Around the World...

It's nice to be able to have a little fun here at The Asylum, like the theme Marcie chose for today. But, we're serious here too, and when we come across news that the MSM has ignored, we're going to pick up the ball and run with it.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
Captain Ed's picked up on this news item from Yahoo News. The Iraqis have chosen their Speaker for Parliament. It's Iraq's current industry minister, Hasem al-Hassani. He's a Sunni, and a close friend and ally of Interim Prime Minister Allawi.

"We passed the first hurdle," Hassani told reporters afterwards. "The Iraqi people have proven that they can overcome the political crisis that has plagued the country for the last two months."

But he also warned against complacency.

"If we neglect our responsibilities and fail, we will hurt ourselves and the people will replace us with others," he said.

Shi'ite politician Hussain Shahristani and Kurdish lawmaker Arif Tayfor were elected deputy speakers. The Shi'ites and Kurds, who came first and second in the Jan. 30 election, had agreed between them that a member of the once-dominant Sunni Arab minority should be speaker.

So, for all those on the Left that said this couldn't be done, that the Iraqis didn't have the ability to create a democracy, how does it feel to be wrong again? Freedom is a powerful force, and it is what drove Afghanistan, and it's driving those in Iraq. This is evident from al-Hassani's statement about what will happen if they screw this up; they'll be replaced. That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=804
Publius follows the struggle for democracy around the world, and he just picked up on Freedom House releasing it's annual report on the most repressive regimes around the world. Is anyone surprised to see SIX of the EIGHTEEN most repressive regimes on the UN's Commission for Human Rights?

Significantly, six of the eighteen most repressive governments–those of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe–are members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representing nearly 11 percent of the 53-member body.

“Repressive governments enjoying CHR membership work in concert and have successfully subverted the Commission’s mandate,” said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. “Rather than serving as the proper international forum for identifying and publicly censuring the world’s most egregious human rights violators, the CHR instead protects abusers, enabling them to sit in judgment of democratic states that honor and respect the rule of law,” she said.

A report issued March 21 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan acknowledged that the presence of these nations on the CHR has dealt a severe blow to the UN body’s credibility. Mr. Annan recommended that states elected to a reformed “Human Rights Council” be chosen based on their compliance with the “highest human rights standards.”

“The Secretary General’s recommendation is welcome: the solution to restoring the UN human rights panel’s credibility lies in the establishment of strict membership criteria,” said Ms. Windsor. “In the short-term, however, it is incumbent upon the CHR’s democratic member states to work together as an effective bloc that upholds the Commission’s mandate by strengthening and promoting human rights and democracy.”

An additional nine countries Freedom House rates as “Not Free” enjoy membership on the Commission: Bhutan, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Swaziland, and Togo. Together, “Not Free” countries comprise just over one quarter of the Commission’s membership. A breakdown by Freedom House ranking of CHR members available online.

Anyone who wants to take a look at the report, there's a link on Publius' site to a link that will take you to the PDF. I've seen it, and it's pretty disturbing to see that the UN allowed these nations to sit on a commission that oversees human rights around the world. And Sudan's on the list; a nation that the UN says there's no genocide occurring. Oh yeah, I want these people determining human rights.
Hat-Tip to Glenn Reynolds at http://instapundit.com/ for picking up the Publius post on the report.

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/weblog.php
I gotta hand it to Charles Johnson. He's got a great site, and he's on top of some of the bigger stories occurring today. (BTW, for all those that would like to see them for themselves, Charles still has the links to the Rather Memos up on his site; both the "authentic" one, and the one he did.)

But we have a couple of stories from LGF this morning including this breaking story about a possible terrorist incident at London's Heathrow Airport. He's linked his site to Cynical Nation, which is where the story and subsequent updates have come from.

This hasn't hit the news yet, but my brother-in-law is sitting on a plane in Heathrow Airport as we speak, and there is apparently some action going on. It seems his plane was stormed by agents with machine guns, who seized a Middle Eastern passenger from my brother-in-law's row and removed him from the plane.

This is happening as I type this. The wonders of modern technology. More to follow, no doubt....

UPDATE: The flight in question is British Airways flight 0215, from London to Boston.

UPDATE: Multiple passengers were removed from the plane by force. My brother-in-law is now off the plane as well, but he has been herded into some special area at Heathrow....

UPDATE: According to the BA website, the flight will be experiencing an "estimated" two-hour delay....

Nice to see the boys in London doing what they need to do. If it turns out that these people that were removed from the plane by force are terrorists, I hope Pres. Bush sends Tony Blair a "thank-you" and a bottle of good Scotch. They may have just prevented another terror team from getting into our country.

Charles also picked up on this today. The Washington Post has a permanent sidebar on their Iraq page (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/mideast/gulf/iraq/) that is still highlighting the media-driven/created Abu Ghraib "scandal". The Post is already neck deep in trouble for running with the phony GOP talking points memo that ABC ran with over the Terri Schiavo case. But more irritating is that the Post has dropped the ball again. They have failed to report on the release of a real war criminal, Miroslav Kvocka. He's served a lousy four years of a seven year sentence. And below is details of just some of the atrocities that Kvocka directed. (In my opinion, this guy didn't deserve a prison sentence. He deserved a bullet in the back of his head.)

The detainees ... were almost always beaten, usually ferociously. The men were tortured in front of each other. Sometimes they were made to beat one another. A father was beaten to death in front of his son. The men shrieked with pain. There was blood on the walls and on the ground. The men who came out of there alive had open wounds, could not stand or were unconscious. The corpses removed from there had open wounds to the skull, severed joints, slit throats. Some of the victims were ultimately executed with a bullet.

The accused heard nothing, saw nothing and did nothing.

Detainees sometimes died as a result of beatings. Their bodies were left on the ground ... sometimes for several days. They would be loaded into small trucks by detainees.

Did the accused still see nothing?

Some of the bodies, including those of two women, would be discovered in mass graves much later.

The 12th of July is Saint Peter’s day (Petrovdan) an important Orthodox celebration when large bonfires are lit. On 12 July 1992, a large bonfire was lit using tyres. Shots were fired at one of the rooms containing detainees. Some were called out of the hangar. Screams were heard. The air smelt of burnt tyres and grilled flesh.

And the media thought Abu Ghraib was bad? Can someone remove their partisan, inept blinders, and show the media what the world is about? It's preposterous that the media will still hype Abu Ghraib, and even pen fluff pieces lauding North Korea, a la Barbara Demick from the LA Times, but this guy was a grade-A war criminal and there's a nary a whisper out of the MSM on it.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

Finally rounding out the morning, and closing in on the afternoon, Hindrocket has this wisdom from the vaunted Ol' Gray Lady herself.

Even as his own voice faded away, his views on the sanctity of all human life echoed unambiguously among Catholics and Christian evangelicals in the United States on issues from abortion to the end of life.

need some quote from supporter

John Paul II's admirers were as passionate as his detractors, for whom his long illness served as a symbol for what they said was a decrepit, tradition-bound papacy in need of rejuvenation and a bolder connection with modern life.

"The situation in the Catholic church is serious," Hans Kung, the eminent Swiss theologian, who was barred by from teaching in Catholic schools because of his liberal views, wrote last week. "The pope is gravely ill and deserves every compassion. But the Church has to live. ...

In my opinion, he is not the greatest pope but the most contradictory of the 20th century. A pope of many, great gifts, and of many bad decisions!"

Among liberal Catholics, he was criticized for his strong opposition to abortion, homosexuality and contraception, as well as the ordination of women and married men. Though he was never known as a strong administrator of the dense Vatican bureaucracy, he kept a centralizing hand on the selection of bishops around the world and enforced a rigid adherence to many basic church teachings among the clergy and Catholic theologians.

So, the New York Times has it's story ready for their "tribute" to the life and death of Pope John Paul II. It's nice to see the media's bias involved in this. Why can't these people just say a few nice words, recount his life, and move on? Why do they have to always act "fair and balanced" now? The Times can't see the forest through the trees most of the time, and this "tribute" is a fitting example. Both Marcie and I wrote from the heart regarding the passing of the man that led our Church for 26 years. I was born in 1972, so, I've seen three popes in my life. Marcie was born in 1983, and Pope John Paul II was the only pope she's ever known. The Times can give fawning portayals of their heroes, but they can't seem to find one nice thing to say about Pope John Paul II. Sad, isn't it?

UPDATE: Anyone who wants to see the Time's second page tribute as it was originally posted on their site go to Powerline. Hindrocket's got it posted there, and you can click on it to blow it up bigger.

That's it for now. We'll be checking in throughout the day, so keep checking up on us.

Publius II