News Brief: Tony Blair, What’s ‘the Next Phase’?
Posted in Terrorism, Iraq, wordpress, Afghanistan, Britain, Iran, Tony Blair, Military on March 27th, 2007 by Stanford Matthews 
Was Iran just not thinking when they captured the 8 sailors and 7 marines, one of whom is a woman? Or is everything from them a knee-jerk reaction and they don’t know how to handle this one? At a time when Britain was ratcheting down there published involvement in the Iraq conflict seems a particularly poor time to risk annoying them. Whatever Tony Blair does, he has no reason to worry about re-election. And this piece from Times Online may be the first subtle warning of things to come. Perhaps Mr. Blair is providing the new millennium version of ‘go ahead, make my day.’ So go ahead Iran, play the punk.
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com
PM warns of ‘different phase’ in Iran crisis
Iran must obey international law and release 15 British military personnel or face the consequences, says Tony Blair
“What we are trying to do at the moment is to pursue this through the diplomatic channels and make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released and that there is absolutely no justification whatever for holding them. I hope we manage to get them to realise they have to release them. If not, then this will move into a different phase.”
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, Conservative Thoughts, and LaTogaStrappata®, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Back to the slogan, such as it is. Why would you say you are in it to win? Isn’t that sort of a given if you file the paperwork and hold fund raisers etc? And we find the smirk on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s face at this site to be a good indicator of who she is. To repeat ourselves, she can’t find enough personalities to attach to herself. First it was she wanted to be known as tough like her male colleagues. Number one, not all of them are tough. Then she wanted you to know who your Mommy is by showing her softer side. Kind of rippin’ off Sears for a promotion. And then she simply wanted to be known as Hillary. Distance yourself from Bill but have him campaign with you, raise money for you but don’t talk about impeachment.
For those of us who still view the evening network news from the television broadcast world, tonight was another disappointment and reminder of how useless they are. ABC, CBS and NBC began there evening newscasts with a story about stents versus drug therapy for the treatment of heart disease. In their defense we will point out when checking AP’s top news RSS feed at the same time, it was listed at the top of their ‘top’ news. Yes, we know, so what? An recent post we have here made some commentary on the state of all things news with the growing presence of the internet. Even though they have done this many times, it still serves as evidence of what is wrong with news when they keep making the same mistakes. If anyone is interested, we discontinued watching the American evening news and switched to the BBC on PBS. They were dealing with things like the sailors held by Iran and other internatinoal news.
That brings us to our evening news offering. Harris Interactive released poll results in a press release today. 
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Washington Post -
It the UN folding to pressure? One bad commission replaced by another and negotiating what as their ‘role’ for investigating human rights violations. Is this a smple PR scheme by the UN? Name the last five significant accomplishments by the UN in this century. Saying something nice or giving someone money does not count. Neither is saying there is something that needs to be corrected.
Obama fan admits to anti-Clinton ad
Fremont Tribune Iraq funding measure splits Mich. lawmakers along party lines
I would say enough already with the Mel stories except this one is better. Some claimed academic heckles Gibson while giving a talk on film making and gets a well-deserved dose of Mel’s now famous temper. That’s right, if you don’t like it make your own movie.
TechShout! Never mind the hype - how about the console?
Ledger Independent Final Four feels great for Buckeyes and Bruins
Earthtimes.org Alcohol ‘is more dangerous than ecstacy’
Scientific American Big media’s challenge to YouTube
WHDH-TV Negotiations in Somalia Suspended
So where do you get your news and information? What sources do you trust and how do you confirm the validity of what they offer? What do we really know after consuming reports, stories and other claimed facts that form our opinions? Questions like these are usually only answered after someone working for a large news organization is caught plagiarizing and the competitors are only too quick ‘going to press’ and gaining a leg up.
The BBC news ticker is listed in the top 100 at Alexa’s Top 500 Global sites. The New York Times and the NBA’s website make the top 200 but one is hard pressed to find many traditional news and information sources ranking high on net viewership. The younger you are the less likely your are to stay informed with the old standard sources for information. What does this mean for what we know and how we respond to events and conditions developing around the globe?
The weekend is a good time to take a little break from whatever you do during the week. In this case, Blog @ Morewhat.com is taking this opportunity to step outside our usual range of topics in this blog and deal with a bit of science and technology. Of course you can find more science articles on our parent site MoreWhat.com as well as other topics.
A new nanoscale apparatus developed at JILA—a tiny gold beam whose 40 million vibrations per second are measured by hopping electrons—offers the potential for a 500-fold increase in the speed of scanning tunneling microscopes (STM), perhaps paving the way for scientists to watch atoms vibrate in high definition in real time.
What has it been, a week now since the poison pet food story broke? I haven’t been paying much attention for anyone I know who has a pet is smart enough and alert enough to provide all the protection the little beggars need. So the pet and food angle is not the part that is getting my attention. The implications for things political in the range of foreign policy, the global economy and, in general, the lack of concern about potential disasters in light of the terror factor ushered in by 9/11 plus related events.
Once that is solved we can tackle health and education. Along with the previously mentioned priorities, health and education round out the basic needs for all Americans. Healthcare is out of control and so is education. We can’t seem to spend enough on either to solve the problems of even one of them. So spending more is not the answer. With over 45 million uninsured citizens and the cost of healthcare rising well above inflation each year it is obvious the system is broken and not working well enough to be referred to as healthcare.
So you can take your global economy and your pet food poison and forget about competing. Because at the rate we are failing and falling behind we won’t even be in the game if we don’t soon cure what ails us. That will require all of us getting back to basics and reexamining in what order we plan to address the most critical issues. If everyone maintains a passionate and unrelenting stand on a single issue at the expense of all others the chances of success are diminished.
One of our top single issues at MoreWhat.com is immigration. It would be acceptable to us if one part of the immigration problem was solved first and the others put on hold temporarily. Border control is the one. If we just had effectively controlled borders it is possible the immigration problem would not get worse. If that would make illegal immigration static, not getting better or worse, that would be acceptable for a time. If everyone who has a single issue at the top of their list would find a similar scenario to accept we could solve more problems than we currently are.
Go ahead Harry, stick your neck out a little further. Funny thing about accountability, it’s a two way street. As is the case with most of the posts by politicians on the Hill.com, y’all use it for making purely political rants at the opposition party rather than for anything substantive or useful. All of you should be held accountable for the shameful way you parade around when you should be honestly attending to the nation’s business. Where your head is at Harry, do you notice an unpleasant odor?
We find the link below to be a good summary of the case for those of you who need to catch up or anyone wanting a little review on why it so majorly sucks that two border agents are being shafted by their own government to appease the Mexican government whom we owe so much for sending us all their problems. President Bush, here is one issue on which we vehemently disagree with your position. And we’re reasonably certain you simply don’t give a damn and this ain’t Gone with the Wind. It’s gone with your crap policy on borders, immigration and national security. Clean up the mess and pardon these border agents. Here’s the political upside, it might even raise your subterranean approval rating.
Another report on the border agent controversy is interesting. We’ll reserve comment on this particular report until later. Why, because our initial reaction may be unfair. Read it and see what you think. See if you notice anything a little biased or suspicious or just plain typically political. BTW, Maggie’s Notebook | Conservative Blog has some good posts on this subject 
To this point the consensus from Blog @ MoreWhat.com looks favorably upon Rep Tom Tancredo on the issues and his interest in 2008. Our current favorite for President is Mitt Romney. The reason we did not choose Tancredo was his FEC filings were the only evidence of a campaign. When and if he gets rolling we will reconsider our consensus position. But Tancredo’s combining the border agent’s pardon petition with an appeal for campaign contributions, if true, is disturbing. If nothing else it is in bad taste.