Dangerous Dan

One of Hamas's leaders is talking about a 10 year ceasefire with Israel. This would be a devil's bargain for the Israelis. Considering that Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, it's a little difficult to imagine that they would take any cessation of violence seriously. When groups like Hamas offer to make such deals, it's usually an indication that they're on the ropes and desperate. They'll make the offers only to buy time and regroup, then as soon as they're back on their feet, they strike. Terrorists are not to be trusted with peace. Peace comes through their elimination.

I haven't seen the movie, don't know a tremendous amount about Alexander the Great's life or history, care little about the bisexual debate, and really care little about the film or debate. I would like to read up some on his life and history, though, because of my interest in ancient history. But that's all beside the point of this post.

Some folks are trying to make the movie's dismal box office showing in the U.S. to be partially (if that) the fault of rampant Christian conservatism and its associated homophobia. What's annoying about this article is that the writer makes, by my count, nine different mentions of various non-gay-related reasons for why the film has tanked. They range from Colin Farrell's bad hair to bad casting to it being too long. Yet after each of these perfectly valid reasons, he comes back to the idea that it's really homophobia which is implicitly or explicitly behind Alexander's woes. Hmmm… maybe the real reasons for the flop is that it's just a bad movie that got horrible reviews, that looks goofy, and is another sword and sandal epic that wore out its welcome right after Gladiator's run. Shocking thought, I know.

I've added a new link to the blogroll. It's The Diplomad and is written by covert conservatives in the State Department. It's great reading and I highly recommend it.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service is advocating for greater availability of abortions in the 20-24 week development range. What's striking is the reasons provided for increasing this avaliablity:

Speaking at a conference in London, Ms Furedi said: "It may be that they're very young, and they've been in denial or haven't been able to tell their parents.

"It may be that they've been very ambivalent about the pregnancy and it's taken them a really long time to make up their minds.

"It may be that sometimes they've started off with a wanted pregnancy but something has gone horribly wrong in their lives.

"It may also be that they simply didn't realise they were pregnant because they were using a very reliable method of contraception."

These all deserve the summary response of "tough." These are very poor reasons for getting an abortion and are so bad, they don't even rise to the level of "excuse." If you become pregnant, and engaged in the activities that led to it, then you have a responsibility to that cluster of cells that is a human. You are shirking that responsibility if you want to get an abortion, especially a late one, although I don't see much difference between early and late, just because you've later decided you don't want the kid for some reason. Really… you want a late abortion just because it took you awhile to make up your mind whether you wanted the child? Tough.

Related to talking about combat journalists being targeted by the military, I'm reminded of a story. Way back in high school, a Vietnam vet spoke to our class. One of the stories he told us was of Dan Rather… yes, Hurricane Dan himself. Rather and his small crew were given permission to travel with the soldier's unit. In one particular incident, they were being fired on by some kids in a hut. Naturally, the soldiers were forced to fire back and kill the kids. Rather's crew, however, didn't start filming until the soldiers returned fire. So on CBS a couple of days later, you didn't see how VC or NVA forces had consigned a few children to death by putting rifles in their hands, you saw U.S. soldiers gunning down some poor kids. The men in the unit were a little upset by this, so they decided that Rather would have a fuller experience if he stuck with the guys on point (the forward scouting deployment of a patrol and the most dangerous assignment). Apparently, Hurricane Dan decided to leave the unit about a day later.

I've noted before that combat journalists who place themselves in dangerous situations in order to get a story have only themselves to blame and that fellow journalists should honor them for the sacrifice made to their profession. Instead, though, most reporters look for someone else to blame, especially the military. There no new ground covered in this article, but I did find one quote interesting:

"The death toll is three times higher than that of international humanitarian workers… This has been arguably the most terrible year for our profession – after I sat here and told you last year it had been the most terrible year."

It's telling that he seems to think journalists are somewhere on the same level as humanitarian workers and that this would be a good comparison. Humanitarian folk skedaddle when combat erupts, whereas journalists get in the middle of it. Also, reporters are not humanitarian workers, though far too many think otherwise.

When I first read this headline on Drudge: "WOMAN SUES AMEX FOR LETTING HER RACK UP DEBT…" I thought it had to do with somebody shirking personal responsibility. After reading the story, however, it's clear that this is just a conwoman continuing a con. It's a common conman personality trait that they don't think they're responsible for their own conning… it's the mark's fault for believing them. That's all she's doing here, except she's combining that idea with the new con that she's stupid. Nice. Throw the book at her and throw out her suit as frivolous.

I'm always amazed at just how much Euro politicos and Euro-style politicos at the UN are completely corrupted by scandals and how little the media seems to care. Given the level of interest in the media, they're clearly given a free pass. Why? I don't know. For some, I'm sure it's because they idolize the corrupt politicians' voice ideals and the media folks are willing to let things slide because the politicians speak to some "greater truth" or work for some "greater cause." Much evil has been accepted under those idiot guises.

Anyway, the latest in the UN oil for food scandal is that Kofi Annan's progeny was accepting dirty money as late as this year. Kofi is little better than a banana republic kleptocrat in my opinion, and he deserves to be tossed out on his ear.

It's good that Dan Rather won't be anchoring the news anymore. It's not good, however, that neither he nor anybody else at CBS News is taking blame for the memo scandal and that Hurricane Dan will be staying on at CBS and doing 60 Minutes. He'll still be there influencing things. If there's any kharmic justice, the new anchorman will force Rather out and bar him from CBS News, just like Rather did to Walter Cronkite and other CBS folks have done to Don Hewitt. That'd be fitting.

Another classy move that I didn't realize is that Rather's announcement he was giving up the anchor chair came right before Tom Brokaw is set to anchor his last NBC broadcast on Wednesday night. Nice move, Rather. Hate for somebody else to have the spotlight for a little bit… gotta upstage him.

I personally don't agree with the concept of 57 year old people having kids. I'm not just talking about mothers here, but fathers too. The only reason the old mother issue is coming up lately is because technology is now enabling older women to have kids whereas it was never very difficult for older men to father 'em. At any rate, I don't believe it's especially fair to the child to have a parent who's so much older than all the other parents, who will die when the child is younger, and who will also require assistance from the younger child as they grow elderly. For some, the necessary emotional development will not be there.

For most of these older people, they've either misspent their youths or used up their normal parenting years in the pursuit of other goals and only later in life did they realize they missed out. Well, tough. You already spent most of your life unwilling to sacrifice for children and then in continued pursuit of your desires, you'll force your children to sacrifice for you. If you missed the boat, let it go, accept it, and don't think that you deserve to have it come back to dock for you.

Related to this is a study the CNN article mentions:

Researchers say older parents have some advantages. A study of 30,000 households showed that people who had children in their 40s were better off financially, spent more time with their children and had a closer connection to the children's friends than younger parents, said Brian Powell, a sociology professor at Indiana University.

Now I'd be interested to see this research, which it doesn't reference beyond this mention. It depends on what parameters they're using for being parents. Also, while 40′s is pushing it, it isn't too bad. I'd also like to be assured that this isn't a case of willful sociologists slanting research to validate what they think should be socially acceptable but isn't.

I always wondered if those kids singing on Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" got paid anything. Now I know. They didn't.

Once again, Rummy shows his "hands-on" approach. Tune in Tokyo!

Queen Elizabeth II walks down the runway, modeling the very latest in fashion for European royalty.

While much of the media is ignoring some of the nasty insugent things we're finding in Fallujah, this site has some nice pics illustrating them. They're from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. The full Powerpoint presentation is here.

(link via LGF)

This CNN article talks about some of the similarities between Alexander the Great and his Persian wars with Bush and the Iraq war. Some of the connections are just silly. Here's my favorite:

"And what is the lesson?" Stone asked. "Alexander brought the Hellenic way which is, let's say, more freedom for the individual. He abided by the customs of, unlike our administration, of leaving the (opposing) armies intact and used the armies. He always needed more men."

After Saddam Hussein was toppled, the United States disbanded the Iraqi army instead of incorporating those not loyal to Saddam as a police force, a move criticized as making it more difficult to fight anti-U.S. guerrillas.

"(Alexander) was always inclusive, and we were exactly the opposite when we went into Iraq. We were totally exclusive. … You could argue the policy was malformed from the beginning, misintended."

Yes, he did use the opposing armies in his own because he needed more men. It worked like this, however: fight for me or I'll kill you or sell you into slavery. That was pretty much the standard treatment for opponents in ancient warfare, except that they usually didn't get the first option of fighting for the conquerer. So unless Stone is advocating that Bush should have taken that approach, he should probably be quiet. In modern wars, we don't do that, and so the army, especially one filled with corrupt Saddam toadies, needs to be disbanded.