“This was another reminder that in Western Europe there is sympathy for dead Jews; it’s just the live ones that they cannot tolerate.”
Hat tip – Allah, via Inoperable Terran.
Flight 51
Reader Charles MacDonald; “It’s now 30 years since the Syrians shot down flight 51 with the loss of all aboard:”
On Aug. 9, 1974, UN Flight 51 was flying from Beirut to Damascus on a routine supply run for Canadian peacekeepers manning the Golan Heights. The outcome was anything but routine.
Aboard the Buffalo aircraft were five crew and four passengers: Mirau, a native of Swift Current, Sask.; Capt. George Foster, 44, of Calgary; Master Cpl. Ronald Spencer, 29, of Quebec; Cpl. Bruce Stringer, 23, of Kitchener, Ont.; Capt. Robert Wicks, 39, of London, Ont.; Cpl. Morris Kennington, 30, of Britain; Cpl. Michael Simpson, 26; Master Warrant Officer Gaston Landry, 35, of St-Francois d’Assise, Que., and Warrant Officer Cyril Korejwo, 47.
The flight was cleared by air traffic control in Damascus to descend for landing.
“Just as they were letting down, the Syrian surface-to-air missile battery along the highway opened up with one missile,” said Roger Landry. “The pilot managed to avoid that first missile.”
But the pilot — it’s unclear whether Mirau or Foster was actually flying the plane — couldn’t avoid a second missile. It took out the left engine.
A third went through the fuselage. Everyone on board was killed — the largest single-day loss of life in Canada’s peacekeeping history. The time was 11:50 a.m.
Landry was allowed into the crash site a day later. The Syrian army had cleaned up most of the evidence, but he did find electrical wiring with Russian writing on it — from the missiles’ firing systems.
Today is the 30th Anniversary of the loss. And Charles is right – don’t look for our UN Peacekeeper lovin’ media to notice.
Red Adair, Dead At 89
CASCAR
Spent the evening out at Bridge City Speedway’s half mile stock racing track. It was more fun than I expected. And clean – very few cautions, despite some pretty agrressive racing all night. Lots of bumping and a few spinouts, but most emerged relatively unscathed.
The Auto Clearing Chrysler Superstore 150 feature race (300 laps) had the top three fractions of a second apart at the finish.
The winner (far right) was a local driver, Chris Shirley.
Indeed, only one bad bump all night. A little slide in reverse along the retaining wall during the Streetstocks didn’t do the rear tire and axle on Craig Katelnikoff’s car much good….
More photos in the extended entry.
“All Guilty, Your Honour”
Circular firing squad, Nigerian style.
The group is believed to practice a ritual in which parties involved in a personal dispute – often over business deals – are made to drink a potion they are told will kill only the guilty one.
Police discovered “well over 50 bodies” and were searching for more, the police spokesman said. Some of the bodies were in caskets and others were headless.
Swift Boat Vets Fire Back
Glenn Reynolds highlights this Kerry memory hiccup.
The Swift Boat Vets:
In reality, Kerry was at Sa Dec – – easily locatable on any map more than fifty miles from Cambodia. Kerry himself inadvertently admits that he was in Sa Dec for Christmas Eve and Christmas and not in Cambodia, as he had stated for so many years on the Senate Floor, in the newspapers, and elsewhere. Exhibit 27, Tour, pp. 213- 219. Sa Dec is hardly “close” to the Cambodian border. In reality, far from being ordered secretly to Cambodia, Kerry spent a pleasant night at Sa Dec with “visions of sugar plums” dancing in his head. Exhibit 27, p. 219. At Sa Dec where the Swift boat patrol area ended, there were many miles of other boats (PBR’s) leading to the Cambodian border. There were also gunboats on the border to prevent any crossing. If Kerry tried to get through, he would have been arrested. Obviously, Kerry has hardly been honest about his service in Vietnam.
These guys aren’t caving to the threats of suit from the Kerry campaign – read the rest at the Captain’s Quarters.
Powerline Blog highlights another much-discussed problem with Kerry’s story;
Richard Nixon was not the President in December 1968. Lyndon Johnson was. It is simply incredible to me that for many years, reporters have mindlessly repeated this obviously false story without, apparently, noticing that it couldn’t possibly be true.
And these observations as well:
The facts that the Swift Vets are prepared to prove are nuclear, far worse than one would assume from reading general newspaper coverage of the controversy. It is not enough to say that the Vets’ evidence shows Kerry to be a liar. That is an understatement. In my opinion, they show Kerry to be a sick, deeply delusional man whose tenuous connection to reality would make a Kerry presidency an unacceptable danger to our country.
One of the Swift Boat Vets has said that he and his colleagues–who represent nearly all of the surviving veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam–feel that they have been called to serve their country a second time. The veterans’ problem, of course, is that they don’t have any money. While borderline-criminal multi-billionaires like George Soros and spoiled entertainers like Ben Affleck have the Democrats’ coffers overflowing with tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars, the veterans have been able to raise only a pitiful $150,000– most of it from a single home-builder in Houston, who has been slandered for his efforts.
Update – Aug.27 – The entire text of John Kerry’s out of print book “The New Soldier”, as well as links to free chapters from “Unfit For Duty” can be found here
Spirit Of America, Update
A couple of months ago, I joined in the fundraising drive for Spirit Of America.
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Thought I’d give the winner an advance peek. |
Car Pics
Just a lazy Saturday. No incentive to blog much, so I’ve gathered togehter some photos I took at the car show yesterday.
Click here for the others.
On The Edge Of Our Seats
Sending a strong message to would-be gay activist, jewel thieving, politicians.
Svend must be kicking himself for giving the thing back.
See Ya Later
I’ve been invited to a car show, so will be heading out of town for the day. I’ll take some pics.
The Madrid Bombings
New information about the Madrid train bombings;
“One of the most sobering pieces of information to come out of the investigation of the March 11th bombings is that the planning for the attacks may have begun nearly a year before 9/11. In October, 2000, several of the suspects met in Istanbul with Amer Azizi, who had taken the nom de guerre Othman Al Andalusi-Othman of Al Andalus. Azizi later gave the conspirators permission to act in the name of Al Qaeda, although it is unclear whether he authorized money or other assistance- or, indeed, whether Al Qaeda had much support to offer. In June, Italian police released a surveillance tape of one of the alleged planners of the train bombings, an Egyptian housepainter named Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who said that the operation ‘took me two and a half years.’ Ahmed had served as an explosives expert in the Egyptian Army. It appears that some kind of attack would have happened even if Spain had not joined the Coalition- or if the invasion of Iraq had never occurred.”
It also undermines the already flimsy hypothesis that the war on Islamic fascism is spawning new terrorists. So far, pretty much everyone they’ve nabbed has been a member of the “Blow ‘Em Up For Allah Glee Club” for quite a long time.
More from the Belmont Club.
hat tip – Paul Tuns at the Shotgun
Misspeak?
There’s been considerable coverage of a so-called “Bushism” being reported today. Why, I do not know, other than the fact that the media sits in wait for them.
” Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. “
It is a clumsy sentence, to be sure. But does it say what the scoffers pretend to think it does?
Just a month ago, the Bush administration was criticized for having a “lack of imagination” prior to the 9/11 attacks. “Thinking about new ways” that harm could be inflicted is not the same as planning to inflict the harm to yourself.
So, what’s the fuss about?
The Sensitivity Strategy
“I’d see myself first of all as a jobs president, as a health care president, as an education president and also an Oprah Winfrey president. And add them all together, you can’t be safe at home today unless you are also safe abroad.”
Olympic Security Passes Stolen
In a massive security blunder, passes allowing vehicles into the Olympic Village in Athens reportedly have been stolen from unlocked cars.
It gets better.
Organizers began recruiting 7,000 workers in mid- May to undertake jobs from receptionists to housekeepers at the Olympic village. But with so many people to process in only three months, the planned background checks were scrapped.
I’m wondering why there’s been no discussion yet on the security problems that will be facing the Vancouver-Whistler games, and what the political fallout may be if the US decides to provide security for their own athletes….
9/11 Subway Sandwiches
Anti-Americanism as marketing ploy.
Last week, the Center for Individual Freedom launched a grassroots campaign against anti-American tray-liners at German subway stores. The tray-liners — a promotion for the film “Super Size Me” — showed an obese Statue of Liberty holding a burger and fries in her hands, under a headline asking, “Why are Americans so fat?”
According to the Center for Individual Freedom, the headline used the word “Amis,” which is considered a derogatory term for Americans. The Center says complaints from Americans prompted German Subway shops to pull the tray-liners. But the cheeseburger-crashing-into-buildings image apparently is still out there — distributed in German subway stores over the past few days. (The food diary also promotes the film “Super Size Me,” and German Subway shops are distributing the diary.)
Unbelievable.
I just bought my last Subway product.
hat tip – Inoperable Terran
Patiently Waiting
The same press that peppered the news with questions and allegations about George Bush’s record in the National Guard are surprisingly unsurprisingly sluggish in picking up on what John Kerry’s swift boat comrades have to say about his self-promoted Vietnam heroism. The story has been circulating on the blogosphere for months (I mentioned it in May) , Drudge has been headlining it for days – but still no search hits on the CNN website.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been formed to counter the false “war crimes” charges John Kerry repeatedly made against Vietnam veterans who served in our units and elsewhere, and to accurately portray Kerry’s brief tour in Vietnam as a junior grade Lieutenant. We speak from personal experience — our group includes men who served beside Kerry in combat as well as his commanders. Though we come from different backgrounds and hold varying political opinions, we agree on one thing: John Kerry misrepresented his record and ours in Vietnam and therefore exhibits serious flaws in character and lacks the potential to lead.
We regret the need to do this. Most Swift boat veterans would like nothing better than to support one of our own for America’s highest office, regardless of whether he was running as a Democrat or a Republican. However, Kerry’s phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compels us to step forward.
For more than thirty years, most Vietnam veterans kept silent as we were maligned as misfits, addicts, and baby killers. Now that a key creator of that poisonous image is seeking the Presidency we have resolved to end our silence.
Stay tuned.
Or, maybe do your own tuning. When the time comes that they can no longer ignore it (ads begin appearing today in the US) the pro-Democrat media is going to work overtime to buffer this story in anti-Bush spin.
update = Let the games begin. Kerry campaign threatens to sue stations who air the ad.
Albany Bust
Here’s a question for you. If the pastor and organist of the United Church you attended each Sunday were selling arms out the back door, do you think the parishioners��would “see no evil, hear no evil”?
Sure it is…
Bowling For Farenheit
“Michael Moore would not need armed guards around him 24 hours a day if that film had no impact,” says Lee, who spoke to Moore a few days ago. “He’s not happy about it, with his life being threatened. I wouldn’t be happy either.” [emphasis mine – ed ]
Someone alert the NRA.
This has the makings of one fine promotional ad.
via Right Wing News
Test Tube Prions
Scientists at UCSF have created synthetic prions — tiny protein particles — and shown they can cause brain disease in laboratory animals and replicate without any genetic material inside them.
[…]
As part of the new study, Prusiner, Legname and their colleagues created a large fragment of a normal prion protein and folded it using lab techniques into an abnormal shape, which they suspected would give it the infectious properties of the faulty proteins.
Then they injected the faulty prion fragments into the brains of mice that had been genetically engineered to produce copious quantities of normal prions.
In little more than a year, the first of the genetically engineered lab mice developed typical prion brain disease, and by the end of two years, all the mice in the colony contracted the same disease.
The researchers then took brain tissue from one of the sick mice and inoculated normal wild-type mice with an extract of the tissue. In less than six months, these mice, too, developed brain disease, Prusiner and his colleagues reported.
A little more work on the delivery system, and a whole new class of bioweapons springs into existance. And highly durable ones – as was discovered to the dismay of the cattle industry, prions aren’t even destroyed by normal rendering processes.
Nice.
Added to the Beltway Traffic Jam