Castro is in the hospital

Cuban President Fidel Castro Temporarily Gives Brother Power Due to Illness

Monday, July      31, 2006

 

HAVANA — Fidel Castro
announced Monday night in a letter read by his secretary live on state
television that due to illness he was temporarily relinquishing the
presidency to his brother and successor Raul, the defense minister.

 
   

 

In the letter read by his secretary Carlos Valenciaga, Castro said he had suffered gastrointestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba, and had to undergo an operation.

Foxnews

Stix

I made the NYSlimes

I have been linked to in the NY Slimes reader Opinion forum online.
My mom found it.  She was looking at the sitemeter and found someone that came from there to check out my blog.  Amazing.  Now I will probably get a boat load of trolls coming on and spouting out that there was never any WMDs in Iraq and Bush is Hitler and all the other BDS symptoms.

Check it out:

whineyloserdems – 11:20 AM ET July 29, 2006 (#218667 of 224241)
The rhetoric from America’s sworn enemies and liberal bedwetters is virtually indistinguishable.

WMD’s found in Iraq

More evidence of WMDs have been found in Iraq.

http://stix1972.typepad.com/stix_blog/2006/07/wmd [...]

Actually
it was found 3 years ago by David Gaubatz, an ex-intelligence officer,
and former special investigator for The Pentagon. He has been trying to
get anyone to listen to him for 3 years to test 4 bunkers in Southern
Iraq. And now they finally have tested them and found WMDs.

Stix

Qana and the instant banner

First, take a good look at this banner which appeared very shortly after the Qana deaths were made public.  Then read the observations collected by Jonah Goldberg at National Review On Line

Was Qana Staged? Cont’d [Jonah Goldberg]

A giant banner denouncing Rice and the "Qana massacre" might have been made a bit too quickly.

I don’t want to get too far out ahead on this, but I know we’ve got a zillion printer-type folks among our readers. Do you guys think such a banner could be made in 2-4 hours (particularly in a supposedly war-ravaged area)?

Update: From a reader:

"Do you guys think such a banner could be made in 2-4 hours (particularly in a supposedly war-ravaged area)?"

Heck no. A designer could throw it together in probably 15 minutes or so, but the longest part would be the printing. Notice how deep the reds and blacks are – this means they didn’t just bust it out. I wouldnt be surprised if that job itself (requiring special equipment, as it looks to be printed on canvas or nylon, not merely paper) took 6 hours simply to print.

Also, that puppy would be expensive.

Update II: From a reader:

Nope. Not possible in 2 hours to design, typeset, print, assemble and transport to the site. 24 hours if you’re really good to do all the above. I say that as an career commercial artist of 18 years now.

Update III: From another reader:

called a close friend who has a very large printing company in NY with the question.  he called out to one of his technicians as to how long a color 30 foot banner would take to produce.  the response was that it would have to be done by a special machine and that machine would take "5 to 6 hours."     by the way, their rather enormous, state of the art (less than 6 months old) facility doesn’t even have the equipment necessary to do it.  so make a guess as to what’s available in a war-ravaged area…

Julia 

July 31

IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA DIES:
July 31, 1556

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators, dies in Rome. The Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known, played an important role in the Counter-Reformation and eventually succeeded in converting millions around the world to Catholicism.

Ignatius, the son of a noble and wealthy Spanish family called the Loyolas, was born in his family’s ancestral castle in 1491. Little interested in church matters, he trained as a knight and in 1517 went in the service of a relative, Antonio Manrique de Lara, the duke of Najera and viceroy of Navarre. In May 1521, during the siege of Pamplona by the French, his legs were shattered by a cannonball. Seriously wounded, he was transported to his family’s castle, where he was forced to lie in convalescence for many weeks. During this time, he was given the Bible and a book on the saints to read. He came to see the service of God as a kind of holy chivalry and resolved to live an austere life in imitation of the saints.

In February 1522 he made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, where a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary and Child, supposedly carved by St. Luke, resides. Ignatius hung his sword and dagger near the statue as symbols of his conversion to a holy life. For the next year, he lived as a beggar and prayed for seven hours a day, often in a cave near Manresa in northeastern Spain. During this time, he composed an early draft of The Spiritual Exercises, his manual for spiritual meditation and conversion. In 1523, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

After his return to Spain in 1524, Ignatius resolved to gain an extensive education to prepare himself for his spiritual mission. He studied in Barcelona and at the University of Alcala, where he began to acquire followers. Suspected of heresy, he was tried in Alcala, and later in Salamanca but both times was acquitted. He was forbidden to teach until he reached the priesthood, and he went to the University of Paris to continue his studies.

In August 1534, the Jesuit movement was born when Ignatius led six of his followers to Montmartre near Paris, where the group took vows of poverty and chastity and made plans to work for the conversion of Muslims. If travel to the Holy Land was not possible, they vowed to offer themselves to the pope for apostolic work. In 1537, Ignatius and most of his companions were ordained. Unable to travel to Jerusalem because of the Turkish wars, they went to Rome instead to meet with the pope and request permission to form a new religious order. In September 1540, Pope Paul III approved Ignatius’ outline of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order is formally known.

Under Ignatius’ charismatic leadership, the Society of Jesus grew quickly. Jesuit missionaries played a leading role in the Counter-Reformation and won back many of the European faithful who had been lost to Protestantism. In Ignatius’ lifetime, Jesuits were also dispatched to India, Brazil, the Congo region, and Ethiopia. Education was of utmost importance to the Jesuits, and in Rome Ignatius founded the Roman College (later called the Gregorian University) and the Germanicum, a school for German priests. The Jesuits also ran several charitable organizations, such as one for former prostitutes and one for converted Jews. When Ignatius de Loyola died on July 31, 1556, there were more than 1,000 Jesuit priests.

During the next century, the Jesuits set up ministries around the globe. The "Black-Robes," as they were known in Native America, often preceded European countries in their infiltration of foreign lands and societies. The life of a Jesuit was one of immense risk, and thousands of priests were persecuted or killed by foreign authorities hostile to their mission of conversion. However, in some nations, such as India and China, the Jesuits were revered as men of wisdom and science.

With the rise of nationalism in the 18th century, most European countries suppressed the Jesuits, and in 1773 Pope Clement XIV dissolved the order under pressure from the Bourbon monarchs. However, in 1814, Pope Pius VII gave in to popular demand and reestablished the Jesuits as an order, and they continue their missionary work to this day. Ignatius de Loyola was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1622. His feast day is July 31.

History Channel

Patrick Henry

From an email from http://patriotpost.us/.

The Patriot Post
Founders’ Quote Daily

"I am not a Virginian, but an American."

– Patrick Henry (speech in the First Continental Congress,
6 September 1774)

Reference: Patrick Henry: Life Corerespondence and Speeches, Wirt,
ed., vol. 1 (220); original Life and Works of John Adams, vol. 2
(365)

——–

Founders’ Quote Daily is a service of The Patriot Post, the most widely
read conservative journal on the Internet. If you would like to receive
Founders Quote Daily, and this highly acclaimed Digest of news, policy and
opinion delivered FREE by e-mail to your inbox, link to:
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All of the Founders’ quotes distributed by FQD have been thoroughly researched
and authenticated by the Heritage Foundation. For a complete database of
Founders’ quotes on various topics, link to the Internet’s most comprehensive
resource page on our Founding documents http://PatriotPost.US/histdocs/
and select Founders Quote Database.

To UNSUBSCRIBE from Founders’ Quote Daily:
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Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Publius Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Stix

Chuck Asay

A great cartoon about Hezzbollah.  They use civilians as shields and are firing their rockets from Christian parts of cities, so when the Israelis retatiate they hit Christians.  These are in total violation of all the rules of war, you can think of, except in Muslims wars.   they use any method they cxan to defeat the enemy, even using women, children and the elderly as they showed this weekend.

Barking Moonbat Early warming System has another good cartoon

Captain’s Quarters has more also.

Weblogin also has a good cartoon

The Jawa Report has Hizzbollah’s new Body Armor

It’s Beer Monday at Pirate’s Cove

Stix

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah hiding like the little girl he is.

Well, if this isn;t just too funny.  Sheik Hassan Nasrallah is hiding out while all his followers are getting their asses blown away by the IDF.  He went back crying to his father (Iran) because the bully (Israel) is taking his lunch money.   Was a pathetic excuse for a leader.  He tells everyone else to do his dirty work and then ducks away and hides in the Iranian Enbassy.

Hezbollah leader said to be hiding in Iranian Embassy

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON

Intelligence reports indicate the leader of Hezbollah is hiding in a foreign mission in Beirut, possibly the Iranian Embassy, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
    Israeli military and intelligence forces are continuing to hunt for Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, who fled his headquarters in Beirut shortly before Israeli jets bombed the building last week.
    "We think he is in an embassy," said one U.S. official with access to the intelligence reports, while Israeli intelligence speculates Sheik Nasrallah is hiding in the Iranian Embassy.
    If confirmed, the reports could lead to an Israeli air strike on the embassy, possibly leading to a widening of the conflict, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Foreign embassies are sovereign territory and an attack on an embassy could be considered an act of war.
    But other reports from the region indicate Sheik Nasrallah may be in Damascus. A Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Seyassah, reported from the Syrian capital yesterday that Sheik Nasrallah was seen moving through the city with Syrian guards in an intelligence agency car, Associated Press reported. He was dressed in civilian clothes, not his normal clerical robe.
    The newspaper quoted Syrian government sources as saying Iranian national security council official Ali Larijani was in Damascus and was to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Sheik Nasrallah.
    Hezbollah officials in Beirut said they did not know whether Sheik Nasrallah had gone to Damascus.
    Asked about the reports of Sheik Nasrallah in Syria, a U.S. official said they are unconfirmed, but noted that because of the proximity, it is easy to travel between Lebanon and Damascus.
    U.S. officials confirmed the existence of intelligence reports about Sheik Nasrallah hiding in a Beirut embassy after Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper reported Wednesday that the Hezbollah leader was thought to be in the Iranian Embassy. The newspaper, quoting intelligence officials, said Sheik Nasrallah has set up an operations center in an embassy basement that is coordinating Hezbollah attacks.
    However, the U.S. officials said the intelligence reports have not confirmed Sheik Nasrallah’s precise location.
    Iran’s embassy in Beirut is located in the Shi’ite stronghold known as the Bir Hasan section, in the western part of the city.

read the rest here.

Have you noticed that all the leaders of terrorists organizations say that you should be a martyr for Islam but they leader goes into hiding .  If they were so much into the Jihad, shouldn’t they also strap on a bomb and blow  themselves up for Allah

WMD’s found in Iraq

More evidence of WMDs have been found in Iraq.  Actually it was found 3 years ago by David Gaubatz, an ex-intelligence officer, and former special investigator for The Pentagon. He has been trying to get anyone to listen to him for 3 years to test 4 bunkers in Southern Iraq.  And now they finally have tested them and found WMDs.  Media Lies has the post:

Breaking news! WMD found in southern Iraq!

Thanks to the persistent efforts of one man, Dave Gaubatz, the US has finally begun excavating the four sites in southern Iraq which Gaubatz identified while in Iraq. Gaubatz told me this evening that he received a phone call from Congressman Burgess today informing him that WMD had been positively identified at the sites. Congressman Burgess just returned from Iraq, along with Congressman Hoekstra, after inspecting the work being done on the sites.

Apparently Hannity interviewed Senator Santorum today and Santorum revealed the discovery. Gaubatz told me

I am sure you have heard what Sen. Santorum told Sean Hannity today. There are WMD sites never inspected in Iraq and it has been confirmed WMD is there. Hannity asked him several times why the U.S. waited so long and if they are there why hasn’t the U.S. retrieved them. Santorum stumbled and could not answer.

(If anyone knows where I can find a transcript of today’s Hannity radio show, please send me the pointer.)

I’m not surprised Santorum would stumble. How can anyone explain ignoring the solid reporting of a top-notch intelligence agent for three years! before someone finally listened?

This breakthrough is the result of Dave’s efforts, especially a meeting he had with DIA and the FBI in June. Apparently someone finally followed up! I will continue with my series on Gaubatz and the efforts he went through trying to get these sites exploited, but his persistence has finally paid off.

CORRECTION: Late last night Dave told me that Congressman Burgess "did not mention what was found" in Iraq during their phone conversation. The Congressman called to tell Dave that he had just returned from Iraq and to set up a meeting with Gaubatz for August 15^th. In reviewing my notes, I misinterpreted what Gaubatz told me about Burgess.

Gaubatz reconfirmed that "Santorum did tell Hannity that WMD has been confirmed at the sites". I’m still trying to obtain a transcript of yesterday’s radio show.

Posted by antimedia on Thursday July 27, 2006 at 9:51pm  (source)

And here is a post about the Long Slog to get them to look at the bunkers.

H/T to All Things Beautiful

Stix

July 28

WORST MODERN EARTHQUAKE:
July 28, 1976

At 3:42 a.m., an earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 magnitude on the Richter scale flattens Tangshan, a Chinese industrial city with a population of about one million people. As almost everyone was asleep in their beds, instead of outside in the relative safety of the streets, the quake was especially costly in terms of human life. An estimated 242,000 people in Tangshan and surrounding areas were killed, making the earthquake one of the deadliest in recorded history, surpassed only by the 300,000 who died in the Calcutta earthquake in 1737, and the 830,000 thought to have perished in China’s Shaanxi province in 1556.

Caught between the Indian and Pacific plates, China has been a very active location for earthquakes throughout history. Earthquakes have also played a significant part in China’s culture and science, and the Chinese were the first to develop functioning seismometers. The area of northern China hit by the Tangshan earthquake is particularly prone to the westward movement of the Pacific plate.

In the days preceding the earthquake, people began to notice strange phenomena in and around Tangshan. Well-water levels rose and fell. Rats were seen running in panicked packs in broad daylight. Chickens refused to eat. During the evening of July 27 and the early morning hours of July 28, people reported flashes of colored light and roaring fireballs. Still, at 3:42 a.m. most people were sleeping quietly when the earthquake struck. It lasted for 23 seconds and leveled 90 percent of Tangshan’s buildings. At least a quarter-of-a-million people were killed and 160,000 others injured. The earthquake came during the heat of midsummer, and many stunned survivors crawled out of their ruined houses naked, covered only in dust and blood. The earthquake started fires and ignited explosives and poisonous gases in Tangshan’s factories. Water and electricity were cut off, and rail and road access to the city was destroyed.

The Chinese government was ill-prepared for a disaster of this scale. The day following the quake, helicopters and planes began dropping food and medicine into the city. Some 100,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army were ordered to Tangshan, and many had to march on foot from Jinzhou, a distance of more than 180 miles. About 30,000 medical personnel were called in, along with 30,000 construction workers. The Chinese government, boasting self-sufficiency, refused all offers of foreign relief aid. In the crucial first week after the crisis, many died from lack of medical care. Troops and relief workers lacked the kind of heavy rescue training necessary to efficiently pull survivors from the rubble. Looting was also epidemic. More than 160,000 families were left homeless, and more than 4,000 children were orphaned.

Tangshan was eventually rebuilt with adequate earthquake precautions. Today, nearly two million people live there. There is speculation that the death toll from the 1976 quake was much higher than the official Chinese government figure of 242,000. Some Chinese sources have spoken privately of more than 500,000 deaths.

History Channel

Autorantic Virtual Moonbat

H/T to Knowledge is Power

Stix