Kung Fu in Kyrgyzstan

Tonight's entry is dedicated to my favorite Roman god, Non Sequitur. We have many things to note.

The Montana House resoundingly confirmed a resolution disparaging the Patriot Act as Fascist Horse Manure. (via Eschaton)

Prince Charles is an ill tempered hemorrhoid of a heir.

Misc links: Did anyone notice that the famous The Blogging of the President bopnews.com needs to update all this '2004' crap they have written all over. HongPong.com started going in 2001 but I'm not still obsessed with high school... Taegan Goddard's PoliticalWire.com, interesting stuff... American Constitution Society has a fancy lookin blog with all sorts of ongoing legal news, and in particular some good thoughts about the Schiavo case and federalism:

...the Schiavo case reveals the true priorities of the right: they are happy to abandon the principles of federalism if the issue is related to questions of "life." But if they are willing to cast aside federalism in the Schiavo case, won't they be willing to do the same in the context of abortion? And if they are, won't that inevitably lead to attempts to pass federal legislation banning abortion?

There is a big deal going on regarding how political contributions via websites should fit into the FEC regulations. Info @ redstate.org. Behold pretentious blog of rightwing Robert Kaplan supporters. This is why Kaplan and his pagan ways make him a bastard.(Hey, they use WordPress, which probably works better than this system).

Gonna have to get me a gravatar. In here is the very best picture to come out of the Terri Schiavo circus (this one). A more moderate Republican dared asked for sanity, then they cut off his fingers. The Pope pleaded for world peace.

C-SPAN provides platform for Holocaust denier to badger author??

MOONIES! John Gorenfeld takes it upon himself to look out for the good Reverend Moon and his Unification Church's ongoing efforts to destroy America and bring that special blend of Korean Neo-Jonestown Messianism to us all... Scrap Democracy! The Evil Elliot Abrams will speak at your functions! I believe Gorenfeld was the one who found out about that crazy crowning ceremony when good ol Moon told us he was the Messiah. That's Washington for ya!

These links should have been in the last post: A little more about the White Supremacists getting ignored by the Department of Homeland Security, as I mentioned earlier. And a little More about Team B in the late 1970s using fake information to support hawkishness...

Kyrgyzstan revolution: it seems like another mess on Afghanistan's doorstep, rather than one of these glossy color coded revolutions intended to provide a jolly narrative for the Folks Back Home. Most of these are sugarcoated, like Ukraine's Yuschenko, for example, is portrayed as a Hero of Democracy rather than someone who embezzled vast sums from the IMF.

In Kyrgyzstan, a poor country that lacks even a spellcheck entry on my computer, is one of these rather authoritarian (post-Stalinist?) Central Asian republics, overrun with heroin smuggling operations and the Russian mob. This article from March 1 describes the local "managed democracy" (ie rigged systems) that the former president, Akayev, couldn't quite rig enough to Inspire Confidence. Oddly enough, some people say that Kung Fu was responsible for this turn of events:

KARA SUU, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) - Many say people power brought down the regime in Kyrgyzstan last week. But Bayaman Erkinbayev, a lawmaker, martial arts champ and one of the Central Asian nation's richest men, says it was his small army of Kung Fu-style fighters.

In southern Kyrgyzstan, where the protests that brought down the Askar Akayev's 15-year regime first flared, the name of 37-year-old Erkinbayev seems to be on everyone's lips. Erkinbayev is the wealthy playboy head of the Palvan Corporation, who led 2,000 fighters trained in Alysh, Kyrgyzstan's answer to Kung Fu, to protests launched after the first round of a parliamentary election on February 27.

A hero in his hometown Osh, he is generally considered to have financed the protests and sent his martial arts trainees to the front lines of the demonstrations, including in the capital Bishkek.

"When our old men were beaten and thrown out of the regional administration building, my fighters were on the front line. And during the siege in Bishkek, my fighters went in first," Erkinbayev told AFP in his gymnasium in Osh.

Iraq still rockin: The Fallujah brigades might be comin back again. Keep reading Juan Cole. Hey, who remembers how Ahmed Chalabi provided all that fake information about weapons of mass destruction in a successful effort to trick the American public into supporting an invasion? Ahh, the good old days... For that honed sense of outrage about the recent panel report on the WMD lies, consider Raimondo:

If and when the [Larry] Franklin [AIPAC-related] case finally comes to trial, the courtroom deliberations could shed new light on the question of how and why we were lied into war. It will prove in a court of law what I have long contended: that the only way to understand this shameful episode in the history of American wars is to look at the series of "mistakes" and "miscalculations" as a covert operation carried out by agents of a foreign power. Contra the WMD report, it wasn't "tunnel vision" that led to a monumental "intelligence failure" – it was treason.

Ray McGovern on the need for Honest Intelligence, regarding National Intelligence Estimates (such as those previously spoofed) etc., and of course our spotty intel on Iran. Scott Ritter says that Bush has a plan to get ready for war with Iran by June this year of our lord 2005.

Lebanon: something written in an unorthodox fashion by William Lind against the U.S. meddling about in Lebanon, and how it plays into al-Qaeda's interests if we go after Authoritarian Syria.

Israel: The Planned Chaos Of Illegal Settlements. This is very important.

Israel/Russia: Funny story about a corrupt financier named Vladimir Gusinsky and his Russian and Israeli schemes. Apparently he has some sympathy from characters like Benjamin Netanyahu... The Agonist is doing some serious reporting of its own now, kudos to them.

The Local Front for Fatal Hubris: Any criticisms of Tom DeLay and the cockroaches oozing from his mouth will be Taken Personally and Reinserted Rectally.