Scribal Terror

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Fake Spokesperp

Jeff at Protein Wisdom has an excellent overview of what appears to be a mainstream media blockbuster:

From Curt at Flopping Aces comes the news many of us quietly expected: Centcom has confirmed that Capt. Jamil Hussein, the primary source for the recent kerosene mosque murder reports—and for a whole host of reports of Shia massacres recounted by the AP—is neither an employee of Iraq’s Ministry of Interior nor is he a police captain.

In short, the AP has been relying on a bogus source for much of its reporting on Shia violence against Sunnis since at least April.

Moscow subway car "nailed to the ground"

English Russia reports in picturesque but readily understandable English:

A while ago there was a story about one Moscow city street advertisement agency.

What made them famous? Their attempt to install a new street ad stand, so they had to hammer in a concrete pile into ground. They started doing this and suddenly the pile came down through ground layer and disappeared somewhere down there.

Yes, they were shocked but they had a task to accomplish so they started to smash in another pile – it also broke in through the ground. Now they got really puzzled.

So where have their piles gone? They gone right into a subway train, nailed a full of people subway train moving at 40mph (70kmh) down to the ground – right in the middle of the working day. They got extremely lucky that the subway car in which they hammered in a pile was almost empty and nobody got seriously injured.

And here are the pilings to prove it:

Strange Doings across the Pond

The Litvinenko story is becoming more and more lurid. Now polonium 210 has been found in the offices of Boris Berezovsky, a patron of Litvinenko, leading Pat Buchanan to theorize that it's a Mossad operation because all the Jews involved are making his whiskers twitch. God alone knows what's actually going on, but the only people who really benefit are the conspiracy theorists. This is obviously enough to keep them in business for decades.

PS: I suggest checking out Douglas Farah's article here to get a good overview of  recent Russian geo-shenanigans.

And kitty makes three

Via Big Fun

Malachi Ritscher's Delusion

I don't like to pick on people who are obviously insane, but delusional people often repeat as sick farce certain social memes that are taken seriously, at least by some, in their political ideologies though not acted out in their personal lives. This is the case with deceased (i.e., self-immolated) war protestor, Malachi Ritscher, who, before dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire, had thoughts of murdering Donald Rumsfeld. Here is how Ritscher interpreted the moment in question (and whether it happened or not is pretty much irrelevant):

I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way - at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past.

Ritscher had clearly bought into a kind of satanic version of the  "Great Man" theory whereby, as Thomas Carlyle once proclaimed, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

This theory is usually contrasted with a theory that talks about events occurring in the fullness of time, or when an overwhelming wave of smaller events cause certain developments to occur. (Source Wikipedia)

I see this theory emerging again and again in anti-Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld posters, effigies, even editorials, which assume that ONE MAN has the power to will historical events to occur and therefore, by definition, the removal of that ONE MAN must inevitably reverse those events. This is patent nonsense, but I think people only notice how foolish it is when they see it expressed on such a grandiose scale by a madman, who clearly sees himself as a Great Man as well, capable of changing history with one lurid and repugnant tantrum. This is not to say that individuals cannot influence events or need not take responsibility for their part in them, but only to say that they are a single variable in an incredibly complex equation.  So rest easy, Mr. Ritscher, your gesture wouldn't have achieved a damn thing on the broad historical scale you imagined yourself acting on; it would just have made a murderer rather than a suicide out of you.

Via KisP

Appleholic Moose Comes to a Bad End

A drunken Swedish moose has drowned as a result of its intemperate consumption of rotten apples. Which should be a lesson to us all.

Lest we forget

One ill advised decision need not ruin our jollifications this holiday season. PSA via Jonco

"The Mormon Question"

Ann Althouse points out this unfortunate choice of title in an anti-Mitt Romney post by someone I no longer read or link to, probably because of my unconscious opposition to gay marriage, which I support only when fully lucid. If I understand correctly, the gist of the post is that Romney is a Mormon and therefore a "Christianist," whereas Harry Reid is a Mormon and not. At this point at least, the writer hasn't come up with a final solution for those questionable Mormons (i.e., the Republican ones), but perhaps Ann Althouse will let us know when he does. Via The Anchoress

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing syllepsis, dirty syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.