photo thanks to my husband Bruce

In his essay on realism in Darfur, Christopher Hitchens asks us to consider the horrors that result from peace.

It looks as if the realists have won the day in the matter of Darfur. Or, to phrase it in another way, it looks as if the ethnic cleansers of that province have made good use of the "negotiation" and "mediation" period to complete their self-appointed task. As my friend Johann Hari put it recently in the London Independent: "At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There's only one problem—it's drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill."

...Surely the administration did everything that could have been asked of it. Abandoning any sort of "unilateralism," it pedantically followed the Kofi Annan script of multiparty negotiations and patient diplomacy. It allowed the inspectors more time. It exhausted all avenues short of war and never even threatened the use of force. By the use of sanctions, it kept Sudan "in its box." And it has got exactly what anyone might have predicted for such a strategy. Perhaps that's why there is so little protest. After all, we know that "war is not the answer." And now Sudan has Darfur province in its box. It has taken the land and gotten rid of the people.

Any critique of realism has to begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace.

To be sure, this mission has been woefully ineffective from the start. The A.U. force has been deliberately undercut by Khartoum since it was first deployed in summer 2004, with Sudan denying fuel to the African Union for its essential helicopters, blocking A.U. deployments within Darfur, and refusing to allow critical equipment and personnel into the region. For its part, the African Union hasn't committed enough resources or manpower; and key African countries have either reneged on military commitments (South Africa) or deliberately obscured Darfur's terrible realities and Khartoum's responsibility (Nigeria).

But the African Union's decision to hold its January 2006 summit in Sudan provides the strongest evidence yet that the organization has no intention of actually standing up to Khartoum and halting the genocide. Because tradition dictates that the next chair of the African Union be the head of the most recent summit's host country, Sudanese president Omar el-Bashir is now poised to lead the very organization that claims to be seeking an end to the genocide he is orchestrating.

Of the world's ineffective response, Simon Deng, a former Sudanese slave says:

I ask this question as a victim of enslavement in Sudan; I ask it for my fellow Southern Sudanese who are always asking this question. My voice is their voice. We can not stop wondering why no one cares about our fate, why nobody does anything about it. We have been victimized by the Arabs in the name of the ideology of jihad, but no one seems to care. We have endured and are enduring the most systematic destruction of a people since the Nazi Holocaust, but our fate seems largely invisible to the world.

It is very painful to say this, but we Sudanese victims can not avoid uttering the truth, at least among ourselves: we are black, and therefore nobody cares about us. We are the ultimate victims of a global racism that continues even in the new millennium. We also have the great misfortune to be the victims of Arabs who slaughter and enslave us in the name of jihad. And everyone sitting here surely knows that when it comes to the ideology of jihad, open discourse at the Commission for Human Rights is muted. People refuse to speak the truth because no one wishes to be seen as anti-Islamic, especially not at the UN.

The UN has been proven ineffective when faced with a genocidal conflict. The world's institutions have failed so many times before, it's no surprise that they're failing again.

If the world is determined to ignore this horror, and if the wealthy Arab League is determined to inflict it, the Sudanese have one option - use their aid money to hire an independent security force that will defend them. Just as the farmers did in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, where a 16th century Japanese farm community defends itself against a gang of pillaging robbers by hiring mercenary samurai who are willing to defend the settlement in return for food and lodging.

Yes, it's just a movie, but the same tactic recently worked for a group of farmers who were tired of having their arms chopped off by "rebels" in Sierra Leone:

Privately, some diplomats and Africa experts believe that one force — a mercenary army — might be able to contain the rebels' killing sprees in Sierra Leone, because it has done so before. In 1995, rebels drew within 20 miles of Freetown, and the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity and the international conflict resolution experts were all unable to help. In its desperation, the Government of Sierra Leone hired Executive Outcomes, a South African mercenary army founded by apartheid-era South African soldiers but made up mainly of black African soldiers, including Namibians and Angolans.

The company was willing to do what the United Nations cannot: take sides, take casualties, deploy overwhelming force and fire pre-emptively. Executive Outcomes agreed to put down the rebels and restore law and order in return for $15 million and diamond mining concessions. Relying on about 200 soldiers and a helicopter gunship, it nearly succeeded: 300,000 refugees were able to return from squalid camps in neighboring Guinea that were costing the international community $60 million a year. And within a year, the people of Sierra Leone voted in their first presidential election in 28 years.

"Our people have died, lost their limbs, lost their eyes and their properties for these elections," the Sierra Leonian Defense Minister said to me at the time. "If we employ a service to protect our hard-won democracy, why should it be viewed negatively?"

Much of the Western press called it an African success story. The foreign diplomats and Sierra Leonians I spoke to at the time said the country owed its stability to Executive Outcomes. Nevertheless the international community and particularly the International Monetary Fund thought it unseemly and too costly for the fledgling democracy to be so dependent on mercenaries. Three months after the mercenaries left, the country, defenseless, collapsed into terror. A year ago, the Nigerians, with some technical support from a British-based private military company called Sandline, staged a counter-assault, ousted the rebels and reinstated Mr. Kabbah.

Now we're back to square one, and some international diplomats are talking about negotiating with the rebels. President Kabbah is understandably skeptical. Executive Outcomes recently disbanded as a corporate entity, but Mr. Kabbah has been consulting with Sandline.

The United States does not want to endorse such a mission publicly, fearing that to do so would send a signal that the West lacks the political will to resolve the problem and that the world's institutions have failed. Sadly, that is exactly what is happening.

But if the United States, the Western powers and the United Nations are unwilling to fight, should they prevent others from doing so? One obvious problem is that private armies conjure up images of bloodthirsty soldiers of fortune accountable to no nation-state and no international laws, fighting for the highest bidder.

Yet as long as the major powers choose not to act in places like Sierra Leone and as long as Africa has no equivalent of NATO, private armies will continue to be in demand in much the same way that security businesses are in the United States. The Clinton Administration has even contracted out some of its own retired generals through a company called Military Professional Resources Inc. to provide training to the Croatian and now the Bosnian army.

..go visit

Alexandra, of All Things Beautiful, has asked the blogosphere for a year end list of the 'The Ten Worst Americans'.

She says:

It is very interesting how a few names are emerging as a constant. On everyone's lips is Benedict Arnorld, very closely followed by Jimmy Carter, Joseph McArthy, Richard Nixon, George Soros, Aaron Burr, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (no particular order). Jane Fonda has appeared on quite a few lists, and so has John Kerry, Lyndon Johnson and Alger Hiss.

If we're talking about incompetence and stupidity, Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski would have to top the list. They came up with the brilliant idea of supporting Islamists as a way of fighting the commies. Because of their policy of tolerance of Islamist governments, a militarily weak fascist movement has been allowed to reach Hitlerian proportions.

Jerry Falwell's moral majority and the efforts of right wing christians to dissolve the boundaries between church and state would also top the list. Since pacifism is a faith-based ideology, the efforts of pacifists like Jesse Jackson can be seen in the same light. Both efforts have caused tremendous damage.

Rachel Carson and environmentalist fearmongering about DDT has likely caused the deaths of millions in Africa due to preventable, vector-borne disease. Timothy Leary would also have to top a bumbling idiots list.

But these people are more of an example of how hell is paved with good intentions. They didn't mean to cause massive destruction. They meant well.

If we're talking about geniunely evil Americans whose deliberate intent was/is to cause great damage, the list is pretty short. There are:

1. The Assassins - John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, etc.

2. The Traitor/Spies - The Rosenbergs, Benedict Arnold, Lynne Stewart, etc.

3. Racist/Supremacists - David Duke, Louis Farrakhan

4. Opponents of Liberal Democracy - Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Walter Duranty, David Duke/Louis Farrakhan (again)

5. Cultists - Jim Jones, Charles Manson

to the brand new Preston Davis Green!

On November 12 the Washington Times reported that:

Saudi Arabia has agreed to end all economic boycotts of Israel, allowing the World Trade Organization (WTO) yesterday to admit the oil-rich kingdom as its 149th member, diplomats said.

I figured they were lying because treating Jews, or any non-Wahhabis as equals, or as human beings goes against all Saudi laws and traditions. Lying about this is also required by their laws.

Also, their lips were moving.

Via CNN: Canada blames U.S. for gun violence

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) — Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence...

.."The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," [Toronto Mayor David Miller] said.

Miller said that while almost every other crime in Toronto is down, the supply of guns has increased and half of them come from the United States.

I'm sure they do - it's all because of the Iraq war and our refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty. They blame us for their hemorrhoids. This is nothing new.

But, not to worry. The Liberals are planning to apply a "Law and Order" strategy to the problem.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who also attended the Montreal ceremony, said the Liberals' law-and-order strategy would help deter such shootings. In addition to the handgun ban, they include aiding crime victims, and offering a "hope and opportunity" package with job-creation measures to prevent youths from becoming ensnared in crime.

"Mainly, we want to address not only crimes of violence, we want to address the root causes," Mr. Cotler told reporters.

If the results of those liberal programs are the same as the results we saw in liberal New York during the '70's and '80's, Canada can expect crime to go up exponentially.

Rockefeller Center, Christmas Eve

The Tree, Rockefeller Center

Tiffanys

Snowflake display and View of
Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center*

Skaters, Rockefeller Center

Salesclerks at FAO Schwartz act out
scene from Big*

Rock Climbing, Central Park*

Downtown NYC, Sunset

* photo by Andy Parker

Rudy Giuliani recently wrote this NYT op-ed in support of the Patriot Act (reprinted here at American Future.net):

It is simply false to claim, as some of its critics do, that this bill does not respond to concerns about civil liberties. The four-year extension of the Patriot Act, as passed by the House, would not only reauthorize the expiring provisions - allowing our Joint Terrorism Task Force, National Counterterrorism Center and Terrorist Screening Center to continue their work uninterrupted - it would also make a number of common-sense clarifications and add dozens of additional civil liberties safeguards.

Concerns have been raised about the so-called library records provision; the bill adds safeguards. The same is true for roving wiretaps, "sneak and peek" searches and access to counsel and courts, as well as many others concerns raised by groups like the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Given these improvements, there is simply no compelling argument for going backward in the fight against terrorism. Perhaps a reminder is in order. The bipartisan 9/11 commission described a vivid example of how the old ways hurt us. In the summer of 2001, an F.B.I. agent investigating two individuals we now know were hijackers on Sept. 11 asked to share information with another team of agents. This request was refused because of the wall. The agent’s response was tragically prescient: "Someday, someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective."

How quickly we forget.

GIULIANI: Yesterday the Senate failed to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, as a Democratic-led filibuster prevented a vote.

YANNONE: The name of the act is USA PATRIOT Act. The first two words are acronyms.

GIULIANI: I support the extension of the Patriot Act for one simple reason: Americans must use every legal and constitutional tool in their arsenal to fight terrorism and protect their lives and liberties.

YANNONE: Provisions of the act violate the Constitution.

GIULIANI: The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made clear that the old rules no longer work.

YANNONE: The attacks of September 11, 2001, made clear that at least three buildings of the World Trade Center could be wired and charged for demolition without anyone noticing.

Enemies like this are another reason why Rudy can't lose.

[cross-posted at Dean's World]

and a Happy Chanukah. Also a Happy Birthday to my son, Kyle, who knows the joys and tribulations that come with being born on Christmas...just like Dave Schuler.

A merry chrismahanukwanzakahbirthday to all!

[Spotted on the drive home through Jersey City]

..I know, it's not Christmassy..

..today is the only day I can get into the city to get my Dad's gift. Wouldn't you know it, today is the day of the transit strike.

According to Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, this strike is about two things; demonstrating political power and whining.

"Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected," said Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union.

Cry me a river. The result of all this whining:

I think they all should get fired," said Eddie Goncalves, a doorman trying to get home after his overnight shift. He said he expected to spend an extra $30 per day in cab and train fares.

[Cross-posted at Dean's World]

..it's Christmas crunch time, and those cookies are not going to bake themselves. I hope to post some photos, food and wine news but if I don't get a chance before the big day, Happy chrismahanukwanzakah everyone!

A wonderful time was had by all at Flip, Karol, and Scott and "The Man's" blogger party. As Neo-neocon said, bloggers love to socialize. Talk is like chain-smoking for us.

The food was the best - good and spicy on a very cold night.

I got a chance to talk with Eric about New York's surprisingly good real-estate market (especially in Murray Hill); talked with Owen about law school, with Scott about Republicans in New York, Zelda about web design and anonymous vs. full-name blogging. Pamela talked about a troll who has been bugging her named James Wolcott. When she mentioned his name, a collective eeyyeeww! shuddered through the female half of the room.

I also met Ron Lewenberg of NYC Right, and we shared memories of the last blogger party, and the tourist trap ($20 sandwiches!) we'd wandered into afterwards. I was about to order a martini, and Ron asked how much they would be with Level vodka. They cost $9 each (!) so I decided not to get one.

But when I ordered a Pinot Noir later on, that was $9 too. I turned that down, and the bartender kindly offered to make me the Level martini for that standard price. That was very nice of him and my conversations afterwards got a little fuzzy.

Karol and Judith arrived later on, and I had a chance to talk to them; also got a chance to take a picture of Eric and Judith.

There were lots of folks there who I unfortunately missed a chance to talk to, but Flip, Karol, Atlas, Zelda and Phil have more (with more photos).

Jane Fonda in Hanoi: Anti-aircraft shells, ready to be used to shoot down American planes by her foot

When Jane Fonda visited Hanoi in 1972, she said:

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets- schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble- strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer.

Fonda claims she learned of the policy switch in "secret meetings" she had with military psychologists "who were really worried about what was happening to our combat personnel."

One doctor, she insists, told her U.S. troops had been deliberately trained to be "killing machines."

"This began," Fonda maintained, "because the military discovered that in World War II and Korea, [U.S.] soldiers weren't killing enough."

"So they changed training procedures" to teach troops how to commit atrocities.

Jane Fonda, 1972:

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

"The idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is just plain wrong"

Neo-neocon effectively dismisses Fonda's claims, but it's difficult to reach the reactionary Left. They wrote these old songs, lies and all, way back when and they like them, dagnabit. They don't want to hear any new ideas, they don't want any backtalk; they just want those neo-con punks to get off their lawn.

I don't always agree with George Will*, but I think he's right about this..

For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.

The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

I should also point out that some conservatives are also trying to enlarge governmental supervision of individual lives in the name of "American values". - .ed]

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern — the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.

..but many do oppose them; because wind farms kill birds. Because wind farms are ugly. Because reactors are scary. Any excuse will do.

Their actions speak louder than their words.

* Link thanks to Irwin Chusid

The Sauds are trying to bribe their way into academia and the media's heart. Zelda at the Urban Grind has more.

Rudy Giuliani still holds the world's record as the only person alive who has ever turned down a bribe from these fascists. Good for him, bad for the rest of us.

Richard Landes believes that Steven Spielberg's 'let's do lunch' solution to the current war against Israel is an example of Liberal Cognitive Egocentrism (LCE):

The projection of good faith and fair-mindedness onto others, the assumption that "other" shares the same human values, that everyone prefers positive sum interactions. In a slightly more redemptive mode, LCE holds that all people are good, and if only we treat them right, they will respond well. This is a form of empathy that, like MOS, aspires to the radical victory of justice, and robs the "other" of his or her own beliefs and attitudes. It projects onto rather than detects what the "other" feels.

So in support of his liberal dream, Spielberg has apparently fantasized such a figure and put the kinds of words into his mouth that both he and Kushner want so desperately to hear:

There is an entirely fictional scene in the movie in which Avner and his Palestinian opposite number meet and talk calmly, with the latter getting a chance to make his case for the creation of a homeland for his people… Without that exchange [Spielberg comments], "I would have been making a Charles Bronson movie–good guys vs. bad guys and Jews killing Arabs without any context. And I was never going to make that picture."

Of course the Munich massacres themselves constitute quite a context, along with the kind of hate driven "ideology" that produced them and the barbaric attacks in Israel that preceded. And then there’s the astoundingly self-destructive tendency of the West to lionize Arafat (thank him for your wait in security lines at airports) and to play down any outrage at the attacks on Israelis (the Olympics did go on). Of course, the problem with that is, were Spielberg to explore that angle, he could no longer fantasize publicly about rational people sitting down and working it out.

Michael Totten writes about Hezbollah's public relations skills for LA Weekly.

..the food wasn't bad.

Voltaire said, "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it".

The concept of defending free speech to the death has faded a bit over the years.

According to the ACLU, "the First Amendment exists precisely to protect the most offensive and controversial speech from government suppression. The best way to counter obnoxious speech is with more speech. Persuasion, not coercion, is the solution."

That makes sense. But what happens when speech is backed up with the threat of fatwas, terrorism and the violent death of anyone who disagrees with the speaker? What about a form of speech that threatens to kill random innocents if anyone dissents? That form of speech is worse than coercive, it's even worse than hate. It's collective punishment, and it's a war crime.

Political Islam, in the form of the Ayatollah Khomeini, declared its right to collectively punish the west for our crime (under Sharia laws) of allowing free speech. Khomeini said:

"I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death."

Since the west didn't care to stand up for free speech, Rushdie was forced into hiding and Khomeini's Islam was allowed to inflict collective punishment on innocent people. According to Wikkipedia:

At the University of California at Berkeley, bookstores carrying the book were firebombed. On February 24 in Bombay, 5 people in a protest at the British Embassy died from police gunfire. Several other people died in Egypt and elsewhere. Muslim communities throughout the world held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. In 1991, Rushdie's Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed and killed in Tokyo, and his Italian translator was beaten and stabbed in Milan. In 1993, Rushdie's Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot and severely injured in an attack outside his house in Oslo. Thirty-seven guests died when their hotel in Sivas, Turkey was burnt down by locals protesting against Aziz Nesin, Rushdie's Turkish translator.

The right to free speech is based on the rights of others to disagree. If others are too intimidated by a credible threat of violence to disagree, it's not free speech.

People who defend radical Islam's right to speak aren't defending free speech - they're defending radical Islams' right to wield the threat of collective punishment. People who apologize for offending radical Islam are apologizing to war criminals.

Like most war criminals, the Ayatollah Khomeini had no sense of humor. He said:

There is no room for play in Islam... It is deadly serious about everything."

Left-wing Iranian intellectual, Afshin Ellian, who knows how this form of Islam works, says:

Hereby I call upon all artists, writers and academics to stop discriminating against Islam. When on television and in hundreds of theatres jokes are being made about Islam, and when academics will start treating Islam more critically, then Muslims will learn tolerance. The terrorists can intimidate and eliminate a handful of critics of Islam, but they can never kill hundreds of critical minds.

Come on friends, and enter the brothels and torture chambers of Mohammed A. and Allah, you will find great inspiration there. Come on, fellow academics, put Islam on the operating table of philosophy. Otherwise it will remain a question of how many murders our society can deal with.

Jyllands-Posten illustration

Jyllands-Posten illustration

According to these apologists, "Islam" is offended by any representation of the prophet. If that's true, then why didn't anyone riot over this image, published decades ago, using Mohammed and the Angel Gabriel to sell meat extract?

illustration of Angel Gabriel, Mohammed and meat extract

How about these clip art images?

Let's face it, images of Mohammed have been around for many years, and religious Islam hasn't made much of an issue of it.

However, political Islam, meaning the Wahhabists and Salafists, make a very big issue of it. According to Khaled Abou El Fadl of the UCLA School of Law, this "supremacist puritanism in contemporary Islam is dismissive of all moral norms or ethical values. Its main purpose is not to integrate particular values within Islamic culture, but to empower Islam against its civilizational rival."

The protests against these cartoons are not a demand that we respect a religion. They're a threat of collective punishment, and they're part of the Islamist war against us. We have nothing to apologize for.

Well, that's not true. We should only apologize for the fact that we have not pasted the Jyllands-Posten images on every available media outlet and surface of the free world.

Pro-Palestinian cartoonist Steve Bell has admitted that "the Muslim Fatwa is something of a deterrent when portraying Arabs." At least Bell has the courage to admit that he's a coward. The UN has never had that kind of courage.

Iraqis have been marching by the thousands against terrorism. Millions have turned out to vote in the past, despite threats from Ba'thist/jihadis and foreign 'insurgent' groups. They use their freedom to speak their minds and to testify against terror. Judith and I decided to join the Raise a Purple Finger for Freedom initiative.

If anyone can be trusted with the future of Iraq, it's the Iraqi people.

There's more about the initiative at Kesher Talk and Protein Wisdom.

Jane Galt says the real estate boom has passed.

The party seems to be over. Long live the real estate plateau.

I figured that it was over during the last days of summer, when I read about people flipping homes in Hoboken. It brought back memories - Fast Company, 2000, just before the dot com crash when the trend in Silicon Valley was "built to flip." You can't build an economy on flip.

UPDATE: According to Dave R. and Forbes, Silicon Valley is heating up again.

Despite my previous misadventures in scuba diving, I'm going to try to defy claustrophobia and try again. Tonight, my daughter and I are starting scuba lessons. I'll let you know how things go, unless they go badly.*

Don't forget to stop by Kesher Talk. Do you know what anniversary they're celebrating?

Did all you one and two year-olds out there say "four"? That's right! Pretty soon, you'll be as big as Kesher Talk.

Now, where's the cake?

* Update: They went badly, but not for the reason I expected. Class was cancelled at the last minute. Something about the instructor and an unavoidable final. Next week, we'll try again.

When writing about the riots in France, it was noted that:

In related news, the supposedly 'peaceful' Muslim supremacist group Hizb ut Tahrir distributed flyers in Australia, demanding that Muslims work together to overthrow Western Governments.

men of "middle-eastern appearance" arrived in Cronulla by the hundreds to protect their mosque. With Glocks. Gunfire was heard.

well, he kinda screams something.... Maybe it was just a touch of gas.

He said vive .. something which might be a revolution or might not be. It could perhaps be a solution to his pressing and profound questions about the Bush/Republican oligarchy which has been crushing Cary's life the way the Chinese crushed the uprising in Tiennaman square. He might *sigh* do something about this if....

...if his sciatica doesn't act up and if his potato gun doesn't give him a rash, if the dry cleaner can remove the stains from his shirt and if his feverish imagination doesn't overwhelm him. If and only if these moral principles are true, then a properly organized revolution, based on the ideals of Foucault, Thomas Jefferson and Michael Moore just might, sometime in the future, be rather quite plausible.

Well, now, it's all just quite feverishly terrible and compellingly fantastic to contemplate, don't you think? Oh, the oppression!

Michael Totten describes the kinder, gentler anti-American funk of Cairo.

Unfortunately, in Lebanon, the Syrian weasels are killing their critics again.

Anti-Syrian lawmaker Gebran Tueni was married, with four daughters.

Paul Sheehan of the SMH describes the rioting in Sydney:

What has happened on consecutive weekends has been displays of two unpalatable subcultures, the yobbo beach tribes, and the Lebanese gangsta tribes. The reactions to the Cronulla brawl will be predictable. The disgusting behaviour of the Aussie yobs, behaving even worse than the original provocateurs last week, will prompt a great deal of ululating about Australian's undertow of racism. This will be countered by a demand for recognition that violent crime in Sydney is disproportionately dominated by Lebanese, Aborigines and Pacific Islanders and Australians have had a gutful of the pandering to these groups...

...The cops hate and fear the swarming packs of Lebanese who respond when some of their numbers are confronted, mobilising quickly via mobile phones and showing open contempt for Australian law. All this is the real world, as distinct from the world preferred by ideological academics who talk about "moral panic" and the oppression of Muslims. They will see only Australian racism as the problem.

Others will see only "Lebs". Cronulla yesterday proved it is not possible to airbrush the yob culture out of the picture, but the problem is not the figment of fertile imaginations. This has been too real for too long.

Many of you would have heard of the horrific problems in France with the outbreak of unprecedented crimes amongst an estimated five million Muslim immigrants. Middle Eastern males now make up 45,000 of the 90,000 inmates in French prisons. There are no-go areas in Paris for police and citizens alike. The rule of law has broken down so badly that when police went to one of these areas recently to round up three Islamic terrorists, they went in armoured vehicles, with heavy weaponry and over 1000 armed officers, just to arrest a few suspects. Why did it need such numbers? Because the threat of terrorist reprisal was minimal compared to the anticipated revolt by thousands of Middle Eastern and North African residents who have no respect for the rule of law in France and consider intrusions by police and authority a declaration of war.

The final mistake was the failure to predict the inevitable retaliation of hot-headed youths of Middle Eastern descent to the events at Cronulla. Subsequently, police failed to contain the violence unleashed along southern and eastern Sydney on Sunday night. Again, despite the rhetoric, senior police have learned little from previous debacles involving public disorder. Indeed, there is a case for believing that they probably never will.

* Links thanks to commenter Dan Lewis. More at Tim Blair's

Munich's Steven Speilberg believes that the solution to Israel's problem is 'talking'

"There is a pivotal scene in which a Mossad agent and his Arab counterpart discuss why so many have had to die over this disputed land. The only thing that's going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you're blue in the gills.

Judith discusses Speilberg, Hollywood and Moral Equivalence in Munich at Kesher Talk and Winds of Change.

Scholar, writer and one of my favorite commenters at Dean's World, Steven Malcolm Anderson has died.

Dean, his wife Rosemary, Eric at Classical Values and his other friends remember him.

....to join a rally and buy a cow.

This sounds like so much fun! (I'd love to try it, but with my lack of car maintenance skills, I'd be bones on the roadside in no time). That slow-car requirement (see "Hall of Crapness") is probably a good thing in the long run - the speed traps in Uzbekistan must be wicked.

Mongol Rally

I'm going to have the Mongol Rally link on the side till summer - just click it to donate!

Link thanks to Dean's World

The new Prius may come with Solar Panels

The "SolaPrius" gets a 10-percent improvement in fuel economy over a standard Prius, up to 55 mpg city and 62 mpg highway. The kits will go for around $2,195 and be available through nationwide dealer franchises after four seasons testing has been completed

Fayrouz Hancock, in her blog an Iraqi in America, interviews Steven Vincent's widow, Lisa Ramaci.

This interview is deservedly featured as one of PJ Media's Best of the Blogs

"Random autopsies on dead insurgents show a high level of opiate use"

More info from a friend of Atlas's, whose son returned from Iraq last week..

Osama bin Laden remains isolated in a border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and appears to be slipping in power as al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, positions himself to take over the terrorist network, the new Saudi ambassador to the United States said Wednesday.

..just how does he know where Osama might actually be while at the same time saying that relations between the USA & Saudi Arabia "a slight improvement," but "still have a long way to go."

The charges, of course, were dropped by the US government.

His name, along with those of other Saudi officials, was dropped from the suits after a judge ruled that such figures had sovereign immunity, whatever the truth of the allegations against them.

By letting this sack of crap into this country, by respecting its status as an Ambassador we prove to the world that we're not fighting terrorism. Terrorists don't need to win the hearts and minds of Arabs or Muslims - they just need lots of Saudi assistance - like the assistance the new Saudi ambassador to the United States provided.

Britain's "war on climate change" targets flatulent cows

"In some experiments we got a 70% decrease in methane emissions, which is quite staggering,” said John Wallace, a biochemist at the institute who is leading the research team. In total about 14% of global methane comes from the guts of farm animals. It is worth doing something about."

No news on kangaroo farts yet.

The Muslim Council of Britain described the Islam-Channel sponsored "Global Peace and Unity" event as a mulicultural, artsy gathering:

Other highlights of the day include an amusement park and crèche facilities for children, and a spectacular fireworks display. This non-partisan event aims to promote and highlight the need for global peace and unity amongst Britain's varied and distinct communities.

Writer Carol Gould describes the Global Peace and Unity experience:

It must be noted for non-British and non-Commonwealth readers that legendary cricketer Imran Khan’s arrival from Pakistan to give a speech would be the equivalent of a sporting megastar doing similar in an American arena. The crowd of some 20,000 adoring, mostly young British Muslims went mad with joy when he ascended the stage and took to the dais. What followed was a stream of invective about his own leader, Parvez Musharraf, Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak, and of course the ‘axis of evil’ Bush, Blair and allies. (It must be noted here that in May, when the controversy arose about American soldiers allegedly flushing a Koran down a lavatory, Khan’s power over world Islam was such that he gave one short speech and riots ensued across the globe, including the horrifying flag-burnings in London’s Grosvenor Square. )

Khan actually said we should feel the degradation of modern Muslims in the context of Hitler and the Germans after Versailles. He used this example to accentuate the reason for ‘Muslim rage’ — there was poor Germany belittled and humiliated, like the Muslim world today. He recounted being confronted by a fellow Pakistani after 9/11 who asked, ‘Do you not feel ashamed?’ and he told the adoring crowd he did not see what there was to be ashamed of, and anyway, 9/11 was an excuse for the criminal Washington neocons to start a New Crusade against Islam.

To illustrate the level of extremism to which this event had degenerated, one of the organisers actually took the mike and said the event team wished to distance themselves from Khan’s 9/11 views.

Zombie of zombietime commented:

j -- Which London terror rally? There seem to be so many of them. I assume you mean the one discussed in this post.

..sponsored by Hoboken Vine, which has a great selection of wines, an experienced wine advisor (Bob), cheap kegs and lots of parking.

I'll try not to overindulge so I can file a report.

In the meantime, visit Mike's Wine Cellar

Lebanon.profile is blogging at Michael Totten's site. Here, he discusses the groups in the Middle East who are not included in the pan-Arabist pan-Islamist view of the world:

The way Americans think about the Middle East is the very way that pan-Arabists and pan-Islamists want them to think about the Middle East: it's a region of Arabic speaking Muslims who don't drink alcohol, hate the United States, want to destroy Israel and massacre Jews, and want a revolutionary socialist government.

That's the equivalent of non-Americans saying, "The United States is a country of white Protestants who trace their heritage back to England and Germany, listen to country music, are xenophobic but simultaneously enjoy foreign wars, go to church every Sunday and Bible study throughout the rest of the week, don't travel, watch Nascar, drink Miller High Life, and eat only chicken pot pie, meatloaf, tuna casserole, cranberries, hamburgers, pizza, American cheese, freedom fries, and stuffed turkey."..

Christopher Dickey of Newsweek is under the impression that terrorists are knights in shining armor:

"Chivalry" is not a word normally associated with terrorism, at least not in the West. But the world in which Osama bin Laden would like to live, and the vision that inspires so many of his followers, is literally about days of old when knights were bold—and fair maidens were kept behind veils, their virtue protected, their lives entirely controlled by men.

Even when we ignore that fact, Dickey still doesn't understand the concept of chivalry, whose rules include::

• Live one's life so that it is worthy of respect and honor.

• Live for freedom, justice and all that is good.

• Never attack an unarmed foe.

• Never use a weapon on an opponent not equal to the attack.

• Never attack from behind.

• Avoid lying to your fellow man.

• Avoid cheating.

The concept of chivalry may have origiated in the Arab world, but the current wave of Sharia and terrorism is proof that it's currently dead there. As Iraqi columnist Aziz Al-Hajj says:

"What kind of national cause is this that uses children like gasoline for igniting a total war of destruction in the name of national and religious liberty?… The Islamic-Arab terrorism has turned into the greatest danger in the world, and threatens civilization, security, and life everywhere. It is today the symbol of evil, religious fanaticism, and moral degradation, and it is the essence of political crime in today's world… Islamic terrorism is the outcome of 'moderate' political Islam, as it is generally described. The latest proof of this is Sheikh [Yousef] Al-Qaradhawi's religious legal ruling [ fatwa ] calling for the killing of all Americans in Iraq…

"The Arabs and the Muslims today contribute nothing to civilization and progress except for blood, severed heads, scorched bodies, and the abduction and murder of children. The Jihad for religion and Arab chivalry have turned into the art of exploding, booby-trapping, and spilling blood. What an innovation and what a social contribution the Arabs have made in the 21st century!!"

Vote for Dean!

..and vote for Jane (Armies of Liberation) and Dave (Glittering Eye)....and Atlas and Harry (Harry's Place) or Norm, I can't decide.

If anyone else is running, let me know.

Now, where's my wasabi/tuna pate on little toast squares? Martinis? It can't be election season without the goodies.

UPDATE - Don't forget Winds of Change..

..and Jane Galt (Asymetrical Information)..and Dawn Summers (Clarefied)!

Teaching a toddler that J is for the Jewess who tried to kill the Prophet, P is for pigs and A is for apes.

According to this Washington Post editorial *, Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn't agree with Bush's comparison of Islamic radicalism with communism. He doesn't just believe that the comparison is unsound. He believes that it's "unwise."

Why would the comparison be unwise? Brzezinski says:

The analogy to communism may have some short-term political benefit, for it can rekindle the fears of the past while casting the president in the mold of the historic victors of the Cold War, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. But the propagation of fear also has a major downside: It can produce a nation driven by fear, lacking in self-confidence and thus less likely to inspire trust among America's allies, including Muslim ones, whose support is needed for an effective and intelligent response to the terrorist phenomenon.

He's also talking about the Iranians. In fact, Mr. Brzezinski was partly responsible for Jimmy Carter's "headless chicken" response to the hostage crisis. He saw Islamofascism as a perfect weapon to use against Moscow and the communism he feared.

The second stage in Brzezinski's grand strategy was to incite the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union to revolt against Moscow and thus frustrate its global schemes. The Bzrezinski strategy had been partly inspired by Helene Carrere d'Encausse, who, in her book "The Fragmented Empire," predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a result of revolts by Muslim minorities. When the Islamic revolution started in Iran, the Carter administration saw it as the confirmation of its assumption that only Islamists could muster enough popular support to provide an alternative to both the existing regime and the pro-Soviet leftist movements. The Carter administration went out of its way to support the new regime in Tehran.

Brzezinski loathing for the evil commies in Moscow is still evident, despite the fact that he's already won that particular war:

I think we're seeing with Mr. Putin the final gasp of the Soviet era. The Soviet system is dead, and the Soviet Union has disintegrated. But the Soviet elite still dominates Moscow politically, and through Moscow it dominates Russia.

Brzezinski is one of the many "hawkish" founders of the pacifist, multiculti Peace in Chechnya organization, which supports the Chechen rebels in their war against Russia.

Peace in Chechnya is still supporting the Islamofascist "rebels", even after the Beslan massacre. So is Brzezinski:

It should be cause for concern to U.S. policymakers that only one major foreign statesman comes close to emulating Bush's rhetorical emphasis on the Islamic aspects of the current terrorist threat, and that is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has deliberately seized upon the theme of Islamic terrorism to justify his relentless war against the Chechens' aspirations for self-determination.

Justifying his attacks on civilian targets, he states: “We are at war and we look at the reality, and not at whether the population has weapons in their hands. We look at the reality of their participation in this war.

Brzezinski and his ilk are fighting for something, but it certainly isn't freedom.

* Link thanks to PeakTalk

Saddam Hussein told the special court trying him Monday that, "I am not afraid of execution,"

That's why he was hiding in a spider hole.

The New York Times admits that "the whole idea of global agreements to cut greenhouse gases won't work."

Perpetually inadequate supporters of the Kyoto treaty, including France and Osama bin Laden will be disappointed by the news.

The Kyoto treaty was bound to fail. It was based on the "three R's" — reduce, reuse, recycle - it was based on old-fashioned conservation, not the aggressive development of new technologies. The development of new technologies is the only long-term solution to the problem:

The only real answer at the moment is still far out on the horizon: nonpolluting energy sources. But the amount of money being devoted to research and develop such technologies, much less install them, is nowhere near the scale of the problem, many experts on energy technology said.

Enormous investments in basic research have to be made promptly, even with the knowledge that most of the research is likely to fail, if there is to be any chance of creating options for the world's vastly increased energy thirst in a few deca