If "Islam" is the problem, then why are terrorists and Islamist extremists more powerful in Britain then they are in Egypt or Morocco?

For decades the Egyptian government complained about the fact that Britain gave refuge and welfare checks to extremists who would have been arrested in Egypt. Unfortunately for the Brits, they didn't read the fine print in their Covenant of Security.

Turkey is 99% Muslim, but laws demanding a distinct separation between mosque and state have been enforced by the Turks for almost a century. If a Turkish imam had declared (as the Archbishop of Canterbury did) that Sharia law should be followed in his country, the reaction from the press and from the Turkish army would have been much more extreme.

The Kurds in northern Iraq are not just Muslims, they're conservative Muslims, yet they're pro-Israel and very pro-USA.

European/British politicians and bankers have gotten rich by making deals with the worst terror supporters in the Middle East. The citizens of these countries are paying the price. The Muslim brotherhood maintains offshore accounts for al Qaeda and Hamas. Some of their bankers were trained at the London School of Economics.

If you want to find the source of terrorism worldwide, don't open the Koran. Go to Dubai, go to one of Prince Bandar's many mansions, visit the Saudi and Iranian oilfields. While you're in Iran, talk to the scientists from Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy. Back in Britain, go to Harrods.

UPDATE: Also note the Saudi government's efforts to get the UN to enforce Sharia Law

..but they're rechecking their calculations just to be sure.

Maybe we should conduct these experiments offsite, like on a space station...?

..reducing our 'carbon footprint'...

New Zealand and Fiji kicked off the event this year. In Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 100 businesses and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness, computers and televisions were switched off and dinners delayed for the hour from 8 to 9 p.m. Suva, Fiji, in the same time zone, also turned off its lights.

Auckland's Langham Hotel switched from electric lights to candles as it joined the effort to reduce the use of electricity, which when generated creates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Turning off the lights to preserve the earth (to paraphrase a common "anti-war" poster) is like fucking to preserve virginity. The state of the world isn't going to improve if we live in darkness, wrap ourselves in banana leaves and eat only the fruit that drops from trees. We need to improve the technologies that we use - make our lives more efficient, not less.

Figuring out how to do that requires brainpower, civilization, technology and, yes, electricity.

Classical Values: Fighting gay antiburger bigots!

Geert Wilder's film doesn't show us anything we haven't seen or read before. It doesn't provide enough information to show proof that the Quran is directly responsible for the terrorist acts that are graphically depicted. It concentrates mostly on the religious leaders who have supported terrorism while ignoring the political systems and the laws that also support it. The hysteria about growing Muslim populations is also misleading - it also ignores the fact that many countries with large Muslim populations do a better job of fighting the extremists in their midsts than the Netherlands does.

If "Fitna" is a criticism of Western obsequiousness in response to Islamist aggression, I'd have to say that South Park did a better job.

LINK TO LIVELEAK

UPDATE: LiveLeak, which is based in the UK, removed the movie after receiving "very serious threats". But, thanks to the link provided by Solomonia, this online copy was found.

While the film is of interest mostly due to its newsworthiness and the related free speech issues, this is also a sign that we do need to find a way to deal effectively with these predictable Imam-ordered hits and death threats. When these hits are carried out, and when death threats hamper our ability to distribute information, it’s proof that Western governments are failing to protect their citizens. If current laws don’t give us a way of dealing with or prosecuting people for issuing murder contracts on local citizens, the laws need to be revised.

The current method of coping with these death threats (running and hiding, or refusing to publish all information about a news story because of a fear of reprisals) has proven to be both ineffective and stupid.

The INS has denied a Navy-Marine Corps Achievement award-winner's application for citizenship. Of this stunning bureaucratic error, Michael Totten writes:

Karen DeYoung published a story in the Washington Post that ought to embarrass anyone making decisions about who deserves permanent residence in the U.S.

Saman Kareem Ahmad is an Iraqi Kurd who worked as a translator with the Marines in Iraq’s Anbar Province. He was one of the few selected translators who was granted asylum in the U.S. because he and his family were singled out for destruction by insurgents for “collaboration.” He wants to return to Iraq as an American citizen and a Marine, and has already been awarded the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter and General David Petraeus wrote notes for his file and recommended he be given a Green Card, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) declined his application and called him a “terrorist.”

The INS says Ahmad “conducted full-scale armed attacks and helped incite rebellions against Hussein’s regime, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom” while a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

The KDP is one of two mainstream Kurdish political parties in Iraq.

Like many bureaucracies, the INS needs to engage some brain cells every once in awhile. Hopefully, the publicity will cause them to reconsider. There may be others like Mr. Ahmad who've worked with the US in Iraq, and who should be given citizenship.

Can a story published in a newspaper or a blog change the way a government does things? Well, it helped upgrade the Dungeons of Fallujah.

I took the Vote Match quiz (link thanks to Rosemary) and once again, I'm a total moonbat. My best matches were I tied between Edwards and Kucinich (48%). Then came Gravel, then Obama, then Hillary. The only Republican I came close to was another social liberal, Giuliani.

According to the political philosophy test, I'm a liberarian-leaning liberal, edging towards 'moderate'. Since most front-running American politicians are fairly moderate anyway, I guess this makes sense. But Kucinich?

Link thanks to Bruce, a tall girl's Dad

Sometimes, one of the toughest mental health challenges we face is simply learning to feel good about ourselves. We can all learn something from Rebecca Thomas, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh senior who wrote the following essay for her journalism class. — Tara Parker-Pope

By Rebecca Thomas

Everywhere I go people stare at me. At the grocery store children gawk at me wide-eyed, craning their necks and pointing as they tug their mothers’ shirts. When I pass people on the street, I hear them mumble comments about my appearance.

I am not deformed or handicapped, I’m not a circus attraction. I have strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. What makes me different is that I’m 6-foot-4, and I’m a woman. ..

...I was healthy, but incredibly shy as a child and into my teens. I’m from a small town, and I grew up and graduated with the same 50 people. I started playing basketball in third grade every Saturday, but I didn’t have any control over my awkward, gangly body. (I didn’t even score a point in a game until many years later.) I was 5-foot-10 in fourth grade. I had a small group of friends in elementary school, but sometimes the boys picked on me, calling me a bean pole or the Jolly Green Giant. I still remember my embarrassment when they taunted me, and how badly I wanted to be invisible.

In high school I got more involved in sports, but I spent most days in the art room. By this time everyone at my school was used to my height (by ninth grade I was 6-foot-3), but if I went out of town people would gawk and comment about my appearance. They acted like I couldn’t hear them.

“Wow! That girl is tall!”

“Oh my gosh! Look at that girl, she’s so tall.”

I was forced into the spotlight wherever I went.

With high school came more confidence. I had success in school, the arts and sports. I played basketball, but my true passion was track and field. My senior year I was the conference champion in high jump and the 400-meter run. The friendships I gained through my involvement in high school boosted my confidence and helped me develop a sense of humor. Now when a stranger told me I was tall I would smile and nod or, if I was feeling feisty, I would feign shock and thank them profusely for telling me. I had no idea!

That's a cute response. I wish I'd thought of that.

I'm only 5' 11", but most of this rings true. I'll bet my daughter, who is over 6 ft.+, can empathize. It is difficult, especially when you're a teenager, to always stand out, whether you want to or not.

But when you do want to grab attention, just dig those old high heels out of the closet.

In her article Barack Obama's desperate desire to belong *, British writer Janet Daley tries to understand Barak Obama's loyalty to Preacher Wright. In her opinion, like all Americans, Obama is lonely:

I would guess that Mr Obama, who had a personal genealogy even more dislocated and idiosyncratic than most, wanted to belong. He wanted a community that could enfold him and make him feel that he was part of something that was recognisable and self-affirming....

..and she comes to the conclusion that:

...Americans suffer from the collective insecurity that arises from rootlessness and the wilful abandonment of historical continuity. That longing for roots, and the emotional security that goes with them, divides Americans as surely and inevitably as their constitutional arrangements unite them. That is the perennial contradiction at the heart of national life.

Of course, it doesn't have to be ethnicity any more. You can find your communal identity through gender, or sexual orientation: you just have to be able to plant your feet on solid ground somewhere and find people to holds hands with, so as not to be swept away in the endless, terrifyingly anonymous void.

What a peculiar misinterpretation. If the reader responses are any indication, I'd guess that most Americans like our rootless, terrifyingly anonymous void. If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be such a market for Westerns, or songs about Route 66 and the open road.

I guess this kind of agoraphobia is the result of living on a little soggy island where people rarely move far from home. When I visit, I often hear Brits express this bizarre idea that Americans regret separating from the ‘mother’ country.

I never have the heart to tell them that we don’t.

* Link thanks to Alan Sullivan

Michael Totten's latest report from Iraq

Ed Kaitz on Obama's Anger

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

"We're owed and they aren't."

In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed. It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

More..

* Link thanks to Carolyn

Michael Totten explains Kosovo's bid for independence with a lot more diplomacy and tact than I was able to muster...

Concern that Kosovo’s independence might trigger a similar declaration from the West Bank to Spain’s Basque country to Chechnya and beyond is understandable but perhaps overwrought. Bosnia declared independence without unleashing a domino effect beyond Yugoslavia. So did Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Montenegro declared independence from Serbia less than two years ago. It’s doubtful the Palestinians even noticed. Hardly anyone else did. In any case, it had no effect on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The irrelevance of Kosovo to the Arab-Israeli conflict is underscored by the fact that not a single Arab country has recognized Kosovo. The only Muslim countries which so far have bothered are Turkey, Malaysia, Senegal, Albania, and Afghanistan. The governments of all these countries are, to one extent or another, either moderate, in the pro-Western camp, or both. All aside from Albania have sizeable ethnic minorities of their own. Turkey especially frets about its own separatists – the Kurds in the east – but still went ahead and recognized Kosovo almost instantly.

Many in Kosovo are well aware that they have more in common with Israel than with the West Bank and Gaza. “Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land,” a prominent Kosovar recently told journalist Stephen Schwartz. “Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?”

More...

New research by NASA-supported scientists shows how atmospheric gravity waves, the kind we often see rippling in clouds overhead, can hit a thunderstorm and turn it into a deadly tornado.

Via NASA*

What is an atmospheric gravity wave? Coleman explains: "They are similar to waves on the surface of the ocean, but they roll through the air instead of the water. Gravity is what keeps them going. If you push water up and then it plops back down, it creates waves. It's the same with air."

Coleman left his job as a TV weather anchor in Birmingham to work on his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. "I'm having fun," he says, but his smile and enthusiasm already gave that away.

"You can see gravity waves everywhere," he continues. "When I drove in to work this morning, I saw some waves in the clouds. I even think about wave dynamics on the water when I go fishing now."

Gravity waves get started when an impulse disturbs the atmosphere. An impulse could be, for instance, a wind shear, a thunderstorm updraft, or a sudden change in the jet stream. Gravity waves go billowing out from these disturbances like ripples around a rock thrown in a pond.

When a gravity wave bears down on a rotating thunderstorm, it compresses the storm. This, in turn, causes the storm to spin faster. To understand why, Coleman describes an ice skater spinning with her arms held straight out. "Her spin increases when she pulls her arms inward." Ditto for spinning storms: When they are compressed by gravity waves, they spin faster to conserve angular momentum.

More...

* Link thanks to Bruce

'Barack, I Didn’t Do It for This': An Homage to Andrew Goodman

Barack, I didn’t do it for this.

Barack, I was a civil rights worker… South Carolina, 1966… 22 yrs old … helping old folks register to vote, teaching kids to read and write, directing Raisin in the Sun…

Barack, I didn’t do it for this.

Barack, I dream of my kindergarten best friend Andy from Walden School, Manhattan, born one day after me, shot dead in Mississippi 1964.

Barack, I idolized Stokley Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Barack, I lost the full use of my left hand for life in South Carolina.

Barack, I didn’t do it for this.

Barack, I gave hundreds to the Black Panthers for their children’s breakfast program when I was 25 and a young screenwriter in Echo Park, Los Angeles, even though I knew Huey was crazy and was worried my money might have been going for guns, even though I had my own children in the house when the Panthers came over, their jackets bulging.

Barack, I made excuses for the Black Power Movement even though I knew it was turning racist.

Barack, I didn’t do it for this.

Barack, your speech was bullshit.

Barack, this isn’t about generations.

Barack, this isn’t about the black church.

Barack, this is about a pathological minister whose uncontrolled anger wounds his own people and keeps them down

More..

Gov. David A. Paterson and his wife, Michelle confessed to having extramarital affairs in the past.

Paterson is changing the rules of the game, making his life an open book, confessing before the press really turned the klieg lights on him. Will other politicians adopt this tactic for dealing with potential media inquisition?

It could start a new trend, of politicians treating press conferences like an episode of the Jerry Springer show. They'll tell us more than we wanted to know - about their affairs, their strange obsessions, neuroses; the crazy preachers who have influenced their lives, the tests they cheated on in 7th grade. We'll see their rashes and their moles. We'll hear about their STDs and constipation. The wall behind them will be plastered with pictures of them drunk at parties. The confessions won't stop until the press gets sick and tired and says "enough already".

In the age of MySpace, it makes sense.

Jews in Dublin

NEW YORK — In talking with Valerie Lapin Ganley, the director of a new film about the Jewish community in Ireland, one of the things that emerges is that Ganley learned as much about her subject while making the film as viewers do while seeing it.

"I was raised in a Jewish family in Los Angeles," says Ganley, whose film, "Shalom Ireland," explores Jewish life in the country by focusing on three Irish-Jewish families, all from Dublin. But she gained an interest in Irish history and culture after meeting her husband, Michael, an Irish-American with "a deep love for his ancestral homeland."

Wearing the official chain of office, Robert Briscoe, the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, visits New York City as seen in "Shalom Ireland," a documentary about Ireland’s remarkable, yet little known, Jewish community.

More...

[And a Happy St. Pat's Day to all...]

Neo-Neocon discusses John Heileman's article in New York Magazine listing ten reasons Eliot Spitzer was politically undone by his infidelities while Bill Clinton managed to survive his.

Neo says:

Spitzer had not only grown more unpopular and made many enemies in high places by the time his Emperor Club shenanigans were revealed, but he started out as a very different person and politician than Bill Clinton. Clinton was an affable scamp with a twinkle in his eye, elected despite his known penchant for womanizing. He was the good ol’ boy you might want to have along for a night on the town—lots of fun. People genuinely liked him.

Spitzer had not only a name and persona singularly lacking in attractiveness, but he was a very different sort of pol than Clinton. Spitzer fit perfectly in the mold of the hard-as-nails prosecutor, the crusader who might not have been the one you’d want with you when you were painting the town red, but the one you’d want out there protecting your wallet and/or your daughters.

And so Spitzer’s dalliance with a girl young enough to be his daughter was not only a sign of hypocrisy, it destroyed what was really his only selling point: his straight-laced righteousness.

One commenter suggested that Clinton, Spitzer (and the prostitute Ashley for good measure) were all a bunch of sociopaths. Sort of true, but in my totally unprofessional opinion, Clinton and Spitzer are 2 different varieties of sociopath. Clinton is the more likeable kind. He wants to be bad and get away with it, but he likes to be bad because being bad is fun - for him and everyone else. Sure he breaks the rules, but in the end, everyone had a good time and has some stories to tell. He basically likes people, because people generate parties and other types of fun.

Spitzer is the puritanical, anhedonic kind of sociopath. People don't like him because he doesn't like them. This type thinks that if it feels good it must be bad, no matter what 'it' is. People like Spitzer think that to be mature, productive members of society they must deny themselves everything they enjoy - and they must force other people to do the same thing. Then after awhile, they start to resent giving up all joy in their life. They decide to be bad, they decide, in a very hostile way, to screw everyone who trusts them, not because its fun but because they 'deserve' some payback after sacrificing so much.

Ashley doesn't sound like a sociopath. She's a performer, or at least that's what she wanted to be. She got her wish, the spotlight is on her now. She's going to smile.

This one sounds like a good idea..

'Bionic eye' may help reverse blindness

A "bionic eye" may one day help blind people see again, according to US researchers who have successfully tested the system in rats.

The eye implant - a 3-millimetre-wide chip that would fit behind the retina - could be a dramatic step above currently available technology, says the team at Stanford University, California, US

But this 'contact lens' for healthy eyes, I'm not sure about ...

The $6 Million Man giving us our first look at a bionic eye, but in the year 2008 what it really looks like is a common contact lens. Look closely and you can see the circuitry embedded in the small piece of plastic.

"We're going to put electronics components and wireless on contact lenses and make it a sophisticated system," said Dr. Babak Parviz, Asst. Prof. Electrical Engineering.

"One of our major areas of interest is to put a display on a contact lens. I mean imagine you could wear your computer display as a contact lens," said Parviz.

"The application for this lens are endless but one for the most significant ones is on the medical side imagine patients could wear this lens and their conditions could be monitored at all times."

Using a contact lens to automatically connect to a computer (or a gps) would be great, but having your 'condition' monitored at all times? CCTV in your head, broadcasting over the net? No thanks.

Ann Althouse says:

Megan McArdle's readers insist that her support for legalized prostitution ought to force her to deal with the question whether she'd do the work herself. Her answer — sensible up to a point — is there are plenty of jobs she doesn't want to do. Her post doesn't explore whether we ought to protect young, weak, and economically hard-pressed individuals from doing things that will probably hurt them. The question is how harmful is the work — if you consider what it would be if it were legal?...Would you consider a career in prostitution? Assume reasonable benefits: great pay, excellent health care, a safe, well-run workplace, interesting colleagues. Would you?

By asking Megan this question, Ann is asking (or at least threatening to ask) any woman who supports the legalization of prostitution the same question.

The subject deserves a lot of research - prostitution is legal in many European countries - before deciding on that kind of thing, we should probably see how that legalization is working over there. But legalizing prostitution in America would appear to be an improvement over the current situation.

So, would whoring be a good career move if the pay was good and there were health benefits? Well, lets look at the Eliot Spitzer meltdown. Spitzer has been described as "disgraced", a criminal, a whoremonger, a bum, a bully, a hypocrite. He's going to lose his job, he's going to be charged with crimes, he'll be disbarred. Most former friends admit that no one ever liked him. Women think that his wife should kick him to the curb, kick him in the nuts and take him for everything he's worth. And he was probably a shitty lay anyway.

Of his wife Silda, people theorize that she wasn't giving her husband enough sex/love/attention. She was a sap to stand by her man, she was humilitated, pathetic, subservient. One even noted that she was overcharging her clients. So, add "overambitious", "liar", thief and crook to her resume.

However, the prostitute is getting a lot of sympathy - and money. One critic of of Silda and Eliot says of Ashley Alexandra Dupré - "I just hope she got paid". She's described as hot, hotter, and the hottest thing on the market. Her song "What We Want" became an instant hit. She's got an edge, she's got a platform, she's gonna make it big. They're talking $1 million dollar photo shots for Hustler and Penthouse, then a book, maybe a movie.

The Spitzer mess proves - we give our whores more respect than we give our politicians (and their wives). At least the whores are honest.

So, would I consider a career in politics? Assume reasonable benefits: great pay, excellent health care, a safe, well-run workplace, interesting colleagues. Would I?

Absolutely not.

Some said that they were sweet, perky and crème filled, and some said that they were dry, overly sugary and overrated. But when I heard about the Magnolia bakery and the cupcake craze that had somehow passed me by, I had to find an answer to the question – how could someone make a fortune selling cupcakes?

For the 18 years I spent as a PTA mom, cupcakes were my bake sale staple. The recipe was pretty standard – Dunkin Hines Devil’s Food or Yellow mix, buttercream frosting, some sprinkles. They were appreciated, but they were pretty standard. Since Magnolia was based in the Village, I imagined that they’d be selling exotic and fancy stuff – perhaps some lychee nut cupcakes crowned with a birds-nest of spun sugar? Red bean cupcakes crowned with green tea icing?

Walking to the bakery on Bleecker Street, I passed a couple of porn shops. New York fetish was having a sale. It must have been break time – in the front of the Japanese, Italian, multi-Fusion and all-natural Zen restaurants, the Mexican cooks were taking a cigarette break. Twenty-somethings clutched cellphones, having animated conversations or texting as they walked. One woman shouted “today is my debut and he’s going to be there. I don’t think I’ll live!” A well-dressed man who looked like Karl Lagerfeld without the ponytail sneezed without covering his mouth. A pudgy locksmith standing in front of his shop recoiled from the sneeze in disgust.

I found the bakery. There were no lines. On a weekday afternoon the crowd in the little bakery was confined to the inside. I was hoping to sit around the shop for about an hour, soaking up atmosphere and conversation, but the lack of seating and the constantly moving group of cupcake buyers made that impossible.

But I didn’t have to sit in the shop for hours to discover why it was so popular. I didn’t even have to taste any of the dozens of perky pastel cupcakes that were arranged so un-artfully around Magnolia’s tiny space. I just had to recognize that smell. Dunkin Hines yellow*. In a neighborhood that was oversupplied with every exotica you could imagine, the Magnolia bakers got rich by crème-filling Greenwich Village’s unmet need for - Mom.

* the batter wasn’t really Dunkin Hines, and it was a little less moist. Otherwise, they were just like my PTA specials – the frosting was more sugary (not buttercream) and they were decorated with the same white sprinkles.

At Dean Esmay's site, Aziz P. says:

Marc Lynch aka The Father of the Aardvark is an expert on Arab media and politics. He has done exhaustive research and journalism on the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and has argued quite persuasively that the MB is indeed serious about its commitment to democracy. Unfortunately, the United States has largely looked the other way while the Mubarak regime systematically persecutes the MB invoking the rhetoric of state security - rhetoric that is revealed to be a lie when moderate, liberal and pro-Western members of the Brotherhood are imprisoned and or prohibited from leaving the country.

Lynch laments,

"I’ve grown tired of debating the finer points of the Brotherhood’s party platform searching for clues as to their true feelings about democracy at a time when large numbers of their members are once again being arrested for the crime of trying to participate in elections."

Lynch's argument is, basically, if you support democracy, you must support the Muslim Brotherhood's bid for power. I’ve heard the same argument from a supporter of Hezbollah's bid for power. Let’s ignore the fact that giving a fascist group power will destroy the country (in one case, Lebanon, in the other case, Egypt). Let’s try to sell fascism by promoting it as democracy. Talk about lipstick on a pig. There’s only a small portion of the population will buy that one, and most of them work in academia.

Like Marc Lynch. He’s made a great career for himself pimping the Muslim Brotherhood’s revolution, while ignoring the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is the financial branch of Islamist terrorism worldwide. It’s also fascist organization, founded by Hassan al Banna, an Egyptian acolyte of Hitler. Putting the MB in charge of Egypt would have the same effect as putting Hamas in charge of Gaza. It’s hard to imagine that Egypt could become more miserable, but as we saw in Gaza, anything is possible.

Unlike the State Department cynics, who are using the MB for whatever realpolitik game they happen to be playing this week (what is it this week, let’s get Iran! or bring back the Cold War!?) Lynch appears to be a true believer. When the state department gets tired of their MB pawns (or when the MB gets tired of their state department pawns), when the "Islamist banking" bubble busts, Lynch and other fascist flunkies will get thrown away like used kleenex. It's happened to bigger, dumber thugs.

For more on the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide's philosophy of non-violence, see the fatwa published by cleric, Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi on Islam Online, the Muslim Brotherhood website - "Contemporary Opinions on Killing Civilians"

Thanks to Instapundit - Equipment for everything from a disaster to a zombie invasion

The Swedish Fire Steel thing is cool, but if surviving Armageddon requires wearing a fanny pack, I'll pass.

It happens all the time in the Ukraine. Recently, in Iran al Sadr's case of food poisoning defied the best efforts of Russian doctors:

From Where is Moqtada al-Sadr? by Richard Fernandez:

On March 3 a Kuwaiti news article translated by MEMRI claimed that the notorious Iraqi militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr was in an Iranian hospital, comatose from “food poisoning.”

The rumor capped one of the most bizarre political absences in recent recent Iraq history. Sadr was a powerful politician who led the Madhi Army militia in Iraq. His forces had fought the U.S. Marines in Najaf; challenged the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for the leadership of Shi’ism in Iraq; built extensive alliances with the Ayatollahs in Teheran and aspired to create a force the equal of Lebanon's Hezbollah. The Nation’s Naomi Klein even called him "the single greatest threat to U.S. military and economic control of Iraq."..

...Following reports he was in a coma, on March 8 Sadr issued a written statement confirming that he was suffering from physical weakness and undergoing a period of meditation and study.

But never fear. Al Sadr is 'reasserting' his leadership through the distribution of leaflets. He's seeking 'active involvement in his movement and its military wing — despite a decision last year to immerse himself in religious study.'

So, if he's seeking 'active involvement', why isn't he going on television, or speaking to his followers in person? Why is he communicating through leaflets?

Maybe, like the Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko, the effects of, umm...food poisoning have altered his appearance - and he doesn't want people to see him looking bad?

No, that can't be it.

Playwright David Mamet, author of Glengarry Glen Ross explains why he is no longer a 'brain dead liberal'.

No stranger to controversy, he makes this announcement in the nadir of brain dead liberalism, the Village Voice

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"..

..As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years.

One commenter, Angry Liberaltarian says

Sounds to me as if Mr. Mamet's youthful vigor is being lost to wealth and status.

It's a well written defense of his inevitable shift to the right (if you're under 30 and not a liberal you have no heart, if you're over 30 and not conservative you have no brain).

And the NPR quote?! Atrocious! I thought he had more sense than that. I guess in his defense of America, his idea of America, he forgot the parallels between Native Americans and Palestinians.

Parallels between Native Americans and Palestinians? Now there's an audience that doesn't care about facts.

Ace on Mamet and the not-brain-dead-liberals out there:

Conservatives, who embrace the "tragic" view as Mamet terms it (I would call it the "realistic" view myself, but then, I'm not a dramatist), are less childish in their starting conceits. We believe that people are selfish, self-serving, self-interested, self-obsessed, and only vaguely self-aware. It is the nature of all of us. And we do mean us; when we speak of human failings, we are really not, as the liberals are, speaking of other people only. We say "we are all selfish and flawed' and we do in fact mean we.

So for conservatives, the question isn't "Why is the world so awful and cruel?" The question is really "How do humans, especially those in the west and particularly those in America, manage to get so very, very much right so much of the time?"

Well, if one believed that the Native Americans were equivalent to the Palestinians, one would never have to ask that question....

Mohamed Sifaoui, who infiltrated an al Qaeda cell in France*, describes his experience with Islamism:

MEQ: Do you believe it is possible to criticize Islamism without being called a racist?

Sifaoui: Absolutely, I would say that one must criticize Islamism. When I am criticizing Nazism, I am not being anti-German.

MEQ: When did you feel for the first time that you had to criticize Islamism?

Sifaoui: I have always felt that it was a moral duty.

MEQ: Do you believe that moderate Islam exists?

Sifaoui: Of course, it does. If the majority of Muslims were not moderate, Islamists would have destroyed the Western world a long time ago. Despite its technological lead, its nuclear power, and all its armies, the Western world would never be able to face an Islamist world entirely convinced by the terrorist cause. One billion people supporting Al-Qaeda would reduce the rest of the world to ashes. Islam contains violent texts that need not be applicable today. Islam is a religion of moderation. I know because I studied theology for four years.

Perhaps 20 percent of Muslims on the planet must be totally reeducated. We have to fight them politically, ideologically, and also militarily. Western societies do not fight them well; whenever they try to do so, they end up strengthening them.

One proof that moderate Islam exists is the huge number of sympathy messages that I received from Muslim people when my investigative story on Al-Qaeda Salafist networks, J'ai infiltré une cellule islamiste, was broadcast on French television M6.

More...

* Mohamed Sifaoui was born on July 4, 1967, and spent most of his childhood in Algeria. He holds a master's degree in political science and studied theology for two years at the University of Algiers and for two additional years at Zeitouna University's Institute of Theology in Tunis. In 1994, he began work for the Algerian daily Le Soir and survived a February 11, 1996 bomb attack at Le Soir's headquarters at the Maison de la Presse. In 1999, the French government granted him political asylum after he received death threats both from Algerian Islamists and the military. In Paris, Sifaoui works at the French weekly Marianne. Between October 2002 and January 2003, he infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell in France in order to research his book, Mes frères assassins: Comment j'ai infiltré une cellule d'Al-Qaïda. (My assassin brothers: How I infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell)

[link thanks to Solomonia]

Michael Yon reports from Mosul

The pilots were about a half mile away from their parking spaces when the Predator relayed coordinates and the laser code to pilot CW3 Tom Boise, an ex-Special Forces soldier with previous experience in Iraq who seems to know a lot more about the war than most people, and the left-seater was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Carlos Lopez who, when I first met him, was wearing a uniform that said he is an Iraqi interpreter, which Lopez, with a slight afro, got made in order to play practical jokes on new soldiers who are set to arrive. Lopez introduced himself to me as an Iraqi interpreter. First I thought, “Why does a Kiowa unit need an interpreter?” And then, “This guy doesn’t look like any Iraqi I have seen.” Lopez must have seen the strange look on my face because he cracked up laughing. The pilots, when they aren’t killing terrorists, apparently are great practical jokers. Captain Brad Warr, an excellent medical officer I got to know in 2005, told me how the pilots stole the adult-tricycle he rides around base. What Brad failed to explain was how he had first stolen the pilots’ van, and then painted it pink and put hearts all over it. They might not seem like killers. . . .

Tom Boise was piloting and Carlos Lopez was in the left seat for this attack.

The target was about three miles away...

More...

Okay, I thought the Eliot Spitzer story was boring because, you know, it's been done. And, living in Hoboken, I've been seeing cops with Hooters chicks on the front page of the Jersey Journal for weeks...

But it turns out, there are a few mysteries in the Spitzer case..

Like, what did client #9 ask for, anyway? Lots of speculation...

Could it have been kink beyond the pale..?

I was watching a video about the storm that's currently battering Britain - and saw someone surfing out there.

People used to do that in Cape May during hurricane season all the time, but on the British (or Irish) coast? That's a new definition of cold.

Speaking of a new definition of cold - Alan Sullivan on Climate Change..

Michael Totten: In the Villages of Al Anbar

Al Farris looks like a model Soviet city up close and a rounded square from the sky. Saddam Hussein built it to house workers in the now-defunct weapons factory to the east, and they live in neighborhoods called City 1, City 2, City 3, City 4, and City 5. “Socialist living at its finest,” Sergeant Edward Guerrero said as we rolled through the gates in a Humvee. The place made me think of Libya, where I have been, and North Korea, where I have not.

Al Farris was part of Saddam’s attempt to launch Iraq into the sci-fi future before he ruined his country with four wars, two genocides, and an international sanctions regime. It was a failure. Like all utopian cities, Al Farris is dreary.

More...

Jesus wasn't the best politician, but his "He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone.." bit should really apply here. Because that's the only thing that'll keep the usual journalists and politicians from being shocked, shocked about this

Despite the lifting of the headscarf ban, Turkey continues to debate the issue:

Leading academics have warned there could be clashes on campuses and a boycott of classes by some female academics. Since the bill approved by the President Abdullah Gul the universities are divided over lifting the ban. Observers say legal uncertainties further complicate the already sensitive and controversial matter, adding the annulment ruling will help to ease tension.

Legal experts are also divided over the issue. Some say the amendment of two articles of the constitution would be enough to lift the ban, but the rest disagrees, saying the ban was put in place not by a law but by a verdict of the Constitutional Court and a top court and they interpreted that the lifting the headscarf ban in universities will harm Turkey's secular system, which is defined in the 2nd article of the Constitution.

A mass rally is planned:

It will be the second large-scale demonstration against easing the ban - imposed after a 1980 military coup - after a February 2 protest that drew more than 125,000 people...

...But the reform has angered secularists - among them the army, the judiciary and academics - who see the headscarf as a symbol of defiance against the strict separation of state and religion in the mainly Muslim country.

In Turkey, more than in the United States, wearing the headscarf is not just a sign of Muslim identity, it's a sign of sympathy with political Islamism, an ideology that's committed to the destruction of the separation of church (or mosque) and state. Most of the population in Turkey is Muslim, but most women, at least in Istanbul, do not wear headscarves.

During a ride down the Bosphorous, on a crowded ferry, a woman wearing a headscarf was looking for a seat. I shifted a little to give her some space, but everyone around me stayed still. She gave up and looked for a seat somewhere else. Another woman, without a headscarf, came by a few minutes later. Everyone moved over to give her room.

In Comment is Free, Agnes Poirier says interviews Goknur, a PhD student of both Montpellier and Istanbul universities, who describes what feels like being a young woman in Turkey today::

On paper, Turkey is a modern country where women enjoy equal rights with men but in reality, traditions are still ruling the way we live and interact: a woman who chooses not to wear the headscarf is still considered by many as a traitor. Men often don't shake your hand, or simply refuse to acknowledge your presence. Since 1923, the Republic has allowed public places where we're free from the weight of religion but outside of these places, women's life is still very much a daily fight." What does she reply when told that a group of Turkish women who wanted to wear the headscarf had to flee to the UK, and the London School of Economics in particular, in order to study freely, as Madeleine Bunting wrote last week? "The London School of Economics is well-known for its links with Fethullah Gülen, an Islamist Hodja, and those students represent but a marginal group.

[The London school of Economics has more Islamists than Guantanamo]

And since when was wearing a veil a sign of women's freedom? Liberals in Europe should support us, women, who try to make Turkey a modern society, rather than support religious people out of some old-fashioned Oriental romanticism."

Accusing Madeline Bunting, who said:

What Islam is, inadvertently, doing across Europe is exposing the precarious assumptions by which the vast majority of Europeans believed they had dealt with religion - they thought they had got the genie back in the bottle.

..of old-fashioned Oriental romanticism? That's got to hurt.

Via Breitbart:

NEW YORK, March 7 (AP) - (Kyodo)—North Korea admitted to sending engineers to military- related and other facilities in Syria during its recent talks with the United States over its nuclear program, diplomatic sources in New York said Friday.

Pyongyang, however, denied its involvement in Syrian nuclear development, according to the sources.

In the post "Oh, You Meant THOSE Engineers?", John at Powerline says:

Sure, that's plausible. Maybe the Syrians wanted to learn about North Korea's industry-leading flat-panel television technology. Who wants Japanese engineers when you can get access to North Korea's? Or perhaps the North Korean engineers were dieticians--human engineers, so to speak--who could teach North Korea's techniques for making each generation shorter than the preceding one, with a shorter life span, too.

Syria may not be a technological powerhouse, but the idea that it would want North Korean engineering expertise, or North Korean "materials," relating to anything other than nuclear weapons is laughable.

Michael Totten: In the Slums of Fallujah

Bill Roggio: In Pictures: Jemaah Islamiyah

Michael Yon: A Prince and a Soldier

At Commentary, Max Boot says:*

Chalk up another recruit for the idea of using mercenaries to stop the killing in Darfur: the liberal political philosopher Michael Walzer, author of Just and Unjust Wars.

More...

[link thanks to Judith]

From Germany's Veiled Statues

Throughout the night on 6th of March we have successfully continued our statue veiling campaign. With this reappearing action, we want to inspire the public to discussion concerning Islamisation and associated taboo subjects. By veiling statues in Berlin, Braunschweig, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Moscow, Tampere, and Turku, we have expanded our activities to Germany, Finland and Russia within six months.

The aim of the campaign is to refer to the creeping Islamisation endangering the European idea of UNITY IN DIVERSITY and other similar cultural achievements of the liberal thinking world. Particularly, the phenomenom that Muslim women wear increasingly Burqa or headscarfs, is a visible expression of the challenge and threat to our liberal societies with their values such as women´s rights, democracy, liberal and secular thinking...

...We need to consider the Human Rights Charta to be accomplished in its totality everywhere in the world. Neither the Quran nor the Sharia can be seriously put on the same level with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN.

It's a good idea, but it might be more effective if, instead of criticizing the Koran, they compared the effects and actions based on our civil laws to the effects and actions based on sharia-inspired civil laws.

For example, if we compare the UN Human rights charter to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, we can see the faults more easily.

Of the CDHRI, Adama Dieng, a member of the International Commission of Jurists, said:

...the declaration gravely threatens the inter-cultural consensus, on which the international human rights instruments are based; that it introduces intolerable discrimination against non-Muslims and women. He further argued that the CDHRI reveals a deliberately restrictive character in regard to certain fundamental rights and freedoms, to the point that certain essential provisions are below the legal standards in effect in a number of Muslim countries; it uses the cover of the "Islamic Shari'a (Law)" to justify the legitimacy of practices, such as corporal punishment, which attack the integrity and dignity of the human being.

Directly criticizing a holy book leads to the my dogma's bigger than your dogma kind of argument that always goes nowhere.

Otherwise, it's a great idea. We should do it here (of course, we don't have as many naked statues :-)

A UN Security Council resolution condemning the mass murder of Israeli students in Jerusalem was blocked today—by Libya.

UNITED NATIONS, March 6 (Reuters) - The United States accused Libya on Thursday of preventing the Security Council from condemning as a “terrorist attack” a deadly assault on a Jewish school in Jerusalem, but Tripoli called for “balanced action.”

The United States had drafted a statement that was discussed at an emergency U.N. Security Council session called to debate an attack by a Palestinian gunman who killed at least eight people and wounded at least 10 more at an Israeli religious school...

The U.S. delegation had hoped the 15-nation council would unanimously support the text but Libya, backed by several other council members, prevented its adoption.

Several other council members?

This is the woman who should be running our State Department.

[Link thanks to Mara]

Writing for Reason, Todd Seavey takes on the anti-nanotech luddites..

Also thanks to Todd - how can anyone complain about technology when it generates exciting jobs like this?

Via Atlas

Der Spiegel Online has it on March 4, 2008:

Sarkozy´s limited Mediterranean Union is to comprise all 27 EU Countries as well as the countries of the Western Balkans and the Euromediterranean Empire-partners: Mauritania, Morocco Algeria, Tunisia, (Libya underway), Egypt, the Palestinian Autonomy, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey.

Mauritania will be part of this? They still have slavery in Mauritania. (something that even the BBC is willing to acknowledge).

If this goes through, will the Euro-bureaucrats regulate the Arab/Islamic slave trade that's rampant in that section of the world with the same vigor that they use for regulating cheeses and asparagus? (ie. must keep your slaves at a certain temperature, must have your slave purchases regulated by two sets of officials)....

More on the Euro-Mediterranean Free trade zone

Richard Price, author of "Samaritan" and "The Wanderers", on writing:

"I always like to hang out," he said, "because, one, it's a way of avoiding really writing; and, two, sometimes God is a crackerjack novelist and you can plagiarize the hell out of him."

More from: Wandering Byzantium...

Via the Times Online: New York passes law against 'libel tourists'

The bill is intended to amend New York’s so-called "long-arm statute" in order to give the state’s courts jurisdiction over a foreign libel claimant who won a judgment against an author or publisher with sufficient physical or financial ties to the state.

It would allow New York’s courts to declare that a foreign judgment was unenforceable if the courts decided that the libel laws in foreign jurisdictions did not protect freedom of speech and the press to the same extent as the laws in New York and the US....

...Dr Ehrenfeld claimed her book, Funding Evil, in which she makes a series of allegations about the charitable activities of wealthy Saudi businessman Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, was protected under the freedom of speech section of the US constitution...

...The Sheikh has always vehemently denied any link with terrorism, or terrorist support or funding, and claimed that the book was defamatory in suggesting that he supported al-Qaeda and terrorism either directly or indirectly.

In January, Democratic Assemblyman Rory Lancman and Republican Senator Dean Skelos introduced the “Libel Terrorism Protection Act” to remedy what they see as a deficiency in the law.

Mr Lancman said: “This legislation will give New York’s journalists, authors and press the protection and tools they need to continue to fearlessly expose the truth about terrorism and its enablers, and to maintain New York’s place as the free speech capitol of the world.”...

...Mr Mahfouz has had a series of victories in English courts, and in August last year, the Cambridge University Press withdrew all copies of Alms for Jihad, a book which took a similar line to Dr Ehrenfeld.

But some American librarians have refused the publishers’ request to withdraw the book from their shelves and surviving copies are for sale for hundreds of pounds on the internet.

One reader (from London) says:

I would like to request THE TIMES to take a similar stand in England and to encourage MPs and government ministers to support legislation to protect our freedom of speech, as well. What's good for the offspring of English freedoms (America) should be relevant for the Mother Country as well: BRING THE REVOLUTION HOME! SUPPORT FREE SPEECH!

The Saudis export terrorism, but New York exports attitude. Looks like we won this one.

Okay, it was a rough crosswind landing, he bounced a few times and had to add power and do a go-around. I used to do that all the time when I was a student pilot soloing a Cessna.

But this was an Airbus filled with passengers landing in gale-force winds. Lufthansa may be an annoying airline, but their pilots deserve some credit for grace under pressure.

More scary landings..

In Commentary magazine, Michael Totten describes The Moderate Supermajority

My Contentions colleague Abe Greenwald takes a gloomy view of a new Gallup survey that shows 93 percent of the world’s Muslims are moderates. “We need to find out from one billion rational human beings why they largely refuse to stand up for humanity and dignity instead of cowering in the face of fascist thugs,” he wrote.

First of all, I’d like to agree with Abe’s point that even this sunny survey suggests we still have a serious problem. If seven percent of the world’s Muslims are radical, we’re talking about 91 million people. That’s 65 times the population of Gaza, and three and a half times the size of Iraq. One Gaza is headache enough, and it only took 19 individuals to destroy the World Trade Center, punch a hole in the Pentagon, and kill 3,000 people.

Some of the 93 percent supermajority support militia parties such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the West Bank’s Fatah. So while they may be religious moderates, they certainly aren’t politically moderate.

I’m less inclined than Abe to give the remaining Muslims — aside from secular terror-supporters — too hard a time. I work in the Middle East, and I used to live there. I meet moderate Muslims every day who detest al Qaeda and their non-violent Wahhabi counterparts. I know they’re the overwhelming majority, and a significant number are hardly inert in the face of fascists.

More than one fourth of the population of Lebanon demonstrated in Beirut’s Mart