The Devil's Excrement

If you had any doubts as to the extent of the terror Iraqis have suffered, the press conference by the four jailed reporters is simply chilling, particularly the quote “Never seen, only heard: the sickening crunch of bone“

Via Instapundit and the The Volohk Conspiracy I learn that my “friends” at Human Rights Watch have denounced that Iraqi tactics violates the laws of war. Have never been too happy with HRW and it has (or not) said about Venezuela but it takes guts to come out with this one.

When I first saw this quote by Michael Moore of Oscar night fame:

“Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator,” he added, “and I hope he’s removed as soon as possible. But nonviolently.”

I was sure it had to be fake. I thought nobody that can make a documentary could be so stupid. Well, it turns the statement is true. Get rid of Saddam using nonviolent means…ummm….let me see, we could have an election to get rid of him….no, that would not work, we alredy did and he got 100% of the votes last fall. Maybe he could be invited to leave…that has been tried too….Oh, well, I am out of ideas. I think Mr. Moore should be more specific, the best idea I have heard so far is this one by Jim Treacher:

Good idea! First we’ll coax Saddam out of his bunker with a trail of delicious candy. Then, once his belly is full and he’s all sleepy and happy, we’ll calmly explain that we don’t approve of what he’s been doing and it’s not very nice and we wish he’d stop. And he’ll be like, “Whoa, I never thought of it that way. You guys are my friends! I like you!” And then everybody will hug and cry, and then get a little embarrassed about crying, and then make some jokes to cover up being embarrassed. And then a beautiful rainbow will appear, and a shy unicorn will walk down it, and Saddam will ride the unicorn to the North Pole, and he’ll spend the rest of his life helping Santa make wonderful toys for all the good little girls and boys, and there’ll be hot chocolate, and, and, and, and nobody will ever ever die again for any reason ever. THE END.

Blogs are definitely “in”. Everyone is trying to come up with something to blog about. Even traditional media wants to get into the game, warblogs being the premier example. However I found it totally absurd for the Boston Globe to try to hide what is nothing but a sports column behind a blog ( a bad one at that!). The effort is so poor, that the only post so far is simply a preview of the upcoming baseball season with links to stories to each team, with essentially no content. Even worse, if you click on the previous weblogs page you get “page not found”, you would think that with the season beginning tonight, the blogger would be posting up a storm. What is remarkable is that I can think of so many ways to make a blog about the Red Sox informative and entertaining even if I am 2500 miles away from Boston. (Yes, I am one of those die-hard followers of the Red Sox and the curse of the Bambino). This attempt to “blog” by the Globe simply shows why blogs are becoming such a serious threat to traditional media, they just don’t get it!

Via Instapundit this amazing story of a peace activist who went to Iraq and realized how wrong he was about what local people felt about the war. Seems true, truly remarkable story.

NBC Nightly news talks about blogging tonight, shows Salam’s screen and talks to a reporter that is searching for Salam Pax. I would prefer if he waited for the whole thing to be over with, for Salam’s sake. Here is the link to NBC with a list of warblogs, but the story is not the one they talked about on the new tonight, in which Salam was mentioned.

The Chavez administration has issued a decree which changes the Columbus Day holiday, called in Spanish “Race Day” or Dia de la Raza, on October 12^th. to “Day of Indigenous Resistance”. Now, this has got to be one of the stupidest idea of this incompetent and inefficient Government. As Forrest Gump used to say: “Stupid is, stupid does”. First of all, October 12^th. commemorates Columbus’ arrival to America, as far as any historian has been able to determine, no Indian attempted to resist, resisted or said he would resist Columbus and his companions on that Oct. 12^th. or any other October 12^th. , so replacing one holiday for another is truly stupid. If anything, as suggested by a local historian, it could be called “Surprise or Amazement Day” because that was the main effect that October 12^th. of 1942 on the indigenous population of San Salvador, which by the way never fought or attempted to fight the invaders? If the Government wanted to celebrate something, they could have picked a day that was a symbol of “indigenous resistance’ if such a historic day could be pinpointed. After all, the Caribes, Caribs or Arawaks were not precisely known for the art of war, were quiet peaceful and were obliterated quite rapidly by the conquistadors. So it will be difficult to teach to young people what this resistance was all about. Thus, once again the Chavez Government wastes its time in meaningless revolutionary imagery of no consequence, but what else is new. Perhaps, the words of Teodoro Petkoff in his daily Tal Cual Editorial playing on the name “Dia de la Raza” saying “Dia de la Risa” or laughing day, saying:

“For years we have been hearing the falsely heroic speeches, having to hear a false epical rhetoric, behind which there is nothing. One hears the flaming verb of Chavez and would believe that he is in one of the Yenan caves, directing like a resuscitated Mao, the epic of the Great March or transmutated into a Cronstand sailor, taking by assault the Winter Palace of Saint Petersburg, if not, dirty and with a beard, overlooking from the Andean peaks the displacement of the semi-naked men of Bolivar in the plains. But it happens that the man is speaking from a sugar processing plant, paralyzed by official neglect and from which the diligent bureaucrats of the Vth. Republic have stolen even the nails. Full of hot air. While the corners of Caracas are full of Warao Indian mothers, carrying their children, begging, Aristobulo (the Minisiter of Education) issues a decree that gives them no bread, no roof, no jobs, but the pathetic consolation that October 12^th. will be the day of indigenous resistance. All hot air, empty words, useless rhetoric. Bullshitting”

Via Outsidethebeltaway, The top ten myths of the Iraqi war, definitely worth reading. Amazing how people believe what they read! But the blogs will set you straight!

Note added: Outsidethebeltway is right, did not see the credit to Vodkapundit at the end!

In this map, which you can blow up and see much better here, you can see the advance of US troops into Iraq in the last four days. At the bottom right is Kuwait. The orange is the troops advance and the white circle is Baghdag. I think is pretty impressive, even if Reuters disagrees and financial markets acted poorly. By the way, a defense expert calls the advance: “This is one of the fastest advances ever achieved, surpassing that of the British liberation army in the dash from the Seine to Brussels in 1944”

Salam Pax’ weblog is certainly getting to be quite famous and so are blogs. In this article in USA Today , not only is Salam’s blog mentioned but also Diane’s as well as other active blogs reporting on the war. Argentina’s Clarin also picked it up, concentrating more on whether Salam is for real or not, it closes with my favorite Salam phrase, if you dont belive I am real, don’t read me. Finally, Instapundit picked up this report by darkblogules that CNN mentioned Salam and even the URL on TV. Darkblogules concludes we are now simply obsolete as the TV announcer did not even bother to explain what a blog is.