I was reading the Netscape Blog today and came across an interesting post on the politicization of climate science. They report:

More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies say they have been pressured to remove references to "climate change" and "global warming" from a range of documents, including press releases and communications with Congress.

So out of that discussion I pulled a couple of interesting urls.

The first is from Russia

ST. PETERSBURG, August 25 (RIA Novosti)- Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century, a Russian scientist said Friday.

Environmentalists and scientists today focus on the dangers of global warming provoked by man's detrimental effect on the planet's climate, but global cooling - though never widely supported - is a theory postulating an overwhelming cooling of the Earth which could involve glaciation.

"On the basis of our [solar emission] research, we developed a scenario of a global cooling of the Earth's climate by the middle of this century and the beginning of a regular 200-year-long cycle of the climate's global warming at the start of the 22nd century," said the head of the space research sector of the Russian Academy of Sciences' astronomical observatory.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century - when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland - could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060.

Here is a report with links showing the connection between solar activity and climate for the last 1,000 years.

During the Medieval maximum of 1000-1300 there was an extremely large Sunspot which is believed to have warmed the Earth higher than normal. There were no accurate measurements of the weather to call upon during this time but the discovery and colonization of Greenland by Eric the Red supports this hypothesis. Eric was exiled from Iceland for manslaughter and sailed west discovering Greenland. He then led many ships, filled with people who wanted to make a fresh start, to this new land. For 300 years Greenland flourished, new communities settled, trade with other countries grew, and the population increased. Around 1325 the climate cooled down considerably, people started to abandon the northern settlements. By 1350 glaciers covered the northern settlements, and the southern most settlements were dying out as well.

The Sporer minimum of 1400-1510 and the Maunder minimum of 1645-1715 were each known as a "little ice age." They were both droughts in Sunspot activity, and a link to a time of abnormally cold weather on Earth. In addition to finishing off the Greenland colonies, the Sporer minimum showed increased rates of famine in the world, and the Baltic Sea froze solid in the winter of 1422-23. Some of the more notable effects of the Maunder minimum included the appearance of glaciers in the Alps advancing farther southward, the north sea froze, and in London there was the famous year without a summer where it remained cold for 21 consecutive months.

The Sun could start going through a down trend in sunspot activity at any time. We could find ourselves back in a state similar to the Maunder Minimum with decades of much colder weather. Or sunspot activity could increase to an even higher level and temperatures could rise more than the amount some models project as a consequence of higher atmospheric carbon dioxide.

My guess is that the chances are greater for a reduction in sunspot activity than for an increase. Why? Most of the time the planet Earth is in an ice age. This is suggestive of the possibility that the Sun just doesn't put out enough heat to keep the Earth out of ice ages most of the time. Also, the higher sunspot activity reported above is at the high end of an over 1,000 year period. Therefore the odds seem greater that we will have more future years with lower sunspot activity than with higher sunspot activity.

My further guess is that a reduction in sunspot activity would cause more harm to humans than a further increase in sunspot activity. A decrease could put large amounts of farm fields out of production and would reduce the useful length of the growing seasons for other fields. The freezing over of rivers and seas along with snows and ice would interfere with transportation more than higher temperatures would.

He is not alone.

The New Scientist report, along with other scientific assessments warning of global cooling, also come as a blow to the campaign -- led by David Suzuki and one of the directors of his foundation -- to portray all who raise doubts about climate change theory -- so-called skeptics -- as pawns of corporate PR thugs manipulating opinion. If the Suzuki claim is true, then the tentacles of Exxon-Mobil reach deeper into science than anyone has so far imagined.

Dramatic global temperature fluctuations, as New Scientist reports, are the norm. A Little Ice Age struck Europe in the 17th century. New Yorkers once walked from Manhattan to Staten Island across a frozen harbour. About 200 years earlier, New Scientist reminds us, a sharp downturn in temperatures turned fertile Greenland into Arctic wasteland.

These and other temperature swings corresponded with changing solar activity. "It's a boom-bust system, and I expect a crash soon," says Nigel Weiss, a solar physicist at the University of Cambridge. Scientists cannot say precisely how big the coming cooling will be, but it could at minimum be enough to offset the current theoretical impact of man-made global warming. Sam Solanki, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, says declining solar activity could drop global temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius. "It might not sound like much," says New Scientist writer Stuart Clark, "but this temperature reversal would be as big as the most optimistic estimate of the results of restricting greenhouse-gas emissions until 2050 in line with the Kyoto protocol."

That was discussed at length at Winds of Change. In fact the discussion basically evicerates the whole cimate change modeling community for over promising on the reliability of their results.

The more I look into this the more I find it is old news. From October of 2000 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

Although the processes of climate change are not completely understood, an important causal candidate is variation in total solar output. Reported cycles in various climate-proxy data show a tendency to emulate a fundamental harmonic sequence of a basic solar-cycle length (11 years) multiplied by 2^N (where N equals a positive or negative integer). A simple additive model for total solar-output variations was developed by superimposing a progression of fundamental harmonic cycles with slightly increasing amplitudes. The timeline of the model was calibrated to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary at 9,000 years before present. The calibrated model was compared with geophysical, archaeological, and historical evidence of warm or cold climates during the Holocene. The evidence of periods of several centuries of cooler climates worldwide called "little ice ages," similar to the period anno Domini (A.D.) 1280-1860 and reoccurring approximately every 1,300 years, corresponds well with fluctuations in modeled solar output. A more detailed examination of the climate sensitive history of the last 1,000 years further supports the model. Extrapolation of the model into the future suggests a gradual cooling during the next few centuries with intermittent minor warmups and a return to near little-ice-age conditions within the next 500 years. This cool period then may be followed approximately 1,500 years from now by a return to altithermal conditions similar to the previous Holocene Maximum.

More on the 1,500 year solar cycle

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Barcepundit's Jose Guardia links to a fascinating piece on modern art, titled "Admit it - you really hate modern art":

There are esthetes who appreciate the cross-eyed cartoons of Pablo Picasso, the random dribbles of Jackson Pollock, and even the pickled pigs of Damien Hirst. Some of my best friends are modern artists. You, however, hate and detest the 20th century's entire output in the plastic arts, as do I.

"I don't know much about art," you aver, "but I know what I like." Actually you don't. You have been browbeaten into feigning pleasure at the sight of so-called art that actually makes your skin crawl, and you are afraid to admit it for fear of seeming dull. This has gone on for so long that you have forgotten your own mind. Do not fear: in a few minutes' reading I can break the spell and liberate you from this unseemly condition.

Why is it that the audience for modern art is quite happy to take in the ideological message of modernism while strolling through an art gallery, but loath to hear the same message in the concert hall? It is rather like communism, which once was fashionable among Western intellectuals. They were happy to admire communism from a distance, but reluctant to live under communism.

When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control. You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on the artist that you consulted before arriving at the gallery. When you listen to atonal music, for example Schoenberg, you are stuck in your seat for a quarter of an hour that feels like many hours in a dentist's chair. You cannot escape. You do not admire the abstraction from a distance. You are actually living inside it. You are in the position of the fashionably left-wing intellectual of the 1930s who made the mistake of actually moving to Moscow, rather than admiring it at a safe distance.

That is why at least some modern artists come into very serious money, but not a single one of the abstract composers can earn a living from his music.

Salvador means "savior" and Dalí said he was "destined for nothing less than to rescue painting from the void of modern art." Dalí disparaged modernism (which he saw as lacking respect for craft) as a dead end. He rebelled by infusing contemporary art with virtuoso draftsmanship and painstakingly realistic technique.

The only slight disagreement I might have with Spengler is his statement that "by inflicting sufficient ugliness upon us, the modern artists believe, they will wear down our capacity to see beauty." I'm not even sure that what they are inflicting is necessarily ugliness, because that would require a depiction of something which is ugly -- which would in turn generate an emotion, a reaction. Many fine artists have accurately depicted ugliness, especially human ugliness. Depicting something like spilled paint or a solid black canvas really depicts nothing at all, and I think it's more on the level of nihilism.

By contrast, here are a couple of Dali's depictions of ugly beings, from Hell:

They're meant to be appreciated as ugly.

A leading Dali dealer and art scholar told me that he loved talking to young fans of Dali who had not yet been to college, because they had not yet been taught to hate Dali.

I'm sure the fact that Dali draws bigger crowds than "traditional" modern (forgive me) artists doesn't help endear him to professors either.

MORE: Another advantage that modern art has over modern music is that it's easier to participate in the former than in the latter.

AND MORE: Great news for Dalí lovers! Via Pajamas Media, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation now has an online catalog of the works of Salvador Dalí. What's great about this catalog is that it lists the works alphabetically, chronologically, and by the location all over the world.

Warning. Some generalizations follow. I can't really help it, because I'm thinking about the way people tend to think, and there's no way to think about the way people think (especially when it comes to things like "values") without generalizing about the way people think.

A lot of people argue over identity politics (and its profitable spawn, affirmative action), but what bothers me the most about it is not so much that it makes the irrelevant relevant, but that it gives it an actual value -- something measurable in terms of wealth. Dollars and sense.

When rewards are bestowed in the form of giving people real and tangible things (like admission to college, preferential treatment in hiring and promotions), the people who get these things can be expected to treat them the way anyone else might treat something of value. If you have something of value, your natural inclination is to fight like hell to keep it. When you're told that you deserve it, this adds a moral justification, and thus a moral "value" becomes a genuine value.

People argue over "values," but they're more likely to go to war over value. The former often supplies a justification for the latter, and when historians look back, they're often confused. Thus, the causes of the Civil War (and many other wars) are still debated.

While it is natural enough to expect someone to fight like hell to defend his property, it helps if he has a moral rationalization. A tenant in a rent-controlled apartment who pays a fraction of its market rent naturally wants what he has, but he'll feel better about fighting for it if he is told that he is good (or "oppressed"), and his landlord is bad ("exploitative"). Pennsylvania has a system of government-run liquor stores which stay in place despite widespread public opposition, because of the lobbying efforts state liquor store employees union, which claims to be "protecting the public." Similarly, the FCC claims that its artificial and outmoded licensing system protects the "public airwaves." So do the licensees, who have paid billions and don't want their licenses devalued.

When moral arguments are used in these and other instances to defeat logical arguments, people spend so much time debating the moral arguments (whether with logical arguments or moral counter-arguments) that they overlook the economic arguments.

Maybe they're uncomfortable with them. Perhaps economic factors are seen as irrelevant -- even immoral -- in the face of morality.

They are not irrelevant. Welfare, affirmative action, rent control, state regulation of alcohol and bandwidth are all someone's bread and butter. To debate the moral issues is fine, although I try to focus on logic. (Logic and morality do not always mix, of course.) Yet in logic, there is no way for me to ignore value as well as values. If someone is getting money, it is not going to be easy to turn off the flow. Money has a way of creating and fueling moral arguments, whether the latter should be there or not. Value often creates values.

Even arguments which seem driven by morality (and "fairness") like same sex marriage have strong economic components. People don't just want the "right" to a piece of paper saying they're married; they want real benefits they see others as getting. Global warming masquerades as "save the planet" morality, but I suspect there are careers, jobs, and vast economic forces behind a regulatory scheme which promises to be the most massive transfer of power in human history. The louder the moral arguments become (in what amounts to a vast international bureaucratic war against carbon), the more suspicious I become that a tangible shift in economic value is involved. If the war on carbon isn't started soon, public opinion might prevent the inevitable power grab, which would be very bad for the emerging new power class. Thus the heavy-handed moral rhetoric has become deafening.

Unfortunately, many of the fiercest proponents of global warming morality cut their teeth by championing an argument against the Vietnam War which many people (myself included) assumed was strictly a "values" argument -- in favor of "peace." While undoubtably there were a lot of sincere people who really believed in peace at the time, many of the peace demonstrators were violent. But that was only because they "believed" so strongly in their newfound peace values. At least, that was what I thought until I saw a sudden and dramatic drop in attendance at the demonstrations which accompanied the end of the draft. This made me suspect a more tangible value was involved -- the value of not risking your life. That's at least as legitimate a value as any economic benefit, but it was concealed by the values argument. And many of the people who did the concealing never admitted what they were concealing, because few asked them whether a very real motivation wasn't simply the preservation of their own lives.

Doubtless, had they been asked (and I'm sure some of them were), they'd have said that wanting to save their skins was "irrelevant." (An argument I have heard.) Really? Their own lives were irrelevant? I doubt it.

I don't mean to generalize about an entire generation of people (because many of them served honorably in the war, and many antiwar leftists have regretted their dishonesty), but some of them developed what I think is a bad habit of imagining that their moral values were more important than other values.

Worse, if these other values (like saving one's skin, keeping a job, keeping a rent-controlled apartment, or building a power base) are sources of shame, it is natural to expect them to be concealed.

When concealed values masquerade as ostensible values, we spend a great deal of time arguing over the less relevant while missing the highly relevant.

Guilford College student Jazz Favor has been cleared by the school and allowed back on campus.

Greensboro, NC -- A Guilford College football player's mom is speaking out, only to WFMY News 2.

Anita Favors, Jazz Favor's mother, says the players and the Palestinan students were friends. She also says at least one of the accusers have already apologized to some of the football players.

Favors says her son was trying to break up the fight between his teammates and the three Palestinian students.

"Our son told us that it was a fight. It started out as an argument and then a whole bunch of people got involved. Jazz was instructed by an official of that school to break up the fight because he's so big and he grabbed a football player and asked him to leave," Anita Favors explained, "In the process of removing the football player he told one of the accusers just run and leave. He was telling everybody just run get out."

An independent investigation by the college is still underway, but Favors says her son has been cleared and allowed back on campus.

Now all Jazz has to worry about is the court case.

The details are murky but I have heard rumors that the fight was over stolen beer and that the "brass knuckles" may have actually been a gold watch. All rumor so far.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

So proclaims the motto of the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton, according to John Birmingham's Final Impact (The Axis of Time Trilogy, Book 3).

I didn't order it, as I'm not a sci fi reader, but in this case perhaps I should make an exception. Not only does Justin say it's great, but when Glenn Reynolds reviewed books one and two in the trilogy (Designated Targets and Weapons of Choice) -- he noted that the author (and blogger) got in trouble for calling Hillary Clinton "the most uncompromising wartime President in the history of the United States."

Stuff like that gets my attention in ways that "normal" science fiction can't, so maybe I should try reading the sequel.

It's probably a good idea to get caught up with history before it happens.

UPDATE: Via Wonkette (where they're outraged enough to manage a Hitler comparison, although they avoided saying "Hitlery") I see that six anti-war demonstrators have been arrested outside Hillary Clinton's office.

Hmmm....

Might these sci fi guys be onto something?

MORE: I guess this sort of thing was inevitable sooner or later.

You know, in the future, everyone will be Hitler for fifteen minutes?

No, I'm not going to copy and paste the offensive image! This armband was bad enough:

Can't we just get along, folks?

Please. Give war a chance.

And don't blame me! Wonkette started it!

ary's "ominous pastels' offensive, as Jan Moir of the Telegraph writes, Ilsa -- She wolf of the SS might be more appropriate:

UPDATE: Sissy Willis has a classic post about Hillary's Pink Offensive, with this picture:

Hmmm....

I see fusion! Confusion! Collusion!

(A Vast Conspiracy of Pink Triangulation!)

The accuseers in the Guilford College fight have finally met with police.

Last Edited: Monday, 29 Jan 2007, 11:21 PM EST
Created: Monday, 29 Jan 2007, 11:20 PM EST

GREENSBORO (WGHP) -- More than a week after a fight on the Guilford College campus, Greensboro police have interviewed the accusers. Three Palestinian students claim members of the football team beat them and used racial slurs during a confrontation January 20.

After two missed appointments last week, the three accusers met with Greensboro Police and the FBI Monday evening at their lawyer's office in downtown Greensboro.

This is the first step in the police investigation. The accusers have filed criminal complaints six football players.

Normally accusers do not do police interviews with their lawyers present. So that is kind of strange. Waiting a week before making contact (time to get the stories straight?) is also not the regular course of action following an altercation.

Not to worry. The Angry Studies people have it under control.

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project chose to enter the public discourse by issuing a news release Monday afternoon.

"May God grant the Guilford College community the courage and wisdom to name, engage, and overcome their own underlying attitudes and cultural prejudices that led to such a tragic event," read the final sentence of the statement.

I suppose it couln't be the white people thing. Half the accused are black.

A look at the Reconciliation Project statement might be helpful.

We pledge to all the members of that college community our whole hearted support as they seek to deal fairly and compassionately with the students involved in this recent event, but also with the underlying spirit of racism and domination revealed in it---a hate-filled spirit from which none of us in this competitive, fragmented, violence-prone society is free.

We pray that God will assuage the wounds of our three young Palestinian neighbors and grant them many friends whose love and support will transcend the barriers of race and culture and hasten their healing in body and soul. May God grant the Guilford College community the courage and wisdom to name, engage, and overcome their own underlying attitudes and cultural prejudices that led to such a tragic event. May God grant the young men who participated in wounding their fellow students the tough love of honest friends and the necessary guidance and support by which they may be freed from the destructive power of the spirit of domination and the exclusive attitudes that drove them into such violent and hateful behavior.

What if the The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project are tough loving the wrong people? What if they don't have a lock on truth? What if they are really bigots in disguise?

Me? I smell a rat.

Here is how The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project got started. The short version: On November 3, 1979, Klansmen shot and killed five communists.

After digging further into The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project it looks to me like they are a group of "progressive" organizers. i.e. communists. Although the communists did extraordinary work on civil rights, their goal was never the reconciliation of the races. Their goal was to weaken America in the long cold war between the Soviets and the Western world. I think they are still at it.

I checked out some names mentioned at The Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project

More than 1,000 people -- Greensboro residents and national and international supporters -- took part Nov. 13, 2004, in the the 25th Anniversary March for Justice, Democracy and Reconciliation. The anniversary was marked by a collection of other religious, cultural and educational events featuring distinguished guests including Naomi Tutu, the granddaughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nationally acclaimed playwright Emily Mann and veteran national civil rights activists including Vincent Harding, Elizabeth McAllister and Ruby Sales.

Don't let people fool you when they say they went to Grenada because the communists were taking over. Don't let people fool you when they say that someday they are going into Cuba because that's where the trouble starts. I know what Cuba was like before Castro came to power. I know what it means to be a slave. Don't be telling me about sending our young men to fight communism in Cuba.

The other names mentioned don't seem to have any obvious communist sympathies. If fact Naomi Tutu's father Desmond appears to have been anti-communist.

Desmond Tutu was Bishop of Lesotho from 1976 until 1978, when he became Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches. From this position, he was able to continue his work against apartheid with agreement from nearly all churches. Tutu consistently advocated reconciliation between all parties involved in apartheid through his writings and lectures at home and abroad. Though he was most firm in denouncing South Africa's white-ruled government, Tutu was also harsh in his criticism of the violent tactics of some anti-apartheid groups such as the African National Congress and denounced terrorism and Communism.

The current cease fire is holding. Except for one killing. So far.

A Hamas affiliated gunman was shot dead in Khan Younies on Tuesday afternoon. Hamas officials are holding gunmen from Fateh responsible for the shooting. It is the first fatality to be reported since the cease-fire came into effect at 3 A.M [local time -which is +2GMT - ed.] on Tuesday morning.

The man killed was an operative of the Al-Qassam brigades, an armed wing affiliated with the Hamas movement, according to Palestinian security sources. The gunman who opened fire at him has not yet been identified.

IMEMC called Fawzi Barhoum, the spokesman of Hamas in the Gaza strip. He stated that apparently some groups of Fateh are not commited to the political leadership commands of Fateh movement, and are still acting on an individual basis.

Give the situation, in another day or two the battles will be raging again.

It looks like the person killed was a Hamas military leader.

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

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

A spokesman for Hamas' armed wing said he was killed by the Preventive Security Service, most of whose members belong to President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction. The security service denied any connection with his death.

It looks like the cease fire is holding. So far. In addition Fatah and Hamas have exchanged hostages.

Rival Palestinian factions have swapped hostages under a ceasefire deal that went into effect hours earlier, largely halting gun battles in which at least 30 Palestinians were killed.

The internal Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip was the fiercest since the Islamist Hamas group, which rejects peace talks with Israel, trounced the more moderate Fatah faction in elections last year, triggering a Western aid embargo.

A total of 20 Hamas and 18 Fatah hostages were freed over a several-hour period, said Samih al-Madhoun, a senior leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

"The process of handing over the hostages has been completed," Madhoun said.

The truce agreed late on Tuesday to end five days of fighting seemed to be generally holding despite the killing of a Hamas commander in Gaza on Tuesday.

The ceasefire went into effect after Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas met an aide to Abbas.

The bloodshed had derailed unity government talks between Hamas and Fatah and prompted some families in the coastal strip to flee their homes.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In my post about the Moscow Mayor's comments (that gay parades are Satanic), one of the things that came up was whether Krishna is Satanic.

Here's why I think a lot easier to opine on whether gay parades are Satanic than whether Krishna is Satanic. Because nearly everyone believes in (I mean in the sense of understands that there is) such a thing as a gay pride parade, and that there are gay people. Whether they are Satanic depends on two things:

1. Whether you believe in Satan; and

2. Whether gay parades share a sufficient number of his (or her; depending on the sex of angels) attributes that they can be considered Satanic.

This makes the analogy at least managable, as simple logic can be applied to at least one side of the comparison. One thing exists; the other thing might or might not. Where it gets problematic is the definition of Satanic, because the existence of Satan is not easily demonstrated, and beyond that, the attributes of Satan are by no means universally agreed upon. It has, for example, been argued that Satan is a medieval adaptation of Nature's God Pan (aka the "Horned God"). And of course if the horned god is nature and Satan, then Satan is Nature, and (like nearly all world leaders) we are all Satanic to a certain degree and so on. It's an emotionally charged mess, because of a lack of readily agreeable definitions.

But calling Krishna Satanic makes calling gays Satanic almost child's play. There's a definitional threshold on both sides of the equation. As someone who does not believe in Satan or Krishna, for me to even entertain the idea that Krishna is Satanic (or Satan is Krishnatic) requires a quantum leap in suspending disbelief. It is my opinion that both of these deities are made up. Yet I don't want to disrespect anyone's religious beliefs, so I tend to assume for the sake of argument that both exist. And I must bear in mind that what's fantasy for me is dogma for others. So, while I can entertain the comparison, it's on the level of "Is Santa like Bacchus?" Not satifisying for those who believe in Santa Satan, or for those who believe in Krishna.

Oddly enough, those who claim Krishna is Satanic would seem to believe in both. Does that mean that to them, Krishna is not made up?

To stay with the example, in the case of Satan and Krishna, there are four possibilities:

1. Both Satan and Krishna are made up;

2. Only Krishna is made up, but Satan exists;

3. Only Satan is made up, but Krishna exists;

4. Both Satan and Krishna exist.

How is a reasonable and logical person supposed to choose from the above possibilities? By tallying up the number of people who believe in one or the other, and go with the winner? By looking at the "date of manufacture" to determine which deity was referenced first in human writings? Some combination of both? Or by believing neither without tangible proof? (The problem with me is that while I do believe in God, I am extremely skeptical of human religious writings.)

These sorts of things make it tough to have reasonable discussions. Not that an unreasonable discussion isn't occasionally entertaining. In the early 90s I remember actually spending time in chat rooms! (Yes, true confession time!) Lest anyone think the chatting was all dirty, I remember one time I argued well into the early morning with someone whose screen name is long forgotten, but who wanted to discuss religious issues vis-a-vis homosexuality, which he maintained was sinful. I was feeling very patient, and I thought I had done a great job of making allowances for what seemed to be a substantial educational disparity between us, and suspending my disbelief as best I could. All I wanted this person of unknown age or sex to do was to engage in logical thinking, and after hours (during which he asked me to "please wait") he brought some new person into the chat room who claimed he was the first person's minister. I started over with that person, and the argument turned into demands to know who I was, where I was, and finally, an accusation that I was "Satanic" and had been trying to "trick" the first person. This struck me as grounded in frustration, as well as an unanswerable, ad hominem attack, and I just wanted to sleep. The worst part of this is that I wasn't trying to win an argument. I just wanted to know exactly what this person thought, and it seemed to me he wasn't thinking so much as he was being told what to think. I only wanted to know why he thought it, and that was ultimately deemed "Satanic."

I'll have to say, it ended an argument which could never have been won.

That's because Satan by definition can't win for losing.

Bernard Lewis says that MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) does not work with people who want to be destroyed.

Outdated Cold war concepts, such as mutually assured destruction (M.A.D) are irrelevant when it comes to Iran , because the Iranian president and his circle see such a scenario "as an incentive, not a deterrent," renowned scholar Bernard Lewis said during a lecture Monday evening at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Addressing a packed hall, Lewis spoke after a screening of the film 'Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West'.

"Ahmadinejad and his group clearly believe, and I don't doubt the sincerity of their belief, that we are now entering an apocalyptic age, which will result in the triumph of their messianic figure," Lewis said, referring to the twelfth Imam, Mahdi.

"Muslims, like Jews, believe that there are things you can do to hasten the messiah. M.A.D doesn't work with these people."

Lewis added that the threat of many Iranians perishing in a war did not deter the Iranian leadership, which believes "it would be doing them a favor, by giving them a free pass to heaven."

"Iran is a mortal threat, and one also has to take account of the apocalyptic mood of Ahmadinejad and his circle. Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, has an end of time scenario," the scholar said.

"There is only solution to the Iranian threat, and that can only come from the Iranian people," Lewis said.

I do think that the Iranian people will have to change Iran. However, there are some Iranian people who think that a push from the USA might be helpful.

WASHINGTON - While United States Minister of Defense Robert Gates, along with many specialists on the matter, warn against a military attack on Iran, which in their view will entrap the Iranian people behind the Ayatollah regime, Iranian student leader Amir Abbas Fakhr-Avar believes an attack will have the reverse result.

In an exclusive interview with Ynet, Fakhr-Avar describes his blueprint for how to topple the regime. If the West launches a military attack on Iran , "The top brass will flee immediately. People will come out onto the streets protesting, why are we being bombed? Many of the regime's mid-level officials will shave their beards, don ties and join the (civilians) on the streets."

He testified before the US Senate, met with President George W. Bush and senior administrators in the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as with experts and analysts on Iran, like Professor Bernard Lewis and others.

His message to the West is: Stop supporting the reformists in Iran. Help us topple the Ayatollah regime. He claims the time is right; all that is needed is a push from the West.

Fakhr-Avar believes the revolution can be accomplished within ten months to a year. He does not ask for much from the Americans: "What we really need is the tools," he says. "Cell phones, computers, cameras, publication ability. This is the funding we need for our (revolutionary) activities, to coordinate within Iran and outside."

So what Amir see as his role in the USA?

Our main purpose and help we can give the administration is to help them to decide better. They don't know that society that well, they really don't know the regime or the people. We need to help them - we being the opposition outside Iran.

In my testimony to the senate I told them a few things: Mainly that sanctions will help to make the regime weak, and that they need to put down the regime.

The outside world does not know much about Iran, maybe they know at best 10 percent of what is going on in Iran, what the people's sentiments are. Seventy percent of the population is under the age of 30, but they've had grand experiences. They've been through post-revolution, war, robbery during (Akbar Hashemi) Rafsanjani's era, so-called reform.

Not the mobiles, not the cell phones. They don't have the technology to stop it, and there are too many. Right now they're busy controlling each other's mobiles - the mullahs, so that's why some of these guys are doing it freely. However, landlines, they do control. But mobiles there are problems.

What is interesting is that the rest of the world believes in the information network of the Islamic regime is very strong, but that is not the case. They are extremely weak. They have a very low IQ.

What we need to do then is flood Iran with cheap or free satellite connections. Uplink and down link. I think we have the technology for that.

Ahmadinejad is stupid. We've known him for the past 6-7 years from the political arena in Iran. When he was the mayor Tehran his plans were so stupid that people laughed at him. One of them was to pave the roadway that the 12th imam traveled on. He took all the intersections and removed the traffic signals so everyone can go where they want. A few months later they decided it was stupid and put them all back. It cost something like 2 billion dollars.

Amir says there is a generation gap in Iran.

People in Iran react the opposite of what the regime says. If the regime says it's day, they'll close their eyes and say it's night. Whatever the Islamic regime fights against- that becomes important to the Iranians. I don't represent the entire population of course, but I can give you an idea of what are the sentiments. I was elected by the students and I speak for them. Remember, 70 percent are under age 30.

The older generation is stuck in the 70s, the youngsters speak a language the adults don't understand

The majority of the population don't care for Hizbullah or the Palestinian people, mostly because they see that their money is going to them.

Israel's attack on Hizbullah was they best thing they've done in recent years. It helped to clean up the land from the terrorists, when they don't have land they have no place to run troops, that's why they drove Hizbullah crazy, regime in Iran wasn't happy either.

I hope the Iranian people get the tools they need. And, if necessary, the mullahs get a good hard shove to help them out the door.

I remember reading a few years ago an Iranian stating that if an American attack kept civilian casualties under 1,000 it would be worth it.

Faster please.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Now I'm not sure if magistration is a word. At least in the sense I intend to use it. So what do I mean by magistration? Getting a magistrate to swear out a warrant without any input from law enforcement. Basically a way to get a person jailed with out any evidence except a sworn statement.

Why is this of interest? It has just happened for the sixth time in the Guilford College case.

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) -- A sixth Guilford College football player was charged Monday with assaulting a Palestinian student, court officials said.

The arrest warrant states that Rushing hit one of the victims while he was on the floor being beaten by others.

Micah Rushing, 21, of Albemarle, was released on a promise to appear, the Guilford County Magistrate's Office said.

The charges stem from accusations by three Palestinian students who said they were taunted with racial slurs and called "terrorists" as they were beaten by several members of the school's football team just after midnight Jan. 20, according to court documents. Besides assault, the five other players have been charged with ethnic intimidation.

Faris Khader, one of the three accusers, swore out the assault warrant against Rushing, the magistrate's office said. None of the charges against the players are the result of police investigation.

Just a guess, but I think the accusers were jealous of the football guys. What was that old Rolling Stones' song? "I can't get no...."

Here is a recap for those of you who would like to catch up on the case details:
Guilford College Six's Injuries
Palestinians Lawyer Up
Guilford Is A Street In Rockford

H/T reader linearthinker

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The hilarious Chris Hedges (whose views I ridiculed as the "final countdown to Bush Fascism") just can't seem to get enough.

Of what?

Humor, hopes Clayton Cramer, as he waits for Hedge's punchline and links Eugene Volokh's discussion of some truly horrendous anti-free speech remarks by Hedges.

From Hedges' book (American Fascists):

This is the awful paradox of tolerance. There arise moments when those who would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible should no longer be tolerated. They must be held accountable by institutions that maintain the free exchange of ideas and liberty.

The radical Christian Right must be forced to include other points of view to counter their hate talk in their own broadcasts, watched by tens of millions of Americans.

More from the Hedges book:

They must be denied the right to demonize whole segments of American society, saying they are manipulated by Satan and worthy only of conversion or eradication....

So where does this leave me?

Who does Hedges think I shouldn't be allowed to call Satanic? Hedges?

Hedges, you are Satanic!

There. I said it. Do I get to go to jail? Or will he just force me to have a leftie co-blogger assigned to criticize what I say? (I guess he means the latter, although the insanity of this is a little mind-boggling.)

From Hedges' NPR radio interview, Volokh has some hilarious quotes. He gets to Rushdoony:

Mr. HEDGES: I think that, you know, in a democratic society, people don't have a right to preach the extermination of others, which has been a part of this movement of - certainly in terms of what should be done with homosexuals. You know, Rushdoony and others have talked about 18 moral crimes for which people should be executed, including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and all - in order for an open society to function, it must function with a mutual respect, with a respect...

JIM: Sure.

Mr. HEDGES: ...for other ways to be and other ways to believe. And I think that the fringes of this movement have denied people that respect, which is why they fight so hard against hate crimes legislation -- such as exist in Canada -- being made law in the United States.

[NEAL] CONAN: But Chris, to be fair, aren't you talking about violating their right to free speech, their right to religion as laid out in the First Amendment?

Mr. HEDGES: Well, I think that when you preach -- or when you call for the physical extermination of other people within the society, you know, you've crossed the bounds of free speech. I mean, we're not going to turn a cable channel over to the Ku Klux Klan. Yet the kinds of things that are allowed to be spewed out over much of Christian radio and television essentially preaches sedition. It preaches civil war. It's not a difference of opinion. With that kind of rhetoric, it becomes a fight for survival....

I'm inclined to agree with Clayton Cramer that it's Hedges who's the fascist. And, just as I agreed with the ACLU that the Nazis had the right to parade in Skokie, IL, I think Hedges has the right to perform his verbal goose steps on NPR.

Without having to allow Fred Phelps equal time.

I'm also hoping this is comedy.

(There's been a lot of it going around lately.)

The Palestinian civil war appears to be raging on. Fighting appears to be heavy and wide spread.

22:43 Jan 29, '07
(IsraelNN.com) Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was unhurt in heavy fighting near his home and office as he called for a halt in the violence which claimed the lives of at least thee more people Monday.

Heavy exchanges of gunfire between Fatah and Hamas supporters were reported earlier in the evening, and a rocket propelled grenade was fired on the Gaza police station a short time ago.

An explosion ripped through the Shati refugee camp near Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's house after nightfall Monday, witnesses said.

There was no immediate word of casualties.

Haniyeh's Hamas and rival Fatah forces have been fighting for several months. In another incident around the same time, security officials said Hamas militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a police station near Haniyeh's office in Gaza City.

Great news. A cease fire has been declared.

Warring Hamas and Fatah factions in Gaza declared a cease-fire early Tuesday, set to go into effect at 3 a.m. local time (0100 GMT,) Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas announced.

Zahar spoke after a meeting between PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and a representative of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, with the participation of Egyptian mediators. They flanked him during his statement.

A Palestinian blogger has called on Israel to bomb Palestine. Nope. This is not a joke.

Following the suicide bombing in Eilat Monday, Palestinian journalist Fadi Abu Sada offered his two cents on the attack and the infighting in Gaza through his blog on Palestinian News Network:

"Israel poising to respond on Eilat attack, it could be by the aerial bombardment and artillery, or perhaps they will try to assassinate Palestinian resistance leaders, what a ironically, we really want that to happen quickly, it might be the only solution to stop the bloody fighting between brothers in the Gaza Strip.

"No Palestinian faction, and no one seems to be now able to mediate between fighters, and stop the bloodshed, either Arabs and their calls on the parties to meet in the country, and it does not seem that anyone actually will respond to that, despite the welcome media practitioners.

"It's defective to reach such thinking, to call Israel to stop this shameful chapter in the chapters of the Palestinian case, if there is case still after all that has already happened and is happening.

"But if this is the only option, there is no problem in this, if this will remind the fighters for a moment that the occupation is still perched on us, because it seems to be lost on their chest.

However, I don't think the Israelis will oblige. They have been very restrained of late. What is amazing is that the Sharon Plan for the evacuation of Gaza foresaw all this (not in detail) several years ago. The man is lying in a coma and his plan is working. A true military genius.

That didn't take long. The truce was suppsed to go into effect at 0100 GMT Tuesday. It is now 0414 GMT and the civil war is back on. Note Israel time is GMT +2.

Fighting raged in Gaza Tuesday morning despite a cease-fire declaration by warring factions.

Gunfire and explosions were audible in downtown Gaza City as gunmen from Fatah and Hamas ignored the cease-fire, reached at a midnight meeting between Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and a representative of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

The latest news is that the cease fire appears to be holding for now. (times given are Israeliy time which is +2 from GMT)

Jan. 30, 2007 0:46 | Updated Jan. 30, 2007 9:52

A cease-fire started taking hold in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, after five days of intense Hamas-Fatah fighting that left 34 people dead.

However, previous truce deals struck in recent weeks of factional clashes quickly collapsed, and it appeared unlikely the two sides would comply with all the terms of the current agreement, such as handing over all those involved in killings and abductions.

In Gaza City, gunfire and explosions were heard throughout the night, but the shooting stopped at about 5 a.m. (0300 GMT), several hours after the cease-fire deal was struck

Here are links to the last few Civil war watches. Because you can't tell the players without a score card.

Palestinian Civil War Watch - 10
Palestinian Civil War Watch - 9
Palestinian Civil War Watch - 8
Palestinian Civil War Watch - 7

and a few other items of interest:

Patterns Are Emerging
Very Complicated
Iraq Comes To Gaza
Palestinians Unpopular
Its Official
Pulling Out Doesn't Work
It's A Family Affair

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I don't know whether Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has been taking moral equivalency lessons from Dinish D'Souza, but his comments that gay parades are Satanic are attracting a lot of attention. Here's GayRussia's colorful version of the story (which uses the charming translation "Satanist happening"):

Mayor Luzhkov said today that he will not even allow this year's Pride march, scheduled for Sunday May 27.

"Last year, Moscow was unprecedentaly pressured to allow here a gay parade which can only be called a Satanist happening," he said in a speech at the State Kremlin Palace during 15th Christmas educational readings.

"We did not allow this gay parade and will not allow it in future."

Mr. Luzhkov then thanked Patriarch of All Russia, Alexi II, for his support in this difficult situation when, according to Luzhkov, Moscow authorities found themselves in the situation of huge pressure, especially from the West.

He said that is not appropriate "to propagate same-sex love" and "blasphemy, as if it is creativity and freedom of speech".

Nikolai Alekseev, a co-organiser of Moscow Pride, said that he was shocked at the Mayor's outburst.

"We are shocked by the statements of Mr. Luzhkov that "gay pride is a Satanist happening" and consider them as personal insult against the organisers and potential participants of the gay pride," he said.

"Such words in respect to huge number of homosexual people who live in Russia are not worthy of an official of such high standing".

I'm not quite sure about what the specific religious objection is, because unless the marchers are having sex in the streets, what they are doing by parading is advocacy of an opinion about their lifestyle. If the conduct the Mayor is preventing is speech, the question becomes: is Satanic speech prohibited in Russia? I realize Russia has no First Amendment, and I don't know to what extent it is governed by religious law, but even if it was, is there any religious prohibition on advocacy of a homosexual orientation or lifestyle? There is the Leviticus prohibition on certain conduct (lying "with a man as a woman"), but does that prohibition extend to advocating it?

If it is conceded for the sake of argument that homosexual conduct is "Satanic," where is that found? Is it in the Bible, or is it an interpretation? Does it declare only homosexual acts Satanic, or does it additionally declare their advocacy Satanic? If it is a religious argument, there has to be some citation to some text, otherwise it's just an ungrounded assertion of Satanism.

What else is Satanic? Apparently, the Russian Orthodox Church considers plenty of things Satanic, including Hinduism. In a letter to Mayor Luzhkov, the Archbishop of Moscow called the Hindu deity Krishna "satanic":

Respected Mr. Luzhkov - can you really allow the idolatrous disgrace to be erected for the glory of this wicked and malicious "god" Krishna? The construction of this Krishna "temple" is a blatant offense of our religious feelings, and an insult to the millennial religious culture of Russia, where the overwhelming majority of people, Orthodox Christians and Muslims, consider Krishna an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God. It is shown that even for Buddhists, Krishna is a negative figure, the head of black demons. Sikhs and Jains also consider him the most formidable demon.

Of course, modern Russia is a secular state, based on secular laws. But can these laws screen our peoples from the judgment of God? Can the Russian Constitution abolish our common responsibility for our acts before God?

Here we have people who (like the Hindus) indignantlly deny that they are Satanists, and claim the term is being hurled against them as an insult. But from a religious standpoint, they would seem to have the same rights as Satanists. As homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia, so they can't be accused of advocating illegal conduct either.

I'd say the Mayor is on shaky secular ground, and I think he might be on shaky religious ground too. Interestingly, as a former Communist Party official, he would have had to have most likely been an atheist, and would probably have been involved in the manufacture (see infra) of new Soviet Communist morality. Now he seems to have switched to the remanufacture of old morality.

I wonder how far it will go. Wife beating was once standard fare in the Orthodox Church. So was (and perhaps is) anti-Semitism.

History shows that times change, and morality changes with time. But there's no certainty about either.

I should be thankful to live in a country with a First Amendment, where calling people Satanists is as American as apple pie.

Let me state here at the beginning that I do not have it in for the Union Pacific, B&O, Southern Pacific or any of the myriad other rail transportation companiers in America. The kind of railroading I'm against is where police and prosectors home in on a suspect and won't let go despite evidence of innocence.

We have seen that in the Duke case where the charges against the 3 Duke lacrosse players is demonstratively false. The accuser's story has changed in very significant ways over time. None of them matching the evidence. The accuser couldn't identify any lacrosse players in the first two line ups. None of her early descriptions matched any of the boys she picked. And on. The case is a bust and yet DA Nifong couldn't quit. He needed the case to win a hotly contested primary election.

However, similar cases are reported all over America. What is unusual in this case is that the boy's parents were in a positioin to fight back. They have good lawyers who have investigated and destroyed the case before it even came to trial. So badly destroyed that the original DA in the case is now up before the bar on charges.

However, most such cases never get the spotlight or the resources this case did. Who gets buried by such tactics? Poor people. Many blacks, hispancics, and poor white trash. Which brings me to the Duke Chapel. Rev. William Barber spoke yesterday at Duke Chapel. A sermon. KC Johnson discusses what he heard.

I decided to watch the webcast of Barber's sermon to hear what he had to say. With copious references to Martin Luther King, Jr., Barber organized his talk around the "devastation of denial" when Pontius Pilate gave into the mob and denied clemency for Jesus.

"The refusal to acknowledge what is right in front of us," declared Barber, "can be devastating," even more so when accompanied by a denial of responsibility to change what is bad. Any "attempt to deny injustice covers us with the blood of guilt," since "all the denial in the world will not save us from ultimately having to face reality." To replace this atmosphere, "what we need today is a theology of truth and not denial."

What he needs to do is turn his whole mind set around. Which is very hard. What Rev. Barber needs to focus on is bigotry free justice. I'm not just talking in a raicial or other similar context. I'm talking about situations where there is a rush to judgement, which in itself is a kind of bigotry. Bigotry is the art of avoiding evidence contrary to preconcieved notions. We know this happens from the numerous cases of people on death row exonerated after many years in prison. We also know the system is reluctant to re-examine the evidence when it is available. Which means that the system thinks it has a lot to hide.

What I think the Rev. should do is join the anti-railroading society. Because, if the prosecutors would pull this on white boys look at how much easier it would be to do to blacks. How do poor people come up with even a retainer for top lawyers?

Rev. Barber needs a serious attitude re-adjustment.

Well any way. We should help our brothers get back on track rather than pick fights with them. It would be the Christian thing to do. Funny thing is I'm Jewish.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Carnival of the RINOs has been posted at Dan Melson's Searchlight Crusade.

I am delighted to see so many posts, especially after some post election slump.

Great posts, and a great job by Dan Melson!

Is graffiti is now officically sanctioned? So asks Glenn Reynolds, as he links a report from The Hill about the refusal by U.S. Capitol Hill Police to stop anarchists from graffitiing the Capitol:

Anti-war protesters were allowed to spray paint on part of thewest front steps of the United States Capitol building after police wereordered to break their security line by their leadership, two sources toldThe Hill.

According to the sources, police officers were livid when theywere told to fall back by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Chief Phillip Morse andDeputy Chief Daniel Nichols. "They were the commanders on the scene," one source said,who requested anonymity. "It was disgusting."

The Hill continues:

Approximately 300 protesters were allowed to take the steps andbegan to spray paint "anarchist symbols" and phrase such as "Ourcapitol building" and "you can't stop us" around the area, thesource said.

Morse responded to these claims in an e-mail Sunday afternoon,explaining that the protesters were seeking confrontation with the police.

"While there were minor instances of spray painting ofpavement by a splinter group of Anarchists who were seeking a confrontationwith the police, their attempts to breach into secure areas and rush thedoors of the Capitol were thwarted," Morse said. "The graffiti waseasily removed by the dedicated [Architect of the Capitol] staff, some ofwhom responded on their day off to quickly clean the area."

He added, "It is the USCP's duty and responsibility to protectthe Capitol complex, staff and public while allowing the public to exercisetheir First Amendment rights ... at the end of the day, both occurredwithout injury to protestors or officers."

Yet, the sources who talked to The Hill were furious thatprotesters were not stopped before reaching the Capitol.

I'm not saying I agree with them, but let me (a former Police Review Commissioner who has dealt with professional anarchists up close and personal) play Devil's Advocate.

This might appear to be a clear case of principle, but is it?

That depends on how we define "principle." Is it a matter of principle to wait in a longer line to save two cents a gallon on gasoline? Sometimes, when I weigh these things, I'll decide that saving twenty cents isn't worth my time, and I'll just fill up where there's no line.

An easy example, though, because paying more for gasoline is not a matter of principle.

However, I think a simple weighing process -- which disregarded matters of principle -- went on in the minds of the bureaucrats who gave the order to allow grafitti.

What costs more? Arresting the vandals? Or cleaning up after them?

The latter is far, far cheaper. (In the short run, and depending on your perspective, maybe even in the long run.)

I say this because of my experience with anarchists, and with civilian review of the police. Anarchists are not ordinary people, but true fanatics. Their operating maxim reminds me of an expression attributed to Golda Meir --

"We will show the world that killing Jews is an expensive enterprise."

In a previous post, I quoted from an anarchist who was honest enough to have provided an example of this mindset at work:

....we will battle the authorities with all means that can be used in an anarchist way.

As anarchists, we have no interest in the justice system. Rob says he did not commit the crimes of which he was accused, and we will certainly do what we can to prove this. But from an anarchist perspective, the guilt or innocence of a comrade is not important in determining our solidarity with him or her. This concept of guilt and innocence is just another aspect of the democratic system of justice and law which we reject.

The justice system, justice as it exists in the present society, is a system of judgement, a system which allows certain people to determine that others--whom these judges have never met and know nothing about--should be locked up, forced to give up certain free doms, even killed. Such a system is beyond any sort of reform that could be acceptable to an anarchist, because at its heart it is authoritarian. Thus, an expression of revolutionary solidarity with an imprisoned comrade would be a struggle aimed at the destruction of the justice system.

This requires an understanding of the justice system. It is courts, judges, prosecutors, the entire trial process; but it is also prisons, police, and laws. There is no use in pursuing prison reforms. No matter how gentle and homely a prison becomes. it remains a prison, a place for locking up one who offends the law. Nor are better behaved police of interest to us. No matter how well behaved the cop is, he or she remains the armed protector of state power and private property, both of which the anarchist seeks to destroy. And better laws only reinforce state power. Their purpose is to protect the present social order, to maintain social peace. And social peace is based in the violence of domination and exploitation, the violence of power.

So our struggles in solidarity with specific prisoners such as Rob base themselves in our struggle against the social order. They use the anarchist methods of attack against that social order, not the democratic methods of accommodation and negation.

Who knows? I might keep my job for a day.

Sigh.

In other cave news, Justin pointed me to this report that head lice are now being tolerated in the Oakland public schools:

Under new guidelines, Oakland children with lice or nits will be allowed to stay in class -- a policy that may be a first in the Bay Area.

Oakland officials cited schools in western Australia as their model, saying the policy encourages treatment and is justified.

"There are no serious health consequences or risks of students having head lice," said Joan Edelstein, the district's health services coordinator. "We don't want students to be missing five to 10 days of schools when they pose no risk of harm to themselves or anyone else."

I seem to be obsessed with war news these days. Kind of a morbid fascination. In any case, US forces in Iraq have some how managed to get a group of insurgents to stand up and fight. As usual under such circumstances the insurgents are taking a beating.

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces killed some 250 gunmen from an apocalyptic Muslim cult on Sunday in a battle involving U.S. tanks and aircraft near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, Iraqi police, army and political sources said.

Two Americans were killed, the U.S. military said, when an attack helicopter went down during the day-long battle in what was one of the strangest incidents of the four-year conflict. Iraqi officials said the helicopter seemed to be shot down.

According to one Iraqi political source, hundreds of fighters drawn from both Sunni and Shi'ite communities were still fighting. A Reuters reporter at the scene, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, saw U.S. tanks and heard blasts after dark and an Iraqi officer said F-16 jets were bombing the area.

Details of the day's fighting were sketchy and the origins of the fighters unclear. An Iraqi army source said some of the dead wore headbands declaring themselves a "Soldier of Heaven."

The governor of Najaf province said the group had gathered in orchards near the city and had been planning to attack the main Shi'ite clerical leadership on Monday. It is the climax of the annual Shi'ite rite of Ashura, marking a 7th century battle which entrenched the schism between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam.

Normally guerillas do not stand and fight. As this fight shows it is not to their advantage. Worse, is to fight in the open. They must have been in a very bad position to get into a situation where all they could do is go down fighting.

It is possible that the troop surge is having an effect. Not necessisarily beneficial to the anti-government forces.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This is the next president of the United States?

DAVENPORT, Iowa, Jan. 28 -- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called today for President Bush to "extricate our country" from Iraq by the time he leaves office in 2009, and she also said she knew enough about "evil and bad men" to protect the country from its enemies.

Hmmm....

Not that there's anything wrong with protecting us from evil and bad men. (Or for that matter, evil and bad women.)

I don't want to sound skeptical, but at this point, it's all just talking the talk. (Like asking "Are you a good evil man, or a bad evil man?")

Back in 1939, Billie Burke really knew how to walk the walk!

And if the questioning got tough, she knew how to disappear.

Not in a puff, but in a bubble!

And it never burst.

MORE: Was the "evil and bad men" remark possibly a reference to Bill Clinton? Glenn Reynolds links Don Surber, who wonders about Hillary's "Maalox moment," and thinks she should divorce him:

Every day, hundreds of young women with little babies to feed work up the courage to divorce the rat they married. Hillary should dump him already.

If Britney Spears is smart enough to dump K-Fed, surely the valedictorian of the Wellesley Class of '69 can figure this out.

If she dumps Bill, she might be happier, but she bursts her own bubble. I don't think she can be elected without him.

Of course, bubbles do cause gas.

(Hence the Maalox moment.)

You knew that already, didn't you? Well a little extra darkness has been added.

10:21 Jan 29, '07

IsraelNN.com) Gunfire and rocket attacks by rival terrorists hit a power transformer, plunging the western part of Gaza into darkness. A sixth militia gunman was killed a short time ago as fighting and kidnappings continued despite agreements by Hamas and Fatah leaders to accept mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia.

Hamas militia men kidnapped the teen-age son and nephew of the commander of the Fatah militia in Gaza.

This is no longer just about business. It is about family. It could get really vicious. In fact it has already.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

"Kerry is exactly what the U.S. needs right now."

--Tehran Times, June 2004.

This is not to suggest that Bush is perfect. Far from it. I'm often disappointed in him, and many times I've looked back and asked whether things might have been different had Kerry won.

The answer is yes they would have. I think they would have been worse. The more I read about Kerry, the more I'm glad I didn't vote for him.

But none of it surprises me. It's not as if we weren't warned.

Kerry might be known as a flip-flopper, but he's remarkably consistent on Iran.

Right now, it's looking like this Cox and Forkum cartoon was a full three years ahead of its time:

I don't know whether to call this "Kerry nostalgia," as I tend to think of nostalgia as something pleasant.

Perhaps its post-election nostalgiaphobia.

Or considering that we're in a state of perpetual state of election, maybe that would be pre-election nostalgiaphobia.

UPDATE: I said I was glad I didn't vote for Kerry. But watching his performance on the video here, I'm even more glad. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

UPDATE: Thank you, Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. Welcome all!

Considering the way Democrats (like Carter and Kerry have been acting), no wonder Joe Lieberman is considering endorsing a Republican. (I think that whether the two major party bases like it or not, a McCain-Lieberman ticket would be unbeatable.)

Major-General Smedley D. Butler: Common Sense (November 1935) I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force---the Marine Corps. I have served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to major-general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers, In short I was a racketeer for capitalism Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place to live for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American Sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."

I agree with the General.

Whoa. Say it isn't so. Nope. It is true. The purpose of the American military in 2007 and well beyond is to open trade possiblities and keep the trade routes open. If we don't do that job as I explained in Decline and Fall, the world and all its people will be worse off. In fact the outcome would lead to Desolation Row.

What people do not understand is that if war is done as a way to increase trade flows (Gen. S. Butler was right about that part - his Marines were sent to make opportunities for American companies or to protect assets the companies had already invested in) every one involved gets richer.

If it is purely a blood sucking operation (as the Soviets did to their "clients") every one gets poorer.

Now in general (and yes from time to time we have screwed the pooch badly) where do you think America stands?

What about people who think that if we stopped spending on the military the money could go to better uses.

Probably.

However, those people needn't wait to get the Feds to move on it. They could start in their own communities by demanding the police force be disbanded. Think of all the money that could go to better uses.

Some one is going to be the world's policeman. Given the options I'd rather it was us. We are not so good. But there is lots worse out there.

Suggested by the discussion at Rose Colored Glasses

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The former head of Israeli Intelligence says that World War III has already started. I actually count it as WW IV since I think WW III was fought against the Soviet menace. However, that is a mere quibble. Let us listen to former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy in his own words.

A third World War is already underway between Islamic militancy and the West but most people do not realize it, the former head of Israel's intelligence service Mossad said in an interview published Saturday in Portugal.

'We are in the midst of a third World War,' former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso.

'The world does not understand. A person walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Buenos Aires and doesn't get the sense that there is a war going on,' said Halevy who headed Mossad between 1998 and 2003.

'During World War I and II the entire world felt there was a war. Today no one is conscious of it. From time to time there is a terrorist attack in Madrid, London and New York and then everything stays the same.'

Violence by Islamic militants has already disrupted international travel and trade just as in the previous two world conflicts, he said.

Halevy, who was raised in war-time London, predicted it would take at least 25 years before the battle against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is won and during this time a nuclear strike by Islamic militants was likely.

I did take a look at what strangling trade routes means to civilization in:

Decline and Fall
Desolation Row

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Here is a Gaza resident's view of the Palestinian Civil War.

Independent legislator, Rawya Shawa, said she was not surprised that the situation had come to this.

"This fight has no end," she said. "One group won the election; the other doesn't want to believe they have lost. The feeling on the street is that these two groups are preparing for a real battle. People feel that on every corner, one is waiting for the other."

"Gaza people are very tough people," Shawa added. "We don't miss the beautiful life because there has never been a beautiful life. We are very experienced with misery. But now, we are very afraid. It is very bad when it comes from your own people. We never expected something like this to happen. But now, one expects anything at any time.

"Personally, I cannot go out at night. In the day, I go to my office but I follow the instructions closely."

"We have a few groups working under the table" Shawa said. "Ready to make things worse. Pulling towards a civil war. In one family you can find supporters of Fatah and supporters of Hamas. It is a very complicated situation."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Much as I hate to dwell on things like the interplay between what we call "science" and what we call "morality," sometimes it seems that duty calls. Whether in this case it's a duty to science or a duty to morality, I do not know.

To back up, in a post last week, I complained about what I saw the manufacture of morality in the context of global warming. I thought I'd made my point, and amazing though it might be, I managed not to mention homosexuality. Not that I don't believe morality has been -- and continues to be -- manufactured in that context, but I just didn't think it was closely tied to global warming. Well, in a general sense, I suppose you could say that I commented on the irony of climate morality vis-a-vis sexual morality. I did conclude by saying this:

I've reached the point where I actually think that some moral evils are worse than other moral evils.

My reactionary moral relativism has now reached the point where I think I should feel more guilty about letting people starve than about letting them breathe.

At this rate, I'll soon be a nihilist.

(Almost makes me wish for good old days, when you were immoral if you screwed but it was still OK to breathe. Now that everything has become immoral, nothing is immoral.)

I'll take this a step further. Suppose I engage in a little Maoist "criticism/self criticism," and plead guilty to the manufacture of morality, here and now! Let's take a look at my last comment (written yesterday):

While I think the effort to "normalize" homosexuality certainly has been characterized by a process of manufactured morality, my concern is whether there is any rational reason to care about another person's sex life, and I don't think there is. This is my opinion, not an effort to manufacture morality. As to the "admissibility" of "further moral changes that [I] happen to favor" I think we're arguing apples and oranges here as I am not arguing for a new morality vis-a-vis homosexuality. Saying homosexuality is good or bad makes about as much sense to me as saying snakes are good or bad. While I would criticize not thinking logically about these things, I don't consider myself responsible for the way other people think or how they are influenced. Here, I criticized the manufacture of morality in the global warming context, but the fact that people use that technique in other contexts is simply irrelevant to my argument. I think you may be confusing my "not caring" with a moralistic desire for "normalization" -- and thus missing my point.

The problem for me is that morality is a feeling thing. You either feel it or you don't. I can get really outraged over terrorism, murder, robbery, rape, disloyalty, dishonesty -- but this business of worrying where someone sticks his dick, it really is a matter of indifference to me, and I cannot help it. Unless someone else's sexual conduct is directed towards me, I just don't have feelings about it. While I admit that the novelty of hearing about new and really kinky or particularly unusual behaviors triggers a certain intellectual curiosity, whether someone has homosexual or heterosexual impulses bores me. I hesitate to say "bored stiff," but if boredom is a moral response, I guess I am strangely moralistic, and if I admit truthfully to what I think, I could at least be said to be promoting (if not manufacturing), my form of bored morality.

(All I can say to that is "yawn.....")

Anyway, if I don't worry about human homosexuality, how can I be expected to worry about homosexuality in sheep?

No, seriously.

Apparently, a new coalition of gay activists and animal rights activists think I should do just that, and (via Glenn Reynolds), Ann Althouse has a post about it. I'm going to quote the whole post because it's so good -- starting with a quote from a noted tennis player who seems to have become a dabbler in scientific morality:

"The more we play God or try to improve on Mother Nature, the more damage we are doing with all kinds of experiments that... turn into nightmares."

That sounds like the alarmism of a religious fundamentalist, but hostility to scientific research comes from the progressive side when the question is the source of sexual preference.

That quote is from Martina Navratilova, who is one of the many critics of Charles Roselli, a researcher who is studying why some male sheep have a sexual preference for other males. Roselli tells his critics that he hates the idea of trying to manipulate the sexuality of human beings and claims that his real interest is in fact sheep.

Don't we accept the idea of sheep breeders doing what they can to get sheep who will in fact breed? Should someone who objects to efforts to cure human beings of homosexuality resist efforts to manipulate sheep? Assuming you don't care about the individuality and personal fulfillment of sheep -- and note that PETA started the campaign against Roselli -- don't you have to admit that any learning about sexual orientation will be applied to thinking about human beings?

Dr. Zeus couldn't have put it better.

We should not learn about anything about sexual behavior if that might be applied to human beings.

Ann Althouse concludes by asking a rather excellent question.

Shouldn't gay rights advocates care when they sound like the religious fundamentalists they usually deride?

As a matter of fact, I think it's one of the reasons I started this blog -- in May of 2002:

The Problem With Anti-Gay Bigots

...is that they want to find out what it is that other people do sexually, and then they want to claim them in some sort of brotherhood, or else disown them as unfit people to associate with. They demand the right to tell other people how to raise their children, particularly as to their definition of human sexuality. Once they identify a person as heterosexual, they encourage, even demand, a liturgy of constant self-affirmation of heterosexuality as the best measuring stick of a human being's worth. As if such peer pressure isn't bad enough in itself, one's sexual desires are now considered a litmus test of one's politics!

The Problem With Gay Bigots

...is that they want to find out what it is that other people do sexually, and then they want to claim them in some sort of brotherhood, or else disown them as unfit people to associate with. They demand the right to tell other people how to raise their children, particularly as to their definition of human sexuality. Once they identify a person as homosexual, they encourage, even demand, a liturgy of constant self-affirmation of homosexuality as the best measuring stick of a human being's worth. As if such peer pressure isn't bad enough in itself, one's sexual desires are now considered a litmus test of one's politics!

Manufactured morality, by gay activists! My commenter certainly had a point, and I think it's fair to acknowledge it.

(BTW, my opinion is that both sides have manufactured morality. Much of the argument involves whether moral beliefs which are said to be older are controlling, and while I have postulated that morality which is said to be in the classical tradition -- "values" -- if I must use that word again -- is older than morality said to be traditional, I realize that if morality is manufactured, the date of manufacture should not be controlling. There's a fine line between logic and satire, and I'm not always sure I know where it is!)

Anyway, gay activism is laden with schmaltzy, syrupy, morality. What a man does with his penis is thought by activists to be almost analogous to skin color -- and therefore of utmost importance. At least as important as it is to the moralists on the other side, and I have long believed that a dirty little secret is that this mutual moral antagonism is mutually symbiotic. While both sides would probably hate me for saying this, I think both sides need each other. And desperately.

Not being content with their preoccupation with making moral judgments about what humans do with their penises, they're now being judgmental about sheep!

I saw Brokeback Mountain, but it was just a movie. (Bah!)

Do these poor sheep have to be dragooned into a gay political morality pageant? It's one thing for them to be herded around, sheered, guarded, slaughtered, and it's another to care about whether their shepherds are gay or straight, but really!

Politicizing sheep genitalia?

Sorry, but that's carrying manufactured morality too far.

Why, it's not even morality; it's nonsense!

And if I have the right to object to manufactured morality, I think I have just as much right to object to nonsense -- even though I acknowledge that the mere discussion of nonsense can be construed as manufacturing more.

If I could offer a nonsensical conclusion by way of advice to the gay sheep it might be along the lines of "RAM EWE!"

But that might be construed as countancing heteronormative immorality!

(What? Should I have said "RAM BUTT"? There. Is that better?)

Recently I've been reading that global warming causes suicide, as well as terrorism, which means it probably threatens to hurt an emerging identity-politics-group of people called "the homeless." I don't know whether there's a bureaucratic plan in place to deal with the unique threat that "global warming" poses to them, but the right now, the biggest climate threat this group is facing seems to be cold weather. While it doesn't yet seem to have triggered an outbreak of homeless suicide bombers, the government in New York has decided that it's so cold that something must be done, so it has given police authority to help them by force:

Arctic Blast Sends Temperatures Into Danger Zone
By VERENA DOBNIK, AP

NEW YORK (Jan. 26) - One month into one of the mildest winters on record in the Northeast, an arctic blast sent temperatures into the danger zone Friday, and New York gave its police legal authority to remove homeless people from the streets to keep them from freezing to death.

I don't mean to be frivolous, but I suspect that the people who gave the police this authority were motivated by some kind of concern grounded in what many people would call morality, and I think it might be worth examining it in a little more detail. Whether from a libertarian standpoint, a "moral conservative" standpoint, a "compassionate conservative" standpoint, or even a "moral liberal" standpoint isn't the point really. I'll leave it to others to worry about the labels. I just want to know why it is that demented psychotics are allowed to run around clutching stuffed monkeys and yelling at their hallucinations in various states of, um, "mind" and nothing is done about it until they hurt other people in ways that simply cannot be ignored.

Like sawing open the chests of total strangers.

But in addition to the commission of heinous crimes, we are now to add the refusal to come in out of the cold as a reason for removal from the street?

It's tough being logical about these things, but let me try. Apparently, it's OK for people like the mental patient who sawed open the subway passenger's chest to have been running around hallucinating and hassling people for money in cool weather, warm weather, and I assume hot weather (maybe I shouldn't assume that), to block entrances to stores despite the high taxes and rents charged the store owners, to stink up public places, to not take medication which might cause his hallucinations to stop, to refuse treatment for out-of-control substance problems, but once it gets too cold, something has to be done.

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that the psychos on the street weren't the only psychos running around.

But I do know better. It's not crazy if the goal is maintenance of bureaucratic power. Leaving decrepit and psychotic people in place and calling them "homeless" (as if they're victims of corporate downsizing or a failure to tax the rich) is a good way to build and maintain a power base. Endless problems require endless solutions that endlessly solve nothing but create endless bureaucratic jobs. (For people with degrees! In social, um, "science"!) Endless committee meetings. Endless "special commissions on homelessness."

But there's a bright side in this spot of cold weather -at least from a bureaucratic standpoint:

"In some ways, [the cold] was fitting," said Madeleine Shea, acting director of Baltimore Homeless Services, which provides funding to nonprofit groups that serve homeless people. "It's good to be reminded of the conditions in which homeless people live."

The city's 2003 census recorded about 2,600 homeless people. Two years later, about 3,000 people reported that they did not have a regular place to stay. The final total of this year's census won't be known until the spring, but Shea said there's reason to believe that homelessness has continued to increase.

"The cost of housing is going up, and that influences homelessness," she said.

While I'm not entirely convinced that's what your average hallucinating derelict is thinking about (what, I should ask the guy with the saw and the monkey?), let's assume she's right.

If the cost of housing is the problem, then the government should build special housing for the hallucinating classes who can't take care of themselves.

Not only am I all for it, I'm old enough to remember it!

Gee, I hate to think about the political implications of being in favor of free housing for the mentally ill. It might mean I'm not a liberal, not a conservative, or not a libertarian.

(Thoughts like that can trigger depression. Seriously, it can be depressing not to have an identity group.)

No slack Saturday. The bodies pile up.

Deadly battles between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have continued in the Gaza Strip, leaving at least five more dead.

Saturday's deaths raise the toll since Thursday night to at least 22.

However, despite tension, the funerals for those killed on the previous day passed off peacefully on Saturday.

Clashes erupted in Gaza after weeks of relative calm and renewed efforts to form a national unity government. Both sides say they have suspended talks.

Those killed on Saturday included a boy of 11 or 12 who was hit during a shootout late at night between the two factions in the northern Gaza Strip.

Earlier at least one person died in a gun battle near Gaza's Islamic University, while another died in a car explosion - rumoured to be caused when explosives being carried in the vehicle exploded.

Shops were shut up and the streets of Gaza City were almost empty on Saturday as people hid inside from the gangs of gunmen stalking the streets.

Members of Hamas and Fatah have fired mortars and grenades at each other and mounted tit-for-tat kidnappings.

The IHT has an even larger body count.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Gunmen from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements battled in Gaza City for a third straight day, firing mortars and grenades in clashes that killed seven people in the increasingly bloody power struggle over the Palestinian government.

Saturday's deaths brought to 25 the number of Palestinians killed since late Thursday, with at least 68 people wounded and efforts to forge a coalition government at a standstill.

The latest fighting, which began late Thursday after a Hamas activist was killed in a bombing, has been among the deadliest in nearly two months of clashes.

A poll conducted amongst Gaza Arabs last month shows that over fifty percent believe that the current violence marks the beginning of a civil war. Sixty-six percent said that they are pessimistic about the situation, and eighty-seven percent said that they feel unsafe. The poll was conducted by an-Najah university in Shechem, with five hundred Gaza Arabs participating, along with eight hundred and sixty Arabs from Judea and the Shomron.

Fighting rages on.

GAZA CITY (AP) -- Gunmen from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements battled each other in Gaza Sunday, continuing an increasingly bloody power struggle over the Palestinian government that left the coastal strip littered with dead over the weekend, while civilians cowered in their homes.

An explosion early in the morning rocked the home of a bodyguard to Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan, but the man was not in the building and no casualties were reported. At least eight people were wounded in exchanges of fire between the sides overnight, Palestinian security officials said.

It looks like some one has it in for Palestinian President Abbas.

Ronny Shaked Published: 01.28.07, 08:46

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas escaped an assassination attempt last week. Four large explosive devices were uncovered by Abbas' security officers on the road leading from the Erez crossing to Gaza, as the Palestinian president left Ramallah and was about to travel on that route.

Upon discovering the devices, Abbas' security officers instructed him to return to Ramallah. The explosive devices were detonated by sappers of the Presidential Guard.

The assassination attempt took place while the Palestinian president was on his way to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to discuss the establishment of a national unity government.

The UN has the proper line.

The UN's Middle East envoy Alvaro de Soto called on all the factions "to cease clashes and comply with international humanitarian law by refraining from acts which endanger civilians".

The violence also showed signs of spreading to the West Bank, where Palestinian police clashed with about 200 Hamas supporters on Saturday.

Update: 28 Jan '07 1803z

Calm has been restored to Gaza.

A relative halt to the inter-factional bloodshed in Gaza was brought about through mediation by an Egyptian security delegation between various Palestinian groups. However, kidnappings continue in the West Bank and the tense ceasefire appears close to a breakdown.

Funeral processions are taking place in Gaza, where four more people were killed Sunday morning during the fourth day of Hamas and Fatah infighting. Since Thursday night, 24 people have died, including a two year old boy caught in the crossfire.

Violence continued in the West Bank, with riots in Nablus Sunday afternoon. Members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - Fatah's military wing - kidnapped at least ten Hamas operatives, including senior municipality officials.

GAZA, Jan 28 (KUNA) -- Unknown gunmen shot dead on Sunday a Palestinian Hamas activist in the city of Khan Yonis south of Gaza.

Hamas Radio, Al-Aqsa, in Gaza said "gunmen opened fire toward Nasser Sharab, 22, a member of the Executive Force of the Interior Ministry in one of the streets in Khan Yonis." According to the Al-Aqsa radio, Hamas blames members of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah military wing, for the shooting, and directly put blame on Palestinian legislative member Mohammad Dahlan for the incident.

Mountain lions are predators whose only natural enemy has traditionally been man.

Or in this case, woman:

Jim and Nell Hamm, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month, were hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park when the lion pounced.

"He didn't scream. It was a different, horrible plea for help, and I turned around, and by then the cat had wrestled Jim to the ground," Nell Hamm said in an interview from the hospital where her husband was recovering from a torn scalp, puncture wounds and other injuries.

After the attack, game wardens closed the park about 320 miles north of San Francisco and released hounds to track the lion. They later shot and killed a pair of lions found near the trail where the attack happened.

The carcasses were flown to a state forensics lab to determine if either animal mauled the man.

Although the Hamms are experienced hikers, neither had seen a mountain lion before Jim Hamm was mauled, his wife said. Nell Hamm said she grabbed a four-inch-wide log and beat the animal with it, but it would not release its hold on her husband's head.

"Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye,'" she said. "So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would."

When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. The lion eventually let go and, with blood on its snout, stood staring at the woman. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away.

"She saved his life, there is no doubt about it," said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Game.

Nell Hamm, 65, said she was scared to leave her dazed, bleeding husband alone, so the couple walked a quarter-mile to a trail head, where she gathered branches to protect them if more lions came around. They waited until a ranger came by and summoned help.

"My concern was to get Jim out of there," she said. "I told him, 'Get up, get up, walk,' and he did."

Meanwhile, in California (where police are vilified for killing mountain lions that threaten children), another mountain lion has been spotted.

In beautiful Beverly Hills, no less!

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Police searching for a mountain lion in Beverly Hills came up empty-handed Saturday, authorities said.

A mountain lion sighting was reported in the 1000 block of Tower Road at about 11 p.m. on Friday, police said.

After about an hour, the search was called off.

I say, if people can't rely on the cops to shoot mountain lions in Beverly Hills, there's only one solution.

Bring back the Clampetts!

It is interesting to read the hard right's take on the justice system based on the Duke case.

When folks from Free Republic lose faith in the justice system, we are in serious trouble.

Here is a typical comment:

To: TommyDale

"Multiply that in North Carolina, where the legal system can screw innocent people and the general public would never know,"

That is everywhere in the country.

10 posted on 01/24/2007 6:14:39 AM PST by SmoothTalker

Cross Posted at Power and Control

People who complain about being controlled by the past might get a chuckle reading about the extent to which modern Rome is still controlled by ancient Rome:

In Rome, modern progress is often slowed down by the past.

Italy's robust preservation laws make it difficult to renovate, remove or otherwise tinker with anything deemed to be of historical significance, and that includes most of central Rome. The laws have protected the capital from newer architectural eyesores but have left it ill-equipped to deal with the stresses of a modern metropolis.

Rome currently has only two modest metro lines to serve its 2.5 million people, leaving the city's streets regularly clogged with buses, cars and scooters whose pollution coats the historical monuments with grime. Neither line passes through the heart of the old city, an area always teeming with tourists.

But successive attempts by city planners to unclog the center by building underground parking garages and tunnels to handle traffic have run afoul of historical preservationists just about every time a shovel has hit the earth.

One exasperated Roman bureaucrat complains that it's like a parody:

"It's like a parody," complains Enrico Testa, the chairman of Roma Metropolitane SpA, the city-owned company that operates Rome's subway. "There are treasures that are underground that would stay buried forever if we didn't have to dig. But as soon as we uncover them, our work gets blocked."

Totalitarians, of course, care very little about the past.

Breaking ground in Rome wasn't always so difficult. When the city started building its first metro in the 1930s, dictator Benito Mussolini refused to let history impede his master plan to create a modern Roman empire. Work didn't pause even when diggers clipped off a corner of the foundation of the Colosseum. The plans were crude: Engineers cut a canal alongside the ruins of the Roman Forum. Truckloads of dirt containing many ancient artifacts were carted off and dumped.

Those who would level the past worry me. Of course, at the other extreme are those who would prevent the future by preventing growth. Whether in the name of stopping "global warming" or "urban sprawl," they invoke "the environment" in the same way that archaeologists invoke terms like "cultural heritage." If an apparently vacant lot has priceless architectural ruins underneath it, I'm all for preserving its cultural and educational value, as long as the owner is compensated. But if it's just because activists think it should always be "green," and they want it to remain that way without compensating the owner, that's not letting the past control the future; that's strangling the future, and disrespecting the past by ignoring settled constitutional principles and the law of property ownership. Arguing that "nature" was here first and that we should therefore be controlled by "nature" is like saying that the lack of electricity and plumbing were here first, and that therefore we should all live in a state of nature like Ted Kaczynski. Saying "no culture" should control culture is primitivism, and its advocates (condemned repeatedly infra) want anti-civilization to replace civilization.

Preserving and respecting the past is civilization. Blocking the future is uncivilized, and has a lot in common with demolishing the past.

It may sound like a paradox, but I think it's common sense.

There's a very peculiar full-page ad in this week's Philadelphia City Paper for a group called the International Coalition for British Reparations (and its web site, BritishReparations.com), which is demanding 31 trillion pounds in reparations for -- well, for literally billions of people worldwide, and almost everyone in the United States.

Here's what it looks like:

If you can't read the text, there's plenty more at the web site. The arguments are so silly that I don't think I need to address them seriously. (For starters, it's corruption of blood.)

Initially, I thought (as did a Cold Fury commenter) that the ad might be satire, for the site blames the British for, among many other things, Stalin's Gulags (prison camps were a British invention, natch), World Wars One and Two, all the Iraq Wars, the list goes on and on. But I think the Cold Fury commenter may have been wrong when he called Grasse a con artist:

Here is what I found interesting: Under the header of "Who is behind the International Coalition for British Reparations (ICBR)?" it says:

The ICBR was founded by Steve A. Grasse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mr. Grasse is a lay historian and founder of a successful multinational marketing company

Allow me to translate:

"Lay historian": Someone who doesn't know shit about History but has read a few books and watched a few TV programs and fancies himself an "historian."

"founder of a successful multinational marketing company" = Con artist.

From the Amazon cache:

Editorial Reviews
Book Description
They invented slums. They invented child labor. They put Saddam Hussein in power. They burned Joan of Arc at the stake. They made Elton John a knight.

We're talking about Britain, of course, and the terrible evils they've set loose on the world. In The Evil Empire, American author Steven Grasse documents the 101 worst atrocities of Mother England everything from foxhunting and the invention of the concentration camp to the rock band Oasis. (He's also launching a massive global Internet campaign for reparations worth 58 trillion dollars this spring.) With an irreverent mix of historical facts, smartass commentary, and red-blooded American arrogance, Grasse offers a devastating critique of the country that gave us the machine gun, factory labor, and Phil Collins. Publishing just in time for the Queen's birthday (April 21), The Evil Empire is essential reading for anglophiles and true-blue Americans everywhere.

About the Author
Steven A. Grasse is the CEO of Gyro Worldwide, a multimillion-dollar ad agency. He has designed award-winning campaigns for clients such as Coca-Cola, MTV, and Puma. This is his first book. Penny Rimbaud is a drummer, writer, poet, and cofounder of the anarchist punk band Crass.

The new Amazon listing for the book says nothing about Grasse being the CEO of Gyro Worldwide, and I am not sure why. Considering that Gyro is a huge advertising outfit which has worked with the Philadelphia Inquirer with Phillycars.com (lots of big money involved there, folks), you'd think it would help sell the book to let the readers know what a hot shot the author is, and how long he's been a hot shot.

Here's what the "About the Author" section says now:

About the Author
Steven A. Grasse is a cultural studies analyst and media communications expert, who has extensively studied the British Empire. He is also the spokesperson for the International Coalition for British Reparations (ICBR), a massive global initiative for reparations from England worth 58 trillion dollars. This is his first book. Penny Rimbaud is a musician, writer, poet, and cofounder of the anarchist punk band Crass.

And right now, while I don't know exactly what is going on, I am very suspicious.

Is it possible that someone is pretending to be Steven Grasse, or that there's more than one?

According to local Philadelphia blog Phawker, Grasse directed a film called "Bikini Bandits" and sure enough, IMDB lists a "Steve Grasse" as the director of that film. And both City Paper and Wikipedia confirm that the director Steven Grasse is the founder of Gyro Worldwide.

Weird, huh?

This is obviously timed to coincide with Prince Charles' upcoming visit to Philadelphia, as the ICBR web site states that Comcast has pulled their TV ad, as did the Bill O'Reilly Show:

The ICBR is a new grassroots organization formed by Steven Grasse, a cultural studies analyst and media communications expert. His ancestors fought in the American Revolution and Civil Wars. He is a distant relative of three presidents--Franklin Pierce, George Bush, and George W. Bush. He is the author of a forthcoming work on the history of British civilization and its role in world affairs, to be published in April 2007.

The Coalition consists of forgotten victims of the British Empire who have banded together to ask for compensation for the injuries and injustice suffered over the past five hundred years. England's shameful misconduct and neglect have necessitated that a global network of citizens from all walks of life unite to seek reparations in the sum of 31 trillion pounds sterling. ($58 trillion USD).

The controversial spot was set to air on "The O'Reilly Factor," but was pulled mid-airing in a move that can be called nothing short of censorship. Comcast execs refuse to broadcast the commercial until major revisions have been made.

Comcast accepted payment for the advertisement and then mysteriously yanked the spot mid-air. When ICBR representatives called to inquire as to whether or not it was a technical difficulty they nervously explained that Comcast's New York City legal counsel had prohibited the commercial and cancelled all future airings.

We respectfully ask: What was the reason for this? Who got to them? And what other acts of injustice will innocent citizens of the world face at the hands of the British Empire?

It would be easy to dismiss this nonsense if it didn't appear to be the product of an important person.

If this is a gigantic hoax, or if Steven Grasse is not the Gyro founder/movie director, I hope someone will let me know.

My information comes only from what I found at the above sites.

I enjoy jokes, and even an occasional hoax. But if it turns out this is serious, and if it turns out a well-connected Philadelphia advertising executive is behind it, would it still be funny?

Well, maybe to me.

(But then, I think Ward Churchill and Michael Moore are funny....)

MORE: If you're as offended as I am by the gratuitous bashing of an ally, Glenn Reynolds links a more appropriate use of the Union Jack.

(Sorry, Glenn! I meant "scary racist symbol." My bad.)

MORE: The same full page ad appears in this week's Philadelphia Weekly.

British Reparations may be a lunatic fringe idea, but somebody's putting a lot of money into it.

UPDATE (01/27/07): Metro Philadelphia asserted that the British Reparations movement is in fact run by the same Steven Grasse of Gyro:

CENTER CITY.?Blame the bloody English.

That's what a longtime Philadelphia advertising executive says in a book set for release in April called "Evil Empire" and plans to spell out at a press conference tomorrow at the Constitution Center.

Steve Grasse, head of Center City's Gyro Worldwide Advertising, wants Britain to pay $58 trillion to the world, or roughly $8,500 per person, for causing what he called "injuries and injustices suffered over the past [500] years" by the world at the hands of the British.

"We're only asking for a fraction of what the world is due," Grasse said yesterday of his Philadelphia-based organization called the International Coalition for British Reparations.

And he says he's dead serious.

What I'd really like to know is why the Philadelphia Inquirer does not seemto consider this major local story to be newsworthy.

Something isn't right.

MORE: If Gyro is trying to hide its connections with British Reparations, they aren't doing a good job. Using a standard domain lookup, I discovered that the contact information for BritishReparations.com points to "Carrie Carnegie" at Gyro:

Registrant:
Carnegie, Carrie
ATTN: BRITISHREPARATIONS.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

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If Mr. Grasse is joking, I'm waiting to hear all about the prank.

UPDATE: My thanks to Pajamas Media for linking this post!

At this point, I think it's obvious who's behind it.

What I'd like to know is why. Is it a joke, or is it serious?

And why the lack of local coverage?

MORE: I hate it when things don't make sense.

If the idea here is for a big, MSM-connnected ad agency to create a brand-new political meme, wouldn't media coverage be the whole idea? After all, it's not as if this involves some piddly rent-a-demonstrator service.

Come on guys! If this is a media-manufactured meme, where's the media?

It is also a Quaker founded college in Greensboro, N.C.

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) -- Three college students were assaulted on the campus of Guilford College early Saturday morning, according to court documents and the school's Web site.

The Greensboro News & Record reported Tuesday that Faris Khadar, Osama Sabbah and Omar Awartani were the victims of an attack by three others.

According to the newspaper, Khadar and Sabbah are students at Guilford College. Artwani is a student at N.C. State who was visiting friends.

Three football players from Guilford College -- Michael Bates, Michael Six and Christopher Barnette -- were arrested and charged with ethnic intimidation. Bates and Six were charged with three counts of assault and battery each, and Barnett was charged with two counts of assault and battery, according to the News & Record.

Bates is from Reidsville, Six from Greensboro and Barnette from Semora.

Today two more boys were arrested in the case.

From today's News & Record

GREENSBORO -- An additional two Guilford College football players were arrested Thursday in connection with a recent attack against three Palestinian students outside a campus dormitory.

The arrests came the same day college officials announced that five people tied to the incident have been charged with violating the school's student code of conduct. And in the morning, students staged a walkout in solidarity with the injured Palestinians.

Police identified the latest people arrested as Jonathan Blake Underwood, of Clinton, S.C.; and Jazz Alfray Favors, of Alpharetta, Ga. Both were released on $5,000 bond.

Their arrests bring to five the number of students arrested in the incident police are treating as racially motivated.

Warrants for Underwood and Favors were issued Sunday but not served until Thursday. The reason for the delay wasn't clear.

Underwood is charged with three counts of ethnic intimidation, two counts of assault and one count of communicating threats. Favors is charged with two counts of assault and two counts of ethnic intimidation.

The charges weren't requested by Greensboro police but instead stem from statements the injured Palestinians made to a magistrate, who issued the warrants. Police said their investigation is ongoing.

Here is a press release from the police thinly disgiused as a newspaper report:

The Greensboro Police Department today issued an updated statement regarding the Guilford College case:

As stated in the previous press release, this case was referred to our Metropolitan Criminal Investigation Division and has been assigned to a detective for follow-up. Two interviews have been scheduled with the alleged victims in this case, and the victims have rescheduled on both occasions. As of this time, they have not spoken with us. We have followed up with Guilford College security and have spoken with them about the information they obtained regarding this incident.

On yesterday, warrants were issued on two additional subjects accused of assault. These warrants were not issued as a result of our investigation.

With an assault investigation, we begin by speaking with the alleged victim or victims in the case. At this point, we have not been afforded this opportunity. We will continue to make efforts to interview the alleged victims in this case and anyone who has information that will lead us to the correct version of events. The Greensboro Police Department will conduct a fair and impartial investigation into this matter. We will issue an updated press release as new information becomes available.

Here is a statement from the family of of a football player.

It is very apparent that the media and many uninformed individuals have unfairly prejudged Michael Bates, Michael Six, and Christopher Barnette of the beating of three Guilford College students during an unfortunate altercation involving several students last Friday night. Since media coverage has been so one sided the Bates, Six, and Barnette families issue this statement to allow for more balanced reporting of this event.

None of these accused young men have yet to be interviewed by any college official. The Greensboro Police Department has refused to take their statements and declined to review physical evidence including pictures of a vicious stabbing and belt whipping that was inflicted by Khader (an alleged victim) upon Michael Six during the altercation.

We also believe that a letter emailed on Sunday, by a college official, to all students of color greatly inflamed emotions needlessly. Here is the first paragraph from that letter from the Guilford College Director of Multicultural Education:

"By now, most of you have heard about the situation that occurred on Friday night between some football players and Faris Khader, Osama Sabbah, and Omar Awartini (a student from N.C. State). Faris, Osama, and Omar were defending themselves against students (and possibly perspective students) that were attacking them physically and simultaneously verbally with phrases like "sandnigga," "terrorist," etc. The incident was a hate crime."

We are deeply saddened by the inaccurate portrayal of these young men in this altercation by their school. When all of the FACTS are revealed, we believe that those who are sensationalizing this story will be rightly embarrassed and hope the retractions will receive the same level of visibility as premature and false charges. Under our system of government, our sons are presumed innocent of these charges and we hope that the community and the media will let the system run its course in determining their innocence or guilt.

The Bates, Six, and Barnette families would like to thank those in the communities, who know the true characters of these young men, for their continued support throughout this ordeal.

In fact, according to this anonymous reportthat is exactly what happened.

gcstudentathlete, Jan 24, 2007 11:30 PM

As a Guilford College student athlete I have been appalled by the reaction to this incident by not only the student body but also the media. Most of the students that are so intent on screaming hate crime are extremely uninformed about the actual occurance of events that night. No, I did not witness the fight the fight but I withhold judging or condemning the parties of either side until all accounts are fully investigated. It seems that even the news has not refrained from prematurally passing judgement. All of the articles and stories I have viewed on the television have been biased and from the most part over victimizing one party why already passing the other off as guilty. From the eyewitness accounts I have heard it was Osama who struck first, taking off his belt and hitting one of the football player. Osama himself has admitted this Also there were no brass knuckles involved in the fight, these so called brass knuckles were actually a watch. I am not saying that it is ok to beat anyone, I hate violence just much as anyone, but you also have to realize that mistakes were made on both sides. I know both of the parties that were involved. Faris and Osama are good guys, I like them a lot, and no doubt they did not deserve this, but as much as I like them they sometimes tend to look for fights. I also know one of the football players who has been arrested, and he is a good guy. He does not deserve to be slandered all across the news when he has not yet been convicted of anything. So get your story straight, stop being one sided, and stop trying to use this unfortunate event as an excuse to get all riled up and protest a hate crime that didn't occur. Further the student body needs to discontinue their DISCRIMINATION against the athletes of this campus. We are your classmates, and your equals. We get no special treatment, we work hard at our classes, our sports, and our held accountable for all our mistakes just like you. So any divide that has been created on this campus has not been created by me or by any of my teammates. So the question I pose to you is who is hating who right now?

I wonder if the football guys have good lawyers?

This page has a picture of Michael Six's injury alleged to have come from the fight.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

As I remarked in a previous post, I loved the new Barajas airport in Madrid. So much, in fact, that I had my picture taken there:

I was, of course, very upset when I read it had been bombed by Basque terrorists. That's because not only do I hate it when terrorists kill people, I also hate it when they destroy beautiful things. I think such terrorist acts are patently immoral.

Yet I must always remember that for other people, even beautiful things like the Barajas Airport are patently immoral.

I kid you not.

This morning Justin told me about this essay by a man who saw the same beautiful new airport, but had a very different reaction. Massive, self-consuming, guilt:

One minute I was admiring Richard Rogers' gorgeous roof, and the play of light upon curves.

But I suddenly stopped perceiving these effects as aesthetic. In place of elegant forms and vistas, I started to contemplate the vast amount of energy embodied in the artefacts, structures and processes that surrounded me.

A big new airbus, taxiing in to park, made me wonder how many thousands - millions - of pounds of matter and energy must have been used to build it.

Beside me was an elegant concrete pillar. It looked benignly tree-like with a gently curving trunk and branches, higher up, that supported a soaring roof.

But how many carbon dioxide emissions were generated during its fabrication? A ton of CO2 is emitted for every ton of concrete that ends up in a pillar - or the miles of concrete apron that stretched, in Madrid, in every direction.

Millions of tons of concrete visible to the eye. Millions of tons of emissions out of sight.

Then there was the noise. I don't usually notice the background hiss and hum of these great modern spaces. But this time my cognitive filters seemd to fail. I became aware of an ambient, angst-inducing roar.

All that air-conditioning, cooling huge volumes of empty space, blowing gales of out hot air to goodness knows where in the sky.

And of course the United States is the most evil place of all:

Eight per cent of the world's total electricity supply is used to cool buildings in the United States.

And did you know that by staring into that flat screen monitor, you are ruining the world? I thought not. But it's the truth.

And therefore, shame on you!

Then there was the light! There was a bank of large plasma screens. On the screens, ads were playing - but all I could think about was their greed for electricity.

Did you know that flat screens use five times more power than the bulbous ones they replace?

And that's just the power they use. Cathode ray televisons contained mostly air. These new plasma screens are packed densely with complex materials whose manufacture is highly energy intensive.

I hate to belabor a point I think is all too obvious, but I thought my readers of the flat-screened persuasion ought to know.

You people are evil, energy-swilling swine!

You are destroying the planet!

And by writing blog posts, I am little more than an enabler.

Isn't it obvious that from a collective standpoint, we're worse than the terrorists?

UPDATE: A scientist I am not. But as a firm believer in scientific morality, I thought it might be worth taking a close look at this screen shot from today's Drudge Report:

Isn't it a little irresponsible of Drudge to show a man freezing his butt off in front of a flat screen monitor?

Because, not only are flat screen monitors ruining the planet, but the image itself -- why, I can't imagine a more blatant depiction of immoral warmth, of hotness, even! The most sinister aspect of this depiction is its cleverly seductive, inherently self-advocating nature. (People who don't know any better might be tricked into imagining that evil is good.) It's a sickening example of what I can only call triple immorality!

It has been about 20 days since the last Palestinian Civil War Watch. And the Palestinians are at it again:

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Rival Palestinian factions clashed across the Gaza Strip, killing six people, as thousands of Hamas supporters marched on Friday to mark the Islamist group's election victory over Fatah opponents last year.

The escalating violence forced the postponement of talks to form a coalition government which could ease a U.S.-led boycott imposed after Hamas won Palestinian elections last January.

"The entire dialogue could explode," Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said, blaming Hamas for the tension. "How can dialogue go on when there is a bomb underneath the table?"

The talks, due to resume on Friday, were pushed back to Sunday.

Three Hamas supporters, a militant from the Fatah-linked Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and two bystanders were killed in violence which began with a bombing on Thursday night and continued with a spate of shootings on Friday.

Further updates as the civil war war progresses.

Update: 26 Jan '07 2258z

Busy day in "Palestine".

Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a militant from the rival Fatah movement late Friday, witnesses said, sparking a deadly gun battle and capping a day of factional violence that killed at least 12 people, including a two-year-old boy, across the Gaza Strip.

Friday's violence was among the deadliest in nearly two months of infighting and marred the first anniversary of Hamas' upset victory in Palestinian elections. After nightfall, the fighting showed no signs of slowing, as the sound of gunfire echoed throughout Gaza City.

Some of the heaviest shooting was concentrated around the home of Mansour Shaleil, a local Fatah leader in the Jebaliya refugee camp just north of Gaza City.

GAZA: Rival Palestinian factions clashed across the Gaza Strip, killing six people, as thousands of Hamas supporters marched on Friday to mark the Islamist group's election victory over Fatah opponents last year.

Both Fatah and Hamas officials said late Friday that unity talks would be suspended until the fighting ends. Both sides blamed each other for the breakdown.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

You know, for all my criticism of government bureaucrats, reading a story like this makes me want to be one:

[Recently resigned Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board Chairman Jonathan H. Newman] often stayed in style, at times booking $500-a-night New York City hotel rooms, an Inquirer analysis of documents obtained through the state's Right to Know law shows.

Newman yesterday vigorously defended the travel, arguing that his wine-buying trips to Napa Valley, the Bordeaux region and Rome generated millions in profits for the state through sales from the Chairman's Selection program he started three years ago to give consumers better wines at a better price.

Haggling for the best wine bargains can't be done over the phone, "sitting on your derriere," he said.

"I'm working my tail off. I'd rather be home with my family. I'm working from 8 in the morning to 10 at night," he said. "And I brought back these new, great products and generated millions in profits for the commonwealth."

Between 2004 and the end of last year, the PLCB spent $47,188 for Newman's travel. Expenses for the two other board members - Thomas Goldsmith and P.J. Stapleton - totaled $35,887 and $20,048, respectively.

Activists who are pushing for greater financial restraint in Harrisburg pounced on the spending reports.

"There is no justification for this type of extravagant, excessive and lavish lifestyle," said Eric Epstein, founder of RockTheCapital.org. "When you become drunk with power, you make impaired decisions."

Stapleton, who replaced Newman as chairman, said yesterday that he was unaware until recently of many of the travel bills, but planned to send a memo to the agency's senior staff next week mandating that more discretion be given to picking hotels.

This story highlights a contradiction inherent in the state control of alcohol distribution. If you're going to be sent on a wine-buying trip to places which are vacation spots for the rich and famous, wining and dining kind of go with the turf -- even if you're a bureaucrat.

The irony, of course, is that a private liquor dealer would probably do a better job of wining and dining the French, the Italians, and even the Californians -- precisely because of the lack of oversight that's present here. "Accountability" would be based not on bureaucratic oversight -- but on whether he turned a profit.

In California, wines are sold in the supermarkets' wine sections, and they are cheaper and have a better selection than the Pennsylvania state stores. The customers neither know nor care how much money the stores' wine buyers or distributors might spend on hotels. What's an "entertainment writeoff" for a private business is a career-ending "scandal" for a bureaucrat.

Putting bureaucrats in the liquor business is a good way to make "bureaucracy" seem synonymous with hypocrisy.

I really should be more outraged here. Instead, I find myself wanting to be a bureaucrat.

Now that's real hypocrisy!

AFTERTHOUGHT: Geez, I just thought of something about which I'm starting to have second thoughts. Should the government really be put in charge of vice?

Bush is starting to make his case for a strike on Iran.

Fri Jan 26, 12:46 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian agents active inside Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the plan.

The move, approved last fall, is aimed at weakening Iran's influence in the region and forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear program that the West believes is for nuclear weapons and not energy, the newspaper said, citing the unidentified officials.

For more than a year, U.S. forces have held dozens of Iranians for a few days, taking DNA samples from some as well as photographs and fingerprints from all those captured, the report said.

Several Iranian officials have been detained in three U.S. raids over the last month. Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters on Wednesday that details of accusations against them would be made public in the coming days.

He said they were "going after networks" of security agents, which he said were a mainstay of Iran's involvement in Iraq. The United States has accused Iran of helping arm, train and fund Iraqi militants, notably fellow Shi'ite Muslims.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In An Act Of War I discussed American moves on Iran. It looks like Iran is making a counter move in Lebanon.

BEIRUT, LEBANON - Lebanon's army imposed a curfew on the capital Thursday after hundreds of government supporters and foes wielded rocks, Molotov cocktails and sometimes guns in street battles that dragged past nightfall.

Four people were killed and 150 wounded, officials said, many of them soldiers who at times stood helplessly between the two sides.

The clashes, which began in a university cafeteria and spread to the surrounding neighborhood of Tariq Jedideh, offered a bitter contrast to the optimism of an international conference in Paris where more than $7.6 billion was pledged to help Lebanon's economy recover from last summer's war with Israel.

As the grants and loans were announced, bursts of gunfire echoed along the airport road and columns of black smoke rose from burning cars in some of the worst clashes since Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended in 1990.

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The United States appealed on Thursday for calm in Lebanon and reiterated concern that "irresponsible" forces were working to topple the government of embattled Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

In November, the White House warned that Syria and Iran, acting through the Hezbollah group of Shi'ite Muslim militants, might be on the verge of an attempted coup in Lebanon.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack condemned the latest violence in which at least four students were shot and killed in clashes between pro- and anti-government activists in the capital, Beirut.

"There are certain irresponsible parties in Lebanon who have been provoking an atmosphere of confrontation and antagonism within the political system," he told reporters.

"The links between those individuals and groups and outside entities are well known. And they have been engaged in a cynical manipulation of public perceptions in the political process."

Asked whether the United States still saw the activities of Syria, Iran and Hezbollah as a threat and whether it was nervous about the safety of Siniora himself, McCormack said nothing had changed since November.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Yes, that's what's being reported at Euro News, apparently because Castro's enemies have been spreading evil rumors about his demise:

Castro shows doubters he is alive and well

A defiant Fidel Castro has issued more footage of himself, as proof that he is on the road to recovery after intestinal surgery. The Cuban leader - appearing in a sports tracksuit -is seen walking freely and heard speaking clearly. His message was to those he called 'enemies' who had declared him dead. "Now they will have to ressurect me," he says. "I'm not worried. They said I was dead. Nonsense. But what they say is what keeps me working and fighting."

These are the first images released of Castro for six weeks. He carried a copy of the day's newspaper to prove the date. He reveals that he is still active in government decisions and up-to-date with current events before signing off with the words: "Thank you very much. Homeland or death."

I'm a bit suspicious.

Meanwhile the International Herald Tribune (in a story titled "post-Castro transition has already occurred") reports that the Cuban government is already in the "post Castro" stages.

I'm not entirely convinced the man is alive, and Dennis thinks he's dead but they just don't want to admit it.

Not that this has stopped Hugo Chavez from claiming he's ready to use a jump rope, or whatever "almost jogging" means. I have a feeling if he was really almost jogging, some new pictures would be released.

These news reports that he's "still alive!" are starting to remind me of Idi Amin.

I guess we've entered the ex post Castro era.

Anyway, here's what he looked like in October:

And here he is in happier times:

What's with the finger? Some "in" joke? (Don't expect me to provide the caption, as it's not very nice.)

Staying with the ex post Castro theme, we can go back even further in time -- to a fascinating interaction between "boy Castro" and another U.S. President -- Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Castro was 14 years old, he wrote to him and asked for ten dollars*:

"If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american . . . because never I have not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them. . . . Thank you very much. Good by. Your friend. Fidel Castro."

Perhaps if FDR had actually sent that kid a sawbuck, the past 40 years would have been completely different for so many.

The letter goes on to say:

My Address is:
Sr. Fidel castro
Colegio de Dolores
Santiago de Cuba
Oriente, Cuba
I dont know very English but I know very much Spanish and I suppose you don't know very Spanish but you know very English because you are American but I am not American...

If you want iron to make your ships I will show to you the bigest(sic) (minas) of iron of the land. They are in Mayari, Oriente, Cuba.

The entire letter (from the National Archives) can be seen here.

What fascinates me about it is that many web sites report that little Fidel was twelve years old at the time. But that's only because they take him at his word; Castro dated the letter November 6, 1940, and in the letter he states unequivocally that he is twelve!

Here it is, in his own handwriting:

According to Wikipedia, Castro was born on August 13, 1926, which would have made him fourteen (as Bababu points out) when he wrote the letter. Why do reputable (gulp) news outlets like the BBC continue to say he was twelve? There's quite a difference between twelve and fourteen, and two years a long time when you're that age.

Unless Wikipedia is wrong and the BBC is right, I'd say the lie is there, for the world to see.

But why would the teenage Castro lie about his age to FDR? For financial gain, perhaps?

And if he was lying then, how do we know he isn't lying now?

Terrible as it is to make such an accusation against a world leader, I think that even if Castro were dead, he would continue to lie.

Has anyone other than Hugo Chavez verified his latest claim?

* Ten dollars would be $143.69 in today's money.

Evidently the Palestinians have learned a great lesson from the Civil War in Iraq. Road side bombs work.

GAZA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed a member of a Hamas-led security force in the Gaza Strip on Thursday and wounded five others, a Hamas police spokesman said.

The spokesman said the six were travelling in a jeep when the bomb was detonated. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.

Update: 26 Jan '07 0614z

Hamas is fighting back.

Hamas gunmen shot dead a member of the Fatah faction's militant Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in the northern Gaza Strip early Friday, a Fatah spokesman said.

The spokesman said that the militant was "executed" by members of Hamas' security force, who had come to question the slain militant about the death of one of their members.

The Hamas militants surrounded the house, said the spokesman, sparking a gunbattle which killed the Fatah man.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

More on the right of free association, which (as I pointed out yesterday) seems to be a court-ordered emanation from the penumbra of the First Amendment right of the people to peaceably assemble.

The comments intrigue me, and I realize that this issue is far from settled.

Just what is freedom of association and how far does it go?

The right to freedom of association is a right I believe in, especially where it comes down to the individual level. Thus, I think I have as much right as the Boy Scouts to form any sort of association I want, and keep anyone out of it I want. When I go out into the public streets, I have a right to assemble with whomever I want to assemble. Whether -- and to what extent -- that right to assemble includes a right to keep others from assembling in my assembly, that confuses me. Because, don't they have a right to assemble wherever they want, and associate with whomever they want as long as they do so in a peaceful manner?

Is there a right of home-schooled children to compete in public spelling bees? There's a story in today's Inquirer dealing with just that, and the answer is unclear. Pennsylvania state law requires that home-schooled children be allowed to attend public school events and activities, but the school here maintains that the spelling bee is part of its "language arts" curriculum.

The law says that home-schoolers must be allowed to participate in public-school athletics or in any other activities outlined in Section 511 of the Pennsylvania School Code, a definition that includes "exercises, athletics, or games of any kind, school publications, debating, forensic, dramatic, musical, and other activities related to the school program."

It is up to local districts to interpret how that applies to their schools, said Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Michael Storm. There is no specific penalty for noncompliance, he added; the family's only remedy would be through the courts.

Avon Grove School District Superintendent Augustus Massaro says the law does not cover the first round of the spelling bee, which is held in school classrooms. "This is a co-curricular, not an extracurricular activity," Massaro said last week. "The early rounds of the spelling bee require participation in the Language Arts program. If you are not part of the school, you can't participate, because this is part of the Language Arts curriculum."

Senate majority leader Pileggi, whose district the Reynolds family lives in, said that while he could not comment on the specifics of Meghan's situation, "clearly, spelling bees are the type of activity that home-schoolers were to be allowed participation in. That was the intent of the law."

Roger Wilson, a Franklin Township supervisor who is a neighbor of the Reynolds family, helped circulate an e-mail appeal and a petition for Meghan's inclusion that has gathered widespread support and will be presented to the school board tonight, he said.

"I'm concerned that the district is looking for ways to exclude her rather than be open," Wilson said. "You can't help but have the suspicion that she's being excluded because she won last year and they don't want the competition. It's surprising and disappointing that they don't welcome her participation."

What I am asking is who has the right to assemble, to associate, and with whom? And, assuming that a given individual or group has a right to attend or leave a particular assembly, along with a right to keep others out, at what point should the state be allowed to enforce this right?

Let's turn to another example. Local anti-gay activist Michael Marcavage (the subject of a number of posts in this blog) has just lost a court battle against the Philadelphia Police Department which excluded him from participating in a gay rights event. The court's legal reasoning was that there is no "right to drown out" the speech of other people at their own, properly licensed event:

U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel on Thursday granted a summary judgment for the city and the event organizers, Philly Pride Presents Inc.

"There is no constitutional right to drown out the speech of another person," Stengel wrote in the 52-page judgement.

The activists, whose case received extensive coverage in the Christian media, argued that the city had violated their First Amendment rights by arresting them at an event on a public street. They claimed police silenced them because of the content of their message. A city judge later dismissed the criminal charges against the 11 defendants.

Organizers of the gay-pride event initially tried to block the protesters from entering, but police escorted the activists in while attempting to confine them to the fringes. The protesters, using bullhorns and signs, were arrested after they disobeyed orders to move. Police said the crowd was threatening to get violent.

Stengel said the gay-pride event had received proper city permits, and the evangelists had neglected to take alternative means to communicate their message, including applying for a permit to hold a counterprotest. He called the activists' claims "simplistic."

Stengel's decision expands upon a 1995 Supreme Court decision that held that the Boston organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade could exclude gay protesters from a private parade on public streets. "This is an important decision that supports the First Amendment rights of organizers of all permitted events," said Jeremy D. Frey, an attorney with Pepper Hamilton L.L.P., which provided free representation to Philly Pride Presents.

Ted Hoppe, attorney for the activists, said the decision allows the government to deny free speech in public areas.

Very distracting even to write, It's getting harder and harder to use ordinary words.

Where was I?

Marcavage. He claims that he has a right to assemble where others have already assembled, in order to yell his message at them. Does he? How far does freedom of association go before it becomes freedom of disassociation? U.S. District Judge Stengel's decision is here in pdf format; it relies on the "time place and manner" doctrine.

I remember attending a pro-Israel demonstration in Berkeley, which was greeted by angry Islamic counter-demonstrators. The latter were waving the PLO flag and attempting to drown out the pro-Israel demonstrators with bullhorns. The BPD was enforcing a rule of separation which required the counter-demonstrators to be on the opposite side of a busy major street, where they could still be heard, but where they were incapable of exercising whatever "right" they had to drown out the pro-Israel demonstrators. There was a lot of emotion present, violent rhetoric was flying, and while I was appalled by the Muslims and on the side of the Israel supporters, I remember feeling sorry for the Berkeley police. Had violence erupted, the cops would have been blamed.

No doubt the Philadelphia police were faced with a similar situation in the case of Marcavage (whose views that homosexuals should be executed have been widely reported in the local gay press). I wish I had easy answers, but they're not staring me in the face.

Ditto the Ku Klux Klan. Every time they want to demonstrate, it requires more police than Klansmen just to keep a semblance of order, and preserve public safety. I shudder to think what would happen if the Klan decided to hold a rally in Philadelphia. But what about the right of the people to peaceably assemble?

And what about "freedom of association" as a subset within the penumbra of the right to peaceably "assemble"? Are they necessarily synonymous? Most of the arguments I hear about freedom of association involve not the affirmative right to associate, but the right to exclusivity in association, to disassociation if you will. Surely, the right to associate includes a right not to associate. In cases where there's a group of people who have assembled in agreement with each other, that's fine. But who has the right to kick out whom? The bare majority of the group that has assembled? Well, what is the group? In the case of a Klan rally, the counter-demonstrators always outnumber the Klan, so why doesn't that give them the "right" to just say no to the Klan? The Klan is easy, but what about a town that decided not to allow Republicans (or gay activists) to assemble? Whose "assembly" is it?

If Marcavage can attend a gay pride festival and yell at them, shouldn't I be allowed to attend the local Saudi Madrassa and yell in their mosque?

Of course, this just an exercise in court-ordered line drawing, so there's really no need for me to be confused. All I need to do is wait for the court decisions to come down, and just say "That's the law!"

I mean, isn't that where freedom of association comes from?

Back to educational issues. I have to say, I have a bit of a problem when that freedom-of-association entity we call the "assembly" is a huge enterprise created and funded with tax dollars decides to exclude some of the very people whose tax dollars made its existence possible. In a historic showdown on June 11, 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace (backed up by state troopers) physically barred black students from entering the University of Alabama.

Wallace eventually stepped aside in obedience to the superior force posed by federal authorities (in the form of the combined forces of the Attorney General's office and the National Guard).

Who had the right to attend college in the name of freedom of association derived from the right to assemble? All the taxpayers? Or just some of them?

Isn't there also a thing called the 14th Amendment? Isn't that constitutional? Or can amendments to the Constitution be unconstitutional?

Don't laugh.

There's an argument that the Constitution can become undeclarational, but the idea's champions seem more enchanted with the "laws of nature" part than with the "pursuit of happiness" part.

Sigh.

I hate the tyranny of the majority almost as much as I hate the tyranny of the minority, so I'll probably never figure out just how "free" this freedom of association deal really is.

In China, it's the Year Of The P-P-P-Pig!

Yay! Right?

Not in China. According to this detailed WSJ report, the Chinese government is systematically censoring all mentions of pig and pig images -- putting Western advertisers in a mad editing scramble:

SHANGHAI -- Next month, China will ring in the Year of the Pig. Nestlé SA planned to celebrate with TV ads featuring a smiling cartoon pig. "Happy new pig year," the ads said.

This week, China Central Television, the national state-run TV network, banned Nestlé's ad -- and all images and spoken references to the animal in commercials, including those tied to the Lunar New Year, China's biggest holiday.

The intent: to avoid offending Muslims, who consider pigs unclean. "China is a multiethnic country," the network's ad department said in a notice sent to ad agencies late Tuesday. "To show respect to Islam, and upon guidance from higher levels of the government, CCTV will keep any 'pig' images off the TV screen."

Suddenly, companies reaching out to China's booming consumer market have a pig problem. The edict has sent Nestlé and others scrambling to adapt to the last-minute rule change, altering spots that had included pigs.

Nestlé is now figuring out what to do with its ads, says its media-buying company MindShare, a unit of WPP Group. "We act in line with any requests that we receive from the authorities" about the content of ads, says Francois-Xavier Perroud, a spokesman for Nestlé.

What amazes me about this is it isn't even mandated by the Koran, which forbids Muslims to eat pork.

Islamic leaders are usually quick to denounce any and all misinterpretations and mischaracterizations of Islam and the Koran. So why aren't they speaking up?

Until they denounce the war on pig images, I'll have to assume Allah doesn't just hate pork, he hates Porky himself!

Not to b-b-butt in, but shouldn't the rule be "hate the pork but love the pig"?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post! Welcome all!

And Happy New Year -- including all you pig lovers out there!

Comments are always appreciated, and feel free to look around.

MORE: I should stress that the anti-pig campaign (as the WSJ article points out) involves television right now. How far it will go is not entirely clear:

The policy shift offers a window on the inner workings of China's governmental machinery, known for its surprise edicts and abrupt shifts in regulation. It wasn't immediately clear whether the ban applies just to ads or to all TV content. And some analysts said the government could still reverse itself, or offer exceptions to the ban.

Are the Piglet stamps that had already been printed safe? It's too early to tell. Pigs are an important part of Chinese culture, and while this is speculation, I think the government might be very hesitant to issue unenforceable edicts. But television is under state control, and Western advertisers are an easy target.

AND MORE: Is there a double standard in China where it comes to cultural sensitivities? Are some animals more offensive than others? Or does it depend on who's offended?

The reason I bring this up is because in 2004, China celebrated the Year of the Monkey, despite the fact that this forced American blogger Frank J. to spend the year in a state of terror.

And I may not be blogging here much longer.....

In fact, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is right, very soon I might not be blogging at all:

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report. Iran's official FARS news agency also reported the comments.

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

Surely, when Mahmoud says "soon," he means before May?

Damn! I hope I didn't contribute to the problem, for I recently compared Mahmoud to Coco's favorite ShihTzu, Tristan. But honest, it wasn't meant as a particularly unfair comparison, and I didn't mean to offend the Iranian president, much less cause the end of the world. Honest! All I was trying to say was that Coco and Tristan (the ShihTzu) probably had more fun than Mahmoud and Hugo (the Venezolano).

Is that really so bad that things had to come to this?

And on top of that I'm starting to really feel guilty about something else. I'm remembering my well-meaning attempt to send Ahmadinejad a necktie. Might that have been misinterpreted? Like, you know, him being from another culture and everything?

I swear I wasn't trying to insult him or make him feel bad or hurt his self esteem, but I thought that if he would wear a necktie that might lead to him being put on the cover of Time Magazine, where only peaceful people go.

Anyway, this was how I visualized world peace:

Laugh if you want, and I know it sounds naive in retrospect, but I honestly thought that if I could get the man to put on a necktie, not only would he see the light, but it might stop the end of the world.

Hey, at least I tried. And hey, if it turns out I really have caused the end of America, well, I'm sorry!

There. I apologized.

Shouldn't that be enough?

The bloggers are watching.

John Derbyshire caught my attention this morning with this:

One of the lesser evils of our age is the passing of "anti-discrimination" laws by legislators in democratic countries. These laws amount to systematic destruction of the principle of freedom of association. While governments should of course treat all citizens impartially, legislators have no business telling citizens whom we may do business with, rent a room to, hire, fire, or engage in any other private transaction with.

As an individual, I think freedom of association is absolute. There's a right to associate or not associate with anyone, for any reason or no reason.

But when individuals form themselves into groups, the "I" (the "me") of the individual tends to become subordinate to a greater "we." At what point does the greater "we" limit the freedom of association inherent in the individual "me"?

Obviously, an individual landlord in close proximity to his tenants is not the same sort of entity as state-funded public housing administration. While it violates the small landlord's rights to tell him who he may or may not rent to, this argument is based on the landlord's individual right -- something wholly irrelevant to the government. (Similarly, a mom and pop store owner is not Wal-Mart.)

What about Muslim cab drivers refusing to pick up passengers carrying alcohol? Are these drivers to be seen as individuals, or as members of a state-licensed group? Taxi medallions are considered a special privilege, and it can be argued that they border on being a state-licensed monopoly. How far does it go? Can Bill Gates decide not to sell computer software to Scientologists?

I don't have the answer, but I think it involves individual conscience. The larger the group of individuals, the less it can be argued that a particular member of the group can claim to be the conscience for the rest of the members of the group.

However, some groups have group consciences (the Boy Scouts are a good example), and these groups have every right to exclude those who do not subscribe to the dictates of their consciences. I can't demand that my local Saudi madrassa allow me to teach students that their religious texts ought to be interpreted in the context I'd like them to be interpreted, and indeed, I don't have any right even to join them in educational or religious services if they don't want me.

Individual rights and group rights are like tar and water, and that's what makes freedom of association such a tough principle to analyze. Analysis is compounded by the fact that freedom of association is not spelled out in the First Amendment, but is implicit in the right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Doesn't that mean it's as much a part of the First Amendment penumbra of rights as the right to privacy?

Uh oh. Maybe I shouldn't have said "penumbra."

God forbid that I should emanate anything.

Clayton Cramer comments on an interesting cultural phenomenon: female Muslim police officers who refuse to touch men:

In addition to refusing a traditional congratulatory handshake from Sir Ian, the WPC - who wore a traditional Muslim hijab headscarf - also declined to be photographed with him as she did not want the picture used for 'propaganda purposes'.

The woman had earlier insisted that it was contrary to her religious teaching for her to touch a man.

Now The Mail on Sunday has learned that her gesture has sparked top-level discussions at Scotland Yard.

Some officers argue that her attitude towards men might impede her ability to detain offenders.

However, it is clear that she is happy to come into contact with men, just not shake their hand or kiss them.

An inquiry has now been launched and the unidentified WPC - described as 'a non-Asian Muslim' - could face the sack if it is considered that her strict religious beliefs prevent her performing as an effective police officer.

However, senior commanders are worried that dismissing her would deepen the atmosphere of mistrust between the police and the Muslim community.

"Sir, you will have to handcuff yourself--my religious beliefs prevent me from touching you." I believe, from reading Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, a memoir of teaching literature while wearing a veil, that Muslim women are only allowed to touch father, brother, and husband. It sounds like this police officer is going to have a rather limited set of potential offenders that she can handcuff!

What also intrigued me about the British incident was this little tidbit at the end:

In June 2005 Sir Ian was judged to have 'hung out to dry' three white detectives - who were accused of rudely mispronouncing "Shi'ites' - to prove his anti-racist credentials.

An employment tribunal said that while he was deputy commissioner in charge of discipline and diversity he had prejudiced disciplinary proceedings against the men because he wanted to make an example of them.

One of the advantages of blogging is that mispronunciations aren't usually a problem. Still, I suppose I can always run into trouble by creating the appearance of a comparison, and with a word like "Shi'ite," the opportunities abound!

While I don't know whether these cops were Cockneys, I see a possible problem with the Cockney pronunciation of "Shi'ite" because Cockneys tend to drop their "t"s anyway, replacing them with a back-of-the-throat borderline vowel sound that resembles the "uh" sound only harder.

Precisely the sound which the apostrophe in "Shi'ite" would seem to invite!

Thus, if the "t" in "Shi'ite" is dropped in the normal Cockney way, then the apostrophe in "Shi'ite" would come to sound like the "t" in "Shi'ite" -- and this might cause to a court reporter or linguist familiar with intepreting Cockney pronunciations to believe that a "t" is meant to go where the apostrophe appears!

That's not very nice result for Shi'ite sensititivities, is it?

I believe in being fair and logical, so it strikes me as just as likely to believe that there are two apostrophes as two "t"s.

Therefore, it is just as reasonable to assume the Cockney officers might have intended to say "Shi'i'e" as they would the very wrong "Shitite."

I worry about these things because Coco's best friend happens to be a ShihTzu, and were he and Coco to mate with each other, the hybrid result would either be a "ShihT Bull," or a "BullShihT."

Sigh.

I can get into enough trouble as it is from merely staring at words. At least I don't have to worry about mispronouncements.

(Unless I make a pronouncement that turns out to be wrong.)

UPDATE: Commenter geekWithA45 advises that in the UK, "shit" is pronounced "shite".

No bull?

Via Drudge, I now see that the experts have been counting Pelosi eye blinks, and timing McCain's little snooze.

Ah, the vital issues this country faces!

While I noticed these "issues" last night, I was trying to be funny when I commented on them, and I did not mean to imply that they were of urgent national importance.

But suppose I said the following, in my usual sarcastic manner:

If Pelosi's blinking is any indication of what's going on with the Democrats, and if McCain's snoozing is any indication of what's going on with the Republicans, that suggests all is not well with the state of the union.

I honestly don't know. Normally, it wouldn't have occurred to me. Perhaps I shouldn't be reading comments.

Here is a short video of an Iranian woman confronting the morality police in Iran. Dymphna has this to say about it:

...I think you will enjoy the thirty seconds or so of sweet revenge, I urge you to click on what my friend described as an example how "Iranian women are sick and tired of the women morality police." Fortunately, you don't need to understand Farsi to see what is happening.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In my post on the State of the Union I included a video by Stuck Mojo.

I went to their www site and found a tale of woe about how record companies rip off bands and fans. However, Mojo has an answer.

The tracks on our new record, "Southern Born Killers," will be posted at www.StuckMojo.us, as well as all over the internet for you to download, FOR FREE! You read that right! Download the songs, share them with your friends and, if you like what you hear, let potential new fans know where they too can get the songs for free.

1. Why would we give the songs away for free? Well, we've been recording records for free for almost twelve years now anyway! Of course it wasn't free to you, the fans. You thought you were supporting the band as you shelled out 16 bucks to a retail store which kept five or six of those dollars for a few inches of shelf space and the rest ended up at a record company in New York, Los Angeles, London or Germany. Yeah, I know, they have a staff to pay, rent, a light bill, advertising budgets, etc. I'm a confirmed capitalist and I want to see everyone that works hard succeed. But most of the guys that I know who play music for a living drive older, used cars, live in small apartments and eat microwave burritos three times a day. I've never once met a record label executive that drives a Toyota Corolla, sleeps on an air mattress and has to take medicine to control his chronic case of diarrhea from Taco Bell. And that's saying something because I've met a lot of them! In fact, most of them have a fresh tan and a golf swing that wasn't perfected just on the weekends. I'm through with them making money off my music.

2. If you like the songs and want to own a copy of the actual "Southern Born Killers" CD, then purchase it at www.StuckMojoMedia.com. This guarantees you the album at it's highest possible audio quality as well as a full-color, 16 panel booklet, a bonus DVD featuring the new video for "Open Season" shot by British filmmaker Simon Evans and a 20 minute behind-the-scenes documentary.

3. This album was completely financed by the band. By purchasing "Southern Born Killers" directly, you can do so knowing the money will go directly to the creators of the music who will continue investing in another record, another video, another tour.

4. Lastly, if you don't have the dollars to buy the record, then just enjoy the free downloads. Tell everyone to go to www.myspace.com/stuckinthemojo or www.StuckMojo.us and come see Stuck Mojo live when we are in your town or a town near you.

Thank you for your support. Respectfully, Rich Ward

.... is all being taking care of by Stephen Green -- the one and only VodkaPundit -- (along with others) so I can relax. I'm delighted he's feeling better too, and this occasion calls for a drink.

Have to say, I'm glad I don't have to live blog this one, as I'm so distracted by watching Nancy Pelosi's face for signs.

Signs of what, I do not know.

She's just looking like she doesn't want me to know.

MORE (9:46 p.m.) : I'm glad to see Bush is talking the talk on Iraq ("not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it's the fight we're in" and "let us find our resolve and turn towards victory") but he's got an uphill battle and he knows it.

The uphill battle is not winning in Iraq (which is possible), but winning in Congress.

He should make these speeches more often.

MORE: "America must not fail" and "the consequences of failure would be grievous."

They would be.

What is a "nightmare scenario" for us is simply "the objective" for our enemy.

To Congress: "Whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure."

(Let's hope.)

MORE (10:30 p.m.) : Bush mentioned Iran, and Stephen Green thought it was the most significant part of the speech :

Bush did just explicitly mention Iran as complicit in the campaign in Iraq. And that, my friends, is the only part of tonight's SOTU worth remembering.

MORE at 10:34: Glenn Reynolds noticed Pelosi jumping and rocketing to her feet. Damn! I thought I saw some sort of movement, but my back was turned. I miss all the good stuff. Like that and the "butt kissing" noticed by Mary Katherine Ham.

I don't know if it counts, but I did see McCain appearing to catch a snooze until the camera turned away. Whether he was really asleep or just pretending, God knows. (I was tuned in to MSNBC, and please don't ask me why, as I don't know.)

In her last Boston Globe column, Cathy Young shares a valuable political insight while discussing the "Mommy Wars":

The "Mommy Wars" of full-time motherhood versus career are likely to remain intractable, with some feminists accusing stay-at-home mothers of letting down the sisterhood, some conservatives accusing working mothers of letting down their children, and people in the middle calling for freedom of choice.

Not only is she absolutely right, but what's even worse is the way the people in the "middle" (it's pretty unsettling to consider that only the middle favors choice) get it from both sides. I've seen this happen in countless other ways, with countless other issues. If we stick with Cathy Young's example, both the feminist activists and their conservative counterparts will lash out at any person from this middle who dares to get involved in politics. Typically, those who do not agree with one side entirely and on all positions will be accused of being on the other side. This is why the "middle" (a term I use reservedly) tend to avoid any and all situations where they might come into contact with activists.

The hot button issues are the worst of all, as they attract absolutists. If you don't believe me, just try being in anywhere near the middle on the abortion issue and talking to people on either side. The anti-abortion side will all but accuse you of aiding and abetting murder if you hesitate to advocate imprisonment, and the pro-abortion side will say you must be "part of the right wing" and that you're "setting women back" if you admit you're squeamish about partial birth abortion. Unless you agree with them 100%, each side will accuse you of being "on the other side."

My theory is that those in "the middle" avoid political situations because they don't like being insulted. Unfortunately for them, this suits the activists just fine. Insulting people who don't agree 100% has therefore become a way of maintaining standards. Keeping people out.

The hard lesson is that it's a rude world out there, and if you care enough to get involved in anything, you'd best be prepared to be insulted.

But there are many people who are unable to tolerate being insulted, and they never will.

How many of them will vote?

Back to Cathy Young, who concludes with these final words to her Boston Globe readers:

As I say goodbye, I'd like to conclude with an issue that has become a subject of overriding concern for me : a tendency toward polarization and mutual demonization in American public life. I have often been embroiled in debates on whether the right or the left is more responsible for the politics of hate. This is fruitless. Things will not get better until people on both sides forget about the blame game and start ostracizing the hate-mongers in their own camp.

Ostracizing hate-mongers requires a very thick skin. The "middle" simply does not have it. It's all they can do to get up the nerve to go vote -- and brave the activists who hang out at the polls.

It appears that in the US determination to get a regime change in Iran the Gulf States are siding with America. Just as they sided (by acquiecense) with Israel's strike against Iran's cats paw Hizballah last summer.

Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns clearly knew his audience in Dubai and the reception he'd get if he'd talk tough against Iran. While Burns was busy today in Dubai warning Iran to back down, the think tank Mr. Burns was speaking to, the Gulf Research Center (described by the AP as "an influential think-tank"), had just put out a paper on Sunday, warning that "Tehran has to finally realize that if push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a US military strike, then the Arab Gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the US. Living under the shadow of Iranian nuclear bomb is unacceptable."

H/T Little Green Footballs

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Nothing new. Palestinians are unpopular where ever they live. The Lebanese didn't like them. The Jordanians didn't like them. And now it appears that some Iraqis don't like them.

Palestinians living in Iraq have been warned that they will be killed by Shia militias unless they leave the country immediately.

Iraqi police say the immigrants, who are mostly Sunni Muslims, are the target of a backlash by hardline Shias, including members of the Mehdi Army led by the Shia preacher Moqtada al-Sadr.

More than 600 Palestinians are believed to have died at the hands of Shia militias since the war began in 2003, including at least 300 from the Baladiat area of Baghdad. Many were tortured with electric drills before they died.

Now the Shia militias are stepping up their campaign to drive out Iraq's 20,000 remaining Palestinians - half the estimated 40,000 living in the country at the start of the war, all of whom were welcomed by Saddam Hussein and provided with housing, money and free education.

Hundreds of Iraqis were forced to leave their homes to make way for the migrants, many of whom joined the ruling Ba'ath party.

Sheik Mahmoud El Hassani, a spokesman for the Mehdi Army, said the Palestinians had brought their suffering on themselves. He said Shias believed they were in league with Sunni extremists and al-Qaeda.

DUBAI: An influential cleric of Saudi Arabia's hardline Sunni school of Islam has denounced Shia Muslims as "infidels" in a new religious edict that comes amid rising sectarian tension in the region. "The rejectionists (Shias) in their entirety are the worst of the Islamic nation's sects. They bear all the characteristics of infidels," Sheikh Abdel-Rahman al-Barrak said in the fatwa, or ruling, distributed on Islamist websites. "They are in truth polytheist infidels, though they hide this," the fatwa said, citing theological differences 14 centuries after the death of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), such as reverence of shrines which followers of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi school consider abhorrent. Concern is growing in Saudi Arabia over Shia-Sunni violence in Iraq which has taken the northern neighbour to the brink of civil war. Sunni-Shia tensions are also high in Lebanon, where Shias are leading efforts to bring down a Sunni-led cabinet. "The Sunni and Shias schools of Islam are opposites that can never agree, there can be no coming together," the fatwa said. Barrak, an independent scholar, has come to be regarded by many as the highest authority for Wahhabi Muslims.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It appears that Lebanese Hizbaballah leader Hassan Nasserallah is tired of knocking heads with Israel and is going after an easier target. His own country Lebanon.

Thousands of Lebanese loyal to Hizbullah leader Nasrallah blocked main roads in Beirut and around the country at the start of what may be a putsch against the government. One man has been killed.

Hizbullah's masses blocked roads with rubble and burning tires, cutting the capital off from its airport and from the rest of the country. In addition, the government opposition, led by Hizbullah, announced a general strike. The riots began at 6 AM local time, and plumes of smoke formed a black cloud over the city soon after.

Nine people have been reported injured in shooting, including one dead.

Thousands of pro-Syrian, Hizbullah and other elements have staged Beirut street protests and sit-ins for nearly two months. Camped outside Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's office, they wish to topple his government, install a new unity administration and hold early elections. Hizbullah leader Nasrallah has been making fiery speeches, calling the current government of a part of the "Zionist-American conspiracy."

Most main roads inside Beirut were blocked Tuesday morning, as were the highways linking the capital to north and south Lebanon and to the Syrian capital Damascus.

BEIRUT, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Lebanon's opposition began removing roadblocks across the country on Tuesday night after suspending a general strike and halting protests aimed at toppling the government, a senior opposition source said.

"All roads in various areas, including that leading to the airport, will be reopened shortly," the source said. He had said that the move was agreed by various opposition forces, including Hezbollah, after a day of clashes killed three people and wounded 133.

Posted: 23-01-2007 , 18:23 GMT

Lebanon's Premier Fouad Saniora called for an urgent parliamentary session to discuss the deteriorating security situation after riots between anti and pro-government followers claimed three lives and wounded scores of others on Tuesday. Saniora told a news conference "I demand an immediate extraordinary meeting by the parliament to settle issues within the constitutional institutions."

According to Saniora, the general strike called by the opposition has developed into "provocations that went beyond all limits." "Blocking roads...is an aggression on the people and their freedoms. It is an attack on social order and it involves risks that are hidden to nobody."

However, he stressed that "our hands remain stretched to facilitate dialogue and settle problems and renew confidence between the Lebanese." The premier said the March 14 parliamentary majority that supports his government "will not fail to listen to the opinions of others."

More on the end of the strike.

Lebanon's pro-Syrian opposition has suspended a general strike and halted protests aimed at toppling the Government.

Clashes between anti and pro-government supporters left three people dead and about 130 wounded.

Lebanese security forces say protests erupted into violence as pro-government supporters fought street battles with followers of the opposition, led by Hezbollah.

Here is a report from a day ago using the big lie technique. Nasserallah was trying to prevent a civil war. So he says.

BEIRUT, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called on Lebanese to take part in an anti-government strike on Tuesday to topple leaders who he said wanted to take the country to civil war.

Nasrallah said his Shi'ite Muslim group, part of the opposition which is locked in a power struggle with the government, would not be dragged to violence in a country still rebuilding from its 1975-1990 civil war.

"Some of the governing team strive day and night to push matters towards a civil war in Lebanon. Some of them work and dream ... that there will be a Sunni-Shi'ite war in Lebanon," he said, adding that they sought to partition the country. "We will not go to a civil war," Nasrallah told followers gathered to mark Ashura, when Shi'ites commemorate the death of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, the Imam Hussein.

The opposition has called a general strike for Tuesday, stepping up its campaign to oust the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who has in turn defied its demands for veto power in cabinet and early parliamentary polls.

Gateway Pundit has a round up of earlier events and photos.

Update: 23 Jan '07 2324z

Michael Totten has photos and commentary.

Just a side note here...Up until today Hezbollah has modeled its "resistance" to the elected government after the March 14 demonstations to oust the occupying Syrian army. The March 14 movement, though, never did anything remotely like this. That's because they are, for the most part, liberal and democratic while Hezbollah is a Syrian-Iranian terrorist army. Today should be a moment of clarity for the willfully obtuse.

Notice, also, that the violent clashes in the streets are mostly between Sunnis and Shia, not between Christians and Shia. This is, and was, entirely predictable. Those who think Hezbollah is a popular movement with the support of Lebanon's Muslims as a whole should think again.

Hezbollah called off the so-called "strike." Nasrallah seems to be aware that his latest stunt was seen by Lebanese an act of war in direct violation of Lebanon's power-sharing arrangment.

Members of Parliament today described Hezbollah as "terrorists" and Beirut as "occupied." Nasrallah is learning the limits of what he can do. He can squat downtown, but he can't seize it or burn it without starting a war.

What you see in Lebanon right now is a proxy war between the Syrian-Iranian axis on one side, and the US, France, and Saudi Arabia on the other.

Saudi Arabia is on our side in this one. Lebanon may be the only country in the world where Saudi foreign policy matches mine.

The reason the Saudis are on the March 14 side is two-fold. One: The Sunnis are with March 14 and the Shia Iranians are with March 8. Two: The Saudis want one freewheeling Arab country they can visit on vacation. Seriously. The Saudis love Lebanon just the way it is. Huge numbers of them go there during the summer for drinking, gambling, and sex.

H/T reader linearthinker.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter firebug at Durham in Wonderland points out this really wonderful site called Pandagon and a discussion of the Duke case going on there.

They talk about the culture of rape that allowed and encouraged the "rape" of the "victim" in the case.

If Federal Crime Statistics[pdf] are to be believed there is very little white on black rape in America. The numbers show that black on white rape is the predominant interracial rape crime. If you account for population it is even worse.

So I suppose you could say that there is a culture of interracial rape in America.

What supports it? Just listen to the music.

When a culture no longer honors its women, you have a culture in serious decline.

Clayton Cramer discusses the statistics.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A friend (who happens to be a loyal Democrat) has just sent me this:

FWIW, I am already sick of the above picture. Naturally, I didn't know what to do with it, so naturally, I'm putting it in this blog post. I'd hate to be manipulated by the vast right wing conspiracy, though, and I'm avoiding that by not googling the picture.

What I don't know I can't be charged with, right?

(Right.....)

But at the risk of sounding like a VRWC theorist, I do know (and I admit) that I am already sick of Hillary. No; unlike Andrew Sullivan I am not struggling to overcome "hatred" of her. I don't think she's worth hating. Besides, as I have said in far too many posts already, I believe her presidency is inevitable, so why would I hate her? Shouldn't I love her? I'll say this for Hillary: she's one of the few major public office holders to personally answer me in a signed letter with a specific reference to the subject of concern to me. I do appreciate that.

At minimum, I should try to be polite, and perhaps it's rude for me to admit I am sick of Hillary. The thing is, I'm trying to be honest here, and if Andrew Sullivan can grapple with his admitted hatred (hatred he feels no more) then I think I should try to examine my tiredness.

Sullivan says he hated Hillary (who "managed to arouse every one of my love-to-hate zones") before he stopped hating her. Hate is a strong emotion, and a destructive, poisonous one. It cannot be carried on forever. But the thing is, being sick of something or someone is very different.

How do you stop being sick of something? Sheesh! Does this mean I have to explain why I was sick of Hillary? That's almost as bad as examining whether I still am -- but let me try.

I was sick of Hillary long ago -- way back in the mid 90s. I voted for -- no, that's just it. I didn't vote for her; I voted for Bill Clinton. But they started this "co-president" deal that "twofer" business, and it made me feel as if I had voted for her. She acted as if she had been elected, and I didn't like that. I didn't like (and still don't like) socialized medicine, and I didn't like the smoke and mirrors with Hillary's Health Care Plan from Hell. There were so many just-short-of-an-indictment things, from firing the travel employees, rudeness to the staff and the secret service, shreddings, missing records turning up in the kitchen, and the last minute terrorist pardon deal was (I thought) just beyond the pale. I breathed a sigh of relief when she was gone -- not because I hated her, but because I was sick of her.

It's hard to forget the main reason she left the White House -- that her husband had to leave the White House because the Constitution required it. Had there been no 22nd Amendment, he'd have been easily, overwhelmingly, elected to a third term. Or should I say she?

Anyway, I am sick again of Hillary, and I didn't want to be, but this latest move on her part has activated a lot of talk which I'm not supposed to ignore, and which gives me this ghastly sense of blogligation! I know there's nothing literally requiring me to write a blog post, but I hate it when my agenda is dictated by the decisions of other people. And let's face it, it was Hillary's decision to run, not mine. I'd rather she not have, because I'd rather not have felt forced to write another blog post about her.

But there's that picture above. Regardless of its source, I think it brings up an important point.

It occurs to me that Hillary may be a bit like Lurleen Wallace.

Who is Lurleen Wallace? Why she was the wife of Alabama governor George Wallace, and she ran for office only because her husband was legally barred from seeking another term.

He could have easily won a second term in 1966 had he been eligible to stand for one; in Alabama (as in many states at the time), governors were not allowed to serve two consecutive terms. This provision dated back to the adoption of the current state constitution in 1901.

Wallace attacked this problem on two fronts. First, Wallace worked for the repeal of the term-limiting constitutional provision. Although he failed to achieve the change in time for the 1966 campaign, he eventually succeeded; Wallace was to serve three subsequent terms, including two which were consecutive. Second, Wallace devised a plan in which his wife, Lurleen, would run for governor while he controlled the policies and procedures of the governorship in the background, duplicating the strategy in which Ma Ferguson won the 1917 election for governor in Texas.

Wallace's attempt to change the succession rule in time for the 1966 campaign failed. However, using his wife as his electoral surrogate succeeded, and Mrs. Wallace won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966. She was elected Governor of Alabama in November 1966, and her inauguration was held in January 1967.

Times have changed, and I don't mean to say that Hillary Clinton is the exactly the same as Lurleen Wallace, for she has served in the United States Senate, and she wants desperately (a little too desperately, IMHO) to be seen as her own man. (Er, sorry, her own woman.)

But is she really her own woman? A Margaret Thatcher, perhaps? To answer this, I think it's fair to ask whether Hillary Clinton could have (or would have) ever been elected president without Bill having been president.

I don't think so. But back in the 90s it occurred to me that the main reason I was sick of her was because I was sick of him.

So perhaps I shouldn't ask myself whether I am still sick of her. Perhaps I should ask whether I'm still sick of him.

The answer is yes.

I fear it will only get worse.

Tiredness doesn't improve with age.

AFTERTHOUGHT: It occurs to me that once you become sick of something, it's almost impossible to stop being sick of it. It's a little like an overplayed song. ("If I hear that 'Young Girl Get Out of My Heart' or "Sign, Sign Everywhere a Sign!" one more time.....")

I realize that people are sick of Bush, but I'd remind them that people were once just as sick of the Clintons.

Unless there's a moral lesson along the lines that we must "take turns to be sick," I'm afraid I'm confused.

Are people getting ruder? We all hear about the collapse of good manners -- a complaint often fraught with cultural implications ("coarsening of culture" is, I believe, one of the common terms). And anything with cultural implications quickly morphs into a political issue.

I don't want this to be about politics, because I see it as more akin to math.

Yes, math. I've been thinking that one of the downsides of the modern put-everyone-on-hold, no-one-has-real-authority-or-responsibility society is that we haven't yet dispensed with meme that "nice guys finish last," that politeness is for wimps and "in order to succeed, you have to be assertive." There is a fine line between assertiveness and rudeness -- so fine that I can't possibly hope to draw it, much less in a blog post. I can only give examples, but I have noticed that when the natural human tendency to do as little as possible is juxtaposed with a bureaucratized system encouraging people to do as little as possible, the result is that the polite are often simply ignored. As a Paddy Chayevsky put it, "Forgotten to death."

But lest anyone think that assertiveness is called for, beware of an emerging Catch 22. The same people (the do-nothing bureaucrats charged with running government and many large businesses) who see politeness as an excuse to do nothing because politeness is mistaken for wimpiness are very quick to "mistake" assertiveness for rudeness. Hence, those who have been polite but who get righteously assertive are greeted with an equally righteous sense of bureaucratic Entitlement to Do Nothing.

This leads to more rudeness.

I like to think the trick is to be politely assertive, over and over, and never become provoked. I once allowed myself to be placed on hold for eighteen hours by CNN when I called in with an uncomfortable question for a TV guest. (Their dime; not mine. I like to think that I elevated "politeness" into the realm of the surreal, although I acknowledge that the shrinks would say I was just being passive-aggressive.)

But after all, there is never any "entitlement" to rudeness? Or is there?

Sometimes I worry what happens to legitimate internal anger when it is constantly syruped over with politeness. Will it melt away without residual damage?

Am I playing the odds? Or just being a wimp?

While Eric had planned to do a surrealistic RINO carnival based on the rhinocerotic art of Dali (the world's first surrealistic RINO Carnival), it seems that something went awry in the channeling department. Eric was trying to channel Dali, but Dali is instead channeling Eric.

To illustrate:

Of course, Dali does not believe in politics, but he does believe in RINOs as an essential art form. On the other hand, RINOs are endangered because of politics. They are destructive of the forces of political conformity, so these forces in turn conspire to destroy them. Eric wants to channel Dali, but Dali is peering into the eyes of the RINO! But what if the RINO is Eric and is peering into the eyes of Dali? There is no way to win.

It's not as if the Republican Party doesn't need RINOs. Far from it. With things getting ever more surreal by the day, the RINOs are starting to look positively normal! And that is a contradiction. On top of that the RINOs are so demoralized that very few posts were received. While Eric the pessimist might call this a form of disintegration, Dali the optimist believes that the Creation and Destruction elements are all at work, and thus even the disintegration of the RINOs means the creation of new atomic and subatomic rinocerotic subparticulate matter -- the stuff of which all change, all metamorphosis, even all creation, is based!

To illustrate, here is a disintegrating RINO.

Notice the angels; even they are concerned. Is it too arrogant to suggest that this means God cares about the fate of RINOs? Eric would never say such a thing, but if Dali says that on his behalf, then who is to say that a dead man cannot put words into a living man's mouth? And if he can do that, then why can't he also put words into a living man's blog? The answer is that it happens all the time!

Considering Dali's hatred of politics, why drag him into the RINO carnival? For several reasons, the first of which is that Republican politics have become so surreal, and what could be more surreal than dissenters from surrealism? As a dissenter from surrealism (expelled from the Surrealist movement for being too surreal) Dali is the perfect symbol. Moreover, there's Dali's paranoiac obsession with all things rhino -- which this essay sums up pretty well:

Artists, all through history, have been tormenting themselves to grasp form and to reduce it to elementary geometrical volumes. Leonardo always tended to produce eggs ... Ingres preferred spheres, and Cézanne cubes and cylinders. But only Dalí... has found truth. All curved surfaces of the human body have the same geometric spot in common, the one found in this cone with the rounded tip curved toward heaven or toward the earth ... the rhinoceros horn!

After this initial discovery, Dalí surveyed his images and realised that all of them could be deconstructed to rhinoceros horns.

We go to the irreducible essence of politics.

So, with that, it's on to the posts, along with some illustrations which I hope are appropriate.

BEAUTY AND GRACE UNDER EXTREME DURESS

Here's a Dalinian sculpture of a RINO whose legs are so delicately long and sweet that I'm reminded of beautiful hookers:

ALL WE NEED IS DUST

Beginning in the early 1950s, Dali became obsessed with atomic particles -- and depicted them in the form of RINO horns. A good example is the Dust of Souls:

LOYALTY

THE JOKE'S ON WHO?

Here's a joker who seems to be annoying the RINO in the background:

ALIEN INVASION

From the early 1960s, a study for Dali's "Battle of Tetuan":

BORDERS IN SPACE

Particles floating around in the cosmos, anyone?

NEVER TOO PROUD TO SUBMIT?

While that concludes the submissions I received, isn't it true that not all "submissions" are voluntary?

As I see it, the people who actually submitted posts to this anarchic and surreal carnival were behaving in an orderly manner. This means that the RINOs who submitted no submissions were more in need of submission than those who submitted, and thus I feel that as the host I have a duty to submit their submissions on their behalf. And even if I don't have a duty, I nonetheless have a right, don't I? I mean, isn't this a blog post as well as a carnival? And, being a blog post, I can link to anyone I want, regardless of whether any formal "submission" is involved.

So, the involuntary submissions (selected by me from favorite fellow RINOs) follow.

RINO submits to angel (who seems to like the RINO):

Dali, a grand master of bullshit if ever there was one, said the following in Conquest of the Irrational:

we Surrealists, as you will realize by paying us some slight attention, are not quite artists, nor are we really scientists; we are caviar, and believe me, caviar is the extravagance and the very intelligence of taste, especially in concrete times like the present in which the above mentioned hungering for the irrational, albeit an incommensurable, impatient, and imperialist hungering, is so exasperated by the salivary expectations of waiting, that in order to arrive progressively at its glorious conquests close by, it must first swallow the fine, heady, and dialectical grape of caviar, without which the heavy and stifling food of the next ideologies would threaten immediately to paralyze the vital and philosophical rage of the belly of history.

For caviar is the life experience not only of the sturgeon, but of the Surrealists as well, because, like the sturgeon, we are carnivorous fish, who, as I have already hinted, swim between two bodies of water, the cold water of art and the warm water of science; and it is precisely due to that temperature and to our swimming against the current that the experience of our lives and our fecundation reaches that turbid depth, that irrational and moral hyperlucidity possible only in the climate of Neronian osmosis that results from the living and continuous fusion of the sole's thickness and its crowned heat, the satisfaction and the circumcision of the sole and the corrugated iron, territorial ambition and agricultural patience, keen collectivism and vizors propped up by letters of white on the old billiard cushions and letters of white on the old millyard Russians, all sorts of warm and dermatological elements, which, in short, are the coexisting and characteristic elements presiding over the notion of the "imponderable," a sham notion unanimously recognized as functioning as an epithet for the elusive taste of caviar and hiding the timid and gustatory germs of concrete irrationality, which, being merely the apotheosis and the paroxysm of the objective imponderable, constitutes the divisionist exactness and precision of the very caviar of imagination and will constitute, exclusively and philosophically, the terribly demoralizing and terribly complicated result of my experiences and inventions in painting.

For one thing is certain: I hate any form of simplicity whatsoever.

LOGIC BEATS SUBMISSION

Or does submission beat logic? I don't know, but Dean Esmay (whose unsubmitted submission is titled "The Standing Male Response To Female Complaints That Has Annoyed Every Woman Since Eve") may have discovered an infallible way to piss off all women without exception. No; I will not say what it is, for I might get sued.

However, Dean's post invites a little Dalinian relativism.

Here is Dali's traditional depiction of Vermeer's Lacemaker:

To fully understand the deconstructive/reconstructive power of the RINO horns, here's Dali's RINOCEROTIC version -- titled the "The Paranoiac-Critical Study of Vermeer's Lacemaker":

And if that doesn't manage to annoy every woman since Eve, Dali took this a step further with "Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized By the Horns of Her Own Chastity":

Commented Dali,

The rhino horn is indeed the legendary unicorn horn, symbol of chastity. The young lady may choose to lie on it or to morally play with it; as it was usual in courtesan love epochs.

FEAR

This Dalinian RINO depiction illustrated a 1950s essay about fear:

Global Warming

Hot climate anyone?

DOOM

At the risk of sounding apocalyptic, here's an image from Dali's Apocalypse of St. John:

With that in mind, a couple of very "final" posts.

FINAL PRAYER

At this point I don't know who is channeling whom, but it seems fair to allow Dali to conclude this post with a prayer for the RINOs:

UPDATE: Digger, by the way, has announced a new site -- The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration:

From the educational costs of illegal aliens to traffic congestion to gangs to solutions to the immigration problem, the website is packed full of facts, links to reports and detailed analysis.

UPDATE: As Jennifer linked this post and had some very kind words, it seemed fair to her and the Dali theme to find a late but fitting entry from Jennifer.

My surrealism button was pushed by her "TV Pretend" post:

Decompress time. Unwind from pretend nuclear explosion. TV pretend. I don't think I spoke for about 27 minutes after watching Dr. Strangelove, I am easily impressionable I know, but I like me that way.

So what better way to forget about TV pretend?

From the TV Guide cover of June 8-14, 1968, (titled "Today, Tonight and Tomorrow"):

That's TV Pretend.

And thank you Jennifer!

It was reported on Janurary 12th that the US attacked an Iranian Embassy in Iraq and detained five "diplomats".

BAGHDAD: U.S. troops in Iraq raided an Iranian consulate in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq and captured six staff members early Thursday, according to Iraqi state television reports.

Later Iran's official news agency IRNA confirmed the development and explained that the troops disarmed the guards manning the gates of the consulate and entered the office building and took the six staff members into custody.

The answer. Some are not.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 18 -- Iraq is carrying out an extensive review of its diplomatic protocols with Iran and may place new restrictions on them, the Iraqi foreign minister said in an interview on Thursday, after Iranian military officials and diplomats were picked up in three separate American actions here.

The raids have deeply embarrassed Iraqi officials, who say that the United States did not consult with them before it detained the Iranians, who were properly accredited visitors to this country. At the same time, Iraqi officials have been put in an awkward position by their neighbor, as the Iraqis concede that at least some of the Iranians appear to have been working with Shiite militias, just as the Americans claimed.

As a result, Iraq has decided to tighten diplomatic controls on Iranian officials, insisting on detailed itineraries for their missions here, closer coordination with Baghdad and pledges that the officials will not work with armed groups outside the government, said Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister.

The US Command has a few things to say on the subject.

The U.S. military insists the Iranians in its custody are not diplomats. Earlier in the week Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, told a news conference there was no doubt about that.

"We have statements made by people in detention and we have records that give us great confidence that these are in fact intelligence operatives," Casey said.

One of the six was released and U.S. officials said the five still in custody were linked to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents and militias in Iraq.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was not available for comment, his office said.

Tehran denied the five detained Iranians had been involved in financing and arming insurgents in Iraq.

"The capture of Iranian diplomats is an insult to the Iraqi government and people," ambassador Hassan Kazimi Qomi said in a news conference at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. Iraqi "Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told me that they will be released within days."

Asked why he believed the Americans carried the raid, Qomi said through a translator from Farsi to Arabic that "they want to destabilize relations between Iraq and Iran."

However, it looks like America has been getting ready to go after Iran for some time. First off there was a report of an aircraft carrier battle group heading for the area around 8 Jan.

The following other capital ships are in the area or near by as of 23 Jan. '07 - 0629z.

Boxer Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG):
USS Boxer (LHD 4) - Persian Gulf
USS Dubuque (LPD 8) - Persian Gulf
USS Comstock (LSD 45) - Gulf of Oman

Bataan Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG):
USS Bataan (LHD 5) - Mediterranean Sea
USS Shreveport (LPD 12) - Mediterranean Sea
USS Oak Hill (LSD 51) - Mediterranean Sea

Amphibious Warfare Ships:
USS Nassau (LHA 4) - Atlantic Ocean
USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) - Atlantic Ocean
USS Ashland (LSD 48) - Indian Ocean

In addition A Brigade of the 82nd Airborne heads to Iraq.

It looks like a squadron of F-117 Stealth Fighters are headed to North Korea to keep them from making trouble while we are busy with Iran.

The Pieces Are Being Put in Place
Col. Sam Gardiner

[Sam Gardiner is a retired colonel of the US Air Force. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College.]

The pieces are moving. They'll be in place by the end of February. The United States will be able to escalate military operations against Iran.

The second carrier strike group leaves the U.S. West Coast on January 16. It will be joined by naval mine clearing assets from both the United States and the UK. Patriot missile defense systems have also been ordered to deploy to the Gulf.

Maybe as a guard against North Korea seeing operations focused on Iran as a chance to be aggressive, a squadron of F-117 stealth fighters has just been deployed to Korea.

This has to be called escalation. We have to remind ourselves, just as Iran is supporting groups inside Iraq, the United States is supporting groups inside Iran. Just as Iran has special operations troops operating inside Iraq, we've read the United States has special operations troops operating inside Iran.

Just as Iran is supporting Hamas, two weeks ago we found out the United States is supporting arms for Abbas. Just as Iran and Syria are supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon were now learning the White House has approved a finding to allow the CIA to support opposition groups inside Lebanon. Just as Iran is supporting Syria, we've learned recently that the United States is going to fund Syrian opposition groups.

We learned this week the President authorized an attack on the Iranian liaison office in Irbil.

The White House keeps saying there are no plans to attack Iran. Obviously, the facts suggest otherwise. Equally as clear, the Iranians will read what the Administrations is doing not what it is saying.

SAN DIEGO - Barely six months after returning from its maiden deployment, the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan will leave its Coronado pier within weeks for a cruise in the western Pacific Ocean.

Two Navy spokesmen said the Reagan probably will spend several months filling in for the Kitty Hawk, the Japan-based carrier that is unavailable because it's undergoing routine maintenance. The sources requested anonymity because Pentagon policy forbids them from providing such information before an official announcement.

The Reagan's unexpected deployment is an indirect result of President Bush's new decision to station a second carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf, the spokesmen said.

The Reagan will fulfill patrol duties in the western Pacific in place of the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, which Bush sent to the Persian Gulf as added muscle to supplement the strike group of the Virginia-based carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Stennis strike group - which includes three aviation squadrons from San Diego as well as the San Diego-based cruiser Antietam, destroyer Preble and frigate Rentz - was scheduled for a routine cruise in the western Pacific.

The date of the Reagan's departure hasn't been set, but its crew is expected to receive deployment orders within a week, the spokesmen said. The tour is expected to last a few months.

The ship likely will deploy without its carrier air wing or escort ships, relying for support instead on vessels and aircraft already stationed in Japan.

The Reagan, commissioned in 2003, arrived in San Diego the following year and completed its maiden deployment in July.

However it does allow for the ships and air group to be a reserve to make up for losses in any attack on Iran. It also allows the carrier to deploy at flank speed. Something difficult to do when oil burners have to keep up with a nuke carrier.

There appears to be Naval support for operations off Somalia. Which is not too far from Iran. As the carrier cruises.

2007/1/9 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

(AP)In a further escalation of American involvement in Somalia, the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived off the war-ravaged country's coast and its aircraft have begun flying intelligence-gathering missions over Somalia, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

The U.S. Central Command re-tasked the USS Eisenhower to Somalia last week from its mission supporting NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is based.

The announcement comes a day after at least one U.S. Special Forces AC-130 gunship launched a deadly strike against several suspected members of al-Qaida in Somalia. Brown said the Navy had no supporting role in U.S. attacks in Somalia.

The U.S. launched at least two more airstrikes against terror targets in Somalia on Tuesday, a Somali official and witnesses said.

The carrier joins three other U.S. warships _ two guided-missile cruisers and an amphibious landing ship _ already conducting anti-terror operations off the Somali coast, the Navy said.

Brown said he did not know how long the Eisenhower's redeployment would last. "We'll be there as long as required," he told The Associated Press.

NATO has begun taking a major interest in intelligence information about Iran's nuclear program, according to Israeli defense officials who recently held talks with senior officers in the Western military alliance.

NATO's interest stems from growing concern that diplomacy will ultimately fail, the Israeli officials told The Jerusalem Post this week, and that military action will be necessary to stop Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons.

TEHRAN, Jan 16, 2007 (UPI via COMTEX) -- There is growing criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, including a parliamentary drive to summon him to answer questions, a report says.

Even previously friendly hard-line newspapers have taken him to task for being too hostile towards the West since the passage of a U.N. sanctions resolution, the BBC said.

Despite all that Iran is keeping out 38 IAEA nuclear inspectors because they are upset at UN resolutions pertaining to their nuclear program. Makes sense.

Say. Didn't Saddam go down that road? Those boys better be careful.

Nasser Karimi, The Associated Press
Published: Monday, January 22, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran has barred 38 nuclear inspectors on a United Nations list from entering the country, the foreign minister said Monday in what appeared to be retaliation for the UN sanctions imposed last month.

The rejected officials are on a list of potential inspectors drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit and monitor Iran's nuclear facilities.

"The act of rejecting some inspectors is legal and in accordance with the agency's regulations," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. He said others on the UN nuclear watchdog's list remain eligible, but did not explain how Iran decided which inspectors to bar.

The IAEA "submits a long list of inspectors to member countries and the countries have the right to oppose the visit by some inspectors," Mottaki said.

Last month, the UN Security Council imposed limited trade sanctions on Iran over its refusal to cease uranium enrichment, a process that can produce the material for nuclear energy or bombs.

The drum-beating suggested Iran does not intend to back down in its standoff with the West. It could also aim to rally the public behind the government and silence increasingly bold criticism at home of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's antagonism toward the United States.

Iran's leaders have touted the possibility of a U.S. attack since President Bush announced on Jan. 9 the deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region, a move U.S. officials have said is a show of strength directed at Iran.

Last month, the Security Council imposed limited trade sanctions on Iran over its refusal to cease uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear energy or bombs.

The Iranian military on Monday began five days of maneuvers near the northern city of Garmsar, about 60 miles southeast of Tehran, state television reported. The military tested its Zalzal-1 and Fajr-5 missiles, the report said.

The Zalzal-1, able to carry a 1,200-pound payload, has a range of 200 miles. That would put Iraq, U.S. bases in the Gulf, and eastern Saudi Arabia in its range. The Fajr-5, with a 1,800-pound payload, has a range of 35 miles.

Neither could reach Israel, but Iran has other missiles that can. It was not known whether the missiles tested are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The Iranian show of strength came as the American aircraft carrier USS Stennis was heading toward the Gulf, joining the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in a beefed-up American military presence. The Stennis is expected to arrive in late February.

The U.S. is also deploying Patriot missiles and nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf and F-16 fighter planes to the Incirlik base in neighboring Turkey.

With the American logistics on the move the opening shots could come at any time. As always the key to any war is logistics. It does no good to have forces if they are not sufficiently close to the scene of action.

Update: 23 Jan '07 0333z

A strong explosion jolted Mashhad.

...a strong explosion at the high-voltage sub-station of Mashhad rocked a large part of the city and frightened residents in this provincial capital.

Israel urgently needed in NATO?

In an effort to establish more effective deterrence in the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons, government ministries are, for the first time, working on drafting a position paper that will include guidelines and a strategy for turning Israel into a full-fledged member of NATO, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The paper is being drafted by an interministerial committee made up of representatives from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and headed by the National Security Council. The committee plans to complete the paper by the end of February and present it to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for approval.

Meanwhile Monday, in an exclusive interview, former Spanish prime minister Jos Mar a Aznar told the Post that "Israel needs to join NATO as soon as possible."

According to Aznar, the Iranian threat serves as "an excellent occasion to enforce [Israeli] deterrence by making Israel a member of NATO."

The former Spanish leader and current president of the FAES Spanish think tank said that if Israel became a member of NATO, "the perception in Iran would change, knowing that it's not only Israel [they are dealing with], but all of NATO."

Aznar said that NATO needed to change its focus to counter the growing threat of global terrorism.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Over the weekend, a friend sent me a picture which reminded me how large a chunk of life a dog occupies in the life of a dog owner. Regular readers will remember Puff, who's pictured over on the right and who died in June of 2005.

The picture shows me on my deck in Berkeley, in 1990, holding Puff when he was still a puppy:

Damn, but I look young and naive compared to today! Little did I know what I was in for over the next few years. (Now, of course, I look old and naive, which is a completely different deal.)

Fifteen years. It's a lifetime for a dog, and a lot of time for us, too.

Hmmm....

The blog will be four in May, so I guess by dog standards, it's getting middle aged.

You can go vote in the election now, at Pajamas Media!

And be sure to check the early results.

Not to spoil anything, but a candidate I'll call "Mommie Dearest" isn't doing as well as I would have thought. (I guess the blogosphere isn't Hollywood, and this ain't the Oscars....)

VOTE!

What is morality?

Perhaps that's a silly question, for we all know it when we see it and those who don't are said to be moral relativists. By merely posing the question, I may have already caused hard-line moral absolutists (if such a thing exists in logic) to roll their eyes in disgust.

One of the things I touched on in the discussion of Dinesh D'Souza's newfound Islamic moral absolutism (assuming that's the right phrase; maybe his embrace of Islamic absolutism is morally relative) was whether or not morality is necessarily limited to sexual matters. A lot of people seem to think it is, or at least they act that way. Typically, there's a lot more outrage by these people over sex on the Internet than crime on the streets.

But I want to move away from sex, and examine the mechanism by which morality is manufactured. I suspect it's something like the manufacture of legislation and sausage -- something that goes on behind the scenes, in a very undemocratic manner. Until at last, before we know it, things that were once considered either "good" (or at least morally neutral) take on a moral tinge. A charge, even.

For example, is it immoral to build a house? To cut down a tree? In the huge North American continent, once the land of promise and opportunity, these things were considered "progress" and doing them -- when it took the form of what we call "development" -- was generally thought to be virtuous. Now, building a house or cutting down trees is seen by many people as downright evil. For years, an anti-sprawl movement has been fighting to stop development, and this movement been aided and abetted by pliant politicians and sympathetic reporters. While "sprawl" hasn't quite managed to take on the dirty connotations normally associated with phrases like "Larry Flynt" and "Hustler," sprawl (and development) are definitely dirty, and I see evidence that the anti-sprawl people are striking paydirt as the "Global Warming" meme heats up. Now is their moment of opportunity, and if they are lucky, the builders of new homes and roads will find themselves excoriated in a manner once reserved for the Larry Flynts -- maybe even drug dealers.

What prompted this morning's observations was seeing morality manufactured before my eyes right here in my county. Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, has not only decided to implement anti "greenhouse gas" measures, they're implementing moral rhetoric in order to put it over on regular people who often don't have time to think.

Today's morality play begins with the apparent conversion of a "skeptical" Republican County Commisioner by a mere graduate student at Penn State:

Climate change is by nature a global problem.

So when a Pennsylvania State University graduate student presented Montgomery County officials with a 145-page report on what it could do to reduce greenhouse gases - the culprits in global warming - Commissioner Thomas Jay Ellis was skeptical.

Could one county - even one with more people than some states - make a difference in such a huge problem?

Ellis and his fellow commissioners decided this month that it could at least try.

Montgomery County, which emits more greenhouse gases than more than half the world's nations do individually, thereby joined a burgeoning list of cities, counties and states that have stopped waiting for federal direction on global-warming remediation.

"The leadership on global warming... is coming from city halls and state capitols, not from D.C... .," said Glen Brand, director of the Sierra Club's Cool Cities campaign, which encourages local programs to address global warming.

Not included in the Inquirer write-up is the fact that Pennsylvania is said to produce "1 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions" -- of which Montgomery County is but a fraction. Add to that the fact that even the advocates of greenhouse gas theory admit that the world's total of human-emitted greenhouse gases are responsible for a tiny fraction of overall global warming and the contribution of Montgomery County is so meaningless as to be statistically insignificant. If the entire county were depopulated and shut down tomorrow by the Khmer Rouge, worldwide CO2 would not be affected.

But we're talking morality, not reality. Typically, moralists present their argument to people who are into feeling terrible and making everyone else feel terrible by scolding them. The goal is the infliction of guilt, and this does not work at first, so it has to be achieved in increments.

Back up to 1914 and the Harrison Narcotics Act. People who took drugs before that consumed opiates and cocaine purchased over the counter. If addiction developed, it was a personal health matter to be discussed with the doctor. While such a person might be seen as weak, the notion that it was "evil" did not set in until laws were passed, followed by years of yellow journalism.

When my father was a kid (he was born in 1909), drug consumption was a health problem as opposed to a moral problem, and when I was a kid, it was not considered evil to build homes or cut down trees. (I know I'm ranting, but I always remember this when I hear people screaming about the absolute, unchanging nature of morality.)

Back to the conversion of today's skeptical Republican by the graduate student. Am I allowed to express skepticism about his skepticism?

Back in June of 2005, Mr. Ellis sounded anything but skeptical:

Montgomery County earlier this month became the first in the state to take action by agreeing to create an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That inventory would let county officials know where local sources of greenhouse gases are coming from, such as farms and traffic pollution, to help inform open space and smart growth policies, said Montgomery County Commissioner Thomas Jay Ellis.

"We can set an example. We can be the laboratory for the nation," Ellis said.

What about us little guinea pigs? Don't we have any say?

Normally, I'd opine that hell hath no fury greater than the recently converted, except I don't think Commissioner Ellis's conversion was recent. As to the evidence that converted him, today's Inquirer article features an impressive chart showing Montgomery County's "total emissions in million metric tons of CO2 equivalent":

The source for the chart is said to be "A Global Warming Plan of Action for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania." I can't find any plan by that name online, although it might be a rebadged version of this EPA-funded project. The Inquirer describes this plan as a master's thesis by a single student, one Sarah E. Knuth.

Isn't it wonderful to see democracy and morality in action? One student -- with one paper -- can affect an entire county!

From the description of Ms. Knuth's EPA-funded "plan":

By targeting sprawl, I will capture a dominant process driving Montgomery Countys emissions and uncover opportunities for climate change mitigation that are tailored to local stakeholder objectives - combating sprawl is vitally important to county officials and residents.

Approach:

I will work with local stakeholders in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania to develop a county greenhouse gas emissions inventory, exploring local emissions in much greater-than-usual detail and making a special effort to draw out and quantify emissions trends related to sprawl. With stakeholder input, I will translate inventory results into a county climate change mitigation plan, developing a series of emissions reduction strategies that target place-specific trends driving emissions and that make the most of local stakeholders power over these trends.

How did the county manage to find this dedicated young activist? Apparently, the right connections never hurt, as her professor is a former law partner of the "skeptical" Republican Commissioner himself!

Knuth was a student of Robert McKinstry, a Penn State University professor and former law partner of commissioner Chairman Thomas Jay Ellis. Nelson said the county should work to reduce greenhouse emissions because it dovetails with county goals, such as open space and farmland protection. It also fits in with the county government's mandate to protect public health.

Goddard Chair professor Robert McKinstry co-wrote a brief submitted in May 2006 to the U.S. Supreme Court representing a number of leading scientists supporting the position of a number of states contending that the federal government should regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from automobiles to address climate change.

Let me admit my bias here. I think that what most people call "morality" is usually cheap partisan demagoguery in drag. I see this smoke-and-mirrors game being played across the political spectrum, and while I find it a bit exhausting to complain about it so often, the alternative is to watch it go unchallenged.

Unless I am misreading today's think-globally-act-locally morality pageant, I get the distinct impression that they really want to reach out and touch everyone -- including me:

Tom Kreutz, a Princeton University researcher who models the performance of energy systems, said returning to 1990 emissions levels can be difficult for growing areas, yet that is "a pretty modest goal in general, compared to where the globe needs to go."

The country needs taxes that make it costly to emit greenhouse gases, he said, and that needs to come from the top. "We can't do it without federal intervention. No question," he said. "Right now it's free to dump your CO2 [the primary greenhouse gas] in the atmosphere and, as long as it's free, people won't stop doing it."

Sorry, but while I know they have the power to tax me, they do not have the power to make me agree with them. My morality stays where it is. Yes, on this issue I am a moral absolutist, and I don't mind saying so.

My breathing is not immoral!

They've got some kind of "mayor's agreement" but they don't think it will be enough. Not unless they get people "out of their cars":

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance this month released a discouraging report on progress made by 10 cities that have signed the mayors' agreement. John Bailey, a research associate who wrote the report, concluded it was unlikely that more than two could reach the Kyoto Protocol goals, "unless complementary state and federal policies are put in place," he wrote.

Only one city he studied, Portland, Ore., is close to 1990 emissions levels. Americans' driving habits have been a particular problem. "Getting people out of their cars has been difficult," Bailey said.

Nevertheless, he still thinks the cities are on the right track. "To wait just doesn't make sense," he said.

Of course, there are some people who are just born to feel guilty, and want to inflict their misery on others. There's plenty of misery to go around, and as I've noticed, things have reached the point where people are actually upset by unseasonably warm weather.

Upset?

But why?

Because they're having what we used to call "a nice day."

What we the guinea pigs need are moral examples:

The most important result of local initiatives, several experts said, is that they serve as an example to residents and show federal and business leaders that people want action.

"The fact is that people in their everyday lives can make a difference in this," said Steve Nelson, Montgomery County's deputy chief operating officer. "Quantitatively, it may not make a huge difference in greenhouse gases, but it's got to start in our own backyard."

As to the author of the master's thesis which wants to reach out and touch everyone here in Montgomery County, she's headed to my old hometown of Berkeley:

Sarah Knuth wrote the Montgomery County report for her master's thesis. Now 24 and studying for her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, she's thrilled that the county is taking her work seriously. "This is a dream come true to have it at least leading somewhere," she said.

Count me as less than thrilled.

It's all part of my ongoing struggle to preserve immorality.

Seriously, it's worse than anyone imagines. I actually enjoy breathing, and every time I exhale I revel in the terrible damage my untaxed CO2 is doing to the environment. I admit it's awful and I know it makes me a genuinely evil person, but it all began a long time ago. My slippery slide from absolute morality to absolute evil began when I was told it was evil that people were starving. I started to develop callused thinking at the dinner table, and it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't my fault, and that maybe I didn't have to feel as guilty as I did. Over the years, it got worse, and now I've reached the point where I actually think that some moral evils are worse than other moral evils.

My reactionary moral relativism has now reached the point where I think I should feel more guilty about letting people starve than about letting them breathe.

At this rate, I'll soon be a nihilist.

(Almost makes me wish for good old days, when you were immoral if you screwed but it was still OK to breathe. Now that everything has become immoral, nothing is immoral.)

The Muslim world is changing.

Roya is a slut. I don't like her." So says a dark-haired Azerbaijani girl nestled on a barstool of the Universal Bar in downtown Baku, a spot where foreign oil workers can meet eligible young women for the right price.

Roya, a provocative young singing sexpot, is a tornado in Azerbaijan, a country of eight million mostly Shia Muslims who live in a thoroughly secular system.

Now freed of Soviet tanks, Azerbaijan stands at the crossroads; in one direction western materialism (they enjoy solid ties with the US and Israel), in the other a return to Muslim Shia orthodoxy, encouraged by neighbouring Iran.

Roya's face stares down from the billboards (those not taken by images of President Aliev), her confidence and sensuality in stark contrast with the grey-eyed souls walking the streets. With her sultry looks and sizzling antics, she may be the perfect embodiment of a new Azerbaijan, long known as the Land of Fire because of the blazes that have burst from the soil since pre-history, leading fire-worshippers to create Zoroastrianism.

in the same celebrity magazines that refuse to offend Muslim sensibilities by discussing unmarried relationships, Roya is routinely pictured topless, or kissing a variety of young men and women. She swears on TV and appears semi-nude in her videos.

Recently one Sinatra-style old-time Azerbaijan crooner was asked what he thought of Roya and the flesh- baring generation of singers she inspires. "They should be shot," he said, apparently speaking for many.

He might not like it, but there's no denying Roya is leading a massive young Azeri demographic revolting against stifling tradition and seeking a more exciting future. In other words, Roya's a sexy Azeri punk.

Guys with beards or topless chicks. For your average male: a tough choice.

Many believe the growing count of minarets in the smaller cities of Azerbaijan is slowly blossoming into something bigger, something that will only grow with ongoing cynicism and the inevitable crisis of oil wealth.

On the other hand, some believe Roya and other Azerbaijani entertainers could help seduce Iran away from fundamentalism. Those 20 million Azeris make up one-third of all Iranians and they are showing signs of tiring of the state's ongoing cultural repression. Many have satellite TV and can see Roya and other pop stars living the high life - and speaking their language.

Is throaty, brazen Roya singing the theme-song for the westernisation of Azerbaijan - or a battle-hymn for the break-up of Iran?

Faster please.

Roya Music MP3. Thanks to commenter Geoff. Click on CKAYATb to start the music.

A Roya page list at Youtube.

Change in Russia.

Kurdish music Youtube.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In what I hope isn't a new trend, families are suing My Space because their underage daughters had sex with adults they allegedly met online:

Four families have sued MySpace after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site. Announcing the lawsuit were the families lawyers at Barry & Loewy of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin of Houston. We posted an item on the first of these types of lawsuits when it was filed last June.

The families want millions of dollars, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the company, which is owned by News Corp. Said lawyer Jason Itkin: "In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users."

Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, disagrees, saying in a statement: "MySpace serves as an industry leader on Internet safety and we take proactive measures to protect our members [and] provide users with a range of tools to enable a safer online experience."

The essence of the complaint (here in pdf) -- that My Space is not "safe" -- boils down to the undeniable fact that the Internet is not safe.

Doh!

Nor is the telephone! And nor are the movie theaters, the back seats of the evil automobiles, or the sleazy public streets.

My reaction to this is, what the hell are the parents doing? Assuming that some 19 year old lied to the daughter and gained her confidence, one thing obviously led to another.

If they eventually had sex, it sure as hell didn't happen online!

Web sites and blogs are little more than communication devices, analagous to mail and telephones. Lying and con games can be accomplished by any of these means. Does that make the US mail service or the telephone company responsible?

I suspect the parents allowed their daughter to use My Space, and paid no more attention to what was going on than when the kid called her on the phone. Suing My Space strikes me as rank opportunism, as well as an abrogation of parental responsibility.

The implications for blogging are obvious, and I hope these cases are thrown out of court, because they will only lead in one direction -- massive communitarian statism, in which we all become responsible for the the responsibilities of others.

I allow comments, and I have no duty to police them. If some underage girl gets into a dialogue with a older teenager who lies and gain her confidence, does that become my responsibility, or that of my ISP? Apparently, some would say yes.

FWIW, I think the lying teen should be prosecuted if he broke the law. It's just too bad the parents can't be prosecuted for poor parenting.

Why should free speech be made the victim? If age and identity verification requirements are imposed on My Space, what's to stop them from being imposed on all blogs? There are, of course, already people who want to do that. This phony "protect-the-children" meme could easily breathe new life into legislation -- roundly condemned -- which would force ISPs to "require and obtain legal names and addresses for anyone who posts online." I don't think it's paranoia to anticipate that protecting children from sex could well become the foot in the door for Chinese style censorship in the United States.

Sigh.

Being held responsible for the conduct of other people is becoming a national disease.

No, actually I couldn't find anything by Camille on the case. However, I did find a LOT on line that speaks to the acedemic issues involved.

Feminist ideology has totally failed to deal with humanity's instinctual drives. No matter what garbage you hear from Foucault's minions, sex is ultimately about procreation. It's in the best interests of the species for fertile women to mate with the strongest, most vital and resourceful males.

Foucault's analysis of "power" is foggy and paranoid and simply does not work when applied to the actual evidence of the birth, growth and complex development of governments in ancient and modern societies. Nor is Foucault's analysis of the classification of knowledge particularly original -- except in his bitter animus against the Enlightenment, which he failed to realize had already been systematically countered by Romanticism. What most American students don't know is that Foucault's commentary is painfully crimped by the limited assumptions of Saussurean linguistics (which I reject). As I have asserted, James Joyce's landmark modernist novel Ulysses (1922) contains, chapter by chapter, far subtler and more various versions of language-based "epistemes" inherent in cultural institutions and epochs.

I'm afraid I bring rather bad news: Over the course of your careers, your generation of students will slowly come to realize that the Foucault-praising professors whom you respected and depended on were ill-informed fad-followers who sold you a shoddy bill of goods. You don't need Foucault, for heaven's sake! Durkheim and Max Weber began the stream of sociological thought that still nourishes responsible thinkers. And the pioneers of social psychology and behaviorism -- Havelock Ellis, Alfred Adler, John B. Watson and many others -- were eloquent apostles of social constructionism when Foucault was still in the cradle.

Foucault-worship is an example of what I call the Big Daddy syndrome: Secular humanists, who have drifted from their religious and ethnic roots, have created a new Jehovah out of string and wax. Again and again -- in memoirs, for example, by trendy but pedestrian uber-academics like Harvard's Stephen Greenblatt and Brown's Robert Scholes -- one sees the scenario of Melancholy, Bookish, Passive, Insecure Young Nebbish suddenly electrified and transfigured by the Grand Epiphany of Blindingly Brilliant Foucault. This sappy psychodrama would be comic except for the fact that American students forced to read Foucault have been defrauded of a genuine education in intellectual history and political analysis (a disciplined genre that starts with Thucydides and flows directly to the best of today's journalism on current events).

When I pointed out in Arion that Foucault, for all his blathering about "power," never managed to address Adolph Hitler or the Nazi occupation of France, I received a congratulatory letter from David H. Hirsch (a literature professor at Brown), who sent me copies of riveting chapters from his then-forthcoming book, The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism After Auschwitz (1991). As Hirsch wrote me about French behavior during the occupation, "Collaboration was not the exception but the rule." I agree with Hirsch that the leading poststructuralists were cunning hypocrites whose tortured syntax and encrustations of jargon concealed the moral culpability of their and their parents' generations in Nazi France.

American students, forget Foucault! Reverently study the massive primary evidence of world history, and forge your own ideas and systems. Poststructuralism is a corpse. Let it stink in the Parisian trash pit where it belongs!

How should the humanities be taught, and how should scholars in the humanities be trained? These pivotal questions confront universities today amid signs of spreading agreement that the three-decade era of poststructuralism and postmodernism is over.

It remains my position--as detailed in my long review-essay, "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders," published in Arion in 1991--that Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault were false gods, created and promoted by secular academics who might have been expected to be more skeptical of authority. As it became institutionalized in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, poststructuralism hardened into dogma, and many humanities professors lost the ability to respect, assess, or even recognize any hypothesis or system outside their own frame of reference. Such insularity has little to do with genuine intellectualism and is more akin to religious fundamentalism.

Most seriously, poststructuralism did manifest damage to two generations of students who deserved a generous and expansive introduction to the richness of the humanities and who were instead force-fed with cynicism and cant. I fail to see that American students are emerging today even from elite universities with a broad or discerning knowledge of arts and letters. Nor has poststructuralism produced any major new critics--certainly none of the towering scholarly stature once typical of prominent professors who had been educated in the first half of the twentieth century.

Duke - are you listening?

Post Post Modern Camille

Uh. Oh. I did finally find something on the Duke Case from Paglia. It was April 5, 2006.

During questions and answers after her talk at GW the other night, Paglia was asked about the situation at Duke. Here's what she said, more or less:

University athletes these days are a kind of master race. They get special favors, special dispensations. Does this sense of entitlement lead to crime? How does the ethos of the college sports team turn into Attila the Hun?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In the comments at Durham in Wonderland commenter anon. (who is very prolific on the board) points to an article by Bill Anderson with this quote:

"For example, any number of college campuses have been the site of "racist" attacks that later were found to be contrived, something I pointed out a while back in looking at what I call "Reichstag Fires" on college campuses. Furthermore, I noted that Duke's latest episode of angst was another rendition of that famous fire, and the nonsense is not limited to Duke. A few years ago at the prestigious Claremont Colleges, a social psychology professor, Kerri Dunn, returned from a free speech rally to find her car windshield smashed and "nigger lover" and other such things spray-painted on her car.

"Naturally, the campus erupted in mass rallies, where people expressed fear at the racism that was engulfing their beloved campus. However, police and the FBI (yes, the FBI was called to investigate) soon discovered that the perpetrator of this "hate crime" was none other than Dunn herself, who had done the damage before the rally began. (Unfortunately for her, bystanders witnessed the vandalism and told investigators what they saw. Thus, Claremont's Reichstag Fire went out quickly.)"

The pool of qualified black faculty members was - and is - small compared to whites, Asians, and people from the Middle East (qualified means having an earned doctorate from an accredited university). In my profession, economics, only about 40 percent of those receiving doctorates in any given year actually are from the United States, and the vast majority of them are white. This is a very good situation for those blacks who do earn doctorates in economics, as their chances for landing a well-paying job are going to be good, since many institutions of higher learning are going to compete for their services.

Unfortunately, not all economics faculties that would like to fill an opening with a black applicant can do so; as a result, most faculties are dominated by people from white, Asian, and Middle Eastern ethnic groups. That is a hard fact of life, not a situation that is due to racist attitudes or hiring practices, no matter what the critics might say.

But such hard facts still do not mitigate the problem that elite universities face. They want more black faculty members; they need more black faculty members, so they permitted the creation of new disciplines in order to "solve" that problem. Thus, on most campuses - and especially at the elite universities - there are entire departments devoted to things like "African-American Studies," "Women's Studies," or "African Studies." These academic areas did not exist a few decades ago, but have become popular, especially with administrators who are pressured to keep up their numbers of black professors.

A real quandary exists, however, and that is that these particular areas of study are based upon historical racism and sexism in society, and that such "isms" must be kept alive in order to legitimate them. In other words, it is not enough to deal only with historical racism, such as the Jim Crow era or black chattel slavery. Every speck of current racism must be discovered, exposed, and magnified, and if none can be found, it can be created.

Even as the case is falling apart, however, most of the faculty members who signed the original document have lent their names to a new statement, one that justifies what they said before:

As a statement about campus culture, the ad deplores a "Social Disaster," as described in the student statements, which feature racism, segregation, isolation, and sexism as ongoing problems before the scandal broke, exacerbated by the heightened tensions in its immediate aftermath. The disaster is the atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus. The ad's statement that the problem "won't end with what the police say or the court decides" is as clearly true now as it was then. Whatever its conclusions, the legal process will not resolve these problems.

The ad thanked "the students speaking individually and...the protesters making collective noise." We do not endorse every demonstration that took place at the time. We appreciate the efforts of those who used the attention the incident generated to raise issues of discrimination and violence.

There have been public calls to the authors to retract the ad or apologize for it, as well as calls for action against them and attacks on their character. We reject all of these. We think the ad's authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real.

Therefore, if this latest document is to be believed, Duke University is a living hell for black faculty and black students. Racism runs unchecked; women are raped; students face intimidation at every turn, and their lives are governed by fear.

Yet, in modern times, I seriously doubt that one - one - black student or faculty member at Duke University (or any other college or university in this country, elite or lower-tier) ever has faced what the lacrosse players faced each day during that terrible time last spring on the Duke campus. A few years ago, a black member of the Duke basketball team was accused of rape (a false charge, but a charge nonetheless), yet he never had to face signs on campus openly calling for him to be castrated.

Indeed, Duke was an unsafe place - a dangerous place - for some young men who engaged in behavior that was no different than what other students at Duke have done: have a party with drinking and hire strippers. (I am not endorsing either, but neither do I believe that what they did was a Crime Against Humanity, as so many at Duke seem to be saying.)

Here was the ultimate fraud, the ultimate Reichstag Fire. Faculty and students - each group claiming to be the brunt of vicious racist attacks - joining forces to launch a vicious and racist - yes, racist - attack on people who did not deserve what they were receiving. In the end, the supposed victims ended up creating real victims and helping to ruin many lives in the process. Perhaps that is the greatest irony of all.

When it comes to interracial rape and sexual assault, the statistics contained in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report and the Department of Justice's National Crime Survey during Wilbanks' study revealed that white rapists chose black victims 8,448 times.

However, black rapists chose white victims in 17,572 cases. In other words, according to Wilbanks, there were more than twice as many black-on-white rape cases as there were white-on-black cases. Overall white-on-black violence cases numbered 100,111, whereas black-on-white cases totaled 466,205. Therefore, blacks using violence against whites is over four times more likely than the reverse.

On the other hand rape rates in general are are declining at a fairly steady clip. So however difficult things seem they are getting better. What we need to do, as usual, is to face reality as it is and keep our prejudices from causing a rush to judgement.

Keep in mind that even with the statistics I showed, very few black men are rapists. So you can leave your stereotypes at home.

It would seem though if the Black Studies Departments are to be honest they have to live in today. We are not where we were 40 years ago, we are certainly not where we were 150 years ago and no amount of screaming will make it so. Thank the Maker.

I have only excerped bits of Bill Anderson's piece. Go read it all for it is good.

Durham in Wonderland has a round up of the last weeks news and commentary for those (like me) who cant get enough of this train wreck.

Here are some statistics[pdf] on rape by the percieved race of the victim and the perpetrator. It turns out that whites raping blacks happens in less than .1% of the cases and is listed as zero.

Update: There appears to be a discrepancy noted between the two sets of statistics re: white on black rapes. Any one have a clue? The second set is directly from the Department of Justice. The first numbers quoted are from a post that refers to a study of FBI numbers.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

California wants to outlaw some dog breeds. This strikes some people as wrong headed.

Following is a MySpace bulletin received from my daughter Melody. Mel's dog Bodhi was the gentlest, friendliest pup I ever encountered. He converted me from being a pit bull hater to a friend of the breed. He was part boxer, part chow, and part pit bull, if my memory is correct. All are "fighting breeds", but Bodhi put the lie to the myth of the visious *Pit Bull*. Just as with humans, it's the love and affection, or training and abuse that the child or the dog receives that creates either a loyal friend or a monster.

As this campaign suggests, "Ban the deed, not the breed."

Oh yeah, lots of cute puppy and dog pictures at the above link.

H/T reader linearthinker

Commenter linearthinker tells me that:

SB 681 passed into law 11/05, an initiative attempt was unsuccessful in 2006

Michael Fumento at Winds of Change is discussing how amniotic stem cells are a huge break through and will eliminate the need for embyonic stem cells. He thinks the New York Times is covering up this breakthrough by inadequate reporting.

Not so fast I say. How about current research in the matter?

For instance how about this work on regenerating heart tissue?

An Israeli scientific team from the Technion have succeeded in creating in the laboratory beating heart tissue from human embryonic stem cells.

Moreover, the researchers - Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein - have succeeded in creating blood vessels in the tissue, which will enable its acceptance by the heart muscle.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. During heart attacks, tissue is destroyed when blood is temporarily cut off to a section of the heart, and this tissue can never be repaired

The scientific journal Circulation Research reports in its on-line issue on two innovations in the researchers' work: one, the use of human embryonic stem cells, and two, the creation of a vascular system in the tissue, which is critical for its acceptance by the body.

"Without this system, acceptance could be prolonged and the cells could die during this time period," explains Levenberg. "In our work, we demonstrated the importance of the endothelial cells (cells that build blood vessels), which encourage differentiation of the heart cells and their organization, in addition to their multiplication. That is - it is important to create heart cell tissue, with all its component cells, in this case the endothelial cells, heart cells and cells that support the blood vessels."

BOSTON: Human embryonic stem cells can help regenerate damaged nerves in rats, producing compounds that nurture nerve cells and stimulate the growth of new ones, Geron Corp said on Wednesday.

The company's stock rose on the news, published in the journal Stem Cells and Development. Geron had earlier reported that human embryonic stem cells had helped replace myelin, a fatty covering on nerves that is vital to function.

Now, the company's researchers said, they had shown the cells produce multiple nerve growth factors, which are proteins that stimulate the survival and regeneration of neurons.

"In addition to the remyelinating activity as previously reported, GRNOPC1 produces growth factors that can improve the survival and extension of neuronal circuitry in the spinal cord," said Thomas Okarma, Geron's chief executive.

Fortunately the research is being done.

Here is a bit on Jewish Law and embyonic stem cell research.

Before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 at the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, medical bioethics expert Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler of New York's Yeshiva University emphatically stated that Jewish law permits embryonic stem cell research and that Jewish tradition clearly mandates the seeking of cures for diseases that cause great human suffering.

Citing Torah sources, the 80-year-old biology professor and Rosh Yeshiva of the university's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) explained that harvesting stem cells from an early-stage embryo on day five or day six does not violate Jewish law concerning when an embryo achieves legal status as a human being.

"That only occurs after 40 days when the embryo has already reached human form and developed all of its organ systems, including having a heartbeat," Tendler said.

In addition, Tendler explained that embryos in a laboratory in a Petri dish have no chance of becoming children without being implanted in a womb.

"Some Christian groups equate embryonic stem cell research with abortion, but that is not Judaism's position," Tendler said. "Because the culling of stem cells by necessity results in the destruction of embryos, these groups oppose it."

The Rabbi nails it with a reference to the US Constitution and Torah Law.

"One of the great tragedies of the Bush administration has been the weakening of the wall between church and state, between the religious and the medical," said Tendler, adding that many of America's leading stem cell scientists are now working in other countries where they have more freedom in research.

"We can be proud that Israel is a world leader in this regard and that many of the best brains in America have gone to do their research at the Weitzman Institute," Tendler said. "Weitzman is the only place so far that has developed stem cells not grown from mice cells."

Because of their regenerative properties, scientists believe that stem cells can be used to treat a variety of degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis and spinal cord injury.

"My stance can't change the controversy," said Tendler, who also serves as rabbi of the Community Synagogue in Monsey, N.Y. "I can only resolve the controversy by saying that if the instruction of the Torah was followed, there would be no controversy. But people don't follow the Torah."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh

said Saturday that his Hamas-led government would be willing to accept a temporary Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in exchange for a 10-year truce with Israel.

His comments - consistent with a call for Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders - came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to meet Hamas' supreme leader Khaled Mashaal in Syria to discuss ways to form a coalition government and end international sanctions on the Palestinians.

However, his bargaining position must be extremely weak, because he admits his weakness. This is a highly unusual bargaining strategy.

"We are with liberating any inch of Palestine," the Palestinian Prime Minister said in a televised address,

explaining his suggestion.

"But we will not close the door for the next generation, because the weak don't always stay weak, and the strong won't stay strong," he added.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm freezing my butt off after having been spoiled by Bush's global warming.

Naturally, my weather resentment is growing.

Who the hell is in charge of my weather, anyway? It's not what I want, and I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the angry Republicans -- or the new right wing BDS. This weather is hard to take, and I question the timing.

Didn't the Democrats just take over?

And didn't it get colder in no time flat?

As FDR said, in politics, there are no coincidences. Just as the Republicans and Bush made it warmer, now the Democrats have made it colder, and the lame duck Bush is powerless to stop them. This cold weather is thus proof positive of the downside of democracy.

To a Democrat, though, the cold weather is probably wonderful. I think it sucks big time, and I think it means that long term, we are destined to lose not just the current battle for the weather, but the war against the Ice Age itself.

Yes, long term, we may very well lose the Cold War.

The best we can hope for is an occasional but temporary period of warming.

A lame "surge" if you will.

MORE: In another ominous sign of the times, those who dissent from the new Cold Warriors -- especially the weathermen we once needed to tell us which way the wind blows -- are to be driven off the air. An all new "weather underground" might be our only hope.

Dr. Sanity is discussing denial. She says that it is a cover for something we don't want to look at. Hiding under the covers.

The most interesting thing to me is in the comments.We have alleged Muslim Supremacists and good old American Defeatists. Commenter Phoenix comments on a post farther up the thread including a dig at the Muslim:

"Jesus talked of love. You talk of denial. And he lived in a world far more brutal than this one."

Sidney,

How can you say Jesus lived in a world far more brutal thing this one? That's nuts. Any era that has embraced wishful thinking and denial has been a brutal era. That means we've had nothing but increasing brutality from BCE to now. Jesus didn't have a thing to do with the brutality other than to think he could mitigate it by love. And to think that love might have engendered brutality? No, never, I'm sure you'd say. Men never kill in the name of their religion, right? Whatever. The thing we know for sure is that we can now kill many more with much greater efficiency. That's a fact not based on denial or wishful thinking. Hmmm.... I wonder if that's considered a truth? Hell if I know....

Phoenix - 01.19.07 - 8:35 pm

En fuego!

Which if you think about it is kind of a pun.

===========

To the rest:

Want to know how America can fight when it gets pissed?

Look at the campaign against the Japanese in the Pacific - WW2 after the first 3 months.

No quarter asked, none given. Shoot the wounded.

Nuke 'em if they complain.

Really, you had better hope we suceeded on the cheap, because it could go much worse for the bastards.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Blue Dog Democrats in the House are finding their voice.

...another sizable group of House Democrats is set to propose a different course today. The Democrats' Blue Dog Coalition -- comprised of more conservative Democrats -- will hold a press conference on the war at 11:30 am. Their proposal appears likely to include important differences from Murtha's legislation.

Currently including 44 members, the group describes itself as primarily "dedicated to a core set of beliefs that transcend partisan politics, including a deep commitment to the financial stability and national security of the United States."

Some Blue Dog leaders have criticized President George W. Bush's escalation plans for Iraq. Arkansas' Mike Ross, the Blue Dogs' Communications Co-Chair, has said that "sending 21,000 new troops is not a new direction, it's simply more of the same." Kansas's Dennis Moore, the Caucus's Co-Chair for Policy, added earlier this month that "instead of the same open-ended strategy to stay in Iraq, we need to consider options put forth by the Iraq Study Group."

RAW STORY spoke to a variety of Blue Dog Democratic staff on Thursday about their pending proposal on the Iraq war. More than one noted that deliberations on the final bill would not be concluded until late in the evening.

But one aide was able to say that "the Blue Dogs are not calling for troop withdrawal tomorrow, and they're not cutting off funding, but they do want accountability and responsibility."

Blug Dog California member Joe Baca, however, told RAW STORY he supported Murtha's bill.

"I voted against the war in Iraq and have consistently opposed it and spoken out against it." Baca said. "I support Rep. Murtha's proposal to redeploy American troops and start to bring them out of harm's way while turning responsibility for Iraq over to the Iraqis themselves." He also added "As a Blue Dog committed to fiscal responsibility, I am in favor of holding the Administration accountable for the massive amounts of American taxpayer dollars being spent in Iraq, particularly with reports of fraud and profiteering by contractors."

A Democratic Leadership aide told RAW STORY that Speaker Pelosi was supportive of the bipartisan resolution on Iraq put forward Wednesday in the Senate. But, the aide added that "Democrats are exploring multiple options."

The Republican Party appeared ready to capitalize on the possible divisions that the Iraq war could create for Democrats in the House.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

If Jimmy Carter is any indication of what's going on with the Democrats, and Dinesh D'Souza is any indication of what's going on with the Republicans, not only is the war on terrorism lost, I'd say so are the two parties.

But much as I hate being a RINO, I don't see what difference it would make if I went back to being a DINO. (No matter which party I'm in, I'll be as annoyed with the damn bases as the bases are with people like me.)

This D'Souza business couldn't have come at a worse time, because while the GOP may be damaged irreparably, I think the real casualty will be the war in Iraq. When I wrote about D'Souza's book, I speculated that it might be a symptom of right wing war fatigue, and I think I should return to that general theme.

The idea that the war might still be winnable seems to be largely lost. With a new meme for war-fatigued social conservatives to devour, I think it will become ever more lost. It is one thing for the war to be undermined by the antiwar left. That they'll do that is as certain as the fact that the sun will rise. Then there's the multiculturalist left, which, by treating Islamists as an oppressed minority, have done much to enable a domestic Fifth Column. But D'Souza's answer to this is to create yet another Fifth Column -- this time on the right. Of course he'll deny it, but that's where I think this conservative-Islamist alliance is going.

In a recent interview with the NRO's Kathryn Lopez, D'Souza makes it quite clear that libertarians are not even on his radar.

....both the Right and the Left have been operating under illusions. The radical Muslims are against modernity and science and democracy. The radical Muslims are upset because of colonialism and the Crusades. It's all nonsense. That's not what the leading thinkers of radical Islam say. And Bin Laden's own views are quite different. In his Letter to America, issued shortly after 9/11, he said that America is the fount of global atheism and it is imposing its morally depraved values on the world. So Muslims must rise up in defensive jihad against America because their religion and their values are under attack. This aspect of Bin Laden's critique has been totally ignored, and it's one that resonates with a lot of traditional Muslims and traditional people around the world.

Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

To D'Souza it's the "cultural left" which is to blame. But what does "cultural left" mean? Who are these "moderate" Muslims he now calls "traditional" Muslims?

D'Souza's lack of specificity leaves us guessing, but he says the latter are nonetheless the enemies of the former, and the allies of the right:

Our concern should be with the traditional Muslims, who are the majority in the Muslim world. These people are also religious and socially conservative, and they are our natural allies. In fact, since the cultural Left in America is de facto allied with the radical Muslims, we as conservatives have no choice but to ally with the traditional Muslims. We cannot win the war on terror without them. No matter how many Islamic radicals we kill, it's no use if twice as many traditional Muslims join them. Now building bridges to this group doesn't mean changing our way of life, and if we are conservative there is nothing that needs to be changed. Our values are quite similar to those of traditional Muslims. There's no point chasing after "liberals" who believe in secularism and feminism and homosexual rights. Such people are quite rare and they have no constituency in any Muslim country. The traditional Muslims are our best bet. Besides, they're not asking us to live like them. They're asking us not to attack their religion, which conservatives do with depressing regularity. They're asking us not to force secularism and separation of church and state on their society, another foolish cause to which some conservatives subscribe.

Isn't D'Souza forgetting that according to the traditional Muslim view, opposition to secularism means Sharia law? Has he read the Sharia? I think he'd better, for if the Sharia is now to be considered moderate Islam, shouldn't those with values said to be so "similar" be told what those values are? (I'm thinking that traditions like mandatory headscarves, polygamy, flogging, and amputations might not be as "quite similar" as D'Souza imagines.)

And excuse me, but since when did "moderate" become a synonym for "traditional"?

What about those who don't share these moderate traditional Islamist Red State values? By reductionism they all become part of the "cultural left" -- the Enemy That Started This War By Opposing Traditional Islam.

Sigh.

Many libertarians have actively supported the war effort, and I don't know of a single libertarian who has made the alliance with Osama bin Laden which D'Souza complains the "left" (conflated into the cultural, no doubt) is making:

look at the Left's uncontrolled fury toward my book. These people are going absolutely nuts. They have never said anything remotely this harsh about the Islamic radicals. That's because I am attacking the Left's values at home, and exposing a link between the Left and the Islamic radicals that is the great unspoken secret of American politics. Basically the Islamic radicals supply the terror and the Left uses the terror to demoralize the American people and urge them to pull American troops out of Iraq and the Middle East. So on the one hand the Left dislikes the values of the Islamic radicals, and on the other the Left needs the Islamic radicals to fulfill its core mission in America, which is to wipe out the Right and send us back to the margins of American politics.

For the record, I'm one of the people who has criticized his book, and I don't believe I have uttered a single word in favor of the Islamic radicals. Ever. (And that's a serious understatement, as any longtime reader of this blog knows.)

The closest D'Souza gets to an actual criticism of libertarianism is his complaint about the "liberal campaign of cultural imperialism that is trying to force the values of the Western Left on the rest of the world":

Already there have been working relationships between traditional Christians and traditional Muslims in the United Nations and some other international forums to block liberal efforts to declare abortion as a right under international law. In fact the U.N. Charter lists no such right, but this is part of the liberal campaign of cultural imperialism that is trying to force the values of the Western Left on the rest of the world. Planned Parenthood is distributing condoms to teenage girls on every continent. Leftist groups are suing to overturn restrictive abortion laws in South America. The Left is trying to force Turkey to liberalize its laws on homosexuality as a condition of joining the European Union. So here are opportunities for people who differ on theology but agree on morality to form an international coalition to block these bogus "rights" from being imposed on cultures that do not want them. I emphasize that I am not contesting any of the rights of classical liberalism. But this is a new liberalism that is trying to smuggle its own political preferences and call them "rights." Come to think of it, hasn't the Left been doing that here in this country for several decades now? Here are home we have to fight these bogus "rights" ourselves, but abroad we have the entire traditional world as an ally. Why wouldn't we want that? This has nothing to do with putting Pat Robertson and Ahmadinejad together, and everything to do with forming coalitions among mainstream groups across international boundaries.

But let's look at Turkey. As to "laws on homosexuality," there don't seem to be any:

Homosexuality is a crime in most Muslim nations, where penalties range from prison to death. But Turkey has no laws against it, and Istanbul, the largest city, attracts those whose sexual orientation would be considered aberrant elsewhere in the Muslim world.

"When you see transvestites on the street, that is something," says Demet Demir, who was born a man 41 years ago but had a sex-change operation in 1996. "That is the first step for freedom in a country."

Turkey not only tolerates those with alternative lifestyles, it embraces them. One of its most famous writers, Murathan Mungan, is gay, and one of its most popular singers, Bulent Ersoy, is a transsexual.

Another gay singer, Zeki Muren, achieved such legendary status before he died a few years ago that his picture -- bearing an uncanny resemblance to Liberace -- is sometimes displayed alongside that of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey.

Nor is it hard to find gay gathering spots. The Internet site of Lambda Istanbul, a gay organization, lists almost 20 gay bars, clubs and discos in the city, in addition to sex shops, "blue movies," cruising areas and bathhouses. Even Time Out, the city guide distributed in luxury hotels, provides a half-page rundown of Istanbul's gay scene, including the most popular item in local sex shops -- a $70 "inflatable transexual doll."

There are no articles on homosexuality in the law but vague references to public morals and public order. The police has the legal right to take anyone who looks suspicious to the police station for interrogation.

Turkish LGBT rights activists created the Radical Democrat Green Party to campaign for on a left-wing Green platform that included support for LGBT human rights. Several of its members participated in a hunger strike in 1987 to protest the police harassment of LGBT citizens.

In 1988 the civil code was amended to allow for transgender people to have a sex change operation, under medical approval. In the 1990s the LGBT movement fought against government bans on LGBT conferences, which prompted the creation of Lambda Istanbul, and in 1994 the newly created Freedom and Solidarity Party banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity within its party, and Demet Demir, nominated by this party, became the first transgendered candidate for the local council elections in Istanbul.

In 1996 The Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling and removed a child from her lesbian parent, on the grounds that homosexuality is immoral. While bias motivated violence against gay and transgender people intensified as did efforts at government censorship, the desire of Turkey to join the European Union has forced the government to grant official recognition to LGBT rights organizations, respect a greater degree of the freedom of speech and the press and to entertain gay rights legislation. Gay themed conferences and gatherings now regularly take place, particularly in Istanbul and Ankara. Several universities have LGBT associations.

As a libertarian, I have to acknowledge that D'Souza and his supporters have every right to form an "International Coalition to Block Gay So-Called "Rights" and Stop Condom Distribution." But how will they feel about working with people who are also out to stop Bible distribution? And Jews? Not long ago, I wrote about one of Turkey's most popular films, which advances the idea that Jewish doctors harvest organs from Iraqi prisoners.

To be sure, Turkey hasn't been America's greatest ally in the Iraq War. Is it D'Souza's argument that if conservative Americans help their traditional Muslims stop homosexuality and condoms, Turkey will then become a better ally of the United States in the war against terror? Much as I'm trying for the sake of argument to entertain the idea, I can't see how that would happen. More likely, conservatives will look ridiculous, Hillary will be elected president, and certain conservative think tanks will then get more money.

And it will be tougher than hell for bloggers like me to maintain (as I have repeatedly) that there really is a huge difference between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam. Much as I hate to say this, I think Dinish D'Souza has done more to advance Andrew Sullivan's thesis of a "Christianist-Islamist alliance" than Sullivan ever could have.

Winning a war requires building coalitions, and I'd almost swear D'Souza is doing his level best to destroy the shaky coalition between conservatives and libertarians which has (at least in the blogosphere) been the backbone of a less than monolithic group we call "war bloggers."

One of the blogosphere's most articulate longtime war supporters is Dean Esmay, who links a long, excellent post by neo-neocon about the hard choices required in war:

....those who require moral perfection in our actions on the world stage are either hopelessly idealistic and out of touch with the consequences of what acting on that idealism would have wrought (in this case, the triumph of the Soviets, and later the Iranians), or they are cynically mouthing arguments they don't even believe.

I wish the world were otherwise. But it's not, and pretending the lion has already lain down with the lamb is an absurdity, or worse. There are plenty of lions out here, about to devour huge herds of lambs, and sometimes all we can do is back the lion who seems less voracious.

The funny thing about the whole thing (and I mean funny-strange, not funny ha-ha) is that it is the neocon philosophy that represents one of the only strategies offering a possible way out of the realpolitik dilemma. And yet those who criticize our realpolitik decisions to back dictators also criticize our neonconnish decisions to overthrow them and try to institute a better and more democratic form of government. Odd, isn't it?

Make no mistake about it, however: the neocon notion that we should attempt actions designed to transform these countries into something better is not an easy one to execute, as Iraq has demonstrated (and, by the way, it does not always involve our waging war--sometimes it involves our supporting internal forces within the country itself, as suggested presently for Iran).

The most disturbing aspect of D'Souza's argument is that, just as he engages in selective editing of radical Islam, he completely ignores libertarians -- thus leaving it to them to guess whether or not they are part of his "cultural left" and therefore part of The Enemy responsible for 9/11.

Might this be intentional?

Here's Andrew Wile, of Market News Network:

In America, liberalism is imposed on the American public through regulation. Around the world, and especially in the Middle East, such morality is imposed at the point of a gun. This is actually what Muslims are reacting to with such hatred - the imposition of a secular bureaucracy that contravenes the moral dictates of their religion. It is not Hillary Clinton's personal beliefs, whatever they are, that makes part of the world "hate" the United States. It is the regulatory enshrinement of those beliefs and their subsequent militarization and exportation.

What neither D'Souza nor Noah seem to touch on is that it is not individual views that are responsible for problems inside and outside the United States. It is government adoption of these views and subsequent enforcement. So long as the argument is framed as liberal versus conservative, there will be no end to it. The political structure, framed in this manner, lurches from one government fascist enterprise to another, with the mood of the country souring, its freedoms eroding. Only on the Internet, thank God, will you find the libertarian point of view to oppose the fraudulent liberal-conservative intellectual construct. (No wonder the Internet has enemies!)

I don't see how any of it is going to help win the war. I suspect that the book reflects D'Souza personal war against libertarianism.

Along that line, here's an excerpt from a chapter titled "the Libertarian Temptation" (in D'Souza's Letters to a Young Conservative):

Consider an example that contrasts the conservative and libertarian views of freedom. If you said to a libertarian, "What if 300 million Americans opt to become pornographers like Larry Flynt? Would that constitute a good society?" While the conservative would emphatically answer no, the pure liberatian would have to answer yes, because these people have chosen freely. As this example illustrates, libertarianism is a philosophy of choice without political concern for what people actually choose. Thus, although many libertarians live virtuously, libertarianism as a philosophy is indifferent to virtue. In this respect it differs markedly from conservatism.

Is libertarianism as a philosophy indifferent to virtue? In the strict sense, you could say the same thing about the Constitution. But can't virtue take other forms than speaking out against sexual immorality? Can't freedom be a virtue too?

If freedom is a virtue, that does not mean that all things flowing from freedom are virtuous. So let us assume that Larry Flynt is a bad man -- the "loathsome character" that D'Souza says he is, but that our freedom allows such loathsome characters to run around loose, make millions, and even (as D'Souza claims) be feted by Hollywood and the ACLU. Is it unreasonable to see such freedom as a virtue anyway? The freedom we're talking about is free speech, and while I'm no fan of Larry Flynt, I'm even less of a fan of Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, or the American Nazi Party. What makes Larry Flynt so much more odious? Is it that he peddles obnoxious sex, while the others only peddle obnoxious politics?

Ah but if only the choice were between pornographers and people who want to kill us.

What a world.

Seriously, I don't know what to say. Rational debate about freedom is becoming impossible.

Hugh Fitzgerald, in Pajamas Media, pulls no punches with a very thorough fisking of D'Souza, and concludes,

With this book, he should lose any residual respect any one of sense might once have harbored for him. He has lost the right to an audience. He should no longer be given a hearing at National Review or, for that matter, anywhere else that wishes to be taken seriously.

This book is beyond the pale. Beyond all pales.

Being beyond the pale is part of our freedom in America.

(Just ask Larry Flynt.)

MORE: Born Again Atheist is skeptical about D'Souza's sincerity, and quotes from a piece he wrote back in 2003:

America is under attack as never before -- not only from terrorists but also from people who provide a justification for terrorism. Islamic fundamentalists declare America the Great Satan. Europeans rail against American capitalism and American culture. South American activists denounce the United States for "neocolonialism" and oppression.

"Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent that we are "slouching towards Gomorrah."

If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed.

Dinesh, in The Enemy At Home, you run the gamut. You Justify terrorism, affirm that America is the Great Satan, and rail against American global cultural hegemony and cultural oppression. You blame America for 911. You fault it for 911, and for continuing insulting the terrorists and their supporters with its culture. Slouching towards Gomorrah? By your own admission, we're already there.

If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed.

"If those critics are right?" Dinesh, you've joined them.

Does that mean D'Souza was against destroying America before he was for it?

(Sorry! But such evolution in thinking has become a trend lately....)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. Welcome everyone; I appreciate the comments.

I should stress my belief that this is the most disturbing political development I have seen in years. Please bear in mind that my goal is not to bash social conservatives here; I only hope and pray that they stop and look within themselves before making the drastic, possibly irreversible about-face that D'Souza advocates.

UPDATE (1/21/07): Dean Barnett has a brilliant review of the D'Souza book:

....intellectually obtuse, poorly informed and, most importantly, an irresponsible exercise in putatively conservative bomb-throwing.

....if the book's principle theory gains any traction it would be destructive. If conservatives decided that liberals are the reason we were attacked and why we're hated, it won't do anything for domestic unity. D'Souza's theory in this regard is not only misguided, it is offensive. Liberals won't have to bother to caricaturize D'Souza's argument. He did that himself.

Second, and this is also no small thing, it's not liberals' fault. Radical Islam hates a respectable Church-going Presbyterian family man every bit as much as it hates a spoiled libertine like Paris Hilton.

It is dispiriting to see D'Souza stumble so badly, and distressing to think that he is selling the theories of this book as a de facto spokesman for America's conservatives.

UPDATE: My thanks to Virginia Postrel for the link to this and my earlier post in her discussion of the Alan Wolfe's New York Times review of D'Souza's book. As to whether Wolfe has "willfully overlooked the strong negative reaction to the book that has, in fact, come from 'decent conservatives,'" perhaps Wolfe could answer Jules Crittenden's question:

Anyone else find it highly ironic that the New York Times should run a piece attacking anyone for being an treasonous al-Qaeda symp?

One step at a time. Should I be holding my breath?

UPDATE: My thanks to Kim du Toit for the link, and for reminding me that D'Souza indeed does not speak for all conservatives, much less all Republicans.

Some of the commenters (both here and at du Toit's blog) make me think that perhaps I should have stressed the first word of this post -- "IF."

It is of course my sincere hope that D'Souza is not "any indication of what's going on with the Republicans" -- hence this post!

At the risk of being redundant, perhaps I should stress again that allowing something is not an endorsement of it. FWIW I do not endorse Larry Flynt, nor do I endorse D'Souza's latest meme. To some commenters, that makes me a liberal (one of du Toit's commenters was especially outraged by my sarcastic statement that "being beyond the pale is part of our freedom in America"). Considering that I am routinely called a conservative, perhaps I should be grateful to be smeared as a liberal!

BTW, I'm seeing a report in today's new that Jimmy Carter is apologizing for his book. If Carter in fact apologized, and if D'Souza does not, would it be a false contrast to point that out? Or a false comparison?

Much as I'd be delighted to retract a tentative comparison I never knew I'd fully made, perhaps I should apologize for creating the appearance of a comparison. (Usually, when I make comparisons -- like these two examples -- I like to think I am being, um, perfectly clear.)

Michael Totten has been doing some really excellent work in Israel and Lebanon showing the aftermath of the war and interviewing those who saw the war first hand. There is way more than I can cover in a few paragraphs so let me give you the short version. Michael thinks the Hizballah got the worst of it. His pictures confirm it. His pictures also show that the Israelis were very selective in their targeting and Hizballah was indiscriminate.

Hizballah headquarters area in Beirut.

Cedars of Lebanon

A Liberal Cleric

South Lebanon - Christian Village

South Lebanon - Hizballah Village

Cross Posted at Classical Values

I love it when my disorganized blog is ahead of the local paper in pursuing forgotten memes. The other day, I had fun with the New York Times' "51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse" (which I deemed unfairly ahead of Glenn Reynolds' "A Rifle in Every Pot") by dredging up the decades old feminist metaphor -- "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

I was, well scraping (rescraping, actually) the dregs of the 70s -- at least I thought I was. It was my way of mocking what I saw as a bad metaphor, but in all honesty I like to think that today's feminist women have evolved past mindless slogans and poor analogies.

I mean, a fish on a bicycle? Aside from being a rather poor analogy, there's a certain unattractive suggestiveness which might evoke certain negative stereotypes you'd think the feminists would have left alone.

But here's the cartoon that accompanied this Op Ed in today's Inquirer:

[NOTE: The cartoon is in the Inquirer's hard copy only; hence the link to the artist's site.]

What I don't know is whether the author of the Op-Ed (University of Connecticut Professor Gina Barreca) chose the cartoon to accompany her piece, or whether the Inquirer editors thought it would be clever.

I should always try to keep in mind that what's satire to me may be someone else's opinion.

At least, I think it's someone else's opinion. Perhaps Ms. Barreca intends the cartoon as satire. She is (according to Ms. magazine) an accomplished feminist humorist:

GINA BARRECA, Professor of English Literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, received a B.A. from Dartmouth College, an M.A. from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. An award-winning columnist for the Hartford Courant, she has served as an advisor to the Library of Congress for work on humor and the American character, and was deemed a "feminist humor maven" by Ms. magazine. With Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post, she wrote I'm With Stupid: One Man, One Woman, and 10,000 Years of Misunderstandings Between The Sexes Cleared Right Up (2004). Barreca's works, which have been translated into five languages, include the best-selling Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even (1995); Perfect Husbands (and Other Fairy Tales) (1993); and They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted (1992).

"Gloria Steinem's marriage is proof positive of the emotional desperation of aging feminists who for over 30 years worshiped the steely career woman and callously trashed stay-at-home moms."

Anyway, in today's Op-Ed, Ms. Barreca inveighs against stereotypes:

Indeed, popular culture - the film/TV world especially - is doing all it can to keep alive the worst social clichés of the past. When women over age 26 or over size 8 are depicted as unmarried, they are most often played by Kathy Bates - or Martin Lawrence. If they're thin and unmarried, they're depicted as predatory and played by Glenn Close or Sharon Stone. If they are young and unmarried... well, by the credits, they won't be.

Complains Barreca, men -- even ugly, out-of-shape men -- are stereotyped as delectable:

Single men remain delectable, however, no matter what shape they're in. I'm not talking only George Clooney here. Any man with a steady job, a history of reasonable sobriety, and the ability to cook one signature meal (either a red gravy for pasta, which they refer to as a "Bolognese" sauce, or a stir fry made in a wok they got from their last girlfriend) can find a woman willing to marry him. Guys who look like Notre Dame gargoyles can find wives who look like Isabella Rossellini. Think Everybody Loves Raymond. Think The King of Queens. Think The Simpsons. Meantime, women who look like Christie Brinkley get dumped for 17-year-olds who work at ShopRite or hookers named Divine Brown.

But forget the new stereotypes. What matters is that the old stereotypes are gone, and that's good for women:

But in the non-screen world, it may be that women have turned the Donna Reed image of singlehood inside-out. Perhaps women are learning that being alone in a relationship is far worse than being alone not in one. (A friend of mine once told me she'd never remarry: single, she can make herself feel inadequate whenever she needs to without having to watch football or, for that matter, her weight.) More and more, being unmarried is a sign that a woman is in control of her life.

But who is making her watch her weight? Her husband? Society? Or might it be her own rational and selfish desire to live longer? Seriously, what has weight to do with this? Not to get off topic, but men and women both get fat, don't they? And isn't being overweight bad for you? Unless Professor Barreca subscribes to the old stereotype -- "fat is a feminist issue!" -- I'm confused. No; I'm wrong right there, because even if she did subscribe to fat theory (or whatever the feminist meme is), then why would she have complained about Kathy Bates? For the fat theorists, shouldn't the latter be considered a liberating stereotype?

OK, enough fat. Let's cut to the meat. Much as I'd like to believe that "being unmarried is a sign that a woman is in control of her life," I often wonder what is meant by being in control. Feminism is supposed to mean independence, yet so many feminists are socialists that I often wonder whether the goal is simply to substitute The State for The Man. If it is, that is not independence, and it is the antithesis of being in control. In logic, if the stereotype of men being in control is bad (because it's bad to be controlled), then how does it become good for the state to be in control? Asserting that it's good for women to be in control of their lives is one thing, but I find myself wondering whether the people who say this really mean it. That's why I suggested that single women be armed. How could any true feminist oppose that?

I think a good slogan would be "a woman needs the state like a fish needs a net."

I know. The net of the state (whether nanny or daddy state) is meant as a safety net.

Nothing funny about it.

(The fish/bike analogy may have been scraping, but the net analogy really is bottom trawling.)

Speaking of ham sandwiches, some people will swallow anything -- including other people:

Marco Evaristi, an edgy Chilean artist, served meatballs made with his own fat to his dining companions at his latest exhibit in Santiago. On the plates in front of them was a serving of agnolotti pasta and in the middle a meatball made with oil Evaristti removed from his body in a liposuction procedure last year. Some of the meatballs will be canned and sold for $4,000 for 10 units. "You are not a cannibal if you eat art," he said.

When an autograph hound asked Dali for his signature during lunch, the eccentric artist whipped out a pink marker and signed his half-finished omelet, much to the dismay of his fan. "Art should be edible," Dali announced.

The title is "Soft Skulls with Fried Egg Without the Plate, Angels and Soft Watch in an Angelic Landscape" (1977).

My personal opinion is that it's better art than canned fat from the overweight Chilean artist.

More tasteful too.

America is desperatly short of translators of Arabic, Farsi and other languages important to our defence against Islamic terrorists.

Last Thursday, Brigitte Gabriel and I put out an Action Alert to the American Congress for Truth (ACT) membership, asking you for examples of how our government rebuffed your valued assistance as Arabic and Farsi linguists for critical intelligence translation work assignments in military, foreign and homeland security agencies.

In less than 72 hours were got dozens of responses and they are still coming in.

While a sampling they are nevertheless indicative of your concerns about why our government persists in denial of loyal American citizens offering to reduce the mountainous backlog of untranslated intercepts and transcripts of interrogations in Arabic and Farsi, in particular.

How mountainous is the backlog of untranslated intercepts? Read this comment from a National Security Agency (NSA) official quoted from Congressional hearings in a Washington Times article on the subject written by Rowan Scarborough and Bill Gertz in their column "Inside the Ring" entitled: "Intelligence backlog."

NSA director, Army Lt. Gen. Keith in commenting in written response to Senators on the large backlog of time consuming labor intensive foreign language intercepts on terrorism noted:

"Today's backlog is no longer confined to Arabic and its multiple dialect but also less commonly taught languages where linguists are in short supply."

One knowledgeable insider in our national security apparatus wrote in response to the ACT action alert:

"The fact that the FBI and the military don't have enough linguists/translators especially after 9/11 is a disgrace and the fact that those they have are possibly not reliable or trustworthy makes it imperative that new competent resources are found."

Brigitte Gabriel, ACT founder, Lebanese Christian.

Brigitte applied three times to the FBI in 2001 and 2002 VOLUNTEERING her services to help translate, in whatever capacity she could be used, to help our country in the fight against terrorism. She never got an answer. Finally the Government sent her a government application that stated that translators must be between the age of 25 and 35, (she had just turned 36), must have graduated with a degree in the language they wish to apply to translate and must have three years on job experience as translators. (utterly ridiculous bureaucracy) Meanwhile complaining on TV that they do not have enough translators.

Brigitte Gabriel speaks not only the classical Arabic which is the official language of all the Middle East, but also the local dialects, Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Palestinian, and Jordanian.

From an Iraqi Christian.

'I applied twice for the FBI. I never got an answer from them. I heard that the Recruiters are Egyptians and want translators with an Egyptian dialect. I don't know if religion is a factor, but I've given up. I think it will be very intimidating under these circumstances. By the way I'm an Iraqi Christian living in the U.S. I worked as a linguist for the U.S. Army in Iraq."

From a Lebanese American Christian.

"I was deployed from Ft. Benning, Georgia in May, 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Supporting our armed forces and intelligence units. In October 2004, I was injured by a suicide bomb blast inside the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. I had to come back for treatment. A year ago I was released by all doctors and they recommended that I could go back to work, but not in Iraq. I called my employer and to my amazement they offered me a job back in Iraq but not a stateside one because I lacked a security clearance. I refused and they sent me a letter in January, 2006 laying me off. I have tried in vain to find a job with the government or defense contractors. The recruiters are usually Muslim and some have told me that they have relatives working for al Jazeera TV. Can you believe that!"

The case of Jan Dickerson was reported on 60 Minutes.

The FBI has admitted that when Dickerson was hired last November the bureau didn't know that she had worked for a Turkish organization being investigated by the FBI's own counter-intelligence unit.

They also didn't know she'd had a relationship with a Turkish intelligence officer stationed in Washington who was the target of that investigation. According to [whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds, Dickerson tried to recruit her into that organization, and insisted that Dickerson be the only one to translate the FBI's wiretaps of that Turkish official. ...

Edmonds says that when she reviewed Dickerson's translations of those tapes, she found that Dickerson had left out information crucial to the FBI's investigation -- information that Edmonds says would have revealed that the Turkish intelligence officer had spies working for him inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon.

Update: 19 Jan '07 0535z

Amir Taheri says our media has the same problem.

January 15, 2007 -- JUST outside Um al-Qasar, a port in south east Iraq, a crowd had gathered around a British armored car with a crew of four. An argument seemed to be heating up through an interpreter.

The interpreter told the Brits that the crowd was angry and wanted U.K. forces out of Iraq. But then a Kuwaiti representative of Amnesty International, accompanied by a journalist friend, approached - and found the crowd to be concerned about something quite different.

The real dispute? The day before, a British armored vehicle had an accident with a local taxi; now the cab's owner, backed by a few friends, was asking the Brits to speed up compensating him. Did these Iraqis want the Brits to leave, as the interpreter pretended? No, they shouted, a thousand times no!

So why did the interpreter inject that idea into the dialogue? Shaken, he tried a number of evasions: Well, had the Brits not been in Iraq, there wouldn't have been an accident in the first place. And, in any case, he knows that most Iraqis don't want foreign troops . . .

Since 2003, Iraq has experienced countless similar scenes, with interpreters, guides and "fixers" projecting their views and prejudices into the dialogue between Iraqis and the outside world.

In a way you got to hand it to these Iraqi guys, they must have studied "Wag The Dog" a hundred times. Reality doesn't count. Only what is in front of the camera counts.

The following is a real classic:

The industry geared itself to meeting demand. In 2004, for example, many journalists coming to Baghdad wanted to interview the "militants" who were attacking U.S. soldiers. The industry obliged by arranging interviews.

One popular interviewee was one "Abu Muhammad," who claimed to be a fisherman by day and "a killer of Americans" by night. One U.K. paper paid $2,000 (a tidy sum in the cash-starved Baghdad of those days) for an exclusive with Abu Muhammad, who later took up a full chapter in a book published in London. The scam ended when someone found out that Abu Muhammad was, in fact, a busboy at a local hotel who'd grown a beard and was "fishing" Western journalists, splitting the proceeds with his cousin, who acted as interpreter and guide.

There is a hassle going on in Minneapolis between Muslim cab drivers and