No, I'm not doing the sensible thing and heading south. I'm going into the cold north, to check out colleges with my daughter (who loves the cold so much she has dreams of being an ice diver..brrr)

Have a good weekend!

Wretchard at the Belmont Club describes three recent disasters -

1. In 2000 a literal mountain of garbage collapsed on scavengers at a dump site near the Philippine legislative building burying about 300 people.

2. In Gaza, an overloaded septic system in Northern Gaza burst, unleashing a “tsunami” which overwhelmed the Bedouin farming village of Umm al-Nasr.

3. Last year in Lagos fuel thieves punctured a gasoline pipeline, causing residents to scramble to grab buckets of gushing fuel. Inevitably some cigarette or metal-on-metal spark caused a disaster, and the resulting explosion killed at least 260 people.

He says:

...These three incidents illustrate what environmentalists in the West often forget: that the Third World operates on an entirely different mental planet. Many years ago I actually lived for some months in and around a dump site far worse than the one which collapsed. It was known as Smokey Mountain; and the infernal fires which arose from it night and day were caused by the spontaneous combustion of organic material underfoot. If anything resembled a terrestrial version of hell, it was Smokey Mountain at night with garbage trucks snaking up the hill amidst pillars of fire and smoke, attended by what seemed innumerable legions of imps. The site was featured in many documentaries which purported to show the horror of life in the Third World, but I can tell you, from first hand experience, that the denizens of Smokey Mountain considered themselves to be comparatively lucky. They had a guaranteed income.

Each square meter of Smokey Mountain was divided into territories. Whatever was dumped into those territories could be ripped out and sold — copper wire, glass bottles, waste paper, metal — and carved into the sides of this garbage mountain were processing sites where the glass was smashed and binned into baskets, tin cans were flattened and formed into bales, and copper wire was extracted from the interiors of motors or cables. Paper, especially long-fiber white paper, was sold by the kilo. One sharp practice, favored by the scavengers, was to dampen the paper in water before having it weighed, a process called "bomba"...

...A tremendous amount of recycling was achieved in this way. What you have to understand is that the garbage which finally settled to the bottom of Smokey Mountain had been stripped of its last usable material. It was picked clean. Most of Manila's cardboard, a considerable percentage of its glass bottles and quite a bit of its scrap metal came from the labor of thousands of scavengers. From a certain point of view it was the epitome of "appropriate technology". It was almost fantastically "Green". And come to think of it, it was mostly honest labor...

Michael Totten and Patrick Lasswell found themselves in a comedy of manners when they discovered that they were talking to the wrong groups of armed, revolutionary communists in Kurdistan.

But, since these armed Kurdish Stalinists had already offered them tea and a nice lunch, it was all water under the bridge. Communists aren't required to be rude to everyone who disagrees with them - this is Kurdistan, not Jersey City.

These hard-line Kurdish communists interviewed in The Iranian Revolution in Iraq answered a question I've been wondering about for years - Iranian leftists supported Khomeini's Revolution, and Khomeini repaid their efforts by annihilating the Left in Iran. Why are Iraninian leftists so opposed to American efforts to fight Islamist terrorism and Ahmadinejad?

"So do you think American foreign policy is wrong?" I said.

"Yes, it is," he said.

"What do you think it should be then?" I said.

"The best thing is for America not to interfere with the situation in the world," he said. "Wherever they meddle they spoil the region – from Afghanistan to Iraq."

"Was Afghanistan better off under the Taliban?" Patrick said.

"I don’t think it was better,” Hassan said. "But the Taliban was a party established by Americans. They helped them against the Soviet Union at that time."

Lord only knows how long it will take for this leftist canard to die. The Taliban didn’t exist until long after the Americans left Afghanistan and forgot all about it. Serious analysts of the Middle East know the Taliban was created with Saudi money by Pakistan’s ISI – its intelligence agency – and from the very beginning was an enemy of the United States. But this was an interview, not an argument, so I left him alone about it.

"Ok, so what do you think of the Soviet Union?" I said. I thought perhaps he was angry about the American support for the mujahadeen (not the Taliban) against Soviet imperialism. Maybe he liked the Soviet Union. He is a Communist, after all.

"The Soviet Union was an imperialist country. We were never in favor of the Soviet Union."

"If the United States wanted to help the people of Iran struggle against the dictatorship," I said, "would you welcome that assistance, or would you rather the Americans stay out?”

"We think meddling in Iranian affairs is a bad thing," he said. “There is already the reality of a struggle against the regime. There are many people who are already against the Iranian regime. Let them do what they want to do.”

I don't agree with their assesment of the situation, but at least I understand where it's coming from.

More about Kurdish communist views and hospitality here and here..

Marvin Kalb and Carol Saivetz analyze the media's role in the Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006 (pdf)

Add one other crucial ingredient to this journalistic wartime stew of charge and countercharge—and that was the Internet. This was a live war, in which the information battlefield played a central role. Here the Israelis suffered from the openness of their democratic society. They succumbed to the public pressures of live 24/7 coverage. They couldn’t keep a secret. Hezbollah, on the other hand, controlled its message with an iron grip. It had one spokesman and no leaks. Hezbollah did not have to respond to criticism from bloggers, and it could always count on unashamedly sympathetic Arab reporters to blast Israel for its “disproportionate” military attack against Lebanon.

Nik Gowing, a respected BBC World anchor, warned at a recent Harvard conference that the "new asymmetric information—the new level of accountability and public perceptions in a time of crisis" exposed "the vulnerability of traditional institutions of power and influence." Israel, in this context, was the "traditional institution," made suddenly “vulnerable” by the flow of "asymmetric information." Gowing gave an example of how "in a time of crisis and tension, public perceptions can be created by the new media matrix." During the war, even though Israel still had military censorship, technically, "you could be up there on the northern border [of Israel] filming, uplinking live war: live war of soldiers moving into south Lebanon, live war of anti-tank missiles immobilizing Merkava tanks." Such reporting, common on the Israeli side of the war, had "a fundamental impact on the reputation and the image and the fear factor created by the IDF." The bloggers helped spread the impression of Israeli "vulnerability." Gowing said "it was the bloggers and the calls to radio stations, which were highlighting the vulnerability of the Israeli defense forces."

Whether the flavor of journalism is American or Qatari, both march to their own drummer, both convinced their principles best define good and honest journalism. Efforts at reconciliation are likely to fail, at least in the near future. Yet both schools of journalism, however different they may be, are strongly influenced in their practice by what might be called “the new media,” that combustible mix of 24/7 cable news, call-in radio and television programs, Internet bloggers and online websites, cell phones and iPods. The upshot is a new kind of populist journalism, which strongly influences the story that is being covered. Indeed, the journalist or, in this new age, the commentator, often becomes part of the story.

Link thanks to Noah Pollak

Via Frontpage

In arguing that the Brotherhood is presently “rejecting jihad”, even the limited examples they cite don’t hold up under scrutiny; and in claiming that the organization is “embracing democracy”, they are clearly equivocating in their use of the term.

To make a case for the “Moderate Muslim Brotherhood” requires nothing short of blind faith. No amount of spin offered by the “progressive” policy wonks or media pundits can account for the fact that not only has the Muslim Brotherhood spawned virtually ever single Islamic terrorist organization in the world, but they have used the financial network established by the Brotherhood to conduct their bloody business (an excellent and concise treatment of this subject is available: Douglas Farah, "The Little Explored Offshore Empire of the International Muslim Brotherhood"). This direct support for terrorism is not just past, but present, policy on their part.

Patrick Poole has even more reasons at his site..

- Links thanks to LGF

Congratulations, Cinnamon Stillwell!

At Moderate Risk, Patrick Lasswell asks "Is Petraeus Being Played?"

At a late night meeting with senior political players in Iraq, concerns were raised about General Petraeus' ability to distinguish friend from foe in Baghdad. The heart of the problem lies with the importance of the former Ba'ath party members and their involvement in the Islamic Party of Iraq. My sources claim to hold documents from April 2003 from Saddam's Headquarters directing Ba'ath loyalists to join the Islamic Party and gain control of it. They are also very experienced in the brutal political realities of Iraq. Of significant concern to my hosts was the movement from Mosul to Baghdad of the leader of the Islamic Party that Petraeus worked with when he was in command of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). My hosts also worked with General Petraeus during that time and had met him repeatedly. They assessed him as very smart and quite well organized and had nothing disparaging to say about his character or leadership, however, his political savvy in tumultuous Iraq was questioned.

This is a difficult post for me to write, both because I am a junior member of the active reserves and because of my personal admiration for Gen. Petraeus...

Cowboy Bebop...

What is street photography? A reflection of every day life – real, unaltered impressions of public places, places that everybody visits every day, the street where you live, the parking lot of your favorite grocery store, the subway. Street photographers document the truth – take candid pictures of things that you don't notice in your daily grind.

Street photography involves attention to detail. The photographer pays attention to scenes, moments that you only recognize subconsciously. The camera is an unobtrusive extension of the eye in any given situation. Oftentimes, street photographers take pictures they feel; the photographer happens to be there and captures the mood in a fraction of a second. He freezes a moment that you will forget in the same amount of time...

Now, take your time and enjoy my vision of everyday life.

..due to reader request..

This picture was taken off the coast of Ireland, at the Hook. I spotted some scuba divers surfacing in the water - one of them was wearing an odd black hood. That one was the seal..

Judith at Kesher Talk ponders a politically unknown quantity - Giuliani supporters:

Who are we? Good question. Giuliani's popularity has the pundits scratching their heads precisely because they can't label the constituency which is driving it. It is like dark matter in the universe - identifiable by what it is not. Do they call us liberal hawks? Centrists? Neocons? Neo-neocons? Civ-cons? Moderates? What was the label which explained Clinton's election? "Socially liberal, fiscally conservative." Since 2001, add "hawkish on foreign policy."

Whatever they end up calling us - I'm going to mix my science metaphors here - we are a supersaturated solution within the body politic, ready to crystallize around a label of convenience (as they are all), or a person, which will enable us to focus our clout. Rudy is the person, the label is not yet defined and perhaps doesn't need to be.

What is interesting about his candidacy is that the more easily definable voters ("conservatives") and us "dark matter" folk share enough serious worries - like terrorism and fiscal discipline - that they don't mind being associated with us. Since we share the same concerns they "get" us better than the pundits, who do not understand either group, since they keep saying let's you and him fight and continue to be surprised when we refuse. Their stereotypes are such that they can't imagine that "traditional values" conservatives might want a president who knows how to be a jerk. They think social conservatives have never seen transvestite clowning in a comedy revue. They forget that Rudy would not be the first Republican president with "blended family" problems. They are surprised by pragmatism in those they had written off as fervently ideological...

I've been trying to get a good photo of the GWB for a website I've been working on - I like this view, right above the bridge, best...

Unfortunately (as far as I know) it could only be reached by traveling under a pigeon-pooped overpass, or by wandering up this mud and snow covered path.

Of course I chose the path, because I had my all-purpose winter boots.

They keep my feet dry through Hoboken puddles and New York city slush, they're great on a hike and they cost fourteen dollars! Best boot buy ever.

At the Greater Philadelphia District of the ZOA

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21.2007

Steve Erlanger, NYT Jerusalem Bureau chief, will join us as we question him about his coverage of the Middle East, and particularly his "news"story that ran in the NYT on March 12th, A GENERATION LOST: The Second Intifada; Years of Strife and Lost Hope Scar Young Palestinian Lives. *

Following the interview with Erlanger, we will be joined by Richard Landes, BU History Professor and an expert on media manipulation. Landes will discuss the various levels of dangers presented by the mainstream media's portrayal of Israel - and the NYT is the Mother of all Mainstream Media!

We will also have the opportunity to chat with H. Patrick Swygert, president of Howard University. Swygert swiftly and courageously nullified a decision by a rogue portion of the Howard University faculty to force the university to divest its holdings from Israel.

As always, join hosts Lori Lowenthal Marcus and Steve Feldman who bring you the news from and about the Middle East that you won't hear anywhere else.

Michael Totten reports from Iraqi Kurdistan:

Iraqi Kurdistan is still a Third World country in many ways – there is no sewer system, for instance, and the electricity fails every day. Unemployment is high. But it’s a Third World country with hope, and it is rapidly moving upscale. New houses cost more in and around Erbil than they do in some parts of the United States. An average sized 200 square meter lot can cost as much as 150,000 dollars – and that’s before a house is built on it. There are literally thousands of brand new houses here in this city, and the population is still just a little bit shy of one million.

Arabs are moving up here from the center and south – when they can, and as long as they are cleared by internal security – and they’re hired to do menial jobs the Kurds no longer want. Sunni Arabs were once the oppressors of Kurds. Now they are reduced to the same low status as migrant Mexican workers in the United States.

The ancient old city walls next to downtown are an impressive sight, but inside the walls is a vast slum. Well, it was a vast slum until recently. A few months ago the residents were moved out so the city government can fix it up and restore it.

Erbil isn’t pretty, as Paris and Vienna are pretty. Some of it is aesthetically brutal, and much of it is still rough around the edges. But it’s stimulating and interesting all the same. The go-go-go and build-build-build attitude is infectious. Every time I come here it looks cleaner, and richer, and more like a normal place...

..Kurdistan’s rise flips Iraq on its head. The Kurds are ahead, but they started from nothing. Under Saddam’s regime they had the worst of everything – the worst poverty, the worst underdevelopment, and worst of all they bore the brunt of the worst violence from Baghdad. 200,000 people were killed (out of less than four million) and 95 percent of the villages were completely destroyed.

The Kurds seem happy and well-adjusted. Scratch the surface, though, and any one of them can tell you tales that make you tremble and shudder. Everyone here was touched by the Baath and by the genocide. If living well is the best revenge, the Kurds got theirs.

Right now, Cathy Seipp, who has been sick with inoperable cancer is in the hospital, where (according to her daughter, Maia) the doctors are 'just making her comfortable'. There are already 400 comments on this post wishing her well but there's room for more.

From her Normblog Profile:

Norm: What would you call your autobiography?

Cathy: For many years as a journalist who spent a lot of time interviewing people, I imagined writing a book or column called What About ME and MY Feelings?!?. But now that I have a blog, that's handled.

Norm: What would be your most important piece of advice about life?

Cathy: I've always been a big believer in the importance of kicking your own ass. That is, forcing yourself to do what you don't necessarily feel like doing at the time.

Norm: What do you consider the most important personal quality?

Cathy: A certain large-mindedness, or generosity of spirit - because this encompasses not only extending yourself for others, but other qualities like courage, and having friends who disagree with you politically, and not constantly worrying about what other people think.

Ron Coleman analyzes the chattering classes' affection for the defiant ones:

You always know the bad guys are losing when the opposition press starts describing them as defiant. Arafat was always defiant. Castro? Señor Desafiante. Not only losers — Iran is always defiant. The little genocidal mullahs that could. As long as they’re on the other side, they’re defiant or, as we see, frequently resilient.

For Juan Cole, Muqtada al Sadr is the defiant little cleric that could - Sadr & co. are defiant in Najaf, they're defiant in Basra, they listen to defiant sermons, they have defiant dogs.

(Well, no they don't have defiant dogs because to these 'defiant' ones dogs are filthy/najis, like infidels, music and shaving.)

Ron says: "Just do tell me when you read an MSM account of meek submission, pathetic surrender or broken acknowledgment of defeat by any enemy of the United States or its allies."

That'll never happen. After CNN's silence concerning Saddam's atrocities, the few reporters who spoke out against Hezbollah's propaganda tours, the general reaction to the Danish Cartoon controversy, we know that most of the media sees meek submission and pathetic surrender as the norm. They don't know what real defiance is.

I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

I work in midtown Manhattan.

42nd & Lexington Ave., to be exact, right across from Grand Central Station.

As the crow flies, that's just 6 miles. But on the tracks, it can be three trains,

11 stops, and 45 minutes each way.

This is what I see every day commuting to and from work.

Thanks to Karol

There was one glaring omission from the International Spy Museum - there were Russian spies, British spies, medieval spies, Biblical spies - but no mention of Irish spies, of one of the greatest intelligence operations ever - Michael Collins' attacks against British secret agents on Sunday, November 21, 1920 (Bloody Sunday).

It was on that day that fourteen British secret agents in Dublin were assassinated, an act that shattered the British intelligence system in Ireland and made it possible for a small, ill-equipped force of irregulars to impose its will on its centuries-old oppressor.

The Twelve Apostles, more commonly known as The Squad, was the name of an Irish Republican Army unit founded by Michael Collins to counter the intelligence efforts of the British during the Irish War of Independence, principally by means of assassination. It began its work by targeting plainclothes police, members of the G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and - occasionally - problematic civil servants. Organisationally it operated as a subsection of the Collins' Intelligence Headquarters.

By 1919 Collins had become such a thorn in the side of the British Government that they had placed a bounty of £10,000 on him, dead or alive. None could be found to take up this offer.

One of the Apostles' particular targets was the Cairo Gang, also known as the Cairo Group, a deep cover British intelligence group, so called since it had largely been assembled from intelligence officers serving in Cairo and the Middle East. The Cairo Group was brought in during the middle of 1920 by Sir Henry Wilson explicitly to deal with Michael Collins and his organisation. Given carte blanche in its operations by Wilson, the strategy adopted by the Cairo Group was to assassinate members of Sinn Féin unconnected with the military struggle, assuming that this would cause the IRA to respond and bring its leaders into the open.

Although the names of the members of the Twelve Apostles have never been formally identified, it is a list which is thought to include: Mick Love, Frank Thornton, Liam Tobin, Joe Leonard, Jim Slattery, Bill Stapleton, Pat McCrae, Sean Doyle, Gearoid O'Sullivan, Charlie Dalton, Paddy Daly, Ben Barrett, Mick O'Reilly, Vincent Byrne, Sean Healy, Francis Healy, James Conroy, Mick McDonnell, Tom Keogh and Tom Cullen. Seán Lemass and Stephen Behan (the father of Irish writers Brendan Behan and Dominic Behan) have also been put forward as members of the Apostles. Understandably, there is no hard evidence to support many of these names; however, those that subsequently served in the Irish Army have their active service recorded in their service records held in the Military Archives Department in Cathal Brugha Barracks.

The most well-known operation executed by the Apostles occurred on "Bloody Sunday," November 21, 1920, when fourteen British army officers, significantly involved in intelligence or spying, were shot at various locations in Dublin. In addition to the "Twelve Apostles", a larger number of IRA personel were involved in this operation. In response to the killings, the Black and Tans retaliated by shooting up a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary at Croke Park, killing 12 bystanders including one of the players, and wounding 68.

In May 1921, after the IRA's Dublin Brigade took heavy casualties while burning the Customs House, the Squad and the Brigade's Active Service Unit" were amalgamated into the Dublin Guard, under Paddy Daly. Under the influence of Daly and Michael Collins, most of the Guard took the Free State side in the Irish Civil War of 1922-23.

When Judith and I visited Washington on Wednesday no one was wearing a jacket on such a balmy day.

Even if inordinately hot winter days like this add fuel to Al Gore's fire, I still love them. If global warming is coming, well, I've always wanted to live on a boat.

Sitting outside the Lincoln Memorial

Judith

Washington Monument

Korean War Veterans Memorial

We visited the International Spy Museum, which was admittedly kitschy. It would have been my favorite place ever when I was a ten-year old fan of the Avengers and Secret Agent. We later dined with the elegant, erudite Lee Smith - altogether a nice way to spend a summer day.

Infidel753 notes that that Russians are catching up to the West due to its most important resource - the talents and education of the people.

I753 also says that "There is no more dangerous potential adversary — and no more valuable potential ally against the Islamists."

If there is an ideological war going on here, it's not East vs. West, Left vs. Right, or a clash of civilizations. Instead, it's a war between Dynamic, innovative societies and Static societies that fear change.

One of many reasons why the Russians, the Chinese, India, Lebanon, Israel and the United States are on one side - the conservative, traditional Islamic world and the moronic convergence, are on the other side..

You can't win a war if you don't know who your allies are.

I've often said that Iraq's Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani is one of the extremists we're supposed to be fighting - we shouldn't be kissing his ass and calling him our savior.

Via the National Review:

Now, former Reagan administration official John Agresto is weighing in. Agresto, who appeared on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday, has a new book out, Mugged by Reality, which is a memoir of his recent nine months of service in Iraq as an adviser to the education ministry. Here is some of what he has to say about Sistani:

We insisted that the Ayatollah Sistani was surely a "moderate" and a friend to civil and religious liberty despite all the hard evidence to the contrary. Let me repeat my previous observations and predictions: The Ayatollah Sistani is an Islamist bent on establishing a theocracy not far removed from that found in Iran. He is an open anti-Semite and a not-too-subtle anti-Christian. He threw his support behind democratic elections because they were the handy vehicles for imposing religious authority all over Iraq. Nor is he the only one, or even the worst, only the most prominent. Yet while I believe the evidence is as clear here as it is in the case of [Ahmad] Chalabi, we only see what we want to see, not what's visible. In our religious lives, hope may well be a virtue — but in foreign policy it is more often a sin, a temptation to willful blindness.

How's that working out for us?

Now policy wonks like Dinesh D'Souza are claiming that conservative "Red Americans" can only win the the war against terrorism and the culture war by allying with "pious Muslims", those famed billions who apparently have absolutely no connection to terrorism yet also apparently have a great influence on the actions of terrorists.

D'Souza ignores the fact that terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (and their partners in crime, groups like CAIR and propaganda outlets like al Jazeera) helped to create the moderate Muslim brand.

After 9/11, Americans began seeking nonviolent 'moderate Muslims' (loosly defined as practicing Muslims who criticized terrorism and therefore weren't presently planning to blow us up) who could help them deal with the extremists. Before then, the concept of 'moderate Muslims' didn't exist. There was no demand, and therefore, no supply. Like all good capitalists, the Muslim Brotherhood, managers of terrorism's billion-dollar financial infrastructure, understood the laws of supply and demand. The market demanded moderate, pious Muslims, they gave us ModeratePiousMuslims (TM).

They even give us ModeratePiousMuslim spam.

Now ModeratePiousMuslim reformers, progressives, liberal Islamists and wannabe friends of Muslims are all jumping on the ModeratePious gravy train. Many probably aren't directly connected with the Brotherhood, but they rarely deviate from basic Brotherhood marketing guidelines like:

1. Always downplay the fact that the Brotherhood is a billion-dollar financial empire

2. Downplay the fact that this finanical empire is and always has been the foundation of Islamist terrorism

3. Pimp the popularity of the Brotherhood and its members

4. Criticize the "extremists" but not the Brotherhood

5. Respond to criticism of one branch of the Brotherhood by saying that the Brotherhood is a large and varied organization.

6. Bow before the Tariq

7. Shout "Islamophobia" (if you're in a bad mood, this can be steps 1-7)

While the friends of ModeratePiousMuslims claim that Islamophobia hurts the war against terrorism, downplaying the malign influence of the Muslim Brotherhood legitimizes the organization. This certainly doesn't help the war against terrorism. In the long run, the Islamophiles are capable of doing even more damage than the "Islamophobes."

D'Souza and Co.'s demand that we ally on the basis of faith and piety is not only profoundly illogical, it's an insult to the Enlightenment values that founded this country. If we're legitimizing the extremists, if we're filling their coffers with inefficient bribes, if we're abandoning the values that formed this secular nation, what are we supposed to be fighting for?

Willful blindness indeed.

Adil Zeshan at Winds of Change:

My name is Adil. I have been born and raised among dutiful and obedient Muslims, and I aim to misbehave.

Already I have fallen from grace. I am no longer one of them, a reason sufficient for their delicately-placed wrath to have me consigned, in this world and the next, to the most grievous of penalties; for what else should the reward be for those who behave like me, they would say if they knew, but disgrace in this life? So no matter where I go in the realms of Islam, I am a hidden traitor to my people, a renegade without honour to be executed. And for them to know of my apostasy is to know of their fear....

"Assalaamu Alaikum, brother", he says.

"Wa-alaikum salaam", I reply.

He says nothing, but keeps looking at me expectantly.

"So", I say, smiling.

"Brother, have you been given one of these leaflets?" He holds out one for me to take. I already have one. His accent is a slurred English, although he is clearly more articulate than the imam. I have had many run-ins with suburban mujahideen such as these elsewhere, and I know their type well.

"Actually, no", I lie. "So, what's a khilafah? What does it look like?".

He is pleased at the question, but before answering he quickly glances around to gauge earshot potential. He already knows his seniors are listening.

"Brother, the Islamic khilafah is the Islamic State. It was destroyed in 1924, and ruling by Islam in the state and society ceased", he says emphasising the last word. "Ruling by Islam ceased when the khilafah was destroyed by corrupt rulers who were agents of the kuffar [infidels]".

Huh.

"Brother, the implementing of the khilafah is a great obligation upon each and every Muslim. It is haram [forbidden] to remain for more than three days without a pledge to a khaleefah being on your neck. It is haram to rule by anything other than Islam and to stay silent about the implementation of kufr laws over us".

His voice is carrying across the courtyard and he promptly shifts to third-person.

"Due to this, Muslims all over the world are sinful in the sight of Allah and they will all receive punishment except those who involve themselves in establishing the khilafah and restore the ruling by that which Allah has revealed. The sin will not be lifted from their necks until the khilafah is established, and whosoever dies without a bay'ah [oath of allegiance to a would-be khaleefah] on his neck will die the death of jahiliyyah [ignorance]."

As Americans are fond of saying: like, whoa.

"So, it is obligatory for every Muslim to help establish the khilafah?", I ask.

George Soros' Halliburton is moving to the Kingdom of Dubai - and Congress is pissed:

HOUSTON, March 12 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other leading Congressional Democrats sharply criticized Halliburton on Monday for relocating its chief executive to Dubai, suggesting it was possibly part of an effort to dodge American taxes and investigations.

Halliburton, an oil services company based here, said it would remain legally incorporated in the United States, and that the transfer of David J. Lesar, its chairman and chief executive, was merely a response to the growing business opportunities in the Middle East and nearby areas.

But that did not stop many powerful Democrats from expressing skepticism about the motives behind the move, arguing that it may presage a wholesale move of Halliburton’s corporate headquarters out of the United States and not merely for business reasons.

They vowed to hold hearings on the matter and jumped at the opportunity to link the move to Vice President Dick Cheney, who led the company from 1995 to 2000. They also sought to revive charges that the company mishandled, through its military contracting subsidiary, hundreds of millions of tax dollars in Iraq.

“I think it’s disgraceful,” Senator Clinton, who is running for president, told a news conference in the Bronx, “that American companies are more than happy to try to get no-bid contracts, like Halliburton has, and then turn around and say, ‘But you know, we’re not going to stay with our chief executive officer, the president of our company, in the United States anymore.’ ”

Via Yahoo..

WASHINGTON - A House Republican leadership group said Monday that Democrats should retract an offer to let the nation's largest Islamic civil liberties organization use a Capitol conference room for a seminar.

The House Republican Conference referred to the Council on American-Islamic Relations as "terrorist apologists" and called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) to cancel the forum scheduled for Tuesday.

"Democrats arrange official meeting with pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah group in U.S. Capitol," headlined a Conference press release carrying a Washington Times article on the planned meeting.

Link thanks to LGF

Bill Ardolino reports from Iraq, Michael Totten is off to Iraq, and on C-Span, Pamela Hess explains why we have to stay there for a while:

"...and he's talking to me very low, under the chatter, and what he said was 'Every morning I wake up, and I feel like I'm pushing a little girl out of the way of a bus. And I pick her up, and I bring her to the other side of the road, and I've saved that little girl,' he said, 'every day I feel like that.' And in fact that is what is happening there. I can't tell you--" ...

"...this is what these people outside or the Green Zone are seeing and dealing with every day, it's real evil, and it's, that's a hard word I think for people here to hear... so it's a hard word to say, but I'm just not sure how you can, how, what other word there can be for people who are shooting kids in the face."

Are we a bit of pollution?

Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?

“Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever.

If so, such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”

All well and good. Science is full of homo sapiens-humbling insights. But the trade-off for these lessons in insignificance has always been that at least now we would have a deeper — simpler — understanding of the universe. That the more we could observe, the more we would know. But what about the less we could observe? What happens to new knowledge then? It’s a question cosmologists have been asking themselves lately, and it might well be a question we’ll all be asking ourselves soon, because if they’re right, then the time has come to rethink a fundamental assumption: When we look up at the night sky, we’re seeing the universe.

Not so. Not even close.

..and Stephen Hawking was right. There's a big frontier out there, bigger than we knew.

The Burka Band

Michael Lund has more on the Burka Band

Nargiz started the Burka Band when she met a German music producer in Kabul in late 2002. The producer was teaching Afghans to play modern music, and Nargiz learned to play the drums. One day she wondered why all the burkas in Kabul were blue, and together with two friends she wrote the song "Burka Blue" which is about burkas and the way you feel when you wear them. The song was recorded in Kabul with help from the German producers. The band would rehearse behind locked doors, so nobody would find out that the women were playing music. The burka also helped hide who the band members really were.

Of course it was a joke to sing in the burkas, but it was also necessary to wear them. If people in Afghanistan knew who the members of the Burka Band were, we could be attacked or killed because there are still a lot of religious fanatics here, says Nargiz, who hasn't told any of her friends that she has played in the Burka Band.

In 2003 the German record label Ata Tak released the song in Germany and the song became a hit in German clubs after it had been remixed by a German DJ. The Burka Band even performed at a big concert in Köln during a trip to Germany . Unfortunately, Nargiz couldn't join the band in Köln because she had to work, but she followed all the hype from her home in Kabul.

* Link thanks to Cinnamon Stillwell

Thanks to David C., who sent these shots from a recent trip to Israel -

Walking towards the Temple Mount, Arab Quarter

headscarves

image of the Pope

...translation?

[UPDATE: Translation * - "The Arabic writing on the Arafat portrait says "Abu Ammar, the king of endurance, through the eye of the needle he passed." Abu Ammar was one of Arafat's nicknames. The significance of the slogan escapes me."

It escapes me too...here's a discussion about the 'eye of the needle' on Wikipedia.

* thanks to Infidel753, the newest addition to my blogroll]

for sale at a sidewalk stall

[translation: "In the last picture, the word over the outline map of Israel is "Palestine", and the writing above the Dome of the Rock picture says "Jerusalem is ours"."]

Via CNN: Sopranos finale not welcome in Diner

BLOOMFIELD, New Jersey (AP) — The producers of "The Sopranos" were denied a permit to film in this North Jersey town because the mayor and some City Council members say the acclaimed HBO series negatively depicts Italian-Americans.

The owners of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor selected for the series' final scene, however, said such "personal feelings" shouldn't stand in the way.

"He should do what's good for the town," Chris Carley, co-owner of Holsten's Brookdale Confectionary, said of Bloomfield Mayor Raymond McCarthy.

We used to go to the Brookdale Confectionary for ice cream every Sunday after church. Best chocolate chip ice cream in Jersey.

My photos from my trip to Costa Rica (in 2005) are up on Flickr..

As the financial hub of the billion dollar Islamist terrorist network, it's no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood has a very active public relations department.

It is suprising to discover that they're spamming the blogs.

Two years ago, I wrote a post about the Brotherhood's branch office in the United States, the Muslim American Society. I titled that post The Muslim American Society: Not Moderate.

I got a comment from a "Fared Mohammed" who basically cut and pasted the Muslim Brotherhood's FAQ page into my comments box.

The funny part is, if you google Fared Mohammed, you'll see that he's done the same thing on a whole lot of blogs, pro-Brotherhood blogs like Juan Cole's, and anti-Brotherhood ones like, well, mine.

I'd have to guess that "Fared Mohammed" is a bot (carbon or silicon-based) that searches the blogs for the mention of Moderate Muslims and the Muslim Brotherhood together.

As M. Simon of Power and Control noted, the Brotherhood links to some posts that are critical of the Brotherhood, when said criticism is not overt. I was once linked to by the Stormfront, who seemed to use the same criteria. Zealots don't get subtlety.

Terrorism and spam. We all knew they have to get together sometime.

Ron Coleman, formerly of Dean's World, has a new site, Likelihood of Success.

His pitch was so good, I have to quote it.

Likelihood of Success is my new "general interest"/politics blog, replacing the gig I had at Dean's World. I've decided not to be anyone else's guest and to build traffic from the bottom up — pure traffic, organic traffic, you traffic. I've pre-loaded the new site with stuff so you shouldn't think I'm only kidding or something. Go ahead, click. I promise not to cross-post from this blog more than once a week or to refund all your money.

My fellow blogger (not my guest) at Likelihood of Success is David Nieporent, a friend of many years' standing, a former colleague at my unlamented old law firm, and fellow long-time email-list controversialist at the once-great "Advocates & Skeptics" group on Princeton's alumni / student "Tigernet" network. Despite also being the newly installed co-blogger sort of guy at Overlawyered.com , David's going to hang out at Likelihood of Success, too, with a little bit longer topical leash.

There may be others. Give us a shot. The world definitely needs another blog. I know I do.

The website for the Steven Vincent Foundation is online.

The Foundation's Mission:

Reporting from strife- and war-torn areas would be impossible without local contacts, colleagues and assistance. Since the Iraq war began in April 2003, more than 100 journalists and photographers have been killed while reporting in-country, as well as an undetermined number of local translators and ‘fixers’. Some were Westerners affiliated with Western media companies whose families would have received some kind of compensation, but those working for local news organizations died without health or life insurance, or benefits of any kind. They relied on the paychecks they received to support their families; when they were killed those paychecks stopped, leaving the family bereft of not only a son, brother, husband and/or father, but what was for many doubtless the main, if not the sole, means of support.

The Foundation will ensure that the families of local media workers and their fixers and/or translators receive financial aid to help them through a time of shock and devastating grief. In addition to providing somewhat of a safety net, it will also send an important message to the recipient(s), namely, that the sacrifice both they and their loved one made has not gone unnoticed, that there are people in the wider world who acknowledge, mourn and honor their loss, and who appreciate the danger these brave men and women put themselves in while attempting to report the truth. Financial aid will not be limited to one particular country, region or conflict, but will be provided on a worldwide basis as needed and as is feasible. With that purpose in mind, the first grant made by the infant Foundation was a donation of one thousand dollars to the widow of Fakher Haider, a New York Times stringer killed in Basra, Iraq, in September 2005.

[cross-posted at Dean's World]

It's time for me to take Dean's offer of voluntary retirement as I have no side to take in the current ideological war.

Dean often says that we should 'talk to Muslims'. I have talked to Muslims, here and abroad, and from those discussions I've realized that one of our government's biggest mistakes was to classify our current war against terrorism as an "ideological war."

The government and the media talk about this ideological war, but they are never clear about what ideology or holders of said unidentified ideology we're fighting. How are we supposed to 'fight' this not-clearly defined ideological war? How do we know when we've won, or lost? Who knows? Ask 100 people and you're likely to get about 200 opinions.

Ask it on the internet and you invariably get a flame war. Somehow, this war has turned into the modern equivalent of 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin'? If you 'win' the discussion, if you argue nicely or if you're rude, what effect does this have on the price of tea in Waziristan?

Without clearly defined enemies or goals, all 6 billion people out there are left in the wilderness, left to provide their own definitions of what we're fighting. Given that terrorists claim to be fighting in the name of Islam, it's not surprising that both Muslims and non-Muslims define our enemy in the GWOT as Islam.

When President Bush said:

"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

I think we're fighting a bunch of gangsters. Why do they ('they' defined as the military and financial infrastructure of the billion dollar underground terrorist network - not Islam) hate us? Because they're greedy pigs who resent anyone who has more money, power and influence than they do, and they're willing to manipulate and kill people to get it. The fact that they're using morality and religion as their cover makes them even more vile than most who have gone before them, but that shouldn't change our focus. We can't fight gangsters with philosophy, religious outreach programs and political correctness.

We also can't fight them by classifying everyone who is in their religious group, or everyone who has kissed the Don's hand, as the focus of the problem. Both the Islamophobes and the Islamophobe-watchers do that. This leads to poorly conceived, poorly planned strategy. If we refrained from shutting down the Mafia because we were afraid that doing so would offend all Italians, Gotti would be president and Gambini would be head of state. If we fought the Mafia by arresting everyone in Little Italy, pulling over every olive oil truck and raiding Arthur Avenue, the result might have been the same.

This ideological war seems to be an issue that Dean wants to focus on. That's his decision. I can either say goodbye now, spend more time doing things that matter to me or I can spend vast amounts of time spinning my wheels by arguing that both sides are wrong.

I choose the latter. So, Dean, thanks so much for asking me to post here and enjoy the debates. I don't mind that there's no golden parachute.

Speaking of parachutes, if you and yours ever visit New Jersey, there's a great place to jump - and there's even some scenery beyond the Turnpike. Don't be a stranger.

* This was a semi-ironic reference to the standard reason corporate types give for early retirement. I plan to spend more time with family and work, photography. As the Danish Cartoon controversy proved, sometimes the visual has more impact than the verbal.

At Hezbollah's Rally, Beirut

Inspired by two posts by Dean, one on the anachronism of churchkeys (can openers) and one on the aggravation of clamshells (that evil plastic packaging), I discovered that one circumvents the other.

Churckeys are great for prying open clamshells - better than scissors, knives, M80s or brute force. Just slide the churchkey along the side of the evil packaging, twist it a bit and it pops open without much fuss.

Thanks, Dean.

..and I got a chance to take the wide angle Tokina 12-24mm lens out for a walk.

the George Washington bridge

View from Edgewater park

[I saw a fellow with consulate plates driving down to this park. He got out of his car and walked through the empty park and stood in the (closed) park shelter, by a trash can.

Okay, I just saw Breach, so my brain was on 'Thriller' mode. I'm sure there was nothing to be suspicious about - after all, he was a diplomat]

There was some wide-angle distortion with this shot. As it approaches the horizon, the bridge leans to the left..

Photoshop's spherize filter fixed it a bit..

the pinch filter seems to work, but now the foreground looks fat

..the lens correction tool (version C2) works best..

Via Pajamas Media:

A number and graph heavy analysis from The Oil Drum on the 8% decline in Saudi oil production in 2006. "On the whole, media coverage of OPEC production cuts appears to be almost completely unmoored from the data the agencies are reporting. The entire ‘production cut’ may be a public relations exercise to disguise other processes."

Overall, I feel this data is clear enough that I'm willing to go out on a limb and conclude the following:

* Saudi Arabian oil production is now in decline.

* The decline rate during the first year is very high (8%), akin to decline rates in other places developed with modern horizontal drilling techniques such as the North Sea.

* Declines are rather unlikely to be arrested, and may well accelerate.

* Matt Simmons appears to be right in Twilight in the Desert, but the warning did not come until after declines had actually begun.

I suggest that this is likely to place severe political strains on Saudi Arabia within a year or two at most...

...Finally, it's interesting to note this Saudi Aramco press release celebrating their achievements in 2006:

2006 was a year of outstanding accomplishment. That was the message coming from the Feb. 21 meeting of the Executive Committee (Excom) of the Board of Directors in Dhahran. “The company reacted rapidly to changes in global crude oil supply and demand during the year,” said president and CEO Abdallah S. Jum‘ah, relaying the results of that meeting in a teleconference Feb. 25. “Ambitious programs were proposed to expand future crude oil production and gas processing capabilities, and for increasing refining capacity both in the Kingdom and overseas.”

and

Among 2006 accomplishments were the optimization of upstream operations, and development and depletion strategies to meet crude demand and increase maximum sustained capacity to 10.7 million barrels per day (bpd).

I used to check my blog first thing in the morning, but now, first thing, I log on to Flickr - partly to see what's up on my site, partly to see what everyone else is putting up, travelling far and wide..

The most fun thing was joining a group - The MoMA Project, which was just recently written up in the NY Sun:

Many of the MoMA photographs are included in "Impressions of MoMA," a Flickr-based project of brothers Travis and Brady Hammond. Their intention with "iMo-MA" is to gather snapshots of every piece of art in MoMA's collection — 150,000 items, not including film and video work. "With mobile phones, everyone is an artist," Brady Hammond said. "It would be the ultimate postmodern gallery."

The project began last August, and has so far amassed about 11,000 photographs taken by 2,000 contributors, who post their snapshots to a page on Flickr. Brady Hammond, who works as an ESL teacher in Boston, said he does not know if MoMA is aware of iMoMA. "We're kind of concerned that the first thing we hear will be a cease and desist," he said. "But I imagine that they would respect the effort we're making. Our ultimate dream would be to have them say, This is a good idea. And even maybe have a little kiosk in the museum. Who wouldn't want to go to a world famous art gallery and see their work on display?"

The best blogger/flickr sites I've seen so far are Lisa and Karol's. But I'll bet there are plenty more out there.

Of course Flickr is just a gateway addiction leading to the hardcore stuff - you know, YouTube.

Via the NY Times *

In a warm-up for a trip to space, Stephen Hawking is