MULLAH OMAR’S WORST NIGHTMARE: Joan Jett performed in Afghanistan. She could kick his flabby Taliban ass, too, I’ll bet. And Osama’s — but what’s the point of kicking a dead guy’s ass?

50,000 PEOPLE ARE DEMONSTRATING IN LONDON AGAINST WAR: Though the press accounts probably won’t make a lot of this point, that’s less than 1/8 as many as demonstrated against a ban on fox-hunting last weekend. (And the foxhunting crowd was, um, more striking in ways other than mere numbers). I think that means the antiwar protests deserve less than 1/8 the attention.

UPDATE: London reader James Killmond sends this firsthand report:

I had planned to meet some friends at a pub on Whitehall today at 2 pm. When I heard about the march I checked the route, and, of course, I was going to be right in the thick of it. In an exercise of wishful thinking I told myself that since the march started near Whitehall at 12:30 and speeches would be given in Hyde Park starting at 3, the crowd would have cleared out by the time I showed up.

Silly me, as if anybody would in a big hurry to see Red Ken Livingston speak. Many folks were still hanging out near Whitehall when I arrived (luckily the pub wasn’t closed). It was a fair sized march, and I would not dispute a 50,000 estimate. I would dispute AP’s characterization of the crowd as “Britons of all regions, ages and social backgrounds”. There were a startling number of self-identified Arabs. I also note that the AP report soft pedals the pro-Palestine bent of the marchers. Pro-Palestine signs dominated anti-war signs by a large margin.

Hmm. Let’s see if that gets pointed out in the other press coverage.

UPDATE: Not here, though this article does note that similar protests in Rome were organized by the Communist Party. Go figure. More interestingly, opposition to war is reported to be trending downward in Euro polls.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The article linked at the top has been updated as of 4:18pm ET to show an official crowd size of 150,000. So I guess the protests should get one-third as much attention. . . .

ONE MORE UPDATE: Magnus Berhnardsen emails: “Uh… the date was chosen because of the two year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa intifada.” I guess that this isn’t really a peace march, then — it’s an anti-Israel march with a few useful idiots following along with peace signs. But that’s usually what these things turn out to be, isn’t it?

If you want to save some time, you can just read this for a survey of the arguments.

THE LAST UPDATE, I SWEAR: James Killmond emails: “So I guess Magnus has explained the profusion of giveaway Al-Aqsa tshirts that I saw everywhere. Nice.”

OH NO, SADDAM’S NOT TRYING TO GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS — THAT’S JUST BUSH ELECTIONEERING SO HE CAN BLOCK PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFITS: All I can say is thank God for the Turks:

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish paramilitary police have seized more than 33 pounds of weapons-grade uranium and detained two men accused of smuggling the material, the state-run Anatolian news agency said on Saturday.

Officers in the southern province of Sanliurfa, which borders Syria and is about 155 miles from the Iraqi border, were acting on a tip-off when they stopped a taxi cab and discovered the uranium in a lead container hidden beneath the vehicle’s seat, the agency said.

That’s critical mass folks — enough for a bomb all by itself. If this report holds up, it’s a smoking gun. Not that we needed one, really, at this point, but. . . .

UPDATE: A reader sends this enlarged photo which seems to indicate that the uranium came from West Germany, though I don’t know how much credence I’d put in that (could just be the shipping container). It also can’t be critical mass if it’s all in one place. My figure for critical mass of weapons-grade high-enriched U-235 is 15kg, which I got from memory but which this source and several others on Google say is right. That means that either (1) this isn’t really weapons-grade; (2) there’s not really 33 pounds (15kg) there; or (3) it was divided into more than one package despite the report’s seeming to indicate that it was all in one. A long cylinder containing 15kg of weapons-grade U-235 wouldn’t explode, and it might not even melt, but it would be highly radioactive and thermally hot — not suitable for smuggling. Hard to say, but my prediction is that this will turn out to be something less than initially advertised.

The New York Times has the same wire story but it’s not on the front page. Oh, and a reader emails to point out that “West Germany” no longer exists. Well, duh, but that only means the container is over 12 years old. As I suggest above, we can’t judge the origin of the material by the origin of the container.

ANOTHER UPDATE: N.Z. Bear has a lot more information.

Lastly, Whigging Out urges calm.

Or not lastly — one more. Jim Henley suggests, as do some emailers, that the stuff may have been on the way to Syria. That’s certainly not out of the question.

GARY FARBER HAS A LONG POST on bioweapons and chemical weapons as weapons of mass destruction. He disagrees with Easterbrook and with a lot of bloggers to whom he links, so I won’t bother recapping the whole discussion.

I do think that Easterbrook’s piece is in good faith, and I do think that, on the whole, chem/bio weapons are overrated in the popular mind. That’s not the same as saying that they’re not dangerous, or shouldn’t be taken seriously.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE! McCain-Feingold turns out to be a crock.

JASON KENNEY has firsthand reporting and pictures from the IMF protests in Washington. Meanwhile, here’s another take. And Nick Denton has these observations:

They complain about the promotion of flower growing over sustainable farming, for which read subsistence farming, the Siamese twin of miserable poverty.

The very existence of protestors in Washington DC is testament to the division of labor, by which factory workers build combine harvesters for farmer to produce grain, which Mexican immigrants turn into wraps for burritos to fuel the college kids in their struggle against global capitalism on the streets of DC, and, if the fascists send in the army, the kids will stake the rifles with flowers, fresh, and flown in that very day from Africa. Isn’t global capitalism wonderful?

Yes, it is.

UPDATE: Hmm. These folks sound like the spiritual antecedents of the DC protesters, don’t they?

The first troops to reach Oxford found over 100 wounded federal marshals at the center of campus, 27 of them hit by civilian gunfire. Packs of hundreds of rioters swarmed the city, some holding war dances around burning vehicles.

And they were defending local traditions against global corporate culture, too. They even said so.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The IndePundit profiles a serial protestor.

TOM HARKIN’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER HAS QUIT. And here’s the official line on the taping incident:

“It appears these shenanigans were the work of one young staffer who didn’t have enough supervision,” the Democrat said.

Will this stick? Stay tuned.

WARGAMES, WAR TOYS, AND “ANTIWAR ACTIVISTS:” Great post from Robert Crawford.

MARK KLEIMAN SUGGESTS holding corrections officials accountable for recidivism among their charges. Sounds good to me.

UPDATE: Sasha Volokh likes Kleiman’s idea, too. On the other hand a reader suggests that getting prisoners not to repeat crimes is hard. Teaching them not to get caught is probably a lot easier, and just as good from the prison operator’s perspective. . . .

TRAFFIC CAMERAS — Generator of revenue, or tool for public safety? Well, see what seems most important in this account:

But on yesterday’s “Ask the Mayor” program on WTOP Radio, Mr. Williams said looming fiscal problems forced the city to get creative in closing a potential $323 million budget deficit.

“The only reason we’re looking at the enforcement with revenue figures is because we’re in such a bind now,” Mr. Williams said.

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, who has been skeptical of the city’s electronic law-enforcement programs, said the latest expansion is a clear indication that the city is starting to see the cameras as revenue sources.

Yeah, sure, he talks about safety, too, but. . . . Traffic and parking laws in just about every city are about money, not safety. Why should DC be any different?

THE MOST SAVAGE COMMENTARY YET on Al Gore’s speech: H.D. Miller compares Gore to Principal Seymour Skinner. I think that’s even meaner than Kelly and Krauthammer. I suspect that Alex Frantz would object.

UPDATE: Jay Caruso says Alex Frantz’s defense of Gore is all wet.

IS STEVEN DEN BESTE BREAKING UP THE E.U.? Joe Katzman has the story.

DAVID HOGBERG HAS more on the Harkin scandal.

SCIENCE FRAUD, STEM CELLS, MICHAEL FUMENTO AND MARTIAN BACTERIA: Charles Murtaugh has a lot of new and interesting stuff up.

UPDATE: Jay Manifold has more on the Martian bugs.

TAPPED says the anti-globalization protests have fizzled, and pretty much agrees with my take, below.

PRESS WATCHDOG GROUPS ACCUSE HUGO CHAVEZ of targeting journalists for political violence.

MOROCCO WILL ELECT A RECORD NUMBER OF WOMEN: And it’s sure to, as 30 seats out of 325 are reserved for women. Hmm. I wonder if that’s designed to help offset Islamic fundamentalists?

JOHN DVORAK has advice for the record industry — and the Justice Department.

HMM. CLEVER, but I don’t think this approach worked in Lebanon.

DAVE TROWBRIDGE JOINS ANTIWAR.COM in denouncing a wartoy.

NICK SCHULZ says that Pat Buchanan’s new magazine is already tired.

LOTS OF IRAN NEWS at Glenn Frazier’s Iranian Liberty Index.

I imagine that the United States — perhaps through non-governmental or quasi-governmental intermediaries — is reaching out to various elements in Iran now. I’m all for engagement with the forces of democracy and freedom there, but I hope that it won’t be handled by a bunch of inexpert ex-military types of the Iran/Contra variety.

TALKLEFT POINTS OUT A PHONY ASHCROFT MEMO that’s making the rounds. Apparently it’s fooled some people.

INTERESTING QUESTION on Saddam, from Jim Henley.

&C SAYS THE ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT IS TOAST. The New Republic predicted this last year. Advantage: TNR!

Here’s what I said last fall:

Thousands of people who were scheduled to protest the World Bank and IMF this weekend are showing up anyway, only now they want to protest a U.S. military response to the 911 assault instead. “Violence breeds violence” says one of the protesters. Think about this. If it’s true, then doesn’t it mean that any U.S. retaliation was just “bred” by the 911 attacks, and is thus the terrorists’ fault? And why is it that this maxim is only directed at violence by, well, people the protesters already dislike?

Some readers think I paint with too broad a brush when talking about the antiglobalization people. Well, maybe. I think that there’s a legitimate concern about the growth of corporate power, and especially about the increasing mobilization of government power in direct support of corporate economic interest (see, e.g., the DMCA). But that’s really an argument for more and freer capitalism not an argument against it. Powerful oligopolies tied to governments aren’t really free capitalism at all. I would like to see more and freer capitalism, around the globe, to help poor people become rich (as it does wherever it’s tried). The antiglobalization people (except for a tiny fringe of anarcho-capitalists who don’t really fit in) want to see more government power, and less free markets — they just want that power used in directions they prefer. That’s very different.

There’s also a puerile and narcissistic element to both the antiglobalization and the “peace” movement (no surprise: as the quick shift in protest emphasis shows, they have an awful lot of overlap) that offends me — and that would offend me even more if I hoped to see them accomplish their goals.

Still seems to fit.