You used to be so amused
At napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

- Bob Dylan

In her post Ramsey Clark rides again, Neo-neocon asks how former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, supporter of civil rights, can defend mass murdering dictators? How can he display such indifference to the oppressed victims of authoritarian regimes?

Why am I interested in all this? It's what so often grabs me, intrapersonal political change. So my question about Clark is: how did what originally seems to have been a relatively mainstream guy end up esposing views that put him in the running with Noam Chomsky? Did something happen to change him? Or was he always like that, despite having served in the Johnson administration?..

..Ramsey Clark's appointment paved the way for Marshall's elevation, as planned, and gave Johnson an Attorney General deeply committed to the civil rights agenda. Ramsey Clark was a prime mover of that cause during the 60s, and it was undoubtedly his finest hour.

From civil rights activism, the Left learned that influencing the government through activism was an effective way of forcing Americans to change their behavior. Since then, whenever the Left wanted to force the American people to change their ways, they didn't try to positively influence the general population - they focused on using activism to change the laws of the land. Winning American hearts and minds became irrelevant - shouting and ordering them around was lot easier, and more fun.

Already leaning towards stasism, the Left saw the general population as a herd that could be pushed in one direction or another by activism and state control. They lost all interest in gaining the support of "Joe Sixpack". In fact, they felt free to hate his guts and to laugh at him at every opportunity. The opinion of the average 'redneck' American meant as much to the Left as the opinion of a cow.

The extreme Left freely expressed their hate and eventually, America started to hate them back. Over the years, they lost their hope that Socialism would cure all ills. Then, they lost their belief that the UN would do the same. They lost their influence over the American public. When they lost the house, the senate and the presidency, they lost everything. All that remains of the old guard are a few ageing professors, Hugo Chavez and random media figures.

People who believe that they have no ability to win power through the Democratic process will turn towards authoritarianism. Neo-nazis like David Duke and have been aware of their political powerlessness for years. People like Ramsey Clark are just discovering their own. The American people flushed extreme Leftist ideology down the toilet. The formerly powerful, like Clark, are finding themselves swimming in the same tank that David Duke and Pat Buchanan have been in for years and they can't stand it.

Clark, Duke and their ilk are doing their best to push their ideologies in any way they can. Clark and Duke say they're doing it for the love: Duke says he's moved by his compassion for the white race, Clark says he's moved by the humanity of dictators and murderers. Both are stasists who believe that the state should force others to live according to their personal beliefs, and both are probably doing it all for the money and whatever power they can grab.

David Duke has made several friendly overtures to the Left, most recently with his support of Cindy Sheehan's crusade. With his own anti-GOP crusade, Pat Buchanan has won some favorable reviews.

Will Clark and his friends accept these overtures? It's an offer they may not be able to refuse.

Judith finds that Austin is still keeping it weird

Richard Landes has finished a very comprehensive evaluation of Pajamas Media (formerly Open Source Media) and his trip to New York for the gathering.

In US News and World report, David E. Kaplan writes about "How jihadist groups are using organized-crime tactics--and profits--to finance attacks on targets around the globe".

It's pretty comprehensive, except for one small point. Kaplan says:

Bin Laden continues to come up with funds raised from sympathetic mosques and other supporters, but the money no longer flows so easily. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have banned unregulated fundraising at mosques, and western spy agencies now watch closely how the money flows from big Islamic charities.

Western "spy agencies" are watching the money flow, but they can't stop it. Stuart Levey, Under Secretary Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Dept. of the Treasury recently said:

The US government has suggested wealthy Saudi individuals remain 'a significant source' of funds for Islamic terrorists around the world, despite widely-publicized efforts by the desert kingdom to shut down these channels.

The statement by Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, contrasts with earlier upbeat assessments by US officials that Saudi Arabia was making good progress in stemming the flow of private money to terrorist groups.

Levey said challenges posed by terrorist financing from within Saudi Arabia are 'among the most daunting' his agency has had to face, as it tries to persuade Islamic nations to strengthen controls over their banks and charitable organizations.

Al Haramain is also active in Bosnia, where they've whited out their old name and reopened under the name "Vazir". The new organization was registered as an "association for sport, culture and education."

Account 98 is the bank account used by the Saudi government to collect donations for the support of terrorism. They've been telling the US that this account no longer exists. They lied.

This was a fund that collected $15,822,977,301 Saudi Riyals for the "Popular Committee for Assisting the Mujahideen"

I don't think dealing hash and reselling bootleg t-shirts generates this kind of cash. Saudis tell us that these offices have been closed. They lie and we pretend to believe them. We've been doing this for decades. We'll probably keep doing it until they run out of oil.

* Link thanks to Dan D. at Winds of Change

Solar powered floor tiles..

* link thanks to Instapundit

Is being hosted by A Guy in New York (an online magazine / blog about good (and affordable) places to eat, living in NYC, and fun things to see and do in Manhattan)

Go visit!

Wired has been offering some of the best alternate energy news around. Their latest, Why $5 Gas Is Good for America:

At the climax of his book Twilight in the Desert, Houston investment banker and energy guru Matthew Simmons describes a visit to the world's most powerful oil company, Saudi Aramco, in Dhahran. Simmons listens in horror as a senior manager reveals the kingdom's darkest secret. The old ways no longer suffice. To keep their aging wells productive, the Saudis now rely upon one information age prop after another: advanced analysis of rock cores, 3-D seismic imagery, software for diagnosing underground oil flows - all integrated using something called fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic? The Aramco man tries to explain the science of complex systems and partial information, but Simmons hears only tidings of a bleak future. Obviously, the end of energy as we know it is nigh...

...We've never had more options for keeping those wheels turning. Aramco's fuzzy logic is just one of a multitude of new tools and fuels - some proven, some in the works, and some wildly speculative. The main thing standing between those possibilities and your gas tank is cheap crude oil that costs Aramco barely $3 a barrel to bring to the surface.

So rising oil prices are more than just an irritant or even an ominous nick out of the GDP. They're an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy - with no political strings attached. Indeed, every extra penny you pay at the pump is an incentive for some aspiring energy mogul to find another fuel...

At Gigglechick's place!

A few weeks ago, Neo-neocon asked, "Who is killing Saddam's defense lawyers?" She says:

Things that pique my interest are things that don't make sense at first, that cause me to wonder what's going on because something doesn't quite jibe. One of those things is that two of Saddam's defense lawyers have now been murdered.

Why doesn't that make sense? After all, aren't there enough people in Iraq who are angry at Saddam, angry enough to kill anyone who might want to defend him? Naturally, of course, no question--and it may indeed be just as simple as that.

But I doubt it. It somehow doesn't have the right modus operandi--the fingerprints, as it were, of the opposition to Saddam: Shi'ite clerics calling for forbearance when their own people are bombed, anti-Saddamites supporting the ascendance of the rule of law. Instead, it bears more resemblance to what we've seen in the past from Saddam supporters.

Iraq has plenty of mooks like that. So does the American anti-war Left. So, we have to ask, cui bono?

The best guess is former US attorney General Ramsey Clark, who has just arrived in Baghdad to assist in Saddam's defense. This defender of Slobodan Milosevic and the Rwandan genocidaires would go to great lengths to support the totalitarianism that is so dear to his "heart."

According to Clark, he's defending Saddam "out of principle." Note that the previous assasinations don't worry him. Wonder why.

Via Yahoo

(PRWEB) - OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 — A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics — relations with "ETs."

By "ETs," Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth.

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

I wonder if the Canadian government is paying for these formerly powerful leaders to spout their Roswell-based extraterrestrial theories? Apparently, Canada's defense minister and Pierre Trudeau believe the X-files was a documentary.

[link thanks to LGF]

Researchers have found the 'fear gene' *

With the discovery of a fear factor gene, announced today, scientists have moved a step closer to being able to moderate extreme reactions to fear and also soothe trauma victims.

The researchers identified a gene in mice that controls reactions to impending danger by firing certain neurons in the brain. Mice that don't have the gene, called stathmin, simply don't react to situations that should scare the rodent pants off them.

Cor! I really miss that series.

* link thanks to Ace

Roger Simon says:

The Bush Administration, like virtually all recent US administrations, has had a repellently cozy relationship with the despicable Saudi regime. While our presidents feel free to criticize even the mighty Chinese for human rights abuses, they say hardly a word in public about the oil-rich Saudis, leaving the (usually mild) criticism to some low-ranking State Department official with a name no one recognizes.

According to a Saudi site dedicated to Mohammed al-Harbi:

After the Saudi authorities captured the terrorists who perpetrated the may 11, 2003 tragic terror bombing in a residential area in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Muhammad al-Harbi made a public announcement to his school’s students praising the Saudi police and supporting anti terrorism actions waged by the Saudi government. He explained that that terror acts are against Islam and do not represent the faith nor its followers. This announcement was not received well by some of the other teachers in the school who adopted some extremist views and conservative ideologies that did not agree with Muhammad’s thoughts. They started plotting against Muhammad for his sincere efforts in spreading the message of tolerance and support for anti terror acts...

According to the Saudi daily Al-Iqtisadiyya, Saudi religious shops are using sex (or the lack of it in the KSA) to convince Saudi men to join the Jihad and blow themselves up:

Religious Cassettes Promoting Jihad

"So ubiquitous are the religious cassette shops that they are outnumbered only by groceries… The bulk of cassettes sold in these stalls are motivational. On closer scrutiny, you will realize that their contents are confined to a system of thought that serves to prepare youth to accept its ideas, yield to them, and adopt its Jihad program.

"These cassettes mostly urge people to carry out Jihad through taking up arms, without specifying the zero hour or the Jihad battlefield. As such they advocate Jihad for Jihad’s sake. It’s a mobilization campaign in which Jihad becomes a state of mind, a mode of living. They want you to give up this foul and mean earthly life, renounce worldly pleasures, devote your life to Jihad, and seek to die in the Jihad battlefield so as to win martyrdom."

Whether our government chooses to acknowledge it or not, Saudi Arabia is at war with us. Fighting a war by getting (and staying) cozy with the enemy has never been a very good strategy.

[link thanks to Crossroads Arabia]

We'll be crossing the Hudson River via the George Washington Bridge, but this photo is more seasonal.

Now it's time to give thanks for family, friends and especially for the men and women in the military who sacrifice so much.

And, like everyone mentioned above, it's time for us to think about food. Got to cook up some potato stuffing and some apple pie now.

If you have a pre-holiday housefull of people to feed, here's a crowd pleasing recipe - Judith's squash soup with sweet red pepper aioli.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The postmodern terrorist doesn't have to win hearts and minds...he just needs a degree from the London School of Economics:*

In describing his guerrilla army, Mao Tse-tung used an aquatic analogy: "Guerrillas are the fish, and the population is the sea in which they swim." He realized that a neutral, if not supportive populace was essential to guerrilla success. Once the majority was swayed to at least tolerate the guerrillas, then only a small portion need be committed to the cause to achieve victory. Today's Islamofascist terrorists are ignoring Mao's dictum in dealing with populations — witness the atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians by terrorists occupying Fallujah and Tal Afar — and in so doing have alienated themselves from the populations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This arrogance will in time contribute to their failure.

But the terrorists have applied his metaphor assiduously to the financial sphere, for the modern Islamofascist terrorist movement swims in the rich waters of international finance. Far from being poor, ignorant peasants as many in the West fancifully envision the terrorists, these men and their organizations are highly sophisticated, technologically aware, and extraordinarily adept at moving money within the intricate web of international financial institutions. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of these terrorists is that many of the most virulently anti-Western have matriculated in British and American institutions of higher learning. More than one detainee in Guantanamo has an advanced degree in international finance from schools such as the London School of Economics. Admission standards may have changed, but one does not reasonably expect to find a simple Afghani opium farmer conscripted by the Taliban to be on the roster of distinguished graduates.

So for the modern terrorist money — and lots of it — is the ocean in which they swim and without which they will cease to live. Post-9/11, one of President Bush's stated objectives was to dry up that ocean and deny the terrorists the funding needed to carry out their horrific attacks. These sorts of financial tracking operations are done by analysts in front of computer screens pouring over endless printout sheets. It is mostly thankless work that is conducted in the back offices of CIA, Treasury, FBI, and Homeland Security. Information is obtained by liaison to foreign countries intelligence agencies and banking establishments — thus bringing in State Department, and though signal and information intercepts - that means the Pentagon and National Security Agency. ..

* link thanks to Fjordman at LGF

Update: More from Fjordman

Saudi royals still funding al-Qaida

Until November 2003, Aufhauser was the administration's point man in the effort to prevent al-Qaida financing. He said Saudi Arabia has not prosecuted any of its nationals on charges of relaying funding to Islamic insurgency groups.

"In the two and a half years I spent on this matter, I cannot remember a single Saudi who was held accountable for being a donor to terrorist financing," Aufhauser said. "Until we get to the donors, the exercise is a fool's errand."

In his recent post, the Importance of being Bosomy, Clive Davis * asks:

While I'm on a battle-of-the-sexes rant, I wish somebody could tell me why any intelligent women has ever taken Madonna seriously.

Those few minutes happened when I was watching Desperately Seeking Susan, a movie I still watch whenever I catch the reruns. It was supposed to be about a desperate Jersey housewife (Rosanna Arquette), but the real plot revolved around the hip, boho life that was New York in the '80's. As a housewife who was too busy with mothering to be desperate for anything but sleep, this quirky, well-made movie appealed to me.

In the movie, Madonna's homeless sociopath, (the "Susan" desperately sought) had a lot more fun than Arquette's shy housewife. Those bustiers, lace and those leopard-print clothes were trampy but fun - and everywhere Susan/Madonna went, she was accompanied by ultra-cool music.

As the movie progressed, Madonna got to sleep with Rosanna's "leisure suit Larry" husband and Rosanna got to sleep with (and keep) Aidann Quinn. Gee, maybe the life of the hip, bustier-clad sociopath wasn't all it was cracked up to be. So, that was the end of that.

* link thanks to Instapundit

Last night, I got an advertisement/comment in response to my post about parents who change diapers in restaurants and use their children as political billboards. Andrea Frost, of babywit.com writes to defend the practice of using babies as an outlet for parental aggression.

It's such a choice piece of spam, I've got to fisk it:

In response to Daisy's argument is that our kid's political line is inappropriate because it encourages parents to use their children as a billboards. (We have shirts that say "I already know more than the president" and "President Poopyhead")

To that I can only say, what the hell are you doing when your kid's shirt says BABY GAP, or DORA THE EXPLORER, or FUTURE DALLAS COWBOY CHEERLEADER?

Are you addressing me? If so, please save your faux-neo-Marxist outrage. When my kids were little I was living below the welfare limits. All of their clothes were hand-me downs, or they were bought in thrift stores. Most were good-quality designer clothes. I'd splurge on fabric paints and few t-shirts at K-Mart every once in awhile. Then I'd let my kids paint them however they wanted - because those were their shirts, not mine.

As I said, people who buy pretentious designer clothing tend to donate them to thrift shops - which is a very nice thing to do. People who buy pretentious post-modernist t-shirt based statements usually donate squat. I'm not sure why.

Good God. This is what I'm talking about - you see a child as equivalent to a billboard, your car, your laptop and your business. You say you'll use "anything" you can get your hands on - Don't you know the difference between a child and an object?

A child is not a thing.

What media are you talking about - are you talking about the group of grasping, profit and publicity seeking capitalists out there? Because, like, you're one of them.

"the tattered banner we've been wavin" - why is a middle aged NY hipster suddenly channelling Pete Seeger?

Do you think that there will be peace just because Bush is gone? You mentioned Indonesia. The Islamist groups responsible for burning and crushing thousands of New Yorkers a few years ago are now busy beheading little Indonesian girls for the crime of going to school. Those Islamists were murdering kids in Allah's name before Bush was elected and your little t-shirt enterprise will do jack to stop them.

Are you trying to incite vandalism? Because I think that's against the law.

After the 2004 elections I also noticed that a hard-working entrepreneur could make a small fortune off of the Left's wild and intestate hatred of Republicans. As a fellow running dog and the descendant of gypsies I appreciate a good con..umm..sales pitch when I see it.

The problem is, you don't seem to understand that kids are not billboards. They're not your property, you don't own them and you don't have the right to put objectionable material on their bodies in an effort to impress your friends and win the approval of your social circle.

I know that winning the approval of your social circle is a NY hipster obsession but why don't you take a minute to stop obsessing about your social status and your profits. Stop pushing kids around and listen to what they have to say. Because whatever they say, it's probably a hell of a lot wiser than anything you've said here.

When I visited London two years ago, I wandered through some conservative muslim neighborhoods that had very few liquor stores or pubs. I wondered if they were banned for being haram.

Some Muslim groups are working on that...

..I don't know why, but those black sunglasses were creeping me out..

Michael Totten describes driving in Beirut:

When I first arrived in Beirut I thought Lebanese drivers must be among the worst in the world. They don’t stop at red lights. They drive the wrong way down one-ways. Seat belts are verboten, and the concept of lanes is utterly alien. Speed limits? No way. Traffic circles are unbelievable clusterfucks. Stop signs are suggestions that translate into "slow down just a tad if it's not too much trouble." The soundtrack of the city is an unending cacophony of blaring car horns and screeching tires. Busses take up two lanes by themselves, and trucks pass slow cars in oncoming traffic around blind corners. It's terrifying at times and maddening the rest of the time...

..Then something new happened. The whole system just clicked. Rent a car and drive these streets yourself for a while and all of a sudden you can predict what first seemed like deranged and psychotic behavior. Behind every seemingly-crazy driving maneuver is a purpose. The key to predicting what other drivers will do is to ask yourself what you would do if there weren’t any rules and you were guaranteed not to hit anybody. Then you can relax and play the game.

It is a game, really. There are winners and losers. You must drive offensively. If you don't you'll be a hazard because others will have no idea what you’re going to do. You have to fight for space. There's a point when both you and the other driver knows who has the right of way. It’s he or she who has the most guts.

You have to trap people. That's how it works. To fight for space you position your car in such a way that if your opponent doesn't tap on his brakes he will hit you. Then you win. Then you get to go. Your reaction time – and therefore your driving skill – grows exponentially after you’ve played this game for a while.

Driving in Costa Rica is insane too; insane in a different way, but the same in one way - you get used to it. Same in Germany - Germans seem to use the autobahn as an outlet for their perpetually pent-up aggressions. They use if very well. Thailand has their own road rules. In Thailand, I just watched our taxi driver - my husband wouldn't let me rent a car. (Well, let me rephrase that - if I rented a car, I'd be all alone in it). I had the same problem in Russia, where we witnessed three car accidents in five days. Our taxi ride to the train station resembled this video.

The freewheeling libertarianism of foreign roads may be insane, but it keeps you on your toes.

Of last week's episode, Eric at the Blatherist says:

What a great show Rome turned out to be (despite occasional lapses into shock-for-shock's-sake), not as good as my HBO benchmarks - Carnivale and the first season of The Wire, but at least as good as Deadwood and well better than overrated fare like The Sopranos.

I wasn't even going to watch Rome when I heard it was yet another retelling of the old Ceasar story. The best work on that story was done centuries ago, why do we keep redoing it? I would rather learn more about later years in Rome - the downfall, the Christians, the Visigoths. But Vorenus, Pullo and the view of everyday, suburban/Roman life makes yet another rehash of et-tu Brutus worthwhile.

Like the Sopranos, most of the characters are tainted in many ways, but in Rome, the violence is consistent with the society that they live in. The Sopranos, not so much - if real-life mobsters whacked each other on such a regular basis, their businesses would be a mess; and when they off someone in view of the ever-busy Pulaski Skyway - are we supposed to believe that no one would see that?

Ignoring the fact that the actor who plays Pullo is totally hot, I think he is the most sympathetic of all the characters; there's a certain honesty about him that comes through, despite his current work as a hired killer. It's an honesty that's completely lacking in Ceasar and especially Marc Antony, who comes across as the bully/football jock that everyone hated in high school. The problem with this is, we should care about them because the plot has to turn around them. That is one advantage that the Sopranos has over Rome - Tony S. is like Pullo after too many servings of ziti - he's bad, but he's honest about it, and you do care what happens to him.

People have called George Galloway a "dove".

Is his "Arabia uber alles!" speech consistent with 'dovish' behavior?

So I say to you, citizens of the last Arab country, this is a time for courage, for unity, for wisdom, for determination, to face these enemies with the dignity your [Syrian] president has shown, and I believe, God willing, we will prevail and triumph, fwa-salam aleikum...

..What your lives would be if from the Atlantic to the Gulf we had one Arab union - all this land, 300 million people, all this oil and gas and water, occupied by a people who speak the same language, follow the same religions, listen to the same Um Kulthum… The Arabs would be a superpower in the world if they had this unity, instead of the shameful situation in which the Arabs find themselves today.

According to Konrad Lorenz, biologist and founder of the study of ethology, Galloway is very dovish. Non-predatory birds can be very violent - the difference is, they opportunistically attack and destroy only their own kind.

In her post Tuesday the Rabbi Kicked Ass, Cathy Seipp wondered why a Rabbi, a "peace"-loving dove, kicked a woman because he disagreed with her hawkish politics.

Seipp says:

According to Konrad Lorenz, the great biologist and founder of the study of ethology, doves, those great symbols of peace are actually nasty and aggressive towards each other. When they are stressed even slightly one will often peck another dove's eyes out, or even peck the fellow bird to death.

But predatory birds are "less easily provoked, and indeed are normally careful not to harm members of their group. In his 1948 book "Man Meets Dog," Lorenz describes purposely and repeatedly putting his wide-open eye right up against his pet raven's big sharp beak to see what would happen; the poor raven kept carefully moving his beak away and eventually became visibly disturbed when Lorenz kept at it."

NPR describes Senior Democratic Representative John Murtha, who has called for an immediate withdrawl of U.S. troops for Iraq as a "long-time war hawk" who has turned into "an angry dove." Watch out.

[cross-posted at Dean's World]

My uncle Joe and Aunt Nell, fans of the Italian shops at Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, served this appetizer during their recent "Constitution Day" celebration. This combination of fruit, cheese and meat really works:

Fig spread
Italian flat crackers (or any non-sweet cracker)
Prosciutto
thinly sliced fresh parmesean

Just stack it all together and eat. Great with a dry sherry.

[Another nice fruit - cheese combination - fresh apples and brie (but not with sherry - maybe a pinot grigio?)]

Yesterday, Ukrainians protested in front of the New York Times, demanding the Times' 'blood-stained' Pulitzer, won by genocide-denier Walter Duranty, be returned. They presented evidence that the Times was complicit in Duranty's whitewash of Stalin's regime.

Most news sources continued their habit of ignoring pro-democracy protests and Ukranians in general. However, the Guardian did report that the pro-democracy Orange revolution was a "bitter disappointment".

Another victim of totalitarianism spoke out in a comment on Joe Katzman's post, Hitchens: In Toronto: The Right Side of History:

Belonging to a nation that got rolled over with tanks twice in the last century - Czechoslovakia - without defending itself at all, I can only support and applaud current US efforts in Iraq and elsewhere.

To defend the good principles takes a terrible toll short-term, to give in means to live in hell for generations.

Next I ask him about terrorism. It's not for any particular reason. It just seems a relevant thing to ask a writer who has seen war, who has written of war and who lives in New York City, where terrorism's horror is understood so well.

"What about terrorists? Do you understand where they're coming from? Do you regard them as soldiers too?" I ask.

Vonnegut's reply is startling. "I regard them as very brave people, yes," he says without a moment's hesitation.

"You don't think that they're mad, that, you know, anyone who would strap a bomb to himself must be mad?"

"Well, we had a guy [president Harry Truman] who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, didn't we?" he says.

"What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back. Peace wasn't restored in Vietnam until we got kicked out. Everything's quiet there now."

There's a long pause before Vonnegut speaks again: "It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in."

This borders on the outrageous. Is the author of one of the great anti-war books of the 20th century seriously saying that terrorists who kill civilians are "sweet and honourable"?

I ask one more question: "But terrorists believe in twisted religious things, don't they? So surely that can't be right?"

"Well, they're dying for their own self-respect," Vonnegut fires back. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."

There's another long pause and Vonnegut's eyes suggest his mind has wandered off somewhere. Then, suddenly, he turns back to me and says: "It must be an amazing high."

Here are some German antifascists protesting against Vonnegut's heroes.

Why would the Ukranians be angry about the Times' complicity in the deaths of their relatives? Why would the residents of Dresden resist the totalitarianism that Vonnegut embraces? Why would a Czech applaud the invasion of Iraq? I'm sure Vonnegut, the New York Times and the Guardian couldn't figure it out if they tried. Gee, why would anyone be angry at "liberals"?

I have to wonder - do these old Stalinists think, or are they listening to the chirps in their heads?

Poo-tee-weet?

* links thanks to Dean Esmay and Norm Geras

The morning 'Lifestyle' panel convinced Richard Landes that he'd rather be in his pajamas

.. in the evening Zelda at the Urban Grind got out and mingled

Henway Twingo at Sense of Soot notes that Open Source Media is still at the Underpants Gnome stage of planning. I'm beginning to wonder if the Underpants business model will define this decade.

Iowahawk sees OSM as a fourish-step business plan that ends with Kaching!! and a yacht.

Neo-neocon notes that the life of a blogger is always intense..like 'group chain smoking'.

Judith tells us more about Lisa Ramaci

Via MSNBC

Clever computer criminals have recently become much more sophisticated in their attacks against online banks, experts say. The Internet is now awash in programs called "remote access Trojans," or RATs, that feed on online banking passwords.

Trojan horse programs have traditionally sneaked their way onto computers by posing as desirable free software, such as electronic greeting cards or file-sharing programs. The malicious programs are hidden, and like the Greek soldiers hidden in the famous wooden horse, jump out to attack once they're safely inside. But others are pushed onto computers without any interaction at all, through various software vulnerabilities...

.."This is the new thing," said Dan Clements of CardCops.com, a site that monitors online fraud. His researchers recently gained access to an e-mail account that was set up to receive data from RAT-infested computers. The account held over 3,000 transmissions, he said.

One of the e-mails contained about 300 logins for Bank of America's Web site. ..

..These specialized forms of spyware, now being called by other names like crimeware, ratware, and even bankware, worm their way onto victims' computers in a number of ways. Some are inserted completely in silence, through an unpublished or unpatched software vulnerability. Others are hidden in Web sites on the Internet's darker side, such as pornography sites. Still others come in e-mail, disguised as electronic greeting cards.

[link thanks to Liberal Hawk Gail].

Daisy Carrington of the Observer writes:

This week, Fairchild Publications is introducing a horrifying new magazine called Cookie—a sort of Lucky for the sandbox set, featuring $900 strollers and hair gel for 3-year-old boys ("have him rub no more than a quarter-size dollop").

But could this be the very magazine that New York City parents deserve? Have you noticed how parents are increasingly using the bellies of innocent babes as their own personal billboards?..

..Down on the Lower East Side, Stephanie Dolgoff likes to dress her twin 2-year-old daughters in T-shirts bearing flippant slogans like "President Poopyhead" and "Bush Is a Tush." During the family’s regular perambulations around their neighborhood, the incongruous sight of the tots in their special shirts often inspires hearty guffaws or approving nods from the few remaining political radicals that live there. "I don’t want to make them out to be like walking posters," said Ms. Dolgoff, 38, the health director at Self magazine, defending the fashion choices she makes on her kids’ behalf. "Really, it’s just funny. The old folks in the neighborhood think it’s funny. They agree Bush is a shithead … and I tell them not to curse in front of my children."

..a Baby Bearer snuck her little poop-factory a few diagonal feet below my nose. It must have been time for the noise machine to be changed, because before I could lodge a complaint, I detected some nasal evidence that it was being changed.

I inquired politely--so politely that you should imagine it said with a British accent--as to whether the adjacent seat had suddenly and without notice become an acceptable baby changing station. I offered that I had first-hand knowledge of a location more suitable for such a pursuit, and that it was conveniently situated within the confines of the store.

The mother informed me that the bathroom was presently occupied, a fact that apparently now entitles the Lavatorilly Challenged to treat the rest of the facilities as the facilities. I wondered whether relieving myself in the garbage can next to the condiment station would be an acceptable response next time I encountered a locked bathroom door at Starbucks.

A chill settled between us as she finished her wiping and re-wrapping, but I hoped she might at least think twice before subjecting others to the smell of her baby's byproducts and the risk of its flailing frontal apparatus acting like an unexpected lawn sprinkler.

From the Observer:

Ms. Dolgoff plans to impose her sassy sartorial will on her offspring for as long as she is able. "You do your thing when they’re young, and they’ll do their thing when they’re older," she said.

I guess these trendoids are tired of the bourgois standards imposed by primitivism, so they have to reach deeper, exploring a nadir previously unreached. Very cutting edge.

I'm not an official pajamadeen, but I did manage to crash their party last night. Wish I could give more details, but I got home at 1am, chatted till 2, woke up at 5am to take my daughter to Penn Station and had a very busy day today. Yes, bad planning, as usual. Judith captured the mood, Pamela took some great photos, and Pajamas Media (or Open Source Media, right now) has the details.

I got there late, and regret missing the platters of wee appetizers. Other regrets - missing a chance to meet Fausta, Ace and Richard from the Belmont Club. I did get a chance to see Steve, Bruce, Susan, Karol and Young Curmudgeon Eric Deamer. Didn't get a chance to talk to Neo-neocon, but we'd enjoyed a Liberal Hawks dinner-out on Monday, at a yummy Arabic restaurant. I bumped into Zelda, and together we introduced ourselves to Glenn Reynolds; Got a chance to meet Kevin of Wizbang, Tim Blair, Cathy Seipp, Austin Bay, filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney and Lisa Ramaci, Steven Vincent's wife.

I met previously unmet notables like Pieter Dorsman of Peaktalk, Richard Landes and Pedro Zúquete of Second Draft. We talked about the European situation and the pro-Israeli, pro-American communists in the German Antifa (among other things) with Judith and Glenn Reynolds. Reynolds, like his blog, has lots of unexpected and interesting information at hand.

Charles Johnson of LGF remembered a post I did about him more than a year ago (and he remembered Oliver Willis' comically unintentional goof). He's got a mind like a steel trap.

We all missed the PJ Media bloggers who couldn't make it to New York, like Michael Totten and Dean Esmay.

Jeff Goldstein liveblogged the whole thing, using his psychic/Karmic thing of being in two places at the same time. He fills in the details of James "I root for Hurricanes" Wolcott's invasion. OMG, that furry thing was Wolcott? I thought the W had rats.

During the taxi ride out, Judith mentioned that I just had to read this by Vanderleun, and she was right. It's one of the best examples of post-post modern humor I've read in a while.

If I've forgotten anything, many apologies. It was an open bar..

UPDATE: The Young Curmudgeon is back!

Congrats to Jane Novak for her appearance on Al Jazeera TV!

Well, two of them, anyway.

I usually don't say this, but I really have to disagree with Ace's post here *:

French Intellectuals Break Silence, Revert To Incessant Jackassery

Know why those Youths of Undetermined Ethnic Extraction rioted in France? Not as a sign of a separation from French culture, but as a declaration they had embraced it:

French intellectuals have maintained their silence, despite more than 6,000 burnt-out cars, wrecked schools and vandalized creches and the one death resulting from the riots that have raged since October 27.

Now at last the philosopher Andre Glucksmann has spoken out with a provocative thesis: The disturbances are not the result of alienation but a sign that the young rioters are becoming integrated.

'They are integrating themselves by the very act of setting cars alight, even by the fact that they are setting people alight,' he told the German newspaper, the Franfurter Rundschau.

According to Glucksmann, negation is a typical form of French integration.

'All parties in France, business, the workers and so on, believe that something can be achieved by violence,' he told the leftist daily.

By this view, young people are integrating through their behaviour. Glucksmann believes that a 'nihilistic atmosphere' predominates currently in France and extends well beyond the banlieus.

Ah. I see. Rioting as a love letter.

By this view, young people are integrating through their behaviour. Glucksmann believes that a 'nihilistic atmosphere' predominates currently in France and extends well beyond the banlieus.

Aside from this essential French aspect, there is the global phenomenon of terrorism.

'The youngsters in the banlieus are saying: 'Today Baghdad is here.' They see it on television and they like it,' Glucksmann says, attributing the driving force behind the violence to hatred.

Essayist and journalist Bernard-Henri Levy takes a similar view: 'Black energy of pure hatred. A nihilistic brew of violence that is meaningless, purposeless...,' Levy writes in an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal.

With the page-turning suspense of the finest mystery novel, Levy, who risked his life and his sanity to write this book by descending into the bowels of evil, traces the footsteps of Daniel Pearl, a fearless, principled reporter, and not only uncovers the evil behind Pearl's murder, but probes into the psychology of evil that drives Islamisists: the way they define themselves not through a positive conception but by negation: hatred of Jews and Christians and for that matter any nonMuslim. Levy analyzes the sickness of fanaticism: the latent homosexual misogyny, the narcissism, the labyrinth of murky evil, which he describes as "one trap door leader to another and another . . ." Even more frightening, Levy shows that the pathology of hatred exists as a normal condition, nurtured by Islamic fanatics in the madrasas, which work in a symbiotic relationship with the ISI, the secret Pakistani police. In fact, Levi shows that it is Pakistan, not Iraq, which is a principal center of evil and potential apocalypse. All of Levy's revelations are rendered with profound humanity and anger at an evil that is glorified in too many parts of the world.

Glucksman also wrote this about the connection between European-style totalitarianism and terrorism:

"…what do extremist ideologies like the communism or Nazism of yesteryear and the Islamism of today have in common? After all, they support ostensibly very different ideals – the superior race, mankind united in socialism, the community of Muslim believers (the Umma). Tomorrow, it could be altogether different ideals: some theological, some scientific, others racist. But the common characteristic is nihilism."

The root element is the attitude that anything goes, particularly when with regard to ordinary people: I can do whatever I want, without scruples. Goehring put it like this: my consciousness is Adolf Hitler. Bolsheviks said: man is made of iron. And the Islamists whom I visited in Algeria said that you have the right to kill little Muslim children, in order to save them."

Human civilization survives because most people are able to suppress their appetite for extreme, random violence (or belligerent hubris)

:::

"..because Man is human: therefore, he can be civilised, even if he can’t read or write, because he can master this hubris. Wherever you go, this belligerent hubris is considered lethal. In the huts of the Amazon, young men are taught to conquer this capacity for excessive violence. You can fight together, but you cannot fight in any way that comes to hand, and you don’t set out to fight just anyone. The same idea occurs in the teachings of the Greeks, the paidera. All European education is based on the same principle.

Indeed, all civilisations have two essential taboos in common: the taboo on ‘total sexuality’, the incest taboo, different in individual cases, but ubiquitous, and the taboo on violence. You are not allowed to succumb to ‘absolute violence’. You have to master that hubris in one way or another. In every civilisation you can find the mastering of these two absolute, destructive impulses."

..[nihilism] can be seen as an extreme form of anarchism. The state thus became the enemy, and the enemy was ferociously attacked. After gaining much momentum in Russia, the movement degenerated into what were essentially terrorist cells, barren of any real unifying philosophy beyond the call for destruction

In short, Glucksman and Bernard-Henri Levy are two of the very few intellectuals in Europe who aren't jackasses.

* I was going to post a shorter version of this on Ace's site, but spam software wouldn't allow it for some reason - yet more proof of the destructive force of nihilism in the form of spam

The Thai government is arming citizens to fight terrorism

About 20,000 residents will be trained and armed in the three southernmost provinces enabling them to defend their villages and spy on the movements of insurgents in the restive region, commander General Ruangroj Mahasaranond said yesterday.

The project, under the supervision of the Supreme Command, will begin in December and is a combination of security training and job creation for residents who will be trained to develop weapons and spying skills, the commander said.

The Southern Border Provinces Peace Building Command will recruit qualified males and females for the project and put them on the government's payroll, he said.

Thousands of residents in the deep South have been trained and armed as defence volunteers to protect their property. The government has issued weapons to them but many are not strong enough to provide sufficient security to their communities. Militants have stolen hundreds of these weapons in several attacks in recent months.

Ruangroj said general defence volunteers had received inadequate training but the new project would offer better instruction and would include ongoing training after the course.

The project is one of the government's efforts to contain violence, which erupted in the South and has killed more than 1,000 people since the beginning of last year.

Well they would scream - if they weren't ignoring the situation in Thailand altogether..

Which Family Guy Character are you?

[Link thanks to Lois/Fausta]

Celebrate at No-W-Here.

..and here and here.

Norm Geras notes a new twist on the Dear Abby (or, as they call them in Britain, agony auntie) idea: Ask the Philosophers - or, as the Guardian says in their article Dear Derrida:

Most agony aunts offer advice on family problems, diets and extramarital affairs. But a group of leading academics has set up a website to deal with the more fundamental questions in life, like: what is truth?

Q: Assuming there is no afterlife, is it irrational to fear death?
A: Peter Lipton: It's irrational to fear what death will feel like if you know it won't feel like anything; but it doesn't follow that it is irrational to fear death. It's not irrational to look forward to the pleasures of living, and if we know that death will take these away, the fear of losing those pleasures doesn't seem irrational either.

I don't say this answer is necessarily wrong, but I have a question about it. Does 'fear of losing those pleasures' presuppose a continuous subject, the person who has the pleasures and then loses them? But if there's no afterlife, once the pleasures are lost there's no person any longer, no sufferer of the loss. So, while I think fear of death probably is rational, I'm not sure if Peter Lipton has given a persuasive reason why.

Which may answer a question I've been wondering about for a while. Someone once said that people become religious because they fear death. That didn't make much sense to me at the time, but maybe it's because religions, with their stories of an afterlife, tend to offer comfort to people who are uncomfortable with this 'unknown'.

Of course, not-existing is not an entirely unfamiliar state. Our unique selves didn't exist before we were born - why is it so hard to imagine our unique selves not existing after we die? It happened before, it'll happen again. Which is why the fear of death always seemed to be slightly irrational. Of course, I'm not a philosopher and this is just an empirical observation.

[Once I use words like empirical observation, I'm totally out of my depth so I'll stop now]

But I just love the idea of a philospher/agony auntie - less practical but more fun.

apple tree at sunset in Liberty, NY

A mosque has been firebombed in Paris. The riots continue and some of the unrest has spread to Belgium. According to the Brussels journal, European censors don't want Americans to pay attention to this. They don't want Europeans to pay attention to it either. They don't want to know about it themselves.

Via the Brussels Journal:

Mosque Attack in France
From the desk of Paul Belien on Sat, 2005-11-12 13:53

It is becoming difficult to give you news about the situation in France. Apart from a minor incident involving a mosque, the media have lost interest or are complying with censorship recommendations from their editors who fear that the public would turn to the "extreme-right" if it receives correct information. Perhaps our attempt to provide information qualifies us as "extreme-right" too. To avoid legal problems our lawyers advise us to put up a warning:

Political Content Warning If you are a Socialist or a Liberal, please stop reading NOW.

In the sixteenth consecutive night of violence in France, 502 cars were set alight. Hundreds of molotov cocktails were thrown at policemen, cars and buildings, including a mosque in Carpentras in the south of the country. In Belgium’s sixth consecutive night of car torching, fifteen cars, including one truck and a bus, were damaged by fire – eight of them in Brussels. The situation in Denmark seems to be tense as well.

In both Paris and Brussels the authorities are nervous because islamist weblogs have called for demonstrations and violent protests today. The French authorities have banned all rallies and protests until Sunday evening. The Belgian authorities do not want the media to report about the weblogs. In Paris and Brussels the police are on the alert...

...There is also considerable media attention for two molotov cocktails thrown at a mosque in the southern town of Carpentras. Though there was no material damage the French authorities have strongly condemned the attack. "This act of agression is as undignified as it is unacceptable," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said. President Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, too, condemned the agression "with the greatest firmness" and expressed solidarity with the Muslim community of France.

Earlier this week two churches were set ablaze, but the French government did not express solidarity with the Christians of France. The Jewish community has also been advised to keep quiet about attacks on synagogues lest they attract the attention of copycats. After the attacks, the French authorities did not explicitly express solidarity with the Jews but advised them "not to publicize their fears, as such declarations could encourage rioters to attack Jews and Jewish community buildings." Apparently, the media and the politicians are convinced that copycats are never Christians or Jews, but always Muslims. Doesn’t that attitude smack of racism?

UPDATE: The European censors may be right to worry about how the reactionaries will respond to the riots. However, they fail to notice the reactionaries from the Left. Harry's Place notes the bias on the covers of British political magazines, The Spectator and The New Statesman.

The New Statesman apologized for the cover (A Star of David standing on a Union Jack above the headline 'A Kosher Conspiracy.' ), but defended the articles within, including an article by 'journalist' John Pilger. Pilger, who has defended the innocence of Slobodan Milosevic and the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing, wrote one of two New Statesman articles "investigating the influence of the British media's pro-Israel lobby."

The New Statesman admitted that the cover followed "an anti-Semitic tradition that sees Jews as a conspiracy piercing the heart of the nation."

The Spectator has not, so far, apologized for their cover "Eurabian Nightmare", featuring the Islamic crescent moon superimposed over a map of France.

[cross-posted at Dean's World]

Frenchmen really are raising the white flag, demanding that Sarkozy resign 'for peace'.

Fausta has photos and the latest news.

Featuring Les Risiblés par Iowahawk; like most of this director/writer's ouvre, Les Risiblés was unfairly neglected by the mainstream while achieving cult status within the pajamasphere.

Significant quotes:

We are FRANCE!
We are France!
If you think you can beat us, bon chance!

:::

When you’re a Frog you’re a Frog all the way, from your first cigarette to your last beaujolais!

:::

Go greased Peugeot you're burning up the Rue De Ville!
(Greased Peugeot, burn greased Peugeot)
Go greased Peugeot you're burning up by Allah’s will !
(Greased Peugeot, burn greased Peugeot)
It’s bitchin’ sweet to see it light up the street, greased Peugeot!
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

:::

When Mahmooooud is in the Notre Dame
And prayer rugs line Versailles
Then this will please the Prophet
We'll get hot chicks in Paradise!

This is the dawning of the Age of Eurabia!
Age of Eurabiaaaaa!
Eu-ra-bi-AH! Eu-RA-bi-ah!

Via Hugh Hewitt and Radioblogger:

But having said that, I do think that what's pathetic about all Western countries, including the United States, including France, including Canada, and a lot of other countries, is that they make these sort of high school sophist arguments about terrorism, as if it's some sort of theoretical debate. It's not. We're dealing with a very difficult situation here. And if you accord to terrorists all the rights of somebody who gets arrested for holding up a liquor store in Des Moines, you are going to lose to the terrorists, because when you accord them the full rights of somebody who is a criminal, you make it impossible to prosecute this as a war, which is what it is.

- Mark Steyn

[Thanks to Instapundit]

Trinidadian Police Arrest Islamic Leader

From the Jersey Journal, twin brothers tell their story:

The twin boys from Hoboken were born 20 minutes apart. That's the longest Craig and Chris Auriemma have been separated in their 33-year-old lives, except for the past 16 months when both men served in separate cities in Iraq with the National Guard.

Craig managed communication lines in Kirkuk, while Chris carried messages between troops in Baghdad. Their paths crossed only