Commoner Sense

The Bailout is dead. Long live the Bailout.

2008-09-29T18:03:00.007-04:00

The House of Representatives just stopped the financial-crisis bailout in its tracks, despite the enthusiastic support it had received from Bush and the rather less enthusiastic support it got from Obama and McCain. Chalk up another win for democracy, but at what cost?

It seems to me this thing failed for the same reason the EU couldn't stuff its voluminous constitution down the throats of the Irish. (No, I'm not saying the CIA got involved.) The whole plan is inscrutable to the average voter. No matter which way you hold it up to the light, it looks like a very large hat being passed around for the purpose of saving the asses of bankers who deserve our disdain (and perhaps prison) more than our charity. The last-minute attempt to change the name on the hat from "Bailout" to "Rescue" didn't make much difference to those being asked to open their wallets.

The legislators who voted against the bailout cited their political survival as the main reason. Which translates into: "We couldn't sell this piece of junk to our electorates." It did not help that we never got a straight answer on how this massive belt-tightening was not going to end up merely guaranteeing this Christmas's bonuses for the Wall Street Bunch. And it didn't help that Forbes discovered last week that "$700 billion"--the best-known figure in America after Heidi Klum's--is derived from exactly nothing.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Well, that is indeed a really large number. They know their stuff, those government economists. How much are we paying them for this? I hope they don't get to name their salaries.

It also didn't help that Nancy Pelosi decided to kick off the biggest bipartisan effort since the American Revolution with a little rant laying (unfairly) the current mess at the feet of the Bush administration. After all, her buddy Barney Frank said this back in 2003, when he was busy trying to kill Bush's plan to increase oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac:

"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Well, good luck with affordable housing now. You know that new fridge you bought with your 2008 tax rebate? Hope you saved the box.

I doubt that many legislators changed their votes because they were annoyed by Pelosi's speech, but it may have made a difference to her later efforts running around pleading with the fence-sitters to go her way. A few weeks in charm school might be in order. Bear in mind that this woman may be our next president if Obama and McCain tie the electoral college. Just when you think things couldn't get worse ...

Another significant bit of obscurity in the bailout plan was whether we should be bailing out the banks or the homeowners who find themselves unable to pay the banks. I tend to lean toward the banks, in the perhaps naive hope that bailing out the banks would allow them to restructure mortgages to make them more affordable month-to-month for the homeowners. But I've read reports that say that mortgage terms cannot be altered after the mortgages have been bundled into "financial instruments" and resold to other banks. Kind of sounds like bullshit, but maybe it's there in the fine print. Ultimately, the point is that the bailout plan was saying, "Trust us. We'll get it right this time." And it looks like that trust simply was not there. Bad for the banks, but no doubt worse for the people who are watching as gas prices and the credit crunch eat away at the money they need to make their mortgage payments.

Living where I do, I've grown accustomed to spending $6 a gallon for gas and $12 a gallon for milk. But I have to drive only about 10 miles per day, and my doctor says I should stop drinking milk anyway. What will happen to those who can't stop at ten miles, or who need milk for their children, and who still have to pay the bank? They need to be bailed out, or at least "rescued" somehow. Drill for oil. Reinvigorate nuclear power (look at Belgium and France). Make America more attractive for businesses so we stop hemorrhaging jobs. But in the meantime, we do need some kind of plan to tide people over until we make those changes. Can we have a plan that looks like a plan, and not just a dollar-figure pulled out of thin air and a promise that it will be wisely spent? Americans may not be the best at balancing checkbooks, but we're not stupid. That is why the bailout was nixed. Stop saying "trust us" and show us some meaningful changes.

If you are interested in how the bailout plan would have limited the ability of bank executives to enrich themselves at the expense of the investors whose money they'd squandered, see for yourself. Here's the bill in PDF format. The part about limiting executive compensation is section 111, beginning on page 30, and it is awfully vague, explicitly defining no specific limits at all. It also contains a glaring typo, which does not say much for the attention paid by lawmakers to this particular provision of the bill. (It reads: "top 5 executives of a public company, whose compensated is required to be disclosed pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act ..." Minus five points.) In fact, golden parachute provisions are only forbidden in the bill after the government has bailed out the institution, which would appear to even an untrained eye to be encouragement to executives to wrap up raiding the coffers before calling for help. The whole thing is a depressing read, leaving you with the distinct impression that you're being hoodwinked.

Obama proposes an American triumvirate

2008-04-21T14:47:00.002-04:00

Barack Obama had this to say at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania yesterday:

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain. And all three of us would be better than George Bush."

Bush must be pleased to hear that it would take the combined efforts of three senators to match his prowess at leadership.

Even if Obama had said what he meant--"Any one of us would be better than George Bush"-- and even if it were true, it's probably not something he should say on the campaign trail. Clinton wasted no time in criticizing Obama for failing to toe the Democrat line and perpetuate the absurd "McBush" myth. Her suggestion that Obama was "cheering on" McCain is a bit much, but she has a point. If the Democrats fail to conflate McCain and Bush in the minds of swing voters come November, they won't stand a chance.

The 2008 Hurricane Prediction SeasonIs Upon Us

2007-12-07T17:35:00.000-05:00

Unbelievable, in so many ways.

We got a six-day reprieve from the Greek chorus of tropical storm forecasters. Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. I have a feeling that next year we won't get even that. Despite three years of bad calls, William Gray at the University of Colorado is already back in the saddle. His new prediction amounts to little more than foreseeing our recent average, give or take. In fact, it's not much of a prediction at all: we're in for a "somewhat higher than average season," thanks partly to what will be "fairly warm" Atlantic sea surface temperatures. "Somewhat?" "Fairly?" Have I mentioned how unscientific this area of science is becoming?

Gray and his colleagues include so many caveats (three paragraphs' worth) in their introduction to their "Extended Range Forecast" for 2008 that any sensible reader would put it down after page one and return to looking out the window at actual weather. Here's a sample of Gray's hedging:

We issue these forecasts to satisfy the curiosity of the general public and to bring attention to the hurricane problem. There is a curiosity in knowing what the odds are for an active or inactive season next year. One must remember that our forecasts are based on the premise that those global oceanic and atmospheric conditions which preceded comparatively active or inactive hurricane seasons in the past provide meaningful information about similar trends in future seasons. This is not always true for individual seasons. [Apparently it wasn't true for the last three seasons.--ed.] It is also important that the reader appreciate that these seasonal forecasts are based on statistical schemes which, owing to their intrinsically probabilistic nature, will fail in some years. [As they did in 2005, 2006, and 2007.--ed.]

Mainstream media sources dutifully overlooked all the caveats, mentioned Gray's past failures either in passing or not at all, and churned out a new slew of utterly meaningless and counter-productive hurricane scare-stories. Incredibly, one media outlet even credits Gray with getting it right lately when the truth is the exact opposite:

Gray, who began publishing his forecasts in 1992, has gained widespread respect for correctly predicting a surge in hurricane activity over the past few years.

Gray and his team enjoyed a streak of accurate forecasts (well, "fairly" or "somewhat" accurate, at least) in the late 90s and through 2003, but the assertion that they have gained respect for their performance in the "past few years" is patently false.

To top it off, Reuters has proved me right about the obfuscation of our new storm-counting methods, just seven days after I predicted the NOAA's fudging would result in mainstream media confusion over how many storms actually occurred in 2007. Hey--I'm a better forecaster than William Gray!

Reuters puts this tropical storm count way up near the top of their article:

In the end, the [2007] season saw 14 Atlantic tropical storms, of which six strengthened into hurricanes.

Arrgh! No it did not! The NOAA gave out fourteen names, but the first one, Andrea, went to a sub-tropical storm that never developed into a tropical storm. Any self-respecting meteorologist will tell you that Andrea was not a tropical storm and that the 2007 season had only 13 tropical storms. The pinheads in the mainstream media, however, can't be bothered to study the details. So now we have the genesis of an inflated storm count for 2007.

I knew this would happen.

Weather ... or not

2007-11-30T21:40:00.000-05:00

Well, there goes another hurricane season.

Forecasters who got it wrong for a second year in a row now have--as Ricky Ricardo would say--some 'splainin' to do. Or maybe not. Priesthoods do hold their work above accountability.

Back in the late spring, weather experts tried their best to scare the hell out of us again with forecasts of a summer and fall chock full of storms and hurricanes. As if the prospect of having your roof ripped off or your home flooded wasn't scary enough already. Having flubbed their pre-season predictions in 2006, they didn't quite get the same breathless reaction from the press in 2007, but there were a fair number of articles in the mainstream media repeating their warnings. I'll be interested to see how they play it next year. I can't believe anyone is going to take them seriously if they decide to cry wolf a third time. At this rate, I will feel more anxious if they predict a mild hurricane season for 2008.

So what's going on? As I see it, there are three forces at work that have rendered pre-season tropical-storm estimates worthless, and none of them are meteorological forces.

First of all, the political maelstrom surrounding the recently popularized theory of anthropogenic global warming has warped the already uncertain science behind large-scale weather prediction. One fine example of global warming irrationality was the attempt by some scientists and media outlets to pin the 2004 tsunami on American SUVs. (Connecting the dots from carbon dioxide emissions to melting permafrost to tectonic plates to earthquakes to massive waves is quite a stretch, but it's sadly conceivable in the new world of weather pseudo-science.) The global warming debate (no, the debate is not over) may be helping dysfunctional third-world governments in their ceaseless search for scapegoats and handouts, but it's not helping science.

Second is the ramped-up media coverage of everything on earth except genocide in Darfur and the gradual Islamist takeover of Europe. Incessant shrieking from the mainstream media about each supposed looming disaster keeps our attention firmly focused right where they want it.

The third force at work is the most complex, and in my opinion the one most deserving of some exploration. The criteria for identifying and analyzing tropical storms and hurricanes have grown dangerously loose and unscientific, allowing for weather prediction driven by agenda rather than by reason. The media have gleefully joined forces with meteorologists in ascribing significance to tallies--how many storms we count--and comparing those tallies to lists from bygone, politically calmer times.

The problem here is obvious: We are no longer measuring how many storms occur, we are measuring how many storms we can count. The only tropical meteorological phenomenon that has shown an anomalous change in recent years is that of meteorologists' willingness to pad the storm tallies they feed to the media. Scientists now draw sweeping historical conclusions from comparison of recent data with that of years past while quietly neglecting to compare the new data-gathering methods with the old. Granted, there is some noise about this problem in the insider-world of weather wonks, but no one seems inclined to bring this dispute to the attention of the public.

This third force can be broken down into three statistical flaws. The first is the most obvious: we didn't have satellites scanning the Atlantic prior to 1960. The 2007 hurricane season's tally includes four named storms (Ingrid, Jerry, Karen, and Melissa) that never threatened land and might have gone unremarked or even unnoticed without satellite imagery. Jerry is the clearest example of this form of tally padding.

Jerry's storm track. That's Newfoundland off to the storm's left. About 700 miles off.

In the 1930s, out of 98 storms, only 12 that never touched land were identified and included in the list. In 2007, out of 14 identified storms, four never touched land. That's a jump from 12% to 28%. Which is the more rational explanation--that a greater percentage of storms are somehow avoiding landfall, or that we are counting more storms?

Which leads us to the second statistical flaw: the criteria for including storms in the annual tally have been gradually modified in ways that increase the number of storms reported and inflate the public's perception of storm activity by naming storms. In 2002, the NOAA altered its policy and began naming not only tropical storms and hurricanes, but sub-tropical cyclones as well. Sub-tropical cyclones are certainly worth noting, since they can develop into tropical storms, but naming them is deceptive, given how we are repeated told that the number of named storms in a season is significant. Since the policy change, NOAA has put three named sub-tropical cyclones on their lists. Two of them (Nicole in 2004 and Andrea in 2007) never became tropical storms, yet their names will forever unbalance the statistics of these years against earlier data.

Although weather experts may see the distinction and not include named sub-tropical storms in their scientific assessments, it is difficult for journalists and activists to see the difference, even when they would like to be honest. The NOAA's own website contains contradictory information on the nature of the first named sub-tropical storm, Nicole. The main webpage on the 2004 season identifies Nicole as sub-tropical in its text, yet the linked map of Nicole's track across a stretch of the open Atlantic identifies her as a tropical storm.

It is also important to note that even after the practice of naming storms was formalized in the 1940s, many storms and hurricanes were judged undeserving and left with just numbers to identify them in the records. The records from the relatively quiet 1960s include five unnamed tropical storms of equal or greater strength and effect than 2007's Jerry. In 1969, two full-blown hurricanes even had to settle for numbers instead of names. Whether or not we name storms wouldn't matter so much if we were not being told that there is some meteorological significance in using up the whole alphabet in a single year.

The third statistical flaw lies in the way the various data have been parsed to draw specious conclusions--in particular, that we are seeing an unprecedented increase in tropical storm and hurricane activity. We are told that early storms are an ominous sign of things to come, that the power of storms like Katrina is unprecedented, and that our unfortunate generation is witness to an unusual rise in hurricane frequency and strength (rather than just another crest in a multi-year activity cycle).

These fallacies are easily dispelled by spending a little time examining the records (even without consideration for how the old data is not comparable to newer data). Take the 1950s. Hurricane Able arrived on the 15th of May in 1951, well ahead of the season, and reached category 3 strength earlier than any hurricane on record. The following year saw the first tropical storm arrive in February. That's way ahead of 2007's Andrea (May 6, and bear in mind that Andrea never became a true tropical storm). Alice arrived on May 25, 1953. Perhaps we should just say that the season begins in May. Twelve tropical storms struck in 1955, nine of them becoming hurricanes and six of them reaching category 3 or greater. Tropical storm Arlene arrived three days ahead of the season in 1959.

And since hurricanes do not give a damn what decade we think it is, let's look past the end of the 1950s and see if the storms changed their ways. Eleven storms were recorded in 1961, of which eight became hurricanes, six of those category 3 or greater. From my vantage point in the Caribbean, I'm starting to feel lucky I wasn't here for what the media want us to believe were the good old days.

But the weather priesthood doesn't see it that way. Here's Joe Bastardi from AccuWeather on what my reaction should be to his colleagues' miserable batting average over the past two seasons.

"Overall, the nation got off very easy this year and last year ... We are in a time until about 2020 that hurricane threats will be more frequent and more intense on our coastlines. So instead of saying, Ha, ha, ha, there's nothing going on, people should be thankful that there's not as much going on."

Has anyone said, "Ha, ha, ha"? This is the weakest straw-man tactic I've seen in a while. No one in his or her right mind would gloat over being spared the tragedy that we've so recently witnessed in New Orleans. Being pleased that we had a mild storm season does not mean we are pleased that our scientists have proven themselves fallible two years in a row. And don't respond to our justifiable concern with a patronizing repetition of the same old dire threats. We never asked you to tell us how bad each coming season would be. The meteorological establishment came up with that plan on its own. Perhaps it's time to abandon it.

Meteorologists should admit that pre-season forecasting is simply beyond their current abilities, stop playing into the hands of our hysterical mainstream media, and focus on the useful and much-appreciated business of identifying and tracking the storms we care about--the ones that exist.

Gender Apartheid creeps into our public schools

2007-10-01T00:19:00.000-04:00

If we truly believe in equality, then there is is no reason for this program taking root in South Carolina's public schools, and there's no excuse for this supposed news story from the Associated Press. The ironic thing is that the same media outlets that decry the shameful persistence of racial segregation in places like Jena have no problem spouting propaganda like this for the equally shameful resurgence of sex discrimination in America's schools. Oh, but it's new, improved sex discrimination made to look like educational and social theory!

S.C. pioneers in single-gender classes

By SEANNA ADCOX, Associated Press Writer

David Chadwell believes boys and girls can get through the awkward middle school years better when they're separated, learning in classrooms tailored to the learning styles of each gender.

As the country's first and only statewide coordinator of single-gender education, Chadwell is helping to make South Carolina a leader among public schools that offer such programs. About 70 schools offer the program now, and the goal is to have programs available to every child within five years, he said.

"Pioneers"? "Helping to make South Carolina a leader among public schools"? Where is the supposed journalistic objectivity? And the last time I drove down to Florida, South Carolina still looked to me like a state, not a public school. Where are the editors?!

The theory is that by separating girls and boys — especially during middle school years typically marked by burgeoning hormones, self doubt and peer pressure — lessons can be more effective because they are in unique classroom settings.

"Burgeoning hormones"? Did I mention that we need an editor over here?

For example, Chadwell explains, research shows boys don't hear as well as girls, so teachers of all-boys classes often use microphones.

Huh?

And because boys' attention spans tend to wander, incorporating movement in a lesson, like throwing a ball to a student when he's chosen to answer a question, can keep them focused.

A little waterboarding might help to focus their daydreaming little minds also, but that doesn't mean ...

In one recent boys' class, a group of gangly seventh-graders sprawled on the floor around a giant vinyl chart, using skateboard parts and measuring tape to learn pre-algebra. In a different school a few miles away, middle school girls interviewed each other, then turned their surveys about who's shy and who has dogs into fractions, decimals and percentages. Classical music played softly in the background.

And the plaintive call-to-prayer of the muezzin echoed eerily in the distance. Don't get too attached to that dog of yours, wallflower.

Teachers in all-girls classes say they've learned to speak more softly, because their students can take yelling more personally than boys.

In the boys' class, they just yell all the time, for no reason. Especially during a good waterboarding.

And the educators gear their lessons to what students like: assigning action novels for boys to read or allowing girls to evaluate cosmetics for science projects.

No way. She did not write that and publish it in the Associated Press, and all with a straight face. We don't need an editor, we need someone from Human Resources.

I can't go on. If you're masochistic enough, read the whole thing. The only interesting points in the remainder of the article are that this is partly Bush's fault (shoulda known) since the No Child Left Behind Act mandated streamlining the process toward realizing gender Apartheid. And the reporter got around to writing five sentences conveying the misgivings of one rather mild critic of the program. At the end of the article, the AP shills the website of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, an advocacy group whose potential usefulness has not been lost on our nation's fifth-column Islamists. If you don't believe me, read it here (middle of page 2) and here.

In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education: "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Obviously, the context of this statement was race, not sex, but if the same rules do not apply, I'd like to hear why. Facile generalizations about boys' hearing or attention spans will not be entertained, however. The society you will face as an adult will not usher the opposite sex out of the room to accomodate your supposed weaknesses, so don't get comfortable behind that "No Girls Allowed" sign. And girls! Good grief, where are the feminists?

Separate is inherently unequal. That's why they have that little curtain between coach and business class. That's why there's a children's table at Thanksgiving dinner. That's why we have a border with Mexico. But division--and the differences that division inevitably generates--have no place in public education.

Meghan O'Rourke at Slate did a pointed critique in 2006 of the faulty reasoning behind the renewed push for gender segregation. It highlights the various flaws in the arguments of people like Chadwell and his fellow travelers at NASSPE, though it doesn't address the greater question: Why is the so-called progressive left in America (whether in public policy or the media) so consistently willing to embrace terrible ideas in the name of creating a better society? (Think "eugenics" ... "midnight basketball" ... "Jeneane Garofalo" ...)

Jumping Ship

2007-09-07T14:56:00.000-04:00

Well, I've gone and done it. I will skip the apologies and jump straight to the excuse. My family and I have spent the last few months pulling up roots and moving. A new home, a new latitude, a new language, a new lease (if not on life, then at least on the home).

Just for the record, I didn't leave because of Bush. You wouldn't believe how many times I've been asked that by former fellow New Yorkers. Good grief.

My reasons for leaving New York are complicated and personal enough to be more boring than enlightening, so I won't go into them. The reasons to be here are more interesting. The photo explains a lot: my youngest daughter, diving off a sailboat into the Caribbean Sea. Over the next few years, she'll do that more times than she'll climb into a taxi. We'll all spend more of our waking hours under blue sky than under a roof. We'll all remember that stars should be plentiful and that air should smell like flowers or rain.

And I will be writing again. Sorry about the prolonged silence. (There, I went and apologized anyway.)

Iraqis to U.S. soldiers:"Please don't go! We want to kill you!"Or why pollsters waste our time

2007-03-19T09:17:00.000-04:00

In my opinion, public opinion polls are useless--kind of the mentally challenged younger sibling of the noble project of one-man-one-vote democracy. But when it comes to grinning idiocy, the antique media just can't get enough, so today we're going to hear a lot of nonsense about how many Iraqis feel nervous and how many don't, about how many can think of a family member hurt since the invasion and how many can't. Public opinion poll results are only slightly less malleable than Play-Doh. Reuters mentioned that the latest poll "oversampled" in Anbar, Sadr City, Basra, and Kirkuk. Oversampling is a bit of statistical funny business that seems hard to justify in this case, especially since quizzing residents of Anbar or Sadr City about the occupation is like stopping passersby in Berkeley and asking how they feel about Bush. Pollsters normally oversample to compensate for under-representation of minorities in random polls, and even in those cases I have my doubts over whether oversampling increases the poll's "accuracy" or whether it simply opens the door for manipulation by agenda-driven poll workers. Oversampling may have been partly to blame for the inaccurate exit polls that helped blow Kerry's chances in 2000.

As if to demonstrate the utter meaninglessness of opinion polls, this latest survey uncovered a startling bit of Iraqi cognitive dissonance.

Slightly more than half of Iraqis — 51 percent — now say that violence against U.S. forces is acceptable ...

About four in five Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S. troops but only a third want those U.S. troops to leave Iraq immediately.

That means that at least 18 percent of Iraqis think it's okay to shoot our soldiers and think our soldiers should stick around.

Now obviously this makes no sense, and only some pretty tricky (or pretty sloppy) polling could render results like that. The suspect figure is the 51 percent, which the pollsters say is a 300 percent jump from 2004. I'd like to know how the term "acceptable" was translated--whether a "yes" answer meant "I'd let my teenage son shoot at Americans" or something more akin to "shit happens"--a popular sentiment, incidentally, in Dar al Islam. I'd also like to know that the question was phrased the same way two years ago. But for some reason, mainstream media outlets never provide a full explanation of a poll's questionnaire and methodology. In this case, a little digging (about seven mouse clicks away) reveals that the poll workers' "oversampling" placed them in harm's way a number of times and subjected them to repeated questioning and harassment by Iraqi police. They were stopped from conducting interviews with female family members even when the poll protocol required it. And most importantly, they did not have the trust of the people they were questioning, a fact that pretty much invalidates the entire project.

The main reason behind this problem is the unstable security situation in this area, especially if we realize that the business of private research is new for Iraqis who are not familiar with such things. Many people believe that we are doing something against them and that we work for foreign interests.

If the interviewees cannot be certain they're not speaking with insurgent spies trying to root out coalition collaborators, they're not likely to give an honest opinion about the whole G.I. vs. jihadi popularity contest. And if the AP had more integrity, they would include these flaws in their own report on the poll, not bury them in hyperlinks or pass the buck to ABC (who sponsored the poll).

But we can't expect such integrity because it doesn't serve the mainstream media to reveal to us their biases, their agendas, their limitations or their manipulations. Like fast food, if we know too much about it, we just might stop swallowing it.

Welcome to Crazy Town

2007-03-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

Am I the only one who thinks this is nuts?

March 17, 2007 -- A mother and four children killed in a Bronx fire that left 10 people dead began their final trip home last night. Mamadou Soumare's Air France flight to Mali, via Paris, took off around 7 p.m. despite bad weather conditions, with the bodies of his wife and four children. The airline is covering the travel costs.
Soumare is to be greeted at the Bamako airport today at 9:20 p.m. by members of his extended family who have flown in from other African countries and Europe, and by hundreds of people from Tafacirga, his home village.
"All the preparations are in place for this," said Moussa N'Diaye, an uncle of Soumare's wife, Fatoumata Soumare.
"We are ready for Fatoumata and the children to come home," N'Diaye said.
Because he is residing in the United States illegally, Mamadou Soumare had to get special clearance from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to travel to Mali and return to The Bronx.
He is hoping to get permission for his three children living in Mali to return to the United States with him.

At the risk of sounding heartless, I believe we're letting our sympathy cloud our judgement. Mamadou Soumare did not merely "reside" here illegally. He worked here illegally (as a livery cab driver--which I thought was impossible), and brought his wife and children here illegally, all with the help of his cousin, Moussa Magassa. Magassa runs a kind of underground railroad for Malians wishing to skirt our nation's immigration laws in order to escape from the shithole their tribal and religious customs have made of their own nation.

"We are a very strong culture," Bukiray said. "We all live together. We share everything. I don't have to know you and I will give you money if you are from my tribe. Any country you go to in the world, you would just send a letter and then just come and you would have six months to stay at someone's house. It is OK, we are all family."
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mali said the Magassa household was well known in the country.

I might find the community's cohesiveness touching if it weren't illegally importing "cultural" practices I don't want to see infecting the society of my city. Malians suffer from all the symptoms of Islamic backwardness, and as usual, it's the female half of the population that suffers the worst. If you're born female in Mali, your prospects don't look too bright. You've got a 95% chance of having your clitoris and labia minora hacked off by the time you're five. And chances are one in four your family will marry you off for a "bride price" before your fifteenth birthday. You've got even odds that your husband will be twice your age or older. You most likely won't have much to say about who the lucky guy is, but don't complain, because the law allows him to rape you and the cops will allow him to beat you. And he can just go and get three more wives if he finds you tiresome. Oh, and you might get to go to school until you're made a wife, but it will probably be a Koranic school, so your chances of learning to read are about one in ten.

I can see why people would want to leave Mali. But the problem arises when Malians come to America not with the intention of leaving Mali behind, but rather with an elaborate (and in some ways illegal) plan for bringing Mali here.

An article in The New York Post describes Magassa's family as "always skirting the edge of poverty." Having eleven children and one income is a good way to guarantee perpetual poverty. Magassa filed for bankruptcy three years ago. The article also mentions that he had seven of those children with his wife, Manthia, and four of them with his second wife, Aissa. (And that's not "second wife" as in divorced-from-first-wife-married-to-second-wife, it's "Big Love" polygamy of the kind the authorities prosecute when Christians do it.) Aissa's name is particularly fitting, as she's only 23 and has four children. Her husband's age remains shrouded in mystery: not one reporter seems to have been able to turn up this basic bit of information. Nonetheless, a little simple math shows that Magassa may be following in the footsteps of the Prophet to an extent that could get him locked up. Moussa Magassa has a 7-year-old daughter. Reporters don't seem curious about whether that daughter is Manthia's or Aissa's, probably because the answer could raise another discomfiting problem. If the 7-year-old is Aissa's, what we have is more than polygamy. It's statutory rape.

Then there is the equally uncomfortable issue of negligence. Magassa had turned his three-story house in the Bronx into a multi-family dwelling. He had reportedly applied for permission to divide the building into three apartments, but permission had not been granted. Suppose for a moment that I have twenty-two people sleeping in my house, and I remove the batteries from the smoke-detectors, and I fail to provide any secondary means of egress (the house had only one staircase and no fire escapes), and have space-heaters going while everyone's asleep. And my house burns down. It wouldn't be Bloomberg visiting me, it would be the police. But then, I don't have multi-culturalism on my side.

I'm not opposed to immigration. My ancestors were immigrants. But letting the left's mantra of "one culture is just as good as another" become a tacit part of immigration policy is suicide. Of course Malians should be welcome in New York, so long as they are not polygamist, misogynist, primitivist, statutory-rapist Malians. It seems evident to me that the post-tragedy, melting-pot hug-fest over New York's Malian community is well-intentioned but dangerously misguided. Americans are ignoring obvious signs that their laws are being flouted, their cultural mores disregarded as irrelevant, their society duped into playing host for all the backwards crap that makes places like Mali what they are. As Richard P. Feynman said: "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out."

An object lesson for the Democrats

2007-02-23T00:39:00.000-05:00

Here's what happens when you pander to the hard left to get yourself in power:

ROME -- Romano Prodi couldn't live with them and couldn't live without them. The far-left fringe of his fragile coalition, they are the parties that noisily opposed the premier's U.S.-friendly policies on keeping Italian troops in Afghanistan and expanding U.S. bases in Italy.

Those tensions forced Prodi to resign Wednesday after he lost a key foreign policy vote in the Senate - and threaten to usher in a new era of turmoil in Italian politics.

Prodi needed the leftists to edge out Silvio Berlusconi in elections in May 2006. But they have paralyzed his ability to govern.

From the start, Prodi's government was fraught with friction, as it struggled to meet European Union demands to cut Italy's budget deficit and increase productivity while seeking to please its electorate by maintaining Italy's generous welfare state.

But foreign policy proved to be its downfall.

Prodi and D'Alema's efforts to raise Italy's profile in NATO and the EU while weaning the government away from Berlusconi's cozy relationship with Bush were not enough to please the more radical wing of the center-left alliance.

"I believe Italy is today the only country in the West where nearly 10 percent of the voters believe in an anti-American platform," said political analyst Stefano Folli. [Ed.--Signore Folli should come visit. He might be suprised at how many American voters believe in an anti-American platform.] "This explains the aversion to foreign policy, which is an aversion to the alliance with the United States."

For example, Lidia Menapace, a member of the Senate's Defense Commission, says U.S. and NATO bases are an "infringement of Italian territory" and that after the fall of the Berlin Wall NATO should simply "dissolve itself."

While Prodi has tried to play a major role as a peacekeeper in Lebanon, his ally, Communist Party leader Oliviero Diliberto, returned from a visit to Lebanon and Syria and said Hezbollah was a "victim of stereotyping."

Pictured on his party's Web site wearing a Palestinian scarf, Diliberto assailed Israeli criticism of his visit as "offensive."

Another communist leader, Marco Ferrando, defended banners held up during a recent protest that called for the release of a group of Italians arrested on terrorism charges as Red Brigades suspects.

...

"Let's hope that after this trauma, the radical left understands that political suicide is in nobody's interest," D'Alema said.

Clinton understands this, I believe. Should she get herself elected by the Cindy Sheehan, 911-Truther crowd, she won't have the political capital to accomplish much more than overseeing our withdrawal from Iraq.

Pig Farsi?

2007-02-22T10:48:00.000-05:00

To skirt the few sanctions the U.N. has imposed on its nuclear program, Iran is renaming the blacklisted firms involved in acquiring nuclear technology for the mullahs. They put their turbans together to see how best to pull the wool over the eyes of the IAEA, and here's one of the new names they came up with:

Sookht Atomi Reactorhaye Iran

Landlady: Oh I'm sorry. I didn't introduce you. This is Ron. Ron Vibbentrop.
Johnson: Oh, not Von Ribbentrop, eh?
Vibbentrop (Graham Chapman, with German Accent): Nein! Nein! Oh. Ha ha. Different other chap. I in Somerset am being born.

"Atomi Reactorhaye"?! That's the most suspicious thing I've ever heard. "Yes, Hello, this is Mr. Ameneikhay calling from North Minehead. Ouldcay ouyay easeplay Edexfay emay entay oundspay ofway utoniumplay?"

We torture people. Islamists "forcibly interrogate" them.

2007-02-20T19:06:00.000-05:00

Those who are "forcibly interrogated" are later killed. In passive voice. By no one in particular. Don't forget, the mainstream media are not unbiased, and not merely anti-Bush. They are on the other side.

The FBI has been handed a gift by Kenyan authorities: Daniel Aljughaifi, an American citizen and convert to Islam who signed up with al Qaeda in Somalia to wage jihad against anyone standing in the way of Islam's continuing conquest of North Africa. He even talked with his new friends about turning Ethiopa into a fundamentalist Islamic state, which would be quite a trick, considering that less than half the population of Ethiopia is Muslim. He was captured by Kenyan authorities after he and his buddies got their butts kicked out of Somalia by Ethiopian troops. If these jihadis have dreams of turning North Africa's Orthodox Christians into dhimmis, they'll have to get better at defeating them when they're soldiers. Aljughaifi proved his bravery as a Muslim warrior by beating up an unarmed (and probably tied-up) flight attendant.

While there, he helped forcibly interrogate an alleged spy against the rebels, a flight attendant who was later reported killed.

Though the criminal complaint against Aljughaifi clearly states that the flight attendant (who the jihadis thought had photographed them on the plane to Somalia) was beaten, slapped, and told (by a gun-wielding Aljughaifi) that he would be killed, the reporter chooses to call it "forcible interrogation." Our media give every benefit of the doubt to our enemies while tearing down--at every opportunity--the men and women who risk their lives to protect ours.

Aljughaifi was born Daniel Maldonoda, and his chosen Muslim moniker may be intended to ally him with his murderous brethren in the al-Jughaifi district of Fallujah. He also appears to have been a contributing member of the website islamicnetwork.com (where he and other posters frequently end their comments with the phrase "Unite and Conquer"), as well as the author of a rather lame blog. In May of 2006 he wrote about his move to Egypt. His last post was in August of 2006. I suppose he then packed his bags, left his burqa'd wife and three little jihadi babies, and went off to join the militia of the Islamic Courts Union, who had taken control of Mogadishu in June. In one of his posts he wonders, "Am I a Wahabbi?" Well, Daniel, you might be. But I'll tell you what you certainly are: a traitor. May you rot in prison.

You can read the government's complete criminal complaint against Aljughaifi here.

Is Iran having money trouble?

2007-02-19T08:09:00.000-05:00

An article from Reuters today suggests that Iran may be showing signs of cash-flow problems. Russia has announced it is delaying work on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant because the mullahs are pulling the old "check's in the mail" trick with January and February's required payments. Their excuse supposedly has something to do with switching from paying in dollars to paying in Euros: dollars are punctual, Euros are tardy. Sounds kind of like Boeing and Airbus. Who would have though that cash has a work ethic?

But the real reason behind the missed payments is likely a matter not of which currency Iran is using but of how much of it they've got. To cover their current expenditures--including frivolities like lobbing missiles around the region, smuggling arms to terrorists, and confiscating everyone's satellite dishes--the Iranians need oil to remain at or above $65 a barrel. It's under $60 a barrel and will likely remain so for some time. The Saudis can live with revenues at that level, and they can do it with a smile knowing they're screwing their Shiite rivals across the Gulf.

Depending on whom you ask, Iran has between 30 and 80 billion dollars in foreign cash reserves. (The vice-governor of their central bank says they like to keep the exact amount shrouded in "mystery" ... kind of a "hidden Imam" approach to fiscal responsibility.) If you trust the lower figure, their 2006 budget called for spending nearly all of it, apparently in the hopes that 2006 oil prices would be sustained into 2007. Well, not only did that not happen, the ayatollahs' Powerball pool didn't come through either. And Mr. Ahmedinejad hasn't cut back on the spending, unless you count stiffing the Russians as an economic strategy.

Iran's brinksmanship becomes more frightening when combined with the possibility that their pockets are empty. The Shiite penchant for glorifying humiliation and defeat--along with Ahmedinejad's membership in an apocalyptic cult that makes mainstream Islam look nearly rational--could mean a very ugly end-game. The Iranian people are already suffering from double-digit inflation. A confrontation leading to a total blockade of the regime or to all-out war could easily spiral into a crisis with worldwide ramifications, not least among them that it's 13 degrees outside and my furnace is already cycling about every ten minutes. On the brighter side, Iranians are growing increasingly fed up with Ahmedinejad, to the point where he's resorting to shutting down criticisms he apparently cannot answer. We can only hope that the Iranians give the madman the heave-ho before he ruins it for everyone.

Uh oh. The Chinese are in for it now.

2007-02-17T14:16:00.000-05:00

What, me worry?

Saw this headline on Yahoo this afternoon:

Fortune: Year of Pig will bring disaster

... and immediately thought, Hmmm. I bet I know what this is about. The promise of a whole year of porcine imagery is sure to get the Islamists' panties all in a twist. Much seething will surely ensue, followed by the obligatory Friday-afternoon chanting and burning things, with a strong chance of occasional explosions and head-chopping.

But no! The article opens with the dire predictions of some Feng Shui master, who thinks the Year of the Pig bodes ill for reasons more mystical than political. Apparently, the elements of the pig (whatever that means) are fire and water, which make for conflict, which therefore mean we're in for a year of stuff blowing up around the world. Wait, haven't things been blowing up on a daily basis for the last few years anyway? Whatever. I learned not to look for reason in the arguments of the religious back in my days in Catholic school. Whatever the supposed cosmological reason for the coming chaos, it does start to sound like it's related to that other reason that Tom Pain has been howling about since the last Year of the Snake.

He noted that the Russian AK-47 rifle, a weapon of choice among insurgents around the world, was invented during a pig year.

"So it will not be surprising to see more gunbattles, murder with guns and bombing attacks in 2007," he said.

And I thought we were through with all that.

In any case, it turns out that Tom Pain's Islamo-sensor wasn't malfunctioning after all, as the article gets around (in the 27th paragraph) to the real reason we should nervous.

While the pig is beloved by the Chinese, the animal is offensive to Muslims, who consider it unclean.

Here we go ...

For that reason, Chinese New Year celebrations have to be handled with care in Malaysia and Indonesia, mainly Muslim countries with large ethnic Chinese minorities.

For the first time in its history, Indonesia introduced a special set of postal stamps to mark the Lunar New Year. But concerns over Muslim sensitivities led the postal service to drop plans to put a large pig on the stamps. It chose a Chinese temple instead.

"We took the middle path," said Hana Suryana, director of the Indonesian postal service.

The "middle path" apparently being the all-too-common one of suppressing anything that differs from the mindless unity of Islam.

Still, that was progress for a country where ethnic Chinese, who make up 5 percent of the population and have long faced discrimination, once were not allowed to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

"That has changed now, but we still feel uncomfortable celebrating the day in a large way because there are some people who cannot accept that Chinese culture is a part of Indonesian culture," said Jhony Tan, a trader in Jakarta's bustling Chinatown.

Yusri Mohammad, president of the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, said he had no problem with the Chinese celebrating the pig year in his country. He said decorative pictures of pigs in shopping malls are fine — as long as Chinese don't start using live pigs or eat pork in public.

And what pray tell, Mr. Mohammad, will happen then?

I am curious (not).

2007-02-11T16:27:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press Department of Headline Blandification turned out a real winner this afternoon:

Obama says voters curious on his faith

Aside from being written in Engrish, this headline manages both to alter reality and to misrepresent the article's focus, and in just seven words! Somebody deserves a raise.

To be clear, this is not the fault of AP writer Henry C. Jackson, who actually puts the point more sharply in his article:

Obama's religious background has come under scrutiny because he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.

I like that Jackson resisted the common antique-media trend of qualifying any statement that might be seen as skeptical of Islam's cloak of benevolence. Attendance at a Muslim school in Indonesia is not the same as attendance at a Catholic school on Long Island, and it is a fact deserving scrutiny. Here's what Obama had to say in answer to the public's supposed "curiosity":

"If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you can expect it, some of that. I think the majority of voters know that I'm a member of the United Church of Christ, and that I take my faith seriously," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Perhaps I'm not representative of the average voter, but I'm not curious about Obama's faith. I'm disdainful of his trumpeting it, and it only diminishes the already slim chances I will vote for him. If I vote for a Democrat at all, it will be for Clinton (who I believe deserves not to be addressed by her first name just because her husband can't step out of the spotlight).

In any event, only five of the article's 29 paragraphs focus on the issue of faith. Jackson strays quickly from the piece's supposed topic to other aspects of Obama's candidacy--ones that might interest voters more than his early connection to a death cult that keeps hundreds of millions of people locked in ignorance, misogyny, and primitive superstition. Those aspects would apparently be his skin color and whether or not he's quit smoking.

In the interview, Obama also said his race might be a "novelty" this early in the presidential contest ...

The greater novelty would be Obama's stature (admirable, in my opinion) as the first U.S. presidential candidate deserving of a fatwa for irtidad (turning from Islam to another religion), a crime regarded by many Islamic "scholars of jurisprudence" as deserving the death penalty. Don't blame me ... It's in the Koran. His status as an apostate might put the kibosh on any plans for hand-in-hand strolls with Saudi princes. Wait, maybe I should vote for him.

Not much "truciness" to this truce

2007-01-30T12:49:00.000-05:00

When is a ceasefire not a ceasefire? When people get shot in head while the ceasefire is "in effect." Can somebody at Reuters explain this to reporter Nidal al-Mughrabi?

GAZA (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a Hamas commander in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and the Islamist group blamed a Fatah-dominated security service for the first killing in the territory since a ceasefire went into effect overnight.

Hospital officials in the southern town of Khan Younis said Hussein Shabasi was shot in the head.

That seems to happen quite a bit during Palestinian ceasefires. This double-speak would be laughable were it not for the western media's complicity in spreading it.

Jermaine wants Michael to convert to Islam

2007-01-29T18:12:00.000-05:00

What would we do without Reuters? I was just wondering what's on Jermaine Jackson's mind?

LONDON (Reuters) - Jermaine Jackson said on Monday he wants his brother Michael to convert to Islam; and he believes the reclusive superstar has given it serious thought.

"Michael, I feel, needs to become a Muslim because I think it's a great protection for him from all the things that he's been attacked with, which are false," said the former Jackson Five singer who now lives in Bahrain.

Yes, I can see how joining a cult that reveres a man who married a 13-year-old might make sense for somebody with Michael's public relations woes. I hereby second the motion. The umma can have The Gloved One. We'll hold onto his music (especially the earlier stuff) if you don't mind. It's undoubtedly haram anyway.

Local warming

2007-01-29T09:59:00.000-05:00

A rare, thoughtful look at the frightening progress of Islamist aggression

2007-01-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

An excellent article from Der Spiegel about how Islam is glomming territory as fast as it can, forcing anyone who doesn't want to get with the program to flee for their lives:

A Christian Exodus from the Arab World

The resurgence of supremacist, totalitarian Islam as a force that kills all difference and dissent wherever it can is largely ignored by Western media. The fact that non-Muslims in places like Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, and Malaysia increasingly face the dismal prospect of dhimmitude or exodus usually warrants little more than a brief aside in articles that focus on specific instances Islamic intolerance, such as the targeting of Christians after the publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Even when the topic of Muslim expansionism is addressed, its long and bloody history is usually downplayed. Younger generations today in America are well-versed in the evils of Christian European expansion into the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries, but they harbor the illusion that North Africa and the Middle East have been Muslim (and Arab, for that matter) since the dawn of time. Der Spiegel takes a long-overdue look at the big picture.

The article does suffer from some very minor symptoms of Western suicidal double-think, but nothing too bad. The sub-head reads: "Violence, terrorism and the Islamists' growing influence pose a threat to Christianity in the Middle East" ... as if the violence, terrorism, and Islamist influence are three distinct things. That's like saying, "Smoke inhalation, blunt force trauma, and terrorist attacks killed nearly three thousand people in New York on September 11, 2001."

Still, Der Spiegel has done us a much-needed service. Here's an excerpt:

Christians have lived in the Arab world for the past 2,000 years. They were there before the Muslims. Their current predicament is not the first crisis they have faced and, compared to the massacres of the past, it is certainly not the most severe in Middle Eastern Christianity. But in some countries, it could be the last one.

...

Demographics have accelerated this development. Christians, often better educated and more affluent than their Muslim neighbors, have fewer children. Because the wave of emigration has been going on for decades, many Middle Eastern Christians now have relatives in Europe, North America and Australia who help them emigrate. Their high level of education increases their chances of obtaining visas. Those who leave are primarily members of the elite: doctors, lawyers and engineers.

But there are deeper-seated reasons behind the most recent exodus: the demise of secular movements and the growing influence of political Islam in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing.

Oh, brilliant.

2007-01-18T14:55:00.000-05:00

From the CanWest News Service:

Researchers bring 1918 Flu Virus Back to Life

Scientists have resurrected the 1918 flu virus in Winnipeg and uncovered evidence of what made the microbe such a relentless killer - it turns the body against itself ...
''The procedure was not all that difficult,'' says Darwyn Kobasa, a researcher at the Manitoba lab. He says the eight carefully crafted genes were inserted into cells along with a few proteins. Within hours, the cells were taking instructions from the inserted genes and mass-producing copies of the 1918 flu virus.
''It is kind of neat looking through the microscope and realizing you are looking at something that is responsible for so many deaths,'' says Kobasa.
Last January, he and his colleagues produced millions of copies of the virus in a bid to understand why the 1918 flu was so deadly ...
The scientists intended to observe the [infected] animals for 21 days, but the monkeys grew so ill, so fast, they were all euthanized by day eight of the experiments.

"Neat." Why don't we cut to the chase and just euthanize ourselves now?

In fairness, the Canadians are only the second stupidest scientists on the planet. American researchers apparently already pulled a Dr. Frankenstein with Spanish Influenza last year. Now who wants third place? Hmmm ... do I see Mr. Ahmedinejad raising his hand in back there?

The friend of my enemy

2006-12-23T10:55:00.000-05:00

Ayman al Zawarihi sent out a Christmas message to his friends and enemies last week. Unlike past missives from al Qaeda's spiritual leader, this one is being largely ignored by the mainstream media, for reasons that should be clear to those who read it. We who support the crusader armies in Iraq and Afghanistan can rest assured we remain on Zawahiri's naughty list, but the American Democrat party seems to have found favor with the old jihad-pushing Egyptian "doctor." The letter explicitly links the interests of al Qaeda and the interests of the party that will take control of our nation's legislature after the New Year.

In the latest speech of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two, titled: “Realities of the Conflict Between Islam and Unbelief” he discusses several topics within the context of this subject, focusing on the incumbency for jihad upon Muslims and the support for the Mujahideen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Algeria, and Somalia. The speech derides several recent events, such as the victory of Democrats over Republicans in the November 2006 U.S. midterm elections, and the November 30 meeting in Amman, Jordan between U.S. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, giving an indication that the video was recorded within the last few weeks ...

To the Democrats in America, Zawahiri states that they did not win and the Republicans did not lose; rather, it is the Mujahideen who have won, and the American forces and their allies those who lost.

I haven't seen a transcript of the tape, but it seems to me there are two ways two interpret this, and neither of them is good news for Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama (and even less so for Congressman Keith Ellison, whose supporters have been known to ululate and shout "Allahu Akbar" at rallies). Zawahiri could mean that the Democrats should thank al Qaeda for bringing them to power in the House and Senate. (Don't the Democrats credit al Qaeda with keeping Bush in power in 2004?) The second possible meaning is more damning for the Democrats--that Zawahiri feels that an electoral win for the Democrats in America is tantamount to a battle won by Islam in its struggle against "Unbelief." Zawahiri may have meant a little of both; when it comes to semantic precision, Arabic is a long way from German.

In any case, this speech from Zawahiri once again lays out plainly the intent of our sworn enemy, while our own leaders blather on about the Religion of Peace and our War on (the amorphous and unaffiliated concept of) Terror. There's a New World Order coming, and it's not the one Bush's father had in mind back in 1991.

Harkening to the speech’s subject, Zawahiri directly tells the Muslim Nation that they have a decision in which they may live on the margins of the New World Order, or rely upon Allah and embrace Islam, doing jihad for His Sake. [Given that this analysis by SITE is from an audiotape, I don't know how they came to the decision to capitalize certain words. It looks suspiciously like creeping dhimmitude ("His Sake") and an Orwellian submission to totalitarian lingo ("New World Order")--Ed.] Scholars who advocate Muslims to take a moderate and progressive position are condemned [As usual, moderate and progressive are good for the infidels (at least until they submit) but bad for the faithful.--Ed] and those who obligate Muslim women in France to remove their hijab and those who obligate the Muslim in Britain to “obey Elizabeth” are not suitable, in Zawahiri opinion, to take the reins of leadership or authority. The Palestinian women of Beit Hanoun who surrounded the besieged mosque are deemed more courageous, resolution, and honorable than the “religion-selling traitors” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cairo, Riyadh, Amman, and Sana’a.

I think we learned a while back in Afghanistan that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, but is the friend of my enemy anything but my enemy? I didn't really need to be dissuaded from voting Democrat anytime soon, but after this, I'm about as likely to cast my ballot for Bin Laden in 2008 as for Clinton or Obama.

Curiouser and curiouser

2006-12-07T16:21:00.000-05:00

Russian-spy-turned-walking-biohazard Alexander Litvinenko is still dead. But now he's Muslim. Actually, he turned Muslim a week before he died, but only those of us in the vast right-wing conspiracy knew about it. Now that his memorial service has been held in the target-rich environment of London's Regent's Park Mosque, and Chechen Islamists have attended his funeral, the mainstream media have pulled their heads out of the sand and noticed.

LONDON - After a Muslim prayer service, ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko was laid to rest Thursday in a rain-swept funeral at London's Highgate Cemetery attended by a Russian tycoon, a Chechen rebel leader and other exiled Kremlin critics.

...

Litvinenko, who criticized Putin's policies in Chechnya, reportedly had converted to Islam before his death, and some of the mourners were dressed in traditional Muslim robes. They left red flowers and an orange and yellow wreath at the stone gate of the famous cemetery where communist revolutionary Karl Marx is buried.

Earlier Thursday, Zakayev and Litvinenko's father, Walter, joined hundreds of Muslims who had gathered at London's Regent's Park Mosque for regular daily prayer to attend a memorial service, where the imam recited a funeral prayer.

"The imam said a special passage for him from the Quran," said Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, head of Britain's Muslim parliament.

"Britain's Muslim parliament"? Is the AP writer channelling us information from the future, or is there some kind of shadow government operating out of London now?

Why can't we have a good old cold-war-style, spy-vs.-spy dust-up without Islam getting involved? You can't swing a cat without hitting the Clash of Civilizations these days. Problem is, that's exactly the way the Islamists want it. "We're here! We're backwards, misogynistic supremacists! Get used to it!"

Storm receding

2006-11-17T17:11:00.000-05:00

What passes for progress in the umma

2006-11-15T23:47:00.000-05:00

Rape victims in Pakistan may soon be able to press charges without fear that they will end up in prison while their attackers walk. Under the country's sharia-based "Hudood" laws, a woman who fails to produce four eyewitnesses (male, of course) to support her accusation of rape has effectively pled guilty to adultery, which carries a maximum penalty of death. Under a new law passed yesterday over loud objections from the parliament's substantial Islamist contingent, a failure to prove rape will no longer automatically morph into an adultery charge against the victim. Should a court actively choose to pursue the adultery charge, the woman may spend only up to five years in lock-up. Brilliant.

Bear in mind that Pakistan--like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Indonesia--is supposedly on our side in the ideological battle against the forces of darkness. With friends like these ...

ISLAMABAD, Nov 15: The government rushed a signal women's rights bill through the National Assembly on Wednesday amid a boycott by religious parties and some drama after the draft survived a prolonged controversy and an apparent last-minute intrigue.

Slogan-chanting members of the Muttahida Majlis-Amal (MMA) walked out of the house in protest before the vote on the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Rights Bill, which they said was contrary to Islamic injunctions about punishments for zina (adultery and rape).

It's not easy to read about Pakistan's Parliamentary politics without going cross-eyed from the endless acronyms the parties employ in a vain attempt to distinguish each brand of primitive double-think from the next. For the masochistic and the stubbornly inquisitive, here's the link from the Pakistan Dawn Online: Some respite for women, at last: Protection of rights bill gets through NA

In any event, reading a little deeper into today's issue of the Dawn reveals that there isn't really as much dawn there as we might hope. On the same day as the Hudood laws came a step closer to the trashbin, the regional goverment of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) voted to introduce a new "anti-vice ombudsman" to protect Islamic values and keep everyone in line with sharia. This is the same bunch of AK-toting, hardscrabble yahoos who thought the gang-rape of Mukhtar Bibi was no big deal. Improbable as it might seem, they manage to give Pakistan a bad name. Oh yeah ... and they've probably been shuttling a burqa-clad Osama Bin Laden from safe house to safe house ever since he crawled out of Tora Bora back in 2002.

Well, they've put their heads together and written a new law, the NWFP Hisba Act, and it will drag their little patch of earth back into the seventh century faster than you can sing "Come, Mister Taliban ..." Whoops, sorry, no singing allowed anymore. Check out some of the highlights of the powers exercized by the new religious police:

Special powers of Mohtasib.

Without prejudices to the powers conferred by section 9, the Mohtasib shall have the following powers:-

(i) To monitor adherence of moral values of Islam at pubic places;

(ii) To discourage Tabdhir or extravagance, particularly at the time of marriages and other family functions;

(v) To monitor adhearence of Islamic values and its respect and regard at the times of ‘Iftar’ and ‘Taravih’;

(vi) To Whom It May Concern [ed.--Gee, that's subtle.]: discourage entertainment shows and business transactions at the times of Eideen and Jumm’ah prayers around mosques where such prayers are being held;

(vii) To remove causes of derelection in performance and proper arrangement of Eideen and Jumu’ah prayers;

(xiv) To discourage un-Islamic and inhuman customs;

(xv) To check the tendency of indecent behaviour at public places including harassment of female; [ed.--That's "female," singular, because that's about how many you'll find out and about on the streets of Peshawar before too long.]

(xvi) To eradicate the deal as profession in ‘Taweez’, ‘Gunda’, palmistry, sorcerary, etc ...

"Sorcerary"? "Eradicate the deal as profession"? Can I start a Taliban to eradicate Engrish?

Better yet, can NASA hurry up and find us a new planet? We'll slip quietly away in our spaceships while the Sunnis and the Shiites duke it out. They can have earth. I'd breathe canned air and drink Tang for the rest of my life to get my family safely away from these morons.

Long Live Saddam ... In prison

2006-11-12T01:57:00.000-05:00

The death penalty is something our nation should be outgrowing, not exporting.

That said, there are reasons to string the madman up, take some pictures of his bloated corpse, and be done with him. Mainly, his demise might diminish the fervor of one rank of the so-called insurgents who've devoted themselves to spilling the blood of Americans and Shiites in Iraq for the last three and half years. His death might also reassure some of our Iraqi allies that they'll not be facing an exact repeat of the last time we retreated from the region and left them to be rounded up and tortured for their support of Western intervention. And there's always the sadistic pleasure of taking revenge on an unrepentant, egomaniacal killer.

Nonetheless, Saddam should live. It might be a good idea to remove him to a maximum security prison in, say, Denmark, but killing him is unwise. Everybody loves a shahid, so why let him pull an Obi-Wan Kenobi on us? Move him to a northern climate, put him on a high-trans-fat diet with not much yard time, and he'll pass like Slobodan--in his sleep before the next Olympics. Not much glory in that.

Sadly, it's not up to us--or me, for that matter, like always. We turned him over to the Iraqis (not so much a puppet regime as a Pinocchio regime) when he should have gone to the Hague. When they hang him, there will no doubt be celebratory gunfire in the streets. Get yer' AK out. Another victory for civilization. Before the barrels cool they'll be back to murdering one another in the name of Allah.

Same as it ever was

2006-10-14T11:39:00.000-04:00

HUTCHINSON
(Punches FAWLTY in the gut.
FAWLTY falls to the floor behind the desk.)
Now, I'm not a violent man, Mr. Fawlty!

FAWLTY
(From behind the desk)
Oh yes you are!

Thirty-eight prominent Muslims have sent a letter to Pope Benedict lecturing him on Islam. A big deal is being made of this by Reuters and the usual suspects, but it isn't really anything more than the same old obfuscations fancied up and given a slightly snottier tone than usual. The tactic of claiming loudly to be a force for justice and peace while all evidence points to the opposite is practically the sixth pillar of Islam.

Much of the letter is devoted to the argument that despite the glorification of violence in the Koran, Muslims reject violence. The writers point out ...

... the sacred formula Muslims use daily, In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Is it not self-evident that spilling innocent blood goes against mercy and compassion?

Yes, it is. Is it not also self-evident that a great many Muslims either see things a different way or have a different definition of "innocent"? So once again we face the tired old argument that the ceaseless bloodshed across the Muslim world and wherever Islam intersects with any other belief, secular or religious, is not the work of good Muslims. Fine, for the sake of argument, I will accept that. But the bloodshed is undeniably the work of people whose beliefs (whatever you call them) were generated by Islam. They say so themselves (and further, they often claim the mantle of "good Muslims" and accuse others of apostacy). So what are we to do? The west will always arrive at this same absurd impasse when it tries to speak rationally with people for whom reason is not a virtue, and for whom logical thought and discourse are nothing more than tools in a bag of tricks.

So perhaps we should just play it their way:

We in the west would like to correct some misperceptions that exist in the Muslim world about our sense of mercy and compassion. Those young men and women in uniforms tramping around the Middle East and Asia with guns in their hands are not soldiers. In fact, the U.S. Army is not really an army. It's more of a construction team. Those explosions you hear are merely the work of the demolition division. Once they're done, the building will begin. They are, to the last one, merciful and compassionate, as our society teaches them to be. Should any of them stray from our beliefs and do something obviously unmerciful or uncompassionate, then clearly they are not really of our society, are they? They ceased to be our responsibility the moment they began acting against the mercy and compassion we hold so dear. So don't come blaming us for what they do. And the War on Terror is not really a war. You see, war is peace, and terror is justice, and "on" and "of" are both prepositions, so you could say that it's actually the Peace of Justice.

And after all, the Koranic verse that now conveniently abrogates all others is, "There is no compulsion in religion." But we'd like to take that one step further, just to put everyone's mind at ease. We firmly believe that "There is no compulsion in anything." So do what you like. Chop off the heads of Buddhist teachers and Wall Street Journal reporters. Blow up marketplaces and nightclubs. Rent SUVs and drive them through crowds of college kids. Poison police officers eating evening meals during Ramadan. Revive polio by banning vaccines. Take children hostage with guns and bombs on the first day of school. Buy young boys and force them to jockey camels. Kill nuns when the Pope says something that pisses you off. Fly planes into buildings. Cut off the genitalia of twelve-year-old girls. Then marry them. We don't care. Do what you like. We trust your self-evident mercy and compassion. And don't complain about all those men and women with the uniforms and the guns; don't complain about the planes, the helicopters, the prisons; don't complain about the U.N. inspectors or the trade sanctions. We've got nothing to do with all that.

Mark Foley is not gay

2006-10-13T19:33:00.000-04:00

Here's a bit of amusing idiocy from Marshall Darts in today's Daily Kos:

The best thing for the whole country is to force the Republican Party to "out" every gay on their side of the aisle in Congress, whether on staff or a politician.

This is not a homophobic reaction to the Mark Foley scandal.

Um. Yes it is.

Quite the contrary, it is to expose Republican hypocrisy and to take the gay issue off the political table.

No, it's not. It's a tiresome expression of the left's creeping fascistic tendencies, this time to require that people wear their sexual preferences on their sleeves. (I'll take a "polymorphously perverse" armband, if Woody Allen didn't get the last one. Or does he get a pedophile one?) And it isn't exactly hypocrisy for a closeted gay politician to oppose gay rights or same-sex marriage. It would be hypocrisy for an openly gay politician to do so. The closeted one could say he is living the lifestyle he advocates for all gays: secret. Furthermore, I don't agree that Mark Foley has the right to call himself gay just because's a pedophile who targets boys. Sex between adults and minors is not "gay," it's morally reprehensible. And it's a crime just about everywhere in the good ol' Dar al Harb.

Some gay-rights groups have intelligently taken Foley's self-outing for what it is: a cheap ploy to shift the focus from his apparent criminality. Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying, "It's irrelevant if he's gay or not." But a spokesman for another gay advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, said that organization would not take a stand one way or the other on the issue of Foley's sudden gay-ness. "We're not going to comment on it,'' he said. If HRC is in the business of protecting gay rights, they should comment on it, because Foley's donning the mantle of the oppressed homosexual damages all gays' chances of achieving acceptance and equal rights.

Anyway, if we follow the advice of Marshall Darts, why stop with just the right side of the aisle? Is he suggesting there are no closeted gays in the Democrat Party? Or maybe he's saying that all closeted gay Democrats support gays on issues like same-sex marriage. What about former governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey?

Democrat? Check.
Gay? Check.
Closet? Check.
Opposed same-sex marriage? Check.

McGreevey claimed he opposed gay rights so nobody would suspect he was gay. Wow. I guess we're lucky his dirty little secret wasn't that his grandparents were Jewish.

So Mr. Darts, if you're concerned about hypocrisy, don't talk about outing only Republicans. And if you are concerned about rights, don't advocate outing anyone. The right to be openly homosexual should be respected, but so should the right to privacy. Expose crime, expose corruption, and certainly expose the pedophiles. But if sexual orientation truly doesn't matter, then treat it like it doesn't matter.

The memory of the monarch

2006-10-13T15:15:00.000-04:00

A monarch butterfly feeds on milkweed flowers outside our house.

The ubiquitous milkweed is crucial to the monarchs' survival during their migrations to and from their southern wintering sites. This particular plant is actually called "Butterfly Milkweed," and it can be found all from New York to Minnesota, often covered in monarchs. Kind of the Denny's of the butterfly world. Milkweed plants often serve as home to the insects' larvae, and pollen stored as fat provides the butterflies with the energy to make migrations of nearly 3,000 miles.

Monarch butterflies demonstrate a form of inherited knowledge that goes beyond simple behavioral instinct. The monarch in this photo is on his way to a forest in southern Florida or Mexico, the same forest where his now-deceased grandfather or great-grandfather spent last winter. Despite the passing of one or two generations that never had the need to make the trip back south, this butterfly will be able to find his way. I wonder if Carl Jung knew about this? It sounds like butterflies have a collective unconscious, whether or not we do.

From the Department of Misplaced Modifiers

2006-10-13T12:53:00.000-04:00

Government corruption in Nigeria has hit a new low:

Un-revolution in Iran?

2006-10-08T03:56:00.000-04:00

This could well turn out to be nothing, but I will throw it out there for the hell of it. An Iranian blogger opposed to the current Islamic regime claims there is fighting in the streets of Tehran at this moment.

According to Anti-mullah's latest post, an Iranian cleric who has supported an end to theocracy is evading arrest while his supporters battle police in the streets around his home. Apparently, the clerics in charge have found probable cause by claiming that Ayatollah Boroujerdi has claimed to be the Twelfth Imam, the international man of mystery who disappeared down a well about a millenium ago and whose return is eagerly awaited by Shia Muslims.

The most obvious question is: "Who gives a fuck?" When it comes to imam-vs.-imam, I definitely have no dog in that fight. But I have to admit that I like the idea of anti-government riots in the streets of Tehran. If Muslims are going to hurl rocks at somebody, I'd rather it be the mullahs' plainclothes death squads than Belgian police.

There's a mention in Anti-mullah's post that this uprising (or at least the backlash against it) may have some connection to the Baha'i faith, which is an odd outgrowth of Shia Islam that regards all religions as equally valid. I guess that's the next best thing to my belief that all religions are equally invalid.

In any event, this is what passes for progress in the Muslim world. Though I generally like what Anti-mullah has to say, I can't get too worked up over this news. If the best anti-theocratic leader the Persians can muster is just another imam, they're doomed.

UPDATE

Anti-mullah reports that the defenders of Ayatollah Boroujerdi did not stand much chance against the regime's water cannons and bullets. Apparently popular support for Boroujerdi was rather half-hearted, possibly for the same reason my post above was less than effusive: the average Iranian isn't going to waste time or risk bloodshed in a struggle between one cleric and another.

Forget Che

2006-09-24T11:51:00.000-04:00

Since the American left can never find enough nasty, murdering megalomaniacs to toe-suck, the AP gives them their semi-annual Che Guevara paean. Though this one has a good deal more balance than others I've read, it's still giving valuable time and attention to the memory of a man who deserves no more. (And revealingly, though the article is titled, "'Che' Guevara's iconic image endures," the web address for the piece calls it "che_s_mystique_5." Could this be the fifth one this year?!) I imagine the story's been dragged out this time because we're nearing the anniversary of his birth or death, or perhaps Hugo Chevez rings a Pavlovian bell in writer Martha Irvine's mind. "Hey look, a blustering South American loudmouth with dreams of spreading totalitarianism and failed economic policies around the globe! Let's do another piece about Che!"

As usual, the great legacy that keeps Che in our faces is that stupid t-shirt. I hope there's an afterlife, so that he can see what I've seen: two young men strolling hand-in-hand along a Chelsea sidewalk, one of them wearing a Che t-shirt, extra-small, the guy's gym-toned abs rippling beneath Che's pursed lips. Guevara was a vicious homophobe. The only thing better will be the day I sit outside Starbucks on the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana, sipping an Iced-Che Latte while reading in the Cuban free press about the progress of Castro's trial in the Hague.

In the meantime, if the editors and writers at the Associated Press are so eager to keep doing Che stories, why don't they do one about his penchant for executing dissidents, or the fact that his (and Fidel's) gay-bashing machismo ended up shaping a special police-state apparatus for homosexuals in Cuba, or that once he stepped off Castro's coattails, his armed uprisings failed to achieve anything except making more people dead. Even leftists sometimes admit that Che was a failure in pretty much everything except self-promotion. In 2007 we'll reach our fortieth Che-free year on this planet. Can we resolve to ignore the anniversary and give Ernesto Che Guevara the inattention he deserves? Somehow I doubt it.

That happy, jolly time of year

2006-09-23T09:46:00.000-04:00

It's Ramadan again, that marvelous month when Muslims around the world fast from dawn till dusk, eschew gossip and sarcasm, and refrain from anger and violence.

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

To start the month off, Noam Chomsky and Bin Laden have both been reported dead, by Hugo Chavez and the French, respectively. Let's hope the French have better intelligence than Venezuela. Chomsky is alive and still blowing hard. Chances are he'll soon meet with his admirer in Caracas to demonstrate that he remains among the quick. My old admiration for Chomsky's research and writing has not stood up to a second read-through, but I would never wish the man dead. Bin Laden is another matter. Let's hope he saw his last Ramadan last year.

The month of Ramadan begins when the new moon is visible. Apparently not anticipating that his cult would eventually span the globe from Michigan to Thailand, Mohammed did not see the problem that would arise from this. Since mindless, submissive unity is central to Islamic thinking, the possibility that the Dearborn Muslims might still be eating while Medina Muslims are already fasting is clearly cause for crisis. Mohammed's system also relies on the kind of weather more common in deserts than in places the rest of us chose to live (thank you, Sam Kinison). Muslims in Seattle or Brussels could probably make it through the whole lunar cycle without seeing the moon once. Then there's the fact that in a millennium and a half, Muslims haven't caught on that the lunar cycle makes a shitty basis for a calendar, since without constant correction the "months" will shift in place relative to the solar year. And the solar year is the one we need to think about, since it determines the meteorological seasons.

The smallest common multiple of the lunar cycle and the solar cycle is nineteen years, known as a Metonic cycle. Ancients like the Hebrews who wanted to stick to the lunar cycle solved the "drifting" month problem by adding seven extra months here and there in the nineteen-year cycle. This way, some years have twelve months and some thirteen, but at least you know that your holidays, planting and harvesting times, monsoons, etcetera will fall in roughly the same months each year. These extra months are known as intercalary months. With typical rejection of reason and reality, Mohammed wrote into the Quran a prohibition against intercalary months. I guess his astronomers were too fearful of his sword to point out that this obstinacy would condemn the ummah to an eternity of never knowing exactly what date it is, what date any given day in the past was, or what date a particular day in the future will be. Today there are numerous Islamic calendars since different "scholars" come up with different lengths for the months. Turkey, Indonesia, and a few other Muslim nations have settled on mathematically based lunar calendars, which solves the problem of the lengths of the months but not the problem of months drifting within the solar year. Muslims in America may soon follow suit, but they are encountering resistance from the primitivists who hold so much sway in the cult. These are the same geniuses of "Islamic jurisprudence" who still issue fatwas on the topic of istijmar, the glorious Muslim practice of wiping your ass with a rock, just because that's the way Mohammed did it.

Anyway, happy Ramadan, everyone. (Oops, I forgot. No sarcasm allowed.)

Fresh from the Department of Redundancy:Another reason not to trust Reuters

2006-09-23T01:38:00.000-04:00

Surprisingly, Reuters has run an obituary on Pham Xuan An, a North Vietnamese spy they (unwittingly, I hope) provided with cover during the war so he could pass to his communist overlords intelligence on U.S. and South Vietnamese troop strength and positions.

It's awfully short for an obit. But I'm surprised it's there at all. Kind of makes a nice counterpoint to Reuters' whining impotence over its staff's evident fealty to Muslim terrorists.

They just never met a traitor they didn't like.

Dear Abby, Muslim style

2006-09-22T23:09:00.000-04:00

From the "Islam" Q&A section of today's Arab News:

Who Can Be a Woman’s Guardian?
Edited by Adil Salahi

Q. I want to marry a relative of mine ...

Incredibly, the fact that he wants to marry a relative is tangential to his question. He just wants to know who's going to sign the marriage contract, since her father can't do it.

Anti-Bush march in New York City

2006-09-19T16:02:00.000-04:00

Rode my bike up to 6th and 37th this morning to see what kind of a crowd the United for Peace and Justice march would draw. They were quite proud of themselves for getting permission from the city to march to the U.N. on the day President Bush would address the General Assembly. All in all, it was pretty bland: the usual crayon-on-cardboard hyperbole, a lackluster "die-in," and a monotonous, repeat-after-me chant led by Jesse Jackson. The weather was nice. And I got to catch a some of Bush's speech on the radio in my cab ride back to where I'd locked my bike.

These leftist/socialist/so-called-liberal events attract quite a range of opinions and characters. After just a few minutes I'd spotted some of the usual birds: muttering lunatics looking nervously up at the traffic cameras, despicable anti-Semites waving Palestinian flags, college students searching for the artistic heart of dissent.

First up, the hyperbole. The theme that we are unwittingly submitting to a Nazi--or fascist, or Orwellian--regime was repeated many times over. It's a take on reality the left would be wise to dump in favor of something less hysterical, given the smirks and scowls of passersby faced with stars-and-stripes swastikas. But the left loves overstatement, so this is what we get:

Bush is Big Brother.

Bush is an "Insane World Criminal." (Is that anything like an "Insane War Criminal"?)

It's not just Bush. America itself is turning Nazi.

Moving on, we have the distortions of reality:

The Loose Change crowd made an appearance.

Not to be outdone were the 911Truth-ers.

This woman apparently thinks democracy is a bad thing, and we need more tyranny around the world to stop the Bush agenda. Or perhaps she's also pro-sex-worker, in which case I guess it's a good thing. Who knows?

This marcher wants victory for "The People's Resistance" in Lebanon and Palestine. If she's really so unembarrassed to support Islamist terrorists, why doesn't she wear a Hamas headband and wave a Hizb'allah flag next time?

This woman thinks that what Kanye West says is worth repeating. Except that Kanye West never said that George Bush hates poor people. He said that George Bush doesn't care about black people. But it sounds like something he might have said, kind of a "fake but accurate" misquote.

These kids were very sharp--the only ones in the march who "made" me as not-on-their-side. Or maybe they thought I was from the FBI. Must be the button-down shirt I was wearing. I should get a neat t-shirt like his. Actually, I should have just asked him to give me his--after all, it's not really "his," is it?

The NYPD were very patient and polite, though I did hear on the radio a few people managed to get arrested.

This guy is my favorite. Couldn't we organize a march and rally just for people who can't figure out what's going on?

A young woman placed tiny plastic soldiers here and there along the crosstown route. I have no idea what it means, but I think it made for a nice photo-op.

The LaRouche Gang showed up. Yikes.

A guy was selling "Zapatista" t-shirts. Someone should tell him that the Zapatistas have become a joke, even in the judgement of the highly sympathetic New York Times. (The article was titled, "At a 60's Style Be-In, Guns Yield to Words, Lots of Words," and it ran on 31 August 2005. It's now trapped in their TimesSelect archives.)

There was one counter-protester, though he wasn't really opposing the UPJ people, he was just an anti-UN protester. I like his sign. Straightforward, clear, insulting but not vulgar. In need of a spell-check, but one can't ask for too much.

The only time I heard a cop start to lose his patience was when a platoon of marchers dropped to the asphalt in a spontaneous (I think) "die-in." The policeman beside my sighed and said, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" I think he was afraid that the protesters were going to remain there, blocking the street, until he and the other cops had to haul them off in zip-ties.

After lying there for a few moments, gasping and moaning in a way that struck me as mockery more than street theater, the protesters got up and moved on.

The marchers arrived at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and were corralled into a pen so they could all face the U.N. building. Oddly, there were four or five other pens. I went to investigate. The first one was occupied by a small group of Muslim Pakistani men who would like Musharref to step down.

I won't pretend to know what their agenda is. Pakistani political rivalries and maneuvering are beyond Byzantine. There are five different Pakistani Muslim Leagues. That's why they have the (N) in their name. And you think we have it bad here with Insane Orwellian Nazi World Criminal Bush(it).

The second pen contained an even smaller group of Thai protesters in yellow t-shirts. In lieu of a banner, they had pinned up this t-shirt on the barrcade:

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin must GET OUT! "Thaksin = Toxin." The UPJ crowd should count it's blessings with Bush. They could have gotten the "Master of Evil." But Thaksin was at that very moment losing his country to a military coup, one apparently endorsed by Thailand's king, since no one sneezes there without his go-ahead. Word of the coup may have reached the yellow shirts, since there weren't very many of them and they didn't seem to have much to protest.

The next corral, adjacent to the UPJ rally, contained a large crowd of supporters of Iranian dissident Maryam Rajavi, who opposes the Islamic Republic with a blend of democracy and Marxism. When the UPJ rally ended, the Iranians got started. Wow, do they know how to throw a rally. The Americans got Jesse Jackson leading the crowd in a droning, halting chant ("This land [repeat one time] ... was made [repeat one time] ... for you [repeat one time] ... and me [repeat one time]" ... I kid you not.) The Iranians got drums, cymbals, horns--playing something melodic instead of the cacophony apparently favored by pacifists. They had photos of the people they want in power (they apparently can agree on whom they want in power), lots of flag-waving, and a stage flanked by two golden lions.

Now that's what the left in America needs!

They also had better signs ...

And funnier cartoons:

All in all, the march wasn't as depressing as I'd expected it to be. There was a strong core of people who are simply anti-war, and though I strongly disagree with them, I'd never want to see their opinions squelched. However, if the rational left hopes to attain any kind of meaningful power, it must find a way to disinvite the conspiracy theorists, lunatics, and vulgarians who always manage to show up for and dominate such events.

AP: Public relations for the mullahs

2006-09-18T23:31:00.000-04:00

In case we needed any more evidence that mainstream media in the west are engaged in a deliberate campaign to obscure the nature of Islam, tonight we have the Associated Press giving us an article with this headline:

Iranian leader urges more papal protests

Here's the article's lede:

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.

Now, I appreciate the way AP Writer Lee Keath puts the jihadis' dream of a worldwide caliphate front and center--it's about time that vision got some scrutiny. It's more prevalent than most casual observers of the clash of civilizations realize, mainly because so many western reporters turn off the mics whenever Muslim leaders start mumbling about how a totally green planet wouldn't be such a bad thing (and they don't mean it in the Al Gore sense). But Al Qaida in Iraq is not what this article is supposedly about, if we're to believe the headline. Plus, what Zarqawi's understudies are spouting should probably take a back seat to the pronouncements of the bearded ones leading the "Death to America" chants while their subterranean minions spin enriched uranium for the purposes of the Religion of Peace. (And while Iran's president is about to treat the U.N. to another earful of mendacity and Persian chest-thumping in the hope that he can just string things along until Bush is out of office.)

Don't hold your breath waiting to find out what exactly "Iran's supreme leader" said, because the writer goes on for another seven hundred words without mentioning him. Perhaps the editor who wrote the headline didn't read the entire article--it's been known to happen. But enough misguided benefit-of-the-doubt. Whether by an editor or by a writer or by an entire staff of fifth-column, Islamist shills, we are being fed pap in place of facts.

Let's jump down to the nineteenth and twentieth paragraphs of the article, where we discover that ...

In Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used the comments to call for protests against the United States.

Sorry to interrupt, but it is worth noting here that we are once again told that the most significant thing about Khamenei's speech is that he called for "protests." Read on:

He argued that while the pope may have been deceived into making his remarks [Ed. -- I have no clue what this bit of conspiracy theory is about, and the article offers nothing to clarify it. I can only presume that Khamenei is talking about Satan.], the words give the West an "excuse for suppressing Muslims" by depicting them as terrorists.

"Those who benefit from the pope's comments and drive their own arrogant policies should be targeted with attacks and protests," he said, referring to the United States.

We are to be "targeted with attacks and protests"? Oh. Well, nevermind the attacks, tell me more about the protest part.

Let's try a new headline for the AP, and see if they pick it up:

Iranian leader urges more attacks against the West

There, fixed that for ya'.

Beyond belief

2006-09-18T09:29:00.000-04:00

From this morning's Times Online:

Al-Qaeda threatens jihad over Pope's remarks

An Iraqi militant group led by al-Qaeda has threatened to massacre Christians in response to remarks about Islam by Pope Benedict XVI that have caused offence across the Muslim world.

The Pope quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who criticised the teachings of Mohammad for endorsing the use of violence, in a speech to an academic audience at a German university last Tuesday.

I think my head is going to explode.

The Pope is no dhimmi

2006-09-15T11:20:00.001-04:00

It strikes me as ironic how Muslims make headlines these days by alternately murdering infidels and apostates in the name of Islam and then demanding apologies from anyone who points out the difficulty of sharing a planet with them.

The latest person to draw their ire is Pope Benedict, the pontiff who recently pontificated on the nature of Islam by quoting the 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II. Paleologos had the Muslim scam figured out six hundred years ago:

"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war," the pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"

"Evil and inhuman" ... uh oh. Well, as you can imagine, that makes today a "demand an apology" day. But as you can see by the photo below, the demands are beginning to take the form of burning things and angry fist-waving, so tomorrow may turn out to be a "murdering infidels and apostates in the name of Islam" day. At the very least we'll no doubt see some stone throwing and embassy burning. (Does the Vatican even keep embassies in Muslim states?)

Sadly, jihadis around the world have one less infidel to despise today. Oriana Fallaci has succumbed to lung cancer at age 77. She was a brave and intelligent woman, one who saw the truth behind the mask of Islam and was never afraid to speak that truth. She will be missed.

Stupid adverb tricks at the Times

2006-09-05T23:04:00.000-04:00

The New York Times pulls another semantic fast one today. Check out this headline:

Danish Antiterror Police Seize 9 Men, Mostly Young Muslims

Now, to native speakers of English, this fairly simple sentence means that at least five of the men seized are Muslim, and no more than four of them are non-Muslim. Conversely, no more than eight of the nine could be Muslim, and no fewer than one must be non-Muslim, otherwise the sentence would have to read, "Danish Antiterror Police Seize 9 Men, All Young Muslims."

Strangely, the fourth paragraph of the article contradicts the headline:

Danish intelligence officials said the men were between 18 and 35 and were Muslims who appeared to have been recently radicalized.

Oh, I get it. The clever editor who crafted that headline didn't mean that the men were mostly Muslims. He or she meant that they were mostly young. After all, that's really the crux of the matter, isn't it? Don't forget, five years ago nineteen young people brought down the World Trade Center. Maybe they were also just mostly young. It takes some time to get that radicalized.

So here's a clarified version of the headline. Let's see if the Times picks it up:

Danish Antiterror Police Seize 9 Men, Mostly Young Muslims Except for One 35-Year-Old Muslim

Boy, do I feel old now.

See no evil:Mainstream media whitewash another caseof Sudden Jihadi Syndrome

2006-08-30T09:30:00.000-04:00

Since I've had such luck lately jumping to conclusions, I will go out on another limb this morning. Omeed A. Popal's hit-and-run assault on more than a dozen pedestrians and drivers in San Francisco yesterday was not, as the mainstream media would like us to believe, merely a mentally unstable man reacting to unspecified personal demons. It was an act of terrorism, specifically a case of what is becoming known in the blogosphere as Sudden Jihadi Syndrome. Now, I'm not suggesting that news outlets like the Associated Press should state this as fact, since it could turn out that Mr. Popal is a recent Evangelical Christian convert trying to run down people he thought might be gay or on their way to abortion clinics. But the AP managed to devote over 400 words to the incident without mentioning Islam or the resemblance of this attack to Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar's hit-and-run holy war at UNC Chapel Hill this past March.

Instead, AP's Julianna Barbassa desperately throws out a raft of alternate explanations:

The driver in a bloody hit-and-run spree that killed one man and injured more than a dozen people was mentally unstable ...

I think it's safe to say that anyone who decides one morning that it's a nice day to try to murder a dozen strangers is clearly mentally unstable. That doesn't obviate the necessity to determine if there was an underlying trigger or catalyst such as mosque attendance or involvement in a radical "prayer group." If Popal had been wrestled from his SUV wearing Doc Marten's and sporting a shaved pate, you can bet the AP would be tirelessly tracking down any links he might have to the Aryan Brotherhood or their ilk. Not so here. Just a lone wolf, loose cannon. DWC, "Driving While Crazy." Nothing to see here. Move along.

But there's more. Popal was ...

... feeling stress from a recent arranged marriage ...

Parents force him to choose a burka-bride, sight-unseen, and he mows down fourteen strangers, including at least one standing in front of the Jewish Cultural Center, a fact that Ms. Barbassa thought not worth including in her article. Maybe his folks were making him marry a Jew.

Authorities believe it began more than an hour earlier when his black Honda Pilot fatally struck a man in the East Bay area ...

"[H]is black Honda Pilot fatally struck a man"?! I hate it when my car does that. "Bad Honda Pilot! Bad SUV!"

I think the implication here is that we should consider that maybe Popal was fiddling with his iPod while on the way to volunteer at the Jewish Cultural Center, drifted onto the sidewalk, killed an innocent man, and then wigged out from guilt and remorse.

Popal's cousin said he had been having recurring nightmares about someone coming to kill him ...

Wait, that's been happening to me for about the last four years and three hundred fifty-three days. Where are my car keys?

His relatives also say he ...

... had been taking medication ...

Isn't everyone in San Francisco taking medication?

No weapons were found on the suspect, though the car had not been searched, Gittens said. There was no information on whether drugs or alcohol were involved, and it was unclear how fast he was driving, he said.

When are they planning on getting around to searching the car? And who really cares how fast he was driving? If you drive slowly over pedestrians, is that a mitigating factor in San Francisco?

Anyway, there's no use trying to figure out what pushed Popal to murder. Or so San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom tells us:

"These are the things, these are so senseless. They're utterly inexplicable. They're impossible to rationalize," Newsom said afterward. "The fact that this individual felt compelled for whatever reason to be determined to do what he did is beyond imagination."

I guess I've got a pretty active imagination, because Sudden Jihadi Syndrome sure looks real to me. And it goes back years (these accounts are in no particular order):

In February of 1997, Abu Ali Kamal shot 7 people on the observation deck of the Empire State Building before killing himself. One of his victims died, another was paralyzed for life. Kamal had in his pocket a note with the typical jihadi rationalizations.

In March of 1994, Radhid Baz took his guns to the Brooklyn Bridge and shot four Jewish teens on a schoolbus, killing one. Baz liked to hang out at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge, but he said that had nothing to do with it. It was just road rage. You know, the school bus cut him off. I was in the city at that time, and I recall that the media actually tried to run with that explanation for a while, but New Yorkers aren't stupid.

In July of 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet shot five people and stabbed one at the El Al counter at LAX. Two of his victims died. He was from Egypt and had moved to Irvine, California. I guess he couldn't find enough virulent anti-semitism in Egypt.

A year earlier, a young man named Paul Gott opened fire with a shotgun at an airport ticket counter in New Orleans, killing one. He was nuts, of course, but he was also a convert to Islam, was carrying a Koran in his bag, and said he did it because people made fun of his turban.

In October of 1999, Egypt Air Relief Flight Officer Gamil el-Batouty nose-dived the Boeing 767 under his control into the ocean off Nantucket, killing 216 people and himself. Instead of responding to the Captain's panicked questions of what he was doing, he repeated the phrase "Tawakilt ala Allah" ("I place my faith in Allah") over and over. I like to place my faith in competent pilots who don't belong to death cults. The media at the time said that el-Batouty may have been desponded over gambling losses.

And of course we have this past spring's SUV-jihad by Mohammed Taheri-azar, who rented a Jeep Cherokee and drove through a crowd of students at UNC Chapel Hill, injuring nine. And Naveed Afzal Haq's fatal attack on a Seattle Jewish center last month hasn't been pushed down the memory hole yet, though it's being labelled a "hate crime."

I could go on. Perhaps I will do a sidebar compendium of Sudden Jihad Syndrome attacks over the past few decades.

The question here is not what drives these homegrown jihadis to do what they do. The answer to that one is in the Koran and the hadith. The question that needs to be answered is this: Why are our media trying to obscure the threat we face from Islamic teaching and thinking? The desire for bloodshed? The supremacist, expansionist attitude exhibited even by many so-called "moderate" Muslims. The bald-faced misogyny. The rejection of the values and tolerance at the root of our culture? Whose side are the media on, anyway?

We are doomed:Voice of America joins Reutersin shilling for Hizb'allah

2006-08-20T13:18:00.000-04:00

This is utterly beyond belief. Voice of America, the U.S. Government's own propaganda arm, effuses over Hizb'allah's good works, mentioning in passing that the organization has been "branded" a terrorist group by the U.S. Government. The Islamist fifth column in America has made more progress than I'd imagined. Margaret Besheer's report opens this way:

As soon as the U.N. brokered cease-fire went into effect in Lebanon last Monday, Hezbollah's social welfare machine shifted into high gear. The organization, which is branded a terrorist group by the United States, has been registering thousands of Lebanese who have lost their homes during the 34 days of fighting between Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group.

Just days ago, the badly bombed southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik was a ghost town. Now, it is alive with traffic and the sound of heavy machinery clearing the debris of more than a month of Israeli bombardments.

Before long, Ms. Besheer is stuffing down our throats Hizb'allah's hapless PR scheme of giving out thousands of possibly counterfeit U.S. hundred-dollar bills in a pathetic but predictably successful attempt to woo the Arab street. It was Reuters, of course, who led the vanguard of the Hizb'allah-free-money story. Since Reuters reporters and photographers happily and unquestioningly relay to us whatever lies their terrorist handlers offer, "special correspondent" Alistair Lyon and photographer Eric Gaillard regale us with tales and images of the philanthropy of the Party of God. Problem is, the images suggest more connivery than philanthropy.

Let's do what Mr. Lyon, Mr. Gaillard, and Ms. Besheer haven't the inclination to do: give Hizb'allah's claims a careful look.

First of all, though the figure of $12,000 is being bandied about quite a bit, I have yet to see a photo in which anyone is being handed anything near $12,000. Most of the handoffs, like this one, appear closer to the "several thousand" range, to be generous.

Second, and more importantly, there is significant evidence in Reuters' own photos that the money being handed out wouldn't add up to $12,000 if you had a trunk full of it. Hizb'allah is known to have dabbled in funny money in the past. The community of bloggers that saves Reuters the bother of fact-checking has taken some notice of the apparent absence of the well-known "security strip" embedded in the U.S. c-note. But that strip is not visible unless the note is backlit, and though there is one photo that seems to show a distinct lack-of-strip in a Hizb'allah bill, it's inconclusive to me. There is, however, a more glaring error, as a commenter on a thread at snappedshot.com noted.

UPDATE

It appears likely that the "glaring error" is nothing more than a fairly common offsetting of the green treasury seal on the hundred dollar bill. The seal is added to the bill late in the printing process along with the serial numbers. Its position, therefore, may not be as fixed as the bill's other elements. I am waiting for a definitive answer from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and at present there is no clear evidence that Hizb'allah's hundreds are anything but the genuine article.

After receiving a couple of comments from people in possession of many more hundreds than I have (and therefore better equipped to "compare notes") I have decided to pull my examination of the treasury seal from Commoner Sense. Anyone who wants to see the original post can email me; I'll send a PDF. My sincere apologies to my readers for the overreach. No apologies to Hizb'allah, who remain what they are, and whose actions deserve far more scrutiny than they receive.

UPDATE

The Associated Press is still pushing the Hizb'allah cash chicanery as given truth, despite the fact that the "hundred dollar bills" being handed out raise a host of questions. Whether genuine or counterfeit, where did Hibz'allah get the money? Should they money be counterfeit, what is going to happen when the recipients try to spend it? What about landlords or store owners who don't feel like accepting fake cash for rent or furniture? Does this money come with some kind of terrorist-muscle guaranty for those who wish to spend it, or will Hizb'allah disavow themselves of if it once the photo op is finished?

But none of that matters to the AP:

While [Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora] visited, Hezbollah's operatives were still handing out bundles [Ed.--"Bundles"?! Show me someone walking away with a "bundle" of cash.] of $100 bills to people who lost homes to Israeli bombs -- $12,000 for each claimant. The stipend is to pay a year's rent and refurnish homes.

No doubt. No analysis. No backstory touching on Hizb'allah's history of counterfeiting. No mention of the fact that none of the recipients have been photographed receiving anything near $12,000. No idea that this relief effort might just be spun, manipulated, exaggerated, for the benefit of western observers and for the malicious purpose of turning public opinion sufficiently in favor of Hizb'allah to give them time to recover, regroup, and reload.

And then there's the question that overshadows all others: Why are our news services transforming themselves into mouthpieces for a bloodthirsty, America-hating, sharia-loving, drug-dealing, money-laundering Islamist terrorist organization?

UPDATE

Commenters have pointed out that their own bundles of hundreds show similar variation in placement of the treasury seal to the one first pointed out in this post. I have put in a question to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to find out if the printing process allows for such variation. I have in the meantime learned that the treasury seal is added to the bill along with the serial numbers, so it seems possible that there might be variation in the placement of the seal. I will update this entry again once I receive an answer.

Embassies burned, dozens killedas Jews around the worldriot over Holocaust cartoons

2006-08-14T23:10:00.000-04:00

Well, not yet. But just wait and see.

With efficiency typical of the Muslim world, a gallery in Tehran has finally gotten around to hanging those Holocaust cartoons we heard so much about last winter. Persian Islamists are a little quicker on the ball when it comes to hanging young women for the sharia crime of "having been sexually abused" or what the mullahs called "crimes against chastity." Here's an image of one of the cartoons, partially obscured by a headscarfed woman who walked through the shot. They'll hang her for her insolence tomorrow.

This cartoon apparently depicts a man lying beside a wall, struck down by that evil symbol of Hindus, or maybe Buddhists ... or Navahos. The arms of the Nazi swastika pointed to the right. And what's the cartoonist trying to say, anyway? That people today are still perishing from Naziism? Has the bizarre Israel=Nazis trope become so widespread that the swastika now symbolizes Jews?!

In the interests of total disclosure, one of my greatest journalistic faux pas was my first and last attempt at political cartoonery. (Well, maybe not last. I did do a Muhammed cartoon just for the heck of it, though I gave it the title "Solidarity" so I could claim some moral right for my free expression, just in case.) In 1986, after the Berlin disco bombing by Libyan agents affiliated with Abu "Chillin'-in-Baghdad" Nidal's terrorist clique, Ronald Reagan told the French to take their sanctified airspace and shove it, and sent bombers from England to Tripoli via the Straits of Gibraltar to level Qaddafi's tent. (Our airmen also inadvertently bombed the French embassy there. "Oops. My bad.") Incensed that our government should do anything to punish a tyrant for paying terrorists to blow up dancing Turkish women in Germany, I decided to put pen to paper. In my college newspaper, I depicted the victims of our attack on Libya as resting in coffins adorned with crosses. I put the crosses there to try to get across the idea that they were coffins, since my draftsmanship wasn't really up to the task of depicting even that. Nevermind that most Arab Muslims don't use coffins. And nevermind that when they do, they're highly unlikely to put crosses on them. It was 1986, and my sleep-deprived psyche was fully in the grip of the tentacles of Marxism, anti-Americanism, and the self-satisfied moral universe of hippie chicks in tight Che t-shirts. I've never taken political cartoons very seriously since then. The act of writing what's on your mind offers boundless opportunity for regret--thinking you can draw what's on your mind is idiotic. Especially when you can't draw.

So I'm loth to pick on cartoonists. Let's pick on curators, who are often both easy and deserving targets. The show in Tehran was arranged by Masoud Shojai, director of Caricature House (I hope that works better as a gallery name in Farsi), and by Hamshahri, the Iranian newspaper that thought up the Holocaust cartoon contest back in February. Hamshahri proposed this as a response to the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten's provocative and enlightening call for cartoonists to defy the PC censors and the jihadis and just do it--draw Muhammed with a bomb in his turban. The editors of Hamshahri say that their motives are similar, that "[i]n the wake of the publication of the profane cartoons [of Muhammed] in several European newspapers, Hamshahri is going to measure the sanctity of freedom of expression among the westerners." Well, good luck with that. How long is your yardstick?

Immediately after Hamshahri's announcement of its contest, a group of Israeli artists beat them to the punch by soliciting and publishing a series of rabidly anti-Semitic cartoons, including a number openly questioning the reality of the Holocaust.

These cartoons were published on the internet in April. No one's died yet over them. As far as I know, no one has burned anything or even bothered marching or chanting about it. (By one fairly scrupulous count, 139 persons have perished in riots over the Muhammed cartoons.) The results of the Israeli contest will be on display at the Tel-Aviv Cinemateque Festival next week. Bring your rocks.

In any event, if Jews around the world do begin rioting over Caricature House's current exhibition, killing one another and burning the embassies of Muslim nations, Iranians won't be watching the coverage on CNN. The mullahs' sense of the sanctity of freedom of expression doesn't extend to satellite channels, as the residents of Tehran found out yesterday when police confiscated their satellite dishes. But hey, it's just another day in the axis of evil, do who gives a damn, right?

If you can't stand the heat ...

2006-08-03T20:54:00.000-04:00

When I tell my New York friends that I like to spend the summer a few degrees south of the Tropic of Cancer, the next question is usually, "Isn't it too hot down there?" I don't think I'll have to answer that one again after this past July. We don't even have air conditioners in our house here. Today my six-year-old daughter announced that she had determined that it was 80 degrees outside and 80 degrees inside, how could that be? We pointed out that without glass windows or doors, outside and inside tend to blend. Had she brought the thermometer to the beach, she would have found the sea's temperature more or less the same.

New Yorkers (along with the rest of the U.S.) just suffered through the worst American heat wave in recorded history. Whoops, that was my inner Al Gore speaking. Actually, it was the worst American heat wave since 1980. Oh, well.

The heat wave of 1980 took over 1000 lives, though I'm still not clear on how the thermal-serial-killer death tolls get tallied. When your 300-pound uncle keels over beside the grill on a particularly sweltering July Sunday, did the heat wave do that? Does that mean his demise comes off the heart-disease death toll or the diabetes death toll?

Here's a bit of how our media is handling the killer-heat-wave-belt-notch question:

In Newark, New Jersey, a husband and wife aged 66 and 65 were found dead in their living room with the windows closed and no air conditioning, said Desiree Peterkin Bell, a spokeswoman for the Newark mayor's office.

Now do those count as heat wave fatalities? What about the old ornery-and-stupid list, like the one Harry Truman of Spirit Lake made when he refused to leave his home and subsequently died in the eruption of Mt. St. Helens?

Here's a bit of heat-wave media muddle from Indiana that will make you think twice:

One inmate in Indiana State Prison's disciplinary unit died from excess heat on Tuesday and another prisoner died there on Sunday from heart failure aggravated by the hot weather, prison spokesman Barry Nothstine said.

Now that's just terrible ...

One of them had been due to be released in November ...

... oh, even worse.

after serving his time for child molestation.

Um. My sympathy thingy just broke. Must be the heat. Maybe his heart failure was also aggravated by a shiv between the ribs?

Inmates in the unit were offered extra bottled water and as many cold showers as they wanted, Nothstine said.

Just hand me the Evian, Nothstine. I'll skip the shower.

What about Lebanon

2006-08-03T10:01:00.000-04:00

I've received a couple of requests for comment on Lebanon.

I will not jump into the great media pile-on of Israel, for reasons both instinctual and rational. Instinctually, I'm averse to taking any stand that would put me in league with Ahmadinejad (who is evil) or Mark Malloch Brown (who is an idiot). I also see much of the Israel-bashing of late as a clever retread of good-ol'-fashioned antisemitism. Rationally, I see little argument that Israel should be expected to stay its hand. Israel agreed in 2000 to withdraw from these same territories on the assurance that the U.N. would disarm Hizb'allah and prevent rocket attacks and guerilla incursions by Hizb'allah from Lebanon. Far from fulfilling its promise, the U.N. has stood idly by while Hizb'allah has consolidated power in the south and in Beirut. On the issue of disarmament, I think the volleys of hundreds of rockets fired over the border speak for themselves. Let's not forget also that the casus belli, Hizb'allah's July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in an ambush on Israeli soil, was not merely a kidnapping. Hizb'allah killed seven other Israeli soldiers in that attack, a fact that the mainstream media seem to be shoving down the memory hole. Israel was attacked, in violation of international law and U.N. resolutions. Concern for civilian casualties in Lebanon would seem more genuine had there been equal concern for Israeli civilian casualties, similar cries to "cease fire," during the past two decades of terror and intifada.

Muslims are fond of pointing out all the good works that Hizb'allah does, arguing that we in the west are wrong to condemn the Party of Allah as a terrorist organization. They build hospitals, don't they? Right, so does the Red Cross. And the Red Cross chooses not to get involved in politics (ever heard of a Red Cross candidate?), and they do not have a "military wing" that fires rockets blindly across international borders. Hizb'allah came into existence as a military force (and an Iranian proxy military force to boot), moved into politics and then into public relations, and (with the help of Bill Clinton and the 1996 April Agreement) gradually succeeded in legitimizing itself in the eyes of non-Shiite Muslims (which is quite an achievement) and Europeans (which is hardly any achievement at all). What makes this transformation remarkable is that they pulled it off without ever renouncing the goals set out in their charter: the absolute destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in Lebanon. I haven't read the charter of the Red Cross, but I suspect we will find neither any talk of destroying anyone, nor any plans to establish a Christian theocracy anywhere. So I will not play relativist games with the nature of Hizb'allah. They are a violent Islamist organization, and readers of Commoner Sense know pretty well how I feel about those. Whether they're running from IDF tanks in Lebanon, CIA drones in Waziristan, or tsunamis in Banda Aceh, I just like to see them on the defensive. To paraphrase an observation Hitchens made on Zarqawi's anger at U.S. policy in the Muslim world: Do we really want a foreign policy that pleases Hizb'allah?

So let the Israelis attack. No point in postponing the inevitable. Civilian casualties are also inevitable, given that without hiding among women and children and firing rockets from beside UN observer outposts, Hizb'allah would not stand a chance against the superior weaponry, training, and determination of the IDF. And no, pious kamikazes do not possess similar determination. They are merely murderous and suicidal. Let the martyrs be martyrs, and the sooner the better.

The baby-name book of cyclones

2006-08-02T15:59:00.000-04:00

Whew.

Tropical Storm Chris passed to the north of our little island a few hours ago. Barring any sudden changes in direction, the misfortune he brings will likely belong to the Bahamians. That's "he," because it's Chris like Christopher, not like Christine. Next up on the list of names is Debby, then Ernesto (that one's bound to devastate Cuba).

The origin of the practice of naming storms is unclear. A 1930s Australian radio broadcaster may deserve the credit, though he named storms more as a criticism of the politicians whose names he used. ("Tropical Storm Cheney just skirted the Lesser Antilles and is now bearing down on the Bahamas"?) Military meteorologists during World War II used the phonetic alphabet system to name storms (Able, Baker, Charlie, and so on). According to the National Hurricane Center in Florida, people in the Caribbean in the 19th century commonly referred to hurricanes by the name of the saint affiliated with the day upon the which the hurricane made landfall. By that method, however, Hurricane Hugo would be called Robert in Guadeloupe and Matthew in South Carolina. The current method was adopted in 1953 when the old Able-Baker system was dropped. Hurricanes were given only female names from then until 1978, when Americans decided not to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and instead to end the oppressive sexist practice of naming deadly storms after women. Another great victory for the feminist movement.

The task of naming Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes falls to the National Hurricane Center--part of the federally mandated National Weather Service. The names come from a set of six lists developed by the World Meteorological Organization. Each list contains 21 names, since the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are spurned--sorry, Quincy. Storms beyond W are assigned letters from the Greek alphabet. Storms beyond the letter omega will presumably not be named, as the NHC will be under water at that point.

Pacific storms and typhoons are given names and/or numbers depending on the meteorological agency in whose region they form. The NHC keeps six rotating lists of names to cover storms that form in the eastern North Pacific. Strangely, their Pacific lists includes X, Y, and Z, but still skip Q and U. Storms brewing in other parts of the Pacific get named from lists assembled by Fiji, Australia, Papua, the Philippines, or a collection of Pacific rim nations. A number of these nations avoid using people's names, so storms end up getting named after trees, birds, insects, gods, or food. North Korea has suggested the name "Meari," which means echo, and which the DPRK Typhoon Committee thinks appropriate since, "It (Echo) means that once Typhoon forms, the Typhoon Committee's notification echoes over to its members." Commies have always had such a subtle way with words. Weather fans in Macau would like to name a storm "Parma," after a popular Macauan dish of ham, chicken livers, and mushrooms. De gustibus non est disputandem. ("Hurricane Lasagna is due to make landfall on the Florida coast sometime around midnight"?)

Once a storm name earns its 15 minutes of infamy by being particularly deadly or costly, the folks at the NHC retire that name and choose another by taking suggestions from the member countries of the World Meteorological Organization. Names get retired more frequently now than they used to. 2005 marked the last time we'll ever have a hurricane Wilma, Dennis, Rita, Stan, or Katrina. Oddly, category 5 Emily did not earn her retirement, though she killed ten people in the Caribbean and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Stan got retired despite being only a category 1, since he contributed to flooding in Mexico that killed thousands. Emily will return in 2011, unless we have a remarkably quiet hurricane season. 2004 saw the end of Ivan, Charley and Francis. Fabian and Isabel took their bows in 2003. Only one name, Isadore, was retired in 2002. Hmmm, looks like a hockey-stick trend to me. Somebody get Al Gore on the phone.

Anyway, in the time it's taken to write this, blue sky has begun to appear above our little island. Chris has seen fit to spare us much trouble. May he do the same for the people of the Bahamas.

Blue sky ... a beach day after all?

Boo. Friggin'. Hoo.

2006-07-23T16:46:00.000-04:00

Muslims in Scotland are upset because they find security procedures at Glasgow's airport "heavy-handed" and "humiliating." So they are boycotting the airport.

Glasgow businessman Mohammed ashraf said it was "undignified" to be stopped and questioned.
"After being through all the checks that normal people go through, at the last moment you are stopped again and asked questions as everybody else passes you by," he said.

"Normal people"? That's an interesting slip. I don't consider myself "abnormal" in any significant way, and certainly not in the way of being brainwashed by a death cult, and I still get pulled aside regularly for secondary searches when I travel. And thanks to one of Mr. Ashraf's co-religionists, now I've got to take my shoes off every time I go through security. Oh, the humiliation!

Mr. Ahmed Tassi, whose wife seems to draw the attention of Glasgow's security officers, is more put out by the delay than by the shame.

"90% of occasions when we pass through they say 'step aside' and she gets the full search.

"I am always waiting half an hour or an hour for her come."

Oh, brother. And that'll cost you another buck at the car park! Write a complaint letter to al Qaeda.

Here. I have something for you.

In any event, a Mulism boycott of an airport is a bit of an odd bird. If it is successful, it would actually save money for the corporation being boycotted, inasmuch as BAA Glasgow could then turn off the x-ray machines and fire all its security staff.

Let's hope that this boycott catches on. Imagine a total, worldwide Muslim boycott of all airports. Then we can all have our shoes back.

Inshellah

2006-07-13T14:56:00.000-04:00

Alright, alright. I've been ignoring the steady drizzle of complaints and queries about the staleness of Commoner Sense of late, but then Tom Pain gets an email from his mom asking whether it's her computer's fault that she keeps getting the same old May 17 post and nothing new. Time to get back to work. (Heh.)

There's not much more pathetic than a self-proclaimed writer trying to explain away a dry spell. But I'm hard to embarrass, so here goes. Tom Pain's mild-mannered alter ego has been working on his novel. In between trips to the beach and watching the Vatican beat Eurabia at soccer. Oh, wait, that's wrong ... I shouldn't put it that way. It's not soccer, it's "futbol." (Incidentally, the French are bravely suing in court to have the final game replayed, claiming that none of the referees or linesmen actually saw Zidane's shameful attack, and therefore it never technically happened. What national pride the French will feel, no doubt, if they manage to negate Italy's win on those grounds.)

Plus, I honestly haven't felt as much need to run around the freeway like Miles Bennell at the end (beginning?) of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, shouting, "They're here! They're here! You're next!" The Islamists have been busy enough and loud enough lately that we Cassandras can afford to sit back and watch for a while, in my opinion. Tennis-shorts-wearers shot in Baghdad, World Cup fans shot in Somalia, young women who refuse to be treated as chattel stabbed to death by their families in Britain, Buddhist schoolteachers beaten to death in Thailand, and of course the usual bombings of mosques, marketplaces, and commuter trains. I can't really outdo the Islamist PR machine when it is so determined to speak for itself.

And then there's the Middle East descending ever deeper into a state of Dar al Harb as secularists, tyrants, and Zionists desperately try to check the tide of Islamist expansionism. That also speaks for itself.

Of course it's all Bush's fault. I'm never voting for that guy again.

So anyway, here's a tidbit from the lighter side of the Commoner Sense menu: A chicken in Kazakhstan is the proud mother of an egg that says "Allah" on it! Brilliant. Buy your plane tickets now, because tourism is about to skyrocket there. Of course, last year in England, Muslims discovered a fast-food ice-cream dessert that supposedly had the word "Allah" on the lid, but they weren't so happy about that. In any event, the egg is a keeper.

"Our mosque confirmed that it says 'Allah' in Arabic," Bites Amantayeva, a farmer from the village of Stepnoi in eastern Kazakhstan, told state news agency Kazinform.

"We'll keep this egg and we don't think it'll go bad."

Well ... good luck with that!

Perhaps they should put it up on the shelf between the "Allah Fish" and the "Holy Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich."

Or maybe they should hatch it. The Twelfth Imam might be inside.

(Yes, I know. Kazakhs are Sunnis, not Shia ... It's a joke, so don't bother emailing me. And no, Mom, it wasn't your computer's fault.)

A Left worth belonging to? (Or one at least worth a capital "L"?)

2006-05-17T05:51:00.000-04:00

Readers from more prolific, bygone times will recall some fretting here at Commoner Sense over the destruction of the terms "liberal" and "progressive" by addleheaded pacifists who converged on my city chanting "Not In Our Name" before there'd even been a rain to wash away the dust of the Twin Towers. For a while, my title-bar sub-head read, "Liberating the term liberalism," and, "Shouldn't progressive have something to do with progress?" Like many former Leftists, I long ago threw in the towel and stopped calling myself a liberal, or a progressive, since no one around me seemed know what the terms meant anymore. I've tried "liberal hawk," but that tends to draw blank stares. In conversation I have glumly accepted "neo-conservative" when it's offered, if only because it puts me in the company of people who think rather than chant.

Well, on the horizon appears new hope that I may one day be able to pack up my pro-democracy, pro-women's-rights, anti-theocracy, anti-fascist viewpoints and move back in with the Left! A group of democrats (small "d") and progressives in London will in a week's time officially launch "The Euston Manifesto," a remarkable statement of principles that might just have the force to wrest all these terms out of the hands of dissemblers and restore them to their once glorious meanings. (It gets extra points in my book for being conceived in a pub.) Here's an excerpt from the Euston Manifesto's preamble:

We are democrats and progressives. We propose here a fresh political alignment. Many of us belong to the Left, but the principles that we set out are not exclusive. We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not.

Despite the declaration's fine provenance, these are the people who sold me Marxism back in the early 1980's, so I'm going to give the Euston Manifesto a thorough study before signing on. Have a look, especially if you called yourself a liberal before 2001.

Read the whole thing.

Ahmadinejad to Bush: WWJD? He'd convert to Islam!

2006-05-14T00:51:00.000-04:00

Since our head-in-the-sand media have had such a hard time deciphering just what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was trying to say in his letter to President Bush, the official Iranian new agency has cleared it up for us:

President says his letter to President Bush
was invitation to Islam

Jakarta, May 11, IRNA
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Thursday that his letter to President George W. Bush did not concern the nuclear dossier, but rather was an invitation to Islam and the prophets [sic] culture.

When I read the translation of the letter provided by the Iranian government, it seemed pretty obvious that was the gist of it, but reporters for western media outlets have too much invested in their vision of Islam as a benign entity to let the public know that powerful Islamists like Ahmadinejad really do think it plausible that they might absorb the entire world into their cult, George Bush included. Ahmadinejad writes in his letter:

The Holy Koran stresses this common word and calls on all followers of divine religions and says: [3.64] Say: O followers of the Book! Come to an equitable proposition between us and you that we shall not serve any but Allah and (that) we shall not associate aught with Him, and (that) some of us shall not take others for lords besides Allah; but if they turn back, then say: Bear witness that we are Muslims ...

He even had the nerve to throw in a Koranic Jesus quote suggesting that even Bush's personal savior would want him to drop the cross for the crescent.

We also believe that Jesus Christ (PBUH) was one of the great prophets of the Almighty. He has been repeatedly praised in the Koran. Jesus (PBUH) has been quoted in Koran as well: [19.36] And surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, therefore serve Him; this is the right path.

This all fits pretty well with the world view Ahmadinejad has expressed in the past. In an interview back in January, he stated: "There should be no doubt that the teachings of Islam should be heard by all ... Undoubtedly, if the truths about Islam are taught correctly, most people will accept Islam." If you just can't get enough of his lunatic's blather from the mainstream media, he's got his own website, complete with speeches and interviews and gems like this: "The president stressed that Islam was the only religion being capable of materializing all rights of women in the full scale." The website even created this hilarious Photoshop job to go with the text of his letter to Bush:

Bear in mind that the headline "President says his letter to President Bush was invitation to Islam" comes from Iran's official, state-run news organization, so the possibility they're misreading their boss's intent is pretty slim. It's odd how so many other reporters (who apparently attended the same press conference) came away with a much different--and suicidally misleading--impression. Here are some of the headlines our own news sources came up with:

Iran's President Says Letter to Bush Was to Open `New Horizon' (Bloomberg)

Is Iran Trying to Send a Signal? (CBS News)

Iranian president's letter opens window onto Muslim world (Star Tribune)

Letter Offers a Look Into Mind of Iran's Leader (L.A. Times)

The New York Sun went one better than calling the letter an invitation to Islam, noting that the untranslated last line of the letter contains an outright threat. The Sun's editorial on the subject was titled: Iran Declares War. Here's an excerpt:

The key sentence in the letter is the closing salutation. In an eight-page text of the letter being circulated by the Council on Foreign Relations, it is left untranslated and rendered as "Vasalam Ala Man Ataba'al hoda." What this means is "Peace only unto those who follow the true path."

Amir Taheri has done a fascinating essay putting Ahmadinejad's letter in historical context. Apparently he's following a well-established Islamic tradition. Not only did Mohammed himself send such letters to leaders of neighboring peoples he planned to put under the sword, Ayatollah Khomeini wrote a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 (not 1987, as Taheri states) asking him to convert to Islam. I guess the surprising thing is that it took so long for the Islamists to get around to sending Bush his invitation. Maybe they just weren't sure they really want him in their club.

al-Qaeda admits it is losing the battle in Iraq: Western media yawn

2006-05-13T16:13:00.001-04:00

When the U.S. Military released the captured video revealing that Zarqawi is more Baby Face Nelson than Che Guevara, American media leapt to the terrorist's defense. The New York Times had this to say about the overfed car-thief-turned-throat-slitter's apparent incompetence at handling anything more complex than a scimitar:

The weapon in question [an M249 SAW] is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in Mr. Zarqawi's hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said Mr. Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it.

Now the military has released a captured document showing that al-Qaeda leaders believe they are losing the battle against the Americans and the new government in Iraq. This time around, the media has chosen simply to ignore it. The Times and its brethren continue to reveal that they are not unbiased, nor are they merely anti-Bush or anti-war. They are on the other side.

USA Today deserves credit for noticing the story about the captured letter and publishing the translation of the document.

Here's a brief excerpt, particularly relevent because it reveals the vital role the Times and other antique media outlets play in al-Qaeda's plans for "assuming power in Baghdad":

The policy followed by the brothers in Baghdad is a media oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy center. Other word, the significance of the strategy of their work is to show in the media that the American and the government do not control the situation and there is resistance against them. This policy dragged us to the type of operations that are attracted to the media, and we go to the streets from time to time for more possible noisy operations which follow the same direction.

This direction has large positive effects; however, being preoccupied with it alone delays more important operations such as taking control of some areas, preserving it and assuming power in Baghdad (for example, taking control of a university, a hospital, or a Sunni religious site).

Read the whole thing.

The murder of Cassandra

2006-03-10T19:16:00.000-05:00

I wrote a piece back on February 19 about the predictions of Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, the director of the British Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. In an interview with the Telegraph, Dr. Sookhdeo stated his belief that England would before long see parts of its urban centers effectively ruled by sharia law. My link to the article then posted on the website of the Telegraph will no longer take you to the interview. It links to this terse--and to me, frightening--message:

The efforts of Muslim extremists to shut down discussion of and debate over the unsavory side of Islam are apparently succeeding. Ornella Fallaci is set to stand trial in June in Italy for defaming Islam. (Should she choose exile in New York over a possible prison sentence, will our government extradite her?) Robert Spencer wrote an excellent point-by-point analysis of the charges against Fallaci last year.

Loopy animal-rights table-dancer Brigitte Bardot was fined 5,000 euros in 2004 for writing that she opposed the Islamization of France, even though her main objection is to the way Muslims treat sheep.

(And to the west's discredit, we've thrown the odious David Irving in the clink for questioning the Holocaust.)

If Theo Van Gogh hadn't had his throat cut, he'd probably be on trial now as well. What Islamists don't achieve with the knife, they'll do with our own suicidal legal systems.

Update: For those interested in reading the original article from the Telegraph, it can still be found here. (Many thanks to Charles at Little Green Footballs for finding this.)

They drowned

2006-03-07T23:55:00.000-05:00

From the Associated Press

Two Endangered American Crocodiles Killed

Two endangered American crocodiles, once considered among the most imperiled species in the United States, were found shot to death near Key West, authorities said Tuesday. Both crocodiles, a 7-footer found Saturday and an 8-footer discovered Monday on Sugarloaf Key about 12 miles east of Key West, were shot between the eyes, authorities said.
A small caliber bullet was found lodged in one crocodile's head. The other also appeared to have a bullet wound between the eyes. Both animals will be examined for a cause of death.

Um ... How much is that gonna cost?

My Danish buycott (girlcott?)

2006-03-02T22:25:00.000-05:00

What's the opposite of a boycott? I'm not sure there's really a word for it, but I'm doing my best. Carlsberg beer is a no-brainer. I found Lurpak butter at our local cheese shop. I'm not really a fan of Havarti, but Danish blue cheese is excellent crumbled into a salad. I've eaten as many butter cookies as I can stomach. Perhaps I'll buy my next yacht from X-Yachts.

But here's my favorite Danish purchase so far:

I found this jar of Puck Cream Cheese Spread at a local gourmet food and spice shop, one founded years ago by an Armenian family. At some point the shop was purchased by Muslims, and it's now run by what appears to be a mixed staff of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Perhaps it is that blend that makes them their store the prime source for Middle Eastern and Asian products for all the city's best chefs. Even better, they are paying no attention to Islamist calls for a boycott of Danish products.

But here comes the conundrum. Puck is made in Denmark, but it's imported to the U.S. by Ziyad Brothers Importing in Chicago, who issued a press release on February 1 announcing that they are suspending all imports from Denmark. (I guess my jar of cream cheese spread had already made it to the shelf.) So by buying Puck I am supporting Denmark, but I'm also supporting Ziyad Brothers Importing. I wonder if any other American importers are looking to fill the gap left by the Muslim boycott. It would be nice if Ziyad ends up losing business as a result of their ungrateful stand against the core values of the nation that welcomed them.

I plan to ask at the cheese shop tomorrow if their Lurpak butter comes to them through Ziyad, and if so urge them to find an alternate importer rather than let Danish products vanish from their shelves.

Please join me in (politely) letting Ziyad Brothers Importing know how wrong they are to believe that a Muslim concept of blasphemy supercedes America's Bill of Rights. Boycotting Ziyad strikes me as petty, but there's no reason not to inform them of how we feel. You can reach their email contact form at this link. And don't forget to buy Danish.

Recognizing dissent

2006-03-01T02:42:00.001-05:00

A group of twelve well-known writers, journalists and intellectuals have put their signatures on a manifesto against "Islamism" in Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the Muhammed cartoons. Eight of the twelve are or once were Muslim. Among them are Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie. Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the non-Muslim signers.

Here's an excerpt:

Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers ...

I'm not hopeful that this manifesto with catch on. Most likely the mainstream media will stuff it down the memory hole, preferring to devote yet more coverage to bearded troglodytes hurling stones at embassies. I've written before pointing out the dangerous tendency in the west to ignore dissent in the Muslim world. Reuters and other major news outlets regularly print statements such as this: "Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous." (That winner is from a February 2, 2006, Reuter's article about the cartoon controversy.) I doubt any of the Muslim signers of today's manifesto would grant the concept of blasphemy any validity at all. Yet Reuters apparently thinks that the ummah is sufficiently of one mind that disagreement is not worth mentioning.

Clearly there are Muslims who can lead the faith into a new stage, an Islam capable of detente with modernity, humanism, and women's rights. But if we ignore those Muslims, they will very likely disappear, one by one. And then all we'll have left is the mullahs and the fearful silence around them.

Read the whole thing.

"Unseen. Unforgotten."

2006-02-27T18:32:00.000-05:00

A year and half ago, photo intern Alexander Cohn opened a closet at the The Birmingham News to look for a lens. There he found a box of negatives marked, "Keep. Do Not Sell." What he discovered is a remarkable collection of photographs from the Civil Rights Era, images that every American should see. These photos were never published at the time, partly out of self-censorship on the part of newspaper editors (an ugly monster that's resurfaced of late).

After looking at these photos, I believe that many of the well-known images from the struggle to end the blight of Jim Crow have become so familiar that their power has diminished. I strongly recommend you take the time to see the moments in America's history that Mr. Alexander and the News have resurrected:

Unseen. Unforgotten.

"Enough now with this turning the other cheek!"

2006-02-23T13:46:00.000-05:00

WWJD? Certain Vatican officials think that Muslim intolerance and violence would strain even the Lamb of God's patience.

"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves," Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, thundered in the daily La Stampa ... "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights," he said.

Even the Pope has finally spoken out against Muslim hypocrisy:

Pope Benedict signaled his concern on Monday when he told the new Moroccan ambassador to the Vatican that peace can only be assured by "respect for the religious convictions and practices of others, in a reciprocal way in all societies."

It's about time the world turned some attention to the blatant hypocrisy of Muslims in the west objecting to piggy banks, cartoons and headscarf bans while religious minorities in Muslim nations suffer endless harrassment and persecution.

Islam turns back the clock on Turkey

2006-02-23T11:53:00.001-05:00

At TurkishPress.com, Tufan Turenc tries to draw his compatriots' attention to another disturbing trend in Turkey (in addition to their government rushing to legitimize Palestine's newly elected terrorist regime). Turenc points out that Prime Minister Erdogan has betrayed the legacy of Ataturk by attending a dinner in his honor that Ataturk would have surely spurned. The increasing influence of Islamists is dragging Turkey backward into the dark ages, and Erdogan seems fine with it, even if it means sitting apart from his newly veiled wife.

The scene in the hall was quite strange for a country which is in the midst of membership talks with the European Union. The women and men who attended the dinner were sitting in separate places, and most of the women were wearing headscarves. The situation was reminiscent of Iran or an Arab country, instead of Turkey. This picture didn’t disturb the AKP members, because this is now they envision Turkey ...
Ataturk would never speak in such a hall, nor even go in, because the situation in that hall is completely the reverse of the revolutions accomplished by Ataturk 80 years ago. Ataturk wanted the clothing of modern Turkish women to be like that of other women living in civilized countries. He wanted Turkish women to participate in social life in equal conditions and rights with men and participate in production. That's why he pushed those revolutions. Therefore, he gave political and social rights to Turkish women before many civilized countries did. That's why Ataturk would never accept that seating plan and speak in that hall. Erdogan's speech in that hall is a sad contradiction of Ataturk's goal of civilized countries and a betrayal of the great revolutionary's heritage.

It's nice to see that the forces of political correctness have failed to completely erase the concept of "civilization." Let's hope that Islamists can be prevented from erasing the reality of it.

Shameful

2006-02-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

As I have mentioned before, I lost a close friend years ago over an argument about David Irving, the provocative and repugnant Holocaust denier. At a dinner party, I defended Irving's right to publish his idiotic beliefs. I felt--and still feel--that the marketplace of ideas should be self-censoring, and if he could find publishers and readers, so be it. Any form of government censorship of Holocaust denial, I said, would only lend credence to the idiocy, and make us guilty of hypocrisy to boot. My friend found my defense of Irving's rights offensive enough to warrant never speaking to me again. A very sad clash of principles.

An Austrian court just sentenced Irving to three years in prison for voicing his moronic beliefs. The hypocrisy is complete. We have diminished the power of truth by implying that truth requires goverment protection. And we have thrown to the wolves twelve Danish cartoonists and countless editors who believed that we had evolved beyond the primitive concept of blasphemy.

Shameful.

Poor Salman Rushdie

2006-02-19T15:39:00.000-05:00

I was surprised today to see the Jerusalem Post report that student leaders at a martyrdom-recruitment meeting in Tehran gave volunteers the option of signing up for a suicide mission to assassinate Salman Rushdie. I had been under the impression that the fatwa calling for his murder had been rescinded, or at least allowed to fade away into the realm of "What ever happened with that thing ..." The other two options were to blow yourself up defending Iran (which probably means trudging across the Iraqi border to an American or British military base) or to blow yourself up along with Israeli civilians.

Not only was the fatwa never rescinded, but the Iranian Martyrs Foundation (or Martrydom Seekers, depending on the news source) reiterated last week that it (and the bounty) remain in full effect.

"Imam Khomeini's fatwa on the apostate Salman Rushdie will remain in force for eternity,' said the Martyrs Foundation, which has offered a $2.8 millon (BD1m) bounty for Rushdie's head."

I'm not sure they have the authority to do this, since their connection to the clerics running Iran's theocracy is vague, but that hardly matters when some disaffected nutcase walks into your book reading with a hand grenade. In 1998, then-president Khatami said that the affair was "completely finished," but other Iranian officials said that only the Ayatollah Khomeini could lift the fatwa, and he was already dead.

Rushdie is a brave and brilliant man, one worth a hundred ayatollahs. I'm saddened to learn that his life is once again disrupted by the bloodlust of the ignorant and primitive.

Great news from the Northwest!"Muslim kids can quote Quran"

2006-02-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

In Washington state, the News Tribune adopts the role of Islamic Public Relations Tool to assure us that the growing trend of religious indoctrination of Muslim children is nothing to be worried about, it's just like what Christians and Jews do.

Here's an excerpt (emphasis mine):

Now a growing Muslim population in America is importing a rite of passage called Ameen ... The cultural practice is a mostly South, Southeast and Central Asian one, familiar to perhaps a third of Muslims in the United States.

It has two parts. The first Ameen, or Amen, is held when a child finishes reading the Quran, roughly the length of the New Testament, for the first time in Arabic. The child reads the holy book aloud, sounding it out without necessarily understanding it.

America has many cultural distractions, which is why Muslim parents here have to take a more active role involving their children in the faith, says Fareez Ahmed, a 21-year-old graduate of George Washington University.
In America, Ahmed would memorize the Quran three hours a day and review for another five or six hours.

“The practice is definitely increasing,” he says. He has five students to teach when he returns to the United States. “Especially with the current international situation, it’s really important to know what the Quran really says about certain issues,” he adds.

Classes about the meaning of the passages will come as the children get older.

"America has many cultural distractions"? Indeed, like Little League, after-school clubs, summer camps, dances, garage bands, and hanging out at the Dairy Queen. Nothing like Saudi Arabia, where parents fret over the malaise evident in the growing "mall culture" to which teenagers are drawn. An opinion piece in Arab News last summer called for increased promotion of extracurricular activities for children and teens:

With little to do many children and teens have turned to the habit of late nights of TV watching and shopping, unproductive evenings, and non-existent mornings ... A young Saudi describes her daily routine as “waking at 12:30 in the afternoon, sitting with my family, eating dinner, and then going out at nine to the mall with friends.”

For Saudi children and teens, school is usually the only time they are mentally stimulated. After school, most do not take part in any extracurricular activities and this can work against them ... “It is very important for children to be involved in arts education and sports,” said Dr. Manal I. Madini, a professor of Early Childhood Education at King Abdul Aziz University.

The impetus for such "cultural distractions" whithers in the Muslim world due to Islam's ambivalence about art, music, and sports. Why would a society encourage its youth to create art when powerful clerics regard creation as suspect, as a potential offense to Allah, the one true creator? Even the Hamas Charter devotes a section (Article Nineteen) to the kind of art they wish to see, just in case little Ahmed was thinking of picking up a crayon instead of a gun:

Art has regulations and measures by which it can be determined whether it is Islamic or pre-Islamic (Jahili) art. [ed.--It's important to note that the Arabic term "jahili" does not mean simply "pre-Islamic," but is frequently applied to present-day, non-Islamic cultures as well.] The issues of Islamic liberation are in need of Islamic art that would take the spirit high, without raising one side of human nature above the other, but rather raise all of them harmoniously and in equilibrium.

Man is a unique and wonderful creature, made out of a handful of clay and a breath from Allah. Islamic art addresses man on this basis, while pre-Islamic art addresses the body giving preference to the clay component in it. [ed.--Here we see plainy how Muslims are still struggling against humanism.]

The book, the article, the bulletin, the sermon, the thesis, the popular poem, the poetic ode, the song, the play and others, contain the characteristics of Islamic art, then these are among the requirements of ideological mobilization, renewed food for the journey and recreation for the soul. The road is long and suffering is plenty. The soul will be bored, but Islamic art renews the energies, resurrects the movement, arousing in them lofty meanings and proper conduct. "Nothing can improve the self if it is in retreat except shifting from one mood to another."

All this is utterly serious and no jest, for those who are fighters do not jest.

That last line looks to me like a thinly veiled threat against any artists who might think of straying from accepted Islamic forms. Not a great way to entice the kids into a life in the arts.

Music gets worse treatment in Islamic culture, since many Muslims hold all music other than Koranic recitation to be haram. Here's a straighforward quote on music and singing from one Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence) site:

Listening to music and singing is a sin and cause for the sickening and weakening of the heart. The majority of the scholars of the Salaf are unanimous that listening to music and singing and using musical instruments is Haram (prohibited).

So much for the Glee Club. I know I'm inviting comments from offended "moderate" Muslims who will protest that their particular brand of Islam has nothing to do with such pronouncements. Such objections are nothing more than a tiresome shell game made possible by the fact that Islam itself is structured like a terrorist organization. The faith has no definable central authority and is in effect divided into numerous cells, each of which can claim to have nothing to do with the actions of the others while secretly sharing the same basic ideology and goals.

So arts, music, and dancing (obviously) are off the list. There are still sports. Well, maybe not. Here's a quote from one site addressing the issue of sports vs. Allah:

Apparently, the great enigma of this day and age is we love everything other than Allah and His Prophet . The non-believers have enchanted us through their devious tricks. Our hearts have hardened. We do not recognise the truth when in front of us! Contrary to the lives of the Sahabah our lives revolve around everything, but the teachings of the Prophet. Presently, a cancer has infected our youth. This cancer is football!

The writer means soccer, of course. The cancer of American football hasn't afflicted the youth of the Middle East yet, mainly because it requires equipment that did not exist 1400 years ago and does not blow its wearer to smithereens.

Muslim kids who do get involved in sports often find themselves up against archaic attitudes that strip the game of half its fun. In Chicago, the girl's basketball team at the Islamic and oddly named Universal School are weary of playing only against other Islamic schools because of gender Apartheid.

Around her, other high school girls dressed in similar flowing robes shoot a few casual baskets while they wait for practice to begin. There are no men in the gym--no male coaches, no boys from school, no dads or brothers in the bleachers. So when the coach arrives and the real training starts, they can peel off their Islamic dress, exposing their sweat pants and short-sleeved T-shirts underneath.
"We'd run if we noticed a man peeking in the window," Hamoud, 16, explains. "We're not allowed to be seen by guys without [Islamic dress]. We've all learned to accept that." But the girls can't accept that they have only been allowed to compete against girls basketball teams from other Muslim schools. There are only four in the Chicago area [ed.--Only four!?], they complain, and their competition isn't exactly tough. Since last year they've been beseeching Coach Farida Abusafa, 26, an English teacher who also coaches sports, to ask public schools and non-Muslim private schools if their girls teams would be willing to compete against girls from the Universal School. The problem is the schools would have to agree to bar men and boys above the age of puberty from watching the games.

The article goes on to point out what the real issue is here, and it bears an uneasy resemblance to the uproar over non-Muslim Danish cartoonists not observing Muslim strictures forbidding the depiction of Muhammed. Now I won't be allowed to watch my daughter's basketball game when she plays against a Muslim team!

The Universal School's principal, Farhat Siddiqi, said there was no reason the girls wouldn't be allowed to play teams from public schools or other private schools as long as the prohibition barring men was strictly observed. But she worries parents from other schools might object.

"I don't want to have to impose our religious requirements on anyone else," Siddiqi said.

Is it just me, or does it sound like Siddiqi didn't finish that last sentence? And I think the ending goes: "... but I will."

How would we look upon any other group (say, a Christian one, or Hindu, or Wiccan) that behaved as the ummah is today--isolating their youth from society at large, requiring pre-adolescents to forgo "cultural distractions" and spend hours each day memorizing a religious text in a language they do not understand, and bursting into belligerent or violent outrage at each supposed offense to their faith? We would probably label such a group a "cult," and at the very least marginalize it. Instead, the west has adopted a policy of appeasement toward the cult of Islam. This policy can lead nowhere but straight into a conflagration that may well devour generations of youth, as we are forced to defend with the gun the values we failed to defend with the pen.

The Muslim "culture of hate"

2006-02-19T03:45:00.000-05:00

Nonie Darwish has written an extraordinary opinion piece exploring the roots of the rage and violence that have erupted over the publication of the Muhammed cartoons. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Amir Taheri, Darwish is a critic of Islam who comes from within Islam. Her essay was published in the Telegraph a week ago, but I missed it, and perhaps others did as well, so here it is.

A brief excerpt:

As a young woman, I visited a Christian friend in Cairo during Friday prayers, and we both heard the verbal attacks on Christians and Jews from the loudspeakers outside the mosque. They said: 'May God destroy the infidels and the Jews, the enemies of God. We are not to befriend them or make treaties with them.' We heard worshippers respond 'Amen'. My friend looked scared; I was ashamed. That was when I first realised that something was very wrong in the way my religion was taught and practised. Sadly, the way I was raised was not unique. Hundreds of millions of other Muslims also have been raised with the same hatred of the West and Israel as a way to distract from the failings of their leaders.

Read the whole thing: We Were Brought Up to Hate--And We Do.

Sabbath silliness

2006-02-19T02:58:00.000-05:00

In another fine example of a religion inspiring utterly moronic behavior, Orthodox Jews in San Diego want the community to let them contruct a miles-long overhead boundary marker of fishing line so they can avail themselves of a dogmatic loophole in their already ridiculous sabbath restrictions. Seems you can't hold an umbrella over your head in the rain on Saturday, since that qualifies as "work." But it's okay to do so in your house. If it's raining in your house. (My grandmother always said never to open an umbrella inside, but she wasn't Jewish, so what does she know?)

So in the fine Judaic tradition of playing semantic games with G-d, they want to string all their houses together so the neighborhood qualifies as one gigantic house. I can see the big ranger in the sky smacking his holy head in frustration: "Drat! They figured out a way around the umbrella rule!" Anyway, it looks like they'll have to come up with another solution, since the community's gentiles have put the kibosh on the big monofilament macrame. Maybe they could put together a volunteer goyim umbrella-carrying force.

You have to give some credit to the Orthodox Jewish community, however. They've restrained themselves from burning cars or beheading anyone over this affront to their faith.

A prophesy worth heeding

2006-02-19T00:42:00.000-05:00

Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, the director of the British Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, had this to say in an interview with the Telegraph published today:

Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law."

Considering that he predicted several years ago that Islam would soon bring suicide bombings to London, the British might want to listen to him this time. Coincidentally, the Telegraph also reports today that forty percent of British Muslims admit to their desire to see sharia law applied in parts of the country. There's a marketing maxim that recommends, "If you want to know what people want, ask them." Well, we've asked, and we've gotten our answer, many times over. In interviews with the Guardian in 2004, Hizb-ut-Tahir leader Jalaluddin Patel said that the west "needs to understand what is really an inevitable matter, and that is that Islam is coming back, the Islamic caliphate is going to be implemented in the world very soon."

Western societies have to varying degrees been infiltrated by a powerful and cohesive cult that rejects even our most fundamental values. Now what are we going to do about it? We must find ways to reject and isolate--peacefully but forcefully--those who wish for the expansion of Islamic theocracy into the west. They have made their intent clear. So must we.

Wrong.

Muslim-mania du jour

2006-02-18T14:13:00.000-05:00

What's driving Muslims over the edge today? Cartoons of Muhammed? Nope, that was yesterday. Korans on the commode? Wrong again! A giant teapot? Nah, they blew that up and moved on ages ago. Jumbo-size Buddhas? Blew them up, too.

Now it's porn that's making them crazy. Playboy is coming to Indonesia, and guess what? Muslims are offended. What a surprise.

This guy is so mad he's going to eat his DVD collection. Then the police standing behind him will shoot him so he gets his seventy-two virgins.

Capital! Reuters gets religion!

2006-02-14T13:09:00.000-05:00

Too bad the religion they've gotten is the creed of Muhammed--or as Reuters now calls him: "the Prophet."

Here's the lede from Reuters' recently published article on the latest Muslim madness (this time in Pakistan):

Security guards shot dead two men, police used teargas on students in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave and protesters attacked Western businesses on Tuesday in Pakistan's most violent reaction yet to cartoons of the Prophet.

Back when Christians were calmly and rationally suffering the offense of seeing Mary's image rendered in dung, did Reuters refer to her as the mother of "Our Savior"?

Doubt it.

Does Reuters employ editors?

What bombogenesis hath wrought

2006-02-12T16:28:00.000-05:00

Meteorologists call a 24-millibar drop in air pressure within a 24-hour period "The Bomb." Such a drop occurred this weekend, when a mass of warm, humid air from down south met up with a mass of cold, dry air from Canada. Voila! Nor'easter!

Islam is coming

2006-02-10T20:38:00.000-05:00

My Pet Jawa has assembled a collection of news photographs documenting the sentiments of Muslim protesters around the globe.

Here's my personal favorite.

At least someone sees things clearly

2006-02-10T20:25:00.000-05:00

I'm no fan of evangelical Christians, but I have to admit their take on the Danish cartoon controversy is more reasonable and insightful than any statements coming from western political leaders these days.

Many conservative Christians have long regarded the media as enemy territory, where traditional values are at best misunderstood and often mocked.
So you might think they would relate sympathetically to Muslim outrage over the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. That outrage has sparked violent protests throughout the Islamic world.
But concerns about the goals of radical Islamic leaders, a sense that a double standard pervades the Muslim media and a general distaste for organized violence have overridden any empathy most Christian conservatives might feel for angry Muslims.
'Unfortunately, the protesters are hinting that the cartoonist might have been right,' said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. 'They're killing fellow Muslims and destroying property. Maybe the radical protests are validating the cartoon instead of proving that cartoon wrong.'
No Christian leader ever espoused violence to retaliate against 'Piss Christ,' the controversial 1989 artwork - a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine - by Andres Serrano, even though that riled many Christians, noted Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a longtime leader among religious conservatives.
'I understand why any religious person would get upset if they think their faith is disparaged in a drawing or a cartoon,' Bauer said. 'But ... how can (the cartoons) engender a greater emotional reaction than the daily bombings and attacks by groups claiming to do them in the name of Allah?
'It doesn't look like a call for respect,' Bauer concluded of the Muslims' protests. 'It looks like a call for submission.'"

You got that right.

If only ...

2006-02-10T20:10:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press reports that Mohammed Khatami, apparently realizing his brand of moderation is unwelcome in the new Iran, is taking it on the road. And he's found a way to sell it to the west: blind optimism unfettered by any attempt to acknowledge reality.

The Islamic world is fed up with violence and extremism in the name of religion and is ready for an era of progressive, democratic Muslim governments, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Friday.

He really ought to get out more. If there's an Islamic world that's "fed up with violence and extremism in the name of religion," it's not in our solar system.

The inadvertent truth

2006-02-06T00:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo taken yesterday of a banner carried by primary school children during an anti-Danish protest in Ramallah.

"We respect your freedom, do so for our dogma."
First off, I have doubts this is the sentiment of a primary school student. It's more likely the sentiment of the student's teacher, the one entrusted with shaping the child's beliefs, attitudes, and future. But what's more striking is the wording itself. The writer sets western freedom in opposition to Islamic dogma. I can't argue with that.

"We respect your freedom"? Obviously not. You don't even seem to comprehend what freedom of speech means. It means that no one in society is protected from expression they may consider offensive, within certain limits. Those limits do not include blasphemy, as demonstrated by years of fruitless fussing by Christian groups every time someone makes a film with Jesus in it, dips a crucifix in urine, or tries to make a religious icon out of animal feces. The message to the offended is always the same: Deal with it. Ironically, our freedoms do not include the right to call for murder and destruction, a type of speech that has become a Friday afternoon ritual in much of the Muslim world.

"... do so for our dogma"? No. We don't have to respect your dogma. We are free to think what we like about your cult, and furthermore, we are free to say what we think. Your dogma doesn't trump our freedoms, and it never will.

The false sanctity of mosques

2006-02-05T22:40:00.000-05:00

Thirteen al Qaeda terrorists have escaped from prison in Yemen, including the masterminds of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole (which killed 17 sailors) and the 2002 bombing of the French tanker Limburg (which killed one and has since been swept under the rug along with countless other acts of violence driven by the cult of Islam). But this wasn't so much an escape as a break-in and "liberation," coordinated, apparently, from the local mosque.

A security source in Yemen told Reuters the tunnel from which the men escaped was thought to be around 140 meters (460 feet) long, twice as long as originally reported, and led to a mosque.

The source said authorities discovered the escape on Friday, but it was believed the prisoners had fled Thursday night and were definitely aided by more than one accomplice on the outside because the tunnel was believed to have been dug from the mosque to the prison.

I've written before about the absurdity of granting mosques the respect deserved of sanctity. Our blinkered multiculturalism has for too long allowed mosques built on our soil to become wellsprings of hate and war-rooms for Islam's relentless assault on the fundamental values of Western society. It should be no surprise that a mosque in Yemen was engaged in aiding convicted terrorists, but the fact deserves more attention than it's getting. Predictably, however, the implication of the mosque is already being omitted in mainstream media reports. CNN's Headline News team just decided that Interpol's involvement in the search for the men is more significant than Islam's involvement in their escape.

So much for the ummah's common sense

2006-02-04T14:36:00.000-05:00

Agence France Press reports today that Jihad Momani, the newspaper editor who published three of the Danish cartoons along with an appeal for reason, is now cooling his heels in a Jordanian dungeon, courtesy of the "moderate" King Hussein.

Momani, editor-in-chief of the weekly gossip newspaper Shihane, was fired from his job on Friday after his newspaper printed three of the cartoons ... Jordan's King Abdullah II said Friday that insulting the Prophet Mohammed was "a crime that cannot be justified under the pretext of freedom of expression."

Momani was apparently intimidated into issuing a groveling retraction, but that didn't save him when Jordanian "security forces" knocked on his door. A "judicial source" tells AFP he may not be the only newspaper editor targeted for prosecution. Ah, the glory of Islamic jurisprudence.

Meanwhile, in England, freedom of speech is evident in the streets, even when it blatantly calls for murder.

In France, this protester's sentiments sum up the Muslim mindset neatly.

Solidarity

2006-02-02T12:18:00.000-05:00

Rare common sense from the ummah, and why the tricolor has two colors too many

2006-02-02T10:32:00.000-05:00

The Lebanese magazine Shihan has published three of the Danish depictions of Muhammed that have the Arab world's jelaba all in a knot. They printed the cartoons along with an editorial appeal for a little Muslim intellectual evolution.

Which one do you think damages Islam more? These cartoons or the scene of a suicide bomber who blows himself up outside a wedding ceremony in Amman, or the kidnappers that slaughters their victims before the cameras?

Meanwhile, the French have once again shown their true colors. After shocking everyone by having the courage to publish the cartoons, France Soir reversed itself, fired the editor responsible, and issued an apology, effectively surrending to primitive religious intolerance. There hasn't been a true Gallic vertebrate since Charles Martel. And across the Channel, Reuters compounds the problem by ignoring the Lebanese and suggesting that Muslims are of one mind in being out of their minds: "Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous." No, they don't. Fundamentalist Muslims do, and if we don't pay attention to the dissent that exists in the Muslim world, there may soon be no dissent left.
UPDATE: Some news outlets are reporting that the magazine Al-Shihan is Jordanian.

Breaking news. Breaking silence.

2006-01-15T11:41:00.000-05:00

I'm forced out of a bad spell of writer's block by a promise I made back in August.

I commented then on the arrest of Reuters cameraman Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani by the U.S. military in Iraq. Al-Mashhadani's family said at the time that soldiers searching their home found video on his computer that they apparently considered suspicious. Well, I said that if he was exonerated I would report it immediately. Mashhadani has been freed after five months in detention without charge, and I suppose that's as good as exoneration.

I'm baffled at the silence of the U.S. military. If reason existed to detain him for so long, why can't that reason be revealed? I understand that due process is impractical in certain circumstances, like in the midst of an invasion-versus-insurgency bloodbath. Still, how could there be reason to hold him for five months but no reason to hold him for six months? Or three years? Or just have the last U.S. soldier leaving Abu Ghraib toss him the keys on the way out? The only rational explanation I can imagine is that al-Mashhadani's interrogators determined that he might be an intelligence asset if set free and kept under surveillance. Nevertheless, some sort of statement seems in order. Silence is damning.

No room for reason

2005-12-08T21:53:00.000-05:00

The absurdity of our hopes for a peaceful reconciliation of the conflict between Islam and civilization grows more apparent each time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opens his mouth. The president of Iran has picked up the mantle of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mathahir Mohammed, who during his prolonged tenure couldn't seem to walk by a microphone without blurting out some anti-Semitic slur. At a press conference in Mecca, Ahmadinejad has reiterated that Holocaust denial is official Iranian policy: "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces ... Although we don't accept this claim."

Strangely, Holocaust denial squeezed its wormy way into the media from another angle today as well. Apparently, Mel Gibson will soon begin filming a mini-series about the Holocaust. [NOTE: I've removed a reference to Jews and Nazis rushing each other across an open field that is included in the above-linked article but which apparently is another blogger's joke gone mainstream. Gibson does in fact have a holocaust mini-series in the works. An attentive reader caught my error. Thanks.] Gibson deserves to be vilified, and not just for making us learn how you say, "You've got a piece of flesh on your tunic" in Aramaic. After his father claimed that the millions of Jews supposedly killed by the Nazis had actually just decided to move to the Bronx, Gibson was asked to state his views on the topic. His answer was basically, Shit Happens: "Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933." (Unless there was a beta version of the year 1933, this claim seems in itself rather unlikely.) In any event, to make it easier to cull the lunatics from the sane, like minds shave alike:

Ahmadinejad's outlook on the future is even more distressing than his interpretation of the past.

"The omission of the potentials of the world of Islam and the absence of its decisive role in the international community should be discussed in the upcoming event." He referred to the OIC summit in Mecca as a suitable opportunity for assessment of the problems encountered by the Muslim world and said that the Islamic states should attempt to work on an equal basis and hand in hand to achieve the desired goal.

From another speech he gave:

He referred to the usurper Israel regime in the occupied Palestine as the main obstacle on the way of Muslim Ummah and said wise removal of the anxiety will give Islam a strong share in administration of global affairs.

"To achieve the desired goal"? "Wise removal of the anxiety"? Giving Islam "a strong share in the administration of global affairs"? Yikes. Oh, but don't worry, Ahmadinejad has a plan to keep your human rights as secure as can be, just like back home in Tehran. He's proposed an "Islamic human rights organization to verify behavior of different countries and publish its annual report in a bid to help restoration of the rights of human beings." Oh, good. That removes my anxiety.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Ahmadinejad called for formation of the Muslim world union of radios and TVs ...

"Radios and TVs of the world, Unite!" What a moron. So while the World of Islam "administers" global affairs by achieving the mysterious "desired goal," the Islamic human rights organization will reassure us that all is fine through unified Islamic radio and television services. Count me out, Muhammed.

I'm relying on Iranian news reports for these accounts of Ahmadinejad's speeches, since my desire to attend the press conference was hampered by the widely overlooked fact that non-Muslims are banned from entering the city. How 'bout the next time a Saudi prince touches his 727 down on the tarmac at IAH looking to take a little hand-in-hand stroll with our president, we tell him we've changed the rules and he can get out or get arrested. No Muslims allowed. I wonder how long the press would overlook that.

Ahmadinejad also took time out from his visit to the Disneyland of Islam to clarify his earlier "Wipe Israel off the face of the earth" statement. He declared that the Jews in Israel should pull up stakes and move to Europe, which will be wiped off the face of the earth at a later date, one apparently to be determined by Mohammed El Baradei.

In other news, in Miami yesterday, two air marshalls hired in 2002 to defend America against Muslim insanity accidently killed a regular insane person. At least they can't be accused of racial profiling.

UPDATE: A reader pointed out that Mel Gibson was a little more direct in supporting evident historical truth about the holocaust in an interview with Diane Sawyer. His words are not very convincing. In the interest of total disclosure, I once lost a friend because I defended David Irving's right to publish whatever idiocy popped into his head, and though I miss the friend I still stand firmly against the censorship of ideas. If Gibson wants to dispute the numbers, let him. And let society and moviegoers judge him. Here's the relevant excerpt from the interview. Judge for yourself.

MEL GIBSON: Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do, absolutely. It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.

DIANE SAWYER: And you believe there were millions, six million, millions?

MEL GIBSON: Sure.

You want Schadenfreude?I'll give you Schadenfreude!

2005-11-08T01:07:00.000-05:00

The Euro tanks. My rent goes down. Allahu Akbar.

That didn't take long

2005-11-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

In my last post I speculated that someone across the Atlantic would before too long figure out a way to blame Bush for the riots engulfing Paris. Well, I forgot about Daily Kos, who beat them to the punch. Fourteen percent of Kos readers think Bush deserves more blame for the rioting than does "France" (which I suppose means everyone there who isn't now rioting) or do the rioters themselves. The poll's intro (by altscott) blazes a trail deep into the jungle of stupid in just two sentences:

I have been mesmerized by the string of riots that started in France and has spread to Germany and Belgium. This has been predicted by science fiction writers for over three decades yet I feel that the stressors in the middle east due to the Iraq insurgency are leading to a European insurgency.

Huh? Sci-fi writers over the past three decades have more often predicted Martian invasions than they've foreseen teenagers raised on bad French rap tossing petrol-filled Fanta bottles at a KFC while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" Watch the skies!

The website of the always-unintentionally-hilarious Moby devotes a page to quotes from George W. Bush, who had this to say about the riots of yesteryear:

"I have been asked who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame."

Moby probably thinks this is reductive. I think the French should give this Texas logic a try, before they make a bigger mess by trying to appease thugs with a new redistribution scheme.

The wages of Schadenfreude

2005-11-07T10:28:00.000-05:00

Not a small number of Frenchmen found America's distress in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina cause for another helping of the EU's favorite export: holier-than-thou derision. Here's what the newspaper Liberation had to say (translated by Britain's Telegraph):

A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy -- it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush... bin Laden, nice and dry in his hideaway, must be killing himself laughing.

The Bush administration suffered this petty sniping with its trademark silence, admirable evidence of restraint and dignity. The French anti-American crowd doesn't look so smug anymore. Now, as Paris burns, it's their turn for silence--silence of the embarrassed kind, not the dignified kind.

A related and distressing development: Sparks from the French conflagration have apparently landed in the tinderbox of the Muslim enclaves of my beloved Brussels. As I have noted previously, Belgium is having problems assimilating its own North African immigrant population. A friend of mine who moved from Morocco to Brussels about ten years ago said that she sees disturbing changes in attitudes and behavior in immigrant community there. She does not wear a hijab, and for that young Mulsim men hiss at her when she walks through the Molenbeek district of the city.

An attack last night near the central train station of Brussels left five cars burned. Belgians have a reputation for near-catatonic apathy, but I can't believe that the spread of Muslim unrest across Europe isn't causing some unease there.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media desperately tries to cover up the Islamic nature of some of the violence plaguing France. Agence France Press makes this disturbing observation:

Among the rioters' targets have been churches, nursery and primary schools, town-halls and police stations as well as warehouses, car dealerships and a film-studio at Asnieres outside Paris.

What's even more disturbing is AFP's omission of synagogues from their list. Rioters have thrown fire-bombs at two synagogues in the past week, one in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine and another in Garges, according to the European Jewish Press. What would make churches and synagogues targets? Why have no mosques been burned? And why schools? What could the hooded and masked young men have in mind while hurling fire-bombs at a school? How could French schools have offended anyone so gravely? I wonder. Who attacks a film studio? Well, back in October, a gang of Somali Islamists decided it was time to put a stop to yet another un-Islamic behavior: watching movies.

Dozens of gunmen loyal to Islamic courts stormed a video studio in Somalia's capital on Monday, destroying equipment and confiscating hundreds of tapes that were being translated into the Somali language.
The courts consider watching movies, listening to music, dancing and many other forms of entertainment un-Islamic.
"We are very proud that we closed down the biggest movie translating firm," said Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, chairman of the Union of the Islamic Courts. "What's considered as harmful to the public will be destroyed."

Did those who destroyed the studios at Asnieres know what they were doing, or was the building merely a convenient target? The answer to that may never be known, but does anyone really believe that the synagogues were attacked at random, or by radical atheists or Christian skinheads? Presuming that the attacks have no religious element is as irresponsible as presuming they were wholly motivated by religion. When the killing of Theo Van Gogh last year set off a string of reprisal attacks on mosques, the media depicted the attacks for they were: intolerance motivated by cultural and religious differences. Investigation of the attitudes of the French rioters might reveal a similar reality, but the press is not interested. Better to pretend it's the devil-we-know: social upheaval in reponse to low wages, no wages, poor housing conditions, whatever. The possibility that the rioters consider themselves part of an umma that feels collectively offended by its host society is too frightening for many Europeans to face.

I've got my "Blame Bush" timer running on the situation in Europe. It can't be too long before The Guardian or Le Monde devise some elaborate mental contortion to pin this one on good ol' Dubya, the Global Whipping Boy.

Anti-parrot bias at Reuters?

2005-10-23T21:54:00.000-04:00

Reuters: Dead British parrot had deadly H5N1 bird flu
He's not dead. He's probably pinin' for the fjords.

Lovely plumage.

The vision of evil

2005-10-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

The full text of Zawahiri's letter to his protege Zarqawi is required reading for anyone who claims understanding of the jihad we face and the War on Terror that may save us.

The U.S. Department of National Intelligence has taken the rare step of releasing the letter, both in the original Arabic and in the English translation.

Here's a taste--Zawahiri's to-do list for the Middle East:

The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.

The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate- over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq ...

The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq ...

The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel ...

Read the whole horrifying thing.

Why do we bother?

2005-10-12T11:20:00.000-04:00

A Pew Research Center survey done in 2004 found that 61 percent of Pakistanis view the United States unfavorably.

Forty-one percent believe that suicide attacks against civilians are often or sometimes justified "in order to defend Islam against its enemies."
Sixty-five percent view Osama bin Laden favorably.

The United States has promised long-term support for the earthquake relief effort in Pakistan, pledging 50 million dollars thus far. Twelve helicopters and an undisclosed number of transport planes from the despised U.S. military are at this moment shuttling aid to survivors. For a complete breakdown of the aid provided and planned by the U.S., read the State Department fact sheet released yesterday.

I'm not suggesting that spite makes a good foreign policy tool, but neither does acting like gullible fools. There should be no strings attached to this relief, but it should be followed (after a respectful pause) by serious pressure for Pakistanis to secularize and liberalize their society. If they don't respect our values, they should do without our help.

If we can save their lives, can't we change their minds?

Be sad, or be angry, but don't be surprised:Islamists slit the throats of quake victims

2005-10-10T14:18:00.000-04:00

An Associated Press story yesterday reported that the ubiquitous "some" thought for a moment that tragedy might help bring peace to Kashmir, where Islamists continue to fight for their right not to suffer the existence of anyone unlike them:

Some think tragedy can unite India, Pakistan

Beware when writers try to tell you about what "some think." It's often Doublespeak for "nobody thinks" or "no one in his right mind thinks" or sometimes "this reporter and her editor think." Here are some of my favorites:

Does Bigfoot live in Pennsylvania's woods? Some think so

Some think attacks on homeless should be considered hate crimes

Some think F-16s chased UFO over Washington

Gore's CurrentTV Actually Works, Some Think

Other times "some think" is code for "here's an obvious fact that this reporter is just now getting":

Some Think Many of Yogi Berra’s Malaprops May Not Be Accidental

Some think Bush speech clear, concise

Some think [Democrat] Party Agenda Still Missing in Inaction

Anyway, the "some" in this case were represented by one starry-eyed relief director.

To N.M. Prusty, the head of emergency relief at the international aid agency CARE's India office, this is a golden opportunity.

"The mutual help in humanitarian crisis will be the most powerful confidence-building measure in the history of India-Pakistan relationship," he said.

"History shows that at the time of natural disasters we have come together in this region. This is an opportunity when both India and Pakistan can forget their differences," he said.

Well, as has been said of Arafat, Islamists never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity:

Terrorists kill 10 in Kashmir despite quake

To its credit, the Associated Press has reported on the killings, though ugly reality gets buried in the eighth paragraph, while Sunday's blinkered optimism got a headline.

In a reminder that the disputed Kashmir region is in the grip of an Islamic insurgency, suspected militants killed 10 people, including four Hindus whose throats were slit in three quake-hit villages, said J.P. Singh, senior superintendent of police.

We cannot expect humane or rational behavior from Islamists. Believing otherwise is about as smart as driving with your eyes closed. Media outlets like the Associated Press should stop feeding us tales of what they wish were true. Stick to reporting what is true.

Dy-No-Mite!Mohamed "Da Bomb" ElBaradeiwins a prize! (Should we care?)

2005-10-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

A peace prize funded by a man who got rich making explosives. Sounds like an idea someone should have nixed early on, like letting the Taliban host a beauty contest. The Nobel Foundation could avoid a considerable amount of controversy by sticking to the sciences and literature. In fact, the peace award kind of sticks out as an ill-conceived afterthought.

The committee has attempted to explain away some of its odd choices of laureates by suggesting that the prize is not given necessarily for achievement but as "encouragement" for those who may someday achieve something in the field of peacemaking. By that reasoning, I'd like them to send over my Nobel Prize for literature now. No sense waiting until the novel is finished, and I could really use the cash.

The list of past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize contains more eyebrow-raising names than can be explained away as errors or flukes. The foundation seems determined to mock real efforts to achieve a peaceful world. By lauding bureaucrats and politicians who actually stand in the way of peace, they impede real progress toward peace. Here are some of the committee's dubious selections from the past century:

Jimmy Carter (2002): His efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict amounted to nothing more than self-congratulatory photo opportunities. He also has a perverse affinity for African dictators.

Kofi Annan (2001): Back in Ghana, "Kofi" must be Akan for "crony." If what the world needs most is corruption and obstructionism, then he's your man. Or maybe his cousin. Or his nephew. Or his brother-in-law.

Yassir Arafat (1994): Oh, brother. Where to begin ... Here's a quote from a speech Arafat gave at his daughter's birthday party less than one year after receiving the prize: "The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem." Peacemaker, indeed. He was also a thief.

F.W. de Klerk (1993): Many people consider this one debatable, though the controversy swirling around de Klerk is so thick and noxious that he should have been passed over, in my opinion. Even his critics admit that he played a crucial role in ending Apartheid in South Africa, but the Nobel committee should have considered the feelings of the families of those murdered by death squads while de Klerk was president. De Klerk's claim before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he knew nothing of the activities of groups like the Vlakplass Unit is patently absurd. Perhaps releasing Mandela and ending Apartheid should earn de Klerk the right not to spend the rest of his life in prison, but a peace prize is too much.

Dalai Lama (1989): The current Dalai Lama is one peaceful dude. He's also wildly popular, rich, and in a cult. Why doesn't John Travolta get a peace prize? Tenzin Gyatso (takes away some of the mystique when we call him by his name) spends his time doing the lecture circuit while the Chinese erase his nation by moving millions of settlers there. The Chinese also say they will handle finding the next Dalai Lama once Gyatso dies, meaning they will locate the child in whose body Gyatso's soul is reincarnated. Gyatso has responded by vowing he will not be reincarnated into anyone in China, or maybe he won't be reincarnated at all. So there. Nya-nya.

Henry Kissinger (1973): This makes Kissinger the first person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize while coordinating the secret and illegal bombing of civilians in Southeast Asia and giving murderous Latin American dictators a boost to power. Brilliant.

Ralph Bunche (1950): Bunche was a member of the Communist fifth column that infiltrated the U.S. government during the Cold War. He worked directly under Alger Hiss.

Frank B. Kellogg (1929): In 1928, Kellogg--then the U.S. Secretary of State--co-authored the Kellogg-Briand pact, which outlawed war. That worked.

Theodore Roosevelt (1906): Roosevelt received the prize for his efforts to make peace between the Russians and the Japanese. What makes his selection odd is that he believed firmly that America should have an imperial role in the world, and he saw militarism as a necessary element of success in that role. He despised Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt's and Wilson's respective philosophies make them practically polar opposites, yet the Nobel Foundation gave them identical prizes. Go figure.

All in all, it's no surprise that the Nobel Foundation decided to give this year's peace prize to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, which is notable for having prevented exactly nobody from acquiring nuclear weapons technology. During his tenure as head of IAEA, both Pakistan and North Korea have gained nuclear weapons. Iran is poised to do the same. I guess this is one of those prizes they give for "encouragement," because it sure as hell can't be for achievement.

Pay no attention to that bearded man with the backpack

2005-10-08T16:57:00.000-04:00

The media response to the bomb set off near a packed Oklahoma University football game last week can hardly be called a "response." There couldn't be less coverage of the event if there were a media blackout. What we know so far is this:

1. Last Saturday night, Joel Hinrichs III died in an explosion while sitting on a bench less than one hundred yards from the OU football stadium. The blast reportedly vaporized the upper half of his body, indicating that he may have been wearing a bomb vest or carrying a bomb in a backpack.

2. One guard from the football game reported seeing Hinrichs bolt from the line of spectators entering the stadium when he was asked to open his bag. (University officials deny Hinrichs attempted to enter the stadium, saying he's nowhere on the security tapes.)

Now just by themselves, these two reports warrant media attention. No matter what his motivation, Hinrichs may have intended to end more lives than just his own that night. The fact that he may have been deterred by vigilant security is significant. The fact that no one pursued him when he declined to be searched is also significant. So why did is the story being ignored? Well, it did get some press, mainly to spread the word that Hinrichs was an American kid with no apparent ties to Islam who decided to blow himself to smithereens and happened to do it near a crowded stadium. The media spotlight grew dimmer and dimmer as the following information emerged:

3. Hinrichs' roommate is Muslim.

4. That Muslim roommate attends a mosque that was also a favorite haunt of Zacaria Moussaoui.

5. The explosive that killed Hinrichs was of the same type that the shoe bomber tried to use to bring down a commercial airliner.

The plot thickens. Well, not if you trust the mainstream media. These revelations led to almost no additional reporting on the story. Instead, we got nonsense like "Aftermath Affects Muslim Community," one of those articles that manages to refute its own premise before it's done:

"You take the actions of a minority of a group and apply them to the group overall," he said. "Some Malaysian sees on TV reports of Catholic priests (molesting children) a few years ago‚--What'‚s he going to think about priests?"

Still, Khan said that, generally, most OU students have reacted reasonably.

"I'd have to say there's been no negativity directed at me or my friends," he said.

The way the Muslim community has been "affected," apparently, is that it might have to endure some scrutiny. This, it seems, is too much to bear, even in the interest of security:

Ashraf Hussein, president of Muslim Student Association and petroleum and electrical engineering junior, said he is disturbed by the media's focus.

"(Hinrichs) had a Muslim roommate; he had a Muslim roommate--That's all they're mentioning," Hussein said."

Right, that's all we're mentioning because it's a development we'd be foolish to overlook. According to Muslims like Hussein, we should ignore these coincidences in the interest of political correctness. Well, then this photo of Hinrichs surfaced.

Oh, dear.

Hinrichs was reportedly a little strapped, so maybe he was conserving his Mach-3 blades by shaving only his moustache. Then again, he had enough dough to attempt a big fertilizer purchase a few days prior to the bombing. Still, there must be some perfectly innocent reason the misguided young man decided to go for the Taliban look. (The Oklahoma Daily student newspaper actually had the balls to run this photo with a 900-word profile of Hinrichs that completely avoids the issue of Islam, as if the beard is some kind of engineering-student fad.)

The desperate attempts by mainstream media outlets to shield Muslims from reasonable scrutiny will leave them vulnerable to charges of complicity should Zarqawi's promise of a "Ramadan offensive" on American soil come to fruition.

Bloggers are doing what old-media reporters will not. Zombie is maintaining a thorough compendium of reports on the bombing, along with a detailed map showing the locations of Hinrichs' apartment, the mosque his roommate attended, the stadium, and the site of the blast.

Blogger.com's spell-checker wants to replace "Hinrichs" with "anarchic." Is that a clue?

Rescuing the Democrats

2005-10-08T12:33:00.000-04:00

The Democrats are foundering, but water isn't the only thing they need to toss over the side.

The American left is killing the Democrat Party, and despite the fact that I haven't voted for a Democrat in over a decade, I do care. A democracy dominated by a single political party lacks meaningful choice, and the dominant party runs the obvious risk of growing complacent. Oddly, dissent and debate within the Republican Party have replaced the old Republican/Democrat divide as the front where all the interesting political skirmishes take place. The recent mutiny in the Senate on a bill protecting the rights of detainees is a case in point. The conflict between Bush and his fellow conservatives over the Miers nomination is another. These instances of healthy disagreement occur only because Republicans don't feel obligated to toe the party line. It's hard for Democrats to even find their party line, they've been dancing around it for so long. (If the metaphor doesn't make sense to you, please read Michael Quinion's explanation of the origins of the phrase "toe the line.")

Don't get me wrong. This voter is not swinging. My memories of the Clinton years (those Days of Pizza and Ambivalence) are too fresh for me to stomach supporting a Democrat yet. Plus, I can't go near a party that keeps getting the Sammy-Davis-Jr. hug from morons like Michael Moore and demons like Mahathir bin Mohamad. Locally, I'll be voting for Bloomberg in a month (even though the fascist bastard took away my smoky bars). I just listened to Fernando Ferrer and Thomas Ognibene making fools of themselves in a debate at the Apollo Theater. Bloomberg wisely avoided this fiasco, in part because he objected to the debate's "lightning round," in which the candidates must field simple-minded questions with yes-or-no answers while the audience morphs into a vulgarian peanut gallery that would make Jerry Springer jealous. The Democrats are so blinded by the glare of the spotlight that they can't see how small that loud crowd really is. They also don't seem to realize that dignity is a big selling point for voters who actually vote. Hillary Clinton will be running for re-election in 2006, so I guess I'll be casting another Republican or Independent vote for senator from New York as well. Every time she plunks her ass down in that seat in the Senate, Patrick Moynihan does another subterranean pirouette. (Now there was a Democrat worth voting for.) As far as 2008 goes, I won't be voting for Bush, but then, no one will--a fact that the Democrats seem to be forgetting. Hating Bush will be nothing more than a quaint hobby in a couple of years, and connecting his shortcomings to Republicans in general may become increasingly difficult if they keep breaking ranks and voting on principle rather than allegiance. (Principle ... now there's a concept.) The Democrats are not likely to put anyone forward who'll win my vote or the votes of other liberal hawks in 2008, but if they want even a fighting chance, they need to listen to reason.

Surprisingly, the voice of reason whispering in the party's ear these days is coming from a couple of former Clinton advisors. Thomas B. Edsall writes in the Washington Post that William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck have advised Democrat party leaders to cut the lunatics loose and steer back toward the center if they want to win any elections anytime soon.

On defense and social issues, "liberals espouse views diverging not only from those of other Democrats, but from Americans as a whole. To the extent that liberals now constitute both the largest bloc within the Democratic coalition and the public face of the party, Democratic candidates for national office will be running uphill."

They go on to recommend that the party should drop the failed strategy of growing a base of highly partisan, left-leaning voters, and look to luring moderates away from the GOP and into a more centrist Democrat camp. Galston and Kamarck have the right idea, but I wish they'd stop abusing the term "liberal." True liberals do not cozy up to dictators like the left's favorite Brit, George Galloway. True liberals do not make excuses for theocracies that subjugate women, like the left's favorite foreign correspondent, Sean Penn. Please stop calling them liberals. Call them leftists (especially since the left keeps embracing them.) Call them rejectionists. Call them idiots. And then get them out of the Democrats' "big tent," and don't let the flap hit their asses on the way out. Let Sheehan, Moore, Streisand, and all the Baldwins join forces with the petrified radical left of Chomsky and Nader. Let them have their own party so they can stop scaring people away from the Democrats. For our democracy to function, we need two viable parties (at least). The Democrat Party must reform, not just for its own sake, but for the sake of the nation.

Bias ... what bias?

2005-10-03T18:05:00.000-04:00

Reuters doesn't usually let the Associated Press beat it to the punch when it comes to bias. Today's coverage of Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is the exception to the rule:

AP: High Court Nominee Has Never Been a Judge

WASHINGTON - President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court on Monday, turning to a lawyer who has never been a judge to replace Sandra Day O'Connor and help reshape the nation's judiciary.

Never been a judge. That's true. But did she ever play for the Steelers?

The only bench Justice Byron White sat on prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court was next to a sideline.

But he was appointed by a Democrat, so that was okay.

UPDATE: The inimitable Fausta at Bad Hair Blog has coined a term for the disconnect from reality exhibited by the Associated Press from time to time: APDD, or Associated Press Deficit Disorder. The AP reporter attending Condoleezza Rice's recent speech at Princeton was apparently suffering from a severe case of APDD. The outcome can be tragic when this syndrome goes untreated. Check out Dr. Fausta's diagnosis.

No comment

2005-10-03T01:01:00.000-04:00

Hindu Balinese women light candles to protest the bombings perpetrated there yesterday by jihadis.

Palestinians set tires aflame in Gaza to protest the killing of Ahmed Yassin by the Israeli military, March 2004.

Cindy Sheehan and Company:The left needs a smaller tent

2005-09-28T14:04:00.000-04:00

Cindy Sheehan serves as a daily reminder of the left's inability to find guidance or choose its friends wisely. She met today with John McCain. Apparently they exchanged viewpoints, after which which McCain said of Sheehan: "She's entitled to her opinion," and "We just have fundamental disagreements." Sheehan then called one of our nation's most popular and respected leaders a "warmonger." The Democrat leadership may now be wishing the Secret Service had run her over back in Crawford. If there's a way she can do more damage to her cause, it will take some effort. Perhaps she could fly to Damascus and publicly kiss the ass of the tyrant behind the "insurgency" that killed her son. That's what George Galloway did.

As Sheehan completes her transformation from grieving mother to pathetic media tool, the Democrats have wisely opted to cut her loose. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry declined to attend last weekend's anti-war rally in Washington, D.C.--a decision that apparently woke the pacifists up to the fact that they have no useful friends in the party and no chance of having anyone to vote for in 2008 unless they learn to give war a chance. Sheehan's hammy behavior before the cameras, combined with her deepening addiction to the spotlight, has put off so many that her blather elicits more derision than applause even over at Huffpo. (One of the few positive comments in response to her latest post came from a member of the "Guns and Dope Party," whose web site is either dull satire or frighteningly wacko anarchism.) Her anti-Israel rant and lame attempts at denial made her fatally toxic to moderate Democrats. And her friends didn't always made a good impression at anti-war demonstrations around the nation on Sunday: the crowds were lousy with conspiracy crackpots, muddle-headed ex-hippies arm-in-arm with Starbucks multiculturalists, and masked vulgarians being lead around by unrepentant Communists. (To see some of Cindy Sheehan's fellow travelers, check out Zombie's collection of photos from the recent rally.)

I'm not hopeful that the left in America can get its act together. Its members seem caught between paradigms they won't abandon (no war, hate Bush, hate America) and reality they won't see (Saddam was not going away on his own, Hamas is not a force for good, sometimes America is). Zombie points out a perfect example of the cognitive dissonance straining the minds of the left today: a group in San Francisco called QUIT, which is apparently a U.N.-style acronym for Queers for Palestine. They march for the creation of a Palestinian state that would undoubtedly persecute gays. Baffling. Christopher Hitchens gives us an even better example of the disconnect among the left, pointing out that Communists in Iraq are bewildered by the support American leftists are voicing for the "freedom fighters" who are trying to silence or kill them.

In an interview in early July, Salam Ali, a member of the Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party, addressed the betrayal of the Iraqi left by the American left. The interviewer asked him to comment on the idea that the nascent government in Iraq is a fraud and the ICP would be better off siding with the "insurgency":

Some on the Western left insist that participation in the political process is a form of collaboration and that the insurgency represents a sort of national liberation movement like that in Vietnam or the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

Ali's response to my question on this comparison was mixed with anger and sarcasm. "This perception has nothing to support it in the real situation in Iraq," he replies. "It doesn’t exist. It's a myth. It's dangerous as well," he added. Such a comparison is based on a lack of understanding of the specific situation in Iraq and "makes a mockery" of the national liberation movements in other countries. He suggested that these views were made by folks, however well-intentioned, without any real contacts with Iraqis on the ground.

Bear in mind that the ICP opposed the invasion and occupation, and as Communists they certainly have no love for the Bush administration. But they know a good thing when they see it (like an open and democratic political process instead of groveling before a tyrant) and they know a bad thing when they see it (like an unholy alliance between scheming Baathists and bloodthirsty jihadis). The left in America, however, just isn't listening.

A democracy dominated by a single party is not desirable from anyone's perspective (even members of that party). Meaningful debate and the existence of choice are vital to the health of such a government. If the left is to have any place in the political process, they'll have to move away from the theatrics and back into the realm of thought. Anti-Semites, loons who see politics as an opportunity to dress funny or not at all, and those who just instinctively hate America should be visibly ostracized from the Democrat Party. The Democrats need a "good left," or their identity will shrivel away--already they're losing African Americans, Latinos, and labor unions because they're so damn vague about what precisely they plan to do. To be of any use to the Democrats, that good left needs to get its bearings, get rid of the baggage, and get serious.

More Reuters bias

2005-09-25T12:41:00.000-04:00

Reuters' latest headline about the escalation of violence in and around Gaza set off my journalistic bias alarm. I should to turn the alarm off while reading Reuters, but here we go ...

Two civilians wounded in Israeli missile strike (9/24 6:50 p.m.)

"That's funny," I thought. "I don't recall the word 'civilians' in the headline about Hamas' unprovoked rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot on Friday." Actually, I couldn't recall any article from Reuters about that attack, but a Google search revealed that Reuters did indeed devote 249 words to it. Most of those words were spent repeating Hamas' justification for the strike or down-playing the seriousness of such attacks: "Such rocket strikes rarely cause casualties."

Tell that to the family of Ella Abukasis, a 17-year-old resident of Sderot killed by a Hamas rocket attack in January.

Not rare enough.

Anyway, the headline for the Reuters article about the strike on Sderot does not call the Israeli victims "civilians"--though they were--and it reduces the incident to a "claim" by including the attribution in the headline:

Palestinian rocket wounds five Israelis - army (9/23 9:50 p.m.)

It seems that Israeli rockets are fact, while Palestinian rockets are possibly fiction--an invention of the "army."

Reuters needs to establish and enforce some journalistic guidelines specifically tailored for its reporters covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is, unless they want to be perceived as a mouthpiece for marginalized terrorists.

Elie Wiesel keeps his cool

2005-09-23T03:09:00.000-04:00

Fausta at Bad Hair Blog has done a nice summary of Elie Wiesel's lecture and Q&A session at Princeton Wednesday night. Wiesel is notable for having once received a Nobel Peace Prize despite the fact that he actually deserved one.

Someone in the audience had the gall to ask Wiesel if he sees any parallels between the Nazis and Bush. If I'd been in Wiesel's shoes, I'd have leapt down from the stage and knocked the moron's head off with the mic stand. I guess that's why I keep getting passed over when they're giving out peace prizes. Wiesel kept his cool. Read his answer at Bad Hair Blog.

Shameful

2005-09-22T09:10:00.000-04:00

Russia and China have cowed France, Britain, and Germany into weakening the language of the latest U.N. resolution on Tehran's nuclear deception and recalcitrance. Iran has already violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a breach that would normally result in immediate referral of the issue to the Security Council. By not evening threatening such action, the European powers weaken the already ridiculous U.N., turning it yet again into a coalition of the unwilling. Sadly, this seems to set the stage for a repeat of 2002-2003, wherein the U.S. will have to construct another coalition outside of the U.N. to enforce the organization's own rules and resolutions. It was difficult last time, and it won't be any easier this time around.

The headline says it all:

EU backs down on Iran

Carnival of the Revolutions

2005-09-19T06:27:00.000-04:00

Round the world in twenty-two steps. Here's this week's collection of developments in democracy, rights, and the revolutions that carry them forward. As always, we've got some progress, some regress, and some that are just a mess.

Let's begin on the road to Damascus ...

Mustafa at Beirut Spring finds some interesting hints at future policy in Saad Hariri's choice of whom to meet (and whom not to meet) at the U.N. this past week.

Further south along the Mediterranean coast ...

Turning to recent events in Gaza, Different River has put together a great compendium of comment and photos on the destruction of synagogues there by "jubilant" Palestinians.

And across the border into Egypt ...

Freedom for Egyptians draws some interesting parallels between the murder of Syria's Rafik Hariri and the assassination of Anwar Sadat nearly twenty-four years ago. The similarities in the political motivations of these killings reveal much about obstacles to democracy in the Middle East. "Both Hariri and Sadat are liberators. Hariri won Lebanon’s sovereignty and freedom and Sadat won peace. Enemies of Hariri and Sadat are the same if not the killers."

Moving down into the horn of Africa ...

Ethiopundit brings us a fascinating look at how Ethiopia (and much of Africa, for that matter) ended up in its particular mess today. This is a work in progress, according to the authors, but well worth reading in its current draft.

And ET Wonkette at Weichegud! gives Jimmy Carter a well-deserved thrashing for his years of helping corrupt tyrants keep Ethiopians on a steady diet of dust.

And across the Gulf of Aden ...

Jane at Armies of Liberation thinks that the U.S. government may be about to let realpolitik cynicism screw the forces of liberal democracy in upcoming Yemeni elections. Administration officials may even be about to welcome to Washington a Yemeni official suspected of involvement in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Jane also notes in another post that U.S. intelligence can no longer claim to be mystified about the origins of the Cole plot, thanks to revelations of the crack work of Able Danger.

Farther north on the peninsula ...

Captain Ed at the Captain's Quarters sees a chink in the wall of gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, women will be allowed to both vote and run in upcoming local elections. Some skepticism is probably in order, but Captain Ed makes some good points in his analysis of what the Saudi royal family may be up to.

And across the Persian Gulf in the land of the Ayatollahs ...

Amil Amani writes in The American Thinker about how the mullahs in Iran are trying to shove pre-Islamic Persian culture down the memory hole in the name of Allah.

Marching east across the Dasht-e Lut ...

Lastango at Daily Pundit offers an excellent primer on the Afghan elections, whose results should be announced this week.

Sohrab Kabuli at Afghan Lord covers the elections in Afghanistan with commentary and photos. The English is a little tricky here and there, but the account is worth reading. Sadly, the news is not all good.

The hard-working Gateway Pundit reports on Taliban terrorism and U.N. hypocrisy: an election day attack on a dam in Afghanistan. Back in 2001 both the U.N. and Taliban officials protested loudly that U.S. military action might damage the dam and put thousands of lives at risk. Now that the U.S. is not the culprit, no one seems quite as concerned.

And south over the Arabian Sea to a small archipelago ...

Robert Mayer at Publius Pundit reports on the dismal state of affairs in the Maldives, where it looks like the only positive development lately is that oppression inspires "freedom-blogging." Don't let mainstream media's complicity with "the mullah" of Male keep the truth hidden. Mayer provides a number of links to Maldive blogs.

Across India to the Himalayas ...

Paramendra Bhagat (a fellow New Yorker) at Democracy for Nepal works on strategy for his countrymen struggling to bring democracy to their troubled nation. I'm not too familiar with Nepalese politics, but what he's proposing sounds like civil disobedience along the lines of Tiananmen, but with a clearer behind-the-protest plan for structure and change. It looks like an uphill battle, given the current three-way fight between monarchists, Maoists (yikes!), and democrats. This revolution is truly a work-in-progress, and Bhagat's blog looks to me like the best way to follow it.

And then north over China ...

Neo-neocon calls our attention to the possible significance of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's retaining power in recent polls in Japan. The comments demonstrate that there is disagreement on this topic ... well worth a look.

And across the Pacific and North America to the Big Apple ...

After last Tuesday's primary to choose their candidate for mayor, Democrats are trying to chuck New York State's election law (Sec. 6-162) in the trash in the interest of unity. Hypocrisy isn't just for the Third World anymore.

Speaking of which, let's jet down south a thousand miles ...

Alfonso Chardy at Net for Cuba reveals that Cubans are sailing to Florida in record numbers. (Maybe they're actually those doctors Fidel said he'd send to New Orleans.)

Vcrisis looks at Hugo Chavez's designs on certain islands in the Netherlands Antilles. The great anti-colonialist may have dreams of a "Greater Venezuela."

And Jorge Arena at The Devil's Excrement examines Chavez's attempts to shred Venezuela's (latest) constitution.

And on a related topic, Ironman at Political Calculations gets out the slide rule and the graph paper and provides a statistical proof for what most of us already figured: the more governments meddle with economics, the harder it is to do business.

Over the Atlantic to Europe ...

Curzon at Coming Anarchy thinks that the results of yesterday's elections in Germany bode ill for that nation's floundering economy.

Then skirting over the north coast of the Black Sea ...

Also at Coming Anarchy, Younghusband wonders if Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev (the proud planner of the Beslan massacre) isn't trying to spread his brand of violence all over the North Caucasus. Whether the goal is another Islamic state spanning ethnic and national boundaries or just control over the oil-pipeline routes, this kind of expansion could set the region back drastically.

And south across the Caucasus Mountains, bringing us almost back where we began ...

Oneworld Multimedia looks at cafe culture in Armenia and sees revolution brewing. Apparently, the chatter at all levels of society there points to a growing intolerance for corruption, the lack of rule of law, and the "obscene wealth and political power of the oligarchs."

For an interesting snapshot of trends in freedom and rights around the world, check out Maximiliano Herrera's "Freedom in the World." This week he updates his ratings of Liberia, Nicaragua, Kyrgystan, Burundi, Guinea Bissau, Lebanon, and Sudan. In Herrera's estimation, all but Nicaragua have seen recent improvements, trends toward greater political freedoms, respect for civil rights, or both.

Lastly, I'd like to direct this Carnival's readers to a site honoring those American men and women in uniform who have given their lives to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in their struggles for democracy and peace.

Thanks to all those who submitted. If anyone thinks I missed a submission or wants to submit something late, please email me at tompain@mac.com. I may add an update to this post later today.

Thanks also to Will at Willisms.com for managing the Carnival and the submissions with such efficiency. Be sure to check back in at the Carnival of the Revolutions home base for the hosting schedule and to make submissions for future Carnivals.

UPDATE (21 September, 10:00 p.m.):

I received yesterday an email from Joshua at One Free Korea with a late submission for the Carnival. Instead of simply sending me a link to a single post of his own, Joshua seems to have done my job for me with regard to both the Koreas. He's written two paragraphs summing up the latest developments in North and South Korea, complete with links to posts (on his own blog and on others) that provide more info and analysis.

Joshua should consider hosting the Carnival of the Revolutions in the future. He has the knack. [Correction: Joshua did one just a few weeks ago, one I missed thanks to a chance meeting between my iBook and a concrete floor. I'm about to read it. Looks impressive.] Though these two paragraphs differ stylistically from my work in this week's Carnival, they're too good to overlook. (The HTML is also not my own, and it has been copied into and out of an email, so it may look a little different from the usual Commoner Sense post, until I modify it. I will not blockquote it, though it is not my writing, since it becomes too confusing in blue with all the links.) Here it is:

South Korea

A modest backlash has taken shape in the wake of South Korean leftists' violent attempts to tear down a statue of General MacArthur at Inchon . . . on September 11th. One of OneFreeKorea's unnamed sources in the House of Representatives provided him a copy of a letter from Congress to President Roh expressing concern about the violent protests. (The Marmot has proof that the protestors are taking some fairly vicious talking points from Pyongyang). South Korea's left-wing president, Roh Moo-Hyun, betrayed his fear of alienating some of his hard-left voters by letting his Foreign Minister send the response during the weekend to fly it under the media radar; One senior member of Roh's Uri party even praised the protestors for their "deep ethnic purity." In the meantime, Roh was at the United Nations railing against American imperialism and dodging hundreds of protestors who denounced his support for the North Korean regime and his silence about the horrific human rights abuses there.

North Korea

This week saw North Korea--which proclaims itself cleansed of racial impurity--agree in principle to prompt denuclearization, only to renege on its agreement the very next day. One of OneFreeKorea's sources on Capitol Hill explains to a think tank (and the rest of us) why this was a bad deal for the United States in any event; indeed, North Korea's behavior may have helped the U.S. position far more than an agreement would have. Meanwhile, the United States appears to be finding its voice and direction in its thus-far-fruitless quest for a consistent policy for the likely event of a diplomatic breakdown. The story that most of the media missed is how the seizure of high-quality North Korean-made counterfeit dollars ("supernotes") in the United States may have already brought one Chinese bank to the brink of insolvency (more here at NKZone, and here).

Meanwhile, another urgent problem looms: North Korea will soon stop accepting food aid despite the fact that the World Food Program believes that 6.5 million North Koreans--most of them in political classes the regime disfavors--depend on that food. Will a new flood of refugees or a another famine be the result (the last one killed millions)? Thankfully, Mongolia has quietly made room for a small number of North Korean refugees.

UPDATE (21 September, 11:21 p.m.):

Thanks, Joshua. I'm putting One Free Korea up in my consciousness-raising links list.

Carnival of the Revolutions submissions

2005-09-18T10:38:00.000-04:00

I'll be hosting the Carnival of the Revolutions this coming week. Will Franklin at Willisms.com coordinates the host schedule and submissions for the Carnival. Please use the Carnival "home base" to submit any democracy/freedom/revolution-related posts you would like to see included, as well as to check out the schedule for future hosts. It's also a good idea to send me a "heads up" at tompain@mac.com to be sure I know about the submission. I keep late hours and will be accepting submissions until late Sunday night/early Monday morning. Look for the Carnival here at Commoner Sense around noon on Monday.

From fascism to fashion:Two odd nights out

2005-09-17T13:59:00.000-04:00

What if they'd been on the same evening? Tough choice ...

Wednesday night my wife and I attended the Galloway/Hitchens debate at Baruch College here in Manhattan. It turned out to be less edifying than I had anticipated, though considerably more lively than any debate I'd seen previously. Galloway was more George Hamilton than Alexander Hamilton, his bald pate glowing practically orange from a good dose of Syrian summer sun. Hitchens came to the podium looking as if he'd finally arrived at the Alka-Seltzer end of a three-day bender. He seemed irritable and indeed already irritated, perhaps because some woman representing one of the groups sponsoring the debate had just given a blatantly pro-Galloway introduction to the event--wildly inappropriate, but not surprising at all. Amy Goodman assumed what turned out to be her thankfully ineffectual role as moderator, and the fun began.

Hitchens got the first go, and elicited surprisingly strong applause from an audience gathered in one of the bluest cities east of the Mississippi. The woman next to me commented that there seemed to be quite a few Hitchens supporters present. I informed her that I was one of them, sparking a brief and fruitless comparison of our viewpoints on the war. As the debate progressed, she turned out to be an utter lunatic, and one possessed of the ability to produce with her fingers, lips and lungs a brain-rattling whistle somewhere in the 200-decibel range. Her performance inspired me to break form and later add my own voice to the chorus of boos that Galloway earned for telling an audience of New Yorkers that we brought 9/11 on ourselves. Aside from that, I limited myself to clapping.

The topic of the debate was supposed to be the war in Iraq. Hitchens repeated his standard (and convincing, to me) list of arguments against do-nothing pacifism. Galloway dragged out the usual collection of distortions and half-truths. He even pulled the old Lancet "100,000 civilians dead" claim out of the rubbish and threw it to the cheering throngs. Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib. New Orleans is evidence that Bush is evil. Ho. Hum. Unfortunately, the most interesting parts of the debate were the ad hominem daggers each man had hidden up his sleeve. Galloway made oblique and not-so-oblique references to Hitchens' drinking and denegrated Vanity Fair. (I wonder if he would be so dismissive of the magazine at a table with David Halberstam and Bob Woodward. Granted, Paris Hilton is on the cover, but VF did scoop everyone on the Mark Felt/Deep Throat revelation.) Near the end of the debate, Galloway also forced Hitchens to deny once again that he works for the Bush White House, an odd accusation. Hitchens came dangerously close to accusing his opponent of concealing involvement in the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal. He straightforwardly called Galloway a tyrants' toadie, guilty of sucking up to every fascist dictator he can find. Pretty sordid stuff, and the mood infected the crowd, so before long Hitchensian and Gallowite enclaves emerged in the composition of the balcony crowd, pockets of true believers who sometimes seemed to be carrying on rowdy debates of their own. Someone down on the orchestra level kept lowing like a cow every time Hitchens tried to make a point. This debate didn't need Amy Goodman, it needed my grade-school principal, Sister Bridget.

There weren't many high points to this evening. Galloway said nothing worth repeating, though the papers are making a small stir over his comment that Hitchens was a butterfly who has now "turned back into a slug," and a slug leaves a trail of slime wherever it goes. Wow. That metaphor would have been clumsy enough if Galloway had been content with sticking to scientific reality and said caterpillar. Hitchens did not offer much about Iraq that we have not heard before--those of us who don't have our palms clapped firmly over our ears. He did have one observation about Galloway that is worth noting: The man visited Syria in July and praised the insurgency in Iraq. That insurgency killed Casey Sheehan, in whose posthumous exploitation Galloway now participates. If this doesn't demonstrate the vile hypocrisy of the left, I don't know what does. Will Cindy Sheehan think about Galloway's words in Damascus when he's standing beside her on tour? I doubt it. Many on the left in America have proven themselves capable of climbing blithely into bed with every odious creature that lurches up out of the muck, so long as it can gurgle, "Bush sucks."

Galloway turned out to be every bit the pompous blowhard I expected. In a Scottish accent oddly tinged with a hint of something Middle-eastern, he generated far more heat than light, throwing the pacifist-left half of the audience precisely the bones they expected: while Halliburton rapes Iraq, Bush, Cheney, and Rove engineer the mass-drowning of impoverished minorities. (The moonbat beside me seemed to have a Tourette's tic that would emerge each time she heard the name "Cheney"--a sort of dog-bark combined with wailing-wall head-bobbing.) While Hitchens lambasted Galloway for things he said and did eight weeks ago, Galloway responded by dredging up decades-old tales of Hitchens praising the Palestinian struggle for liberation, the Vietcong, and even Galloway himself. Hitchens denied only his alleged praise for Galloway. Following the same weak approach, Galloway accused Hitchens of inconsistency on Iraq, pointing out that he had vociferously opposed the first Gulf War. This Hitchens also did not deny, responding that he changed his position on Iraq only after meeting Iraqi Kurds near the end of the war in 1991. Hitchens said that he had not repudiated his original views, he just no longer held to them. This bit of hairsplitting drew some derision from the audience. Though it may be a valid distinction, it sure looked like waffling. If your Kurdish friends are right, why not repudiate your earlier views? If you're suggesting that there is some validity to the anti-war position, then you're doing more for Galloway's argument than Galloway himself.

It went back and forth like this for over an hour, with more guidance from the timekeeper than from the moderator. Hitchens and Galloway arrived at their own ground rules without any input from Goodman. They respected each other's right to speak more or less without interruption, though there was a good deal of groaning and eye-rolling. When they did interrupt, it was usually done in good humor and taken in good humor as well. (I was surprised at the level of civility, considering that Galloway regularly calls Hitchens a drunk and Hitchens has lately added Galloway to his criminal prosecution wish-list, where he can share a cell with Henry Kissinger, I suppose). Goodman did pose some questions to direct the "discussion" segment of the debate, but her questions were pointless and overtly biased. She asked Hitchens whether he thought his new, hawkish viewpoint earned him different treatment in and from the media. She did not ask Galloway if his viewpoint earned him different treatment from corrupt tyrants and central players in the Oil-for-Food scandal. Ultimately, it was Galloway, not Goodman, who announced that the evening was losing steam and perhaps it was time to wrap things up. He was right, and Hitchens apparently agreed, for he had already fished a cigarette and lighter from his jacket pocket as Galloway made his closing comments. I watched Hitchens nervously, afraid he might light up right there on stage and be immediately lynched by the fascist leftists who today disgrace the term "liberal." He restrained himself, however, and the evening came to a peaceful, civilized close. As we shuffled out onto the street amid the muttering crowd, I felt depressed. We stopped for a quick dinner and then headed straight home and to bed, exhausted just from watching the spectacle.

The next night found us at quite a different venue: the runway show for the Zac Posen Spring/Summer 2006 collection, one of the last events of Fashion Week in Bryant Park. In the interest of total disclosure, Zac is a family friend, so don't expect an unbiased review. I'm also about as qualified to critique couture as I am to handicap a horse race. But I do like beautiful clothes and certainly don't mind beautiful people, and there were plenty of both at the show. (The only beautiful person at the debate--in the Page Six sense of the phrase--was Viggo Mortensen, who was whisked off the "will call" line and plunked in a front row seat long before we took our places in the balcony. He bought a copy of Galloway's book and made notes or doodled on the flyleaf during the debate. Sadly, Mortensen has pitched his political tent alongside Sean Penn and Johnny Depp, proving once again that acting skill and intellect just might be mutually exclusive.)

Despite being better organized than Baruch, the team at the door had no record of my reservation, so I had to wander around outside the tent for a while in shame and humiliation until a fashion angel devised a plan to get me in. Once safely inside--away from the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth--I took a place beside my wife, the seat which apparently had been reserved for me anyway, since no one else came to claim it, and every seat and square foot of standing room in the place was taken.

The show began much closer to schedule than had the debate, despite involving dozens more people and the complications of lights, music, and of course, costume--another testament to the efficiency of capitalism. In fairness, the Posen people did not have to run everyone through a metal detector. The fashion world is actually more sensible than Hollywood, and they seem cognizant of the fact that they operate well below the radar of jihadis. Eliminating the evil of Seventh Avenue decadence is rather low on Osama's list of things to do. (The debate, on the other hand, did attract a few "Magnificent 19" types--glowering and bearded young Arab men who could give the willies to anyone with a boarding pass.) So once the paparazzi had been herded into their pen and Diddy had taken his seat, the show was on. (I feel so much closer to him since he dropped the "P.")

I do believe, for what it's worth, that Zac is the most talented young designer working today. I base this judgment on two observations. First, his designs are eye-catchingly innovative and possess a feminine grace often strangely absent in women's fashion. Second, a woman in a Zac Posen dress never looks like she got smooth-talked by a personal shopper at Barney's, or like she's an extra on the set of a French science fiction film. Zac's designs seem to animate the beauty of the women wearing them ... not every cut for every woman, naturally, but when it works, it really works. I left the show feeling uplifted. We skipped dinner, went straight out, and didn't return home until dawn.

A rare bit of relativism here at Commoner Sense

2005-09-10T18:58:00.000-04:00

I have to grit my teeth while writing this, but truth is truth, and Protestants and Catholics in Belfast have spent the latter part of the summer hurling insults and bombs at each other. Before I criticize the bloody Sunni/Shiite rift in Islam once again, I must concede that Christianity--though considerably less psychotic--is just as deserving as Islam of being driven off the face of the earth. Just because Christians aren't presently capable of bloodlust equal to their Muslim counterparts doesn't mean we should tolerate them until they are. Religion is evil [see the update below], and anyone arguing otherwise has a lot of explaining to do.

Dar al-Harb, Christian style

Secular government that subjugates all religious ideology and differences to democracy and the absolute separation of church and state is necessary for the creation of a peaceful and just world. And I'm sorry, but secular democracy is by necessity athiest, and it may (by democratic vote) allow abortion, allow capital punishment, allow gay marriage, and allow women (or men, for that matter) to wear miniskirts and fishnets if they so please. If you don't like it, find a piece of undisputed territory and create your own medieval state. We'll mostly likely have to build a wall around it in a few years (for our own security), but it's your choice. Civilization ... love it or leave it.

I was raised Catholic, sort of. My mother is Catholic (I think she still is ... haven't bothered to ask her lately how that's working for her), my father is Protestant (Anglican, or American Anglican, or Episcopalian ... I'm not certain, and I could hardly care less). At a very early stage in my upbringing they seemed to have arrived at a mutually acceptable amalgam of the two disparate "faiths," an agreement that I would be raised with occasional doses of religion (perhaps innoculations would be more accurate) augmented by a regular diet of reason. The steady, inane droning of the priests who educated me served to hammer home the message, and by age eighteen I was an agnostic. No better way to create a fallen Catholic than eight years of Catholic school. I am now a tolerant anti-theist, which for me means that I don't care what you think about the universe as long as you don't desire that I think the same. But start hurling bombs at people who disagree with you, and tolerance wanes.

Catholics and Protestants disagree about a number of things, some quite important: birth control, abortion, and capital punishment, for instance. These issues should be immediately and without question turned over to a secular, democratic government (one that provides equal protection and rights to men and women, to ensure that the democracy is genuine). They also disagree about a number of absurd, practically meaningless questions, none that really matter at all to anyone living today: Should baptism be performed soon after birth or later? Should we bow down before statues? Was Mary born without sin? Did she get to take her body with her to heaven? Is this thing I'm putting in my mouth matzoh or human flesh? Should we cut off part of our infant's genitalia? (Is the absurdity getting through yet?)

Tossing a hand grenade over any of these issues is simply ridiculous. But nobody in Belfast--or in Bagdad, for that matter--is really committing murder solely on the basis of such idiotic disputes. Religious hierarchies have managed to reduce people in these places to states of prehistoric tribalism. And for that, we should all condemn religion, set it aside, take whatever spiritual beliefs we have and hold them close and quiet within our hearts. Let secular, democratic government handle public life. Focus our lives on doing what is right, which most people seem capable of understanding until they listen to priests and imams.

Update: I've received a fair bit of justifiable criticism for the stridency of this post. My apologies for the "evil" statement in the first paragraph--it's simplistic and over-the-top, as well as offensive to those who choose to believe. I let the vision of streets aflame in my ancestral homeland get the better of me. My feelings about the absurdity of the issues that religions deem important will stand as expressed.

Who's to blame for the blame game?

2005-09-09T10:15:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press this morning points out that finger-pointing and backbiting have dominated the aftermath of Katrina, a marked change from the "let's all pull together" attitude following 9/11. The writer attempts to place the blame for the blame game on differences between the attacks and the hurricanes, such as that Osama bin Laden apparently had nothing to do with Katrina (though he may believe otherwise).

The extraordinary showing of national and political unity displayed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is nowhere to be found in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

That's right ... and you know why? Because "national and political unity" didn't serve the Jerry Springer model of conflict-based media. Respectful, reasoned analysis doesn't sell nearly as well as hyperbole and speculation. So now we have a reporter actually asking the President for comment on the rumor that the U.S. military deliberately flooded New Orleans by blowing up the 17th Street Levee in the hours after Katrina struck. Had any reporter indulged in such ludicrous and irresponsible gossip in the days after 9/11, there would have been a backlash. Not so anymore.

What mainstream media learned from 9/11 is that they don't have to adapt in the face of horrific tragedy. They can continue to make division and controversy their goals, to do their best to create the national atmosphere that suits their needs and not the needs of the people. Meanwhile, they can claim the pious defense that the muck they're raking up (or inventing) serves someone's interests. Remember when the media tried to drive a wedge into the war effort by playing the race card? We had to listen to plenty of hysterical speculation from people like Charles Rangel that the pain of war would fall with unfair weight on America's minority population, since "[a]ccording to his office, minorities comprise more than 30 percent of the nation's military." Well have a look at the photos of the young men and women who've lost their lives in Iraq. If 30 percent of our front-line soldiers are minorities, then insurgents in Iraq must be somehow targeting the whites. By my informal count, it appears that roughly 10% of those killed are African-American and another 10% are Latino. Casualties almost precisely reflect the racial make-up of the nation, but does anyone in the mainstream media feel it necessary to call attention to this, now that reality would not serve to cause tension and bitterness? No. Not a peep. Race and the military was only an issue when it had the potential to cause conflict and controversy.

Selling acrimony has become the number one priority of America's mainstream media. The AP is part of the problem. Their duplicitous attempt to find reasons for America's poisonous political atmosphere belongs up there with O.J. Simpson's ongoing investigation into his ex-wife's murder.

Can evil turn good?

2005-09-08T11:33:00.000-04:00

"Just tell me how I can help! I'm there for you!"

Reporters and editors in the mainstream media find something titillating about the potential for national humiliation in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Offers of aid from Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba have earned more attention from the media than far more substantial (and certainly less disingenuous) offers of assistance from countless other nations. The outstretched hands of tyrants are symbolic, and in a profoundly mean-spirited way (not like Sri Lanka's touching "token" donation of $20,000 in aid). The fact that the underlying message of these three offers is more significant than their substance is revealed in the media's relative lack of interest in the follow-up. Eli Lake in The New York Sun today strays from the pack and writes an interesting piece about what's become of the proposed deliveries of food, water, oil, and doctors.

Chavez made the offer of food and water just three weeks after he threatened to completely stop all shipments of Venezuelan crude if the U.S. doesn't stop meddling in their affairs. By "meddling" they mean objecting to Chavez providing arms to FARC "insurgents" in Colombia and cloaking cocaine dealers with Venezuelan diplomatic immunity. In any event, Lake writes that the U.S. has apparently said yes to their offer.

Iran offered oil, but on the condition that we suspend the economic sanctions in place over the mullahs' funding terrorism and making "Death to America" the driving philosophy of their foreign policy. When the people of the Iranian city of Bam needed help after an earthquake in 2003, the U.S. government quietly set aside differences and sanctions and allowed American assistance to flow unconditionally. Our government wisely decided to pass on the Iranian extortion.

Cuba offered to send doctors. Now this might be a sincere gesture, but it looks more like an absurd insinuation from Castro that the medical system in the U.S. is lacking compared to his own. Will he next offer to send a team of his vaunted literacy experts to teach the victims of capitalism now huddled in the Astrodome how to read? If it were a publicity ploy, sending hundreds of doctors to America could turn out to be risky for Castro. I suppose each one would come handcuffed to an escort from the G2, lest Fidel find his plane a little lighter upon its return from the Land of the Free. Talk about Doctors Without Borders. If it weren't for Cuba, China, and North Korea, the word "defector" could be finally laid to rest. (Cuba's missing one baseball player and one ballet dancer after the latest defections.) Lake says we politely declined, apparently since we don't even have diplomatic relations with Cuba. Another report--this one focusing on the difficulties of accepting and coordinating foreign aid offers--quotes a State Department official as saying we simply have enough medical personnel already.

North Korea has been more principled, holding out to America nothing more than its standing offer to nuke Anchorage. In a radio statement (radio being the most effective means of communication on the darkened upper half the peninsula), Kim Jong Il's government had this to say:

"The U.S. government has been neglecting the poor residents of New Orleans for a long time ..."

Their hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that two million North Koreans starved to death over the last decade while Kim Jong Il parties on in Pyongyang.
Lots of circus. Not much bread.

Perhaps the North Koreans can send over a hundred thousand of their "mass games" performers to entertain the refugees in the Astrodome.

Help Katrina's victims, and don't punish the American Red Cross

2005-08-30T22:00:00.000-04:00

I just learned from Little Green Footballs that I committed an egregious error in suggesting that those wishing to help the victims of Katrina should donate to the Salvation Army instead of the American Red Cross. According to LGF, the American Red Cross has nothing to do with the policies of the International Committee of the Red Cross and has in fact withheld funds from the ICRC to protest its blatantly biased agenda.

I've amended my earlier post with an update. And I've donated what I can to both the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross. People are suffering. Let's do all we can.

You can donate to the American Red Cross by calling 1-800-HELP-NOW.

You can donate to the Salvation Army by calling 1-800-SAL-ARMY.

Swimming against the current:What's happening to Al Gore's tv channel?

2005-08-30T03:18:00.001-04:00

I just got around to listening to a very stale podcast of the Brian Lehrer show from almost a month ago. (I share my iPod with a household that currently includes two seventeen-year-old girls, so I listen to more Leonard Cohen than Leonard Lopate, and I don't mind, because the seventeen-year-olds are right, in that respect.) But can somebody tell me what is going on with Al Gore's foray into television? (I know, I know. He invented it. Let's move on.)

I tried Googling INdTV, and Google asked me if I meant "In HDtv." The website "indtv.com" is parked. Not a good sign. Some more Googling informed me that his project is now called "Current TV," something I later realized I would have known if the Lehrer podcast hadn't put me to sleep. "Currenttv.com" is a television commercial ad company that apparently has fielded enough foul balls for Gore's station that their website now greets you with: "We are in no way associated with the Current.TV Network." That's a good sign. If you're not savvy enough to get your own dot com name, or to pick one you can get, you're already three steps behind most teenagers in America today. Not an auspicious start for the inven--okay, I said we wouldn't bring that up.

So what the hell is going on? Has the American public suddenly wised up to cynical appeals to its baser instincts and stopped watching crappy propaganda? Did Gore's concept simply nose-dive? Somebody fill me in! I'm watching French cable filtered through Guadaloupe, and there's not a news article to be found on the web about Current TV's arrival or demise. (Excepting one insider piece titled, "Gore's Current TV Actually Works, Some Think." Bear in mind that "Some Think" is media-speak for "Nobody Thinks.") The podcast I listened to said it was pretty heavy on religion and spirituality. Lots of Deepak Chopra. Did Gore discover an enormous black hole in the heart of American youth? Wouldn't that merit a story?

When I finally found Current TV's website, it was via the "tv" domain suffix. (I thought it might be Transylvania, which would be kind of cool--but that's not a real country. Actually "dot-tv" belongs to the island nation of Tuvalu, whose nine thousand inhabitants are now desperately trying to get rich off something it would have taken them another millennium to invent. More power to 'em.) The blurb for their latest video pick offers some kind of satirical piece wherein Karl Rove gets advice from O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, and Robert Blake. Gee, that sounds funny. Except for the dead women and molested children part. Suddenly I don't mind not having DSL.

Anyway, Current-TV-dot.tv offers little for us non-high-speed viewers to view, even in their apparently favored four-minute format. So I checked our their blog. God, and I thought my numbers sucked. A pathetic appeal for comment on Katrina had brought in zero posts after five hours, so I jumped over to the vblog part of the site to see if maybe Current TV users aren't just too advanced for QWERTY. Nope. Nothing there except a weird pean to some guy who sent them some video of the aftermath of the London bombings. Which happened almost two months ago. And another pathetic appeal for any kind of input. "Garbage out, garbage in," I guess.

Can anyone say, "Air America"?

Staying on topic ...Never forget that humans suck,and everything is our fault

2005-08-29T11:29:00.000-04:00

The American left is getting very good at feigning sympathy while pointing a blaming finger. A half-million residents of New Orleans have fled their beloved city ahead of the approaching hurricane, and "experts" and environmentalists think now is a good time to suggest that they shouldn't have lived there in the first place.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. We built a city, erected walls to save it from a flooding river. Oh why, oh why didn't we listen to those "experts" and stay in the trees and caves? Life was so good back in the Pleistocene, when nothing bad ever happened.

"Let's sing a song, of long ago/When things were green, and movin' slow."

The Associated Press called up the ubiquitous doomsday-predicters to harangue us about how we've been screwing things up ever since we tried walking upright:

Experts have also warned that the ring of high levees around New Orleans, designed to protect the city from floodwaters coming down the Mississippi, will only make things worse in a powerful hurricane.

I love the way these experts don't seem to have any constructive suggestions. Their advice always seems to boil down to "leave things alone and go somewhere else." The safety of inaction is just too appealing for the self-hating left to resist. The wetlands would have saved us. Reminds me of environmentalists who claimed after last year's tsunami that the coastal populations would have been safe if they had left the shoreline's ancient mangrove swamps intact and not lived on the coast. Sounds like a great idea, except for the fact that most of those people have long depended on fishing and tourism to live. "Honey, let's visit a mangrove swamp in southeast Asia this Christmas! And then we can spend New Years at the the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta!"

Katrina is expected to push a 28-foot storm surge against the levees. Even if they hold, water will pour over their tops and begin filling the city as if it were a sinking canoe.

Make that, "a sinking canoe constructed by a plague species."

Last night Euronews showed impressive images of the parking lots surrounding New Orleans' sports stadium packed with row upon row of ambulances, cherry pickers, and other emergency vehicles. Workers readied their gear, filled sandbags, and loaded their cars with water and first-aid supplies. Residents calmly and patiently evacuated the city. This is civilization. We do not cower at the dark forest's edge or shrink in fear from adversity. Despite the dire predictions of the "experts," I know that these people will return to their homes and rebuild, no matter how terrible the damage. The price we pay for being brave enough to build is that we must sometimes rebuild. This is nothing new, and it is a facet of human nature that we should celebrate, not denegrate.

My thoughts are with the people facing Katrina's wrath. If you wish to donate to the relief effort, call the Red Cross (1-800-HELP-NOW) and donate. [Update: I was wrong to suggest earlier that the American Red Cross should be avoided--they have nothing to do with the sins of the Internation Red Cross. See my post above on this error and correction.] Or call the Salvation Army (1-800 SAL-ARMY) and donate to their efforts.

(The lyrics in the image caption above are from Randy Newman's "Dayton, Ohio, 1903." The image is from a mural by Taylor Studios for the South Florida Museum.)