CUANAS: 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005

Thursday, March 31, 2005

American Anti-Semitism
Columbia University Absolves Itself Of Charges
That It's Professors Are Anti-Semitic

I criticize and make fun of Europeans here quite a bit, for their idiocy, and anti-Semitism. Today I must say that Columbia University has demonstrated that such idiocy and anti-Semitism is not unique to Europeans. From the New York Times, via Little Green Footballs:

An ad hoc faculty committee charged with investigating complaints that pro-Israel Jewish students were harassed by pro-Palestinian professors at Columbia University said it had found one instance in which a professor “exceeded commonly accepted bounds” of behavior when he became angry at a student who he believed was defending Israel’s conduct toward Palestinians.

But the report, obtained by The New York Times and scheduled for release today, said it had found “no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic.”

It did, however, describe a broader environment of incivility on campus, with pro-Israel students disrupting lectures on Middle Eastern studies and some faculty members feeling that they were being spied on.

As Charles Johnson of LGF notes, basically, the Columbia report blames the problem on "uncivil" Jews. This is an outlandish and disgusting whitewash of the problem.

Let's look at some of these problems caused by the uncivil Jews. Do you think, for instance, a Jews uncivility could have caused these offenses by Columbia Professor Joseph Massad:

Then Joseph Massad took the floor, and the floodgates of hatred opened wide. Mr. Massad is one of the MEALAC professors accused of demanding of one Israeli student, "How many Palestinians did you kill today?" At the forum, he used the phrase "racist Israeli state" more than two dozen times. He used seemingly universalist language of anti-racism to drive a fascist argument. Mr. Massad is so extreme that he argued that Arafat was in effect an Israeli collaborator for even talking about compromise.

Whatever can be said of this rant, its "academic" content was hard to discern. But to judge by the applause he received, Mr. Massad was the star of the evening.

Or, how about when Columbia featured speaker Ilan Pappe:

... who has stated openly that his so-called scholarly work is an attempt to create a counter narrative to official Zionist historiography and to undermine the international legitimacy of the state of Israel. He bizarrely insisted that the destruction of Israel would pave the way for enhanced rights for women, and the feminist students in the audience cheered.

Read the truth about the anti-Semitism at Columbia University here, and here, and here.

And let us ponder this question; if America allows this kind of open assailing of Jews at it's major universities, what kind of future do Jews have here? And where can they go that they will be safe?

Terri Is Dead

From AP:

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose 15 years connected to a feeding tube sparked an epic legal battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41.

Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her fate in the nation's most bitter — and most heavily litigated — right-to-die dispute.

The feud between the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and their son-in-law continued even after her death: Brother Paul O'Donnell, an adviser to the Schindlers, said they and their two other children "were denied access at the moment of her death. They've been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside."

I haven't written about Terri for days now, because I've been through this kind of death before. My father organs shut down and he died several days later. As others have noted, once hydration is stopped, the body begins a process of digesting itself. After a week, I would imagine there is nothing much left to save, so I gave up hope days ago.

To all of you who did not, who believe in miracles, God Bless You.

Let us all hope and pray that the fact that the "right-to-die" crowd has now had a chance to parade their Masque of Death for all to see, has been an education to those who had never previously thought about the issue.

The Effect of The War On Terror
On The Popularity of Extremists

Behind Fallujah, the Iraqi city of Najaf was the second-most feared seat of Islamic extremism. A new poll shows the effects of the Democratic revolution on Islamofascist influence. From Powerline:

Haider Ajina has translated poll results that appeared today in the Iraqi newspaper Almendhar. What makes this survey particularly interesting is that it was conducted in Najaf, which Haider describes as "the center of the Shiite branch of Islam and possibly the most religiously conservative city in Iraq if not in the northern middle east." The poll, conducted by the school of political science of Najaf University, includes the following results:

62% of those polled said they wanted Islam to a beginning sources of the constitution. 38% wanted Islam to be the only source for the Iraqi constitution. 49% support a federal government. 50% support allowing those who boycotted the election to have input in writing the constitution. 63% support the multi national forces staying in Iraq for the current time. 85% expect the new transitional government to succeed in its goals. 78% expect the new national assembly to successfully write a constitution by the dead line. 1% said they expect civil war to break out.

This is just one more item in a rapidly-expanding body of evidence that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis reject fanaticism and sectarian conflict.

Keep repeating to yourself, "Bush = Hitler. Bush = Hitler. It's all about oil and American Imperialism."

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

"Useless Eaters"

The media is all aflutter, trying to figure out why us "right-wing" wackos are so upset about the murder of Terri Schiavo. Well, it's partially because the Terri Schiavo case has a precedence in history which makes us rather uncomfortable. Thanks to the Anchoress for leaving this in my comments section:

" Between September 1939 and April 1945 the defendants . . . willfully,and knowingly committed war crimes, as defined by Article II of ControlCouncil Law No. 10, in that they were principals in, accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected with plans and enterprises involving the execution of the so-called "euthanasia" program of the German Reich in the course of which the defendants herein murdered hundreds of thousands of human beings, including nationals of German-occupied countries.

"This program involved the systematic and secret execution of the aged,insane, incurably ill, of deformed children, and other persons, by gas,lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals,and asylums. Such persons were regarded as "useless eaters" and a burdento the German war machine. The relatives of these victims were informedthat they died from natural causes, such as heart failure. German doctors involved in the "euthanasia" program were also sent to Easternoccupied countries to assist in the mass extermination of Jews."

(Count 2, section 9, of the indictment in "the Doctor's Trial" at the Nuremberg war crimes trial;United States Holocaust Memorial Museum )

You can read it all here.

So, yeah, you know, we're a little uncomfortable with the idea of becoming such a society.

Israel = Nazism
The Historical Context

This is from an article by Rory Miller, a Senior Lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at King’s College, University of London, via Little Green Footballs:

The historian Yaacov Shavit once argued that the main question to be debated within Jewry in the wake of the Holocaust was whether “Nazism [was] an inherent feature of the European essence or was it a diverted characteristic, an historical accident?” It is one of the great historical and intellectual perversions of our times that many westerners are now asking the same question about Israel and Zionism as Jews asked about Europe.

From polls in Germany in which 51% of respondents expressed the view that Israel’s current treatment of Palestinians is similar to that meted out to the Jews by the Nazis, to posters in Paris reading “Hitler has a son — Sharon”; from information signs in the Spanish town of Oleiros, flashing “Let’s stop the animal!!! Sharon the assassin, stop the neo-Nazis”, to banners in a Dublin march demanding an end to the Palestinian holocaust and equating the Star of David with the Nazi swastika. Wherever we look we are being bombarded by attacks on Israeli “storm troopers” pursuing “SS tactics” and engaged in “Blitzkrieg” operations.

But Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories have no relation to the horrors carried out by Germany during the Nazi occupation of Europe and there is absolutely no moral equivalence between Hitler’s industrial slaughter of the Jews and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

If you doubt this ask yourself the following questions: would it have been possible for Jewish schools in German-occupied Holland, Poland, Hungary and numerous other countries, to indoctrinate their students with the most outlandish anti-German propaganda and incitement?

Would these same school children fresh from their brainwashing classes have been free to enroll, in the glare of the world’s media, in summer camps dedicated to training a new generation of anti-German guerillas? Would their religious and secular leaders have been able to go on their own TV channels and call their occupiers the “sons of monkeys” with impunity?

Of course not — the Jews under Nazi rule were too busy trying (in most cases unsuccessfully) to escape being bundled on trains and shipped to the gas chambers. Yet all this, and much more, is standard practice among Palestinians in areas controlled by the PA.

Teaching That Jews Are Blasphemous
And America Is Worth Nothing

The other day I wrote about Rashid Nasim, a Muslim from Ottawa, Canada who was shocked to find that his daughter's school was employing teachers who were exhorting students to violent Jihad against the Jews. Mr. Nasim blew the whistle and put an end to the problem.

In this article Daniel Pipes tells us of just how prevalent these kinds of teachings are in the Islamic schools of the Western world:

“Shocked” is how Aisha Sherazi, principal of the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa, described the reaction of the school’s administration and board on learning last week that two of its teachers had incited hatred of Jews.

And “shocked” was how Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau, described his own reaction to the front-page news about the Abraar school.
But they may have been the only two persons on the planet to be “shocked” to learn that teachers at an Islamic school are promoting anti-Semitism or other aspects of the Islamist agenda. The fact is, inquiries into Islamic schools repeatedly discover just such a radical Islamic outlook. Some examples:

New York City: An investigation by the New York Daily News in 2003 found that books used in the city’s Muslim schools “are rife with inaccuracies, sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians, and triumphalist declarations of Islam’s supremacy.”

Los Angeles: The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 Korans (titled The Meaning of the Holy Quran) to the city school district in 2001 that within months had to be pulled from school libraries because of its antisemitic commentaries. One footnote reads: “The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts…Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy.”

Ajax, Ontario, 50 kilometers east of Toronto: The Institute of Islamic Learning is a Canadian emulation of the extremist Deobandi madrassahs of Pakistan. It focuses exclusively on religious topics, has students memorize the Koran, demands total segregation from the Canadian milieu, and requires complete gender separation. Former students complained about the school’s cult-like devotion to its head, Abdul Majid Khan, and complained that it “twisted religion and used it to its own benefit.”

Then there are four leading Islamic schools in the Washington, D.C., area:

The Muslim Community School in Potomac, Maryland, imbues in its students a sense of alienation from their own country. Seventh-grader Miriam told a Washington Post reporter in 2001, “Being American is just being born in this country.” Eighth-grader Ibrahim announced that “Being an American means nothing to me.”

A textbook used at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Alexandria, Virginia, in 2004, authored and published by the Saudi Ministry of Education, teaches first graders that “all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews [and] Christians.” An ISA class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was recently indicted for plotting to assassinate President Bush.

The U.S. government revoked the visas in 2004 of sixteen people affiliated with the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, of Fairfax, Virginia. In the words of the Washington Post, “That decision followed accusations that the institute, a satellite campus of al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, was promoting a brand of Islam that critics say is intolerant of other strains of the religion as well as Christianity and Judaism.” In addition, the IIASA is under investigation for ties to terrorism.

The Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences of Ashburn, Virginia, referred to as a “purported” educational institution in an affidavit justifying a raid on the school, had its financial records seized in 2002 on suspicions of links to terrorism.

Nor are schools the exception among Islamic institutions in North America. A recent study by Freedom House found a parallel problem of venomous anti-Jewish and anti-Christian materials in U.S. mosques. The most prominent American Muslim organizations, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spew anti-Semitism and host a neo-Nazi. The same applies in Canada, where the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohamed Elmasry, publicly endorsed the murder of all Israelis over the age of eighteen.

Sex Appeal And Democracy

From National Review:

The accounts were grim. One can only imagine the hell reporters witnessed last month in Tehran's Mohseni Square.

"Women and girls in tight clothes and transparent scarves and guys dressed in Western fashion lit candles and laughed their hearts out," wrote Ya Lesarat Weekly, organ for the vigilante group Ansar-e Hezbollah. Equally indignant, the conservative daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami reported, "In this disgraceful event, which was like a large street party, women and girls...as well as boys...mocked Muslim beliefs and sanctities in the most shameless manner.... Some long-haired guys would openly cuddle girls, creating awful and immoral scenes. Fast, provoking music...nearby gave the street party more steam."

Worse, this depravity occurred during Ashura, holiest of Shiite holidays. But rest assured, Ansar-e Hezbollah broke up the gangs of spooning youngsters, returning the commemoration to its solemn purpose of observing the martyrdom of Imam Hussain. "Let the officials realize that the heroic and passionate people of Iran can easily deal with a handful of hoodlums and promiscuous elements that ridicule our sanctities," Jomhuri-ye Eslami vowed.

Across Mesopotamia, however, the Syrian chapter of Hezbollah is having more trouble shoving the erotic djinn back in the bottle. As the world has witnessed, the Lebanese have been smart-mobbing Beirut's Martyr's Square with protest rallies, which, if the media is to be believed, are comprised entirely of attractive women. Already, Internet pundits (a largely male lot) have dubbed these bodacious avec-culottes the "Babes of Democracy," while the cover of Newsweek gave them star treatment.

Meanwhile, mainstream media is taking increasing note of a phenomenon that has been percolating through the Middle East the last few years: Arab music videos. Beamed throughout the region via satellite networks such as Saudi-based ART-TV, these superbly-produced "clips," as they're called, showcase singers like Lebanon's Nancy Ajram and Haifa Wahby and Egypt's Roubi in erotically charged tableaux filled with beauty, glamour and sex appeal that owe more to The Arabian Nights than Koranic scripture. Produced primarily for entertainment and star promotion, these videos are fast becoming political as well, with many young women seeing in the exotic settings, flamboyant clothes and sensual fantasies encouragement to take control of their identities and social roles.

Can I get a Hallelujah for all the beautiful women?

This is what Democracy looks like, my friends. In a Democracy people are free. They can do what they want, as long as it doesn't hurt otherts. For too long religious people around the world have denied repsonsibility for their own wanton actions, and tried instead to lay the blame at the feet of the female body. Sorry, that doesn't cut it with me, and it won't cut it with God.

Imagine yourself standing in front of God and He says, "Why did you use all those women with no thought for their feelings?" And you answer Him, "Well God, I just couldn't help myself. They were dressed too provocatively."

You might as well blame God, because He's the One who created your sex drive.

The biggest problem with societies who blame liscentiousness on women is that the net effect is they place strict controls on women. I believe power over women is the real issue, not sanctity, or virtue.

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Did Her Best
To Shut Down The Search For Bin Laden

From Little Green Footballs:

Richard Miniter at the New York Sun blows the whistle on an outrageous decision by US Ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell, shortly after September 11, to refuse distribution in Pakistan of material advertising the $25 million reward for the capture of Osama Bin Laden: How a Lone Diplomat Compromised the Hunt for Bin Laden.

WASHINGTON — A lone U.S. ambassador compromised America’s hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan for more than two years,The New York Sun has learned.

Ambassador Nancy Powell, America’s representative in Pakistan, refused to allow the distribution in Pakistan of wanted posters, matchbooks, and other items advertising America’s $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.

Instead, thousands of matchbooks, posters, and other material — printed at taxpayer expense and translated into Urdu, Pashto, and other local languages — remained “impounded” on American Embassy grounds from 2002 to 2004, according to Rep. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois.

While the American government was engaged in a number of “black” or covert intelligence activities to locate Al Qaeda leaders, Mr. Kirk said, the “white” or public efforts — which have succeeded in the past in leading to the capture of wanted terrorists — were effectively shut down in the months following the September 11 attacks. ...

Mr. Kirk accidentally learned of Ms. Powell’s impoundment policy as part of an official congressional delegation visiting Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in January 2004.
During the course of his visit, Mr. Kirk met with several intelligence officers to discuss the hunt for Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Kirk, a moderate Republican from the North Shore of Chicago, also serves as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserves.

Citing his experience in intelligence matters, Mr. Kirk asked embassy intelligence officials about the distribution of matchbooks in local languages.A single matchbook helped lead to the capture of Mir Amal Kansi, who gunned down several CIA employees at the front gates of the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters in 1993. Kansi was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 when a local fingered him for the $5 million reward.Mr.Kirk pointed out the similarities between the Kansi and bin Laden cases. “Both are cases gone cold in Pakistan,” he said.

Embassy intelligence officials agreed with his assessment, Mr. Kirk said, but surprised the lawmaker by saying that the ambassador had ended the distribution of printed materials advertising the $25 million price on Mr. bin Laden’s head.

Security personal were unhappy with the decision, according to the congressman. “There was a lot of discord among the staff,” he said.

I can't wait to find out the explanation for this. I wonder if it's anything like the Oil-for-Food Scandal.

The future history books which will tell the story of the War On Terror are going to be labyrinthine and full of Machiavellain intrigue.

Rules To Live By In The War On Terror

Some rules to live by for the War On Terror, from the Kafir Constitutionalist:

Jeff Goldstein posts some of Robert Satloff's advice to the president's undersecretary of state:

* Banish the terms “Arab world” and “Muslim world” from America’s diplomatic lexicon; be as country-specific as possible, in both word and deed. Radical Islamists want to erase borders and create a supranational world where the lines of demarcation run between the “house of Islam” and the “house of war.” Don’t cede the battlefield to them without a fight.*

Never read polls: If you judge your success by America’s poll numbers, you will fail--both in your mission and your job. In the Middle East, polls tend to distort and exaggerate; public opinion is episodic and driven by news cycles; and popular attitudes seem to have little impact on people’s behavior. In your old job, polls may have been essential; in this job, they are toxic.*

Don’t try to accommodate, co-opt, or “dialogue” with Islamists. They are much better at this game than we are and, in the process, we confuse and demoralize our allies. And don’t try to tell Muslims how to be “good Muslims” or suggest that America knows what is “true Islam.” Focus on what we really know something about, i.e., running a reasonably well-functioning democracy for 229 years.

Read the rest of his post, and the whole thing.

I use the term Islamofascist all the time. By using this term I mean to distinguish the militant Islamists from the everyday Muslim who doesn't go through his day hating the Infidels. While I think it is appropriate for me to phrase my disagreement with militan Islam in the way that I do, I can see Robert Satloff's point. What do I know about who is, or is not, a "good" Muslim?

Well, I do know this, a person who calls for violent jihad against a whole group of people is not a good human being. How's that?

No, No, No, Astute Blogger
The Sky Is Surely Falling

The Guardian channels Chicken Little, and the Astute Blogger counters rather astutely:

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure. ... "Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it says.

Didn't Paul Ehrlich say this in 1970!? Sheesh.

Today - as compared to 1970, (when Dr. Erhlich said we had ONLY 25 years left) - ALL commodities are more plentiful and cheaper, and the standard of living has gone up for hundreds and hundreds and HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people (especially China and India). Industrialization and globalization have done more to IMPROVE the living standards and health of humanity than anything else - EVER! And yet there are still a couple of BILLION people whose lives need improving - who need more freedom and prosperity, and I say helping them become freer and richer takes precedence over rare species and remote ecologies. ESPECIALLY when dire "sky is falling" predictions like these have ALWAYS been proven FALSE in the past.

The truth is, forestation actually increased over the second half of the 20th century, increasing significantly in North America.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Dogs And Cats Running Wild In The Streets

Condoleeza Rice has "alarmed" the "reformist" Arabs. Oh no, what will we do?:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has alarmed many reformist Arabs with comments suggesting a new U.S. approach that promotes rapid political change without regard for internal stability.

Rice said in an interview with the Washington Post last week the Middle East status quo was not stable and she doubted it would be stable soon. Washington would speak out for "freedom" without offering a model or knowing what the outcome would be.

"This a very dangerous scheme. Anarchy will be out of control," said Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University and an advocate of gradual change.

A liberal Arab diplomat, who asked not to be named, said: "They seem to be supporting chaos and instability as a pretext for bringing democracy. But people would rather live under undemocratic rule than in the chaotic atmosphere of Iraq, for example, which the Americans tout as a model."

Oh yeah, people would rather not be free. Especially Arab people. Arab people are more likely to rather not be free than any other people would rather not be free, or, uh, something like that, anyway. Or rather, I don't know. Never mind, forget it, you wouldn't understand anyway.

I love that line: "Anarchy will be out of control."

Just remember, the last thing you ever want to do, ever, is "alarm" the "reformist" Arabs. Those types of Arabs, they don't like to be "alarmed" I tells ya.

I think I better start writing Screaming Memes again. This kind of stuff really get to me.

The Sudanese Give the UN
Just The Present They Wanted

From Little Green Footballs:

TOMORROW, the Security Council is to vote on a French resolution calling for those committing mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of Sudan to be tried by the International Criminal Court. Suspiciously, with only hours to the vote, the Khartoum regime says it has arrested 15 men who are accused of murder and burning villages in Darfur. If past examples of Khartoum’s "justice" are anything to go by, these men - guilty or not - will be tried and executed very quickly, thus evading UN involvement.

For two years now, the Arab Janjaweed militia has been murdering African farmers in Darfur, with the connivance of the Sudanese government, which wishes to put down a separatist rebellion in the province. At least 70,000 people have been murdered. For more than a year, the UN has been calling on the Khartoum regime to disown the Janjaweed, but to no avail.

The arrests are only a charade designed to delay compliance as long as possible. Khartoum will only be made to end the mass murder in Darfur if the UN is willing to back words with action. The UN must impose sanctions on the regime and indict the real murderers - who are not a million miles from Khartoum itself.

The UN does not want to have to declare the situation in Darfur a Genocide, because if they do they are bound by their by-laws to act. The last thing they want to have to do is actually do something, so this "arrest" is the present the UN always wanted.

Yay. Thank you, Sudan. Mwahh.

Could the Islamic Reformation Be Under Way?
Moderate Muslims Celebrate
Public Rebuke Of Bin Laden

From the Washington Times, via Front Page Magazine:

CAIRO -- The condemnation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by the Islamic Commission of Spain on the first anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid that took 200 lives is making waves throughout the Muslim world.

The Spanish commission's fatwa, or condemnation, follows other signs of the kind of public theological debate rarely seen in the Muslim world, openly challenging the dominance of Saudi Arabia's wealthy Wahhabi fanatics.

One Islamic scholar even calls it a sign of "a counter-jihad."

In a recent interview with the Qatari daily newspaper Al-Raya, for example, Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, the former dean of Shariah and law at the University of Qatar, urged his fellow Muslims to purge their heritage of fanaticism and adopt "new civilized humane thought."

Such humane thought, he said, "must be translated [into deeds] in educational ways, via the media, tolerant religious discourse, nondiscriminatory policy and just legislation."

"We must purge the school curricula of all sectarian implications and elements according to which others deviate from the righteous path and the truth is in our hands alone. We must enrich the curricula with the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other who is different [in school of faith, ethnic group, religion, nationality or sex].

"The political regime must refrain from sectarian or ethnic preference; it must respect the rights and liberties of the minorities and must guarantee them through legislative action, practical policy and equal opportunity in the areas of education, media and civil positions."

Other Muslims quickly attacked the Spanish fatwa.

A group calling itself al Qaeda in Iraq -- the name Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi gave his organization after he aligned himself with bin Laden -- mocked it in the familiar religious rhetoric. "Allah has promised us victory," it said in a posting on its Internet Web site. "... Terrorizing enemies of God is our faith and religion, which is taught to us by our Koran."

Nevertheless, the reaction to the Spanish fatwa astonished its authors, who were swamped with e-mail messages of congratulations.

"I couldn't even read them all -- there's at least a thousand, maybe more," said Mansur Escudero, secretary-general of the Islamic Commission of Spain. "The tone was nearly all the same: 'It's about time someone did it. Bravo!' "

Says Khaled Abou El Fadl, an authority on Islamic law at the University of California at Los Angeles: "The long and painful silence of moderate theologians and experts in Islam jurisprudence -- who had been bought off or intimidated into silence -- is finally starting to break apart. We are seeing signs of a counter-jihad."

The response to the Spanish fatwa was dominated by Muslims outside the Middle East, suggesting most moderates live outside traditional Muslim areas.

"I'm glad that someone of authority in Islam is taking a stand and demanding their religion back from the terrorists who have hijacked it," a respondent from the United States wrote.

"This shows the Muslim world is tired of the harm that radicals and terrorists are doing to Islam," said Mr. Escudero, whose declaration carried the support of Muslim leaders in Morocco, Algeria and Libya. "We hope this will inspire others to speak out."

Has Turkey Lost It's Collective Mind?
Mein Kampf and Nuclear Weapons
In the Turkish Imagination

From Reuter's:

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's government Monday played down soaring sales of Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic book "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") and said there were no racists in the large Muslim country.

Booksellers say "Mein Kampf," or "Kavgam" in Turkish, has featured among the top 10 bestsellers in the past two months, to the dismay of the country's small Jewish community and of the German embassy in Ankara.

Asked to comment on the phenomenon, government spokesman Cemil Cicek said: "We cannot allow prejudice against people for belonging to a certain race."

"We have never had such an attitude in our culture, nor in our history, and we do not have it now ... It's not possible for people to choose their races ... Turkish society's idea about this issue is clear. There is no racism in this country."

That's an amazing statement coming from a spokesperson for a government which enacted the genocide of one million Armenians.

Now, read this next apology for Turkish hatred:

Political analysts say "Mein Kampf" probably reflects rising nationalism and anti-American sentiment rather than anti-Semitism or specific support for Hitler and his ideas.

Sorry, that completely lacks credibility. Mein Kampf did not talk about America, so why would those who wish to justify their anti-Americanism turn to it for solace?

Why does Reuter's publish out such patent idiocy?

But wait, there's more:

Many Turks are worried their country is having to make too many concessions to the European Union (news - web sites) as it prepares for the start of long-delayed entry talks later this year.
There is also widespread anger about the U.S. occupation of neighboring Iraq (news - web sites).
The current No. 1 bestseller in Turkey, ahead of "Mein Kampf," is "Metal Storm," which depicts a U.S. invasion of the country. The Turkish hero avenges his homeland by destroying Washington with a nuclear device.

No, we don't have any reason to worry, do we?

Monday, March 28, 2005

Fear Of A Free Planet

A great post explaining the Left's motives in the Terri Schiavo case, from the Astute Blogger:

Fear, moral relativism and cognitive dissonance of the Left.

YEAH, FEAR. The Left is BASICALLY AFRAID that Bush and the religious right are coming to take them to a country where you have to be a Christian ...

It's an irrational fear, but IT FEELS VERY real to the Left. Anything - REPEAT ANYTHING - that they can twist into that worldview - THEY DO! "Blood for Oil" BusHitler! JINSA! YUP: the Left believes SIMULTANEOUSLY that Bush is controlled by Jerry Falwell, Ariel Sharon and the House of Saud. (Imagine how smart that dumbsmirkingchimp must REALLY be if he can keep those three happy simultaneously!)

The act of Congress signed into law to give the Schindlers one last avenue to save their daughter's life, was IN FACT A BIPARTISAN BILL, but that did not stop the Left from coloring it as another invasion of privacy by the religious right-wing of the GOP - WHICH THE LEFT BELIEVES IS EVERY BIT AS DANGEROUS AS ALQAEDA!

And the BOTTOMLINE - the ROOT CAUSE of their irrational Bush hysteria is that the Left blames 9/11 on "religious fundamentalism" in general, and they lump all devout believers together: To the Left, a Christian fundamentalist is as dangerous as a Jewish settler or an Islamic suicide bomber. They are morally equivalent to the Leftist.

It is precisely this MORAL EQUIVALENCE based in FEAR and tempered by YEARS of inculcation in post-modernist MORAL RELATIVISM that's made the Left's utterly irrational fear of Bush so RAMPANT and VIRULENT.

The brightest RED-LINE for the Left is "abortion rights" (not euthanasia) because it's so fundamental to their 1960's Marcussian COUNTER-CULTURE ETHOS, (a basically anti-Western/anti-traditionalism worldview - the worldwiew of Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag). Everything and anything that threatens to rollback the Left's morally relativist/amoral worldview they call ANTI-PROGRESSIVE, BOURGOIS - EVEN HITLERIAN!

To the Left, PROTECTING THE RIGHT PRIVACY is the absolute key to preventing the religious fanatics from unraveling their COUNTER CULTURE. Total PRIVACY - ESPECIALLY in the bedroom - (whether it's the bed you make love in or the bed you die in) - is PARAMOUNT to them. Privacy is PARAMOUNT to them because it's inextricably tied to the bedrock of their creed: moral relativism.

What worsens their FEELING that their COUNTER CULTURE/"PROGESSIVE VISION" is under attack by "FUNDAMENTALISTS" is the FACT that there's really been a total collapse of their underlying Marxist economic meme: the USSR and its satellites have fallen; India and China have abandoned command economies and each adopted free markets and all are THRIVING as a result. Further discrediting Marx is the FACT that the few remaining ruling adherents to Marxism are obvious two-bit thugs who have ruined their countries: Castro, Chavez, Mugabe. Kim Jong Il and Assad.

IT IS OBVIOUS: Marx & Engels and Keynes & Galbraith were DEAD WRONG, and Hayek and Friedman were RIGHT ON, and this fact bugs the living snot out of the Left! It is the root cause of their cognitive dissonance.

As a result - even as democracy experiences a new birth ALL OVER THE WORLD, (largely because of the USA and Bush) - the Left seems unhappy: rooting for the insurgents and whispering their secret hopes to each other that "of course Lebanon and Iraq will fail."

Those of us who are traditionalists, and who believe in Natural Law and the Sanctity of Life - of each and every life - and in the inalienability of the Human Soul have values which extend beyond failed ideologies or partisan politics. And we believe that everyone EVERYWHERE deserves freedom and democracy - and can achieve it!

And most us also supported the Schindlers and suspect that while Greer's decision to believe the Schiavo's hearsay evidence was probably legal - it was morally WRONG.

The concept of Human Soul and Natural Law and Sanctity of Life are COMPLETELY alien to the Left. To the Left, consciousness is merely concomitant with nerve cell activity. The Left are MATERIALISTS, after all. And that's why to the Left, Terri is - at this point in her life - merely something to be disposed of.

Well, the Left is wrong AGAIN!

What's sweeping the world today is not MATERIALISM but the indominatable HUMAN SPIRIT. People everywhere just wanna be FREE.

The world is positively flooding with democracy and freedom - and soon the free world will swell with renewed and redoubled prosperity, spurred-on by free unfettered Human creativity - the kind of creativity and prosperity that ONLY freedom foments!

And though there are still some tyrants around - and a few judges - who may try to hold back the flood waters a while... they really have no more than a finger in the dam.

And the dam will burst. And the water will wash over us. And clean us. And sustain us. And make our land fertile and green. And make us all free. YES: one day SOON, we will all be FREE.

Even Terri.

The Left doesn't really believe that Christianity is as dangerous as Islamofascism. Nor is the Left incapable of understanding the distinction between peaceful Islam or Christianity, and Jihadi ideology. Instead, the Left is afraid of Christianity because they fear the condemnation of the morality for which Christians stand.

But, this fear is irrational considering that America is both the most Christian nation on Earth, and the most free. So, it would seem obvious that us Christian fanatics are not trying to take away freedom.

Repeat: The Left is afraid of moral condemnation, not the loss of freedom.

This is also made clear by the fact that they wish failure on our efforts to Democratize the Middle East.

So, the Left isn't afraid of a Christian Planet. Instead, they are afraid of a planet where people are free to be Christians, or anything they want to be.

Hands On The Whip At Last
Why Does The Left Support Those
Who Would Take Away Human Rights?

Ever wonder why Leftists are willing to support, or at least tolerate, ideologies which run absolutely counter to their stated belief in Human Rights? Well, the blog Anti-Chomsky, which works to deconstruct the anti-American writings of Noam Chomsky, will explain it for you. First, let me explain that Noam Chomsky is a Linguistic Philsopher who somehow has recreated himself by spewing hate at America for about 30-something years now, and, in so doing, has made himself the world's most quoted living author. Think about that; all he does is write about how America sucks, and he is the most quoted living author. Isn't that amazing?

Well, here's the explanation:

In my opinion, Chomsky is completely sane. Obviously, I don't know the man, nor am I a qualified psychiatrist, but his bizarre denials of reality and frequent distortions of history do not strike me as the products of a diseased mind, but rather as willful lies and exaggerations of which Chomsky is well aware. I don't think he really believes that the Cambodian genocide was invented by the American media, that the US tried to commit a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan, that Israel is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, or that the Bush administration will bring about the end of life on this planet. Nor, in my opinion, is he convinced that communist Cuba, Sandanista Nicaragua, or North Vietnam were anything other than immensely oppressive totalitarian dictatorships.

Why Chomsky and his fellow travelers hold otherwise is not, in my view, a particularly difficult question, and the way to the answer is pointed out by George Orwell with his usual incisive prescience, when he remarked that the pro-communist intellectuals of his day desired not justice and equality as they claimed but rather a new hierarchical society in which "the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip".

If one looks at the various movements Chomsky has supported, they are all more or less movements composed of radical ideologues, not much different from himself, who have simply taken the extra step of merging their intellectual stance with the gun. That is to say, with the power to enact their plans through cruelty and violence.

The attractiveness of this to the average radical intellectual, especially in democratic societies, which always tend towards the mean, cannot be underestimated. It allows him to live out his fantasies of revolution vicariously while making sure that he never has to actually pull the trigger himself. It allows him to be, shall we say, a mandarin of sorts; someone who can taste the thrills of absolute power without having to pay the inevitable price of political crime.

Thus, the intellectual can, through the act of mere support, or rhetorical succor, remain sanguine on such subjects as oppression and mass murder while still imagining himself morally pure and unsullied.

Once this is coupled with the naked reality of one's self interest, this becomes a particularly intoxicating combination. Since a man of Chomsky's beliefs can never hope to achieve any real power except through imposing his ideas by violence upon the rest of us, the sight of men like Fidel Castro or Daniel Ortega actually doing so cannot possibly appear to be a brutal act of tyranny but rather a heroic and admirable assault on those who keep self-anointed prophets like Chomsky trapped in the purgatory of relative obscurity and powerlessness.

It strikes me, therefore, that Chomsky and is ilk are not motivated by madness, but rather by lust for power and a reasoned acceptance of what it would take to achieve it. This, coupled with an almost theological admiration for the capacities of political violence and the men who use it; on whom are easily projected impossible fantasies of domination and rule, the intoxicating capacity to simply say "Exterminate all the brutes!"; creates a mindset in which all facts or truths which stand in the way of seizing the heights must be done away with, by fair means or foul.

Seen this way, the average Chomskyite's relentless confabulations appear not merely sane, but also sensible; as sensible, at least, as one can be when driven by such forces. It is for us, therefore, not to simply dismiss such things as the ravings of madmen, but to do what we can to ensure that the whip does not fall easily into their hands.

The Fun Might Be Over In The Old World

(Warning: Adult Language ahead.)

TVD writes about how the EU is bringing a comic book writer up on charges for depicting Jesus as a pot-smoking windsurfer. From Philosodude:

I mean, this is kinda funny.

Nothing that I wouldn't have drawn in the margins of my copybook during religion class. I might have given it its own page. It shows Jesus windsurfing on I guess the Sea of Galilee. It's from a graphic novel (that means comics for adults) -type thingee that just earned its creator an arrest warrant from the European Union.

Yup. Here in the land of museums showing crucifixes in urine (you know) and calling such asininity art, arresting someone for such a thing would be so 17th century. We're so hip in the stodgy ol' US, it makes me puke sometimes. But Europe, which is far hipper than us, wants to nail this guy.

Now, in the old days, blasphemy was a real art form in Europe. Americans today don't even know what "cursing" is, and why it was considered so bad. The English used to swear by divine genitals, and an Italian friend once taught me how to call The Master of the Universe a pig. Now that's some imagination. But the fun might be over in the Old World.

Ironically, Jesus Himself, capital aitch, would not have been so upset about being mocked like this. In Matthew 16, He says,

"And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come..."

The Son of Man is Jesus, of course. (Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is attributing the works of God to the Devil, or some say, to man.)

The reason for the EU arrest order is purely political, making a test case of Jesus. But if He was OK with it, what's the problem?

The real worry in Europe is the interpretations of Islam that dictate a death sentence for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed, ala Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. The title refers to a legend that Mohammed dictated some (discarded) verses of the Qur'an under the influence of you-know-who. Since Mohammed is seen as working under the influence of the Holy Spirit, well, see above.

Rushdie found himself on the receiving end of a religious decree calling for all good Muslims to do him in. He hid out for years, although these days he shows his face now and then.

The EU is trying to set a precedent, because their Muslim population is skyrocketing. What you can say and what you can't over there looks to be in for a major shakedown.

Europe, the land of Human Rights. Isn't Freedom of Speech the first human right, for God's sake? If we needed any more evidence that the cheese-eating appeasement monkeys have taken over power in Europe, here it is.

Think about this, they are willing to go after an artist for making fun of Jesus, an Individual whose profound influence on their culture they refuse to acknowledge in their own Constitution, just as a means of setting up their policy against blaspheming Islam.

Why do they want to have a policy against blaspheming Islam? Because they are desperately afraid of the Jihadis in their midst.

What a bunch of pussies.

The Euros have no interest in protecting Christ. You know that's true. They don't care one iota.

(By the way, I don't think Christ needs the Euros to protect Him. Do you?)

I am astounded by their hypocrisy here. In his post, TVD also noted that in America it's ok to put a crucifix in a glass of urine, we just don't want to pay for it with our tax dollars. You know, that the way it should be Europe; Free Speech and the Will of the People.

Excuse me, I gotta go puke.

Gay Patriot Silenced
By Gay Fascist Operatives

Readers may have noticed a few weeks back that I was linking to a blog, written by a Conservative gay person, called the Gay Patriot. I linked to it initially because I had read some posts which were of interest to me, and besides, even though I am a Christian, I don't have a problem with gay people. If God has a problem with gay people, then he has His reasons. As for me, I have never had a gay person hurt me, or even try to hurt me, in anyway, so I have no reason to hate them. Whatever sin they may have in their life, it doesn't effect me, or my family, and I have a hard time figuring out why Christians are so adamant that it is negatively effecting our society.

Wow, what a controversial guy I am. And I find the fact that what I'm saying here is controversial is pathetic, frankly.

By the way, I actually stopped linking to the Gay Patriot because I thought it was a rather boring blog. It seemed to focus primarily on issues related to gay life, and the politics thereof. As I am not gay, I wasn't interested. I could have left the link up just to make a point. But, gay rights is not the agenda of this blog.

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is because this morning I saw this over at Little Green Footballs:

GayPatriot, the anonymous gay Republican blogger, has officially signed off. In a statement, no explanation was given. With GayPatriot’s permission, I am now able to recount the real story.

On Friday, GayPatriot posted “WANTED: GAY TERRORISTS” in which he identified gay activists and bloggers John Aravosis (Americablog) and Michael Rogers (BlogActive) as terrorists.

Wanted for crimes against the gay community. Wanted for repeatedly conducting outing witch hunts against gays who do not believe in radical liberal anti-American ideals. For repeated violations of privacy of gay Americans. For conducting systematic civil liberties attacks on gay Americans.

WANTED! Let’s do something about these gay terrorists who have infected our community with their hatred and self-loathing bigotry of gay Americans who wish to live their lives in peace. [WANTED: GAY TERRORISTS - GayPatriot - 03-25-05]

As many of you know, Rogers is the host and agent of a widely publicized “outing campaign” at BlogActive.com targeting closeted gay Republicans. One of the most notable results of this campaign was the dramatic retirement of a Republican Virginia Congressman, Ed Schrock. The most recent outing was that of Ken Mehlman, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee. Whatever you believe about the practice, it is difficult to ignore the political impact the campaign has had over the past year.

According to GayPatriot, who is also a client of mine, Michael Rogers called GayPatriot’s place of employment on Friday immediately following the post above and spoke to GayPatriot’s secretary and boss. GayPatriot had no idea Rogers would go to such measures and shared with me that both he and his secretary were very upset by the calls but that his boss was understanding.

Later on that day, Rogers personally called me and recounted much of the same account, adding that he had also called the police and is working with the authorities on the matter. Rogers expressed feeling threatened by the post and compared it to posts by anti-abortionists who posted the names of doctors performing them.

Rogers also said he asked GayPatriot to remove the post and replace it with a post about non-violence or he would launch a national boycott of GayPatriot’s corporate employer and pursue any and all avenues necessary to protect himself. By the time Rogers had called, GayPatriot had already made the decision to remove the post and also remove GayPatriot from the blogosphere.

GayPatriot was silenced.

We need to get to a place in our society where gay people are judged by the content of their character and not the genitalia of the people they sleep with. If we treated gay people justly, then Ed Schrock and Ken Mehlman would not have had to step down from their positions, and the Gay Patriot would still be at work converting gay people to conservatism.

Label me "Disgusted."

Sunday, March 27, 2005

A Drop Of Blood
But Not A Fleck Of His Body

From Associated Press:

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Their hopes fading and legal options exhausted, Terri Schiavo's parents appeared quietly resigned Sunday to watching her die but could claim one Easter victory: The severely brain-damaged woman received a drop of communion wine on her tongue — her only sustenance in nine days — after her husband allowed her to receive the sacrament.

Outside the hospice where Schiavo is being cared for, five protesters were arrested, and about a half-dozen people in wheelchairs got out of them and lay in the driveway, shouting "We're not dead yet!"

Schiavo's husband, who a day earlier denied a request from his wife's parents that she be given communion, granted permission Sunday to offer the sacrament.

The Rev. Thaddeus Malanowski said he gave Schiavo wine but could not give her a fleck of communion bread because her tongue was dry.

Who Will Roll Away The Stone For Us?

Wretchard, at Belmont Club, brings us the penultimate Easter post. Starting with the Terri Schiavo issue, he discusses death and resurrection and, ultimately, the New Heavens and New Earth. Very beautiful. Go read it.

The Resurrection

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?

He is not here; he has risen!

Easter

A great Easter post from American Digest.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

A Painting By Marc Chagall

Sorry, I don't know the title. Maybe someone will write in and tell me. No special meaning here. I just love Chagall's paintings. This one, obviously, is one of his love paintings. With the man in his formal religious robes and headress, and the nakedness of the women, what I see in this one is a mixture of the sacred and the sexual.

That's one of my favorite themes.

In the Bible, the Church is depicted as the Bride of Christ. When we all go to heaven we will sit down and celebrate the Wedding Feast of the Lamb with God Himself. Now, I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what this metaphor means, but I do believe that we know that we are meant to have a deeply intimate relationship with our Creator. One that I'm imagining will far surpass the oneness and ecstasy we feel with our mates.

I get a glimpse of this kind of spiritual joy when I look at the paintings of Chagall.

Speaking Truth To Power In Taiwan
Appeasement Won't Work

A Million Pro-Democracy Taiwanese
Demonstrate Against China

In light of recent events in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, the Ukraine, and Kyrgzystan, Roger Simon says Democracy is viral, and links to TAIPEI (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people chanting "Oppose war, Love Taiwan" joined President Chen Shui-bian Saturday to protest against China's anti-secession law that sanctions the use of force against the island. to prove his point:

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people chanting "Oppose war, Love Taiwan" joined President Chen Shui-bian Saturday to protest against China's anti-secession law that sanctions the use of force against the island.

Chen's ruling Democratic Progressive Party hopes the protest will draw international attention to the new law and put pressure on China to scrap it.

Organizers said 1 million people joined the show of people power against Beijing's military threat, but Taipei police estimated the crowd at just over 240,000.

"I am here to protest against a barbaric China which looks down upon the Taiwanese people," said 70-year-old businessman Fan Wen-yi, adding he was not affiliated to any political party and had never participated in a protest before. "The anti-secession law, simply put, is a law that authorizes war."

The protestors chanted slogans and waved green flags that read "democracy, peace, protect Taiwan" as they marched toward the presidential office from 10 locations around the capital, symbolizing the 10 clauses of the anti-secession law.

Many brought their children and pets to the "democratic carnival." Scores of children bared bottoms plastered with anti-missile stickers, while a handful of angry protesters set fire to red Chinese flags.

And I note that the Babe Factor is at play here as well.

Wells Fargo Is Unethical and UnAmerican
In Their Business Practices

From Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - When Army reservist Steve Welter was called up for active duty in Iraq (news - web sites) last August, his wife never thought she would face her own fight to save the family's home from foreclosure.

A 65-year-old federal law, which Congress expanded last year, provides a range of protections for activated reservists and for Guard members called up by the Pentagon (news - web sites).

Those protections include a 6 percent cap, under certain circumstances, on consumer and mortgage interest rate debt incurred before activation; protection from eviction or foreclosure; payment deferral for federal taxes; and a stay on civil proceedings, including divorce and bankruptcy.

Keira Welter knew the law was supposed to protect a soldier's property from creditors during active military service. But for months, she said, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Co. did not seem to care about the law, no matter how many times she explained her case.

"We had worked so hard to own our own home, and while my husband was over there serving our country it was going to be taken away," said Welter, 31, of Osawatomie, Kan.

After Wells Fargo started foreclosure proceedings in February, Keira Welter contacted the state attorney general's office and members of Congress. It was not until a local television station aired her story and Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., intervened that the company finally backed off.

You know, really, apparently shame also ought to be heaped on those members of Congress to whom this situation was brought. If any member of Congress ever hears of such a situation he must do something about it. Members of Congress, and all of us, should treat our soldiers as our heroes.

We Are All Jews

Thanks to the Astute Blogger, for leaving this article, by James Woolsey (former head of CIA under Clinton) in my comments section the other day:

I sometimes get asked these days if I'm Jewish — it's my neoconish views on defense and foreign affairs, I suppose. For a while I would just say, "No, Presbyterian,' but I've started saying instead, 'Well, I anchor the Presbyterian wing of JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs http://www.jinsa.org/home/home.html )."

What with anti-Semitism growing in Europe and a hideous variety thereof metastasizing in the Middle East - not to speak of the American Left's (and a small part of the Right's) hostility to Israel, which sometimes veers off into anti-Semitism - it seems to me our Jewish friends could use a bit of solidarity these days. Today, the first day of Rosh Hashana, celebration of the Jewish New Year, is as good a time as any to explain why.

It's not only the other two great Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, that owe a substantial debt to Judaism, it's the world as a whole. The reason is that between three and four millennia ago something happened in the Sinai among a tribe of refugees from Egyptian oppression that introduced the world to the concept of the rule of law - the idea that the law is not the whim of, but rather has its source above, those who rule.

This concept is at the heart of what makes decently-governed societies possible, whether you sign on to Jefferson's formulation that we are "endowed by our Creator" with basic rights or prefer the more secular notion of natural law.

In the absence of one or the other of these bases for the notion that the rule of law somehow derives from a source above the rulers, electoral democracy can degenerate into mob rule and capitalism into theft. This supremacy of the law is what most Americans mean when they say that we have a "government of laws, not men."

Some aspects of this have gotten a bit muddled recently in the largely academic debate about whether the United States is or is not an "empire.' If the US is an empire it's a very odd one: Countries where it has troops such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Germany suggest they are unhappy about that and the response is, 'OK," and an offer to leave.

Nero and Napoleon would have been appalled. They would also have had a hard time understanding the travails of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. One was driven from office by the people's elected representatives for permitting a cover-up of a clumsy political burglary. The other was impeached by the House, then acquitted in a Senate trial, for lying under oath in a deposition taken in what was essentially a sexual harassment case brought by a private citizen.

What, you may well ask, are the most powerful individuals in the world doing, if they are emperors, getting held to account by members of Congress for burglary cover-ups and by private citizens, no less, for sexual behavior?

The answer is, of course, that neither Nixon nor Clinton, indeed no American president, is even close to being an emperor. People (and smaller nations wherein an empire maintains troops) obey emperors, if they know what's good for them, without much discussion. These two recent presidents were, instead, held to account in a distinctly non-imperial way - in pretty much the same way Elijah humbled Ahab for allowing his queen, Jezebel, to frame and execute Naboth and steal his vineyard, and in the way the prophet Nathan confronted David over his taking Bathsheba and ordering her husband, Uriah, to the front lines and certain death.

The US does not look back to Rome or France at the height of their power in determining the way to deal with those who today govern the most powerful nation in history. Thankfully, in regard to the powerful being subjected to the rule of law we are, instead, all Jews.

I'VE MAINLY been in synagogues for the bar mitzvas and bat mitzvas of friends' children. The next time you are, notice what the object of veneration is - it is the Torah, the law itself. At a point in the service it is carried, lovingly, around the congregation, greeted as an old friend. I am convinced that it is this veneration of the law - with its status above the ruler — that is at the heart of anti-Semitism.

Jews have almost always been the first target of tyrants, because their beliefs and religious practices, honed by nearly two millennia in Diaspora, clearly declare that in their view the law is above the ruler: dietary laws, the dress of the Orthodox, a propensity to contend about what is a fair interpretation of rules, all stamp Jews with this belief's being the heart of their history and religion. As a consequence they are often the first group that dictators, secular or theocratic, feel they must suppress.

We should all reflect upon the historic reality that when anti-Semitism raises its head, the rest of us, unless we are willing to live with a foot on our neck, will be the next targets.

Jewish humor, a distinctive barrier against any propensity to self-righteousness, permeates American culture. A number of times during the Cold War, I was involved in arms control negotiations with the Soviets. No matter how bad the tension across the negotiating table during the day, Russian and American negotiators would often end up going out for dinner together. Somehow, even in the most difficult periods, the conversation frequently turned to trading jokes.

I always thought it remarkable how much Russian humor was suffused with a wry, self-deprecating, ironic tone both quite funny and somehow quite familiar to Americans. Later, finding versions of a number of these jokes and stories in Leo Rosten's wonderful The Joys of Yiddish, I realized the source of the familiarity.

Six years ago the Immigration and Naturalization Service imprisoned eight Muslims, Iraqi freedom fighters who were refugees from Saddam, for allegedly being security threats to the US. The government's case was worse than flimsy but it was protected by rules regarding secret evidence. After a long struggle all eight were freed, and several are now working to establish democracy in Iraq.

I was one of their lawyers. The majority of my co-counsel, all acting pro bono, were Jewish. The law is, after all, above the ruler.

The Rats In The Cage

From the London Telegraph, excerpt from an article by Mark Steyn:

Almost every issue facing the EU - from immigration rates to crippling state pension liabilities - has at its heart the same glaringly plain root cause: a huge lack of babies. I could understand a disinclination by sunny politicians to peddle doom and gloom were it not for the fact that, in all other areas of public policy, our rulers embrace doomsday scenarios at the drop of a hat. Most 20-year projections - on global warming, fuel resources, etc - are almost laughably speculative. They fail to take into account the most important factor of all - human inventiveness: "We can't feed the world!" they shriek. But we develop more efficient farming methods with nary a thought. "The oil will run out by the year 2000!" But we develop new extraction methods and find we've got enough oil for as long as we'll need it.

But human inventiveness depends on humans - and that's the one thing we really are running out of. When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2005, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2025 (or 2033, or 2041, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management, Systemic Racism and Gay Studies degrees). If that's not a political issue, what is? To cite only the most obviously affected corner of the realm, what's the long-term future of the Scottish National Party if there are no Scottish nationals?

When I've mentioned the birth dearth on previous occasions, pro-abortion correspondents have insisted it's due to other factors - the generally declining fertility rates that affect all materially prosperous societies, or the high taxes that make large families prohibitively expensive in materially prosperous societies. But this is a bit like arguing over which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, in this case, which came first, the lack of eggs or the scraggy old chicken-necked women desperate for one designer baby at the age of 48. How much of Europe's fertility woes derive from abortion is debatable. But what should be obvious is that the way the abortion issue is framed - as a Blairite issue of personal choice - is itself symptomatic of the broader crisis of the dying West.

Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent.

The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?

Shortly after 9/11, I wrote in these pages about one of the most curious aspects of the new war - the assurance given to Islamist "martyrs" that 72 virgins were standing by to pleasure them for eternity. The notion that the after-life is a well-appointed brothel is a perplexing one to the Judaeo-Christian world, and I suggested that Americans would be sceptical if heaven were framed purely in terms of boundless earthly pleasures.

But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.

"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."

Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.

In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.

The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.

Everything he says here seems to be true. You know what struck me while reading this article? If this is true of the West, what about China where couples are allowed only one child? How can a Communist system sustain such a population decline? The answer is, they can't. In a Communist country where almost all services are provided by the government and, thus, supported by taxes, a birth rate which assures that a population will decline by half over the course of one generation is a death certificate already being filled out.

Do you think China will start allowing mass immigration into their country, the way Europe and the U.S. have? That also would be the death of their system, because immigration would bring an element of cultural chaos, which the strict order of the Communist system could not control.

As Mark Steyn notes, politicians never speak of this issue. And yet it is obvious that what he says is true. The disinclination of our politicians to deal with this reality is based on either profound ignorance, or fear, or more probably, a combination of both.

It is important to note that this decline in the birth rate of the West was precipitated by a massive disinformation campaign put forth by environmentalists, in the late 60's and early 70's, about the "Population Explosion" and the ecological disaster it was creating. When I was a kid this was a huge topic not only in the media, but in my school as well. We were quite literally indoctrinated with the idea that, if we continued to have more than two babies per couple we were, in effect, destroying the Earth.

That's quite a lot of guilt and fear for a child to shoulder. But, obviously we have all taken our lesson to heart. Of course, our responsible adherence to this idiotic dictum is empowered by the profound selfishness of our consumer society. Let's face it, part of the reason we don't want to have a lot of kids is because we won't be able to afford as nice a car, or take as many vacations.

I remember the image that environmentalists used to explain to us just how the "Population Explosion" would destroy the Earth. This image is seared, seared into my memory. It was that we were like rats in a cage, with only a certain amount of food. At some point the population and, thus, the appetites, and waste matter, of the rats would exceed the size of the cage. At that point the rats would begin to drown in their own waste, and to kill each other to get the food.

It would seem that the rats in a cage scenario is an accurate description after all. However, the rats are in our minds; they are the ideologies, products, lifestyle choices, and "good times," which we put in front of the more natural human desire to be surrounded by family.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Purim!

By Rabbi David Eliezrie

Purim has been celebrated with pizzazz and energy since its beginning some 2,300 years ago when the miracle happened. But Purim is about more than just fun. The celebration marks a watershed event in Jewish history, and, if we dig a bit, we find that in many ways it is analogous with the challenges of modern Jewish life.

Purim occurred almost 70 years after the First Temple’s destruction, during the Jews’ first Diaspora experience. We know they were integrated into the general society and had political influence. The Megillah relates that Mordechai, the head of the Sanhedrin, sat in the King’s Palace; the Midrash adds that he was a general of the royal army. When the king marked the three-year anniversary of his reign with a major feast, the Jews participated.

Even as Jews began to slip into Persian culture, they remained unique. Haman was troubled by a nation that was distinct, that worshipped a G-d who could not be seen. His decrees against the Jews were more ominous than those of other tyrants throughout the ages: There was no place to run.

At that time, all Jews lived within the Persian Empire. Even during the darkest days of the Holocaust or the Spanish Inquisition, Jews could escape to other countries. This time there was no other Jewish community to help out. The threat of annihilation was against the entire Jewish people. How did Mordechai respond to this threat?

As the Megillah states, he “sat in the gate of Palace of the King,” and he urged Esther to intervene with the king, but he recognized that Jewish destiny transcends the will of mortal monarchs. Cognizant of the Jewish teaching that the purity of children can tip a decree, he gathered 24,000 Jewish children in prayer and charity.

I witnessed a modern enactment of this teaching in the quiet months leading up to the Yom Kippur War, when the Lubavitcher Rebbe encouraged his Chassidim to gather Jewish children in prayer and charity. Rallies were organized in every community in the globe, thousands of children gathered at the Wall in Jerusalem. We could not understand the reason for this, as there was no sign of imminent danger -- and then the war broke out. The Rebbe had perceived a threat, and had prepared for it through this spiritual response.

Our responses to challenges cannot just involve the realm of nature. Of course we must lobby the government aggressively on behalf of Israel, but we must also recognize that there is something more spiritual that must be attended to. At times, the mystery is overwhelming. For instance, when my son was battling cancer, my wife asked me, “Why?” and I had no answer. Still, we knew that our response to this dire threat must be multilevel. Aggressive medical care, prayer, charity, and introspection were all necessary. (Thank G-d he is well, married and has a child.)

The uniqueness of Jews is characterized by such actions. Mordechai fought Haman using diplomacy and courage, but knew that the spiritual component was crucial to his success. We need to emulate Mordechai by reaching inward to fortify our spiritual dimension as we face external crises. Though the name of G-d is not mentioned in the Megillah, if we dig deeper we can find the Divine Destiny in the actions of Mordechai and Esther and in our lives today.

Rabbi David Eliezrie, a member of the Rabbinic Cabinet, is a Chabad Shaliach in Yorba Linda, California.

Prayer

Dehydration Nation

Thanks to Graham Lester for leaving this in my comments section last night:

For more than ten years, conscious and unconscious cognitively disabled people who use feeding tubes have been legally dehydrated to death in the United States. This intentional life-ending act—clamping feeding tubes and denying all sustenance—has become so ubiquitous that, generally, little attention is paid.

This public indifference was shattered by the Terri Schiavo litigation, an epic legal, political, and media struggle that pitted Terri’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, against her quasi-estranged husband, Michael Schiavo. At stake was whether Terri would live, as fervently desired by her parents, or die by dehydration as demanded by her husband. (I shall explain below why I consider Michael to be estranged from Terri.)

The Schiavo case is not the first “food and fluids” case, but it is certainly the most notorious. Widespread revulsion over Terri’s court-ordered dehydration sparked a grass-roots political campaign that culminated in the Florida legislature’s rushed passage of “Terri’s Law,” which empowered the governor to intervene and prevent some categories of cognitively disabled people from being dehydrated. As soon as the bill became law, Governor Jeb Bush dramatically halted Terri’s dehydration in its sixth day, setting off an international uproar. (As this is written the constitutionality of Terri’s law—and hence the fate of Terri Schiavo—is being litigated.)

At this point we must distinguish between two different circumstances in which nourishment is withheld from incapacitated patients:

• First, not forcing food and water upon dying patients who reject nourishment. This often occurs in the end stages of cancer. Indeed, it is recognized as medically inappropriate to force-feed patients whose bodies are shutting down during the natural dying process. In these cases, the patients die from their disease, not dehydration. This is not the situation that this article addresses.

• Second, withholding tube-supplied food and water from cognitively disabled persons like Terri who are not otherwise dying. In such cases, nourishment is withheld not for medical reasons but because someone believes that the patient’s life is not worth living in such an impaired state, or that he or she would rather be dead than live with a profound cognitive disability. Death in these situations is caused by dehydration.

If the owner of a horse or cow caused the animal to die by withholding food and water, he or she would probably go to jail, and rightly so. If a condemned murderer were executed by being shut in a room without food and water until he died, the American Civil Liberties Union would never stop suing, and rightly so. (Ironically, the ACLU has jumped into the Schiavo case—on Michael’s side, to have Terri’s Law declared unconstitutional.) But dehydrate a person with significant brain injury who requires a feeding tube, and it is considered medically ethical, the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment and an adjunct of the legally non-existent “right to die.”

In fact, a Florida rancher was just arrested the other day, on 120 counts of animal cruelty for starving his cows.

Kill a cow, go to jail. Kill a human being, and collect insurance money.

I believe the one good thing that will come out of the Terri Schiavo case is that the eyes of the nation have been turned on this practice. Many of us, myself included, have watched as relatives have been in states like this. I watched my father suffer in a state like this for several days. Eventually, he was able to eat again, then sit up, and then I helped him to learn how to walk again. He went on to live another seven years filled with smiles and tears of joy.

I'm not saying that Terri could have made such advances, but I am saying that from the videotape, it was apparent that Terri was happy to see her mother. She's not a vegetable and we all know it.

Hail Rashid Nasim
The Correct Muslim Repsonse to Islamofascism

From the Ottawa Sun, via Little Green Footballs:

Rashid Nasim arrives at Abraar Islamic elementary school to pick up his young daughter, and he’s upset, he wants answers.

“I want to speak to the principal, I want to speak to teachers. This is not what I want from this school. We didn’t have our daughter go here for this. I want to know how this could happen.”

Rashid Nasim wants to know why a Muslim pupil at the private school was allowed to get away with a project in which he wrote a stridently anti-Semitic story about Palestinians revengefully killing Jews in the Middle East. He wants to know why two teachers were approving of the completed work. He wants to know why it was put on display in the school as if to be proud of.

Rashid Nasim, 31, owns three of the Curves For Women fitness centres in Ottawa. His wife, Shaista Zareef, is a family physician. Their four-year old daughter Mariya is in junior kindergarten at Abraar. The family is Muslim.

Nasim was born in Pakistan and grew up in Montreal where he attended a Catholic high school. “I’m glad I did. Where does it say I can’t learn about other religions? The ignorance about other religions and cultures, that’s what breeds fear and hatred.

“We are practising Muslims and wanted her to go here for the cultural education and strong moral foundation it provides. We spoke to the principal, and were convinced it was the right choice.” The principal is Dr. Aisha Sherazi, who has suspended the two teachers.

“The view of the child who wrote the story is not a view accepted by the overall teachers, the administration, or the other students. It was one individual opinion. It was the culture he was brought up in over there. Any child coming from that environment would have that feeling.

“To be allowed to express it in a school setting that might influence other students at that impressionable age, that’s the issue. But why did the teachers seem to encourage it, why did one of them write the favourable comments on it? I want to know — was it assigned or was it original?

“I don’t want my daughter’s school tarnished by this. This is not what the school stands for. We don’t want the community to feel threatened. I am not anti-Semitic. I have Jewish employees. Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew — all people deserve respect, there is no room for hatred.”

Doesn't Rashid sound like someone you would be proud to call a friend?

Behold, I Make All Things New

My favorite scene from the movie The Passion of the Christ, was the scene where Mary watches as her son struggles to carry the cross, and stumbles. She recalls watching him stumble and fall as her dear little child. He looks at her, out from underneath his agony, his face blood-streaked and grimy, and says,

"Behold Mother, I make all things new."

God came to Earth and took upon Himself all our sin (our evil, our anger, our pain, our shame, and our fear) and took it through death to be eliminated forever.

While He was going through the suffering He did not know for sure if He would make it through. That's why He cried out to His Father, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me."

Christ did not get on the cross thinking to Himself, "In 15 minutes this will all be over. Instead, He had to face His death, just as all of us have to face ours; alone and afraid.

Imagine that God would put Himself through that for us.

Good Friday

My friend Jaymarie, over at Pond Ripple wrote what I think is the definitive statement on the Terri Schiavo situation. Her comment was part of a larger discussion, so go read it, but here's the passage which I thought was definitive:

... what bothers me the most is the idea that I keep hearing from Christians and religious people - that death is ok, that this too is a part of God's plan, that maybe it is her time to go...peacefully.

Ah, what a load of bullshit. We fight for life because it is a holy, God ordained act. Because our brothers and sisters are the "inside" we have to God in this lifetime. Because it is the greatest beauty which is known to man and it is horrifying to see it come to an end.

Everything Christ ever did, or was, hinges on His overcoming the grave. The apostle Paul admitted it when he said that without the ressurection our faith would be in vain. If we believe this then we admit that death "had" to be conquered...how can we also say that death is fine and dignified.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Ralph Nader and George Bush Are In Agreement
On Terri Schiavo

Because I don't think my posting an article by Ralph Nader would constitute a temper tantrum on my part, here is Mr. Nader weighing in on the Terri Schiavo murder:

To: National Desk

Contact: Ralph Nader, 202-387-8034; Wesley Smith, 510-886-8609

WASHINGTON, March 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader and Wesley J. Smith, author of the award winning book "Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America" call upon the Florida Courts, Governor Jeb Bush and concerned citizens to take any legal action available to let Terri Schiavo live.

"A profound injustice is being inflicted on Terri Schiavo," Nader and Smith asserted today.

"Worse, this slow death by dehydration is being imposed upon her under the color of law, in proceedings in which every benefit of the doubt-and there are many doubts in this case-has been given to her death, rather than her continued life."

Among the many injustices in this case, Nader and Smith point to the following:

The courts not only are refusing her tube feeding, but have ordered that no attempts be made to provide her water or food by mouth. Terri swallows her own saliva. Spoon feeding is not medical treatment.

"This outrageous order proves that the courts are not merely permitting medical treatment to be withheld, it has ordered her to be made dead," Nader and Smith assert.

The medical and rehabilitation experts are split on whether Terri is in a persistent vegetative state or whether Terri can be improved with therapy. There is only one way to know for sure- permit the therapy. That is the only way to resolve all doubts.

The court is imposing process over justice. After the first trial in this case, much evidence has been produced that should allow for a new trial-which was the point of the hasty federal legislation. If this were a death penalty case, this evidence would demand reconsideration. Yet, an innocent disabled woman is receiving less justice.

The federal and state governments are spending billions on what we are told will become miracle medical cures for people with all sorts of degenerative conditions, including brain damage. If this is so, why not permit Terri's parents and siblings who want to care for her do so in the hope that such cures are discovered?

Benefits of doubts should be given to life, not hastened death. This case is rife with doubt. Justice demands that Terri be permitted to live.

Amazing.

Err on the side of life.

Benefits of doubts should be given to life, not hastened death.

George Bush and Ralph Nader agree.

Meanwhile, Moloch eats his children.

British Parliament Whip
Invites Anti-Semite To Speak to Lawmakers

From Melanie Phillips:

Stephen Pollard reports a remarkable speech delivered in the House of Lords last month by a Swedish antisemite, Joran Jeremas, at the invitation of Labour peer Lord Ahmed. According to Pollard, these are some highlights of this speech:'“your newspapers belong to Zionists”

“in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East…in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble - and that is Jewish supremacy drive”

“…the Jewish media-lords in the US and elsewhere. Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking; just last month a Rothschild bought the French daily Liberacion…”

“The Jews like an Empire…This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance…Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se…”

“Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England…they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”

“all the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.”

'It is, I suppose, possible that Lord Ahmed made a terrible mistake and had no idea that the man he invited was a rabid anti-semite - despite the fact that his views are freely available on his website. But the absence of an apology for such a mistake, or a condemnation of the views expressed by Jeremas, seems to indicate that Lord Ahmed sees nothing wrong with the views expressed in Jeremas' speech, and might even support the views outlined on his site, since he chose to invite him to speak. In which case, does the Labour Chief Whip in the Lords feel it appropriate that Lord Ahmed should still hold the Labour whip? And if so, why?'

The answer is that the Labour party is riddled with rabid prejudice against the Jews. Sheltering behind the convenient pretence that hatred of Israel is not the same as hatred of the Jews, they have pretended to themselves that they occupy the moral high ground by sanctimoniously railing against 'racism' and 'prejudice'. Well, that pretence is now well and truly over. The line between their Nazification of Israel and their Nazification of British Jews is unbroken. Whether consciously or unconsciously, in incident after incident they have been giving themselves away. They are bigots, mired in the moral squalour of the contemporary left.

Europe is returning to it's roots, like a dog to it's vomit.

On Terri Schiavo

I believe it would take a miracle, a real intervention by God, to save Terri at this time.

I am so unhappy with our courts, and their Oligarchical behavior, that I can not formulate any thoughts that would be anything other than verbal gobs of spit. I really feel like lashing out at all those who would see Terri die.

Therefore, I'm going to refrain from writing anything about the failure of the Terri Schiavo case. The only reason I'm writing this post is so that people will know that I didn't merely watch the loss and think, "Oh well, on to the next thing."

Palestinian Nazi Salute

The AP Photo Caption reads:

Militants of the Palestinian ruling Fatah party salute during a pre-election rally for the students council at the Al-Quds university in the West Bank town of Hebron Monday March 21, 2005. Tensions are increasing between Fatah and the Hamas Islamic group, which scored a decisive victory in student elections at Hebron University last week, and Hamas is expected to fare well in the Palestinian parliamentary elections set for July.(AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

Note that Fatah is the ruling party. Fatah is the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah was also the party of Yasser Arafat. Fatah is Israel's partner in the Roadmap to Peace.

Where exactly will this Roadmap take them?

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Google Removes Nazi Hate Site From It's News Page

This is good to know.

Why Are The Jews Hated?
Because They Are Jews

Gates of Vienna discusses the neo-Nazi website Vanguard News (which Google features on the Google News Page), which I previously discussed here. He notes that on their site the Nazi's mock the accomplisments of various Jewish professors:

A quick look at their site -- and a brief exposure is the most that a person can tolerate -- reveals juicy tidbits such as this one, concerning a professor at UVA (professor's name and offensive terms are redacted):

...Before entering academia, [the professor] served as a legal counselor with the Washington Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.(I WONDER IF SHE CHARTERED AIRCRAFT TO FLY WHITE GIRL RAPING SOMALI N***ERS INTO THE DAKOTAS AND MINNESOTA?) She spent 1997-99 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she was director of the International Human Rights Law Group's Bosnia program for 14 months. The program's work included a report on women's human rights and development of a training program on employment discrimination. Before joining the Law Group, [the professor] served as an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) liaison officer to the Human Rights Coordination Centre of the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina....Between 1981 and 1993, she led regular delegations of U.S. citizens on study tours of the Middle East, and spent a sabbatical year (1989-1990) in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

With dismaying irony, the contributor cites activities which should endear the professor to his Jew-hating heart -- she has been involved in the UN and travelled to Israel in order to provide aid and comfort to the enemies of Jews! Surely this would endear her to his Aryan heart...? But race trumps everything.

Another entry is straightforward and traditional, with its frisson of implied miscegenation:

LMFAO- JEWESS GETS DOWN WITH URBAN N***ER TALK AS HER TITLE!So the lesser mongrel races are colluding against the purity of their white betters.

It is difficult to do anything other than gape slack-jawed at this hackneyed hate, in all its banality. Does nothing ever change?An ominous novelty is a headline appended to many of the entries on the VNN site:

White Racists Seek To Ally With Middle Eastern Wahabists Against The Jew.

So, following in the footsteps of the führer, the neo-Nazis are assembling the Arab auxiliaries...

I don't know why they bother with their "analysis" of the accomplisments of the professors. Short of killing themselves and other Jews, the Nazi's wouldn't be happy with anything they might do. They simply hate the Jews because they are Jewish.

That's it.

The question addressed by Dennis Prager's book on anti-Semitism is "Why The Jews?" That is also the title. Dennis Prager's answer to that question? It's because they are Jewish. It's because they are the carriers of God's Law. It's because they are God's Chosen People. It's because they have stood for God's Law through the ages. For this reason the dragon of anti-Semitism chases them through the millenia.

Kofi Annan's Clanking Monstrosity

Wretchard, at the Belmont Club, on Kofi Annan's proposal to fix the UN:

In my own opinion Kofi Annan's proposals are a recipe for disaster for two reasons. His entire security model is philosophically founded on a kind of blackmail which recognizes that the only thing dysfunctional states have to export is trouble. He then sets up the United Nations as a gendarmarie with 'a human face' delivering payoffs to quell disturbances. This is the "bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries' security concerns." Second, his model flies in the face of the recent experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and the entire democratizing upheaval in the Middle East. It is by making countries functional that terrorism is quelled and not by any regime of international aid, inspections, nonproliferation treaties, declarations, protocols, conferences; nor by appointing special rapptorteurs, plenipotentiary envoys; nor constituting councils, consultative bodies or anything else in Annan's threadbare cupboard.

Nor is this clanking monstrosity particularly efficient, even in contemplation. Neither new Security Council model solves the basic question: how can it compel nations with the muscle to act against their interests? Alliances, like political parties, are the building blocks of global politics. Forcing alliances to work within the artificial structure of the United Nations Security Council (A or B) adds nothing to the process. The sole value of the Security Council should be to rubber-stamp what global politics has already decided upon, as constitutional monarchs do in countries with Parliaments.

It was a dictum in Field Marshal Zhukov's Army that a good commander never reinforced failure only success. It is a maxim of the United Nations that progress is achieved by doing everything that never worked all over again. Probably nowhere is the bankruptcy of Annan's vision (and I use that word consciously) more evident than in Paragraph 29, where he lays out the UN vision for a better world. It is a laundry list of all the special interest 'development' goals the UN has acquired over the years where problems of different orders of magnitude and positions in the chain of causality are jumbled together; a bureaucrat's dream and a human being's nightmare.

So, in other words, Kofi Annan's idea on how to fix the UN is "Give me more money to do the same crap."

What a swindler.

The Arab World Is Abu Ghraib

From Reform Syria:

No doubt the abuse of the prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison is a crime that must be investigated and its perpetrators brought to justice. The civilized world spoke in one voice when it claimed that this transgression was morally unacceptable. But then again, this is war, and most events during wartime could hardly be deemed as “morally acceptable”; nonetheless the US administration ought to be commended for its public admission and regret for the actions of a very small minority of its armed forces.

Sadly, a similar commitment to introspection and compassion for justice is absent when it comes to most Arab leaders today. While legions of talking heads and pundits in the American and European media fret about the “public rage” that the abuses will ostensibly engender in the Arab world, they fail to take notice that the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of American servicemen in Abu Ghraib were but a small reflection of what happens every day in almost every Arab country—the only difference is that in the rest of the Arab world, the abuses are worse… much, much worse.

The crocodile tears of Arab dictators and the corrupt Arab league are a public spectacle, geared not towards the Arab people that they oppress, but towards a naïve Western media.

Where were the public trials for those who slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Syrians in Hamma in 1982, or more recently the indiscriminate jailing and murder of anti-government demonstrators and human rights leaders in Allepo and Damascus? Where were the calls for the prosecution of the war criminals that committed these despicable acts of genocide? Where were the calls for prosecution of those who killed Nicholas Berg, an innocent American, who was beheaded savagely for the world to see? Why have the Arab dictators that are calling for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld themselves not under scrutiny for the tens of thousands of political prisoners that have been hideously tortured, executed, or are still currently rotting in sub-human conditions for years in places like Baschar Assad’s Sednaya and Tadmur prisons?

Too many people in the Arab world still bear the scars of having loved ones “disappeared” or having personally suffered sadistic torture at the hands of organs of Ba’ath state security like the Syrian Ba’ath. And when I speak of torture, I mean real torture, where one begs to be killed to end the pain—not the pain of humiliation, but the pain of going through another day of having one’s genitals electrocuted or one’s daughter gang-raped in front of his eyes. That is true torture; it is a torture ubiquitous to the Arab world, yet no one cries for those victims.

It seems, that the addiction to anti-Americanism is such that it blinds even the most well-meaning progressive from the real horror that is occurring on a daily basis in the middle east; a horror that is not being perpetrated in Baghdad, but in Damascus; a horror that is not being committed at the hands of Americans, but by reactionary Ba’ath thugs who are totally oblivious to the value of human life and dignity.

The Arab dictators are not condemning America for any real wrong that it might have committed; Abu Ghraib is child’s play by their standards. Rather, the condemnations and kabuki theatre of faux-indignation are part of a calculated effort by Arab dictators to attempt to discredit and stem the Arab Democratic revolution that threatens their ability to cling to power.

The United States has done more for the advancement of Arab dignity than any of the nations in the Arab League; Iraqis now have the dignity to choose their own destiny, to live a life void of Ba’athist terror. The Arab dictators are loathe to admit this fact, and instead of emulating the progressive reform that Iraq is undergoing, they have instead opted to push their respective societies even further back in time and oppose calls of liberalization emanating from all corners of Arab civic life.

In the end, while our Arab leaders still hide behind their empty rhetoric, the US opens up to the world, admits its mistake, and seeks forgiveness. The most powerful men on earth are humbled by the experience and try, under a full vibrant democracy, to correct the wrong their people perpetrated upon other people.

If Arab leaders have any modicum of courage, any sense of compassion for the real suffering of the Arab people under their tools of oppression, if they have any urge to help the Arab people reclaim their dignity, they would do well to condemn not the Americans for what happened at Abu Ghraib, but themselves for having enslaved the entire Arab world in something that would make Abu Ghraib seem like Disneyland.

Schindler's List

Matt Davidson, a calendar clerk with the U.S. 11th Circuit Court, delivers copies of the ruling to media at the Elbert Tuttle United States Court of Appeals Building, early Wednesday morning, March 23, 2005, in Atlanta. A federal appeals court refused early Wednesday to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, denying an emergency request by the brain-damaged woman's parents. (AP Photo/Gregory Smith)

This "calendar clerk" looks pretty happy. He is handing out the list of Schindler's to be killed. Why is he so happy? Is he excited that he's having his picture taken?

The look on his face is sadly reprentative of our entire society today. We're going on with our beautiful American lives while Terri Schindler-Schiavo is being starved to death by the will of the people.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Google's Official Nazi News Source
Publishes List Of Jewish Professors

The other day Little Green Footballs reported that Google has included the neo-Nazi site National Vanguard on it's News Page. Now it seems the Vanguard News Network is compiling and publishing the names and addresses of Jewish professors. From Little Green Footballs:

A few weeks ago, participants on an anti-Semitic Web site became angry when a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles refused to participate in an exchange of e-mail messages.

The professor was Jewish, and the Web site responded by placing photographs of and biographic material about UCLA professors and anti-Semitic diatribes online. In recent days, the Web site — Vanguard News Network — has expanded its campaign, which it says is designed to draw attention to the high percentage of Jewish professors on law schools’ faculties.

The Web site is now publishing a variety of information — photographs, results of Google searches, phone numbers — of faculty members who are Jewish (or have Jewish-sounding names) at leading law schools all over the United States.

Among the institutions who have faculty members discussed by name on the Web site are Georgetown, Harvard, New York, Stanford and Yale Universities; and the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Most of the comments attack Jewish faculty members at law schools, with a theme being that they make up a larger share of law school faculties than do Jews in the U.S. population, and that this over-representation signifies Jewish control of American society.

But some of the professors attacked are not Jewish or law professors. A black female professor is described as “Mammy Stormtrooper for Jooz.”

And a few professors who are listed teach in other disciplines. Harry Jaffa, a professor emeritus of government at Claremont McKenna College, is described by one of the Web site’s authors (verbatim) as “a troll jew at CMC, next to my school, Pomona, in Claremont. He’s the major Lincoln liar — the leader of the school that refurbishes reality to fit current jewish political needs, ie claiming lincoln was a liberator rather than dictator.”

Full disclosure: CUANAS is hosted by Blogger, which is owned by Google. Yeah, I feel good about that.

Do you think Google doesn't understand what they have done? That's a little hard to believe. Someone has got to be overseeing the content on the Google News page.

Spoke Too Soon

This post basically deletes the post below. Pamela, over at Atlas Shrugged, has posted an article from Agence French Presse, which says quotes leaders of Palestinian terrorist organizations saying that they see the truce as an opportunity to regroup and rearm before they continue their fight against the Israeli entity:

by Sakher Abu El Oun
GAZA CITY, March 22 (AFP) - Palestinian militant groups, weakened by more than four years of fighting against Israel, are capitalising on the relative calm of an informal truce to strengthen their political and military clout.

Representatives of the 13 main Palestinian factions agreed last Thursday to observe a period of calm until the end of the year at talks in Cairo, provided Israel ends all forms of aggression and releases prisoners.

Their declaration followed nearly two months of calm on the ground, during which Palestinian militants have mostly heeded a de facto truce and Israel has refrained from waging largescale operations in the territories.

But if the main outcome has been a halt in anti-Israeli attacks, the cooling off period also gives breathing space to militants and groups targeted by countless Israeli offensives since the uprising began in 2000.

What Palestinian representatives in Cairo did not sanction was an end to armed resistance nor the dismantling of armed factions as demanded by Israel.

"This calm is not a gift to the occupation. We will work on and prepare ourselves. Disbanding the armed wing of Hamas is absolutely out of the question," said Abu Ubada, spokesman for the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades.

The faction agreed to extend the informal truce, not out of love for Israel but "to put Palestinian affairs in order and to ensure a period of calm conducive to holding elections", he said.

Palestinian parliamentary elections are scheduled for July and Hamas has declared its intention to contest the legislative ballot for the first time.

Abu Ubada refused to countenance any idea of Palestinian disarmament.
"Our rifles are aimed at the occupiers. Weapons that have to be collected up will be used to unleash chaos," he added.

A spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, loosely affiliated to the mainstream Fatah party, said its militants would integrate into Palestinian Authority security forces without sacrificing the "resistance".

"A large number of our fighters already belong to the security services. Joining the security services does not at all signify the end of resistance against the occupation," said the spokesman, calling himself Abu Qussay.

He cautioned Israel against violating the period of calm.

Well, that blew my brief respite of optimism all to hell.

Good News From The Middle East
Palestinian Authority Security Forces Twart Attack on Israel
Israel Hands Over Control Of Second City This Week

This bit of rather extraordinary news from Haaretz, via Roger Simon:

The Palestinian Authority security forces are foiling just as many terror attacks as Israel, the head of the research division of Israel Defense Forces intelligence, Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.

and this from a later version of the Haaretz article:

IDF and Palestinian commanders formalized the Tul Karm handover Tuesday morning, ceremonially unlocking a gate that had blocked traffic between the town and other locations in the West Bank. The gate is to be removed at a later point.

Under the terms of the agreement reached between Israel and the PA, the IDF will avoid entering the town; on Tuesday morning the IDF removed its roadblock on the road between the city and the nearby village of Anabta.

Israel handed over security responsibility for Tul Karm to the PA on Monday night. At around 8 P.M., armed Palestinian policemen began patrolling the streets of the city, the second in the West Bank to be handed over to the PA.

Last week, the Palestinian Authority assumed security control in Jericho. Talks on the handover of a third West Bank city, presumably Qalqilyah, are expected to begin in the coming days.Israeli officials decided on the handover Monday after resolving a dispute with the PA over the control of villages near the town.

During talks Sunday, the Palestinians demanded responsibility for villages north of Tul Karm, including Tseida and Ilar, from which an Islamic Jihad cell mounted its February attack at the Stage club in Tel Aviv. Israel rejected the demand. The sides agreed Monday that the villages would remain under Israeli control and that the issue would be revisited in a month's time.

This is very good news indeed. I have been worried about Abbas, seeing as how he is a Holocaust Denier, but it seems that he may have had a conversion after seeing the blazing light of practicality along the road to Damascus.

For years I have heard people say the Middle East conflict is a Cycle of Violence. That Israel is as complicit as the PA. That Israel wants the Palestinian territories for themselves. In all those years, Arafat never was never able to stop the violence. Clearly, Abbas is making a sincere effort to put an end to terrorist attacks. And what happens? Israel hands control of the territories back to the Palestinians.

What do you know?

It would seem that all those who have accused Israel of imperialism now owe Israel an apology. Though, I'm sure Israel would settle for peace.

On The Necessity Of Pacifism

Last night I had a phone conversation with the guy who was best man in my wedding, and my life-long best friend. He and I wrote and performed music together for years. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, and currently works as a Social Worker and Youth Pastor. He is also a Pacifist, and he is the person to whom I addressed a portion of a previous post on an article from the Pacifist magazine, Sojourners.

I was concerned that he might have been upset by the post (I also sent a portion of it to him in email form), because I had never received a reply.

It turns out, he was not upset but, instead, was giving the questions I raised some thought, before he formulated an answer. I told him that I didn't actually expect answers, because those are tough questions. I also told him that I don't think we need to agree, just that we need to be clear where each of us are coming from, so that we don't fall into stereotyping each other, which would lead to disrespect.

My friend said something about the message of Jesus Christ which I consider to be true, and which I have often thought about in the past. That is that Jesus' message was to forgive, it was to turn the other cheek, and it was to put helping those in need before other considerations, practicality be damned.

Christian Philosopher Dallas Willard, in his book The Divine Conspiracy (which is very popular among conservative Christians) said,

"Once we have grasped our situation in God's full world, the startling disregard Jesus and the New Testament writers had for "physical death" makes sense. Paul bluntly states that Jesus abolished death - simply did away with it. Nothing like what is usually understood as death will happen to those who have entered this life."

In such a reality, Pacifism makes a lot of sense. It makes sense to think that we may throw all caution to the wind and seek to give love, and spread peace, without regard to whether our death will be handed to us in response.

But, we also know, and I say know meaning deep in our hearts know it to be true, that we were blessed by God with not only our own lives, but the lives of our children. None of us would deny that there would be something lacking in a person who would not sacrifice himself for the life of his child.

In fact, that's exactly what Christ did for us, and what Christ calls us to do for the world. The people of Iraq, who lived under the murderous Saddam Hussein regime, are the children of God. And, to me, it makes sense that we would sacrifice our lives to remove Saddam from power, and to help the Iraqi people establish a Democracy.

The same thing goes for Sudan. The people of Sudan are the children of God, and I believe we are called to help them as well.

Could it be that this, also, is the startling disregard for death which Christ exhibited?

In my previous post, I raised the question. If you were walking down a city street holding your child in your arms, and a madman came and snatched her from your clutches, and began to twist her neck, would you not use violence to save her?

I will add to that the question, would such violence, and the danger you would put yourself in by enacting it, not be an expression of Christian sacrifice? And do not the people of Sudan deserve the same love as your children?

In the end, I believe that both points of view have their merit, and their place in our world. I am happy that there are Pacifists demonstrating in the street against war, because I believe they stand for a principle which needs to be taken into consideration. I am not happy when those Pacifists turn their Pacifism into an excuse to call Geore Bush the equivalent of Hitler. Not only is this kind of hatred counter to their mission, but it is out of whack with reality.

We must remember that the Kingdom of God may have been born in our hearts, but it has yet to be established on Earth. We do not live in a perfect world. Therefore, we must live with paradoxes.

We are called to turn the other cheek. But we are not called to turn our cheeks from the suffering of others. By Christ, we are called to work for peace, but we need also remember that of Love, Joy and Peace, the greatest is Love. And, I believe, sometimes Love means our soldiers laying down the lives for our Friends.

Colonialist Habits Die Hard

From New Sisyphus:

We noted, as did many in the Blogosphere, the awarding of the Victoria Cross to Private Johnson Beharry of the British Army for bravery in handling his Warrior APC while under heavy machine gun and RPG fire, saving the lives of numerous comrades and demonstrating to the enemy, yet again, that they are no longer facing unarmed stewardresses or Russian school children.

The Guardian has a good account of the award, the reasons behind it and the reaction to the Grenada native’s heroism.

One thing, however, caught our eye and, so far as we know, has gone unremarked upon. In the Guardian story, the following exchange appears:

The Grenada-born private was paraded by the top brass yesterday among his comrades in the 1st Battalion, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, and other recipients of high military honours.

"I was just doing my job. I was just thinking of the guys in the vehicle and the guys behind me," he said.

He was asked what was going through his mind at the time. "An RPG", Pte Beharry promptly replied. He was not afraid at the time, only afterwards.

Asked why he had left Grenada, he said he wanted "a change of life".

Asked if he would be Britain's first black general, he quickly replied:

"No."

The British have never had a black general?

Ever?

Keep that in mind folks next time you’re talking to a member of the Liberal Democrats about “racist” America, are putting up with a lecture from a European about our troubled racial past or enduring BBC World screening “Mississippi Burning” for the 206th time.

You've got to hand it to England for beating America to female leadership by hundreds of years, but I'm not surprised that they lag on racial issues. Colonialism was a tradition, and traditions die hard in Europe.

If a culture is steeped in a Colonialist mindset, it will be hard to treat the formerly colonized as equals. I suspect that European racism is more nuanced than American racism, which has always been rather baldfaced and unsophisticated.

England always did give positions of authority to pro-British "natives," in countries like India and Sri Lanka, as Governors in order to triangulate out those who would rise up and rebel against the United Kingdom. In other words, Brits have been used to having their "subjects" in positions of power, but not in positions of ultimate power.

Contrast this with the United States, where the rise of black people into positions of power has been slow by the standards of justice, but fast in comparison to England. The truth is, the people of the United States fought a war to free the slaves. The side with the larger population won.

In other words, there was always a consensus that slavery was wrong. There may not have been a consensus that black people were equal to whites in ability, but there was a consensus that they were human beings created in the Image of God and, therefore, ought not be enslaved.

America is more of a meritocracy than England. Therefore, it was easier for black people to rise on the content of their character. In England, where lineage is still an important consideration, black people are the formerly colonized.

England did not fight a war to rid itself of it's empire. England lost it's it's empire. There are probably people in the upper echelons of English society who lament that fact to this day.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Approaching Storm

Jack Of Clubs Weighs In
On The Fight Against
The Terri Schiavo Death Penalty

Jack of Clubs on the Terri Schiavo case (written March 18, 2005):

This is in some sense an inevitable outcome of the death with dignity argument. Once we acceded to the notion that not life itself but quality of life is the ultimate value, it became impossible to avoid the loss of innocent life in the interest of mercy or dignity.

We could have delayed this by legislating that only in the case of a living will could an unconscious patient's life be terminated -- and, indeed, there are such laws -- but any such legislation survives at the sufferance of the interpreting judiciary. If we allow the issue to be framed as a matter of denying a patient's right to die, the judiciary will inevitably feel itself duty-bound to nullify any merely statutory legislation. In fact that is the sense of these comments by Michael Schiavo's lawyer:

"What we experienced today in the subpoena issued by the United States House of Representatives is nothing short of thuggery [...] It is absolutely shocking that according to the House of Representatives, any committee member or subcommittee member can issue a subpoena directed to any American forcing them to have medical treatment to have medical treatment against their will."

Thus evil becomes good and good becomes evil. Losing the moral high-ground is not merely an academic exercise. It is a matter of life and death, as we see here.

We talk about euthanasia and abortion as being part of a culture war, but we are not fighting it as if it were a war. From my perspective it seems more like a playground brawl where the stakes are not very high and we can afford to take a shot whenever we see an opening. But this is not the way to win a war. If the latter is our goal we must take a longer-term, strategic view. This entails controlling the institutions of cultural creation, the churches and the schools, and restraining the power of the courts. Nothing else matters. It is true that journalism and the arts/entertainment industry have a significant impact on culture but they are ultimately secondary. They transmit culture but they do not create it.

Looking around I see little concerted effort in these areas. To be sure there are several groups that focus on these three strategic institutions, but they are generally perceived as having less urgency than saving a particular life or protesting a particular law or judicial decision. But if I am right, many more bad laws will be passed due to our lack of strategy and that will ultimately result in many more lives lost (to say nothing of lost souls).

I don't want to disparage the efforts of those who have worked on behalf of Mrs. Schiavo since every life is precious. But in the big picture, if it hadn't been Terri, it would have been someone else. Focusing on such activities may be necessary in emergencies, but we must view it in military terms as akin to charging up San Juan Hill. It may serve as a rallying point, but it also invites counter-attacks and if we are not careful we can end up losing more ground than we gained.

I agree with Jack that the "War" is fought in churches. The "War" that needs to be fought is for people to understand that we need to live by the Word of God, not merely rest comfortably in the surety of our Salvation.

But, on the other hand, since we are a secular society, the legal war will be won with law.

We need to pass a law that says only the brain dead can be "allowed to die." If we do not work with such an explicit definition, then, as Jack says in different words, our judiciary will constantly redefine "Persistant Vegetative State."

A Cross For Terri

Click here.

We Even Produce Better Anti-Americans
Than They Do

From No Pasaran:

It pains me to say it, it really does. But the fact is that in so many areas and walks and ways of life, the United States is now a better country than Canada

writes Michael Coren in the Toronto Sun. Replace Canada/Canadien throughout with Germany/Germans, France/French, Great Britain/Britons, suggests FR Hoffmann, and see if Coren's comment doesn't fit equally for these countries.

There, I've said it. Because I'm so very tired of the way, particularly in the last two years, that we Canadians have come to define ourselves not by who we are but by who we are not.

…With a malodorous stew of ignorance and malice, [publicly funded mediocrities screaming abuse at a great and noble nation] pump Canada at the expense of deflating the United States.

They say that we are about peace and they are about war. Nonsense. We haven't been able to keep the peace for years even if we'd wanted to do so. We haven't the aircraft or the equipment. It's the Americans who send most of the aid and keep most of the peace.

They say we are informed and intelligent, they are insular and foolish. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and a plethora of world-class universities. Nobel Prize winners by the dozen, internationally renowned scientists, scholars and sages. Goodness me, they even produce better anti-Americans than we do.

They say we are sophisticated, they are dumb. Yet they have more symphony orchestras, more theatres, more libraries, more museums per head than we do in Canada.

They say we are free, they are not. Really? Take the example of Fox News. For years this right-of-centre network was barred from Canadian airwaves, while we publicly funded left-of-centre equivalents such as the CBC. …

They say we have diversity and wit in our press, while they have conformity and lack of style. Yet every American city has a number of impressive daily newspapers and most small towns have weekly publications. They have liberal and conservative, religious and secular, black and white.

They have wide and different ownership, a multitude of different and contrary expression, the right to say almost anything, the liberty to question authority, the expectation of argument and debate, the protection of the basic right to speak one's mind.

Bashers of the U.S. say we have the separation of church and state while they have too much religion. The truth is that they have a constitutional requirement to separate church and state but allow religion to have its place in the public square, thus giving voice to so many brilliant and ethical people.

We effectively silence people of faith, lie to and about them and insult the very ideas that founded Canada itself. We stifle talk of moral behaviour in the name of morality. We deny the difference between right and wrong and then condemn people as being wrong if they disagree.
We say we are mature and they are childish. Which shows just how immature we are and how much growing up we need to do.

Time to put away the toys of smugness and conceit and make our own way in the world. With or without a government grant.

I Really Don't Hope
Denmark Turns Out To Be As Bad As I Fear
But I Am Prepared

A message from CUANAS reader DS, who is a Danish college student living in Denmark:

I just hate the ignorant attitude towards understanding Israel that most people (here) have. Also, I fear the day when/if Europe get's too dangerous to live in.

My surname is listed in Nazi archives, as descendants of jews, and the Danish website that contains the list (I'm pretty sure there is a lot more not online places where this list are) hasn't been closed down, and doesn't seams like to be.

Hizb ut-Tahrir hasn't been banned though it has directly stated in Denmark: "Death to all Jews". I really don't hope Denmark turns out to be as bad as I fear (but I am prepared)...

DS writes in quite often, but not often enough. His comments are always informative. English is not his first language, but he expresses himself very well.

Think about what DS is saying here. He is of Jewish ancestry. I think one of his grandparents was Jewish, if I recall correctly. He knows the history. He is wondering if it could happen again. Can you blame him?

As I have recounted a few times on CUANAS, before I was married I had 3 long term girlfriends who were Jewish. All three families had experienced the Holocaust directly. One of the families had lost half it's members.

Most of us comfy Americans can not imagine what it's like to know that such a thing has happened to one's family. I was very callous about it, until I heard the stories repeated a few times. "Why does your father have a German accent when he grew up in Mexico? You mean your grandmother, and all your aunts and uncles, they all died?"

It is understandable that a Jew living in Europe would be worried. Most of us would be, if we had the history of the Jews.

I think it is more than likely that DS has nothing to fear. I don't think the Euros have enough strength left in them for another round of direct Jew-killing. That's why they have hired the Islamists to do it for them.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

"If Only You Could Say, 'I Want To Live,' Terri"

"Ahhhh Wahhhh ..."

From Marlowe's Shade:

Last Visit Narrative
by Attorney Barbara Weller

When Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed at 1:45 p.m. on March 18, 2005, I was one of the most surprised people on the planet. I had been visiting Terri throughout the morning with her family and her priest. As part of the legal team working throughout the previous days and nights to save Terri from a horrific fate, I was very hopeful. Although the state judicial system had obviously failed Terri by not protecting her life, I knew other forces were still at work.

I fully expected the federal courts would step in to reverse this injustice, just as they might for a prisoner unjustly set for execution—although by much more humane means than Terri would be executed. Barring that, I was certain that sometime around noon, the Florida Department of Children and Family Services would come to the Woodside Hospice facility in Pinellas Park and take Terri into protective custody. Or that federal marshals would arrive from Washington D.C, where the Congress was working furiously to try to save Terri, and would stand guard at her door to prevent any medical personnel from entering her room to remove the tube that was providing her nutrition and hydration.

Finally, I was sure if nothing else was working, that at 12:59,just before the hour scheduled for Terri’s gruesome execution to begin, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would at least issue a 60-day reprieve for the legislative bodies to complete the work they were attempting to do to save Terri’s life and to make sure that no other vulnerable adults could be sentenced to starve to death in America. I had done the legal research weeks before and was fully convinced that Gov. Bush had the power, under our co-equal branches of government, to issue a reprieve in the face of a judicial death sentence intended to lead to the starvation and dehydration of an innocent woman when scores of doctors and neurologists were saying she could be helped.

All morning long, as I was in the room with Terri and her family, we were telling her that help was on the way. Terri was in good spirits that morning. The mood in her room was jovial, particularly around noontime, as we knew Congressional attorneys were on the scene and many were working hard to save Terri’s life. For most of that time, I was visiting and talking with Terri along with Terri’s sister Suzanne Vitadamo, Suzanne’s husband, and Terri’s aunt, who was visiting from New York to help provide support for the family. A female Pinellas Park police office was stationed at the door outside Terri’s room.

Terri was sitting up in her lounge chair, dressed and looking alert and well. Her feeding tube had been plugged in around 11 a.m. and we all felt good that she was still being fed. Suzanne and I were talking, joking, and laughing with Terri, telling her she was going to go to Washington D.C. to testify before Congress, which meant that finally Terri’s husband Michael would be required to fix her wheelchair. After that Suzanne could take Terri to the mall shopping and could wheel her outdoors every day to feel the wind and sunshine on her face, something she has not been able to do for more than five years.

At one point, I noticed Terri’s window blinds were pulled down. I went to the window to raise them so Terri could look at the beautiful garden outside her window and see the sun after several days of rain. As sunlight came into the room, Terri’s eyes widened and she was obviously very pleased.

At another point, Suzanne and I told Terri she needed to suck in all the food she could because she might not be getting anything for a few days. During that time, Mary Schindler, Terri’s mother, joined us for a bit, and we noticed there were bubbles in Terri’s feeding tube. We joked that we didn’t want her to begin burping, and called the nurses to fix the feeding tube, which they did.

Terri’s mother did not come back into the room. This was a very difficult day for Bob and Mary Schindler. I suspect they were less hopeful all along than I was, having lived through Terri’s last two feeding tube removals.

Suzanne and I continued to talk and joke with Terri for probably an hour or more. At one point Suzanne called Terri the bionic woman and I heard Terri laugh out loud heartily for the first time since I have been visiting with her. She laughed so hard that for the first time I noticed the dimples in her cheeks.

The most dramatic event of this visit happened at one point when I was sitting on Terri’s bed next to Suzanne. Terri was sitting in her lounge chair and her aunt was standing at the foot of the chair. I stood up and learned over Terri. I took her arms in both of my hands.

I said to her, “Terri if you could only say ‘I want to live’ this whole thing could be over today.” I begged her to try very hard to say, “I want to live.” To my enormous shock and surprise, Terri’s eyes opened wide, she looked me square in the face, and with a look of great concentration, she said, “Ahhhhhhh.” Then, seeming to summon up all the strength she had, she virtually screamed, “Waaaaaaaa.”

She yelled so loudly that Michael Vitadamo, Suzanne’s husband, and the female police officer who were then standing together outside Terri’s door, clearly heard her. At that point, Terri had a look of anguish on her face that I had never seen before and she seemed to be struggling hard, but was unable to complete the sentence. She became very frustrated and began to cry.

I was horrified that I was obviously causing Terri so much anguish. Suzanne and I began to stroke Terri’s face and hair to comfort her. I told Terri I was very sorry. It had not been my intention to upset her so much. Suzanne and I assured Terri that her efforts were much appreciated and that she did not need to try to say anything more. I promised Terri I would tell the world that she had tried to say, ”I want to live.”

When Is That Bitch Gonna Die?

From News Max, via the Anchoress:

A certified nursing assistant who cared for Terri Schiavo in 1997 filed a sworn affidavit in the case stating that she was able to feed Schiavo normally on multiple occasions - but that husband Michael Schiavo would allow only a feeding tube.

Heidi Law, a CNA at the Palm Gardens nursing home, testified:

"At least three times during any shift where I took care of Terri, I made sure to give Terri a wet washcloth filled with ice chips, to keep her mouth moistened. I personally saw her swallow the ice water and never saw her gag.

"[Another CNA] and I frequently put orange juice or apple juice in her washcloth to give her something nice to taste, which made her happy. On three or four occasions I personally fed Terri small mouthfuls of Jello, which she was able to swallow and enjoyed immensely."

Law testified that the only reason she didn't attempt to feed Ms. Schiavo more frequently was "because I was so afraid of being caught by Michael."

Editorializing on the case in light of Law's account, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette said Sunday, "It is one thing to withdraw a feeding tube; another entirely to withhold that day's meal tray."
Carla Sauer Iyer was a registered nurse at the same facility. In her own affidavit Iyer testified that Ms. Schiavo was capable of speech, explaining, "[Terri] spoke on a regular basis, saying such things as 'Mommy' and 'help me.'"

When she put a washcloth in Terri's hands to keep her fingers from curling together, Iyer said, "Michael saw it and made me take it out, saying that was therapy" that he had forbidden.
"Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri's death," the RN noted. "Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died yet?' and 'When is that bitch gonna die?'"

The Anchoress says this is, "From NewsMax, so who knows," but I'm not sure what reason she has to worry about News Max's credibility. News Max is clearly biased towards the right, but I haven't noticed them outright lying. Then again, I will admit, I haven't paid that much attention.

Maybe we will find out this story is not true. But, as Anchoress says, we really ought to find out, don't you think?

Cool Photo Of The Day

South Park Conservatives

From StudentCon.com:

Did anyone catch last night's South Park?

UC, Boulder "know-it-all college hippies" taking over the small Colorado town? The reference to the Ward Churchill saga when one of the hippies calls Cartman a "little Eichman?" The lesson learned about the laziness and selfishness of the left?

My favorite moment from the show:

Kyle (or Stan): "Man, I didn't know that corporations were so bad."

Hippy: "You just haven't gone to college yet; I just finished my first semester."

eheh..

If you're a conservative and have been reluctant to watch the show, because of the violence, graphic sex references, and the vulgar language, well - get over it! South Park has to be one of the most conservative shows on television, and that is not a bad thing.

Brian Anderson, author of the soon-to-be-released South Park Conservatives, argues that shows like South Park seem to be popular among individuals who are not fans of political correctness, and they often tend to be cultural conservatives who are fed up with the left's control of Hollywood and the media. I would also argue that many of these "South Park conservatives" are young people who fit the "studentcon" definition as well.

It seems that the stereotypical college Republican is either a cold-hearted business student or a dorky computer science major looking to hang out with other pocket-protector-wearing kids. The truth is, many conservatives would have a hard time identifying the conservative college student on the typical American college campus. Considering they don't exactly let their political positions be known (reference the West Express saga if you wonder why), they blend in quite well to the campus culture. They listen to Hip Hop, Alternative, and Punk/Ska music. They have piercings, tattoos, and funky hair. Many are either not religious, or, if they are, they're not carrying around Bibles in their backpack. And.. They like t.v. shows like South Park.

Studentcons may be irreverent, but they're using their brains; they aren't just letting themselves be brainwashed by a campus culture that punishes and criticizes if you dare "step out of line." Mainly they're individuals, which is comical if you consider that leftwing college students (who share their ideology with, in most cases, the majority of the student body - and in all cases, the vast majority of the faculty) consider themselves to be the "enlightened" individuals, fighting "the Man's, bourgeois/corporate conformity" perpetuated by the "capitalist ruling class." Yeah, you're a real "individual" when you just parrot the material fed to you by every professor, "expert," text book, student group, guest speaker, etc. that you encounter on campus.

But wait! Are you some paleocon wondering how a young conservative could support such "filth" like that displayed in such wicked shows like South Park? Have you decided to finish reading this post so you can write this young "whipper snapper" a nice e-mail about how supporting shows like South Park leads to the "degeneration of society?" Don't waste your time.

From kindergarten until college graduation, most American kids are being put through one long left-wing course on failed theories of "social justice" all at your expense. Sixth graders are being shown how to put on condoms (in class), cultural-Marxists are making 5-minute sing-a-longs that show Sesame Street characters and Sponge Bob singing about "diversity," and professors like Ward Churchill preach anti-corporate, anti-globalist, anti-American propaganda at the local community college down your street.

So a cartoon that frequently shows the gruesome death of a pre-teen named Kenny, has the children attend class where their teacher has a hand-puppet (and is gay), and where only most of the cuss-words coming out of the 8-year olds' mouths are "bleeped" - yet has episodes that support the War on Terror, bash political correctness, and, most recently, expose the emptiness of the left and their control of the university - isn't leading to the "degeneration" of this society.

I have a friend who is a Pastor at a church, in her 40's, and is a South Park lover. In fact, if I recall correctly, I think she and I had a discussion about her wanting to use a South Park episode within the body of her weekly message, but she couldn't figure out how to edit all the curse words out, without the whole thing descending into an exercise in absurdity.

I love South Park, but even more than that, I loved Team American. I loved how they poked fun at America's gung ho spirit but, at the same time, showed how it is truly a superior approach to life, when the chips are down.

Oh yeah, and I liked watching Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins meeting gruesome ends. Yeah baby.

There is a whole new generation of South Park Conservatives just starting to move their way through college and into the workforce. Referred to as the Millenials, they will be a force to reckon with in about fifteen years. Just in time for the climax of the War on Terror, if I'm reading my clock right.

It Has Nothing To Do With Anti-Semitism
Our Only Aim Was Commercial

From theJerusalem Post, via the Eurabian Times:

In Turkish bookshops, there's one bestseller that some book shops are hesitant to put on the shelves next to the rest.

New paperback versions of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" have suddenly become top sellers in Turkey, raising questions about whether the sales reflect growing anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiment in this Muslim country, or if it's just curiosity and a cheap read.

Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf", or "My Struggle," in the 1920s, filling it with anti-Semitic diatribes and his strategy for world domination.

Tens of thousands of copies of the book have sold in Turkey in recent months since at least two cheap paperback versions were released.

Many people are not sure why they're such hot sellers.

Analysts point out that many in this Muslim country are angry over the violence between Israelis and their fellow Muslim Palestinians. There is also increased frustration with US policy in neighboring Iraq and in general in the region. Some say the book sales are a reaction to Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

Lina Filiba, executive vice president of Turkey's Jewish Community, called the popularity of Hitler's book "disturbing" but said price and curiosity due to prominent media attention were major factors.

She added the sales were part of a "worrying trend" with anti-Semitic publications - such as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a 19th-century anti-Semitic tract - even on sale in bustling department stores.

"I think there's an increase in anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-foreigner feeling that have paralleled (the) December 17" decision by the European Union to open membership talks with Turkey, Filiba said.

The country's top seller, "Metal Storm," is a novel about a fictional war between Turkey and the United States. Conspiracy theory books are popular sellers and the press is extremely critical of the United States and Israel.

At least two publishing houses, Emre and Manifesto, have released cheap versions of Hitler's book this year.

Oguz Tektas from Manifesto said it had printed 30,000 copies of the book - a relatively large number for Turkey - and had sold at least 25,000 so far.

"It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Our only aim was commercial," he said.

A company list of bestsellers across Turkey listed the Emre edition of the book as the No. 4 four top seller for the D and R bookshop. Officials from the Remzi bookstore confirmed the book was among its top 40 sellers.

But that doesn't mean the shops are comfortable with the book. In one D and R shop in Istanbul, the book couldn't be found with the other bestsellers, but was instead on a lower shelf.

"That's where they told us to put it," said saleswoman Nihan Bora. Still, "it's selling a lot."

At the Dost bookshop in Ankara, the book was on a high shelf, far out of reach, where the cover featuring a picture of Hitler, can't be seen. The manager said he was selling about five books a day and added they intentionally were not including it in the best sellers section.

"I saw the book on TV and got curious about Hitler's life and decided to buy it," said Asli Ugur, 20, a university student, who also bought a book about Cuban revolutionary Che Guevera.

You think the young revolutionaries that walk around here in America wearing Che Guevarra t-shirts might soon start becoming interested in Hitler's life as well?

Rubber Arrow Bounces Off
The Hardened Heart Of The Philosoraptor

Yesterday I wrote this post, in which I took the Philosoraptor to task for claiming that George Bush "cooked" the evidence of Saddam Hussein's WMD's. Today the Philosoraptor responds to my post with a post of his own, which was really pretty fair considering how hard I was on him:

Still in Denial

I was wondering the other day whether anyone out there still really believed that the administration didn't cook the evidence about WMDs. Then I ran across this, an alleged refutation of my latest thing on Krauthammer. That post of mine isn't very good, incidentally--in case you haven't noticed--but the Cuanas post doesn't demonstrate that. It's a rubber arrow. Anyway, my favorite parts:

1. The suggestion that there's something funny about thinking about international affairs over Spring break. (Hmm...maybe that is kinda funny, come to think of it...)and

2. The suggestion that the following two propositions are incompatible:

(a) The Administration cooked the evidence about WMDs and

(b) France and Germany thought that Saddam had WMDs.

Egad, even France and Germany thought so?!?!?!?!

For the record, I thought that Saddam had WMDs, and still recognized that the administration was cooking the evidence... In fact, I remember saying to one of my colleagues "There is no doubt in my mind that he's got 'em, and I still think they [i.e. members of the administration] are lying [about the evidence]."

So, of course, I felt it necessary to respond to him in the comments section of his blog:

Hello Philosoraptor,I'm glad to hear that you supported taking Saddam Hussein out of power. I'm also glad that you see that American policy is having some positive, if tentative, effect on the Middle East. But, the reason I wrote that post, was that you said Bush "cooked" the evidence.

As I pointed out in my post, to say he "cooked" the evidence is to say he perpetrated a fraud. If you accuse someone of committing fraud and then it turns out you were incorrect, then you owe that person an apology.

As to your point that one can believe that Saddam had WMD's and at the same time believe that Bush cooked the evidence. Well, that's true. But, at that point we're moving into a whole different definition of cooked.

What you are apparently saying is Bush exaggerated the evidence. That he insinuated that he knew things to be true, when he might have had a lesser degree of certainty.

There is a fine line between such machinations and simply putting spin upon one's story. All politicians, corporations, attorney, salespeople and, yes, even college professors spin their story when they tell it.

All of us make our case by attempting to put it in the best light.

Unless you have solid evidence that lied about something specific and imporant, it is probably not a good idea to accuse him of perpetrating a fraud on the American people.

How's that for a rubber arrow?

Oh yes, and you should probably keep working on the koan.

That last comment was a reference to I had said that I wanted him to think about why I might find this portion of a Philosoraptor comment funny:

I came back from Spring break with the intention of asking us all to consider the following ...

I can see where he's coming from in his speculation about why I might find it funny, but no, that wasn't the reason. And I'm still not saying what the reason is. Anyone have any thoughts? TVD? DS? Jaymarie? Anyone, anyone?

UPDATE: TVD writes in to me to say that he doesn't get my koan challenge either. Well, if he doesn't, then maybe it's the kind of thing that's only funny to me. I must admit, I do find myself laughing at parts in movies that no one else seems to find funny.

The "Ambiguity Of Conciousness"
On Trying To Define Things Which Are Impossible To Define

From Graham Lester:

In colloquial speech, the words "consciousness" and "awareness" are often used as synonyms. Psychologists, however, make a distinction between the two, although they disagree on what precisely the definition of "consciousness" ought to be. One definition of consciousness is simply "awareness of awareness." Another is, "Selective attention to ongoing perceptions, thoughts, and feelings."

The presence of "awareness of awareness" in animals and in people who suffer from severe brain dysfunction is surprisingly difficult to prove experimentally. Some scientists have related the possession of "consciousness" to "theory of mind" and suggested that it is the very faculty that makes us human.

The Terri Schiavo case shows that all this is no longer simply academic. Here’s what Daniel Dennett says about consciousness:

I believe, but cannot yet prove, that acquiring a human language (an oral or sign language) is a necessary precondition for consciousness–in the strong sense of there being a subject, an I, a 'something it is like something to be.' It would follow that non-human animals and pre-linguistic children, although they can be sensitive, alert, responsive to pain and suffering, and cognitively competent in many remarkable ways–including ways that exceed normal adult human competence–are not really conscious (in this strong sense): there is no organized subject (yet) to be the enjoyer or sufferer, no owner of the experiences as contrasted with a mere cerebral locus of effects.

This assertion is shocking to many people, who fear that it would demote animals and pre-linguistic children from moral protection, but this would not follow. Whose pain is the pain occurring in the newborn infant? There is not yet anybody whose pain it is, but that fact would not license us to inflict painful stimuli on babies or animals any more than we are licensed to abuse the living bodies of people in comas who are definitely not conscious. Link.

Unfortunately, it is hopelessly naïve to expect that all those in positions of authority will take the compassionate view that Dennett alludes to in the second paragraph. Given the ambiguity of "consciousness," it is fairly easy for experts to argue that an individual’s life should be terminated owing to lack of "consciousness" in front of a public that takes the word to mean "awareness."

I could not prove to the satisfaction of some rigorous scientists that my autistic son possesses consciousness. I expect that there are in fact degrees of consciousness, but I cannot prove it.

But history tells me that the holocaust began with the father of a severely impaired boy who wrote to Hitler and asked his permission to euthanize the child. This led to the gassing of thousands of "feebleminded" German citizens, and eventually millions of Jews. Will the doctors and nurses in Terri Schiavo’s case just be following orders?

I remember being a young Philosophy student, studying Noam Chomsky and the linguistic Philosphers, and coming to realize that there were actually people who believed what Dennet states here, that people are not concious if they do not have language.

A Professor of mine told the class that without words one can't think. I being the obnoxious guy that I am, raised my hand and told him that I think without using words on an almost constant basis. He asked me how I think without using words. I told him I think in music, sounds and images.

I'll never forget this next part. This really happened, so check it out. The Professor looked at me incredulously and asked, "You mean to tell me you see images, like pictures in your head?"
"Yeah. All the time."

"Really?"

I nodded and many of the other students in the class nodded as well. The Professor looked at us like we were nuts and asked, "You all do? You all say that you can see images in your minds all the time?"

We all nodded.

"I don't think I've formed more than 3 or 4 mental images in my mind in my entire life."

He really said that. This story is anecdotal, but I'm going to finish telling it for a reason. First, though, I'm going to say that when I first heard this idea that Linguistic Philosophers said that human beings can't truly think without words it sounded like a denial of human reality to me. I won't go the whole way and say that I saw it as an inhumane idea, but it was unhuman, let's put it that way.

Now, the kicker to this story is that in later years my Professor killed his girlfriends husband. His colleagues rallied around him and mortgaged their homes to put up bail for him. But shortly after that it came out that he had been in and out of mental institutions and that he had believed, at one time, that the CIA was monitoring his thoughts through the fillings in his teeth.

So my Professor was one sick puppy. What does that prove? Not much really. But, I do think that my Professors lack of mental imagery was a symptom of his mental illness. And similarly I think that a society which does not value the vague effluvia of conciousness will inevitably come to not value those who only possess only the vague effluvia of conciousness.

The idea that Terri Shiavo, or a person in a coma, or an autistic child are not truly concious are all equally as preposterous. We can not define whether or not a human being is alive by using the word conciousness, when we can't even accurately define what we mean by it. The phase "awareness of awareness" is enticing in it's cuteness, but really says nothing. It is a labyrinth made of a void, for what is awareness itself. Well, I guess awareness is the state of being concious of ... uh, well, uh, this is all totally tautological, isn't it?

The stunning thing about the Terri Shiavo case has been the realization that the term "Persistent Vegetative State" by which we all confidently assumed the authories meant a person who is brain dead, doesn't mean anything of the like. Terri Schiavo is clearly far from brain dead.

We have always been ok with unplugging the life support of a person who is brain dead, because a brain, once dead, does not spontaneously fire back up.

But, the problem is, while we were sleeping, the medical establisment has redefined the term "vegetable," a term which, to my mind, probably shouldn't be used in relationship to human beings anyway.

We don't need to end Terri Schiavo's life, we need to end this redefinition of what it means to be brain dead.

After All, Reality Is Only What You Make Of It

From Little Green Footballs:

Oh no, no potential for abuse here at all! AP to Offer Two Leads for Some Stories.

NEW YORK—Attention, Associated Press members, prepare to get more for your money: Now available, two leads for the price of one.

In a break with tradition at the 156-year-old news cooperative, the AP will now offer two different leads for many of its news stories, the organization confirmed Wednesday.

“The concept is simple: On major spot stories — especially when events happen early in the day — we will provide you with two versions to choose between,” the AP said in an advisory to members. “One will be the traditional ‘straight lead’ that leads with the main facts of what took place. The other will be the ‘optional,’ an alternative approach that attempts to draw in the reader through imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means.”

The advisory added that the change is an attempt to “enhance the value of the AP news report to your newspaper.” The AP serves about 1,700 members.

AP officials said the optional leads have already begun to appear in some sports stories and on the national news wires during the past two months. The new initiative is in response to requests from many editors who want to be able to offer readers “something fresh so they will want to pick up the newspaper and read a story, even though the facts have been splashed all over the Web and widely broadcast.”

Notice that the AP’s main goal is to differentiate their print product from the internet versions. But it’s more than a little disturbing to read that a news service will intentionally employ techniques like “imagery,” “perspective,” and “creative means.”

We all know they’ve been doing it already, especially with their relentlessly biased imagery and creatively embroidered reports from the Middle East. The difference now is that they’re not just admitting it, they’re touting it as “adding value.”

And here are examples of the types of different leads they’ll be writing:

Traditional

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) A suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners Thursday, splattering blood and body parts over rows of overturned white plastic chairs. The attack, which killed 47 and wounded more than 100, came as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad said they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government.

Optional

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) Yet again, almost as if scripted, a day of hope for a new, democratic Iraq turned into a day of tears as a bloody insurgent attack undercut a political step forward.
On Thursday, just as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad were telling reporters that they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government, a suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners in the northern city of Mosul.

As Charles of LGF points out, the AP has already been offering alternative versions of reality. Judging by their "Optional" story here it appears they are intending to ratchet up the Alice in Wonderland effect.

Pravda anyone?

In Iran An Expression Of UnIslamic Joy
Leads To Tear Gas, Arrest, And Torture

From National Review, an article by Michael Ledeen:

From al-Reuters, we have a masterpiece of disinformation:

ISFAHAN — Iranian authorities beat up and tear gassed exuberant young revellers as they breathed new life into a pre-Islamic fire festival with a night of dancing, flirting and fireworks. The Islamic Republic, which has an awkward relationship with its ancient Zoroastrian religion, only gave guarded recognition to the "Chaharshanbe Souri" festival last year.

The Islamic republic does not have "an awkward relationship" with Zoroastrianism. It forbids Zoroastrian practices, including the celebration of the Zoroastrian New Year, Norooz. Forget about "guarded recognition;" there is a ban.

The mullahs know something that al-Reuters apparently either doesn’t know, or doesn’t choose to report: that there is a big Zoroastrian revival under way in Iran, another sign of the hollowness of the Islamic republic, and the hostility of the Iranian people to their leaders.

And to say that the authorities "beat up and gassed" some "revelers" is quite an understatement, since, on the evening of March 15h, there were very large-scale demonstrations all over Iran, combining the Norooz celebrations with calls for the downfall of the regime itself. Effigies of top mullahs were burned in the streets. But al-Reuters makes it sound like a frat party that just got a bit out of hand:

"Hundreds of people poured onto the streets in Tehran and other cities for a rare night of partying. Public revelry is unusual in Iran where the authorities consider it to be at odds with the country's strict moral codes."

The IRNA news agency said police used tear gas in more than four places in Tehran. Vigilantes were also seen beating up a group of boys in the central city of Isfahan. The Iranian student group headquartered in Texas provides us with a considerably more accurate — if somewhat ungrammatical — picture:

These clashes happened as brutal militiamen attacked Iranians who transformed the already hardly tolerated celebration into protest action and show of "un-Islamic" joy.

... according to Iranians with whom I have spoken, there were monster demonstrations in eleven provinces and 37 cities, and many thousands — one source said more than 30,000 — people were arrested, some only briefly, others shipped off to the infamous prisons and torture chambers of the regime. The most dramatic events took place in Shiraz, where the demonstrators directed a chant toward Washington: "Bush, you told us to rise up, and so we have. Why don’t you act?"

The president publicly promised the Iranian people that the United States would support them if they acted to win their own freedom, and the Iranians are now calling on Bush to make good on that promise.

The problem is that the administration may have outwitted itself, as has happened in the past. It seems that our current tactic is to set a series of traps for the Europeans and the terror masters.

The Europeans are told that we will support their nuclear negotiations with the Iranian regime for the time being, but they must join with us in strong action if the talks fail. The Syrians are invited to leave Lebanon, and Hezbollah is invited to abandon terrorism, and are warned of harsh consequences if they do not.

The president quite clearly doesn’t expect the negotiations to succeed, doesn’t expect Syria to accept a free Lebanon, and doesn’t for a minute think that Hezbollah can renounce its terrorist essence. In each case, we have convinced ourselves that, by taking a sweet and reasonable position today, we will be in a stronger position for tough action tomorrow. It will make it easier for at least some of the Europeans to join with us, whereas they would oppose tough action right away.

All that may well be true, but even so, it is the wrong thing to do. First of all, it enables the terrorists and their masters to buy time, and this is a moment of enormous risk for them. Every day they remain in power encourages them, and discourages the forces of freedom in their countries. When the people of Shiraz ask President Bush "why don’t you act?" they are reflecting this reality. Carpe Diem, Mister President.

But above all, the clever stratagem adopted by the administration ignores Machiavelli’s greatest lesson: Leadership is all about winning and losing, not about elegance and deep thinking. If we win the Europeans and lose the Middle East, we will have lost. But if we win the Middle East, the Europeans will hail us, as we see from their grudging tributes to Bush’s successful liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The fires of freedom are burning all over Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. Don't stand back and admire the flames. Push the dictators in, and then cheer as free societies emerge.

The point of Ledeens article is important. We need to hurry. True, but I want to focus on this one sentence about the Zoroastrian celebration as being an "expression of unIslamic joy."

My long march away from being a Leftist towards becoming what I am today started in the year 1987, when I saw Reagan meeting with Gorbachev. It was clear that Reagan, despite what the media said about him being a "war-monger", wanted peace. He was sincere about nuclear disarmament.

Right around that time, my girlfriends father, who was an engineer in the dreaded American Military Industrial Complex, was sent to Russia on a program on information sharing, which I imagine was reciprocity for Glasnost. When he came back, he told me stories that made me want to cry.

Whereas the media paternally explained to my warped young mind that the Soviet Union was just like us, and that stories of oppression were exaggerated, and indeed, that we Americans live under oppression as well, we just don't realize it, my girlfriends father's stories illustrated exactly what the word Totalitarian really meant.

The people of the Soviet Union really had almost no idea of what was going on outside their world. They really had little choice in what they could do with their lives. They were really afraid of the KGB. And they were really depressed.

Once my girlfriends father finished telling me the stories I looked at him, my pimply face barely visible underneath my mane of long curly hair and said something along the order of, "Woah, they're living in a psychological Holocaust."

My girlfriend's father and his family had fled from the Holocaust and wound up in Mexico, so to him my observation registered, and it might have been the only time he actually liked me.

But, I didn't say it to make him like me. Truly, I was stunned by what he had told me. The Soviet Union was one big concentration camp.

How could the media lie to us like that? How could we as a nation sit back and allow hundreds of millions of people to be slaves to a Totalitarian regime like the Soviet Union? I thought about the reality of all those people, their lives passing them by with almost no choice, and NO JOY.

That was what went through my mind. Yes, the Soviet Union was a kleptocracy focused on keeping power in the hands of a few, but the overwhelming effect of this, to my mind, was that it stole the Joy from the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

And the media told us it was ok.

That day was my first step towards real adulthood.

The New Kristalnacht?

I'm adding a blog, called Gates of Vienna, to my blogroll. Usually I don't make an announcement, but in this case, I find the blog so exceptional, well-written, and driven by a sense of justice, that I want to be very obvious about it. Here's an excerpt from a post:

Full disclosure: I am not a Jew. I am a practicing Christian, non-evangelical, from a background of tolerant Protestantism. I read eclectically, am well educated, and consider myself an intellectual. And I stand with the Jews.

Many historians date the beginning of the Holocaust to November 9th, 1938. On that date the Nazi government launched a pogrom against the Jews, killing hundreds and arresting many more. Synagogues were torched, Jewish shops and homes were looted and destroyed, and Jews were shipped off to concentration camps. That night of major violence came to be known as Kristallnacht, in reference to the shattered glass found on the sidewalks in front of Jewish businesses all over Germany.

A few days later new laws were passed by the Nazi government, effectively banning all economic activity by Jews and removing what few civil rights remained to them. It was a big step down the road that led through the gates of Auschwitz and Treblinka to the Final Solution.

Does the West stand on the threshold of a new Kristallnacht? The alarming spread of anti-Semitism across the globe is ominous evidence of a new cycle of hatred.

When Jewish students are attacked on an American university campus by protesters screaming "Hitler was right!";

when the prime minister of Iran says, "...the use of a single atomic bomb has the power to destroy Israel completely, while it will only cause partial damage to the Islamic world";

when synagogues are burned in Belgium and European Jews are afraid to wear the yarmulke openly;

when The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is made into a television drama in Egypt and sold openly on Wal-Mart's website;

when Jews are fleeing anti-Semitism in France to settle in Israel;

when the world does not rise up in outrage against these evils;

-- then it is time to prepare for a new and more widespread Kristallnacht.

Anti-Semitism is virtually everywhere, even in such formerly safe havens of the Anglosphere as the USA and Australia. Around the world, but especially in the Middle East, countries which once boasted large and vibrant Jewish communities are now emptying themselves of Jews. Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq once were homes for Jews. Now there are virtually none; they have left their homes and their cultural roots to resettle in Israel or America.

There had been Jews in Yemen since at least the second century, taking on many of the cultural characteristics of the Muslims around them and contributing to the civilization of Yemen while retaining their Jewish identity; now they are gone.

The "World Community", as exemplified by the UN, regards violence against Jews to be of no importance. The UN passes dozens of resolutions condemning Israel, the most notorious being Resolution 3379 (1975), which declared that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." All Israeli actions towards the Palestinians are censured, including the building of a wall to protect innocent Israelis against suicide attacks. But in all the years of the UN’s existence, not one resolution has been passed against those who have promised to annihilate the "Zionist entity".

Anti-Semitism was already established on the nationalistic Right. More alarming are the notably virulent strains now reappearing on the Left. During Hitler's time, many of the Old Bolsheviks were Jews; Bolshevism was considered "revolutionary Jewish politics" and was reviled as such on the Right. But in the Soviet Union persecution of Jews flared sporadically and the purging of "rootless cosmopolitans" was the duty of the Party.

Now, with the euphemistic equation Zionism=Racism, the very existence of Israel has been called into question. An anti-Zionist might say, "I am only against Zionism, not against the Jews," but that is merely a new and disingenuous cover for Jew-hatred. The mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv is the dream of the enemies of Zionism.

In their reaction to conservatives by those on the Left, a new term has developed: "Neoconservative" is a code word for "Jew". A neocon who supports Israel is thus an agent of the Zionists. I am, in fact, one of their unwitting dupes as I write this, since I stand with the Jews.

Is the rich and fertile culture of "The West" even conceivable without the Jews? In every enterprise open to them Jews excel. They are over-represented in the highest reaches of the arts and sciences, and in the academy; despite historical obstacles and discrimination, they are to be found among the greatest mathematicians and physicists, composers and musicians, historians and novelists. Examine the masthead of a magazine, the credits for a movie, or the members of a university faculty, to see the contributions of the Jews.

Beyond those achievements, the greatest gift of the Jews to Western Civilization has been the Law. The Jews brought us the idea that a man stands accountable before his Creator, Who will sit in judgment over him; that the Law is just and eternal, and that obedience to it is a moral and righteous act.

Christianity, especially as developed by Saint Paul, was responsible for the spread of this new idea of law and the individual throughout the West. Still, it is in essence a Jewish idea. Christ's revolutionary message urged a return to the Law as originally understood by the Patriarchs. In its earliest years the gate to Christian conversion opened onto Judaism first.

The Laws of the Jews form the moral and ethical core of Western Civilization. Without them we would be a hollow culture, subject to the whims of polytheism and prone to the fads of nihilism. They are the backbone of what makes us civilized; we repeal them at our own peril.

Whether or not it is 1933 (or 1936, or 1938) all over again, it is time for the West to make a stand. Before the shards of glass cover the pavement in front of Jewish businesses in the new Kristallnacht; before laws are passed restricting the rights of Jews; before whole families are shot and bulldozed into mass graves; before the mushroom cloud rises over Tel Aviv -- Western Civilization must stand up and be counted. We must say, with the Jews, "Never Again."I stand with the Jews.

The only thing I want to add is that, at first, I thought about taking out the paragraph about the accomplisments of Jews. The sentence, "Examine the masthead of a magazine, the credits for a movie, or the members of a university faculty, to see the contributions of the Jews," in particular, worried me.

But then, as I thought about it, I realized this hesitancy on my part is evidence of the insidiousness of anti-Semitism. That I, as supporter of Jews and Israel, would think to delete such a statement is pathetic.

How is it that Jews are criticized for their accomplisments? Think about that. Any other group would be held up for praise. Arabs are particularly successful in the United States. One hears Arab organizations touting the accomplisments of Arabs. We do not hesitate to celebrate the accomplisments of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, etc. Why is it that we don't celebrate the accomplisments of Jews, but instead find conspiracy in them?

Well, of course, there are many Jews in positions of power and esteem in many areas of life. But, if one needs proof that these positions of power and esteem are deserved, one only need look at the list of Nobel Prizes handed out in categories which are completley accomplisment-based, such as mathematics and physics. One will also find Jews disproportionately represented in those categories.

I believe the reason for the accomplisments of Jews is exactly that they are the carriers of the Law of God. Jewish children are often instructed in how to study and analyze the Torah (the books of the Bible which contain the Law) from a very young age. This is a time-honored tradition, and is even considered a necessity, in many Jewish homes. Is it any wonder that this would lead to powers of analysis which would carry over into other pursuits as they grow older?

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Who Is This Man?

I have my suspicions.

If Bush Was Right, Then Who Was Wrong?
The State of Euro Politics In the Light Of American Victories

From the British daily, the International Herald Tribune, via No Pasaran:

"Middle East on the Move, Is Bush to Thank?", a newspaper's banner headline quite fairly asked Europeans last week. What a terrifying premise.

Perhaps not for scores of millions of Arabs. But if George Bush is proven right on Iraq, and more than a bit responsible for the Arab Spring of shaky political advances now shimmering from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, then it's a frightening development and delegitimizing situation for European politicians from Spain to Germany.

They are pols like Gerhard Schröder and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who essentially won election by running against Bush and the Iraq war. Leaving the talk of freedom or jihadist terrorism to the yahoos, they have linked their futures to what they supposed would be the eternal vote-cornucopia of resistance to Bush's vision for the Middle East.

Adding France and Belgium, the group widens to include governments that hoped to leverage their stance on Bush and the war into a genesis myth for a Europe redefining itself as America's counterweight.

Until the elections in Iraq, in this view, Europe's wishful identity as both moral superpower and tower of wisdom had been demonstrated to the world through Bush's headfirst dive into the hopeless Middle East.

Now, things are happening that suggest the start of a change in European mind-set in the zone where the Bush administration usually was called dumb and dangerous.

… Could this be European revisionism on Bush? In any event, when it comes to movement in the Middle East, Laurent Murawiec, a French security affairs expert, wrote that progress certainly wasn't the work of the Holy Ghost or "the very French strategy based for so long on not 'isolating' terrorist killers" like Hezbollah.

The newspaper Le Monde, whose headline asked if Bush was to thank for the flicker of hopefulness in the Arab world, published a reply from official but unnamed French voices. Naturally, they said, France couldn't deny the power of American influence and military presence in the region, but instead they insisted the winds of change did not emanate from the war in Iraq, where little was yet resolved.

In this version, the advances in the Israel-Palestinian conflict yielded no credit to Bush for his refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat; or, indeed, introspection about the years of diligent French support for him. Rather, Bush's essential Middle East contribution had been pressuring Israel to enter talks with the Palestinians again.

Such is the region through French theoretical eyes. In fact, events have made France something of an American ward on the Lebanon-Syria issue, a situation that tacitly gives Bush his due more meaningfully than anything France could say.

When the Syrians pushed Jacques Chirac's intimate friend, Rafik Hariri, out of power in Lebanon, the gesture signified to the Middle East that French protection or practical leverage there meant little or nothing. To respond to this affront, and to jab at its former friends in Syria, France enlisted the Bush administration last fall to produce a joint Security Council resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

Then came Hariri's assassination a month ago. Because it refocused Arab attention on the incapacity of France to act alone in any material fashion in the region, the French hewed to the Bush line on the specifics of a Syrian pullout and supporting Lebanese democracy. On Iran's nuclear arms program, if the Americans have endorsed the European negotiating plan for now, it has come at the cost to France of a public promise to the Bush administration to help it in bringing Iran before the Security Council if the talks fail.

Unlike Schröder, Chirac has the personal luxury of staying away from immediate grief arising from the new facts. Schröder must go to the polls next year in German circumstances of disastrous unemployment and the weakest growth prospects in Europe.

Alongside that lost economic strength and the appearance of Bush-led change in the Middle East, add an increasingly ludicrous Schröder campaign boast of Germany re-emerging as a political force in the world on the basis of his opposition to the Iraq war.

Still, given a year to maneuver and Arab democratization more time to crystallize into reality, Schröder, as Europe's most facile political chameleon, might find a way to persuade his electorate that his steadfastness turned Bush into a peacemaker.

This revisionist reach is virtually impossible for Zapatero. In Spain's schoolyard of hand-on-throat politics, Zapatero seems required to inflict defeat every day on the conservative allies of his predecessor, José María Aznar, a vibrant supporter of Bush.

Saying that Bush may have gotten something right — Zapatero invited George Soros, Gary Hart and Tariq Ramadan, the Islamist political battler banned in the United States, to a conference here last week to insist that Bush hadn't — would mean the end of a domestic war Zapatero wants to continue roaring.

And that's not to mention disdain for looking at the world as it is.

Congress Steps In On Terri Schiavo
The Case Will Go To Federal Court

From Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - Congress leaders announced agreement Saturday on legislation they said would allow a severely brain-damaged woman to resume being fed while a federal court decides the right-to-die battle between her parents and her husband.

We think we have found a solution" to the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said at a Capitol Hills news conference. "All sides agree that this is the best way to proceed."

Final approval was expected Sunday when the House planned to meet in a special session, he said. The Senate planned to pass a resolution Saturday evening that would let House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., call the House into session on Sunday.

DeLay said President Bush (news - web sites) would sign the bill as soon as it got to him.
A White House spokesman, Jeanie Mamo, said the president, who was at his Texas ranch "was supportive of the efforts by congressional leaders. We remain in contact with Congress and the president is being kept apprised."

The compromise was similar to a Senate bill passed Thursday that would let a federal court have jurisdiction in the Schiavo case. House Republicans had favored broader legislation that applied similar cases that questioned the legality of withholding food or medical treatment from people who are incapacitated.

What Is Freedom?

There a great discussion/argument going on over at The Kafir Consititutionalist between the Kafir himself, and sometimes CUANAS commenter TVD, regarding the meaning of freedom. Highlights:

TVD responded the First Lesson of Pooklekufr Constitutionalism:

The flaw in Madden's thinking is that he does not allow us the freedom to enter into any social contracts we wish.

This is not Madden's error. Madden argues that the only purpose of government is to protect the right of humans to form voluntary associations so long as they bring no harm to others.Think about it this way: your mother's freedom exists only in the restriction on every other human from initiating physical force against her. Do you believe that the prohibition from robbing, raping, murdering, or defrauding your mother is a serious restriction on your "freedom"?There is no such thing as "freedom to." Freedom only has meaning when it refers to the absence of force.

The only free man is the hermit.

You are falling into the "Salurian Fallacy." Freedom is not the ability to do whatever one wishes.

Freedom is the absence of coercion.

Once man joins the City (Plato here), he is no longer "free" in the way Madden contemplates it. I expect my wife not to sleep with others, and promise not to either. Of course we are "free" to do so, but our City of two will crumble if we do, and it won't be pretty. What Madden imagines is anarchy, and anarchy is no more freedom than statism is. In the end, they are both tyrannies---rule by the strongest.

What do you mean? Do you mean that your requirement not to be coerced in any significant way limits me? That I am not "free" because I cannot rob or murder you? Do you mean that my requirement not to be coerced by you in any significant way limits you? That you are not "free" because you cannot rob or murder me? Do you mean that a society ordered on the principle that law exists only to ensure that no man initiates physical force against any other man, is "anarchy"? Do you mean that my claim to freedom is a tyrannical imposition to your claim to freedom, and vice versa? Please leave me another comment and explain why you think anyone should feel constricted by another person's liberty.

It goes on like that, over several different posts. Very thought-provoking and worthwhile.

Krauthammer Hurts Philosoraptor
Pastorius Dresses The Wounds

From an article by Charles Krauthammer, via Powerline:

It is not just that the ramparts of Euro-snobbery have been breached. Iraq and, more broadly, the Bush doctrine were always more than a purely intellectual matter. The left's patronizing, quasi-colonialist view of the benighted Arabs was not just analytically incorrect. It was morally bankrupt, too.

After all, going back at least to the Spanish Civil War, the left has always prided itself on being the great international champion of freedom and human rights. And yet, when America proposed to remove the man responsible for torturing, gassing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, the left suddenly turned into a champion of Westphalian sovereign inviolability.

A leftist judge in Spain orders the arrest of a pathetic, near-senile Gen. Augusto Pinochet eight years after he's left office, and becomes a human rights hero -- a classic example of the left morally grandstanding in the name of victims of dictatorships long gone. Yet for the victims of contemporary monsters still actively killing and oppressing -- Khomeini and his successors, the Assads of Syria and, until yesterday, Hussein and his sons -- nothing. No sympathy. No action. Indeed, virulent hostility to America's courageous and dangerous attempt at rescue.

The international left's concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism. Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out this selective concern for the victims of U.S. allies (such as Chile) 25 years ago. After the Cold War, the hypocrisy continues. For which Arab people do European hearts burn? The Palestinians. Why? Because that permits the vilification of Israel -- an outpost of Western democracy and, even worse, a staunch U.S. ally. Championing suffering Iraqis, Syrians and Lebanese offers no such satisfaction. Hence, silence.

Until now. Now that the real Arab street has risen to claim rights that the West takes for granted, the left takes note. It is forced to acknowledge that those brutish Americans led by their simpleton cowboy might have been right. It has no choice. It is shamed. A Lebanese, amid a sea of a million other Lebanese, raises a placard reading "Thank you, George W. Bush," and all that Euro-pretense, moral and intellectual, collapses.

The Philosoraptor doesn't appreciate Krauthammer's tone:

Shame on Krauthammer

It's hard to know what to say about Krauthammer's latest screed in the WaPo. I've actually been doing a lot of reflecting on W and his role in recent events, trying to look at it all from different angles, trying to see whether there's any rational way to grant him credit for recent developments. Irrational partisan drivel like Krauthammer's piece is not making my attempts at objectivity any easier, I've got to say.

I came back from Spring break with the intention of asking us all to consider the following: most of us seem to give credit to FDR for pulling the U.S. toward involvement in WWII against its will. Well, I do, anyway. Fighting Hitler was morally obligatory but most Americans didn't realize that. Consequently, FDR was forced to act anti-democratically, in ways designed (at least in part) to entangle us in affairs most of us had no desire to become entangled in. Although Pearl Harbor came along and decided the matter, that doesn't change anything.

So, if these actions redound to FDR's credit, then it seems that the following general principle must be true: a (in particular, democratic) leader acts rightly if he convinces his country to do the right thing, even if this requires deceiving the electorate.

But if that principle is true, then George W. Bush deserves credit for getting us to oust Saddam, even though he had to deceive us in order to do it. Considerations of consistency seem to prevent us from judging FDR one way and W another.

The difference, however, is that democratizing the Middle East was, so far as anyone can tell, never the real goal of W's invasion of Iraq. We still don't know what the real goal was, and may never know.

Does anyone smell the aroma of gears grinding just a little too hard? Well, at least the Philsoraptor's name is appropriate because, really, he appears to be living with a worldview whose time has long since passed.

And also, while I'm flinging the insults, I think I should compliment the Philosoraptor on an incredible line of unintentional satire, embedded in his piece. Let's look at it shall we?:

I came back from Spring break with the intention of asking us all to consider the following ...

For anyone who was a fan of Screaming Memes, tell me, was that a funny line, or what? I'm not even going to go into why, because if the Philosoraptor happens to technorati his blogsite, and find that I've linked to him, I'd prefer that he be left wondering just what it is about that line that would be so funny to me.

I imagine it as being like a koan that I'm giving him. You know like a little question he can turn over and over in his his mind,

"What's so funny about me coming back from spring break and posing something for us all to consider? What's so funny about that?"

until one day, he achieves enlightenment.

:)

But now that I'm done having my fun at his expense, I will deal a bit with his content. That would be the fair way to play, wouldn't it?

Mr. Raptor... Uh, may I call you that? Ok, Mr. Raptor, you say that clearly the evidence of WMD's was cooked. Now, think back. Do you remember that, in the lead up to the war, many nations were expressing their belief that Saddam had WMD's and WMD programs? Remember?
Do you remember that among the nations that were expressing such a belief were France and Germany?

So, were France and Germany cooking the evidence?

The Philosoraptor says that Krauthammer's "irrational partisan drivel" makes it hard for him to be objective. I can understand that. It's hard to admit you are wrong.

The thing is, Mr. Raptor, when you say someone has "cooked" the evidence, you are accusing them of a perpetrating a fraud. When you accuse a person of fraud and it turns out that you are wrong, then an apology is in order.

Oh yes, and just to be clear with you, because I can see you're having a little trouble keeping things straight, that apology should be from you to Bush, not the other way around.

Got it?

Michael Schiavo Is A Piece Of Work

From Reuters:

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (Reuters) - As a severely brain-damaged Florida woman lay dying on Saturday, the husband who has long fought for her right to die assailed Republican congressmen for their last-minute attempts to keep her alive.

Michael Schiavo spoke out against the maneuvers in Washington a day after doctors followed a court order and removed the feeding tube that has kept Terri Schiavo alive for the last 15 years.
"They should be ashamed of themselves," he said in an interview with the CBS "Early Show." "Leave my wife alone. Leave me alone."

Intervening in the highly public right-to-die case, Republican congressional leaders sought in recent days to block the court order and keep the tube in place by subpoenaing Terri Schiavo to appear before hearings and committees later in the month. The move would have granted her protection as a witness in a congressional inquiry.

But the Florida state judge in the case, Circuit Judge George Greer, rebuffed the effort and said his order for the tube to be removed on Friday should go ahead.

If Michael Schiavo gets his way with regards to Terri, in two weeks or so he will count as a murderer, according to my understanding of the definition of murder.

Why doesn't he just give over custody of Terri to her parents?

Vegetable?

If This Is A Persistent Vegetative State
Then You Might As Well Murder Me
First Five Minutes of Every Morning

Please Click Here and See The "Vegetable"
They Want To Murder

Friday, March 18, 2005

Michael Moore Is A Big, Fat, Money-Grubbing,
Democracy-Hating Idiot

From the San Francisco Examiner, via No Pasaran:

First, Michael Moore threw his creative weight and his celluloid into defeating President Bush's re-election. Then he made a big push for an Oscar nomination. He lost on both counts.

Why didn't the former golden boy of Hollywood who championed the anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-America movement with his dishonest propaganda piece "Fahrenheit 9/11" garner an Oscar nod? Is the Hollywood crowd wising up to the limited appeal of extremism, or has Moore worn out his welcome?With characteristic zeal, Moore campaigned vigorously for a best picture nomination.

But the Hollywood elite turned up their surgically sculpted noses at Moore's flick. Urbanski explained that Hollywood has had it with Moore. Many blame him for provoking conservative voters and contributing to John Kerry's defeat in the presidential election. He's become the No. 1 favorite target of leftists.

"In certain [Hollywood] circles he is a shutout," Urbanski said.

Why would Moore's former manager be so forthcoming in his criticism?"Michael Moore makes a substantial living going into peoples' private lives. Sneaking up on them," Urbanski said. So Urbanski feels no compunction in talking about the only client he ever fired. In fact, he fired Moore with a 10-page letter.

"A more dishonest and demented person I have never met," Urbanski wrote me in an e-mail, "and I have known a few! And he is more money obsessed than any I have known, and that's saying a lot."

Urbanski believes that Moore hates America, hates capitalism and hates any normal concept of freedom and democracy. This seems odd, considering that if it weren't for America, freedom and capitalism Moore's brand of expression and capitalistic success would be impossible, if not illegal.

Come Right Out And Say It, Why Don't Ya?

James Lileks writes about the "controversy" surrounding the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. Via LGF:

This morning I was clicking around, following some links about Wolfowitz’ nomination to the World Bank (mrghmghfm) (surpressing mad laughter) (mrghmghfm) (Sorry, mwa HAHAHAHAHA) and encountered one of those brand-name sites I don’t visit much because the proprietor has nothing to say and no particular skill at saying it. He referred to that “filthy Wolfowitz.”

Do you often come across the word “filthy” applied to many politicians? No. Can you recall which group, in the last, oh, 60 years, got tarred with that word most frequently? Just curious. If the word rings no bells for you, then I’m overreacting. Obviously rung no bells for the author. I expect he will be equally unaffected if Trent Lott refers to “that uppity Rev. Jackson.”

Bush On Free Speech and The FCC

From Free Republic:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said parents should turn off their televisions if they feel the programs being broadcast violate their standards of decency.

In a taped interview to be aired on the public affairs channel C-SPAN on Sunday, Bush waded into the thorny debate over how far the government should go to clamp down on indecent antics on radio and TV.

"As a free-speech advocate, I often told parents who were complaining about content, you're the first line of responsibility; they put an off button (on) the TV for a reason. Turn it off," Bush told C-SPAN interviewer Brian Lamb.

Honoring Arafat On The Way To The Holocaust Museum

From Powerline:

The New York Sun's Meghan Clyne has rounded up an impressive set of quotes commenting on Kofi Annan's laying a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat while visiting Israel earlier this week to attend the opening of the new Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem: "Annan's bow at Arafat's grave sparks outrage in city." Perhaps the most astute of the many quotes in this piece is Rep. Jerrold Nadler's:

To Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, Mr. Annan's tribute to Arafat was symptomatic of the anti-Semitism ailing his organization. "A lot of what is wrong with the U.N. is nicely summed up by the fact that Kofi Annan, who goes to Israel to participate in the dedication of a memorial museum to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, lays a wreath at the grave of someone whose career was murdering Jewish civilians," Mr. Nadler said.

Also deserving of special recognition is Jeffrey Wiesenfeld's observation:

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld - one of the members of the United Nations Development Corporation, the city-state entity overseeing the [U.N.'s planned] expansion - was also outraged by Mr. Annan's gesture. "It's certainly not in his self-interest, nor in the interest of the image of the U.N., to put a wreath at the grave of such a vehement Jew-hater," Mr. Wiesenfeld said, adding that he would be no more appalled if Mr. Annan had honored the grave of Hitler henchman Adolf Eichmann, who implemented the Nazis' "Final Solution.

"As far as Jews are concerned, the only difference between Eichmann and Arafat is that Eichmann mechanized Jewish murder, and Arafat would do it, as they say, on the installment plan. The concept is the same," Mr. Wiesenfeld, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, said.

The Transcendant in Music
The Primal In Children

I absolutely love the new post at Pond Ripple. Here's an excerpt:

... it is something special everyone (i hope) has experienced when you hear words or music that connect to your soul. Really, it is a gift. It is like seeing a counselor, or friend, or (once in a million) a lover who truly understands, who “gets” it. A moment of longing fulfilled. A second where your heart finds footing, something to grasp on to.

There is a place for the easy, fun music that just makes you want to move – even that feeds your soul, and then, there is a magical place where a portion of lyrics, a simple song, a movement from Mozart, a haunting melody – melts callouses and touches deeply, inscrutably. The finger of God that reaches to Adam on the Cappella Sistina. An electric shock. It burns, cuts to the quick, cauterizing wounds, making way for new life.

I am not jealous of this talent I have been the beneficiary of (I mean that I have received the benefit of the talent, not the talent itself), that would be like child coveting her generous father's wealth. I am just so grateful these gifted ones are compelled to share. How empty life would feel without music. It is really impossible to imagine.

Anyway – in a completely different vein: my girls crack me up. Of course.They find every opportunity they can to shed clothing, especially Eva, the 2 ½ year old. I would worry, but all the kids I have known have this built in modesty factor that kicks in around the ages of 6-8 years (yes, even European kids :) That also seems to be the magic age for potty and private things being devastatingly hilarious, “hee, hee, she FARTED. Oh, your FARTS are so stinky... etc.. etc... ad nauseam."

Anyway, If I am starting to change her clothes she says, “Mama, may I peese be naked?” and (yelling) “hey, I'm naked, yeah!!” and then automatically she begins to run around in the buff. How primal.

A couple of days ago she was naked in preparation for her bath, but as dinner was on the stove, and I was distracted, she was just running around crazy, happy. I walked into the entrance area of our home to see Eva, on our tile floor, with two glove type potholders on her feet, and not a stitch of clothing on her bod, sliding around saying, “wheee, I'm ice skating , wheeeee!”

And today – after I had asked Eva to get her grundies on, I was in the bathroom with Zoë when I heard a sound that made my heart sink to my gut. I heard the heavy dresser drawer shut, hard, and then a few seconds later, a piercing wail. So sad! I went quickly to make sure there were no lonely digits hanging out in the bottom drawer, and to try to soothe the hurt “feelers”.

When I saw Eva, naked of course, she was crying and smacking her hand on her bottom. I thought it was some kind of reactive gesture because she had hurt her hand so badly. I kept trying to get a look at it to try to find visible damage, but she kept jerking it away from me and hitting her behind. (what in the world?)

Anyway, between the sobs she chokes out that her hand didn't get hurt, but she managed to shut her tiny butt cheek in the drawer...and she has the mark to prove it.Don't ask me how, I still can't picture it!

Poor, strange child.

Great Moments In The History Of Protestantism

Who said this:

... set fire to their synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues.

Answer here.

Thanks to Tom at The Kafir Constitutionalist for emailing this quote to me:

Judge Attempts To Slap Down United States Congress

After Tom DeLay and other members of Congress subpoenaed for Terri Schiavo to appear as a witness before Congress, now some idiot judge in Florida thinks he can tell the United States Congress who's boss.

Un-friggin-believable:

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - The presiding judge in the case of Terri Schiavo ruled Friday that the feeding tube keeping the brain-damaged woman alive must be removed, despite efforts by congressional Republicans to block the move by seeking her appearance at hearings.

Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer refused a request from U.S. House attorneys to delay the removal, which he had previously ordered to take place at 1 p.m. EST. Greer determined that it should go forward about an hour after another judge issued a temporary delay blocking the tube's removal.

"I have had no cogent reason why the (congressional) committee should intervene," Greer told attorneys in a conference call, adding that last-minute action by Congress does not invalidate years of court rulings.

Now, that's arrogance.

Uh, judge Greer. Did you know that the United States is a Democratic Republic, not an Oligarchy of judges? In a Democratic Republic the People's Representatives ought to trump you, you puny little piece of ...

I think we need to start thinking about this situation in terms of it being the last straw. The judicial system is completely out of control.

How long, oh Lord?

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Iranian Democracy Demonstrators Proclaim
"Europe Is Finished" and Then Burn French Flag

From LGF:

According to received reports from various cities in Iran, today which marks the first celebration of the Iranian New Year’s Festival of Fire was met with celebrations as well as huge protests and demonstrations against the Islamic regime of Iran. The protestors chanted: “We need no Sheikh or Mullah, we curse YOU - RUHOLLAH!”

A report from Tehran: Young celebrants today set scarecrows in the likeness of various Mullahs, such as Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Sharoudi, Jannati, etc. on fire in the streets. They cried out slogans such as: “Referendum, referendum, this is the people’s dictum.”

In various parts of the capitol, celebrations and parties rage on. As a part of this celebration which is held on the very last Tuesday night of the year, dry bundles of bramble and shrubbery are set on fire and people jump over them. This is in order to purge their spirits of all the sins and tribulations of the passing year, in order to start the new year, with a pure heart. This is an ancient Persian (Zoroastrian) tradition, one that the Mullahs have done their best to eradicate since their takeover in 1979.

An eyewitness reported that despite severe crackdowns by the Revolutionary Guards and storm troopers, people bravely came out of their homes to celebrate. The sound of bursting firecrackers (which is a part of the celebrations), fireworks, toy rockets, confetti and various other celebratory trajectiles can be heard all over Tehran and smoke has filled the streets.

In one of the grassy knolls, in a suburban area of Tehran, large bonfires were lit and people danced around it and continued chanting the various slogans in defiance of the Mullahs and their henchmen. It is reported that the local Mullahs in various areas of several areas have locked themselves in their mosques fearing the crowds who continually and collectively shout out their slogans.

In several other parts of Tehran, revolutionary guards who have blocked off roads in order to stop cars carrying passengers of various groups from joining others. However people have begun parking their cars and have joined their fellow celebrants on foot. The guards however have become frightened by the force of the people. In this specific area several non-Iranian journalists were also present with their film crews, reporting.

In another area of the city people took to setting the French flag on fire while chanting: “Europe is finished and so are their Mullahs.” OR “Bush, Bush, where is Bush?” (In Persian this rhymes: Bush, Bush, kush, kush!).

Meanwhile the French are desparately trying to convince themselves that Bush has nothing to do with the move towards Democracy in the Middle East:

Such is the region through French theoretical eyes.

America: The Judeo-Christian Nation

From Town Hall:

Some Jews and Christians object to the term “Judeo-Christian.” How can there be Judeo-Christian values, they argue, when Judaism and Christianity differ? In a previous column, I explained that one should not confuse theology with values. Theological differences are not the same as value differences.

Nevertheless there are some value differences between the religions.

But that is precisely the greatness of Judeo-Christian values: They are greater than the sum of their parts. That is why in this series of essays I have been making the case for Judeo-Christian values, not for all Christian values and not for all Jewish values.

The combination of Jewish Scripture (the Old Testament) and Christian thought and activism – as worked out mostly in America and mostly by Judeo-based Christians – has forged something larger and more universally applicable than either Judaism or Christianity alone.

Let me give two examples of specifically Jewish and Christian values that are not Judeo-Christian values. As Judaism developed, it developed a legal system (Halakha) that increasingly aimed to separate Jews from non-Jews. One purpose was to keep Jews from incorporating pagan practices and values into the one monotheistic religion. Over time, however, it was also a result of the constant decimation of the Jewish people by antisemites. Jews, for good reason, feared disappearing. Thus survival – in part through avoiding social contact with non-Jews – became the primary concern of Jewish life, not influencing the world. Whatever the reasons, Judaism retreated from the world. Judeo-Christian values bring Jewish values back into the world.

An example of a Christian value that is not Judeo-Christian is Christianity’s traditional emphasis on faith above works and on an exclusive credo. Many Christians, including those who forcefully advocate Judeo-Christian values, believe that one must profess faith in Christ in order to be saved, that no amount of good deeds a person may perform, even if that person also has a deep belief in God (the Father), suffices in God’s eyes. And though Catholicism has emphasized works along with faith, for most of Church history, the importance of works was restricted to Catholics. Non-Catholics, no matter how good, were often denied salvation and frequently persecuted solely for their different faith (e.g., Huguenots and Jews).

Until the twentieth century, European Christianity, as embodied in the Church, de-emphasized its Jewish roots, and it usually persecuted Jews (though never ordered, indeed opposed, their physical annihilation – annihilation required a secular ideology, Nazism). No Christian state referred to itself as “Judeo-Christian.” That identity arose with the Christians of America, who from the outset were at least as deeply immersed in the Old Testament as in the New. The American Christian identified with the Jews rather than saw himself as simply superseding them.

These American Christians chose a Torah verse – “Proclaim liberty throughout the land” – for their Liberty Bell; learned and taught Hebrew; adopted the Jewish notion of being chosen to be a light unto the nations; saw their leaving Europe as a second exodus; had every one of its presidents take the oath of office on an Old and New Testament Bible – and while every president mentioned God in his inaugural address, not one mentioned Jesus.

Of course, most Protestant Christians who hold Judeo-Christian values continue to believe that there is no salvation outside of faith in Christ. But precisely because they do hold Judeo-Christian values, they work hand in hand with others whose faith they deem insufficient or incorrect (e.g., Jews and Mormons). So while they theologically reject other faiths, evangelical Christians are the single strongest advocates of Judeo-Christian values.

They are what can be called “Judeo-Christians.” Since they founded America, such Christians have recognized the critical significance of the Jewish text – the Old Testament – which forms the foundation of Judeo-Christian values. It provided the God of Christianity, their supra-natural Creator, the notions of divine moral judgment and divine love, the God-based universal morality they advocate and try to live by, the Ten Commandments, the holy, the sanctity of human life, the belief in a God of history and that history has meaning, and moral progress. All these and more came from the Jews and their texts.

But while the Jews provided the text, the Christians brought the text and its values into the world at large and applied them to a society composed of Jews, Christians, atheists, and members of other religions.

Those Judeo-Christian values have made America the greatest experiment in human progress and liberty and the greatest force for good in history.

And they are exportable. In fact, they are humanity’s only hope.

Can I get an Amen!?!

Iraq And It's WMD Factory
Organized Looting or Carefully Planned Military Operation

The other day the New York Times ran an article which revealed that Saddam had WMD capabilities. Liberal British writer, Christopher Hitchens, comments. Via Little Green Footballs:

My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or MoveOn.org activist in the entire country who hasn’t stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam’s propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq’s physicists as “our nuclear mujahideen.”

My second question is: What’s all this about “looting”? The word is used throughout the long report, but here’s what it’s used to describe. “In four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 ... teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. ... ‘The first wave came for the machines,’ Dr Araji said. ‘The second wave, cables and cranes.’ ” Perhaps hedging the bet, the Times authors at this point refer to “organized looting.”

But obviously, what we are reading about is a carefully planned military operation. The participants were not panicked or greedy civilians helping themselves—which is the customary definition of a “looter,” especially in wartime. They were mechanized and mobile and under orders, and acting in a concerted fashion. Thus, if the story is factually correct—which we have no reason at all to doubt—then Saddam’s Iraq was a fairly highly-evolved WMD state, with a contingency plan for further concealment and distribution of the weaponry in case of attack or discovery.

Well, gee, who woulda thunk it? How about France, Germany, Poland, Britain, Italy, Spain, the United States, Israel, Russia, all the other Middle Eastern countries, and, uh, Australia. I'm sure I've forgotten some. All these countries were convinced that Saddam had WMD's before the war, and most were willing to put their money and, indeed, their lives on the line to back up their belief.

This means that in addition to the questions posed here by Mr. Hitchens, another reasonable question is, why is it that George Bush has been left to take all the blame when all these nations were saying the same thing?

The Political Aspirations Of Islamism
And Why They Are Incompatible With Democracy

In followup to the previous post wherein TVD made the point about Al Qaeda's recruting points, it is also important to understand that terrorist organizations have larger political objectives. From Front Page Magazine:

Terrorist organizations are not just independent actors whose sole goals are to create terror and chaos—they do have political objectives. This is sometimes overlooked and easy to forget, especially when the media constantly bombards us with images and endless columns that portray Islamist terrorism as a type of phantom menace without political infrastructure.

... Islamist politics is not some kind of nebulous, unquantifiable structure; it has emerged as a major force in the Middle East and South East Asia. In this respect, while Islamist terrorist groups clearly have political objectives, it is essential to understand that they also have powerful, political backing. A minority in the Islamic world may perpetrate the violent tactics of terror, but terrorism itself enjoys widespread support from individuals and nations alike.

The reality here is that these Islamist groups are waging a civilizational battle to transform the Middle East and do so with help from legitimate political figures and nations. One such group is the Jamaat-i-Islami, a renowned fundamentalist group with ties to terrorism that was formed through the leadership and teaching of Maulana Abul Al Maududi and is prominent in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Another group allied to the fundamentalist cause is the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formed by Hassan Al-Banna. The Brotherhood is mainly prominent in Arab countries; however, the Islamist movements frequently share ideas and use each other’s works to consolidate their ideology. The first Jihad in Afghanistan, for instance, was a major factor in the blending and co-operation of Islamist designs.

The JI and the Muslim Brotherhood have been vocal in spreading Shari’a law and in their rejection of all western ideologies and institutions. They have stated that they want to defeat western liberalism and secularization, which they see as the greatest threat to the Muslim world. But every time these groups have managed to gain power in countries like Afghanistan and Sudan, their anti-Americanism is accompanied with the abuse of human rights and the promotion of hatred and intolerance.

Negotiating with terrorist groups or labeling militants “reformers” only serves to legitimize the Islamist movement and give it a stronger political infrastructure. Islamic scholars and Middle Eastern experts have scoffed at this type of thinking as simplistic, but in this, they only protect Islamism’s ideology of hate and totalitarianism and nurture its growth.

The political objectives of the Islamist movement cannot be allowed to progress-violent or non-violent. Islamists believe that the laws of society must be made from the passages of the Quran. In democracies, we believe that laws are progressive-they change. We believe elected representatives should implement and write laws. Islamists, on the other hand, believe this should be done by unelected religious clerics, which by the very nature of Shari’ a law makes them fundamentalist. They want a theocracy with no separation of church and state.

When Islamists speak of democracy, they don’t mean they want to have a government and political systems with wide-ranging views and opinions. Islamist parties just want one or two elections, which will get them into positions of power. Saudi Arabia’s free elections, for instance, meant anti-western Islamist clerics gained wide support, and some cynics say the Saudis knew that this was going to be the outcome, and this is why they had the elections. Whatever the case, we must recognize that democratic reform must be accompanied by clearly defined strategies to combat the very ideology of Islamism.

Promoting freedom of speech and basic human rights are paramount in tackling the stagnation and tension in the Muslim world, but we must be carefully that our promotion of democracy be accompanied with effective strategies to combat Islamism in all its many forms. Otherwise, democratic reform could become yet another shield behind which Jihadi groups hide to plot their murderous designs.

So, in other words, the anti-Americanism of Islamism is inherent, but it is not the objective. The anti-American resentment is a good recruiting tool, and a good way to foster unity among the followers of Islamism, but the larger goal is the setting up of a Sharia state, which is incompatible with Democracy.

How The War On Terror
Took Al Qaeda's Primary Recruting Points Away

I was reading a post from Philosraptor the other day and sometimes CUANAS commenter TVD made some good points in an ongoing discussion over there. The subject of the post was "The Iraq War Helps To Recruit Terrorists." TVD disagrees and makes some very cogent points:

If you examine their documents from before 9-11 and the Iraq War, Al-Qaeda's 2 strongest recruiting points were the US military presence in "The Land of Two Holy Places (Mecca and Medina)," Saudi Arabia, which were needed there to keep an eye on Saddam, and in a larger sense, the hopelessness offered by the Western-supported tyrannical governments of the Muslim world.

Al-Qaeda offered itself as a remedy to both, and could not be engaged only with force because they were essentially correct about those things. Removing Saddam and the subsequent "democracy initiative" answered both. US troops are out of Saudi and freedom is on the march.

Al-Qaeda has been transformed from being "the base" (its literal translation from Arabic) of a worldwide liberation movement to just another would-be tyranny among many.

Tom's point is so obvious, and yet I've never heard anyone point that out before. I suppose there are those who are motivated to hatred of America by the War On Terror. However, even al-Zarqawi admitted the other day that he's having trouble finding martyrs.

Boo hoo.

Pre-Futurism

The other day I was reading Tom's thoughts, over at The Kafir Constitutionalist, and I was impressed with a particular idea he presented. Here it is:

All of Pooklekufr Constitutionalism is derived from one simple lesson: humans require the freedom to think and act without coercion.

To repeat: humans require for life, that they do not have guns held to their heads, electrodes held to their genitals, chains on their feet, or pliers held to their teeth. In other words, I am free if and only if you are not "free" to initiate force against me, and vice versa.

I wrote to Tom that, in my opinion, he's on to something very important. The idea that Freedom is about being able to act without coercion is well established. The idea that we need to be able to think without coercion, while recognized by some, is not truly an established idea as of yet.

I believe this will be one of the great human rights battlegrounds of the 21st century.

It is pretty clear to everyone that our world has fundamentally changed. However, I still hear people bandying about the term "Postmodern" on an almost constant basis. I don't think we live in a Postmodern age anymore. I remember for a short period of time, just after 9/11, there were people calling it the "End of Irony." I thought that was somewhat apt, but limited.

I don't think our change in ages began with September 11th. It began earlier than that, although a precise date would be impossible to pin down. (September 11th is more a symptom of the change in ages, than it is the cause.) The fall of the Berlin Wall is a tempting event to name as the changing point, but others can argue it out. I'm not up to it right now.

I would call our current age, the Age of Pre-Futurism. Here's my thinking: The time we are living in is laden with decisions about our future which will fundamentally effect what it means to be human. These decisions are impossible to ignore, yet it is almost impossible to comprehend their magnitude.

Sixty years ago we aquired a sort of omnipotence with the creation of the atomic bomb. We now have the ability to destroy all of human civilization in the blink of an eye. But, that was only the beginning. In the near future, it has become apparent to those who are doing the work, we will aquire a sort of omniscience as well. As the speed of computing inevitably increases, and combines with camera technology, biotechnology, and other technologies, our capacity for surveillance will increase so as to become all-pervasive. I believe it is inevitable that human beings themselves, their output, input, thoughts, and inquiries, will be "connected" to the internet, as an aid and/or impedence to thought.

In the early days, such human connection to the internet will be basic. We would be able to use our thoughts to make "Google" type inquiries for information. But, I believe that, as biotechnological implants become more sophisticated, the human brain itself will meld with the internet.

I'm sure this would seem like a preposterous idea to some, but I'm going to roll with it here in the interest of philosophical inquiry in preparation for decision-making about our future.

If the human brain does indeed meld with the internet in order to increase the capacity and speed with which individuals can think, then all of our thoughts will become susceptible to interfence by outside sources, including the government. Such interference, in such a world of thought, would become the equivalent of physical force. In that sense, interference with human thought would be the proverbial "gun against the head." It would be the electrodes held to genitals, chains on the feet, and pliers held to teeth.

Privacy is set to become the major human rights front of the 21st century, just as Free Speech was the human rights front of the 20th century.

Conservatives opposed to abortion are fond of pointing out that the American Constitution does not guarantee a right to Privacy. But, in what I see as the inevitable future coming our way, violations of Privacy will be the equivalent of the Abortion of Thought and thus Freedom in it's fetal stage. It will become necessary to amend the Constitution to include a right to Privacy.

We need to start taking the right to Privacy, and the concept of a Zone of Privacy, extremely seriously. A Zone of Privacy is required for Freedom of Thought. (I agree, by the way, with our Declaration of Indepence when it says that these rights were endowed to us by our Creator and that's why I am capitalizing the words). I am very disappointed in the American Christian Church because of it's lack of understanding of the importance of a Zone of Privacy to the Freedom of mankind.

Clearly, no Christian would deny that Prayer is necessary for people to come to follow Christ. If they can understand that, then, on a spiritual level, they ought to be able to understand that a kind of prayer, in other words thought, is required for all human decision-making. No Christian would deny the importance of silence, contemplation, or in the modern parlance, "alone time with God," as a requirement for Prayer, but Christians are many times the first to jump on the bandwagon of the limitation of information which ought to be distributed in the public arena. Such a limitation of information in the public arena, in a world where peoples thoughts are connected to the internet, would truly be a violation of the Freedom to Think, and therefore, the Freedom to Create.

It is not hard to see how a violation of the Freedom to Think leads to the impedence of thought in the lives of Humans. Already, as we drive the streets of our major cities, we can see that cameras mounted on traffic lights, in the interest of "safety," cause people to hesitate and make bad choices as they approach intersections. Rear end collisions have risen as people, afraid of being sent a ticket, slam on the brakes. This is a perfect metaphor for what the violation of our individual Zone of Privacy does to our ability to be Creative and Free human beings.

Enough said about Privacy, for now.

There is one other area in which humans face a decision about our inevitable future. This decision is also brought to us by advances in biotechnology. We face the very real possibility, and many biotechnologists would say inevitability, of being able to prolong the span of human life indefinately. The question posed by such an inevitability is, how will human beings, who are already so bored and angry with only 70 years at their disposal, deal with the choice and possibilities presented to them by 700 years?

My guess is that many would not deal with it well.

Already we see the toll that corruption takes on many of us over the course of our short lives. In the future, as we learn to eliminate the physical toll that corruption plays upon our bodies, will we be able to also learn to erase the mental toll of corruption? No, I don't think so. In fact, our capacity for corruption will increase as the speed and scope of our thought is increased by being connected to the internet.

It almost goes without saying that this increase in our capacity for corruption will inevitably lead to an increase in our capacity for doing evil. We will invent new ways to hurt ourselves and others, and we will do so with greater speed, and more power.

Of course, that is the story of human history, but the difference is that we are approaching an age where individual human beings will have a capacity beyond that of entire armies in past generations.

To sum up, we are living in an age defined by the inevitability of our future capacities. The future is so inevitable as to be present already, in the sense that we must begin to make decisions about how to handles it's effects right now, in our present time. In this way, our future is palpable, and with us, almost like another being staring us in the face. This is why I call it Pre-Futurism.

The spectre of a humanity with 1) omnipotence, 2) omniscience, and 3) a life-creating and sustaining ability, on the level of the individual human being is frightening. But it is not necessarily apocalyptic. We humans were made by our Creator with just such possibilities in mind. The Bible says that we were created in the image of God. More and more we are coming to find out exactly what that means.

Humans seem to have an infinite capacity, limited only by time, and the law that one can not get something for nothing. People from the 19th century would have said there was no way humans could create the things we created in the 20th century. Similarly, many people will say that the technologies of which I am speaking are impossible. But, there are serious scientists, all over the world, currently at work on just such possibilities. History seems to demonstrate that, over time, humans can achieve whatever they can conceive.

Fear for man, but do not doubt him. Not even his ability to solve the problems presented by the works of his hands.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Mainstreaming Hizballah?

From an article by Tony Bankley from the Washington Times, via Powerline:

... Hezbollah exists to oppose Israel's right to exist ... they (do not) support secular democratic government for Muslims. Moreover, it is very likely they have established sleeper terrorist cells in the United States.

They may well participate in democratic politics for the purpose of gaining power. They certainly provide food, shelter and education to poor Lebanese.

So also, Al Capone set up soup kitchens during the Depression. And the Nazis provided social services to poor and starving Germans in the 1920s and early '30s. But they both kept killing until, respectively, the FBI and the Allies put them both out of business.

Hezbollah is certainly a ruthless band of cutthroats, but there is no evidence that they are insincere in their beliefs, or that they are open to changing their minds and joining the Women's League of Voters. If, at their heart, they oppose our objectives, then either they have to be defeated or we do.

Any political party — be it Sinn Fein, Hezbollah, Hamas or the Nazis — that has its own private army is inherently not a democratic institution. Nor is it likely to evolve into one if it holds undemocratic ideas.

A friend of mine wrote to me, just the other day, on this very subject:

It seems to me that relying on terrorist tactics, for whatever cause,"poisons the souls" of the people involved in thatcause, however noble, even if it wins. And this is the *real* reason to oppose terrorism.

Here's what I mean by that and why I started thinking in this direction. As you know, a lot of folks on the left are resistant to the idea of a widespread condemnation of terrorism. They'll say one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Or,they'll point to the fact that forbidding terrorism seems to be arbitrary and sets up terms that favor organized military (which is true, but I'm not surethat it's bad).

But usually most persuasive is that they can point to numerous independence/national movements whose results most people consider "good" and yet which relied to at least some extent on terror.

... they can point to, for example, South Africa. And, of course, Israel. (The more ignorant ones claim thatthe U.S. is another case, but honestly I don't knowwhat the hell they're talking about, they always seemto be just makin' stuff up.)

But anyway, the left kinda-sorta wants to say that we can't simply declare all terrorism "bad". This is what underlies much of their obstructionism.

Meanwhile, I want to say that we can. But I have a hard time disputing their point that some "good"independence/national movements have relied on terror. Here's how I resolve it. And maybe it's simple:

I think the problem with relying significantly on terrorism in your movement, however noble your goals might be, is that, *if you win*, your new leaders will be *terrorists*. They will be inured to violence and dehumanization. As well, inevitably, some of the vanguard will have been in it mostly for the rush, for the "thrill-kills", for the power, for raw bigotry, etc.

Similarly, the "underground" nature of the thing will have linked you in all sorts of unholy ways to the underworld/mafia, and to terror groups in othernations (or foreign dictators). So even if you "win", you'll be stuck with some # of corrupt, secretive, interdependent monsters and cold blooded killers on top.

Even if it was Evil Imperialism you fought against, is your new independent republic with terrorists on top going to make for a better situation than before? Will the revolutionaries all magically transform back into statesmen? It seems doubtful. And meanwhile, you'll have set the ugly precedent that terror is a great way to get what you want. Your children will betaught to love and honor the terrorists who built your country.

There seems to be no way out, how do you say "ok from now on the way we do things is through politics, in a civil society", when all your past examples of heroism and success relied on bombing cafes?

This is what I mean by "poisoned souls". By using terror, you make a deal with the devil, and even if you "win", you lose.

At the very least, if your movement's been using terror, what you ought to try to do is a *purge* of the terrorists within your midst, as soon as you're done. "Ok, thanks, terrorists, now go home." If you somehow can pull this off then maybe you have a shot at developing into a decent nation. I've read that something like this is what happened at the beginning of Israel (Ben-Gurion disarming Irgun). On the other hand, I don't think Algeria did it successfully - and(not coincidentally?) they've had messy infighting andcivil war and never ending troubles with Islamist terror groups in the decades since.

I think this is what George Bush is saying when he says he can envision Hizballah joining Lebanon's mainstream. Obviously, he made it clear that the first step is to disarm. The Euros, of course, don't think that's necessary, because they support terrorism against Israel.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

News Flash: Peace And Democracy
Were Brought To Europe
By The Sword Of American Good and Evil

From the German magazine Der Spiegel, via Medienkritik:

Terminator? Demokrator!
By Claus Christian Malzahn

Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon: The virus of democracy is running rampant in the Middle East. German foreign policy must finally react to this joyous turnaround and look the fact in the eye that, in fact, freedom and democracy sometimes are brought with fire and sword.

Berlin – George W. Bush – the man knows what he is talking about – once compared Germany’s abstinence from the Iraq war with the behavior of a dry alcoholic: For them a glass of beer is already one glass too many. War as a political means became taboo for the German Federal Republic after the Wehrmacht and SS left Europe in rubble and ash, murdered nearly all European Jews and struck a swath of death through the Soviet Union. At the moment, Germany is virtually sinking in a flood of memories of the Second World War; Almost every day 60 years ago is relived once again through the media. No other nation in Europe is so obsessed with history as the Germans. The fascination with “downfall” is nearly boundless.

But this flood of pictures and avalanche of history bury some important realizations that still possess validity even today. The Nazi rule was also not ended by sit-ins in front of the Führer headquarters. Hitler’s total war machine was fought to defeat at the greatest military and civilian sacrifice on the part of the Russians, Americans and British. We Germans were brought democracy carried into our land by bombs and grenades. It would not have worked otherwise, because the Germans did not want it otherwise. Many believed in their Führer to the very end, and the first steps of re-education back then were not motivated by social workers, but instead ordered by the US Army.

Peace and democracy were brought to Europe with the sword. George W. Bush began a war two years ago against Iraq out of false reasons. Good reasons existed to protest against him. Now it seems that from this wrong war, real freedom of opinion and democracy are emerging. Then there would be equally good reasons to celebrate.

The weapons of mass destruction that allegedly threatened the world have never been found – but instead mass graves have been found. In January, the Iraqis voted against the terror. It has not yet been stopped. The followers of the top terrorist Zarqawi are following a dark, religiously-fired promise of happiness. For them, death is the climax of life. Only death will stop them. However, the Iraqi voters have achieved something else: The virus of democracy that Zarqawi and his consorts so fear is raging in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia there were local elections in February – in the eyes of the West a ridiculous event, but for the residents a meaningful exercise in relaxing things related to freedom of opinion. Until now only men were allowed to vote – but the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud promised just now in an interview with Time Magazine that this will soon change: Women are more sensible voters than men anyway. Entirely new tones from Riyadh.

Wake-Up Call for the Lebanese People

What is happening in Lebanon is just as amazing. Millions of people are gaining political self-confidence – despite occupation and fresh reminders of a bloody civil war. Whoever was behind the terror attack on the former Minister President – he barely could have had a wake-up call for the Lebanese people in mind. It is still to early to compare these developments with the “orange revolution” in the Ukraine. But a sign of hope are the young people, who with flags waving want to take possession of their land once and for all.

Where the journey in Lebanon is headed is anyone’s guess. The Syrians will have to leave the oppressed country – now or later. Perhaps then the virus of democracy and freedom of opinion will reach over from Beirut to Damascus, perhaps it will soon cover Amman and Tehran. We Europeans should have no fear of this process, but instead should support it with our given strength. For far too long the essence of German foreign policy consisted of leaving everything as it was. “Critical dialogue” with Tehran sounded great – and didn’t harm anyone. Blood for oil in the Iraq war? Granted. Let us leave the USA out of the game for a moment and take a look at the volume of exports of the Federal Republic of Germany into the land of the mullahs: 2.7 billion Euros (more than $3.5 billion) per year. What we call peace is characterized by others as the cold silence of the grave “kalte Grabesstille.” We negotiate with people who like to force their people into the corset of the Koran. And for those for whom it is too narrow, there is prison, torture, exile – or death.

There are legitimate, serious objections against Bush’s cannon boat democratization: Abu Ghraib! Guantanamo! How does a country that tolerated torture and created zones without justice stand for democracy and human rights? It is appalling that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is still in office and Secretary of State Colin Powell had to make way. But the acts of torture have not remained without atonement ... The reality in the Middle East is additionally more complicated than a pair of terrible photos from the dungeons of the US Army would hope to prove.

The people in Iraq simply set their hopes against this iconography, emphasized sometimes more in the West than in the Middle East. This double-edged sword of war crimes and liberation has existed in the past. When US General George Patton landed on Sicily with the 7th US Army in July 1943, 150 Italian and 50 German soldiers who had already surrendered were murdered: A war crime also at that time.

In April 1945, Patton’s soldiers liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp. What they saw on the Ettersberg near Weimar knocked the breath out of them: Piles of bodies, living skeletons, the dying didn’t stop for weeks after the liberation. Even the birds had fled from the crimes of the Nazis. They finally came back when the crematorium no longer pumped its sweet clouds of death into the sky.

“Shock-and-awe” Pedagogy

In the next days, George Patton obliged a thousand Weimarer to the clean-up work in the concentration camp. From every household someone had to make the hike up to the Ettersberg to bear witness to the atrocities of the Nazis. The action was called “viewing the atrocities” – necessary “shock and awe” pedagogy on a nation that to the end believed in the Führer, the wonder weapons and Santa Claus. “Viewing the atrocities” was one of the first measures of re-education of the Germans – ordered by a general who brutally violated the Geneva Conventions on Sicily.

Patton’s 7th Army later went in part into the V Corps, that unit of the US Army that two years ago carried the main weight of the attack on Baghdad. Among the 42,000 soldiers is also the 205 Brigade of the Military Secret Service, some of the men and women of this troupe carried out their service in Abu Ghraib. Other soldiers of the V Corps are currently building schools, on patrol, the 130th Engineering Brigade built bridges or renovated streets. Without the protection of the V Corps, one could not have voted in Iraq.

It would be better for Iraq if the US Army stayed a bit longer – and would not disappear again as quickly as back then in Weimar: So that the virus of democracy can continue to spread unhindered as long as possible.

Medienkritik comments:

Certainly, the abuses at Abu Ghraib represent a moral setback for the United States. Some critics of the Iraq war have even called Abu Ghraib a moral "catastrophe." What these very critics fail to see is that their own decades-long indifference to the plight of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East, borne of a convenient mix of knee-jerk pacifism and deep-seated economic interests, represents a true moral catastrophe. European foreign ministers and leaders comfortably sipping tea and brokering multi-billion dollar business deals with dictators in expensive palaces and then criticizing the US for its dealings in the Middle East is hypocrisy of the highest degree.

Killing Jews Is A Topic Of Significant Public Interest

From Little Green Footballs:

Canada’s “hate crime” laws do not apply to Muslims who advocate terrorism against Israelis: Saying Israelis are ‘legitimate targets’ not a hate crime.

Police have decided not to charge a controversial Muslim leader under Canada’s hate-crime laws for suggesting on a television talk show last fall that all adult Israelis are “legitimate targets” for Palestinian terrorists.

Investigators with Halton Region police said that while the comments by Dr. Mohamed Elmasry “were described by many as [a] hate crime,” they did not meet the legal definition.

“Although the comments would be considered distasteful to many, in this context they do not constitute a criminal offence,” police said in a news release. “The comments were made during a free-flowing discussion between subject-matter experts who were encouraged to express their opinions openly on a topic of significant public interest.”

They said it, not me.

Monday, March 14, 2005

It's All About The Ladies
Afghanistan Opens It's First Health Club For Women

Via Jack of Clubs:

The country's first fitness club for women started 2 months ago with the participation of a dozen women. It has already logged some success. Women from different ages exercise at this club, especially those women who have difficulty with mobility because of their weight. Most women are happy for the positive changes in their bodies in two months.

Nima, the head of the club, who also carried the Afghanistan flag at the Athen's Olympics, said in an interview "I am keen to solve the problems of the women". During her tours abroad as an athlete she collected various sports and exercise equipment now in use at the club.Women can now exercise in a safe place wearing blouse pants and sports shoes.

The club administration said due to demand she would establish clubs in other areas of the capital if she can find suitable premises.

Welcome to the civilized world.

(Via Waheed, who is evidently Afghanistan's first blogger.)

The other day I had another post called "It's All About The Ladies", and reader Saije commented:

I agree. How a society treats women is directly related to its success in all other areas.

Yes, that's true. But, it's not just that. Civilization begins with the protection of women. The freer women are, the better a society is. So yeah, success is great but, to me, it's mostly about the morality.

Lebanese Demonstrate For Democracy
Crowd Estimated at 800,000

From OC Chronicle:

Things are changing. Stop a moment and appreciate it. Something big is happening. I remember when the Berlin Wall was coming down and the communist states in Eastern Europe fell so quickly fifteen years ago. I noticed it, but I didn't truly appreciate the historical significance of the events at the time.

We should all now stop and begin to really look at what is happening in Beirut today. Look at the photo above. There will be plenty of time in the coming months to debate the cause and to truly explain the significance of the Bush Administrations Middle East Democracy policies.

Right now look at what is happening and understand that our world will never be the same.

Do you see the joy in this photo? Do you see the massive number of people? Do you see women and men side-by-side as equals demanding a better life? This is the picture of hope. This is the picture of life. This is what all humans, created in God's image, yearn for.

Never again should we be lured by intellectual midgets pontificating about how some people are not ready for democracy, not ready for freedom. Let no man be another man's slave. Free Beirut!

Sometimes You Just Gotta Love Your Enemies

From Atlas Shrugged:

Canadian Jews Have ´Israel´ Deleted From ´Jerusalem´ Passports
Jewish World

Canadian Jews born in Jerusalem are having their passports recalled in order to erase the word “Israel” from beside the name of the Jewish State’s capital.

The government's move follows an application to Canada's Supreme Court by B’nai Brith of Canada against the government’s new policy regarding its passports and Jerusalem. Canada's new position is that "Israel" not be specificed as the country of birth for its citizens who were born in Jerusalem.

The court suit was filed on behalf of a 17-year-old Torontonian, who objected to the ban against noting Israel as his country of birth on his passport. The boy's lawyer argued that the new policy discriminated against his client, as many other citizens had received passports with such a classification.

The latest development is that scores of Canadian Jews have been told by Canadian Passport Office officials that they must surrender their passports showing "Jerusalem, Israel" as their birthplace.

In a similar move last September, a US court found that American consular offices need not register the birthplace of a Jerusalem-born American citizen as "Jerusalem, Israel," but merely as "Jerusalem."

As longtime readers of my blog (and that's a very exclusive club) would know, the title "Sometime You Just Gotta Love Your Enemies" is a piece of running sarcasm that I direct at Islamofascists who come right out and confess their murderous hatred of Jews.

I'm going to break the tradition, in this case, and direct it at the Canadians.

I mean, the Canadians really have to hate Israel to go so far out of their way on such a trivial issue as a country of origin on a Passport. It's not like changing that is going to clarify anything for anyone in the Customs Dept.

Any person, organization, or state that hates Israel this much is an enemy of mine.

As far as I understand it, the goal of the "Peace Process" has always been to divide Jerusalem up in some way, so that both Israel and Palestine can claim it in part. Canada appears to have decided to unilaterally make a ruling, on the status of Jerusalem, that even that paragon of anti-Semitism, the United Nations, has not yet put in writing.

So, now we know where you stand Canada. You just gotta love your enemies, when they tell the truth.

Hey Zarqawi, This Is An Orange Alert Directed At You

According to this week's Time Magazine Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi plans to attack the United States. His list of spots to hit includes movie theatres, restaurants, and schools:

Two weeks after intelligence officials confirmed that Osama bin Laden had sent a message to Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, urging him to plan attacks on U.S. soil, details are emerging from one of al-Zarqawi's lieutenants about what the man behind many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq could have in mind. Intelligence officials tell TIME that interrogation of a member of al-Zarqawi's organization, who was taken into U.S. custody last year and has been described as a top aide, indicates that al-Zarqawi has given ample consideration to assaults on the American homeland. According to a restricted bulletin that circulated among U.S. security agencies last week, the interrogated aide said al-Zarqawi has talked about hitting "soft targets" in the U.S., which could include "movie theaters, restaurants and schools."

After the attack on the World Trade Center I remember hearing people who always seemed like decent, down-to-earth people on any other day, calling for the United States to "turn the whole damned Middle East into one gigantic glass parking lot." If Zarqawi does indeed attack American schools, and kill school children, he will have brought the frightful wrath of the United States down on himself.

Thus far, we, as a people, have not been serious about this war. By that, I do not mean that our military, or our leaders, have not been serious. I mean the American people themselves. America went into a full war mobilization during the years of WWII. I believe we would do so again. The things we can and will do if we feel threatened would shock the world.

Leader Of Worldwide Zionist Conspiracy
Has Arab Feminist Girlfriend

From the New Yorker, via Praktike's Place:

In fact, there is a woman from whom Wolfowitz does draw support and backing for his views, but she comes from a very different — and unexpected — background. His closest companion and most valued confidante is a middle-aged Arab feminist whose own strongly held views on instilling democracy in her native West Asia have helped bolster his resolve.

Shaha Ali Riza is a senior World Bank official who was born in Tunis, grew up in Saudi Arabia and holds an international relations masters degree from St Anthony’s College, Oxford. Close acquaintances of the couple have told The Daily Telegraph that she is romantically linked with Wolfowitz, 61, a fellow divorcee with whom she has been friends for several years. Even by the discreet standards of Washington’s powerful inner circle, it is a remarkably closely guarded secret. They rarely go out as a couple openly or demonstrate affection publicly, according to friends who are aware of the relationship. They attend low-key Washington social events and visit friends’ homes together and Riza also sometimes goes to official functions and dinners with him, but is not identified as his partner, an acquaintance said.

“Most people would never guess there was a relationship, even if they saw them together,” he said. It is a sign of the sensitivity surrounding the relationship that the few friends willing even to acknowledge it last week did not want to be named. “Shaha Riza runs around with Wolfowitz a lot. I gather she is his current girlfriend but they are very careful about this,” said one.

By the way, the New Yorker article is titled:

The Believer - Paul Wolfowitz Defends His War

Am I crazy or does the title itself smack of Worldwide Zionist Conspiracy?

Come, Let Us Murder The Vegetable

Hat tip: Marlowe's Shade

Sunday, March 13, 2005

You've Come A Long Way Baby!

Iranian Burka Ninjas rappel down the side of a building while the Burka Honor Guard stands at attention, in the "Incredibly Strange Graduation Of The Iranian Female Police Cadets".

UPDATE:

Commenter TVD says:

It's all good. Just a small step from rappelling down buildings to reading Lolita.

To which I reply ( a bit chagrined):

Thanks Mr. TVD,Let me be clear that I certainly am not making fun of the women in these photos. I'm making fun of the Jihadi Islamofascist Iranian Mullah-idiotocracy that forces them into such ridiculous poses.

Germany's New Nazi Party Is On The Rise
They Win 9 Seats In Parliament

From the London Times, via Little Green Footballs:

“ADOLF HITLER was a great German statesman,” the bête noire of the German Establishment said as he sat in a room darkened by bombproof shutters.

“If you can call Churchill a great Briton, if you can make a hero out of Alexander the Great, then you have to give that status to Hitler, too,” Udo Voigt, the leader of the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD), said. “My lawyer has told me to say no more than that.”

This rising right-wing extremist is under investigation for allegedly glorifying the Nazis. “All part of a strategy to criminalise me and marginalise the party,” he said.

But as Germany prepares for the 2006 general election, a criminal case could muzzle Herr Voigt, who is increasingly seen as a malign Pied Piper who entrances the surly young of eastern German housing estates.

So he is careful. There are no busts of the Führer in Herr Voigt’s bunker-like office, just maps of Germany as it was, various German and neo-Nazi flags and a poster that declares: “May 1945, Nothing to Celebrate.”

This year’s 60th anniversary commemorations have rallied Germany’s usually warring right-wing organisations. They are using them to stir regret for German wartime suffering, convert it into political anger and win voters across the generations.

Herr Voigt, 52 and a former army captain, is the mastermind. Since taking charge in 1996 he has converted the NPD from a mouthpiece for embittered war veterans into “a radical voice for the silent majority”. He addresses rallies using the slogan: “We are everywhere.”

He began by harnessing the raw energy of eastern Germany’s racist skinheads, recruiting them from pubs and placing them under near- military discipline.

“More than 600 have passed through our training centres, and many of them have become our leadership cadres,” he boasted, pointing at a picture of a graduation ceremony.

Behind the party’s headquarters, in the Berlin suburb of Köpenick, stands a new education centre with bunk beds, blackboards and an NPD flag fluttering in the courtyard.

The NPD is widening its appeal. Last month, during the anniversary of the Dresden bombing, 8,000 neo-Nazis marched silently through the streets, and they seemed to enjoy the sympathy of many citizens.

The NPD won more than 9 per cent of the vote in Saxony and has become a pivotal element in the Dresden parliament.

Sometimes the party is deliberately provocative, such as when its representatives walked out of Parliament rather than stand in silence for the victims of Auschwitz, but mainly it uses its status to build far-right cells beyond Saxony.

With the help of other far-right parties it is starting to make inroads in western Germany. “We are now in the middle of society, not on the fringes,” Herr Voigt said.

On May 8, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender, the NPD plans to march through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, chanting “Nothing to celebrate” in an effort to exploit Germany’s mixed feelings about losing the war.

“May 8 is not a day of liberation for the Germans,” Herr Voigt said. “It’s a day of mourning. Millions of German civilians died in the months after the supposed liberation.”

Notice, he organizes skinheads, inspiring them to "near military discipline". Many of them have assumed "leadership" roles. They march in the street, enjoying the "sympathy" of many Germans.

Do you think these skinheads are armed?

Anti-Semitism On Campus At UC Irvine

From Little Green Footballs:

In the center quad at UC Irvine, Amir Abdel Malik Ali stands before a crowd of 150, his hands clutching a podium bearing the message, “Desperation of the Zionist Lobby.”

“Zionism is a mixture, a fusion of the concept of white supremacy and the chosen people,” the Oakland-based Muslim religious leader and teacher told the audience at the Feb. 2 Muslim Student Union (MSU)-organized event.

Malik Ali unleashed an attack about the Zionist control of the American media, Zionist complicity in the war in Iraq and Zionists’ ability to deflect justified criticism.

“You will have to hear more about the Holocaust when you accuse them of their Nazi behavior,” he told the group of mostly Muslim students.

At a time when Israeli and Palestinian leaders are taking baby steps toward a peaceful two-state solution, Malik Ali made it clear that he had a different vision.

“One state. Majority rule,” he said to rousing applause. “Check that out. Us. The Muslims.”

Once a sleepy suburban university, UCI has joined the ranks of Columbia University and UC Berkeley as a hotbed of anti-Zionism. The situation has become so tense that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — in reaction to a complaint filed by the conservative Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) — is investigating allegations of anti-Jewish harassment at UCI and administration indifference.

In recent years, UCI Muslim student groups have invited speakers like Malik Ali to attack Israel and its supporters in language that has the unmistakable ring of anti-Semitism.

And here's a link to Malik Ali's speech:

‘Amrika, the Belly of the Beast.’

Who's Hallucinating?

So, the other day, the media seemed to be exultant that the United States had backed down (or, at least, that seemed to be the way they were portraying it) and agreed to work with Europe on the Iranian nukes problem. The agreement we made with the Euros was that we would attmpt to negotiate with Iran, if the Euros would agree to turn the matter over to the UN Security Council if the negotiations broke down. Well, how's that going? From Reuter's:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Washington is "hallucinating" if it thinks Iran (news - web sites) will scrap its nuclear fuel production plans in return for economic incentives, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying Sunday.

The United States offered the encouragements in support of the European Union (news - web sites) which is negotiating with Tehran to try to persuade it to give up sensitive nuclear activities.

"U.S. officials are either unaware of the substance of the talks or (they are) hallucinating," Sirus Naseri, a senior member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team, told the official IRNA news agency.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. I guess the European diplomacy thing just ain't cutting it. So, now what should America do to make the Euros happy? Maybe we could tap dance, or do some pratfalls.

I know George Bush wasn't surprised at the outcome of these "negotiations". So, exactly who is it that's "hallucinating"? And tell me, does this rejection of our offer to Iran constitute a broken-down negotiation process?

Condoleeza, let Mr. Annan know that you and I will be coming out to see him soon.

UPDATE: From Roger Simon comes this:

Our New Iran Policy is not that new, at least as articulated by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley this morning:

"Iran should not take comfort in the Bush administration's softened stance against its suspected nuclear program," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Sunday in his first television interview since taking the job.

The United States agreed last week to drop opposition to Iranian membership in the World Trade Organization and to allow some sales of spare parts for civilian aircraft as part of a European plan that offers economic incentives for the Tehran government to give up any weapons ambitions.

But Hadley insisted the United States is not offering concessions to Iran or engaging the regime that President Bush has described as "the world's primary state sponsor of terror."

"What we are doing is removing some objections to something the Europeans are doing," Hadley said on "Fox News Sunday." "But I do not think that the Iranian regime can take much comfort in this because as part of this arrangement, the Europeans now for the first time are talking about Iranian support to terror and the need for this Iranian regime to listen to their people and to give them a greater role in the political process."

“Have You Heard of This Idea
That Anybody Can Make Something of Himself
If He Tries Hard Enough?"

Very interesting observations about German society from Entertainment Complex:

Germans will tell you that they’re not particularly proud to be German. In fact, many find their German-ness rather embarrassing—peinlich. Invariably, the explanation follows: well, it’s our history. “History,” apparently, refers almost exclusively to World War II. The “War,” in turn, is code for National Socialism and the Holocaust, but not necessarily for other aspects of the conflict. A lot of other issues are equivocated. The blitz on London, for example, was no different really than the Allies’ bombing of virtually every German city of note. No one apologizes for the occupation of France or the annexation of Austria. Quite different, however, is the weight of guilt for the Holocaust, and more broadly, for the painful anti-intellectualism of fascism. Germans do not want the world today to view the nation as racist. Or, even worse, unintellectual. And yet, the war wasn’t that long ago, and racism was a central feature of National Socialism, so the whole issue of nation, national identity, and just being German remains problematic.

University student, Gabi M., finds embarrassingly nationalistic the flying of German flags, the national anthem ... “It makes me very uncomfortable,” Gabi explains. Fortunately, Gabi doesn’t encounter flags and other national symbols very often in her day-to-day life in Berlin. For a major capital, Berlin is surprisingly empty of such iconography.

Contemporary Germans acknowledge no distinction between patriotism and hyper-nationalism. And nationalism is, of course, very, very bad.

World War II may well be just a scapegoat in the situation. Scratch the surface of an inclusionist, egalitarian, pan-European thinking German and you’ll quickly discover a rabid regionalism, and indeed often a class hatred, that for an American is shocking. Berliners hate the Saxons, Bavarians hate the Prussians, and everyone thinks that Stuttgarters talk funny. Berliners scold Americans for picturing all Germans as wearing Lederhosen and eating sausages with enormous Krugs of beer, yet they will quickly describe Bavarians in exactly these terms.

Certainly history plays a large part in this German unease with patriotism. But it’s more than the history they’re thinking about. Human nature dictates that we consider the present political configuration in Europe to be the way it has always been. In some respects, this may be true, but not when you’re talking about the map of central Europe. Before Bismarck unified Germany—by force—in the late 19th century, “Germany” comprised a patchwork of dukedoms, kingdoms, principalities, and city states.

Convenience allows us to assume they were unified by a common language, but in fact, local dialects were, and are still, often unintelligible to “German speakers” from other regions. There is no reason to suppose that the states that became modern Germany were in any way more unified or related to one another then than they are now to the German-speaking regions of Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France, Belgium, Bohemia, or Poland. Throw in the disasters of World War I, Weimar, World War II, and the Russian occupation of the East, and you’ve got a nation that has never actually been a nation, and has never developed a coherent national mythology. For being a part of old Europe, Germany is pretty new, and they’re still not used to it.

A country’s national mythos is critical to the creation and understanding of its artistic output. How can we grasp Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach, It Happened One Night, M*A*S*H*, or E.T. without understanding the mythology of the American frontier, the South, the harrowing of Viet Nam, or the modern revisionism of Spielberg’s landscapes? True, good doctors of the academy like Herr Doktor Prof. M. will remind you over and over that Germany is the land of Goethe and Schiller. Sadly, most Germans enjoy only a hazy concept of what that means. And while all school children may have read Faust, the play is no more immediate than Hamlet is for most American or English high school graduates. Germans almost seem willing to borrow our national myth. Gerhardt A., a German university student, quizzed me, “Have you heard of this idea that anybody can make something of himself if he tries hard enough? We call it the American Dream.” So do we, Gerhardt. Germany doesn’t possess a comparable canon of shared (positive) experience, of collective understanding, a German Dream.

The question posed by the German university student is not surprising to me. I have not been to Germany, but I have met many Germans. For a "can do" people they are surprisingly morose. I have been to France and I observed the same depression and lethargy there.

Western Civilization was built primarily on the backs of England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. It's as if the labor has broken them.

I often think it's a matter of the weight of sin that goes along with being a victor, with a strong sense of history. Africa does not lament it's sins. Nor does the Middle East, or South America. Yet the history of those places are just as filled with barbarity and conquest, just not on as grand a scale.

And, of course, their sins were not recorded in rich detail, and are not passed down from generation to generation via a developed education system. In fact, the education system they do have is, for the most part, based upon that of the West. And the history of Africa and the Americas did not begin to be recorded, in glorious detail, until the West intervened.

Hence, the peoples of non-Western societies believe that their history is one of being raped and pillaged when, the truth is, they are just as good at raping and pillaging as the next guy. They just have not been as good at documenting it.

Western Civilization needs to put down the pen and stop writing it's suicide note. A suicide note is not good history, nor is it great literature. Instead, it a a curse against the God who has blessed us with life. God asks that we take what he gives us, and use it to make the world a better place. Truth is, Western Civilization, with it's science, art and medicine, has done a decent job at just that.

We have sinned, but the response to sin should not be to give up in defeat, but to give up our sins. Give them up and move on. One can not change the past. One can only learn from it. Sure, admit your sins. Lay them out on the table. Inspect them. Tell others about them. But, only do these things in order to learn to make them right, with God's help.

The future of the world is relying on Western Civilization's willingness to repent and move on. If we do not the rest of the world will surely destroy itself.

Yeah, It Is Just Like That, Isn't It?

CUANAS reader, DS from Holland left the following comment about yesterday's "Hizballah Nazi Salute" post:

I don't know why nobody say anything about this. I can somehow understand why the left here won't discuss it, but the right seams to ignore it too.

I have seen some few clips of nazi banners in the palestinian territories in Danish TV but nothing said about it. It seams more like they forgot to cut it out or something. It's like the nazi regime has continued in the arab world, just now, they are on the 3rd countries level.

Notice DS says he has seen Palestinians flying Nazi banners on TV. You know what, DS? We've never been treated to that lovely sight here in the U.S. This Hizballah Nazi Salute never makes it to the Mainstream Media either.

What force is it that makes the good paternalistic American media hide such images from us? Is it not important that we know that these groups share an ideology with the Nazi's?

Of course, I spend a good deal of my time trying to bring this truth to light. There are quite a few other bloggers (with larger readership than mine) who are also fighting the good fight. But come on, what gives? Why does it take "pajama-clad" blogger to bring such an important truth to people.

This is not just a matter of cultural differences that we need to learn how to tolerate. This is an ideology which needs to be destroyed.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

London Times Says Israel Will Attack Iran

From the London Times, via Drudge:

Revealed: Israel plans strike on Iranian nuclear plant Uzi Mahnaimi

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear programme.

The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave “initial authorisation” for an attack at a private meeting last month on his ranch in the Negev desert.

Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include raids by Israel’s elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs to penetrate underground facilities.

The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israel’s way if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.

Tehran claims that its programme is designed for peaceful purposes but Israeli and American intelligence officials — who have met to share information in recent weeks — are convinced that it is intended to produce nuclear weapons.

The Israeli government responded cautiously yesterday to an announcement by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, that America would support Britain, France and Germany in offering economic incentives for Tehran to abandon its programme.

In return, the European countries promised to back Washington in referring Iran to the United Nations security council if the latest round of talks fails to secure agreement.

US officials warned last week that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities by Israeli or American forces had not been ruled out should the issue become deadlocked at the United Nations.

Not that this news comes as a surprise, but who leaked this? Maybe Sharon authorized it to be "leaked". In other words, maybe it is misinformation.

Hizballah Nazi Salute

What more do you need to know?

Alliance With Fascists

From a speech by Phyllis Chesler, via Melanie Phillips:

Phyllis Chesler tells it as it is at Columbia University (a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling):

'The problem is this: The entire "politically correct" Western Academy--including the Feminist Academy--has been fully and fatally Palestinianized.

'Professors in every discipline are persuaded that the Palestinians, peace be upon those who have truly suffered at the hands of their own corrupt and vicious leaders, including the Islamikaze bombers, represent the world's ultimate and most noble of victims. These same professors, well trained (or might I say brainwashed) by Columbia's own Edward Said and others such as Noam Chomsky, now view both America and Israel as the "real" terrorists.

Orwell would weep. Both President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon have been called "Nazis" and "worse than Nazis"--by professors to whom we turn for the truth.

'Today, they deal in lies, not truth, they deal in hate speech, not truth speech. They exaggerate complex and tragic realities--in the service of the most vulgar Jew-hatred, and in the service of death. They do not stand for democracy or freedom or tolerance but stand against it. They condemn and despise the very country that allows them to have their say. Such progressive, liberal, left, feminist, and gay "politically correct" professors have also romanticized totalitarian Islamists.

'Indeed, the "good" people, those who really want human suffering and injustice to end, have made an alliance with fascists and terrorists to bring down western civilization--and why? Because it is not perfect, because it has not yet redeemed the entire world. But, until they can accomplish this anti-colonialist, anti-racist "Armageddon," our "best and our brightest" are willing to settle for-- God forbid!-- the destruction of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

They scapegoat, demonize, and obsessively focus upon the most minor failings of the Jewish state -- even as they look away from the ongoing genocide in Sudan and the "gender cleansing" of Sudanese women, the genocides in Rwanda, in Bosnia; even as they consign millions of Muslims and Christians to suffer in medieval misery under barbaric Islamic regimes.'

No War Between Democracies

From an article entitled "No War, No Famine" at Project Syndicate:

STOCKHOLM: Two hundred years ago in his essay “Perpetual Peace” Immanuel Kant imagined a future “union of liberal republics.” In 1795, however, liberal republics were abstract ideas. Yet Kant imagined our present reality of flourishing liberal democracies. Moreover, Kant’s idea of perpetual peace seems even less far-fetched because no democracy has ever made war on another. Indeed, “No War Between Democracies” is as close as we are likely to get to an immutable diplomatic law.

Scholars have demonstrated the truth of this. Professor R J Rummel of the University of Hawaii investigated 353 pairs of combatants between 1816 and 1991. Democracy fought non-democracy in 155 cases. Dictatorship fought dictatorship in 198 cases. He found no examples of democracies at war with each other.

Curiouser and Curiouser

From the New York Post, via Medienkritik:

WEAPONS-PROBE BOSS: IRAQ TRIED TO BRIBE ME

March 11, 2005 -- WASHINGTON — A former chief U.N. weapons inspector revealed yesterday that he was offered millions of dollars in bribes from Tariq Aziz, Iraq's ex-deputy prime minister — to give a favorable report on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.

In the latest U.N. oil-for-food scandal bombshell, ex-weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus said he told the U.N. investigative panel headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker about the bribe offer, which he said he rejected.

"I told the Volcker people that Tariq said a couple of million dollars was there if we report right," Ekeus told Reuters. "My answer was, 'That is not the way we do business in Sweden.' "

Why would Tariq Aziz offer a bribe if there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction

Photo Of The Day

Hamas' Genocidal Agenda
Will Be On Palestinian Ballot

From Associated Press, via Little Green Footballs:

NABLUS, West Bank - The Hamas militant group announced Saturday it will participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections, a decision that could undermine Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ attempts to renew peacemaking with Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, about 2,500 unemployed Palestinians stormed the parliament building, throwing stones at police and breaking windows. Police fired in the air and dispersed the crowd, but the confrontation was the latest sign of internal dissatisfaction.

Hamas — which launched a deadly suicide bombing campaign in Israel during four years of fighting — does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has been committed to destroying the Jewish entity.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but this is good news. We already know that the preponderence of Palestinians support terror. But, this means that we shall see whether the Palestinian people want to murder "Jews", as the Hamas Charter calls for, or whether they simply want to eliminate Israel, as the Charter of the Palestinian Authority calls for.

That's a rather negligible difference, admittedly. Either choice is beyond the pale, as far as I'm concerned. But, I do believe that clarity will help. With it will come a clear line of demarcation between anti-Semite and genocidal anti-Semite.

For instance, which side do you think Europe will come down on? It will be interesting to see, won't it?

All Necessary And Appropriate Force
Against Those Nations, Organizations, Or Persons

From Michelle Malkin:

This Washington Post editorial is mostly critical of the Bush Administration's handling of the Josa Padilla case, but it includes an important concession:

In one important respect, we think Judge Floyd was too tough. He ruled that the government had no right to detain as an enemy combatant a U.S. citizen who had been arrested domestically in a civilian setting. But when Congress authorized the use of military force after Sept. 11, 2001, it gave the president the power "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" responsible for the attacks and "in order to prevent any future" attacks. If the war on terror is in any meaningful sense a real war, detaining people believed to be plotting attacks on the enemy's behalf must be part of the power to fight it. There may be times when enemy soldiers, even if U.S. citizens, must be held but cannot be tried in civilian courts.

Really, I don't know how you could fight a war in any other way.

Friday, March 11, 2005

It's All About The Ladies

This is so important I'm going to give it it's own post.

Go here, and see why it's all about the ladies.

Two worlds there. Which one do you want to live in?

Oh yes, and there's this about women's role in the new Iraqi government. They will hold 31% of the Assembly. Mrs. Narmin Othman, Minister of Women's Affairs, Iraq, has this to say:

We had election before but always there was one list, one man, and we could -- we should vote to him, and at the same time, which means that women will hold 31 percent of this Assembly; equally historic, 2,352 women were candidates out of 7,212. This is remarkable. And a first in Iraqi history, despite the threat of bombs, Iraqi’s voted. Maybe you heard, it was a wonderful and unique and incredible history in our election.

Woman without having any chance to reach the polls, she went in there and her son on her husband's shoulder to go to there to vote. A pregnant woman had a baby at the polling place and she get the name for her daughter, Al Intekhabat, it means election.

That brings a tear to my eye.

Beirut Babes For Democracy

Forgive me the sexist title, but it's there to make a point. In light of my previous post about how the anti-Democratic Hizballah demonstrations were male-only, I thought it appropriate to comment on the reality of this photo.

These girls are not hiding their faces, and they are not attempting to hide their stand against the Syrian government. In fact they are openly flaunting both. They both possess a look of real intelligence and determination. These qualities are sexy.

Good for them, and good for the world.

Blessed be the Name of the Lord, Ruler of the Universe, who brings forth beautiful women from the womb. And thank you to these beautiful women for their courageous stand.

Here is a link to a photo essay on the changes in Lebanon.

Hat tip to No Pasaran.

A Sikh/Hindi Brit Diagnoses England
With A Bad Case of The New Anti-Semitism
Says Prognosis Is Bad

This is an anecdotal story from England. However, it ought to be understood in context of all the other stories of anti-Semitism coming out of merry old England. From Melanie Phillips:

A reader, who happens to be of mixed Sikh and Hindu parentage, emails me to say the following:
'In today's Guardian Timothy Garton Ash explains why we should be sympathetic and kind to Muslims who consider Osama to be a hero and make statements like this:

'I ask another Muhammad ("just call me Muhammad"), a voluble 16-year-old, about last year's bombings just down the road, at the Atocha station. Well, he says, he doesn't like to see people dying "even if they are Christians and Jews". But in this case, because of what Aznar did in the Iraq war'.

"Even if they are Christians and Jews" tells you all you need to know about the mindset of many Muslims in Europe, as though CHristians and Jews are lesser people, scum, like dogs or animals. The left in this country is unable and unwilling to face up to the fact that there is a deep poison in the ideology of many of its idealised and romanticised "oppressed" lumpen masses. It is unable to accept that no matter what they do, there will still be people utterly deranged by an ideology of hatred that no amount of wretched and pathetic self flaggelation will defuse.

'I have e-mailed you before and told you about the rancid, casual, rabid anti-semitism that I encounter on a regular basis amongst Muslims I meet in my life. Because I am Asian, have brown skin, they sometimes assume I am Muslim, and even if they don't, they are freer to tell me their inner thoughts than they would to a white person. It is a level of hatred that is Nazi like in its extremity and virtually universal. I have met some brave Muslims who are sickened by it, but they are a minority and would never challenge the status-quo hatred that persists amongst them, for fear of ridicule, contempt, and perhaps even violence.

'It is only now that I am putting two and two together, though, and seeing how this links into the sly and crafty anti-semitism within wider British society, the type of anti-semitism in the salons that Philip Roth diagnosed so well in his writing when he lived in London and moved in the circles of "liberal" London. For them, the religious rapture of Islamist hatred for Jews is thrilling. Coupled with the vilification of Israel out of all proportion to its crimes, we have a heady brew of hatred and bigotry that the useful idiots of the left either choose to ignore, or actively participate in.

'Personally, I think that Jews, and to a lesser extent Hindus and Sikhs, face a future of marginalisation in Britain, caught in a pincer movement between the Islamist political game and the pandering of the left to every whim of the Muslim community. Look at Ken Livingstone and his outrageous remarks all to court the Muslim vote. This is the future of Britain. It is a tragedy.'

My guess is that there aren't just a minority of Muslims who disagree with this "Nazi-like" hatred. However, he probably is right that there is just a minority of brave Muslims willing to speak out against it. Of course, they don't have a public platform. And, unfortunately, the ones who do, rarely speak out against the extremism in their midst.

Condemning An Israeli Terrorist
And Those Who Honor Him

I was having an email discussion with a friend the other day, and something came up which I think I ought to post on this site. I'll try to give it context, so you can see why it came up. My friend wrote the following of Sharon's disengagement program and the settlers:

It seems to me that his bigger difficulty is going to be in evacuating theJewish towns without causing horror and backlash. What do you think about that by the way? I am torn there.

In order to understand my answer, one must understand that I don't purport to be any kind of expert on the history of the border dispute, or the peace process. I don't understand these things, and they really have little to do with this blog anyway. You'll notice that I don't post on the Middle East conflict very often, except if it is a Palestinian calling for the death of Jews. To my mind, that is morally wrong. So, I speak out on it. I consider the political dispute to be the realm of people who understand the history and legal rulings comprehensively.

So anyway, here's my answer to my friend. Please take it in the spirit in which it was given:

You know, honestly, I don't know what to think. Here's as far as I've been able to get with it:

1) The Settler Program (which I believe Sharon accelerated) seems unfair and counter to the Oslo Peace Accords

2) I can think of no reason why Jews should not be allowed to live in Palestine, if they buy the land legally.

3) I honestly don't know why any sane Jew would want to live in Palestine.

I read an article in the New Yorker, a few months back, on the Settler Movement. Now, of course, the New Yorker is liberal, but that doesn't mean it's always wrong. From my own personal experience with radicalized Christians and Jews, I believe that their characterization of the Settler Movement was probably relatively accurate, although probably not quite as prevalent as they imply. Basically, the people the New Yorker interviewed were Jewish Supremacists who believe Israel is their land because the Bible says it is.

They have made a hero out of Baruch Goldstein. In case you do not remember who he is, he's the guy who, during the time when the Oslo Accords were first being implemented, marched into a mosque and used a machine gun to mowed down 29 Palestinians as they were praying.

Since I had brought that up, I thought I would include a link to a story on Baruch Goldstein. So, I went to google and typed in something like,

Baruch Goldstein murder mosque

or something like that. The number one link provided by google was this:

On the Feast of Purim (February 1994), Dr. Baruch Goldstein, dressed as an army officer, entered the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and shot to death 29 Arabs and wounded approximately a hundred more. It is our great misfortune that Dr. Baruch Goldstein may G-D avenge his blood, who was brutally murdered by the Arabs is no longer with us.

The site, from which that quote is taken, deals with a dispute over the gravesite of Baruch Goldstein. The people who keep the site clearly think Baruch Goldstein is a hero.

I just want to go on record here on CUANAS and say that, to me, Baruch Goldstein was a terrorist, just as sure as any Palestinian suicide bomber is a terrorist.

That being said, I know of no major movement, within Israel, in support of people like Baruch Goldstein. As is true with America, Israeli society contains of a tremendous plurality of opinions, but the general consensus is they want to have a two-state solution.

Contrast such an attitude with that of the Palestinian Authority whose charter (which is on the official UN website) calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Washington Post Managing Editor Doesn't Seem
To Know What's Going On In China

From Michelle Malkin:

The Washington Post's managing editor, Philip Bennett, gave a fascinating interview to People's Daily Online, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Chinese regime.

Assuming Bennett's remarks were correctly transcribed (and there is a significant possibility that they were not), it seems fair to say he has bad feelings about the Bush Administration, which he says deliberately lied about WMDs in Iraq and is excessively secretive. He can't define democracy, but whatever it is he disputes the notion that it's advancing in Iraq. He doesn't seem to place much value in freedom of the press, as evidenced by his enthusiasm about the idea of working as a journalist in China, which routinely censors web sites and news. He is darn sure that America shouldn't lead the world. On the other hand, he is quite fond of China and its leaders. He didn't go so far as to accuse U.S. troops of deliberately killing journalists a la Eason Jordan, but once again the anti-American mindset comes through loud and clear.
I've included some highlights below, but read the wh