If I listened long enough to you,
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true.
Knowing that you lied, straight-faced, while I cried,
Still I'd look to find a reason to believe.
-- "A Reason To Believe"

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK that a rich and powerful organ grinder like the New York Times spend a little money and hire a "Stupidity Editor" (SE) ? No, not an internal SE, since just riding herd on the anonymous Editorial scribblers would be a full time job for at least five Pulitzer finalists, but simply an external SE to play "Katie, bar the door!" for all the gunk that consistently seeps onto the OP portion of the OP/ED page.

An old friend who works at the New York Times once confessed to me, not without a certain shame, that the overarching game plan of the Times was to become "the national newspaper of teachers and college professors." And in this they are, beyond a doubt, succeeding. But that does not mean they have to give space every other day to the kind of sludge seeping from the hyperbolic sump pumps that ceaselessly churn in the petrified forests of the Groves of Academe.

Today's seepage is entitled, in a heart warming and positive manner, We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran . It was pumped out of the fervid mind of one Barry R. Posen, a professor of political "science" at MIT. It is a soothing, calming item that, blithely overlooking the unremitting dementia that has ruled Iran for decades, purports to prove that a nuclear Iran would simply be a 'management' problem for the Western Elites to 'handle.' On the one hand, the message of the essay is "Don't worry. Be happy," while on the other it is the parallel message of "What? Me worry?"

While there may in some alternate universe be a cogent argument for simply kicking back and letting events in Iran unfold as they will, there's nothing resembling it in Mr. Posen's article. The unstated premise is that an Islamic nuclear weapon developed by the world's leading Radical Islamic state would forever remain specific to that state. This concept evolves from the idea that nation states are still the only social structures of significance in the 21st century. It's a tidy concept, but it is wrong. The globalization of ideology driven by instant communication and the ability of men and material to be anywhere on earth within 48 hours, makes Posen's premise of nation states as the only significant actors on the world stage quaint to say the least.

What the "What? Me worry?" intellectuals in our universities fail to see, or, seeing, fail to credit, is the fact that Islamic Fascism is a global virus which is replicating with all the speed of other viruses in the modern age. Indeed, it is currently outpacing avian flu. While it may take the resources of a state controlled by religious fanatics and fat with oil funds to create a nuclear weapon, the distribution network for such devices is already in place use them.

For example: If we can only monitor 5% of the containers coming into US ports, how many containers can Mexico monitor? Indeed, to deliver a nuclear weapon to Mexico, you don't need a container or a port of entry at all. A fast boat and a beach in the Yucatan will do quite nicely, thank you. Once that's done, you don't have to control a US port to attack the US with a nuclear weapon, or even drive it into the country. You merely have to get it into Mexico and truck it to the border fence at Juarez. Nuclear blasts are not stopped by border guards. [See Nukes South of the Border Will Do Nicely, Thank You published here in November of 2004.]

Still, Posen has no fret in him. He begins with a soothing bromide followed by a hopeful assertion:

Indeed, while it's seldom a positive thing when a new nuclear power emerges, there is reason to believe that we could readily manage a nuclear Iran.

As for Posen's "reason to believe," well there is always a "reason" to "believe" in a positive political outcome when dealing with Fascist states. That this belief is regularly confounded in past and present history has to also be factored into the equation. Mr. Chamberlain had many reasons to believe he had achieved "Peace in our time," when all he had achieved was to give the Nazi state the time and the space to arm and maneuver. Fascist states, during their rise, depend on reasoned diplomacy to buy them time while they fashion a larger stick. When it comes to dealing with Fascists, as a friend of mine once said in a different context, "Hope is the enemy."

The United Nations recently went through numerous iterations of hoping, and threw away many years and many more lives with their "reasons to believe" that Saddam Hussein would comply with their various demands backed by huffery and puffery. It went on believing right up to the point that their mission to Iraq was blown to bits in the early days of the US occupation of Iraq. The UN is currently following the same secular religious notion in the Sudan and elsewhere with similar tragic and criminal results.

Absolutely top-shelf.  Go read the rest.

American Digest 

Tim Graham blogged about it here but a quick survey of MRC analysts reveals MSNBC's Hardball has been the only network show to touch on the remark. This is a far cry from the reaction Pat Robertson received for his controversial remarks especially when you consider the arguable relevance he still has at least compared to Frank's status as a current sitting member of Congress.

At any rate Matthews gets credit for catching the incendiary comment from Frank although he did seem to lend some credence to some of Frank's theories. The following is the full exchange between Matthews and Frank including Frank's lame attempts to defend himself:

Matthews: "Welcome back to Hardball. Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts are under fire again this week as more hearings get underway on Capitol Hill, and storm evacuees are here in Washington by the hundreds to demand more help in rebuilding their homes and their lives. Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank met with some of them yesterday and here’s what he had to say."

[Rep. Barney Frank: "We have to do more, because here’s what I have to say and I hate to have to have to say this about my own government. But I believe what we are seeing with regard to New Orleans and the surrounding area is a policy frankly of ethnic cleansing by inaction."]

Matthews: "Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts here right now to talk about what he meant by that, and what he thinks needs to happen to improve the situation. Congressman Frank, thank you for coming on today. Your remarks yesterday were pretty hot. Do you stand by them?"

Frank: "Yes, although I, I see there was some potential confusion. Somebody wrote me an angry letter today and said were you accusing the president of genocide? To me there was a very sharp distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide. Genocide is, is, is murdering people. By ethnic cleansing, and I welcome a cans to clarify this as certainly what I had in mind, I’m talking about the policy of removing a certain kind of people from an area, not, not killing them, but getting them out. And that’s clearly what’s going on in New Orleans. It is clearly gonna be the case that if the Bush administration is allowed to continue its policy, there will be in New Orleans after this is over, this period of crisis, many fewer lower income people, and particularly many fewer African-Americans. The inaction of the federal government is such that people who were destroyed, whose homes were destroyed, whose lives were devastated by the hurricane, are getting literally no assistance. They got some short-term, temporary relocation assistance, very inadequate, but this administration’s policy is so far literally to do nothing to try to help particularly lower income people build their homes and everybody understands the consequence of that. It’s going to be a much richer, much whiter New Orleans."

Buffoon.

By the way, Barney, hanging out on the club balconies at Bourbon and St. Ann, dangling beads and yelling "Show us your [privates]!" doesn't really count as a fact-finding visit.

Newsbusters

Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled television is still broadcasting human interest pieces highlighting parents' support for their children's decisions to become suicide bombers.

In spite of PA pledges not to incite, an interview broadcast last week featured the mother of Wafa Al-Bas, the 21-year-old Arab woman from Gaza who was arrested at the Erez Crossing in June 2005 wearing a 20-pound (9 kg) bomb under her clothes.

The PA TV interview with Al-Bas' parents, which aired on February 20th, features her mother saying the event was hard for her - not because her daughter was on a suicide mission, but because she was arrested on her way to carry it out.

Al-Bas intended to bomb Be'er Sheva's Soroka Hospital outpatient clinic, where she had been receiving regular treatments for serious burns on 45 percent of her body resulting from a gas stove explosion in her home.

The failed bomber later told Israeli television that her greatest wish was to kill 30 to 50 Israelis, including children. The hospital attack would likely have killed or maimed the very Israeli doctor who had saved her life.

Al-Bas' mother said in the PA TV interview that she knew that her daughter had wanted to be a martyr since she was a little girl, but had not encouraged her - not because she opposed the idea of suicide bombing, but because Wafa was female. "If it was a boy, I would have supported, but since she is a girl I discouraged," she said.

The "Religion of Peace™"

Link 

The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces — or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government. The United States air base at Balad is one of the busiest airports in the world. Camp Victory near Baghdad is impenetrable to serious attack. And even forward smaller bases at Kirkuk, Mosul, and Ramadi are entirely secure. Instead, the terrorists count on three alternate strategies:

First, through the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), assassinations, and suicide bombings, they hope to make the Iraqi hinterlands and suburbs appear so unstable and violent that the weary American public says “enough of these people” and calls home its troops before the country is stabilized. In such a quest, the terrorists have an invaluable ally in the global media, whose “if it bleeds, it leads” brand of journalism always favors the severed head in the street over the completion of yet another Iraqi school.

Second, the al Qaedists think they can attack enough Shiites and government forces to prompt a civil war. And indeed, in the world that we see on television, there is no such thing as a secular Iraq, an Iraqi who defines himself as an Iraqi, or a child born to a Shiite and Sunni. No, the country, we are told, is simply three factions that will be torn apart by targeted violence. Sunnis blow up holy places; Shiites retaliate; and both sides can then blame the Americans.

Third, barring options one and two, the enemy wishes to pay off criminals and thugs to create enough daily mayhem, theft, and crime to stop contractors from restoring infrastructure and thus delude the Iraqi public into believing that the peace would return if only the Americans just left.

...

Most would agree that the Americans now know exactly what they are doing. They have a brilliant and savvy ambassador and a top diplomatic team. Their bases are expertly run and secured, where food, accommodations, and troop morale are excellent. Insufficient body armor and unarmored humvees are yesterday’s hysteria. Our generals — Casey, Chiarelli, Dempsey — are astute and understand the fine line between using too much force and not employing enough, and that the war cannot be won by force alone. American colonels are the best this county has produced, and they are proving it in Iraq under the most trying of conditions. Iraqi soldiers are treated with respect and given as much autonomy as their training allows.

Again, the question now is an existential one: Can the United States — or anyone — in the middle of a war against Islamic fascism, rebuild the most important country in the heart of the Middle East, after 30 years of utter oppression, three wars, and an Orwellian, totalitarian dictator's warping of the minds of the populace? And can anyone navigate between a Zarqawi, a Sadr, and the Sunni rejectionists, much less the legions of Iranian agents, Saudi millionaires, and Syrian provocateurs who each day live to destroy what’s going on in Iraq?

The fate of a much wider war hinges on the answers to these questions, since it would be hard to imagine that bin Laden could continue to be much of a force with a secure and democratic Iraq, anchoring ongoing liberalization in the Gulf, Lebanon, and Egypt, and threatening by example Iran and Syria. By the same token, it would be hard to see how we could stop jihadism from spreading when an army that is doing everything possible still could not stop Islamic fascism from taking over the ancestral home of the ancient caliphate.

Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq — mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of the state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that. After visiting the country, I think we can and will win, but just as importantly, unlike in 2003-04, there does not seem to be much of anything we should be doing there that in fact we are not.

Friday VDH goodness.  Read the rest.

Victor Davis Hanson 

(CNN) -- Hamas deserves to be recognized by the international community, and despite the group's militant history, there is a chance the soon-to-be Palestinian leaders could turn away from violence, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.

Carter, who monitored last week's Palestinian elections in which Hamas handily toppled the ruling Fatah, added that the United States should not cut off aid to the Palestinian people, but rather funnel it through third parties like the U.N.

"If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government," Carter said. (Watch the former president cautiously defend Hamas -- 4:35)

"If there are prohibitions -- like, for instance, in the United States, against giving any money to a government that is controlled by Hamas -- then the United States could channel the same amount of money to the Palestinian people through the United Nations, through the refugee fund, through UNICEF, things of that kind," he added.

Carter expressed hope that "the people of Palestine -- who already suffer ... under Israeli occupation [Lord, what a fuckwit... --ed]-- will not suffer because they are deprived of a right to pay their school teachers, policemen, welfare workers, health workers and provide food for people."

Yeah. Whatever Jimmah.

CNN

With GE's new plastic, self-washing buildings, cheap diagnostic chips, and free-flowing honey jars are possible.

By David Talbot

If you've ever despaired over getting the last drop of ketchup or detergent out of a plastic bottle -- or happen to be a microfluidics researcher wondering how you'll ever mass-produce a cheap diagnostics chip -- scientists at GE may have a plastic for you.

Company researchers have come up with a way to process a common polymer so that it repels fluid, even drops of honey roll right off. The resulting property is called "superhydrophobicity " -- or extreme repelling of water-based fluids -- beyond even that of a freshly waxed car.

[Click here to view images.]  

While several existing engineered materials behave this way, the GE accomplishment is noteworthy because it was done with an inexpensive plastic, GE's Lexan, that's normally "hydrophilic," meaning water spreads out on contact, not something that's "hydrophobic" to start with, such as Teflon or silicone-based materials. These latter materials are far more expensive compared with Lexan, a ubiquitous thermoplastic used in products ranging from CDs and DVDs to automotive headlamps, food storage containers, and common household appliances.

While GE is not predicting specific applications yet, a few are theoretically possible. A cheap superhydrophobic plastic could be used in food containers from which every last bit of ketchup or syrup would flow right out. It could also allow for a building panel that repels water so efficiently that rain would wash away dirt -- making it essentially self-cleaning.

Such a material could be a bonanza for medicine, too. In the field of microfluidics, superhydrophobic materials are needed so that tiny volumes of blood or other body fluids can flow more easily through micrometer-scale channels. Although some superhydrophobic materials are currently available, they're expensive enough to preclude visions of diagnostic gadgets that you could buy in a drugstore. A cheap plastic, though, could make such a disposable diagnostic chip feasible. "It is a big deal and it is important for the microfluidics applications," says Neelesh Patankar, a mechanical engineer and microfluidics at Northwestern University.

Technology Review 

PESHAWAR: A local cleric who offered $1 million and a car for the death of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) cartoonists said on Wednesday that suicide bombers had volunteered to “kill the blasphemers”. Yousaf Qureshi, the imam, or prayer leader, at the 300-year-old Mohabat Khan mosque in Peshawar, announced the reward on Friday.

“The Prophet Muhammad’s blasphemers will not live and there are mujahideen who visited me to assure that such people will not be allowed to live for their unpardonable act,” the cleric told a news conference. “Mujahedin suicide bombers have contacted us and they are ready for this mission. They are college and university students.”

Qureshi is considered close to the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which is at the forefront of the ongoing campaign against the cartoons in Pakistan. The imam also hit back at criticism from both Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu that rewards for murder were forbidden by the Quran. “The OIC secretary-general is ignorant of Islamic teachings,” he said. “There are instances when the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) ordered the killing of persons who were degrading or insulting him. So the Quran has not forbidden murder of someone who is involved in blasphemous acts against the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),” he said.

He said the Danish foreign minister “lost sense” after he realised the strength of the Muslim world’s reaction to the cartoons. The only solution to the crisis was the trial of the blasphemers under Islamic laws, Qureshi said. “Nothing else is acceptable other than capital punishment under Islamic laws to the cartoonists,” he said. staff report

The "Religion of Peace™"

The Daily Times 

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.

The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.

We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.

Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind -- images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.

The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects -- stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.

In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation's efforts -- and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike -- the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.

But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.

Go read the rest. 

When Harry Whittington strode out of the Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, wearing a blazer, a crisp white shirt and a smile, as well as a bruise and a few small scabs, to face the media last Thursday, the whole artful and painfully constructed edifice of the liberal communications industry and their Democratic hand maidens came crashing down around them.

With Harry walking into the daylight under his own power, alone, sans wheelchair, without an iron lung, without a company of white suited orderlies and paramedics to brace him, with nary an IV bottle and hose in view, without sunglasses, without constant medical attention, without a single tremor or palsied movement, without a give-away halt to his gait, with not a single visible bandage in sight, with his hair combed perfectly, the jig was up on all of the liberal media’s monkey business and clowning around.

It also became painfully obvious, even for the most backward and ill educated red state rube, that the daily death watch was over, that the high stakes mortality pool had come to an end, that the heart attack which was expected to claim the life of Mr. Whittington was firmly relegated to the past and that the high-temperature media frenzy was instantly put on ice. And, further, that this particular instrument of destruction - this latest and greatest, almost nuclear, weapon, which had fallen into the hands of the Democrats and their media tools courtesy of the Vice President, who appears to be so heedless of their power and influence that he tended to his friend before he deigned to inform them, the loyal liberal protectors and Myrmidons of progressive thought - was spent.

Read the rest. 

When Shane called Wilson a ‘dirty Yankee liar,’ Wilson reached for his shootin’ iron. What else was he to do? He had been insulted; demeaned; defamed. And unless he responded immediately to the challenge he would never be able to show his face in Grafton again. Suing was out of the question, lawyers were expensive, and Shane didn’t have a pot to boil coffee in. So Wilson went down to the hardware store and bought some bullets. His honor was at stake—such as it was. 

On May 20, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) rose in the Senate to trash the Kansas-Nebraska Act. During the course of the speech he made several insulting references to Senator Andrew Butler (D-SC), one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Butler had taken  “…a mistress,” said Sumner, “…who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean, the harlot, Slavery.” Two days later, Butler’s nephew, US Congressman Preston Brooks (D-SC), strode into the Senate chamber and beat Sumner half-to-death with a gutta-percha cane with a solid gold handle. Uncle Andy’s honor has been at stake; Preston ‘Bully’ Brooks’ honor had been at stake; the South’s honor had been at stake—such as it was. 

So it is with Islam. The less honor reposing in a person or a group, the more angry and violent the response to any challenge, real or imagined, by said person or group. 

Voltaire said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He wasn’t there for Shane or Charles Sumner, but it’s the thought that counts. It’s in the First Amendment to the US Constitution: the freedom of Speech; the freedom of _Expression; the freedom of Thought; the freedom to Doodle; the freedom to take photographs of a crucifix suspended in a jar of urine and pass it off as art. One could, theoretically, paint a picture of The Holy Virgin Mary and cover it with elephant dung and call it art. Actually, that’s what Chris Ofili did and he won a prestigious art award for what some called an abomination. (Liberal avant-garde artists seem to be fascinated with urine and feces) 

Art connoisseurs, obviously knowing more about body wastes than the average person, said Ofili’s masterpiece was ‘shocking,’ ‘deliberately provocative’ and was intended to ‘jolt viewers into an expansive frame of reference.’ 

Could that have been the idea behind the 12 drawings of Mohammed that appeared in Jyllands-Posten?  Was it to shock—to provoke—to expand a frame of reference? Now. Absolutely not! It seems more like something the old gang at Mad Comics would have done to while away the time between Smilin’ Melvin and Melvin of the Apes. But shock it did—like a cattle prod going full blast. And provoke? Like poking a stick in a hornet’s nest, though it did little to expand anyone’s frame of reference. Islam is still mired in the 7th Century. But the artists are in hiding, Jyllands-Posten has apologized, the Danish embassy in Damascus was torched, protesters in Pakistan are chanting ‘Death to France’ and ‘Death to Denmark,’ Iran’s precious little rat-bag is waving Islam’s bloody shirt, and poor little England who has been apologizing profusely for three months has, nevertheless, been threatened with another 7/7. 

Wilson would have understood; Bully Brooks would have understood; the Hatfields and the McCoys would have understood. It’s about honor—real, imagined, or mistaken—those who have the least of it spend the most time defending it. Whether it’s Wilson, Brooks or Islam they bully, they threaten, they insist upon having their way. At least six centuries behind the West in social and technological development, Islam cannot catch up with the modern world without embracing the very freedoms and ways of doing things they have despised for 1,400 years. To do so would dishonor them; it would be worse than death. But if they can conquer the dar al-Harb and restore the Caliphate all will be well and the Prophet will be pleased. He may even put out the fuse in his turban. And they were well on their way to doing just that. By subterfuge, by taquiya, by playing on the gullibility of the Noam Chomskys and the John Espositos, by taking advantage of the spinelessness of Europe’s secularized society and the mind-numbing obtuseness of an America opiated on cultural diversity they were within a mere hadith or sura of success when, almost by accident, 12 of the most unlikely Rosa Parks' imaginable sat down at their drawing boards and exposed the ugly face of Islam. And like Wilson and Bully Brooks they responded with violence.

Let it be said: There is no honor in cutting the hands off thieves; there is no honor in the murder of a wife or sister or daughter because of the sexual incompetence of some braying jackass; there is no honor in collapsing or even talking about collapsing buildings on gays and lesbians; there is no honor in locking women up in houses and clothing them in garbage bags so some maladjusted sexist chauvinist pig can feel superior to someone; there is no honor in screaming ‘Death to Israel,’ and ‘Death to America; there is no honor…no honor…no honor…

The mobs rampaging through the streets of Damascus , Tehran and Beirut should serve as a warning to the West. These are not the kind of people a sane person would want living next door. They are mean, nasty, ugly. Satan would have been proud of them; bearded, wild-eyed, irrational…men, youths; mere boys, exuding hatred with every breath. Everywhere one looked one saw men, men…men. Where were the women? The only thing that could possibly ameliorate the savageness of these low-life cretins would have been the presence of women—a lot of them.  The higher the percentage of women in a given crowd, the less the propensity of said crowd to engage in violence. 

Is it possible that 12 cartoon depictions of the Prophet could turn normal everyday men into raving rampaging lunatics—a sort of spontaneous combustion?  Not likely. The kind of hatred exhibited in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere in the Muslim world does not come from the tooth fairy. It has a long gestation period. It has to be imbibed with a mother’s milk. Brainwashing is an art—it takes a long time to put even a small load through the spin cycle. 

And where did the mobs come from so quickly, so spontaneously, so expeditiously? Did they come out of thin air? Didn’t any of those rascals have jobs? Some of them must have been employed somewhere. Did they vacate the counting house, the forge, and the furnace to riot?  No wonder the economies of some Muslim countries rival that of Lower Slobbovia! 

The truth: Muslims cannot be trusted. They practice taquiya instead of honesty; dissimulation trumps frankness; power relationships replace cooperation. They are not like us, they have never been like us, and, chances are, they never will be. It is time to put a halt to Muslim immigration to the United States . Islam has nothing to do with freedom and democracy; it has everything to do with slavery and oppression. If Muslims want acceptance let them publicly renounce the sharia. If the vast majority of the world’s 1.2 billion so-called peace loving Muslims can’t rid Islam of a handful of Jihadists it’s because they don’t want to. A Muslim is no more likely to join America in its war on terrorism than a Nazi in the 1930s would have been to oppose Adolph Hitler.

Seeing as America’s mainstream media lies supine in the face of Islamic terrorism it is up to the Internet—the hackers and the bloggers; the last bastion of freedom of speech—to oppose the coming Caliphate. Whenever a mad mullah opens his mouth to scream hatred of America and Israel , post a picture of Mohammed. Whenever Ibrahim Hoopercrit or Nihad Awad or one of their running dogs of the species espositas jonnicus proclaims Islam to be a religion of peace and toleration, post a picture of Mohammed. Post, post, post! As Abraham Lincoln said, “ America is the last best hope of the world.” 

Shane had good reason to call Wilson a ‘dirty Yankee liar,’ and Charles Sumner had an ever better reason to call Butler ’s gal-friend a harlot. Now it is Mohammed’s turn. A mass murderer, the man responsible for the destruction of the Syriac, Egyptiac and Persian civilizations among others, and for the oppression of more human beings than communism and fascism combined, he deserves it. 

Go to sites:

onejerusalem.com

The Autonomist

Outstanding.

FaithFreedom.org 

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

February 10, 2006, 11:16 AM

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

February 10, 2006, 11:16 AM

ROXANA HEGEMAN

Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. - A federal judge hearing a constitutional challenge to a Kansas law requiring doctors, teachers and others to report underage sex between consenting youths said the state presented no credible evidence that underage sex is always harmful.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten stopped short of issuing a decision from the bench, but he repeatedly interrupted Thursday's closing arguments by Assistant Attorney General Steve Alexander to challenge his assertions.

"Motives are irrelevant - I want to deal with facts," Marten said. "Where is the clear, credible evidence that underage sex is always injurious? If you tell me because it is illegal - I reject that," Marten said.

The lawsuit filed by The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York advocacy group, stems from a 2003 opinion issued by Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline's opinion requiring health care providers and others to tell authorities about consensual sex by underage youths.

The group contends that forced reporting discourages adolescents from seeking counseling and medical treatment and violates their rights to informational privacy.

The Attorney General's Office contends the statute requires mandatory reporting because sex is inherently harmful to underage children. In Kansas, the age of consent is 16.

At issue in the Kansas case is what the Legislature meant when it wrote the statute to say that doctors and others must have a "suspicion of injury" caused by abuse and neglect to trigger mandatory reporting.

Marten has repeatedly asserted during the two-week trial that wording appears to indicate that the Legislature meant to vest some discretion. On Thursday, he said he would extend that same discretion not only to health care providers but also to teachers, social workers, firefighters and others required by law to report child abuse.

Bonnie Scott Jones, the attorney representing the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in closing arguments that before Kline issued his 2003 opinion, health care providers and others could exercise judgment about what to report. She said they have never been offered assurances they would not be prosecuted if they failed to report consensual sex among minors.

"The Kline opinion has very much changed the legal landscape in Kansas," Jones said.

Wow.  Thoughts on this? 

Link 

The global reaction to the uproar over the "12 Satanic Cartoons" demonstrates a growing Western embrace of the mentality of Islamic "dhimmitude" subtly disguised as political correctness.

Under Islam, a "dhimmi" is a non-Muslim living in conquered Muslim lands. "Dhimmis" are permitted limited freedom of religion, provided there is no conflict with Islamic laws governing such things as religious symbols and images. However, a dhimmi has virtually no rights in actual practice. The word of one "offended Muslim" can send a dhimmi to death.

Historically, Jews living as dhimmis in Muslim countries have been subjected to daily humiliations that reduced life to a perilous uncertainty. They are required to pay a very high tax called the "jizra" for the "privilege of living among Muslims."

This latest example of Muslim intolerance and violence over any hint of insult to their religion displays clearly for all to see that their core beliefs inspire hatred and violence.

The behavior of the vast majority of Muslims puts the lie to "the political correct image of Islam as inherently peaceful and tolerant." Yet, the continuing advance of this patently false idea by Western leaders, despite the total lack of evidence to support it, is an admission that we're all dhimmis now.

It is evidence that we've voluntarily submitted most of our culture to "Islamic dhimmitude," by censoring those who dare to point out the inherent contradictions evident in the continually repeated myth that Islam is basically tolerant and peaceful. It is a myth driven by fear of Muslim violence and terrorism.

A Christian fundamentalist is one who adheres to the fundamentals of Christianity. A Jewish fundamentalist is one who adheres to the fundamentals of Judaism. There is no other logical understanding of the terms.

If an Islamic fundamentalist is one who adheres to the fundamentals of Islam, then a "moderate" Islamic majority means a majority of Muslims reject Islam's fundamental teachings. This is so self-evidently circular that it makes one dizzy to contemplate.

There was a scene in the old '60's series "Star Trek" in which an evil android was defeated by Mr. Spock's circular logic. Mr. Spock told the android that he (Mr. Spock) was lying when he said he was lying. Sorting it all out made the android's head explode.

Figuring out how a religion's fundamentals can inspire terror while arguing it is fundamentally "peaceful and tolerant" makes me feel like that android.

You're not alone, Mr. Lindsey.

Read the rest. 

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada began receiving campaign contributions from at least four American Indian tribes only after they hired Jack Abramoff, Republicans charged this week in an effort to tie the Senate Democratic leader to the disgraced lobbyist.

On Thursday, Reid shrugged off questions about money he received from tribal clients of Abramoff, who pleaded guilty last month to three felonies after being accused of exchanging meals, travel and gifts for political favors.

Advertisement

"I've said that I received money from Indians in the past and will continue to do so," Reid said.

Asked what he would say about tribes who did not give him money until after hiring Abramoff, Reid said, "What I've said all along."

The National Republican Senatorial Committee this week revived a charge that Reid received more than $50,000 from four tribes with gaming interests between 2001 and 2004 after they hired Abramoff. The Nevadan had received no money from those tribes before then, Republicans said.

The donations included:

• $19,500 from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians of California.

• $5,000 from the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana.

• $7,000 from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

• $19,000 from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.

"Harry Reid's ties to Jack Abramoff are too substantial for him to dismiss with Washington, D.C., denial and hypocritical accusations," Republican spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

Reid has acknowledged receiving $61,000 from tribal clients and lobbying colleagues of Abramoff. He has said the money was legally raised, that he has done nothing improper and does not plan to refund the donations.

An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign watchdog group, shows that Indian gaming tribes as a general proposition increased their political donations substantially since the late 1990s, spreading money wider and deeper among members of Congress.

Oooooops!  Not one dime, eh?

 LV Review Journal

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com" title="http://www.JewishWorldReview.com" target="_blank"http://www.JewishWorldReview.... |

Sparks sure fly when the premodern world of religious piety and the postmodern world of Monty Python collide. Middle Eastern Muslims have demonstrated, threatened, boycotted and burned in their fury over European newspapers republishing months-old distasteful cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Stunned, European diplomats have tried in vain to explain to Arab ambassadors that, in the West, governments neither own nor muzzle an often unwise and tasteless press. Hurt feelings and much worse are the price we are supposed to pay for free expression so central to consensual government. Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Jews or Muslims in secular democracies simply don't burn foreign embassies when their faith is impugned in the free press.

Nor did the offended wish to hear that the intent of the cartoons, originally published in September by a Danish newspaper, was to ridicule extremists who use religion to justify terrorism and the killing of civilians, rather than gratuitously to insult Islam.

We are seeing an escalating clash of civilizations — against a tense backdrop of the Iranian government's call for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, the election of Hamas terrorists in the Palestinian territories, and Western efforts to protect the new democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq from jihadist bombers.

There is a great asymmetry in all this. Western notions of cultural tolerance and liberality are the benchmarks Muslims employ to condemn insensitive European journalism. Meanwhile, the Islamic Middle East is given a pass, as anti-Semitic state-run papers there daily portray Jews grotesquely.

As the controversy heated up, the word globalization came up a lot, with many banally noting that "we are all interconnected now" — and that what a small newspaper prints in a small country like Denmark can affect the entire world. But that is only half-true.

Globalization is, in fact, mostly a one-way process. Western technology, democracy, freedom, capitalism and popular culture continue to infect the non-West. Once there, they often bulldoze time-honored culture. That resulting clash leads to a radical divergence of perceptions. The cocky West assumes non-Westerners wish to emulate it. They often do, but also soon resent deeply their newfound dependence and appetites for what is often antithetical to traditional life.

Europeans and Americans rarely demonstrate when Jesus, the pope or the Jewish faith is lampooned abroad. In contrast, the insecure and touchy Middle East is hypersensitive about any affront to its religion — or honor. Thus the mere possession of a Bible is felonious in Saudi Arabia, while mosques typically operate without scrutiny in once-Christian Europe.

There is also an expectation that Westerners, purportedly soft and decadent, will apologize for the excesses of their culture, while Muslims abroad need not for the extremism of an Iranian president promising another genocide or Osama bin Laden's periodic vow to murder thousands more Americans.

What can say?  It's VDH, go read the rest!

Victo David Hanson 

IBM will unveil a new processor on Tuesday that will be twice as fast as those of competitors such as Sun, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and AMD when it appears in 2007, according to the group.

IBM's Power6 chip is a radical departure from the trend among microprocessor makers to produce more energy-efficient chips after their race to increase speeds created overheating problems.

IBM said it had broken through energy and heat barriers with the Power6 to achieve speeds of between 4 and 5 gigahertz – more than double the performance of the next generation of Intel's Itanium chip, planned at less than 2GHz.

Tasty...

Financial Times 

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Mandating costly alternatives to oil in the name of a cleaner environment could impoverish people and lower living standards, the Saudi Arabian oil minister said on Tuesday.

"I believe that we should not impoverish people in the name of a cleaner environment," Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi told an energy conference. "Lowering living standards, or limiting peoples' ability to rise out of poverty, in order to improve the environment trades one potential health hazard for another."

He said that would be the result of asking consumers to give up oil for a less efficient and more costly alternative fuel that would otherwise be uneconomical.

Naimi's comments came a few days after U.S. President George W. Bush said America was addicted to Middle Eastern oil. He also committed to raising alternative energy funding by 22 percent for clean coal, wind and solar power, ethanol, and fuel cells.

Or deprive you of building 100 room palaces, Abdullah?   Feh!

Reuters 

We are told that blogs are the future, and since I plan on spending considerable time in the future I very much want to like the chatty Internet websites. But I don't.

In fact, I find them disturbing. And that was before I tracked quite a number of them through the election. Now I am beginning to think that if blogs are the future, meaningful public debate is history.

What scares me is the extremism so common in the political blogosphere. The tone of absolute certainty. The disdain for anyone who thinks differently. The refusal to acknowledge the existence of uncomfortable facts. The minds encased in the hard amber of ideology.

Last November, on what was once October Revolution Day, I stood outside Red Square in Moscow with a group of grey and wrinkled Communists who shook their bony fists at bored police officers and shouted, "The victory of socialism is assured!"

I didn't realize it at the time but the old Bolshies were blogging without computers.

Yes, there is value in the medium. As bloggers say -- over and over and over again -- the great thing about blogs is that they democratize the media.

Mass communication was once something only done by a lucky few. Like, um, me. But today, anyone with a computer and a couple of bucks can publish anything and distribute it around the world. In theory, that's a magnificent thing. More voices, more ideas, more perspectives should produce a richer public dialogue. Certainly there are corners of the Internet, including a few blogs, that are delivering on that promise.

But the explosion of voices on the Internet also made it possible for people to obtain all their news, analysis and opinions exclusively from like-minded sources. Liberal or Conservative. Millennialist or atheist. Whatever your bent, there is a whole universe of information produced by your kind for you.

You need never hear a different perspective. Never read a contrary view. Never be challenged by facts that don't fit your conclusions. And that is precisely how most of the political blogosphere is developing. A recent study of 40 American political blogs -- 20 conservative, 20 liberal -- found the sites were densely linked to others within their ideological camp but had virtually no contact outside.

Dear Dan,

You're wrong.  I linked to your smug, elitist, diatribe...  Heh!

Canada.com 

Radical Danish imams have deliberately incited hatred against Denmark, the country that had hospitably welcomed them in. To this end, while on a visit to Arab countries last month, they added three false, extremely offensive Muhammad “cartoons” to the twelve relatively mild ones published by Jyllands-Posten last September [see the latter here, halfway down the page].

One of the three additional cartoons [we linked to them in this article], which the imams distributed on a faxed image of appalling quality, was said to be a depiction of Muhammad with a pigsnout. When the Danish press discovered the three false so-called Danish cartoons, the imams refused to say where they had got them. They claimed, however, that the false cartoons were genuinely Danish and had been added to “give an insight in how hateful the atmosphere in Denmark is towards Muslims.”

The Brussels Journal has always doubted whether the cartoons added by the imams were genuine. Whenever we mentioned them we explicitly wondered whether they were not “of the imam’s own making.” Certain Western mainstream media, however, such as the Australian network SBS (and even, we have been told, the BBC) authoritatively declared that the pigsnout was one of Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons.

Yesterday an American blogger discovered where the “pigsnout Muhammad” comes from. It has no relation to Muhammad whatsoever, it is not even a cartoon, but a fax image of a photo of a French clown performing at a pig festival.

Read more at The Brussels Journal 

And those are just the ones fool enough to admit to the pollster what they were thinking. Tiny Minority of Extremists Update: "Poll shows voters believe press is right not to publish cartoons," from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Interested:

Nearly two fifths (37 per cent) believe that the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target “as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East”. Moreover, only 52 per cent think that the state of Israel has the right to exist, with 30 per cent disagreeing, a big minority. One in six of all Muslims questioned thinks suicide bombings can sometimes be justified in Israel, though many fewer (7 per cent) say the same about Britain. This is broadly comparable to the number justifying suicide attacks in ICM and YouGov polls of British Muslims after the July 7 attacks.

The cartoon crisis which has left embassies ablaze and sparked riots from Beirut to Bangkok and Jarkarta was a set-up job, planned and executed by a group of Muslim leaders from Denmark in concert with leading lights of the Islamic world.  The conspirators used supremely inflammatory phony cartoons never published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten to gin up a campaign of violence and intimidation against Denmark, the EU, and the West.

The instantaneous availability of Danish flags for burning in obscure outposts of the Muslim world suggests a great deal of advance planning. 

Those involved in taking a four-month-old incident in far-away Denmark and making it into a crisis roiling the streets of Beirut, Bangkok and Jakarta among other Muslim outposts, include Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sunni Islam’s most influential scholar, Yusuf al Qaradawi, according to Lorenzo Vidino of the Counter Terrorism Blog.

These are very heavy hitters in the umma, the world community of Muslims.

Two questions raise themselves about this crisis manufactured by a who’s who in the world of Islam: Why was a plan created and put into effect? And why now?

The answer to the second question is likely found in the need to whip up Muslim unity in the face of several severe challenges on the world’s political agenda. As Richard Baehr notes today, the new Hamas government of the Palestinian territories needs to continue on life support via cash infusions from the European Union and other donor nations, including the United States. Fear and chastening have usually worked to unlock resources and sympathyin the past, so why not now?

Meanwhile Iran is facing potentially serious consequences from the referral of its nuclear program to the UN Security Council, not to mention a possible military attack on said facilities. Syria and its clients in Lebanon also face ongoing pressure and consequences from the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. At such a time, anti-Western anger serves to unite the fractious Sunni and Shia elements of the umma, and make the infidels more cautious about the Arab or Muslim street, in case they plan any actual use of force or other compulsion.

These answers to question 2 alone may seem to be sufficient to generate an answer to question 1. But there are longer term, far more important strategic goals being advanced, matters beyond the immediate tactical considerations of hardball geopolitics, no matter how serious these immediate concerns may be.

 Very insightful.  Go read the rest.

American Thinker 

Happy Ashura everybody!

Their father's hell did slowly go by.

And feed them on your dreams,

The one they picks, the one you'll know by!

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,

So just look at them and sigh and know they love you!

Thanks to Terp Mole 

Just when you though it couldn't get any more bizzare...

Imams Gone Wild! 

The publication of these cartoons of Mohammed are not the reason for the rioting and violence.  They are the excuse.  Islamic protesters burned down the Danish consulate in Beirut in response to those cartoons making fun of Islam. Riots are ongoing, cars are being overturned and at least one person is dead in Afghanistan. Pakistan is boycotting prescription drugs from companies based in countries where the cartoons were published. 

This is absolutely insane. What we are witnessing is the ultimate conclusion to militant political correctness. Many leftists would excuse this behavior...because these Muslims are "offended." Know this: in the world of liberals, there is no greater crime known to man than offending Muslims. The more violent radical Islamists become the more the politically correct elements make excuses for them.  

This religion is rapidly getting out of control.  Muslims can murder 200 school children and their parents, shooting kids in the back, in Chechnya and the Muslim world hardly pauses a moment to notice.  Let someone draw a cartoon of their so-called  "prophet" and they start burning embassies and looking for Europeans to kidnap or murder.  The more our Western leaders make excuses for their behavior, the bolder they become.  These Muslims torching embassies and rioting around the world are not what we might consider highly educated.  They have little or no understanding of Western culture and the concept of freedom of the press is entirely beyond the grasp of most of them.  They believe that anything printed in any newspaper constitutes the official opinion of that country's government.

These riots and demonstrations are not about those cartoons, they are about freedom.  One protestor was seen carrying a sign that said Freedom go hell.  To these Islamic jihadist criminals freedom is an enemy.  A religion that says you must either convert, kill or enslave those who don't believe as you is not a religion that would embrace freedom.  Whether the politically correct like it or not, this is a religion that is anathema to our way of life and the liberties we hold dear.

There was another sign being carried by these Islamic rioters.  It said "Europe.  Take some lessons from 9/11."  I sure I don't have to explain the threat implicit in that sign.  Actually, this is a good thing.  I wish the Islamic radicals would wave more of those "Europe.  Take some lessons from 9/11" signs.  The train bombings in Spain and the subway bombings in London apparently weren't enough.  Maybe these riots will convince the Euro-snobs that Islamic fanatics and their myrmidons pose as much a threat to them, perhaps more of a threat, as they do to the people of the United States.  

Who knows ... maybe even some Americans will wake up.  Democrats, for instance.

Don't hold your breath, Neal...

NealzNuze 

http://news.search.yahoo.com/...++british&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&c =news_photos

...Muslim outrage huh.  OK ... let's do a little historical review.  Just some lowlights:

• Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia.  A Christian school.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt.  No Muslim outrage.
• A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India.  Kills six.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia.  Muslims shoot children in the back.  No Muslim outrage.
• Let's go way back.  Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses.  Over 700 are injured.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons.  No Muslim outrage
• Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge.  No Muslim outrage.
• Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed.  Muslims are outraged.

Dead children.  Dead tourists.  Dead teachers.  Dead doctors and nurses.  Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. no Muslim outrage ... but publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and all hell breaks loose.

Come on, is this really about cartoons?  They're rampaging and burning flags.  They're looking for Europeans to kidnap.  They're  threatening innkeepers and generally raising holy Muslim hell not because of any outrage over a cartoon.  They're outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged.  You don't really need a reason.  You just need an excuse.  Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult is to a jihadist what tailgating is to a Steeler's fan.

I know and understand that these bloodthirsty murderers do not represent the majority of the world's Muslims.  When, though, do they become outraged?  When do they take to the streets to express their outrage at the radicals who are making their religion the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule?  Islamic writer Salman Rushdie wrote of these silent Muslims  in a New York Times article three years ago.  "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"

Boortz.com 

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

February 1, 2006, 7:24 PM

Instead, Pandora says the service is driven by the listener's own musical preferences, and these attributes, or 'genes' as the company calls them, helps decipher what that person likes to hear.

"The best way to think of it is as primary colors," Pandora's Chief Strategy Officer and founder Time Westergren told BetaNews in a recent interview. For example, voice has 30 attributes, each a different aspect of that subject, including bravado, range, ornamentation, pitch, and tamber among others.

The company has been licensing the technology behind the Music Genome Project since shortly after its launch in December 1999. However, the consumer product has only been in existence for several months.

Pandora's online service takes the concept of Internet radio one step further. Whereas current offerings only allow the listener to hear what the DJ has programmed, the technology behind the Music Genome Project gives the user full control.

"When you enter an artist or song in Pandora, we use that song's 'DNA' as a guide on how to sequence songs for you," Westergren explained. The playlist is then streamed to the user. From there, the listener can give a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" -- much like TiVo -- to tell the service if its playing the right songs.

Be DARN careful with this folks, more addictive than crack.  ;)

Beta News 

Pandora Media 

Two militant Palestinian groups have threatened Norwegian, Danish and French diplomats as tensions continued to rise over published caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.

"All citizens and diplomats from these countries can be seen as a target for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade," read a joint statement from the two groups.

A PRC spokesman, Abu Mudjahid, emphasized that the threat pertained to citizens of these countries who are in the Palestinian territories, and that the threat was extremely serious.

"We demand that the offices and consulates of these three countries close. If this does not occur, we will not hesitate to destroy them," the statement read.

The groups also demanded a boycott of Norwegian, Danish and French products and warned against their sale.

The PRC is an armed Islamist group while the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade has its origins in Fatah, the largest and most secular Palestinian group, which lost last week's election for a new national assembly.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD) has no immediate comment on the matter as it has just been informed about it," said UD information adviser Rune Bjåstad.

Color me shocked. 

AFTENPOSTEN

By Henryk M. Broder

A couple of simple caricatures printed in a Danish newspaper has the Arab world outraged. Unfortunately, the paper apologized for the Muhammad-critical cartoons and democratic values lost out to totalitarian ideology.

In Germany and the rest of free Europe, one likes to talk about the necessity of learning from the past, of helping newcomers to the democratic club and of supporting stable democracies. Over sixty years after the end of the Nazi regime, everyone&nbs p;is determined not to let such a group rise to power again.

But the reality is that our real options when confronted with such a force are somewhat modest. A dozen faux-Nazis being elected to the Saxony state parliament was enough to plunge the established parties into frenetic helplessness. The late German television personality Johannes Gross -- a political conservative who possessed an acute sense of history -- once said: "The resistance to Hitler and his kind will only grow the further the Third Reich recedes into the past."

One shudders to imagine how the political classes would react if the country were threatened -- from the right or the left -- by a real totalitarian movement.

What one can and must consider, however, is the reaction within Germany if a mainstream daily paper -- like the Frankfurter Rundschau or the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example -- were to print a dozen or so caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in much the same way as such caricatures of Jesus, the Pope or other religious figures are published all the time. One only has to take a quick glance over Germany's northern border into Denmark, where Jyllands Posten allowed itself just such caricatures four months ago. A storm of indignation has been raging in the Muslim world since -- as though a second Abu Ghraib had been discovered in a suburb of Copenhagen.

11,000 jobs versus freedom of speech

Yesterday, Jyllands Posten gave in and apologized for the caricatures. The drawings, Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste wrote on Tuesday, were not intended to be offensive to Muslims the world over and the paper "takes exception to symbolic acts suited to demonize specific nationalities, religions and ethnic groups."

The concern here, of course, is not to elevate cultural sensitivity above freedom of opinion. Denmark is already concerned about the potential loss of some 11,000 jobs resulting from boycotts against Danish products in the Islamic world. Earlier this week, a Danish dairy closed down its production in the Saudi Arabian capital Riad as a result of the boycott. 

Obviously concerned about the threats against the Danes, the Norwegian government -- rich and not reliant on Arabian crude oil -- opted to take preventative action. A statement released by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry via the country's ambassadors stationed in Islamic countries indicated that Norway "understands the anger and dismay" that Muslims feel as a result of the drawings.

The impulse for the Norwegian statement was provided by an Oslo newspaper, which published the drawings out of solidarity with Jyllands Posten. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store criticized the decision as being "not positive for the dialogue between different cultures and people of different religions."

But what should one call such a statement? Preventative capitulation? Suicide out of fear of death? A contribution to a multicultural life in which one side acts insulted and the other side promptly takes distance from itself? Or perhaps simply: The interplay of extortion and opportunism.

Salman Rushdie as a precedent

It's not the first time that a democratic public has chickened out in the face of a totalitarian-religious disposition. More than 20 years ago, German television personality Rudi Carrell showed a short, satirical film involving the Ayatollah Khomeini and women's bras. The crisis that resulted could only be defused by an apology from Carrell.

When Salman Rushdie published his book "Satanic Verses" in 1988, the Muslim world was so angered that a "fatwa" was issued against him. Rushdie had to live in hiding for years, and even today he doesn't go out in public without the protection of body guards.

Back then, of course, the public was split. Whereas the liberal intellectuals expressed understanding for the reaction of the insulted Muslims and thought that the Muslim Rushdie should never have gone so far as to insult his own, a number of European publishing houses showed solidarity with Rushdie and brought out special editions of "Satanic Verses." The German daily Die Tageszeitung printed excerpts from the book on its front page and the Frankfurt Book Fair barred Iranian publishers from attending in 1989. In 1991, the Italian translator of "Satanic Verses" was seriously injured in an attack. His Japanese colleague was stabbed to death.

Today, at least outside of Norway, there is precious little solidarity with Jyllands Posten. The conservative daily Die Welt was the only German paper to show enough courage to reprint the caricatures. In Paris, France Soir stepped up to the occasion. Other major papers, it seems, are cowering ou t of fear of triggering a boycott and endangering the profits of gummy bears and German coffee filters in Arabic countries.

Germany's leftist Die Tageszeitung went one dubious step further, opting to side with a totalitarian ideology rather than defend the right to free speech. A Tuesday editorial in the paper began with the sentence: "The Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten -- which is considered the mouthpiece of right-reactionaries in Denmark -- knew what it was getting itself into..." Whether the paper is right wing is beside the point. Either way, the sentence means that freedom of opinion is a privilege for left wing publications like Die Tageszeitung, but is restricted for those on the other side of the political spectrum. 

Wow.  Some of Europe is starting to wake up.

Stop appeasing these 7™  century barbarians.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0" title="http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0" target="_blank"http://service.spiegel.de/cac...,1518,398532,00.html 

By PAMELA HESS
UPI Pentagon Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- The American media stood up and took notice when an improvised explosive device grievously injured an ABC News crew Sunday.

In Iraq, and throughout the military, there is sympathy and concern for anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, but there is also this question:

"Why do you think this is such a huge story?" wrote an officer stationed in Baqubah, Iraq, Monday via e-mail. "It's a bit stunning to us over here how absolutely dominant the story is on every network and front page. I mean, you'd think we lost the entire 1st Marine Division or something.

"There's a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That's a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here."

At least 2,242 troops have died in Iraq since the war's start, 1,753 of them killed in action. Another 16,000 have been injured, half of them seriously enough to require evacuation from the battlefield. According to the Pentagon, 60 percent of the deaths are the result of IEDs. IEDs have injured more than 9,200 troops, nine times more than gunshots.

"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.

The unavoidable consequence of war is this: People are savagely wounded and killed. Soldiers in Iraq watching the coverage on satellite television and reading the news on the Internet are getting the impression that the press has only just discovered this fact.

It's not quite as simple as that, of course. Military personnel often express frustration that the media harps on military casualty reports at the expense of what they consider their successes in Iraq.

However, as it promoted its story on Woodruff and Vogt Monday evening, the local ABC News affiliate in Washington showed a montage of exploding vehicles in Iraq -- footage culled largely from insurgents, who videotape the attacks and post them on Web sites to advertise or magnify their successes.

"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks anyone," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.

There.  Clarified that quote for you soldier.

Go read the rest. Suprisingly insightful for UPI.

 ;http://www.upi.com/SecurityTe...