Radical Cleric Anjem Choudary Charged with Aiding Islamic State

Watch, at the BBC, "Anjem Choudary faces UK terrorism charges over Islamic State."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary is remanded in custody after being charged with terrorism offence over 'inviting support for ISIS'."

And the latest, at Telegraph UK, "Anjem Choudary protests innocence as charged with terror offence: Preacher Anjem Choudary claims David Cameron and police are the guilty ones as he faces charge of inviting support for Isil."

This Don Lemon Interview with W. Kamau Bell is Actually Pretty Interesting

It's gets better after the opening bit about "all white guys" on the stage. This W. Kamau Bell is articulate and he makes a point: Why should a guy like him --- a black dude --- vote for Donald Trump.

Watch: "Bell on Trump: 'Campaign of rich, white dudes'."

Taylor Swift Freaks Out as Fan Tries to Grab Her Ankle During Concert in Edmonton, Canada.

Seems to me that rockers have to be ready for fans to grab them or rush them, etc. They're surrounded by bouncers, in any case. Especially Taylor Swift. Interesting that the stage area had no security barrier with bouncers separating the performers from the stage.

In any case, at CNN, "Taylor Swift gets spooked by fan during show."

Islamic State Executes 19 Girls After They Refuse to Submit to 'Sexual Jihad'

This is Obama's legacy.

The legacy of appeasement and partnership to genocide.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "ISIS executes 19 girls for refusing to have sex with fighters."

Rohnert Park Police Officer Pulls Gun on Citizen Recording Him on Cellphone Camera

This just out of control. Wow.

Watch, at Jawa Report, "Some Cops Are Bad Cops" (via Memeorandum):

I started watching this expecting another unfounded cop bashing. But, wow, this cop needs retraining or something. He does not appear fit for the job.

Atom Bomb: The Logical Outcome of Total War

From Alonzo Hamby, a review of Charles Pellegrino's, To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima, and Susan Southard's, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, at the Wall Street Journal:

‘The bomber will always get through,” Stanley Baldwin told Britain’s House of Commons in 1932. “The only defense is in offense, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.” Baldwin was no warmonger. His purpose was to underscore the indiscriminate horror likely to come from the air in an era of big military airplanes carrying large payloads of explosives. His declaration reflected the thinking of theorists ranging from the Italian general Giulio Douhet to the popular novelist H.G. Wells. It also acknowledged the truism that wars are ultimately between peoples and societies, not just armed forces.

War came within a few short years, and the bomber was its most feared weapon. In Europe, Germany showed the way—first in Spain with Guernica, then in Britain with the Blitz against London, Coventry, Hull and other cities. Revenge followed in the form of British and American bombers plastering German population centers with equal indiscrimination. Japanese bombers killed or wounded thousands of Chinese at Shanghai in 1932 and wreaked havoc at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

In late 1944, Japan began to be attacked by the most formidable of the World War II bombers, the American B-29. Japan’s defenses were weak and its provisions for civilian shelters grossly inadequate. Its wood-and-paper buildings were terribly vulnerable to incendiary bombs. Few had basements to which their inhabitants could retreat. On the night of March 9, 1945, more than 300 American B-29s raided a working-class area of Tokyo that was laced with small factories. The incendiary bombs set off firestorms that laid waste to nearly 16 square miles of the city and killed approximately 100,000 civilians and left the survivors demoralized.

Other Japanese cities endured ordeals similar to Tokyo’s. Two, however, were relatively untouched—Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their inhabitants never realized that they were being saved for a terrible new weapon. The reprieve came to an end on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, in each case with single atomic bombs that probably produced fewer deaths than the Tokyo firebombing but spread greater fear.

Charles Pellegrino’s study of Hiroshima, “To Hell and Back,” and Susan Southard’s “Nagasaki” give scant attention to the larger military and diplomatic issues of the atomic bombings. Instead they recount the ordeals of ordinary and altogether sympathetic citizens coping with a sudden, devastating event that destroyed the world they had known. The lucky were killed instantly, some simply vaporized. Others displayed mute testimony to the event. Mr. Pellegrino describes one such example, drawn from the account of a survivor: “A statue, standing undamaged, . . . was in fact a naked man. . . . The man had become charcoal—a pillar of charcoal so light and brittle that whole sections of him crumbled at the slightest touch.” Another survivor, we are told, gathers the bones of a young woman, resolves to return them to her parents and manages to catch the last train to their home—in Nagasaki.

Ms. Southard gives us similar stories and provides photographs of aged Japanese still bearing horrible physical scars from their burns. She notes that the scars could also be psychological—feelings of “bitterness and outrage,” the mockery that could come with disfigurement. For some, she writes, the “fear of illness and death never ceased.” Both authors describe the harrowing effects of radiation sickness.

The maimed survivors of each city devoted much of their lives to evangelizing against the bomb. It is easy to write off such narratives as exercises in victimology, but it is also important to understand the effects of nuclear weapons in an age when they have become vastly more powerful and have been developed by nations of dubious responsibility.

What is missing from both books is context. Neither author properly discusses the factors that went into the American decision to use the bomb. Nor do they venture an opinion on whether the bomb shortened the war. They focus on the ways the bomb affected civilians who had to cope with a catastrophe.

“To Hell and Back,” one may remember, appeared in an earlier form, in 2010, as “The Last Train From Hiroshima.” The publication of that book was suspended when the authenticity of one of Mr. Pellegrino’s sources—a man who claimed to have been on a plane accompanying the Enola Gay bomber on its Hiroshima mission—was called into question. That source and his assertions are gone from the new book. A foreword notes that he had indeed “tricked” the author, who later admitted his mistake.

In a preface to “To Hell and Back,” Mark Selden, a scholar of East Asian studies, declares that Mr. Pellegrino’s narrative “encourages us to reflect anew on the ethics and horrifying outcome of World War II strategies of massive civilian bombing, whether by Germany, Japan, or England, or by American fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

His statement reminds us that the atomic bombs were the logical outcome of a style of war taken for granted on both sides by the summer of 1945. Britain suffered heavy bombing and massive property destruction, but civilian deaths for the nation were less than 45,000. The port city of Hull (population, 320,000), roughly analogous to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, endured damage to an estimated 95% of its housing stock but lost only 1,200 civilians. Unlike Britain, Japan seems to have made little or no provision for the protection of its civilian population.

Were the bombs necessary to compel surrender? U.S. policy—laid down by Franklin Roosevelt, followed by Harry Truman and supported by most Americans—was uncompromising. The U.S. would accept only unconditional surrender, to be followed by military occupation.

In Japan, advocates of a last-ditch resistance could not promise victory but could guarantee heavy casualties for the invaders. The last battle of the war—Okinawa—made the point. Okinawa was a small island, and the U.S. possessed overwhelming ground, naval and air superiority. Even so, the battle raged from April 1 to June 21, 1945, with 92,000 Japanese troops fighting to the death and kamikaze planes inflicting significant damage on the offshore American fleet. U.S. casualties (killed and wounded) were approximately 45,000.

The experience made an impression in Washington. The Japanese home islands were next. Japan’s leaders made no secret of their plans to wage a dogged resistance that would mobilize the civilian population, right down to teenagers armed only with clubs and sticks; and the leaders clung to the fantasy of a negotiated peace brokered by the still-neutral Soviet Union. They rebuked their ambassador in Moscow for telling them that the Russians, who were moving troops to attack Japan in East Asia, would be of no help.

American military planners focused on the southernmost Japanese home island of Kyushu as a first target, to be followed by an invasion of the island of Honshu and a final campaign across the Tokyo plain in 1946. Meeting with his military chiefs in Washington on June 18, 1945, President Truman expressed his hope of “preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.” A month later, the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert. Hiroshima and Nagasaki quickly followed.

Critics of the atomic bombings often assert that Japan was “ready to surrender.” Clearly this was not the case...

No, it was not the case, at all.

But keep reading.

Deals in Carry-On Luggage

At Amazon, Shop Amazon Launchpad - Bluesmart Smart Carry-On: The World's First Connected Luggage.

Plus, ICYMI, I'm greatly enjoying Robert O'Connell's, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman. It's definitely worth your time!

Jill Kargman Skewers the Shenanigans of Upper East Side's Elite Mothers

At the Wall Street Journal, "An ‘Odd Mom Out’ Feels Manhattan’s Embrace."

Also at Vanity Fair, "Jill Kargman Jokes About 'Rich Mom Problems'."

Some of the Hottest Models on Instagram Party with Maxim in a Desert Oasis

Hey, I can dig it.

Watch: "Thanks for Sharing: The Girls of Instagram."

Democrats Are on the Wrong Side of History

Indeed they are.

From Kirsten Powers, at USA Today, "I've got news for Democrats. It's a baby!:

The Democratic Party shilling for barbarism — whether by politicians, liberal media outlets, union officials or unrestricted abortion advocates — is not likely to be viewed favorably by future generations. These Democrats will be remembered for demonizing the activists who lifted the veil on a previously sanitized process and for seeking restraining orders to silence truth tellers. They will be remembered for publishing dehumanizing decrees — as The New Republic did — that people stop criticizing Planned Parenthood because as a medical matter, “The term baby … doesn’t apply until birth” (that thing on your sonogram is nothing more than a “product[] of conception.”) And they will be remembered for demanding investigations into citizen journalists for meticulously exposing atrocities in our midst.

Oh my!

Clarissa Ward Reports: Britain and France Overwhelmed by Europe's Migrant Crisis (VIDEO)

Excellent coverage.

Watch, at CBS News, "Migrant crisis: France and Britain overwhelmed."

Drought-Fueled California Rocky Fire Defies Efforts to Defeat It

At the New York Times, "California Fire, Aided by Drought, Defies Tactics to Defeat It":

LAKEPORT, Calif. — As firefighters on Wednesday embarked on their sixth day of battling the largest of the many wildfire s that have flared across the state, fire officials said that the Rocky Fire, which has grown to consume nearly 70,000 acres here in the northern reaches of wine country, is still nowhere near under control and may not be until perhaps Monday.

The Rocky Fire, which was impeded slightly by humid overnight conditions, has already defied firefighters’ expectations for how such blazes typically behave, and has crossed highways, and fire lines and other barriers meant to contain it. Feeding on tinder-dry terrain and woodlands that have been parched by drought, the Rocky Fire is now 106 square miles and has forced the evacuation of 1,480 people; about 13,000 have been urged to leave their homes.

More than 3,840 firefighters are deployed across the uneven landscape of several counties, including Yolo, Colusa and Lake. They are cutting back underbrush to make fire-blocking tracts, and dropping gallons of water and flame retardant from nearly two dozen aircraft that fly through the smoky sky. But the fire is still only 20 percent contained, according to fire officials, and the flames are surging with unusual speed.

“I’ve got 30 years in, and in the last 10 years I have seen fire behavior that I had never seen in my entire career,” said Capt. Ron Oatman, a public information officer for Cal Fire, the state firefighting operation, and a longtime wild-land firefighter. For example, he said, on Saturday the Rocky Fire grew by 22,000 acres, a plot of land that computer models indicated would take about a week to burn. But that plot was consumed in five hours.

In the last three years, rain levels in California have been 24 to 30 inches below normal, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, meaning the state has been missing about two years’ worth of rainfall. The drought has sapped moisture from underbrush and thick trees, dampness that would typically retard a fire.

“In this situation, we’ve had multiple years of precipitation deficit,” said Jeff Shelton, a fire behavior specialist who has been tracking the inferno for the firefighting operation. “In a single year, that can be bad on a short term, but when you stack multiple years together, there is a cumulative effect.”

The desiccated vegetation has become ideal fire fuel, Mr. Shelton said. “It’s potential energy, waiting for something to happen — and that’s exactly what we have.”

The situation has rendered even the complex computer programs the firefighters use here at the mobile command center in the County Fairgrounds in Lakeport into futile predictors of how the fire will burn...

More at that top link.

And watch, from CBS News 5 San Francisco:

Police Department Officers Shoot Pit Bull After Attack on City Worker in South Los Angeles (VIDEO)

I hope the worker wasn't hurt. And I feel sorry for the dog, although I just wouldn't own one.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Police Shoot Pit Bull After Attack on City Worker."

And it's more than one dog, at ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "LAPD OFFICERS SHOOT AT 2 PIT BULLS AT SOUTH LOS ANGELES PARK."

Thank God for the Atom Bomb

From Bret Stephens, at the Wall Street Journal, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t merely horrific, war-ending events. They were lifesaving":

Hiroshima

The headline of this column is lifted from a 1981 essay by the late Paul Fussell, the cultural critic and war memoirist. In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. Army who had fought his way through Europe only to learn that he would soon be shipped to the Pacific to take part in Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin in November 1945.

Then the atom bomb intervened. Japan would not surrender after Hiroshima, but it did after Nagasaki.

I brought Fussell’s essay with me on my flight to Hiroshima and was stopped by this: “When we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.”

In all the cant that will pour forth this week to mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs—that the U.S. owes the victims of the bombings an apology; that nuclear weapons ought to be abolished; that Hiroshima is a monument to man’s inhumanity to man; that Japan could have been defeated in a slightly nicer way—I doubt much will be made of Fussell’s fundamental point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t just terrible war-ending events. They were also lifesaving. The bomb turned the empire of the sun into a nation of peace activists...

That's really worth savoring for a second. Imagine especially if we'd never defeated authoritarian Japan and the Chrysanthemum Throne?

Yeah, no nation of Japanese peace activists. And no peace.

But keep reading.

'So, Matt Yglesias is now doing pig-ignorant, Aren't-I-Daringly-Contrarian #HotTakes about events he just learned about, but which happened over 220 years ago...'

Yglesias never disappoints in the leftist-loser lulz department.

At AoSHQ, "Matt Yglesias, Intellectual."

Also, from Ms. EBL, "Sex with Robots will be 'the norm' in 50 years experts claim and some people have strange...compulsions (Matt Yglesias has issues)."

Carly Fiorina: 'I'm Not a Professional Politician...'

She's so articulate. I do hope her poll numbers improve before some of the upcoming GOP debates. She deserves to be on that stage.

At Politico, "Carly Fiorina on being left out of prime-time debate: It's a long race."

Listen to her interview with Joe Scarborough, "Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina joins Morning Joe to discuss not making the top 10 in the first GOP debate."

Underwater Search Ends for Free Diver Natalia Molchanova

She's dead.

At ABC News, "Underwater Search for Famous Russian Free Diver Natalia Molchanova Called Off."

PREVIOUSLY: "Freewater Diving Champion Natalia Molchanova Presumed Dead," and "How Far Down Can a Free Diver Go?"

AQAP's Khalid bin Umar Batarfi Issues New 'Lone Wolf' Threats Against American Cities (VIDEO)

From the SITE Intelligence Group, "AQAP Releases Video Calling for Lone Wolf Attacks, Praising Chattanooga Shooter."

And at the Chattanooga Time Free-Press, "Al-Qaida calls for more lone wolf attacks, praises Chattanooga shooter":

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula released a video calling for lone wolf attacks and praising attackers like Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, according to SITE Intelligence Group, a jihadist monitoring organization.

The video was produced by AQAP's al-Malahem Media Foundation and released on August 4, 2015, the SITE Intelligence website stated. In the video, AQAP official Abu al-Miqdad al-Kindi (AKA Khalid bin Umar Batarfi), who was freed from a Yemeni prison in April of 2015, condemned "America France and other kufr [disbeliever] nations" that "assist and make legislations to protect those who abuse Islam and the Prophets." To that point, he stressed, "And as you put limits to freedom of expression and punish whomever goes against them, it is upon us to punish whoever transgresses out boundaries and sanctities."

In reference to Abdulazeez he said, "And the latest operation of Muhammad Abdulaziz, which occurred in the heart of American soil, is a clear evidence of that. He penetrated the base killing and injuring American marines in a blessed Jihadi operation. We ask Allah to accept him and raise his status among martyrs."

And here I thought we had al-Qaeda on the run. Hmm, I guess not.

ADDED: Flashback, "Al-Qaeda in Iraq Releases Shocking GoPro-Quality Propaganda Video."

David Horowitz: 'Obama is a Traitor. It's a No Brainer' (VIDEO)

Heh, Alan Colmes "debates" David Horowtiz. Like that's some kind of contest, or something.

Obama's worse than Hitler!

Watch: "Alan Colmes vs. David Horowitz: Is Obama a 'Jew-hater'?"

Women Get Just 30 Percent of Roles in Top U.S. Films

Obviously, we need more hot women in the movies.

But see Manohla Dargis, at the New York Times, "Report Finds Wide Diversity Gap Among 2014’s Top-Grossing Films."

RELATED: At Vanity Fair, "Amy Schumer Explains How Her Magical Jennifer Lawrence Vacation Came to Be."



Ah, yes, let's definitely have more Jennifer Lawrence in top roles, heh.