[Quote:]

Looking out the window During final approach, you see the flaps extend and feel the landing gear drop down and lock into place. The aircraft rolls abruptly and begins spiraling downward like a slowly turning bit in a power drill. By the time you figure out what’s happening, the wheels touch ground with a reassuring thud and the airplane rolls to a safe stop on the runway.

What was that?

Before jumping out of your seat to complain to the pilot, consider the good news: You’ve just avoided being shot down by a missile. Welcome to Baghdad International Airport.

Hundreds of civilian aircraft take off and land at Baghdad International every week. These aren’t the friendliest of skies, however. Outside the heavily defended airfield perimeter are bands of insurgents who occasionally target civilian and military aircraft with surface-to-air missiles. To avoid being knocked out of the sky, pilots employ an old, trusted tactic: the spiral, or corkscrew, landing approach. Once the plane arrives at about 18,000 feet—still safely beyond the range of weapons like the SA-7 shoulder-fired missile—the pilot banks sharply and descends toward the runway in a slow, tight circle, like someone walking down a spiral staircase. During the spiral the crew keeps an eye out for other air traffic, and for anything coming at them from the ground. After several turns, the pilot pulls out of the rotation with careful timing, straightens out, and lands. The whole thing takes seven to 10 minutes, roughly the same as a regular approach, but it all takes place directly overhead, instead of beginning 20 miles from the runway.

Though it sounds like something from a flying circus, the corkscrew is actually a straightforward tactic that uses fairly standard piloting skills. Airline pilots sometimes use a similar maneuver, descending quickly through clouds to get under bad weather. With a little on-the-job training, spiraling down to the runway becomes second nature, says Kurt Neuenschwander, international chief pilot for Air Serv International, a nonprofit organization that flies relief workers and supplies into Iraq. Landing in Baghdad, he has flown Embraer 120s, which can handle a maximum bank angle of 60 degrees. Neuenschwander keeps it under 55 to be safe.

[Quote:]

Manchester Airport is to start charging people collecting passengers from its three terminals regardless of how quickly travellers are picked up.

Traditionally motorists collecting from Terminal 1 are given 10 minutes free parking but from 1 November they will be directed to the short term car park.

The airport says the new measures will help boost security and safety.

But guess what it will really “boost”… from free to £1.80:

Parking for less than 30 minutes in a short term bay usually costs £2.30 but this is being reduced to £1.80 – a saving of just over 20% – across all the airport’s short term car parks from 1 November.

[Quote:]

“The RIAA has dropped the Elektra v. Wilke case in Chicago. This is the case in which Mr. Wilke had moved for summary judgment, stating that:

1. He is not “Paule Wilke” which is the name he was sued under.

2. He has never possessed on his computer any of the songs listed in exhibit A [the list of songs the RIAA's investigator downloaded]. He only had a few of the songs from exhibit B [the screenshot] on his computer, and those were from legally purchased CDs owned by Mr. Wilke.

3. He has never used any “online media distribution system” to download, distribute, or make available for distribution, any of plaintiffs’ copyrighted recordings.

The RIAA’s initial response to the summary judgment motion, prior to dropping the case, had been to cross-move for discovery, indicating that it did not have enough evidence with which to defeat Mr. Wilke’s summary judgment motion. P2pnet had termed the Wilke case yet another RIAA blunder.”

[Quote:]

vanaf vandaag kunnen klanten bij ruim 45 Albert Heijn winkels terecht voor halal-vlees. Hiermee vergroot de supermarktketen de keuze voor consumenten voor wie halal-vlees onderdeel uitmaakt van de dagelijkse boodschappen. Het vlees komt van leveranciers die halal-gecertificeerd zijn. Met een assortiment van 27 producten biedt Albert Heijn het grootste versassortiment in de Nederlandse supermarkt. In het Albert Heijn filiaal aan het Lambertus Zijlplein in Amsterdam werd vandaag door een medewerker het speciale halal koelmeubel gevuld met het nieuwe assortiment.

[Quote:]

In het Amsterdamse stadsdeel Zuidoost heerst een bestuurscultuur waarbij politici subsidies verstrekken aan stichtingen waarin ze zelf belangen hebben.

Vooral de PvdA is verweven met maatschappelijke organisaties. Het stadsdeel controleert amper wat er met de subsidies gebeurt.

[..]

Een voorbeeld van de verwevenheid is de werkwijze van het PvdA-raadslid André Bhola, tot begin dit jaar voorzitter van de welzijnsstichting Anand Joti. In het najaar van 2004 stelde hij de stadsdeelraad voor 50 duizend euro vrij te maken voor een gezondheidscampagne voor allochtone ouderen. De raad ging akkoord. Een dag later vroeg Bhola als voorzitter van Anand Joti uit deze nieuwe subsidiepot 32 duizend euro.

[Quote:]

Representative Bob Ney, the first member of Congress to confess to crimes in dealings with the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty to corruption charges Friday but said he would not immediately resign.

Oh, and I’m sure you can guess the next bit as well:

In announcing last month that he had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors, Mr. Ney said he was an alcoholic and was seeking treatment at an outpatient medical center. Asked by Judge Huvelle on Friday whether he was currently under any medical treatment, he replied, “Right now, alcohol, last 30 days.�?

If you want to know what Republican Sex-Ed looks like after Shays comments on Abu Ghraib, read this.

[Quote:]

Things look bleak for the GOP right now. Between bribery convictions, corruption indictments, and sexual predator cover-ups, we’re likely to loose nearly every member of the House Republican Caucus by 2008.

Thank God we have a very deep bench. There are hundreds of Republican candidates in the down-ballot races who have what it takes to run for Congress in the next election cycle. I’ve profiled a few of my favorites below.

Candidate: Tony Cunningham

Position: District 3, Texas State Board of Education

Qualifications: Mr. Cunningham is invisible. Nobody knows anything about him. He takes great pains to keep it that way by foregoing employment and hanging up on reporters who call him. The Mighty Clenis of Terrible Vengeance won’t be able to find him, let alone bring him down with its secret powers.

Candidate: Brent K. Schepp

Position: Kane County (IL) Board

Qualifications: Mr. Schepp’s devotion to the American family is one of his greatest selling points. That’s my the Kane County Republican Committee highlighted it on their candidates page, writing: “He understands the needs of today’s families and is qualified to lead Kane County into the Future [sic].”

More importantly, Schepp is not a homosexual, and as of yesterday, he has the rap sheet (14 counts of criminal sexual assault, 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse and two counts of unlawful delivery of alcohol to a minor) to prove it.

Candidate: Rep. Russell Pearce

Position: 18th District, Arizona House of Representatives

Qualifications: Confederate-Americans will lose a powerful advocate in the Senate if George Felix Allen is defeated in November. Fortunately, we have an Arizona Republican waiting in the wings to fill that void in the next cycle.

Rep. Pearce’s love for Our Lord is only surpassed by his hatred of brown people. That’s why he emails National Alliance articles to his friends, decrying the media for presenting a “single view of the world, a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders . . . “

Candidate: Bill Montgomery

Position: Arizona Attorney General

Qualifications: One of America’s greatest Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, once said “America’s business is business.” Bill Montgomery not only understands that, he practices it by bringing Republican business values to his campaign. That’s why he hired illegal immigrants to appear in an ad blasting illegal immigration. Hey, they’re a heck of a lot cheaper than actors with SAG cards.

Candidate: Richard Brees

Position: Jefferson County (WA) sheriff

Qualifications: Richard Brees is Tom DeLay without the connections to Saipan sex slavery. In other words he’s a fighter. One Jefferson County citizen, a neighbor who Brees assaulted, knows that. Soon, the rest of Jefferson County will witness it as well when Brees takes them to court, suing them for his arrest and conviction.

Candidate: Hugh Foskett

Position: 18th District, Washington House of Representatives

Qualifications: Yes, I’ve already profiled him once, but how can you not love a conservative Christian who gets drunk, puts on a sombrero and a sailor suit, and yanks his buddy’s little soldier.

The award for the Most Creative Way to Blame Democrats for Foley goes to:

Cliff Kincaid:

The complex nature of the “dirty trick�? against the Republicans over the Mark Foley scandal is beginning to emerge. It doesn’t involve a George Soros-funded group or emails that had been in the possession of the media or shopped around by Democratic operatives. Instead, the GOP has played a trick on itself. The party brought so-called gay Republicans into positions of power in Congress only to realize that the confidential information they held about a secret gay network was political dynamite that could backfire.

[...]

So if the gay Republicans are not really Republicans, what are they? One veteran observer of this network told AIM that the Foley scandal should make it crystal clear that the gay Republicans are in reality “liberal activists�? who want to use the party to advance the same homosexual agenda embraced by the Democrats.

[...]

It seems appropriate to note that one of the few Republicans financially supported by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the pro-Democratic group to which Trandahl made his contributions in 2000, was Rep. Jim Kolbe. Was the first “openly gay�? Republican member of Congress a closeted Democrat as well? It’s certainly the case that he started acting more like a Democrat once his secret life was exposed. He has, for example, become a prominent advocate of gays in the military and has denounced the proposed federal amendment protecting traditional marriage.

[...]

It’s early in the probe, but we may be looking at emerging evidence of a homosexual recruitment ring that operated on Capitol Hill. It’s time to get beyond partisan politics and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Our media should not be intimidated by charges of “gay bashing.�? They must lead the way in getting to the bottom of this terrible abuse of power.

[Quote:]

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall.

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

“The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It’s very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices. … And as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don’t dodge in and out of those marijuana forests,” he said in a speech in Ottawa, Canada.

“We tried burning them with white phosphorous — it didn’t work. We tried burning them with diesel — it didn’t work. The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn’t burn them,” he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

“A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those [forests] did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action,” Hiller said dryly.

One soldier told him later: “Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I’d say ‘That damn marijuana’.”

I guess they’ll just have to smoke the taliban out.

[Quote:]

U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays was under fire yesterday after saying in a debate earlier this week that the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison was not torture but rather a “sex ring” involving National Guard troops.

Amnesty International officials and Shays’ challengers in the 4th District said it was absurd for the Republican incumbent to call the acts at the Iraqi prison anything but torture.

“This is outrageous for a sitting congressman who was shown pictures (of Abu Ghraib) that were not even available to the public because they were supposed to be more provocative,” said Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast regional director for Amnesty International. “The photographs did not only depict humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners. They showed prisoners who were killed.”

During the debate Wednesday night at Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport, Shays, R-Bridgeport, was asked what the government should do to restore the country’s moral image in the world after accusations of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

“Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said according to a transcript provided by Democratic challenger Diane Farrell’s campaign and confirmed by others who attended the debate. “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.”

Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn’t doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.

“I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff,” Shays said. “The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn’t primarily about torture.”

Where I come from, non-consensual sex = rape. And since prisoners cannot refuse, they cannot consent. QED, anything that might have been about “sex” at Abu Gharib is actually about rape. And if I recall the Geneva Convention correctly, rape is a war crime.

So even if your mind is so mindboggingly warped that you feel Shay was correct in his assessment, it is still a war crime.

And even if I’m wrong about the Geneva Conventions, is he really trying to argue “gee, it’s not so bad, it’s not torture, it’s only rape”?