You Tube, you suck

The company has pulled down the “We Con the World” video put out by some young Israelis and sung to the tune of “We are the World”. It was a parody and clearly falls under the fair use doctrine of copyright law, but it was a video of Jews condemning Palestinian terrorists and that was that, so far as You Tube was concerned. There is a war going on here, and we’re losing it.

UPDATE: I’d forgotten – Google has bought You Tube – that explains everything: do all evil.

Obama: $400 million for the Hamas

So we taxpayers are now subsidizing terrorists? Is there anything this man won’t spend our money on? I’m not by nature a conspiracy fan, but Obama increasingly appears determined to run our country into ruinous debt so that he can impose his dream of a socialized, centralized government. Either that, or he’s a moron, but he did go to Harvard, right?

Afghanistan loaded with mineral wealth

The NYT says it could change the entire economy. From what I know of history, corrupt governments that come into oil or mineral money just keep it for themselves and the people continue in their poverty. I don’t see this as a game-changer.

Quelle surprise: Chinese “organic” food is contaminated

You call him Fido, we call him organic!

I try to avoid buying anything from China on general principle but I certainly wouldn’t buy their food.

[S]erious questions about certification in China have been raised by the United States Agriculture Department. The agency, which uses private groups to conduct most inspections, has banned a leading American inspector from operating in China because of a conflict of interest that strikes at the heart of the organics’ guarantee. The federal agency also plans to send an audit team to China this year to broadly review the certification process.

Fudrucker takes on Gibbon

A (generic) Gibbon

Fudrucker and his Demmerkrats expect to challenge Lile Gibbon for whatever seat it is she holds in Hartford. Hmm – Their convention has come and gone and they couldn’t find anyone willing to run against her? These guys sound dispirited.

But if they really can’t find anyone local, how about South Carolina’s Alvin Greene?

So who wants the Waloons, anyway?

Flanders Fields

Flemish separatists win election – Belgium to split? I’m not at all sure what Belgium has contributed to western civilization besides the killing fields of WW I and that 19th Century pleasure hole, the Belgian Congo (Heart of Darkness was a pretty good book, though). Maybe France should absorb its fellow linguists and the north should rejoin Holland.

Greenwich Time photo editor strikes again

Does anyone in this picture look like Tony Blair?

THE DISH: Tony Blair, Bill Clinton team up for 9/11 remembrance benefit gala

Shame: Greenwich bullies pick on British midgets

To their credit, they did let the short fellows win.

Paul Korngiebel, left, playing for team USA heads the ball over Martin Waters, playing for the English team,

Neato

Japanese space mission returns.

SYDNEY, Jun (Reuters) – A Japanese space probe, which scientists hope is carrying a sample from an asteroid, has returned to Earth, blazing a spectacular trail across the sky in the Australian outback, witnesses said Monday.

The Hayabusa probe is returning home after a seven-year mission which took it to the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa, on which it landed in 2005. Scientists hope it has brought back a sample, the first time one has come back to Earth from any other world, except our own Moon.

An Australian defense official speaking from the area told Reuters Monday the probe lit up the sky as it returned on schedule around midnight local time (1430 GMT) over the Woomera weapons testing range in South Australia state.

“It was like a shooting star with a starburst behind it. It was fantastic,” the official told Reuters by telephone, saying officials were on their way to discover its exact landing site and retrieve its contents.

Teams from NASA in a flying laboratory have been deployed to watch the craft’s arrival, along with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which sent the 500-kilogram probe on its mission in 2003.

The war between state employees and taxpayers is extending

Obama: time to bail out the states with more debt. From Calculated Risk:

From Jackie Calmes and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at the NY Times: Obama Presses for Aid to Cities and States

President Obama on Saturday implored Congress to provide more aid to states and cities to blunt “the devastating economic impact of budget cuts” by local governments that imperil the jobs of teachers, the police, firefighters and other public employees.

In a letter to Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders, Mr. Obama said the “mounting employment crisis” in the states “could set back the pace of our economic recovery.” … education secretary, Arne Duncan, has said that without federal aid, up to 300,000 fewer teachers would be in classrooms this fall …

The WaPo quotes Obama as writing there will be “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” without the additional funds.

The Jones Act strikes back

From Instapundit:

DAVID WARREN: “We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand. This is amusing, in a way: a memorable illustration of … the sort of stuff I keep going on about. Which is to say, the law of unintended consequences, which pertains with especial virulence to all acts of government regulation.”

UPDATE: History of the 1920 Jones Act here. It hasn’t improved with age.

Our friends the Pakis

Turns out, they’re in cahoots with the Taliban

Pakistani support for the Taliban in Afghanistan runs far deeper than a few corrupt police officers, however. The Sunday Times can reveal that it is officially sanctioned at the highest levels of Pakistan’s government.

Pakistan’s own intelligence agency, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), is said to be represented on the Taliban’s war council — the Quetta shura. Up to seven of the 15-man shura are believed to be ISI agents.

The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, Amrullah Saleh, who resigned last week, said: “The ISI is part of the landscape of destruction in this country, no doubt, so it will be a waste of time to provide evidence of ISI involvement. They are a part of it.”

Testimony by western and Afghan security officials, Taliban commanders, former Taliban ministers and a senior Taliban emissary show the extent to which the ISI manipulates the Taliban’s strategy in Afghanistan.

Pakistani support for the Taliban is prolonging a conflict that has cost the West billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. Last week 32 Nato soldiers were killed.

According to a report published today by the London School of Economics, which backs up months of research by this newspaper, “Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude” in Afghanistan.