Maryhill Museum of Art
Maryhill Museum of Art, overlooking the Columbia River gorge south of Goldendale in Klickitat County, displays diverse collections ranging from Native American treasures to sculptures by Auguste Rodin to Russian Icons. The museum was built by Sam Hill (1857-1931), a Minneapolis railroad executive who moved to the Northwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Construction began in 1914 on what was then planned as a magnificent mansion. The museum opened in the spring of 1940, and by 2001 was receiving 10,000 visitors a month.
In addition to business and investment activities, Sam Hill promoted good roads in Washington and Oregon, international trade, and education. He owned a gas company in Seattle and a telephone company in Portland. One of his ventures was a 6,000-acre model agricultural community in the Klickitat Hills on the Columbia River he named Maryhill after his daughter and his wife. The project never grew as Hill had hoped, but he started construction on a magnificent mansion on the property in 1914. The reinforced concrete structure was designed with eight suites of rooms, seating for 250 dinner guests, and a parking lot.
Hill used the Washington, D.C. architectural firm of Marshall and Hornblower, which had drawn up plans for his home in Seattle as well as public buildings in the nation's capital. The designers used a Flemish style for the 60 by 93 foot main building that was 50 feet high. Since Hill was an advocate of good roads, he included ramps and turnarounds for automobiles.
In 1917, Hill cancelled construction because of financial problems and a wartime labor shortage. At that time, Hill's friend Loie Fuller (1862-1928), a dancer and art promoter well known in Europe, convinced Hill to convert the mansion to a museum. In 1924 Hill incorporated the Maryhill Museum of Art. Fuller used her contacts to assemble a collection starting with works by sculptor August Rodin. She enlisted to the effort San Francisco art patron Alma Spreckles. The museum was formally dedicated on November 3, 1926 by Hill's friend, Queen Marie of Rumania. Queen Marie also donated many pieces for the collection.
Hill died in 1931 and left half his estate to the museum. But litigation over his will stalled the bequest for years and the museum staff had to apply to the courts for funds to maintain the building. After years of struggle by the museum's board and tiny staff, Maryhill Museum of Art opened its doors to visitors on May 13, 1940. That first season, 49,000 people viewed the collections.
By 2001, Maryhill saw 10,000 visitors a month during its March to November season. Maryhill has been accredited by the American Association of Museums, one of only 15 institutions so recognized in the Northwest.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Achilles' Heel
BY MARK STEYN
August 28, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/38668
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."
Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."
Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.
Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.
But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.
Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:
"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death.There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."
That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:
"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."
Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
… with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:
"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.'"
That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.
So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:
"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."
It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.
Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.
BY MARK STEYN
August 28, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/38668
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."
Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."
Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" — even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.
Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.
But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.
Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:
"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death.There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."
That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:
"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."
Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension …
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
… with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:
"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.'"
That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.
So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:
"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."
It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.
Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.
Oldest Person Now American!
Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bolden (born August 15, 1890 in Somerville, Tennessee) is presumed to be recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person, as of August 27, 2006 (no official word from Guinness has yet been given, although Mrs Bolden was next in line from the 2007 Guinness Book list, page 67). She previously held the title from August 30 to December 9, 2005 until María Esther Capovilla was announced as authenticated. She has become only the second person to hold the title for two terms, the first being Jeanne Calment.
Mrs. Bolden was verified in April 2005 as having been the oldest documented resident of the United States since the death of Emma Verona Johnston the previous December. She displaced Bettie Wilson, who had previously been the oldest known American.
She was thought to be the oldest surviving person in the world when Hendrikje van Andel died on August 30, 2005.
Elizabeth Jones married Lewis Bolden circa 1908. Like Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Bolden was born the daughter of freed slaves, and had a son, Ezell, on September 21, 1909. In the 1900 U.S. Census, she is recorded as having been nine years old and born in August 1890, and in the 1910 census she is recorded as 19 years old, already married with a child. With the destruction of Fayette County, Tennessee records in a 1925 fire, the family had guessed that she was born in 1891, but investigation proved she was a year older.
Lizzie Bolden had seven children, only two of whom are still alive as of 2006. Queen Esther Rhodes is 89 and Mamie Brittmon is 85. In 2003, a Memphis newspaper reported that Lizzie had 34 grandchildren, 124 great-grandchildren, 100 great-great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great-great grandchildren.
She currently resides in a Memphis, Tennessee nursing home. She has been described by her family as unable to communicate, and they have thus requested that media attention (such as interviews and visits) be limited. However, Lizzie was photographed by two photographers for two different books in early 2005, and was featured in Jet Magazine in May 2005 and the local Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper in June 2005. Since her August 30, 2005 accession to the Guinness "world's oldest person" title, Mrs. Bolden has not been seen in public.
On December 9, 2005, Elizabeth Bolden lost the "World's Oldest Person" title when Guinness World Records gave it to María Capovilla of Ecuador, a woman 11 months older. However, with María Capovilla's death on August 27, 2006, Bolden became the oldest recognized person once again.
In July 2006, Bolden entered the all time top ten oldest verified people. In August 2006, Mrs Bolden was photographed publicly for the first time in almost a year, although she did not appear in public for her 116th birthday.
Mrs. Bolden was verified in April 2005 as having been the oldest documented resident of the United States since the death of Emma Verona Johnston the previous December. She displaced Bettie Wilson, who had previously been the oldest known American.
She was thought to be the oldest surviving person in the world when Hendrikje van Andel died on August 30, 2005.
Elizabeth Jones married Lewis Bolden circa 1908. Like Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Bolden was born the daughter of freed slaves, and had a son, Ezell, on September 21, 1909. In the 1900 U.S. Census, she is recorded as having been nine years old and born in August 1890, and in the 1910 census she is recorded as 19 years old, already married with a child. With the destruction of Fayette County, Tennessee records in a 1925 fire, the family had guessed that she was born in 1891, but investigation proved she was a year older.
Lizzie Bolden had seven children, only two of whom are still alive as of 2006. Queen Esther Rhodes is 89 and Mamie Brittmon is 85. In 2003, a Memphis newspaper reported that Lizzie had 34 grandchildren, 124 great-grandchildren, 100 great-great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great-great grandchildren.
She currently resides in a Memphis, Tennessee nursing home. She has been described by her family as unable to communicate, and they have thus requested that media attention (such as interviews and visits) be limited. However, Lizzie was photographed by two photographers for two different books in early 2005, and was featured in Jet Magazine in May 2005 and the local Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper in June 2005. Since her August 30, 2005 accession to the Guinness "world's oldest person" title, Mrs. Bolden has not been seen in public.
On December 9, 2005, Elizabeth Bolden lost the "World's Oldest Person" title when Guinness World Records gave it to María Capovilla of Ecuador, a woman 11 months older. However, with María Capovilla's death on August 27, 2006, Bolden became the oldest recognized person once again.
In July 2006, Bolden entered the all time top ten oldest verified people. In August 2006, Mrs Bolden was photographed publicly for the first time in almost a year, although she did not appear in public for her 116th birthday.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Very Interesting
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/washington/23judge.html?ex=1313985600&en=2a8082331233aff1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush's eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday," reports the New York Times:
*** QUOTE ***
The group, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization here that found the connection, said the link posed a possible conflict for the judge, Anna Taylor Diggs, and called for further investigation. . . .
The Web site for the group that supported the A.C.L.U., the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit, lists Judge Taylor as its secretary and a trustee. It indicates that trustees make all financing decisions for the organization, whose assets exceed $350 million and which gives grants for a variety of community projects. . . .
The executive director of the Michigan A.C.L.U., Kary Moss, said her group had received four grants totaling $125,000 from the foundation since 1999. They were a $20,000 grant in 1999 for an educational program on the Bill of Rights, $60,000 in 2000, along with the N.A.A.C.P. and other groups for education on racial profiling, $20,000 in 2002 for work on racial profiling and $25,000 in 2002 for a lawyer to work on gay rights.
*** END QUOTE ***
The ACLU is the lead plaintiff in the case and provided legal counsel to the other plaintiffs. Yet the legal ethicists the Times interviews don't seem overly concerned. One of them, Stephen Gillers of New York University, "said he did not think there were grounds for Judge Taylor to remove herself from the case":
*** QUOTE ***
"The question is whether her impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Professor Gillers said, "and the fact that she sits on the board of a group that gives money to the plaintiff for an otherwise unrelated endeavor would not in my mind raise reasonable questions about her partiality on the issue of warrantless wiretapping."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/washington/23judge.html?ex=1313985600&en=2a8082331233aff1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"The federal judge who ruled last week that President Bush's eavesdropping program was unconstitutional is a trustee and an officer of a group that has given at least $125,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, a watchdog group said Tuesday," reports the New York Times:
*** QUOTE ***
The group, Judicial Watch, a conservative organization here that found the connection, said the link posed a possible conflict for the judge, Anna Taylor Diggs, and called for further investigation. . . .
The Web site for the group that supported the A.C.L.U., the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan in Detroit, lists Judge Taylor as its secretary and a trustee. It indicates that trustees make all financing decisions for the organization, whose assets exceed $350 million and which gives grants for a variety of community projects. . . .
The executive director of the Michigan A.C.L.U., Kary Moss, said her group had received four grants totaling $125,000 from the foundation since 1999. They were a $20,000 grant in 1999 for an educational program on the Bill of Rights, $60,000 in 2000, along with the N.A.A.C.P. and other groups for education on racial profiling, $20,000 in 2002 for work on racial profiling and $25,000 in 2002 for a lawyer to work on gay rights.
*** END QUOTE ***
The ACLU is the lead plaintiff in the case and provided legal counsel to the other plaintiffs. Yet the legal ethicists the Times interviews don't seem overly concerned. One of them, Stephen Gillers of New York University, "said he did not think there were grounds for Judge Taylor to remove herself from the case":
*** QUOTE ***
"The question is whether her impartiality might reasonably be questioned," Professor Gillers said, "and the fact that she sits on the board of a group that gives money to the plaintiff for an otherwise unrelated endeavor would not in my mind raise reasonable questions about her partiality on the issue of warrantless wiretapping."
Johnny Marr Joins Modest Mouse
by Staff | 08.04.2006
For the first time in over 15 years seminial British guitarist Johnny Marr is now a full-time member of a band he didn't form. According to a recent Rolling Stone interview with Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock, Marr is now "not pretty much. He's a full blown member of the band [Modest Mouse]. It's really fuckin' nice."
Previously it had been reported that Marr was merely involved in the recording of the album, however this is the first confirmation that he will be touring with the band as well.
"He made a cautious commitment to write and record with us, and then the tighter we got, he was like, 'okay, let's tour too,", Brock said.
The Seattle outfit's forthcoming album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank was recorded in Mississippi and produced by Dennis Heering (Good News For People Who Love Bad News), it's due in stores this fall.
It is not clear what this will mean for Marr's 2nd Healers album which he is said to have been currently recording.
by Staff | 08.04.2006
For the first time in over 15 years seminial British guitarist Johnny Marr is now a full-time member of a band he didn't form. According to a recent Rolling Stone interview with Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock, Marr is now "not pretty much. He's a full blown member of the band [Modest Mouse]. It's really fuckin' nice."
Previously it had been reported that Marr was merely involved in the recording of the album, however this is the first confirmation that he will be touring with the band as well.
"He made a cautious commitment to write and record with us, and then the tighter we got, he was like, 'okay, let's tour too,", Brock said.
The Seattle outfit's forthcoming album We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank was recorded in Mississippi and produced by Dennis Heering (Good News For People Who Love Bad News), it's due in stores this fall.
It is not clear what this will mean for Marr's 2nd Healers album which he is said to have been currently recording.
Monday, August 21, 2006
An excellent piece by Ben Stein that somehow slipped past the filters at the New York Times: Looking for the Will Beyond the Battlefield.
The other side considers it a privilege to fight and die for its beliefs. Those on the other side cannot wait to line up to blow themselves up for their vision of heaven. On our side, it’s: “Let the other poor sap do it. I’ve got to make money.” How can we fight this fight with the brightest and best educated rushing off and working night and day to do private equity deals and derivatives trading? How can we fight this fight with the ruling class absent by its own sweet leave?
I keep thinking, again, that if Israel, with its back to the sea, cannot muster the will to fight in a big way, then the fat, faraway U.S.A. will never be able to do it. I keep saying this and it terrifies me.
We’re in a war with people who want to kill us all and wreck our civilization. They’re taking it very seriously. We, on the other hand, are worrying about leveraged buyouts and special dividends and how much junk debt the newly formed private entity can support before we sell it to the ultimate sucker, the public shareholder.
We’re worrying whether Hollywood will forgive Mel Gibson and what the next move is for big homes in East Hampton. We’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The terrorists are the iceberg.
WHAT stands between us and the iceberg are the miraculously brave men and women of the armed forces. They’re heroes and saints as far as I’m concerned. But can they do it without the rest of us? Can they do it while we’re all working on our tans and trying to have our taxes lowered again? How can we leave them out there all alone to die for us when we treat the war to save civilization as something we can just wish away?
The other side considers it a privilege to fight and die for its beliefs. Those on the other side cannot wait to line up to blow themselves up for their vision of heaven. On our side, it’s: “Let the other poor sap do it. I’ve got to make money.” How can we fight this fight with the brightest and best educated rushing off and working night and day to do private equity deals and derivatives trading? How can we fight this fight with the ruling class absent by its own sweet leave?
I keep thinking, again, that if Israel, with its back to the sea, cannot muster the will to fight in a big way, then the fat, faraway U.S.A. will never be able to do it. I keep saying this and it terrifies me.
We’re in a war with people who want to kill us all and wreck our civilization. They’re taking it very seriously. We, on the other hand, are worrying about leveraged buyouts and special dividends and how much junk debt the newly formed private entity can support before we sell it to the ultimate sucker, the public shareholder.
We’re worrying whether Hollywood will forgive Mel Gibson and what the next move is for big homes in East Hampton. We’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The terrorists are the iceberg.
WHAT stands between us and the iceberg are the miraculously brave men and women of the armed forces. They’re heroes and saints as far as I’m concerned. But can they do it without the rest of us? Can they do it while we’re all working on our tans and trying to have our taxes lowered again? How can we leave them out there all alone to die for us when we treat the war to save civilization as something we can just wish away?
Friday, August 18, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Hitchins
Terrorists Ain't What They Used To Be-Reflections on the London bomb plot.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006, at 1:26 PM ET
SAO PAOLO, Brazil—A panel at a beautiful annual literary festival in Brazil, held in the almost Utopian coastal town of Parati, found me matched with Fernando Gabeira. This comparison reduced my own limited charisma value to something like zero: Gabeira has excelled at every cultural activity in Brazil from journalism and book writing to bikini modeling (is there, I wonder, a Brazilian wax for men?) to politics. A founder of the Green Party of Brazil and a leading parliamentarian, he delivered a barn-burning speech earlier this year against the exorbitant corruption of the ruling Workers' Party and, implicitly, of its celebrated head, President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva. After a lifetime of politics and adventure, Gabeira is counted by numberless Brazilians as a great charmer and wit, as well as an all-round good egg and upright citizen.
Still, the fact remains that in 1969 he was one of the organizers of the kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick. This means that I can't have him to stay with me in Washington, because he can't get a visa. He spoke movingly about the way in which he keeps in touch with the United States, of which he is very fond these days, at second hand. Well, those are the breaks, I suppose. There are one or two lines that you can't cross and then expect a visa in return. Brazil, of course, was a hideous military dictatorship at the time of the kidnapping, and the kidnapping hoped to secure the release of many prisoners held in unspeakable dungeons (and did so). There has since been an amnesty in Brazil that covers both sides but applies mainly to one. Still, a terrorist is a terrorist, no?
This brings to four the number of former hijackers and kidnappers with whom I have been on friendly terms. Herminio da Palma Inácio, the Portuguese revolutionary, was perhaps the first hijacker in Europe. He borrowed a Portuguese plane from Morocco during the Salazar dictatorship, made it fly over Lisbon and drop leaflets calling for a free election, took it back to Morocco, presented all the ladies onboard with a rose, apologized for the inconvenience, and deftly disappeared. He was later a national hero for his role in the overthrow of fascism. In the 1960s, Bill Brent became convinced (I think with good reason) that if the Oakland Police Department didn't kill him, some of his former Black Panther associates would. He rashly decided to redirect a TWA flight from Oakland, Calif., to Cuba, where he still lives and from where he has published a very readable and sobering memoir called Long Time Gone. Bassam Abu Sharif, who during his days in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine helped bring hijacking to the Middle East, was later partially deafened and partly crippled by an Israeli parcel bomb and went on to become one of the most fluent and courageous advocates of a "mutual recognition" between the two peoples.
Conversation with these men over the years was enough to convince me of what I already knew: It is indeed possible for one man to have been both a terrorist and a freedom fighter, though it is probably better to have skipped the "terror" phase altogether. The Iraqi Kurds, for example, never tried to involve noncombatants in their war of liberation. Nonetheless, evolution can and does occur.
This is only one of the many ways in which to appreciate how much the current phase of Islamic "terrorism" is utterly different. Whether or not the London plot turns out to have been real, one knows for sure that similar plots have been afoot ever since the 1990s, when Ramzi Yusef and others conspired to bring down several jumbo jets over the Pacific. And one day fairly soon, we may be sure that human and mechanical debris will fall from the sky upon a city. If you look at the four men I cited above, you will find that they did not plan to inflict murder at random, that they had at least a reasonable belief that they were left with no other recourse, that they had some concept of tomorrow being better than today, and that they accepted—and still accept—responsibility for their actions. What could be more different from those who plan to inflict mass death at random, whose agenda is tyrannical and theocratic, and who are so arrogantly exalted by fanaticism that they wish only to be among the dead? This isn't at all about bad methods being used for "justifiable" reasons or causes. It's about being able to tell a great deal about the "end" from the sort of "means" that are employed to attain it.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006, at 1:26 PM ET
SAO PAOLO, Brazil—A panel at a beautiful annual literary festival in Brazil, held in the almost Utopian coastal town of Parati, found me matched with Fernando Gabeira. This comparison reduced my own limited charisma value to something like zero: Gabeira has excelled at every cultural activity in Brazil from journalism and book writing to bikini modeling (is there, I wonder, a Brazilian wax for men?) to politics. A founder of the Green Party of Brazil and a leading parliamentarian, he delivered a barn-burning speech earlier this year against the exorbitant corruption of the ruling Workers' Party and, implicitly, of its celebrated head, President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva. After a lifetime of politics and adventure, Gabeira is counted by numberless Brazilians as a great charmer and wit, as well as an all-round good egg and upright citizen.
Still, the fact remains that in 1969 he was one of the organizers of the kidnapping of the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick. This means that I can't have him to stay with me in Washington, because he can't get a visa. He spoke movingly about the way in which he keeps in touch with the United States, of which he is very fond these days, at second hand. Well, those are the breaks, I suppose. There are one or two lines that you can't cross and then expect a visa in return. Brazil, of course, was a hideous military dictatorship at the time of the kidnapping, and the kidnapping hoped to secure the release of many prisoners held in unspeakable dungeons (and did so). There has since been an amnesty in Brazil that covers both sides but applies mainly to one. Still, a terrorist is a terrorist, no?
This brings to four the number of former hijackers and kidnappers with whom I have been on friendly terms. Herminio da Palma Inácio, the Portuguese revolutionary, was perhaps the first hijacker in Europe. He borrowed a Portuguese plane from Morocco during the Salazar dictatorship, made it fly over Lisbon and drop leaflets calling for a free election, took it back to Morocco, presented all the ladies onboard with a rose, apologized for the inconvenience, and deftly disappeared. He was later a national hero for his role in the overthrow of fascism. In the 1960s, Bill Brent became convinced (I think with good reason) that if the Oakland Police Department didn't kill him, some of his former Black Panther associates would. He rashly decided to redirect a TWA flight from Oakland, Calif., to Cuba, where he still lives and from where he has published a very readable and sobering memoir called Long Time Gone. Bassam Abu Sharif, who during his days in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine helped bring hijacking to the Middle East, was later partially deafened and partly crippled by an Israeli parcel bomb and went on to become one of the most fluent and courageous advocates of a "mutual recognition" between the two peoples.
Conversation with these men over the years was enough to convince me of what I already knew: It is indeed possible for one man to have been both a terrorist and a freedom fighter, though it is probably better to have skipped the "terror" phase altogether. The Iraqi Kurds, for example, never tried to involve noncombatants in their war of liberation. Nonetheless, evolution can and does occur.
This is only one of the many ways in which to appreciate how much the current phase of Islamic "terrorism" is utterly different. Whether or not the London plot turns out to have been real, one knows for sure that similar plots have been afoot ever since the 1990s, when Ramzi Yusef and others conspired to bring down several jumbo jets over the Pacific. And one day fairly soon, we may be sure that human and mechanical debris will fall from the sky upon a city. If you look at the four men I cited above, you will find that they did not plan to inflict murder at random, that they had at least a reasonable belief that they were left with no other recourse, that they had some concept of tomorrow being better than today, and that they accepted—and still accept—responsibility for their actions. What could be more different from those who plan to inflict mass death at random, whose agenda is tyrannical and theocratic, and who are so arrogantly exalted by fanaticism that they wish only to be among the dead? This isn't at all about bad methods being used for "justifiable" reasons or causes. It's about being able to tell a great deal about the "end" from the sort of "means" that are employed to attain it.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Happy Birthday Bukowski!
It's the birthday of Charles Bukowski, (books by this author) born in Andernach, Germany (1920). His family moved to Los Angeles when he was two years old. His father was a milkman, and so frustrated with his own life that he became very abusive. He once beat Bukowski with a two-by-four because the son hadn't mowed the lawn correctly.
Bukowski studied literature and journalism for a year at Los Angeles City College. His father threw him out of the house after reading some of Bukowski's stories. For the next several years, he lived as a hobo. He made money working at a slaughterhouse and a dog biscuit factory, and for the American Red Cross. While trying to write, he starved much of the time, limiting himself to one candy bar a day, while he wrote up to five short stories a week. Often he had no typewriter and hand printed his work.
He finally got a steady job as a postal clerk in the fifties. In 1960, when he was forty years old, he published his first book of poetry, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960).
He published more than fifteen books of fiction and poetry in the next ten years, including Run With the Hunted (1962) and The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969).
Late in his life he said, "Every day I'll wake up around noon. Then I'll go to the track and I'll play the horses. ... Then I'll come back and I'll swim and ... have dinner and I'll go upstairs and I'll sit at the computer and I'll crack me a bottle [of wine] and I'll listen to some Mahler or Sibelius and I'll write, with this rhythm, like always."
Bukowski studied literature and journalism for a year at Los Angeles City College. His father threw him out of the house after reading some of Bukowski's stories. For the next several years, he lived as a hobo. He made money working at a slaughterhouse and a dog biscuit factory, and for the American Red Cross. While trying to write, he starved much of the time, limiting himself to one candy bar a day, while he wrote up to five short stories a week. Often he had no typewriter and hand printed his work.
He finally got a steady job as a postal clerk in the fifties. In 1960, when he was forty years old, he published his first book of poetry, Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail (1960).
He published more than fifteen books of fiction and poetry in the next ten years, including Run With the Hunted (1962) and The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969).
Late in his life he said, "Every day I'll wake up around noon. Then I'll go to the track and I'll play the horses. ... Then I'll come back and I'll swim and ... have dinner and I'll go upstairs and I'll sit at the computer and I'll crack me a bottle [of wine] and I'll listen to some Mahler or Sibelius and I'll write, with this rhythm, like always."
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Monday, August 14, 2006
Master of the Zombie Boner
Observe hunky young Dr. Mark Warfel, ambitious Manhattan plastic surgeon with a secret plan: to perform all kinds of disturbing procedures on your penis, and to be paid well for the pleasure. In the name of enlargement, he's prepared to sever its ligaments, yank it further out of your groin, inject it with fat, and wrap it an am empowering sheath of dead flesh. Not girthy enough? Fear not:
"Right now, there are two methods of adding girth to a penis: injecting fat, or wrapping the penis in layers of cadaver skin.Both have drawbacks, in that the body would like to absorb both fat and skin."
Even corpse skin. So in a way, your significant other gets to engage in a threesome that's (at least) one-third necrophillic. One could be forgiven for reconsidering that decision to check the "donor" box on the back of one's driver's license.
Priapus Shrugged [Observer]
Observe hunky young Dr. Mark Warfel, ambitious Manhattan plastic surgeon with a secret plan: to perform all kinds of disturbing procedures on your penis, and to be paid well for the pleasure. In the name of enlargement, he's prepared to sever its ligaments, yank it further out of your groin, inject it with fat, and wrap it an am empowering sheath of dead flesh. Not girthy enough? Fear not:
"Right now, there are two methods of adding girth to a penis: injecting fat, or wrapping the penis in layers of cadaver skin.Both have drawbacks, in that the body would like to absorb both fat and skin."
Even corpse skin. So in a way, your significant other gets to engage in a threesome that's (at least) one-third necrophillic. One could be forgiven for reconsidering that decision to check the "donor" box on the back of one's driver's license.
Priapus Shrugged [Observer]
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, A Saint For Our Times
Today is the feast day of Father Maximilian Kolbe. The patron saint of journalists, families, and prisoners died in Auschwitz in 1941, taking the place of another selected for death. His amazing story is told at the Auschwitz web site:
In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.
'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.
The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'
Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'
Father kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'
Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparantly the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.
Gajowniczek later recalled:
'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?
I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.
For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'‘
Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over.
Gajowniczek survived Auschwitz, which was a miracle in itself. He eventually attended the ceremony that canonized Father Kolbe as a saint in 1981. He returned to Auschwitz every year on August 14th, the date that the Nazis finally had to kill Kolbe with an injection, to offer prayers on his behalf. Gajowniczek died in 1995, fifty-four years after Kolbe's sacrifice.
I think of Father Kolbe when we see the heroics of everyday people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Few get the opportunity to personally put themselves in another's place for certain execution without any guarantee of saving the other life, with only trust in the Lord. The Nazi commandant could easily have added Kolbe to the other ten, after all, or could have killed Gajowniczek separately later.
Why didn't he do that? Why did the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz -- someone we can certainly assume to be as evil as any who goose-stepped the Earth in that period -- allow Kolbe to sacrifice himself for another? It makes no worldly sense, but it happened. It's where reason ends and faith begins, and why Father Kolbe makes such a compelling figure of faith for so many.
Today is the feast day of Father Maximilian Kolbe. The patron saint of journalists, families, and prisoners died in Auschwitz in 1941, taking the place of another selected for death. His amazing story is told at the Auschwitz web site:
In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.
'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.
The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'
Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'
Father kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'
Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparantly the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange. Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.
Gajowniczek later recalled:
'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?
I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.
For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'‘
Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over.
Gajowniczek survived Auschwitz, which was a miracle in itself. He eventually attended the ceremony that canonized Father Kolbe as a saint in 1981. He returned to Auschwitz every year on August 14th, the date that the Nazis finally had to kill Kolbe with an injection, to offer prayers on his behalf. Gajowniczek died in 1995, fifty-four years after Kolbe's sacrifice.
I think of Father Kolbe when we see the heroics of everyday people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Few get the opportunity to personally put themselves in another's place for certain execution without any guarantee of saving the other life, with only trust in the Lord. The Nazi commandant could easily have added Kolbe to the other ten, after all, or could have killed Gajowniczek separately later.
Why didn't he do that? Why did the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz -- someone we can certainly assume to be as evil as any who goose-stepped the Earth in that period -- allow Kolbe to sacrifice himself for another? It makes no worldly sense, but it happened. It's where reason ends and faith begins, and why Father Kolbe makes such a compelling figure of faith for so many.
Associated Press Go-To Guy: Hard Core Radical Islamist
One of the most insidious and deceptive mainstream media practices is quoting radical Islamists (or radical leftists) as “experts” without providing any context to evaluate their statements.
Here’s a prime example in an Associated Press article by William J. Kole, promoting the nonsensical, ahistorical view that US/British “foreign policy” is somehow to blame for the global jihad: Plot Shows Rise of Extremism in Europe.
To advance this theory (which is really a thinly veiled threat), Kole opened his Rolodex and found an “expert” to opine on the matter—Azzam Timimi, one of the most hard-core Islamists currently operating in Britain. But you won’t find this out from Kole’s article.
Little is known of what may have motivated the 23 suspects in British police custody to allegedly plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners with liquid explosives. But many in their middle and working class neighborhoods said the communities have become alienated by U.S. and British policy in the Middle East.
“Governments in Europe insist this is a problem of ideology, but the real cause of this phenomenon is the political crisis that is sweeping the world with the war in Iraq and the situation in Palestine,” said Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought.
Like the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the London bombings on July 7, 2005, “should have been lessons for everybody _ that government policies endanger the security of everyone,” Tamimi said. “The root cause has never been addressed. Unless they open a debate, the threat will never go away.”
Little is known of what may have motivated the 23 suspects in British police custody to allegedly plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners with liquid explosives.
Pssssst. It's in the Koran.
One of the most insidious and deceptive mainstream media practices is quoting radical Islamists (or radical leftists) as “experts” without providing any context to evaluate their statements.
Here’s a prime example in an Associated Press article by William J. Kole, promoting the nonsensical, ahistorical view that US/British “foreign policy” is somehow to blame for the global jihad: Plot Shows Rise of Extremism in Europe.
To advance this theory (which is really a thinly veiled threat), Kole opened his Rolodex and found an “expert” to opine on the matter—Azzam Timimi, one of the most hard-core Islamists currently operating in Britain. But you won’t find this out from Kole’s article.
Little is known of what may have motivated the 23 suspects in British police custody to allegedly plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners with liquid explosives. But many in their middle and working class neighborhoods said the communities have become alienated by U.S. and British policy in the Middle East.
“Governments in Europe insist this is a problem of ideology, but the real cause of this phenomenon is the political crisis that is sweeping the world with the war in Iraq and the situation in Palestine,” said Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought.
Like the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the London bombings on July 7, 2005, “should have been lessons for everybody _ that government policies endanger the security of everyone,” Tamimi said. “The root cause has never been addressed. Unless they open a debate, the threat will never go away.”
Little is known of what may have motivated the 23 suspects in British police custody to allegedly plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners with liquid explosives.
Pssssst. It's in the Koran.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Tashbih Sayyed offers some hard-won words of wisdom about The Cease-fire.
The latest flare-up in a 59 years long war to wipe the Jewish state off the map of the world is fast approaching its expected closure. Israel is once again being forced to leave the job of eliminating the Islamist threat unfinished. The world’s powers, blinded by their anti-Semitism, politico-commercial considerations, and regional agendas, want Israel to stop pursuing its legitimate campaign to secure itself by eradicating the Islamist threat from its door steps: they want an immediate cease-fire.
They are not ready to accept that in the case of political Islam, cease-fires are nothing but tactical pauses which are used as tools to gain time in order to recoup losses, re-arm forces, and rebuild terrorist infrastructure. For example, the world thought that the Oslo Accord was a step in the right direction - peace. But for Yasser Arafat who signed it on September 13, 1993, it was just a tactical cease-fire “Hudna” that could be broken at any time.
Political Islam finds a number of examples in the life of Prophet Muhammad that sanction the use of treaties as a tactical necessity. In explaining why he signed the Oslo Accord, Yasser Arafat cited a truce signed by Prophet Muhammad with the Meccan tribe Quraish at Hudaybiyah in 628 C.E. According to the PLO leader, Prophet Muhammad had signed the truce when he was not strong enough to win a war and it was to last for ten years. But when, within two years of the signing, the Muslims felt that they have gained enough strength to defeat the Quraish, they broke the truce, attacked the Quraish and captured Mecca.
A prominent Saudi sheikh, ’Abd Al-Muhsin Al-’Obikan, also referred to the same treaty while condemning Hezbollah’s actions in Lebanon. He issued the edict against Hezbollah’s actions not because he considered them wrong but because in his view Muslims, at the moment, are not strong enough to defeat Israel. He said that since the Muslims have no chance of winning this campaign against the Jews, a temporary solution is necessary - a truce similar to the temporary truce of Hudaybiyya.
According to the Saudi Sheikh, Islamic laws (Shari’a) also “place preconditions and constraints on the declaring of jihad, which must be considered in order to ensure the greatest gain for the nation and spare it loss - [that is,] in order to ensure the minimum possible damage and avoid greater damage.
One of the preconditions regarding jihad [states] that the [the jihad fighters] must have [sufficient] capability to inflict harm on the enemy and to repulse its evil, so as to ensure the lives, the property, and the honor of the Muslims and to safeguard them from aggression or harm, that is, [from] destruction of property, from violation of honor, and from bloodshed.”
Those who understand the Islamist ethos know that for political Islam, disengagement, a cease-fire, or a pull back on the part of the “enemy” is a sign of its weakness. No one has more experience with this treacherous mindset than the Israelis. It was Israel’s unwillingness to escalate a raid into a full scale battle in 1968 that helped the Palestinian terrorists to win the support of the masses.
The latest flare-up in a 59 years long war to wipe the Jewish state off the map of the world is fast approaching its expected closure. Israel is once again being forced to leave the job of eliminating the Islamist threat unfinished. The world’s powers, blinded by their anti-Semitism, politico-commercial considerations, and regional agendas, want Israel to stop pursuing its legitimate campaign to secure itself by eradicating the Islamist threat from its door steps: they want an immediate cease-fire.
They are not ready to accept that in the case of political Islam, cease-fires are nothing but tactical pauses which are used as tools to gain time in order to recoup losses, re-arm forces, and rebuild terrorist infrastructure. For example, the world thought that the Oslo Accord was a step in the right direction - peace. But for Yasser Arafat who signed it on September 13, 1993, it was just a tactical cease-fire “Hudna” that could be broken at any time.
Political Islam finds a number of examples in the life of Prophet Muhammad that sanction the use of treaties as a tactical necessity. In explaining why he signed the Oslo Accord, Yasser Arafat cited a truce signed by Prophet Muhammad with the Meccan tribe Quraish at Hudaybiyah in 628 C.E. According to the PLO leader, Prophet Muhammad had signed the truce when he was not strong enough to win a war and it was to last for ten years. But when, within two years of the signing, the Muslims felt that they have gained enough strength to defeat the Quraish, they broke the truce, attacked the Quraish and captured Mecca.
A prominent Saudi sheikh, ’Abd Al-Muhsin Al-’Obikan, also referred to the same treaty while condemning Hezbollah’s actions in Lebanon. He issued the edict against Hezbollah’s actions not because he considered them wrong but because in his view Muslims, at the moment, are not strong enough to defeat Israel. He said that since the Muslims have no chance of winning this campaign against the Jews, a temporary solution is necessary - a truce similar to the temporary truce of Hudaybiyya.
According to the Saudi Sheikh, Islamic laws (Shari’a) also “place preconditions and constraints on the declaring of jihad, which must be considered in order to ensure the greatest gain for the nation and spare it loss - [that is,] in order to ensure the minimum possible damage and avoid greater damage.
One of the preconditions regarding jihad [states] that the [the jihad fighters] must have [sufficient] capability to inflict harm on the enemy and to repulse its evil, so as to ensure the lives, the property, and the honor of the Muslims and to safeguard them from aggression or harm, that is, [from] destruction of property, from violation of honor, and from bloodshed.”
Those who understand the Islamist ethos know that for political Islam, disengagement, a cease-fire, or a pull back on the part of the “enemy” is a sign of its weakness. No one has more experience with this treacherous mindset than the Israelis. It was Israel’s unwillingness to escalate a raid into a full scale battle in 1968 that helped the Palestinian terrorists to win the support of the masses.
Reutersgate strikes other news outlets
Sheera Claire Frenkel, THE JERUSALEM POST
Aug. 11, 2006
At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media.
Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of the most esteemed media outlets.
More than a dozen accusations of staged or doctored photographs have made their way through various Web sites in the past several weeks. None has been treated by the news outlets as seriously as the original Reuters incident, which saw the photographer Adnin Hajj fired and over 900 of his photos removed from the Reuters wire list. But numerous other outlets - including the BBC, The New York Times and AP - have been forced to recall photos or change captions following inaccuracies pointed out in online forums.
The fact that the online community rather than fellow mainstream media has become a watchdog of accuracy has surprised many who originally derided blogs as being "devoid of accuracy."
"In a blog you don't have to be accurate to anyone but yourself and your readers," said Laya Millman from the Jewlicious.com blog. "There is a great deal of accountability because, if you get anything wrong, the readers will quickly, very quickly, point it out."
As was demonstrated in the case with the Reuters photograph, blogs come with their own teams of investigators: the thousands of readers who stream through the site. Within hours of Charles Johnson's posting on Little Green Footballs, readers of the Web site had gone to work uncovering an array of damning evidence against Hajj, the most serious of which - a second doctored photograph, an Israeli plane altered to make it look as though it was dropping a series of bombs - may have pushed Reuters to fire Hajj after initially announcing that the freelance photographer would be suspended. That photograph, which was discovered by blogger Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report, included an illustrated account of how the photos had been doctored.
Photographs whose veracity has been questioned by blogs in the past few weeks since Reutersgate began include:
Two pictures used by The Associated Press and Reuters, in which the same woman appeared to be crying over the destruction of her Beirut home. Distinguished by a red-checkered scarf and scar on her right cheek, the woman was pictured crying in front of two different locations two weeks apart.
Several photographs of a bombed bridge in Beirut which appear on Reuters and AFP with the different captions stating that the bridge had been bombed on July 18, July 24 and August 5. Bloggers claim that the striking image was photographed to look like several different bombings in order to make destruction in Beirut appear more severe.
In The New York Times photo essay "Attack on Tyre," a photograph of a man who appears dead is accompanied with the caption reading "bodies were still buried under the rubble." However, in a later photograph in the same series, the same man appears to be walking in the foreground of a photo. The Times issued a correction for the first photograph, stating that the man was injured.
Some claim that the online controversy over the photos has gotten out of hand, with many blogs now launching investigations and hurling accusations at a variety of news sources.
"These accusations can be very damning, and need to be handled with care and not thrown out by any angry blogger," said one anonymous poster on Little Green Footballs.
In the meantime, however, Little Green Footballs - along with many other online forums - has been flooded with investigations into mainstream media, with the entire army of its hundreds of thousands of readers eagerly at hand.
Sheera Claire Frenkel, THE JERUSALEM POST
Aug. 11, 2006
At first everyone thought they were just blowing smoke, but the debunking of a Reuters photograph by a group of Web sites has launched a fiery online war in which bloggers have taken on the mainstream media.
Bloggers, or writers on web logs, were the first to reveal that a Reuters photograph depicting plumes of black smoke rising over Beirut was doctored to enhance smoke above the city. The Web site www.LittleGreenFootballs.com is credited with first revealing the scandal, which has been dubbed Reutersgate, but the affair has spread far wider than the Reuters News Agency and into several of the most esteemed media outlets.
More than a dozen accusations of staged or doctored photographs have made their way through various Web sites in the past several weeks. None has been treated by the news outlets as seriously as the original Reuters incident, which saw the photographer Adnin Hajj fired and over 900 of his photos removed from the Reuters wire list. But numerous other outlets - including the BBC, The New York Times and AP - have been forced to recall photos or change captions following inaccuracies pointed out in online forums.
The fact that the online community rather than fellow mainstream media has become a watchdog of accuracy has surprised many who originally derided blogs as being "devoid of accuracy."
"In a blog you don't have to be accurate to anyone but yourself and your readers," said Laya Millman from the Jewlicious.com blog. "There is a great deal of accountability because, if you get anything wrong, the readers will quickly, very quickly, point it out."
As was demonstrated in the case with the Reuters photograph, blogs come with their own teams of investigators: the thousands of readers who stream through the site. Within hours of Charles Johnson's posting on Little Green Footballs, readers of the Web site had gone to work uncovering an array of damning evidence against Hajj, the most serious of which - a second doctored photograph, an Israeli plane altered to make it look as though it was dropping a series of bombs - may have pushed Reuters to fire Hajj after initially announcing that the freelance photographer would be suspended. That photograph, which was discovered by blogger Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report, included an illustrated account of how the photos had been doctored.
Photographs whose veracity has been questioned by blogs in the past few weeks since Reutersgate began include:
Two pictures used by The Associated Press and Reuters, in which the same woman appeared to be crying over the destruction of her Beirut home. Distinguished by a red-checkered scarf and scar on her right cheek, the woman was pictured crying in front of two different locations two weeks apart.
Several photographs of a bombed bridge in Beirut which appear on Reuters and AFP with the different captions stating that the bridge had been bombed on July 18, July 24 and August 5. Bloggers claim that the striking image was photographed to look like several different bombings in order to make destruction in Beirut appear more severe.
In The New York Times photo essay "Attack on Tyre," a photograph of a man who appears dead is accompanied with the caption reading "bodies were still buried under the rubble." However, in a later photograph in the same series, the same man appears to be walking in the foreground of a photo. The Times issued a correction for the first photograph, stating that the man was injured.
Some claim that the online controversy over the photos has gotten out of hand, with many blogs now launching investigations and hurling accusations at a variety of news sources.
"These accusations can be very damning, and need to be handled with care and not thrown out by any angry blogger," said one anonymous poster on Little Green Footballs.
In the meantime, however, Little Green Footballs - along with many other online forums - has been flooded with investigations into mainstream media, with the entire army of its hundreds of thousands of readers eagerly at hand.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
WSJ: Scholar Warns Iran's Ahmadinejad May Have 'Cataclysmic Events' In Mind For August 22Tue Aug 08 2006 10:22:35 ET
In a WALL STREET JOURNAL op-ed Tuesday, Princeton's Bernard Lewis writes: "There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers." "In Islam as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time -- Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the US about nuclear development by Aug. 22," which this year corresponds "to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque,' usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1)."This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind."
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/qana-directors-cut.html
Pretty interesting commentary on photo manipulation-
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
Does This Sound Familiar?
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Eleven foreign students from a Muslim nation get off a plane in New York, walk down the street, and turn into a national security problem (via Flopping Aces):
U.S. authorities are searching for 11 Egyptian men who arrived in the United States last month but failed to turn up at Montana State University for a scheduled academic program.
According to the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the men were among a larger group of students who arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York from Cairo on July 29 with valid visas.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said there is no threat associated with the men.
A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the men are between 18 and 22 years old.
Now we have eleven young Muslims from a country known for producing radical Islamists walking unattended in the US, obviously uninterested in higher education goals. The Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner to violent groups such as al-Qaeda, bases its operations in Egypt, and among their alumni are luminaries such as AQ #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The FBI wants to assure us that none of them represent a threat, but this sounds rather disconcerting to me. All of them disappeared at the same time, and all of them listed as their school of choice ... Montana State University? None of the eleven bother to show for their class -- not just one or two who may have gotten themselves caught up in partying or sightseeing, but all eleven.
It sounds like a joke with a very bad punchline. Considering how many of the 9/11 plotters got into the US from Saudi Arabia on student visas, it sounds like a very old and tiresome joke. Instead of trying to blow smoke about the lack of a threat, perhaps the FBI should publish the names and photos of the missing talib and let us help them find the little truants.
Posted by Captain Ed at 06:08 AM Comments (27) TrackBack (4)
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Eleven foreign students from a Muslim nation get off a plane in New York, walk down the street, and turn into a national security problem (via Flopping Aces):
U.S. authorities are searching for 11 Egyptian men who arrived in the United States last month but failed to turn up at Montana State University for a scheduled academic program.
According to the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, the men were among a larger group of students who arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York from Cairo on July 29 with valid visas.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said there is no threat associated with the men.
A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the men are between 18 and 22 years old.
Now we have eleven young Muslims from a country known for producing radical Islamists walking unattended in the US, obviously uninterested in higher education goals. The Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner to violent groups such as al-Qaeda, bases its operations in Egypt, and among their alumni are luminaries such as AQ #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The FBI wants to assure us that none of them represent a threat, but this sounds rather disconcerting to me. All of them disappeared at the same time, and all of them listed as their school of choice ... Montana State University? None of the eleven bother to show for their class -- not just one or two who may have gotten themselves caught up in partying or sightseeing, but all eleven.
It sounds like a joke with a very bad punchline. Considering how many of the 9/11 plotters got into the US from Saudi Arabia on student visas, it sounds like a very old and tiresome joke. Instead of trying to blow smoke about the lack of a threat, perhaps the FBI should publish the names and photos of the missing talib and let us help them find the little truants.
Posted by Captain Ed at 06:08 AM Comments (27) TrackBack (4)
Monday, August 07, 2006
AJ Strata points out that Democrats Have Drunk The Kool Aid:
The one third of America which calls itself ‘liberal’ and ’strong democrat’ can now also be classified as ‘not working with a full deck’, because these people have bought into the BDS hallucination that 9-11 was an inside job. Proof from a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll just out.
More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. ...
These are the same 30% who vote against everything conservative or moderate or Republican. They are the same 30% who hate Israel and Bush and are grateful for the media co-dependants who exposed our terrorist surveillance programs. They are the same 30% who would rather leave Iraq to Osama Bin Laden and Impeach Bush and Cheney. ...
It is amazing that all these people are just incapable of adjusting to an America that has moved beyond their shrill, failed liberal ideas and, instead of attempting to be relevant decide to go delusional - big time. They have truly drunk the Kool Aid. What the reporting doesn’t note is while these minorities are living in a wierdo fantasy, 64% do not in general believe this silliness. 64-36 is what political watchers call a route.
The Arab world is famous for their paranoid conspiracy theorizing about the supermen of America and Israel. S, C & A does a masterful job describing their downward arc in Useless Ceasfires And The Tragedy Of The Unter-Menschen.
The one third of America which calls itself ‘liberal’ and ’strong democrat’ can now also be classified as ‘not working with a full deck’, because these people have bought into the BDS hallucination that 9-11 was an inside job. Proof from a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll just out.
More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. ...
These are the same 30% who vote against everything conservative or moderate or Republican. They are the same 30% who hate Israel and Bush and are grateful for the media co-dependants who exposed our terrorist surveillance programs. They are the same 30% who would rather leave Iraq to Osama Bin Laden and Impeach Bush and Cheney. ...
It is amazing that all these people are just incapable of adjusting to an America that has moved beyond their shrill, failed liberal ideas and, instead of attempting to be relevant decide to go delusional - big time. They have truly drunk the Kool Aid. What the reporting doesn’t note is while these minorities are living in a wierdo fantasy, 64% do not in general believe this silliness. 64-36 is what political watchers call a route.
The Arab world is famous for their paranoid conspiracy theorizing about the supermen of America and Israel. S, C & A does a masterful job describing their downward arc in Useless Ceasfires And The Tragedy Of The Unter-Menschen.
Rueters Bias
Where There's 'Smoke,' There's a Firing http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=TopNews&storyID=2006-08-06T215602Z_01_L06301298_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST-REUTERS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-TopNews-10
Reuters finds itself in the middle of the latest journalistic scandal: The wire service "told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut." Blogger Charles Johnson http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only exposed the fake photo, which seemed to show two plumes of smoke rising from buildings in the Lebanese capital.
The original photo (shown here http://today.reuters.com/news/newsPhotoPresentation.aspx?type=topNews&imageID=20060806T215559Z_01_L06301298_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0.xml alongside the altered one) shows one burning building and far less smoke. Johnson analyzed the doctored photo and found repeating patterns, which could only be the result of digital manipulation. Reuters reports on the laughable explanation offered by photographer Adnan Hajj:
*** QUOTE ***
"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.
*** END QUOTE ***
This explanation is implausible on its face, but it becomes even more ridiculous with the revelation that another Hajj photo was similarly manipulated. This one, first noted by blogger Rusty Shackleford http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php , purports to show an Israeli F-16 plane firing missiles. In fact, according to Shackleford, they are "flares designed to be a decoy for surface to air missiles." And although the picture purports to show three of these "missiles," in fact two of them are simply copies of the first. YnetNews reports that Reuters http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3287774,00.html has acknowledged this photo was faked as well.
Other Hajj photos carry captions that appear to be inaccurate:
-A Hajj photo http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060806/ids_photos_ts/r1428781317.jpg transmitted yesterday carries the caption: "A Lebanese man runs away from the burning ruins of a building destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack." But the picture plainly was taken in broad daylight. As blogger " Bullwinkle http://www.bullwinkleblog.com/?p=1747 " (no relation to Marshall Wittmann http://bullmooseblogger.blogspot.com/ ) quips, the photo's subject must be "the world's slowest man."
Reuters finds itself in the middle of the latest journalistic scandal: The wire service "told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut." Blogger Charles Johnson http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only exposed the fake photo, which seemed to show two plumes of smoke rising from buildings in the Lebanese capital.
The original photo (shown here http://today.reuters.com/news/newsPhotoPresentation.aspx?type=topNews&imageID=20060806T215559Z_01_L06301298_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0.xml alongside the altered one) shows one burning building and far less smoke. Johnson analyzed the doctored photo and found repeating patterns, which could only be the result of digital manipulation. Reuters reports on the laughable explanation offered by photographer Adnan Hajj:
*** QUOTE ***
"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.
*** END QUOTE ***
This explanation is implausible on its face, but it becomes even more ridiculous with the revelation that another Hajj photo was similarly manipulated. This one, first noted by blogger Rusty Shackleford http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php , purports to show an Israeli F-16 plane firing missiles. In fact, according to Shackleford, they are "flares designed to be a decoy for surface to air missiles." And although the picture purports to show three of these "missiles," in fact two of them are simply copies of the first. YnetNews reports that Reuters http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3287774,00.html has acknowledged this photo was faked as well.
Other Hajj photos carry captions that appear to be inaccurate:
-A Hajj photo http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060806/ids_photos_ts/r1428781317.jpg transmitted yesterday carries the caption: "A Lebanese man runs away from the burning ruins of a building destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack." But the picture plainly was taken in broad daylight. As blogger " Bullwinkle http://www.bullwinkleblog.com/?p=1747 " (no relation to Marshall Wittmann http://bullmooseblogger.blogspot.com/ ) quips, the photo's subject must be "the world's slowest man."
Friday, August 04, 2006
2006 = 1938
Victor Davis Hanson’s latest column is exceptional, a look at the plague of moral equivalence infecting Western society: The Brink of Madness.
"It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.
These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.
Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.
In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around."
"It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.
These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.
Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.
In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around."
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
"This is just the start of a showdown between the West and The Rest"
(Amir Taheri, The Times, 2006/08/02)
"For almost a quarter of a century there has been intense competition within the Islamist camp over who could claim leadership. For much of that period Sunni Salafist movements, backed by oil money, were in the ascendancy. They began to decline after the 9/11 attacks that deprived them of much of the support they received from Arab governments and charities. In the past five years Tehran has tried to seize the opportunity to advance its own leadership claims. ...Many in the Middle East are alarmed by these shifts of power and dread the prospect of the region entering a new dark age under radical Islamist regimes. For this reason, there seems to be much less hostility towards Israel in the wider Arab world than we might expect in the West. There may be no sympathy for Israel as such but many Arabs realise that the current war is over something bigger than a Jewish state with a tiny territory of 10,000 square miles, less than 1 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s land mass.This war is one of many battles to be fought between those who wish to join the modern world, warts and all, and those who think they have an alternative. This is a war between the West and what one might describe as “The Rest”, this time represented by radical Islamism. All the talk of a ceasefire, all the diplomatic gesticulations may ultimately mean little in what is an existential conflict."
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Better Dead Than Red http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=TopNews&storyID=2006-08-01T093040Z_01_N31365302_RTRUKOC_0_US-CUBA-CASTRO.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-TopNews-2
So this is what communism comes down to: a feeble near-octogenarian dictator lying in a hospital bed, bleeding from an unmentionable part of his digestive tract. As Reuters reports, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has "stepped down temporarily . . . handing over power for the first time" to Crown Prince Raul Castro:
*** QUOTE ***
[Fidel] Castro, who will be 80 on August 13, said in a statement read out on television that he overexerted himself this month on a trip to a summit of South American leaders in Argentina and celebrations of his 1953 assault on a military garrison.
"This caused an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obliged me to face a complicated surgical operation," he said in the " proclamation http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5233770.stm " read out by his personal aide Carlos Valenciaga.
"The operation obliges me to remain for several weeks resting, away from my responsibilities and duties," it said.
*** END QUOTE ***
Now of course Castro is merely going the way of all flesh, but this apparently is a surprise to some of his enthusiasts among Western journalists. The Associated Press http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060801/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_castro "reports" that the Cuban people are morons who had no idea Castro was mortal until recently:
*** QUOTE ***
Talk of Castro's mortality was taboo until June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly recovered, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would eventually die.
*** END QUOTE ***
Reuters http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060801/ts_nm/cuba_castro_dc_8 , too, is impressed with the emperor's elegant clothes:
*** QUOTE ***
The left-wing leader has enjoyed a revival in international support. . . . Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care. He has won friends. . . . Castro was greeted by crowds like a rock star. . . . Anti-globalization youths see him as a hero. . . .
Yet, at home critics say Castro has subjected Cuba's 11 million people to collectivized poverty in a police state.
*** END QUOTE ***
Yeah, well, nobody's perfect. In his statement, Castro vows to "fight until the last drop of blood." We will be keeping an eye on his condition. May it stabilize soon.
So this is what communism comes down to: a feeble near-octogenarian dictator lying in a hospital bed, bleeding from an unmentionable part of his digestive tract. As Reuters reports, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has "stepped down temporarily . . . handing over power for the first time" to Crown Prince Raul Castro:
*** QUOTE ***
[Fidel] Castro, who will be 80 on August 13, said in a statement read out on television that he overexerted himself this month on a trip to a summit of South American leaders in Argentina and celebrations of his 1953 assault on a military garrison.
"This caused an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obliged me to face a complicated surgical operation," he said in the " proclamation http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5233770.stm " read out by his personal aide Carlos Valenciaga.
"The operation obliges me to remain for several weeks resting, away from my responsibilities and duties," it said.
*** END QUOTE ***
Now of course Castro is merely going the way of all flesh, but this apparently is a surprise to some of his enthusiasts among Western journalists. The Associated Press http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060801/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_castro "reports" that the Cuban people are morons who had no idea Castro was mortal until recently:
*** QUOTE ***
Talk of Castro's mortality was taboo until June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly recovered, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would eventually die.
*** END QUOTE ***
Reuters http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060801/ts_nm/cuba_castro_dc_8 , too, is impressed with the emperor's elegant clothes:
*** QUOTE ***
The left-wing leader has enjoyed a revival in international support. . . . Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care. He has won friends. . . . Castro was greeted by crowds like a rock star. . . . Anti-globalization youths see him as a hero. . . .
Yet, at home critics say Castro has subjected Cuba's 11 million people to collectivized poverty in a police state.
*** END QUOTE ***
Yeah, well, nobody's perfect. In his statement, Castro vows to "fight until the last drop of blood." We will be keeping an eye on his condition. May it stabilize soon.
YES!!!!
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In what could become a new weapon in the battle of the bulge, scientists on Monday reported initial success with an experimental vaccine for obesity.
The researchers found that when they gave rats a vaccine against a "hunger hormone" called ghrelin, the animals were able to live the dream of eating what they wanted without packing on body fat.
The findings, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest a whole new approach to weight loss.
It's a long way, however, from success in rats to similar results in people.
The researchers found that when they gave rats a vaccine against a "hunger hormone" called ghrelin, the animals were able to live the dream of eating what they wanted without packing on body fat.
The findings, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest a whole new approach to weight loss.
It's a long way, however, from success in rats to similar results in people.
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