Dangerous Dan

While I think it's a positive sign that Hosni Mubarak felt compelled to allow other candidates on the Egyptian presidential ballot for the first time in 24 years, I've never had any illusions about who would win or whether the election would be fixed. It's foolish to think a man who has held firm dictatorial control of a country for 24 years would seriously risk losing that control through an open democratic process. Mubarak is now giving us a good look at what his version of democracy entails and it's likely the first real step in what will be his eventual downfall. When activists gathered to hold a demonstration yesterday in Cairo's most prominent square, they were quickly beaten by police and "government supporters," i.e. Mubarak thugs. Fortunately, no one died, but the demonstrators were clubbed, kicked, punched, and had clothes ripped off them.

The government, of course, is saying it won't happen again, which is what they also said after a similar incident in May. Mubarak is clearly intent on violently punishing those who publicly oppose him and making examples out of demonstrators as warnings to others. There is an upside to this, though. The fact that people are willing to demonstrate against Mubarak despite the consequences is a positive sign. Also, that Mubarak is violently suppressing these demonstrations indicates that he feels threatened by reformers, which in turn means that the reformers have more power and momentum than anybody in the government will officially attest to.

Mubarak will fix the September elections, and, like most dictators who like the sham veneer of an overwhelming democratic mandate, will inflate his margin of victory beyond what is at all reasonable. This will only create further resentment among the populace and strengthen the hand of the reformers. We'll see how this plays out, but I think Mubarak is futilely trying to stand against a democratic tide in the Middle East.

Regarding that article about Hussain, compare the following:

Hussain was calm and coherent at a hearing in a Rome prison Saturday, but doesn't consider himself a terrorist and may be gearing up to fight his extradition to Britain, his court-court appointed lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, said.
…
"He doesn't consider himself a terrorist," Sonnessa told Italian TV. Asked about what line he took when interrogated, she declined to be specific, but said: "He defended himself with extreme calm, coherence."

with this:

"Muktar urged us to be careful" La Repubblica quoted Hussain as telling his interrogators. "We didn't want to kill, just sow terror."

They wanted to sow terror, but don't call them terrorists! I don't buy their line that they didn't actually intend to kill anybody. That's the desperate plea of a failed murderer, who because he missed when he shot at his victim, claims that's proof he wasn't really trying to kill the person. The four bombers messed up and at least one is now trying to say that it was intentional and they were just trying to scare people. Even if true, this would be incredibly stupid of them. But just to dismiss this excuse consider this eyewitness account:

Although London police have not yet said whether the July 7 attacks were linked to the failed attacks July 21, police chief Ian Blair did say there was a "resonance" between the two.

In the latter attempts, it's clear at least some of the bombers expected to die — they lay on top of their explosives, which failed to go off.

Abisha Moyo saw one attempted attack on a subway train. He told the Daily Mail newspaper he broke off a cell phone call when he heard a noise like a pistol shot.

"I turned around and there was a man lying on the ground with his arms outstretched in a Jesus Christ position, lying on top of a medium-sized black and green rucksack, face up," he said. "I thought he might have been shot. I went up to him and said: 'Are you all right mate?' But he just ignored me."

They were expecting to die and they laid on the explosives to make sure vital biological components were sufficiently damaged so as to ensure the result. It also doesn't take a whole lot of explosives to do major damage and kill others. Consider that these bombs were similar to the 7/7 bombs and what they did. Hussain and company merely screwed up.

Also consider the word-parsing Hussain is doing. He’s trying to define terrorism as when you actually kill somebody, not merely when you try to spread terror. This is absurd on its face, etymologically-speaking and otherwise. If one blows up a locale in which somebody could have been killed, though the explosion is intentionally timed such that nobody is injured, that still makes the person a terrorist. He is trying to inculcate fear in the populace by making them think that this could happen to them. This individual would be a terrorist, but just not a murderer and this is an important distinction. Hussain is a terrorist regardless of his killing intentions, but I believe it’s clear he’s also an attempted murderer.

Want more?
Captain Ed notes that Hussain sure went to a lot of trouble to get into and out of the country just for the sake of making a political statement.

The nabbing of the four would-be London bombers is beginning to bear fruit. Already, six more people have been arrested. That these guys survived is probably one of the worst things for their little terror ring. Not only can they be interrogated, but their panicked actions after their failure are leading authorities in new directions. Take Osman Hussain, who took off to Rome:

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, briefing lawmakers, said Hussain counted on an extensive network from the Horn of Africa in Italy to protect him in his flight from London, through Paris and to Rome.

"During the investigation, it has been possible to pinpoint an extensive network of subjects from the Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Italy considered to have played a role in covering for the fugitive," the minister said.

Top anti-terrorism investigators have said for years that Italy is a logistics base for international terrorists, including in providing false documents to help travel.

Police in Milan, while hunting down suspected accomplices in Hussain's flight, raided a center which was producing false documents, Pisanu said. Investigators were studying the seized material.

Police fanned out across Italy on the trail of Hussain's contacts Saturday. More than a dozen searches were launched in cities from north to south, including Venice and the port city Salerno, Pisanu said.

In his desperation to get out of Britain, Hussain has exposed and endangered an extensive clandestine network by putting a rather potent spotlight on it. This is the sort of attention it would rather not have and it wouldn't have had if Hussain had succeeded in martyring himself. We'll furthermore get a better idea of how these networks operate, which will be invaluable in targeting other groups.

Wow. That's all I have to say. Thanks to Riding Sun, I now know of the comic book (click for a preview) that pits bionic Sean Hannity, Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy against the forces of liberals in the year 2021.

It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. America is under oppression by ultra-liberal extremists which have yielded governing authority to the United Nations. It is up to an underground conservative group (known as F.O.I.L.) led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North to thwart Ambassador Usama Bin Laden’s plans to nuke New York City.

There's North, Hannity, and Liddy.

Wow. Clearly, O'Reilly and Limbaugh need to be calling their agents about now.

It's hard to beat Oliver Stone for being an idiot. He's currently planning a big Hollywood movie about the 9/11 attacks. That would be fine except that he's also a Bush-hater, is a typical cultural relativist, and has a tendency to manipulate and make up historical events in order to make his conspiratorial storyline mesh. So expect a presentation of 9/11 as being something America earned, the terrorists are just confused angry men, and Bush's response to it was that of a bumbling fool. In other words, expect a dramatization of Michael Moore's already fictional account.

On a related note, Stone's chutzpah extends to his last movie, Alexander. It was a major flop, but that, of course, isn't his fault. Despite the fact many historians and classicists didn't like it, movie critics didn't like it, and the general public didn't like it, Stone is chalking it up to kids misunderstanding history.

He says, "Because of BRAVEHEART, I think kids see ancient times as, 'Hey man, that's violence!' They don't see it as separate cultures that in some cases had stronger values than ours.

"The Greek culture in its entirety is what I was going for, or the Persian culture. It's not just a hero's tale. Alexander was a flawed hero, a complex character.

That's right, it failed because kids just couldn't appreciate his perfect and superb presentation of ancient history. It's nice when somebody always has ready excuses for their own failures.

In one of the odder match-ups, the new Dodge Charger is becoming a favorite vehicle of the hip-hop/rap set and various rappers are featuring the car in their videos. Now keep in mind that the car now being favored by black urban rappers…

… is most famous as the "General Lee," which was bright orange, had the Confederate battle flag painted on top, had a horn that played Dixie, and was driven around the countryside by a couple of cracker good ol' boys.

Ya gotta admit. It's a tad ironic.

Ok, I'm back from another trip.

People are decrying the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the London subway as some sort of example of police brutality. The family especially is complaining. I can't blame them for that, but the facts are that de Menezes should have been shot. He was wearing padded clothing during the summer, came out of a location under police surveillence for suspected terrorist activity, ignored police orders to stop, jumped a turnstile, and tried running onto a train. What were the police supposed to think? Any reasonable judgment, especially in the heat of the moment, would have said this guy was trying to get on the train and bomb it. The police did the right thing in shooting him. Either de Menezes was involved in terrorist activity (or had some other reason to run from police), or he was just exceptionally stupid. Either way, I refuse to blame the police for taking the proper precaution. Doing so will only make law enforcement too timid in the future to do what is necessary. When they see a threat who needs to be stopped, they will second-guess themselves and innocents will die.

So all the rage with the blogging kids nowadays is the podcasting. What with them and their fancy cars and new-fangled mp3 players and all. I'm thinkin' I'll throw together my own short podcast soon. Probably later next week. Could be fun; will definitely be time-consuming… fortunately that's not currently a problem.

I was browsing The Smoking Gun's archive and came across this entry about L. Ron Hubbard. TSG obtained LRH's FBI file via a Freedom of Information request. Among the gems is Hubbard claiming operatives broke into house, knocked him out, and attempted to kill him… but didn't.

Saddam Hussein is complaining that he isn't being given enough access to his lawyer. I know, it's hard to feel sorry for the guy considering that the people he gassed, threw into plastic shredders, electrocuted, tortured, and murdered likely never met with a legal counsel. Maybe that should be included in the list of charges against him.

There's this too:

Wearing a dark blue suit and a white shirt, Saddam complained that when he greeted the judges, he got no response.

"When someone like me says 'Peace be upon you,' and no one responds, then this is a big insult for someone like Saddam Hussein," he said.

I'm sure this is all a big misunderstanding on the part of the judges. I know that when I hear a genocidal, mass-murdering tyrannical dictator say, "Peace be upon you," that I just don't take him seriously. I imagine when the judges heard it, they also didn't take him seriously and so didn't reply to it. Now they know they hurt Saddam's feelings, I'm confident they'll return his greeting next time – I believe the appropriate response would be, "Go to hell, you bastard." They could also add a few more colorful words, but that might make them seem biased.

It looks like the events in London today were, on the balance, fortuitous. On the downside, there was another attack. On the upside, nobody was hurt. On the further upside, the wannabe suicide bombers messed up when all four of the bombs failed to explode as only the detonators went off. That means the bastards are still alive to be found and arrested, which in turn means they can provide a great deal of information to authorities. At least two men were arrested, although one has already been released and we don't yet know what connection the other guy has to the events. I'm sure the would-be bombers are a tad paniced now that they're not getting their 72 virgins.

I think there are three possible explanations for the bombs being duds. The first is that this is some horrible copy-cat prank. It's such a horrible prank, though, I don't believe anybody would actually do it. The second is that the bombmaker wasn't very good and produced defective explosives. I've seen this crop up on other blogs as a possible indication that al Qaeda in Britain is losing its touch. The third possibility is that the bombers were double-crossed. It's a little odd, after all, that all four bombs didn't work. It could definitely be that the person making the bombs didn't connect a couple of wires or used silly putty in place of C4. Maybe he took the money and ran, didn't believe in the cause, or some other reason, and purposely fouled up the bombs. Whatever the reason, though, it's a very good thing they didn't work.

I just finished it today and I like it. I think it's the best one yet, followed closely by #4. It has plenty of light moments but still gets to the serious stuff and it nicely sets up for the final book in the series. I shan't say anymore about it since I don't want to give spoilers.

Due to this blog's interest in things Star Trek, I must mention today's loss of James "Scotty" Doohan.

He was a fine actor and he now joins Deforest Kelley and Gene Roddenberry as being among the first of the original Star Trek cast (Roddenberry wasn't actually cast, but I'll count him) who have departed. Hard to believe that ST first premiered in 1966. As one who grew up on the series (in syndicated reruns) and movies, it's a little sad to know the characters have had all the appearances they'll have.

I learned from this CNN story that Doohan was much more than an actor. He stormed Juno Beach on D-Day and that night took six rounds from a machine gun, one of which shot off his right middle finger. Do they still make Canadians like that anymore?

In the booth next to ours:

Little Kid 1: Because of Jesus, I love everybody, even bad people.

Little Kid 2: Even Satan?

Little Kid 1: Everybody except Satan.

I laughed.