The Sydney Morning Herald story I linked to about US soldiers burning Taliban bodies in Afghanistan is actually from tonight’s episode of Dateline here in Australia. That link is to their front page where tonight’s episode is discussed briefly. Video and transcript should be available here when they get it uploaded, but as I write this the show won’t finish for another couple of minutes.

The freelance photographer who filmed the burning of the bodies made a good point. The soldiers who burnt the bodies probably thought they were actually doing it for hygiene purposes, but the Psy-Ops guys with them knew exactly what they were asking the soldiers to do and why.

Both the act of burning the bodies and facing them west in the process is highly insulting in Islam (or so the program said, I have no reason not to believe it). The local village was then blasted via loudspeaker, hoping to enrage and thus flush out more Taliban fighters. They taunted them by calling them ‘cowards’ and ‘ladymen’ for not coming out to fight after their colleague’s bodies were desecrated. Yes, in their announcement they told them they had been burnt facing west.

I’ll update when video and/or transcript is available at that link. Photojournalist who recorded the burning and other video from the story is Steve Dupont, voiceover and second half of story/footage is by SBS journalist John Martinkus.

UPDATE: Blogger is giving me an error page when I try to add new posts, but will let me edit existing ones!! Useless. Anyway, announcement iTunes Music Store may be coming to Australia next week.

UPDATE: Transcript now available at Dateline website. Quote by Psy-Ops guy of what they put out over loudspeakers in local language (read out in English, straight from their notebook)

SGT JIM BAKER Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.

BBC NEWS – French crack baby-smuggling ring. Still interesting, but not as much as what I thought I read, which was more along the lines of French crack-baby smuggling ring.

Sydney Morning Herald article about US troops burning Taliban bodies and then taunting via loudspeaker the village where they think more are hiding out… makes me proud. U-S-A! U-S-A! Not to mention the SMH’s suckhole policy on RSS feeds, which doesn’t allow you to link their headline. Because generating more traffic for them would be a bad thing how? And if you sign up to their RSS feeds, the only thing you get anyway is the headline, most of which are so crap you wouldn’t know what the story was unless you followed the link anyway, which is the whole point of RSS, so I don’t have to visit your site for EVERY, BLOODY, STORY. And while I can link to them via RSS, you may have to subscribe to read their stuff. Suckholes. Ok, rant over.

The Australian – Terror laws to be introduced here in Australia. One line of this, that just pissed me off (actually read it in print edition over breakfast)

Under the proposed laws, people could be jailed for up to five years for disclosing details of others who are being held by law enforcement agencies.

Sweet.

The link in an earlier post was a slightly amusing/embarrasing list of things done in a day in the life of a blogger. In that list he provided a link to his site meter, which is quite interesting.
As you can see, he’s seen a pretty big spike in visitors, another 3,000 since I looked at it this morning, I think.

Volokh.com – writing about the issue of the Chinese dissident who was jailed after Yahoo provided essential details to Chinese authorities that allowed him to be identified. One line I disagree with.

…just as there was no way to be an ethical supplier of spy equipment to the USSR or Nazi Germany

Was it unethical to supply spy equipment to the USSR simply because they were the US’s enemies? Would it have been unethical to supply spy equipment to the US government during the McCarthy era? On that note, I can’t wait for George Clooney’s new film Good Night, and Good Luck about Edward R. Murro, the journalist who publicly opposed McCarthy. Trailers here.

Downloading the trailer in iTunes now for Good Night, and Good Luck. Australian release date, December 22, 2005. Excellent! I get to watch that on my honeymoon.

Yeah, baby, I’m getting married. That’s right. Dig it.

Okay, just watched trailer. Great ending quote

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Cathy Young – post about the University of Oklahoma student who blew himself up and the rumour mill that took place in the blogosphere as to whether or not he was a terrorist. As an aside, it was while a football game attended by 85,000 people was going on inside. That’s right, 85,000 to a college football game.

The Age – more about Australian terror laws.

I thought it was a joke, but no. It’s a soccer fatwa.

Edict includes

• Do not follow the heretics and play with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it
• Do not play in t-shirts and shorts, they are not Muslim, but heretical Western clothing
• Do not appoint someon to follow you called a “referee” as his presence would be in imitation of the heretics, Jews and Christians
• You should use two posts instead of three pieces of wood or steel that you erect in order to put the ball between them, meaning that you should remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system’s despotic international rules

And other ridiculousness. Upside – maybe Australia won’t have to worry about facing Iran in any future World Cup playoffs.

Also available at the International Herald Tribune, if the NYT link becomes subscription only.

iLounge – and finally, iLounge brings the video iPod, with a six-page photo gallery

My 13 Open Tabs

UPDATE: The individual list items in this post have been broken up into seperate posts that you would have already skimmed above.

Too many open tabs, must say something about them. Minimal.

1. BBC NEWS – French crack baby-smuggling ring. Still interesting, but not as much as what I thought I read, which was more along the lines of French crack-baby smuggling ring.
2. MetaFilter talking about broadband access in the US… kind of boring.
3. Sydney Morning Herald article about US troops burning Taliban bodies and then taunting via loudspeaker the village where they think more are hiding out… makes me proud. U-S-A! U-S-A! Not to mention the SMH’s suckhole policy on RSS feeds, which doesn’t allow you to link their headline. Because generating more traffic for them would be a bad thing how? And if you sign up to their RSS feeds, the only thing you get anyway is the headline, most of which are so crap you wouldn’t know what the story was unless you followed the link anyway, which is the whole point of RSS, so I don’t have to visit your site for EVERY, BLOODY, STORY. And while I can link to them via RSS, you may have to subscribe to read their stuff. Suckholes. Ok, rant over.
4. The Australian – Terror laws to be introduced here in Australia. One line of this, that just pissed me off (actually read it in print edition over breakfast)
   

   Under the proposed laws, people could be jailed for up to five years for disclosing details of others who are being held by law enforcement agencies.

   Sweet.

5. The link in the previous post was a slightly amusing/embarrasing list of things done in a day in the life of a blogger. In that list he provided a link to his site meter, which is quite interesting.
   As you can see, he’s seen a pretty big spike in visitors, another 3,000 since I looked at it this morning, I think.
6. Volokh.com – writing about the issue of the Chinese dissident who was jailed after Yahoo provided essential details to Chinese authorities that allowed him to be identified. One line I disagree with.
   

   …just as there was no way to be an ethical supplier of spy equipment to the USSR or Nazi Germany

   Was it unethical to supply spy equipment to the USSR simply because they were the US’s enemies? Would it have been unethical to supply spy equipment to the US government during the McCarthy era? On that note, I can’t wait for George Clooney’s new film Good Night, and Good Luck about Edward R. Murro, the journalist who publicly opposed McCarthy. Trailers here.

7. Cathy Young – post about the University of Oklahoma student who blew himself up and the rumour mill that took place in the blogosphere as to whether or not he was a terrorist. As an aside, it was while a football game attended by 85,000 people was going on inside. That’s right, 85,000 to a college football game.
8. The Age – more about Australian terror laws.
9. I thought it was a joke, but no. It’s a soccer fatwa.
10. iLounge – and finally, iLounge brings the video iPod, with a six-page photo gallery.

And I think that’s it. It only worked out to 10 because there were some that were just too boring to link to here. Yes, even more boring than some of those already linked. I think I’ve wasted enough time for the day. Perhaps I’ll learn from others with high traffic that I should really be doing those points as one post at a time to generate more visitors. You can’t win ‘em all, but I guess it would negate the need for 10-20 tabs open at once on the off chance I might blog about them. Post and be done with it.

Downloading the trailer in iTunes now for Good Night, and Good Luck. Australian release date, December 22, 2005. Excellent! I get to watch that on my honeymoon.

Yeah, baby, I’m getting married. That’s right. Dig it.

Okay, just watched trailer. Great ending quote

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

A Day in the Life of Blogging

This is so sad. What makes it worse is I’m posting a link to it while thinking, damn, I need to get to class. I currently have 11 tabs open in Firefox. Nerd much?