No Runny Eggs

(H/T – Curt/Flopping Aces))

I’m sure you’ve heard by now all the bloviating over Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of martial law, busting up their Supreme Court and muzzling the Pakistani press. What you’re probably not going to hear from the LeftStream Media is the semi-official reason why – he’s declaring war on Al Qaeda. Supporting that is a report that Pakistan has pulled many of its troops from the Kashmir region.

If this is true and not the same old tightrope walking Musharraf’s done since 2001, it’s a big development. Much of Pakistan’s elite, namely the lawyers and the presstitutes, which is caught up in the wake of the martial law, is solidly in the camp of Al Qaeda. Of course, so is Pakistan’s ISI, which is presumably what Musharraf would need to rely on to effectively combat any internal opposition to him.

In any case, it’s more complicated than simply Musharraf wanting to hold onto power, though that is undoubtedly his main goal.

Head Jawa Rusty has blown the lid off some games keyboard Islamists want to start on the 11th.

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

From militaryphotos.net via head Jawa Rusty…

Militaryphotos.net has it in full 2048×1536 glory. I don’t care to know whether that’s a Photoshop (though I suspect it is).

(H/T – Allahpundit)

Dr. Neal Krawetz, who is good enough to get a C|Net story, did some video/audio and image analysis of the “new” Osama bin Laden video. The money quotes:

The big question is: is the audio from Bin Laden? I’m not an audio expert (yet) and since I don’t know Arabic, I cannot tell if there is an accent or if the accent changes. I do know that the room echo and background sounds change during different audio clips. And there are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. I also cannot rule out a vocal imitator during the frozen-frame audio. The only way to prove that the audio is really Bin Laden is to see him talking in the video, but all references to current-events come during the frozen-frame section.

I’m shocked, SHOCKED that there would be so many splices in the audio-only portion of the M-m-m-m-max bin Laden tape. How about the under-4 minutes of video?

There are some very obvious places where the video has been spliced. Here’s some examples:

• 1:39 — A little more than a minute and a half into the video is a splice. He goes from looking out to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second.
• 13:13 — The second splice. Not as big, but definitely there.

There are actually six splices in the video as far as I can tell.

The video itself was filmed in two takes. The first section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. That’s right: the entire 26 minute video has less than four minutes of animated footage. The rest of the video just shows a still-frame of Bin Laden. The two sections are clearly from different recordings because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section.

Let’s see; 3:28 of live video, 6 splices. They couldn’t get more than 35 seconds out of “ObL” before they had to cut. M-m-m-m-max Headroom got more than that. Let’s continue with the video analysis, with my note that Krawetz believes the 2004 video was made in 2004 (I have my doubts on that):

Yet here is Bin Laden in the same clothing, same studio, same studio setup, and same desk THREE YEARS LATER. In fact, his stack of papers that he reads are moved between the exact same stacks. If you overlay the 2007 video with the 2004 video, his face has not changed in three years — only his beard is darker and the contrast on the picture has been adjusted.

What are the chances of nothing changing (except his beard) in three years? Virtually zero. The clips appear to have been recorded three years ago.

Or longer. However, I do not put as much stock in the sameness; a studio in Milwaukee can be made to look exactly the same as one in New York City. Morever, others have noted differences in the face between the 2004 video and the 2007 one. On to the image analysis:

As far as my tools can detect, there has been no image manipulation of the Bin Laden portion of the image beyond contrast adjustment. His beard really does appear to be that color. (I’ve asked another graphics researcher to also look at the image I analyzed, as a cross-check.)

One of the limitations of image analysis is that staged environments are not digital fakes. For example, when China Airlines painting over their logo on crashed planes, the pictures did not analyze as being faked — because they were not. In the case of his beard, it could be a costume mask, or a trimmed and dyed beard.

Let’s stop for a moment. It could also be a look-alike. Do recall that the late Saddam Hussein reportedly employed up to 25 look-alikes to try to prevent his assassination.

Another limitation concerns image size and resaves. If you make a picture small enough or resave it many times, then the fine details vanish. A picture that looks obviously like a fake cannot be detected as being a fake.

Neal goes on to note that the bin Laden frame and border were both saved at least twice and not at the same time, and that the various elements of the video came from different sources. The conclusion:

So is Bin Laden still alive? I see no proof of his existance that is newer than three years ago. Bin Laden is as alive as Elvis.

It is a lot easier to hide a corpse than a living body.

Six years ago today, a bunch of Islamists decided to snuff out the lives of 3,000 people because they wanted a worldwide Caliphate full of nobody except their kind. Though they haven’t managed another attack on American soil, they are still as committed to that goal now as they were then.

Fortunately, we’ve been taking the fight to them, slowly but surely eliminating those that hold that murderous view. We need to stay at least as committed to defeating them as they are to killing us.

If you haven’t heard the news that al Qaeda has issued a “new” videotape of Osama bin Laden, you’re not paying attention. Howie at The Jawa Report has the full video, and there’s something quite “curious” that Allahpundit pointed out. At the 1:55 mark, the image of Blackbeard bin Laden becomes a freeze frame. Interestingly, that is before the first reference to events past December 2001.

Guess al Qaeda’s Max Headroom technology isn’t perfected (or is it the Left’s; after all, “ObL” rails on Global “Warming”, corporations and neocons as well).

Revisions/extensions (7:58 am 9/9/2007) – I should’ve watched the whole thing; Dr. Rusty Shackleford (founding Jawa) notes that there also is motion on the “Osama”-cam from 12:30 to 14:00, when the figure channels Breck Girl, Barack Hussein Obama, and Alpha Algore Goracle. It makes it a bit more likely the video is somewhat-fresh; however, Osama has expressed admiration for the Vietnam-era defeatists among the Dhimms in the past, and the envirowhacko/anti-business plank has been part of the Dhimm policy since the 1960s, and there is no concrete references to events beyond December 2001.

(H/T – Sister Toldjah)

11 years after the initial discovery of several vials of phosgene gas in Iraq, the re-discovery of said vials at a UN building in New York City touched off a kerfuffle. The statement from the UN is less than reassuring:

On Friday 24th August 2007 in archiving UNSCOM files, UNMOVI staff discovered two small plastic packages with metal and glass containers (ranging in size from small vials to tubes the length of a pen) with unknown liquid substances. The archives are located at the UNMOVIC headquarters, 866 East 48th Street, 3rd and 6th floors.

An initial investigation has revealed that these items were recovered from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, al Muthamma, by UNSCOM inspectors in 1996.

It was only on 29 August, however, that the inspection report containing an inventory of the items was recovered. The inventory shows that one of the items may contain phosgene (COCL2) suspended in oil — an old generation chemical warfare agent. The inventory also indicated that the other package contains Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) reference standards in sealed glass tubes. These standards are used to calibrate chemical analytical equipment.

UNMOVIC has confirmed that normally such items would have been transported directly to appropriately equipped laboratories for analysis and not sent to UNSCOM/ UNMOVIC headquarters in New York. In the past, UNSCOM chemical samples were sent via military transport directly to Edgewood labs.

And this is the agency we’re supposed to trust with certification of disarmament of WMDs?

(H/T – James T. Harris)

You can bet terrorists the world over will want these 4-shot .22-caliber “cell phones” over the iPhone. Never mind that the reception, frankly, sucks because it doesn’t actually do any cell-phone-related stuff. Just hit the right keys to shoot.

An American Expat has been outlining the problems that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been having lately. Since shortly after 9/11/2001, he has been walking a tightrope between the Taliban (once offically supported by Pakistan)/Al Qaeda/Saudi-funded madrasas on one side and the US on the other. There’s been mounting evidence that he has slipped off the rope, and the Islamokazis that had backed him prior to his tightrope act are poised to succeed in their attempt to take over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal.

I strongly suspect that, if that happens and nothing is done to either secure or destroy Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, said arsenal will depart Pakistan for detonation in the West and Israel instead of its intended targets in India. However, I just as strongly suspect that the US does have contingency plans for securing and destroying that arsenal should an Islamist group take control in Pakistan.