Dangerous Ditherers

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Something had to be done about Iraq and our government was all for attacking it too. So let’s not blame G.W. for the war. And when things did go wrong in Iraq, and there were calls to pull out, Mr Bush just followed his own counsel and doubled his bet with the Surge. And he was right because Iraq is in a relatively better shape today than it ever was and Al Qa'eda is a shadow of its former self in that country. This is a man who has the courage of his convictions. Let’s not forget how Europe does wars. Usually we wait and wait until the enemy starts attacking, then we let them win a bit, then we fight until we are tired, then we just call the US to come over to clean our mess. That is what happened in WWI, WWII, and the Balkans. Bush is just showing us what a bunch of dangerous ditherers we are and we hate him for it. Naturally.

Good News For The Credulous

clipped from online.wsj.com The extent to which Yongbyon's aggregate plutonium production has been weaponized and concealed is one critical unresolved issue. Moreover, analysis of the much-touted 18,000 pages of Yongbyon documentation previously turned over has uncovered significant gaps in information, especially concerning the reactor's early years of operation, that preclude making a truly accurate calculation. Ironically, the documents themselves are contaminated with particles of highly enriched uranium, probably from that enrichment program North Korea still denies. This program's extent is crucial, because if it is production scope, the North will still have a route to fissile material no matter what Yongbyon's ultimate fate, proving yet again that leveling those aged facilities was a nonconcession. The only good news is that there is little opportunity for the Bush administration to make any further concessions in its waning days in office.

Fauxtography Update

clipped from www.weeklystandard.com France 2, dragging its feet, eventually produced 18 minutes of film. (There is practically no such thing as "contempt of court" in such circumstances in the French judicial system.) The showing of this film made for an eerie moment at the trial, when the hitherto blasé judges sat up and started watching with more attention, then took a recess, after which they asked for all of France 2's footage. It would prove to be the turning point in the proceeding. You could see Palestinians being carried on stretchers into ambulances, then coming out again unharmed, all in a kind of carnival atmosphere, with kids throwing stones and making faces at the camera, despite what was supposed to be a tense situation. The tape showed occasional gunshots, not continuous firing. From the general horsing around captured on film by Abu Rahmeh, Mena concluded that the whole scene must have been staged.

Check out Second Draft if you haven't yet.

Welcome To The Nursing Home

clipped from www.nytimes.com Those inclined to see the glass as half-full include some people who are closest to the numbers. James W. Vaupel, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, looking in particular at Germany’s demographic status, is downright sunny on the future. He, too, says that the shrinking and graying of European societies is inevitable, but he suggests that “on balance, the future will probably be better than the past. People will probably live longer, healthier lives. Continued economic growth, even if at a slower pace than in the past, will further raise standards of living.” Haub wasn’t buying it. “Maybe tinkering with the retirement age and making other economic adjustments is good,” he said. “But you can’t go on forever with a total fertility rate of 1.2. You can’t have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home.”

Shocka: Germany Working Once More To "Cancel" Jews

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Last week in Berlin, at a location close to both the Holocaust memorial and the former Nazi center of power, the Third Transatlantic Conference took place. Its stated purpose was to address "common solutions" in the Middle East. During the conference, Iran's former deputy minister of foreign Affairs, Dr. Muhammad Javad Ardashir Larijani, stated that "the Zionist project" should be "cancelled" because it "has failed miserably and has only caused terrible damage to the region." According to the Jerusalem Post, representatives from Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia also attended, and contributed their own harsh anti-Israeli statements. Reasonable people can disagree over what the German Foreign Ministry's Iran policy should be. One would have thought it beyond dispute, however, that the German Foreign Ministry should not be sponsoring, supporting, or faciltating a conference whose goal is to "cancel" Israel, and that the Federal Economic Ministry should not be financing such a conference.

How Long Before The Next Retreat Though?

clipped from hotair.com At first, the operation appeared aimed at a splinter group in the Taliban, but the main partner in their negotiations believes otherwise.  Baitullah Mehsud abruptly suspended talks with Islamabad in the wake of the military operation, ending for the moment the Gilani government’s new strategy of engagement with native radicals.  Mehsud threatened to wreak havoc in major cities if the government did not retreat from its new positions and end all offensives against Taliban elements. Hopefully, Gilani learned his lesson quickly on appeasement, having allowed Peshawar to teeter on the brink of Taliban takeover before acting.  For today, Gilani appears ready to revert back to at least the Pervez Musharraf position.

Lunatic Hypocrisy Watch

clipped from tigerhawk.blogspot.com The chief practical argument coming from those who oppose opening our continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling is that it will take ten years to get the oil so it will not have any impact on current oil prices. The response is that is factual and analytical hogwash, insofar as the whole point of futures markets is to discount the impact of changes in future supply. It is also, by the way, reasoning that many on the left would not want applied to their own pet project: My response to those who say that increased drilling is pointless because it won't yield immediate results -- like Arnold Schwarzenegger --is why worry about the greenhouse effect, then? Nothing we do will cool the planet immediately. Yet we're told immediate action there is vital. In fact, we're told that by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the very same speech. One would have thought that this point was so obvious it would not have to be made at all.

Tinfoil Apocalypse Update

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk A former head of Mossad has warned that Israel has 12 months in which to destroy Iran's nuclear programme or risk coming under nuclear attack itself. He also hinted that Israel might have to act sooner if Barack Obama wins the US presidential election. Shabtai Shavit, an influential adviser to the Israeli parliament's defence and foreign affairs committee, told The Sunday Telegraph that time was running out to prevent Iran's leaders getting the bomb. Mr Shavit, who retired from the Israeli intelligence agency in 1996, warned that he had no doubt Iran intended to use a nuclear weapon once it had the capability, and that Israel must conduct itself accordingly. "The time that is left to be ready is getting shorter all the time," he said in an interview.

Starving On The Cold Darkling Plain (Part 7,835,835)

clipped from pajamasmedia.com BECAUSE IT'S NOT AS IF WE NEED MORE ENERGY: U.S. Halts Solar Projects Over Environment Fears. Okay: Nukes are out, coal is filthy, wind power destroys Ted Kennedy's view, and solar leads to "environment fears." Do they just want us all to freeze in the dark? Pretty much, I'd say . . . .

The First Three Must Change

clipped from www.americanthinker.com All across America, schools are confronted with Shakirs who either do not show up for school or who attend school but hang out in the hallways, bathrooms, and other hideaways. What can the schools do, confronted with thousands of Shakirs all across America? Many schools are just passing the kids through, just biding time until the kids are no longer the responsibility of the school. Why Shakir can't read is the same reason many black kids in America can't read: the kid's own lack of interest in education, his unstable home life with a single parent who doesn't care, a community that regards education as being destructive of black authenticity, and school systems which are burnt out with the stress of dealing with such kids. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the school cannot do it all; for, education is essentially reciprocal. Therefore, the first three must change before school systems can produce Shakirs who can read.

And The Conditions For Liberal Democracy Are No Longer Extant In The West, Umm, Britney World Either...

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk This weekend there will be voices in our Prime Minister's ear suggesting how in one bound he might cast off his dithering reputation. To help to broker the toppling of Robert Mugabe (they will whisper) might be just the sort of history-making that rescued Margaret Thatcher from doldrums at home, before Galtieri invaded the Falklands. In The Times this week Lord (Paddy) Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon suggested that intervention may become necessary. Mr Brown will think hard about this; list the pros; list the cons; dither; and finally decide it's all too difficult. Well let's hear it for dithering. Beware the widely held opinion that all we need is Robert Mugabe's head on a stick. In Iraq we called this the decapitation strategy, and duly secured the required head - Saddam's - on the right stick. Then it all went wrong. The ingredients necessary for a liberal democracy were not, it turned out, there. Why should things be different in Africa?

Kafkanada

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com I have mentioned only the current cases in which periodical publications have been prosecuted, in the strange new world of “Kafkanada” -- where you can be tried for the same imaginary “hate crimes” in any or all federal and provincial jurisdictions, simultaneously or sequentially. A single complaint by any reader anywhere is enough to launch a secret inquiry. The target has no right to confront his accuser, and will not at first even be told who he or she is. Truth is no defence, the absence of harm is no defence, there are no rules of evidence -- due process is entirely subverted. The inquisitors of these kangaroo courts may ultimately reach any “judgement” they please, after months or years of playing cat-and-mouse with their selected victim. A Protestant minister in Alberta was, for instance, recently ordered to publicly renounce his Christian beliefs, as well as pay a big lump sum to the anti-Christian activist who had prosecuted him,

Answer: Ignorance

clipped from blogs.dailymail.com Question: Did the murder rate really triple under the Washington, DC, gun ban? Answer: Yes. The murder rate was 26.8 homicides per 100,000 people in 1976, when the ban became law. That would be its lowest rate for the next 30 years. It peaked at 80.6 homicides per 100,000 people in 1991. Question: What’s the highest the murder rate has been in gun happy West Virginia in that time? Answer: 6.9 homicides per 100,000 people. Question: So why did Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post write: “The practical benefits of effective gun control are obvious: If there are fewer guns, there are fewer shootings and fewer funerals. As everyone knows, in the District of Columbia — and in just about every city in the nation, big or small — there are far too many funerals. The handgun is the weapon of choice in keeping the U.S. homicide rate at a level that the rest of the civilized world finds incomprehensible and appalling.” Answer: Ignorance.

OZero

clipped from hughhewitt.townhall.com Obama has often invoked his academic credentials as a proxy for quality in his opinions, including why he is qualified to find certain judicial nominees unqualified or to criticize some judicial opinions. I do not dispute that he had a significant distinction teaching, as the University of Chicago recognizes. But I think most academics expect people claiming to be academics (or former ones) to have some record of scholarship. If you enter "au(obama)" in the Westlaw "Journals and Law Reviews" database, which is the means to find articles authored by the name in parentheses, you get nothing.  Zero results; no articles. Entering "Obama" in a search of the Social Science Research Network ("SSRN"), a place where most academics place their published scholarly works, retrieves zero results.  Again, no articles/no scholarship.

Anything Please

clipped from www.strategypage.com June 27, 2008: What shape is al Qaeda in? Both U.S. intelligence officials, and al Qaeda message board traffic seem to agree that the terror group was defeated in Iraq, and is now gathering for a last stand in Pakistan. But there have been no numbers released to back this up. - Al Qaeda representatives and Internet based fans openly discuss the defeat in Iraq, and the much reduced stature of al Qaeda in the Moslem world. The problem was that too many terrorist resources were being poured into Iraq, where the main result was the loss of many terrorist leaders and specialists, and even more innocent Iraqi civilians. That led to a loss of popularity throughout the Moslem world, and even fewer recruits and contributions. The al Qaeda leaders dare not show themselves, and can do little but release audio and video messages pleading for supporters around the world to do something violent for the cause. Anything. Please.

Death By Cell Phone

clipped from www.strategypage.com June 27, 2008: In East Baghdad, and Shia cities throughout the south, the Mahdi Army is no more. The Iran supported group was taken apart by government security forces during the last two months. All that's left of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr's private army are a few hundred die hard members who are, for the moment, keeping their heads down. And for good reason. While appreciated in 2006 -7 for keeping Sunni Arab terrorists out of Shia neighborhoods, the Mahdi Army quickly evolved into a collection of self-serving thugs. Once civilians realized that the army and police were stronger, and moving in to stay, the cell phones came out and the police were buried in tips about Mahdi Army safe houses and arms caches. Sadr has been hiding out in Iran through all this. Sunni Arab terrorist diehards are undergoing the same experience up north, but with more violence. Around Mosul, U.S. Special Forces teams, which have been chasing al Qaeda leaders for years, are having enormous success.

The Missing Objections

clipped from campaignspot.nationalreview.com Yesterday I wrote that despite Barack Obama’s claims that he believes in the Second Amendment, is a friend to gun owners, never supported a complete ban on handguns (despite a questionnaire from early in his career stating he did), etc., those claims are hard to balance with his approval of Chicago’s effective ban on handguns. In Obama's entire time in the city, there’s no record of him ever objecting to it. During Obama’s tenure with the Joyce Foundation, donations to anti-gun groups increased dramatically. In the wake of today’s ruling, you’re going to hear Barack Obama claim passionately that he believes in the Second Amendment and that he is a friend to gun owners. It will be interesting to see how he can rectify that with his efforts to fund books like Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.

Mayor ODaley's Slum Lords

clipped from campaignspot.nationalreview.com I note this as the Boston Globe takes a comprehensive look at Obama’s efforts at housing as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator, and comes to devastating conclusions. The policy changes Obama pushed have been catastrophic failures for the public, but lucrative for his donors. As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year. But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

What Memory Hole?

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com It is too often forgotten, not least by historians, that George W. Bush did not invent the idea of deposing the Iraqi tyrant. For years before he came on the scene, removing Saddam Hussein had been a priority embraced by the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton and by Clinton’s most vocal supporters in the Senate: Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons. . . . Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. . . . I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again. These were the words of President Clinton on the night of December 16, 1998 as he announced a four-day bombing campaign over Iraq. Only six weeks earlier, Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act authorizing Saddam’s overthrow—an initiative supported unanimously in the Senate

Hitch Provides Today's Red Meat

clipped from hotair.com

Today's Stopped Clock Moment

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Heck, even The Socialist Worker sees the problem: BUT WHILE millions grapple with rising mortgage payments or see their wealth evaporate with falling house prices, members of Congress continue to benefit from favorable treatment by mortgage lenders--the very same lenders who will get a bailout if proposed legislation passes. The housing bill's key backers in the Senate--Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), head of the Senate Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee--both got special deals from the nation's biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide, thanks to their connections with the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo. "Dodd, the lead sponsor of the bill, secured no-closing-cost mortgages at interest rates of 4 percent and 4.25 percent, and continues to insist he got no special favors," the Rocky Mountain News reported. Conrad admitted calling Mozilo for help with a discount on a $1 million mortgage for a beach house, but also claims that it was legitimate.

Another Trough For Their Snouts

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Here's environmentalist of doubt Bjorn Lomborg writing in the Washington Post on Lieberman-Warner and the nonsense that is cap-and-trade: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill, has called it "the world's most far-reaching program to fight global warming." It is indeed policy on a grand scale. It would slow American economic growth by trillions of dollars over the next half-century. But in terms of temperature, the result will be negligible if China and India don't also commit to reducing their emissions, and it will be only slightly more significant if they do. By itself, Lieberman-Warner would postpone the temperature increase projected for 2050 by about two years. Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax And the real trade it will bring in its wake is in political favors. In fact, that's much of the reason it appeals to so many in the Congress. It's just another trough for their snouts.

A Good LF Laugh

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Dear Mr. Goldberg, I have read your vicious attack on Margaret Sanger and have a simple demand. Whenever you next choose to slander Ms. Sanger's memory, you must do the same to Helen Keller, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Winston Churchill and Marcus Garvey. Me: I find this hilarious. First of all, the reader seems not to know that the article is an excerpt from the book. If she'd read the book, she might find out how little some of these folks help her cause. Indeed, she might realize how much she's making my argument for me, as I argue that liberalism and progressivism were shot through with eugenic thought. Oliver Wendell Holmes argued that his “starting point for an ideal for the law” would be the “co-ordinated human effort. . . to build a race.” Yes, W.E.B. Du Bois was sympathetic to eugenics (his "talented tenth" was a eugenic term). Marcus Garvey? You mean the fellow who claimed to have led "the first fascists?" All of this gets mentioned in the book.

OPivot Of Life

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com The past two days of Supreme Court decisions have shed a bright light on Obama’s rightward pivot for the general election. Yesterday in the child rape case, Obama agreed with two Justices he voted against and disagreed with those he holds up as models. Today, revising a long held position on gun control, he agrees with Justice Scalia’s reading of the Second Amendment and again disagrees with Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and Stevens. If only the Court could overturn Roe before the election, Obama would become a pro-lifer.

Art For Art's Sake

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com The problem, rather, is a dangerous confusion between ends and means, and it is a confusion shared by Condi Rice and Barack Obama. Coalitions, even successful multilateral ones, are instruments, tools, means to an end. They are important and useful, sometimes essential, but they are not, and must not be seen as, ends in themselves. Confusion on this point can lead to claims of success when failure is staring you in the face. How else should we judge progress as we seek to end Iran's drive for nuclear weapons and its support for terrorism? We have a multilateral coalition. It is "united." But it has not, and almost certainly will not, do the thing for which it has arduously been put together. Seven and a half years after denouncing Iran's nuclear weapons program, a hapless president and his coalition can only look on while the Iranians rush to the finish line. Art for art's sake is beautiful. Multilateralism for its own sake is not.

A memorial post to my late father. His name was Art.

And he would have agreed wholeheartedly with Perle on this piece.

And Maybe Poland

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Alas, anti-Americanism is so rife that Mr Obama enjoys overwhelming support in almost every country. His opponent, John McCain, would only stand a chance in the U.S., Afghanistan, and Iraq. And maybe Poland. A worse failing was the administration’s response to the universal “Bush lied, everybody died” demonization by the Left. Bush and his allies failed to be sufficiently aggressive in response to this (and similar) nonsense -- in which the White House alone was held accountable for intelligence misjudgements that afflicted spy agencies right across the West. Domestically, Democrats who received the same garbage briefings as the President himself, through Congressional intelligence, foreign relations, and armed services committees, came to the same conclusions as Bush, and yet their own words are seldom read back to them. Five short years later, the media allow them to rewrite history. It will take another catastrophe to wake the sleepers from their rest.

The Genocide This Time

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com It will be recalled, by readers who follow world news, that the President of Iran has on many occasions unambiguously declared both the desire to annihilate Israel, and the expectation that Israel will soon be annihilated. It will also be recalled, that on the balance of evidence, the Iranian state has been working assiduously to acquire the means for this act of genocide. It is in direct defiance of U.N. resolutions to stop enriching uranium, and playing Saddam-like games with U.N. inspectors. If a man were threatening to kill you, and declaring that you will soon be dead, while reaching for a gun, I think most readers would allow you were within your rights to kick that gun out of his reach. The Iranian state is officially represented not only by President Ahmadinejad, but also in similar statements made by other leading ayatollahs, promising the utter annihilation of Israel. Iran openly arms and funds Hezbollah and Hamas, which likewise publicly promise to annihilate Israel.

To A Pulp

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com We finally have a result in the Zimbabwe election. Over the weekend, the man who won it, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew from the run-off, thus clinching the presidential poll for the incumbent and loser, Robert Mugabe, after nearly three months of murder and mayhem. An official letter from the challenger’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (which also won the Parliamentary elections), confirmed yesterday that the run-off would not be contested, to save the lives of as many party supporters as possible. Mr Tsvangirai himself immediately sought refuge in the Dutch embassy at Harare, trusting not in his opponent’s magnanimity. He had already been arrested and beaten five times during the election campaign -- in one instance “to a pulp” according to persons who saw him just after his release.

A Good Debate

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com "I don't know what my aide said but I've been very consistent, I teach constitutional law," Obama said. "What I said was that I believe Second Amendment as being an individual right and have said that consistently. I also think that individual right is constrained by the rights of the community to maintain issues with public safety. I don't think those two principles are contradictory and in fact what I've been saying consistently is what the Supreme Court essentially said today." Which is a ludicrous claim, even by Obama's standards. Here's an idea, though: maybe as part of this year's campaign, we could have a debate between Obama and his campaign staff.

Imagine He Wasn't Corrupt

clipped from pajamasmedia.com href="http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299286762937609">INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY: "If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn't he back imported sugar-based ethanol?" They say it's because he's in the pocket of Archer Daniels Midland, et al. "ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation's largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil."

Center OTack

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The Supreme Court's death penalty jurisprudence is unprincipled. Capital punishment certainly was not considered "cruel and unusual" at the time the Constitution was adopted, or for nearly two centuries thereafter. So what the Court has done in recent decades is to make it up as it goes along. Today it held that while it is constitutional for a state to punish murder by death, it is prohibited to punish child rape--in the case at issue, the rape of an eight year old girl by her stepfather--by death. Needless to say, no such distinction appears in the Constitution. It is solely the product of arrogant quasi-politicians who have been in Washington too long. Even Barack Obama couldn't stomach this one, in an election year. But that's only a ruse: bad as Republican appointees have often been, any Justice appointed by Obama would be selected precisely for his eagerness to impose his liberal views on "unenlightened" voters.

I Prefer A Different Word Starting With "S"

clipped from pajamasmedia.com It’s a pretty seedy story: When Conrad was looking to buy his Delaware beach house in 2002, he called his good friend, former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson, Conde Nast reported. Mozilo happened to be in Johnson’s office and Johnson handed the phone to him. Countrywide financed the beach house and, later, an investment property of Conrad’s. Mozilo instructed a subordinate via email to "(T)ake off 1 point" and in another email wrote, "Make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a senator." Dodd never spoke directly to Mozilo, but Dodd was aware that his two Countrywide mortgages were in a "VIP section." Dodd says he assumed that was just some kind of "courtesy." The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating. Incidentally, Johnson is the same guy who was briefly tasked by Obama to vet potential running mates. Johnson stepped aside when it was revealed that he had received preferential loans from Countrywide.

All Of Them

clipped from campaignspot.nationalreview.com Obama spokesman Bill Burton on October 24, 2007: “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” Barack Obama, June 20, 2008: “Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program.” All Barack Obama statements come with an expiration date. All of them.

Great

clipped from campaignspot.nationalreview.com But to encourage a transition toward alternatives, Obama favors legislation that would make fossil fuel more expensive. Doesn't that mean more pain to come under an Obama presidency? "There is no doubt that in the short term, adapting to this new energy economy is going to carry some costs." But, he adds, citing the coal industry's ability to adapt to stop acid rain in the 1980s, "I would never underestimate the power of American innovation." Great. Because all summer long, Americans have been asking themselves, "where can we find a guy who will propose policies to make gasoline and electricity more expensive?"

Freedom Of Expression

clipped from www.thenews.com.pk The Amnesty International report on human rights for the year 2007 is out. The Muslim world constitutes, as usual, bleakest chapter. Every single country across the Muslim world has been pointed out by the Amnesty International either for executions and torture or discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities. Punishments never handed down even during the Stone Age, have been awarded in 21st century Muslim world. The Muslim world cuts a sorry figure every time a global watchdog releases its findings. Freedom of expression here remains curtailed, Reporters Sans Frontieres annually reports. Regarding freedom of expression, there is a joke often told in Arab world. At a meeting, a US journalist says: "We have complete freedom of expression in the US. We can criticise the US president as much as we like." The Arab journalist replies. "We also have complete freedom of expression in Arab world. We can also criticise the US president as much as we like."

Chinese Confirmation

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Modern life offers many happy moments, but I’m particularly indebted to the People’s Republic of China for censoring the latest issue of the Far East Economic Review, which featured an article of mine on the cover.  As Rowan Scarborough was kind enough to href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/30/beijing-bans-may-issue-of-murdoch-magazine/">point out, the folks at FEER had asked me to update an old think piece, in which I had argued that contemporary China is difficult for us to understand, because it is something we haven’t seen before:  the world’s first mature fascist state.  And I did that, as you can readhref="http://feer.com/essays/2008/may/beijing-embraces-classical-fascism?searched=ledeen&highlight=ajaxSearch_highlight+ajaxSearch_highlight1"> here. One of the points I made is that the regime in Beijing is hypersensitive to criticism, and their reaction to my essay seems to prove that abundantly.  The entire issue was seized, both subcriber copies and newstand copies.  As I told Scarborough, one could hardly ask for more dramatic confirmation of my main thesis, and he was good enough to describe me as someone with “a penchant for tweating repressive regimes.”