Email of the Day (Name of the Guilty and the Guilty Bastard's Wife Changed)

Dear Louise,
Would you please remove my email address immediately and substitute it with my wife XXXXXXX’s email address: XXXXXXX@sympatico.ca for all correspondence including this one.
Thank you very much,
Jack Arsehole

What precipitated this bizarre and less than kind note was an introductory email by Louise to the parents of the children that are on the soccer team that Louise and I are coaching. Now what to make of this? Surely, a father might be interested just a little, wee bit in his son's soccer? Or if he felt so strongly (and why does he feel so strongly?) could he not just forward it on to his wife and ask that his wife be included on subsequent emails? And no, it's not that the fellow's email account is so precious or secure that mere soccer mail was unsuitable. It is in fact, as you can see, a domestic sympatico account. Also, this is that this family (his wife?)asked Mooredale to use for soccer correspondence.

Not Quite Sure of What to Make of This (Leave Comment)

You Would Think Bush Would Want to Keep a Backup, (in the style of Borat) 'Not!'

Great story here about how the Whitehouse have just happened to misplace something on the order of 5 million emails over the course of Bush's presidency. Will Hillary go back to Lotus Notes, I wonder?

Poor Anastasia; The Remains of All The Czar's Children Have Been Found

This was a story, that so to speak, would never die.

Every few years, a self-styled Princess would surface calling herself Anastasia and laying claim to the Russian throne, having somehow been spared the vicissitudes of the Bolshevik Revolution, who shot the family in a basement, threw them down a mine shaft, and poured over acid over so as to hide the complete discovery of the crime for 90 years. I can remember in my lifetime at least 3 or 4 different claimants.

A parallel, but less known story, is that had the British Royal family invited the Romanoffs to England--Nicholas and George V were cousins, you can see the family resemblance in the photo above--, they, unlike 40 million others, would have escaped one of the worst regimes of all time. Alas, no such invitation was forthcoming and no such counter factual history made factual.

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Scientific tests have confirmed that remains found in Russia last year belong to the last Tsar's male heir and his daughter, missing since the royal family were executed in 1918, officials said on Wednesday.

...

Bolshevik executioners shot the family in 1918 in the basement of a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg, 1,450 km (900 miles) east of Moscow. Attempts were made to destroy the bodies, then they were dumped into pits.

.

Full story here.

More Great Cold War Era Music

Cold War and Central Committee. Series. 4: Plenums of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 1941-1990. Woodbury, CT: Research Publications, 2001. 181 reels, 690 fiche (Media Commons)
This collection documents the plenums of the Central Committee of the CPSU from the Stalin era until the demise of the Soviet Union. During each plenum a team of stenographers compiled an "uncorrected stenogram" or verbatim transcript of the proceedings. However, speakers were permitted to revise and extend their remarks. These corrected versions, called the "author's copy," were then collated into the "corrected copy." After additional editing, usually with an eye to maintaining ideological consistency, the remarks were distributed to members of the Politburo, the CPSU Secretariat and members of the Central Committee as a final "edited copy." This publication contains nearly all versions - from uncorrected stenogram to edited copy - of Central Committee plenums. Of particular interest to scholars, the author's copies often contain the handwritten corrections of the participants as well as the inclusion of newly drafted remarks.

If you Look Really Closely, You Can See the Olympic Torch Passing Unmolested.

The amazing picture above shows the two Koreas at night. If you look really closely, you can see the Olympic Torch in the middle of darkness of North Korea.


North Korea welcomes Olympic torch

You have to love the article below from The Star.

KYODO/REUTERS

April 29, 2008
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PYONGYANG–North Korea mobilized tens of thousands of citizens yesterday to celebrate the Olympic torch relay in Pyongyang, the flame's first visit to the authoritarian nation.

Men in their best suits and women wearing traditional high-waisted dresses waved flags and paper flowers in the capital, greeting the torch like a visiting head of state.

Unlike some other parts of the relay ahead of the Beijing Olympics, everything went off without a hitch in North Korea. Only the most loyal Communist elite are allowed to live in Pyongyang, a showpiece city filled with monuments to the hard-line regime.

China is North Korea's main ally and a key provider of aid, and the torch relay was used to herald their ties. North Korea has condemned disruptions of the relay elsewhere, and supported Beijing in its crackdown on violent protests in Tibet.

Leader Kim Jong-il was not seen at yesterday's event, but he was "paying great interest to the success of the Olympic torch relay," Pak Hak-son, chair of North Korea's Olympic committee, said at the relay start, according to a report from Pyongyang by Japan's Kyodo News Agency.

"We express our basic position that while some impure forces have opposed China's hosting of the event and have been disruptive, we believe that constitutes a challenge to the Olympic idea," Pak said.

The torch began its run from beneath the giant red stained-glass flame that tops the 170-metre-tall obelisk of the Juche Tower, which commemorates the national ideology of "self-reliance" created by the late founding president Kim Il-sung, father of Kim Jong-il.

An attentive and peaceful crowd watched the start of the relay, some waving Chinese and Olympic flags, APTN footage showed. The ceremony was presided over by the head of Parliament, Kim Yong-nam. Kim passed the flame to Pak Du-ik, a former soccer star who played on North Korea's 1966 World Cup soccer team.

As the 19-kilometre relay wound through Pyongyang, thousands of cheering people lined the streets waving pink paper flowers and small flags with the Beijing Olympics logo and chanting "Welcome! Welcome!" Middle-aged women in traditional dresses danced and beat drums in one square, while young girls held red balloons and bouquets of flowers.

Security was far lighter than in most other cities visited by the torch.

The relay ended after about five hours at Kim Il-sung Stadium, where female marathoner Chong Song-ok used the torch to light an Olympic cauldron, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Later yesterday, the torch arrived to a warm welcome in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Carter is Outed by a Frenchie as the Anti-Semitic Peanut Farmer That He is

From the WSJ.

The Sad End of Jimmy Carter
By BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY
April 25, 2008

The problem is not that he is, or is not, talking to the Syrians – everyone does it to some degree.

It isn't that he went to Damascus to meet with the exiled head of Hamas – everyone, including the Israelis, will one day have to do that too, in accordance with that old rule which says that in the end it is with your enemies not your friends that you have to come to an understanding and make peace.

No.

The problem is how Jimmy Carter went about it.

The problem is the spectacular and useless embrace he exchanged with the senior Hamas dignitary, Nasser Shaer, in Ramallah.

The problem is the wreath he laid piously at the grave of Yasser Arafat, who, as Mr. Carter knows better than anyone else, was a real obstacle to peace.

It is that in Cairo, if we are to believe another Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, whose statement has so far not been denied, Mr. Carter apparently described Hamas as a "national liberation movement" – this party which has made a cult of death, a mythology of blood and race, and an anti-Semitism along the lines of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the linchpin of its ideology.

The problem is also the formidable nose thumbing he got from Hamas's exiled leader, Khaled Mashaal, who, at the very moment he was receiving Mr. Carter, also triggered the first car bombing in several months in Keren Shalom on the Gaza strip – and that this event elicited from poor Mr. Carter, all tangled up in his small-time mediator calculations, not one disapproving or empathetic word.

The former president, it will be recalled, is an old hand at this sort of thing.

Going off track like this is not new for the man who 30 years ago was one of the architects of peace with Egypt, but who since then has not stopped vilifying Israel, comparing its political system to that of South Africa during apartheid, ignoring Israel's desire for peace, which is no less real than its errors, even denying its suffering.

A year ago, he told CBS that for years his beloved Hamas had not committed any terrorist attacks resulting in civilian casualties – this, a few months after the assassination of six people at the Karni Terminal, and the attack on Aug. 30, 2004, which killed 16 passengers in two buses in Beersheba.

And it is one thing to speak to CBS, and another to say these words, which are unofficial but have indisputable moral authority, to the belligerents.

It is one thing to say, in Dublin on June 19, 2007, that the true criminals are not those who proclaim, like Mashaal, that "before dying" Israel must be "humiliated and degraded," but those who would prefer that these charming characters be pushed out of the circles of power, sooner or later, with a distinct preference for "sooner." It is quite another to come over in person and put all one's weight behind the most radical elements, those who are the most hostile to peace, the most profoundly nihilistic in the Palestinian camp.

The truth is, if one wished to discredit the other side, to fully humiliate and ridicule the only Palestinian leader (Mahmoud Abbas) who at the risk of his life continues to believe in the solution of two states – if with a word one wanted to ruin the last dreams of men and women of goodwill who still believe in peace – one would be absolutely on the right track.

So what happened to this man, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate?

Is it the vanity of someone who is no longer so important, who wants a last 15 minutes in the spotlight before he has to leave the stage forever?

Is it the senility of a politician who has lost touch with reality and with his own party? Barack Obama, even more clearly than his rival, has just reminded us that it will not be possible to "sit down" with the leaders of Hamas unless they are prepared to "renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and respect past agreements."

Could he be suffering from a variant of self-hatred, or in this case a hatred of his own past as the Great Peacemaker?

All hypotheses are permitted. Whatever the reason, Mr. Carter has demonstrated an unusual capacity to transform a political error into a disastrous moral mistake.

Jimmy reads Rawls too, I understand. HT: KPF

There's Something Refreshing About a bad Review

A Belated Message from Anne Frank

Story Here

Notice the Lower Case 'P' in 'pope.'

Pope Makes First Papal Visit To Six Flags

EUREKA, MO-Benedict granted a private audience to dignitaries Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam at the Moose Burger Lodge in DC Comics Plaza.

I Am Not Quite Sure What The Following Picture Means, But I Agree: Boycott Beijing!!!

There was an excellent article in theThe NYT last week here arguing that it was Nazi Germany, with the wonderful mountain climber Leni, who engineered the same ceremony for the same reason: that China might take its place in the fascist sun!

The Relay of Fire Ignited by the Nazis
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: April 14, 2008
If you want to know how the Olympic torch really began its “Journey of Harmony,” as the Chinese call its current relay, if you want to see why the torch has had to pass through a human obstacle course composed of protesters, SWAT teams and police in San Francisco, Paris and London, then do not look to Tibet’s grievances against China. Look to the opening of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film, “Olympia.”
In that homage to Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Games the origins of this ritual are revealed. Never before had a lighted torch been relayed from a Greek temple in Olympia to an athletic competition, let alone by thousands of runners trying to keep it from being extinguished.
So Riefenstahl creates the myth the Greeks never got around to telling, creating a filmic counterpart to the opening of Wagner’s “Ring,” in which an entire world gradually emerges from elemental fragments. The camera begins by surveying a misty landscape of ruins, of shattered pillars and overgrown grasses. Restless and circling, the camera reveals a Greek temple standing amid the stones. Heads and the bodies of Greek statues appear in an eerie erotic landscape. Under the sensuous caresses of Riefenstahl’s lens, a naked discus thrower comes to life, polished stone becoming muscular flesh. Another athlete prepares to throw a javelin, its trajectory leading toward a bowl of fire. Lighting the Olympic torch, another nude acolyte triumphantly raises it aloft like Wagner’s Siegfried displaying his sword.
Humanity is given its purpose; the relay begins. The torch is conveyed from one bearer to the next and ends in Berlin at a 110,000-seat stadium where it ignites an altar of flame. Through shimmering heat the sun itself can be seen, vibrating in sympathy. And Hitler salutes the cheering crowds.
This passing of the torch thus demonstrates a lineage of inheritance — a historical relay — making Nazi Germany the living heir to Ancient Greece. A claim was being staked.

sub Beijing for Berlin and 1938 for 2008 and I fail to see the difference.

If You Have Spent Any Time in Essex, No Explaination is Needed

HT: KPC

It Can Happens to the Best of Us: Bond car plunges into Lake Garda

Sad story here.

Sure: Two Jags John Suffers from Bulimia

Two Jags Prescott on bulimia battle

Yes. And as Pink Floyd conclusively showed, Pigs do Fly!

Vive le resistance conservatif

Compliments of JPK

The Cats Look Alive to Me

HT: KPC

Better Find my Leicas!

Click to read the fine print.

HT: AS
(I believe it's for real).

Amazingly, Not From the Onion

By Emma Graham-Harrison Reuters - Friday, April 11 10:58 am

BEIJING (Reuters) - A wheelchair-bound Chinese torch bearer has rocketed to national fame after fending off protesters in Paris, becoming a symbol of China's defiance of global demonstrations backing Tibet.
(Advertisement)

Jin Jing, a 27 year-old amputee and Paralympic fencer has been called the "angel in a wheelchair" and is being celebrated by television chat shows, newspapers and online musical videos after fiercely defending the Olympic torch during the Paris leg of the troubled international relay.

Protesters denouncing Chinese policy in Tibet threw themselves at Jin. Most were wrestled away by police but at least one reached her wheelchair and tried to wrench the torch away.

Jin clung tenaciously to what has become a controversial icon of the Beijing Olympic Games until her attacker was pulled off.

Her look of fierce determination as she shielded the torch, captured in snapshots of the scene, has now spread throughout China, inflaming simmering public anger at the protests.

"I thought we had lost in France, but seeing the young disabled torch bearer Jin Jing's radiant smile of conviction, I know in France we did not lose, we won!" said one of tens of thousands of Internet postings about the incident.

...

Jin, cheerful and photogenic, has emerged to embody nationalist indignation at Western criticisms and protests.

"I still feel very angry now, and I think the man was very irrational," she told Reuters in an interview.

"Hosting the Olympics is such a good thing for our country, so why do they want to ruin it?"


(Additional Reporting by Guo Shipeng, Nick Mulvenney and Sally Huang; Editing by David Fogarty)

Bored of Google Earth? Just Add the Onion

Here is is.

On Canada I think it goes a bit easy.

Living in the shadow of its southern neighbor, the nation of Canada will never be as great as the U.S. so long as it continues to burden citizens with universal health care, refuses to drill for oil in federally protected wildlife reserves, and neglects its duty to blindly support unilateral invasions of Middle Eastern states.

On Quebec, accurate:

A combination of french fries, gravy, cheese curds, and a disregard for one's health.

Too harsh, however, on Italy:

Italy is known as one of the most racially intolerant nations in the world, where citizens base their opinions of other ethnicities on appearance and stereotypes alone. But then, what more do you expect from a bunch of greasy, filthy womanizers?

It's Amazing to See How Much Crap is in The Heavens

Click on photo to see crap in greater detail.

Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational - roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

More info here.