About five weeks ago My Pet Jawa broke a story about al-Zarquawi's main site getting hacked. It was only down for a while, but Rusty got a screen capture that went into the post: the page was black, with an American Flag across the top and a crossed-out picture of Bin Laden.

A month later a related site was hacked, and this went unfixed for multiple days. Meantime, In the Bullpen was on the case, and he posted the event—with a screen capture of the graphic, a penguin holding a full-auto rifle and the legend, "if you host them, your [sic] next."

Now, the MSM (with MSNBC in the lead) are using screen captures from both postings without giving either gentleman credit for breaking the stories or saving the images for posterity. The attitude appears to be "I found it on the internet fair and square, and I neither need to authenticate it nor give the blogger credit." It's sloppy and amoral, but other than that it's a great approach.

And then there is the current online controversey about whether Americans should be hosting these types of sites in the first place. There have been attempts to shut them down, but at this point various Federal agencies are ordering companies to leave the sites up. So I'm not signing the petitions quite yet (or pressuring the hosting companies), in the hopes that our spooks and special ops guys are mere inches away from bagging Zarquawi.

A girl can hope.

And when we do capture him, I hope it's the Marines who have custody of him first. Because I think they would treat him in a very respectful way at any point wherein there were cameras nearby. That's all I really ask.

Posted by: Attila at 01:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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When I heard about the Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam thing, I was pretty appalled by the Feds' actions. This is really hard, because I really like that man's music, and because he appears, on the surface, to be a "moderate" voice in Islam: something we want, presumably, to encourage. After all, he condemned 9/ll and the actions in Beslan in no uncertain terms.

But if he's given a lot of money to Hamas, he is funding terrorism, and we need to change the mind-set that makes a little killing of innocents here, a few suicide bombings there, okay as long as you mean well.

I love this guy; I can't help it. And I can't help but agree with James:

Truly bizarre. Surely, this guy isn't a sufficient threat to national security that they couldn't have waited until the plan got to Dulles to detain him.

But we need to stop the funding of groups like Hamas, and stop conferring respectability on those who transfer funds to them. I didn't buy Teaser and the Firecat on CD with the notion of killing innocent people.

And what we cannot have is a system in which celebrity confers a sort of immunity upon people, who can do whatever they like as long as they are famous.

I love some of what Islam does: starting schools and the like. But we just cannot welcome rich guys who fund terrorists coming and going as they please.

The whole thing is painful to me, though.

Now I've been cryin' lately, thinking about the world as it is,
Why must we go on hating; why can't we live in bliss?

Posted by: Attila at 01:53 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Protein Wisdom gives us "9 French government excuses for forging Niger yellow-cake documents," including:

1. The US hyperpower needed to be taught a lesson, and France—well, France brings the lesson hammer!

2. Those were simply practice forgeries. Our real forgeries totally incriminate the Jews.

And so on. Scoot, now.

Posted by: Attila at 02:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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