IT'S PROBABLY de most politically incorrect music video. Ever. That's why I love it. It's a comedy skit, really, by one of the funniest -and prettiest- comediennes, Sarah Silverman:




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A GOOD PIECE by Michael Malone on the future of Web media in ABC News. I'm sure you understand if I tell you I particularly enjoyed these paragraphs:

But as much as the handful of smart traditional media companies have transformed themselves to meet this new reality, I've long assumed that the real innovations — the defining models for mass media in the 21st century — would emerge from entrepreneurs of the Internet itself.

That's why, longtime readers of this column will remember, I cheered the arrival of Pajamas Media, the first real aggregator of the blogosphere.

Pajamas got off to a shaky start — stumbling just enough to satisfy those who had predicted it to fail but eventually finding its legs.

Now that the mainstream media have moved on to other stories, Pajamas is pulling in hundreds of thousands of readers each day, all drawn to its attractive mix of stories, viewpoints and, increasingly, videos.

Right now, especially on the big international stories, nobody covers events from more perspectives and with greater nuance than Pajamas Media.

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CLAUDIA ROSETT writes upon her return from a one-day visit to Guantanamo:

Detainee salad

I’ve just returned from a one-day press trip to Guantanamo Bay, on which there will be more to say. But an observation while digesting the experience —

Only in America would you find authorities trying to cope with terrorist detainees by over-feeding them. We of the media were served the same halal meal as that offered to the detainees, which meant a lunch including — this is only a partial list — spiced meat patty, egg salad, tuna, yogurt, fresh dates, freshly baked bread, juice, and a down-home Middle Eastern dessert, which left us licking from our fingers the honey and nuts of the same baklava we were told is served to Hambali, Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the rest of the gang. Of course, this being Ramadan, the detainees have the option of dining on a different schedule, fasting by day and tucking into the baklava at night. All told, they are offered a menu that provides 4,200 calories per day — more than the 3,800 allotted for a U.S. combat soldier in Iraq.

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GRANNY GET YOUR GUN!




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AZNAR RUFFLING FEATHERS with his remarks at the Hudson Institute the other day. Everybody here, including many in his own party, thought he'd gone too far. Only for seeing so many biempensants and PC-people with their eyes popping out, it was worth it.

I think he would have overstretched his point nalogy if he said what they said he said, so to speak. He didn't actually call on Muslims to apologize for occupying Spain for 800 years: if so, Spaniards would have to apologize for what the conquistadors did in America, wouldn't they. His main point was that he thought that the Pope shouldn't apologize for his famous remarks, and revealed the double standard: “It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologise for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries,” were his words.

And on that I agree completely.

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I'LL BE TRAVELLING and Internet access will be intermitent at best, so posting might be low to non-existent for the next few days. Yes, I know I haven't posted much recently, been busy, but I tried, honest!

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I WAS CLEANING my spam email folder, and found this one. Couldn't resist putting it here for all to see:

From: MR KOJO ANNAN
Date: Sep 20, 2006 5:05 PM
Subject: BE MY PARTNER.
To:

Dear Partner,
My names are Kojo Annan. I am the son of the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan.My motive for contacting you is based on my urgent need of a partner that can assist in securely and investing $47,000,000.00. The source of these funds is my now overtly known participation as a consultant with the Swiss firm Cotecna Inspection S.A, in the Iraqi Oil for Food Program. Though the program has been
discontinued since 2004, the public scrutiny into how the affairs of the program were run has refused to go away.I was on transit in Europe when I was contacted on the phone by my lawyers that a further revelation about two incriminating emails had broken on the said program. I had to immediately re-organize my
immediate travel plans. Coincidentally, I had just taken delivery of the above mentioned funds. Because I knew that the press would be looking out for me, I had to hurriedly seek for a storage company to keep away the trunk cases containing the said funds.Fortunately, a 145 page report released by an independent inquiry committee headed by U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker has exonerated me and my dad of any wrong doing. You can get first hand news on this by visiting
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050329-031329-6020r.htm

Following this good news, I would have since gone back to retrieve the suitcases but I know I am being watched because of the Oil for Food scandal. This is why I require your assistance. You are to proceed immediately to Europe with the relevant claim documents which I will provide you with, to retrieve the suitcases. I have already notified the storage company in writing, of my intention to elect someone that would be coming on my behalf and it is ok with them. They have simply asked me to arm my elected person with a consent letter. The cases where logged in as personal effects.

Before you proceed, ensure that you have perfected modalities to take care of the funds once they arrive your account. Soon after, my attorney would meet with you to sign relevant documentation to evidence our partnership in a profitable venture we will decide on. You are to get 20% for your troubles.if you are interested in my proposal.

Please send me your :
full names
contact address
direct phone number
occupation
I await your urgent response.
Best Regards.
Kojo Annan.
please reply me through this email:kojo1annan@excite.com.

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GREAT MOMENTS IN DIPLOMACY: move aside, Carrot Top, Hugo Chavez is there!

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MALE RESTROOM ETIQUETTE: brilliant.




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HEH™.

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RICHARD MINITER after a short visit to Guantanamo:

The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.

The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.

Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)

Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee privacy.

Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has developed in the camp. Military intelligence can't yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for making weapons and so on.

And they can make weapons from almost anything. Guards have been attacked with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs and fan blades. Some are more elaborate. "These folks are MacGyvers," Harris said.

Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others. How? Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages. (Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono basis, with more than 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.) Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of "attorney-client privilege" - even if they know the document inside is an Arabic-language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.

That's right: Accidentally or not, American lawyers are helping al Qaeda prisoners continue to plot.

There is little doubt what this note-passing and weapons-making is used for. The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005 to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.

One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life; the doctors wear body armor to treat their patients.

The kinder we are to terrorists, the harsher we are to their potential victims.

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MICHAEL LEDEEN remembers his friend Oriana Fallaci.

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THE TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL CARS of all times, for AutoMotoPortal. Your opinion may vary, of course.

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SEE WHAT HAPPENS when you take part in an illegal, imperialistic war in Iraq? When you are a Bush poodle? Because we know that Islamic terrorism is only the consequence of the war in Iraq, right. Right?

Al-Qaida has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against French and American interests.

Current and former French officials specializing in terrorism said Thursday that an al-Qaida alliance with the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, was cause for concern.

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ORIANA FALLACI has died.

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CHEERS!

People who consume alcohol earn significantly more at their jobs than non-drinkers, according to a US study that highlighted "social capital" gained from drinking.

The study published in the Journal of Labor Research Thursday concluded that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than teetotalers, and that men who drink socially bring home an additional seven percent in pay.

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IT MAKES YOU wanna cry. Spain's Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, said in an interview with Barcelona daily La Vanguardia ($) in Tel Aviv's airport after a visit to Gaza:

The best response to Al Qaeda is no response, and to keep working towards peace.

(my word by word translation)

200 of his constituents in Madrid (as well as 2996 Newyorkers, 202 Australians and Indonesians, 200 Indians, 52 Londoners, and hosts of others in countless places) were unavailable for comment.

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IF YOU'VE FOLLOWED this blog for some time, you already know that Victor Davis Hanson is one of the writers and essayists I most admire. So excuse me if I jump in joy while I announce that we have a new blog at Pajamas Media: that of none other than Victor Davis Hanson himself. It's such a privilege to have him on board.

You're going to enjoy it as much as I do.

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NEVER, NEVER FORGET

I'm using the same picture every year because it's so good. It was taken by my friend José Carlos Rodríguez who back then was living in New York.

Exceptionally, this is an open post with comments enabled.

UPDATE. I'll be all day at Pajamas Media's special coverage.

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BAD, BAD Big Oil companies...

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COUNTDOWN to genocide in Darfur:

After the United States helped broker a Darfur peace deal in May, the United Nations promised to come to the rescue with a peacekeeping force capable of enforcing the accord. But, as Darfur faded from public consciousness, the world body has again proven itself utterly ineffective. As the feeble and largely symbolic African Union force (itself indifferent at best to the continuing rapes and murders) prepares to leave the region in five weeks, Darfur is on the brink of massive human killing with no international force forthcoming. The UN's own chief of humanitarian operations, Jan Egeland, conceded in a recent interview that mass murder is about to begin on a tremendous scale, while rapes and individual killings are already the rule, not the exception. (Systematic sexual violence against women, we recall, is the hallmark of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Sudanese regime's Janjaweed militia in Darfur. Even after they have been driven from their homes into wretched camps, Darfuri women still must venture out to fetch wood and water, putting themselves at risk.)

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SPEECHLESS:

THIS is the latest look coming to our NHS hospitals – a burka-style gown for patients.

Instead of standard issue clothing, women who want to cover up because of their faith are to be offered the striking turquoise garment.

Although welcomed by doctors as a breakthrough to encourage Muslim women to seek treatment, critics last night said the move was "another example of political correctness.

My question -and I'm not the only one- is: does it open and split in the back? If so, I'm afraid that covering the face is not the biggest problem, if you know what I mean...


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VARIFRANK:

Pacifism in the face of genocide is not a virtue. In fact, by promising to not fight they ensure that more people are killed, not less. Sometimes being a pacifist can be a brave act, but there are times when being a pacifist is just another name for being a coward.

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SO SIMILAR, and yet so different:



Worth your time.



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WELCOME TO world peace:

World peace was not supposed to look like this. It was supposed to be more - well, more peaceful. But a remarkable global phenomenon is being obscured by headlines about bombs and conflict in the Middle East. The ancient scourge of war has disappeared, at least in the sense of one government's army doing battle with another.

Last week marked 1,000 consecutive days with no wars between nations anywhere in the world, since the night in November 2003 when India and Pakistan instituted a cease-fire. This is the longest episode of interstate peace in more than half a century.

Other sorts of conflicts still rage around the world, but these are not wars of government against government. In this summer's bloodletting in Israel and Lebanon, for example, the Lebanese government took no military action to defend its territory, even as some of its bases came under fire. In Iraq, no government in the world has sent troops to support the insurgency. The interstate phase of the war for Iraq ended more than three years ago, when the United States and its allies removed Saddam Hussein's government. Despite the brutality in Darfur and elsewhere, even civil wars have become rarer. After rising steadily for half a century, the number of civil conflicts dropped by a third or more in the late 1990s. The world is far more peaceful than a dozen years ago, when slaughters in Rwanda and the Balkans led to gloomy predictions of rampant civil war.

Despite this outbreak of world peace, we remain fixated on international conflict. For example, the United Nations called for a traditional Olympic truce during the Winter Games in Turin, Italy, despite the fact that no countries were actually fighting one another.

It may seem hard to reconcile the concept of world peace with the bloody campaigns of jihad and the war on terror. Yet according to political scientist John Mueller, a leading scholar of the subject, the political violence that we see today is but the "remnants of war," generally involving small gangs of thugs, mercenaries, and terrorists.

These conflicts are typically far less destructive than conflicts between states. Even in the conflict in Iraq, the casualty rate is still lower than it was during the interstate war that toppled Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, according to the Iraq Body Count website.

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A FATWA AGAINST A SPANISH POLITICIAN: Aaron Hanscom interviews Gustavo de Aristegui on Islam in Spain, the feelings of radical muslims for al-Andalus and, most worryingly, the death threats against him on al-Qaeda websites since he published his book The Jihad in Spain: The obsession to reconquer Al-Ándalus.

Gustavo de Arístegui is a Spanish MP and one of Europe's biggest experts on Jihad and Islamic terrorism. His father, Gonzalo de Arístegui, was the Spanish ambassador to Lebanon and was killed in the early 80s when a Syrian missile hit his residence in Beirut. Considering the Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn precedents, the threats are indeed worrying. He's under the double whammy of being a target of both Islamic radicals and ETA -he's been under tight security measures for years- this one is potentially more dangerous, since apparently they're not generic criticism against him but a specific order to kill him. I spoke with him on the phone a few days ago and he was understandably concerned. And all people of good will are too. That of course leaves out radical leftists who, as usual, have aligned themselves with the fundamentalists. Gustavo explains it in the interview. Don't miss it.

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