Terrorist bombs in Jordan missed Israelis

This is interesting.

A number of Israelis staying on Wednesday at the Radisson hotel were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.

The Foreign Ministry stated Wednesday that no Israeli tourists are known to have been injured in the blasts. Representatives of Israel's embassy in Amman were in contact with local authorities to examine any report of injured Israelis, but none were received. There are often a number of Israeli businessman and tourists in Amman, including in the hotels hit Wednesday.

John Burgess on events in France

The rioting and civil insurrection now sweeping across France has led certain sectors of the American media–including blogs–to see it somehow as a “French intifada,” or worse. Even normally neutral observers are drawing a false conclusion from an assortment of fact; they’re “connecting the dots,” but coming up with the wrong picture.

What is going on in France is a revolt of immigrants who have been kept–intentionally or not–at substandard levels of society. Among those immigrants are many Muslims. That, however, does not make this a “Muslim revolt.” Also among those rioting immigrants are Africans from the Sub-Sahara, many of whom are Christian. There are also reports of Eastern Europeans taking part. The issues are social and economic: they are not religious.

Attempting to solve a social/economic issue as though it were a religious issue is not going to work. The wrong diagnosis never leads to the correct prescription.

While this is not a religious revolt, it could become one. Everyone with a political stake will be seeking to frame these riots to further their own agendas. That could include Islamists and already includes the far-right and far-left of the French political spectrum. But that’s what it could become, not what it is.

While most of the media -- both Left and Right -- start to hyperventilate, John Burgess takes a more measured approach to events in France. He links to several places that he says have a more nuanced diagnosis of the issues than most.

If you are not among the hyperventilating crowd, you might want to take a look.
If your mind is already made up, don't bother. Just move on to another post.

Meantime, I am coming to the conclusion that Islamophobia is becoming the New Antisemitism. No matter which way a Muslim turns it will be the wrong way. If he protests he is being unreasonable, if he remains quiet he is just waiting until the right moment to protest. If a week of Molotov cocktails has no casualties, it is evidence that an organized effort is underway that will soon lead to the next stage of a violent Jihad. If the violence stops they are only biding their time until the next opportunity. What is happening is a mindset no different from the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Saddam's defense lawyer killed -- Prosecution responds

Saddam's defense team lost yet another member by assassination.

Three gunmen in a speeding car killed a lawyer for a co-defendant in Saddam Hussein's trial and wounded another today in Baghdad, a member of the defense team and police said.

It was the second assassination of a lawyer associated with the trial and was likely to raise new questions about whether this country can conduct such a sensitive prosecution in the midst of insurgency and domestic turmoil.

Defense attorneys already had announced they would not cooperate with the special court trying Saddam and seven other defendants until security was assured.

Grotian Moment Blog has two responses: one by Michael P. Scharf and another by Laura Dickinson. Anyone interested in tracking what promises to be a long and tedious exercise in jurisprudence can take a look.

After the murder of Sadoun Nasouaf al-Janavi, counsel to defendant Awad al-Bander, three weeks ago, the Iraqi Government and the U.S. military each independently offered to provide security for the defense counsel. The defense lawyers declined, saying that they did not trust the Iraqi Government or U.S. military. This was a ploy; a deadly gambit to justify their boycott of the trial and attempt to delay or derail the proceedings.
[...]
I think that the judges will end up dealing with this problem by requiring the defense counsel to accept US military protection. If the defense lawyers continue to refuse to do so and to boycott the trial, the judges may tell them that as duly appointed defense counsel, they are officers of the court, and have a responsibility to accept the security and continue to participate in the trial, or they can face sanctions such as fines, imprisonment, and disbarment, and they can be replaced by court-appointed defense counsel who will not play these kinds of high-risk games in an effort to disrupt the proceedings.
[...]
Iraqi authorities should thus seriously consider moving the proceedings temporarily to a nearby location such as Dubai. A temporary move would preserve the essentially domestic character of the proceedings yet at the same time would also address the concern that proceedings in Iraq cannot take place fairly due to security concerns. Such a move would would both signal the tribunal’s commitment to secure conditions for all participants as well as help improve actual security on the ground....While the risk of attack on lawyers, judges, defendants, witnesses, and others involved in the proceedings could exist anywhere in the world, the greatest risks undoubtedly are posed within Iraq. Iraqi authorities should thus seriously consider holding proceedings outside the country until the security situation improves.

Don't forget the earthquake, updated

Any idea how many casualties following the October 8 earthquake?

What about 73,000? via Quake Help Blog

Pakistan's official earthquake death toll jumped by 16,000, and officials warned Wednesday that it is likely to rise further as relief supplies fail to reach thousands of victims stranded in remote parts of the Himalayas.

The announcement, which puts the official toll at 73,000, brings the central government figures closer to the number reported by local officials, who say the Oct. 8 quake killed at least 79,000 people in Pakistan.

"Just imagine how many villages and towns became a heap of rubble and how many people got buried," Maj.-Gen. Farooq Ahmed Khan told reporters.

Khan said 73,276 people have been confirmed dead in Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, up from the official count of 57,597. In India's portion of Kashmir, an additional 1,350 people died.

More than 69,000 people had severe injuries, with the total number of injured much higher, the general said.

Read this post...

Fakhr e Alam’s message about United Pakistan

It has been over 14 days now that I and my volunteers have been working in the valleys of death. Though we have been told that the rescue phase is over and we are all to work on relief and rehab….the truth is that yesterday after 21 days a man was found alive from underneath the rubble alive. Sad that we have given up on these people. Only God knows how many are still alive underneath all that concrete, hoping, praying and waiting for us…..if they would only know that on the surface we have already declared them dead.

Ask yourselves for a moment if you or your loved one was underneath the rubble of your own home, and we gave up on them on day 8….how would you feel?

Anyway as much as I try, I cannot fight the system. However we must not give up, and continue to do what we want too, what we have too. Please remember we will not get any medal for all our efforts, only Allah can reward us for what we do.
[...]
Our forward teams have gone where no one has gone…we have been co ordinating our efforts with the Pakistan army, and hence were pin pointed where doctors were needed…..we have reached and delivered. The great thing about UNITED PAKISTAN…..is that it is not an NGO. People working for NGO’s have big salaries. Most of your donations go into administrative costs with NGOs…basically paying salaries of the big fish. In UNITED PAKISTAN we are all working as volunteers and doing it with heart and soul.

Sad part is that many big NGO’s working in the region have packed up and left or deserted their camps. Leaving patients in tents needing critical post op care. WHY? beacuse the photo opoortunity is over…media has moved into further areas, and the NGOs have gotten what they wanted, good coverage so that they can claim more donations from you. Be careful where you give your donations.

Something bad is happening.
There is a great opportunity for the US to make a dramatic mark in a part of the world that needs to see the US make such a mark.
Hearts and minds are waiting.
This is what some people would call a "teachable moment."

November 8 addendum

I heard the number of casualties last night on NBC reported at 80.000 and rising. The media is losing interest. The NGO's seem to be getting tired. This is a tragedy in slow motion and the people involved are being left to their tragic, pitiful and woefully inadequate resources.

This was published this morning in Katachi Metroblogging.

Let us hear the mother of one of the girls buried under the rubble. The interview was conducted on October 26.

“I have been going to school everyday with my husband, taking a torch with me so I can look into the nooks and crannies for any sign of my daughter’s body. Yesterday, my husband came running, asking what little Laiba was wearing when she died. You know how men are; they often don’t know these things about their own children. I told him she was wearing a half-sleeved frock and toghts. His face fell. He said he had spotted what looked like a girl’s body, but it seemed like she was wearing a shalwar.”

The woman’s name is Naseem Gulshan and she was a primary class teacher at a government school. Not satisfied with the standards of her own school. She had sent her daughter to a private school known as Alfalah. But it was not enough to save her life. Now every day since October 8, Naseem goes to the school in the hope of finding her daughter’s body. This is the hell she has been living in since that fateful day.

The village of Chinari has been comprehensively destroyed and rendered unlivable. But unlike most other residents, Naseem and a few other mothers refuse to leave until they have found the bodies of their children.

Why are we telling this story now, almost a month after it happened?

Nothing illustrates the state of the relief operations better than this tale of horror. Not that the army isn’t doing anything. Not that the non-governmental organizations are wasting their time. It is just that the scale of this tragedy that has reduced the relief operations to a state where even after a month, people are either still digging for their dead relatives or starving to death. Kashmir in particular seems to have become the devil’s abode. It is a world where grief abounds in such quantities that it towers way above the mountains that dot its once picture postcard landscape. Every day, in the midst of hills that are still crumbling, the devil laughs harder.

And we have Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz telling the world that he is satisfied with international relief efforts. No wonder he got rapped on the knuckles by the United Nations, an agency that has seldom spoken against a government with which it is working.

Worse, the relief effort seems to be tiring – at a point where it is needed the most. Assistance from within Pakistan is drying up and tired volunteers are at their wits’ end.

Whatever reservations one may have about our military leadership and their overall policy, jawans and junior officers of the Pakistan Army are doing everything in their power to reach out to people. It started as an unwanted duty for them but now in many individual cases it has become a matter of personal commitment. The problem is that they are just not enough. Over 100,000 troops are currently deployed in the zone but what is needed is one million. Pakistanis have responded with a zeal that has left the world stunned. But they seem to be tiring now, thinking that they have done whatever they could. Nothing could be more tragic than that. We need to keep reminding ourselves that it is only the tremors that are over, not the tragedy. That is just beginning.

Reader, count your blessings.
Hoots

Patriot Advisory: SKIP THIS POST

Remember Giuliana Sgrena?

She was the Italian journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq in February. Upon her release she was nearly killed by "friendly fire" on the way to Baghdad Airport. Wikipedia has multiple accoounts of what happened, but that is not the point of this post. That is background.

Her report is being aired tonight on Italian Satellite TV. It is a documentary about the US assault on Fallujah. The focus of the report is the use of an advanced form of chemical weapon called by various names, but referred to as simply "W.P." (short for white phosphorus). Do your own homework about that. I don't care to link any of what I found.

As of last night there was a link to a video of the documentary.
In addition to being politically offensive to US patriots, it also contains graphic images and content that can be disturbing.
Viewers are advised to keep your mouse near the back button. I did. I used the back button before the film finished so I can't make any further comments.

Jim Gilbert meets George Sada

Blog buddy and "Christian globe-warrior" Jim Gilbert had the honor of meeting George Sada, defense minister and spokesperson for the Iraqi interim government. He tells about it in this latest post.

He can't tell about anything juicy, but I'm impressed all the same. Impressed because Jim came to meet him, and impressed because the man is Christian and Kurdish, served directly under Saddam, and is now rubbing shoulders with US movers and shakers.

Good story here:

One Baghdad taxi driver told him a harrowing tale not too long ago.

A passenger got into his cab and asked him to take him around the city. "To what destination?" the driver asked. "It doesn't matter. Just drive," came the reply. And so they drove, all over Baghdad, for three hours, before the passenger finally asked to pay and disembark. "It's too bad," he said to the still-puzzled driver. "Tonight we could have dined with Mohammed."

The driver was baffled. What did he mean about having supper with the Prophet? "We could have dined with Mohammed," the man repeated, and opening his coat, revealed a chest and waist laden with explosives. He had been looking for targets all evening, and had he found one, he would simply have detonated himself, the cab, and his driver, in order to enter Paradise. Sada repeated the driver's stuttered response: "Oh, no thank you. I don't want to eat with the Prophet tonight. I just want to have supper with my wife." And with that the forlorn jihadist paid his bill and exited the taxi.

EU Referendum blog: Looking at France

Helen Szamuely spent some time Sunday putting together a solid, worthwhile essay about the Vehicle Massacres taking place in France.

This is not a revolution, nor an insurrection, nor an intifada (just try coping with that as the Israelis have had to). It is a series of riots that are not leading anywhere special and have grown out of the peculiar tensions that have existed in French society for decades, possibly since the Algerian war. And yet, it seems, that the predicted riots and possible revolution meets with no approval among those who had done the predicting.
[...]
In theory...all those who arrive in France from the former colonies, especially those who found they had to flee as a result of the Algerian war and its rather sudden ending, are French and will be treated as such. Alas, this has not been the case and the resentment has been smouldering, strengthened by the undoubted frequent brutality displayed by the police.

She contrasts the situation in France with that of Germany (with no corresponding "riots" from Europe's second largest Muslim population) which has treated immigrants as "guests" rather than new Germans.

Ralf Goergens' post this morning at Chicago Boyz says pretty much the same thing.

If you don't make any promises to people, they can't accuse you of breaking them - it's as easy as that. Germany has never been a country open to immigrants. Muslims moving always were told that they were guests, and expected to work here for some years, and then to leave again. The mostly Turkish migrant workers themselves fully intended to return sooner or later, and therefore never even tried to integrate themselves, or demanded full citizenship for themselves. Returning turned out to be a lot harder than planned. Most tried to go back, but found out that they simply no longer fitted in after a decade or two in Germany, so they reluctantly decided to stay in Germany, which is a much better country to retire in than Turkey. Even so they mostly continue to regard themselves as Turks rather than Germans, and try to instill the same feeling in their children. Since nationalism is a much more important factor with them than Islam, they are more like Mexican immigrants in the United States, than Algerian immigrants in France.

There is something to be said for allowing foreigners to be foreigners. Any pretense that someone's just-arrived grandmother who cannot and will never speak English will become a flag-waving American is just that: pretense.

Harlan McCraney on electoral speechmaking

Not new but still fresh, a short but informative video.

Helena Cobban on riots in France

Thoughtful reflection by Helena Cobban.

Here in the US, members of the "white"-dominated political elite are slowly coming to grips with the idea that the country's self-image and actual practice of social interactions needs to change to incorporate the facts of the growing empowerment of African-American and other non-white citizens, and the growing empowerment and increasing numbers of Hispanic-cultured citizens, in particular. I see it as a pretty exciting, challenging and open-ended process.

In Europe, the pressing facts of demographic change have been quite a lot slower to become reflected in the self-image and social practice of the "indigenous" and dominant white majorities. I'm not sure whether the proportion of non-"white" residents is noticeably higher in the UK and France than it is in other European countries. But it is certainly interesting that it is in those two countries-- the two that maintained the largest overseas empires for so long, and that for so long even defined themselves by reference to their worldwide imperial role-- that the children and grandchildren of the formerly colonized have been most bold in staking their claim to equal rights with the indigenes of the metropolis.

Lots more, including contrasting comments left at one of her previous posts and anecdotal insights of her own.

This morning's topic on Washington Journal (C-SPAN) concerns the Voting Rights Act, it's history and current applications, with a very knowledgable guest from Washington Times. This discussion stands in bright contrast to what I am reading and hearing about politics in Europe, especially in France. My instinct is that the rage and frustrations being expressed in what is now eleven nights of -- they are calling it "rioting" but there has to be a more precise word -- is related to a lack of voice in the political process we euphemistically (and carelessly) call democracy.

Back to the "rioting'...
As I recall, rioting is a form of unrestrained, unmitigated, out of control madness that takes the form of explosive mob behavior. It's as dangerous as any ordnance, putting the lives and safety of everyone at risk, including the perpetrators.

The stories France are not reporting casualties or even injuries. Mostly what is being mentioned is burning vehicles, by the numbers, sounding like some kind of wierd body count. This strikes me as very odd. I saw a picture of a woman looking at a line of busses, twenty-seven in all according to the caption, all of which seemed to have been incinerated as a fleet. Most of the pictures show cars to a crisp, but death and injury are not mentioned. This is a very strange way to riot.

The only thing I find more peculiar is the lack of response on the part of the authorities. The word "restraint" does not apply here. Is the lack of response in gratitude that damage is restricted to vehicles with a minimal loss of life?

Update, a few minutes later...

I stand corrected.

NY Times is reporting "10 Officers Shot."
Sounds pretty bad, until you get well into the piece and read

"We have 10 policemen that were hit by gunfire in Grigny, and two of them are in the hospital," Patrick Hamon, a national police spokesman, said Monday morning.
He said one of the officers hospitalized had been hit in the neck, the other in the leg, but added that neither wound was considered life-threatening.

Eight of ten didn't require hospital care!
What kinda shooting is that?

Francis Fukuyama on creating radicals

Via History News Network this column from Wednesday's WSJ. Fukuyama brings it all together. Very worthwhile read.

The real challenge for democracy lies in Europe, where the problem is an internal one of integrating large numbers of angry young Muslims and doing so in a way that does not provoke an even angrier backlash from right-wing populists. Two things need to happen: First, countries like Holland and Britain need to reverse the counterproductive multiculturalist policies that sheltered radicalism, and crack down on extremists. But second, they also need to reformulate their definitions of national identity to be more accepting of people from non-Western backgrounds.

Last line in the piece: "And since Europe is today one of the main battlegrounds of the war on terrorism, this reality will matter for the rest of us as well."

Europe? A battleground? In the GWOT? Really?
Hello!
Winning over there, are we?
Great!

I guess that's why I've been running across the word "Eurabia." That explains it.

Tow Chinese Boys

Nope.
Not a typo. That's how they spell it.
And there is no way I shouldn't link here.
After all, they were on the Today Show last week. Don't ask me why.

April, 2006:
This is a new link I found at You Tube. The original one no longer worked.
The new name is "Chinese Backstreet Boys" but it looks like the same two, different take.
You Tube seems to be capturing the video imagination of the entire web. Who knows what the next development will be?

Riverbend on Iran

EBW at Wampum said to read Riverbend's essay.

I did.

My questions about the connection between Iran and Iraq are getting answered. And the answers are not good. Iraqi resentment of the US pales compared with that for Iran.

The agony of the long war with Iran is what makes the current situation in Iraq so difficult to bear- especially this last year. The occupation has ceased to be American. It is American in face, and militarily, but in essence it has metamorphosed slowly but surely into an Iranian one.

If you haven't read the background, this essay may not make sense. If you have, it will leave you angry, sad, embarrassed or all of the above. The only way around any of these reactions -- especially embarrassment as an American -- is denial.

Tick, tick, tick...

Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal three years ago saw it coming, and said so.

The laxisme of the French criminal justice system is now notorious. Judges often make remarks indicating their sympathy for the criminals they are trying (based upon the usual generalizations about how society, not the criminal, is to blame)...A Parisian acquaintance told me how one recent evening he had seen two criminals attack a car in which a woman was waiting for her husband. They smashed her side window and tried to grab her purse, but she resisted. My acquaintance went to her aid and managed to pin down one of the assailants, the other running off. Fortunately, some police passed by, but to my acquaintance’s dismay let the assailant go, giving him only a warning.

Reported crime in France has risen from 600,000 annually in 1959 to 4 million today, while the population has grown by less than 20 percent...

Where does the increase in crime come from? The geographical answer: from the public housing projects that encircle and increasingly besiege every French city or town of any size, Paris especially. In these housing projects lives an immigrant population numbering several million, from North and West Africa mostly, along with their French-born descendants and a smattering of the least successful members of the French working class. From these projects, the excellence of the French public transport system ensures that the most fashionable arrondissements are within easy reach of the most inveterate thief and vandal.
...
A kind of anti-society has grown up in them—a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust—greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years—is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them.

This is a chilling read, especially since it was written three years ago. The man's a sociologist, apparently someone who takes to the "field" to learn about his subjects. Several of his anecdotes could have been from last week instead of three years ago.

I can't resist. Is this an example of that old story about the frog getting boiled alive because he didn't jump out of the water?

This piece and a current article by the same writer are linked by Sum, Ergo Cogito , a blog started less than three weeks ago by a group of young Catholics. I'm impressed. Somebody has been doing his or her homework. I have added this site to my aggregator.

That Librul MSM is at it again

Laura Rozen says

Torture produced bad information that was used by the administration to make the case for war. The lawyers pushing the torture have been promoted to the very top positions of the US government (David Addington), or given cushey offices at the American Enterprise Institute (John Yoo). The Congressional oversight committees have been way too compliant, with the chairman of the Senate Intel committe voting to support Cheney's demands that the torture continue.

She cites this week's Newsweek article.

...one reason the prison abuse scandal won't go away—two months after gruesome photos were published worldwide—is that a long paper trail of memos and directives from inside the administration has emerged...one such memo, an explosive August 2002 brief from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel disclosed by The Washington Post. The memo, drafted by former OLC lawyer John Yoo, has been widely criticized for seeming to flout conventions against torture. It defends most interrogation methods short of severe, intentionally inflicted pain and permanent damage. White House officials told reporters that such abstract legal reasoning was insignificant and did not reflect the president's orders. But NEWSWEEK has learned that Yoo's August 2002 memo was prompted by CIA questions about what to do with a top Qaeda captive, Abu Zubaydah, who had turned uncooperative. And it was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel, who discussed specific interrogation techniques, says a source familiar with the discussions.

Lots more, if you have the stomach, including a video link.
But hey, that's just another bunch of stuff they made up to make the administation look bad. It's a war, you know.
We don't wanna act like a bunch of wusses.
Right.

How in the name of all that's good can so many people do so many disgusting things and not be called to account?

And last week's closed door session of the Senate is being referred to as a "stunt."

Wonderful photos

Paulo Cohen-Myers is one of my favorite photobloggers. The current batch is especially great. Just keep scrolling.

Riots in Europe

Not much commentary about the latest unpleasantness in France and the rest of Europe. I'm not sure why. Those I talk with whose news diet is from TV don't even know, though there is a vague suspicion, that minorities or Muslims are involved. I guess political correctness is more important than accuracy in reporting in this case. Or maybe there is concern that too much reporting about that might further inflame our own minorities. After all, Latinos are already running into problems with blacks, and blacks in turn are all wound up in the passions stirred up by the Rosa Parks wake and funeral.

Shahed Amanullah, editor-in-chief of alt.muslim, posted a tight little link-filled report with all the latest news. Odd source, if you ask me, with all the smart people out there in the blog world. I was expecting better, like the rash of interest that followed every twist and turn of the Caribbean hurricanes. I guess hurricanes are safer. When it comes to events that could have political implications, there is a lot of holding back to see first what the Sunday talking heads and designated party leaders have to say.

From what I gather the word "suburb" in the reports can be understood better by Americans if we think "inner-city." I presume that unlike in America where towns and cities are only a couple of hundred years old, mostly surrounded by spaces that have only been "owned" for a few generations, European cities and lands have been around for centuries. Suburbia in America offers more bang for the buck...bigger lots, newer construction, better property values, and a protective distance from the great unwashed. Europeans apparently are too crowded or too rooted to afford these luxuries.

Most, but not all of Europe is affected. Here is an interesting article about Poland.

While Paris burns, Poland does not. Isn't that strange? The Poles have an unemployment rate which is as high as the unemployment rates in French suburbs. Yet while "angry French youths" burn down their neighbourhoods, including their public transport buses and schools, Polish plumbers, construction workers and nurses are too busy to be angry. They travel abroad for several weeks at a time to work in foreign lands. One of the places they go to is France, where they work harder, often delivering better quality and at lower wages than French workers.
...
Mark Brands is a clever young Dutch entrepreneur. Last year he founded Eurostar25, a company which negotiates temporary contracts between Dutch employers and Polish workers.
...
An obvious solution to the "anger" of the unemployed "youths" in Clichy-sous-Bois and the other burning suburbs of Paris would be to send in an entrepreneur like Mark Brands to offer them the same kind of jobs that he is offering to Poles, Czechs and Greeks. Why doesn't that happen? Why is there no "invasion" of unemployed workers from Clichy-sous-Bois and similar places? Why do they prefer to burn down schools rather than to follow the Polish example?

Perhaps because despite the so-called poverty and destitution of which they are victims (at least according to the media), the Islamic "youths" of Clichy are the spoiled brats of the West European welfare state. Despite the media talk of "discrimination" (if there is any discrimination of immigrants in Western Europe, it is "positive" discrimination), they get the same generous welfare benefits as other Frenchmen.

The West European government handouts are so high that none of the allegedly "frustrated and angry unemployed" are willing to do the kind of jobs that the Poles gladly take. The moral perversion which accompanies socialism has affected Muslims to a larger extent than it has affected people raised in the traditional Christian culture of the West with its stronger sense of individual responsibility – and even among the latter social welfarism has had devastating effects on traditional morality, which has almost disappeared.

There's more, but you get the idea. That idea, which I consider flawed, is that the more people are "spoiled" by government policies, the more likely they will misbehave. Citizens are children and governments are parents. Spare the rod and spoil the child. It is but a small step to laissez-faire economics. That government is best that governs least. Current Libertarian thinking derives from this appealing idea.

As a parent having reared a few kids of my own, I see such thinking as equivalent to boarding school, with the business community in loco parentis, but not obligated to take care of any children not able or willing to abide by the rules. Those with behavior problems, disabilities or the wrong pedigree can find elsewhere to board and get educated.

Oh, there are plenty of times I wanted to fire my kids. If they had been on a company payroll I would have initiated the first of a three-stage "progressive discipline" followed by termination if the behavior didn't change. But responsible parents do not have that option. Some act like it, of course, but the results are often a disfunctional family that passes uncorrected bad behavior to the next generation.

The article above also has a not-very-subtle subtext: Christianity is somehow better at producing responsible workers than Islam. "Social welfarism" has been devastating for traditional [Christian?] morality, but the effect on Muslims has been downright toxic. It's thinking like this that makes me know I am not ripe to become a Conservative. Notice how certain words above are placed in quotes, to be sure the reader doesn't get the idea that the writer doesn't want to characterize the rioters as youth or have any truck with ideas like discrimination, most especially positive discrimination. He had no trouble with the label spoiled brats. Modern Liberals may be morally retrograde, but modern conservatism continues to move toward the fascist end of the political continuum. Given the option, I will continue to stand among the untouchables.

The question remains: Why have rioting young people reached the flash-point and what is the most constructive government response? Has anyone figured out that when people have something at stake they are more likely to protect it? Has Europe thought to look across the pond to figure out how minority issues might be dealt with more effectively?

America is far from being the Promised Land, but it has been decades since the whole country erupted in rioting. Locally we still have more than our share of problems, but nationally we may be on the right track. A national commitment to civil rights and what Rosa Parks did years ago may have contributed to what passes for stability these days, efforts to torpedo affirmative action notwithstanding.

One more footnote: I find it reassuring that so many disaffected young people -- most of whom are reported to be Muslims from North Africa -- are disorganized to the point of rioting. Some, of course, work behind the scenes to become terrorits. But a lot more are clearly more open with their frustrations. At some level that is encouraging. To the extent that this population can be transformed into productive members of their respective countries, they will reduce the number of potential recruits for more sinister damage as terrorists. These riots present a sharp contrast to the image we have been fed of a quiet but devious Muslim plot to destroy host countries by jihad. What we are seeing is nothing holy. It's nothing more than old-fashioned criminal behavior.

Looking at China

Two books, reviewed by Robert Skidelsky in the New York Review of Books...

Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East
by Clyde Prestowitz
China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World
by Ted C. Fishman

If the theses of these two books is anything close to reality, Americans living in an isolationist bubble are in for a jolt. We don't know anyone like that, do we? Right.

Snips from the review...

Focus on China is overdue. For the last quarter of a century its economy has been growing by over 9 percent a year, increasing eightfold. ...China's population is officially estimated at 1.3 billion, but is probably larger—one fifth of all the people in the world. This makes its rise much more important than that, say, of Japan in the 1960s. From the economic point of view its cheap labor is much more abundant, so its cost advantage will not quickly be eliminated. ...economics and politics cannot be so easily separated. China is both an engine of globalization and a rising military power, a "Wal-Mart with an army."

In Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev destroyed Communist Party rule in a failed effort to create a "humane" communism; in China Deng saved Communist rule by embracing capitalism. ...Mao Zedong...has even been rebranded to serve business needs as a kind of Chinese Colonel Sanders, advertising food products outside the restaurants in Hunan, his home province. There has been no official repudiation of Mao's legacy, even one like the limited denunciation of Stalinism which Khrushchev undertook in 1956.

Optimists say that democracy will come incrementally, starting with provincial elections, as the middle class grows. [This is a pernicious deception, I'm afraid. When I was looking into the dust-up of Authorities vs. Yahoo I came across a reference that indicates that the Chinese authorities are very capable of using technology to their advantage, not the other way around.]

Clyde Prestowitz's ...thesis, chattily if not wittily expressed, is that the virtually endless supply of labor in China and India, combined with the negation of time and distance by the Internet and global air delivery, portend the ruin of American manufacturing and a long-term decline in American living standards. Already America is living beyond its means...China produces two thirds of the world's photocopiers, shoes, toys, and microwave ovens, half of its DVD players, digital cameras, cement, and textiles, 40 percent of its socks, one third of its DVD-ROM drives and desktop computers, a fourth of its mobile telephones, TV sets, steel, car stereos, and so on. It exports 30 percent of the world's electronic goods. In Prestowitz's fevered imagination the United States is the Dr. Frankenstein who raised the monster destined to devour it.

The US government helped Asia's rise by embracing a laissez-faire ideology and floating the dollar. As a White House economic adviser quipped: "Potato chips, computer chips, what's the difference? They're all chips."...Prestowitz says that the United States must abandon laissez-faire. It must renounce its crazy ambition to flood the world with dollars and instead develop a more limited dollar sphere consisting of the North American Free Trade area plus its trade with Japan. "For the United States, this deal would marry Japan's surpluses with US deficits and create a dollar zone in trade balance with the rest of the world. It would also serve to keep Japan in the US orbit and prevent it from slipping into China's."... rejects the free trade model of globalization as harmful to US interests. He is a modern mercantilist: trade freely with your friends, and strategically with everyone else.

China, writes Fishman, "is an infinite jumble of hybrid businesses" that "conflate the sectors, often in impossibly complex, opaque ways." Almost all business "is conducted by words, handshakes, and occasionally by written but extralegal contracts."... forced demolitions and evictions to make way for new buildings and hydroelectric projects; of female workers exploited in textile and electronic factories who dream of returning to their villages; of the encroaching deserts; of pollution so intense that the "Asian Brown Cloud" wafts over to the Pacific coast of the US; of China's great road- and railway-building program; of the spread of HIV, the abortion of unwanted girls, and much else. But his central theme is the same as Prestowitz's: countless US businesses are being hammered by the low "China price," which includes counterfeiting and piracy. Jobs for many more millions of US workers will disappear. Nothing, he believes, will stop the Chinese juggernaut, for China is already building "the critical masses of companies that catalyze the creative ferment that leads to rapid innovation."

What we have here, as the old phrase says, is a failure to communicate. Unfortunately, that failure is polluted by a corresponding failure on the part of US leadership to even find agreement on what should be done. Our politicians are focused on getting votes, our business leaders on getting profits, our missionaries on converting the heathen, and our consumers on getting the lowest price on everything. The voices sounding a wake-up call are few and far between, marginalized, unfortunately, by a cloud of individual interests.

Again, thanks to ThreeQuarks for the link.

Dr. Bob -- another great post

I thought I was done posting for the day. One last glance at this morning's unfinished reading (I have about ninety or so sites on Bloglines...have to click the "Mark All Read" feature about every other day, drop back a few yards and punt.) and I got snagged. Here's another gotta read:

I have long marveled at an observation I rarely hear made: that a patient, a complete stranger, after one or two short visits, allows a surgeon to perform what is often a high-risk surgical procedure on their body, with something approaching blind trust. Granted, there is trust accrued in the degree, the board certification, the training, and hopefully the reputation of the surgeon you (or more likely, your family doctor) have chosen. But in reality, the information gap is real, and the leap of faith substantial. The “eyeball test” only goes so far: is the personable, knowledgeable professional you meet in the office a ham-handed clumsy oaf in the OR? Is the obnoxious, cold, arrogant technician a highly competent surgeon (a dichotomy often imagined as the norm), or instead a hot-headed impulsive boor whose ego trumps caution in surgery while denigrating all around him? Fortunately, neither scenario is typical–most surgeons are well-trained, professional, and highly competent–but how will you know?

He has described a procedure that failed to go as planned.
But Dr. Bob is a man of God whose surgery includes more than other people in scrubs and a cabinet full of medical supplies.

You see, I pray before surgery–and I prayed before this one, for guidance, wisdom, and good judgement, as I often do. If you are of a skeptical bent, and disinclined to give weight to such superstition, at least humor me by accepting that such an act might focus the mind and center the soul. But only a fool would deny that there is much beyond our control–and few things teach this lesson more clearly than surgery. It was not always thus: I have lived a life where skills and talent were all that was needed to succeed–a formula which led me inexorably on a downward spiral of failure. So I pray.

But to pray is to expect answers–and with that lies the unspoken assumption that all will turn out as I would wish. And so, it is God’s fault–is it not?–if the outcome is not what I would desire. Did I not have my patient’s best interest at heart in this request? Would not a good God answer this prayer to the benefit of both me and those He entrusted to my care? And so it appears, ipso facto, that God screwed up–and I get to take the heat. Bum rap, it seems to me.

But maybe–just maybe–there is a bigger picture in all this. Maybe I get to learn how little really is under my control. Maybe I learn to depend more on Him than on myself. Maybe–and this is a tough one–my shortcomings, my imperfections, which can cause harm as easily as my skills beget good–can work beneficially in some unfathomable way, even for those who must bear the suffering of these very imperfections. Some of the worst, most painful episodes in my own life have proven in the long run to be blessings unimaginable at the time–perhaps it can also be thus for others, even when I am the instrument of such adversity. A frightening thought, this–a terrible power.

Just. Go. Read. You will find it worth your time.
(But if time is limited, go to the next post about Theo van Gogh, which took a lot more time and effort. Bookmark Dr. Bob for later.)

Theo van Gogh remembered

Before he was killed a year ago I never heard of Theo van Gogh. He was, to put it kindly, not widely admired. He was "the man on the bike, the father, the errant moviemaker, the jester, the drinker, the womanizer, the man so full of life that he could not bring himself to see that it would soon be over," according to Pieter Dorsman whose superior blog Peaktalk is an unerringly erudite source of commentary. (If you want to see some real "live-blogging" take a look at his comments as Europe's simmering, huddled masses, yearning to breathe madness, continue to erupt in riots.)

Pejman points to the Peaktalk post remembering Theo van Gogh. If you drill into the links it will take some time to read, but it paints a picture (excuse the metaphor) of a singular creature whose life and death emerge as symbols of a deep and growing cultural rift. Dutch society and politics can be seen as a microcosm of Europe in particular and Western values in general...a rift that will be remembered historically by the horrible events of the last five years.

[Following van Gogh's murder]...there were those that were willing to look fear into the eyes and face the enemy. The deputy prime-minister declared without hesitation that jihad had arrived in the Dutch streets and some fairly drastic counter-terrorism measures were soon unveiled. And the decades of failed integration policies were finally addressed by a zealous minister who quickly earned herself an iron lady nickname. Her agenda was ambitious: deporting radical imams, mandatory integration tests for immigrants and rapid deportation of illegal aliens, all measures that were no longer taboo. In doing that a clear sign was given that a debate initiated by a gay professor, an unruly film director and a Somali immigrant was now sufficiently mature to be taken on by mainstream Dutch politicians. The fact that two of these initiators had been murdered and that one has to spend the rest of her life under very tight security may have had something to do with that.

Here, in miniature, is a case study in political identity-finding. Any thoughtful observer of a certain age will read this account and relate to the political mood swings and search for meaning that has been brewing for the last forty-five or so years.

Van Gogh was a supporter of Mr. Bush's war. His reasons were visceral and straightforward. Even now, two years into the war, his passion is shared by many. This is Dorsman speaking, with his translations of Theo van Gogh's remarks...

To keep things nice and within pre-defined rules of engagement is a typical Dutch instinct and it serves a politically correct debate well. Both Van Gogh and Fortuyn ignored it completely and spoke from their hearts. That approach also applies to the way he described his support for the invasion of Iraq:

Suzan – to whom I would love to devote some passionate words as being one of my great lovers – called me from Sydney, Australia, drunk, to tell me that Bush was the greatest threat to world peace. You shared a bed with someone like that, you had an enormous amount of fun with her, a year ago you shared an elephant in Thailand, and now you have to endure the complete nonsense she dispenses and you tell yourself that really, Western civilization is built on the right to disagree with one another. It is a paradox though that a fifth column of peace birds, in which all the Suzans of this world march along compliantly, provide the exact proof that the values that are defended by Bush and Blair are of a higher standard than those of Saddam. How decadent do you have to be as a free person in the West to happily applaud at your own grave by protesting against America and not against the butchers in Baghdad?

It’s a coincidence that the Belmont Club last week discussed the tendency of many European justice systems to punish victims of crimes for taking action against criminals themselves rather than wait for the overburdened and ineffective justice system to deal with it. In Holland last year tech mogul and ex-Compaq executive Roel Pieper was attacked with a knife in his home by a deranged anti-capitalist activist and Pieper's approach was – what else to expect from a tech millionaire – to take on the perpetrator, landing both him and his wife in hospital (I actually blogged about it here). Of course Van Gogh weighed in sensing that a dislike for success contributed to the attack and the lamentable reactions to it:

The Dutch police finds it very strange that there are people that dislike it when their wives are being stabbed by a nutcase. Even stranger is the fact that someone whose wife is threatened decides to chase down the terrorist in order to track him down and have him arrested. It’s better to let your wife be stabbed, call the police and wait for the police to turn up. Even the Telegraaf (a conservative newspaper) thought that Pieper had gone too far and that serves as evidence that fools have essentially taken over this country.

It’s a pity that Pieper didn’t kill the man that attacked his wife. Do you really think that millionaire Roel would have been let off the hook because of self-defense?
Absolutely not.

This particular column ended with Theo asking who was next in line to be killed in The Netherlands. It turned out to be him. Rest in peace Theo.

* * * *
* * * *

We stand too close to events to know how history will write about them. And as we all know, but no one wants to say out loud, a lot of written history has to do with who the winners turned out to be. But in the end, I predict that Theo van Gogh will remain a footnote, but a very important one, in a larger account of the times in which we live. His passion, his vision, his frustrations with the insanities of the times, are symbolic of a larger debate. He seemed to understand that the comity of Dutch politics, habitually civil in its approach to conflict, no longer serves in a time when extremists do not share those values.

Poetic Justice

Heard this on the radio and came across it a couple of times on the internets.

A man suspected of stealing discs from a video store was tripped up by his baggy pants, falling twice before police captured him, authorities said.

I can't come up with any comment that can make that story any better.

Althouse comments on Alito

This post by Richard Lawrence Cohen is great. Go read it, and don't skip the comments thread. It only takes a couple of minutes. That's where the post picks up steam.
I have no idea why Cohen and Althouse got a divorce. None of my business. But they are both terrific people and a model of how formerly married people should think and act.
What he says.
What she says, too.

Egyptian blogger "detained"

Get it? Detained. Where have we heard that word? Seems to be a buzzword in the making that actually means unlawfully-but-lawfully in custody. Newspeak, anyone?

Baheyya is one of the smartest writers I have found, and she also happens to be Egyptian. Her commentary will hold up strong to anyone's. Today she points to the detention of a follow Egyptian blogger by the authorities.

On Wednesday October 26, Alexandrian blogger Abdel Karim Nabil Suleiman was taken from his home and detained by State Security agents (Amn al-Dawla). Bloggers who visited his family report that the family believes Abdel Karim's political opinions and writings for several outlets, including Copts United, are behind the arrest. Suleiman is a 21-year-old law student at al-Azhar University (Damanhour campus). He lives in the Muharram Bek neighborhood that witnessed rioting by 5,000 Muslims outside the Mar Girgis Church on Oct. 21, resulting in three deaths and more than 100 wounded. Security forces detained 100-some rioters but recently released many of them.

As is now well known, the crowds were protesting a play performed at the church two years ago that allegedly insults Islam. The play was recently circulated via CD/DVD by unknown parties, though theories abound as to who could be behind it. Stories point the finger at the Ikhwan, competition between rival NDP candidates, and long-festering social tensions. Observers disagree on whether the violence was election-related, but all agree that the government's purely security-centric approach to sectarian relations is blatantly inadequate.

Abdel Karim maintains a blog, but his family could not say whether this is relevant to the arrest. Abdel Karim's brother speculated that his arrest may be instigated by local "fundamentalists" with whom Abdel Karim apparently has tense relations. It remains to be seen whether he has been "preventively detained" for the usual 15-day chunks and whether he will be formally charged by State Security Prosecution. The first few days (sometimes weeks) of a detention are always the murkiest, with Amn al-Dawla deliberately keeping everyone in the dark to instill fear and confusion. The causes of Karim's detention thus remain entirely unclear. Did neighborhood toughs instigate the police to arrest him? Are security agents punishing Abdel Karim for his writings? Why did his family appear to be unconcerned with locating his whereabouts?

Given these and many more questions, it seems to me counterproductive to traffic in unsubstantiated theories and rumours, or to reflexively sensationalise this as an Iranian-style 'crackdown on bloggers,' or to bicker about whether Abdel Karim's views are "representative" or worth defending. This is basic: a person's views are never the issue when it comes to arbitrary and unlawful detention. The issue is security agents' behaviour, plain and simple. Therefore, I will not comment here on what I think of Abdel Karim's writings; what I or anyone else thinks is not relevant, with due respect. It is much more important now to monitor the situation closely and work to obtain concrete information from State Security, as Egypt's human rights groups have always done in these situations.

She is being overly gratious in her comments. From what I have read sectarian conflicts in Egypt can become downright savage. The word "extremist" might well be applied to both sides, with the Copts (one of the world's oldest identifiable Christian groups) engaging in vitriolic counter-attacks that can be as provocative as those of their Islamic opponents.

John Burgess mentioned this most recent conflict yesterday. He linked to an informative piece in Asharq Alawsat worth reading.

The antagonism has swelled so much that after the riots, President Hosni Mubarak made a rare acknowledgment of the tensions. On Saturday, he told a gathering of Muslim scholars they need to promote "a religious discourse that cuts away intrigues and backbiting among Muslims and Christians — to preserve Egypt's stability, social fabric and national unity."

"Teach young people that heaven's law prohibits spilling the blood of the innocent," he said. "Remind them always that religion is between them and God, and our nation is for everyone. Nobody has a monopoly on faith."
[...]
The Internet has played a role before in fomenting tensions between the two religious groups. In December last year, word spread through Christian Web sites about a wife of a priest being abducted by Muslims and forced to convert to Islam. That rumor triggered protests by thousands of Christians who clashed with security forces. The allegations were never verified.

Christian-Muslim tensions erupt violently at least once a year, usually over similar forced conversion allegations or Christian attempts to build or renovate churches in heavily populated Muslim areas. In 2000, 23 people, most of them Christians, were killed in the southern village of el-Kusheh in clashes sparked by an argument between a Muslim customer and a Coptic Christian shopkeeper.

But so far, government and religious officials have tended to keep contentious issues quiet and intervene only when the tensions turn violent.

Bird Flu in Russia

From one of the Avian Flu blogs comes this from Russia. As this virus spreads more and more human contact becomes probable. The more human contact there is the greater the likelihood that a human to human strain will emerge. That becomes the flashpoint of a local epidemic which in turn can become a global pandemic if not successfully contained.

Russia has discovered outbreaks of avian flu in 10 areas, and 19 more are under suspicion, agriculture ministry officials were quoted by the Itar-Tass agency as saying on Tuesday.

Among the areas affected are southern Siberia’s Altai and Omsk regions, the south Urals’ Kurgan region, neighboring Chelyabinsk and in central Russia’s Tambov regions as well as the Tula region south of Moscow.

"Three more areas in the Kurgan region and 16 in the (southern Siberian) Novosibirsk region are under suspicion," the ministry added.

Migratory birds had apparently carried the virus to Siberia from southeast Asia, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of fowl and the introduction of quarantine measures.

The EU already has various bird import bans in place for Romania, Russia, Thailand and Turkey, countries which have announced confirmed cases of the lethal H5N1 bird flu strain, which humans can catch from infected birds.

For those of us who have been paying attention, this is old news. For others it bears repeating.

Aphorisms, James Geary, new book, new blog

Radioblogging again.

Yesterday on the way to work I heard a great interview promoting James Geary's book The World in a Phrase, sub-titled A Brief History of the Aphorism. This morning I find that it is Day One for a blog: James Geary's Aphorism Addicts already up and running. There are already comments at the first post. Word travels fast, doesn't it?

Two reactions:

First, I am an old lover of aphorisms. I haven't made it my life's work, but whenever I get a chance to put a smart retort or big idea into a few words I jump at the chance. Just yesterday I had a chance to take someone down a notch or two by telling him "I've been in the food business long enough to know baloney when it comes along. And that's baloney." Not exactly an aphorism, I know, but you get the idea.

In this day of nutshell philosophies that have to be deleted from everyone's daily email, the aphorism looks as tired as last weeks TV Guide, but the form is as old as history. According to Geary, the Chinese I Ching or "Book of Changes," one of the world's oldest attempts to predict the future, derives from aphorisms.

Second, I will be interested to see how this blog effort goes. Blogging has become yet another marketing resource in selling...not just books, but lots of things. But more than that, it is another fiber in the increasingly complicated fabric of contemporary life. I might be reading the wrong places, but it seems to me that bloggers tend to measure what they read with some kind of political metric, trying to figure out what is unseen, unspoken, unsaid, unintended. Standing in the middle of any issue is considered boring or even dull-witted. Being undecided about an issue is often seen as being weak rather than inquiring.

Just this morning I read a negative comment about last night's closed session of the Senate. The comment was not from the so-called "right" as one would expect. (You don't have to look far to see plenty of carping there.) It was from the "Left," suggesting that the whole effort was nothing more than a Democratic gesture intended to throw a bone to their more extreme supporters from the left to make it appear that they care about the same issues. Nobody, it seems, trusts anybody in politics.

I'm sure there is an aphorism that would put all I just wrote into a single clever line, but I can't think of one at the moment. I guess I'll have to publish it as I wrote it and let myself be revealed in all my ignorant glory.

Surveillance and security

On my recent visit to London, I was struck by the difference between U.S. security procedures and British ones. In London, you are videotaped--and told you are being videotaped--everywhere. But you can walk into a crowded train station or an art museum filled with tourists and priceless treasures without showing anyone the contents of your bag. Even airport security is much more casual than the ritualistic shoe stripping and computer segregation of U.S. airports. I'm not convinced that either surveillance or routine search does much to prevent terrorist attacks. But, while less avoidable (at least in theory), the British way is certainly less intrusive. I'd rather be watched than searched.

Virginia Postrel

I agree.

Viagra during Ramadan

Got a nice comment from Ritzi Mabrouk on an earlier post. I'm gonna have to start reading her blog. This is cute:

With only a couple of days left of Ramadan, Egyptians are stocking up on the miracle pills. But tell me, why is it that Egyptian men always seem to be proud of their Viagra consumption?

Looking at Pajamas Media

Jeff Jarvis looks at Pajamas Media after getting an invite to a gala in Noo Yawk. The name derives from a snide reference to bloggers as a bunch of people in pajamas pretending to be important, or something. Like so many trivial remarks the term got traction from an Instalanch or two and a movement was underway in blogdom.

Pajamas, as I understand it, wanted to be an ad network. I don’t see huge advertiser demand for a bunch of mostly conservative political bloggers. At one time, they wanted to be some sort of syndicate but I said nobody would buy content. It seems they now want to be some sort of blog central thing — antimatter to the Huffingtonpost’s matter, I suppose — but the difference is that most of her people don’t blog while most of these people already do blog so I don’t know why I need to see a collection of them. And they keep saying they’re going to change their name but they have their gala introduction still using the silly name they have.

Interesting take. Pajamas counterbancing Huffington. Seems right to me.

I tried to find a Wikipedia entry for "Pajamas Media" and the hook came up clean. No bite. I wonder if that nobody has taken the time to do an entry. Heck, Widipedia has a Katrina entry before the storm was finished!

This snip from Wired News mentioned Ann Althouse's lack of enthusiasm. Also broached the subject of (Hello!) political leaning....leaning. Love that word.
Got a denial from founder Roger Simon.

Pejman is on board (or was in May) and I like his take on stuff.

It's about money, really. Advertising revenue is the lifeblood of the marketplace. I wondered how long the internets could continue handing out free samples (like this blog).
Sooner or later something has to give. I mean take.

Scooter Libby the, uh, novelist

OK, you now know that Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby has just been indicted on five felony counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and some other things. You know he's resigned as the Chief of Staff for Dick Cheney. But did you know that he is also a novelist?
[...]
...From 1982 until 1985, he served as director of special projects in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. It was perhaps this post that inspired him to write "The Apprentice," his 1996 thriller that takes place in 1903 Japan.

The novel earned Libby favorable reviews. The Boston Globe called The Apprentice an "alluring novel of intrigue" while the New York Times Book Review said Libby's "storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy's emotional turmoil."

Well, now you know. Since the indictment, Libby's book, The Apprentice (St. Martin's Press), has jumped from #16,249 in sales on Amazon.com to #379, as of Friday evening.

This from Writer's Blog (a commercial faux-blog) thanks to Talk of the Town which has a few salacious quotes...

...Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his...

...well, you get the idea. Just a bit of trivia for Halloween night. A peek at the dark side of this administration's flow chart. Nothing sinister or illegal, you know. But nevertheless revealing .

A look at the Hawza at Najaf, Ayatollah Sistani

Abu Khaleel has posted another rich and descriptive essay, this time about the history of the holy city of Najaf, its educational and religious history and the most important individual in Iraq, the Ayatollah Sistani. This is a short, clear, nonpartisan piece that will only take a few minutes to read.

For more than a thousand years, there have been two main activities in that city: religion and commerce. Commerce in the city derives mainly from its religious activities! Visitor hordes are there for the numerous pilgrims from other parts of Iraq and other countries, most notably Iran, doing ziaras (or holy visits)… or to bury their dead. So many people bury their loved ones in the holy soil of Najaf that the city ended with what is probably the largest cemetery in the world.
[...]
The nature of the city was summarized so concisely by a famous Najafi poet, Ahmed al Safi who said:

My town's imports are coffins……
My town's exports are turbans.

"Turbans" refer to the religious clergy. In that city, you see them everywhere. They are a sign of distinction. A scholar who is a Sayyed (a descendant of Imam Ali) dons a black turban. One who isn’t has a white one. Usually, the higher up in the hierarchy the person is the larger his turban! Non-scholars do not wear turbans; however, a Sayyed who is not a scholar usually has something green (or, much less frequently, black) in his headgear. Green headbands (worn by members of the Mehdi Army for example) are something else.

Check out this from Dave Price at Dean's World, as he wonders if Sistani might be Iraq's George Washington.

As Iraq endures similarly uncertain democratic beginnings, they too are blessed with a popular leader who eschews high political office that could easily be his. In fact, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani has not only not sought office for himself, he has directed all Shia clerics to avoid political office as well. In the current campaign for the December 15th elections, he has gone so far as to refuse to endorse any political party or coalition. In what is certainly one of the greatest ironies in the endeavor to democratize the Mideast, Iraq’s most powerful cleric is also its leading secularist.
[...]
Sistani’s leadership in other areas has been equally auspicious. He has consistently called for restraint in the face of hundreds of deaths inflicted by Sunni suicide bombings intended to provoke a Sunni-Shia civil war. When he has disagreed with coalition policy, he has advocated peaceful, democratic means to achieve his ends. At every turn, he has advocated the path that seemed best for Iraqis rather than that which would accrue power to himself or the Shia clergy.

Michelle Malkin takedown

Michelle Malkin is one of my favorite conservatives. Snappy. Witty. Snarky. Timely. And smart. I have linked to her site several times since I started blogging and will continue to do so, but after reading this assessment of Malkin I will keep a salt shaker handy as I read from now on.

Malkin continues unabated and unabashed, since being conservative means never having to say you're sorry. She's lately taken editors at the "MSM" to task for failing to join her in taking up cudgels against the spooky threat of creeping Islamism in the memorial to Flight 94 victims. More recently, there's been the Oklahoma suicide bombing and her confusion over the failure of the nation's editors to leap to the obviously dubious conclusion that this suicide was potentially part of an evil Islamist plot extending its tendrils to every corner of the nation.

This is just the latest in a string of encounters that David Neiwert has had with Malkin.

I have something of a history with Malkin. I edited her column at the Bellevue Journal American in the early 1990s, while she was syndicated through the Los Angeles Daily News. The LADN only ever employed her as a columnist. Likewise, when Malkin moved to the Puget Sound to go to work for my friend Mindy Cameron at the Seattle Times, it was only as a columnist.

Now, it's true that while at the Times, Malkin did make the occasional foray into providing original reporting within her columns. Indeed, she was rather eager to write various exposes -- but unfortunately, she had trouble doing the requisite legwork to make those exposes actually stick.

This is a long post with many links. Drilling into the links also takes a long time, but I read far enough that he got my attention. Whenever I think I'm ready to become more conservative, some really impressive writer like David Neiwert comes along and gives me a reality check. Being conservative means never having to say you're sorry....Now that's a great line.

And while we're at it, that Cathy Young article he mentions is a quickie and worth a read. She comments on what passed for reporting following the suicide bomber in Oklahoma a few weeks ago.

ON OCT. 1, a tragedy shocked the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman: 21-year-old engineering student Joel Henry Hinrichs III killed himself with a homemade bomb while sitting on a bench about 100 yards away from the university's football stadium, packed with 84,000 fans. Since then, this sad event has mushroomed into a story that touches on some important and controversial issues: vigilance and paranoia in the age of terrorism, and journalistic ethics in the age of the ''new media."
[...]
In the Hinrichs case...it seems that the blogs and the mainstream media have brought out the worst in each other, with local TV stations picking up Internet rumors and feeding them back to the Internet.

And, yes, the hysteria has done real harm. The conspiracy theories on the right will still flourish even after the case is closed; meanwhile, many on the left will use this fiasco as an excuse to dismiss legitimate concerns about terrorism as right-wing paranoia and anti-Muslim bigotry. Hinrichs's family has been put through the additional hell of having to publicly defend a dead son and brother against accusations of being a murderous fanatic.

The mainstream media can be arrogant. But the bloggers and their readers are sometimes too willing to accept trafficking in rumor and speculation as a process from which the truth will ultimately emerge through the self-correcting power of debate.

Scary story for Halloween

You want answers? You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

* * *

This story illustrates why I don't like the idea of detaining people without solid legal reasons.

...When my turn finally came up at the counter, the INS agent asked me more questions than usual, and then closed his counter and asked me to follow him to a large room at the side of the immigration hall. Once there, along with a bunch of other people who had also been pulled aside for extra questioning, I waited for my file's turn to be examined by the officer at the counter there. (The original INS agent had deposited me and then returned to his duties elsewhere.) Finally my name was called, and after some very aggressive questioning about who I am, what I do, where I live, and on and on (and they frequently keep asking the same questions over and over, making one feel like they are hoping to trip you up in case you are lying), I was informed that I was being detained. Two agents handcuffed me and led me to another smaller room. When I asked what I had done, they said things like, "Oh, you know what you've done. You are in trouble, my friend." Then I asked to call a lawyer, and I was informed that I hadn't yet been admitted to the United States, and so had no legal standing. No lawyer would be called, nor would I be allowed to call anyone else. They took my cuffs off, fingerprinted me (very difficult because of my sweaty palms), recuffed me and then left me there.

It was at this point that my knees went a little trembly. I had heard many stories of Pakistanis being held under the Patriot Act without charges for months, and now I had visions of Guantanamo in my head, and I became almost dizzy with the adrenaline rush of fear...

Abbas Raza's Monday musing this week is a study in character develpment. If I had to go through what he did I don't think I would have handled it with the same equanimity.

Halloween post, 2005

Last year I didnt' have much to say about Halloween. I linked to Josh Claybourn's brief remarks, short and sweet.

This year, via ilona, I link to the Christian History Institute, Issue #94, The Hijacking of Hallow's Eve. A history of the observance and corruption of All Hallows Eve ends with a personal statement.

We at Christian History Institute mourn the loss (in many of our Protestant churches at least) of any meaningful celebration of the earlier observance of Hallow's Eve. Our mission is to remind the Body of Christ of our heritage, and surely a day a year to recall the great leaders and martyrs of the faith is one small way to celebrate how God has worked across the ages, surely more important than encouraging kids to gorge themselves on candy.

It's one thing to complain, another to do something. We have prepared a new series of video programs, "Children's Heroes from Christian History." These would serve well for a "Hallow's Eve" gathering for kids as an alternative to Halloween. Besides, it would be better for their teeth.

There is also input from the Orthodox root of the faith.

From an Orthodox Christian point of view, participation in these practices at any level is impossible and idolatrous, a genuine betrayal of our God and our holy Faith. For if we participate in the ritual activity of imitating the dead by dressing up in their attire or by wandering about in the dark, or by begging with them, then we have willfully sought fellowship with the dead, whose lord is not Samhain, as the Celts believed, but Satan, the Evil One who stands against God. Further, if we submit to the dialogue of "trick or treat," we make our offering not to innocent children, but rather to Samhain, the lord of Death whom they have come to serve as imitators of the dead, wandering in the dark of night.

Yesterday Fiona Ritchey told about the connection of Halloween with the old Celtic tradition called Samhain (pron: Sow-een). Listeners to NPR know her program The Thistle & Shamrock.

On Samhain night, our October 31st, the veil between this world and next was believed to be at its thinnest, allowing living to communicate with ancestors. The ancients had no dread of spirits. Dead were encouraged to visit the living, in the hopes that they would come and restore memories, or pass on meanings of ancient customs. So lanterns were placed in windows to guide wandering souls, and food was left at the table for any visitors from the spirit world. When Christianity spread throughout Scotland, Ireland and Wales where this ancient culture still prevailed, it didn't so much replace the ancient ways as absorb them. So in the 8th century the festival of Samhain was re-framed as the Feast of All Saints, with the similar purpose of honoring the dead. Even since the dawn of the Christian era, the ancient beliefs surrounding this supernatural time of year have been preserved, the old Celtic traditions still followed on eve of All Saints, or All Hallows Eve: Halloween.

Modern Christian Evangelicals head the list of groups shunning Halloween as an evil manifestation of forces from the spiritual dark side but I think there are more serious threats to the faith than Halloween. Mega-churches come to mind whose membership is harvested from smaller "feeder" churches in which people are more likely to be held accountable for their behavior. Pop writing comes to mind which offers feel-good religion and cheap grace. But I don't want Halloween to be the occasion that I pick a fight with anybody. I'm already at the edge of enough people's barely-tolerable lists.

Glimpse of Iraq, glimpse of hope

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I found it.

Several hours ago I read something that stuck in my head and I lost the source. I didn't recognize it was important at the time, but something kept the thought from disappearing. It involves an idea that Abu Khaleel mentioned that was underscored by a totally different source. That idea is central to solving the ongoing mystery that has been dogging me for weeks: what is the connection between Iran and Iraq, and what are the disconnects?

Look at this:

The rise of the Shiites, Iraq's long-suppressed majority, is one of the most thrilling consequences of Saddam Hussein's overthrow. There is a vast body of scholarly writing about them, but for most reporters - myself included - Yitzhak Nakash's "Shi'is of Iraq" is the most accessible study. Nakash, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brandeis University, influenced the thinking of some of us by showing that Iraq's Shiites developed on a different historical track than their coreligionists in Iran, and do not generally believe in the wilayat al-faqhi, or the rulership of the clerics. That difference helped to explain why Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered religious figure, has not used his vast power over Shiite believers to intervene even more directly in Iraq's politics. It may also help to check Iran's much-feared influence over its neighbor.

That is Robert F. Worth writing in the New York Times, an essay titled The Reporter's Arab Library. (Times Select, so you have to register and pay to read the rest. Good essay, but the rest is beside my point.)

Now look at this, Abu Khaleel describing the difference between the way Iraqis and Iranians differ in how they relate to their common faith.

Although they never admit it, Iraqis are generally and characteristically rather ‘casual’ about their religion and their adherence to it. This should not be taken at face value. They generally hold it in great esteem and will not tolerate any attack on it; they just don’t adhere to what they regard as ‘inconvenient’ aspects of it. Iranians, on the other hand, are for some reason traditionally more attached to their religion - probably to the extent of being zealot about it!

Iraq is almost universally seen as a holy land by many religious Iranians: It is the land where so many of the divine Imams are buried… and the land where the 12th Absent Imam, the Mehdi, disappeared. It was also the seat of the Shiite supreme clergy.

I don't think I am reading too much into his words to conclude that both sources are saying basically the same thing.

So here is an a UPI story illustrating the same idea:

Grand Ayatollah Sistani, one of the most revered Shiite clerics in Iraq, told Iraqis to vote their consciences in the election, refusing to endorse a party.

Sistani made his position clear through a Friday sermon by Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai in the holy city of Karbala, the BBC reported.

"The marja (Sistani) enjoins Iraqis to participate massively in the forthcoming elections, but does not support any political group in particular," he said. "It's up to Iraqis to make their choice based on their beliefs."

In January's election, Sistani backed the United Iraqi Alliance, helping it win a majority. The Alliance has joined other Shiite parties in a united bloc for the upcoming election, while two Kurdish parties and three Sunni parties have formed two more blocs.

There is hope for the political process as long as clerics resist the impulse to override that process by instructing the faithful how they should behave. Iraqis will learn from experience that there is a better way to govern infidels than by outlawing them politically, emasculating them socially, and punishing them generally when they fail to do as they are told. If and when a "loyal opposition" forms will democracy have a firm footing.

It is easier said than done, but with a Shiite majority the saying part comes easier than the doing part.

Now if we could just get our own clerics to keep their hands off politics...
Talk about a crazy idea!