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14. juli 2005
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Normblog has a very solid debunking of the "root causes" apologists who jumped to blame the London terrorist attacks on Bush and Blair before the bodies were even cold.
Hat tip Roger.
PS: I'd also recommend checking out Alan Johnson's letter to a friend, discussing how the radical left made itself an ally of Islamic fundamentalism.
11:03:56 PM 
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What can possibly make conservative bloggers like Captain Ed and Michelle Malkin agree with senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry? That has to be senator Rick Santorum, who stupidly blamed the Catholic Church sex scandal on Boston "liberalism."
What drew the concentrated ire of the Bay State's congressional delegation was Santorum's decision this week to repeat his three-year-old comment that liberalism was at the root of the scandal over child sex abuse in the church.
"Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture," Santorum wrote in a July 12, 2002 article for the Web site Catholic Online. "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."
Since then, of course, the storm has spread. There is probably quite a few things that can be blamed on "liberalism", but the pedophile scandal in the conservative Roman Catholic hierarchy is certainly not one of them.
This was a stupid attempt at deflecting the moral breakdown of precisely conservative religionists, who preach virtue only to practice the most vile form of vice.
9:36:52 PM
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The fourth bomber has been identified.
Investigators believe that the fourth London bomber was Lindsey Germaine, a Jamaican-born Briton thought to have occupied a house in Aylesbury that was raided by armed police last night.
All the others were men born in Britain from parents of Pakistani origins.
No details yet about him being a Muslim, but it's hard to imagine he was not.
The police are also hunting for an unknown number of people who participated in the terrorist operation. CCTV coverage from Luton station seems to indicate a possible fifth bomber who were close to the four suicide bombers on the fatal day.
Then there are apparently two candidates for being the bomb makers:
Police believe that they have identified the British-born man who masterminded the suicide bomb attack. The leader of the terrorist cell is believed to be in his thirties and of Pakistani origin. He arrived at a British port last month and is understood to have left the country the day before four suicide bombers murdered at least 52 people.
Security sources believe that he has been involved in previous terrorist operations and has links with al-Qaeda followers in the United States. It is also believed that he visited the bombers in Leeds and identified targets on the Tube.
Then there is a chemistry teacher.
Scotland Yard were also looking last night for an Egyptian-born chemistry lecturer who was teaching until recently at Leeds University. M. Asdi el-Nashar, 33, is understood to have rented one of the Leeds addresses where explosives were found. He left Britain recently after telling neighbours of difficulties with his visa. The lecturer, who studied in the US, is understood to have known some of the bombers.
The university has said there were no problems with his visa. The profession may well indicate serious knowledge of explosives.
4:51:05 PM
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Your blog may come back to haunt you when you apply for a job. An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses how applicants for an academic job left a very bad impression on the committee through their blogging.
In some cases, a Google search of the candidate's name turned up his or her blog. Other candidates told us about their Web site, even making sure we had the URL so we wouldn't fail to find it. In one case, a candidate had mentioned it in the cover letter. We felt compelled to follow up in each of those instances, and it turned out to be every bit as eye-opening as a train wreck.
Ouch.
In once of the instances, however, the applicant (in the humanities, obviously) was disqualified because he was a geek.
But the site quickly revealed that the true passion of said blogger's life was not academe at all, but the minutiae of software systems, server hardware, and other tech exotica. It's one thing to be proficient in Microsoft Office applications or HTML, but we can't afford to have our new hire ditching us to hang out in computer science after a few weeks on the job.
And, obviously, those who know a lot about software systems and servers can't possibly be proficient in the humanities.
4:12:00 PM
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The Mirror has an interview with an 18-year-old Muslim boy, using the assumed name Muhammed Yusuf, who was approached by two strangers trying to recruit him as a suicide bomber. His father had been a pillar of the local north London community, and when he died the young boy found solace in the local Mosque. There he was one day approached by two bearded men who wanted to exploit his troubled times and make him into a suicide bomber. He describes himself as a typical naive 14-year-old, and the men appealed to his emotions, his sense of community and even his sex drive.
Then one evening I attended a gathering in a home in London. After everyone else had left the two men took me aside and asked me if I was angry about the West's persecution of Ummah, the Islamic nation. They pulled out a video cassette and slipped it into the machine. The tape started with masked men talking in Arabic. I didn't understand everything so they paused the tape to translate and explain what was going on.
Then I watched in horror as grotesque footage was played of Chechen fighters being executed by Russian soldiers. The men were shot in the head, with blood going everywhere. It was the first time I'd seen such horrific things and I felt physically sick, hardly able to watch.
"You see what's happening to your brothers and sisters?" one of the men told me as other images of Muslims being killed in Palestine and Iraq flashed up. "But these people are going instantly to heaven." The other added: "Imagine how it feels to be one of these brothers, to know you are about to be rewarded with eternal life and the highest place in Jannah."
After the video had ended the two men sat on either side of me and began to discuss how glorious it would be to die for the great cause.
They promised that if I died that way I would get 70 virgins in heaven and even talked about how I would be given a place to have sex, covered in diamonds and pearls, where even angels couldn't see me.
Luckily, this young man had the sense to reject this propaganda as a corruption of his faith, and reported the incident to the authorities.
But I can't help wondering if other young, vulnerable Muslim men would have been as strong.
I guess we now know the answer. How many more out there?
3:49:53 PM
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They certainly have ridiculous lawsuits in France, too. A group of French cleaning ladies have organised a car-sharing scheme to get to work cheaper and quicker than taking the bus. And therein lies the rub: the bus company is now suing the women and their employer for "an act of unfair and parasitical competition".
The women, who live in Moselle and work five days a week at EU offices in Luxembourg, are being taken to court by Transports Schiocchet Excursions, which runs a service along the route. It wants the women to be fined and their cars confiscated.
A lower court has already thrown the case out of, but the bus company now tries again.
1:09:57 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 30.07.2005; 02:58:12.
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