] Bored Boy Behind President Gets Nationwide Attention

awesome.

Bored Boy Behind President Gets Nationwide Attention

] In that statement, Clarke claimed that Slammer "disabled
] some root servers, the heart of Internet traffic." Not
] true. A report from the RIPE Network Coordination
] Center--one of the Internet's four regional
] registries--said that at most the worm slowed
] connectivity to two of the 13 root servers and did not
] disable any of them. "This did not cause any degradation
] in (domain name system) service," RIPE concluded.
]
] Clarke also claimed that "a national election/referendum
] in Canada was canceled" due to computer mischief. At
] best, that was a reckless exaggeration. What actually
] happened is that Canada's New Democratic Party held a
] leadership convention and found their Internet voting to
] be sluggish. CBC reported that voting was completed just
] 45 minutes behind schedule.

Declan republished this old article in which he accused Rickard Clarke of being a bit of an exagerator.

The credibility of Richard Clarke

Jeremy wrote:
] Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of the
] militant Palestinian group Hamas, was killed early Monday by
] an Israeli missile that struck him as he left a mosque in Gaza
] City.
]
] Black smoke curled over Gaza City as Palestinians began
] burning tires in the streets and demonstrators chanted for
] revenge.

This is quite perplexing. I can't find anyone outside of Isreal who has expressed support for this action. The UN, the EU, England, and France all condemed this action. The US has distanced itself from it and made a (likely futile) plea for calm. Stratfor has publically expressed that is doesn't understand the reasoning behind it.

Sure, this guy is a bad guy, but nevertheless, this is almost certainly going to provoke an escalation of violence in the region, mostly reactionary and senseless. What the fuck were they thinking?

RE: Leader of Hamas Is Killed in Israeli Strike

] Text messages were quickly circulating in Taiwan with
] questions about whether the shooting had been staged to
] gain a sympathy vote for the president.
]
] Sisy Chen - a defector from President Chen's party who is
] now an outspoken foe - also noted that his security
] detail had visited the shooting scene and the hospital
] beforehand.

Presidential assassination is the new pop.

eTaiwanNews.com/Shooting raises questions, provokes conspiracy theorists

This is short and sweet.

Rumsfeld gets nailed.

This week's Onion must-read.

Rumsfeld then declared the tournament open by symbolically shattering a block of obsidian with his prosthetic dragon's claw—the powerful weapon grafted onto his right wrist after 2003 champion Li severed his hand with manji butterfly swords.
..
"Man, they ain't seen unorthodox-but-effective until they seen me," said the languid Jack "Chocolate Lightning" Garrison, the two-time East Coast Freestyle Kung-Fu champion once described by SuckaPunch magazine as "six feet of stone-cold brotha and 10 inches of afro barely contained in a fly lemon-yellow jumpsuit."

Onion:Rumsfeld Hosts No-Holds-Barred Martial Arts Tournament

] Many voters blamed outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria
] Aznar's staunch support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq for a
] series of rush-hour bombings on commuter trains in Madrid
] Thursday that left 200 persons dead.

The government's rush to blame the ETA blew up in their face, if you'll excuse the poor choice of wording, driving home the "get out of the middle east" message even harder then it would have been driven had the government handled the situation objectively from the outset.

I think Al'Q ended up getting exactly what it wanted here in the short term. Also an indirect victory for the ETA. However, the real question will be how Europe reacts on the whole.

Spain's Socialist Party Claims Victory (washingtonpost.com)

] An investigation that definitively pointed to an al-Qaeda
] engineered attack would sow panic in Spain. It would also
] work in favour of the Socialist candidate for prime
] minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, even though he
] has said in the past a Socialist government would be
] willing to meet "moderate demands" from separatist
] groups.
]
] Investigators are not likely to have any conclusive proof
] before tomorrow's vote on whether the attacks were the
] work of ETA, al-Qaeda or even both groups working
] together.
]
] As the millions of Spaniards who marched yesterday
] demonstrated, the authorship of the terrorist strikes
] should not be used as a campaign issue. Mr. Aznar and his
] government should wait for the facts instead of resorting
] to political expediency.

Ding...

National Post: Aznar fingured ETA for policial reasons

] I'm just leaving the silent march at the Spanish Embassy.
] A small crowd of two to three hundred gatheed at the
] embassy, and then at noon, walked across the street in
] silence to Washington Circle, across from the George
] Washington University Hospitals.

Instapundit.com: Pictures from anti-terror demonstration in Washington

] I went over to San Francisco's Spanish consulate this
] afternoon, and they had posted signs indicating that
] there was a book of condolences available for signing by
] the public. Their office hours are 9-2, so they were
] already closed, but presumably they'll have it out for a
] few more days.

When I got home form work last night the top story on CNN was Gay Marriage. Disgusting. The people of Spain have put their lives on the line. In Afghanistan. In Iraq. And now in the streets of Madrid. They've done it because they support you and your fight against these kinds of threats. And yet I sense that in this country people want to abstract themselves from the situation. Its over there. Its not our concern. When the WTC got hit we expected Europe to support us, and they did. We ought to have the same respect for them.

101-280: Condolences