Snapped Shot

Personally, I think ol' Maddy-jabby will self-destruct long before the West will need to do anything about him. It's not like he's immensely popular amongst everyday Iranians or anything...

Did somebody say fake photographs?

It seems that Iran's recent display of its new missile technology isn't worth the, well, bytes it was transmitted with. According to Gateway Pundit, ever the expert on military technologies, not only were the pictured photographs not capable of achieving orbit, the pictures are actually from Woomera, Australia!

Iran: Outsourcing its space race? More like inventing a space race out of whole cloth!

Excellent work on the sleuthing there, Gateway! I'm sure that somewhere, someone is crying their little eyes out!

I'm a sucker for snow! So much better that it's not Monday, so we can actually enjoy it, too!

It would appear that we can add Tom and Jerry to the list of we evil Zionist conspirators... Oy vey!


(h/t MEMRI, via The New Editor)

To nobody's surprise, the U.S. Treasury Department has designated the Hezbullah-affiliated group Jihad al-Binaa as a terrorist-supporting organization (h/t MEMRI). Snapped Shot readers may recall that "Construction Jihad" was pegged early on as a propaganda effort at best, something which has been reinforced more recently by complaints from local residents.

Terror-supporting organizations, setting up front groups to bolster their support and launder their cash? The shock!

I'm happy to see a delightful little bout of commonsense from our Government on this occasion.

GatewayPundit has discovered that one of our noble fauxtographs has been honoured as the International Picture of the Year for 2006. My congratulations to the photographer, Tyler Hicks, for the honours, and my sincerest thanks for keeping people like Gateway and myself in business.

Amazingly enough, it seems that I'm not the only one who's obsessed with silly photos of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, but these pictures, courtesy Kamangir, really take the cake!


Thanks for the early-morning laugh, Kamangir--though you definitely have my sincerest condolences for actually having to put up with that loon!

Surly belated birthday to the starver of peasants and "burninator" of his nation's Gross National Product, Robert Mugabe.

I was surprised to read in the Washington Times this morning that the General Assembly has passed a bill mandating vaccination for HPV in all of the Commonwealth's schools. Of course, after reviewing the bills over at Mr. Jaquith's excellent Richmond Sunlight, I'm left even more in shock.

This measure passed by 80/17 in the House? And by 40/0 in the Senate? Even the Senate's Health and Welfare Committee, a notoroious stopping-point for just about any "conservative" legislation (see this eternally-engrossed bill, for instance), passed this claptrap unanimously!

Is it really in the Commonwealth's best interests to force the use of a first-year, almost wholly-untested vaccine on all of our girls? And if, God forbid, our children start dying from this vaccine, will the Commonwealth and the General Assembly transfer the costs of such litigation on to we, the taxpayers and citizens thereof?

Consider this: the National Cancer Institute says that HPV is 100% preventable, and while I'm sure Bill Clinton would never approve of the method involved, it is effective.

Furthermore, the "disease" itself causes a mere 3,600 deaths, nationwide! I'm not trying to say that each case is not tragic in its own right, but do we want to dictate Commonwealth policy on such a wide basis, to protect against a very miniscule risk to our children? We're hardly talking about an epidemic, after all.

It seems to me that we'd save twice as many lives by banning teenage driving, for instance, but I don't hear anyone in the Assembly arguing for the Commonwealth to do that.

So what's the primary motivation here? Is the Commonwealth seriously considering risking the lives of our 1,816,191 children with a relatively untested vaccine, in order to try and save the hundred or so that will be affected by HPV? Or is the Commonwealth using its Legislative authority to "transfer" money to the pockets of the sole source of the HPV vaccine?

I'm not so sure that I trust the Legislature's judgement on this, and I'd definitely hope for a veto from our Governor.

I'm curious to hear what some of the more esteemed bloggers here in the Old Dominion think of this debacle... How do you compare the forced vaccination for every girl in the Commonwealth with your beliefs in individual freedom, if any? And, do we really want for the General Assembly to act as our collective surrogate mothers in this case, or any other?

I eagerly await the input of those who are undoubtedly greater than myself.

Wow, this one really takes the cake...

Continue reading »

Of course, with everything else I had going on, I managed to miss Dear Leader Comrade Generalissimo Kim Jong Il's birthday. That figures... Hopefully, this will help make up for it.

Israel Matzav has provided a very fascinating background to the "controversial" renovations going on at the Temple Mount. Most specifically,

After the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist institutions began to emphasize the Western Wall as a national symbol of the Jewish people, in addition to its religious significance. This action led the Mufti of Jerusalem to claim that the Jews intended to take control of the Western Wall, so he declared the Wall - with no religious or historical substantiation - a holy Moslem site. [Ed.: Now where have I heard that before?] This wall of stones, to which the Muslims ascribed no importance, was thenceforth called El Buraq, after the name of the magical horse of the Prophet Mohammed.

In the 1920s, the Mufti of Jerusalem ordered the opening of the Mughrabi Gate in the southern plaza, thus turning the prayer plaza from a cul-de-sac into a thoroughfare for passersby, who disturbed the worshipers. In August 1929, an incited Muslim mob rampaged through the opening torn by the Mufti in the south of the plaza, attacking the Jewish worshipers and destroying ritual objects. Several days later, the 1929 riots broke out. As a result of these riots, the British established a committee of investigation. The committee’s report included a specific statement on the use of the El Buraq myth by the Mufti to incite the Arabs against the Jews.

As a side note, the fine folks over at CAMERA Snapshots (no relation) have found a very illustrative graphic, which puts the whole project in perspective. Be sure to head over there and check it out!

I'm still working on getting caught up on what I've missed over the past week, so please do bear with me!

Is this the "vaunted" announcement that maddyjab has been hyping up for the past couple of months?

I was away from the computer all day today, but I did catch an interesting item in today's Washington Times,

Mr. Ahmadinejad said Iran's nuclear-technology advances will be made public over the next two months until April 9. He did not explain what would happen on that date, but it marks the first anniversary of Iran's announcement that it had enriched uranium for the first time.

Considering that he was previously talking of major announcements during their anniversary celebration, which is going on right now, I wonder if they haven't missed some kind of internal deadlines. Like, the kind of deadlines you miss when your plutonium supplier suddenly goes Dutch?

Be sure to check out Gateway's coverage of Iran's festivities and other looney toons... If I were around, that's the gist of what I would've been doing all day.

I'd like to extend a hearty welcome to the Blogosphere to our own captainfish, who has been a regular visitor here since Snapped Shot kicked off last August. I can't wait to start reading what you've got, good Sir!