The Missing Link

February 28, 2006

A Manifesto for Freedom

This manifesto is making its way around the blogosphere:

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

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El Alcazar -- Seville, Spain

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E-ducation

I suspect that online colleges will become increasingly popular in coming years. This may hasten that process:

It took just a few paragraphs in a budget bill for Congress to open a new frontier in education: Colleges will no longer be required to deliver at least half their courses on a campus instead of online to qualify for federal student aid.

That change is expected to be of enormous value to the commercial education industry. Although both for-profit colleges and traditional ones have expanded their Internet and online offerings in recent years, only a few dozen universities are fully Internet-based, and most of them are for-profit ones.

The provision is just one sign of how an industry that once had a dubious reputation has gained new influence, with well-connected friends in the government and many Congressional Republicans sympathetic to their entrepreneurial ethic.

The Bush administration supported lifting the restriction on online education as a way to reach nontraditional students. Nonprofit universities and colleges opposed such a broad change, with some academics saying there was no proof that online education was effective. But for-profit colleges sought the rollback avidly.

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A Critique of Diversity

This is a rather eloquent critique of diversity as currently practiced:

Diversity practitioners claim that individual life experiences matter, and contribute to various positive outcomes. The claim is understandable; but the practitioners do not follow their own claim. Instead, individuals are stripped of life experiences that matter, and an externally-applied group identification is substituted. Worse, the group identification is often antithetical to reasoned judgment based on facts, logic, or even empathy.

The group identification is applied involuntarily (that is, by force). It is an outrageous violation of its own fundamental principle, that individual life experience matters. It is a miscarriage of justice, in that benefits and penalties owed to individuals are applied by group identification, even if the individual did not participate in, or inherit the results of, the attributed behaviors and experiences of others.

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The Next Generation

It gave me chills too.

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Talking About Islam in Europe

In Holland it's come to this:

"Would you write the name you’d like to use here, and your real name there?� asked the girl at reception. I had just been driven to a hotel in the Hague. An hour earlier I’d been greeted at Amsterdam airport by a man holding a sign with a pre-agreed cipher. I hadn’t known where I would be staying, or where I would be speaking. The secrecy was necessary: I had come to Holland to talk about Islam...

The event was scholarly, incisive and wide-ranging. There were no ranters or rabble-rousers, just an invited audience of academics, writers, politicians and sombre party members. As yet another example of Islam’s violent confrontation with the West (this time caused by cartoons) swept across the globe, we tried to discuss Islam as openly as we could. The Dutch security service in the Hague was among those who considered the threat to us for doing this as particularly high. The security status of the event was put at just one level below “national emergency�.

That seems an appropriate classification for free speech in Holland.

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Wednesday Column

In an essay about the threat that radical Islamic immigrants pose to Western societies Francis Fukuyama offers this sound analysis: “Governments need to clamp down on extremists and jihadists in ways that do not risk further alienating minority communities; their aim must be to integrate moderate Muslims better while avoiding a right-wing populist backlash.�

Let’s understand his advice by applying it to a hypothetical situation.

Imagine that another terrorist attack occurs within the United States, and that Islamic radicals are behind it.

The government might round up all those already under surveillance as suspected terrorists. It might round up all foreigners from terrorist sponsoring nations on expired visas. It might round up all foreigners from terrorist sponsoring nations. Or it might round up all immigrants from terrorist sponsoring nations, even those who are United States citizens.

Some Americans, supported most vocally by a faction on the political right, would argue that all immigrants from terrorist sponsoring nations should be detained and questioned—when the stakes are as high as American lives better safe than sorry, they’d argue.

Many would object, myself included, that profiling so broadly is wrong, and that all United States citizens possess constitutional rights prohibiting such a round-up regardless of their nation of origin.

Francis Fukuyama may well agree with that.

But if I’m interpreting his quotation correctly he’s saying something more: that rounding up, for example, all immigrants from terrorist sponsoring nations shouldn’t be done for practical reasons.

I think that is correct.

A great struggle now exists between radical Islamists who hope to destroy Western societies and the rest of us, who hope to defeat them. Anyone who pays attention to how many fellow Muslims these radical Islamists kill can attest to the fact that moderate Muslims and radical Islamists are antagonists.

Here’s the question: does the antagonism between those two groups surpass the antagonism between moderate Muslims and the west?

At present it does.

But if certain far right policies are adopted in the United States or Europe—if one’s core liberties are gravely threatened simply because one is a Muslim or comes from a terror sponsoring nation—Muslims will find themselves in an awful predicament.

They will be forced to choose between a society treating them unfairly despite their innocence… and Islamic radicals whose ideas they don’t share, but who offer refuge, support and protection.

What would happen if the United States or a Western European nation began rounding up all Muslims? All Muslims would suddenly find themselves antagonists to that nation, with moderates and radicals forced together by a society suddenly out to get them all.

The same phenomenon can occur on smaller scales.

If we wrongly imprison a dozen Somali immigrants from an enclave in Manhattan, other Somalis within that enclave will be more inclined to mistrust our government and its safeguards, and some will embrace radical Islam, however wrongly, as the appropriate response. It is human nature among some to act as though your enemy’s enemy is your friend, particularly when that supposed friend is offering help, as radical Islamists looking to recruit are apt to do. Other Somalis may only begin attending a radical mosque themselves; perhaps one among their sons, thus exposed to the radicalism, will be the only one to take up the radical jihad.

In this hypothetical, safeguards to ensure the dozen Somali immigrants wouldn’t have been wrongly detained would’ve eliminated one terrorist as surely as a CIA agent assassinating a terrorist somewhere in the world.

There is an important lesson here for our discourse on immigration and terrorism: aggressive action can and should kill terrorists, but reducing the number of terrorists can also be a matter of carefully ensuring that we do not meanwhile create terrorists by wrongfully persecuting Muslims.

Among some Americans today there is a certain antagonism toward anyone who condemns abuses like those that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison, or who questions whether sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent people from being wrongly accused of terrorism, or who opposes racial profiling for terrorists.

It is said that these people are naïve, that they are valuing the rights of terrorists over the lives of Americans, or that they don’t understand what it takes to win the War on Terror.

One convincing counterargument—an entirely pragmatic one—is that carefully preserving the rights and liberties of Muslim Americans, apart from being the right thing to do, is the surest way of keeping moderate Muslims where their beliefs ought to put them: squarely allied with us against the terrorists.

That alliance helps our success in the War on Terrorism, as do those who cultivate it.

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February 27, 2006

Patents and Prosperity

Thomas Lifson has written an excellent essay on intellectual property and radical Islam.

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High and Inside

If there was any doubt that Roger Clemons raised his kids in a competitive household it has vanished:

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Roger Clemens’ son took dad deep on the Rocket’s first pitch of spring training, crushing a trademark fastball over the left-field fence Monday.

“That was probably one of the harder fastballs I cut loose,� Roger Clemens said after throwing to Koby and other Houston Astros minor-leaguers. “He got my attention.�

Then the Rocket got Koby’s. The next time his oldest son came to the plate, Roger buzzed him high and tight with another fastball. The younger Clemens dodged the pitch, then smiled at his father.

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The Road to Serfdom

Former Societ dissident Vladimir Bukovksy worries that the EU will eventually become a totalitarian government unless it is dismantled:

The ultimate purpose of the Soviet Union was to create a new historic entity, the Soviet people, all around the globe. The same is true in the EU today. They are trying to create a new people. They call this people “Europeans�, whatever that means.

According to Communist doctrine as well as to many forms of Socialist thinking, the state, the national state, is supposed to wither away. In Russia, however, the opposite happened. Instead of withering away the Soviet state became a very powerful state, but the nationalities were obliterated. But when the time of the Soviet collapse came these suppressed feelings of national identity came bouncing back and they nearly destroyed the country. It was so frightening.

PB: Do you think the same thing can happen when the European Union collapses?

VB: Absolutely, you can press a spring only that much, and the human psyche is very resilient you know. You can press it, you can press it, but don’t forget it is still accumulating a power to rebound. It is like a spring and it always goes to overshoot.

PB: But all these countries that joined the European Union did so voluntarily.

VB: No, they did not. Look at Denmark which voted against the Maastricht treaty twice. Look at Ireland [which voted against the Nice treaty]. Look at many other countries, they are under enormous pressure. It is almost blackmail. Switzerland was forced to vote five times in a referendum. All five times they have rejected it, but who knows what will happen the sixth time, the seventh time. It is always the same thing. It is a trick for idiots. The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage.

PB: What do you think young people should do about the European Union? What should they insist on, to democratize the institution or just abolish it?

VB: I think that the European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized. Gorbachev tried to democratize it and it blew up. This kind of structures cannot be democratized.

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The Great Triangulator

Andrew Sullivan wants to send Bill Clinton to Iraq to help avert a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. It seems worth a try to me.

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Flamenco in Seville and Beyond

When I lived in Sevilla I often visited a small dance studio where locals gave flamenco performances a few times a month.

Flamenco is huge in Sevilla, from the high-end clubs that cater to tourists throughout the Barrio Santa Cruz to Carbonaria, a bar and flamenco venue that attracts tourists and locals alike, to the many little known bars spread throughout the city where that distinctly Andalusian dance form is simply part of life's rhythm.

This week's New Yorker discusses the form flamenco performances now take in New York.

I took the photograph below at that neighborhood venue I mentioned--it's on Castellar near Calle Feria (vaguely near the Alameda de Hercules if you're familiar with the city).

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Radical Islam and the Political Landscape

I think Francis Fukuyama is right about this:

The dire diagnosis of Europe's domestic situation is perfectly justified: Well before last year's riots, the French internal intelligence agency noted that there were dozens of neighborhoods where the French police dared not set foot. The problem is how to address the situation from here on out, and the basic issues are clear. Governments need to clamp down on extremists and jihadists in ways that do not risk further alienating minority communities; their aim must be to integrate moderate Muslims better while avoiding a right-wing populist backlash. Unfortunately, anyone looking for more specific prescriptions from America—where, after all, assimilation has a long history—will find more sound and fury than useful insights.

I see the following dynamic: on the fringe right there are people willing to criticize radical Islam for the wrong reasons--they are racist and xenophobic, and their worldview is wrongheaded generally even if they are right that radical Islam poses a threat to Western Civilization.

In the vast middle most politicians are unwilling to condemn radical Islam or to vocally defend Western Civilization, though they know in their hearts that the former threatens freedom and basic human rights. They are cowed into silence by fear of appearing racist or xenophobic.

On the fringe left are those unwilling to criticize any culture or system of beliefs or ideas except whatever happens to predominate in the West. They label anyone who does criticize radical Islam, or who asserts the greatness of Western Civilization, as racist or ignorant.

In the United States and Europe there is a need for the vast middle to unite, articulating non-racist, non-xenophobic arguments for condemning radical Islam and defending Western Civilization. Moderate Muslims ought to be a part of this coalition.

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Explaining VH1's Success

Bryan Curtis:

To understand the much-heralded renaissance of VH1, in which the network has gone from unwatchable to riveting, the place to start is with its inferiority complex.

I think the place to start is Pop-up Video.

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Costs Rising, Quality Falling

William Stuntz is pessimistic about the future of American universities:

Three key American enterprises have seen costs rise much faster than inflation over the past generation, and all three are enterprises in which America leads the world: housing, health care, and higher education. Houses have grown bigger and better, as anyone who has looked at contemporary bathrooms and kitchens knows. Doctors do things they could not imagine a generation ago. Costs may have risen faster than quality, but there is no doubt that quality has risen, and risen substantially.

Higher education is similar--on the cost side. Benefit is another story. There is little reason to believe that undergrads and graduate students are better educated today than a generation ago. More likely the opposite. Teaching loads of senior professors have declined; probably teaching quality has declined with it. The culture of research universities has grown ever more contemptuous of students, especially undergraduates, who are seen as an interruption of one's real work rather than the reason for the enterprise. Which means that, year by year, students and their parents pay more for less. That isn't a sustainable business plan.

Today's college students do get a whole lot more for their money than their predecessors. The problem is that the new amenities include better dormitories, lavish college funded parties and expensive celebrity guest speakers... not a particularly better education. The hyper-specialization that has enabled advances in scholarship has simultaneously hurt undergraduates, who might know more about, for example, pottery in ancient Sumaria than the modern transition from representational to abstract art.

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Advice for the Host

Lee Siegel is giving Jon Stewart Oscar advice.

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Self-Defense or Vigilantism

How far should citizens be allowed to go when attacked in a public place?

ATLANTA – Instead of embracing a citizen's "duty to retreat" in the face of a physical attack, states may be taking cues from the days of lawless frontier towns, where non-deputized Americans were within their rights to hold the bad guys at bay with the threat of deadly force.

First enacted in Florida last year, "Stand Your Ground" bills are now being considered in 21 states including Georgia, according to the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The South Dakota senate approved one just last week.

These new measures would push the boundaries beyond the self-defense measures already on the books. Twelve states already allow citizens to shoot intruders in their homes, and 38 states permit concealed weapons in public places. The "Stand Your Ground" laws would allow people to defend themselves with deadly force even in public places when they perceive a life-threatening situation for themselves or others, and they would not be held accountable in criminal or civil court even if bystanders are injured.

Laws putting more judgment in an individual's hands stem from people's increased concern about crime in their communities. Proponents say it helps shift the debate from gun control to crime control, and that these laws are part of the rugged individualism of Americans.

Its debates like this that highlight the cultural gulf between the United States and Europe, where such laws wouldn't even be discussed in polite company.

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A Taliban Official At Yale

Did you know that an official spokesman for the Taliban now attends Yale? John Fund has objections.

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February 26, 2006

Mardi Gras

The New Orleans Times Picayune has lots of Mardi Gras coverage.

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A War We'll Continue Losing Until It Ends

The Wall Street Journal has published an op-ed that questions the most ill-conceived war in American history: the War on Drugs.

Economist Milton Friedman predicted in Newsweek nearly 34 years ago that Richard Nixon's ambitious "global war against drugs" would be a failure. Much evidence today suggests that he was right. But the war rages on with little mainstream challenge of its basic weapon, prohibition.

To be sure, Mr. Friedman wasn't the only critic. William Buckley's National Review declared a decade ago that the U.S. had "lost" the drug war, bolstering its case with testimony from the likes of Joseph D. McNamara, a former police chief in Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif. But today discussion of the war's depressing cost-benefit ratio is being mainly conducted in the blogosphere, where the tone is predominantly libertarian. In the broader polity, support for the great Nixon crusade remains sufficiently strong to discourage effective counterattacks.

In broaching this subject, I offer the usual disclaimer. One beer before dinner is sufficient to my mind-bending needs. I've never sampled any of the no-no stuff and have no desire to do so. So let's proceed to discuss this emotion-laden issue as objectively as possible.

The drug war has become costly, with some $50 billion in direct outlays by all levels of government, and much higher indirect costs, such as the expanded prison system to house half a million drug-law offenders and the burdens on the court system. Civil rights sometimes are infringed. One sharply rising expense is for efforts to interdict illegal drug shipments into the U.S., which is budgeted at $1.4 billion this fiscal year, up 41% from two years ago.

That reflects government's tendency to throw more money at a program that isn't working. Not only have the various efforts not stopped the flow but they have begun to create friction with countries the U.S. would prefer to have as friends.

As the Journal's Mary O'Grady has written, a good case can be made that U.S.-sponsored efforts to eradicate coca crops in Latin America are winning converts among Latin peasants to the anti-American causes of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Their friend Evo Morales was just elected president of Bolivia mainly by the peasant following he won by opposing a U.S.-backed coca-eradication program. Colombia's huge cocaine business still thrives despite U.S. combative efforts, supporting, among others, leftist guerrillas.

More seriously, Mexico is being destabilized by drug gangs warring over access to the lucrative U.S. market. A wave of killings of officials and journalists in places like Nuevo Laredo and Acapulco is reminiscent of the 1930s Prohibition-era crime waves in Al Capone's Chicago and the Purple Gang's Detroit. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban are proselytizing opium-poppy growers by saying that the U.S. is their enemy. The claim, unlike many they use, has the merit of being true.

Read the whole thing.

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Anti-Semitism in France

Mark Steyn writes about anti-semitism in France:

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.''

Here's hoping that more hate crimes against Jews aren't perpetrated in Europe, though I'm not optimistic.

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February 25, 2006

Banned Books and City Lights Book Store

This is disappointing news about City Lights bookstore in San Francisco:

A FRIEND OF MINE took his young daughter to visit the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, explaining to her that the place is important because years ago it sold books no other store would — even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive.

So, although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.

However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.

"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."

Now let's just savor the absurd details of this for a minute. City Lights has a long and proud history of supporting banned authors — owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was indicted (and acquitted) for obscenity in 1957 for selling Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and a photo at the bookstore showed Ferlinghetti proudly posing next to a sign reading "banned books."

Yet his store won't carry, of all people, Fallaci, who is not only being sued in Italy for insulting religion because of her latest book but continues to fight the good fight against those who think that the appropriate response to offensive books and cartoons is violent riots. It's particularly repugnant that someone who fought against actual fascism in World War II should be deemed a fascist by a snotty San Francisco clerk.

What's repugnant is the extent to which the left today has become a political force for reducing freedoms rather than expanding them.

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Images of Sevilla

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The Muslim Madonna

Andrew Sullivan reports on "the Muslim Madonna." It looks as though my satirical post is coming true sooner than I enpected.

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The Pill for Men?

Will there ever be a male birth control pill?

Lisbon - Pharmaceutical companies could produce a male contraceptive pill but do not, because men would refuse to take it, one of the pioneers of female oral birth control pills said in an interview published on Friday in Portugal.

"It would be possible to make a male pill today. We know how hormones work and we could use the same principles that are used to make the female pill," Carl Djerassi, 82, told weekly news magazine Sabado.

What say you, male readers? Would you take it?

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The Best a Man Can Get?

A man who knows his shaving samples the Gillette Fusion, the 5 bladed razor I'll one day try myself. Meanwhile this blogger says the blogosphere beats the mainstream media when it comes to razor reviews.

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February 24, 2006

The Prejudice Inherent in Multiculturalism

In the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner actor Sidney Poitier plays an accomplished black doctor hoping to marry a beautiful young white woman…if only her staunchly liberal parents will approve.

The father of the bride respects his daughter’s fiancée, and doesn’t doubt that the young couple loves one another deeply. At first, however, he refuses to give his blessing, arguing that a bigoted society won’t accept their marriage.

“There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives,� says Spencer Tracy, playing the role of the father. “You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say ‘screw all those people’!�

A modern viewer can’t help but feel gratified at how far society has progressed since those days. Today’s interracial couples may face difficulties, but nothing compared to what their predecessors faced even a generation ago.

At another point, however, I couldn’t help but feel pessimism.

“I love you,� Poitier’s character tells his father. “I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.�

As modern America accepts immigrants from all over the world (and racial divisions remain even among those born here), it is as important as ever to think of ourselves as human beings rather than members of a racial group.

Yet a strain of thought exists—it is called multiculturalism—that encourages us to think of people whose race, religion or cultural background is different from our own as somehow essentially different from us.

Multiculturalists believe that even within our own country positive steps should be taken to keep different cultures from blending together. They believe that group rights often trump individual rights. They assume that a person’s race, religion and cultural background always says something important—something quintessential—about who they are.

Whether or not the individual considers his race, religion or culture a defining trait is never considered.

A passage I read in The New Republic this week explains this dynamic nicely.

“If a young girl in a conservative immigrant family wants to go out on a date with an English boy, that would certainly be a multicultural initiative,� Amartya Sen writes. “In contrast, the attempt by her guardians to stop her from doing this (a common enough occurrence) is hardly a multicultural move, since it seeks to keep the cultures separate. And yet it is the parents' prohibition… that seems to garner the loudest and most vocal defense from alleged multiculturalists, on the ground of the importance of honoring traditional cultures--as if the cultural freedom of the young woman were of no relevance whatever, and as if the distinct cultures must somehow remain in secluded boxes.�

In 1967 liberals watched Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and cheered the idea that secluding people into boxes due to their race is a wrongheaded approach to the world. Today a faction among liberals takes the contrary view—that enlightened people must view those whose race, religion or cultural background is different through the prism of that trait.

Perhaps a remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is in order. Will Smith can play a successful black doctor who wants to marry a Persian beauty whose immigrant parents, moderate Muslims both, fled Iran during the Islamic revolution. In this remake the parents, seeing the love that exists between Smith and his fiancée, can support the marriage immediately. Society can be on board too, with friends, neighbors and colleagues celebrating the engagement.

Meanwhile a leftist ethnic studies professor, an activist group composed of her students and a traditionalist Islamic advocacy group can object to the marriage, not because they fear for the couple’s happiness or society’s tolerance for their union, but because they prioritize maintaining distinct cultures above individual happiness.

Of course, I’m being naïve. These days Hollywood doesn’t produce films that challenge orthodoxies of though on the left. So let’s take it upon ourselves to reject the prejudices and stereotyping inherent in multiculturalism. I don’t know whether or not Sidney Poitier will be behind the effort. But his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner would’ve been.

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February 23, 2006

The Patriot Act &The War on Drugs

When the Patriot Act is criticized its proponents, usually Republicans, justify it by raising the specter of terrorism. We musn't fall into a pre-September 11 mindset, they say. Law enforcement needs new tools to keep America safe from Al Qaeda, because this is a new kind of enemy, we're told.

I agree that terrorism presents new challenges for American law enforcement, and that we might have to sacrifice some liberty to attain an acceptable level of security.

I'm sympathetic to those who worry about the Patriot Act, however, because Congressmen make statements like this one:

“The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself,� Congressman Dent said. “This bill will help reduce the supply of this deadly drug by making it more difficult to obtain the ingredients necessary for production. It will also stiffen existing penalties for anyone caught producing or trafficking in meth."

Funny thing, it frightens me to think of my next flight blowing up or a dynamite clad youth blowing himself up next time I see a band play at the House of Blues.

The growing availability of methamphetamine, however, doesn't scare me at all. It's too bad for those addicted to it. I'll be the first to tell them that developing a meth habit is an awful idea. But am I willing to curtail civil liberties to extend the drug war? Certainly not.

Neither are most Americans. That's why Congress is inserting this nonsense into the Patriot Act, a bill whose name grows more Orwellian each time a provision unrelated to terrorism is added in conference committee. The additions:

The Methamphetamine Epidemic Elimination Act, included in the conference report on H.R. 3199, the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2005, will do the following to reduce the supply of meth and punish meth producers, traffickers, and smugglers:

* Restrict the sale of precursor drugs (common, over-the-counter medicines used in the production of meth);
* Require exporters and importers to report on their traffic of precursor drugs to prevent diversion of these drugs to meth production;
* Toughen federal penalties for methamphetamine traffickers and smugglers as well as those who produce or deal meth in the presence of children.

Yes, that's right: the Patriot act now has among its provisions restrictions on buying Sudafed over-the-counter.

Hit & Run touches on one irony of this legislation:

Ironically, some Democrats who objected to National Security Agency wiretaps in December actually championed provisions that step on privacy in the name of stopping meth. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.), who voted for a filibuster after the revelation of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program in December, co-sponsored the CMA and helped insert it into the PATRIOT Act conference report after failed attempts to pass it through other legislation. The new provisions were stalled with the filibuster and temporary PATRIOT extensions, but now appear to be poised for passage with the compromise bill.

The CMA would move cold medicines such as Sudafed behind the counter, on the grounds that their active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is a potential meth component. In DiFi's words, the solution to this non-problem would include "requiring purchasers to show identification and sign a log book."

Once you sign for your medicine, your name becomes part of "a functional monitoring program" that would "allow law enforcement officials to track and ultimately prevent suspicious buying behavior of ingredients for meth production," according to a Feinstein press release describing a similar stand-alone bill.

When you're operating on the premise that the availability of meth is a kind of terrorism, I suppose it makes sense to keep track of who buys Sudafed--which contains an ingredient used to make meth--and to consider them terror suspects whose behavior justifies greater police scrutiny.

Meanwhile those of us who haven't lost our minds would prefer that the government spend its precious intelligence resources tracking the other kind of terrorists--you know, the ones who fly planes into buildings and blow up pizzerias full of women and children.

This little kerfuffle also puts the controversy over the NSA wiretaps into a new perspective. President Bush justifies it by saying that the government only cares about listening to your conversations if you're engaged in behavior that endangers national security.

If these days we've set that bar as low as "buys Sudafed now and then" his explanation seems far loess comforting.

Posted by Conor at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

One Foot In Ankle Deep Water, Other Foot in Mouth

New Orleans officials seemingly don't have that little voice inside their heads that tells them when to keep their mouths shut:

New Orleans doesn't want its poorest residents back — unless they agree to work.

That was the message from three New Orleans City Council members who said government programs have "pampered" the city's residents for too long.

The news that some New Orleans City Council members weren't keen on the city's poorest returning home added another layer of discomfort in Houston, where local residents and elected officials alike have stretched to meet the needs of thousands of Louisiana residents in the months after Hurricane Katrina.

Chief among the complaints: Houston didn't discriminate when New Orleanians — from the poorest to the richest — filled this city's homes, hotels, motels and shelters. And Houston didn't flinch when nearly 100,000 evacuees needed subsidized housing for up to a year. So why, asked one Houston city councilman, are only the educated, healthy and employable welcome back in New Orleans?

It's like the immigration debate, but with Americans.

Posted by Conor at 01:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The Pathology of the Tehran Times

Yesterday I suggested that given the outrage seen in the Muslim world it would be interesting to see the reaction to mosque attacks in Iraq, where Shiite and Sunni Muslims are blowing up one another's holy sites and killing one another.

The Tehran Times takes up this issue:

The serious crime of the terrorists who bombed the holy shrines of the tenth and eleventh Shia Imams, Imam Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan Askari (AS), on Wednesday in Iraq was an insult to the sanctities of all Muslims.

Undoubtedly, it is a new plot which first of all can be considered as the continuation of the disrespectful move of the European newspapers that published cartoons of the Prophet of Islam.

Yep, that's right, they're blaming the Danes. The mind reels. (Hat Tip Andrew Sullivan)

Posted by Conor at 01:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A Press Failure?

Alan Dershowitz and William Bennett have written an odd-couple op-ed in the Washington Post asserting that the press has failed us throughout the Danish cartoon affair:

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

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

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

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

The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: "[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."

But as for caricatures depicting Jews in the most medievally horrific stereotypes, or Christians as fanatics on any given issue, the mainstream press seems to hold no such value. And in the matter of disclosing classified information in wartime, the press competes for the scoop when it believes the public interest warrants it.

What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities.

I think that last assertion is correct, and I wish more newspapers would admit that they haven't published the cartoons largely because they're afraid someone will end up dead if they do.

Posted by Conor at 01:19 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Al Qaeda, Homeland Security Faltering

Austin Bay has excerpts of a letter from an Al Qaeda operative criticizing Osama Bin Laden. It suggests that the terrorist organization is plagued by setbacks--good news for the civilized people of the world.

And lucky for us that they are faltering, because America's homeland security efforts have been lackluster, to say the least.

As Peggy Noonan writes this week: "Look at the airports. Why would terrorists bother with seaports?"

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Letters to the Blogger - Gay Adoption

In comments Brian Chadwick writes:

I think gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt to protect the child because kids can be very cruel, and growing up with two dads and two moms just seems kind of weird.

I think Brian is correct that the children of gay parents are more likely to experience teasing at school.

But do we really want to enact adoption policies that hinge on how school kids will react to them?

After all, some kids will make fun of mixed race parents, overweight parents, nerdy parents, poor parents, parents who dress sloppily, parents who have bad teeth, orthodox Jewish parents, Muslim parents, parents who drive old, beat up cars, etc.

Should all these people be prevented from adopting?

Additionally, would you rather be raised by gay adoptive parents who your classmates make fun of but who love you very deeply... or by an orphanage or a succession of mediocre foster parents, some of whom couldn't care less about you?

That's the choice faced by many kids. I think the vast majority would choose the loving gay parents, ridicule by schoolyard bullies be damned.

Posted by Conor at 01:01 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Offensive Speech and How We Ought to React To It

I'm all for sensitivity when people interact with one another, and I doubt I've seriously offended many people in my personal life, if anyone.

Good manners. however, ought to be outside the realm of public policy. David Berstein articulates several sensible reasons why:

One price of living in a free society is having to tolerate those who intentionally or unintentionally offend others. The current trend, however, is to give offended parties a legal remedy, so long as the offense can be construed as "discrimination." Yet the more the American legal system offers people remedies for offense, the more they are likely to feel offended. This is true for two reasons. First, as economists point out, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. Therefore, if the legal remedies of antidiscrimination law, particularly monetary remedies, subsidize feelings of outrage and insult, we will get more feelings of outrage and insult, a net social loss. Second, economists have also noted the psychological endowment effect, which, in effect, means that people tend to consider something they own to be more valuable than it would be if they did not own it. Similarly, once people are endowed with a right, they tend to overvalue it and react passionately when it is interfered with.

Unfortunately, Americans increasingly coddle and even reward the hypersensitive, perversely encouraging ever more hypersensitivity.

I noticed this phenomenon as an undergraduate--on campus these days hypersensitivity seems the norm.

After much reflection I decided that often there's a good case for eschewing offense--or at least overblown offense--even to objectively offensive actions.

I remember, for example, a time when an unknown vandal scrawled the word "fag" in a shower stall. I find that epithet quite offensive, and I'd let anyone I heard using it know as much. My alma mater, however, reacted to the grafitti with three all campus e-mails, several meetings for students to air their hurt feelings, calls for mandatory sessions on tolerance and a general outcry.

My contention is that reacting to offensive speech in that way does too much to empower those who use it. A lone bigot shouldn't have the ability to upset large groups of people, to interrupt their lives, etc.

Thus the proper reaction to morally offensive speech is to forcefully articulate it's wrongheadedness, ignore the speaker and move on.

The opposite approach plays into the hands of bigots and provacateurs everywhere, people who deserve to be deprived of the attention they seek.

Posted by Conor at 12:29 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?

George Will thinks so:

Conservatives are happier than liberals because they are more pessimistic. Conservatives think the book of Job got it right (``Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward''), as did Adam Smith (``There is a great deal of ruin in a nation''). Conservatives understand that society in its complexity resembles a giant Calder mobile -- touch it here and things jiggle there, and there, and way over there. Hence conservatives acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.

Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.

The right to pursue happiness is the essential right that government exists to protect. Liberals, taking their bearings, whether they know it or not, from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 State of the Union address, think the attainment of happiness itself, understood in terms of security and material well-being, is an entitlement that government has created and can deliver.

What's amazing is the faith liberals have in government despite its track record. They see Hurricane Katrina, for example, and conclude that more government resources should be devoted to disaster preparedness.

Many conservatives agree, but the primary lesson they take from Katrina is that it's a good idea to have bottled water, canned food, a flashlight and a gun on hand should a catastrophic disaster strike.

If it comes to that I think I know who will be happier in its aftermath.

Posted by Conor at 12:18 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 22, 2006

Dress Kevin

Experiencing empty nest syndrome? Help dress this man each day.

Posted by Conor at 01:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Stick Figure Cartoons Will Break My Bones But Bombs Will Never Hurt Me

In Iraq Muslim extremists are blowing up one another's Mosques:

SAMARRA, Iraq - Insurgents detonated bombs inside one of
Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 90 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.

You'd think this would be an affront to the world's Muslims, evoking outrage and triggering protests across the Arab world. Apparently, though, this is more important.

Posted by Conor at 01:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Citizen Justice in Venice, and Its Implications for America

If you've traveled around Europe you know that pickpockets are a scourge, and nowhere more so than in Italy. When my father came to visit me there last May, pummeling a pickpocket who tried to steal his wallet in the Rome metro with several body blows, I liked to think my family did its part to fight back against the pickpockets.

Now the Italians themselves seem to have joined the fight, thanks to

...a civilian antipickpocket patrol called Cittadini Non Distratti, or Undistracted Citizens. Members, who call themselves "Citizens," walk around Venice looking for pickpockets. As thievery spikes during Carnival, when tipsy tourists mob the streets, the group increases patrols. The Cittadini Non Distratti look for a number of giveaways. Most pickpockets are men, they travel in small division-of-labor teams behind tourists, they stop when tourists stop, and their eyes concentrate on vulnerable pockets and bags—not gondolas and pretty buildings. The presence of a teenager is another clue (minors risk lighter punishment). Sudden distractions are an even bigger tip-off: directions sought by a map-wielding questioner, food spilled on a tourist by an apologetic stranger, a heated argument that diverts attention.

More than 200 Venetians have paid a nominal fee for a Cittadini Non Distratti membership card (considerably fewer walk regular beats). The group's cat-and-mouse game is legal, as long as members are unarmed and grab suspects only after they've slipped a hand into another's pocket. They must then call the cops immediately.

With significant reductions in pickpocketing what's not to like?

The city has refused Cittadini Non Distratti's requests for official recognition and logistical support. "It's do-it-yourself justice; it's a negative gunslinger culture," says Giuseppe Caccia, until recently Venice's deputy mayor for social affairs. That remark belies what is likely a greater concern: embarrassment. City Hall officials privately acknowledge that the para-police group is bad PR, leading some to think that the city can't adequately protect Venice's lifeblood—its tourists.

In a way this reminds me of the Minuteman patrols on the Mexican border. Citizens assist a law enforcement effort handled poorly by government; government gets angry.

As long as efforts like these don't morph into vigilante justice I'm all for them. The Italian critic in the story objects to do-it-yourself justice. When the alternative is thieves running free, however, do-it-yourself justice beats no justice at all.

Government officials who object to citizen patrols should realize there's an easy way to stop them: maintain a police force and presence that makes them unnecessary. Absent that, the civic impulse to fill a societal need is laudable, a point that seems to lost on those so enamoured with government that they object to any civic engagement aside from paying taxes.

We'd do well to remember that on Sept. 11, 2001, the only actors who successfully stymied the terrorists were regular Americans on board that plane over Pennsylvania--a group that combatted Al Qaeda more effectively that day than the entire federal government, despite the numerous warnings the feds had at their disposal.

Can an even more engaged citizenry help prevent future evils, from street crime to terrorist attacks? I think so.

Posted by Conor at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Four Non-Blondes

In an entertaining photo essay Jack Shafer of Slate reflects on the predominance of blondes in the television news business.

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The Virtue of Self-Censorship

Robert Wright has written a New York Times op-ed arguing that the Muslim response to the Danish cartoon affair doesn't demonstrate as wide a chasm between our culture and theirs as it at first seems.

Posted by Conor at 01:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ideas Matter

Armed and Dangerous writes:

Americans have never really understood ideological warfare. Our gut-level assumption is that everybody in the world really wants the same comfortable material success we have. We use “extremist� as a negative epithetic. Even the few fanatics and revolutionary idealists we have, whatever their political flavor, expect everybody else to behave like a bourgeois.

We don’t expect ideas to matter — or, when they do, we expect them to matter only because people have been flipped into a vulnerable mode by repression or poverty. Thus all our divagation about the “root causes� of Islamic terrorism, as if the terrorists’ very clear and very ideological account of their own theory and motivations is somehow not to be believed.

By contrast, ideological and memetic warfare has been a favored tactic for all of America’s three great adversaries of the last hundred years — Nazis, Communists, and Islamists.

Posted by Conor at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Cartoons Pit Muslim Against Muslim

The New York Times has published a must-read story about the Danish cartoon affair:

AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 21 — In a direct challenge to the international uproar over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, the Jordanian journalist Jihad Momani wrote: "What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras, or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony?"

In Yemen, an editorial by Muhammad al-Assadi condemned the cartoons but also lamented the way many Muslims reacted. "Muslims had an opportunity to educate the world about the merits of the Prophet Muhammad and the peacefulness of the religion he had come with," Mr. Assadi wrote. He added, "Muslims know how to lose, better than how to use, opportunities."

To illustrate their points, both editors published selections of the drawings — and for that they were arrested and threatened with prison.

Mr. Momani and Mr. Assadi are among 11 journalists in five countries facing prosecution for printing some of the cartoons. Their cases illustrate another side of this conflict, the intra-Muslim side, in what has typically been defined as a struggle between Islam and the West.

The flare-up over the cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, has magnified a fault line running through the Middle East, between those who want to engage their communities in a direct, introspective dialogue and those who focus on outside enemies.

But it has also underscored a political struggle involving emerging Islamic movements, like Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Arab governments unsure of how to contain them.

"This has become a game between two sides, the extremists and the government," said Tawakkul Karman, head of Women Journalists Without Constraints in Sana, Yemen. "They've made it so that if you stand up in this tidal wave, you have to face 1.5 billion Muslims."

The heated emotions, the violence surrounding protests and the arrests have sent a chill through people, mostly writers, who want to express ideas contrary to the prevailing sentiment. It has threatened those who contend that Islamic groups have manipulated the public to show their strength, and that governments have used the cartoons to establish their religious credentials.

"I keep hearing, 'Why are liberals silent?' " said Said al-Ashmawy, an Egyptian judge and author of books on political Islam. "How can we write? Who is going to protect me? Who is going to publish for me in the first place? With the Islamization of the society, the list of taboos has been increasing daily. You should not write about religion. You should not write about politics or women. Then what is left?"

While the cartoons have infuriated Muslims, the regional dynamics underlying the conflict have been evolving for decades, during which leaders have tried to stall the rise of Islamic political appeal by trying to establish themselves as guardians of the faith.

In the end, political analysts around the region say that governments have resorted to the very practices that helped the rise of Islamic political forces in the first place. They have placated the more extreme voices while arresting and silencing more moderate ones.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Conor at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What Does A Chinese Keyboard Look Like?

Slate explains.

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February 21, 2006

Shouted Down

A student at Pomona College, my alma mater, is criticizing the all too common campus occurence of guest speakers being shouted down by protesters:

I attended the debate on Guantanamo Bay last week, and I found myself confronted by something I find very disturbing: a “liberal� protest that ran counter to everything I love about liberalism. The protest, which interrupted the question and answer period of the event, was simply rude and counterproductive.

Now generally I’m all about the liberal protest. I grew up in San Francisco. I’ve been called a terrorist by passersby while marching past police in full riot gear. I love being a liberal because to me being liberal means being open minded and questioning everything: the government, the army, the media, social structures, religion, prejudice, and, above all, myself. Which is why I enjoyed listening to John Yoo so much: he made me think and doubt some of my past assumptions. The question and answer portion presented an opportunity for faculty and students to participate in a dialogue with the presenters. The protesters interrupted this dialogue. They halted the learning process. They purposely stopped a process of discussion and questioning, the essence of liberalism, to make the point that some people here don’t like Bush. What a shocker. Somehow I think Yoo already knew that. And so I have a simple message to those protesters: stop making me look bad. Your actions, made in the name of liberalism, degraded liberalism and the value of protests. Your actions exemplify the type of liberalism that many resent here at Pomona, a liberalism that jumps down the throat of any conservative sentiment and stifles open discourse that everyone could learn from. I’ve seen this liberalism in classrooms, and I’m ashamed that the presenters had to witness it as well.

Liberal students on college campuses are far out of the American mainstream on most issues. They can express their views only because people who disagree with them value freedom of expression and tolerate ideas they disagree with. How ironic that these same students, whose views would surely lose out if public discourse turned into a shouting match, do their best to turn it into just that.

UPDATE: This piece suggests that the bulk of Pomona students behaved admirably.

Posted by Conor at 06:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Islamophobia

Christopher Hitchens:

Within a short while—this is a warning—the shady term "Islamophobia" is going to be smuggled through our customs. Anyone accused of it will be politely but firmly instructed to shut up, and to forfeit the constitutional right to criticize religion. By definition, anyone accused in this way will also be implicitly guilty.

I fear he is right.

Posted by Conor at 06:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Should Gays Be Allowed to Adopt?

USA Today is covering the growing backlash against gay adoption:

Efforts to ban gays and lesbians from adopting children are emerging across the USA as a second front in the culture wars that began during the 2004 elections over same-sex marriage.

Steps to pass laws or secure November ballot initiatives are underway in at least 16 states, adoption, gay rights and conservative groups say. Some — such as Ohio, Georgia and Kentucky — approved constitutional amendments in 2004 banning gay marriage.

"Now that we've defined what marriage is, we need to take that further and say children deserve to be in that relationship," says Greg Quinlan of Ohio's Pro-Family Network, a conservative Christian group.

As a staunch supporter of gay marriage--though an opponent of attempts by courts to impose the practice--gay adoption seems to me the most difficult question society faces with regards to gay rights.

On most matters, marriage included, I find it morally impermissible for society to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, a trait I regard as intrinsic, not chosen.

Moreover my gay friends and acquaintances leave me quite convinced that the love gay couples feel for one another is no different than the love felt for one another by heterosexuals, and that the benefits they'd garner from marriage are as profound.

If you believe that committed, monogomous relationships are the best chance for a happy life and a good society, as many conservatives do, extending marriage rights to gays seems like a no-brainer.

Gay adoption is trickier because even those of us who normally demand that the law treat gays equally must weigh the welfare of another party: the child. When it comes to the system we set up for adoption, I care very little about fairness for adoptive parents because my priority is the welfare of the child.

So the question arises: is a child better off with heterosexual parents?

I don't know the answer. But my intuition is that all else being equal heterosexual parents are better for a child. People relate to men in ways largely influenced by their own father, and to women in ways largely influenced by their own mother. Since every child must relate to men and women in their lives, it makes sense to me that the lack of either sex as a primary caregiver is less than ideal.

That leads me to a conclusion I'm rather uncomfortable with: if forced to choose between a heterosexual couple and a gay couple I'd award adoption rights to the hetereosexual couple first, assuming that all else is equal.

That said, I find an outright ban on gay adoptive parents foolhardy. After all, all else is seldom equal. Sure, consider whether perspective parents will be able to provide a child with a role model of each sex. But there are many other factors that determine whether someone ought to be a good parent. An appropriate decision will weigh all these factors.

Moreover, it isn't as if we have so many willing adoptive parents that we ought to be turning good couples away simply because they're gay.

Julian Sanchez makes the same point in Reason Magazine:

...visit Florida and ask a child in foster care which makes him feel more threatened: the thought of being raised by homosexuals, or the prospect of an indefinite number of years spent passing through an indefinite number of homes.

His whole essay is a quite convincing argument against bans on gay adoption.

Posted by Conor at 03:36 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

A History Lesson

John Fund is upset with the University of Washington's student senate:

It's well known that college students today aren't as educated in our nation's history as they should be, but it's still hard to grasp the mind-bending political correctness just displayed by the University of Washington's student senate at its campus in Seattle.

The issue before the Senate this month was a proposed memorial to World War II combat pilot Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a 1933 engineering graduate of the university, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service commanding the famed "Black Sheep" squadron in the Pacific. The student senate rejected the memorial because "a Marine" is not "an example of the sort of person UW wants to produce."

Digging themselves in deeper, the student opponents of the memorial indicated: "We don't need to honor any more rich white males." Other opponents compared Boyington's actions during World War II with murder.

"I am absolutely bewildered that the Student Senate voted down the resolution," Brent Ludeman, the president of the UW College Republicans, told me. He noted that despite the deficiencies of the UW History Department, the complete ignorance of Boyington's history and reputation by the student body was hard to fathom. After all, "Black Sheep Squadron," a 1970s television show portraying Colonel Boyington's heroism as a pilot and Japanese prisoner of war, still airs frequently on the History Channel. Apparently, though, it's an unusual UW student who'd be willing to learn any U.S. history even if it's spoonfed to him by TV.

As for the sin of honoring a rich white male, Mr. Ludeman points out that Boyington (who died in 1988) was neither rich nor white. He happened to be a Sioux Indian, who wound up raising his three children as a single parent. "Colonel Boyington is luckily not around to see how ignorant students at his alma mater can be today," says Kirby Wilbur, a morning talk show host at Seattle's KVI Radio. Perhaps the trustees and alumni of the school will now help educate them.

In my experience student senates don't reflect the views of the student body. Rather, they reflect the disproportionate power wielded by vocal factions of political correctness on campus. (The irony is that disparaging white males on account of their race and gender counts as politically correct these days.)

Posted by Conor at 03:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nuclear Power

Nuclear energy is clean and efficient. It doesn't produce air pollution or greenhouse gasses. Most of France is powered by it.

And stories like this one make it so that no one wants a nuclear power plant anywhere near them.

Posted by Conor at 03:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Misguided Views of Multuculturalists

The New Republic has published a thoughtful essay by Amartya Sen on multiculturalism:

One of the central issues concerns how human beings are seen. Should they be categorized in terms of inherited traditions, particularly the inherited religion, of the community in which they happen to have been born, taking that unchosen identity to have automatic priority over other affiliations involving politics, profession, class, gender, language, literature, social involvements, and many other connections? Or should they be understood as persons with many affiliations and associations, whose relative priorities they must themselves choose (taking the responsibility that comes with reasoned choice)?

I've long argued for the latter approach. Racial, ethnic, religious and cultural minorities--the most frequent subjects of multicultural doctrine--ought to be treated as individuals whose uniqueness and inherent worth is valued every bit as much as those who possess majority traits.

Instead proponents of multiculturalism treat minorities as though their race, thnicity, religion or cultural heritage is the most important thing about their identity.

Sen gets it right:

Being born in a particular social background is not in itself an exercise of cultural liberty, since it is not an act of choice. In contrast, the decision to stay firmly within the traditional mode would be an exercise of freedom, if the choice were made after considering other altenatives. In the same way, a decision to move away--by a little or a lot--from the standard behavior pattern, arrived at after reflection and reasoning, would also qualify as such an exercise. Indeed, cultural freedom can frequently clash with cultural conservatism, and if multiculturalism is defended in the name of cultural freedom, then it can hardly be seen as demanding unwavering and unqualified support for staying steadfastly within one's inherited cultural tradition.

Of course, many proponents of multiculturalism care little for individual freedom.

Last night I watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

In the film the 23-year-old daughter of a liberal San Francisco newspaper publisher brings home Sidney Portier--a black man--and announces they are to be married. Their fathers at first object to the marriage, fearing for the couple's happiness and the obstacles they'd face as an interracial couple.

Perhaps nowadays a remake is in order. In it the couple and their parents could support the marriage from the beginning. Meanwhile the bigoted objections could be raised by modern day multiculturalists, opposed to the marriage not because they fear for the couple's happiness or how society will treat them, but because they prioritize maintaining distinct cultures above individual happiness.

Posted by Conor at 02:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Larry Summers Resigns from Harvard

Harvard President Larry Summers has resigned:

"I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments of the Arts and Sciences faculty make it infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to Harvard's future," he wrote. "I believe, therefore, that it is best for the University to have new leadership."

It's a loss for Harvard--too bad its faculty is so uncomfortable rigorously persuing the truth that they allow political correctness to determine the accepted bounds of public discourse. [Aren't you applying to Harvard for graduate school?--ed.]Now that Summers will no longer be raising dissenting ideas that push campus discourse forward they need me more than ever!

Posted by Conor at 12:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 20, 2006

Blogging Will Commence...

I'll be back blogging tomorrow, so get ready for a return to regular posts.

Posted by Conor at 04:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 19, 2006

Blogging Update

I'm arranging a doctor's visit Monday morning and hope to be blogging again sometime this week.

I'll post updates daily until then.

Thanks for continuing to visit.

Posted by Conor at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 16, 2006

Blogging Break

Due to some unfortunate hand/forearm pain I'm taking a break from blogging for a couple days. I'll update everyone sometime this weekend. Check back Monday if not before.

(I will approve comments tonight for Ms. Frank's class.)

Meanwhile why not check out my other blog?

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February 15, 2006

Why Cities Should Spend More on Police Than Anything Else

A city’s government—as opposed to its school districts and parents—must protect the lives and property of its residents first. Arguing that the mayor should meanwhile save the education system and compensate for bad parents ignores two facts:

1) He or she has very little power to complete either task.
2) Every minute and dollar spent on those efforts—or investments in the future, as advocates term them—takes away from today’s ability to protect people.

Most organizations perform their primary functions better when not distracted by other matters, no matter how noble. Like many cities in America, San Bernardino tolerates crime rates far higher than necessary when it allocates resources to anything other than public safety.
As ironic consequence focusing too little on crime then emerges as the biggest root cause growing tomorrow’s criminals. After all, I can imagine no better program for future crime prevention than ensuring safe neighborhoods where children can attend school without fear, grow up without thriving gangs to recruit them, get first jobs without a lucrative trade in drugs to tempt them and otherwise be denied the opportunity to commit even petty crimes without the very real risk of repercussions.

Posted by Conor at 11:32 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 14, 2006

70,000 protest, some riot, 8 year-old boy and man killed

The absurdity continues:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Gunfire and rioting erupted Wednesday as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in several cities during Pakistan's third consecutive day of violence over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons. A man and an 8-year-old boy were killed.

More than 70,000 people gathered in Peshawar's streets in Pakistan's biggest protest yet against the drawings, said Saeed Wazir, a senior police officer. Protesters burned a KFC restaurant, several movie theaters and a mobile phone company's offices. Clashes between police and demonstrators injured at least 16 people, witnesses said.

Muslim groups have yet to criticize the Pakistani government for allowing the riots to occur. As yet no one has demanded an apology for the death of the 8-year-old boy. Americans haven't taken to the streets to boycott the destruction of the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ambassadors haven't been recalled from Pakistan.

Posted by Conor at 10:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Los Angeles Street Art

Tony Mora searches the Los Angeles area for murals at taco stands, carnicerias and mariscos emporiums, then posts them to his blog.

Check out the latest here.

(Via LA Observed via Hot Dog Spot)

Posted by Conor at 05:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Riots in Antwerp

Did you hear about this through the mainstream press?

Last Saturday’s riots in Antwerp, when Moroccan “youths� went on the rampage in Antwerp’s historical center, destroying cars and beating up reporters, has led to frustration among police officers because the authorities prevented them from stopping the violence. Officers complained in today’s papers that they had been given orders to watch passively while young, rowdy Muslims were allowed to take revenge over... drawings published more than four months ago in a Danish newspaper.

“We had to watch how they were ripping off car mirrors. We wanted to stop this vandalism but were ordered to withdraw,� an anonymous policeman says in today’s Flemish daily De Standaard. “An ambulance was told to switch off its siren because that might provoke the Moroccans.� Another anonymous officer told the press: “There you are watching this, while citizens can see that you are powerless.� According to an anonymous police chief the authorities decided, that “it was better to have a few cars vandalized than risk open war in the streets.� On Monday the city council, led by the Socialist mayor Patrick Janssens, decided that the city would compensate the damage to cars and property.

One of the victims of the violence was Fatima Bali, a city councillor of Moroccan origin. She was on a tram last Saturday evening around 6 pm, when the vehicle was attacked. “It was very frightening,� she said. “Stones were thrown at the tram. Passengers tried to hide under the seats. Everyone panicked. Windows were shattered, a stone hit a passenger’s head – a Moroccan by the way. I hope I will never have to go through something like that again.�

Thank you, Brussel's Journal.

Posted by Conor at 05:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bye Bye Free Speech

Let us imagine a Christian and a Muslim arguing on the streets of Brussels.

Christian: Jesus Christ is the only son of our Lord God.

Muslim: Jesus Christ is a great man and a prophet, peace be upon him, but he is not the son of Allah.

It is rather easy to imagine both men as devout believers who are offended that, on one hand, Jesus is being made out as the son of God, and on the other hand, that Christ's divinity is being denied. Certainly both men are directly and publically contradicting a core element of the other's faith.

Now imagine the same debate taking place on the pages of a European newspaper--I suppose we'll have to assume a particularly brave editor--and consider the following (from the Brussel's Journal):

Earlier, in a joint statement, Mr Solana of the EU, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) wrote: “We understand the deep hurt and widespread indignation felt in the Muslim world. The freedom of the press, which entails responsibility and discretion, should respect the beliefs and tenets of all religions."

Should it? Is the conversation above likely enough to cause offense that it ought to be kept from the newspaper? What about atheists? Should they be allowed to argue that God doesn't exist? Such an argument certainly doesn't respect the tenets of all religions. Should we throw them in jail if they make it?

It's a nice notion, the idea that we should all respect one another's religious beliefs. I subscribe to it in my personal life. Why needlessly offend my fellow humans by denmigrating their beliefs?

Anyone who gives the matter a moment's thought, however, will appreciate that religious beliefs conflict with one another and with non-religious beliefs all the time.

Kofi Annan & friends say we ought to respect all religious beliefs. So what happens when we run across a religious cult that calls for the ritual sacrfice of a virgin from every nation to placate the gods? Or what happens when a Frenchman truly believes that Christianity is a harmful form of mind control. Should the law prohibit him from speaking out about his beliefs?

The Brussel's Journal reports:

Today some 200 Islamic religious leaders demonstrated in Brussels’ European district. It was a peaceful demonstration, but the Muslims want Europe to adopt the religious taboos of Islam. They handed a letter to a representative of the European Commission condemning “the blasphemy and humiliation� caused by the Danish cartoons, demanding that the EU introduce legislation against “hatred and islamophobia� and that it ban “blasphemy and the showing of disrespect for all religions and their prophets� because “every excessive form of free speech stigmatizes people."

Funny thing, the Danish cartoons didn't stigmatize Muslims in my eyes. The fact that 200 Islamic leaders are agitating to suppress free speech, however, stigmatizes Islam as a religion incompatible with Western freedoms. That's unfortunate because many Muslims don't feel that way.

Meanwhile many of us Westerners can help but comment on the irony that many Muslim nations won't even allow Jews and Christians to practice their religions... and yet it is Islamic leaders agitating for more rights in predoninantly Christian countries where they are completely free to practice their faith. In some European nations they're protesting the same governments that have subsidized Mosque construction with public dollars.

After their meeting with the representative of the Commission the Muslim delegation was received by the Danish ambassador, Karsten Petersen. “He thanked us for our moderation that invites dialogue and calm,� said imam Said Dakkar, the chairman of the Union of Brussels Mosques. “We have told him that we disapprove of violent demonstrations,� imam Said Mdaoucki of the Antwerp Mosque Federation added, “but we want to know how far freedom of speech is allowed to go. Can you ridicule someone’s values and beliefs? Is that freedom of speech?�

Why yes, it is.

In a free society speech is the preferred way to show someone that you find their beliefs foolish. The alternative--violence--is all too common in societies where freedom of speech isn't allowed.

Unfortunately, Europe seems not to realize this.

Yesterday, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, EU Foreign Policy Coordinator Javier Solana promised that the EU will support a clause in an updated human rights charter of the United Nations to “protect the sanctity of religions and the prophets.�

Put another way, Europe may soon adopt a fundamental right to not have one's religious beliefs challenged. What an odd turn for the continent that gave us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Vatican II.

Posted by Conor at 04:21 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Wednesday Column: The Problem with Identity Politics

A recent guest column in the Los Angeles Daily News explores the growing rivalry between blacks and Latinos in the United States.

“As Latinos grab the attention of marketers and gain political clout, many African-Americans feel that their influence is waning and that the decline is disproportionate and unfair,� Sharon Woodson-Bryant writes. “Many African-Americans view Latinos - because of their numbers - as a threat to their social, economic and political gains. In cities like Los Angeles, where blacks still wield a measure of political power, they are increasingly digging in to resist a Latino tsunami.�

This unfortunate rivalry flared up in the aftermath of the April 26, 1992 riots in Los Angeles, when the Latino press complained that blacks used the mayhem as an occasion to victimize Latinos. It resurfaces occasionally, especially recently.

When New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin asserted last month that New Orleans should be rebuilt as a “chocolate city� some Latinos, aware that many immigrants have flocked to the region to rebuild, took offense.

Earlier this week, amid race riots in the Los Angeles County jail between Latino and black inmates, black leaders went on the evening news to demand the segregation of inmates. Naji Ali told KTLA that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Latino civil rights activists would be speaking up if Latino inmates rather than black inmates had been the murder victims.

I find one thing striking about all these controversies: unlike the language of the Civil Rights Era, when Martin Luther King responded to racial injustice by calling for a color blind society, today’s black and Latino leaders view all race matters through the lens of identity politics.

When something goes wrong they imagine the problem is that their particular identity group isn’t getting enough attention, or resources or power. They demand more attention, resources or power as if that will rectify the problem.

In fact, identity politics itself is a problem.

Its first flawed premise is that race is among the most significant characteristics an individual possesses, defining their identity, their wants and their needs. Race does matter in our society, but only because we’ve constructed it to matter. Identity politics has allowed these racial constructions to survive and to ossify long past the time when they ought to have crumbled.

The second flawed premise is that it’s possible to create a fair society by putting everyone into racial groups, gauging the amount of discrimination they face and countering it with positive discrimination.

Almost everyone who sees racial injustice wants to rectify it, and positive discrimination is a tempting path. But when the government begins favoring some citizens due to their race other citizens are inevitably penalized due to their race. In a society with as many races and ethnicities as ours—not to mention people of mixed race and ethnicity—that’s a recipe for unfairness and rising racial resentment.

After spending the last generation lauding affirmative action, diversity quotas and self-proclaimed ethnic group leaders who purport to speak for all members of their race, is it any wonder that two large minority groups, Latinos and blacks, now see one another as adversaries? Of course they are competing: we’ve set up a system where political spoils accrue to the most powerful racial identity group. Can it be otherwise that blacks and Latinos see one another as “others� out to take what could be theirs?

When our government policies and our political races treat race as one of the most significant traits a person has is it any wonder that the idea endures in our society to this day? If blacks know that some political favors are handed out not because they represent the most fair policy but because blacks represent the biggest minority group isn’t subsequent black antipathy toward Latinos–and vice versa– not only inevitable, but rational under the system of incentives we’ve intentionally established?

It’s long past time that we strive again toward Martin Luther King’s ideal: a society where everyone is treated equally under the law and where the content of your character matters more than the color of your skin.

Race blind government policies and an end to identity politics won’t end racism immediately. Yet racism endures only insofar as people of different races think of one another as somehow essentially different. As long as our government treats race as a core characteristic of an individual, society will internalize that misguided worldview. It will never die out.

The sooner our government and institutions treat all people equally, the sooner individuals will stop seeing people of a different race as adversaries and “others�. The sooner blacks and Latinos won’t be threatened by the success of a rival faction, but heartened by the success of their fellow Americans. The sooner racism will finally end, a goal that seems well-worth fighting for, though it may be a long, hard slog.

Posted by Conor at 04:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Against a Guest Worker Program

Why immigrants to the United States
should be welcomed as citizens instead.

Across Western Civilization prosperous democracies are grappling with immigration. The September 11 terrorist attacks, the Madrid bombings, the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the London subway bombings have spurred immigration reform attempts that focus on routing out terrorists.

Meanwhile extreme poverty in Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia—combined with widespread prosperity, falling birthrates and a demand for low-wage workers in Europe, North America and Australia—propels desperate immigrates to circumvent security measures and often times risk their own lives to immigrate illegally, usually to seek work.

The subsequent strain on government services like schools, jails and emergency rooms, the strain on infrastructure—crowded freeways, housing shortages, etc.—and the criminal activity some illegal immigrants engage in has created a substantial majority in most every Western country who favor a crackdown on illegal immigration.

As the United States considers what reforms to adopt, especially as it considers a massive new guest worker program, we ought to be thankful that America doesn’t have an ethnic view of citizenship. Since our national identity is based on shared values and political loyalty rather than ethnicity - something that isn’t true in much of Europe - newcomers won’t inevitably change what it means to be an American.
I fear, however, that too many take American exceptionalism for granted. Immigration reform proposals, though premised on the assumption that mass immigration won’t threaten our values, never seem to grasp why that is so.

The McCain-Kennedy legislation - indeed any immigration reform proposal primarily driven by a massive guest worker program - ignores the reality that the policies we choose and the values we project determine whether or not tomorrow’s immigrants will embrace American values. If we create a system designed to welcome and assimilate future citizens we can ultimately enjoy generations of loyal, productive Americans who embrace our bedrock ideals while enhancing our diversity. On the other hand, if we create a system designed to fill low-wage jobs with temporary residents whose only loyalty to America springs from the paycheck they collect we are likely to produce an underclass of second class non-citizens who ultimately become disaffected with a nation that never fully welcomed them.

THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE
Oddly many Americans believe we are the only nation that tolerates mass immigration. In fact the European experience - particularly the guest-worker programs Western European countries adopted during their post-WWII boom - provides a useful case study of failure to assimilate immigrants. Consider Europe’s current Muslim population, a diverse group that includes peaceful, integrated families living out the European promise of a better life, and disaffected, radicalized second-generation immigrant youths who use the privileges of full citizenship to preach the destruction of the country that took them in and subsidizes their housing and meals.

Of course, geography suggests that the United States will continue to get the bulk of its immigrants from overwhelmingly Christian Latin America - though our immigration policy certainly must concern itself with stopping Islamic terrorists it is doubtful that radical Islamists will establish themselves here in the same numbers that they have in Europe. The substantial community of tolerant Muslims already living within the United States is more reason for optimism—already mainstream Islamic culture is a subset of United States culture as American as any other.

But tomorrow’s immigrants need not carry out terrorist attacks or advance a radical religious ideology to be of concern. Any large minority of disaffected residents presents myriad potential problems. Consider, for example, the consequences of a small group of El Salvadoran immigrants who formed the violent street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, after immigrating to Los Angeles to escape a civil war at home.

Today the gang is known for torturing and beheading its enemies, running guns and military weapons back and forth from El Salvador and terrorizing the communities they inhabit. Given the current prevalence of illegal immigrants in street gangs, it isn’t hard to imagine a gang problem writ much larger within immigrant communities who aren’t accepted and integrated into the American economy or culture. In Europe the failure of integration happened because, among other things, new residents were tolerated as guest workers - essentially treated as a necessary if unfortunate economic necessity - but never encouraged to become citizens, integrate, or share any civic identity within their new homeland.

Already America is going down the same road by tacitly tolerating large scale illegal immigration to reap its economic benefits. Institutionalizing the large scale immigration of non-citizen workers will only hasten its ill effects.

WHY TODAY’S IMMIGRATION DEBATE IS DIFFERENT

Of course, I’m not the first to worry that an influx of new immigrants will present challenges for America.

“No nation in human history ever undertook to deal with such masses of alien population,� Francis A. Walker wrote in an 1896 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. “That man must be a sentimentalist and an optimist beyond all bounds of reason who believes that we can take such a load upon the national stomach without a failure of assimilation, and without great danger to the health and life of the nation.�

Throughout American history immigrants have arrived, stoked concern in the native population, and ultimately integrated. That history ought to inform the current debate and calm xenophobic concerns that immigrants will somehow overrun America or destroy our well-being. Nevertheless we must ask ourselves whether today’s immigration debate presents unique challenges. Historian David Kennedy suggests several in his provocative 1995 article “Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?� (His ultimate answer: yes.)

Mexican-Americans will have open to them possibilities closed to previous immigrant groups. They will have sufficient coherence and critical mass in a defined region so that, if they choose, they can preserve their distinctive culture indefinitely. They could also eventually undertake to do what no previous immigrant group could have dreamed of doing: challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and educational systems to change fundamentally not only the language but also the very institutions in which they do business. They could even precipitate a debate over a “special relationship� with Mexico that would make the controversy over the North American Free Trade Agreement look like a college bull session. In the process, Americans could be pitched into a soul-searching redefinition of fundamental ideas such as the meaning of citizenship and national identity….

No previous immigrant group had the size and concentration and easy access to its original culture that the Mexican immigrant group in the Southwest has today. If we seek historical guidance, the closest example we have to hand is in the diagonally opposite corner of the North American continent, in Quebec. The possibility looms that in the next generation or so we will see a kind of Chicano Quebec take shape in the American Southwest, as a group emerges with strong cultural cohesiveness and sufficient economic and political strength to insist on changes in the overall society’s ways of organizing itself and conducting its affairs.

Kennedy focuses on Mexican Americans who gain citizenship in the Southwest. Thus far their rapid assimilation into the American mainstream suggests his fears will not be borne out.

However, a similarly situated population of non-citizen immigrants—given neither means nor any incentive to assimilate—seem prime candidates for challenging regional cultural identity. Who among us wouldn’t attempt to transform a culture that shuns us?

We struggle to predict a precise outcome because America has limited experience admitting large groups of long term guest-workers without caring whether they become citizens or not (at least given contemporary human rights norms that would save future immigrants from the fate of last century’s Chinese laborers and 19th Century slaves).

Nevertheless it is reasonable to speculate that second generation immigrants raised by citizen parents in American schools will feel more loyalty to America than their counterparts raised by non-citizens who don’t speak fluent English, toil for American employers at exploitative wages and pass along nothing of American civic values.

Both groups of children will be American citizens. It is plain which cohort will embrace an American identity and which will be tempted by ethnic street gangs, radical political movements and civil unrest.

Non-citizen guest-workers are also problematic because the first generation will live among us without the right to vote. Consider that certain immigrant enclaves will welcome increasing numbers of non-citizen residents. Ultimately there might be communities where the majority of people a local government serves aren’t eligible to vote for its members. The resulting choice - extend the vote to non-citizens or abandon the idea of democratic self-government - ought to be avoided at all costs.

IF NOT GUEST WORKERS WHAT?

Any large scale immigration reform plan - particularly one that grants amnesty or initiates a large scale guest worker program - must count as a primary goal welcoming immigrants not just as workers but as future citizens and intrinsically valuable human beings. The McCain Kennedy bill, which allows guest workers to apply for citizenship but doesn’t require or encourage it, doesn’t meet my standard—the path to citizenship must be clear and well trod.

Ideally our immigration policy would welcome foreign workers to our economy and our civic life, offering the chance for unlimited economic opportunity but requiring a citizenship application, English classes to maximize civic participation and knowledge of American government. A successful pluralistic society means instilling core American values into new immigrants—primarily liberty and self-government—while respecting all cultural differences that aren’t at odds with those core values.

Fortunately we’ve created a nation where millions of people would like to seek citizenship on those terms. Why we would purposefully entrench a system that instead favored non-citizen guest workers, thus marginalizing a whole segment of the population while ensuring that they’ll never become fully invested in our country’s future, I have no idea.

Posted by Conor at 05:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Satisfying the Beer Gods

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

A $1 million dollar commercial inspired by Monty Python and featuring an army of people working together to induce the heavens to rain beer on them is the centrepiece of an ambitious marketing campaign by the state's biggest-selling tap beer.

The bizarre yet bold ad for Tooheys New depicts teams of people using huge catapults to propel sacks of malt, hops and even a solitary stag into the stratosphere in order to satisfy the beer gods.

That's absolutely ridiculous! Obviously the beer gods won't be impressed by ingredients for beer--they've clearly either already got them or don't need them.

What would I launch at the beer gods?

Duh.

Posted by Conor at 05:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 13, 2006

A Valentine's Day Strike?

Will illegal immigrant restaurant workers strike on Valentine's Day, sending the restaurant industry into chaos? Beyond Borders Blog has the story.

Posted by Conor at 04:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lying on Resume May Be a Crime in WA

A Seattle newspaper reports:

Talking yourself up to a prospective employer is a time-honored tradition. But come this summer, inflating your resume could be downright illegal.

State legislators are considering a bill that would subject people to a $1,000 fine for claiming in writing to have an academic degree they don't really have or failing to disclose that a listed degree came from an unaccredited institution.

Will this affect Dr. J?

Posted by Conor at 03:28 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Great Moments in Public Education

The Chicago Sun Times reports:

A 12-year-old Aurora boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project this week has been charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug, Aurora police have confirmed.

The sixth-grade student at Waldo Middle School was also suspended for two weeks from school after showing the bag of powdered sugar to his friends.

The boy, who is not being identified because he is a juvenile, said he brought the bag to school to ask his science teacher if he could run an experiment using sugar.

Two other boys asked if the bag contained cocaine after he showed it to them in the bathroom Wednesday morning, the boy's mother said.

He joked that it was cocaine, before telling them, "just kidding," she said.

Aurora police arrested the boy after a custodian at the school reported the boy's comments.

The school district's stance:

The dangers of illegal drugs and controlled substances are clear. Look-alike drugs and substances can cause that same level of danger because staff and students are not equipped to differentiate between the two.

Yes, that's right, the school officials assert that a bag of powdered sugar is as dangerous as a bag of cocaine. The mind reels.

Posted by Conor at 03:05 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Al Gore talks to the Saudis

AP reports on a speech given by Al Gore in Saudi Arabia:

Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Gore told the largely Saudi audience, many of them educated at U.S. universities, that Arabs in the United States had been "indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."

Blogger Tigerhawk (via James Taranto) gets it mostly right:

This is asinine both substantively and procedurally.

Substantively, the idea that cracking down on Saudi visa applications is "playing into al Qaeda's hands" is laughable. Had we scrutinized Saudi visas a little more carefully in 2001, thousands of Americans who died on September 11 that year might well have lived. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on that day were Saudi nationals. If we had denied some or all of them visas, exactly how would that have "played into al Qaeda's hands"? . . .

Procedurally, Gore's speech is repugnant. It is one thing to say such things to an American audience in an effort to change our policy. . . . It is, however, another thing entirely to travel to a foreign country that features pivotally in the war of our generation for the purpose of denouncing American policies in front of the affected foreign audience. It is especially problematic to mess with Saudi political opinions, which are subject to intensive influence and coercion by internal actors and the United States, al Qaeda, and Iran, among other powers. Supposing that some Saudis were inclined to be angry over the American visa policy, won't they be more angry after Al Gore has told them that they're being humiliated? How is that helpful?

Finally, Gore's outrage at the American treatment of Arab and Muslim captives may be genuine, and it may even be worthy of expression in the United States, where we aspire to do better than press accounts suggest we have done. But whatever nasty things we have done in exceptional cases in time of war, they pale in comparison to the standard operating procedure in Saudi Arabia. So this is what Gore has done: he has traveled to Jiddah to explain to the elites of an ugly and tyrannical regime that the big problem in the world isn't the oppression of Arabs by Arabs throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the mistreatment of a few hundred Arabs in the United States. This is like visiting Moscow in 1970 and denouncing the United States in front of a bunch of Communist Party deputies for the killings at Kent State. . . .

There is simply no defense for what Gore has done here, for he is deliberately undermining the United States during a time of war, in a part of the world crucial to our success in that war, in front of an audience that does not vote in American elections. Gore's speech is both destructive and disloyal, not because of its content--which is as silly as it is subversive--but because of its location and its intended audience.

Posted by Conor at 02:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 12, 2006

The World's Best Wine Label

With dinner tonight I sipped on a 2003 Rutherford Hill Chardonay from Napa Valley, enjoying it enough to peek at the back label to see how the vintners decribed it. I found the best wine label ever:

My marketing people advised me to hire a terrific back-label writer to craft beautiful words that would demonstrate the depth of my family's commitment to quality. Instead, with my sons Bill and John, I paid more for grapes, dumped wine that didn't measure up to our standards, spent millions on new equipment, and hounded the winemaking team day in and day out to improve the wine every year. And then we put the proof in the bottle.

The wine is quite good indeed. It reminds me of a trip to the Napa Valley I took last summer, thanks to the generosity of the Bennett family.

It's beautiful:

Posted by Conor at 07:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

DIck Cheney Shoots Hunting Companion

AP reports:

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

That's the best evidence yet that it's a bad idea for the Vice President and a Supreme Court Justice to go hunting together.

Posted by Conor at 06:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"Cheap Gratuitousness"?

Gregory Djerejian suggests those agitating for the publication of the Danish cartoons are engaged in cheap gratuitousness.

Posted by Conor at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"The Betrayal of Denmark"

The Brussel's Journal has another must-read post on the cartoon affair.

Posted by Conor at 06:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mark Steyn: It's the Jihadists Who Are Offending Islam

Mark Steyn notes that some British Muslims are upset that a London sex shop is selling a blowup doll named "Mustafa Shag" since Mustafa also has the title "al-Mustapha."

If I were a Muslim, I'd be "hurt" and "humiliated" that the revered prophet's name is given not to latex blowup males but to so many real blowup males: The leader of the 9/11 plotters? Mohammed Atta. The British Muslim who self-detonated in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammed Hanif. The gunman who shot up the El Al counter at LAX? Heshamed Mohamed Hedayet. The former U.S. Army sergeant who masterminded the slaughter at the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania? Ali Mohamed. The murderer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh? Mohammed Bouyeri. The notorious Sydney gang rapist? Mohammed Skaf. The Washington sniper? John Allen Muhammed. If I were a Muslim, I would be deeply offended that the prophet's name is the preferred appellation of so many killers and suicide bombers on every corner of the earth.

But apparently that's not as big a deal as Mustafa Shag.

It is surreal that given all the barbaric things Islamofascist jihadists are doing while invoking Islam the controversies that lead to demonstrations involve cartoons and blow up dolls.

For more, see the Sunday Times article How Liberal Britain Let Hate Flourish.

Posted by Conor at 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fear Factor

Tim Rutten:

Thursday, CNN broadcast a story on how common anti-Semitic caricatures are in the Arab press and illustrated it with —you guessed it — one virulently anti-Semitic cartoon after another. As the segment concluded, Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera and piously explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures.

He didn't even blush.

Rutten favors publishing the cartoons to inform readers about the controversy. He also praises a newspaper for admitting an uncomfortable truth:

Among those who decline to show the caricatures, only one, the Boston Phoenix, has been forthright enough to admit that its editors made the decision "out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. This is, frankly, our primary reason for not publishing any of the images in question. Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy."

John Temple, Editor of the Rocky Mountain News, writes:

I question whether we're being given the full story about why some news organizations aren't touching the cartoons.

The missing word: Fear.

It would be impossible as a responsible editor with correspondents in the Muslim world to see the violent protests and not be concerned about endangering your own staff.

An alternative newspaper in Boston, The Phoenix, put it bluntly.

"Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year publishing history."

It's understandable other editors and publishers might not make a similar statement publicly, but it's hard to believe this concern didn't factor into their decisions.

Andrew Sullivan rails against media outlets that have failed to publish the Danish cartoons:

As of this writing no major newspaper in Britain has published the cartoons; the BBC has shown them only fleetingly and other networks have shied away. All have decided not to give you this critical information, without which no intelligent person can construct an informed and intelligent position on the matter. You’re on your own.

The reasons given are conventional enough: the press doesn’t want to inflame matters further; the cartoons are indeed offensive, and no editor has to publish images that would appal readers; reprinting would merely play into the hands of extremists, and so on.

The one argument you haven’t heard is the one you hear off-camera. Many editors simply don’t want to put their staffs at risk of physical danger. They have “offended� Muslims in the past and learnt to regret it. In New York the editors of a free alternative paper, the New York Press, decided they wanted to run the cartoons so their readers could have a grasp of what this huge story is about. The owner refused. The staff quit en masse. The editor claims the owner gave him a simple explanation: “I’m not putting lives in danger. We’re not getting things blown up.�

None of these arguments is risible. An editor has no responsibility to publish anything he doesn’t want to. A publisher has every right to protect his own staff from physical danger. But what all the arguments amount to is simple: the press is refusing to do its job.

The fundamental job of journalists is to give you as much information as possible to make sense of the world around you. And in this story, where the entire controversy revolves around drawings, the press is suddenly coy. You can see Saddam Hussein in his underwear and members of the royal family in compromising positions. You can see Andres Serrano’s famously blasphemous photograph of a crucifix in urine, called Piss Christ. But a political cartoon that deals with Islam? Not our job, guv. Move right along. Nothing to see here.

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Counter-demonstration

It's getting harder and harder to stand up for free speech in Europe.

Posted by Conor at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

AIDS and Entry into America

Andrew Sullivan argues that HIV positive people shouldn't be kept out of the United States:

I'm delighted to see that the Homeland Security Department has temporarily waived the ban on any non-American with HIV from entering the United States for the Gay Games in Chicago this summer. It's still stunning to me, however, that the Bush administration, which has done so much to advance treatment for people with HIV and AIDS in the developing world, should still be perpetuating stigma by keeping the (largely unenforceable) ban on all HIV-positive visitors from legal entry into the U.S. Nothing stigmatizes a disease more than a country saying that no-one with HIV can enter its borders or become one of its citizens if he or she is HIV-positive. Being HIV-positive should not bar anyone from becoming an American citizen. But it does. You could remove the worry about people coming to the U.S. for free medical care by adjusting waiver requirements to ensure that immigrants have private health insurance before they get here. The stigma can be ended - if the administration finds a way.

Anyone want to offer a counterargument?

Posted by Conor at 05:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"Balls to the Wall"

Slate wonders:

Where does the expression "balls to the wall" come from?

Somewhat disappointingly, it has nothing to do with hammers, nails, and a particularly gruesome way of treating an enemy. The expression comes from the world of military aviation. In many planes, control sticks are topped with a ball-shaped grip. One such control is the throttle—to get maximum power you push it all the way forward, to the front of the cockpit, or firewall (so-called because it prevents an engine fire from reaching the rest of the plane). Another control is the joystick—pushing it forward sends a plane into a dive. So, literally pushing the balls to the (fire)wall would put a plane into a maximum-speed dive, and figuratively going balls to the wall is doing something all-out, with maximum effort. The phrase is essentially the aeronautical equivalent of the automotive "pedal to the metal."

Posted by Conor at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

California Governance

Mickey Kaus:

Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez declares education must be the "first priority" for funds "until every child in this state receives a decent education and a fair chance to succeed." Conveniently, there's no danger of that happening any time soon, at least as long as the California Teachers Association is in charge.

Read about the California Democratic Party's subservience to the CTA here.

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A New Controversy

Eugene Volokh reports on a new cartoon controversy. It's just another step toward this.

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Sen. Tom Coburn: Porkbuster

George Will has written an excellent column about Senator Tom Coburn, a man standing fast against the pork barrell spending of his colleagues:

Coburn is the most dangerous creature that can come to the Senate, someone simply uninterested in being popular. When House Speaker Dennis Hastert defends earmarks -- spending dictated by individual legislators for specific projects -- by saying that a member of Congress knows best where a stoplight ought to be placed, Coburn, in an act of lese-majeste, responds: Members of Congress are the least qualified to make such judgments.

Indeed. The following anecdote alone makes me want to send him a campaign check should he seek re-election:

When Coburn disparaged an earmark for Seattle -- $500,000 for a sculpture garden -- Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was scandalized: "We are not going to watch the senator pick out one project and make it into a whipping boy." She invoked the code of comity: "I hope we do not go down the road deciding we know better than home state senators about the merits of the projects they bring to us." And she warned of Armageddon: "I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next." But Coburn, who does not do earmarks, thinks Armageddon sounds like fun.

It sounds fun to me too. If you want to see less pork join the blogosphere's anti-pok effort here.

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No One Will Protest These Words

This speaks for itself:

Tehran (dpa) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that the Palestinians and "other nations" will eventually remove Israel from the region.

Addressing a mass demonstration in Tehran - one of many organized throughout Iran to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution - he once again questioned the Holocaust "fairy tale".

"We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them," Ahmadinejad said in a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

"Do the removal of Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations," the ultra-conservative president said. He once again called the Holocaust a "fairy tale" and said Europeans have become hostages of "Zionists" in Israel.

He also accused Europeans for not allowing "neutral scholars" to investigate in Europe and make a scientific report on "the truth about the fairy tale of Holocaust."

"How comes that insulting the prophet of Muslims worldwide is justified within the framework of press freedom, but investigating about the fairy tale Holocaust is not?" Ahmadinejad said.

If we don't take this threat seriously history will deem us naive idiots for good reason.

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February 11, 2006

Al Jazeera's Staff Blog

Given world events of late I'd say its time for this blog to be updated. I wonder what Al Jazeera's staff thinks about the Jordanian newspaper arrested for publishing the Danish cartoons.

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A Matter of Perspective

I've just begun H.G. Wells two volume Outline of History. He begins by noting that for many centuries man believed himself to live on a flat earth under a domed sky. "The Babylonian and Chinese astronomers, after many centuries of star observation, still believed that the earth was flat."

The Greeks first perceived a spherical world, but still imagined a very small universe, where the sun, the moon and the stars rotated around a fixed earth at the center of everything.

Only in the 15th Century did Copernicus guess that the sun is our anchor and not vice versa.

Here H.G. Wells dazzles:

It was only with the development of the telescope by Galileo in the opening of the seventeenth century that the views of Copernicus became widely accepted.

The development of the telescope marks, indeed, a new phase in human thought, a new vision of life. It is an extraordinary thing that the Greeks, with their lively and penetrating minds, never realized the possibilities of either microscope or telescope. They made no use of the lens. Yet they lived in a world in which glass had been known and had been made beautiful for hundreds of years; they had about them glass flasks and bottles, through which they must have caught glimpses of things distorted and enlarged. But science in Greece was pursued by philosophers in an aristocratic spirit, men who, with a few such exceptions as the ingenious Archimedes and Hiero, were too proud to learn from such mere artisans as jewellers and metal- and glass-workers.

Ignorance is the first penalty of pride. The philosopher had no mechanical skill and the artisan had no philisophical education, and it was left for another age, more than a thousand years later, to bring together glass and the astronomer.

In our times interdisciplinary studies are quite common. Yet this historical anecdote is nevertheless a useful warning as some of our academic disciplines become so increasingly specialized that we risk not being able to see the universe for the stars.

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Unhinged by Bush

Speaking of paranoia... (via Fark)

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About that Cask of Amontillado...

Note to Danish cartoonists: you may want to look into this.

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A Strategy for Islamic Supremacy

Olivier Guitta:

IT IS NOW ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that the recent murderous protests over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September were anything but spontaneous. The actions of Islamist agitators and financiers have deliberately drummed up rage among far-flung extremists otherwise ignorant of the Danish press. The usual suspects--the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran--have profited from the spread of the disorders, and even the likes of tiny Kuwait has reportedly offered funds to spur demonstrations throughout France. More important, however, and perhaps less widely understood, the cartoon jihad is tailor-made to advance the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term worldwide strategy for establishing Islamic supremacy in the West.

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Los Angeles by Night

LA Observed links to a cool HD video clip of Los Angeles by night.

Posted by Conor at 02:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Are Boys Falling Behind at School?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Despite extensive outreach programs and dire predictions about their futures, there is a minority group growing ever smaller on college campuses.

It seems no matter what anyone says or does, the trend cannot be reversed. Fewer and fewer of them attend college.

The minority group? Men.

This trend has been getting a lot of press attention lately. The New Republic tackled it here:

Nearly every chart told the same story. Boys are over 50 percent more likely than girls to repeat grades in elementary school, one-third more likely to drop out of high school, and twice as likely to be identified with a learning disability. The response? Near-total silence.

Newsweek dedicated a cover story to the topic:

They're kinetic, maddening and failing at school. Now educators are trying new ways to help them succeed.

The Atlantic Monthly gets credit for being first, tackling the topic way back in 2000:

This we think we know: American schools favor boys and grind down girls. The truth is the very opposite. By virtually every measure, girls are thriving in school; it is boys who are the second sex.

But Slate says they're all full of hot air.

I understand The Missing Link is lucky enough to have a couple high school classes among its readers. Do these stories ring true to you? Or are adult journalists so out of touch with what's going on at today's high schools that they've got the story all wrong? Your comments are welcome.

Posted by Conor at 02:23 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

It's About Culture, Not Religion

Leonard Pitts on the cartoon affair:

The argument is not about religion, but culture. Note that American Muslims - surely as offended by the cartoons as Muslims elsewhere - have felt no need to riot. They are writing letters to editors and holding peaceful rallies while their co-religionists are burning embassies down.

No, the argument is about what happens when any culture anywhere is so bereft and so closed that its people have no way of comprehending or even imagining lives and beliefs beyond their own.

Consider the announcement by an Iranian newspaper of a retaliatory contest seeking cartoons that mock the Holocaust. This, as a means of highlighting the West's supposed hypocrisy, its double standard on the question of free expression. A Muslim Web site has already posted a cartoon showing Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler.

All of which is so appallingly stupid, misreads the rest of the world so completely, you don't know where to begin pulling it apart.

Perhaps it is enough to ask: Do they really expect this crude attempt at provocation to make Jews riot in the streets of Tel Aviv or Palm Beach?

Dear God, I think they do. That's the pitiful thing. Both for the aforementioned stupidity and for what it says about radical Islam's isolation, its separation, its ''apartness'' from the entire rest of the world, mainstream Islam emphatically included.

I'm dismayed that a few publishers felt it necessary to give gratuitous offense to 1.1 billion people. Just because you have the right to say a thing doesn't always mean you should.

Still, what's more dismaying is the way some in the Muslim world have chosen to respond. At least 10 people have lost their lives in these riots. All over a series of cartoons.

And you wonder: Are they so far removed from the realities of the world the rest of us occupy that they don't see the damage they're doing their faith, their people, themselves?

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Conor at 02:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Valentine's Day as Western Imperialism

...and then they came for Valentine's Day:

Nearly two dozen black-veiled Muslim women stormed gift and stationery shops Friday in Kashmir, burning Valentine's Day cards and posters to protest a holiday they say imposes Western values on Muslim youth.

No one was hurt in the half-dozen or so incidents, and police cordoned off the area to prevent the women from marching through Srinagar's main shopping district to continue their ransacking.

The women were from the Kashmiri Islamic group Dukhtaran-e-Millat, or Daughters of the Community, Kashmir's only women's separatist group, whose members are also known for their fiercely conservative social views.

"We will not let anyone sell these cards or celebrate Valentine's Day," said Asiya Andrabi, the group's leader, as she held a burning poster in her hand. "These Western gimmicks are corrupting our kids and taking them away from their roots."

Somehow I think they'd like the alternative holiday celebrated on American college campuses even less.

UPDATE: Notre Dame doesn't like the alternative holiday either.

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February 10, 2006

Muslim Writer Calls for Publication; An American Pundit Disagrees

American pundit Bob Wright argues that Western media shouldn't publish images of Mohammed.

A Muslim writer is arguing that newspapers ought to publish the Danish cartoons.

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A Netflix Conspiracy

Apparently Netflix sends your new movies out more slowly if you use the service a lot. Protecting profits or needlessly pissing off customers? If only a good alternative existed we'd find out...

Posted by Conor at 04:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Welfare and Terrorism

Does welfare cause terrorism? They're discussing it at Bloggingheadstv.com

Posted by Conor at 04:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

An Unpopular Stance

Kyle Smith says we should cancel the Olympics.

Posted by Conor at 03:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Curious George, the Curious Little Victim of Western Imperialism

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

For the politically correct Bay Area parent, the "Curious George" children's books are a minefield of cultural horrors through which to tiptoe. Imperialism. Animal abuse. Bad parenting.

The horror. the horror! And it gets worse:

"The books are really irresponsible to me. It's sickening, really," said Robin Roth, managing editor of www.arkonline.com, an animal welfare Web site.

Start with the Caucasian, gun-carrying Man with the Yellow Hat venturing to Africa (imperialism alert!) to harvest wildlife for a zoo (animal repression alert!). Continue with George being unsupervised and allowed to smoke a pipe and huff ether (bad parenting alert!), and it's a wonder there aren't pickets already forming around movie theaters.

Roth, a high school English teacher in Los Angeles, writes on her animal rights Web site that "Curious George" reveals "the sinister side of a corrupt wildlife trade with perilous roots in Western imperialism." When the mischievous George is sent to jail, "the picture of the forlorn little primate alone in his cell conjures haunting images of countless monkeys lingering in laboratories, suffering silently and alone."

I don't know--the Man with the Yellow Hat never even makes George do household chores, unlike these stone age oppressors.

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Survival of the Coke Drinkers

If you happen to get lost while camping... and you don't happen to have MacGyver with you... here's how to start a fire using a Coke can and a chocolate bar.

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February 09, 2006

Name That City: Contest #2, Hint One

Here's how it works: I post a photograph of a world city. The first to identify the city wins the right to dictate the topic of a future post on The Missing Link. If no one gets it I'll post an easier to identify image of the same city in the next couple days. Good luck.

Posted by Conor at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sue Happy America

The soft drink lawsuits are coming.

Posted by Conor at 11:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why We Should Clap for the Invisible Hand

Clive Crook offers a rousing defense of capitalism in the Atlantic Monthly:

Capitalism is prey to excesses, self-evidently, and it creates, or leaves unattended, a host of problems that decent societies must address by other means. Even so, the prevailing culture of suspicion and disappointment is at odds with the facts. Mainly, what is missing is awe. Premodern scholars (Karl Marx is an exception) could scarcely have imagined the material advance that capitalism has delivered. Certainly Adam Smith never dreamed that his “invisible hand� would arrange things so well.

In the late 1980s, as Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on his perestroika program of economic reform, Soviet officials were sent abroad to see how things were done in the West. One visited London’s main vegetable market. He asked how the market was organized, and how prices were set. He was told that the individual traders bought whatever quantities they wished, and set their own prices, and that these fluctuated throughout the day as the balance of supply and demand changed. At this, the Soviet visitor laughed. He said he understood that this was the official line—but, please, how did the market really set prices?

That, in fact, was the reaction of an intelligent man. It is fantastically improbable that markets work, at scale, as well as they do. It is astonishing that in an economy of America’s size—to say nothing of the world economy as a whole—a limitless variety of goods and services is continuously offered at prices people are willing to pay, without persistent gluts or shortages, entirely without central direction. That the system also calls forth an endless flow of innovation and improvement is a miracle. The man from Moscow was right to be incredulous.

And it gets better, because this infinitely complicated, decentralized system has an obvious affinity with personal liberty, in a way that a centrally directed system never could.

If you're lucky enough to subscribe to the Atlantic Monthly like me, read the whole thing.

Posted by Conor at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"What Bush Understands and Danes Do Not"

The New Republic's Peter Beinart is one of journalism's best thinkers. He has written a thought-provoking article on the Danish cartoon affair:

The riots currently engulfing the Islamic world, prompted by a Danish newspaper's decision to caricature the Prophet Mohammed, require two responses. The first is easy: horror. In the physical assault on Denmark's embassies and citizens, and in the diplomatic assault on Denmark's government--all because a free government won't muzzle a free press--multiculturalism has become totalitarianism. Religious sensitivity, say the zealots marching from Beirut to Jakarta, matters more than liberty. Indeed, it matters more than life itself. To which the only answer, from democrats of all religions and of none, must be: In this matter, we are all Danes.

So responding to the thuggishness is easy. Responding to the cartoons themselves is harder. It is hard to condemn them when the barbaric response in parts of the Islamic world so vastly dwarfs the initial offense. And yet, the cartoons should be condemned nonetheless. Of course, the Danish newspaper had the right to publish them. But, in doing so, it revealed a particularly European prejudice, one that the United States must take care not to repeat.

The prejudice is not simply against Islam. Rather, it stems from Europe's--or at least Western Europe's--inability to take religion seriously at all. As my colleague Spencer Ackerman has written ("Religious Protection," December 12, 2005), one reason Muslims find it harder to integrate in Western Europe than in the United States is that, in Western Europe, integration is often presumed to mean secularization. In defending his decision to print the cartoons, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten declared, "This is about the question of integration and how compatible is the religion of Islam with a modern secular society." In defending its decision to reprint them, the French paper France Soir wrote, "No religious dogma can impose its view on a democratic and secular society."

But most Americans--like most Muslims--do not think "modern" and "democratic" equal secular.

Read the whole thing.

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Don't Print 'Em

Rossputin argues American newspapers should not reprint the cartoons.

Posted by Conor at 08:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

You Can't Advertise That!

David Bernstein has an interesting post at The Volokh Conspiracy about how housing laws could destroy Craig's List... and the ability of minorities to find the roommates they want.

Posted by Conor at 08:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

EU to Consider Media Code of Conduct

I suppose this shouldn't surprise me:

LONDON: The European Union may try to draw up a media code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furore caused by the publication across Europe of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, an EU commissioner said today.

In an interview with Britain's Daily Telegraph, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the charter would encourage the media to show ''prudence'' when covering religion.

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The Future We're Headed For*

March 29, 2011

Muslim Anger over Photograph Spreads

Paris-- The French newspaper Le Monde has refused to apologize for publishing a photograph of a bathing-suit clad French Muslim woman tanning herself on the banks of the Seine.

The photograph, published alongside several other images of Paris on the first day of spring, has outraged French Muslim groups, who are demanding an apology.

In Islamic culture there is a strong taboo against women exposing their bodies in public.

"This can only be seen as a deliberate provocation intended to offend Muslims," a French Muslim group said in a statement. "We demand that Le Monde print a full page apology to all Muslims and promise to refrain from publishing photographs of Muslim women in the future unless they are in teraditional Islamic dress."

An editor at Le Monde claims that freedom of expression guarantees the newspaper's right to publish the photograph, and noted that the Muslim woman photographed consented to her image appearing in the newspaper.

The woman, whose name is being withheld at the request of police, cannot be reached for comment and has gone into hiding. The photographer, himself a Muslim, has also gone into hiding, but is expected sometime next month to appear before a tribunal that will determine whether he will be brought before a European court on incitement and hate speech charges.

Since the publication of the cartoons Muslim nations have exerted international pressure on the French government to sanction the newspaper and apologize for the images. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria are calling for an economic boycott of France and any other nation where the photograph, distributed by the Agence France Press wire service, appears.

Marches on the French embassies in those three nations are planned for Saturday, and all non-essential diplomatic personel have already been recalled by the French government. French aid workers in Palestine and Algeria have also been warned to return home.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Bill Clinton opposed the economic boycott of France, but also denounced Le Monde for publishing the photograph.

"It is important to show respect for the religious sensitivities of all people," Clinton said. "Distributing an image of a Muslim woman in a bathing suit seems a deliberate provocation of a culture that puts a premium on feminine modesty."

Thus far several European publications have republished the photograph in a sign of solidarity with Le Monde. In Belgium an editor who included the photograph on an inside page has been fired.

American newspapers are still weighing whether or not to publish the photograph, no doubt keeping in mind the bomb threats that plagued the Philidelphia Inquirer after they published controversial illustrations of Mohammed in 2006.

Since tensions have risen over the Le Monde photograph Sports Illustrated, an American magazine that publishes a swimsuit issue each year, has relocated this year's shoot from Indonesia to Hawaii and fired a swimsuit model who grew up in the Islamic faith, fearing that her appearance in the issue would provoke more violence. The decison prompted two SI photogreaphers quit in protest.

"No one has ever quit this job before," a longtime photographer said, asking that his name be withheld for fear of reprisals, "But I can't stand by while we appease terrorists by marginalizing Muslim women."

Harvard University, whose home page included an image of a co-ed Muslim student group river rafting in Colorado during a school sponsored trip, has removed the image pending review by its Multicultural Committee for Responsible Free Expression.

*I thought it self-evident, but since some readers have apparently missed it: this post is satire!! See the date, for example...

Posted by Conor at 04:14 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Meanwhile President Bush Is Demanding a Pot Hole Be Fixed on Haight Street In Front of the Squat and Gobble

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is debating whether or not to pass a resolution calling for the investigation and impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

It drives me nuts when local officials--they're famous for it in Los Angeles and Santa Monica--do this.

Memo to the S.F. Board of Supervisors: You have neither power nor influence over Congress. You do, however, have local responsibilitiers to attend to.

Every minute you waste posturing on national politics is time that could have gone to making life better for your constituents.

And if you succeed in making this a local political issue, you'll see your local elections devolve into contests between candidates campaigning on issues they'll have no control over once elected--a sure recipe for an elected body that enacts lots of local policies that voters don't particularly support.

Posted by Conor at 04:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

What's Next

Bruce Bawer weighs in on the Danish cartoons, putting the whole affair in context:

Many Europeans agree with Kofi Annan that freedom “should always be exercised in a way that fully respects… religious beliefs, “ and with Sunday Times (UK) columnist Simon Jenkins that the main question here is “whether we truly want to share a world in peace with those who have values and religious beliefs different from our own.� What’s called for, they say, is “respect,� “restraint,� and “responsibility.� And, above all, “sensitivity.� For them, this is simply a case of the powerful mocking the faith of the weak.

On the contrary, what’s happening here is that a gang of bullies—led by a country, Saudi Arabia, where Bibles are forbidden, Christians tortured, Jews routinely labeled “apes and pigs� in the state-controlled media, and apostasy from Islam punished by death—is trying to compel a tiny democracy to live by its own theocratic rules. To succumb to pressure from this gang would simply be to invite further pressure, and lead to further concessions—not just by Denmark but by all of democratic Europe. And when they’ve tamed Europe, they’ll come after America.

After all, the list of Western phenomena that offend the sensibilities of many Muslims is a long one—ranging from religious liberty, sexual equality, and the right of gay people not to have a wall dropped on them, to music, alcohol, dogs, and pork. After a few Danish cartoons, what’s next?

Meanwhile the New York Times reports on how Islamic elites intentionally turned the Danish cartoon affair from a local controversy in Northern Europe into a worldwide jihad. The notion that the Danish newspaper editors should have anticipated all this is getting more absurd every day.

Posted by Conor at 03:48 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Contemporary Music, Already Formulaic, Seeks Better Formula

Interesting new research:

The mystery of what makes a hit has perplexed song writers and marketers as long as there has been popular music.

And in the end, the next hit song may be -- like love -- unpredictable.

But a new study has come up with an intriguing clue: People will select a song if they think others like it.

So if you want to write a hit song... just write a hit song!

Actually, this whole subject has been anticipated in my still-in-progress novel, which hypothesizes that record company executives should be careful what they wish for:

Early music industry studies analyzed the neurological pleasure that accompanies various chord progressions and lyrical accompaniments, with competing labels in a musical space race to plant corporate flags on The Technically Perfect Song’s virgin landscape…

…Until a 1990s pop idol turned MCA executive realized you can only sell the perfect song once. And so hypothesized (correctly, it turns out) a less risky, more profitable path to music industry success: create software that costlessly composes catchy songs.

The MCA patented process has resulted in fail safe best-sellers in the 12 to 22-year-old demographic, with singles inexorably turning gold then platinum, outselling even the very best selling traditionally composed songs (which, paradoxically, consumers claim to like more).

Patent lawyers may want to save this post for future litigation.

Posted by Conor at 02:53 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Egg on His Face*

This is a hard-boiled thing to do:

A city councilman and former police officer in Northglenn admits he egged the car of a Broomfield officer whom he believed was having an affair with his ex-girlfriend, authorities say.

The egg-tossing and other alleged incidents in late January led police Monday to arrest 39-year-old James Miller on misdemeanor charges of harassment, second-degree criminal tampering and domestic violence.

*Alternate Headlines: Jilted Lover Throws Off Yolk of Romance; "It's Over! Easy..."; Officer Eggs on Councilman, Who Retaliates; What Yolk on Yonder Window Breaks?;

Posted by Conor at 02:39 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Los Angeles Terrorist Plot Foiled in 2002

Did the U.S. government thwart a plot to crash an airliner into L.A.'s library tower? (AP has more.)

Apparently L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is as surprised as the rest of us.

Posted by Conor at 02:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Isolate the Radical Provacateurs

Yesterday I wrote this post. I see today that Bernard Henri Levy is calling for a similar approach:

So what made this demented scene, this planetary upheaval, possible? However you might look at the problem, it is hard not to see that insidious forces have brought these drawings to the attention of the Muslim masses. And it is hard not to link this provocation, the deliberate circulation of these cartoons, the quasi-home-delivery of a Danish paper that no one could have guessed had so many readers in the Muslim world, it is hard not to link this self-inflicted blasphemy, this calculated offense (calculated, mind you, by the organizers of the distribution of the cartoons), it is hard not to link this blasphemy to a new planetary configuration...

Moderate Muslims are alone these days, and in their solitude they more than ever need to be acknowledged and hailed.

Posted by Conor at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

James Lileks on Gender Studies

If you've never read James Lileks... you should! He's a newspaper columnist and stay-at-home dad whose sarcasm and wit are always entertaining. An excerpt from today's Bleat:

Interesting conversation about how the patriarchy forces women to empty the dishwasher. Personally, I’ve known messy women, and clean ones. I’ve known neat guys and slobs. Until I met my wife, in fact, nearly every woman I dated was a slob. She was the first one who knew how to keep house. She also was the first one with a job. I was a half-slob once and a mostly-slob before that. Now I do all the housework and child care and do not feel as though I am making some Brave Stand Against Predominant Sexual Paradigms. It’s not like I get boobs when I mop. The thread is notable for the usual joyless prim thin-lipped intensity of some of the commenters; I hope they’re enjoying grad school. One fellow noted that anyone who has daughters has to be a feminist, to prepare them to push back against what society will push on them. I know what he means. Society came to the door the other day and insisted I take her out of her girl-power Scout program, turn off “Dora� and “Kim Possible� and the “Barbie Princess and Pauper� videos and anything else that encourages intellectual inquiry and personal strength, eliminate all the female role models she sees – teacher, working mom, all the bosses at Dad’s office – and start learning to walk ten steps behind men with her eyes downcast and worry about her ability to make dishes so clean she can see her reflection. Damn society. Sometimes I see its face outside pressed against the window, too. Then I release the hounds.

Posted by Conor at 03:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Another Blasphemy, Another Riot

Even granting that mistreatment of the Koran offends Muslims, how does it make sense to riot and burn random buildings in response?

These crownds sure don't make it easy on those of us trying to defend Muslims against negative stereotypes. They do underscore my point that a strategy diesigned around making sure offense is never taken is bound to fail.

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Eminent Tyranny?

Debra Saunders draws attention to another case of government trying to seize private land.

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There's No One to Root for in This Story

Apparently Bill O'Reilly's paranoid conspiracy theory about liberal Hollywood actors meeting before the Oscars to plan how best to bash George W. Bush... turns out to be true. (via Kausfiles)

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Forget About Offending Radical Muslims; Let's Assert Our Values and Win Over the Moderates

A bloody clash of civilizations with the Islamic world isn't inevitable.

A great many Muslims haven't any desire for it, and the vast majority of Westerners want to avoid it too. Islam, Judaism and Christianity have co-existed peacefully at various times in history; it can be so again, especially as many Muslims voluntarily choose to leave Islamic countries for the Western world, where opportunities abound and freedom of religion is ubiquitous.

Westerners must understand, however, that avoiding a clash of civilizations isn't primarily a matter of tip-toeing around Muslim sensibilities. To avoid a clash of civilizations, our mindset and our strategy must change from a defensive attempt to refrain from insulting Muslims to an aggressive attempt to win over moderate Muslims to our side.

If we aren't willing to make the case for our values who will be?

* * *
We must understand this:

Radical Islamists aren't upset when Europeans are seen as offending Muslims. Rather, they celebrate any offense taken. Their goal is to provoke a clash of civilizations. When Muslims are somewhat offended by cartoon images of Mohammed they don't lament the fact that their prophet has been blasphemed; they create more offensive images to further inflame whatever masses will go along.

Radical Islamists are betting that despite their military inferiority they will triumph in a clash of civilizations. It is why they blow up American naval vessels and crash airplanes into skyscrapers. It is why they behead Westerners, unleash suicide bombers on European capitals and flush their own Korans down toilets to create the illusion of Western abuse. It is why they stand on the streets of London holding signs that say "The Real Holocaust is Coming."

We know that radical Islamists resort to these most depraved tactics. We know they've desecrated their holy book and spread forged images insulting to their own prophet to gain a tactical advantage.

Even knowing this, however, we seem to take their outrage at face value when they provoke the burning of embassies, the kidnapping of foreigners and the threats of mass murder. Sure, we don't condone those things. But we treat them as the response of Muslims angry about cartoons rather than the handywork of provacateurs searching for any pretext to stir up an angry factions ready to riot on command.

Radical Islamists firebomb buses full of Muslim children in Iraq. They allow Saudi women to burn alive rather than evacuate them from a burning building without their burkas. They send their own children off as suicide bombers.

Yet we somehow believe that they've suddenly cultivated sensibilities so delicate that Western insensitivity is at the root of all this mayhem--that if only we wouldn't have offended their suddenly delicate sensibilites with cartoons they wouldn't have stirred up the radical fringe of the Muslim masses with propoganda tours, organized protests and violent actions a few months in the making.

Ask yourself which is more likely: are such men genuinely outraged by the cartoons, or did they see a strategic opportunity to stir up the masses? Now ask yourself if our strategy ought to be aimed at 1) avoiding genuine offense or 2) finding a way to win over moderate Muslims so that when the inevitable attempts to stir up violent resentment come they are seen for what they are: a radical fringe unrepresentative of Muslims, and thus unable to provoke a clash of civilizations.

The former strategy is foolhardy. Islamic radicals stand ready to use any pretext to inflame the masses--no perceived offense is too trivial, and if actual offenses are in short supply made up offenses will suffice. We are talking about societies where the official media report that food aid packages dropped by the United States contain poison, and where the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are disseminated as historical documents.

Additionally, our own freedom of expression ensures that some Westerner will offend some Muslims at sometime in the future.
Does anyone believe for a moment that we can censor, whether officially or unofficially, all speech that Islamic radicals will be provoked by? What kind of a strategy is that?

* * *

Here is the reality we face: Many thousands of Muslims are truly offended by images critical of their prophet. Any American who finds that reaction unreasonable ought to be reminded how many thousands of Americans feel when they see someone burning the Stars and Stripes. Sure we ought to respect the religious symbols of different cultures; of course we shouldn't gratuitously insult Muslims.

Neither should we assume, however, that all Muslims are deeply offended by the images, or that those who are support violent extremism as the reaction.

Many American thinkers have long identified such assumptions as a pitfall to avoid in the War on Terrorism. If you fight against violent extremism you can attract moderate Muslims to your side. If you fight against Islam you will send many moderate Muslimes to the other side.

Now consider how the Danish cartoon affair has brought us to a dangerous moment where a clash of civiliations is more likely than before.

Jim Geraghty writes:

I know, from my experiences, that there are significant numbers of Muslims who have no beef with the West, who want to live the American dream, who can practice their faith and coexist with other religions. I’ve documented their efforts to take back their faith from the bin Ladens of the world. But apparently they are too quiet.

I wonder how many Muslims understand how the actions of the embassy-torching maniacs define their faith to so many. I wonder how many don’t know, how many don’t care, and how many do know and care but are too scared of the consequences to stand against the violence committed in their name. I’m trying to articulate my positive experiences with Muslims over here to my readers, but it’s not as powerful and penetrating an image as screaming lunatics burning down embassies and threatening to behead anyone who they believe has insulted them. And frankly, I’m not all that wowed with the reaction of moderate Muslims. I’m not sure how much further I want to stick my neck out defending a faith community that won’t loudly and firmly police or rebuke its own members.

Geraghty's sentiment is both understandable and increasingly common (see the numerous examples in his post). Certainly I wish that more moderate Muslims--the silent majority I desperately want to court--begins to be more vocal about their own views, undercutting Islamic radicals who attempt to speak in the name of Muslims everywhere.

While those moderates cannot escape blame for their relative silence, however, we must acknowledge that the Western response to the cartoon affair is hardly making it any easier on them. We are implicitly allowing the Islamic radicals to speak for all Muslims every time we accept the premise that uncontrollable outrage is "the Muslim response" to these cartoons, or that all Muslims are offended by them, or that apologizing to Muslims will stop the violence.

Western Civilization must be clear that freedom of expression isn't a value we're willing to compromise on, and that we won't tolerate attcks on us for exercising it no matter how offensive its content. Nor are we willing to compromise on the equality of women, the freedom to choose one's faith, the depravity of anti-Semitism or the separation of church and state.

If we aren't willing to categorically defend these values when they are challenged how can we expect moderate Muslims in oppressive communities to do so?

If our first reaction to arson, violence and threats of mass murder is to credulously condemn the cartoons that supposedly provoked them--implicitly accepting the notion that angry Muslims rather than radical Islamists are the root cause of all this--how can we expect moderate Muslims to bear the burden of refuting our mistaken notions?

If we are unwilling to make the case for Western values and their compatibility with moderate Islam how can we expect moderate Muslims to make it?

Thus far, our behavior and that of moderate Muslims has been disappointing. Before we give up on them, we ought to see what happens if we defend and articulate Western values ourselves. Confident assertions attract more allies than half-hearted defenses.

Posted by Conor at 02:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Why We Shouldn't Ban Flag Burning

Eugene Volokh explains why the United States shouldn't ban flag burning, applying lessons learned from the Danish cartoon case. It's an excellent post--read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Volokh offers another excellent post here.

Posted by Conor at 12:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 08, 2006

Violent Response to Cartoons not Representative of Islam

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal contributes reporting that suggests even more strongly that the reaction to the cartoons was orchestrated by governments hostile to the West.

Amir Taheri puts the whole cartoon affair in context:

"The Muslim Fury," one newspaper headline screamed. "The Rage of Islam Sweeps Europe," said another. "The clash of civilizations is coming," warned one commentator. All this refers to the row provoked by the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper four months ago. Since then a number of demonstrations have been held, mostly--though not exclusively--in the West, and Scandinavian embassies and consulates have been besieged.

But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators?

Not very representative, he asserts:

Their attempt at portraying Islam as a sullen culture that lacks a sense of humor is part of the same discourse that claims "suicide martyrdom" as the highest goal for all true believers.

The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more than a decade. Both Arabic and Persian literature, the two great literatures of Islam, are full of examples of "laughing at religion," at times to the point of irreverence. Again, offering an exhaustive list is not possible. But those familiar with Islam's literature know of Ubaid Zakani's "Mush va Gorbeh" (Mouse and Cat), a match for Rabelais when it comes to mocking religion...

Islamic ethics is based on "limits and proportions," which means that the answer to an offensive cartoon is a cartoon, not the burning of embassies or the kidnapping of people designated as the enemy. Islam rejects guilt by association. Just as Muslims should not blame all Westerners for the poor taste of a cartoonist who wanted to be offensive, those horrified by the spectacle of rent-a-mob sackings of embassies in the name of Islam should not blame all Muslims for what is an outburst of fascist energy.

Nor should we assume that all those offended represent the true "Muslim position."

A faith with a billion adherents isn't so easy to generalize about.

Posted by Conor at 06:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Craig's List Sued

Craig's List is being sued:

A Chicago fair housing group has sued groundbreaking Web site Craigslist for allegedly publishing discriminatory advertisements, a case that could test the legal liabilities of online ad venues.

The suit is part of an emerging attempt by housing watchdogs nationally to hold online classified sites to the same strict standards as the publishers of print classifieds, such as newspapers.

The suit is potentially significant because it suggests that the rules for an Internet site should be the same as for a traditional publisher, in which every ad should be vetted to conform with the law. But that notion contradicts the way the Internet has blossomed, where informal communities tend to police themselves and free expression is valued.

I find housing ads that discriminate on the basis of race abhorrent, but holding Craig's List responsible for the behavior of every user who posts on it would effectively end Craig's List, or at least its housing posts.

Unfortunately there are racist people out there. Allowing them to undermine a much loved resource like Craig's List gives them too much power.

Glenn Reynolds has more thoughts.

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A Slow Burn, Apparently

This blogger, based in Egypt, says a local paper published the Danish cartoons back in October, outraging no one.

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It's Not What You Think

If you like Japanese cartoons go here, then scroll down and click on "Japanese cartoon."

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Stalin Disturbingly Popular in Russia

Foreign Affairs has bad news from Russia:

Since 2003, we have conducted three surveys in Russia, and according to these polls, there is no stigma associated with Stalin in the country today. In fact, many Russians hold ambivalent or even positive views of him. For example, one-quarter or more of Russian adults say they would definitely or probably vote for Stalin were he alive and running for president, and less than 40 percent say they definitely would not. A majority of young Russians, moreover, do not view Stalin -- a man responsible for millions of deaths and enormous suffering -- with the revulsion he deserves. Although Stalinism per se is not rampant in Russia today, misperceptions about the Stalin era are. Few of the respondents to our surveys could be classified as hard-core Stalinists, but fewer still are hard-core anti-Stalinists. Most Russians, in other words, flunk the Stalin test.

Posted by Conor at 04:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Name That City (Contest One, Hint #2)

Yesterday I offered a prize for the first reader to name this city.

As yet no one has guessed correctly, so I've posted another photograph of the same city. While this one is significantly easier to identify, I'll post a still easier photo in the next couple days if no one has guessed correctly yet.

Today's photograph:

Posted by Conor at 04:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Editorializing about the Danish Cartoon Affair

My employer, the San Bernardino Sun, has written an editorial about the Danish cartoon affair. I think its argument has both strenghts and weaknesses.

The unfortunate cartoons and caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that have sparked reprisals in the Muslim world are not a matter of free speech, or even censorship. What it comes down to is an issue of press responsibility and sensitivity to religious beliefs. And, above all, good taste.

In my view this controversy is about good taste and free speech--in fact, I don't see how one can view this controversy as anything other than a manifestation of the tension between the two, exacerbated by a cultural divided and fanned by opportunistic Islamic extremists.

To say that this isn't about free speech ignores the fact that government actors have condemned the publication of these cartoons in some European countries, that Islamic organizations are demanding that the cartoonists and publishers are charged with hate speech and that several editors have been fired for publishing the cartoons.

It is about free speech, among other things.

A Danish newspaper's cartoons that depict the prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb can only be insulting. Especially when the Islamic religion forbids rendering any image of Muhammad as blasphemy.

Doesn't that oversimplify this controversy? After all, it isn't true that such a cartoon can "only" be insulting, even if it is very insulting indeed. I submit that it is insulting and that it reflects the reality that many Europeans believe Islam has been co-opted by radicals who use the words of the prophet Mohammed to justify terrorism. The relationship between the Islamic faith and terrorism is surely an important topic to discuss given the numerous terrorist acts that have been committed and threatened with Islam as their supposed justification. That doesn't mean debate about the topic should be insulting or offensive. It does mean, however, that insulting cartoons discussing the matter aren't "only" insulting--they are also relevant, whether or not they should have appeared.

So, why are other newspapers in Europe clamoring to reprint them? Though freedom of the press is a cherished democratic principle, it does not sanction gratuitous images that are blatantly offensive.

But other European newspapers face a decision far harder than balancing free speech and good taste! These cartoons have triggered mayhem across a whole region of our world. Can readers understand this important story without seeing the cartoons that caused the uproar? Plausible arguments can be made on both sides of that question, but acting as though it doesn't exist is unfair to the European newspapers who have decided to publish the cartoons to better inform their readers.

Yes, the Danes are proud of their freedom of speech laws. And they had a right to print what they did. But should they have? Papers in this country probably would refrain from fomenting further discord, because while we revere the ability of newspapers to print the outrageous, we also, first and foremost, respect the feelings and beliefs of others.

I don't think it's true that the press first and foremost respects the feelings and beliefs of others. In fact, I hope it's not true. The press ought to respect printing the truth first and foremost. If there is information that readers need to participate in a free society it ought to be published--and it typically is published--whether or not it hurts feelings or offends beliefs.

Ask an orthodox Catholic how they feel about reporting on the molestation of children by priests. Quite a few are very upset with the press over those stories. Other orthodox Catholics feel the press has done the right thing investigating that story.

Should the truth and the relevance of the information determine how the press treats it, or the relative levels of offense taken by affected actors? And which actors? It isn't as if all Muslims are offended by the cartoons, and mong those who are there are the mildly offended and the gravely offended. Whose feelings count?

Still, printing the cartoons, in no way, should provide cover for physical retaliation. The minority of Muslims who have taken out their anger by torching embassies are Islamic radicals, who are countered by the clerics who have repudiated such extremism and by other Muslims who show their dismay through peaceful protest, and costly boycotts.

It seems important to note that the boycotts are targeting entire nations for the actions of a dozen cartoonists and a handful of newspaper editors. In my view we ought to repudiate the idea that it is okay to punish an entire nation for the speech of a few of its citizens.

And while we empathize with Danes held hostage by the turmoil, we also feel strongly that amends are in order.

What kind of amends? It makes a big difference!

Danish publishers are holding out, claiming that to retract the cartoons or apologize would amount to censorship. But really, it would be simply acknowledging that by blindly running such parody without regard for how it hurts others, they had made a grave mistake by ignoring common decency.

Who says they ran the parody blindly, without considering how it might hurt others? My understanding is that they anticipated some controversy but decided to print the cartoons anyway.

Posted by Conor at 01:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Add It to the Dictionary

So the Eskimos have a great word -- "aimerpok" -- that means "visits expecting to receive food." That's a succinct description of many a trip to my grandparents' house!

Or consider a husband and wife conversing about whether or not the neighbors should be invited over: "Honey, I've had a long day, I'm not up for an aimerpok tonight."

Now and then I like to introduce useful words into the lexicon, and this seems a prime candidate. I'd go so far as to say that young children, while being taught the alphabet, should learn "A is for aimerpok," a strategy that would make its spread both rapid and inevitable.

Unfortunately, I don't think the California Teacher's Association will go for it. Among some mostly sensible guidelines for teaching indigenous Americans: When teaching the ABCs, avoid "I is for Indian" and "E is for Eskimo."

Now I understand that Indians has become a loaded term, and a confusing one at that--imagine trying to explain that "Indians" were indigenous to North America one day and that outsourcing sent daddy's software analysis job to an Indian in Bombay the next.

But I fail to see what is offensive about "E is for Eskimo" (unless the letter has sponsored a racy segment on Sesame Street I'm unaware of)*.

Sometimes we're so needlessly erksiwok about being insensitive that it makes me want to erealarpok!

*(You be the judge)!

Posted by Conor at 12:36 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

One Case for Publication

Tony Blankley argues for publication:

Those who argue for republication of the Danish cartoons are not "instigating" a clash of civilization. Nor are they pouring gasoline on a fire. Rather, they are defending against the already declared and engaged radical Islamist clash against the Christian, Secular, Jewish, Hindu, Chinese world by expressing solidarity with the firemen.

In this case, the firemen, perhaps surprisingly to some, is the European press. French socialist newspapers, The BBC, and other major secular European media stand shoulder to shoulder with a right-wing Danish newspaper against what they correctly see is an unyielding demand by radical Islam that Europe begin to start living under Sharia law.

If anyone has seen a great argument against publication please alert me to the URL, as I'd like to link to it.

Posted by Conor at 12:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Boycott on Your Products... Um, Except Your Flags

I posted before about the odd availability of Danish flags in the Middle East. Now I read about this Palestinian man:

GAZA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn.

Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade.

"I do not take political stands. It is all business," he said in an interview. "But this time I was offended by the assault on the Prophet Mohammad."

A wave of anger has swept the Muslim world over the publication of the cartoons, one of which shows the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb.

First printed in Denmark, the cartoons have appeared in newspapers across Europe, as well as in the United States.

While normally hard to come by in isolated Gaza, Danish and Norwegian flags are now popping up at daily protests, increasingly replacing Israel's Star of David.

It's not clear how many merchants apart from Abu Dayya are offering the flags, but they appear to be readily available. Angry Muslims set the flags ablaze or tear them to pieces.

A Western flag bearing the image of Mohammed would present quite a conundrum.

Posted by Conor at 12:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Soldier Forced to Pay for Body Armor Destroyed by Enemy

I wish I could find someone who is raising money to pay back this soldier:

The last time 1st Lt. William “Eddie� Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

It's right out of a Joseph Heller novel. (Hat Tip Hit & Run)

Posted by Conor at 12:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 07, 2006

The Weirdest Drug Law in the Land?

Jacob Sullum points out another way the War on Drugs is improperly infringing upon civil liberties.

Posted by Conor at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Irony of It

Ayaan Hirsi Alli:

There is no freedom of speech in those Arab countries where the demonstrations and public outrage are being staged. The reason many people flee to Europe from these places is precisely because they have criticized religion, the political establishment and society.

How ironic that some in Europe council speech restrictions as a token of respect for immigrants who have fled such countries.

Posted by Conor at 10:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Fake Cartoons

Eugene Volokh is demanding a fatwah.

Posted by Conor at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Quotation of the Day

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
--WB Yeats

Posted by Conor at 09:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

A Dress Code for SB County Employees?

It's not the tattoos that bother me... it's the soul crushing inefficiency and overgenerous compensation!

Posted by Conor at 05:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The DaVinci Code vs. Opus Dei

If you read The DaVinci Code, it may come as no surpise that the real Opus Dei isn't satisfied with its portrayal:

NEW YORK, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Opus Dei, which has protested its portrayal in "The Da Vinci Code," has embarked on an image-polishing campaign that includes its own book, a report said.

New York-based Opus Dei is portrayed as a secretive Roman Catholic organization in the book by author Dan Brown and movie set for release in May, in which fictional assassin Silas is an Opus Dei monk.

Opus Dei has embarked on a campaign to improve its image that includes its own blog written by a priest in Rome, The New York Times reported.

It also has introduced the only "real" Silas in Opus Dei -- a Nigerian-born New York stockbroker.

Opus Dei has found a silver lining in the controversy.

Doubleday is about to release "The Way," a collection of spiritual writings by Josemaria Escriva, the Spanish priest who founded Opus Dei in 1928.

"The Da Vinci Code" opened the door for "The Way," an Opus Dei spokesman told the newspaper.

Luckily Opus Dei has decided againt the radical jihad pr strategy, in which perceived accusations of violent extremism are answered with violent extremism.

Posted by Conor at 05:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"The World's Most Depressing Career Path"

Fark.com: In what can only be described as the world's most depressing career path, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Director leaves post to head up new Sept. 11 museum.(link)

Posted by Conor at 05:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Movies and Liberalism

Apropos this post a commenter writes:

In considering a film’s viewpoint, one has to regard what was occurring during that particular era of which it was a product. Were gender roles changing? Was homosexuality becoming more tolerated? Changes in issues such as these contribute to a film’s ability to be more controversial.

The film industry is constantly changing. Traditional values are questioned and in regards to the issue of censorship, what was typically considered forbidden to show in theaters is now being deemed acceptable. Gender roles are shifting as women in film are becoming more outspoken.

I think this is partly right: societal changes are reflected in films, and society has become more liberal in many ways since, say, the 1950s.

But liberal ideas aren't the only ones that challenge the status quo. Consider The Incredibles, a film in which trial lawyers and societal prejudice against excellence forces superheroes into retirement. "Everyone is special," the superhero mother tells her superhero son, who must hide his talents to spare the feelings of other kids. "That's just another way of saying no one is," he replied. (I'm quoting from memory, but that's about right.)

A cult of equality and self-esteem are elements of liberalism that have been established as societal norms. The Incredibles was a thoughtful challenge to those pieties.

I submit that it stands as the exception to the rule, too. Generally speaking Hollywood movies aggressively challenge the status quo when it advances liberal notions, but hardly ever challenges the status quo if it means challenging liberal orthodoxies.

Posted by Conor at 05:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sleeping with the Fishes

A California woman has been arrested for killing 7 exotic fish.

Posted by Conor at 03:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Danish Cartoon Update

The Danish cartoons have led to a staff walk out at a New York newspaper:

The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.

Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff:

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editorJonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.

We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.

Michelle Malkin says she tried to show the cartoons on Fox News but the camera cut away when she held them up.

Antonio Zerbisias argues that those showing the cartoons hates Muslims. (He's wrong.)

Iraqi blogger Alaa suggests that there is more to outrage at the cartoons than meets the eye:

Those who have been following my blog should know that I am a practicing believer in the religion of Islam; so naturally I consider it offensive to show disrespect to Islamic religious symbols or any religious symbols of any kind, for that matter. However there is more to this than meets the eye. It seems to me quite suspicious that this storm is created at this particular time. To start with this is certainly not the first time that insults and affronts of this nature appear on print in western media in many countries and places. Such things do not deserve any kind of reaction other rather the contempt they deserve. Yet there are those who seem to seize upon such opportunities for motives that have nothing to do with the apparent religious sensitivities. Clearly there are those who wish to harm relations between the West in General and the Moslem World and more particularly we should not forget the contribution of Denmark to the allied effort in Iraq. Yes friends, I who consider my self a fervent Moslem, tell you that this is an artificial storm stirred by the same kind of people who are beheading, kidnapping and blowing up market places and day workers in Iraqi cities etc. Those in the West who give such people the ammunition and pretexts to launch such pitiful shows and stir up the emotions of gullible simple people, are their allies and facilitators.

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg quips that the Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest has caused the Jeiwsh street to explode.

(Hat tip Instapundit)

Posted by Conor at 03:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Great Moments in Public Education

A Dallas school official wants to hire illegal immigrants as teachers.

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Hybrids: A Silent Killer?

Auto News reports on an unusual problem:

As hybrid sales skyrocket, there's a growing concern that the battery-gas powered vehicles pose a risk because they aren't as noisy as gas-powered engines. When idling, hybrids run on the quiet electric battery. Most, with the exception of GM and Honda hybrids, can also operate on the battery until the car reaches higher speeds, when the gas engine kicks in.

What follows is silence at locations where drivers are likely to tangle with pedestrians and bicyclists -- crosswalks, turning lanes and parking lots.

In Sant'Anna's case, an elderly man enjoying a morning walk didn't hear her coming as she backed into the street. She lunged for the brake, stopping just short of hitting him.

"He was in my blind spot on one side," said Sant'Anna, 41, of the Silver Creek area of San Jose. "Then I turned to look back on the other side and saw him clearing the corner of my car. I don't think he heard me and my heart almost stopped."

Tom Battle of Los Altos recalled his own near-hit as he walked to his car in the parking lot at Symantec in Mountain View, where he is the director of engineering.

"I had to jump out of the way of a hybrid, which suddenly, and completely silently, moved toward me," he said. "The car was a brand new Prius, which I remember because it was still very shiny."

Wouldn't it be cool if all hybrids had to play auto-themed songs while idling? Little Deuce Coupe, Born to Run, 409, Born to Be Wild, Low Rider...A concert at every intersection!(Hat Tip Mickey Kaus)

Posted by Conor at 02:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Multiculturalism and Islamism

James Pinkerton says that multiculturalism can destroy a society:

It's time for all of us to recognize that different cultures have different values. For the West, broadly speaking, the highest value is freedom, including freedom of religious expression. But for the Muslim world, the highest value seems to be Islamic piety. To draw such a distinction between West and East is not to endorse cultural relativism; it's simply to take note of cultural reality.

Not everyone thirsts for liberty. Plenty of people around the world, maybe most, thirst instead to restrict liberty. And so, if Muslim crowds can't kill the Muhammad-mocking Danish cartoonists for "blasphemy," they will settle for burning Western embassies, at least for now.

Even the government of Afghanistan - where Danish forces have contributed to Western "democracy-building" - joined in the protests. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who would not be in power save for Western intervention, added his voice to the chorus: "Any insult to the Holy Prophet is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims, and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated."

It should be obvious that our effort to influence Muslim public opinion in a positive way has reached a dead end. That is, we advocate democratization but get Islamization. That process empowers the likes of Hamas in Palestine and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

The counterargument is that people in Muslims do thirst for liberty, but the majority's voice is silenced by a violent majority that has leveraged its barbarity to seize power. Unfortunately I can't say with certainty which view is correct.

I can say that American officialdom is taking the wrong position.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff writes:

In this jihad over humor, tolerance is disdained by people who demand it of others. The authoritarian governments that claim to speak on behalf of Europe's supposedly oppressed Muslim minorities practice systematic repression against their own religious minorities. They have radicalized what was at first a difficult question. Now they are asking not for respect but for submission. They want non-Muslims in Europe to live by Muslim rules. Does Bill Clinton want to counsel tolerance toward intolerance?

On Friday the State Department found it appropriate to intervene. It blasted the publication of the cartoons as unacceptable incitement to religious hatred. It is a peculiar moment when the government of the United States, which likes to see itself as the home of free speech, suggests to European journalists what not to print.

Posted by Conor at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Poking Fun at Ray Nagin

Wall Street Journal columnist/blogger James Taranto responds to a headline stating that New Orleans Will Seek Aid From Other Nations: "Dear Belgium and Switzerland, please send chocolate." (Background here).

Posted by Conor at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's Unhelpful to Gratuitously Offend

Gregory Djerejian:

I agree, of course, that freedom of expression is a fundamental, bedrock value that we must defend and uphold without reservation. And yet, I would note a couple things. One, while we post-Enlightenment sophisticates like to pat ourselves on the back for being so wondrously accepting about 'art', like a "Piss Christ", or such--as we merrily plod about the Chelsea art district looking for bargains and a good lunch on 10th Avenue--we shouldn't be so shocked that pre-Enlightenment societies aren't quite as accepting about crude depictions of their leading religious figures. Second, depicting Mohammed as a beturbaned bomb is rather unhelpful--particularly in the context of a global struggle against radical Islamism--not least because we are attempting to stoke a greater schism between moderates and radicals in the Islamic world, and equating the venerable Prophet as something of a bomb-wielding terrorist is counter-productive on this score.

The whole post is good.

Posted by Conor at 03:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why Not Tell Him What You Really Think?

John McCain is mighty angry at Barack Obama!

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

There's more here.

Posted by Conor at 03:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Battle for Moderate Muslims

Thomas Lifson writes:

The only way that Islamofascism can be defeated and the world’s Muslims live in harmony with other faiths in today’s interconnected world is for questions of faith to be discussed without fear. Fundamental questions need to be debated among Muslims about the use of violence against unbelievers and those Muslims who dare question any scriptural teachings. The rest of us must be permitted to express opinions as well.

Muslim immigrant and Dutch Member of Parliament Hirsi Ali (who now lives in hiding under death threats) makes the point convincingly:

“A free discussion of Islam remains rare and dangerous, certainly in the Islamic world, and even in our politically correct times in the West… Apostasy is still punishable by long prison sentences and even death in many Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Iran…�

“You cannot liberalize Islam without criticizing the Prophet and the Koran…You cannot redecorate a house without entering inside.�

Those who seek the same goal as the Islamofascists, the global reign of Islam as the unchallenged religion of humanity, understand Hirsi Ali’s point very well. For them it is essential that ordinary members of the umma never see fundamental questions raised and never start raising them on their own.

For once degrees of individual autonomy are granted on spiritual questions, and the right to question and make up one’s own mind becomes established, the top-down pattern of divinely-sanctioned authority inherent in the ideal of a Global Caliphate collapses.

“Moderate� Muslims by definition are people who recognize some limits on scriptural injunctions to spread the faith by violence. Questioning religious injunctions from others and deciding for oneself the best answers is the only way such moderation will spread in the umma.

By seeking to establish a global norm – a custom enforced by social sanction, not law – that Sharia restrictions shall apply even in non-Muslim lands, the Islamofascists are engaging in prophylaxis: preventing the “disease� of free discussion and debate over topics they wish to control exclusively from ever gaining traction and possibly spreading to their own constituency.

It is quite understandable that caring, sensitive Westerners seek to avoid offending the religious sensibilities of any serious believers, Muslims included. Such empathy is normally a highly commendable impulse.

But acceding to the demand that those most willing to use violence be allowed to control the discussion and stifle debate, among infidels and Muslims alike, is a betrayal of not only the moderate Muslims, but of all those who hope someday to live in peace with an Islam that grants legitimacy to religious dissent and to the claims of other faiths.

Posted by Conor at 03:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Middle Class, the Poor and Marriage

In City Journal Kay Hymowitz argues that the wealth gap in America is largely due to the different decisions the rich and the poor make about marriage:

Why would women working for a pittance at the supermarket cash registers decide to have children without getting married, while women writing briefs at Debevoise & Plimpton, who could easily afford to go it alone, insist on finding husbands before they start families? For a long time, social scientists assumed, reasonably enough, that economic self-sufficiency would lead more women to opt for single motherhood. And to listen to the drone of complaint about men around water coolers, in Internet chat rooms, on the Oxygen Network, and in Maureen Dowdworld, there would seem to be plenty of potential recruits for Murphy Browndom. Certainly when they talk to pollsters, women say that they don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a baby without a husband. Yet the women who are forgoing husbands are precisely the ones who can least afford to do so.

The conventional answer to the puzzle is this: in an economy marked by manufacturing decline, especially in cities, too many of the potential husbands for low-income women are either flipping burgers, unemployed, or in jail—in other words, poor marriage material. But three facts raise doubts about this theory.

One, it’s not just unemployed men or McDonald’s cooks who have become marriage-avoidant; working-class men with decent jobs are also shying from the altar. Two, cohabitation among low-income couples has been increasing; about 40 percent of all out-of-wedlock babies today are born to cohabiting parents. Why would there be a dearth of marriageable men, when there appear to be plenty of cohabitable fathers? And three, marriage improves the economic situation of low-income women, even if their husbands are only deliverymen or janitors. In a large and highly regarded study, the Urban Institute’s Robert Lerman concluded that married, low-income, low-educated women enjoyed significantly higher living standards than comparable single mothers. Joe Sixpack may not be Mr. Darcy, but financially, at any rate, he’s a lot better than no husband at all.

Still, whatever the arguments against it, the no-marriageable-men theory is entrenched in policy circles and in the academy and is unlikely to go anywhere soon, so let’s try another approach to the Marriage Gap conundrum. Instead of asking why poor and near-poor women have stopped marrying before having children, let’s think instead about why educated women continue to do so—even though, in order to be accepted in polite company or to put food on the table, they don’t need to.

Go here to read her theory.

Posted by Conor at 02:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Name That City

The Missing Link hereby introduces its Name That City contest--whoever first correctly identifies the city pictured above can suggest that I write a blog entry on the topic of their choice. So long as it's reasonable--I mostly mean so long as it won't get me fired--I'll oblige, though I can't guarantee which side I'll take on any topic you may suggest.

Posted by Conor at 02:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The American Press

A debate has been raging within American newspapers about whether or not to publish the cartoons.

Posted by Conor at 02:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

"We Are Sorry"

A group of moderate Arabs and Muslims is asking for help circulating the following apology note. The Missing Link is happy to oblige. It is reproduced below in full:

In the middle of all the mayhem surrounding the Danish cartoons controversy, a group of Arab and Muslim youth have set up this website to express their honest opinion, as a small attempt to show the world that the images shown of Arab and Muslim anger around the world are not representative of the opinions of all Arabs. We whole-heartedly apologize to the people of Denmark, Norway and all the European Union over the actions of a few, and we completely condemn all forms of vandalism and incitement to violence that the Arab and Muslim world have witnessed. We hope that this sad episode will not tarnish the great friendship that our peoples have fostered over decades.

The problem with media representation of such issues tends to be that the media only picks up the loudest voices, ignoring the rational ones that do not generate as much noise. Voices that seek tolerance, dialogue and understanding are always drowned out by the more sensationalist loud calls, giving viewers the impression that these views are representative of all the Arab public’s view. This website is a modest attempt at redressing this wrong. We would appreciate it if you could forward the word to as many of your friends as possible.

We will note that we find the cartoons to be incendiary, insulting and very abrasive. We also take issue with the general stance of the Danish Newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which has a reputation for publishing inflammatory material. Yet, it would be wrong to take away their freedom of expression, regardless of how horrid their material is. We affirm our belief in freedom of expression and people’s right to express whatever opinions they hold. However, at the same time there is a need to realize that freedom of expression is a responsibility that should not be used to gratuitously insult people’s beliefs.

When confronted with such a situation, we deplore the use of violence in all its forms, as well as threats of violence and derogatory and racist remarks being thrown in the opposite direction. We condemn the shameful actions carried out by a few Arabs and Muslims around the world that have tarnished our image, and presented us as intolerant and close-minded bigots.

Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.

We apologize whole-heartedly to the people of Norway and Denmark for any offense this sorry episode may have caused, to any European who has been harassed or intimidated, to the staff of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Embassies in Syria whose workplace has been destroyed and for any distress this whole affair may have caused to anyone.

There is a strong tradition of friendship and cooperation between the Norwegian and Danish people and Arab people. Of most note is the continued support that these governments give to the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and liberation, and the brave stance that these governments have often taken to defend Palestinian rights. We sincerely hope these special bonds will not be broken. We hope that our Scandinavian friends would not be convinced by the actions of a few to believe that this is how Arabs and Muslims feel about them. There are racists, bigots and criminals in all countries, and it is the duty of the respectful and reasonable to reach out to each other.

Let us hope that instead of emboldening the bigots, this sorry affair will bring all open-minded, tolerant and reasonable people from the Arab, Muslim, Norwegian, Danish and European communities together to unite in a continued struggle of reason against prejudice, open-mindedness against bigotry and humanity against racism.

Posted by Conor at 02:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Homemade Bombs in Iraq

The New York Times reports on long overdue efforts to keep our troops safer:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — The Pentagon is tripling its spending, to about $3.5 billion this year, on a newly expanded effort to combat the rising number of increasingly powerful and sophisticated homemade bombs that are the No. 1 killer of American troops in Iraq, military officials say.

Whenever we send troops abroad into harms way we ought to take extraordinary measures to protect their safety.

Posted by Conor at 01:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The End of Telegrams

James Lileks commemorates the end of telegram service--scroll through all five.

Posted by Conor at 01:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Holocaust Cartoon Contest

Islamic radicals, having had their cake, want to eat it too:

IRAN'S largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

"It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper - which is published by Teheran's conservative municipality.

He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he said.

It is shameful that European newspapers, if they decide to print the cartoons, will be subject to arrest. As several bloggers have remarked, Europe would be in a lot better position to defend freedom of expression if they didn't start criminalizing some speech long ago.

Still, the Iranian newspaper editor apparently doesn't realize that:

1) Cartoons denying the Holocaust won't provoke any sort of violent reaction in the Western world.

2) It's hardly "turning the tables" when Middle Eastern media have been publishing offensive material about Jews, including Holocaust denials, for decades.(This cartoon makes the same point more succinctly.)

3) They've never "provoked" a violent response--or much of a response at all, really--before.

Posted by Conor at 01:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

European Pessimism

Since the beginning the Brussel's Journal has reported on the Danish cartoon affair. Today it's editor, Paul Belien, is sounding quite pessimistic:

It is 1933 again and the SA is marching in Europe. This time they are not shouting “Heil Hitler,� but a creed I will not quote for fear of provoking them to kill a poor priest somewhere in Turkey, Palestine or Lebanon. Six years from now it will be 1939 and our future looks bleak. A war is about to begin, but Europe is in even worse shape than it was in the 1930s. It will not only have to overcome its islamofascist enemy, but it is dying because, when it lost its own religion about two decades ago, it embarked upon a protracted suicide by ceasing to procreate. The coming of Allah to a continent with an increasing population of elderly natives is inevitable. The young Muslim hordes are arrogant. Who can blame them? They smell victory. The Danish cartoon case shows us what deep down we know is going to happen. Soon we will be slaves.

I hope Belien is wrong--that a clash of civilizations can be averted, that a liberal Europe survives and that moderate Muslims stand in solidarity with European liberals to ensure that outcome.

Even before this affair, however, I sensed among Europeans a resignation to the opposite fate. Like Belien they are pessimistic; and like Belien they don't plan to give up their continent without a fight.

This attitude in a continent that has a history of extreme political movements doesn't bode well for the future. Few Americans realize that today's Europe has political constituencies ranging from pacifist to militant Islamofascist to neo-Nazi. If any one of the previous constituencies gain sufficient power catastrophe on the continent is eminent.

Can the vast middle set aside their differences, their malaise and their fear, allying to save Europe from civil war? Isn't it imperative that they at least try?

Posted by Conor at 12:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Danish Cartoon Affair: How Muslims Are Reacting

The Danish cartoon affair continues; thanks to the power of the Internet more relevant information and arguments emerge every day.

Global Voices has translated excerpts from Muslim blogs, underscoring the point that the Islamic reaction to the cartoon affair is quite diverse.

Captain's Quarters explores the idea that the protests against the cartoons aren't spontaneous. Juan Cole argues that they're not contrived.

Finally, Did you know this?

While the debate rages, an important point has been overlooked: despite the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world. The recent cartoons in Jyllands-Posten are nothing new; it's just that no other images of Mohammed have ever been so widely publicized.

This page is an archive of numerous depictions of Mohammed, to serve as a reminder that such imagery has been part of Western and Islamic culture since the Middle Ages -- and to serve as a resource for those interested in freedom of expression.

Posted by Conor at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Game Time

Bored at work? Enjoy.

Posted by Conor at 12:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 06, 2006

Your Tax Dollars at Work

In this post 9/11 world is the National Security Agency stretching every dollar to gather as much valuable intelligence as possible?

Apparently not!

(Hat Tip Hit & Run)

Posted by Conor at 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What's In a Name?

Hendrik Hertzberg offers a interesting argument against the newest terminology in the War on, er, I mean Struggle Against, um... terror... or is it terrorism... or violent extremism?

As of last week, he seemed to have settled on “radical Islam.� It’s a bad choice, reminiscent of his early talk of a “crusade.� Violent jihadism, yes. Islamist (as distinct from Islamic) terrorism, yes. But not Islam, radical or otherwise.

There’s no doubt, of course, that terrorists of the Al Qaeda ilk are drawn from the ranks of adherents of “radical�—which is to say, extreme or fundamentalist—Islam. But radical Islam is a far broader and more variegated phenomenon than the terrorist virus that infects it. Its incarnations range from Al Qaeda to the clerical and legal establishments of Saudi Arabia. In virtually every iteration, it demands the subordination of women, the stunting of education, and the curbing of the freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion. It should be opposed, as part of America’s thirty-year-old campaign against violations of human rights. But it is not in and of itself a casus belli. Violence and terrorism are not intrinsic to it. And it is emphatically not something against which the United States should seek to fight a war to the death. One of Al Qaeda’s goals has been to frame the conflict as a holy war between Muslims and infidels. In calling it a war, Bush emphasized its seriousness, but at the cost of granting its criminal perpetrators the dignity of warriors. Calling it a war against Islam, even radical Islam, grants them the other half of their wish.

All right, blog readers, let's go where Henrik Hertzberg didn't and propose a constructive solution. What would you call it?

Posted by Conor at 02:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Congress Should Act To Limit, But Not End, Wiretapping

Should the NSA be able to monitor electronic communications between people in the United States and those abroad?

Since the New York Times reported on a program doing just that Americans have been debating the matter. Did President Bush break the law when he approved the surveillance? Is the program necessary to protect us from terrorist attacks? Is it an unacceptable infringement on our basic liberties?

The temptation on this one is to have it both ways: we want to use surveillance to catch terrorists, but we don't want to government listening in on people's phone conversations so that they can try them for tax evasion or buying marijuana.

But why can't we have it both ways?

If the government wants to run all electronic communication through a big computer that picks out certain words that we suspect terrorists use, and then more closely monitor communications of those who have been flagged, I can't say it bothers me all that much... as long as we have legislation that clearly establishes this power will be used only to monitor suspected terrorists, and that evidence gathered through this power won't be used for non-terrorism prosecutions or even kept on file.

Unfortunately legislation hasn't established those safeguards. Congress ought to take up the matter immediately. The Bush White House ought to rely on the president's constitutional authority to safeguard the nation in a time of war to justify itself only when an alternate means to the same end that threatens civil liberties less is unavailable.

Posted by Conor at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Electronic Books

Are electronic books the next big thing? I'm tempted to say no since I still prefer paper pages. Then again, I used to think I'd always prefer physical newspapers to news Online.

Posted by Conor at 02:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sorry for Burning Down Your Embassy

This diplomacy would've been useful a few days ago...

Posted by Conor at 03:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Great Zucchini Revisited

If you read The Peekaboo Paradox, an article I recommended a few days ago, this online chat with the reporter may interest you. It includes material edited out of the original story.

(If you didn't read it... you should.)

The reporter also reveals his favorite expense account item ever: $100 to receive a massage he needed to write this story.

Posted by Conor at 03:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The World's Best Burrito Joint

Anyone who thinks cultural diversity is all bad hasn't visited the nation's best burrito joint, Chile Pepper's in San Luis Obispo. Though pricey for a burrito it's well worth every penny. I'm partial to the Garlic Spicy Shrimp.

Chile Pepper's also makes an excellent Barbecued Chicken Burrito.

Posted by Conor at 02:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Uncommon 9/11 Video Footage

I'd never seen this 9/11 video before--it shows the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

Posted by Conor at 02:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Future of Entertainment

Did you miss Kobe's 81 point game?

Thanks to Google's new video service you can buy it for $3.95.

Welcome to the future of entertainment.

Posted by Conor at 02:42 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

New Orleans Faces Hospital Crisis

Among the 7 hospitals in New Orleans only two are open, leading to a crisis in health care, the N.O. Times Picayune reports:

With the bulk of New Orleans' hospitals shuttered after major damage from Hurricane Katrina, open medical centers are packed with patients as the suburbs shoulder the region's health care in the face of rapid repopulation, staffing shortages, diminished capacity and reduced services.

Add to that Carnival and the onslaught of flu season, and the combination could wallop an already strained system where lengthy emergency room waits are now the norm, hospital officials said. Patients are spending nights in emergency rooms, and ambulances often are diverted elsewhere because hospitals are filled, officials said.

"The health care system in our region is jammed to the gills," said John "Jack" Finn, president of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans.

"If we have a bad flu season or a good Mardi Gras, we're going to have way more patients than we can handle," said Dr. Mark Peters, president and CEO of East Jefferson Medical Center.

The rebuilding effort also is taking a toll, Peters said, noting that many injuries are the result of construction accidents. The influx of contractors and aid workers from outside the metropolitan area who don't have local health care providers also stresses the system when they seek treatment.

"I think it's a crisis now," Peters said. "This isn't an East Jefferson problem, it's not an Ochsner problem or a Touro problem. It's a health care problem for our region."

If you were thinking about going to Mardi Gras this ought to be a consideration.

Posted by Conor at 02:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why Is the Typical Hollywood Movie Liberal?

If you think that Hollywood movies are typically liberal, as many Americans do, you probably attribute it to the mostly liberal producers, directors and actors who make the movies.

Matthew Yglesias challenges that conventional wisdom, arguing that Hollywood movies are left- of-center because their target audience is left of center:

Teenagers go to a lot of movies. They need reasons to get out of the house away from the prying eyes of their parents, and can't legally participate in a lot of nightlife activities. As a result, there's a relatively low bar you need to cross to convince a teen to go to your movie. Parents with kids at home are the reverse -- it's expensive for them to hire a sitter for the kids, and since they don't get that many opportunities to spend an evening out the opportunity cost of going to the movies is high. So you need to cross a pretty high bar to get them to go out to the movies. Last, insofar as you live in a densely-populate area, it's much more convenient to go to the movies.

As a result, the audience that studios are trying to appeal to is younger, more childless, and more urban than the American population as a whole.

These also happen to be the demographic characteristics of American liberalism. So it's not that surprising that rationally self-interested movie studios would be much more inclined to push projects designed to appeal to liberals than projects designed to appeal to conservatives.

Network television is run by a very similar group of people as those who make movies, but it has very different demographic characteristics. As a consequence of this, and notwithstanding The West Wing, you see a huge number of shows on network television propounding a very right wing depiction of the criminal justice system.

If Yglesias is right the shift in the movie industry from theater revenue to DVD and at-home-on-demand revenue should trigger a rightward shift in on-screen politics.

Of course, there are those who argue that Hollywood is quite conservative.

Posted by Conor at 01:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Is the Vision of the Founders Alive Today?

In the current issue of City Journal Robert P. George argues that America's colleges ought to do a better job teaching civics:

For all their academic achievement, students at Princeton and Yale and Stanford and Harvard and other schools that attract America’s most talented young people rarely come to campus with a sound grasp of the philosophy of America’s constitutional government. How did the Founding Fathers seek, via the institutions that the Constitution created, to build and maintain a regime of ordered liberty? Even some of our best-informed students think something along these lines: the Framers set down a list of basic freedoms in a Bill of Rights, which an independent judiciary, protected from the vicissitudes of politics, would then enforce.

It’s the rare student indeed who enters the classroom already aware that the Framers believed that the true bulwark of liberty was limited government. Few students comprehend the crucial distinction between (on the one hand) the national government as one of delegated and enumerated powers, and (on the other) the states as governments of general jurisdiction, exercising police powers to protect public health, safety, and morals, and to advance the general welfare. If anything, they imagine that it’s the other way around. Thus they have no comprehension as to why leading supporters of the Constitution objected to a Bill of Rights, worried that it could compromise the delegated-powers doctrine and thus undermine the true liberty-securing principle of limited government.

Good students these days have heard of federalism, yet they have little appreciation of how it works or why the Founders thought it so vital. They’ve heard of the separation of powers and often can sketch how the system of checks and balances should work. But if one asks, for example, “Who checks the courts?� they cannot give a satisfactory answer.

Judging by my friends, many of whom attended elite colleges, I'm guessing that George's assessment is accurate: on the many occassions I've debated public policy matters late into the night I can't recall any of my peers ever arguing that the federal government hasn't any jurisdiction to legislate on a matter, or that additional government growth at the federal rather than the state level might threaten our liberties.

Posted by Conor at 12:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 05, 2006

Danish Cartoon Update: Ordinary Muslims Respond

Ordinary Muslims are fed up with Islamic radicals, the Times Online reports:

BRITAIN’s leading Islamic body yesterday called on Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to press charges against the extremists behind last week’s inflammatory protests in London over the “blasphemous� cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

This photograph is representative of the London protests being condemned.

Meanwhile Brit Hume is criticizing the Muslim protestors on Fox News:

What is striking about this is what offends these Muslims who are protesting and these imams. Does the slaughter of innocent people in many parts of the world in the name of Allah offend them? Is that a sacrilege worthy of protest? No, not in the least. No, cartoons published five months ago in a -what- for people who live in Gaza and Damascus is an unknown and unheard-of newspaper--that's what's offending them. Not to mention, of course, the kinds of slurs against Christians and against the Jewish faith that are regularly spread abroad in the Arab world by the mass media and by these imams.

This is really a disgrace. And it is a disgrace not least because of the obvious, howling double standard involved here. The really great sins are ignored. And this trivia is protested.

That seems reasonable. As I've written before, I don't think it's unreasonable to be offended by the Danish cartoons. Clearly they've upset even peace loving Muslims sensitive to the portrayal of their prophet. What is unreasonable is the response among Islamic radicals to the cartoons, expecially given the fact that compared to those who terrorize and murder in the name of Islam the cartoons are a venial sin.

That certainly applies to this protest, in which Islamic radicals are responsible for two deaths.

Of course, the Islamic leaders who circulated fake cartoons more offensive than the originals didn't help matters. Nevertheless, no cartoon should trigger violence no matter what its content.

In days to come I hope to see Western free speech advocates and moderate Muslims standing in solidarity. Additionally, I hope I don't see any more knee-jerk responses intended to strike back at Muslims. The temptation is there to be unnecessarily antagonistic in flaunting our freedom to publish what we like. Surely we ought not shrink from any important issue or debate because it might offend. But neither should we offend as an end in itself.

UPDATE:

More interesting commentary from Matthew Paris:

People of faith and people of none cannot escape attaching themselves to claims that are inherently offensive — and at the deepest level — to other people.

But offence implicitly offered, and offence actually taken, are two different matters. On the whole Christians, for example, take offence less readily than Muslims. The case for treating them, in consequence, differently is obvious, but we should be wary of it. It means groups are allowed to be as thin-skinned as they wish: to dictate for themselves how delicately we must tread with them — to create, as it were, their own definition of respect and require us to observe it. Those who do this may not always realise that that they create serious buried resentments among those of fellow-citizens who are more broad-shouldered about the trading of insult.

David Warren:

In the Arab world, protests are still confined to “the usual suspects� -- the several thousand who will always come out to provide a fresh “Muslim anger� segment for the international media. The violence in Gaza is also within the usual range, though the explicit targeting of the European Union offices portends something new. But we have yet to see how all this builds. My gut feeling -- albeit at a distance -- is that the “fire this time� is greater than previous apoplectic responses to e.g. the Satanic Verses, the Abu Ghraib prison photos, or the Newsweek reports from Guantanamo.

Not that the provocation is greater. What we have instead is a wave that is building from lesser waves. Each new provocation, each new breakthrough event, such as the 9/11 hit, or the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, adds to the height of what is actually becoming a single wave.

What should be apparent to every Western observer by now, is the ability of this wave, served by modern technology, including world television and Internet, to wash over national and regional boundaries in the Muslim world. Those boundaries were drawn by European Imperialists in the last two centuries, and have served as bulkheads or firewalls against just this sort of catastrophe. They were partly meant for that purpose, by a Europe that was once more vividly aware of the power an aroused Islam could exert -- on a once-Christian continent entirely surrounded by Islamic empires or sea, that several times came close to being completely overrun.

Charles Moore:

There is no reason to doubt that Muslims worry very much about depictions of Mohammed. Like many, chiefly Protestant, Christians, they fear idolatry. But, as I write, I have beside me a learned book about Islamic art and architecture which shows numerous Muslim paintings from Turkey, Persia, Arabia and so on. These depict the Prophet preaching, having visions, being fed by his wet nurse, going on his Night-Journey to heaven, etc. The truth is that in Islam, as in Christianity, not everyone agrees about what is permissible.

Some of these depictions are in Western museums. What will the authorities do if the puritan factions within Islam start calling for them to be removed from display (this call has been made, by the way, about a medieval Christian depiction of the Prophet in Bologna)? Will their feeling of "offence" outweigh the rights of everyone else?

Melanie Phillips:

The still escalating confrontation over the Danish cartoons dramatically illustrates the now pathological reluctance of the leaders of Britain and America to face up to the blindingly obvious and the extent to which they have already run up the white flag in the face of clerical fascism. With holy war declared openly upon the west, with death threats being issued against cartoonists and editors, with Danes, Scandinavians and other Europeans being hunted for kidnap and in fear of their lives, with blood-curdling intimidation, with mob demonstrations, calls to behead westerners and rallying cries for ‘holy war’ by Islam against Europe, the governments of Britain and America are busy prostrating themselves before this terror, apologising for ‘causing offence’ and blaming the victims of this assault; while their intelligentsia earnestly debates whether it is wrong to insult someone else’s religion, for all the world as if this were a university ethics seminar rather than a world war being waged by clerical fascism against free societies and with people in hiding and in fear of their lives for having exercised the right to protest at religious violence and intimidation.

Jeff Jacoby:

HINDUS CONSIDER it sacrilegious to eat meat from cows, so when a Danish supermarket ran a sale on beef and veal last fall, Hindus everywhere reacted with outrage. India recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen, and Danish flags were burned in Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi. A Hindu mob in Sri Lanka severely beat two employees of a Danish-owned firm, and demonstrators in Nepal chanted: ''War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!"In many places, shops selling Dansk china or Lego toys were attacked by rioters, and two Danish embassies were firebombed.

It didn't happen, of course. Hindus may consider it odious to use cows as food, but they do not resort to boycotts, threats, and violence when non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone abide by the strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons: They don't lash out in violence when their religious sensibilities are offended. They certainly don't expect their beliefs to be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.

But radical Muslims do.

The current uproar over cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper illustrates yet again the fascist intolerance that is at the heart of radical Islam.

Posted by Conor at 11:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The End of the Internet as We Know It?

Jeff Chester is worried about the future of the Internet:

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

This is the first we've heard about Internet regulations at The Missing Link. If true all this is quite troubling. Expect follow-up posts if they are warranted.

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Forget the Roses... Bring on the Ipod

This sounds about right:

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- When it comes to gifts for Valentine's Day, U.S. men prefer an electronic gadget or gizmo, a survey says.

Most men would prefer to receive a gadget rather than candy or flowers from their significant other on Valentine's Day, according to survey by IOGEAR of 607 male and female respondents.

Sixty-one percent of men said that any technical gear would be their gift of choice, but only 19 percent say they have ever received such a gift for Valentine's Day.

Valentines Day isn't exactly geared toward men, though, is it?

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...Give a Man an Ultraviolet Lure and He'll Eat Forever

This wouldn't have helped The Old Man and the Sea's narrator or Captain Ahab... but if you fish it might help you.

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The Question for Danes: To Be or not To Be

Mark Steyn has weighed in on the Danish cartoon controversy:

The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to.

That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

Note that Steyn labels it "militant Islam," not Islam in general. The distinction is important both because it is wrong to stereotype a whole religion based on the behavior at its fringes and because pretending all this nonsense is a "Muslim" reaction leads us to inaccurately frame this as a clash between Muslims and the rest of us, or an opportunity for multiculturalist understanding.

Steyn explains why that isn't so:

Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a "diverse" "tolerant" society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.

Read his whole column.

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Bill Cosby and Tupac Shakur

I submit that Bill Cosby's controversial remarks at the Brown vs. Board of Education 50th anniversary commemoration are strikingly similar in substance to the message in this excerpt from Changes, a Tupac Shakur song:

It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact the penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks But some things will never change try to show another way but you stayin' in the dope game Now tell me what's a mother to do bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you You gotta operate the easy way "I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way sellin' crack to the kid. " I gotta get paid," Well hey, well that's the way it is

[Bridge]

[Talking:]

We gotta make a change...

It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

It sort of makes sense that Cosby's remarks were far more controversial though they came years after Tupac's lyrics were rapped when you consider how much more influential Cosby is... until you realize that Tupac is arguably more influential in this day and age, and that far more people heard his song than will ever hear Cosby's remarks.

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Opinion Roundup: 3 Views on the Cartoon Affair

John Leo argues for civility.

William F. Buckley says the Islamic establishment is already exerting pressure on the American media.

Zsofia Szilagyisays publishing the cartoons was a mistake.

(via Real Clear Politics)

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The Soft Bigotry of Acting as Though It's Understandable That Islamic Radicals Want to Kill Danes

(Welcome Real Clear Politics readers. Updates on the Danish cartoon affair can be found on the main page--just keep scrolling.)

In an editorial about the Danish cartoon affair the Boston Globe asserts the following:

Just as the demand from Muslim countries for European governments to punish papers that printed the cartoons shows a misunderstanding of free societies, publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam's prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet. Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Klu Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance. That is why the Danish cartoons will not be reproduced on these pages.(emphasis added)

That's a remarkable comparison to make.

Nazi caricatures of Jews and Klu Klux Klan caricatures of blacks both asserted the inherent inferiority of their targets due to their race. Those caricatures also served a uniquely insidious function: helping along efforts to murder Jews and blacks.

In contrast, the Danish cartoons mostly just depicted Mohammed. Even the most offensive cartoon, which suggested a link between Mohammed and terrorism, neither asserted the inferiority of all Muslims nor abetted an effort to hurt Muslims.

I'm unsure how the Boston Globe editorial board gauged the relative emotional hurt felt by WWII era Jews, Jim Crow era blacks and modern day Muslims. It seems safe to say, however, that if modern day Muslims feel as hurt by the Danish cartoons as the Jews and blacks felt due to the Nazis and the KKK the offense they are taking is wildly unreasonable.

I find it far more likely that the world's billion Muslims have widely divergent views about whether the Danish newspaper should've been allowed to publish the cartoons, how offensive or hurtful the publication proved and the appropriate response, if any.

You'd think the fact that Muslim editors have themselves decided to publish the cartoons -- and that a faction among Danish Muslims is dissenting from the reaction of their imams -- would prove my point.

(In fact, you'd think the rather obvious fact that Muslims are distinct individuals whose shared religion doesn't suggest identical opinions, value systems or behavior would've made proving my point unnecessary.)

Instead the Western press is largely treating Muslim reaction to the cartoons as though it is monolithic-- Muslims are extremely offended and extremely pissed off, we're to believe. That's "the Muslim reaction" on "the Muslim street."

Everything is seen through that frame--one that allows the most vocal and/or violent Muslims to speak as if for all practitioners of Islam. In Muslim nations and Western Europe this unfortunate tendency isolates moderate Muslims who might speak out for free speech, and against the fundamentalists, more vocally if only we weren't so quick to assume their non-existence (thus weakening their position).

Meanwhile our generalizations mitigate the cognitive dissonance we might otherwise feel applying an insulting double-standard to Muslims, excusing barbaric behavior we'd condemn if perpetrated by a Westerner as understandable since a Muslim, provoked by offensive speech, is perpetrating it.

That phenomenon is quite pervasive.

Imagine the most offensive behavior imaginable--learning about the molestation of a child will suffice. Imagine a British newspaper publishing an image of the molestation. We'd cancel our subscription. We'd organize a boycott.

Yet none of us would, for example, set fire to the British embassy, or wander the streets of New York searching for a British citizen to kidnap and behead, or threaten to blow ourselves up in the Tate Modern.

Somehow, however, news accounts depict Islamic radicals perpetrating these actions as though they are understandable-if-wrongheaded "Muslim responses" to being offended. The coverage seems to tell us, Yes, the Muslim reaction to this is unfortunate, but after all, the cartoons were a provocation.

The Muslims who aren't rioting, who weren't offended by the cartoons, or who at least come down on the side of freedom of expression though they were offended?

A news consumer could be forgiven for a lack of familiarity with such Muslims, though they far outnumber the headline grabbing radicals who we won't condemn outright for fear of offending Muslims. It's a vicious circle held together by the truly insulting prejudice: that Islamic radicals and Muslims are enough alike that insulting one is to insult the other.

So what of "provocation"?

It misses the point! The term provocation, as used in this coverage, seems to assume that we humans reach some level of offense at which we just can't restrain ourselves from acting barbarically. In fact, I can quite confortably say that there are cartoons that would offend me just as much as the Mohammed cartoons have offended Islamic radicals... and yet there is no cartoon capable of provoking me to behave like a barbarian.

Rest assured that the Islamic radicals out burning down embassies and hunting Europeans on the street aren't necessarily the most offended by the cartoons. Rather, they are the least civilized among their fellow believers, so that even minor offense seems to them sufficient grounds for barbarity.

Amid all the talk of provocation many also seem to have missed the obvious point that even granting the premise of the Islamic radicals--that the cartoons are a provocation that demand punishment for the perpetrators--it is still entirely unjustified even by those standards to target people, economic goods and buildings whose only tie to the supposed provocation is that the supposed provokers happen to share the same national origin.

Put succinctly, too many press accounts have implicitly accepted the notion that if you're Muslim being very offended somehow makes it perfectly natural that you'd start behaving barbarically.

One odd consequence of this bizarre double standard: several months after a single newspaper published 12 controversial cartoons Western society is having an ongoing argument about whether or not the Danish government should apologize for their content.

Meanwhile masked Islamic radicals have stormed EU aid offices, angry mobs have shouted death to Denmark in the streets of Pakistan, terrorist organizations have promised suicide bombings in Denmark, the 12 cartoonists have received death threats, a Danish embassy has been burned down... and no one, so far as I've seen, has called for an apology.

Why is that?

UPDATE: In the LA Times Tim Rutten makes a similar point:

Violence spread and Western diplomats including Kofi Annan and the British foreign secretary began falling all over themselves to apologize for their news media's insensitivity.

All this would be slightly more edifying if it didn't reflect the destructive and dangerous double standard that the Western nations routinely observe when it comes to the government-controlled media in Islamic states. There the media is routinely rife with the vilest sort of hate directed at Jews and, less often, Christians. The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" remain widely available in countries where nothing is published without government permission, and quotations from that infamous forgery are a staple of commentaries published across the Middle East. In recent years, government-owned television stations in Egypt and Syria have broadcast dramas that repeat the blood libel.

Where were the united and implacable Western demands for apologies?

If you want to see the continuing consequences of this double standard, consider these reactions to this week's events as reported Friday by the Associated Press: In Gaza City, Palestinian terrorists tossed a bomb into the French cultural center. Ismail Hassan, a 37-year-old tailor marching in an anti-European protest there, said, "Whoever defames our prophet should be executed."

Meanwhile, the imam who preached the Friday sermon in Gaza's Omari Mosque told 9,000 worshippers that the cartoonists who executed the caricatures should be beheaded.

In Nablus, the imam Hassan Sharaf told his congregation that, "If they want a war of religions, we are ready."

The whole piece is worth reading--do click through to the link--particularly for the stirring conclusion:

The West's current struggle with a murderous global Sunni Muslim insurgency and the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Iran makes it clear that it's no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world. The hard work of rooting those things out will have to be done by honest Muslim leaders and intellectuals willing to retrace their tradition's steps and do the intellectual heavy lifting that participation in the modern world requires. They won't be helped, however, if Western governments continue to pander to Islamic sensitivity while looking away from violent Islamic intolerance. They won't be helped by European diplomats and officials who continue to ignore the officially sanctioned hate regularly directed at Jews by the Mideast's government-controlled media, while commiserating with Muslims offended by a few cartoons in the West's free news media.

The decent respect for the opinions of others that life in modern, pluralistic societies requires is not a form of relativism. It will not do, as Isaiah Berlin once put it, to say, "I believe in kindness and you believe in concentration camps" and let's leave it at that.

The proof of this is written in the facts on the ground. Across the United States, there are Saudi-funded mosques, teaching that nation's particularly intolerant brand of Islam. There are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia; they're against the law. In Iraq on Friday, the country's dwindling community of Chaldean Catholics prepared for more of the terrorist attacks that have become routine; there were no reported attacks on Muslims in any of the countries where the Danish caricatures were republished. Muslims in those places may have been affronted, but they are not in fear for their lives. No Western leader claims that Ferdinand and Isabella did not expel the Moors from Spain or that there were no massacres during the Crusades. If they did, they'd be howled off the podium and ridiculed into obscurity. The president of theocratic Iran claims that there was no Holocaust and people across the Islamic world applaud.

The European media may have behaved in a provocative fashion this week, but it was provocation in a good cause. The Western governments — ever mindful of their commercial interests — aren't required to endorse what their press has done, but they do nobody a favor when they apologize for it.

It's as eloquent a column I've ever seen from Rutten, an excellent writer if a thinker I often disagree with.

Posted by Conor at 03:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 04, 2006

A Photograph of Copenhagen, Denmark

I took this photograph in January, 2005.

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The Abortion Debate

Is abortion bad?

Willaim Saletan and Katha Pollitt are debating the question in Slate.

Jane Galt offers thoughts of her own at Assymetrical Information.

It's striking how differently each of these pro-choice thinkers feels about abortion

Posted by Conor at 02:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Danish Cartoon Update

Instapundit has a round-up of updates on the Danish cartoon affair, including a link to this BBC story:

A Jordanian newspaper editor sacked after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has been arrested.

Jihad Momani is accused of insulting religion under Jordan's press and publications law.

I hope Mr. Momani is flooded with job offers from Western newspapers seeking foreign correspondents.

Oh, did I mention that they torched the Danish embassy in Syria?

Amid all Christopher Hitchens--an atheist if you can't tell--argues that we ought to mock religion.

For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.

Therefore there is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general...

You can be sure that the relevant European newspapers have also printed their share of cartoons making fun of nuns and popes and taunting child-raping priests. There was a time when this would not have been possible. But those taboos have been broken.

Which is what taboos are for. Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible proof of an aggressive intent. This current coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive" become really offensive lately?) I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs, and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts toward me the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to individuals who have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fuelled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.

As someone who attended 14 years of Catholic school and attended college at an elite liberal arts school decidedly antagonistic toward religion I can assure everyone that there are faithful and atheists among the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species; there are also faithful and atheists among the wise and compassionate.

Hitchens is right, however, when he notes that establishing prohibitions based on offense would mandate not only that we ban material that mocks religion, but that we ban religion itself too. After all, it offends people.

Posted by Conor at 02:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spontaneous Outrage or Calculated Incitement?

Charles Moore has an insightful column on the Danish cartoon affair anchored by this point:

It is assumed that Muslims have a common, almost always bristling, view about their faith, which must be respected. Of course it is right that people's deeply held beliefs should be treated courteously, but it is a great mistake - made out of ignorance - to assume that those who shout the loudest are the most representative.

In fact, he argues, the current uproar in the Muslim world about these cartoons is anything but spontaneous.

It's some time since I visited Palestine, so I may be out of date, but I don't remember seeing many Danish flags on sale there. Not much demand, I suppose. I raise the question because, as soon as the row about the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten broke, angry Muslims popped up in Gaza City, and many other places, well supplied with Danish flags ready to burn. (In doing so, by the way, they offered a mortal insult to the most sacred symbol of my own religion, Christianity, since the Danish flag has a cross on it, but let that pass.)

Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of "spontaneous" Muslim rage, the odder it seems.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of "adding fuel to the flames"; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organised, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.

Quite a dangerous piece to research, however.

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A Stealthy Victory

Daniel Drezner offers an interesting post about how an episode of The West Wing helped British parliamentarians to defeat a bill.

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A Silver Lining?

Tim Cavanaugh: The Danish cartoon controversy is a breath of fresh air for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

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An Electronic Trail

If you thought the Internet was anonymous think again.

Posted by Conor at 04:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Forgotten Cartoonists

Amid all the controversy over the Danish cartoons their illustrators have been forgotten.

TWELVE Danish cartoonists whose pictures sparked such outcry have gone into hiding under round-the-clock protection, fearing for their lives.

The cartoonists, many of whom had reservations about the pictures, have been shocked by how the affair has escalated into a global “clash of civilisations�. They have since tried, unsuccessfully, to stop them being reprinted.

A spokesman for the cartoonists said: “They are in hiding around Denmark. Some of them are really, really scared. They don’t want to see the pictures reprinted all over the world. We couldn’t stop it. We tried, but we couldn’t.�

Here's hoping that no harm comes to any of them over this affair.

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The Long Tail

What's the single most important piece of journalism written about how the Internet has changed commerce and life?

This is!

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Forever Young

The Internet is a place where everyone can find their niche.

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Offensive to Christians?

Surely this magazine cover is offensive to Christians throughout the world. I expect it will elicit calls for an apology--it may even trigger a small boycott of Rolling Stone.

Yet there will be no death threats, no violent protests, no international animosity, no assumption that the image is indicative of the general view of Americans toward Christianity... nor will there be any official condemnations or calls to the editors of Rolling Stone to apologize for their insensitivity.

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Speed Demon

Now that's fast.

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The Danish Cartoons: A Strategic Boon or Bane?

The Belmont Club is engaged in deep thinking on the War on Terrorism:

It's possible to regard the cartoon crisis as either a strategic disaster or boon for the War on Terror. The argument for it being a disaster is the assertion that in the war against extremists it is necessary to win over the moderates. And even if winning them over is impossible one may still be capable of keeping them neutral or indifferent; but at all events to avoid raising the Muslim masses in an emotional war against the West. The Danish cartoon crisis has managed to ignite what the Bush administration hoped to avoid from the beginning: turning the War on Terror into a War with Islam. Now an incident arising from a relatively obscure newspaper in Denmark has forced a choice between the most deeply held of all Western values, freedom of speech, with the cherished strategic goal of keeping the Muslim "street" aboard in the War on Terror.

The argument for regarding the Danish cartoons as a boon is premised on the belief that President Bush's attempt to separate the War on Terror from Islam was doomed to fail anyway; that it was better to face that question now than later. According to this point of view, a view reinforced by the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, cultural and religious issues were at the root of international conflict. That mere voting -- in Palestine for example -- would never be sufficient to establish a liberal democracy for as long as the underlying culture remained hostile and aggressive to democracy's roots.

If I knew the correct view I'd be an advisor to Condaleeza Rice, rather than a prolific blogger. Perhaps by thinking over the matter, however, our cumulative knowledge and reasoned debate will help us to approach the truth.

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A Question for Cereal Eaters

Awhile back I made Raisin Bran my daily cereal, choosing it over Raisin Bran Crunch because the latter cereal seemed to contain far more sugar. Ever since I've felt very responsible about my ostensibly health conscious choice.

And yet.

Today I happened to see the two cereals side-by-side, and if the nutritional ingredients panel is to be trusted they have roughly the same amount of sugar.

So what shall I trust, dear reader, the nutritional panel or my own taste buds? Even now I'd swear, tasting the two cereals, that Raisin Bran Crunch surely contains far more sugar, so much so that after a few months eating Raisin Bran it seems to me too sweet to stomach.

Am I alone on this? Or simply the first among a mass of confused cereal eaters possesed with the courage to speak out?

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The Arab Reaction

What does the Arab press think of the Danish cartoon affair? Slate tells us.

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How Hard Is It to Fire a Gun Anyway?

I've never held. let alone fired, a gun before.

It seems like every time I hear about someone firing a gun for the first time they either 1) are surprised at how firmly they must pull the trigger to fire the weapon; 2) fire the gun accidentally while cleaning it or showing it off, often injuring someone.

Consider this story:

A 10-year-old special education student was accidentally shot in the arm Friday by another youngster on a school bus, authorities said.

The student was hit in the elbow and hospitalized in good condition. The wound was not life-threatening, authorities said.

The bus carrying seven youngsters was a short distance from Longfellow Elementary School at 8:20 a.m. when a .38-caliber handgun carried by a 9-year-old boy discharged, Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Oscar Butao said.

"It appears to be accidental. The other student was showing the handgun to his friend, and it accidentally went off," Butao said. "The driver just heard a gunshot. They were just about to arrive at the school."

What gives? Surely I have a reader out there familiar with hand guns. Are they hard to fire or easy to fire accidentally?

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February 03, 2006

Bed, Bath and Beyond...

I imagine wireless Internet has led many telecommuters to e-mail from the bathroom... but this is ridiculous.

Posted by Conor at 07:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fashion Week

Slate has a photo essay on Fashion Week. If you've got the time explore their photo essay archives--some of the work is quite breathtaking.

Posted by Conor at 06:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Tragedy at Sea

SAFAGA, Egypt (AP):

An aging ferry sank in the choppy waters of the Red Sea on Friday with more than 1,400 people on board, mainly Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia. Most were feared lost but officials said at least 314 made it to safety.

A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said the ferry did not have enough lifeboats, and questions were raised about the safety of the 35-year-old, refitted ship that was weighed down with 220 cars as well as the passengers.

Let us keep the victims and their families in our thoughts and prayers.

Posted by Conor at 04:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack