In Darfur, the Shariah-inspired jihadi government responds to criticism by arresting the Messenger. Atlas Shrugs has more.

In Yemen, their Shariah-inspired jihadi government calls their critic, Jane Novak of Armies of Liberation, a docile pupil of a monkey monk - and a non-tummyist.

Why does our government call these al Qaeda-trained 'tards our allies in the war against terror? We're certainly not dazzled by their rapier-sharp wit. Their military forces could be defeated by a Belgian girl-scout troop.

Are we doing it all for the sake of their rapidly dwindling oil supplies? It's hardly worth it.

June is learn to fly month, for good reason. With blue skies and puffy white clouds, the weather is perfect.

Today I was baggage, sitting in the backseat of a Cessna 172 during my son's introduction to flying course. He was a natural, according to the instructor, and he seems to enjoy it as much as he enjoys driving. Hopefully, he'll continue to avoid the urge to race or find his pace car (or plane?)

His first-time landing was made amidst many jets. I was wondering why our small northern NJ airport was so busy on a Tuesday morning. The reason was - another accident at Teterboro Airport. What is going on over there?

Anyway, the flight was so much fun, I think I'll try to revive my dormant pilot's license, update my eyeglass presecription and study up for my long-delayed biannual. It's that time of the year.

The city of Eugene Oregon is considering banning sex segregated bathrooms, because they are a form of discrimination based on "gender identity."

bob at Breakdown Lane says "Next thing you know they'll be handing out citations for leaving the lid up."

They've already done worse in Germany.

for the average American omnipotent hyperpower God..

..a God's eye view of the world..

[link thanks to Judith Weiss]

More well-planned heartfelt expressions of Islamist rage occured after yesterday's Friday sermons.

These English language signs crack me up. Islamists can always depend on the Western Press for their PR work.

Iraqis protesting terror aren't so lucky.

These Pakistani signs are convincingly hand-lettered. I know they can do a better job than that.

Hmm..did they read this?

These outraged zealots sure know how to study a market.

A lake in Russia disappeared:

"I've never seen anything like it. Never," said Dmitry Zaytsev, an officer with the federal Emergency Situations Ministry sent to investigate the case.

"Pretty much all the water went down that hole, and that's it," he said. "Everything — fish, water, everything — got sucked into that hole. And judging by the size of the crater, it must have happened pretty quickly, in a matter of a few hours."

Government officials theorize that a shift in soils underneath the lake opened access to an underground channel that drained the water, estimated from several thousand to more than a million cubic yards, into a subterranean cavern. From there, it may have flowed into the Oka River a few miles away.

"It's pretty scary to even be here. You have to understand, it was like there was a pump somewhere underground. A gaping sinkhole emerged, and everything was flushed down like a toilet," said another Emergency Situations Ministry investigator, Vladimir Gryasnov. "If anyone had been near the thing when it happened, they would have had no chance of surviving."

The channel-to-the-river theory has gained credence during the last week, as several fishermen along the Oka reported catching 35-pound carp. The species has been found in the lake but not the river. At least, not in ordinary times. But, of course, these are not ordinary times; not when White Lake is there one day and gone the next.

With an eerie, almost Elmer Fudd-like precision, the UN, their related NGOs and Democrats like Howard Dean and George Soros have been hunting Wepublicans for years.

Like Fudd, they believe that their prey is stupid. They believe they have the superior intellectual firepower, but these Fudds always go home empty handed. Why?

Maybe their concentration is off. Be vewy, vewy quiet.

The hyperbolic, cartoonish intensity of their frustrated efforts to bag the big Wepublicans was exemplified by Howard Deans' cartoonish Yeeargghhh! But that Fuddy bleat of despair is now surpassed by this pathetic effort from Amnesty International. This bold yet peacefully ineffective defender of Human Rights worldwide has just published an official Annual Report that is, literally, a cartoonish expression of rage.

(Amnesty's cartoon is thanks to someone named Morin, who is no Tex Avery)

In their Cartoon report, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, had a Yeeaarggh! moment when she called Guantanamo "the gulag of our times"

Michael Totten discusses Khan's harebrained comparison:

I have read some of the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And I once (briefly) met a man who survived both a Nazi concentration camp and one of Stalin’s slave labor camps in Siberia. It would be a bit much to say I "know" the gulag, but I do have a bit of a clue about what went on there. It was no Guantanamo, as anyone who has ever bothered to study the subject well knows. For one thing, if Guantanamo were the new gulag, Irene Khan would be languishing in it herself right about now – and so would her family.

But she isn't, she never will be, and she knows it. What she doesn't know is the gulag.

I once said of Senator James (more outraged by the outrage) Inhofe of Oklahoma that "it takes a special kind of person, really it does, to think anger at torture is worse than torture." All Irene Khan is doing here is encouraging the Inhofes of the world by crying "wolf" instead of properly crying foul. It is, as a certain Secretary of Defense would put it, not helpful.

Anyway, the gulag of our times is in North Korea.

In Amnesty's universe, Americans are omnipotent, hyperpower Gods. All intermational peons must bend to our will.

So, if we're responsible for everything bad that happens, we must be responsible for all the good things too, like the Independence of Lebanon, India's economic boom, the improving Chinese economy and the Canadian government's recent entertaining antics.

If we were responsible. But, since this is the real world, we're not.

When hysteria-prone Fudds like Dean are threatened, they fly into bigger and better hysterics. Since the 2004 elections, their anti-Bush hysteria has been turned to 11. The screamers at Amnesty have just turned the loony tunes up to 12.

From William Schulz, Amnesty's Executive Director:

At the launch of its 2005 Annual Report, Amnesty International called on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating U.S. officials implicated in the development or implementation of interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. While the U.S. government has failed to conduct a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation, the officials implicated in these crimes are nonetheless subject to investigation and possible arrest by other nations while traveling abroad, the organization said.

The human rights organization warned that at least one dozen former or current U.S. officials are vulnerable to this action. The individuals, who, to date, have either dodged investigation or escaped sanction, include those at the highest levels of government, such as President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, as well as Attorney General Gonzales and former CIA Director George Tenet.

Q: Why did the Bush administration ultimately carry out its Iraq policy the way it did? Do you subscribe to any of the more cynical views commonly voiced by the left, for example that the war was simply a big oil grab?

Schultz: I think it reflects a rather wholesale disregard for international institutions, for a multilateral framework in which to conduct U.S. foreign policy. I don't think it's only about oil. That may be part of it, but fundamentally it's about American power. The United States has articulated in the National Defense Strategy - with its precursor being the Project for a New American Century - the desire to make sure American military power is preeminent, and will stay that way 100, 200 and 500 years from now. That will be accomplished by asserting American unilateral military power - and economic power, though the two in some measure go hand in hand — wherever it's needed around the globe

In his Salon interview, Schulz ignored the enemy that Amnesty is NOT fighting - oppression, slavery and human rights violations around the world.

He's still ignoring them. Did Mr. Schulz threaten the genocidal President Omar Hassan A. Al-Bashier of the Sudan with arrest? Did he mock Bashier with a cartoon? Of course not. He doesn't care about Bashier. President Bashir doesn't threaten Schulz's power.

Fear of American hyperpower and fear of their own loss of power motivates Amnesty's bumbling efforts to hunt Wepublicans. It also motivates their lack of equivalent concern for every other human rights issue around the globe. In their worldview, I suppose this makes sense. If Wepublicans are omnipotent Gods who control every earth-event, hunting them is the only reasonable course of action.

In Amnesty's cartoon universe, their motivation is clear. I understand that, but what I don't understand is - why should anyone pay for their obsessive loony-tunes hunt?

There's something screwy going on around here.

[cross-posted at Dean's World]

..According to research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. Toast alone boosted children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best. Beans are also a good source of fibre, and other research has shown a link between a high-fibre diet and improved cognition. If you can't stomach beans before midday, wholemeal toast with Marmite makes a great alternative. The yeast extract is packed with B vitamins, whose brain-boosting powers have been demonstrated in many studies.

More of the steps to a better brain...

* if you have to ask what Marmite is, you don't want to know

In March, 2004, Carl Bernstein, who, with Bob Woodward, exposed the Watergate scandal (and who may or may not be responsible for creating the mess we now call the media) lamented the "triumph of idiot culture".

[Bernstein] said much of today's news has deteriorated into gossip, sensationalism and manufactured controversy. That type of news panders to the public and insults their intelligence, ignoring the context of real life, he said. Good journalism, Bernstein said, "should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them."

He said the modern press lacks true leadership, citing such examples as AOL Time Warner and mogul Rupert Murdoch as media owners that have increasingly abandoned the principles of meaningful reporting.

"Their interest in truth is secondary to their interest in huge profits," Bernstein said.

Still, he said people can change that trend by exploring the Internet and piecing together from reputable sources their own news about important world matters.

According to John Podhoretz, the media is seeing the financial effects of this critical mass:

There are compelling individual explanations for these phenomena. For instance, this year's movies have been extraordinarily uninteresting. And the collapse in newspaper circulation may simply be the result of more honest reporting on the part of publishers chastened by the public exposure last year of fraudulent numbers at papers like Newsday and the Dallas Morning News. But it can't be a coincidence that the five major pillars of the American media — movies, television, radio, recorded music and newspapers — are all suffering at the same time. And it isn't. Something major has changed over the past year, as the availability of alternative sources of information and entertainment has finally reached critical mass.

Newly empowered consumers are letting the producers, creators and managers of the nation's creative and news content know that they are dissatisfied with the product they're being peddled.

In a discussion on the left-leaning Pandagon about the Left's support of religion, I quoted this from Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, explaining why she broke with the Left:

Because the left is exactly like the Muslims! I wanted to give priority to the defense of immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence. They said to me: "No, that's not a priority! The problem will take care of itself when the immigrants have jobs and are integrated." It is exactly what the Imams say who demand that we accept oppression and slavery today because tomorrow, in Heaven, God will give us dates and raisins ... . I think we need first to defend the individual. The left is afraid of everything. But fear of giving offense leads to injustice and suffering. The sexual revolution, the affirmation of individual rights, improving the living conditions of immigrants - these were once the great causes of the Dutch left. In their eyes, the simple fact of belong to a minority gives one the right to do anything. This multiculturalism is a disaster. All one has to do is scream "discrimination" and all doors are open to you! Scream 'racism' and your opponents shut up! But multiculturalism is an inconsistent theory. If one wants to let communities preserve their traditions, what happens when these traditions work to the detriment of women or homosexuals? The logic of multiculturalism amounts to accepting the subordination of women. Nonetheless, the defenders of multiculturalism do not want to admit it.

Being opposed to fascism isn't a left/right thing. Anti-fascists include the anarchist Lefties of the East German Antifa. They're socialists like Norm Geras and the bloggers at Harry's Place. They're Democrats like Jeff Jarvis and Liberals like Michael Totten, Dean Esmay and Hirsi Ali. They're conservatives like Joel Mowbray and Bat Ye'or. They're the independents like Roger Simon and Judith Weiss.

Anyway, when I said I was anti-fascist, another commenter at Pandagon called me a Right wingnut. Another said that Hirsi Ali was "off her rails". Then they ranted about imperialism and racism. Sigh.

[Cross-posted on Dean's World]

Olivier Guitta at Tech Central Station says that the Bush administration is trying to win Islamist hearts and Minds. That's a revelation. Islamists have hearts and minds?

In the past few weeks, the Arab media have been buzzing with shocking news: the West is engaging in open talks with Islamists. While this is not really unexpected coming from the European Union, which has always been quite appeasing with Islamists, it is all the more surprising coming from the Bush administration.

We're not fighting a war against terrorism or Islamists. Our soldiers are fighting terrorists, but our government wandered down some old cold-war realpolitik path a long time ago. I'm not sure who they're fighting now. The Chinese? The Soviets?

Anyway, we are doing a few things right - or, more accurately, the Lebanese are. Also at Tech Central Station, Michael Totten describes how the groundbreaking Cedar Revolution is Resolving the Clash of Civilizations:

The movement is totally led by young people," he said. "Both Christians and Muslims. We stay up all night strategizing and getting to know each other. It's amazing, but it's also sad. We Christians and Muslims never really knew each other until now. Hariri's assassination broke down that wall. We are talking together — really talking and getting to know each other — for the first time.

"This isn't just about Lebanon, either," he said. "You want to know what we're doing? I'll tell you what we're doing. We are resolving the clash of civilizations." He meant the Terror War, of course, which — in my view — is more ideological than religious and civilizational. Islamist fanatics have murdered far more Muslims than they have Christians. But there's no denying a civilizational aspect to a war where the one-God zealots of the Middle East promise to vanquish the "infidels" only a few years after the Orthodox Christians of Serbia put the Muslims of Europe in Bosnia and Kosovo to the sword.

Beirut may be the only place in the world where you can buy a necklace with a Christian cross and a Muslim crescent moon fused together as one. It's an unofficial symbol of Lebanon's nascent national unity.

From Christopher Hitchens' "Stop the Masochistic Insanity"

Many years ago, in response to a humor column written by Auberon Waugh (son of Evelyn) in the London Times, an Islamist mob got hold of the idea that a conspiracy was being hatched against the prophet. The British Council library in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was burned down as a result. In 1989, having just gone back on his divinely inspired word and signed a peace treaty with Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini was looking for a populist issue and found it in the publication of a novel that he had not read. Copies of The Satanic Verses were thereupon burned all over the world, and its author burned in effigy and made the target of fanatical death squads, who slew or maimed several of his translators and publishers. Over the last week, the flag of the United States of America has been cheerfully incinerated by grinning crowds in several cities.

Now, everything in me is revolted by the burning of books, let alone the attempt to murder writers, and I claim the right to feel this at least as strongly as any illiterate fanatic may choose to feel about a story in Newsweek. Some of us can be offended at insults to our culture, and we, too, possess unalterable convictions and principles. Many people take the same view of the desecration of Old Glory. But we would never dream of venting ourselves in random assaults on mosques or Muslims, and if anyone on our soil did dare to commit such atrocities, I hope and believe that they would not receive moist and sympathetic treatment in the pages of the American press.

Speaking of cringing Westerners, Jack Straw believes that photos of Saddam in his underpants was a breach of the mass murderer's right to be treated with dignity as a prisoner of war.

In contrast, the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister, Sheikh Dr Mohammad Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah said:

"In Kuwait, when this publication came out, we had just buried five of our people who we brought back from mass graves in Iraq. We really do not understand this fascination with the colour of Saddam’s underwear while ignoring the horrendous crimes he committed against his people and his neighbours."

"I think the issue is the crimes Saddam committed, rather than anything else"

It's about time we stopped cringing.

[Link thanks to Norm Geras]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch MP who has been called one of the most courageous defenders of human rights on the planet today explains why she has broken with the Left:

Because the left is exactly like the Muslims! I wanted to give priority to the defense of immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence. They said to me: "No, that's not a priority! The problem will take care of itself when the immigrants have jobs and are integrated." It is exactly what the Imams say who demand that we accept oppression and slavery today because tomorrow, in Heaven, God will give us dates and raisins ... . I think we need first to defend the individual. The left is afraid of everything. But fear of giving offense leads to injustice and suffering. The sexual revolution, the affirmation of individual rights, improving the living conditions of immigrants - these were once the great causes of the Dutch left. In their eyes, the simple fact of belong to a minority gives one the right to do anything. This multiculturalism is a disaster. All one has to do is scream "discrimination" and all doors are open to you! Scream 'racism' and your opponents shut up! But multiculturalism is an inconsistent theory. If one wants to let communities preserve their traditions, what happens when these traditions work to the detriment of women or homosexuals? The logic of multiculturalism amounts to accepting the subordination of women. Nonetheless, the defenders of multiculturalism do not want to admit it.

In [this interview] she says: "Since the September 11 attacks, I no longer believe in God. In the eyes of the fundamentalists who threaten me, that justifies my being put to death. They accuse me of 'insulting' the Prophet, of saying that Islam oppresses women, of 'collaborating with the enemy', that's to say, with non-Muslims."

Hirsi Ali’s break with Islam has been widely publicized. Perhaps less known is her break with the "left". Originally, a member of the Dutch Labor Party, Hirsi Ali left the latter to join the classical liberal (I think this term will now be understood by Trans-Int regulars. In case of doubt, see discussion here.)

The Left, like the Imams, demands that we accept oppression and slavery. Like the Imams, there's no reason to do what the Left demands. They only have the power that we give them.

The Malaysians have been helping their Thai neighbors recover from the Tsunami disaster - by funding and assisting Islamist terrorism in Thailand's southern regions.

I guess this is an example of the tremendous outpouring of gratitude Muslims were supposed to feel after the worldwide effort to help Tsunami victims. Malaysia suffered losses after the Tsunami. Empathy isn't their strong point.

Once again, the press and the Thai government are trying to convince the world that these bombers and school burners aren't the Islamists we're looking for. Of course, this trick only works on the weak-minded - like the press and the Thai government.

It wasn't always that way. This is from a BBC report about terrorism in southern Thailand:

The Thai government continues to insist that most of the attacks in the south can be attributed to local criminals. But it seems increasingly evident that organised Islamic separatist groups are playing at least a part in the violence.

There are a number of Muslim separatist groups known to operate in southern Thailand - including Pulo (the Pattani United Liberation Organisation), BRN (the Barisan Revolusi Nasional) and GMIP (Gerakan Mujahadeen Islam Pattani). In the past, these groups have been linked to larger Islamic organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah - blamed for terrorist attacks across South East Asia - and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in the troubled Indonesian province of Aceh.

No group has categorically claimed responsibility for recent attacks, and it remains difficult to be certain who is ultimately behind the upsurge in violence.

But one thing seems certain. If police and security personnel continue to act with such heavy-handed methods, the animosity between them and the Muslim inhabitants of southern Thailand is only likely to increase.

Problems began with the government's decision in the summer of 2001 to dismantle the government's once successful intelligence and suppression operations against those separatist and insurgent movements. This was exacerbated by the government's initial response, which was limited to labeling it a law-enforcement issue and blaming it on gangs of organized criminals and out of work Thai Army officers displaced by the government's policy change.

Can you imagine the New York Times or Newsweek reporting that fact? I can't.

They didn't.

Here's another story that was barely reported:

Muslim teacher arrested over arson attacks in Thailand's south

The Thai army says it has arrested a teacher at an Islamic school who has allegedly admitted to organising a spate of arson attacks in the country's south.

Nimahamud Hagisamae, 40, was arrested after being linked to attacks in Pattani, one of three provinces worst-hit by separatist violence this year that has left more than 275 people dead.

Police say he has admitted to being a member of a Muslim separatist group, the Pattani United Liberation Organisation, and has been involved in a number of bomb attacks.

According to the Bangkok Post, the Thai authorities have found a definite connection between Saudi al Qaeda and the terrorist madrassas:

Students at a private Islamic school in Pattani province which was raided by soldiers yesterday admitted weapon training was held at the school, but they denied any involvement.

Troops from the 22nd Task Force yesterday raided Jihad Witthaya school at Ban Taloh Kapo village in Pattani's Yaring district. They found several CDs showing al-Qaeda terrorist-style weapons training and documents written in Arabic. Four students were taken to the district police station for interrogation.

"Some students admitted weapon training was held at the school, but insisted they were not involved in such activities," said Col Chatuporn Kalampasut, commander of the task force.

Soldiers also seized reports written in Thai on how to monitor and follow security officers.

They didn't. Dave R., Dan D. at Rantburg and the Thai press are the only people who are paying attention to this story.

Do a search for "Jihad Witthaya" and see for yourself.

According to the Thai government, the school is "linked to a separatist network" . They suspect the school's leader is "hiding in a neighbouring country".

As Dave R. says:

A neighbouring country!!!? Could it be that moderate Islamic country to the south? We dare not speak its name, of course, as that might be undiplomatic and offend someone.

I didn't have much time to post this weekend. We're hosting two Mexican exchange students this week, and my son's friends came up to Hoboken to see Revenge of the Sith. There was lots of cleaning, laundry, cooking and pizza ordering to be done.

I took a small troop of exchange students and their hosts (4 teenaged girls) to the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. The exchange students, trained dancers, loved it. They called the performance "contemporary classic." My daughter, who did some dancing before taking up basketball, also enjoyed it.

Before the performance, we were entertained by a thunderstorm that descended on New York City like that scene from Ghostbusters. On the way to Lincoln Center, we pointed out all the Gozer style buildings.

After the ballet we hoped to find a dim sum place that my husband recommended, but it wasn't there anymore (most restaurants in NY have the lifespan of a medfly). It was breezy and cold, so we stopped by the first deli we found. The surly guy behind the counter got angry when the girls couldn't decide what kind of chicken they wanted in their sandwiches. He tossed the pesto and the mesquite variations back into their respective bowls and shouted "decide or you get no chicken!"

The exchange students didn't know why my daughter and I were laughing. We told them about the Soup Nazi

We also saw Revenge of the Sith (my son saw it for the third time with us). Of the current trilogy, it was the best, but since I found episodes I and II to be almost entirely unwatchable, that's not much of a compliment.

A short review - Space Cowboys are fun, Space Priests and Politicians are not.

I can't wait to see Joss Wedon's Serenity.

Dean Esmay and Ace have more detailed thoughts about why Lucas' Anikin trilogy wasn't necessary.

Sluggo found something I'd never heard of before.

ZabaSeach:

If you want to get a little creeped out go here and plug your name in. There's quite a bit of information there, including a satellite image of your house. ZabaSearch gets you down to a hundred yards over your head. $20 gets you the image without the logos.

Twenty more gets you a search of criminal records.

Islamists have taken over a town in Uzbekistan..

KORASUV, Uzbekistan – The bearded 42-year-old farmer, astride a horse with a colorful saddle and wearing a traditional Uzbek embroidered black-and-white skull cap, snapped his fingers as he gave orders to an assistant.

"We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran," rebel leader Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press as he watched two roads converging at an intersection. "People are tired of slavery."..

..It was unclear how many people Rakhimov commands. But there was no sign of any Uzbek government officials Wednesday in this town of about 20,000 people on the border with Kyrgyzstan.

Rebels cherishing the prospect of a strict Islamic state were firmly in control of Korasuv, throwing up a new challenge to the government as it tried to prove to skeptical diplomats that its troops didn't fire on civilians in the nearby city of Andijan.

The government of President Islam Karimov dismissed the rebel leader's claims as "nonsense." Rakhimov maintains he has 5,000 followers ready to fight any troops that try to crush the rebellion...

..Regardless of officials' attempt to shrug it off, the insurgency in Korasuv ratchets up the stakes for Uzbekistan, a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism. Observers of the impoverished Central Asia region have long feared that any social unrest could be used by Islamic groups to promote their own goals...

...Rakhimov's men, clad in traditional V-necked white shirts and embroidered skull caps, could be seen scattered around the town...

..Among the groups that promote such ideas, the one that probably has the most followers in formerly Soviet Central Asia is the Hizb-ut-Tarir party, which Uzbek authorities accuse of inspiring terror attacks in Tashkent and the central city of Bukhara last year that killed more than 50.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which claims to reject violence, denied responsibility for those attacks. The organization wants to establish an Islamic state throughout a broad swath of Central Asia.

Rakhimov said he and his supporters did not belong to any specific Islamic organization. "We are just people," he said. "We just follow the Quran."

Now, Karimov says they aren't taking over. Will the Kossaks believe him now?

UPDATE: The BBC and the Daily Kos still can't find them.

The Guardian believes that it's all a CIA plot.

More at Dean's World.

Eric has photos up!

If western NGOs weren't run by a bunch of back-to-nature Luddites, we might see more of this:

Satellite technology brings Web, phones to remote locations

IVAPORUNDUVA, Brazil - For three centuries, residents of this remote village founded by runaway slaves have languished on the fringes of Brazilian society. a government experiment is sweeping Ivaporunduva into the digital age. As part of a larger plan to fight rural poverty, the government has installed a satellite-based Internet connection that is ending years of isolation for the village.

Residents can make doctor's appointments online, find new markets to sell fruit and download school lesson plans. In one of the biggest experiments ever in a growing field that uses information technology to alleviate poverty in developing countries, Brazil's government installed satellite Internet in 3,200 other rural communities over the last two years. Another 1,200 will be added this year..

...Moreover, information gathered from the Internet is supporting political activism in a way that would have been unthinkable before the village got connected.

Marinho da Silva monitors the Web to see if outsiders are trying to overturn a ruling that halted the construction of four dams on the river that would supply energy to an aluminum smelter. Groups opposed to the dams can use e-mail to coordinate their activities with the villagers.

The creator of Jar-Jar Binks discusses life, the universe and everything

When I first read this boneheaded New York Times article, "The Mystery of the Insurgency", which asks why the insurgents act like terrorists, all I could say was "duh."

They're not insurgents, they are terrorists, and if the Times hasn't figured that out by now, they are, in the Darwinian sense, way too dumb to live."

Christopher Hitchens has more patience than I do (which says a lot) and he takes the time to carefully and precisely dismember this pathetic article:

On many occasions, the jihadists in Iraq have been very specific as well as very general. When they murdered Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant and brave U.N. representative assigned to Baghdad by Kofi Annan, the terrorists' communiqué hailed the death of the man who had so criminally helped Christian East Timor to become independent of Muslim Indonesia. (This was also among the "reasons" given for the bombing of the bar in Bali.) I think I begin to sense the "frustration" of the "insurgents." They keep telling us what they are like and what they want. But do we ever listen? Nah. For them, it must be like talking to the wall. Bennet even complains that it's difficult for reporters to get close to the "insurgents": He forgets that his own paper has published a conversation with one of them, in which the man praises the invasion of Kuwait, supports the cleansing of the Kurds, and says that "we cannot accept to live with infidels."

Ah, but why would the "secular" former Baathists join in such theocratic mayhem? Let me see if I can guess. Leaving aside the formation of another well-named group—the Fedayeen Saddam—to perform state-sponsored jihad before the intervention, how did the Baath Party actually rule? Yes, it's coming back to me. By putting every Iraqi citizen in daily fear of his or her life, by random and capricious torture and murder, and by cynical divide-and-rule among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. Does this remind you of anything?

...

* Carl Oglesby is the former leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the group that spawned the terrorist "Weathermen".

A short history of Oglesby's SDS:

SDS members also rationalized this more frequent civil disobedience and resistance on the ground that the "Establishment" fails to listen when protests are "merely verbal."45 At the 1967 convention, SDSers were extremely hesitant to endorse an anti-war march. Secretary Carl Davidson gives the reasons for this hesitancy: "Marches are just not enough. They won't stop this war. More important, they won't stop the military-industrial complex, the powerful institution that decide the fate of people in this country."… Members also began reading Marxist historians such as William Appleman Williams, who viewed the U.S. as an imperial power with an history rife with imperialistic ventures. …Talk of violence did not meet with much resistance among the SDS's ranks. Many members wanted to see results that were not being accomplished by their peaceful marches and sit-ins.53 The SDS of 1967 had forgotten, or chose to ignore the statement made in the Port Huron Statement five years earlier in which the SDS found violence to be "abhorrent" because it transformed a human being or a group of people into a "depersonalized object of hate."

..In an SDS pamphlet titled "Cuba v. US Imperialism", the SDS lauds the Cuban Revolution for its "freshness and anti-dogmatism, its version and firmness in the fight with imperialism."57 Through their admiration for revolutionaries, and their movement from peaceful protest to resistance, the SDS began their metamorphosis into a more radical and defiant revolutionary organization.

I mention him because Oglesby also wrote this letter to the New York Times, which they printed without comment:

By combining the antiwar movement with the counterculture, Bai ignores the fact that S.D.S. was destroyed by an enormous but still incompletely understood campaign of federal penetration and disruption. From 1968 through the early 1970's, part of that campaign was the F.B.I's counterintelligence program, Cointelpro. Unknown numbers of federal undercover agents were involved, and it wasn't long before S.D.S. leaders began to sense the government's presence. Their anger, panic and naïveté helped lead to the dissolution of S.D.S., as the organization's members began retreating into the secret terrorist cells of the revolutionary group known as the Weathermen.

As a national leader of S.D.S. (I was its president in 1965 and 1966 and a member of its governing body through 1972), I must say that what this experience demands of today's Democratic Party is that it confront its own passivity. The current mess in Iraq is one result of this passivity. Other such messes — Iran? Syria? Korea? — will almost certainly follow as the national defense budget continues to soar and the military establishment continues to lock up its control of foreign policy.

Carl Oglesby
Cambridge, Mass.

Via LGF: According to an Indian security analyst, the Islamist rioting in Afghanistan is being deliberately incited by well-organized agents of the Hizb ut-Tahrir terror gang. They realized that Newsweek "Quran desecration" story was a propaganda windfall:

In Newsweek's May 9 edition, a brief item carried a single sentence saying that a U.S. military investigation had found that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, where Islamist terror suspects are being held, had flushed a Koran down a toilet.

A populist politician in Pakistan called a press conference to draw attention to the claim, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia issued strongly worded statements, and protests erupted in the Afghan city of Jalalabad and spread..

..Myers said at the Pentagon briefing Thursday that according to U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, the Jalalabad protests had more to do with the political situation on the ground than anger about the report.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a U.S. ally, has also suggested that foreign elements and "enemies of peace" were responsible for the violent rioting...

..South Asian political and security analyst Bahukutumbi Raman said the protests in Afghanistan were not spontaneous.

"They had been well-prepared, and were well-organized and well-orchestrated. Groups of students went from town to town instigating the local students to take to the streets."

Raman, who is director of the Institute For Topical Studies in the Indian city of Chennai, also reported that many members of the police and army appeared to have sympathized with the protestors.

He cited "reliable Afghan sources" as saying the demonstrations had been organized by a growing global movement called Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami.

The rally in Andizhan, Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city, began after demonstrations over the trial of 23 local businessmen boiled over. Prosecutors had accused the men of belonging to the outlawed Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation) but their supporters say the charges are fabricated, and Hizb ut-Tahrir denies any link to the violence.

Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation) a radical Islamic political movement that seeks 'implementation of pure Islamic doctrine' and the creation of an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia. The group's aim is to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic da’wah to the world. The ultimate goal of this secretive sectarian group is to unite the entire ummah, or Islamic world community, into a single caliphate. The aim is to bring the Muslims back to living an Islamic way of life in 'Dar al-Islam' [the land where the rules of Islam are being implemented, as opposed to the non-Islamic world] and in an Islamic society such that all life's affairs in society are administered according to the Shariah rules...

...It is active all over the world. Hizb ut-Tahrir now has its main base in Western Europe, but it has large followings in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, as well as in China's traditionally Muslim Xinjiang Province...

Unlike similar Islamic groups, the radical Sunni Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir recruits new members irrespective of differences among the various tendencies within Islam. Unlike more traditional Islamic parties, it is supranational and refuses to be involved in local politics. Therefore, it is impossible for regional leaders to co-opt the group, as happened with the former Islamic opposition in Tajikistan. Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a political party in the sense that it does not want to participate in national politics. It does not want to go for elections. It does not want to be part of any coalition government.

The group has never been overtly involved in any violent actions, and Hizb ut-Tahrir has long claimed it wants to achieve its objectives through nonviolent means.

Like our moderate, non-overt nonviolent allies, the Saudis, Hizb ut-Tahrir also likes to blame the Jews for everything.

The Saudi government has published this defense of Hizb ut-Tahrir in their English-language publication, Arab News.

Which brings up another amazing coincidence - Hizb-ut-Tahrir was formed in Saudi Arabia as a pan-Islamic movement in the 1950s. In their own words:

At that time we had a united plan with the Wahabbi movement, but we soon split because Hizb-ut-Tahrir wanted to bring about sharia {Islamic religious law} in a peaceful manner while the Wahabbis were extremists who wanted guerrilla war. Hizb-ut-Tahrir went underground during Soviet times and many members were in Soviet prisons. But today we have tens of thousands of members across Central Asia. We want to make a caliphate {Islamic state} which will reunite all the Central Asian states. Hizb-ut-Tahrir wants a peaceful jihad, but ultimately there will be war because repression by the Central Asian states is so strong.

Saudi Hizb ut-Tahrir isn't as violent as Osama bin Laden's Saudi al Qaeda paramilitaries, but they share the same goals, a worldwide Islamic state under Shariah law.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we should continue to support Uzbekistan's burtal authoritarian ruler, Karimov.

It does mean that we shouldn't allow Hizb ut-Tahrir to install a Taliban/Saudi style theocracy. We're already allied with one non-overt terror-supporting Islamist state. We really don't need more friends like these.

[Cross-posted at Dean's World]

..and "Peace Democrats" in 1865

[Link thanks to Irwin C.]

I was wondering how this group got my address..

Via Yahoo:

E-mail users perplexed by the barrage of German-language spam waiting in their inboxes Monday morning can point the finger of blame at the latest version of the Sober mass mailing worm which began rapidly spreading over the weekend..

..Sober.q uses both German and English-language messages to direct recipients to Web sites with right-wing German nationalistic content, according to an advisory from e-mail security company MX Logic. One of the URLs points to the Web site of the right-wing German NPD party, it says..

..Although Sophos is seeing a lot of German-language spam sent by the new Sober variant, the worm itself doesn't appear to be spreading anymore, Cluley says.

E-mail users are advised to update their spam filters to guard against the new Sober spam

Once again, inspired by Bush Derangement syndrome, the media did a stupid thing. They didn't properly check their sources because they wanted to publish an article that made Bush look bad.

Newsweek is incompetent. This is news?

In contrast, take a look at the Muslims who were spontaneously overwhelmed with rightous indignation in response to Newsweek's story. Look at these mass-produced signs.

For a bunch of righteously indignant zealots, they've got a cutting-edge graphic-arts team. Is that a custom font?

These righteously indignant zealots have Photoshop and Kinkos and they know how to use them. A lot of cash, planning and organization went into this fiery media-savvy display. It's almost like they were waiting for some kind of opportunity to bring back the good old days of the "Arab street".

Oh, for the good old days, when Islamists could slaughter American soldiers and innocent civilians and still claim to be the victims. Unfortunately, the good old days are still alive and well at Newsweek, and in our government.

Like Newsweek, our government is using this incident to demonstrate our gullibility and stupidity. Our response to Islamist violence? We're worried about our image abroad.

The Ayatollah Khomeini called American efforts to win hearts and minds in the Muslim world the headless chicken strategy. Pathetic efforts to make Islamists "like" us have been winning contempt and disdain since 1979.

According to the AP, the 22-nation Arab League issued a statement saying if the allegations panned out, Washington should apologize to Muslims. Is this the same Arab League that backed the Sudanese genocide? They're troglodytes, they'll always be troglodytes, and apologizing to these creeps will only make us look weak.

The only people who deserve an apology and compensation are the victims of Islamist violence. Not the perpetrators.

However, the Arab League does deserve something. We should publicly congratulate the spectacular amount of planning, organization and artwork that went into this spontaneous display of fiery righteous indignation. Maybe our publicity team can talk to their team. Let's do lunch.

Years ago, an intrepid writer had this to say about Lebanon:

Beirut, at a glance, lacks charm. The garbage has not been picked up since 1975. The ocean is thick with raw sewage and trash dots the surf. Do not drink the water. Leeches have been known to pop out of the tap. Electricity is intermittent.

It is a noisy town. Most shops have portable gasoline generators set out on the sidewalk. The racket from these combines with incessant horn-honking, scattered gunfire, loud Arab music from pushcart cassette vendors, much yelling among the natives and occasional car bombs…

…The Green Line's four crossings were occupied by the Lebanese Army - the Moslem Sixth Brigade on one side, the Christian Fifth Brigade on the other. Though under unified command, their guns were pointed at each other. This probably augers ill for the political stability of the region..

We came upon not only photo murals and monuments to Christian war criminals Samir Geagea and Bashir Gemayel but a surly mob of students - all of them men - arranged before us in a phalanx. All wore the same brown shirts with a picture of Geagea on the front and a black Christian cross on the back. They loudly chanted Christian war songs, raised their right hands and aped the Nazi salute. Others, behind the phalanx, banged drums. Someone rang the church bells furiously and violently. Far from a celebration in the new Lebanon, it looked more like a political pep rally in General Franco's Spain.

The three activists from the democracy movement I was traveling with - Ribal, Michel and Alaa - ran up to the mob of radical Christians and hugged them. I felt sick to my stomach. What on earth were so-called democracy activists doing buddying up with sectarian ethnic chauvinists? I snapped some digital pictures because I didn't know what else to do.

Just then a bald university administrator wearing a suit and a tie got in my face. "Where are you from?" he screamed. It was the first and only time anyone yelled at me in Lebanon. "You erase those pictures," he said. "And you erase them right now."

Quote of the day: "If The Huffington Post sucked any harder, it would have an event horizon."

Thanks to Steve H., who may or may not know something about HuffingtonsToast.

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism are proud to announce that on May 14, 2005, Muslims and Middle Easterners of all backgrounds will converge on our nation's Capital for a rally against terrorism and to support freedom and democracy in the Middle East and the Muslim world. This will be the first rally of its kind in Washington, D.C., that is led by Muslims and Middle Easterners.

Join us in sending a message to radical Muslims and supporters of terrorism that we reject them and that we will do all we can to defeat them.

We also want to send a message of hope to the people of the Muslim world and the Middle East who seek freedom, democracy and who reject radical Islam that we are with them and that we will do all we can to support them.

This rally is NOT limited to Muslims and Middle Easterners. We request anyone and everyone who supports our message to join us at the rally. We want to send a message to the extremists and terrorists that American Muslims, Christians, Jews and people of all faiths are united against terrorism and extremism.

We welcome all endorsers and we ask that you circulate and publish this message to as many groups and people as possible. Help us make history.

More information here and here..

In his essay Was World War II worth it?, anti-war Nazi apologist Pat Buchanan says:

When one considers the losses suffered by Britain and France – hundreds of thousands dead, destitution, bankruptcy, the end of the empires – was World War II worth it, considering that Poland and all the other nations east of the Elbe were lost anyway?

If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.

Fortunately, VodkaPundit has a stronger constitution, and he fisks Buchanan's whole rotten mess. He answers:

Not all wars are fought for liberation – ask a Cherokee. Whoops! Something tells me Buchanan isn't ready to turn Florida back over to any of those heathen redskins any time soon.

Seriously though – I am serious. Some wars are fought for no purpose greater than destroying something. Sometimes that something is evil (Nazi Germany), and sometimes it isn't (at least half of our Indian Wars). Pat Buchanan would have you think the Trail of Tears was more just than D-Day.

In this Guardian article, Cambridge professor and anti-war Nazi apologist Richard Drayton, also wonders if WWII was worth it.

He seems to agree with Pat, for different reasons. This nazi apologist believes that WWII allowed the foul pestilence that is "democratic imperialism" to grow stonger. Once again, Hitler is not to blame, this time because, like most evil, fascism was the fault of the Americans (with the help of the UK, of course).

The British and American publics share a sunny view of the second world war. The evil of Auschwitz and Dachau, turned inside out, clothes the conflict in a shiny virtue.

Movies, popular histories and political speeches frame the war as a symbol of Anglo-American courage, with the Red Army's central role forgotten. This was, we believe, "a war for democracy". Americans believe that they fought the war to rescue the world. For apologists of the British Empire, such as Niall Ferguson, the war was an ethical bath where the sins of centuries of conquest, slavery and exploitation were expiated. We are marked forever as "the good guys"and can all happily chant "Two world wars and one world cup."

All this seems innocent fun, but patriotic myths have sharp edges. The "good war" against Hitler has underwritten 60 years of warmaking. It has become an ethical blank cheque for British and US power. We claim the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial on the basis of direct and implicit appeals to the war against fascism...

..Our democratic imperialism prefers to forget that fascism had important Anglo-American roots. Hitler's dream was inspired, in part, by the British Empire. In eastern Europe, the Nazis hoped to make their America and Australia, where ethnic cleansing and slave labour created a frontier for settlement. In western Europe, they sought their India from which revenues, labour and soldiers might be extracted.

So, was WWII worth it? The anti-war movement has been asking itself this question for some time, and the answer seems to be a consistent NO.

The anti-war movement's mission statement was written in the mid-1930's by Major General Smedley Butler, who famously said "War is a Racket", run soley for profit by profiteers. He says:

Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

Of course, the question no anti-war activist wants to answer is - "if WWII had never happened, would we even know what a Jew is?"

Ace of Spades says:

As William F. Buckley concluded in a long essay on Pat way back in the late eighties (I think), Buchanan takes a number of positions, each of which seems defensible on its face, and yet, taking them all together, the cumulative impression is that he just hates Jews.

My words, not WFB's. But that seemed to be WFB's basic gist.

When the Sous-Chef Is an Inkjet:

HOMARO CANTU'S maki look a lot like the sushi rolls served at other upscale restaurants: pristine, coin-size disks stuffed with lumps of fresh crab and rice and wrapped in shiny nori. They also taste like sushi, deliciously fishy and seaweedy.

But the sushi made by Mr. Cantu, the 28-year-old executive chef at Moto in Chicago, often contains no fish. It is prepared on a Canon i560 inkjet printer rather than a cutting board. He prints images of maki on pieces of edible paper made of soybeans and cornstarch, using organic, food-based inks of his own concoction. He then flavors the back of the paper, which is ordinarily used to put images onto birthday cakes, with powdered soy and seaweed seasonings…

… Mr. Cantu is experimenting with liquid nitrogen, helium and superconductors to make foods levitate. And while many chefs speak of buying new ovens or refrigerators, he wants to invest in a three-dimensional printer to make physical prototypes of his inventions, which he now painstakingly builds by hand. The 3-D printer could function as a cooking device, creating silicone molds for pill-sized dishes flavored, say, like watermelon, bacon and eggs or even beef Bourguignon, he said, and he could also make edible molds out of cornstarch…

A glass of fine, dry, 1999 Tang would be the perfect accompaniment, followed by a palate-cleansing dish of freeze-dried Astronaut ice cream

[Link thanks to Chiasm]

I could be mistaken, but I think Jon likes bloggers. Not just lefty bloggers, bloggers in general.

Or, maybe he sees the blogs as competition, and he's wisely trying to run with the pack, to avoid the fate of the old slow members of the MSM herd.

In any case, he did a funny bit on bloggers on cable TV. Since I only watch South Park, the Daily Show and occasional episodes of Deadwood, I haven't seen any bloggers on cable, but the routine was pretty funny. One of the cable/bloggers, EdCone, agrees.

According to John Podhoretz, the the MSM is losing their audience:

There are compelling individual explanations for these phenomena. For instance, this year's movies have been extraordinarily uninteresting. And the collapse in newspaper circulation may simply be the result of more honest reporting on the part of publishers chastened by the public exposure last year of fraudulent numbers at papers like Newsday and the Dallas Morning News. But it can't be a coincidence that the five major pillars of the American media — movies, television, radio, recorded music and newspapers — are all suffering at the same time. And it isn't. Something major has changed over the past year, as the availability of alternative sources of information and entertainment has finally reached critical mass.

Newly empowered consumers are letting the producers, creators and managers of the nation's creative and news content know that they are dissatisfied with the product they're being peddled.

[Link thanks to Yaron of the Daily Lunch]

Well, I've been living with one for twenty-two years. After decades you get used to their obscure and alien ways.

How Well Do You Understand Men? Take This Quiz

Oh, and when it comes to panties, I'm totally girly. Don't ask.

[Link thanks to Annika]

Via All Africa

A United States intelligence expert and former ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Princeton Lyman, has said that after the dreaded Middle East terrorist group, Al-Qaeda was chased out of Afghanistan, it has shifted base to Nigeria in which its influence is growing by the day.

Lyman in a report on the American television news station, CBN News, quoted a United Nations investigation which he said uncovered al-Qaeda's surreptitous training and building bases in Nigeria in support of his conclusion that the country is a natural target for terrorists seeking to expand their operations..

...In the last 12 months, al Qaeda-linked groups have launched a series of attacks on several oil-rich countries, including Nigeria.

CIA's new director, while briefing the congress after his appointment had expressed concern that the allure of fanatical Islam is attracting an alarming number of people from Nigeria's Muslim community. The rise of religious extremism is threatening to turn Africa's most populous nation into a breeding ground for international terrorists...

.."The Africa, or the sub-Saharan African bureaus of the CIA, were cut to the bone. They lost two-thirds of their station in West Africa, and the stations that remained were staffed at less than half the level they had been before. So you are talking about a huge cut in our ability to monitor these areas of the world," he said.

Farah says that is one reason why U.S. intelligence failed to anticipate the stunning spread of radical Islam across Africa.

He added, "but particularly in West Africa. The Wahabbi strain of Islam, which preaches hatred to the West and is largely funded by Saudi charities, moved in very rapidly in the early 90s. And it is something that people are only now discovering, and only now starting to focus on in a very minimal way."

Paul Marshall, a human rights advocate, says it is Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi strain of Islam, that is fueling much of the Islamic fervor in Nigeria.

Marshall said, "You go there and you'll find the Saudis, and you find the Sudanese there, you find the Libyans there, you find Syrians there, Pakistanis there, and it's all part of a world-wide Islamization."

And not only is Al Sunna Wal Jamma trying to Talibanize Nigeria, it is also offering the full menu of Taliban-style justice: chopping off a hand for theft, stoning adulterers, caning for drinking alcohol, and serving up death for anyone who leaves Islam.

From Sudan to Kenya to Tanzania to here in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, Islamists are pushing to either expand or implement Sharia law."

Nigeria is almost there. To date, 12 of 36 states have adopted Sharia law.

Dozens of people are in jail waiting to be either stoned to death, have their hands chopped off, or be flogged.

I don't know if there are any actual or even potential terrorist bases in Nigeria. But my experience with such claims makes me instinctively skeptical. I assume that many of such speculative reports say more about those making them than the actual situation on the ground. In any case history has shown that the best way to create extremists of any type is first through oppression, and second by attempting to label and isolate the oppressed, and finally by using force to suppress their protest. At this point any self-respecting community will do anything to throw off this yoke.

Is Yusef suggesting that the many potential victims of Sharia should "throw of this yoke?" Not a bad idea...

Meanwhile, the Islamist genocide continues in the Sudan..

[Links thanks to Winds of Change - cross posted on Dean's World]

From the anti-Genocide group Not Now, Not Ever

A preventable humanitarian crisis, affecting more than two million people, is raging in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Not since the Rwanda genocide of 1