interesting reading, opening a window to how these deals under the table work.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES has a relatively dismissive piece on the Docex documents from the Saddam era. They forget that any bad translation would be self-corrected on the spot, just as errors or lies in the blogosphere. Or maybe it's just sour grapes because they're not the gatepekeepers anymore; one can almost smell their hurt feelings, and their longing for a time when they could selectively publish what suit their own agenda.

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AS YOU CAN SEE, there's been no posting today; haven't had enough time to do any minimally interesting post, so I though it was better not to do any just for the sake of it (of course, you can argue that this one is just that...).

Back tomorrow; in the meantime, you can always check Pajamas Media: there's always something there.

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MORE ON THE EVIDENCE that there were links between Iraq and Islamic terrorists, including al-Qaeda.

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REMEMBER, there were not only Russian scientists in Iraq prior to the war, but allegedly the Russian ambassador gave Saddam the plan of attack. Yes, the Russians are trying to deny it; the attempt can be seen under a different light simply by looking at these pictures.

I know, I know; the fact that there were so many Russians there only days before the war started doesn't necessarily mean that they actually informed Saddam of anything. But if we apply the Halliburton rule of evidence so dear to anti-war people ("the was was done so that Cheney could handle big contracts to the company he was working in before entering the White House, and that's just because, well, because he knew them and sure they were friends"), this is should also be a slam dunk, shouldn't it?

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ABDUL RAHMAN, who was going to be sentenced to death for his conversion from Islam to Christianism, will be released today after the judge dismissed the case against him because of lack of evidence. That's the good news: the bad one is that the same judge sent the case back to the prosecutor for more investigations. Let's hope international pressure works.

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I GUESS we'll have to start Pandora Anonymous or something. "Hi, my name is Barcepundit, and I'm a Pandora-holic"...

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BLINKPRO: Does anybody know what the hell is happening to that bookmarks hosting services? It's been down since Friday.

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I THINK IT'S NOT a recent cartoon, but just saw it:

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POLICE BRUTALITY in Belarus, where the situation is really heating up; more information at Never Yet Melted.

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"Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales": don't miss this this great analysis by Martin De Vlieghere and Paul Vreymans at the Brussels Journal.

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CHAVEZ, the Western left and the 'Che complex': an outstanding blogpost written from a leftist perspective. A true leftist, I'd say (via Marc Cooper).

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SO THE UNSCOM INSPECTIONS were going well and poor Saddam was proving that he was innocent, right? Then, why would he hide, Cold War-style, Russian and Turkish scientists so that they couldn't be interviewed by inspectors in 2002?

I'm not who says they did; it's the Iraqi intelligence services themselves, in a memorandum translated by Ray Robison from the Docex dump.

By the way, all this and more can be also found at Iraq Files, over at Pajamas Media.

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29 REASONS why America sucks, by Greg Gutfeld at the Huffington Post, no less. Really funny.

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FOR THOSE OF YOU reading Barcepundit with a RSS reader, I just want to alert that I have corrected an earlier post about Salon's Bushism of the Day. I stand corrected.

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MAGNIFICENT, SUPERB MARK STEYN on the Iraq war and "stability" of the Middle East region. Read it from top to bottom, and enjoy.

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SO I WRITE A COMMENT on ETA's ceasefire yesterday and, apparently 1/ I peddle some party line when in fact I wrote it 23 minutes after the announcement, more than an hour before any official reaction from any party or the government, 2/ I am a Basque-phobe, because I mistrust an offer by a Basque terrorist group. Basque nationalists like this guy like to accuse everybody who is critical of ETA of demonizing the Basque people (an absurd accusation in my case, but I'm not going to give personal explanations here) because, they say, it's as if we were saying that all Basques are ETA terrorists. You'll notice the irony: if I criticize ETA, why is he jumping to defend the Basques? Isn't him who equates Basques and terrorists?

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STILL MORE PROOF OF where Zapatero's geostrategical vision lays:

A motion against Hugo Chavez presented by representatives of Partido Popular in Spain's Senate was rejected yesterday by Zapatero's government. The motion, seeking to defend Spanish citizens rights residing in Venezuela, who have been subject to kidnaps, lynchings, extorsions and whose small farms have been expropriated, was dismissed.

The issue seems to be the lack of attention and support dispensed by Spain's diplomatic representatives to victimised Spaniards in Venezuela. Raul Morodo, Spain's Ambassador to Venezuela and staunch Chavez supporter, has ignored completely the plights of the affected until now, refusing even to meet with them.

The Spanish ambassador to Venezuela is a disgrace; there's more details at the link.

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A SUPERB ESSAY by Neo-neocon on Norman Rockwell's 'The Four Freedoms'. Don't miss it.

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AARON HANSCOM comments on ETA's ceasefire.

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ANOTHER WEISBERGISM of the day: in his section 'Bushism of the day', Jacob Weisber at Salon a/ wants to distort reality, or b/ doesn't mind letting everybody know of his inability to follow a relatively simple argument. He laughs at Bush because he said:

"After the bombing, most Iraqis saw what the perpetuators of this attack were trying to do."—(On the bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra in Iraq) March 13, 2006, Washington, D.C.

You only have to read the quote in context to see that it was a part of an argument that you can agree or not, but which makes perfect sense:

After the bombing, most Iraqis saw what the perpetuators [sic] of this attack were trying to do: The enemy had failed to stop the January 2005 elections, they failed to stop the constitutional referendum, they failed to stop the December elections, and now they're trying to stop the formation of a unity government. By their response over the past two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world they want a future of freedom and peace -- and they will oppose a violent minority that seeks to take that future away from them by tearing their country apart.

UPDATE (March 24): Duh. Apparently it's me who fails to understand things... A reader points out that the Bushism was "perpetuators", and not what I thought. I wish I could say that it was the absence of [sic] in Slate, as opposed to the White House transcript, what fooled me. I don't really know how I goofed. My bad.

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WITH THIS, it's not only proven that it was reasonable to believe that Saddam had WMDs, but it's also transparent the effort by the MSM to lie and cover the truth. Turns out that Saddam's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was a CIA informant for a short period of time. NBC asks in the headline: "Saddam’s foreign minister told CIA the truth, so why didn’t agency listen?"

Very simple: they did.

Because lower in the report, it says: "On the issue of chemical weapons, the CIA said Saddam had stockpiled as much as "500 metric tons of chemical warfare agents" and had "renewed" production of deadly agents. Sabri said Iraq had stockpiled weapons and had "poison gas" left over from the first Gulf War."

So NBC shouts one thing in the headline, and then writes down below something that completely undermines its assertion. They don't even feel the need to hide it. That's because they trust in the power of the headline, aware that most people don't go further than that because it has a bigger visual effect; the headline is what's going to stay in people's minds. Then, below, they provide the other information so that they can plausibly deny that they were hiding information.

Clever, if it worked.

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READER ERP emailed a comment to my post on the veil as a liberation for Muslim women; it's quite politically incorrect, so I simply had to publish it, with his permission:

As a mere man, you don't understand what western, non-Moslem women mean when they say that the enforced wearing of burqas in public is liberating. This is because, not having spent your entire lives being judged on your appearance, you and all the other men don't get it and that's why your comparing it to negro slavery or segregation in the U.S. south misses the point entirely.

It's a little tricky, so try to follow me. It's liberating to be FORCED to cover up from head to toe because then you aren't being judged, so you don't have to look your best, don't need to make sure your clothes and hair are presentable, etc. just to run out for a loaf of bread. Since men haven't been socialized to worry about their appearance, it's probably impossible to understand just how deep this goes. Nothing I can think is comparable.

If this burqa business isn't enforced and women can cover up or not, it's not at all liberating because those covering up will be suspect of being particularly ugly and or disheveled and disreputably messy. Get it? When all women MUST cover up, then we all can pretend we're past beautiful and dressed beautifully and perfectly groomed even if the truth is far different.

That's why western women might opt for it.

Of course, the reason Moslem women conform is entirely different. Here the comparison to slavery works. They do what they're told because they're terrified of the consequences if they don't.

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I'M NOT TOO SURPRISED because in Spain it's everyday's stuff, but nevertheless perhaps you'll be interested in learning that a prominent German politician, Oskar Lafontaine, has called Americans "terrorists". Not Bush, not Rove, not the neocon warmongers: all Americans. The worse thing is that, after the controversy erupted, Sueddeutsche Zeitung deep-sixed the report; worse still, it's been erased from Google's cache.

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YESTERDAY IT WAS a document showing that Saddam planned to collaborate with Palestinian terrorists in Iraq to carry out an attack with anthrax. Today there's another not-so-stunning revelation straight from the Docex documents from Saddam's regime: that Iraq's intelligence services met with Osama bin Laden in 1995 in Sudan.

Yes, I know it was metaphysically impossible since Saddam was secular and Osama was a religious nut, bla bla bla.

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SUPERB WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL (unfortunately a subscription link) about the trouble in the streets of France:

The right to assemble is a pillar of free society. But in France it's the only pillar its citizens seem to take seriously. So much so that any public debate of import gets conducted in the streets rather than through the ballot box or institutions of a purportedly mature democracy.

In less enlightened societies, as opposed to the birthplace of the Enlightenment, that's usually called mob rule. But the violent street demonstrations roiling France's cities today, and the unhappy career prospects of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, are the latest symptoms of an ailing democracy.

[...] How instructive it would be to send Alexis de Tocqueville through France today. He'd find dependence on the state and the absence of individualism, symbolized by the low levels of private charity and civic engagement. He would not find the bounty of groups and lobbies of healthier democracies. "In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government," Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" asserts, "in the United States you are sure to find an association."

Yes, the banners of student groups add color to the street demonstrations. But look closer. The force with real bite is the public-sector employee unions. Blue-collar workers long ago abandoned the union movement, leaving civil servants who, like Charles de Gaulle once said of France's cosseted farmers, are desperate to hold on to their "mediocre but secure" posts.

The government workforce -- one-quarter of the population -- can terrorize the majority by stopping the trains or turning off the electricity. In other words, the state funds its own opposition, which torpedoes even modest efforts to modernize France. By marching with the public-sector unions to defend this status quo, the boys and girls of the Sorbonne are saying they want to be "mediocre but secure," too. What a dream for a 20-year-old. And a useful warning to Americans about the danger of giving public-sector unions too much power as well.

Read the whole thing, if you have a chance.

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BREAKING NEWS: CNN is saying that the Basque terrorist group ETA has announced a permanent ceasefire. Still no links. Well, last time, at the end of the 90s, the truce revealed itself as a kind of hudna, that is, a time to regroup and re-arm when they were particularly weak. As they are now. This is why it was so absurd for Zapatero to negotiate with them under the table. Let's see what Mr Appeaser may have given them.

UPDATE. Link here; many more at Google News.

UPDATE II. Well, I'm looking for the translation of the communique into English; from what I've seen in Spanish, ETA's ceasefire is contingent to their claims for an independent Basque country is met, and this is going to be difficult. What they are doing is to say they'll stop the violence as long as a negotiation towards that end is started, which implicitly means they can go back to killing is they're not satisfied. The conclusion is that they're still using violence, or the threat of violence, a part of the political process. Doesn't sound like the end of ETA to me. That would be if they had announced they regret all they've done in the past, asked for the victims' forgiveness, and turned in all their weapons.

UPDATE III. Here's the full text of ETA's statement.

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IF WE'RE SO CONCERNED with civil wars, how come the media isn't giving similar attention to this one?

Eyewitnesses said most of those wounded in Monday's fighting in the Gaza Strip were policemen who tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from taking over government buildings and security installations. The two sides exchanged gunfire for several hours in scenes that many Palestinians said were reminiscent of the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s.

Rand Simberg's explanation is, of course, correct.

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CARNE ROSS has a fantastic article in Slate on the Western Sahara, the land no one pays attention to:

If any part of you wants to believe that the world is fundamentally just, that wrongs are eventually righted, and that those of us in the West are fair and righteous in the way we treat other countries and cultures, consider the story of the people of Western Sahara. Their history proves that you can have right wholly on your side, international law emphatically in support of your cause, be on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council for decades, and still be ignored.

I guess that's because they haven't started to blow things up like the Palestinians. Are we giving people an incentive for violence? Is this the lesson?

This bit is just is just the beginning of the piece, so go and read the rest. As I said, it's a great one, though Ross still forgets the role -rather, the absence- of a part who could have made a difference, and had a moral responsibility because the territory was a former colony after all. I'm talking about Spain: all governments since the restoration of democracy after the Franco dictatorship have virtually abandoned the Sahrawis.

Oddly, just like the Kurds, Sahrawis used to be a cause célèbre of the Spanish left, who were demanding governments to do something about it. The left's support of the Kurds ended, well, you know when it ended: when Coalition troops stepped in Iraq in 2003, and when the left realized that Kurdistan has been a staunch ally of the US and one of the, understandably, fiercest opponents of Saddam.

And the Spanish left support of the Sahrawis ended exactly as Zapatero won the 2004 election and started cozying with Morocco as no Spanish government had done before. Interestingly, it was an electoral victory only three days after a massacre perpetrated by a group of assassins composed mainly -but not only, as there were other nationalities, also Spaniards well known in the undeground dealings with security forces- by Moroccans. What it's been proven so far is that these Moroccans who committed the heinous act of March 11 in Madrid were foot soldiers. The question is, foot soldiers for who?

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WOW, ALBERT, I don't know what to say, that's quite a honor!

(you can get Einstein to write what you want here; via Drinking From Home)


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THE WHOLE POST is interesting (I also mentioned that in a previous post), but the last picture is plain scary.

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HAS THE MOTHER of all smoking guns been found among the Docex documents? Ray Robison, a former member of the Iraq Survey Group, thinks he has found it: a memo by the IIS about plans to handle small vials of anthrax to terrorists of al-Quds (Palestinians). Read it all.

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IF YOU STILL HAVEN'T READ THESE, you should:

• My Ideal War: How the international community should have responded to Bush's September 2002 U.N. speech, by Christopher Hitchens
• Rewind and replay: Dr. Sanity's comments on Hitchens' piece above
  
• The stone face of Zarqawi: Iraq is no "distraction" from al Qaeda, also by Hitchens, and
  
• It's three years since the disarmament of Saddam and all that followed..., by Gerard Baker, an ucrony, or rather a dystopia, about what would have happend if there had been no war in Iraq.
  

Food for thought after yesterday's third anniversary since it began.

UPDATE. Add Jeff Goldstein to the list.

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BELARUS hopefully-a-revolution will be liveblogged; Robert Mayer is at it again for the third day.

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PIETER DORSMAN at Peaktalk makes excellent points about women and Islam, particularly regarding the increasing number of European women who are converting. He also quotes an interview with Dutch minister of transportation, also a female, who seems to agree that Muslim women are "liberated" by covering themselves up. To this I say: whatever floats your boat is fine with me. But it's the explanation to it what bothers me: the Dutch minister says: "Wearing a headscarf is of course culturally determined. And that’s the way these women experience that, because that’s how they experience their religion. In addition, the headscarf offers opportunities for women is some Islamic countries, because without one they won’t be able to leave home."

Yeah, sure. And blacks in segregated Alabama should be grateful and liberated to be able to go to a "Colored people" bathroom, otherwise they would have had to crap on the floor outside. Not to mention blacks in the slavery era; they had endless opportunities thanks to the shackles and chains, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to leave their huts.

It's the same logic, ain't it?

The point is not whether Muslim women are free to cover themselves up. It's whether they're free not to; it's what happens if they decide not to use a veil what counts. And we know what happens: in most Islamic countries, and in Islamic areas in Western cities, at a bare minimum it means at least not being able to leave their homes.

Where's the "liberation" in that?

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SORRY FOR THE slow blogging; I had planned to write something on the 3rd anniversary of the Iraq war but, actually, the best thing you could do is go and read what Iraq The Model has to say.

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THAT'S FUNNY.

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THE ELECTIONS IN BELARUS went as feared: with multiple irregularities and Lukashenko emerging as the winner. At this moment, Milinkevich supporters are gathering in thousand at October Square in Minsk, and the fear is that this may become an ugly thing. Both Andrei Khrapavitski at Belarus Elections 2006 and Robert Mayer at Publius Pundit are liveblogging.

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AKBAR GANJI, an Iranian political prisoner who almost died from the hunger strike he held in protest for the condition he was held in, has been finally freed.

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HOURS AND HOURS will be spent by this blogger at the multimedia section of TCM (Turner Classic Movies)'s website. It has lots of trailers, movie clips and stills of thousands of the most significant movies of all times (via Hugh Hewitt).

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WE'VE GOT MAIL! Look at the comment left in my Spanish blog, in the post about Iraq the Model's translation of documents from the Saddam era:

I came across your blog: Frustrating and one sided. But on the other hand you are a pundit, or worse, a wannabee pundit. I hope you die. Have an ice day.

p.s. I bet you don't care people are going to die because of your warmogering. You just feel smart.

Thanks buddy, I like you too! Hmm, can I have an ice-cream day instead?

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REMEMBER GENERAL SADA, the former no.2 of the Iraqi Air Force during Saddam's rule, who says that WMDs were airlifted to Syria just before the war? Vik Rubenfeld went to see him speaking two days ago in Los Angeles, and recorded it. Here's the video.

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GATES OF VIENNA has a second installment of its Islam's Bloody Borders project, in which the relationship between the terrorist attacks since 2001 and the Islamic population in the countries is analyzed. Check it out.

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LOOK AT THE DOCUMENT that my buddies Omar and Mohammed of Iraq The Model have translated. It's from Iraq's intelligence services, and is one of the millions found after the war. It's a pdf, but I'm copying the main points (emphasis mine):

Our Afghani source #002 (info on him in paper slip '1') has informed us that Afghani consular Ahmed Dahistani (info on him in paper slip '2') had spoken before him of the following :

1-That Usama Bin Ladin and the Taliban group in Afghanistan are in contact with Iraq and that a group from the Taliban and Usama Bin Ladin's group had conducted a visit to Iraq .

2-That America possesses evidence that Iraq and Usama Bin Ladin's group had cooperated to strike targets inside America .

3-Incase Taliban and Usama's group are proven involved in those sabotage operations, it will be possible that America directs strikes at Iraq and Afghanistan

4-That the Afghani consular had heard about the Iraq connections with Usama Bin Ladin's group during his presence in Iran.

We're going to do a special coverage of this at Pajamas Media; in fact, I think we can take some credit for what seemed a wild idea: given the impossibility of hiring enough Arabic translators for more then 2 million documents, why not releasing all documents and put them on a website so that they could be translated by bloggers all over the world? Roger Simon floated the idea with Rep. Hoekstra and others in Washington during his trip for the Intelligence Summit, and it seemed as if no one had had that Eureka moment yet. Having many bloggers working over the same publicly available documents ensures the quality of the translations; it's open source intelligence at its best, all thanks to the Internet. Ain't that grand?

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AARON HANSCOM unveils the radicalism of Mark LeVine, associate professor of history at UC-Irvine.

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INTERESTINGLY, Saddam showed at his trial yesterday that he has a better memory than war critics who still insist that it was only nonexistant WMDs what took us to war...

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IRAQI SUNNI AND SHIITE religious leaders decree the spilling of innocent blood as a sin and call for the rejection of sectarianism; that something that the Iraqi newspaper Al-Ayat reported and that we can only read in the West thanks to people like Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, who has the translation. Of course, the MSM cannot cover this, otherwise, how could they keep on sounding the civil war horn?

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IRAQI SUNNI AND SHIITE religious leaders decree the spilling of innocent blood as a sin and call for the rejection of sectarianism; that something that the Iraqi newspaper Al-Ayat reported and that we can only read in the West thanks to people like Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, who has the translation. Of course, the MSM cannot cover this, otherwise, how could they keep on sounding the civil war horn?

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AT LAST! The evidence is there for all to see: Bush and Hitler are soul mates.

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THE FIRST BATCH of documents found in Iraq and Afghanistan after the war has been (finally!) made public; this web related to the DoD has them, and will include the next ones as they're released, as well as audio and video in the near future. The first batch are basically pdf documents, almost all in their original Arabic. But you don't need to know Arabic to see an interesting detail in one of them (via Jawa Report): it's ISGZ-2004-019920, described as "2002 Iraqi Intelligence Correspondence concerning the presence of al-Qaida Members in Iraq. Correspondence between IRS members on a suspicion, later confirmed, of the presence of an Al-Qaeda terrorist group. Moreover, it includes photos and names." On page 6 you'll see a familiar face:

Do you recognize the guy? This picture will help:

Yes, it's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There are several more.

(via Stephen Hayes, with interesting observations)


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AFTER GOOGLE MAPS of the Earth now comes... Google Maps of Mars (via Bastiat Free University).

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THIS GUY is pretty funny...




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IQBAL RIZA, Kofi Annan's special advisor for UN's Alliance of Civilization project, is a real piece of work. Claudia Rosett has the details.

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THE ROAD TO SERFDOM in Five Minutes: a movie with music based on the famous cartoons. Impressive (via Marginal Revolution):





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GET YOUR KEYBOARDS READY: the Bush administration has decided to release to the public the documents found in post-war Afghanistan and Iraq; oddly, it had refused to do so until now. Many people are celebrating, particularly Stephen Hayes who had been pursuing this for a long time. Still to be decided when and how, but when the moment arrives it'll be, well, da bomb.

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IT'S SEEMS there may be an explanation after all for The People's Cube being blocked by Google, although they respond in a comment on Little Green Footballs.

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ROWAN SCARBOROUGH:

Audiotapes of Saddam Hussein and his aides underscore the Bush administration's argument that Baghdad was determined to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction once the international community had tired of inspections and left the Iraqi dictator alone.

In addition to the captured tapes, U.S. officials are analyzing thousands of pages of newly translated Iraqi documents that tell of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa in the mid-1990s.

The documents also speak of burying prohibited missiles, according to a government official familiar with the declassification process.

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GOOGLE WAS NOT SUPPOSED to be evil, right? Well, besides the China firewall thing, besides being Orkut -one of it's properties- a place for al-Qaeda's propaganda and recruiting, now this: Google is blocking The People's Cube from its search engine. By the way, that's an outrageously funny website.

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KLAUS ROHRICH:

Now I am not against conservation, as I believe in wise use of non-renewable energy sources. However, I’ve had it up to here with the sky-is-falling-global-warming-Chicken-Little crowd. I will concede that it is quite likely that the earth’s climate is warming, as is that of our nearest neighbor, Mars. However, I am totally fed up with the moronic theories that insist the earth is warming because we are living too well.

I do not believe that climate change is due to an increase in so-called "greenhouse gasses". And while the neutered scientists working for the UN are warning us of impending doom if we do not change our lifestyles, there are scientists who challenge their findings. Problem is, because these challenges run counter to the accepted politically correct orthodoxy of climate change, many rebuttals don’t often see the light of day and many scientists whose findings challenge those of the conventional climate wisdom are frozen out of research funding.

Climate catastrophics appears to have become a new religion, replacing Marxism and Christianity as the arbiter of acceptable belief. Anyone who questions the accepted climate-change theories currently in favor is considered a heretic.

Keep on reading.

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CALL HIM WHAT YOU WANT, but you've got to admite that, unlike Zapatero (who brags about his closeness with the French president), he knows what he's doing:

French President Jacques Chirac has officially rejected Venezuela's bid to buy two Scorpone-Class diesel submarines [sic: el nombre correcto de la clase de submarinos es Scorpene -- F.A.]. While France has sold military equipment to Venezuela over the years, sales have been modest (averaging no more than $1 million annually). The submarine deal would have involved serious money (a billion dollars or more), but the French rejected it for several reasons. Chirac is trying to rebuild relations with the U.S., but there's also serious concern about Venezuela's unstable President Hugo Chavez. French investments in Venezuela have been among those "foreign" interests threatened with "nationalization" by the Chavez regime. In addition, Chavez' barely veiled threats against the Netherlands West Indies and Guyana makes senior French diplomatic and military leaders concerned about his ambitions in the Caribbean.

(gracias a Golan por el enlace)

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WAFA SULTAN, who made waves by criticizing Islamofascism in an interview on al-Jazeera, no less, has been profiled in the New York Times.

UPDATE. Key sentence: "Shortly after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a wire service reported." If this cleric only knew how right he is: there's no better way to diminish the strength of fundamentalism that telling in the open how it really is.

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RESURGEMUS has an email from a friend who was on a train bound to Madrid on March 11 years ago, the day of the terrorist attacks.

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HEH.

(shamelessly stealing Glenn's trademark...)

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THE BUTCHER Milosevic is dead.

UPDATE. Austin Bay on Milosevic: "The man who moved from Red to Brown"


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NORMAN GERAS has four videos of the protest during the International Women's day in Teheran, the one that started with chants and ended in beatings and arrests. By the way, the videos made me travel back in time; the protestors are singing Joan Baez's song about Sacco y Vanzetti, o or a very similar one; it's been a flashback, thirtysomething years ago, when it was a very popular song in Spain during the last days of Franco dictatorship.

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IN MEMORIAM

Eva Belén Abad Quijada, Spain, 30 years old

Óscar Abril Alegre, Spain, 19 years old

Liliana Guillermina Acero Ushiña, Ecuador, 26 years old

Florencio Aguado Rojano, Spain, 60 years old

Juan Alberto Alonso Rodríguez, Spain, 38 years old

María Joséfa Alvarez González, Spain, 48 years old

Juan Carlos Del Amo Aguado, Spain, 28 years old

Andriyan Asenov Andrianov, Bulgaria, 22 years old

María Nuria Aparicio Somolinos, Spain, 40 years old

Alberto Arenas Barroso, Spain, 24 years old

Neil Hebe Astocondor Masgo, Peru, 34 years old

Ana Isabel Avila Jiménez, Spain, 43 years old

Miguel Ángel Badajoz Cano, Spain, 34 years old

Susana Ballesteros Ibarra, Spain, 42 years old

Francisco Javier Barahona Imedio, Spain, 34 years old

Gonzalo Barajas Díaz, Spain, 32 years old

Gloria Inés Bedoya, Colombia, 40 years old

Sanaa Ben Salah Imadaquan, Spain, 13 years old

Esteban Martín De Benito Caboblanco, Spain, 39 years old

Rodolfo Benito Samaniego, Spain, 27 years old

Anka Valeria Bodea, Romania, 26 years old

Livia Bogdan, Romania, 27 years old

Florencio Brasero Murga, Spain, 50 years old

Trinidad Bravo Segovia, Spain, 40 years old

Alina Maria Bryk, Poland, 39 years old

Stefan Budai, Romania, 37 years old

Tibor Budi, Romania, 37 years old

María Pilar Cabrejas Burillo, Spain, 37 years old

Rodrigo Cabrero Pérez, Spain, 20 years old

Milagros Calvo García, Spain, 39 years old

Sonia Cano Campos, Spain, 24 years old

Alicia Cano Martínez, Spain, 63 years old

José María Carrilero Baeza, Spain, 39 years old

Álvaro Carrion Franco, Spain, 17 years old

Francisco Javier Casas Torresano, Spain, 28 years old

Cipriano Castillo Muñoz, Spain, 55 years old

María Inmaculada Castillo Sevillano, Spain, 39 years old

Sara Centenera Montalvo, Spain, 19 years old

Oswaldo Manuel Cisneros Villacís, Ecuador, 34 years old

Eugenia María Ciudad-Real Díaz, Spain, 26 years old

Jacqueline Contreras Ortiz, Peru, 22 years old

María Soledad Contreras Sánchez, Spain, 51 years old

María Paz Criado Pleiter, Spain, 52 years old

Nicoleta Diac, Romania, 27 years old

Beatriz Díaz Hernandez, Spain, 30 years old

Georgeta Gabriela Dima, Romania, 35 years old

Tinka Dimitrova Paunova, Bulgaria, 31 years old

Kalina Dimitrova Vasileva, Bulgaria, 31 years old

Sam Djoco, Senegal, 42 years old

María Dolores Durán Santiago, Spain, 34 years old

Osama El Amrati, Morocco, 23 years old

Sara Encinas Soriano, Spain, 26 years old

Carlos Marino Fernández Dávila, Peru, 39 years old

María Fernández del Amo, Spain, 25 years old

Rex Ferrer Reynado, Phillipines, 20 years old

Héctor Manuel Figueroa Bravo, Chile, 33 years old

Julia Frutos Rosique, Spain, 44 years old

María Dolores Fuentes Fernández, Spain, 29 years old

José Gallardo Olmo, Spain, 33 years old

José Raúl Gallego Triguero, Spain, 39 years old

María Pilar Gamiz Torres, Spain, 40 years old

Abel García Alfageme, Spain, 27 years old

Juan Luis García Arnaiz, Spain, 17 years old

Beatriz García Fernández, Spain, 27 years old

María de las Nieves García García-Moñino, Spain, 46 years old

Enrique García González, Dominican Republic, 28 years old

Cristina Aurelia García Martínez, Spain, 34 years old

Carlos Alberto García Presa, Spain, 24 years old

José García Sánchez, Spain, 45 years old

José María García Sánchez, Spain, 47 years old

Javier Garrote Plaza, Spain, 26 years old

Petrica Geneva, Romania, 34 years old

Ana Isabel Gil Pérez, Spain, 29 years old

Óscar Gómez Gudiña, Spain, 24 years old

Felix González Gago, Spain, 52 years old

Ángelica González García, Spain, 19 years old

Teresa González Grande, Spain, 38 years old

Elías González Roque, Spain, 30 years old

Juan Miguel Gracia García, Spain, 53 years old

Javier Guerrero Cabrera, Spain, 25 years old

Berta María Gutiérrez García, Spain, 39 years old

Sergio de las Heras Correa, Spain, 29 years old

Pedro Hermida Martín, Spain, 51 years old

Alejandra Iglesias López, Spain, 28 years old

Mohamed Itaiben, Morocco, 27 years old

Pablo Izquierdo Asanza, Spain, 42 years old

María Teresa Jaro Narrillos, Spain, 32 years old

Oleksandr Kladkovoy, Ukraine, 56 years old

Laura Isabel Laforga Bajón, Spain, 28 years old

María Victoria León Moyano, Spain, 30 years old

María Carmen Lominchar Alonso, Spain, 34 years old

Myriam López Díaz, Spain, 31 years old

María Carmen López Pardo, Spain, 50 years old

María Cristina López Ramos, Spain, 38 years old

José María López-Menchero Moraga, Spain, 44 years old

Miguel de Luna Ocaña, Spain, 36 years old

María Jesús Macías Rodríguez, Spain, 30 years old

Francisco Javier Mancebo Záforas, Spain, 38 years old

Ángel Manzano Pérez, Ecuador, 42 years old

Vicente Marín Chiva, Spain, 37 years old

Antonio Marín Mora, Spain, 43 years old

Begoña Martín Baeza, Spain, 25 years old

Ana Martín Fernández, Spain, 43 years old

Luis Andrés Martín Pacheco, Spain, 54 years old

María Pilar Martín Rejas, Spain, 50 years old

Alois Martinas, Romania, 27 years old

Carmen Mónica Martínez Rodríguez, Spain, 31 years old

Míriam Melguizo Martínez, Spain, 28 years old

Javier Mengíbar Jiménez, Spain, 43 years old

Álvaro de Miguel Jiménez, Spain, 26 years old

Michael Mitchell Rodríguez, Cuba, 28 years old

Stefan Modol, Romania, 45 years old

Segundo Víctor Mopocita Mopocita, Ecuador, 37 years old

Encarnación Mora Donoso, Spain, 64 years old

María Teresa Mora Valero, Spain, 37 years old

Julita Moral García, Spain, 53 years old

Francisco Moreno Aragonés, Spain, 56 years old

José Ramón Moreno Isarch, Spain, 37 years old

Eugenio Moreno Santiago, Spain, 56 years old

Juan Pablo Moris Crespo, Spain, 32 years old

Juan Muñoz Lara, Spain, 33 years old

Francisco José Narváez de la Rosa, Spain, 28 years old

Mariana Negru, Romania, 40 years old

Ismael Nogales Guerrero, Spain, 31 years old

Inés Novellón Martínez, Spain, 30 years old

Miguel Ángel Orgaz Orgaz, Spain, 34 years old

Ángel Pardillos Checa, Spain, 62 years old

Sonia Parrondo Antón, Spain, 28 years old

Juan Francisco Pastor Férez, Spain, 51 years old

Daniel Paz Manjón, Spain, 20 years old

Josefa Pedraza Pino, Spain, 41 years old

Miryam Pedraza Rivero, Spain, 25 years old

Roberto Pellicari Lopezosa, Spain, 31 years old

María del Pilar Pérez Mateo, Spain, 28 years old

Felipe Pinel Alonso, Spain, 51 years old

Martha Scarlett Plasencia Hernandez, Dominican Republic, 27 years old

Elena Ples, Romania, 33 years old

María Luisa Polo Remartinez, Spain, 50 years old

Ionut Popa, Romania, 23 years old

Emilian Popescu, Romania, 44 years old

Miguel Ángel Prieto Humanes, Spain, 37 years old

Francisco Antonio Quesada Bueno, Spain, 44 years old

John Jairo Ramírez Bedoya, Colombia, 37 years old

Laura Ramos Lozano, Honduras, 37 years old

Miguel Reyes Mateos, Spain, 37 years old

Marta del Río Menéndez, Spain, 40 years old

Nuria del Río Menéndez, Spain, 38 years old

Jorge Rodríguez Casanova, Spain, 22 years old

Luis Rodríguez Castell, Spain, 40 years old

María de la Soledad Rodríguez de la Torre, Spain, 42 years old

Ángel Luis Rodríguez Rodríguez, Spain, 34 years old

Francisco Javier Rodríguez Sánchez, Spain, 52 years old

Ambrosio Rogado Escribano, Spain, 56 years old

Cristina Romero Sánchez, Spain, 34 years old

Patricia Rzaca, Poland, 7 meses

Wieslaw Rzaca, Poland, 34 years old

Antonio Sabalete Sánchez, Spain, 36 years old

Sergio Sánchez López, Spain, 17 years old

María Isabel Sánchez Mamajón, Spain, 37 years old

Juan Antonio Sánchez Quispe, Peru, 45 years old

Balbina Sánchez-Dehesa France, Spain, 47 years old

David Santamaría García, Spain, 23 years old

Sergio dos Santos Silva, Brazil, 28 years old

Juan Carlos Sanz Morales, Spain, 33 years old

Eduardo Sanz Pérez, Spain, 31 years old

Guillermo Senent Pallarola, Spain, 23 years old

Miguel Antonio Serrano Lastra, Spain, 28 years old

Rafael Serrano López, Spain, 66 years old

Paula Mihaela Sfeatcu, Romania, 27 years old

Federico Miguel Sierra Serón, Spain, 37 years old

Domnino Simón González, Spain, 45 years old

María Susana Soler Iniesta, Spain, 46 years old

Carlos Soto Arranz, Spain, 34 years old

Mariya Ivanova Staykova, Bulgaria, 38 years old

Marion Cintia Subervielle, France, 30 years old

Alexandru Horatiu Suciu, Romania, 18 years old

Danuta Teresa Szpila, Poland, 28 years old

José Luis Tenesaca Betancourt, Ecuador, 17 years old

Iris Toribio Pascual, Spain, 20 years old

Neil Torres Mendoza, Ecuador, 38 years old

Carlos Tortosa García, Spain, 31 years old

María Teresa Tudanca Hernández, Spain, 49 years old

Jesús Utrilla Escribano, Spain, 44 years old

José Miguel Valderrama López, Spain, 25 years old

Saúl Valdez Ruiz, Honduras, 44 years old

Mercedes Vega Mingo, Spain, 45 years old

David Vilela Fernández, Spain, 23 years old

Juan Ramón Zamora Gutiérrez, Spain, 29 years old

Yaroslav Zojniuk, Ukraine, 48 years old

Csaba Olimpiu Zsigovski, Romania, 26 years old

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MORE DHIMMI-CENSORSHIP in Spain:

An annual festival of satire in Valencia has fallen foul of censorship after more than four centuries following the furore over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

In the Fallas festival, giant sculptures of the high and mighty are placed in the streets for the public to mock before being destroyed in an orgy of gunpowder and flames. It has survived attacks by the Roman Catholic church, various puritanical rulers and the Franco dictatorship.

This year's figures will include President George W Bush, several of the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and the Prince of Wales dancing, in Highland dress, with the Duchess of Cornwall. But self-censorship has seen Muslim and Arab figures modified to avoid offence.

[...] In the countryside near Valencia, many villages have their own festivals, involving mock battles between "Moors and Christians", in an ancient recreation of the Catholic reconquest of Spain from Arab rule.

There have been subtle changes this year, which no locals would discuss, the Spanish newspaper ABC recently reported. In Bocairent, villagers refrained from burning life-size mannequins of the "Mahoma", a traditional figure presumed to be based on Mohammed.

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THE HORROR:

Murderers.

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WRITELY, the online word processor -I use it all the time; it's fantastic for writing a document no matter what computer you're at, and for remote co-authorship of texts with people in the other side of the world- has been bought by Google.

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OCCUPATION FOR ME, but not for thee: Palestinians bow to Chinese pressure, won’t let Dalai Lama visit Bethlehem.

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AN INTERESTING PIECE by the Christian Science Monitor on the reaction of moderate Muslims in Europe to the cartoon furore.

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THE FINANCIAL PORTRAIT of the New York Times is not pretty, according to the financial statements and public disclosures by its parent company to the SEC; see this post at The American Thinker or, if you want the bullet points and graphic, this one at BizzyBlog.

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A GERMAN WEBSITE has been shut down after it published the Mohammed cartoons. Way to go, Europe!

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HOLLYWOOD GUYS are showing how brave they are in the latest films in which they dare to question the official line imposed by the oppresive political climate in the US. Bush is a fascist, you know, and so they are really risking their lives by making films like Good Night and Good Luck or Syriana. Well, Mark Goldblatt has some suggestions for films they could make now and confirm how brave they really are.

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EVEN THE UN STAFF is fed up with Kofi Annan:

U.N. staffers heckled and booed Secretary-General Annan yesterday in a raucous meeting after he presented a "management reform" plan that includes cutting jobs for New Yorkers employed at Turtle Bay.

In a clear sign that U.N. employees have lost confidence in a leader who rose from their ranks, one staffer told the secretary-general bluntly, "Nobody believes you."

When asked by a staffer if U.N. jobs will be farmed out to Kinko's from now on, Mr. Annan showed how out of touch he has become from his underlings and from his fellow New Yorkers. "What is Kinko?" he asked.

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MORE EVIDENCE questioning the evidence for global warming.

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PURE TORQUEMADAS, that's what the Guantánamo torturers are, at least according to the official report that an American court forced the Pentagon to publish. This is what some of the inmates declared:

"Prisoners here are in paradise. American people are very good. Really. They give us three meals, juice, fruit and everything! My God! Here they [i.e. the Arab detainees] bother me everyday, every time. Now about 30 months to this day, they bother me. They call me a hypocrite. They call me a spy. You have to say, 'thank God!' I thank you for America! If you are in a Taliban prison, they do not treat you well. Here we are in paradise. It is 100% paradise. Yes, really. Thank you!"

Or this one:

"I'm very happy with the Americans. I don't blame the Americans for capturing me. I blame someone who reported me; I got captured because of him."

Ah, no, now it's when the appaling torture comes:

During his time in Guantanamo, Mr. Abbasi (writing in the third person) alleges that he was:

• subject to [unspecified] "mental stress and pressure"
• "willfully misdirected ... to pray north"
• deprived of "comfort items"
• subjected to an [apparently failed] "attempt to withdraw Qur'an"
• able to hear two guards having sex, while they "assumed he was asleep"
• distracted from his prayer by the "sharp intake of breath" of a female MP who'd been "sexually fondled".
• offered a plate of pork
• the object of a conspiracy "to keep detainee ignorant of detainee's allotted Tuesday recreation"
• subjected to a "partially successful" attempt to administer injections "under the guise of immunisation", designed to "unhinge detainee's mental and emotional stability"

And this? How can you remain indifferent about this?

what Mr. Abbasi was forced to endure when he had his peanut butter eaten by a guard "right in front of him".

Animals.

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TORTURE IN GUANTANAMO, black hole for human rights, legal limbo... but some of them don't want to go home. Maybe it's because, according to the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, Gitmo inmates are treated better than at Belgian prisons.

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JULIE NICHOLSON, whose young daughter was killed in the London terrorist attacks in July, has resigned from the church where she was the priest-in-charge because she couldn't forgive the monsters. And what she writes is really impressive:

Forgiving another human being for violating your child is almost beyond human capabilities. It is very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself.If someone were to say to me that my ability to forgive Jenny's killer would end the violence I could probably find the courage to do it. But I am not sure in my heart I would believe it.

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APPARENTLY IT'S TRUE that there's a civil war going on in Iraq. Only that it's not between the Sunnis and the Shias, as the conventional wisdom goes, but between the Iraqis and the al-Qaeda boys:

First they killed the chief of the Naim tribe and his son. Then they killed a top tribal sheik who headed the Fallujah city council. Then they assassinated the leader of the al-Jubur tribe.

And now the reported killers of all these men -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- have a powerful new enemy.

Tribal chiefs in Iraq's western Anbar province and in an area near the northern city of Kirkuk, two regions teeming with insurgents, are vowing to strike back at al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni Arab-led group that is waging war against Sunni tribal leaders who are cooperating with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. Anbar tribes have formed a militia that has killed 20 insurgents from al-Qaeda in Iraq, leaders said.

Separately, more than 300 tribal chiefs, politicians, clerics, security officials and other community leaders met last week in Hawijah, about 35 miles southwest of Kirkuk, and "declared war" on al-Qaeda in Iraq. In a communique, the participants vowed "the shedding of blood" of anyone involved in "sabotage, killings, kidnappings, targeting police and army, attacking the oil and gas pipelines and their transporters, assassinating the religious and tribal figures, technicians, and doctors."

Read the rest and you'll be ready to understand why Ralph Peters writes about the untold truths:

AMONG the many positive stories you aren't being told about Iraq, the media ignored another big one last week: In the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, it was the Iraqi army that kept the peace in the streets.

It's routinely declared a failure by those who yearn for the new Iraq to fail. But an increasingly capable Iraqi military has been developing while reporters (who never really investigated the issue) wrote it off as hopeless.

What actually happened last week, as the prophets of doom in the media prematurely declared civil war?

Answers follow; don't miss them

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THE GEEKS' MUSE has a wild side too...



UPDATE. Well, that didn't last long; YouTube has removed the video for copyright reasons.


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DOES THE WASHINGTON POST have its own Jayson Blair?

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IRAN'S CHIEF NUCLEAR NEGOTIATOR is boasting about how he duped the EU-3 negotiators for two years:

The man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic programme.

In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear programme was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.

He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot.

"From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them'," he said.

Revelation of Mr Rowhani's remarks comes at an awkward moment for the Iranian government, ahead of a meeting tomorrow of the United Nations' atomic watchdog, which must make a fresh assessment of Iran's banned nuclear operations.

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RALPH PETERS can't find it:

I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.

All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.

And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that?

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.

Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops.

And we didn't just drive past them. First Lt. Clenn Frost, the platoon leader, took every opportunity to dismount and mingle with the people. Women brought their children out of their compound gates to say hello. A local sheik spontaneously invited us into his garden for colas and sesame biscuits.

It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs.

Read the rest.

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SOMETHING ELSE that the MSM will downplay, or actually hide, from us so that we keep thinking that things are worse everyday because of the cowboy in the White House, and won't improve until a sensitive Dem reaches the presidency: this massive demonstration of Muslims against terrorism, in Bahrein:

UPDATE. Many more pictures here; impressive.

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THERE WAS A PRO-DANISH RALLY in Madrid too, yesterday:

(more pictures here)

It was only 50 people, according to the organizers, but considering the political climate of a country whose prime minister is the leading advocate of the lame "Alliance of Civilizations" and the author of such a letter, well, it's not too bad.

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I WON'T BE WATCHING the Oscars tonight either; I probably wouldn't if I was in the US today, but with a 9 hour difference it's out of the question. But if you care to do so, or if you prefer to follow it from a different angle, Pajamas Media will liveblog it, with the participation of Roger Simon, Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, the two guys of Gay Patriot, Manolo The Shoeblogger.

UPDATE. The blogjam will be located exactly at this page.

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HALLELUJAH! After several days, my DSL connection is working again. Phew! I'm ready to roll again; meanwhile, read this great post by Gates of Vienna on Islam's bloody borders. It's from a couple of days ago, but couldn't post it because I was offline.

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SO, MY HOME OFFICE DSL went down last night and is still down, so to be able to work I had to rush to a hotel near my Barcelona apartment where there's a wifi hotspot, and from whose lobby I'm writing right now. It's a small, relatively modern hotel (not hip modern; it was simply open four or five years ago and has contemporary decor, not Louis XVI furniture and all, if you get my point), no big luxuries, and their common facilities (basically, the restaurant and bar) are not that good. This means I won't be hanging around more than what it's strictly necessary, so don't expect much updates here... Hope the DSL will be up and running tomorrow, but some time it takes longer, so perhaps I'll have to come back, or look for somewhere else which is more comfortable.

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