28 April 2006
Remember when protestors fought the police?
Animal activists bit off more than they could chew this morning when they chained themselves to the killing area of an abattoir at Ipswich in south-east Queensland.
The 12 protesters got a fright when meatworkers took matters into their own hands and used angle grinders to cut the chains off the activists so they could get back to work.
[…]
Protester Angie Stephenson says it was terrifying.
“The workers, they were standing around cheering and whooping and yelling and making lewd comments so we had to call the police and tell them to get out here straight away,” she said.
Police escorted the group off the site and no arrests have been made.
I’d type some pithy comment but I’m laughing too hard.
Bank shot
[source]
Haaretz picked up on an Itim report that Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar had $450,000 stolen from his hotel room during a fund-raising trip in Kuwait. But this snippet may be even more eye-opening. Will this point be reported in the Western media?
Itim also reported that an official at the Palestinian Finance Ministry has revealed that, despite its empty coffers, the PA has funded the trip for al-Zahar and his entourage.
Well, yeah, since banks won’t deal with the PA anymore, the bribe money has to be cash.
Maine line of attack
The Media Bloggers Association is getting involved on behalf of Lance Dutson, a blogger in Maine who’s being sued in connection of his serious criticism of certain local government shenanigans.
Hey, search engines:
(Via Dean’s World)
Technical Means
We are experiencing transient failures on this weblog, involving stuck processes. It is being investigated but there is no obvious explanation at present.
As long as they aren't incarcerated at Gitmo, what's the problem?
Our colleagues at HonestReporting Canada noted the following fact in this Toronto Star report. Correspondent Mitch Potter writes:
Egyptian officials have said little about an ongoing and at times draconian military campaign against extremist elements in Sinai in the wake of earlier bomb strikes at Taba and Sharm el-Sheik, including the arrest of as many as 4,000 men, mostly members of Sinai’s tribal Bedouin population.
Can anyone imagine the media reaction if Israel were arrest 4,000 Palestinians in such a short time after a terror attack?
Oooh, oooh, pick me! I know!
P.S. I was going to cite a post at another website in which an Israeli talks about the warm relationship between Israelis and the Bedouin in the Sinai. This is quite possibly related to the article above — “mostly members of Sinai’s tribal Bedouin population”. But that webhost suffered a massive DOS attack this morning and now the website is missing. I presume this means that it was the target and the webhost has moved the website elsewehere to prevent repeats of the large scale outage.
26 April 2006
Planning ahead
For future reference: [source, source]
The 9-11 Commission notes (p. 128):
On November 4, 1998, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of Bin Ladin, charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations. The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hezbollah. The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was “probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qida agreement.” Clarke added that VX nerve precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”
Oh yes, the Iraqi Ba’ath — Al Qaeda connection was a fabrication of the Bush Administration many years before it took office.
Isn't it natural for a cornered animal to fight?
Something extraordinary is happening in global development circles. For the first time since the 19th century, progressive activists are embracing trade as positive tool for change. The global NGO Oxfam is the latest progressive interest group to change its tune. It has launched a campaign to end agricultural subsidies in the developed world.
This could represent a fundamental turning of the tide from a world based on nationalism and violence to a world based on commerce and peace.
Oxfam has a new section on its website devoted to “the private sector’s role in development,” where they acknowledge that “Oxfam GB believes that the private sector plays a central role in development, impacting on or contributing to poverty reduction in many different ways.” The awkward “impacting on,” rather than simply “contributing to,” poverty reduction rings of compromise language, perhaps included to satisfy lingering “old Left” market resentments among certain Oxfam stakeholders, but we should be strictly grateful for the core thesis: “The private sector plays a central role in development.”
In a recent paper, Columbia University political science professor Erik Gartzke shows that economic freedom (as measured by the Fraser Economic Freedom Index) is about fifty times more effective than democracy in diminishing violent conflict. Although it is not literally true that two nations with McDonald’s do not go to war with each other, nations with high levels of economic freedom are far less likely to be engaged in violent conflict than are nations without economic freedom. The democratic peace turns out to be the free market peace.
It is telling indeed that OxFam is forced to use weasely language to describe facts because of ideology.
- It shows that in the past, OxFam was more about politics than results
- It shows that there are a lot of old guard who prefer opinions over facts
- But those types are gradually losing about to a new generation who prefer accomplishment to posturing
More tales from the Great Rope Give Away
[M]ary McCarthy has been given the sack. And the New York Times rushes to her aid, with a three-hankie story on April 23, moistly titled “Colleagues Say Fired CIA Analyst Played by the Rules.” This is only strictly true if she confined her disagreement to official channels, as she did when she wrote to Clinton in 1998. Sadly enough, the same article concedes that McCarthy may have lied and then eventually told the truth about having unauthorized contact with members of the press.
Well! In that case the remedy is clear. A special counsel must be appointed forthwith, to discover whether the CIA has been manipulating the media. All civil servants and all reporters with knowledge must be urged to comply, and to produce their notes or see the inside of a jail. No effort must be spared to discover the leaker. This is, after all, the line sternly proposed by the New York Times and many other media outlets in the matter of the blessed Joseph Wilson and his martyred CIA spouse, Valerie Plame.
I have a sense that this is not the media line that will be taken in the case of McCarthy, any more than it was the line taken when James Risen and others disclosed the domestic wiretapping being conducted by the NSA. Risen’s story is also the object of an investigation into unlawful disclosure. One can argue that national security is damaged by unauthorized leaks, or one can argue that democracy is enhanced by them. But one cannot argue, in the case of a man who says that his CIA wife did not send him to Niger, that the proof that his wife did send him to Niger must remain a state secret. If one concerned official can brief the press off the record, then so can another.
It has long been pretty obvious to me that the official-secrecy faction within the state machinery has received a gigantic fillip from the press witch hunt against Lewis Libby and Karl Rove. What bureaucrat could believe the luck of an editorial campaign to uncover and punish leaking? A campaign that furthermore invokes the most reactionary law against disclosure this century: the Intelligence Identities Protection Act? It was obvious from the first that the press, in taking Wilson and Plame at their own estimation, was fashioning a rod for its own back. I await the squeals that will follow when this rod is applied, which it will be again and again.
Yet another example in the theme of immediate vs. the meta, where the Left simply cannot (or will not) consider things at a more abstract or meta level.
23 April 2006
Friends don't fact check friends
[source]
The NYT’s John Broder and Patrick Healy describe the origins of the life-giving friendship between Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle with a PR-perfect paragraph that should have set off the BS-meter:
The two men first met when Mr. Clinton was running for president in 1992 and touring neighborhoods in Los Angeles that had been torched during riots after the acquittal of several police officers charged with beating Rodney King. Mr. Clinton noticed that some supermarkets were still open, and asked why, his aides recalled. He was told that those stores were not burned because the owner, Mr. Burkle, treated his customers and employees fairly. Mr. Clinton asked to meet him.
Hmm. Too good to check? Not if you have NEXIS! At the time of the riots, Burkle owned a chain of markets called Food 4 Less. (He apparently didn’t acquire Ralph’s markets until 1994.) Here’s the lede paragraph of a June 1, 1992 story in the Orange County Business Journal:
Ron Burkle was in the middle of a meeting in a downtown Los Angeles hotel room when the Rodney King verdict came in last month. As word of the ensuing riots spread, television sets in the room were turned on. Burkle, chairman of La Habra-based Food 4 Less Supermarkets Inc., soon found himself watching intently. Buildings were burning. His buildings.
When the smoke finally cleared, Food 4 Less tallied its losses. The operator of the Boys’ Markets, Viva and Alpha Beta stores that provide inner city residents with most of their groceries had sustained some $ 25 million to $ 30 million in riot-related damage. At the height of the riots, 44 of its stores had been shut down. A handful were burned to the ground. Another dozen were so badly damaged that it would take from a month to several months to make them operational once more.
Is NEXIS too expensive for the NYT? Let’s all chip in and buy them a subscription. …
But they were all numbers, right? So what's the big deal?
[source]
On April 20, the Times ran an article by Jennifer Steinhauer on the problems the City of Houston has experienced in coping with refugees from Hurricane Katrina. A principal theme of the article was that the federal government had failed to come through with needed or promised help:
Seven months after two powerful hurricanes blew through the Gulf Coast, elected officials, law enforcement agencies and many residents say Texas is nearing the end of its ability to play good neighbor without compensation.
[…] Today, however, the paper admitted in its corrections section that it had completely misrepresented the facts:
A front-page article on Thursday about strain on government services in Texas caused by hurricane evacuees misstated the number of evacuee children in Houston public schools and the amount of Federal aid the state has received. The most recent count, in late February, showed 5,475 students, not 30,000. The aid is $222 million, not $22 million.
As Junie B. Jones says: Boom! Do the math. The Times reported that the feds had contributed $733 per student. In fact, the feds have paid $40,548 per student. One can only surmise that the people who run the newspaper are beyond embarrassment.
[…]
Oh, that’s not quite all. Today’s paper included a second correction for another article, published the day after the Houston piece:
An article yesterday about criticism of the Small Business Administration’s response to the 2005 hurricanes misstated the value of loans the agency has provided to victims. It is $842 million, not $336 million.
One is left wondering where the NY Times actually gets its numbers from and why that source (ouija boards?) is considered reliable.
22 April 2006
We just haven't decided how to blame it on Bush yet
[source]
If you want a good sense of where the media’s mind is in the wake of the Mary McCarthy story, check this out . It’s an AP story about McCarthy’s firing. Guess whose picture is at the top? Not McCarthy. Not Dana Priest. Not anybody involved in the story at all, actually. It’s a picture of Scooter Libby — who’s not even mentioned in the article.
You can see a screen capture here
Pulitzer joins Nobel
Dana Priest of The Washington Post, won the best reporting award for revealing that the CIA was using secret prisons in Easter Europe to interrogate terrorists.
In other words, they gave an award to a reporter who got a tip from a government worker who betrayed his or her country by revealing top-secret information. The reporter and The Post, in an effort to become the darlings of left, then splashed said top secret information all over the front page. Who benefited from this “Pulitzer Prize Winning Reporting?” Terrorists who mean to kill everyone in the United States.
Next, you have the New York Times winning a Pulitzer Prize for announcing President Bush’s “domestic eavesdropping program.” Again, a proudly left-of-center newspaper is given a prestigious award for revealing top secret information that can only bring aid and comfort to al Qaeda and other terrorists who mean to destroy us and our allies.
Given that this kind of reporting coincides with declining readership, what can the motivation be except hostility to their own nation and government?
P.S. [source]
The European Union’s antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.
“We’ve heard all kinds of allegations,” the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. “It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”
21 April 2006
Everybody has problems
[source]
[…]
I’m serious, why does Zawahiri insist on making nice with these infidel college dickslaps? Okay, so a few dhimmis throw us a few bucks every month. But Holy fucking Prophet, otherwise they’re as useless as tits on an Imam. “Sorry, Zarkman, can’t help you with the wiring diagrams, my Ph.D. is in deconstructivist semiotics,” whatever the fuck that means. I mean, holy dung, how do these motards chew gum and protest march at the same time? And the ones that actually do get over here never want to volunteer for anything other than being a stupid hostage, and then they start whining for vegan meals and high-speed internet, and then they get all pissy and crying when you actually cut off one of the other’s heads. Helloooooo, Moby McMoonbeam: that’s what you fucking hostages are for. Shit, I swear the only victory we’ve had lately is when Team Satan came and took those Unitarian peace creeps off our hands. Your problem now, dawg.
[…]
It’s always hard to find good help.
It was always about keeping us employed
Page one in the Wall Street Journal today:
Booming Economy Leaves the IMF Groping for Mission
What about the mission of shutting down and getting out of the way?
Because they would all be used up!
Iran’s leaders have reiterated their call for Israel’s annihilation, announcing the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, and winning a seat on the United Nations’ Disarmament Commission.
Maybe the mullahs will describe their genocidal plans for starting a nuclear war as “disarming Israel”. I bet the UN would believe it.
Inadvertent confirmation
In diminishing the effectiveness of his press interactions, the [Canadian] Prime Minister is indirectly encouraging reporters to fan out to look elsewhere for news, a radical notion that’s not in his interest and will lead to scrutiny no administration can sustain.
As noted, ony some one completely encapsulated in the Old Media bubble could fail to see what a damning admission this is. Murrow forbid that any reporter should actually go out and look for news.
20 April 2006
We will sacrifice as many peasants as it takes
Last year, at Doe Run’s invitation, I visited Peru with two Catholic priests, to see the operation firsthand. The environmental compliance work was impressive. However, after we explored the town and met its mayor and numerous citizens, what really stood out were programs whose primary purpose was improving the quality of life in the region.
Doe Run has financed or conducted hundreds of projects, mostly suggested by the locals. It constructed a municipal sanitary landfill, paved roads to reduce dust and accidents, and improved schools, built a youth center and clinic, and helped plant 100,000 trees and acres of flowers.
“Many homes here don’t have bathrooms or even running water,” Nilda Gómez told us. Now families can go to public laundry and shower facilities that cost little or nothing to use.
The company also sponsored cleft palate surgeries for 200 children, and jewelry making, pastry baking, electronics and business management classes for local people. They, in turn, have opened scores of new businesses. Most are home-based, but a bakery now employs eight workers, including Emilia Hinostroza, whose speech disabilities previously had prevented her from holding a job.
To improve agriculture in hamlets up to 30 miles away, Doe Run removed debris from water canals and tunnels; builds reservoirs and irrigation systems; imports better breeds of grass, sheep, alpaca and cattle; trains farmers in land management and animal husbandry; and provides medicines and medical treatment for animals.
The hard work and $140 million investment (through 2005) have improved environmental quality and created a new sense of pride, ownership and hope for the region’s 50,000 people. At a union-organized event, we were mobbed by happy parents and children who shouted “Viva Doe Run” and said their lives had improved more in the past seven years than in the previous 75.
These efforts epitomize “corporate social responsibility.” And yet, the company and community are under constant attack by local Archbishop Pedro Baretto and US-based activists led by Oxfam. They have insinuated themselves as “stakeholders,” say Doe Run hasn’t done enough to address blood-lead levels, and strongly object to the SO2 deadline extension.
In fact, Doe Run made the decades-old lead contamination problem its top priority from the outset. The company tests workers and children regularly, reduced lead emissions at their source, built facilities that ensure workers don’t take contaminants home, and initiated programs to clean streets and homes of accumulated contamination. Blood-lead levels now meet US (OSHA) guidelines for nearly all workers, and the children’s blood-lead levels are improving.
Frustrated that the union and residents overwhelmingly support extending the SO2 deadline, the activists constantly lie about these health issues and Doe Run’s efforts and intentions. Many suspect they also want to turn public opinion against mining and foreign investment, and tilt Peru’s presidential race toward Ollanta Humala, a left-wing Hugo Chavez protégé.
Liberation Theology was never about helping the poor. It was always about the practitioners and their egos.
Mullahocratic Craziness as she is spoke
A nice selection of quotes from the mullahocracy. It continues to be stunning to see alledged peaceniks and disarmament types openly back a regime that is openly stating that it wants to start a nuclear war.
The essential flow of the issue
I suspect we invaded Iraq because 9/11 proved the Islamic world needed an enema and Iraq, by reason of its location and indefensible government, was the best place to put the hose.
First step, realizing there is a problem
[source]
Friday sermons from around the Islamic world used to be circulated fairly regularly by MEMRI and others; you can search the archives here and find some hair-raising examples. But in recent months few have come to light; apparently someone in the PR department realized just how damaging the publication of these sermons in the West was to the jihad cause.
This is a sign of losing, not winning, for the Caliphascists. The first step in delegitamizing an ideology is to cause it to be unspeakable in polite company.
Unrecognized territory
[source]
The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel will revoke the residency rights of four Hamas legislators who live in eastern Jerusalem. The four, including Mohammed Abu Tir, currently receive Israeli social benefits, which include payments from the National Insurance Institute for health care. Meanwhile, YNet News notes that Hamas plans to fight the effort in Israeli courts.
One would think that the Israeli government would base its defense on the question “do you recognize the existence and legality of this court?”.
19 April 2006
General knowledge
The only thing that matters to me is that the generals—be they retired or active, Iraq veterans or not—claiming that more troops in Iraq would solve all the problems are dead wrong. Rumsfeld is right. More troops would have inflamed Islamic passions, created a disincentive among the Iraqi Security Forces to improve, cost the U.S. much more money, and—most importantly—cost us many more casualties.
Rumsfeld knew this, and he knew it by studying the last time a great western power fought a protracted Islamic insurgency, which was the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962).
The French had 500,000 troops in Algeria, which at that time had a population of 9 million. If you scale the troop-to-citizen ratio up to match Iraq’s population, that would mean we’d need 1.5 million troops in Iraq. We currently have 138,000.
The French lost 18,000 troops killed over an eight-year period, or 2250 a year. Again, if you scale it up to Iraq ratios, it would be 6750 a year. We’re losing about 700 a year, and that figure is falling.
Between 350,000 and 1.5 million Algerians were killed. To scale those figures up to Iraq, multiply them by three. So far in Iraq, about 32,000 have died, including terrorists.
The French used a policy of collective punishment in Algeria: If a village harbored insurgents, the village was bombed from the air or hit with artillery strikes. The French also tortured suspects to death, rounded people up by the thousands and shot them without trial, and put about 2 million in concentration camps. And they still lost the war.
With less than 10% of the troops (proportionally) that France had in Algeria, and with a policy not of conquest but of partnership, look what we’ve accomplished. More importantly, look at the slaughter we’ve avoided.
Something to thank Rumsfeld—not the generals—for.
A better plan
[source]
(2006-04-19) — A growing movement of retired and active-duty U.S. military officers, angry at the mismanagement, arrogance and even deception that have hampered U.S. efforts to secure peace and democracy in Iraq, have begun quietly calling for the resignation of top leaders they blame for the difficulties.
“I believe that it’s time for them to step down,” said one unnamed retired three-star general. “The editors of The New York Times and Washington Post and the news producers at CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC should resign effective immediately.”
“They’ve formed a tight cabal that focuses only on news that reinforces their neo-journ ideology,” said another unnamed general. “Despite the urgent need for actual reporting from Iraq, they have failed to put enough boots on the ground in country.”
“As civilians, they make editorial decisions without any understanding of history or military strategy,” said another retired officer, “and they’re trying to run the war coverage from hotels in the cloister of the Green Zone, without consulting with our leaders and troops on the frontlines.”
The generals who all requested anonymity, in the words of one, “so I won’t be bothered by a bunch of calls from reporters writing redundant stories,” said the leading news media gatekeepers should be replaced by “more centrist voices” who will be honest with America, and not blindly devoted “advancing the neo-journ agenda.”
“We’d like to see leaders in there who will cover the Iraq story as Americans, or at least as those who believe in liberty,” said one active-duty general who has worked closely with reporters and editors.
Meanwhile, New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. brushed off what he called “the incessant drumbeat of negativity” from opponents of his administration.
“You can’t relieve your top commanders while your side is winning,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “Frankly, the Pentagon doesn’t direct enough attention to the car bombings, sectarian strife and rumblings of civil war which show that we’re making progress in Iraq every day.”
No accountability, even from accountants.
Resisting climate change
Earlier this year Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz decided to discontinue his department’s pre-trial investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm, where audio cassettes with highly inflammatory anti-Semitic content were being sold. After Swedish radio programme Dagens Eko unveiled the contents of the cassettes in November 2005, a charge of racial incitement was filed with the police against the Stockholm mosque.
The Swedish Chancellor of Justice responded by closing the pre-trial investigation on the grounds that “the lecture did admittedly feature statements that are highly degrading to Jews (among other things, they are consistently referred to as the brothers of apes and pigs)” but pointing out that such statements “should be judged differently – and therefore be regarded as permissible – because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict”.
And some wonder why the native turn to nativist political parties.
18 April 2006
Yet he gets paid for it
The Iranians’ call for more nuclear talks is probably a snare, designed to knot up the West in fruitless diplomacy while they accelerate their drive to build atomic bombs. Yet President Bush should take them up on their offer
Because the natural reaction of a liberal to a trap is to walk right in to it.
14 April 2006
The moral worth of world opinion
[source]
Well documented case study of how FIFA is disturbed by soccer related problems only when they are caused by Israel. Bombing soccer fields, torturing soccer players for losing, illegal boycotts, using soccer fields as terrorist training grounds or public execution venues, etc. — no problem. Israel destroying a soccer field used terrorists to launch rockets without injuring anyone — Pure Evil.
Fighting the last clandestine war
The Chicago Tribune’s John Crewdson has written a disturbing report regarding what seems to be the incredible lack of secrecy concerning a relatively large number of clandestine CIA operatives.
The Trib’s piece does not show the CIA in a flattering light, to say the least. In fact, if accurate, this story presents an unacceptable portrait of the agency.
When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.
[…]
Not all of the 2,653 employees whose names were produced by the Tribune search are supposed to be working under cover. More than 160 are intelligence analysts, an occupation that is not considered a covert position, and senior CIA executives such as Tenet are included on the list.
But an undisclosed number of those on the list—the CIA would not say how many—are covert employees, and some are known to hold jobs that could make them terrorist targets.
[…]
Asked how so many personal details of CIA employees had found their way into the public domain, the senior U.S. intelligence official replied that “I don’t have a great explanation, quite frankly.”
The official noted, however, that the CIA’s credo has always been that “individuals are the first person responsible for their cover. If they can’t keep their cover, then it’s hard for anyone else to keep it. If someone filled out a credit report and put that down, that’s just stupid.”
One senior U.S. official used a barnyard epithet to describe the agency’s traditional system of providing many of its foreign operatives with easily decipherable covers that include little more than a post office box for an address and a non-existent company as an employer.
Why should we expect the CIA to be any more competent at cover than anything else?
11 April 2006
You can depend on the Palestinians
Nofal is one of many Palestinians feeling the pinch of an economic boycott of the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority (PA), as a cutoff in ties by the US, Europe, and Israel touches off a financial crisis that could snowball. Already retailers won’t accept credit from public servants out of concern they will never be repaid, lines are growing at some gas pumps amid a shortage of fuel, and a top Israeli bank said it will no longer work with Palestinian counterparts.
“The situation is deteriorating in a dramatic and tragic way,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters Tuesday.
One could be hopeful that the Palestinians will realize that there is a heavy price to pay for electing a violent gang of thugs with a policy of aggression and ethnic cleansing. Or they could decide it’s another Zionist plot and the only solution is to redouble their efforts to destroy the Zionist Entity. I know which one I would bet on.
07 April 2006
Why the Patriot Act was posturing, not action
Yet another long litancy of how the FBI actively CYA’d itself in to inaction before the 11 Sep attacks. But we can’t blame just the standard bureaocratic power tripping and inertia. The fact that the FBI has repeatedly failed to upgrade its information infrastructure to the point where it can supply e-mail addresses to all of its agents was no small part of the problem. None of this, of course, is addressed by the Patriot Act and there’s no evidence that any of it will be fixed or even tinkered with before the next successful attack.
Going for the votes
Senate Democrats refused to allow consideration of an amendment yesterday that would bar illegal aliens convicted of felonies from obtaining U.S. citizenship.
Democrats said the amendment would “gut” the immigration bill under consideration in the Senate and refused to allow a vote on it.
“It hurts the bill,” said Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. “It hurts the very foundation and what I believe is the spirit” of the legislation.
Apparently the Democratic Party knows who the likely Democratic Party voters are.
In too deep
Uh-oh. Via Instapundit, there is some evidence that some Leftists are beginning to realize what a putz Joe Wilson is. Fortunately, the moonbat contingent is willing to defend Wilson to the death of the Left (see the comments).
04 April 2006
Still, how could he better have demonstrated his moral vacuity?
Speaking during an eight-day visit to Sudan, Dr Williams said yesterday that detaining people indefinitely when they had not been convicted, and denying them proper legal rights, set a dangerous precedent.
Sets a precendent. Sets a precendent. Because, you know, no other nation in recent history has detained people indefinitely and denied them proper legal rights. While quite the apalling statement, note that Williams makes it in Sudan.
Looking a bit Dowdy
This was a somewhat amusing article about Maureen Dowd’s visit to Australia. I think almost everything you would want to know about Dowd is summed up in these two quotes, the first about Dowd’s talk:
The really bad thing the feminists have done is to make it hard for Dowd to get a date. In her talk, Dowd said she hadn’t had a date for yonks and that men were scared of smart women. She then gave the audience her hotel room number.
and the second about her book, which
has an incredibly parochial optic. We’re inside the bubble of upper-middle-class Washington and we never peep outside.
Oddly, the author of this piece doesn’t seem to realize that these exact same flaws are what make her political commentary so irrelevant.
03 April 2006
Irony overload alert
[source]
Borders spokeswoman Beth Bingham, explaining their decision not to carry Free Inquiry magazine because it contained the Danish Mohammed cartoons, said, “For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority.”
Although their decision to preemptively surrender is appalling, I actually applaud Borders for being honest and acknowledging their real motivation—fear and concern for employees—for not carrying Free Inquiry, instead of concocting an obviously phony statement about “religious sensitivity.”
However, isn’t one of the main complaints by Muslim groups about the Danish cartoons that they promote a stereotyped image of Muslims as violent terrorists—especially the cartoon showing Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban?
In fact, the accusation of ignorant, racist stereotyping is one of the most common charges levied by Islamic advocacy groups against the people they target for harassment.
So why isn’t CAIR demanding an apology from Borders Books for this open admission that they fear violence from Muslims? Isn’t this a blatant example of “racist stereotyping” by CAIR’s usual yardstick?
It would be, of course—except that in this case, the implicit and explicit threats of violence have had exactly the results groups like CAIR want. Every major American institution has knuckled under to the fear; universities, newspapers, television, booksellers, all of them.
My theory is that CAIR has been silent on this issue because they do not want to be asked the obvious question: “did Borders overreact to the threat of violence?”.
They even supply their own rope!
It’s time to break a taboo and place the word “socialism” across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls—and how to find them again.
I agree completely. This would be of great benefit to the nation, to put the final nails in the coffin of the Left.