When the left starts talking about corporate censorship, and I read this story, I start thinking they have a point. USA Today:

Athletes may be the center of attention at the Olympic Games, but don't expect to hear directly from them online — or see snapshots or video they've taken.
The International Olympic Committee is barring competitors, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from writing firsthand accounts for news and other Web sites.

An exception is if an athlete has a personal Web site that they did not set up specifically for the Games.

The IOC's rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists — and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first.

Participants in the games may respond to written questions from reporters or participate in online chat sessions — akin to a face-to-face or telephone interview — but they may not post journals or online diaries, blogs in Internet parlance, until the Games end Aug. 29.

FASCISTS Pigs

Posted by: Rusty at 11:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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That's Drudge's story and he's sticking to it:

PRESIDENT BUSH PLANS TRIP TO OLYMPICS, SOURCES TELL DRUDGE. MAY ATTEND IRAQI SOCCER GAME. 'TRIP BEING PLANNED IN SECRET'... SECURITY CONCERNS AND 'DISRUPTION' OF GAMES AT ISSUE... 'THE PRESIDENT WILL NOT GO, IF IT BECOMES TOO MUCH OF A DISTRACTION,' TOP SOURCE REVEALED LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON... TOP BUSH SOURCE CAUTIONS PLANNING FOR TRIP IS BEING RESEARCHED AND IS IN PRELIMINARY STAGE. TRIP WOULD BE FOR FINALS AUG 28 [SATURDAY]... DEVELOPING...

PS-The all caps thing IS annoying.

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Ok, well, AS is still silent, but silence is consent under the law (or so I am told). I guess his Club Med vacation was not in Zanzabar. Either that, or it was in Zanzabar and AS is in a whole lotta trouble and may not be returning any time soon---say, 25 years. This Guardian story via Robert Spencer:

A law banning gay sex has come into effect in Zanzibar, with homosexual men threatened with 25-year jail terms and lesbians facing seven-year sentences.

"This is what we have been aspiring for. If the government takes such steps, the country will really move ahead," said Sheikh Muhammed Said, a local Islamic leader.

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Did I say Islamic? I meant Llama Style.

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Blogs for Bush is turning out to be a better assett than I had foreseen. Where did the dark-side fail me?

I don't go in for this conspiracy stuff, but it is fun to see how connected individuals and groups tend to be. Remember the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon theory you learned in Sociology? Surely Kerry's own camp is no less 'connected' to MoveOn.org than Bush is to the Swifties.

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John Kerry assumes the Al Gore Florida strategery. When you look like you're going to lose, hire a lawyer. Via Blogs for Bush this CNN story:

John Kerry has hired an Internet-savvy Democrat to run his presidential campaign's online communications, a move that raises new questions about the link between his campaign and the independent groups that run TV ads on his behalf.
Zach Exley, the director of special projects for the MoveOn PAC, is going to the Kerry campaign to become its director of online communications and organization.

Exley also worked during the Democratic presidential primary for Howard Dean, helping Dean set up his web-based organization.

Since Kerry became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in early March, the MoveOn PAC has spent more than $2.5 million on TV ads that attack President Bush.

But under the new campaign-finance law, those efforts cannot be coordinated with the Kerry campaign.

A MoveOn statement said Exley and the staff of all MoveOn entities have agreed that they will not be in contact through the election period to avoid the appearance of coordination, "even though federal election rules permit some forms of communication."

Via James Joyner news that Kerry is also calling on book retailers to recall Unfit for Command. The Al Gorization of the Kerry campaign thus being completed since there was no call for book retailers to witdthdraw Kerry's official bio Tour of Duty. This doesn't smack of Gore's strategery of demanding vote recounts only where beneficial to him---no, this is the same strategy.

Beck, over at INCITE, has this to say about the dueling ads of MoveOn and SBVT:"there's so much shit on TV these days that scientists are on the brink of a massive breakthrough of using radio waves to fertilize crops." Hip-boots for me, but I think John Kerry needs some mouthwash.

Beth Donovan really makes the most thorough case as to why JFK-lite is full of crap on this issue: "He does not respond to the accusations in the ads - he simply attacks the Veterans as liars." Would I sound too geeky if I quoted Gandalf here? "You seem to be very comfortable using the word liar."

Kate believes this is such a massive mistake as to accuse JFK-lite of being a Rove operative. DU theory noted, and duly approved!!

Jeff Soyer goes so far as to call Kerry a traitor for pissing on the 1st Amendment. I wouldn't go that far, and let's remember the it was Bush who signed McCain/Feingold and is also condemning independent organizations right to free speech.

Finally, In the Bullpen notes that a quick visit to the local bookstore shows that retailers are already burying Unfit for Command on the backshelves....not the usual place for bestsellers which are promulently displayed up front. Of course, I can't check out the theory...Arlen has no real bookstores, unlessing you count the "Grace and Blessings Books and Gifts" on third street, or the "Christian Science Reading Room" as a bookstore.

These and other links stolen borrowed from Jeff Quinton.

PS-"You are not seeing this post. This post is not happening."--says John Kerry's new spokesman.

PSS-QandO reminds me that Media Matters is behind the campaign to have the Swifties book pulled from shelves. Need I remind you, dear readers, that Olliver Willis works for Media Matters?

Posted by: Rusty at 08:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Blog buddy and Imperial Undersecretary of Asian Affairs (Hong Kong Bureau), Simon, has had a new baby!! Congratulations!!

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I'd pull an INDC best of, but the premise is all wrong for this site. Can you believe I'm going to a 'retreat' but not actually leaving town? If they ask us to start doing trust exercises I'm bolting.

PS-In case I bolt the meeting, I'm going Bigfoot Hunting. I'm serious. I really have gone Bigfoot Hunting. (read, snipe hunt)

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Buried deep in a story about how Franco-American journalist Micah Garen was to be freed because of the relentless efforts of the peace-loving Muqtada al Sadr (future Nobel Laureate), I found a single paragraph about a Turkish company caving to demands that it leave Iraq or one of their employees would be beheaded.

The only good I can see coming out of this is that at least this poor guy won't die. And, at least it was a private corporation--not a government (I'm looking in your direction Spain and Phllippines). Record-Journal:

Also Thursday, a Turkish company announced it was withdrawing its employees from Iraq in an effort to save the life of a worker taken hostage by Iraqi militants. Turkish media said the kidnappers have threatened to kill the hostage if the company didn't leave within three days.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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UPDATE 9/13: Another murdered hostage, this one Durmus Kumdereli from Turkey, was released today. News, pics, and video here.

Another one. Murat Yuce was the name of the Turkish hostage executed last month. He was shot, rather than beheaded.

Al Jazeera:

A Turkish television channel aired footage of a Turkish hostage in Iraq who said that his captors had given two Turkish companies 72 hours to quit the country in exchange for his life.

The NTV news channel identified the man as Aytullah Gezmen, who went missing in Iraq last month together with another Turk, Murat Yuce.

more...

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I'm going to a 'retreat' tomorrow. Worse than a regular retreat, this one doesn't even have the charm of going out of town. Instead, the powers that be rented out a bed and breakfast in town. Charming, they say. I say bah-humbug!! Posting will be light or non-existent. Stupid meetings.....

Posted by: Rusty at 08:16 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Did you know Noam Chomsky has a blog? Ghost of a Flea is in an all out race to beat Chomsky in the TTLB Ecosystem, begging for linkage. I just checked my own TTLB rating, and I beat Chomsky by a full 192 blogs!!! Just two days ago I was another 20 blogs ahead (see what happens when you don't post for two days).

Since I'm sure Chomsky will begin to climb as soon as word gets out about his blog, here are my two goals:

a) never link Chomsky again. The TTLB Ecosystem is based on number of unique incoming links. NEVER link Chomsky. If you want to say something about his blog, don't link it. Why? This post explains it with a follow up post here.

b) get banned at Zmag, where Chomsky's blog has a home. You can wear that as a badge of honor. "I was banned at Zmag!" No, I take this one back. Zmag wants you to front $3 bucks for the honor of comenting. No wonder Chomsky has zero comments to his posts. You think any of his readers even has a job?

Those are my goals, and should be yours too!!!

UPDATE: Tuning Spork more thoroughly fisks Chomsky and doesn't drop a link!

Also, kudos to Mark and Comrade Rusty (wink) for also taking the pledge!

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Pakistan released it's list of most wanted terrorists today. Below is a picture. In the top center slot is Amjad Hussain 'Farooqi', wanted for the grizzly beheading execution of Daniel Pearl. Not shown is center square, Whoopi Goldberg.

PS-'Beheading is un-Islamic'

Posted by: Rusty at 02:05 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Yawn. I've heard this one before. Will somebody wake me up when Sadr is dead please?

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Is it better to be loved or feared? Remember, John Kerry thinks the former, G.W. Bush the latter. Pakistan helps us because they fear us. VOA:

Pakistani police say they have arrested a suspected Arab al-Qaida member following a shootout in the western city of Peshawar.

PS-(OT)Llamma Butchers (that ought to put you back onto the TTLB Ecosystem)

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The Australian:

A PUSH by South Korea's accident-prone President Roh Moo-hyun to identify aged former collaborators with the Japanese occupation forces has netted its first victim -- the leader of his own party. Uri Party chairman Shin Ki-nam was forced to resign yesterday after admitting his father collaborated with the Japanese as a military policeman.

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Once again, this is not looking good. I have no bone to pick with Georgia, I just worry this could lead to a regional conflict. Background here. More below. more...

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This. That is more than mere potential life--it is a human being.

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Kenneth Silber has an interesting piece over at TCS in which he proposes a new word to describe libertarian leaning conservatives--fusionists:

Fusionism is the idea, named and developed decades ago by Frank Meyer of National Review, that conservatism and libertarianism share a common agenda. Thus, the fusionist believes that conservatives and libertarians ought to be allies -- and indeed that their respective philosophies are largely or essentially combinable into a coherent body of thought.

Might I second the motion for neolibertarian? The term flows better than fusionist, which makes me think of the music of Kenny-G or Chuck Mangione more than any thing else. more...

Posted by: Rusty at 12:33 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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You don't post for two days and the whole world falls apart. First, you get the Swifties being fisked all over the mainstream media while they let Kerry get away with murder (and I mean that literally, if you take Kerry at his word that he was a war criminal). This is what Noam Chomsky calls the 'selection bias' or something to that effect (yes, I'm too lazy to pop open my copy of Manufaturing Consent!)

On another front you have a (yet another--what is the plural form of truce?? tuces? truci?) truce with al Sadr being brokered and broken twice since my last post. Didn't any one at State ever read The Boy Who Cried Wolf?

So, I'm going to just ignore everything that has happened in the last 72 hours. Tuesday and Wednesday didn't happen. Ah, this is what it feels like to be a Democrat! It's not as bad as I expected.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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