IRANIAN WOMEN PROTEST IN IRAN: Reports, and lots of pictures, at Publius.

TIM CAVANAUGH:

I’ve gotta get on record saying this rash of celebrities claiming they’ve been involved in stalkerazzi-related traffic accidents is straight-up bullshit. How can anybody be taking these claims at face value? Out-of-control skank Lindsay Lohan, who has already racked up an abysmal driving record in her 18 years, gets in a crash with a photographer, and we’re supposed to assume the photographer’s at fault? Accident-prone xanthochroid Cameron Diaz blames nameless shutterbugs for her bad luck, and the papers believe her? The legendarily high-strung J.Lo shows signs of persecution anxiety, and that’s the fault of the paparazzi?

I’d prefer, of course, if all of these stars were no longer covered. Give ’em what they want . . . .

TURNABOUT for the mullahs?

MARK STEYN: Who can stop China from conquering the world? The Chinese communists! Read the whole thing, and especially the conclusion.

ETHIOPIAN OPPOSITION UNDER ARREST: Gateway Pundit has the report, and video.

MICHAEL YON has posted lots of new reporting from Iraq.

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S BritBlog roundup!

A FISH, A BARREL, A SMOKING BLOG: Tom Maguire fact-checks Frank Rich in a big way.

THIS IS COOL:

As video cameras, and digital storage devices (like the iPod), grow smaller and cheaper, they have become useful as a military intelligence tool. The latest example of this is a lightweight video camera that can be attached to a helmet, and the video stored on a 30 gigabyte hard drive the size of an iPod. That provides enough storage for 2-46 hours of video (depending on the resolution.)

It was civilian security personnel, former military people, who first started doing this sort of thing. Small vidcams attached to the dashboard, were used to photograph a mission. Reviewing the tapes later would often reveal an attempted attack, or some other danger that needed to be studied, and dealt with in the future. Now a British company, Double Vision (DV), is producing wearable vidcam systems for police, journalists, military personnel and athletes.

I want some of these for bloggers. . . .

ROGER SIMON NOTES A DISTURBING EXAMPLE of Microsoft sucking up to China. Bill Gates, and the rest of the Microsoft crowd, should be embarrassed, and I agree with Roger that if this story bears out, it’s hard to imagine MSN Spaces doing well with the blogging community.

LOTS OF PHOTOS, and an essay, at Rick Lee’s place.

HOW’S THE ERIC FLINT BOOK? I’m only few chapters into it, but so far it’s good. I’m not a big fan of Andrew Jackson, but Flint gives him a 3-dimensional portrayal. Sam Houston gets a much bigger role than he had historically, which is cool since he’s a local boy (my mother is even librarian at Sam Houston Elementary, which claims some connection with the nearby school where he taught). Flint’s non-PC despite being a (way) lefty, and it’s good reading so far.

IN WEST VIRGINIA, notes Dave Kopel, an employee’s right of self defense trumps the employer’s right to order employees not to defend themselves.

MORE ON THE ALGERIAN CONNECTION:

Algeria has been the center of Islamic radicalism in Africa for over a decade. Even more so than Egypt, where many of the intellectual founders of Islamic radicalism come from. Algeria is where most of the foot soldiers of the movement came from. Egypt defeated its Islamic radicals a decade ago, while Algeria has crushed them only in the last year. Over the last few years, many of the Algerian Islamic radicals have fled to Europe, and other Islamic countries. About a quarter of the 400 foreign terrorists captured in Iraq are from Africa, and a similar percentage of the foreign terrorists killed in Iraq are believed to be from Africa (mainly Egypt, Morocco and Algeria.) But the most dangerous Islamic terrorists are those who fled south, to set up camps in the thinly populated Sahel (the semi-desert area south of the Sahara desert). Al Qaeda, using its network of Islamic “charities” provides some of the financing for these new terrorist bases, as well as the money to send African Islamic radicals to Iraq.

Keep an eye on this.

“CITIZEN OF NOWHERE:” ERNEST MILLER RESPONDS to the Jay Rosen item on Bob Franken noted below.

HERE’S A GLOBAL VOICES SKYPECAST on China’s attack on blogs and bloggers.

GATEWAY PUNDIT has more on the East St. Louis voter fraud trial. Plus a shocking example of cultural insensitivity. Don’t these people care about world opinion?

THE LOS ALAMOS WHISTLEBLOWER-BEATING STORY looks to be bogus, according to DefenseTech.

INTERESTING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS in The Netherlands and elsewhere:

The backlash against Hirsi Ali has astonished and disappointed many Dutch feminists, who continue to count themselves among her biggest fans. Margreet Fogteloo, editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, said flatly that Mak is crazy. “People like him feel guilty because they were closing their eyes for such a long time to what was going on,” she said. In what appears to be a Europe-wide pattern, some feminists are aligning themselves with the anti-immigrant right against their former multiculturalist allies on the left. Joining them in this exodus to the right are gay activists, who blame Muslim immigrants for the rising number of attacks on gay couples.

Stay tuned.

“WHEN I’M REPORTING, I’M A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD:” Jay Rosen reflects on this statement by Bob Franken, in the process of examining journalism’s declining reputation.

UPDATE: Franken’s would seem to be a case of “asymmetrical skepticism.”

THE STORMTRACK BLOG is tracking Tropical Storm Arlene.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

OFF TO THE BEACH. Blogging will continue, but at a reduced pace, and email response will be degraded as well.

Among other things, I’m taking this Eric Flint alt-history novel about Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812 for beach-reading. It has a good Amazon review from Mark Whittington. I’ll report on how it turns out from my perspective.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF TOMORROW is up! And so is the Carnival of Cordite.

A SPANKING for the CJR over the Navasky matter.