"...thrust U.S. troops into their bloodiest conflict with Shi'ites in two years"

U.S. troops mounted two raids against Iraqi Shi'ite forces in Baghdad on Sunday, killing up to 20 gunmen in an assault around a radical mosque and arresting over 40 Interior Ministry personnel guarding a secret prison.

The incidents prompted angry accusations against U.S. forces by powerful politicians from Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

Details were sketchy but the two operations looked like U.S. strikes against sectarian Shi'ite militias of the kind the U.S. ambassador said on Saturday must be brought to heel if Iraq is to form a unity government and halt a slide towards civil war.

It comes as Washington has increased pressure on the ruling Shi'ite Islamist political bloc to bring minority Sunnis into government -- it is even planning landmark talks with hostile Shi'ite Iran to try to break the impasse -- and thrust U.S. troops into their bloodiest conflict with Shi'ites in two years.

Hmm. "...brought to heel..." Here's the link.
Great turn of a phrase there. Some of the allies are getting out of hand, it seems.
Further down in the story we find...

Senior aides to Sadr accused U.S. troops of shooting dead more than 20 unarmed worshippers at the Mustafa mosque after tying them up. The mosque's faithful follow Sadr but the aides denied they were Mehdi Army gunmen.

"The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers," Hazim al-Araji said.

"They tied them up and shot them."

Another Sadr associate, Transport Minister Salem al-Maliki, said: "There was a dirty invasion by the U.S. forces.

"This was part of an escalation programme to drag Sadr's group into another battle or to obstruct the political process."

Earlier, in an unusual admission, Interior Ministry officials said a police major accused of taking part in death squad killings had been arrested in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.

Arkan al-Bawi is the brother of the provincial police chief.

In an indication of the scale of the violence, Iraqi forces said they could not identify 30 bodies found on the main street of a village near Baquba on Sunday. Most had been beheaded.

Remember that Sadr is our putative ally now. It was his aides, not he, who made the accusation that US troops were acting up. I notice, too, they are not called "coalition" forces.
"Death squad killings" were reported...police chief's brother implicated...bodies with heads missing...
This is not a good thing. Not good at all.
This is also not a big surprise. Such eventual complications were pointed out last year when there was a realignment of...of what? Military objectives? Diplomacy? Foreign policy? Muddling?

I did a post last year that can now be revisited with new insights.
The CFR had a fairly unsettling report that proves now to have been on target.

There is a growing chorus of complaints from Sunni Arab leaders that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) has been infiltrated by Shiite militias that engage in torture, kidnappings, and, in some cases, deaths squads against Sunnis. Though Iraq’s leadership downplays these outbreaks of violence, experts say there is widespread evidence that an increasing number of members of the Mahdi Army, led by the hot-headed Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Badr Organization are joining the ranks of Iraq’s military and engaging in paramilitary-style policing methods.
[...]
These militias have put the U.S. government in a difficult bind: On one hand, experts say, these groups are effective in fighting the Sunni-led insurgency. Last year, the U.S. military fought alongside militia groups in counterinsurgency operations in Mosul and Samarra. On the other hand, these groups are fueling sectarian tensions and infiltrating the military, which raises doubts as to where these soldiers’ allegiance lies.

But U.S. officials seem unworried by the spread of militias. “They are increasingly an Iraqi problem, not a U.S.problem,” says a senior Defense Department official who preferred not to be named. Though Iraqi militias were technically banned by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in June 2004, the U.S. military is “encouraging existing militias into the security services—that is true,” says the Defense Department official. “We continue to examine their loyalties but also are trying to build loyalty [to the Iraqi state].”

U.S. officials were not worried. Iraqi problem, you know.
"...examining loyalites..." I bet.

If I may be so bold as to quote myself...

Clearly we cannot discern among the many groups that make up the Iraqi population. I don't know how many there are, but there are a lot more than three. This is a very poor taxonomy to decide whether or not we are supposed to be killing people. And outsourcing the job to thugs is not the best way to create good public relations.

We are not on the side of many angels in Iraq. Our intentions may be good, but our connections are badly out of synch with our ideals. The Badr Brigade and its wicked offspring-- our official allies, incidentally -- do not make the US look any better in the eyes of everyday people there.

Monday update: Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, in Seattle Times

The incident is politically explosive because the mosque is a stronghold of followers of the radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Iranian-backed movement has a powerful bloc in parliament and a large sectarian militia.

Sunday's clash was the most serious between that militia and U.S. forces since al-Sadr led two anti-American uprisings in 2004.

In increasingly insistent language, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been pressing Iraq's leaders to disband such militias, which he blames for much of the sectarian killing that has spiraled since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the mostly Sunni Arab city of Samarra.

Dozens of people are found dead each day in a shadowy campaign of executions.

More to read at the link, if you have the stomach.

(That part about disbanding militias interests me. If that can be accomplished in Iraq, getting a handle on gangs in U.S. cities should be a snap. Oh, I forgot. I don't think Iraq has a Second Amendment yet. Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Sunday also brought more violence. In addition to the 30 bodies discovered by the highway, police said 13 corpses were found in other parts of the country and 10 other Iraqis were killed. They included a 13-year-old boy hit by a bomb blast as he walked to school in the southern city of Basra.

Arkan Bawi, a police major accused of heading a death squad in Baqouba, was summoned to Interior Ministry headquarters in Baghdad and placed under arrest. It was unclear what prompted the rare instance of an official investigation into such charges.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops investigating alleged abuse of prisoners by the Interior Ministry raided a detention facility but left after determining 17 Sudanese there were being held legally, an Iraqi official said.

End of story.
Excuse me...Sudanese? Seventeen of them? In Iraq? Held legally?
That looks like a story to me.
But the investigators left? Or so the Iraqi official said.
Hello out there....
Anybody listening???

Jimmy Carter and Guinea Worms

For untold generations here [Nigeria], yardlong, spaghetti-thin worms erupted from the legs or feet — or even eye sockets — of victims, forcing their way out by exuding acid under the skin until it bubbled and burst. The searing pain drove them to plunge the blisters into the nearest pool of water, whereupon the worm would squirt out a milky cloud of larvae, starting the cycle anew.

"The pain is like if you stab somebody," said Hyacinth Igelle, a farmer with a worm coming out of a hand so swollen and tender that he could not hold a hoe. He indicated how the pain moved slowly up his arm. "It is like fire — it comes late, but you feel it even unto your heart."

Now, thanks to a relentless 20-year campaign led by former President Jimmy Carter, Guinea worm is poised to become the first disease since smallpox to be pushed into oblivion. Fewer than 12,000 cases were found last year, down from 3 million in 1986.

New York Times has a Sunday feature.

Too bad so many otherwise sensible people disregard the Times as just another leftist rag of that despised MSM. But what the hey! When the talk about Jimmy Carter it only proves the point, right? On this weekend of progressive resurgence, with embarrasement about that guy's plagiarism, Latinos in the street and the president's slip about "future presidents" (plural)...I expect a lot of big guns are being loaded for some big journalistic volley next week.
I, for one, can wait.

Pandagon on Latino Liberation Day

I don't read Pandagon much because I simply don't have enough time in my life. I spend so much time reading stuff I don't agree with that listening to the rest of the choir is a luxury more than a mission. But this comment on Friday's massive Hispanic demonstrations in San Francisco gets it about right.

This may be the straw that breaks the Rethug camel’s back. The 30% or so clinging to the delusion that Dear Leader is god will turn on him on this issue.

The freeper set is so virulently hateful towards undocumented workers (who are here mowing their lawns, working in restaurants they nosh in and picking the fresh produce they buy, of course) that this is the issue that will eat the GOP alive — and the pols know it.
[Quote from the link...]
As I’ve discussed in prior posts, this is a complicated issue, fraught with political landmines for both parties, but as the GOP clowns are in charge of things, Bush and the the Rethugs on the Hill will be the ones to take the fall if they accommodate the xenophobic cretins or the businessmen bed buddies who love the cheap, exploitable labor pool.

Play that tiny violin and watch the racist Freepi explode…

There follows a revealing collection of actual snips from a single comment thread from the Free Republic blog. Hats off the anyone with the patience and discipline to sift through piles of ore to find these nuggets. I'm glad there are peope able to do that. David Neiwert is another one.

With people like that doing the spade work I don't feel so lost when I read the news. At some level I know that the seething, savage, thoughtless, careless quip-tossers may be in a loud and swelling majority, but as long as they are not on the side of the angels I may have something to fear but can submit to defeat in the sure knowledge that my soul is headed in the right direction.

Clorox Toilet Wand ad

I saw this ad in the doctor's office and knew it had to be shared.

Tried to find it online but to no avail, so I had to go out and buy this month's Reader's Digest and scan it.

Caption says:

Just be glad we don't make toilet paper.

No exclamation point, either. That's classy.
Where do you go to nominate an advertisement for awards? This one has to get in the running.

(And another thing...was this a custom ad for little periodicals that one is more apt to find while sitting on the John?)

It's a big outfit, kinda like the government. So if you want to get your own, I already looked it up.
Amazon has the goods.
The ad is on page 84 of the April Reader's Digest.

Sunday night: Woo-hoo...I got my first hit from the Clorox page at Google Finance!
Hi, Guys! Welcome to Hoots' Place.

Zayed reports from Baghdad

This is from yesterday's post at Healing Iraq blog. The irony of the blog name is inescapable.

Please don’t ask me whether I believe Iraq is on the verge of civil war yet or not. I have never experienced a civil war before, only regular ones. All I see is that both sides are engaged in tit-for-tat lynchings and summary executions. I see governmental forces openly taking sides or stepping aside. I see an occupation force that is clueless about what is going on in the country. I see politicians that distrust each other and continue to flame the situation for their own personal interests. I see Islamic clerics delivering fiery sermons against each other, then smile and hug each other at the end of the day in staged PR stunts. I see the country breaking into pieces. The frontlines between different districts of Baghdad are already clearly demarked and ready for the battle. I was stopped in my own neighbourhood yesterday by a watch team and questioned where I live and what I was doing in that area. I see other people curiously staring in each other’s faces on the street. I see hundreds of people disappearing in the middle of the night and their corpses surfacing next day with electric drill holes in them. I see people blown up to smithereens because a brainwashed virgin seeker targeted a crowded market or café. I see all that and more.

Don’t you dare chastise me for writing about what I see in my country.

Another Iraqi blogger living in London, using the screen name Salam Adil, puts together a summary of current Iraqi voices at Global Voices Online. Those of us who follow Iraqi blogs have already seen this material, but the casual reader who would like to see a collection of thumbnails can find them here. The piece is cross-posted at his personal blog, Asterism.

Korea note -- ROK & DPRK cooperation

Business Week had a little article with a big story. I haven't run across any online note, but the implications are enormous. Dear Leader is apparently allowing North Korean workers to work for South Korean companies under tight controls.

For decades, there has not been much traffic across the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers are on constant alert. But these days, some 200 cars, trucks, and buses cross the border every day.

They're going to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a dusty outpost that is North Korea's boldest economic initiative in decades. Just an hour north of Seoul, Kaesong is cordoned off from the rest of North Korea by seven-foot-high fences patrolled by squads of soldiers.

Just after 7:00 a.m., Monday through Saturday, dozens of buses from North Korea enter Kaesong, ferrying some 6,000 northern workers to 11 South Korean-owned factories to make shoes, clothing, pots, and other low-tech goods. Another 28 South Korean outfits have signed agreements to set up plants there, while 1,000 more are considering such a move, the Seoul government says.

The idea behind the effort is simple: North Korea is home to a huge, cheap, and underemployed workforce. South Korea needs a low-wage manufacturing base to compete with China. By 2012, Kaesong could be home to 725,000 jobs and generate $500 million in wages annually for the North Korean economy, figures Park Suhk Sam, senior economist at Bank of Korea. After a five-year tax holiday expires, another $1.8 billion might tumble in annually from corporate taxes levied on South Korean companies operating there. "The overall impact on the North will be huge," Park says.

North Korea's "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Il, has little choice but to experiment, given the dire condition of the North's economy. True, Kim's first priority is political self-preservation, so any opening will be measured. But since 2002 he has embraced -- however grudgingly -- tentative economic reforms. State-owned farms and factories that exceed production targets are now rewarded with higher wages. And Pyongyang has eased price controls and opened private markets where food and consumer goods are sold. "North Korea is pushing ahead with changes to the extent that they will not jeopardize its regime," says Paik Hak Soon, a security expert at the Sejong Institute, a Seoul think tank.

For South Korean companies, Kaesong offers plenty of advantages. North Korean workers at Kaesong earn about $50 a month, around half the average wage for unskilled workers in China and less than 10% of what South Koreans earn. Kaesong "offers better business conditions than China," says Moon Chang Seop, president of shoemaker Samduk Stafild. The company has invested $10 million in its spotless Kaesong factory, where some 1,200 workers cut and stitch shoes.

Outsourced work for South Korean capitalists may not be exactly what Marx and Engels -- or Kim Il Sung (Kim Jong Il's father) -- had in mind, but it could be the only hope for Pyongyang.

This is a very significant story. I am amazed that it is not getting more attention.

Now get a load of this...

A U.S. Congress staff member visited a joint North-South Korean industrial project in the north to learn more about it, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said Tuesday.

Douglas Anderson, a staffer on the House International Relations Committee, looked around the South Korean-run industrial complex in the Northern border city of Kaesong for several hours on Monday, said embassy spokesman Robert Ogburn.

''He has wanted to go up and see and what it was like, and we sent a couple of embassy guys to go with him,'' the spokesman said.

South Korean media reported that it was the first time U.S. officials have visited the industrial zone, but Ogburn said it's not. ''Working-level people have been there before,'' he said, without giving further details.

The Kaesong industrial complex is one of the showcase inter-Korean projects launched after the landmark 2000 summit between the two country's leaders.

Fifteen South Korean companies now operate at the complex, using cheap North Korean labor. They started producing kitchenware and other goods in late 2004.About 6,000 North Korean workers are employed at the factories.

South Korea hopes that a potential free trade agreement with the United States could include goods made at a joint industrial zone in North Korea.

But Washington is against it as a free trade deal only applies to goods originating within the territories of the two parties of the agreement _ South Korea and the United States

Great, huh?

More here.

So what am I missing? Is US policy so fixated on North Korea as an enemy that anything resembling a rapprochement of the two Koreas is anathema?

The Marmot's Hole, which I consider the preeminent Korean blog in English, posts about this development. It looks as though things are developing between the two Koreas with or without the advice, participation or approval of any of the big powers. That would mean China, Japan and the U.S. There is a chance that these moves are being done with tacit U.S. approval, but I don't give the State Department that much credit. Or if the State Department is involved, it would come as a surprise to me if the administration is in the loop.

In case sensible ideas don't work out, deniability remains a safety net. I'm not sure what the safety net is when dumb ideas result in spectacular failure.

Muddling Through

One of the odd symptoms of corneal dystrophy is being waked up from a deep, satisfying sleep by sharp pain. During the day, when the cornea is open to air, it settles down and feels natural. In fact, one of the ways to get comfortable is to hold a hair dryer at arm's length and allow warm air to waft directly on the eyeball, which helps take excess moisture from a swollen cornea and make it feel better. Believe it or not, it also makes the vision better as blurry becomes more in focus.

There must be some bizarre, symbolic connection here. Here I am in the middle of the night, waiting for my eye to dry out a bit so I can go back to sleep, and I come across these two wonderful quotes. Completely unrelated sources come to the same conclusion. Leon Hadar first:

If you accept the notion that the modus operandi of the Bush administration's foreign policy is muddling through, that it really does not have a "National Security Strategy," all the "inconsistencies" suddenly make a lot of sense.

He concludes with an obliquely optimistic stinger...

For some, it might sound like bad news. Perhaps we should regard it as good news if we recall that the only time that the Bush administration was not muddling through was when it decided to invade Iraq. It thought that it knew what it was doing. Now it finally recognizes that it does not. And that's progress.

Just before reading this I came across Churchill's great take on the Yanks...

"Americans always do the right thing after they have tried everything else".

...cited by M. Simon who concluded his assessment of the administration's foreign policy in exactly the same way.

It is a weakness and a strength. Why strength? Because eventually the right policy will be found. What is required is time.

The Brits BTW have a name for this managing style - they call it muddling through. We Americans put it in a fancy dress and call it adapting to circumstances.

Time to go back to bed. Maybe things will look better in the morning.

Dr. Bob on addictive behavior

With his usual compelling clarity Dr. Bob hammers away at a durable myth. In my case he is preaching to the choir, but I want to spread the word.

I was listening to Bill O’Reilly on the radio recently, discussing a sports figure whose career was ended by drug use. He was using it as a segue into his philosophy about drug laws, enforcement, legalization and addiction. Now, I generally like O’Reilly, and agree with him maybe 60-70% of the time, but he–and almost all conservatives I’ve listened to on this topic–are way off base about this issue. His conclusion, in essence, was that all this discussion about “diseases” such as addiction was an excuse to avoid personal responsibility and create victims–addiction was, pure and simple, a personal choice made by individuals, who could just as easily choose to give it up and live responsible, upright lives.

It’s a sentiment I understand fully. And it’s fully wrong.

Even if you don't care to read the post go look at the picture of a smoking cat.

Shocked....SHOCKED!!!

Texas arresting people in bars for being drunk.

D'oh...

I don't think I can improve on this story unless there are more arrests for indecency because men are unzipping their trousers to pee.

"Was it self-defense, an accident or cold-blooded revenge?"

Time Magazine documents a horrible tragedy from November.

...According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.

...The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians.

I don't have what it takes to even read through the whole article. For anyone interested, there are slides and further descriptions at the link.

Hammer of Truth blog has a synopsis with predictable carping in the comments.

Independent On-line story (UK)

This is madness. Sheer madness.

In yesterday's press conference the president came across to me as sincere in his convictions and absolutely sure of his moral stand. I can remember as though it were last week that many people I knew and loved, even my own family members, came across the same way years ago when they argued against both the civil rights movement and opposition to another war. And they were wrong. Tragically, sincerely and inescapably wrong. So, too, is the president.

It has been said that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. That may be true, but it fails to go far enough. At its most powerful, war is an extension of faith itself. At some point the fulcrum of faith moves from divine to secular. At that point our efforts no longer serve the forces of light and fall into a great deception which unwittingly serves the forces of darkness.

Personal Notes

Tonight I need to do a little personal blogging. A couple of things have been on my mind for a day or two that need to get into words. Where to start.....?

Before I forget, there was a great moment this morning on the way to work. I stopped for a cup of coffee at a convenience store and there was a woman in front of me making a transaction. In order to get thr full benefit of the moment, you have to get in the mood. If you're not from the South or have never lived in the South this is not easy. We have a wonderful social matrix down heah that has no equal any place else. If you are able to enjoy this morning's post about White Trach Palace, the post just under this one, you might get where this is going. Remember, I had just composed that post less than an hour before I stopped for the coffee. This is what I saw.

She was about five feet, four inches tall, with hair bleached out at the outer length but a kind of sandy brown coming in from the roots. I didn't see any grey, but she looked at least forty-five years old from the lines on her face. A bit of grey streaking would have been natural, but I think her hair was tinted to cover it up.

She wasn't wearing her teeth, but she had a friendly, toothless smile and pretty good posture. She was wearing a teeshirt with a characature of an Indian in profile, pot-bellied with one feather and slightly bucked teeth, wearing a loincloth front and back. The caption under the cartoon said "SQUAT." she was wearing jogging pants that stopped short of her sneakers, showing about half of her white socks.

She was spending twenty-two dollars to buy scratch-off lottery tickets. She spent the entire amount and walked away with a little handful.

I got my coffee and make a mental note to remember to blog the moment, so here it is. Sons and daughters of the South will understand. All the rest can just move along to the next item...

*** *** ***

*** ***

***

Tonight my eye is okay, more or less. But as of the last week or two I have been seeing poorly in my left eye. Really strange. After going to two opthalmologists I have been given the term corneal dystrophy. A bit of Googling and I found out the condition is chronic, not acute, and can take a range of forms. I will know more when I go back for my Friday appointment, but meantime I have been reflecting on the significance of my eyesight as an easy blessing to take for granted. Corneal dystrophy is a "condition" rather than a disease, rather like freckles or ingrown nails or male pattern baldness. Just happens in some individuals. The good news is that, worst case scenario, corneal transplants have a very high success rate. Also, there is something called Fuchs' Corneal Dystrophy which may or may not be what I have.

This brings me to the question of blogging. Hours of pecking on the keyboard and staring into the monitor is what blogging is all about, so being able to see okay is important to that activity. Gardening, woodworking, cooking...almost anything else -- would be easier on the eyes. But for the moment I'm still motivated to blog.

I don't have any real traffic, and most of my hits are from searches. As close as I can figure there must be fewer than fifteen or twenty regular readers of my blog, and those are all "lurkers." Comments are very few and far between. Even the troll seems to have lost interest. So why do I keep it up?

I blog to my grandchildren. When I am catching something and making comments I am speaking to the next generation in the hope and expectation that one day about twenty or thirty years from now one of them might be curious about what his or her old Grandpa may have said about this or that. I may or may not be alive, but even after I am gone I hope the Google cache will still have a storage place for my blog. Like an old newspaper clipping turning yellow and crumbly my blog may be an important link bondingme with my heirs. The words and ideas I leave behind will be far more important than any material stuff.

I know this to be the case because I have such a treasured place for my own grandparents and those who went before them. Every scrap of history and geneology has been important to me, not because it makes me any better, but because it contributes to who I am. My maternal grandfather died when I was only a boy, but I have nothing but admiration and respect for his legacy. I remembered him a few days after Christmas last year and included some of his writing in a blog post. Most recently I came across a wonderful letter he had written in 1905, a letter of reference for a young woman who was in one of his Sunday School classes. It was composed in the courtly and formal manner of the time, and it gave no suggestion that that same woman was to become his second wife within a few years, his first wife being lost in childbirth. She was, of course, my maternal grandmother, who kept not only that precious letter but more as well, including a three-page note from her own father, one of my great-grandfathers, written in pencil in 1889 when she was a college student. I am carefully assembling these family documents in sheet protectors to keep in a three-ring notebook.

Yes, I know all this is pedestrian and boring for everyone else, but for my grandchildren they will come across this post and know that they have discovered a crack in the old guy's shell that showed something of his humanity. That's not an easy guy thing to show, you know, even in these enlightened times.

Before I quit I have to tell a great story about the youngest grandchild. (You knew this was coming, right?) Seventeen months old soon and he just had one of those developmental moments that make you want to cry. His mother is a perfect mom, nurturing and involved with his every move. And his father is also a superior parent. They made the decision that she would be a stay-at-home mom and they would live on his earnings alone. (My wife and I did the same thing so it is not surprising. We knew what it was to do free stuff for entertainment. We lived in a house for nine years with no air conditioning, took walks for entertainment, and at one point had no television for a year because the one we had broke. Thankfully, those days didn't last more than a few years.)

So this little toddler goes into the bedroom where Mom is doing something, reaches up and says "Up." This means pick me up. This time Dad is home, right down the hall, and Mom is busy.
First time ever in his little life she says to him, "Mama's busy right now. Go let Daddy hold you."

He looks up silently. Understands. Turns and begins walking down the hall toward Dad. Slowly.
"Come on, Buddy, Daddy will hold you," says Dad holding out his arms. And at that moment the little guy bursts into tears, heartbroken that his Mama isn't going to hold him this time.

It's a beautiful picture that we can never forget. I wasn't there, but just the telling of the story by my wife was all I needed. How could any parent receive any greater blessing than to see his own children being a good teachers and role models for the next generation? Some day when I am gone he will read this post. He won't remember the moment. But when he reads, tears will form in his eyes and he will know how dearly he was loved. Blogging doesn't get any better than this.

White Trash Palace

This morning's goodie...
White Trash Palace. Gitcher kitchy stuff hyere.

Even if you're Catholic there's something for you. Or maybe I should say especially if you're Catholic. The hostess of this treasure trove is apparently Catholic, so she has a special place in her heart for trashy Catholic tastes.

White Trash Gift - Nunzilla -- Nunzilla is 2” tall and made of hard plastic with an intimidating expression. Wind her up and she trudges like a determined disciplinary force, shooting sparks from her mouth. Only five bucks.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Shirt -- This is a "WTP" designed tee featuring Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patron Saint of the Americas. Believe it our not, the Queens of the WTP are in fact Catholic, so we adore Our Lady and all stuff associated. Of course, now a great deal of the Catholic culture is now quite in fashion----but we were Catholic BEFORE it was cool. Twenty-two bucks.

Find out how WT you are.
It's SPRINGTIME at your trailerpark. What kind of tasks do you take on to get your trailer (or house) ready for Spring? Your answers will give an indication of just how WT you are!

Don't get the wrong idea. This is not a site for Catholics only. There is plenty of stuff for everyone else, infidels included. Whenever we come across a corresponding internet business peddling Muslim and Bedouin Trash I will know that world peace is just around the corner. From what I gather they are already on the way genetically in much the same way that WT in America has flourished, Pedigree Collapse.

Bedouins do not carry more genetic mutations than the general population. But because so many marry relatives — some 65 percent of Bedouin in Israel's Negev marry first or second cousins — they have a significantly higher chance of marrying someone who carries the same mutations, increasing the odds they will have children with genetic diseases, researchers say. Hundreds have been born with such diseases among the Negev Bedouin in the last decade.

The plight of the community is being addressed by an unusual scientific team: Dr. Ohad Birk, a Jewish Israeli geneticist, and two physicians, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, and Dr. Khalil Elbedour, himself a Bedouin from Israel.

They work together in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba at a genetics center with two neighboring branches, the Genetics Institute of Soroka Medical Center and the Morris Kahn Human Molecular Genetics Lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

* * * *

Credits: Thanks for this morning's little post go to NY Times..., Diana Moon..., Henry Copeland, and especially Michelle Lamar who helped put it all together in my mind.

Later: Found out the Washington Post also took a look. But they didn't make the same connection I did, expecting Sandmonkey Trash to be next...
As I said, when we see that we will know that world peace is at hand.

BREAKING -- BELARUS IN THE STREETS

Publius is following closely.

Pictures here.

If you're not following these events whenever you get close to a keyboard, you're missing the latest excitement on the internet. By and large it is being glossied over by popular media and lost in the shuffle of co-called local news.

Yahoo is doing its part.

Neeka's backlog Tuesday, March 21, 2006
.
br23 blog reports hundreds of riot police units stationed in the backyards of the buildings adjacent to Oktyabrskaya Sq. The protesters, however, are determined to stay "until the new election date is set, in July." LJ user samuel_smith writes (RUS) that cars with drinking water and food for the protesters are kept from parking at the square by the police. LJ user agafon_bel writes (RUS) that Aleksandr Milinkevich's two sons were detained by police and almost charged with petty hooliganism, but when the police colonel learned who they were, he not just let them go but gave them a ride to the square.

Charter 97 is posting something every few minutes...

00:3000:50, 21/03/2006
Policemen do not allow the cars bringing food and mineral water to stop on the square. A policeman in mufti seized a bag with warm things and blankets from the hands of a person who went to the square.
00:2500:49, 21/03/2006
Traffic policemen have detained a car with activists of Alyaksandr Kazulin. They were transporting the Bell of Freedom. The car was stopped and taken to the police department of Central district.
00:2000:49, 21/03/2006
Several thousand people remain standing on the square. About 20 tents are placed there. People are singing songs and playing guitars. National flags, flags of the European Union and Zubr are seen. People are chanting: “Long live Belarus!”, “Police is with the people!” There are several dozens of policemen in mufti on the square. They are serenely observing the scene and do not make a move.
Alyaksandr Milinkevich’s sons are released00:16, 21/03/2006
The candidate of the democratic forces has informed about that himself. Alyaksandr and Vitaut called on the phone and said that they had been detained by policemen, but now they are released and are going to arrive to the square.
23:5000:13, 21/03/2006
Alyaksandr Milinkevich and his wife have come to the tent camp fixed on the square. Now there are 15 tents on the square. The leader of the democratic forces shook by the hand each of the protesters and thanked them for their courage. People are scanning: “Milinkevich!”, “Long live Belarus!”

Opinion survey -- Reason on Line

As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq approaches, Reason asked a wide range of libertarian, conservative, and freedom-minded journalists and academics to assess the war, the occupation, and how their views have or have not changed.

This summary is worth a look. Results are all over the place.
This one, by Tim Cavanaugh, Reason's web editor, scares the hell out of me but I can't think of any compelling arguments against it except, as he says, it might offend our sense of decency. A sense of decency, it seems, is no longer on the list of desireable qualities to be called civilized.

Let the Shiite Crescent bloom: We've already spent thousands of lives and half a trillion dollars inadvertently nurturing it, so we might at least get the incremental benefit of having a deadly rival to the Salafists who are even more determined than the Shiites to destroy our civilization. (Just so, we should have let the Iranians finish kicking Saddam's ass in the 1980s.) That means accepting the current Mullahfied Iraqi government and leaving it to brutalize the Sunnis at will. This might offend our sense of decency, but if we stay in the country, the same historical forces that drove the British, the Turks, and all other visitors to back the Sunnis over the Shiites will drive us down the same road.

Belarus -- Today's most exciting story

Publius is live-blogging another revolution in the streets.
This is blogging at it's best. Babes, too! That tells me this is for real.

Veronica Khokhlova is working overtime liveblogging this as well. She translates a post from LiveJournal user lipski that says people are beginning to go home because it’s cold and can’t hear what people are saying very well. He says that people are a bit disappointed due to the snow storm, but in general are happy to see the strength they have in numbers and the overwhelming support they’ve gotten. But Neeka, who lived through the Orange Revolution herself, notes that the first night of protests weren’t exactly anything to gawk at either and people had the same sinking feeling in their stomachs. And yet the next morning, just as Milinkevich called people out now for tomorrow, people showed up and began their revolution. Now we must wait and see if the people of Belarus can reignite the fire in them come morning, and if the military won’t kill them. That the election commission plans on giving Lukashenko some 90% of the vote, when independent exit polls put him at 47% — thus forcing a runoff with Milinkevich — should be enough to get people out on the streets. At least I hope so.

Rumsfeld on Iraq

On this third anniversary of the US occupation of Iraq read the words of a true bveliever, the Secretary of Defence.

Though there are those who will never be convinced that the cause in Iraq is worth the costs, anyone looking realistically at the world today -- at the terrorist threat we face -- can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.

Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

The whole statement is in the Washington Post and elsewhere, I'm sure. I was self-conscious about using the term occupation until I read the word postwar. One is as applicable as the other. And both will apply after the fact, regardless of the outcome.

And the outcome hangs precariously in the balance.

Mixed signals

You know what they say about backsides...

Compare this post with this column.

What's that saying? ...you can't make this stuff up.

Those who advocate democratic expression in places now run by kings, sheiks, tribal leaders and clerics should reflect long and hard on this post and this column. Be careful what you ask for, because you may very well receive it, along with unintended results. Take a good look at how Missouri legislators are dealing with abortion and birth control and ask yourself: Would a tradition-based population from the KSA or UAE behave any differently?

As I recall, Afghanistan was/is the poster child for how much better conditions are in the wake of an enlightened US involvement in their internal affairs. I don't find this story very encouraging.

An Afghan man who recently admitted he converted to Christianity faces the death penalty under the country's strict Islamic legal system. The trial is a critical test of Afghanistan's new constitution and democratic government.

The case is attracting widespread attention in Afghanistan, where local media are closely monitoring the landmark proceedings.

Michelle Malkin noticed, too.

From another front: Gaza

Late-night surfing brings this... Not a pretty picture, I'm afraid.

Well blog readers, we are out of Gaza and no one knows when we will be going back in. There has been a mass exodus of westerners out of the Strip because of what has happened. Along with the mass kidnappings, an armed force of terrorists attacked the school.

We had word early on Tuesday (March 14th) that there might be a problem due to the Israeli capture of the six Palestinian militants from the jail in Jericho, so it was decided that school would be turned out early. We had the kids out for the buses, but two of the buses were late so about half of the kids were still sitting on the edge of the soccer field waiting. I heard shots being fired just as one of the Israeli drones went overhead, so I thought that someone was just shooting at the drone, but then I saw the security at the top of the hill running toward the shots. Then the shots started going overhead and we started to herd the children back to the building. As I ran to the building, I saw someone with his arm around one of the teachers; I mistook him for one of the security forces people until I was about 15 yards from him. He was holding the teacher hostage while the real security was advancing on him. I took the kids that were with me and got behind something for cover.

About that time, one of the other teachers started yelling for the kids and I to pull back behind the generator shed about 60 yards or so behind us, so with gunfire still going off, another teacher and I pulled the kids back behind the building. Almost immediately, one of the security guys and one of the Palestinian teachers ran out to us screaming for us (the two western teachers) to come with them to safety. I told them to take Stephen since I would not be automatically picked out as westerner and I was the only one left with the kids. But they came right back after they got him in the building and were ordering me to come with them. When I refused, the older high school boys started yelling at me to get to safety and that they would take care of the younger children. So the security guys and I made the sprint for the building through middle of the fight. Unknown to us, about 10 of the militants had gotten into the building, so we spent the first few minutes hiding in the building, a few teachers with students in rooms spread all over the school, waiting for the security forces to retake the building.

When the militants started to leave, they grabbed two of the other teachers (two Australians that they thought were Americans). When two of the Palestinian staff tried to prevent them from leaving with the teachers, the militants shot them. It took about 20 minutes for the security forces to retake the building. During that time, the American Consulate in Jerusalem was on the phone to me every few minutes getting updates. They immediately liaised with the Palestinian Authority to get the four Americans out as soon as possible, but by the time they were ready to go, ALL of the western teachers were ready to be taken out (with all of the foreign embassies getting their people out).

We were taken out the back way to avoid the militants who were trying to cut off the route to the Erez Crossing. Even when we got there, things did not calm down. The UN contingent was just behind us and were stopped before they got to the crossing and had to be freed by the security forces. We crossed over to wait on the release of the two kidnapped teachers. As soon as they were through the crossing, the Israelis immediately started to pound the hell out of Gaza.

The upshot is, there has been a mass exodus of westerners out of Gaza. Even western women who are married to Palestinians are no longer safe. The militants even tried to kidnap a woman who has been living in Gaza 15 years and is married with kids. Even she is not safe there now.

I don't know what this will mean for the school next year, but at the moment we're about to meet to talk about what’s going to happen next. I will keep you posted.

Bird Flu Watch

"...the World Health Organisation has thus far confirmed only 173 cases of avian flu in humans, but more than half of those people died. And the virus has been spreading rapidly westwards from East Asia as far as Western Europe. A small genetic mutation could greatly facilitate its transmission from birds to humans and between humans. "

From a Niall Ferguson column in the London Telegraph.

Also, H5N1 Blog points to an excellent online world map in the WaPo showing the spread of bird flu, tracking the last three years.

NPR's All Things Considered had a three and a half minute segment last Thursday discussing the bio-physics involved with a dreaded mutation of the virus from its current B2B and B2H form into a H2H pandemic model. (Bird to Bird, Bird to Human, Human to Human...)

As in the case of hurricanes, there is a smug, pregnant silence in Washington. No one seems to tire of waving the bloody shirt when it comes to rattling sabers at Muslims, advocating vigilante behavior on our Southern border or spending breathtaking amounts of earmarked pork from the Treasury. One would think that the specter of a global flu epidemic presents a much more rational and productive motivation for nations to seek cooperation over conflict, but that thinking seems to be politically unfeasible.

In the past, preparations for epidemics that never materialized (think Swine Flu) resulted in negative political fallout for those who were later smeared with the "over-reaction" epithet. So much for being better-safe-than-sorry. Seems to me the only real way to win with preparations for a pandemic is to lose and lose big. That would be cause for a great sigh of relief. Unfortunately too few people would agree.

Great comment here from Meryl Yourish...

China received global condemnation for dragging its two point six billion feet in reporting cases and sharing information on epidemics last year, failing to contain the virus and allowing it to spread into other countries.

Will Egypt receive condemnation for failing to contain the virus and take an active role in controlling it?

Go ahead. Hold your breath. The blue will go nicely with the upholstery.

"Boomer-bashing has become a virtual cottage industry."

This essay by Leonard Steinhorn was in the Washington Post a month ago and I missed it. Snave grabbed it, so here it is for my scrapbook. It's just short of a rant, but ir's really not carping. His points are well-taken. As the sub-title says, who contributed more -- the heroes of World War II or the revelers at Woodstock?

It makes the headlines nearly every day, and the tone is usually resentful: Beware of those soon-to-retire baby boomers, all 80 million of them, who are about to place a huge burden on the rest of us. The first of this whiny, entitled generation are turning 60 this year, and they'll be demanding even more special treatment in old age than they've gotten the rest of their lives.
But imagine if the generation getting ready to retire wasn't the baby boomers, but the World War II generation -- or the Greatest Generation, as it's popularly lionized. No one would be calling those Americans a burden or a drag. If they were retiring today, we'd be writing columns full of praise for their sacrifice and discussing what our nation owes them and how it's our moral duty to support them.

Why the different attitudes toward these two generations? Why is one idealized as heroic and giving, while the other is disdained as self-indulgent and taking? It's time to reassess. The true test of a generation should be what it's done to make America better. And in that regard, boomers have an important story to tell. It's a story about a more inclusive and tolerant America, about women's equality and men's growing respect for it, about an appreciation for cultural diversity too long denied, about a society that no longer turns a blind eye to prejudice or pollution.

The boomers' problem is not that they haven't accomplished a great deal; it's that we take their accomplishments for granted and don't give them any credit. But if we look more closely at the legacies of both the boomers and their parents, we might see that the boomers are a far more consequential group than many admit. We might see, in fact, that they have advanced American values in ways the Greatest Generation refused to do.

Today, no one questions what the World War II generation gave to America, and that's as it should be. Its members sacrificed their lives and futures to defend our country. They were heroes then, and they deserve our continuing gratitude. But the reality few acknowledge is that, mission accomplished, they returned home to preside, by and large without complaint, over an American society vastly inferior to the one we know today.

Our view of the 1950s is clouded by nostalgia. We have a Norman Rockwell image of that era, one of tightknit neighborhoods and white picket fences. But for too many Americans, this was no golden age. In the storied years of the 1950s, we told women to stay home, blacks to stay separate, gays to stay closeted, Jews to stay inconspicuous, and those who didn't conform or prayed to a different God to feel ashamed and stay silent.

Greatest Generation blacks who fought Hitler were forced to sit behind German POWs at USO concerts, and when they returned home the new suburban neighborhoods -- emblems of the American Dream -- were closed to them. Even baseball great Willie Mays couldn't find a house to buy when the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco in 1957 -- until the mayor intervened. Just as Jews anglicized names and decorated Christmas trees to fit in, blacks tried to straighten their hair and bleach their skin by using fiery, painful chemical products with names such as Black-No-More. For them there was nothing warm or nurturing about that era.

It was a time when men with beards seemed subversive and women in pants were questioned by police, and when the Organization Man ruled the workplace. Children thought to be gay were sent off for psychiatric treatment and even electroshock therapy. As for those who spoke up for the environment, they were irritants in a nation that was on the march and viewed smog alerts and clouds of soot as simply the price of progress.

Women of that era found themselves trapped in an apron. Want ads were segregated by sex -- a practice The Washington Post didn't end until 1971 -- and it wasn't unusual for a description of the perfect "girl" to be "5-foot-5 to 5-foot-7 in heels." Judges ridiculed female attorneys as "lawyerettes" in court. A woman's job didn't count for much, as credit bureaus typically denied women their economic independence.

The Greatest Generation largely accepted and defended this status quo. Even in the 1990s, polls showed Greatest Generation majorities continuing to resist racial intermarriage, working mothers and laws to protect gays from discrimination. Through the late 1980s, a majority of white respondents in national polls even said they would vote for a law allowing a homeowner to refuse to sell his home to a black buyer.

In other words, if most Greatest Generation Americans had their way, American life would have remained frozen in the '50s. They were not the agents of change that built the far more inclusive, tolerant, free and equal America we have today.

That task fell to the boomers, who almost immediately started breaking down the restrictive codes and repressive convictions of the Greatest Generation's era. From the moment pollsters began recording their attitudes in the 1960s, boomers stood diametrically opposed to their elders on the core issues of race, women, religious pluralism, homosexuality and environmental protection. They saw an America that was not living up to its ideals, and they set about to change it.

But this is a story that rarely gets told. In part that's because the media prefer the dramatic or the epic, which leaves out a great deal of social change. In part it's because we remain fixated on the '60s, as if boomer history ended there. Yet nearly four decades have passed since the '60s ended, and the ways in which America has changed are so far-reaching and fundamental that they have transformed how we live as profoundly as any war or New Deal.

Today, we see minorities and women contributing to society in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. Diversity and pluralism are now moral values, bigotry and sexual harassment no longer get a free pass, and ethnic boundaries once considered impermeable are breaking down in media, society and personal relationships. Half of all teens now report dating across racial and ethnic lines -- and 90 percent say their parents have no problem with it.

Discrimination against gays? Increasingly prohibited. Domestic partner benefits? Increasingly accepted. Men sharing housework and child care duties? No more raised eyebrows. Toxic runoffs and belching smokestacks? No longer tolerated. The command and control workplace? On its way out.

So natural and comfortable are these new norms that most of us take them for granted, as if it's always been this way. Because we live in a changed America, we tend to forget what it was like before boomers agitated for change.

Boomer-bashing has become a virtual cottage industry. They're labeled "the worst generation." They're accused of infantilism and self-promotion. One Web site described them as "a plague of self-centered locusts."

Part of what drives this vitriol is an implied criticism that boomers are soft and overindulged because they never sacrificed in a Great War or Depression. But millions of boomers fought bravely in a war their parents handed them, and millions more risked arrest, uncertainty and ostracism for protesting what they believed to be the pointlessness and duplicity of that war. There's no reason to believe that boomers wouldn't have fought Hitler as nobly as their parents did, and boomer antiwar protesters said as much at the time, distinguishing between what they saw as the just and necessary war against fascism and the misguided, deceptive and morally ambiguous war in Vietnam.

As for the well-worn condemnation of boomer materialism, the truth is that materialism is nothing new in America, and boomers are far from the first and only generation to face this charge: It was conspicuous consumption in the 1920s and keeping up with the Joneses in the '50s.

Boomers certainly haven't solved all of society's problems, and they've created a few as well. But if we held the World War II generation to the same standard, the word "greatest" would never come to mind. Even if we're not a perfect America today, in so many ways we're a better America. And for that, we owe the baby boomers our thanks.

Kidneys and other body parts

For some reason I'm coming across a lot more body-parts stories than usual the last day or two. Maybe they have always been there and I only just noticed because I'm having a bout with what the eye doctor calls corneal dystrophy in my left eye, but I don't think so. Lookit this...

Virginia Postrel writes that this is National Kidney Month.

Two posts earlier she linkd to a story about how kidney donations can be on the rise thanks to an innovative program at Massachusetts General Hospital that enables friends of kidney patients needing a new organ to donate their otherwise incompatible organs to a different patient in need in a quid pro quo arrangement resulting in compatible organs for two.

But last week, Borchert saved her friend's life by giving a kidney to Krafton, a man she did not know, in the first test of a system that brings together strangers to exchange organs for transplant. At the same moment that surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital began removing Borchert's kidney for Krafton, another surgical team at New York Presbyterian Hospital started taking a kidney from Krafton's friend, Steve Proulx, to implant in Borchert's friend, who asked to remain anonymous.

Virginia Postrel knows whereof she speaks because she is a donor herself. There is an interesting political spin in a great story by Amity Shlaes.

Okay, then.
Just a while ago I came across another kidney story at BoingBoing. The link and story is about a South Korean muscal being produced by someone who left North Korea. It's an interesting story, but the part that stuck in my head was this little blurb...

Oh, and the director, he had to put up his kidney as collateral to put the show on. If he can pay them back by next month, it won't be removed.

Kidney for collateral? Imagine that. Something seems not quite right about that. It recalls Shylock's pound of flesh from The Merchant of Venice.

But college coeds are raising money by selling their eggs.

At least one guy was so angry about something he cut off his own penis and threw it at the cops. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase pissed off, doesn't it?

And finally, also via BoingBoing, a just-published book about the cadaver business, Body Brokers.

I don't think it is my imagination. There really seems to be a rash of stories about body parts and such. Hey, I even know personally a young woman who just went through the egg-donation procedure. And when I asked the eye doctor about a prosthetic cornea (I knew that cataract surgery routinely implants a factory-made lens that enables the patient to see better than they did before surgery) he replied that there was no need. It seems cornea transplants have such a high success rate that there is no demand for factory-make products.

Is it any wonder that Aubrey de Grey believes the next generation might live to 150 years, and the first human to reach the age of 1000 might already be born?

Living indefinitely, or at least hundreds of years, is not an outrageous scientific proposition, said Cambridge University scientist Aubrey de Grey.

Achieving what he called "life-span escape velocity" by always staying a couple of decades ahead of death is theoretically possible, although probably not for another half century.

For those of us in the retirement living/ gerontology setting that is what I call real job security.

Riverbend Essay

Already I know just seeing the name "Riverbend" will lose many readers. To many, she has been the gold standard for Iraqi anti-American sentiment. Too bad so many have made that pre-judgement because she is highly-regarded in a lot of circles, and her essay this morning rings absolutely true to me. Reflecting on the last three years in Iraq, she goes to a core issue, the poisonous divide the press is calling "sectarian," a separation of Sunni and Shiite Moslems that before the war was, from all I have read, minimal to non-existent in most of Iraq.

This is not to say there was no differnce. There clearly was a divide with a mathematical advantage to Shias. And there was also a political unevenness in Saddam's manipulative tactic of allowing a Sunni minority to subjigate a Shiite majority. But those differences seem to have been more tribal or social than sectarian, an accident of political alliances which furnished a convenient template for a political imbalance. Such arrangements are nothing new in the history of totalitarian regimes. Think South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Hitler's Germany. Playing one group off against another is a tactic in every tyrant's toolbox, typically with a minority group (seeking power, and offering loyalty to the dictator in return for the acquisition of that power) receiving military, technical, economic and police resources to keep the majority under tight control. It is a win-win arangement between a minority group and the tyrant whereby a numerical majority is kept under control.

With a tyrannical infrastructure no longer in play, the fires of a backlash are in play, with every report fanning the flames. One would hope that as an outside force seeking peace the US might become an agent of reconciliation, but thanks to the need for hegemony official policy is aimed more at allignment with whatever forces emerge dominant from the chaos. And all the talk about "democracy" points to the dominance of the mathemaical majority, which in this case happens to be Shiite. On the face of it, the notion is appealing. But at another level it is nothing more than an inverted version of a totalitarian state, with a tyranny of the minority being replaced by a tyranny of the majority, that worst possible enemy of democracy itself.

With those thoughts in mind, go read the Riverbend essay.

I read constantly analyses mostly written by foreigners or Iraqis who’ve been abroad for decades talking about how there was always a divide between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq (which, ironically, only becomes apparent when you're not actually living amongst Iraqis they claim)… but how under a dictator, nobody saw it or nobody wanted to see it. That is simply not true- if there was a divide, it was between the fanatics on both ends. The extreme Shia and extreme Sunnis. Most people simply didn’t go around making friends or socializing with neighbors based on their sect. People didn't care- you could ask that question, but everyone would look at you like you were silly and rude.

I remember as a child, during a visit, I was playing outside with one of the neighbors children. Amal was exactly my age- we were even born in the same month, only three days apart. We were laughing at a silly joke and suddenly she turned and asked coyly, “Are you Sanafir or Shanakil?” I stood there, puzzled. ‘Sanafir’ is the Arabic word for “Smurfs” and ‘Shanakil” is the Arabic word for “Snorks”. I didn’t understand why she was asking me if I was a Smurf or a Snork. Apparently, it was an indirect way to ask whether I was Sunni (Sanafir) or Shia (Shanakil).

“What???” I asked, half smiling. She laughed and asked me whether I prayed with my hands to my sides or folded against my stomach. I shrugged, not very interested and a little bit ashamed to admit that I still didn’t really know how to pray properly, at the tender age of 10.

Later that evening, I sat at my aunt’s house and remember to ask my mother whether we were Smurfs or Snorks. She gave me the same blank look I had given Amal. “Mama- do we pray like THIS or like THIS?!” I got up and did both prayer positions. My mother’s eyes cleared and she shook her head and rolled her eyes at my aunt, “Why are you asking? Who wants to know?” I explained how Amal, our Shanakil neighbor, had asked me earlier that day. “Well tell Amal we’re not Shanakil and we’re not Sanafir- we’re Muslims- there’s no difference.”

It was years later before I learned that half the family were Sanafir, and the other half were Shanakil, but nobody cared. We didn’t sit around during family reunions or family dinners and argue Sunni Islam or Shia Islam. The family didn’t care about how this cousin prayed with his hands at his side and that one prayed with her hands folded across her stomach. Many Iraqis of my generation have that attitude. We were brought up to believe that people who discriminated in any way- positively or negatively- based on sect or ethnicity were backward, uneducated and uncivilized.

St. Patrick's Day

Jake wishes everyone a festive St. Patrick's Day celebration! Here is an Irish joke for the occasion.

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Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking space.

Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life and give up drinking Irish Whiskey."

Just then a parking space miraculously appeared. Paddy looked up and said, "Never mind, Lord. I found one."

Serial Rape -- Congress on Social Security

For years the revenue collected from employers and workers as a payroll tax to suppoort Social Security ( not subject to any deductions, by the way) has exceded the needs of Social Security. That's right. There has been a surplus collected every year for many years.

And every year that "surplus" has been treated as ordinary income to the Treasury and spent. It has not been accumulating for future Social Security needs. When the president says the system will be "bankrupt" in a few years, what that means is that expenses will excede income. Since past excess collections will have been spent, the term "bankrupt" is fairly apt. Very much the same way that if I choose to spend all that I earn and set nothing aside for future needs I will become bankrupt when those needs come due.

Once again, the Senate has voted to continue pissing away that overage.

Trump takedown

First, read this...

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.”

Now read Grant McCracken.

Just when we were beginning to think that Mr. Trump might not be a "short fingered vulgarian," he stages a show that removes all doubt.

Uh, so far no arguments in the comments thread. I'm sure not gonna disagree.

Looking at historical Muslim contributions

Younghusband at Coming Anarchy links to a site enumerating many contributions made over the years to science, medicine, music and other cultural artifacts. It's an interesting place to visit, but among the comments are a couple of pointed observations that take some of the wind out of the sails.

A lot of the inventions attributed to ‘Islam’ (why dont other religions get kudos for inventions?) were actually invented in muslim controlled lands by infidel non muslims.
...
There are some instances of muslim achievement in the sciences, but often Islam intervened to make sure that scientific development was halted. In medicine, muslims were the first to establish pharmacies and require standards of doctors and pharmacists, to be enforced by an examination system. Under the reign of the fifth caliph, Harun al-Rashid (753-809), the first hospital was established in Bagdad, and others followed. But modern medical advances were not made by muslims...because muslims were forbidden to dissect human bodies.
[...]
...I mean to say that far from ‘Islam’ being responsible for scientific discovery, whatever muslims discovered as in spite of having Islam holding them back.

And this:

This site was disappointing in that they took for granted that any invention made by Arabic, Persian, or Turkic people was automatically “Muslim”. For example, I noticed that chess is noted as Muslim, because they came to the west through the “Muslim” world. But even people who attribute chess to the Middle East (though it’s disputed) believe that the game was invented long before Mohammed was a twinkle in his daddy’s eye.
Also, it asserts that Muslims introduced cosmetics to the West ... Call me crazy, but I think that it’s been shown that peoples all over the world, from South America to the sub-continent have been using cosmetics ever since they realized that blackberries turn your lips red.
The list goes on.
Certainly Muslims are not the only people to attribute everything to their own civilization, but this was a real disappointment. I went looking for science and got more bluster.

I was enjoyed looking at the site because I tend to take all claims, Muslim or otherwise, with a grain of salt. This delightful caption was under an illustration.

Rather than eating potatoes and soggy swedes like Medieval Europe, the Islamic world over 800 years ago had a constant supply of fresh foods to eat throughout the whole year.

I recall hearing Harry Golden years ago make a similar remark...

When Europeans were still roaming the forests, painting their bodies green, the Jews already had diabetes.

Mamacita and others on education

[Advisory: This post will take a while to ingest. If time is limited, come back later.]

One of my jobs where I now work is dipping ice cream. And one of the flavors is Moose Tracks. Don't ask me why, that name...maybe because moose leave huge lumps of stuff behind as they go tromping through the woods. Or maybe the dairy people, like the people who name real estate developments, just ran out of names one day. I dunno. Anyway, in moose tracks you sometimes dig around in the tub and come across a mother-lode of chocolate all in one piece, a semi-sweet chocolate boulder of chocolate magma than has to be broken a time or two to make room in the dipper for even a little vanilla ice cream. For the average ice cream afficianado it is a nice perq, but for the chocoholic, it is like waking up on Easter to find your basket packed with nothing but chocolate. No marshmallows. No circus peanuts. No jelly bird eggs. Just one chocolate treat after another.

I say all that to introduce three rich wellsprings of rich blogging all in one post. Nothing I write here (as you can see for yourself) will be anything like what they say themselves. They are The Anchoress, Siggy (short for Sigmund, Carl and Alfred), and Mamacita. Think of Siggy as a the most indulgent banana split you have ever been served, Mamacita as a big portion of Moose tracks on the side, and The Anchoress as a tall, frothy cup of gourmet coffee, not too much sugar, with a generous shot of Drambouie added.

These three converge on this occasion to discuss the sorry state of education in America. Since my own baby is pushing thirty and my grandchildren are a generation down the line, separated more by keyboards than books, I don't have personal credentials to speak with authority about what is happening in schools today. I'm sure it is as bad as they say, maybe worse. But I am more alarmed at the whole in loco parentis theme defining what now passes for education in the post-WWII era which has made the two-income family obligatory instead of optional. It is all well and good to say that the mission of shool is to educate, not provide day-care. But that ideal is a distant dream for a lot, maybe a majority, of families. And the poisonous phrase single-parent family is not helping.

My own views on education have already been formed. I am open to whatever ideas might be added as time passes, but I cannot break free of the foundational importance of the family in determining the end result. There are good reasons for officials, authorities, politicians and other putative "leaders" and "role models" to offer guidance about what should and should not be included in a curriculum, but I have no confidence that any certified outline or syllabus can ever substitute for old-fashioned parental encouragement and support. I am careful to avoid using the word "involvement" because it is misleading. Involvement implies that a level of parental accomplishment that is commendable but not essential to the success of the process. How else would illiterate parents ever rear children who develop into physicians or physicists?

Only two days ago I came across a wonderful family treasure: a three-page letter, written in pencil toward the end of the nineteenth century. With two or three erasures and corrections, and a couple of repetitions that reveal that the writer was not accustomed to writing much of anything, it was a sincere written plea to my grandmother from her father to seek the advice of a well-educated Dr. McKee and his daughter regarding what might be the best course of study for her, my grandmother, to pursue in school. She was a college student in Ohio at the time and it was easy to spot her daddy's thinly-veiled concern that her interest in elocution and physical education might not serve her well in finding a "profitable position" when she got out of school. Having lost her mother, his wife, in childbirth, and his fortune by having sold the family estate to someone who paid him off in Confederate money, he was in no position to give his only child, being reared by relatives better able to feed and support her, much more than encouragement to seek the advice of others whom he respected.

Again I am reminded of my own great heritage, not of formal education, but of a family that valued the process of learning. Whatever educational achievement I have I attribute to that heritage more than any institution. And my guess is that most educated people, given enough time, would tell a similar story. Classrooms, instructors and others from academia would be an important part of the story, of course, but in the end there would be role models -- maybe not parents or family -- who became the lynchpins of their success.

PejmanYousefzadeh on Dubai

He links to Ann Althouse as well. Dan Drezner, too.

Looks like Congress did enough damage to foreign policy to keep the State Department busy for a long time patching things up abroad.

...the political dinosaurs who all too prominently inhabit the terrain of policymaking when it comes to dealing with the challenges of the global economy and domestic security don't appear to recognize this fact. So instead, they are content to demagogue the issue for short-term political gain (including their own political gain should they eventually decide to run for President) while doing a monumental injustice to the facts and sacrificing the long term economic and security interests of the United States. At some point, one expects that this brand of political antediluvianism will give way to a brand of thinking that is with the times and in tune with the facts. But that does not appear to be ready to happen anytime soon.

Sigh.

John Burgess on Dubai

This is what happens when vox populi gets too loud.
It's okay in the context of democratic principles, but it also reveals how, in Churchill's clever turn of phrase, it is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others.

Perhaps the American Congress will learn that grandstanding has its costs, always. Just because they aren't immediately apparent, doesn't mean they don't exist.

About Crossroads Arabia

Diana Moon on Dubai

Dubai, and a couple of other choice topics. Balance. That's why I keep checking in with Diana Moon. If you think you are getting the straight scoop on something be careful. Diana may come at it from a different angle, so prepare to get your clock cleaned. And she sucks up to nobody.

Of all the blogs I have found, hers is one of the few that makes me want to meet the writer in person. Why? Because if the occasion presented itself I think she would not pretend it was good to meet me, just because convention expected it. After a short time I expect she would make an assessment then let me know in no uncertain terms that she either enjoyed meeting me or I was full of baloney and need to get a life. And she would mean it.

Like everyone else, she is checking out Dubai. Responding to a report of a French woman who become a rape victim in a jusisdiction deriving its authority from Sharia law, she uncovered a pretty ugly scene. That part is not surprising, but she looks for some kind of meaningful reaction from those who purport to be defenders of Dubai.

After a couple of local sites that offer what is at best a tepid reaction, she comes across the US expat business types at Aquol. It's like a scene from a movie. A tawdry, dark film in black and white with a woman looking for a lost friend finds herself in a grimy local saloon with a bunch of unsavory characters who drink too much, cuss too loudly and haven't shaved for a day or two.

Sweet, eh? All that oil money, recycled back to its source. And what does the American workingman get out of this deal?

Debt, and a ticket to indentured servitude in the National Guard.

Anyway, business is business and "the Lousebury's" shrieking hysteria just shows that he's no businessman. The real eagle-eyes will just wait for the fuss to blow over and then make a killing. They always do.

I swear, I was going to predict yesterday that one of the contributors of Aqoul would post something dismissive and contemptuous of Wafa Sultan. I was not disappointed. What a pathetic little failed attempt at a louse-up.

You go, girl! I'm on your side. These guys are like cats. They will always land on their feet. Somewhere inside your heart is in the right place. And you are not for sale. Not for petro-dollars or any other kind.

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you!

I have to give them credit for being comprehensive. Winds of Change leaves nothing out today when they look at the entire world and see an avalanche of evidence that global trends counter to the interests of good people everywhere make the need for patriotic vigilance, military might and border protection more important than breathing and eating. The death of Slobodan Milosevic was mentioned in passing, but it is too early to know if his ghost will return for the purpose of aiding the other dark forces out to destroy America.

Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday.

[Avalanche follows here]

If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War".

You got it, guys. The credit is all yours. I can't think of anything a tired old unreconstructed Liberal from the past can say. In my lifetime I have been able to witness a Red Scare morph into a Cold War which seems now to have morphed into a Global War on Terror. There is an old saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything you see looks like a nail.