Branded? 'IRAQ' is burned into his future

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Forget it – Blair will never be branded a war criminal - Nick Cohen

Too late, matey, he has been already. What you mean is that he won't be officially branded a war criminal. That's a shame but, in the end, so what? His entire future will be overshadowed by the Iraq debacle, just as your's will be too. And everyone else who chooses to continue to defend it.

Even the likes of Geras and Aaronowitch have amended their position but you sail on, into eventual oblivion, I suspect, like Mark Steyn and all the other pathetic armchair warriors.

A Greek Returning Gifts

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Norman G. Finkelstein - Thanks, but no thanks
Theodoros Pangalos, a 70-year-old Member of the Greek Parliament, received three bottles of wine as a holiday gift, with best wishes from Israel’s Ambassador, Ali Giachia. (Wikipedia lists him as Ali Yihiye.) In a Trojan horse reversal, Pangalos returned this gift and thanked the Ambassador with the following letter:
Brilliant. Would you see aletter like this from a British MP?

Wire people so stoopid?

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Idiots at School Go on Lockdown Over Child’s Science Project that has “Wires” Dvorak Uncensored
Students were evacuated from Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School in the Chollas View neighborhood Friday afternoon after an 11-year-old student brought a personal science project that he had been making at home to school, authorities said.

Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, said the student had been making the device in his home garage. A vice principal saw the student showing it to other students at school about 11:40 a.m. Friday and was concerned that it might be harmful, and San Diego police were notified.
The school majors in technology and a teacher panicked when he or she saw...wires! Oh, no. It must be a bomb! 

It took three hours(!) plus robotic investigation and x-rays to satisfy themselves it was a harmless homework project.

Fuck me. How gormlessly paranoid can you get?

More god-bothering nutjobs

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Does God Hate Haiti? - AlbertMohler.com
Does God hate Haiti? That is the conclusion reached by many, who point to the earthquake as a sign of God's direct and observable judgment.

God does judge the nations -- all of them -- and God will judge the nations. His judgment is perfect and his justice is sure. He rules over all the nations and his sovereign will is demonstrated in the rising and falling of nations and empires and peoples. Every molecule of matter obeys his command, and the earthquakes reveal his reign -- as do the tides of relief and assistance flowing into Haiti right now.

A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening.

The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe. The entire cosmos awaits the revelation of the glory of the coming Lord. Creation cries out for the hope of the New Creation.
Blah, blah, fucking, blah!

And millions of Yanks believe this crap! Scary!

Via J-Walk

The man IS for turning

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Gordon Brown's election strategy is doomed, but you have to admire the cheek of it - Telegraph
Labour is nowhere in the political battle over the deficit, as it deserves to be. It is both responsible for that horrific debt and has no plausible strategy to deal with it. True, Alistair Darling and Lord Mandelson have prevailed in their battle to make Gordon mention "cuts" occasionally, and now talk with freedom themselves about the need for budget savings. But it is much too little, much too late. Labour will not win this argument at the election. If it really is all about the economy, stupid, then the party is already sunk.

So Brown must rely on raw politics, rather than economics; on suspicion rather than statistics; on cultivating fear of the Tories rather than parading Labour's record. And one cannot fault the sheer cheek of his chosen attack. What could be more counter-intuitive than to present the Tories as the enemies of the middle class? The party of Thatcherism, the blue rinse, Essex Man, the "property-owning democracy" and the "middling sort", suddenly turning on its own? Ludicrous, surely? But that is precisely what Gordon is claiming.

Cloud, silver lining...

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LENIN'S TOMB: Haiti: opportunity knocks
You want to hear about chutzpah? You want to hear about sheer gravity-defying audacity? Well, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, prepare to catch your lower jaw. Forget Limbaugh's racist anxieties. Forget about Pat Robertson drooling about Haiti's 'pact with the devil'. He's a senile old bigot, and his sick provocations are familiar by now. This is the Heritage Foundation on the Haiti earthquake, which is estimated to have killed 100,000 people...Read the post here

Another time, another theory

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Michael Chrichton: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago...
Read the essay here   And when you've finished take a peek at this

Remember, remember...

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We must turn Blair’s life into Groundhog Day - Matthew Parris
So dream on, my fellow critics of the Iraq war. But if we think that, even now, a searchlight into the past is likely to catch any of these people red-handed, we distract ourselves from the achievable.What’s achievable is that those who led us into that grisly blunder are never allowed to move on; that they never regain the respect they enjoyed before it; that their public careers never climb back towards the eminence they once enjoyed; that, forever justifying themselves, forever repeating their denials and slipping through their frustrated accusers’ fingers, they never escape the flashlight beamed at this single episode in their lives.

And that each new inquiry, each new interview, becomes for them another Groundhog Day, an endless circle; while on to their monuments is chiselled “Iraq”, and into their obituaries one central, unforgiven fact.