Bill’s Blog

“Not for the politically correct.”

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DrudgeReport.com

SF Rally Participants Overstated | Human AIDS Vaccine Results | Human Shields in Iraq

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SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- A newspaper's aerial survey of last weekend's massive anti-war rally in San Francisco determined Friday that the size of the crowd was less than half of what police and protest organizers had originally estimated.

The San Francisco Chronicle said high-resolution aerial photographs commissioned by the newspaper showed that around 65,000 people took part in last Sunday's march through downtown rather than the 200,000 announced originally.

This makes me wonder if all of the numbers of participants in all of the demonstrations are similarly inflated. This may have been true in the Vietnam Era as well.

While the right to peaceably assemble is protected by the First Amendment, the best way to determine the public will is elections. The Democrats didn’t run an “anti-war” campaign in 2002 because they were afraid they would lose, hence the general public probably backs the action against Saddam.

This could be a major breakthrough in halting the AIDS epidemic. One problem could be getting the people giving the injections to sterilize the needles, as may be happening in Africa.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Long-awaited results for the first human test of a vaccine against the AIDS virus will be announced on Monday, vaccine maker VaxGen says.

Data from the trial, which began in 1998, is being analysed over the weekend, the Brisbane, California-based company said.

It will be the first peek at the possible human benefits of a vaccine against the deadly virus, which has killed 25 million people around the world and has infected 40 million more.

There is no cure for HIV and drugs that keep it under control are only available to patients in industrialised countries. All experts agree that a vaccine is the only hope for controlling HIV.

The ones in this article were from “Sweden, Spain, Italy and Finland,” but there are supposed to be Americans as well.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday that any Iraqi officials who help in the deployment of the human shields could be punished as war criminals.

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 OpinionJournal.com

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A different take on the so-called duct tape and plastic sheeting “panic.”

This article also has some interesting points on what it will take to defeat the terrorists.

The episode showed that a government that had been caught off guard on Sept. 11 had learned its lesson: It was sharing information with the people and giving useful guidance on how that information should be used. I live in Washington, and I'm very glad to know that people in the government are thinking hard about what citizens should do in case of a chemical or radiological attack.

The episode reflected well on the American people too. The newspapers reported “panic buying,” but I didn't see any panic at my grocery store--only citizens heeding warnings from their government and taking practical steps to protect themselves and their families. Back in the 1990s, political scientists used to worry about Americans’ loss of trust in their institutions. Those emptied-out aisles where bottled-water used to be are the best evidence to date of trust regained.

How one accounts for last weekend’s demonstrations--how they happened and how the media covered them-- is a great subject for which I have become convinced only the annals of psychiatry can offer an answer. Once people get certain beliefs hard-wired into their brains, there's no chance that new facts will stop old neurons from flowing down well-worn pathways to familiar conclusions.

The media’s mystical belief that demonstrators against war are holy people dates back to the Vietnam War, when the idea of the “dissident” emerged. The Vietnam “dissenters” achieved coequal status as First-Amendment standard-bearers, at which point they gained immunity from the sort of questioning that normally chases society's villains and disfavored into the ditch. For decades the organizers of these marches have understood this.

Vietnam was a complicated time, a mess, and idealism bled easily into naiveté. Still, you have to wonder if this no-questions-asked reporting hasn’t reached the point of absurdity when a primary organizer of the demonstrations, United for Peace & Justice, can suffuse its Web site the week after with mainstream press reports that read like press releases.

The San Francisco Chronicle: “What differed from the protests of three and four decades earlier was the palpable fear that this time global annihilation is possible.” “A woman in a green top and leopard print pants smiled at a gray-bearded man in a wheelchair, and suddenly thousands of strangers were looking at each other and smiling.”

…

What’s odd about this persistent media credulousness is that the story of who and what’s behind these demonstrations is pretty interesting, no matter what your politics. Indeed the organizers are hardly hiding their colors. The partial list printed here from the Web site of United for Peace includes groups that have been in the anti-war game for at least 40 years. The War Resisters League! Pax Christi USA! No wonder the old gray-beard in San Francisco set thousands to smiling; this was the biggest reunion they'd had since the 1969 Mobilization on the Washington Mall.

…

As it stands, the average reader or viewer is left to think these demonstrators are average Joes just like them. Some are, but most are veterans of organized political opposition, men and women of the anti-war, anti-Israel, anti-capitalism, anti-U.S. left, and proud of it. If they're not trying to hide who they are, why should the media?

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FrontPageMag.com

 Europe Fears Jihad | Status of American Arabs | No Iraqi Peaceniks
 University Terror Network Busted | The Third Axis | Time to Ditch the UN
Gods And Generals | 

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Rattling nerves along the border, a North Korean fighter jet violated South Korean airspace over the Yellow Sea on Thursday before turning back as warplanes in the South scrambled. The flight - the first such incursion in 20 years - was the latest in a series of North Korean provocations.

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Jewish World Review.com

 Jihad Against Textbooks | NY Demonstration

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In the United States, similar demonstrations brought thousands to the streets of San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Woody Guthrie sang “Blowin’ in the Wind” and celebrities Martin Sheen, Jesse Jackson, Phil Donahue, Colleen Dewhurst, Jules Feiffer, Meryl Streep, Kris Kristofferson, Muhammad Ali, Jane Fonda, Ed Asner and Robert Blake leant their names and prestige to the movement.

 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
 (Subscription Site)

Zell Miller Supports Bush | State Revenues Down | House Protects Veterans Records
 Arkansas 2nd in Strokes | LR Lights Ruin Wye Mt. Astronomy | West Nile Kills 5
 Vietnam Wants US Cotton, Airliners | Aremenian Genocide Film | Vagina Monologues Hit LR

This might not be a problem if the state’s spending wasn’t growing at a rate twice the population growth.

As amended, HB1345 would allow the public to have access to such information as years of service and rank but would keep secret information such as Social Security numbers and medical records.

One of the reasons to have your military records recorded at the county courthouse is to prove that you served. The reason that the records have Social Security numbers is that Congress made Social Security numbers serial numbers. Since the Geneva Convention requires prisoners their serial numbers, enemies can use the Geneva Convention to fraudulently obtain prisoners’ assets.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. After 3 decades of liberal government we’re still near the top on most negative social concerns.

Another consequence of Little Rock’s sprawl to the West.

The funny thing is that West Nile didn’t appear to have affected the bird population around Little Rock.

Communist Vietnam wants to use earnings from its exports to the U.S. to buy Boeing airliners and cotton. One of their exports to us is “catfish,” and American catfish farmers have complained that this trade is subsidized. One suspects that other Communist Vietnamese products are either subsidized or produced by exploited labor. Slave labor in their “reeducation” gulag could be involved, even though U.S. law prohibits the import of slave labor goods.

The Armenian Genocide. As the obscure Austrian corporal said, “who remembers the Armenians?” The question for contemporary Americans is who remembers the Cambodians? The ones who voted for Slick sure don’t

Feb. 14 may have been Valentine’s Day, but Saturday will mark V-Day in Little Rock.

V-Day, the global movement to stop violence against women and girls, will sponsor the Little Rock performance of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler’s award-winning play with the attention-getting title. All profits from ticket sales and donations will be used to benefit the Family Service Agency’s Sexual Assault Center.

The trouble with this is that domestic violence has become a “progressive” cause.

The Vagina Monologues is simply a diatribe by a man-hating radical feminist.

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