These large (usually more than 10 ft. long), oddly seminal seaweed fragments are found all over the San Mateo coast.

Tex Johnson, Boeing test pilot, rolls a 707 (link thanks to Judith)

Base Jumping with a kite suit on, gliding along a mountain (link thanks to Ace)

There was snow in the hills over Silicon Valley yesterday. Today there's a chance of more snow and icing on route 17 (an already dicey ride). I haven't lived here for a while, but I think this is pretty unusual..

Flight of the naked Germans...

Space Ship Two is unveiled:

In olden days, astronauts were fit, healthy young men with years of specialist training. Now, all that is required to show the Right Stuff seems to be a large checkbook and a reliable heartbeat. If an 88-year-old can make it through "astronaut training," then surely almost anyone can.

That is good news for Virgin Galactic, one of a number of firms proposing to take people into space at a price measured in thousands, rather than millions of dollars. On Jan. 23 the firm unveiled the vehicles it plans to use to give the world's moderately well heeled pensioners (and anyone else with a couple of hundred grand to burn) the ride of their lives.

Cynics who were around at the time of the Apollo missions may be forgiven for thinking they have heard it all before...

... Flying into space on Virgin's SpaceShipTwo, itself launched from a special aircraft, called White Knight Two, is both a small step and a giant leap. It is small because, like NASA's first attempts, it is a quick, sub-orbital flight — and purists might argue that real spaceflight involves going into orbit. It is giant because no privately funded effort has come this far, nor seemed so likely to succeed.

For that success to be sustained, however, this project and its successors must bring down costs and open up new markets and different destinations. Some firms are already eyeing the moon, though that would require much more powerful rockets...

...It is famously difficult to predict the market for disruptive technologies, whether they be computers, muskets, jet engines or digital cameras. But cheap access to space, and to the other side of the Earth, is likely to be revolutionary.

For many years the question has been why taxpayers should pay to put people into space. The point of private-sector space travel is that the world will rapidly and accurately come to a conclusion about what space is for. The invisible hand may, indeed, point upwards. Then again, it may not.

If it does, however, it may also point to a revolution of a different kind. Many people date the emergence of the environmental movement to the publication of a photograph taken from Apollo 8 of the Earth rising over the lunar horizon.

When space becomes a democracy — or, at least, a plutocracy — the rich risk-takers who have seen the fragile Earth from above might form an influential cohort of environmental activists. Those cynics who look at SpaceShipTwo and think only of the greenhouse gases it is emitting may yet be in for a surprise.

Or, if anyone is in the mood to hit the tipjar, I'll take the tour and blog it... :-)

Michael Totten has another insightful report from Fallujah: The Final Mission, Part I

There's more to the final mission than keeping the Iraqi Police solvent, however. The effort is focused on the Police Transition Teams. Their job is to train the Iraqi Police and bring them up to international standards so the locals can hold the city together after the last Americans leave.

A senior Marine officer whose name I didn't catch grilled some of his men during a talk in the Camp Fallujah chow hall after dinner.

“Do you trust the Iraqi Police?” he said to a Marine who works on one of the teams.

“No, sir,” the Marine said without hesitation. That was the only acceptable answer. This was a test, not an inquiry.

“Why not?” the officer said.

“Because they're not honest,” the Marine said.

“What do the Iraqi Police watch?” the officer said. “What are they looking at on a daily basis?”

“Us,” said several Marines in unison.

“They will emulate you, gents,” the officer said. “They. Will. Emulate you. Why? Because we came over here twice and kicked their ass. I do not trust the Iraqi Police today. Our job is to get them up to speed. They don't need to be up to the standard of Americans. But they do need to be better than they are right now.”

more...

Posting will be light this week. I'm heading out west, this time to San Francisco (and if the weather is good, Tahoe)

In the spirit of the trip, here are a few posts on one of my favorite hobbies, shooting. From TmjUtah at Three Rounds Brisk: How to Improve your offhand shooting

1. Stand easy, weak side shoulder facing the target. A line drawn across your back should point at the target. This is your starting point. Later, as you find your own natural point of aim, you may modify this.

2. Feet slightly more than shoulder width apart. Some folks like their feet parallel. Others go toe in, or toe out. But the key is to not force a too wide stance. Back straight, and keep it as straight as you can when the rifle is in your shoulder. You will be moving; an exaggerated sway-back won't help. Offhand is the weakest position because it requires more balance vice bone-to - to bone support.

3. Take a breath. Let it out...

more...

John from Summer Patriot, Winter Soldier if you could only own one pistol, what would it be?

almost any recognizable major name in firearms make wonderful side arms, and that would include smith and wesson, colt, taurus, beretta, fn, glock, springfield armory, and ruger. among those makers a purchaser can usually depend on finding a serviceable gun that will perform its intended purpose, and will do so dependably over an extended period without being finicky or nettlesome.

it seems to me, however, that if you talk to gunsmiths, gun repair people, and gun cranks, one name stands out for making a strong, robust, dependable, serviceable, accurate and reliable arm...

..and something I should have linked to a while ago, Bill Whittle's essay on the importance of agility: Forty Second Boyd and the Big Picture

Boyd called these Energy-Maneuverability graphs, and in the process of producing them, Boyd developed the first of his two Earth-shattering breakthroughs: E-M Theory.

Boyd realized – through years of intense and lonely study on his own time and often in direct contravention of orders – that the key to the Perfect Sword lay not in speed, or service ceiling, or rate of climb, or even turning ability. All of these were red herrings that had been chased for decades.

Boyd’s first breakthrough was that the perfect fighter plane’s key characteristic was agility.

Agility. The ability to change its energy state rapidly. To turn, or climb, or accelerate faster than its opponent. And most importantly, to keep up that high energy state in the grueling, high-G turns that rapidly bled out speed and options...

..and yes, there is a shooting range in New York City. When my daughter came to visit over the holiday season, we did the usual girl stuff - toured the cute little shops, saw an indie movie in the village and visited the West Side Range. It's a nice, friendly place, where they're used to novices..

..and yes, this is the headline of the day. Thanks to Ace:

"Suicide Bomber Trips and Falls Down Stairs; Dies of Embarrassment and Bomb Detonation, But Mostly Bomb Detonation"

Animal-rights activist Karen Davis claimed that the murder of thousands who died in the 9/11 attacks was a good thing because their "trivial consumer satisfactions included the imposition of fundamental misery and death on hundreds of thousands of chickens"

When Ward Churchill sought to blame the victims of 9/11 for the attacks, he titled his essay "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens"

Now, when the Saudis are launching a propaganda campaign to distract the world from their support of world terrorism, guess who they blame...

What is it with terror-supporters and chicken?

High Mercury Levels Are Found in Tuna Sushi

Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“No one should eat a meal of tuna with mercury levels like those found in the restaurant samples more than about once every three weeks," said Dr. Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J.

Dr. Gochfeld analyzed the sushi for The Times with Dr. Joanna Burger, professor of life sciences at Rutgers University. He is a former chairman of the New Jersey Mercury Task Force and also treats patients with mercury poisoning.

The owner of a restaurant whose tuna sushi had particularly high mercury concentrations said he was shocked by the findings. “I’m startled by this,” said the owner, Drew Nieporent, a managing partner of Nobu Next Door. “Anything that might endanger any customer of ours, we’d be inclined to take off the menu immediately and get to the bottom of it.”

Tuna, king mackerel and swordfish are all a little dicey. I think I'll stick to the salmon and dragon rolls..

Link thanks to Noam

At a Manhattan Project gathering, I was talking to Todd Seavey about comics (it's great to find a fellow Tick fan). He mentioned the Lord of Light saga, described here:

Shiva 3000 bears some resemblance to a later comic book miniseries by Grant Morrison called Vimanarama and a great, earlier novel by Roger Zelazny called Lord of Light, set on a planet where scientists have been functioning as a ruling elite clad in Hindu-based rituals and myth for so long and are armed with such fantastic technology, that there is by now little practical difference between their world and the world of Hindu mythology, particularly in the minds of the masses who must worship and obey them. That is, of course, our long-term plan at the American Council on Science and Health as well.

An amazing side story about Lord of Light: in a notorious boondoggle that some charge was merely a con to begin with, a Lord of Light-based themepark was at one point planned — complete with costume designs by comic book legend Jack Kirby, creator of such cosmic characters as the mighty Galactus — but the whole thing collapsed before construction ever began, to the sorrow of numerous doomed investors. Weird enough to be a sci-fi story itself

If you're a fan of weird CIA tricks, sci-fi, comics or the influence of Hollywood and Bollywood on the Middle East, the story behind the boondoggle is worth reading..

After reading Sara Corbett's culturally relative discussion of the The Lighter Side of Female Genital Mutilation", I decided to see what cultural relativism had to say about another unhealthy, brutal crime against humanity: cannibalism.

Is it possible that the tolerant multiculturalists of academia and the media could mau-mau the West into loving people-eating? One multi-culturalist, Beth Conklin, author of Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society, is giving it the old college try, using a full bag of cultural relativism's tricks:.

First, she shows the lighter side of cannibalism:

"We assume that cannibalism is always an aggressive, barbaric and degrading act," objects Beth A. Conklin, an associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University. "But that is a serious over-simplification, one that has kept us from realizing that cannibalism can have positive meanings and motives that are not that far from our own experience."...

..."When I decided to study the Wari' I was a vegetarian and the last thing I was interested in studying was cannibalism," Conklin recalls. Her attitude changed as she talked to Wari' about their experiences with the deaths of family members...

"I hope that this book will make people think more deeply about the meanings that the body has in human relationships, and to consider that other cultures may have understood those in ways that made the destruction and transformation of the body through cannibalism seem to be the best, most respectful, most loving way to deal with the death of someone you care about."

Then she uses moral equivalence:

At the same time that Europeans were condemning various native peoples as cannibals, however, they were practicing a form of cannibalism themselves. Use of medicines made from blood and other human body parts was widespread in Europe through the 17th century...

...Conklin sees irony in the fact that scholars who insist that all accounts of cannibalism must be false are actually perpetuating the negative stereotypes of it. "They seem to assume that cannibalism is by definition a terrible act-so terrible, in fact, that could only have been invented by outsiders who wanted to denigrate or exoticize native peoples. A healthier, more realistic approach would be to recognize that various peoples, including western Europeans, have consumed human body substances for different reasons in different times and places. Let's try to recognize the positive, not just negative meanings of these practices," ..she says.

And, of course, one must find a way to blame colonialism

Historically, charges of cannibalism were used by European nations to help justify their colonization efforts.

She declares that her opinions are "challenging"..

"Cannibalism is a difficult topic for an anthropologist to write about, for it pushes the limits of cultural relativism, challenging one to define what is or is not beyond the pale of acceptable human behavior,"

Then she blames us for the narrowness of our views:

..Wari' ethnography highlights the fact that different groups of people had a variety of motives for practicing cannibalism, ranging from love and respect to hate and anger. "If we listen to what indigenous people like the Wari' say about how they experienced funerary cannibalism," Conklin notes, "we begin to see the narrowness and ethnocentrism of our own views."..

and she wraps it up by downplaying the horrors and deadly aspects of this charming indigenous and non-colonialist custom

...In 1999, Christy Turner of Arizona State University published a book presenting extensive evidence for prehistoric cannibalism at Anasazi sites. White and Turner's research has been highly praised within the field and strongly criticized by scholars who maintain that it is impossible to determine the motives of the people who appear to have cut up the bodies of a number of people, stripped off the flesh and cooked the bones in a clay pot.

If cannibalism did take place at Anasazi sites, it was associated with torture, murder and mutilation. That's the kind of thing that gives cannibalism a bad name," Conklin says. "To my mind, the killing and torture is more abhorrent than the alleged consumption of human flesh. And it's worlds away from the funerary practices I've studied, in which consuming the body honored the person who was eaten."

...Another area of debate regarding cannibalism is whether it may spread infectious diseases. Animal studies have suggested that cannibals may be at greater risk for being infected by parasites and diseases from members of their own species than from other prey...

Conklin downplays those long-established medical facts by stating that there are 'serious questions' about them, while neglecting to mention that these 'serious questions' were apparently only raised by Conklin, who says that she didn't see any disease among the Wari.

Of course the Wari haven't been cannibals for years. They stopped eating people back in the 1960's, when government workers and missionaries forced them to abandon the practice.

Note that they were 'forced' to abandon the practice. Government workers and missionaries didn't gently work with local leaders and opinion-makers to gradually shift the public discussion of people-eating away from from its indigenous positive meanings. They literally forced cannibals to stop eating people. Whoa, harsh.

Sara Corbett, the cultural relativist in charge of putting a pretty face on child mutilation in Indonesia, is trying to convince us that "You cannot make change that way.”

Wrong again.

Phyllis Chesler writes about a Sunday New York Times magazine article describing female circumcision in Indonesia

..the article is essentially a National Geographic-style photo essay subtitled: “Inside a female circumcision ceremony for young Muslim girls.” The photos are by Stephanie Sinclair, the brief text is by Sara Corbett.

What is a human rights atrocity with life-long and life-threatening consequences is here being presented as a “tradition,” often a harmless one, sometimes not, but always a well-intentioned one.

According to the article, there is “little blood involved”—well, how bad can that be? And, “antiseptic is used”— well, this is not dangerous at all, is it? Finally, afterwards, the child is given a “celebratory gift”—what, am I the kind of westerner who, Grinch-style, would deny the child her gift in order to make my twisted, “racist” argument? As the article states , the child clutching (or drinking) her gift “has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia.”

These photographs were taken in 2006 on a day where 200 girls were genitally mutilated . In honor of the “prophet Mohammed’s birthday,” the Assalaam Foundation subsidized both the mutilation—and the “gift.” According to the Foundation’s chairman of social services, the cutting/mutilation will “stabilize her libido;” “make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband’; and “will balance her psychology.”...

I will let Dr. Bostom, who is a physician and the author of the forthcoming book, “The Legacy of Islamic AntiSemitism” (a daunting, compelling, and indispensable book), have the last words. He has written a passionate article titled “Clitoral Relativism-Female Genital Mutilation in ‘Tolerant” Islamic Indonesia. ” Quoting from the British Medical Journal on the subject, he reminds us that:

“Female genital mutilation, also misleadingly known as female circumcision, is usually performed on girls ranging in age from 1 week to puberty. Immediate physical complications include severe pain, shock, infection, bleeding, acute urinary infection, tetanus, and death. Long-term problems include chronic pain, difficulties with micturition [urination] and menstruation, pelvic infection leading to infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labor during childbirth. ”

He notes that FGM is illegal in the United States. He views the above article as “misleading.”

Speaking of misleading articles, the author of "A Cutting Tradition", Sara Corbett, also wrote a cover story for the New York Times called "The Women’s War", about female Iraq veterans.

Amorita Randall, one of the women who appeared in The Women's War never served in Iraq and made up much of what she told Sara Corbett in her interview.

The Times printed this retraction, saying "If The Times had learned these facts before publication, it would not have included Ms. Randall in the article."

Apparently Corbett had some reservations about the woman's story, so she used "hedge-words and qualifiers" to describe Randall in the piece.

One reader commented:

Boy, this sort of thing, "a lie can disclose a bigger truth" or "the truth doesn't matter, is how you feel that does",nonsense is really scary. It has been used and is being used particularly by feminists such as in the Duke Non-rape case. Some professors just went with the thought that it didnt' matter if the students were innocent because throughout history privileged white young men have abused poor black women.

Like I said, that kind of thinking is truly frightening.

Is it any surprise that Americans don't trust the mass media anymore?

Very cool documentary thanks to Armed Liberal, who says:

This just came from Biggest Guy's relatives in France: documentary footage of his grandfather flying a bombing mission as a member of the Free French air force in WWII (he's the guy in the goofy helmet).

From Red, White and Blue Tag Sale

Even as W. played cheerleader for Arab business, the Arabs were cleaning our clocks — then buying them. Our addiction to oil has allowed our pushers in the Persian Gulf to go on a shopping spree to snap us up.

Hillary Clinton was right when she said it was “pathetic” that President Bush had to beg the Saudis to drop the price of oil.

One cascading rationale he offered for invading Iraq was the benign domino theory, that bringing democracy to Iraq would sway the autocrats in the region to be less repressive.

But when W. visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt last week, he did not have the whip hand. He could not demand anything of the autocrats in the way of more rights for women and dissidents, much less get the Saudis to help on oil production. He needs their help in corralling Iran, which has been puffed up by the occupation of Iraq.

So he was a supplicant in Saudi Arabia. The American economy is a supplicant, too.

Two decades ago, we fretted that Japan was taking over America when Sony bought Columbia Pictures and Mitsubishi bought a chunk of Rockefeller Center. But they overpaid for everything.

Now, because of Wall Street’s overreaching, our economy depends on foreign oil and foreign loans to stay afloat.

China and Arab countries have a staggering amount of treasury securities. And the oil-rich countries are sitting on so many petrodollars that they are looking beyond prestige hotels and fashion labels and taking advantage of the fire sale to buy eye-popping stakes in our major financial institutions..

When the president got back Thursday night from a trip that made it clear he has no clout overseas, he had to rush the ailing economy into intensive care.

The Left, the Right and everyone in between were disgusted by Bush's trip to Saudi Arabia. Everyone has complaints about where the economy is going. Should we be surprised that "change" is this campaign's buzzword?

I posted the David Cox rant (below) because I thought it was some funny tin-foil hattery, and because he looked so much like Michael Palin doing a parody of Silly Party politicians.

But responses to the post started me thinking about the positive aspects of studying data transmissions through space.

(this would work better as fiction, but since I'm too lazy to write that, I'll just blog it)

It doesn't matter if our space phone is ringing - the probability is already high that someone, somewhere in those 10³°° universes out there already knows we're here. We've probably been on the equivalent of their Tom Tom for eons. They don't care if we answer or not.

The Russian experiment is interesting, not because of the possible reactions of "aliens" who are more likely to resemble phosphorous-nitrogen seaweed than Star Trek space babes, but because they're testing a system of transmitting data. We haven't made great strides in actual space travel (where are our flying cars!) but we have made significant progress in methods of storing and transmitting data.

According to a recent article in Newsweek (which may or may not be reliable), computers are able to crunch enough numbers to sort of read minds. A computer's ability to read that kind of data implies that we may someday be able to download ideas and concepts onto a remote database in the same way we blog, without the annoyance of typing.

We've also made a lot of progress in the field of biomimetics (bionics). We're heading towards the point where we will be able to replace most parts of the human body, either through artificial implants or cloning.

With the right combinations of all the above technologies, annoying problems in space and time travel become solvable. It will probably take us centuries to be able to create an artificial intelligence that can think or emote the way we do (like the Cylons who improbably evolved from mindless robots to humanoids with reproductive ability in a generation) but the ability to copy and download our existing consciousness from one storage unit to another could be do-able by the end of this century.

So, if we wanted to travel from point A to point B, instead of moving our delicate, high maintenance bodies, we could just transmit the data from one bio-storage unit to another, from body A on earth to body B on mars.

Or even from body A in 2145 AD to body B in 2147. If we see space and time travel as the transmission of data/consciousness, rather than as the transportation of bodies, all sorts of possibilities open up. Transmitting data through space is easier than transmitting cumbersome bodies, and it's likely that data could be transmitted through time as well. While data/consciousness couldn't travel faster than the speed of light, it's more likely to be able to travel (and survive the trip) through "warped" space-times, wormholes or simulated superluminal travel through a timespace curved by something like gravitation.

I'd always thought that the term 'singularity' meant the crushing, event-horizon type of singularity predicted by general relativity, but the definition that's being discussed lately is a point in the future "variously characterized by the technological creation of self-improving intelligence, unprecedentedly rapid technological progress, or some combination of the two".

Or the "rapture for nerds...

That's a much more positive type of singularity to be heading towards. As far as I can tell, the Russian transmissions are an important step towards reaching it.

Also linked to from Harry's Place - In the Guardian, David Cox writes:

ET stay home

We should resist the efforts of Russian scientists to contact aliens who could threaten our very existence..

Not long ago, the idea that an extraterrestrial civilisation might threaten us would have been dismissed as far-fetched. No longer. Recent simulations of known extrasolar planetary systems have found that about half of them could be expected to harbour an earth-like world. There's no reason to suppose that intelligent life hasn't evolved on some of these planets as it has on earth, and there's every reason to guess that some of the lifeforms involved would by now be far more developed than our own.

As long ago as the 1970s, Sir Martin Ryle, the then Astronomer Royal, warned that "any creatures out there" might be "malevolent or hungry". The late Ronald Bracewell, a Stanford University astronomer, argued that alien creatures would be likely to be both cunning and well armed. Another influential astronomer, Zdenek Kopal, told a British colleague: "Should we ever hear the space-phone ringing, for God's sake let's not answer. We must avoid attracting attention to ourselves."

David Cox is a writer, producer, and (apparently) a total nutter. There's a lot of that going around in media these days.

Fortunately, Iowahawk is investigating the problem.

At Dissent Magazine*, Leftist Mitchell Cohen discusses anti-Semitism and the "Left that doesn't learn"

After 1989, the left that doesn’t learn was in retreat. It was hushed up by the end of all those wretched communist regimes, by images broadcast worldwide of millions in the streets demanding liberation from dictatorships that legitimized themselves in left-wing terms. You know who I mean by the left that never learns: those folks who twist and turn until they can explain or ‘understand’ almost anything in order to keep their own presuppositions—or intellectual needs—intact...

...Nothing exemplifies the return of old junk more than the ‘new’ anti-Semitism and the bad faith that often finds expression in the statement: “I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic.” The fixation on Israel/Palestine within parts of the left, often to the exclusion of all other suffering on the globe, ought to leave any balanced observer wondering: What is going on here? This fixation needs demystification...

..A FEW YEARS ago I sought to outline commonalities between anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist discourses in a scholarly journal. It is worth reproducing. Here are major motifs that inform classical anti-Semitism:

1) Insinuations: Jews do not and cannot fit properly into our society. There is something foreign, not to mention sinister about them.

2) Complaints: They are so particularistic, those Jews, so preoccupied with their “own.” Why are they so clannish and anachronistic when we need a world of solidarity and love? Really, they make themselves into a “problem.” If the so-called “Jewish problem” is singular in some way, it is their own doing and usually covered up by special pleading.

3) Remonstrations: Those Jews, they always carp that they are victims. In fact, they have vast power, especially financial power. Their power is everywhere, even if it is not very visible. They exercise it manipulatively, behind the scenes. (But look, there are even a few of them, guilty-hearted perhaps, who will admit it all this to you).

4) Recriminations: Look at their misdeeds, all done while they cry that they are victims. These ranged through the ages from the murder of God to the ritual slaughter of children to selling military secrets to the enemy to war-profiteering, to being capitalists or middlemen or landlords or moneylenders exploiting the poor. And they always, oh-so-cleverly, mislead you.

....Alter a few phrases, a word here and there, and we find motifs of anti-Zionism that are popular these days in parts of the left and parts of the Muslim and Arab worlds:

1) Insinuations: The Zionists are alien implants in the Mideast. They can never fit there. Western imperialism created the Zionist state.

2) Complaints: A Jewish state can never be democratic. Zionism is exclusivist. The very idea of a Jewish state is an anachronism.

3) Remonstrations: The Zionists carp that they are victims but in reality they have enormous power, especially financial. Their power is everywhere, but they make sure not to let it be too visible. They exercise it manipulatively, behind people’s backs, behind the scenes – why, just look at Zionist influence in Washington. Or rather, dominance of Washington. (And look, there are even a few Jews, guilty-hearted perhaps, who admit it).

4) Recriminations: Zionists are responsible for astonishing, endless dastardly deeds. And they cover them up with deceptions. These range from the imperialist aggression of 1967 to Ehud Barak’s claim that he offered a compromise to Palestinians back in 2000 to the Jenin “massacre” during the second Intifidah. ..

No, anti-Zionism is not in principle anti-Semitism but it is time for thoughtful minds—especially on the left—to be disturbed by how much anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism share, how much the dominant species of anti-Zionism encourages anti-Semitism.

And so: If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else; if your neck veins bulge when you denounce Zionists but you’ve done no more than cluck “well, yes, very bad about Darfur”;

if there is nothing Hamas can do that you won’t blame ‘in the final analysis’ on Israelis;

if your sneer at the Zionists doesn’t sound a whole lot different from American neoconservative sneers at leftists;

then you should not be surprised if you are criticized, fiercely so, by people who are serious about a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and who won’t let you get away with a self-exonerating formula—“I am anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic”—to prevent scrutiny. If you are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, then don’t use the categories, allusions, and smug hiss that are all too familiar to any student of prejudice.

Being a leftist (albeit one who learns) he's not a fan of neo-conservatism at all, but this is a good analysis of the bias that informs the "anti-Zionist" point of view.

* Link thanks to Adam L. at Harry's Place

In praise of fighter chicks

Phyllis Chesler, who was present at the founding of Ms. Magazine, expresses her profound disappointment about the path the magazine's editors have chosen to take..

In her post in Pajamas Media, she says:

Recently, in the pages of the New York Times, Gloria Steinem wrote that we should not hold the only female Presidential candidate to a higher and different standard than we hold male politicians; when we do, Gloria explained, that’s sexism. From 1972 on, I have been explaining to Gloria and to other Ms. feminists that we should not hold the only Jewish state to a higher or different standard than we hold all other nations states; when we do, it is called racism or Jew-hatred or anti-Semitism.

Ms magazine, the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority, which took over Ms magazine, and far too many Western feminists have, for a long time, been more concerned with the alleged “occupation” of a country that does not exist (Palestine) than they have been concerned with the occupation of women’s bodies world-wide, especially in Islamic countries.

More on Ms. Magazine's "contemptible" refusal to run a full-page advertisement submitted by the American Jewish Congress that features three prominent Israeli women.

I've just started an online Feature-writing class at Gotham Writer's Workshop.

Things should start improving around here soon...

Michael Hirsh at Newsweek notes the power of the Petro-Islam Mafia, a force more powerful than democracy

We need to have an honest discussion about the nature of this strange state, which contains as much as 20 percent of the world's oil reserves. Saudi Arabia has always been a nation run by a family, the vast network of Saud princes who operate in a manner more reminiscent of the Sopranos than a modern, relatively transparent government, says a former senior CIA and FBI official with long experience in the country. The Saud family's legitimacy is built not on law but on an extremist brand of Islam, Wahhabism, in which Osama bin Laden was schooled, much as Tony Soprano's power is based on violence. (Remember when people used to talk about forcing the Saudis to change their radical Islamist views after 9/11? Didn't happen. Instead we invaded somewhat secular Iraq—at least it was next door to the real problem—and found ourselves preoccupied.) Imagine if Tony S. ran much of the world's oil supply and used the vast profits to fund more Bada-Bing fronts for organized crime all over the world? Don't you think governments would band together to stop it? Well, that's not unlike what's happening today, with Saudi Arabia's financing of anti-Western sentiment—but no one's doing anything about it, starting with George Bush. Simply because it's the Saudi government. Our "friends."

As we've seen in Iraq, the Saudi/al Qaeda mafia can be fought, if individuals decide that they're not going to co-operate AND if the government backs them up.

That same tactic is also working against the Mafia in Italy:

Web, crackdowns weakening Mafia's grip

PALERMO, Sicily - When it came down to business, Cosa Nostra could always count on fear.

No more

In a rebellion shaking the Sicilian Mafia to its centuries-old roots, businesses are joining forces in refusing to submit to demands for protection money called "pizzo."

And they're getting away with it, threatening to sap an already weakened crime syndicate of one of its steadiest sources of revenue.

The Mafia has a history of bouncing back from defeat, but this time it is up against something entirely new: a Web site where businessmen are finding safety in numbers to say no to the mob....

....The businesses are openly defying the Mafia by signing on to a Web site called "Addiopizzo" (Goodbye Pizzo), which brings together businesses in the Sicilian capital that are resisting extortion.

The campaign was launched in 2004 by a group of youths thinking of opening a pub. They started off by plastering Palermo with anti-pizzo fliers, reading "An ENTIRE PEOPLE WHO PAYS THE PIZZO IS A PEOPLE WITHOUT DIGNITY," and eventually brought their campaign online where it struck a profound chord with Sicilians fed up with Mafia bullying.

Confindustria, the industrialists' lobby, has also boosted the movement with a threat to expel members who pay protection money. Its Sicilian branch has gone through a list of pizzo-paying companies found in a raid on a top Mafia boss' hideout, and this month began summoning heads of those companies to demand to know if they indeed had been paying and should be drummed out of the politically influential lobby...

....At the same time, authorities are ratcheting up the pressure on business owners, aggressively prosecuting those who refuse to testify against the Mafia in clear-cut cases of extortion. Under Italian law, a businessman who denies paying up despite flagrant evidence — such as being caught on a surveillance tape — can be charged with "aiding and abetting" Cosa Nostra.

"Now it is a bigger risk for us to pay than not to pay," said Ugo Argiroffi, an engineer who recently added his Palermo construction company, C.O.C.I. to Addiopizzo's list (http://www.addiopizzo.org in Italian with an English link).

As we've seen from Saudi libel tourism, some Sauds are willing to go to great lengths to hide the truth about their Petro-Mafia from the American public. They know they've got most of our government (Republicans and Democrats) in their pockets, but they actually believe that ordinary people can change things.

Strangely enough, they have more faith in us than we have in ourselves.

If we waged an ideological and legal war against the people who manage terror-Mafia finances and against the politicians, universities and media who take their bribes, we could weaken the Petro-mafia in Saudi Arabia and in Iran.

I mean, really, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Speaking of people who have no dignity, as Michael Hirsh notes, the US is not really friends with the Saudis, we're more like their lackeys. Our president claims to support democracy in the area, but he's afraid to speak to pro-democracy dissidents because it would offend our 'friends'. In this political relationship, it's obvious who is in control.

Since the beneficiaries of Saudi bribes are happy with the state of things, they have no incentive to change. It's up to us to make them do it.

Donald Sensing files a report from the Milky Way..

I have a bunch of old sketches that I like but never got to use at work. So, here they are...

In this report, "Bush Soaks in Dubai Culture in Mideast", Anne Gearan, the AP's "Diplomatic Writer", states that "Saudi Arabia [is] a key U.S. security ally and often the region's decision leader."

She repeats this clumsy phrase twice in the same report.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - President Bush gets a flavor of this cosmopolitan banking and business hub before heading to Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security ally and often the region's decision leader....

...Bush was departing the Gulf region later in the day for meetings in Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security ally and often the region's decision leader.

This was published this morning in a number of news outlets from the Guardian to the Washington Post to the Duluth News Tribune without comment or correction. Our news, hot off the State Department press.

I question the spontaneity of this propaganda...

..through their "Human Rights Commission".

Ezra Levant describes Canadian efforts to intimidate journalists and publishers*:

Here is an exchange between me and Officer McGovern. I talked about the chilling effect that human rights complaints have not just on the victims — e.g. the people and companies named in the complaints, like we were — but on other media who see what could happen to them if they dare upset thin-skinned whiners. It's similar to the phenomenon of libel chill, except it's worse. Libel chill is when reporters are worried about writing a story for fear of being sued. But that's not much more than a healthy fear — if a story's facts are true, it's defensible in defamation law. More than that, any would-be plaintiff would have to finance his own lawsuit, be subject to well-known rules of court, and have to pay the costs of any failed nuisance suits. None of those restraints are checks againt "human rights commission chill": truth is not a defence; plaintiffs complain for free; taxpayers pay for the prosecuting lawyers; rules are arbitrary; legal precedents are not applied consistently; and instead of judges, tribunals are stacked with activists, many not even lawyers.

The worst part is that there is no deterrent to spurious complaints — there is no cost to making false accusations. That's where the "human rights chill" comes in: why would any rational publisher or editor report on sensitive subjects (read: radical Islam) if they knew they would be tagged with a no-win complaint?

That's the point I was making. And after I made it, Officer McGovern said "you're entitled to your opinions, that's for sure."

Well, actually, I'm not, am I?

Speaking of bureaucracy, in Bayonne a meter maid recently got in got in trouble for holding up two plainclothes detectives who were actively trying to pursue a drug dealer.

The detectives forgot to feed the meter and she wouldn't let them get in their car until she finished writing them a parking ticket, even after they showed her ID and explained the situation.

Maybe not coincidentally, that meter maid looks a lot like the lady interrogating Levant. Years of just following orders probably gives people like her that banal inexpressiveness.

* Link thanks to Judith Weiss

In Commentary Magazine, Michael Totten writes:

Iraqi Army soldiers have a terrible reputation for cowardice and corruption – especially in Baghdad – but it’s unfair to write them all off after reading the news out of Iraq’s capital Sunday. Three Iraqi Army soldiers tackled a suicide bomber at an Army Day parade and were killed when he exploded his vest...

...And what of those three who threw themselves on a suicide bomber? They are hardly less brave than American soldiers. They are arguably as brave as the Americans who sacked the Al Qaeda hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, and sacrificed themselves so that others could live.

...These Iraqis deserve recognition, and they deserved to be recognized by their names. Yet I could not find their names cited in any media articles. All three of their names generate zero hits using Google at the time of this writing. I had to contact Baghdad myself to find out who they were. Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton was kind enough to pass their names on.

Iraq between the time of the initial invasion and 2007 was easily as nasty a place as Lebanon was during the 1980s, and the conflict is eerily similar. Thomas Friedman made a haunting observation about anonymous death during the civil war in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem: “Death had no echo in Beirut. No one’s life seemed to leave any mark on the city or reverberate in its ear.” Then he quoted a young woman. “In the United States if you die in a car accident, at least your name gets mentioned on television,” she said. “Here they don’t even mention your name anymore. They just say ‘thirty people died.’ Well, what thirty people? They don’t even bother to give their names. At least say their names. I want to feel that I was something more than a body when I die.”

Here are the names of the three brave Iraqis who hurled themselves on an exploding suicide bomber.

Malik Abdul Ghanem
Asa’ad Hussein Ali
Abdul-Hamza Abdul-Hassan Rissan

They were friends the Americans and Iraqis did not know we had until they were gone.

Private Johnson Beharry's courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle's crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is "too positive" about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain's youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

The BBC's retreat from the project, which had the working title Victoria Cross, has sparked accusations of cowardice and will reignite the debate about the broadcaster's alleged lack of patriotism.

According to Robert Kaplan, the media's alleged lack of patriotism is related to the cult of victimhood:

As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: "Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I'm a warrior. It's my job to fight." Every journalist has a different network of military contacts. Mine come at me with the following theme: We want to be admired for our technical proficiency--for what we do, not for what we suffer. We are not victims. We are privileged.

The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims "displaced traditional images of heroism." It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims..

...In particular, there is Fox News's occasional series on war heroes, whose apparent strangeness is a manifestation of the distance the media has traveled away from the nation-state in the intervening decades. Fox's war coverage is less right-wing than it is simply old-fashioned, antediluvian almost. Fox's commercial success may be less a factor of its ideological base than of something more primal: a yearning among a large segment of the public for a real national media once again--as opposed to an international one. Nationalism means patriotism, and patriotism requires heroes, not victims.

Nations like Iraq and Lebanon can't afford the luxury of indulging in a cult of victimhood. Stories of heroism, like the bravery shown by Malik Abdul Ghanem, Asa’ad Hussein Ali and Abdul-Hamza Abdul-Hassan Rissan can bring unity to nations that need it, badly.

...because they and their friends know that counter-terrorism through social justice is no counter-terrorism at all.

In her Campus Watch article, Juan Cole and CAIR: Two Peas in Pod, Cinnamon Stillwell writes:

University of Michigan history professor and former president of the highly politicized Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Juan Cole is known for his boilerplate anti-Western remarks. His blog, Informed Comment, is chockfull of the stuff. This extremism may have accounted for the fact that Cole was denied tenured faculty positions at both Yale and Duke in 2006. It has certainly won him a starring role in Campus Watch's "Quote of the Month," which features more of Cole's unhinged commentary than those of perhaps any other Middle East studies academic.

Now comes word that Cole is to speak at a CAIR-Florida fundraising banquet in March, 2008. This is fitting for Cole and CAIR (The Council on American Islamic Relations) are two peas in a pod. Both act as apologists (and in the case of CAIR, incubators) for radical Islam and consistently paint the United States and Israel as the bad guys in the struggle therewith...

...Writing at his blog, Cole supported CAIR's claim in 2006 that the suspects in the Miami terrorism case involving a plot to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and various FBI buildings weren't really Muslims, but, rather, members of a cult that included, as he put it, just "(a little bit of) Islam." While the so-called Liberty Seven did indeed appear to be more cult-like than strictly Muslim in their religious observances, their behavior followed a pattern established by Islamic terrorists in the United States both before and after Sept. 11, 2001. What's more, Cole, in typical politically-correct fashion, chalked up their terrorist plots to "grievances and resentments of race and class inequality in the United States" and suggested that "In this case, the best counter-terrorism would be more social justice."...

...CAIR's deservedly compromised reputation is leading politicians on both sides of the aisle to distance themselves from the group in droves. One would hope Middle East studies academics would follow suit, but in the case of Cole, he is instead going out of his way to assist CAIR in their fundraising efforts.

Membership in the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has declined more than 90 percent since the 2001 terrorist attacks,

The organization instead is relying on about two dozen individual donors a year to contribute the majority of the money for CAIR's budget, which reached nearly $3 million last year.

According to anti-Islamist M. Zuhdi Jasser:

the sharp decline in membership calls into question whether the organization speaks for 7 million American Muslims, as the group has claimed. "This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population. They only represent their membership and donors," Mr. Jasser said.

Cole and CAIR, two peas in a pod...

In his latest post from Iraq, Michael Totten interviews (mostly Sunni) Iraqis.

Their opinions on:

Mistakes made:

“What did you think of the Americans a few years ago when they first got here?” I said.

“The United States made a big mistake when they invaded Iraq,” Omar said. “They destroyed the Iraqi Army. They destroyed the whole army when they invaded. They lost their right hand against the insurgents. They lost a good partner that could have really helped in the future. In the beginning if they had just kept the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police, somebody would have been backing them.”

Israel

I almost thought better of it, but I had to ask: “Have you ever been to Israel, Tom?”

“Yes!” he said, beaming. “It is my country. It is beautiful. I have family there. The first time I went to Israel, after the 1967 war, I was afraid the Jews might eat my flesh. But they were so nice to me in Haifa. They welcomed me into their homes even though I am Palestinian. We hated them, you know, after all that had happened. But I was welcome as a Palestinian. The Jews are good people. Like you.”

For all the hatred in the Middle East, there is also forgiveness, and moderation. Where are the moderate Muslims? ask many Americans. I find the question bizarre. I meet them every day in Iraq, and everywhere else in the Middle East, too. The problem is they have a hard time getting attention in newspapers and magazines that wallow in sensationalism.

Al Qaeda

“Can you describe what Al Qaeda did here?” I said.

“The Al Qaeda organization is the enemy of Iraqis and of Americans,” Mahmoud said. “We are Muslims. Sunnis. Al Qaeda came through Islam and used it to enter Iraqi lands. They are killers, insurgents, they don't respect humanity. They don't belong to Islam or have religious beliefs. They have no kind of religious beliefs.”

Don’t assume Mahmoud is dissembling when he says this. It may appear that some Muslims are being overly defensive by saying Osama bin Laden is not a real Muslim, but there is a solid case to be made that radical Islamism is, in fact, a totalitarian cult unhinged from the religion as it is actually practiced by the majority. It is they, after all, who blow up mosques in Iraq. I know of at least one mosque in Ramadi that is considered “blackened” because insurgents used it as a base. No one will set foot in it now...

...When Mahmoud says Al Qaeda does not belong to Islam, he is not speaking theologically. I’m afraid Al Qaeda does belong to Islam if you look at it that way. But he is right that Al Qaeda does not belong to Islam as it is currently lived by the people in his community.

“In Western Iraq we have been a part of this big game,” Mahmoud said. “The Sunnis here are very simple people, very innocent people. It is easy to win their hearts. Al Qaeda tried to go through the religion to earn their affection. People can get enrolled in those types of Islamic organizations for that reason.”

“The Al Qaeda organization is like a mafia or any other secret organization in the world,” Ahmed said. “If you enroll in that organization, that's it. You're gone. Nobody can get you out of that business. You're lost. It's a matter of trapping the man after letting him in. Then he's trapped, he's lost forever. He cannot go back because the Al Qaeda organization will get him.”

They are not just like a mafia. They are also like a murderous cult.

“The Al Qaeda organization has a core philosophy,” Ahmed continued. “When you join the Al Qaeda organization the first thing you have to do is get your parents far away from your mind. Your father and mother have to be away from your thinking. There can be nothing else. Only the Al Qaeda organization. Your kids, your wife, your family, your parents, your beliefs, all have to be out. Only then can you enroll in the Al Qaeda organization.”...

....“If an Al Qaeda officer gives you an order to kill your father,” Ahmed continued, “you have to do it. Your father, your mother, your neighbor, no matter who it might be. It's a simple way to get anybody killed – American, Iraqi, any civilian, any local, anyone. It's a matter of ideological indoctrination from the organization itself.”

According to the conventional narrative, Al Qaeda was rejected by Iraqis because they murdered Iraqis. They were far more vicious and hateful than the Americans they vowed to expel. The narrative is correct, as far as it goes, but Al Qaeda is detested for more than mere thuggery. Other armed groups have been able to maintain at least some popularity even though they also murder Iraqis. None of the others, though, violent though they may be, are so thoroughly totalitarian, so alien to the traditions of Iraqi culture, and so hostile to its centuries-old social fabric. Al Qaeda in Iraq tears at Iraq’s traditional culture as viciously as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia. ..

...“Well, what was their real objective here?” I said. “Surely they had an objective other than just killing people. They wanted to accomplish something.”

“Of course,” Omar said. “This organization belongs to somebody, somebody outside the country. I blame Syria and Iran. There are small cells running around in this country in favor of those two countries.”

The Syrian and Iranian regimes may or may not use Al Qaeda cells for their own reasons, but the fighters who make up Al Qaeda are not fighting for Alawite Baathism or Shia Theocracy.

“Don't you also have problems here with Islamist extremists from Saudi Arabia?” I said.

“Actually, yes,” Omar said. “They have been here in this area. But they aren't right now for the time being. If you look at Al Anbar Province, it's becoming a stable and safe area. This image is being projected to the other provinces. Kirkuk and Mosul appreciate this and are trying to achieve the same thing.”

America in Iraq

“How long do you think the Americans should stay here?” I said. “And I mean here in the Fallujah area, not in the whole country.”

“I anticipate that the American forces will be withdrawn to major bases in Iraq,” said Ahmed. “They will finish their mission here in, let's say, one or two years. Maybe one and a half years.”

“A lot of people say that the Americans are here to benefit from the oil and the Iraqi economy,” Omar said. “They want to do business in this country. But the Americans could have just asked Saddam Hussein for that.”

“What do you guys think of Saddam Hussein?” I said.

“We appreciated the leadership of Mr. President Saddam Hussein,” Ahmed said. “Because now we are sacrificing a lot. Because of the Al Qaeda organization. Saddam was painful. I admit that. But it wasn't as bad then as it is now.”..

...“We will need some kind of protection after the American forces leave the area,” Ahmed said. “If you don't support the Neighborhood Watch and the Iraqi Police, we'll achieve nothing. We need more support, more equipment, more weapons for the locals here. Anbar Province should be an example for all the other Iraqi provinces. That's the main thing we can do for you.”

In related news, the US is planning to hand over security to Iraq troops in Anbar

Of the recent incident at the Straits of Hormuz, Ralph Peters says:

January 8, 2008 — EARLY Sunday morning, the US Navy lost its nerve and guaranteed that American sailors will die at Iranian hands in the future.

As three of our warships passed through the Straits of Hormuz, five small Iranian patrol craft rushed them. As the Revolutionary Guard boats neared our vessels, an Iranian officer broadcast a threat to our ships, claiming they'd soon explode.

The Iranians tossed boxes into the water. Mines? Just in case, our ships took evasive action.

The Iranians kept on coming, closing to a distance of 200 meters - about two football fields. Supposedly, our Navy was ready to open fire but didn't shoot because the Iranians turned away at the moment the order was given.

We should've sunk every one of them...

...The Iranians may even have had an escalation plan, in case we opened fire. President Ahmedinejad and his posse may seem contemptible to Washington, but the Iranians think several moves ahead of us: We play checkers, they play chess.

In contrast, the Boston Globe suggests that:

President Bush should leave no doubt that America does not want an armed conflict with Iran and should call for agreed-upon rules for avoiding similar confrontations in the future.

Dealing with Iran isn't a matter of diplomacy and it isn't a chess game. It's child’s play. They shout "think fast!" and if they make us blink, they shout "HA, HA, made you blink!!

Then they go and brag about it to all their friends.

Anyone who has spent any time in a playground knows that the next time, they'll try to make us cry uncle, just like they did to Britain when they captured those 15 sailors.

There are many complex recommendations for how to deal with these antics, but the simplest would probably be to anticipate this bratty behavior and to stop blinking. Didn’t we learn anything in kindergarten?

In the New York Times Book Review, Ayaan Hirsi Ali reviews Lee Harris' "The Suicide of Reason"

In describing the imperialist nature of Islam, Harris suggests that it is distinct from the Roman, British and French empires. He views Islamic imperialism as a single-minded expansion of the religion itself; the empire that it envisions is governed by Allah. In this sense, the idea of jihad is less about the inner struggle for peace and justice and more about a grand mission of conversion. It should be said, however, that Harris’s argument is incomplete, since he does not address the spread of Christianity in the Roman, British and French empires....

...The second fanaticism that Harris identifies is one he views as infecting Western societies; he calls it a "fanaticism of reason." Reason, he says, contains within itself a potential fatality because it blinds Western leaders to the true nature of Islamic-influenced cultures. Westerners see these cultures merely as different versions of the world they know, with dominant values similar to those espoused in their own culture. But this, Harris argues, is a fatal mistake. It implies that the West fails to appreciate both its history and the true nature of its opposition.

Nor, he points out, is the failure linked to a particular political outlook. Liberals and conservatives alike share this misperception. Noam Chomsky and Paul Wolfowitz agreed, Harris writes, "that you couldn’t really blame the terrorists, since they were merely the victims of an evil system — for Chomsky, American imperialism, for Wolfowitz, the corrupt and despotic regimes of the Middle East." That is to say, while left and right may disagree on the causes and the remedies, they both overlook the fanaticism inherent in Islam itself. Driven by their blind faith in reason, they interpret the problem in a way that is familiar to them, in order to find a solution that fits within their doctrine of reason. The same is true for such prominent intellectuals as Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama.

Harris does not regard Islamic fanaticism as a deviancy or a madness that affects a few Muslims and terrifies many. Instead he argues that fanaticism is the basic principle in Islam...the West has cultivated an ethos of individualism, reason and tolerance, and an elaborate system in which every actor, from the individual to the nation-state, seeks to resolve conflict through words. The entire system is built on the idea of self-interest. This ethos rejects fanaticism. The alpha male is pacified and groomed to study hard, find a good job and plan prudently for retirement: "While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin," Harris writes, "the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive and ruthless."...our worship of reason is making us easy prey for a ruthless, unscrupulous and extremely aggressive predator and may be contributing to a slow cultural "suicide."

Harris’s book is so engaging that it is difficult to put down, and its haunting assessments make it difficult for a reader to sleep at night. He deserves praise for raising serious questions. But his arguments are not entirely sound...

...Enlightenment thinkers, preoccupied with both individual freedom and secular and limited government, argued that human reason is fallible. They understood that reason is more than just rational thought; it is also a process of trial and error, the ability to learn from past mistakes.

Harris is correct, I believe, that many Western leaders are terribly confused about the Islamic world. They are woefully uninformed and often unwilling to confront the tribal nature of Islam. The problem, however, is not too much reason but too little. Harris also fails to address the enemies of reason within the West: religion and the Romantic movement...Both the Romantic movement and organized religion have contributed a great deal to the arts and to the spirituality of the Western mind, but they share a hostility to modernity. Moral and cultural relativism (and their popular manifestation, multiculturalism) are the hallmarks of the Romantics. To argue that reason is the mother of the current mess the West is in is to miss the major impact this movement has had, first in the West and perhaps even more profoundly outside the West, particularly in Muslim lands...

...To argue, as Harris seems to do, that children born and bred in superstitious cultures that value fanaticism and create phalanxes of alpha males are doomed — and will doom others — to an existence governed by the law of the jungle is to ignore the lessons of the West’s own past. There have been periods when the West was less than noble, when it engaged in crusades, inquisitions, witch-burnings and genocides. Many of the Westerners who were born into the law of the jungle, with its alpha males and submissive females, have since become acquainted with the culture of reason and have adopted it. They are even — and this should surely relieve Harris of some of his pessimism — willing to die for it, perhaps with the same fanaticism as the jihadists willing to die for their tribe. In short, while this conflict is undeniably a deadly struggle between cultures, it is individuals who will determine the outcome.

Hirsi Ali believes that reason is our strength, not our weakness. Reason gives us the the ability to learn from past mistakes. This is a skill that political Islam and multicultural Romaticism lack.

Like Hirsi Ali, we should have the courage of our convictions.

[cross-posted at Solomonia]

..but not work safe, which is why I posted it today

[link thanks to the Queen]

The Dakar road rally, one of the most dangerous endurance races in the world is being canceled due to concerns about safety.

Via the News Scotsman:

MILITANTS linked to al-Qaeda yesterday forced the cancellation of the world-famous Dakar Rally for the first time in the event's 30-year history.

Amaury Sport, the France-based organisation in charge of the 6,000km rally, said in a statement it had been advised by the French government to cancel the race, which was to begin in Lisbon today and end in Dakar, capital of Senegal, on 20 January.

Four French tourists were murdered in Mauritania last month – a country across which much of the rally runs.

The organiser said direct threats had also been made against the event by "terrorist organisations"...

Oh for pity's sake. Historically, racers have successfully or unsucessfully dodged minefields, gotten lost, maneuvered through camel grass and erg, broiled under desert heat, froze during desert nights - and they're canceling for safety concerns?

According to the Scotsman, an al Qaeda propaganda release "did not directly call for attacks on the race or on teams taking part."

The race goes through a fairly lawless territory, which means that people are allowed to defend themselves when attacked (unlike in Europe). This is just one more danger added to an already extreme sport. Why is the Dakar rally going Bloomberg on us?

In the months before the Kenyan elections, Christian media published reports that candidate Raila Odinga signed a Memorandum stating that he would implement strict Islamic Sharia law if he received the Muslim vote. Kenyan Muslim leaders (with the help of the BBC) dismissed these reports as "propaganda". From the BBC report, published in November:

"Kenyan Muslim leaders have dismissed as propaganda allegations that an opposition party promised to introduce Sharia for Muslims if it won elections."

The National Muslim Leaders Forum said its deal with the Orange Democratic Movement was to end the current discrimination against Muslims...

..."There was a fear that Muslims will force their faith on other people, Islam does not allow suppression of other religions and we will be the last to advocate for this," said Abdullahi Abdi of the National Muslim Leaders Forum.

Instead the memorandum of understanding, signed in August, states that Mr Odinga has pledged to defend Muslims against harassment and victimisation by state security forces who claim to be fighting terrorism.

If the ODM leader wins, he promises to set up a commission to investigate renditions of Muslims to Somalia, Ethiopia and the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

The document also commits Mr Odinga to initiate policies to redress the present marginalisation of Muslims living in the Coast and North-East provinces.

However, according to this copy of the actual document (found thanks to Atlas and A Jacksonian)dated 'this 29th day of August 2007, Mombasa, Kenya, signed by Chairman Abduallah Amdi, and the Hon. Raila Odinga, it's promised that the candidate, who "recognizes Islam as the only true religion" will:

b) Within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions.

c) With immediate effect dismiss the Commissioner of Police who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists to oppress the Kenyan Muslim community.

g) Within one year facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters. [Note: everywhere in Kenya, not just in "Muslim declared regions."]..

"No Muslim residing in Kenya, whether a citizen, visitor or relative of any of the above shall be subjected to any process involving the laws of a foreign country and in particular any Muslim arrested for or suspected of Terrorism or any International crime shall only be tried within the boarders (.sic) of Kenya and shall be granted a competent lawyer of his/her choice at the expense of the Government.

Also, according to item "n",

the candidate who "recognizes Islam as the only true religion" will "impose an immediate ban on women's public dressing styles that are considered immoral and offensive to the Muslim faith in the Muslim regions of the Coastal and North Eastern regions. This ban will apply to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in those regions and will include all visitors whether domestic or foreign tourists.

In both cases, they've committed crimes of omission; like a doctor who will tell you that you need to lose weight, but who neglects to mention the melanoma growing on the back of your neck, the Beeb is more than untrustworthy. They're dangerous.

double-plus-ungood writes:

Shit. After the high last night and this morning over Obama's win in Iowa there comes the crushing news that military blogger Major Andrew Olmsted who posted at his own site and at Obsidian Wings under the name G'Kar was just killed in service in Iraq.

Andrew was a conservative blogger that I deeply respected, and the military service in Iraq of someone so intelligent and insightful gave me a lot of hope that he and others like him could pull the fat out of the fire.

This is awful. I'm heartbroken over this.

Andrew Olmstead's Final post

In the NY Sun, Rick Richman proposes that Bush should follow JFK's lead when he visits Israel next week *

"There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin.

"There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.

"And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.

When President Bush visits Jerusalem in January, he will be less than a two-hour drive away from Sderot.

Built from scratch by Jewish refugees from Morocco in a dusty, uninhabited portion of pre-1967 Israel, Sderot is only a kilometer from the Gaza strip. It is a beautiful community, with simple homes, schools, and other institutions, and a population of about 24,000.

Thousands of rockets have fallen on Sderot and its surroundings since the Palestinians responded to the formal offer of a state in 2000 — in all of Gaza, 97% of the West Bank, and a capital in Jerusalem — by waging a barbaric war against Israeli civilians. More than 1,000 rockets have fallen since August 2005, after Israel vacated every square inch of Gaza.

The president can address the citizens there and say there are those who claim that peace is simply a matter of withdrawal from disputed land; or that one can satisfy those committed to one's destruction with concessions; or that a people choosing life will eventually run from the threat of death.

And he can respond by saying: "Let them come to Sderot."

Would this represent choosing sides? Only if "choosing sides" means standing against a terrorist organization that seized half the putative Palestinian state, that is raining rockets daily on civilians, that has a charter calling for destruction of a member of the U.N., that has brought isolation and misery to the people of Gaza, and that has rendered the "peace process" merely a discussion with certain Palestinians.

If America, Israel and its Fatah "peace partner" cannot stand together in opposing that — cannot visit together the site of rocket attacks that make a mockery of Palestinian readiness for a state — then there is no real "peace process," merely an elaborate farce, with a "partner" that opposes terror only rhetorically in occasional speeches in English.

..and he could visit the settlement of Shavei Shomron, where Palestinian policemen killed Ido Zoldan, a 29-year-old father of two.

Or he could visit Ramallah where the al-Aqsa Brigades say that Abbas' reports that they were dismantled are greatly exaggerated.

The peace process is an elaborate farce. Bush knows it, Olmert knows it, Abbas knows it, the world knows it. We're all like the residents of Sderot, threatened by absurd thugs who have been encouraged by years of appeasement to become powerful.

We all sit quietly listening to politicians who tell us not to fight back, to hold hands with our enemies, to wait for democracy, negotiations and realpolitik to save us from our fate as sitting ducks.

...for most of the same reasons I do:

It's funny because I still maintain to all who will listen that Rudy probably won't win the nomination. I still hope to be wrong but I've said for so long that Republican primary voters just won't choose a pro-choice ex-mayor from Brooklyn. But they should.

While it's true that Rudy is no social conservative, he has something that all the other candidates ultimately lack: my trust. I know this man, I watched him lead New York out of ruins--both after David Dinkins as well as after 9/11. We all know him, even the bad parts, because he has never hid his positions or ideals from us, even when they were inconvenient to him politically. This is a man who will always tell you where he stands, even if you might not agree. Yes, he is pro-choice, but he will support judges who won't legislate from the bench. Yes, he doesn't love guns but that is more a product of being from New York (I too was anti-gun for most of my life, it was the default NY position) than his want to snatch yours.

He's got the executive experience after running the most populous city in the U.S. He was the first Republican mayor in decades and he won election in a city that is 7-1 Democrat. He was able to lead, and lead well, despite that imbalance. He will be able to lead with a Democratic congress just the same.

9/11 changed me. And I know it changed Rudy too. This is not a man who will give up the war against terrorists. This is not a man who will roll over and let our purpose, the one where we defeat Islamofascism where it breeds, wane. He will be steadfast and strong in securing America. I know. I watched him secure New York.

So, if an endorsement is meant to predict a winner, this is not that. I support Rudy because he is the best candidate and would make the best president. Lucky for us, though, so would most of the other Republicans.

Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun Times: Kenya turmoil a test for Obama

The arc of the moral universe Obama refers to so often — a line from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — now stretches from the United States to Kenya. What can he do — what will he do — that is more than the radio message for Voice of America's Africa service he taped Wednesday, urging the Kenyans to stop the violence?

"Despite irregularities in the vote tabulation, now is not the time to throw that strong democracy away. Now is a time for President Kibaki, opposition leader Odinga, and all of Kenya's leaders to call for calm, to come together, and to start a political process to address peacefully the controversies that divide them," Obama said.

I saw how Kenyans adulated Obama. I met his half sister, Auma, who lives in Nairobi and who has been in Iowa campaigning for him.

I was there when Obama delivered a lecture on corruption intended for the ears of Kibaki, a member of the Kikuyu tribe.

I watched Odinga, a Luo, as was Obama's father, hover when Obama got an AIDS test with wife, Michelle, and then be part of the welcoming ceremony the day Obama visited his father's homestead.

As Kenya boiled, Obama reached out to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss the situation. I'm told it was Obama's idea to put out the statement.

I understand Obama has to be careful because while he is one of the most credible figures the United States has to deal with Kenya, the dispute between Odinga and Kibaki is mired in tribal politics. Obama, very aware that Kenyans may see him as a Luo in this context, does not want to be seen as taking sides.

But Obama's claim of uniqueness is being offered as a reason he should be president. The Voice of America statement is a good first step. What's next? Obama can't vote present on Kenya.

The zookeepers at the SF Zoo knew the tiger could get out.

Highly skilled engineers chose to ignore the problems with the Space Shuttle Challenger's solid rocket boosters in cold weather

A fully-operational, planet-destroying Death Star had an obvious design flaw that would allow a single shot to cause a chain reaction that would destroy the entire structure

Wretchard and Belmont Club readers question and answer the mystery of Open Secrets: Why does common knowledge remain unacknowledged within an organization?

FALLUJAH — A sign on the door leading out of India Company’s Combat Operations Center says “Have a Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet.” For a fraction of second I thought it might be some kind of joke. But I was with the Marine Corps in Fallujah, and it wasn’t a joke.

I asked Captain Stewart Glenn if he could explain and perhaps elaborate a bit on what, exactly, that sign is about. "It's pretty straightforward," he said rather bluntly. "It means exactly what it says."

Just a random idea - since some Kenyans see Barak Obama as a kind of messiah, maybe he could use that influence to start negotiations?

UPDATE: Obama speaks out: US presidential hopeful Obama urges calm in Kenya

Some more information on the election violence in Kenya.

Are Islamists involved?

We know that al Qaeda has been active in Kenya for years. We know that Gulf charities like the Saudi Al-Haramain Foundation have been financing al Qaeda and the spread of Islamic extremism in the country. Also, according to this article in Christian Today, Raila Odinga allegedly signed a Memorandum stating that he would implement strict Islamic Sharia law if he receives the Muslim vote in the country and is elected president: Of this memorandum, the ICC regional manager for Africa, Darara Gubo said:

This agreement made with Muslim leaders undermines the secular nature of Kenya and opens a Pandora’s box of chaos and conflict similar to what happened in Nigeria and Sudan.

“This is not a stand-alone incident; rather, it is part of strategy to Islamize Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa, through the introduction of Sharia law.”

Is it a religious, ethnic or tribal conflict?

From what I've read so far the victims are mostly people who belong to the politically powerful Christian Kikuyu ethnic group (supporters of President Mwai Kibaki, who supposedly stole the election); the Kikuyu are being targeted by supporters of ethnic Luo Raila Odinga, who is promising to give special consideration to Muslims and Sharia law and who claims that the election was stolen.

Is the press being deliberately imprecise about the identities of the rioters?

This election violence is nothing new. According to this Reuters report:

The area is multi-ethnic but traditionally dominated by the Kalenjin tribe. It suffered ethnic violence in 1992 and 1997 when hundreds of people — mainly Kikuyus — were killed and thousands more displaced in land clashes.

Reuters also says:

The Red Cross video showed hundreds of people at Eldoret airport, which lies 20km from the town itself, who had been there "for the last few days, surrounded by 3,000 people from one ethnic group," he added.

It's unclear whether the "3,000 people from one ethnic group" are Kikuyus, surrounding the airport because they want to get out, or Odinga supporters, surrounding the airport to keep Kikuyus from escaping. It would be clearer if the "3,000 people from one ethnic group" were identified.

When we search for information on the Luo tribe, the connection between American politics and the Kenyan election gets interesting. At KenyaImagine, a Muslim, non-Islamist Kenyan blogger writes:

I thought I knew everything about Kenyan politics; at least enough to believe that there existed parameters enclosing the possible and the impossible. Imagine my surprise then when I heard that there are Muslims for Raila...

...What surprised me, what seemed to me entirely fatuous, even incredible was the notion that a sizable number of Kenyan Muslims should believe their political fortunes set to enjoy an improvement under a Raila Odinga government. There are many reasons why this position is inconsistent with reason, and I will try to lay them out. They are based on the whole on the American war on terror, a euphemism for a war on Islam- clothed in some quarters as a clash of civilisations, and the ODM leader's closeness with the American establishment.

First off, the ODM candidate has repeatedly boasted about his close links with the American political establishment. Even the idlest observer of our politics will have noticed that Raila Odinga is particularly chummy with the Americans. For lack of evidence, I will not go into the allegations of a deal for the establishment of Africom's headquarters in Kenya at the minute, but even disregarding that there is every reason to fear your enemy's friend....

..But that is not the end of the ODM leader's obsession with the Americans. Like I said before, he boasts in his celebrated biography about his links with the American establishment, including invitations to attend Democratic party conventions. For those uninitiated in these things, the United States is really a one party state with very little difference between the two parties. The media may obsess with painting George W Bush as evil, but these measures started long before his presidency. President Clinton and Madeline Albright were for example instrumental in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. Perhaps more incriminating than the deaths themselves was the callous fashion in which these deaths were regarded by that administration.

Even more recently, new kid on the block and a close friend of Raila's, Barack Obama has come out clearly to state that he would invade Pakistan if General Musharaf was overthrown. This was so extreme a sentiment that even the normally hawkish Hillary Clinton saw fit to ask Obama to calm down. And Obama is not a nobody; the Illinois Senator sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Yes, these are the friends the ODM keep.

Kenyans see Obama as a messiah

Ordinary Kenyans are not the only ones who see Obama as a messiah. Kenyan politicians are already using his popularity as political capital. Raila Odinga, a Luo opposition leader and one of the top contenders for the 2007 Kenyan presidential elections, tried to portray Obama's 2006 trip to Kenya as a personal endorsement. His supporters have created T-shirts and posters with cleverly computer-altered images that show Obama and Odinga standing side by side, arms around each other. This, too, has gotten some Kenyans excited.

"In 2009, we might see a Luo president in Kenya, a Luo president in the USA, and a Luo ambassador in Washington, D.C. — current ambassador Ogego," one Kenyan suggested recently on Africa Op-Ed, an online forum. "If there was time you had to learn Luo, it's now," he added. Such a possibility is imagined as potential salvation for a tribe that has been marginalized — politically and economically — since independence more than 40 years ago.

I like Obama. I don't think he's an Islamist or a potential Luo messiah but I do think the admittedly Democrat-sympathizing press may have reasons for being cagey.

This is where bias in the media causes problems. When the media fails to give all the facts about the political, ethnic and religious issues motivating the problems, readers are confused and uninformed.

The newsmedia's job is to give us the facts and let us draw our own conclusions. At least, that used to be their job.

Seablogger Alan Sullivan wonders about the forces behind the political violence in Kenya:

At least thirty people — mostly women and children — reportedly died in Kenya when a church full of refugees caught fire. Of course it could have been an accident — maybe refugees were trying to cook, and something went wrong. Or it could have been malice — religious war. If a Muslim mob torched the church, the BBC will be the last to report the truth. At some point it becomes a vice to see no evil. BBC crossed the line long ago.

Is political Islam a factor in the Kenyan elections? This article in the New York Times suggests that it may be

Unfortunately, even that investigative report didn't investigate enough. At one point, the Times' reporter:

....asked Harugura whether it was true that he was accepting money from Somalis or from fundamentalist Islamic groups, including the Kuwaitis and Saudis, and he shook his head vigorously. “You know very well that no Muslim organization can give a shilling. Even children’s aid programs have been shut down by the Americans since 9/11. No shilling can come from the Arab world to Kenya. It’s so difficult to even have collected 500 shillings.” Five hundred Kenyan shillings is about $8.

In any case, the Times' most recent report, like most of the media, blames the troubles on 'tribalism'.

Are Islamists behid the violence in Kenya? Well, if you have a few hours or days to spare, a working knowledge of the histories of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, a fast computer and a series of links to Kenyan blogs, you may be able to figure it out.

But if you, like billions of people out there, don't have the time to do the research, you'll have to rely on the usual sources - our Saudi-funded state department, Islamist funded MENA-region experts in academia and media outlets - like the BBC.