Sky News:

British Paratroopers have filmed themselves fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and posted it on the internet.

The video – set to an Eminem track – features fierce firefights, a helicopter dropping supplies and a soldier firing a rocket launcher.

It starts with an expletive-filled warning to “Terry Taliban” which concludes with the lines, “So do one Terry, you’ve plenty to fear, we run this town, the Paras are here”.

The video, which has become a hit on YouTube, was made by members of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (Wikipedia), whose motto Utrinque Paratus means “Ready For Anything.” The troopers involved in the video returned home to Britain last month after a six month tour Afghanistan.

The rap song is Eminem‘s Lose Yourself.

3:34 min. video

Josh Manchester, at TCS Daily,

Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing — with wave lengths, just as sound and light have. An evil place can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil.
— Richard Connell, The Most Dangerous Game

What is the most dangerous game of Connell’s short story? It’s the hunting of men by other men for sport. Connell might be surprised today to learn that it’s not fiction.

There are hundreds of websites featuring dozens of professionally produced videos of violence against US forces in Iraq. Dubbed with loud monotonal music for an extra creepy effect, at the point of the attack, the filmers usually erupt into cries of “Allahu akbar!”

The US might film its own missions for forensic or debriefing purposes sure, but that is a far cry from reveling in them. So what might motivate someone to be so twisted as to film and celebrate death?

One answer: recruitment.

A recent story in The Australian detailed the means that terrorist groups use to bait and attract new adherents:

Young Western-born Muslims recruited in universities, mosques and on the internet are increasingly being turned to jihad by terrorist networks, which train them in Islamic countries to support and conduct attacks on their homelands . . .

. . . “They are looking for them in mosques … in the youth centres … on the web … relying on social acquaintances and also family ties and universities,” Dr Ganor told a conference hosted by the institute in the resort city of Herzliya yesterday.

He said terror organisations used psychological strategies to win the hearts of “specific” young Muslims through either indirect recruitment platforms such as the internet, and direct ones such as combing radical mosques and prayer halls.

Read the whole thing.

Excellent GOP response ad.

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Hat tip to José Guardia and Dean Esmay.

A short 3:32 demonstration of Wushu (Chinese Kung Fu) by Wim Demeere for Belgian television (in Flemish).

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A video reading of the famous Robert W. Service poem. Very well done.

Lynn Cheney asks Wolf Blitzer why is CNN broadcasting terrorist propagada videos showing the shooting of Americans, and wonders if CNN wants the US to win. Blitzer responds by imitating the Times’ Byron Calame.

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The comedian is alarmed at the prospect of Mrs. Pelosi occupying a position two heartbeats away from the Presidency. Miller seems to think Pelosi is just a trifle dim. I’d hate to hear what he’d say if he ever ran into Barbara Boxer.

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And, as a matter of fact, only today Nancy Pelosi declared: I have supported legislation, including H.Res.316, that would properly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. It is imperative that the United States recognize this atrocity.

The Armenian Genocide is a term applied to deaths resulting from the forcible mass evacuation of Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915.

Armenians want to play the victim card and refer to genocide. Turks say Armenian deaths were inadvertent, and blame ethnic strife, disease, and WWI.

Fascinating as all this is, the precise relationship of Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915 to the government of the United States in 2006 is less than obvious to me. All this ethnic pandering may get Cher to vote for Pelosi, but the rest of us are not impressed.

Icelandic clown plays Beethoven, Boccherini, Vivaldi, &c. on squeeze horns attached to his clothing on a French broadcast.

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Hat tip to Karen Myers.

This is one very talented horse.

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Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.

The actor Michael J. Fox was born in Canada.

In the middle of a successful career, he had the terrible misfortune to be struck down in 1991, at age 30, with Parkinson’s disease. He retired from a television series in 2000 because of the progress of his disease, but has since produced a television pilot and made guest appearances on programs.

He recently made this video advertisement for the democrat Senatorial candidate from Missouri Claire McCaskill.

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In this video, Michael J. Fox is visibly trembling, and he appeals for voter support for McCaskill, who he says “shares (his) hope for cures” through stem cell research. Fox charges that incumbent Republican Senator Jim Talent “opposes expanding stem cell research… (and) wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope.”

This charge is, of course, a tremendous oversimplification of a complex issue.

CBC story

Rush Limbaugh reported yesterday:

I have gotten a plethora of e-mails from people saying Michael J. Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication for Parkinson’s disease when he appears before Congress or other groups as a means of illustrating the ravages of the disease. So lest there be any misunderstanding, we talked about a half hour ago of the commercial that’s running for Claire McCaskill featuring Michael J. Fox on what appears to be when he’s off his meds. I have never seen him this way and I stated when I was commenting to you about it that he was either off his medication or acting. He is an actor after all, and started hearing from people, “Oh, no, I’ve seen him on TV this way, this is how the disease has affected him when he’s not on his medications.” Then the e-mails started coming in saying he’s admitted not to taking them in certain circumstances so as to illustrate how the disease affects people. All of which I understand, and I’m not even critical of that. Parkinson’s disease is hideous.

Let me just stress once again in what I said in closing this out, that I think this is exploitative in a way that’s unbecoming either Claire McCaskill or Michael J. Fox, because in this commercial for Claire McCaskill he’s using his illness in a way to mislead voters that there’s a cure for Parkinson’s disease if only Claire McCaskill gets elected, if only Jim Talent is defeated…

Mr. Fox was allowing his illness to be used as a tactic to trying to secure the election of a Democrat senator who is going to somehow, her election is going to lead to the cure for Parkinson disease via stem cell research because her opponent, Jim Talent, opposes it, which is not true.

Michael J. Fox appears also in essentially the same video on behalf of the democrat Senatorial candidate in Maryland Ben Cardin.

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Washington Post story

I couldn’t find on the web the interviews Rush Limbaugh referred to, but I have seen Michael J. Fox appearing recently sans tremors on the television show Boston Legal, and I’m inclined to believe that what Rush Limbaugh’s email correspondents are telling him is correct.

The use of stem cell research as a campaign tactic in the way democrats use it is objectionable, because the issue is always presented in seriously misleading ways.

Avoiding federal subsidies for stem cell research is an example of government neutrality in matters of faith and morals, which liberals ought to applaud. In cases where substantial numbers of Americans differ on the basis of religious conscience, government funding should not be the preferred approach. It is perfectly possible to fund stem cell research privately, and other forms of stem cells besides embryonic can be used in research.

The great promise democrats find in this particular area of research seems to be completely related to Republican opposition to funding it federally. There is no real reason to suppose that any unique opportunity lies in this direction. If it did, doubtless private foundations and private companies would be devoting very adequate resources to it.

Everyone feels sorry for Michael J. Fox’s bad luck in life, but his deliberate and calculated efforts to exploit the sympathy of others, while cynically misstating the issues, represents a low approach to politics, demeaning to the voters and to the process.

Egads!, no more cute screaming Japanese girls and lizards. YouTube, having been bought by Google, is going corporate, and surrendering to a collection of Japanese copyright-enforcement groups. They will be deleting 29,549 videos.

Smart move, Japanese broadcasters, you wouldn’t want any free international publicity and recognition adulterating your brands’ prestige, would you?

Here is the new Republican Committee Ad. A lot of people on the right are complaining that it’s unoriginal, just a take-off on Bill Moyer’s anti-Goldwater “Daisy” ad. Perhaps so, but as I recall Johnson did win.

The embedded player is a bit too small for easy reading. If you have a problem, just catch it at the original GOP web-site here.