The Consistent Doctrine

"NEW YORK-- Ayaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: "I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant," she declares. "But that is apologizing for the truth."

Statements such as these have brought Ms. Hirsi Ali to world-wide attention. Though she recently left her adopted country, Holland--where her friend and intellectual collaborator Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004--she is still accompanied by armed guards wherever she travels.

Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Mogadishu--into, as she puts it, "the Islamic civilization, as far as you can call it a civilization." In 1992, at age 22, her family gave her hand to a distant relative; had the marriage ensued, she says, it would have been "an arranged rape." But as she was shipped to the appointment via Europe, she fled, obtaining asylum in Holland. There, "through observation, through experience, through reading," she acquainted herself with a different world. "The culture that I came to and I live in now is not perfect," Ms. Hirsi Ali says. "But this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved."

***

At his sentencing, Mohammed Buyeri said he would have killed his own brother, had he made "Submission" or otherwise insulted the One True Faith. "And why?" Ms. Hirsi Ali asks. "Because he said his god ordered him to do it. . . . We need to see," she continues, "that this isn't something that's caused by special offense, the right, Jews, poverty. It's religion."

***

That partly explains why Ms. Hirsi Ali's new autobiography, "Infidel," is already a best seller. It may also have something to do with the way she scrambles our expectations. In person, she is modest, graceful, enthralling. Intellectually, she is fierce, even predatory: "We know exactly what it is about but we don't have the guts to say it out loud," she says. "We are too weak to take up our role. The West is falling apart. The open society is coming undone."

Many liberals loathe her for disrupting an imagined "diversity" consensus: It is absurd, she argues, to pretend that cultures are all equal, or all equally desirable. But conservatives, and others, might be reasonably unnerved by her dim view of religion. She does not believe that Islam has been "hijacked" by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: "Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous."

The Muslim faith has many variations, but Ms. Hirsi Ali contends that the unities are of greater significance. "Islam has a very consistent doctrine," she says, "and I define Islam as I was taught to define it: submission to the will of Allah. His will is written in the Quran, and in the hadith and Sunna. What we are all taught is that when you want to make a distinction between right and wrong, you follow the prophet. Muhammad is the model guide for every Muslim through time, throughout history."

This supposition justifies, in her view, a withering critique of Islam's most holy human messenger. "You start by scrutinizing the morality of the prophet," and then ask: "Are you prepared to follow the morality of the prophet in a society such as this one?" She draws a connection between Mohammed's taking of child brides and modern sexual oppressions--what she calls "this imprisonment of women." She decries the murder of adulteresses and rape victims, the wearing of the veil, arranged marriages, domestic violence, genital mutilation and other contraventions of "the most basic freedoms."

These sufferings, she maintains, are traceable to theological imperatives. "People say it is a bad strategy," Ms. Hirsi Ali says forcefully. "I think it is the best strategy. . . . Muslims must choose to follow their rational capacities as humans and to follow reason instead of Quranic commands. At that point Islam will be reformed."

This worldview has led certain critics to dismiss Ms. Hirsi Ali as a secular extremist. "I have my ideas and my views," she says, "and I want to argue them. It is our obligation to look at things critically." As to the charges that she is an "Enlightenment fundamentalist," she points out, rightly, that people who live in democratic societies are not supposed to settle their disagreements by killing one another.

And yet contemporary democracies, she says, accommodate the incitement of such behavior: "The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism. . . . Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve. . . . With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place."

The most grievous failing of the West is self-congratulatory passivity: We face "an external enemy that to a degree has become an internal enemy, that has infiltrated the system and wants to destroy it." She believes a more drastic reaction is required: "It's easy," she says, "to weigh liberties against the damage that can be done to society and decide to deny liberties. As it should be. A free society should be prepared to recognize the patterns in front of it, and do something about them."

She says the West must begin to think long term about its relationship with Islam--because the Islamists are. Ms. Hirsi Ali notes Muslim birth rates are vastly outstripping those elsewhere (particularly in Western Europe) and believes this is a conscious attempt to extend the faith. Muslims, she says, treat women as "these baby-machines, these son-factories. . . . We need to compete with this," she goes on. "It is a totalitarian method. The Nazis tried it using women as incubators, literally to give birth to soldiers. Islam is now doing it. . . . It is a very effective and very frightening way of dealing with human beings.""

Spain: Finally Enough With Appeasing Terrorists?

"The rally is organized by the conservative Popular Party, now in opposition, and follow 65 smaller demonstrations across the country's cities yesterday evening. They're all against Zapatero's decision to allow one of ETA's biggest killers, Iñaki de Juana Chaos, to serve his reduced sentence at home after being in a hunger strike for about 100 days demanding his release. Of course the term 'hunger strike' is an euphemism: during the last weeks he was in a Madrid hospital with a more than lax regime for visits and his girlfriend staying with him. The police officers custodying him have publicly complained they were ordered not to search her, so who knows how many power-bars or other food she sneaked in. Anyway, Zapatero took the measure for 'humanitarian reasons' alleging he was in a very bad physical state, though it didn't seem an obstacle for him to take long 40-minute showers with his girlfriend (if you know what I mean) until the last day before he was sent home. Or leaving the hospital walking, as he did. Again, it's the police officers who say it, not me.

Many people, not only from the PP, view this as the last straw, as a measure in favor of a terrorist who just said he doesn't feel any remorse for killing and who belonged to a terrorist organization that just killed 2 inocent people in the Barajas airport bombing late last year. Even though Zapatero said then that he would stop negotiating with ETA, the truth is that soon after he has declared his intention to keep doing so. That's probably why today's protest is probably even bigger than the several million-man marches in recent months. Madrid public regional TV says it's 2.2 million, but Madrid regional government is PP so they're probably stretching the figures a little. In any event, it's another impressive gathering." [ This is great to see but I'm frankly not optimistic about Eurabia in general. I have said before that we will need to greatly increase U.S. immigration quotas to absorb the refugees with the sense to escape (probably a fair number of them in this crowd!) when the final straws start falling with the Islamists. How long? Did you know that in many major Eurabian cities like Paris the Muslim teens are nearly equal in numbers with the natives. Already. -ed. ]

Hypocrisy Eurabian Style

"'Cause the Europeans are, you know, more progressive than we are."

All Cleared Up Now

"In the question and answer session, it apparently became even more difficult for Carter to sustain his "good will" towards Jews. Asked how he felt about the 14 members of the Carter Center advisory board who resigned in protest over his book, Carter noted, "they all happen to be Jewish Americans, I understand the tremendous pressures on them." In other words, these scholars like Kenneth Stein criticized his book for "egregious errors and polemical conclusions," they weren't offering their good faith assessment, they were succumbing to pressure from their tribesmen. I'm glad he cleared that up."

That Bad?

"The analogy I use is like my car’s not running very well, so I’m going to ignore the engine which is the sun and I’m going to ignore the transmission which is the water vapour and I’m going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel which is the human produced CO2. The science is that bad."

The Non-Smoking Animal-Loving Vegetarian Artist Surely Loves Thermopylae...

"I have no idea whether 300 is a good movie, but Steven's review is an entertaining example of how all events, including those which happened nearly 500 years BC, must be judged according to prisms of contemporary political correctness. Miller had to remember, for example, "that we're in the middle of an actual war". Did he not realize his duty to denounce it? But what if Miller had made a movie about the fight against Hitler? Would it have been necessary to remind the audience that Hitler was a nonsmoking, animal-loving, vegetarian artist? Or had he remade Zulu to include some white faces among Prince Dabulamanzi's impis?

The most interesting thing about those who habitually denounce ethnocentricity and cultural blindness is that they are not without such sentiments themselves, the difference being that their cultural point of view is rooted in the mid-20th century, rather than say, ancient Lacedaemonia.

Now I'm truly surprised that nobody 'gets' the background of 300. Everybody knows it deals with what happened to Hercules after his epic battle with Maciste on his way to a rematch with Conan."

100 Bars Here, Another Rod There...

"Mr Mukeba said Mr Lumu was suspected of "orchestrating illicit contracts to produce and sell uranium" but he did not name the alleged buyers.

Le Phare newspaper reported that about 100 bars of uranium had disappeared from the small experimental reactor, the oldest nuclear facility in Africa. The uranium produced by the reactor in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, is enriched but not to weapons grade, although it could be used in a "dirty bomb" to spread radiation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and foreign governments have expressed concern about lax security at the plant, which the US has tried to get closed for a number of years. Two years ago the Congolese government denied reports that uranium was shipped to Iran.

In 2000, Newsweek reported that a Kenyan middleman attempted to sell Congolese uranium to Saddam Hussein but the Iraqi leader was under too much international scrutiny to buy it.

The IAEA has criticised standards at the site, which is often left unguarded and is protected only by a low fence and rickety gate. Although the reactor has been on standby for nine years, there are 98 bars of enriched uranium stored at the site, submerged in a pool underneath a padlocked metal grate or in the reactor.

Two uranium rods disappeared from the facility in the late 1970s, one of which is believed to have been found in 1998 on its way to the Middle East via the mafia. The other was never recovered." [ Isn't that special? -ed. ]

The Drama Of "News"

"Perhaps the greatest production of the BBC has been the long running drama of itself playing a news organization.

As for myself, I will continue to read the BBC -- and Xinhua -- remembering for my own benefit that in their newsroom hangs a portrait of Bush as Hitler. Seig Heil."

The Scare Dynamic

"With no countervailing force, we get the build-up of a scare dynamic which then dominates public policy, even (or especially) where the scientific foundation is hopelessly flawed.

In the fullness of time, the scare will dissipate – scares always do – leaving a trail of wreckage behind it. Looking back, we will view the claims of pending Armageddon with amused puzzlement, wondering how people could have been so stupid as to have accepted such crazy alarums.

By then, of course, we will all have moved on to yet another scare, and another, each of which will have seemed every bit as plausible and rational as did global warming at the time. But each time we will have forgotten how easily we were gulled by that which we now deride, and each time mankind emerges the poorer." [ And don't forget that China is set to pass the U.S. as the largest greenhouse producer this year or next. Or that the meat industry is currently the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses. ... Crickets chirping... -ed. ]

Hatreds Of Lost Utopias

"His name is Peter Tatchell and he asks the right question: how come the Left doesn’t support the Iranians’ desire to be free? I think the answer is pretty obvious: because the Left has made the United States, Israel, and George Bush their prime enemies, and they defend all the tyrants who threaten these enemies.

To put it differently: they never forgave us for bringing down the Soviet Empire. We destroyed their utopian dreams."

The People Who Must Choose For Themselves

Irshad Again...

"“Moderate Muslims denounce terror that's committed in the name of Islam but they deny that religion has anything to do with it," she says. "Reform-minded Muslims denounce terror that's committed in the name of Islam and acknowledge that our religion is used to inspire it.""

Warren On Robert's Anglosphere

"His main point is that the Anglosphere determined the course of history through the twentieth century by standing united against Prussian militarism in the First World War, Fascism in the Second, and Communism in the Cold War. In each case, the Anglosphere stood nearly alone, with no reliable allies elsewhere in the world, only clients and dependents. As we pass into the 21st century, we face a fourth great test, against what has been called “Islamofascism”. Will the Anglosphere again stand united, in defence of the West?

Roberts takes this as an open question. He is distressed by demographics, and by “multiculturalism”. Massive immigration of Muslims and others from dysfunctional Third-World states is transforming our societies, especially in leading urban centres, and meanwhile our educational systems have “progressed” to reflect a demented cultural relativism, in which our own English-speaking heritage is disowned, barbarous ideas are substituted piecemeal, and a void is created into which all kinds of horrors may be sucked.

We are no longer assimilating immigrants, and winning them over to our language and outlook; we are instead surrendering everything we stand for.

Yet the Anglosphere is still there, as evidence the British and Australian allies the Americans found when something had to be done about Iraq. Canadian troops in Afghanistan represent at least a tip of the hat to our own best national traditions, in which we were always rather proudly first in the trenches, and first up the hill.

Nor, of course, is systematic unhelpfulness from our nominal allies in Continental Europe something new. We have a history of having to protect them from each other, or liberate them, again and again, while they mutter about the distastefulness of “Anglo-Americanism”. But someone has to play adult in the planetary kindergarten.

You must know history, to see a way forward; you must ask the “What if?” questions. Without a strong, essentially united Anglosphere, the world would be a much nastier place, even than it is today. It is time we English-speakers got our act together. Again. And I think, time we started inviting India to the show, for it is emerging as another English-speaking centre on the scale of a new America."

A Barbarism Of Their Own Making

"In America, my husband was proud that I was a natural-born rebel and free thinker. In Afghanistan, my criticism of the treatment of women and of the poor rendered him suspect, vulnerable. He mocked my horrified reactions. But I knew what my eyes and ears told me. I saw how poor women in chadaris were forced to sit at the back of the bus and had to keep yielding their place on line in the bazaar to any man.

I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes — one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male “prison”-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence).

Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous — but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: “Not even the British could occupy us.” Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil. Long before al-Qaeda beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and Nicholas Berg in Iraq, I understood that it was dangerous for a Westerner, especially a woman, to live in a Muslim country. In retrospect, I believe my so-called Western feminism was forged in that most beautiful and treacherous of Eastern countries.

Nevertheless, Western intellectual-ideologues, including feminists, have demonised me as a reactionary and racist “Islamophobe” for arguing that Islam, not Israel, is the largest practitioner of both sexual and religious apartheid in the world and that if Westerners do not stand up to this apartheid, morally, economically and militarily, we will not only have the blood of innocents on our hands; we will also be overrun by Sharia in the West. I have been heckled, menaced, never-invited, or disinvited for such heretical ideas — and for denouncing the epidemic of Muslim-on-Muslim violence for which tiny Israel is routinely, unbelievably scapegoated."

On Fairness

"I'm sorry to be redundant about this, but I don't think people fully appreciate the logic. Meat eating is either the number one cause of GW or it is not. If it is the number one cause, then why are the GW people not talking about it? Even the skeptics are not focusing on meat as they should be. I think meat may be the Achilles Heel of GW, as it puts the lie to them. The skeptics should be pressing it. I think the logic is being blurred for several reasons. One is that lot of people think we should conserve (we should), and end our dependence on foreign oil (we should). This does not mean that CO2 is being released in sufficient quantities to cause climate change, though. People rationalize going along with the GW scare because we need to conserve, and they forget that conservation of oil is a different issue. (I think it's right to conserve oil and reduce dependency, but I think fudging the issue is manipulative.)

Another reason is that even the believers have a natural resistence to giving up meat, and they fear it will damage their movement. They want to keep it quiet, and for some strange reason, their opponents go along with keeping it quiet, probably because they think the less said about it the better. Big mistake IMO, especially if meat is in fact the Achilles Heel of the environmentalists. The American people are used to being scolded about oil, but if they're asked to give up meat, they'll begin to wise up, and start asking basic questions. It's this "leave well enough alone" mindset which prevents people from getting to the truth.

Finally, there's a natural inclination to think of oil as the culprit, not just because Big Oil is so widely demonized, but because we've all been conditioned from childhood to think of smokestacks and tailpipes as pouring out evil, filthy pollution. Never mind that we emit carbons and that they're organic. Oil companies are "bad." Farmers are "good."

Thus, it is counterintuitive to see meat as the problem. Frankly, I don't think man's oil consumption or meat consumption emits enough carbon to change the climate. But I believe in being fair."

In Which Brian Williams Gets Honorable Mention...

"If their morale could be bottled, it would probably sell like crack, then be outlawed."

Letter From The "French Educated Intellectual" Memory Hole

"Dear Excellency and Friend:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.

You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we are all born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].

Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

Immediately after the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, writes Kissinger, Sirik Matak was shot in the stomach and left to die over the course of three days from his untreated wounds." [ If you don't know who the "French Educated Intellectual" was then how much grasp of history do you really have? -ed. ]

The Messiah Pariah

"Think about that one for a moment. Again, as we were discussing the other day, the deeper the cause, the deeper the effect. The cause of this messiah was so deep that its shattering effects continue to be felt today -- again, even if you only look at it in purely Bionian terms, let alone religious ones; for if truth is catastrophic, then Truth must be the biggest catastrophe of them all, shattering every man-made idol with which it comes into contact.

Understood in Bion's sense, it is not the least bit of hyperbole to say that the United States is the "messiah among nations." With this understanding in mind, it is entirely predictable that the Establishment -- e.g., the UN or the international left -- would react to us the way they do. The truly messianic liberal principles embodied in our founding documents absolutely shatter the leftist agenda into into so many bits of totoiletarian fasces."

Iranian Cracks?

"One respected analyst with sources in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard says Gen. Ali Reza Asgari has defected and is now in a European country with his entire family, where he is cooperating with the U.S.

Other reports have suggested that the general may have been kidnapped by the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. A spokesperson at the CIA declined to comment on the reported defection.

"This is a fatal blow to Iranian intelligence," said the source, explaining that Asgari knows sensitive information about Iran's nuclear and military projects. Iran called tens of its Revolutionary Guard agents working at embassies and cultural centers in Arab and European countries back to Tehran out of fear that Asgari might disclose secret information about their identities, according to the analyst."

Suicide Shock Watch

"A military correspondent for Russia's top business daily has died after falling out of a window, and some media alleged Monday that he might have been killed for his critical reporting. [ This is just shocking that such a thing could happen. In *Russia* no less! -ed. ]

Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said. His body was found by neighbors shortly after the fall." [ Vladimir practices a different kind of suicide attack ... that of his enemies. But no less effective. -ed. ]

Allegre Who?

"In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."" [ Looks like we're about to have one of the most eminent possible French scientists sent down the Memory Hole. This ought to be grounds for popcorn. Allegre who? -ed. ]

Reverse Is Stripped Scotty!

"If private companies had mismanaged outpatient care for veterans the way the V.A. system has, there would be strong calls from all the usual quarters for a government takeover, and proclamations of how we can't trust "greedy" for-profit companies to take care of veterans. Funny how this thought process doesn't seem to work in reverse, except among "free market ideologues," who have been criticizing the V.A. for years." [ Why it's because all of us "free market idealogues" are always filled with evil and bad intentions of course. I know I am. Why the very devil himself invented the idea of a "hand up" instead of knee jerk "hand outs". -ed. ]

There You Have It

"In my most recent visit, there was the pervasive, open acknowledgement by the police, IA and the residents that they trusted the Americans, but not each other."

On Enemies And Their Our Victims

"An enemy, as opposed to an opponent, is a very different creature.

An enemy is someone with whom we, as individuals and as a community, have fundamental differences. An enemy has values and beliefs, that are very different than out own. An enemy wants to deprive us of our beliefs and values, because that enemy finds our beliefs repulsive or threatening to their own. Enemies will fight to the death, should they choose to engage us or we choose to engage them.

That is a bitter lesson.

Had we bombed Berlin and rid the Germans of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi political leadership, 50 million lives would have been spared.

Had we assassinated the likes of Josef Mengele and other Nazi ’scientists’ and ‘doctors,’ untold horror and tragedy would have been averted and tens of thousands of ‘medical experiments’- many thousands of which the German ‘doctors’ meticulously noted were done without anesthesia, would never have taken place. The wholesale slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, gays, and ‘mental defects’ would never have occurred. [ Of course, many of our own "best and brightest" were aiding and abetting the madness under the rubric of "eugenics". -ed. ]

There are people who believe that enemies are opponents- that is, they can reasoned with and rationalized with and common ground can be had. Believing that an enemy can be an opponent is what led much of Europe to appease Hitler, in the beginning. Herr Hitler, it was believed, was after all a European. Surely he could be reasoned with. Surely he would respond to the rational idea that war was catastrophic.

The world watched and listened as Germany stated her objectives and prepared for war- and remained in denial about the obvious German intentions. The Germans could never be enemies, they believed. They might be opponents- but never enemies.

They were wrong.

Reynolds is absolutely right. If we do not deal with the mullahs and other racist, bigoted and dysfunctional leaders in Tehran and the Arab world, we and our allies will pay dearly. The conflict will not be limited to Africa or other far away places that the media can ignore. We are facing a confrontation in our own back yard.

This kind of denial and moral bankruptcy from the left is not surprising. They have not stood up against any slaughters or tragedies. Stalin, Pol Pot, post war Vietnam, Che, Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leonne, Mauritania and Algeria are only a few places of the the left saw fit not care about. The truth is, the only victims the left have consistently proved to care about are themselves."

And The "Coincidental" Putin Hits Go On...

"The shooting of Paul Joyal, 53, came days after he accused the Russian government of involvement in the poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. The FBI was assisting in the investigation.

Joyal was shot Thursday by two men in his driveway, police said.

The shooting appeared to be a random robbery and street shooting, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person did not have authority to comment on the case. [ There are those anonymous sources again... -ed. ]

In an interview broadcast last Sunday on "Dateline NBC," Joyal also accused the Russian government of trying to silence its critics.

"A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you _ in the most horrible way possible," Joyal said." [ And of course, it couldn't possibly be a hit made to look like a street crime. -ed. ]

Another Putin Shocka

"Finally, Russia is a high-cost oil producer, the largest oil producer in the world, the largest oil exporter outside of OPEC, and the largest gas producer. As such, it is interested in maintaining a high energy price environment, which is usually generated by tensions and conflicts in the Middle East. Russia is perfectly willing to sell weapons to both sides of the growing Sunni-Shia divide. This was evidenced when the same nuclear reactors – peaceful, of course, and the same anti-aircraft systems, were offered both to Iran and to the Arab Gulf states, which are increasingly nervous about the growing Iranian military power and nuclear ambitions. As one Russian observer put it, weapons sales create allies. Russia is using weapons and nuclear reactor sales the way imperial Germany used railroads – to bolster influence and to undermine the dominant power in the Middle East."

A Confusion of Whats And Hows

"The California legislature may want to revisit the wording of their proposed ban on incandescents (AB 722). How about mandating a level of efficiency rather than assuming that innovation can't happen?" " [ A classic example of why putting almost anything related to science and technology in the hands of politicians is generally a dumb idea. -ed. ]

Forget It -- Liquid Explosives Edition

"Just imagine if the 'Palestinians' spent as much time and effort and resources trying to improve their lot in life as they spend trying to kill people. Forget it. It will never happen."

Eugenics Holocaust Update

"The thrust of the article, which was based on interviews with administration sources, was that while North Korea's commitment to acquire nuclear weapons has never been in doubt, at no time has the US had certain knowledge of its actual capabilities. In light of the uncertainty relating to Pyongyang's capabilities, the Bush administration was wrong - the Times's sources clucked - to have confronted it over its intentions.

By the same token, those who applaud the administration's decision to engage the nuclear weapons-seeking mullahs in Teheran argue that the administration would be wrong to confront Iran for its stated intention to "wipe Israel off the map," and to bring about "a world without America," since US intelligence services are incapable of bringing unequivocal information regarding the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Clearly there is something wrong with this analysis. If what is not in doubt is Iran's commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons, rather than base its policies on a best-case-scenario regarding Teheran's unknown capabilities, the US and its allies should be basing their policies on a calculation of the risks a nuclear armed Iran would constitute for global security. ***

IN LIGHT of this analysis it seems that in spite of the praise it is reaping from the policy jet-set, the Bush administration would do well to reexamine its new policy toward Iran. It should accept their criticism and revert to basing its policy toward the nuclear-proliferating, terror-supporting rogue state on what is known rather than on what is unknown.

Since Iran not only wants nuclear weapons, but has an active nuclear weapons program, the question that should be guiding policymakers is not whether Iran should be negotiated with, but rather, whether the US is willing to accept any of the likely scenarios of what will transpire if Iran does in fact acquire nuclear weapons. If the US is not willing to accept any of those scenarios, then it should be asking itself what must be done to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

While Europe may be willing to sit on the sidelines of this fight, just as it sat on the sidelines of the Cold War, and did little to prevent the Nazi conquest of the continent in World War II, Israel has no such luxury." [ The holocaust survivor has now been officially flushed down the Memory Hole. You know, the one who when asked what he had learned from the Holocaust replied: "When a man says he wants to kill you ... you should believe him." Luckily for pomo man, intentions never matter. Or was that always matter? Ah, I forgot -- only MY (obviously bad no matter what I say) intentions matter... -ed. ]

Sink Or Swim Only Works With Swimmers

""How the Americans can infuse into the Iraqi army and police in Baghdad a sense of mission and even-handedness such that the Americans can withdraw from neighborhoods in eight to twelve months without backsliding. "

I don't have the answer to this one, it is a great question, but I know what many will say the answer is. "Just leave and they will be forced to take on the responsibilities themselves. Sink or Swim." I know many are advocating this course of action, but I can tell you from experience, this is not a winning strategy. We tried this in 2005 in Eastern Baghdad, turning over much of the East side to Iraqis who were not ready. Because they were not ready, they did what they had to in order to survive, they cut deals, turned blind eyes and stayed out of the way. They did what they could, but they were not ready to do what they had to do." [ The Golden Hour clock ticks relentlessly. And we have a 5 minute attention span... -ed. ]

On Fighting

"Unless memory fails, Pickens once said that it is not enough for your adversary to know you will fight; he has to believe you love to fight. That always struck me as pretty good advice for war as well as business."

NYeT To The Killing Fields -- Past And Future

""In the beginning, middle, and end of this episode, Kissinger shows to telling effect, the barbaric nature of the Communist Khmer Rouge was painted over in soothing tones by much of the American press. The New York Times was the most flagrant offender. In one dispatch, its correspondent Sydney Schanberg described a ranking Khmer Rouge leader as a "French-educated intellectual" who wanted nothing more than "to fight against feudal privileges and social inequities." A bloodbath was unlikely, Schanberg reported: "since all are Cambodians, an accommodation will be found." As the last Americans were withdrawn, another upbeat article by Schanberg appeared under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." In short order, the Khmer Rouge proceeded to march nearly two million of their fellow Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields. Also in short order, Schanberg went on to greater glory and a Pulitzer prize. [ I was nearly unable to post this due to a tremendous nausea and urge to retch. -ed. ]

What Al Qaeda?

"The enemy we face in the war on terror has made Iraq the primary front in that war. To use a popular phrase, this is an inconvenient truth."

Calling Charles Martel...

"Reports that France surrendered in response to this story, however, are false."

Eugenics Past ... And Present

"The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.

As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste." [ Did I forget to mention that Magaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood? Did that make you sit up in your chair? -ed. ]

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind.

There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal --- the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America.

Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.)

Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where "mental defectives" were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.

Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and of killing ten million undesirables.

After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form." [ Michael Crichton is unstinting on the global warming hysteria, no? Wow -- a real excavation of the Memory Hole on display here. -ed. ]

But now we have someone new working hard to bring eugenics back:

"Ahmadinejad has made a habit of making virulently anti-Israel comments, calling for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map," among other verbal attacks.

He also has called the Holocaust a myth and held a conference of revisionist historians on the credibility that six million Jews were killed by Nazis during World War II."

Focus

"My advice to investors and entrepreneurs is not to dive into a hot Web 2.0 start-up. Instead, invest in building up your attention span. Take a walk. Read a book. Shut down your computer and your cell phone for 24 hours. Focus." [ Turn off the TV too. -ed. ]

The Middle ... Is Missing

"The CCES survey asked about 14 national issues: the war in Iraq (the invasion and the troops), abortion (and partial birth abortion), stem cell research, global warming, health insurance, immigration, the minimum wage, liberalism and conservatism, same-sex marriage, privatizing Social Security, affirmative action, and capital gains taxes. Not surprisingly, some of the largest differences between Democrats and Republicans were over the Iraq war. Fully 85 percent of those who voted for Democratic House candidates felt that it had been a mistake to invade Iraq, compared with only 18 percent of voters who cast ballots for Republicans.

But the divisions between the parties weren't limited to Iraq. They extended to every issue in the survey. For example, 69 percent of Democratic voters chose the most strongly pro-choice position on the issue of abortion, compared with 20 percent of Republican voters; only 16 percent of Democratic voters supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 80 percent of Republican voters did; and 91 percent of Democratic voters favored governmental action to reduce global warming, compared with 27 percent of Republican voters.

When we combined voters' answers to the 14 issue questions to form a liberal-conservative scale (answers were divided into five equivalent categories based on overall liberalism vs. conservatism), 86 percent of Democratic voters were on the liberal side of the scale while 80 percent of Republican voters were on the conservative side. Only 10 percent of all voters were in the center. The visual representation of the nation's voters isn't a nicely shaped bell, with most voters in the moderate middle. It's a sharp V.

The evidence from this survey isn't surprising; nor are the findings new. For the past three decades, the major parties and the electorate have grown more divided -- in what they think, where they live and how they vote. It may be comforting to believe our problems could be solved if only those vile politicians in Washington would learn to get along. The source of the country's division, however, is nestled much closer to home." [ Now that's truly sobering. -ed. ]

Methane Credits

"me: “So let me get this straight: I pay you five dollars, and in return, you promise not to eat an ounce of roughage for, say, three days. Meanwhile, I can eat as much in the way of beans and cabbage as I want—and in the end, we’re both absolved from any responsibility for personal methane production...?”

poor Mexican migrant worker: ”Si.”

me: “Interesting.

me: “—So. Does this mean you have to follow me around and take the blame if I let one rip in a crowded elevator? Or is that, like, extra...?” "

VDH Reaches Into The Memory Hole Once More

"Imagine if the House of Representatives had debated a resolution to authorize the president’s use of force in Iraq only after the bombs were already falling. And what if after the debate, in the middle of the war, with our troops already in combat, Congress had suddenly denied such approval?

That is precisely what happened to President Clinton during the Serbian war of 1999. Neither the Senate nor the House agreed to sanction the administration’s ongoing preemptive bombing campaign against Serbia. That congressional rebuke prompted liberal commentator Mark Shields to scoff on PBS Newshour that American troops were “putting their life on the line, and (the Congress) are saying, we’re not with you.” ***

Since World War II, our intelligence agencies failed to foresee the Chinese invasion of Korea, the Yom Kippur War, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sudden spread of Islamic fundamentalism, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Cambodian and Rwandan holocausts, and the acquisition of the bomb by Pakistan and North Korea." [ And let's not forget that the Manhattan project's inception based on the assumption (supported by Einstein no less) that Hitler was headed toward the bomb himself was probably THE greatest intelligence failure in history. The ALSOS project investigating Hitler's nuclear program after the war concluded that they may have spent more money trying to find the program than Hitler spent on his program! -ed. ]

I Did Mention Worms, Didn't I?

"Those who still dream of the grand bargain—including those in the G.W. Bush administration who have pursued it avidly, and have gotten kicked in the same place as the Clinton pursuers—must explain to us simple souls why there is anything different today that might make a bargain with the Iranians more likely than it has been for the last 28 years. Certainly the Iranians have shown no desire for reconciliation; quite the contrary, unless you think killing Americans at a rate considerably faster than the tempo of murder in the Clinton years represents some odd form of mating dance. The Supreme Leader is the same fanatic as he was then, in terrible health to be sure, but no friendlier towards satanic negotiators. The only big change in Tehran personnel is the president. Instead of Khatami-the-Reformer we’ve got Ahmadinejad, Hitler’s great admirer. I don’t think that is an improvement.

If they were forced to answer these questions, the advocates of negotiations would resort to the hoax—we haven’t tried negotiations, and it’s worth a try. But the real history of U.S.-Iranian relations suggests very strongly that the only possible winners in such talks will be the mullahs. They will gain more time to organize their war against us, and to build atomic bombs."

Blogger Down The Memory Hole...

"The pseudonymous Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey of Rantings of a Sandmonkey has an extremely moving article in Pajamas today about the sentencing of his fellow Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman. Abdel Kareem (also spelled Karim) was given four years for "contempt for religion" and "insulting the president". He could easily be killed in jail by a religious fanatic, according to the Sandmonkey, if he doesn't go crazy in solitary first.

It's frustrating to read stories like this. You want to do something, but you don't know how. I quickly clicked onto the websites of Human Rights Watch and PEN (of which I was once the West Coast president), hoping they could do something, but found no references to Abdel Kareem under either spelling. Maybe I missed something. I checked Atrios and the Daily Kos as well, but nothing there either about their fellow blogger. Perhaps they are unaware of what is happening. You would think this was a situation that would transcend domestic politics - the guy's going to the slammer - but so far apparently not. Lots of stuff on Kos though about how Giuliani's numbers can't last and how he's going to implode."

That Old Marxist Envy

"Envy hasn’t yet been beaten in China. Yes, markets in China have been opening up, but traditional Confucianist disdain towards merchants goes back millennia. It won’t go away in a decade or two.

Over the past year, Marxist rhetoric has been heating up in the Chinese media. The Communist party’s official paper, the People’s Daily, has been talking a lot about income inequality (perhaps taking its cue from the New York Times). Powerful Communist party officials have been complaining about “black hearted” business tycoons and prattling on about social responsibility."

Keeping It From Happening Again

"The Sunni terrorists, faced with getting shut down, have shifted their aim to targets more likely to get noticed by foreign journalists. The terrorists know that the journalists are pretty dumb when it comes to terrorism. The journalists don't do much counting or analysis, but simply rush from one large explosion to another and try and make it sound like the sky is falling and the end of the world-as-we-know-it is neigh. That's not dumb as much as it recognizes how the news business works. It's all about events, the "news", not trends and analysis. The historians can come along in a decade or so and do that boring stuff. But for right now, the reporters want hot headlines, and the terrorists are glad to oblige.

A few months of stomping on Sunni terrorists will be followed, for most of the Summer, by an even more difficult battle with the Shia terrorist organizations. The problem with the Shia gangs is that they have more support (60 percent of the population is Shia), and the worst ones have the backing of Iran (in the form of cash, weapons and technical advice). Most of the Shia terrorist gangs also have connections to Shia political parties. Shia politicians are nervous about taking down the Shia gangs because of the risk of a civil war between Shia factions. But either you take that risk, or you leave the Shia terrorists to go on driving the Sunni Arabs out of Iraq. That would get ugly, and widely condemned. For example, a European war crimes court recently condemned Serbia, and all Serbians, for their support of Bosnian Serbs in the ethnic cleansing massacres of the 1990s. Same thing is shaping up in Iraq, and the Shia terrorists are very encouraged. Over half the Sunni Arabs have already been driven from the homes, and most of them have fled the country. Kurds and Shia in Iraq don't care what European war crimes commissions think, they can only remember their dead, and an urge to prevent it from happening again. That means the Sunni Arabs have to go."

Oops, Another Bad Example...

"U.S.: Er ... Well, uh ... this has been very helpful, don'tcha think? I mean, we're talking, right? Talking is progress, no? Didn't Chamberlain talk to Hitler — oh, sorry, bad example. Didn't Carter send Brzezinski to talk to you guys — oops, another bad example. But you get my drift, right?"

The Apocalypse Will Be Only Grapefruit Sized?

"For want of a less loaded term, let us just say that the hail of shakti or "universal k" is coming down the size of grapefruits, pelting everyone below: "the sun shines on both the wicked and righteous," and all that. Some people strap on a suicide bomb while others hallucinate about a "Christo-fascist takeover," but everyone gets hit and tries to figure out why we have hail on earth.

A great many primordial conflicts are rising to the surface and being worked out in the field of time. Mankind's future evolution hinges on their outcome, no less than it hinged on the earlier preparation of a human group and a human body. For now, the only viable human future will have to involve all of mankind, not in some twisted left-hand exterior version enforced by elites from on high, but in a truly interior-vertical sense. One way or another, all men must become Coons, even if they don't yet have a public school diploma or can't come up with the $1.50 initiation fee." [ Gagdad has another fine post worth savoring today. What he forgets is something that he already has pointed out before tangentially: "It's pretty odd when you can be less than five years away from the nuclear bomb but more than five centuries away from the nuclear age." I really like the imagery of the "Arc Of Salvation". The problem is that the Arc's entire trail remains fossilized in the present with the continued existence of progressively more primitive peoples leading back in a geographical Arc from the New World back through Europe Eurabia, the Middle East/ Islam and even some few remaining pre-modern rain forest primitives. The folks in the rain forest are not the problem -- not yet any way. (See "Understanding The Concept Of Button") But there is a fault line in the Middle East with Islam where we have violated the Prime Directive in a very big way. The power of Shiva's fire is barrelling precipitously toward people that really don't understand the awesome power of Oppenheimer's child (and its relatives) having their fingers on the button. They know what a button is. But they really don't understand what it will mean to push it... (Welcome to the 3 Conjectures) So in my view we have two choices leading to survival: 1) an all-out effort to educate them and extinguish their primitive beliefs and ignorance before they inevitably have their finger on the button or 2) an all-out effort to re-impose the cloak of the Prime Directive and remove Shiva's power from their hands. I don't see either one happening -- instead we have a pitifully weak and bumbling hybrid of the two. We are squandering the "Golden Hour". -ed. ]

Welcome To Jihad

(HT Pajamas)

Eurabia Update

"MvdG: In WGM you argue that Europe will face big problems due to the aging and decreasing population. Can something be done about that or do you advise me to leave this hellhole migrate?

HdB: Can something be done? Absolutely, mostly in the bedroom but Igather that Europeans are pretty good at this elsewhere too. Unfortunately the attractions of large families are not what they used to be, as anyone sitting in row 18 in an airplane will agree. So Europeans are still having fun but less, shall we say, outcome. The results are daunting, and I do not see Europe’s future very optimistically. At least Europe’s population is not declining for the same reasons Russia’s is (Russia,of course, is not Europe); dysfunction goes a lot deeper in Russia. Nor does Europe face the cultural obstacles as also-declining Japan with its racial-purity obsessions. But Europe’s geography — that is, its relative location — creates special problems in the sourcing of the immigration stream that has and will replace its demographic losses. Accommodating the ex-colonial and neo-Muslim immigrations has not gone well and various models, including the Dutch, have essentially failed. Regarding your question about emigrating — take a look at the statistics… You’re in good — and much — company. The number of Dutch leaving the Netherlands annually is steadily rising."

Peters On The Real Mistakes

"Historically, the common denominator of successful counterinsurgency operations is that only an uncompromising military approach works — not winning hearts and minds nor a negotiated compromise. This runs counter to our politically correct worldview, but the historical evidence is incontestable.

Simply because the truth is hateful to us doesn't mean that we can declare it false.

We have entered a grim new age in which we must cope simultaneously with a return to old-fashioned wars of blood and belief, with the fatally flawed borders left behind by European imperialism, with the destabilizing effects of the information age on traditional societies, and with the explosion of our cherished myths about the pacific nature of humankind.

There were many things we failed to understand about Iraq, but our comprehensive mistake has been failing to understand our place in history."

Inside The MSMemory Hole

"The Vietnam-era journalists began a tradition that today's press consistently upholds. We hear very little from most large press outlets about American heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan, men like James Coffman Jr., Danny Dietz, and Christopher Adlesperger, or about our military successes there. Instead of associating such names with these wars, Americans associate the words they hear most often from the press, like Abu Ghraib and Haditha. As in Vietnam, too, the shunning of heroes does not extend to the press's coverage of itself. Awards to journalists, both those who have spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan and those who have not, are considered worthy of lengthy news stories.

Publicizing American heroism and success is essential today for two reasons. First, it permits a nuanced view of Iraq and Afghanistan, one which cannot be discerned from the daily stories of sectarian murders and the photos of American troops who have just been killed. Second, American troops and the American people become more courageous and resolute when they hear of their countrymen's military heroism and success, past and present. In earlier times, Americans ingrained their traditions of heroism and victory into the country's youth through historical instruction. Today's history textbooks largely ignore America's military past, a reflection of the anti-military prejudices, lack of military experience, and cosmopolitanism that pervade the intelligentsia."

Christian Worms As Far As The Eye Can See...

"Washington, DC—A coalition of liberal religious leaders just returned on Sunday from a week long “bridge-building” trip to Iran. [ a bridge to Hades - Atlas] They met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the hopes of averting U.S. military action against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The Iranian president, who has denied the Holocaust and threatened to incinerate Israel, assured the trusting church officials that he is against nuclear weapons. Organizers of the trip were the Mennonite Central Committee and American Friends Service Committee. Ahmadinejad invited the religious officials to Iran after having met with many of them in New York last September. The delegation included representatives of the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, and the National Council of Churches, among others.

IRD UMAction Director Mark Tooley commented:

“The ecumenical delegation’s acceptance of President Ahmadinejad’s soothing assurances about peace and good will was absurd. The Iranian dictator, who presides over a vicious Shiite theocracy, has publicly prophesied for an apocalypse that concludes with the destruction of non-believers. Presumably he did not discuss his genocidal plans with the church officials, and presumably they did not bother to ask.

“Supposedly Ahmadinejad told the 13-member delegation his government ‘Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons’ yet his foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki has reiterated that his country would never suspend uranium enrichment. (AP)

“The ecumenical statement released included, ‘We believe it is possible for further dialogue and that there can be a new day in U.S. – Iranian relations.’ Perhaps the ecumenical delegation should have sung Kumbaya with the Iranian president. For over 30 years, officials from these church groups have never failed to meet an anti-American dictator they could not trust and even admire. If they made any impression on Ahmadinejad at all, these church officials must have only confirmed his stereotypes about naïve and gullible Americans." [ I have never used the really bad word on this blog other than a small number of quotes of it. I'm sorely temped to use it in the first person right now though... -ed. ]

The Secret 51st State -- Do You Know Where It Is?

"“I read the Iraq Study Group report that criticized your region for not flying the Iraq flag,” I said.

Adnan responded, “Yes, they did. This was the same flag planted in over 5000 villages that were gassed. We have a constitution, and our region is democratic. Why must we fly the Iraqi flag? Would the U.S. ask the Jews that suffered in the Holocaust to fly the Nazi flag? We refuse to honor the ‘Hitler’ who gassed our people; we want the new flag approved by our Constitution.” Adnan also rejected the Iraq Study Group’s proposal that two terror states, Iran and Syria, “meddle in our affairs.”

“Why,” he asked, “did no one from the Iraq Study Group come here? They ask where the proof is that the Bush policy is succeeding in Iraq. We are the proof. Your nations saved us from extermination. We are a stable region that is a model of everything the U.S. wants for Iraq. Why is it being kept hidden?” I am reminded as I look into his eyes that he was the target of a bomb attack by fanatic Muslims because of his strong support for America, and was poisoned by Saddam Hussein, and almost died.

Adnan placed a letter in my hands to deliver to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. He said, “I sent it through diplomatic channels via the U.S. Ambassador, but did not hear back.” I promised I would do my best to get it into the hands of the President." ***

"The U.S. National Intelligence Agency declassified a report suggesting that President Bush’s new strategy for controlling violence must show progress within twelve to eighteen months or risk further deterioration. Show progress? What a sick joke. You have one-fourth of Iraq living in stability; not one U.S. soldier has been killed there…ever. There has not been a terror attack in 18 months. If that is not progress, what is?" [ Have you figured out where this is yet? If you can't name it yet what does that say about your opinions on the rest of the Middle East? And if you can, did you know this? Why not? -ed. ]

The Temple Mount -- Islamic Waqf Hell

(HT Pamela)

"Gee, you think?"

Did I Mention Worms?

"I hope General Shirazi is explaining all the details of his job to our interviewers. He undoubtedly knows a lot about Iran’s international reign of terror, from Iraq to Yemen, from Europe to South America. He might even help us track down Imadh Mughniyah, the operational chief of Hezbollah, who was last noted at a confab in Tehran with Ramadan Shalah (head of Islamic Jihad) and Moqtada al Sadr, the boy wonder of Iraqi radical Shi’ism.

Perhaps Secretary Rice can explain to us, slowly and clearly, why we should be negotiating with these bastards instead of supporting regime change in Tehran? Those lucky enough to escape their clutches—such as Ardeshir Dolat—understand that you can only lose by negotiating with terrorists.

Have a look at these excellent thoughts from Ardeshir Dolat. He knows. Condi should have him over for tea."

Even Angels Long?

"If in Christian terms this is truly the era of the Paraclete, it means that the history of the world since the redemption must itself contain a message, a message that cannot be less than equal to the Gospel of Christ -- if the Holy Ghost is indeed equal to the other two persons of God. If we look at that history from the vantage point of today, we notice one huge development: the astonishing progress of science, technology, and the human arts in general. That progress occurred chiefly in the parts of the world devoted to the Book and influenced by the life of Christ, while other civilizations lagged, or caught up only when exposed to the Gospel. The implication is that in Christian terms we might see progress in human art and science as the direct sign, the gospel, the very metabolism, of the Paraclete, the Helper."

AND:

"Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things." (I Peter 1:10-12 TNIV)"

AND I WAS SOMEHOW -- SOMEWHAT O.T. -- REMINDED OF THIS JARRING PASSAGE OF GENESIS 6:

"1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose."

Oh, THAT Place Again

"The international community . . . having invested so much . . . must continue to stay deeply involved. It would not be surprising if, after seven years, interest has flagged. But without more outside help, there is little hope for building a peaceful democracy in . . .

You guessed it, the next word isn't "Iraq." The Times doesn't want to cut and run from Kosovo." [ You know, where Clinton tried to help the Muslims against the Serbs and mysteriously the West only got 9/11 for doing so? And that the libs keep trying to bury because it doesn't fit the BDS story line? ]

What Would Al Gore Be Like If He Were Real?

"[It] has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling. "By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small," says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home. "Clients of similar ilk are building 16-to-20,000-square-foot houses." [ Like Al Gore and John Edwards? ] Furthermore for thermal mass the walls are clad in "discards of a local stone called Leuders limestone, which is quarried in the area. The 12-to-18-inch-thick stone has a mix of colors on the top and bottom, with a cream- colored center that most people want. "They cut the top and bottom of it off because nobody really wants it," Heymann says. "So we bought all this throwaway stone. It's fabulous. It's got great color and it is relatively inexpensive.""

Memory Hole Update

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

Mecca Is As Mecca Does

"There is not one ME majority Muslim nation that doesn't have an Islamic based radical violent minority which is openly tolerated or by a large portion of the remaining population. Sometimes the radicals are dominant as Iran is.

When I first got into Iraq and saw what was going on I gave Islam the benefit of the doubt and attributed what I saw as "just" tribalism and factioning. After some distance and perspective I find that the overriding factor in all of this is Islam as it is practised by the dominant cultures of Islam.

Saudi Arabia is where it starts, where the radical Sunni Wahabbi sect runs the religious show. Where Mecca is. Where Muslims go on Hajj for Eid, a religious holiday. Where no infidels are allowed."

Today's Memory Hole Moment

"I'd like to congratulate Carl Levin for undercutting several of the major Democrat talking points and I'd like to thank Senator Levin for calling for mililtary action against Syria as well as Iraq."

And who will bell the cat?

Are You Asleep?

Old Fogies: Same As They Ever Were...

"Students, be warned: the college of your choice may be watching you, and will more than likely be keeping an eye on you once you enter the hallowed campus gates. America’s institutions of higher education are increasingly monitoring students’ activity online and scrutinizing profiles, not only for illegal behavior, but also for what they deem to be inappropriate speech."

On French Comprehension

"For some reason, people see the union of Hamas and Fatah as some sort of breakthrough in the peace process, but a unity government for the Palestinians only addresses their internal tensions, not their relationship to Israel. Actually, that's not quite true -- it makes the relationship to Israel worse than before. Why some nations want to leap to their checkbooks to reward the Islamist integration into the PA is a question only Douste-Blazy could answer, if he could even comprehend the question."

The Islamic Democracy Conundrum And Nightmare's Handmaiden

"I'll discuss this more when I get some time tonight...but the conundrum presented here is a serious one. If we believe we can avoid conflict by doing the right thing, and doing the right thing means handing power to people who are determined to have a conflict with us...there's a good chance we've got issues with the way we're formulating the problem." [ You betcha. Reading assignment: Kurtz here and here. Gagdad here and here and here. There are prerequisites for democracy; some pretty whopping ones in fact that we take so completely for granted that we can't even see them any more. The problem is that we have violated the Prime Directive and have stumbled into the Golden Hour whether we like it or not. Given this situation, the only responsible thing to do is to suck it up and attempt a democracy transplant even given the low odds we have of success. And it's made all the more maddening given that Kurdistan right next door from the hellish nightmare we struggle with today could nearly be the 51st state. All the more amazing given the level of British intervention it took to get India anywhere close to 51st state stature next door to the hellish nightmare of Pakistan. You can run -- but the hellish nightmare will kill you where you live. If we learned anything from 9/11 that should have been it. But denial is nightmare's handmaiden... -ed. ]

Eurabia: Dependency And Hypocrisy

"Britain and the US have received years of criticism for the foray into Iraq to resolve the 12-year standoff there rather than commit more troops to fight the terrorists of the Taliban. However, when the subject of that fight comes up, the defense ministers of the NATO alliance suddenly find a lot of excuses as to why they cannot contribute troops for the mission. Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, puts it rather bluntly: “Too many of our European partners are now pocketing the Nato security guarantee but leaving UK taxpayers and the UK military to carry the cost."

NATO currently has 35,000 troops in Afghanistan. The US provides 27,000 of them, followed by the existing British contingent of 5,500. That leaves around 2,500 troops contributed by the rest of our partners in the war on terror, many of which have placed restrictions on their deployment in combat areas. That's less participation than we had during the invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps we should end our NATO alliance and look for more suitable partners for security. The Eastern European nations appear more rational about the threat to freedom coming from Southwest Asia these days. The traditional NATO nations, save the UK, appear to have decided that the doctrine of unity among members has little to do with them. The US should pull itself out of Western Europe altogether and let them provide for their own security, paying their own bills and organizing their own policies rather than continue subsidizing ennui." [ More proof that dependency is a very bad thing. Look up at the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote topping this blog about the ability to hold two opposed ideas simultaneously in mind. If we didn't "save" what has now become Eurabia during WWII and the Cold War, there is no doubt that we would be in a world of hurt. On the other hand, we clearly let them become far too dependent on us during the Cold War -- they basically eliminated their militaries and used the funds to prop up their welfare nanny states. I have supported getting our troops out of Europe for a long time. But we may be wrapping around now that they will be needed to evacuate the "natives" from the Islamic colonization invasion of Europe. In any case, as I have said before we will need to raise U.S. immigration quotas substantially to accomodate those who want to flee for their lives as Sharia gains hold. -ed. ]

Welcome To Pakistan Waziristan

"This failure comes at the expense of security in Afghanistan, to the West, as al-Qaeda is plotting strikes and training terrorists from the tribal areas, and within Pakistan itself. The Taliban are openly pushing their agenda in the Northwest Frontier Territory, and are conducting a nationwide terror campaign to cower the government. The peace deals in North and south Waziristan, the upcoming deal in Bajaur and others soon to follow, and the inability to take action against the terrorists inside their own borders poses a direct threat to the existence of the Pakistani state." [ The question is now evolving toward whether we get to face off with one nuclear power or two. You'd never know it watching the MSM of course... -ed. ]

Digg Deeper

"It’s a leftist totalitarian dreamworld. They simply exclude any and all points of view that violate the groupthink—and call it “democracy.”

The most ridiculous example is in the first LGF post that broke through the Digg hivemind, in which the first two dozen comments are hidden: Digg - Iran Uses Photoshop: Fake Pic ‘Reveals’ US Terror Arms.

Here’s a Digg post by someone else who sees how bad the problem has become: Digg - Dear Kevin Rose, Please Create a ‘Who Buried This’ Tab.

And that post was immediately buried."

Facilitating Jihadists? Really?

"If I thought, as Pat does, that there was a useful analogy in the Cold War experience, I might nevertheless agree with the “let’s negotiate” partisans. I don’t agree, for the reasons that Ken has so effectively marshalled. But I’d like to get beyond that for a second and bring this back to some of the points stressed by Steve and Michael – the points about the problem being the regime, not the nukes. If I agreed, for argument’s sake, that negotiations were the way to go, the next problem I would confront is that “negotiations” is a hopelessly promiscuous term. Who knows what’s on the table when we’re told: not to worry, we’ll be tough.

Let’s get down to cases. Americans were told very little this past summer about the State Department’s gambit of negotiating directly with the Iranians (in the context for the multi-party talks) over the nuclear program. Nonetheless, when the fine-print emerged (in the foreign press), it became clear that this was a shameful offer. We did not stay tough and play hardball over the nukes. We offered them everything including the kitchen sink if they would just please, please agree to look like they were suspending activity – not actually stopping, but making a verbal commitment to stop which would be “verified” by the IAEA, in whose demonstrated ineffectiveness and slavish deference to the regime lies much of the current problem.

For this nigh-useless commitment, we offered, among other things, security assurances; economic aid; high-technology; and aviation, energy, telecommunications and agriculture assistance. When they, predictably, laughed at us, we unilaterally pressed ahead with the aviation assistance anyway. More to the point, we were dealing with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism – the nation that has targeted Hezbollah against us for three decades, kills Americans in Iraq, harbors al Qaeda, and gave safe passage to the 9/11 hijackers – and yet our offer in connection with nukes made no demands about facilitating jihadists."

Intelligent Leadership

Israel can be safely said not to have it right now. And needless to say, this is not a very good time for that to be the case. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is one leftist who makes W look like Albert Einstein... (HT The Corner)

Crichton Finale: The End Of The World?

"Is this really the end of the world? Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods?

No, we simply live on an active planet. Earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half of them every year, or three every minute. A Richter 5 quake every six hours, a major quake every 3 weeks. A quake as destructive as the one in Pakistan every 8 months. It’s nothing new, it’s right on schedule.

At any moment there are 1,500 electrical storms on the planet. A tornado touches down every six hours. We have ninety hurricanes a year, or one every four days. Again, right on schedule. Violent, disruptive, chaotic activity is a constant feature of our globe.

Is this the end of the world? No: this is the world.

It’s time we knew it.

Thank you very much."

Bacillus Today

"Adolf Hitler said in 1939:"Only when this Jewish bacillus infecting the life of peoples has been removed can one hope to establish a co-operation amongst the nations which shall be built up on a lasting understanding."

Or, was it the UN's Duggard saying it today? Hard to tell.

Only those who would dearly love to erase all Jewish history (and the associated Christian history) of that part of the world would accuse Israel of "Judaizing" Jerusalem."

Plus Ca Change

"Can you guess which President the London Examiner was referring to when it wrote that the man had “murdered the Constitution of the United States” and “overthrown all for which Washington fought and Patrick Henry spoke?""

You Do Understand ...

... that music is banned under Sharia law ... Don't you? ... Is everything really relative? You really wouldn't lift a finger to defend Kazuhito Yamashita from brutalization much less spritual suffocation by 7th century primitives? Really? Has it truly come to that? (HT Hucbald)

Crichton On "Information Casualties"

"But thousands of Ukrainians who didn’t die were made invalids out of fear. They were told to be afraid. They were told they were going to die when they weren’t. They were told their children would be deformed when they weren’t. They were told they couldn’t have children when they could. They were authoritatively promised a future of cancer, deformities, pain and decay. It’s no wonder they responded as they did.

In fact, we need to recognize that this kind of human response is well-documented. Authoritatively telling people they are going to die can in itself be fatal.

You may know that Australian aborigines fear a curse called “pointing the bone.” A shaman shakes a bone at a person, and sings a song, and soon after, the person dies. This is a specific example of a phenomenon generally referred to as “hex death”—a person is cursed by an authority figure, and then dies. According to medical studies, the person generally dies of dehydration, implying they just give up. But the progression is very erratic, and shock symptoms may play a part, suggesting adrenal effects of fright and hopelessness.

Yet this deadly curse is nothing but information. And it can be undone with information.

A friend of mine was an intern at Bellvue Hospital in New York. A 28-year old man from Aruba said he was going to die, because he had been cursed. He was admitted for psychiatric evaluation and found to be normal, but his health steadily declined. My friend was able to rehydrate him, balance his electrolytes, and give him nutrients, but nevertheless the man worsened, insisting that he was cursed and there was nothing that could prevent his death. My friend realized that the patient would, in fact, soon die. The situation was desperate. Finally he told the patient that he, the doctor, was going to invoke his own powerful medicine to undo the curse, and his medicine was more powerful than any other. He got together with the house staff, bought some headdresses and rattles, and danced around the patient in the middle of the night, chanting what they hoped would be effective-sounding phrases. The patient showed no reaction, but next day he began to improve. The man went home a few days later. My friend literally saved his life.

This suggests that the Ukranian invalids are not unique in their response, but by the large numbers of what we might call “information casualties” they represent a particularly egregious example of what can happen from false fears."

At Home

"As Diana puts it, "the Muslim council isn't asking the the British to create the perfect Shiriah state exactly, but rather the perfect shariah state school system," one in which the fanatics seeking to reimpose rigid Islamic law in Afghanistan, for example, would feel very much at home."

Bringing Them Home

"Under increased pressure to announce an exit strategy from Iraq, President George W. Bush revealed plans today to bring U.S. troops home on the budget airlines JetBlue.

Mr. Bush received praise for his decision to withdraw American troops, but his choice of JetBlue to transport them raised more than a few eyebrows.

According to most official estimates, with its recent spate of scheduling problems and flight delays, JetBlue could take up to seven years to bring U.S. troops home, and possibly ten years in the event of inclement weather."