Don Singleton

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Islamic scholars to issue pro-Hamas fatwa

Yahoo! News reported Islamic scholars are to meet in Doha next week to draw up a fatwa, or religious edict, obliging the Muslim faithful to help the internationally isolated Palestinian government headed by Hamas. Influential cleric Yussef al-Qardawi said the May 10-11 meeting would help both the Palestinian people and their government, hit hard by US and EU funding cuts because of the Islamist faction's refusal to recognize Israel.

I am happy to see that they will be encouraging Muslims to support the Palestinians rather than expecting the US and EU to do it, but why just support the Palestinians. There are many Islamic countries that have plenty of money, and many other Islamic countries that are very very poor? Why don't they support the poor Islamic contries that are living in peace. Why only support one that wants to destroy its neighbor?

Ulemas (scholars) as well as other Muslim and Palestinian leaders will "draw up a fatwa on the duty of the ummah (Muslims) and of governments" toward the Palestinians and the Hamas cabinet, Qardawi told a press conference Saturday. The fatwa will refer to financial aid to the Palestinians as well as offering them moral support, Qardawi said.

They want the money. I suspect they care less about the "moral support". There is very little about Hamas that is moral.

In a Dentist Shortage, British (Ouch) Do It Themselves

NYT I snapped it out myself," said William Kelly, 43, describing his most recent dental procedure, the autoextraction of one of his upper teeth. Now it is a jagged black stump, and the pain gnawing at Mr. Kelly's mouth has transferred itself to a different tooth, mottled and rickety, on the other side of his mouth. "I'm in the middle of pulling that one out, too," he said

Ouch!!!

.... But the problem is serious. Mr. Kelly's predicament is not just a result of cigarettes and possibly indifferent oral hygiene; he is careful to brush once a day, he said. Instead, it is due in large part to the deficiencies in Britain's state-financed dental service, which, stretched beyond its limit, no longer serves everyone and no longer even pretends to try.

The next time Democrats want government controlled health care, let us remind them of how well it is working in Britain.

Mr. Kelly, interviewed in a health clinic here as he waited for his son to see a doctor, last visited a dentist six years ago, in Sussex. Since moving to Rochdale, a working-class suburb of Manchester, he has been unable to find a National Health Service dentist willing to take him on. Every time he has tried to sign up, lining up with hundreds of others from the ranks of the desperate and the hurting — "I've seen people with bleeding gums where they've ripped their teeth out," he said grimly — he has arrived too late and missed the cutoff.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Specter, Santorum find common ground on stem cells

Philadelphia Inquirer reported Senators Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) and Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) today will announce the introduction of a bill that would provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that does not involve destroying a human embryo.

The bill would provide "funds as necessary" to the National Institutes of Health for research into ways to get powerful stem cells from sources that "do not require the creation of human embryos for research purposes or discarding" human embryos, a Santorum spokesman said.

This is good news, not just the fact that there is a way to pursue embryonic stem cells without killing an embryo, but that people like Specter and Santorum can agree on it.

Iraqi police 'killed 14-year-old boy for being homosexual'

Independent reported Human rights groups have condemned the "barbaric" murder of a 14-year-old boy, who, according to witnesses, was shot on his doorstep by Iraqi police for the apparent crime of being gay....

I don't support this, of course, but don't the same liberals who are upset at this, always telling us we are supposed to be tolerant of other cultures?

Grand Ayatollah Sistani recently issued a fatwa on his website calling for the execution of gays in the "worst, most severe way".

Is a gunshot not the "worst, most severe way"?

The powerful Badr militia acts as the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which counts Ayatollah Sistani as its spiritual leader. Another fatwa from the late and much revered Ayatollah Abul Qassim Khoei allows followers to kill gays "with a sword, or burn him alive, or tie his hands and feet and hurl him down from a high place".

But that does not include gunshot.

27 Propositions for Reforming Islam

Nathalie Szerman wrote in MEMRI In his Manifesto for an Enlightened Islam (Manifeste pour un islam des lumières), Chebel puts forth 27 proposals for extensively reforming Islam. He turns to the values of the 18th-century European Enlightenment for guidance, when rationalism and secularism guided the drive towards cultural, social and political progress. Chebel's first two propositions set the principles of reform: a new interpretation of the Koran, and the preeminence of reason over creed. However, he dismisses atheism, noting that "nothing very important is achieved outside the framework of religion."

Chebel calls for putting an end to violence in the name of Islam;

I agree

for renouncing Jihad, which is, in his eyes, immoral;

I agree

for abolishing all fatwas calling for death;

I agree

and for abolishing Islamic corporal punishment. Chebel stands against female genital mutilation and for banning slavery and trafficking in human beings in the Arab world; for strict punishment of the perpetrators of honor crimes and for promoting the status of women.

Most of Chebel's propositions deal with politics: He advocates an independent judiciary, the preeminence of the individual over the Islamic nation, and the struggle against political assassinations in an effort to promote democracy in the Arab world. He also advocates fundamental cultural changes, such as turning freedom of thought into a Muslim value, renouncing the cult of personality, respecting the other, and fighting corruption.

His other propositions address technology, bioethics, ecology, and the media. The last one reaffirms the preeminence of human beings over religion. Chebel's propositions aim at providing keys to a modern, reformed, enlightened Islam.

Read the whole thing

Robert Spencer blogged Chebel's other recommendations are excellent. I hope they are adopted. But will a return to the original Islam really result in an intellectual flowering and enable the idea of violent jihad to be discarded? The Qur'an considers death "not a noble thing"? Yet it instructs Muslims to "kill the unbelievers wherever you find them" (9:5), promises Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (9:111), and taunts the Jews that if they are really chosen of Allah, they will love death: "Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful" (62:6).

Friday, May 05, 2006

Construction on the Freedom Tower

In a message about another subject Allah Pundit blogged on Hot Air Construction on the Freedom Tower and a 9/11 memorial is finally under way in New York City, too. They’ve already proposed a, ahem, spending cap. At 1,776 feet, the Tower will be the tallest building in the world — for a few years, until a skyscraper being planned for Bahrain blows past it with a height of 3,000 feet.

The Bahraini tower will be part of a complex of five buildings,

The next highest is also higher at1800 feet.

each of which represents one of the five pillars of Islam. And the firm that’s set to design it … is Danish.

World’s tallest building. In a Muslim country. Built by a company from the same country that produced the Mohammed cartoons, whose embassies in the Middle East have been burned as a result. What could go wrong?

I wonder what efforts they are taking to make sure someone does not fly a plane into it.

Demotion of Jack Straw

Guardian's diplomatic editor Ewen MacAskill wrote in Comment is free The key to the demotion of Jack Straw from foreign secretary is Iran. Mr Straw for more than a year, in his favourite outlet the BBC Today programme or at various press conferences, said repeatedly a military strike on Iran was inconceivable. Politicians always try to avoid boxing themselves in, but Straw did on this issue: if a military strike had become a serious option, he would have been forced to resign.

If you are going to make absolute statements, you need to be sure the boss agrees.

He was reflecting the reality of British domestic politics. Against the background of the Iraq debacle, Mr Straw knew it would be difficult to win support for the military option in cabinet and that it would create even more upheaval among the membership of the already weakened Labour party.

The problem for Mr Straw is that Tony Blair does not view Iran the same way. He regards the threat posed by Iran as the most serious in the world today, and is even more messianic on the issue than George Bush. That does not mean that a military strike will happen but Mr Blair, like Mr Bush, thinks it is a good idea to keep the option on the table, if only to keep Iran guessing.

Downing Street phoned the Foreign Office several times to ask Mr Straw to stop being so categoric in ruling out a military strike. And the White House also phoned Downing Street to ask why Mr Straw kept saying these things. And that was before Mr Straw dismissed as "nuts" the prospect of a tactical nuclear strike on Iran, an option that Mr Bush subsequently refused to remove from the table.

New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change

SPACE.com reported A storm is brewing half a billion miles away and in a rare event, astronomers get to watch it closely. Jupiter is growing a new red spot and the Hubble Space Telescope is photographing the scene. Backyard astronomers have been following the action, too. "Red Spot Jr." as it is being called, formed after three white oval-shaped storms—two of which were at least 90 years old—merged between 1998 and 2000.

A similar merger took place centuries ago and formed the bigger and legendary Great Red Spot, a storm twice as big as Earth and almost 300 years old. The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

Will the Bush Administration be blamed for this, or will the residents of Jupiter join Kyoto?

Free -- but mostly obscure -- TV

If you have a broadband internet connection, but no satellite TV or Cable TV, you may be interested in this item from TechBlog ChannelChooser: 70 channels of free cable-style television.

And let's get the obvious question out of the way first: Yes, there's porn . . . eight channels of it. But you won't click on that, right?

The other 62 are channels you know -- Sci-Fi, Comedy Channel, Bloomberg TV, NASA TV, MTV Overdrive -- and plenty you probably don't. Ever heard of the Patient Channel, Poker TV, the Police Channel, the EMS & Fire Channel and Psychic Interactive? Yeah, me either, but then I don't have digital cable or satellite TV, so I'm deprived. But hey, no longer! I tried clicking on a couple of the more popular ones -- including the Comedy and Sci-Fi channels -- and they just timed out. The Church Channel came right up, though.

Update: Not so obscure: CBS streams some of its shows on Innertube.

I had the same problem with Comedy and SciFi, but a lot of the others worked fine. The 70 channels are: 01-C-Span 1, 02-C-Span 2, 03-C-Span 3, 04-Pentagon Channel, 05-Roo TV, 06-CCTV, 07-European Affairs, 08-BBC News, 09-Reuters News, 10-Real Estate TV, 11-Bloomberg TV, 12-3BTV, 13-Chatshow Network, 14-Channel XL, 15-Channel 125, 16-Game Network, 17-Psychic Interactive, 18-TV Cartoons, 19-Western Channel, 20-Horror Channel, 21-Comedy Channel, 22-Sci-Fi Channel, 23-Tiscali TV, 24-Fashion Party, 25-Mania TV, 26-Drama Channel, 27-SCC TV, 28-Research Channel, 29-LNN, 30-Patient Channel, 31-Ministry Of Sound, 32-Deluxe Music, 33-TMF, 34-E-Music, 35-Deejay TV, 36-On Top TV, 37-Tunespoon, 38-RTV Channel, 39-MTV Overdrive, 40-Airside TV, 41-Lifestyle Network, 42-IVnet TV, 43-Police Channel, 44-Ems & Fire Channel, 45-NASA TV, 46-Shopping Channel, 47-Baby Channel, 48-Fashion Channel, 49-Holiday TV, 50-Fashion TV, 51-Weatherplus, 52-Hope Channel, 53-Church Channel, 54-Racing Live, 55-Wheelz TV, 56-Bandsports, 57-Cycling TV, 58-Sail TV, 59-High TV, 60-Fieldhockey TV, 61-Poker TV, 62-Star Games, 63-Adult TV Channel 1, 64-Adult TV Channel 2, 65-Adult TV Channel 3, 66-Adult TV Channel 4, 67-Lingerie Channel, 68-Midnight Hot Plus, 69-Midnight Hot, 70-Men Lingerie TV

In Image War, U.S. Shows Video of Bumbling Zarqawi

NYT In the video released last week by the terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, he is seen firing long bursts from a heavy automatic rifle, his forearms sprouting from beneath black fatigues as he exudes the very picture of a strong jihadist leader.

If you can control the editing, you can make the video show whatever you want.

In out-takes from the same video, Mr. Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, cuts an altogether different figure: As the camera rolls, Mr. Zarqawi is flummoxed by how to fire the machine gun until an aide walks over and fiddles with the weapon so it discharges.

Oh, so that's how it works.

Another scene shows Mr. Zarqawi hand the weapon off to several other insurgents, who absent-mindedly grab it by its scalding hot barrel.

Ouch!!!

And after his shooting scene, Mr. Zarqawi walks away from the camera to reveal decidedly non-jihadist footwear: Comfortable white New Balance sneakers.

Is he a paid endorser for New Balance footwear?

Turning the tables of propaganda on the most hunted man in Iraq, the American military released the video out-takes today, which they said troops had discovered amongst a trove of information about Mr. Zarqawi last month in the dangerous town of Yusifiyah, just south of Baghdad.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Zarqawi Blooper Video

Stop The ACLU blogged Video thanks to Wizbang

In blooper-type footage from a Zarqawi video released last week, the al Qaeda in Iraq leader is seen fumbling with a machine gun…. Lynch said Zarqawi decided not to publicize the piece, which shows him decked out in New Balance sneakers. In it, he said, Zarqawi had trouble firing his automatic weapon and needed assistance from an aide, and his associates “do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves.”

Hot Air has the video via FOX, and reports we may be closing in on the idiot. Its quite hillarious, almost like a bad skit for Al Qaeda’s funniest home videos. I’m wondering if it should bother me that Zarqawi and I have similar taste in tennis shoes.

Kim Priestap at Wizbang says:
This is hysterical. He was wearing New Balance sneakers. Sorry, but fearsome warriors don’t wear sneakers. Maybe he didn’t get the memo from OBL. Watch Zarqawi fumble with his machine gun here. In case Zarqawi wasn’t aware, fearsome warriors don’t fumble with machine guns, either.
Also see: Counterterrorism Blog

FOX has a 4 minute clip.

This is hillarious. First he is fired because he is giving insurgents a bad name, then he runs out of people stupid enough to blow themselves up, so he decides to form a force big enough to attack the Coalition and Iraqi forces, then he ends up losing 100 men, with 2 Iraqi losses, and none from the Coalition. Then he proves he does not even know how to shoot a gun. There is nothing left but to pretend to be French, and wave the white flag.

France Wants Moussaoui Back

Captain's Quarters blogged The French have apparently not let the ink dry on the jury submission from yesterday's sentencing recommendation in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial before starting to interfere with its implementation. Le Monde reports today that French officials have contacted the US in hopes of transferring Moussaoui to France in order to serve his sentence (h/t: CQ reader Leo T):

My high-school French is rather poor these days (thank heaven for BabelFish!), but the gist of this report is that France wants to rely on two bilateral conventions to extradite Moussaoui when sentencing is complete. They wish to explore the transfer of the al-Qaeda terrorist to French custody to serve out his sentence, supposedly under American law, but with an eye towards their own brand of justice. The conventions mentioned in the article date to 1983 and 1985, and give specific processes for the transfer of French citizens convicted in American courts, as well as the reverse.

This would be a terrible idea. The French are such cowards that all Al Qaeda would have to do is threaten to blow something up, and they would turn him over to them. They would not even have to waste the explosives (although knowing Al Qaeda, I suspect they would blow something up anyway).

The French show the minimum respect for American sensibilities by announcing they will wait until after the formal sentencing today to request this extradition. Moussaoui's mother has publicly pressed the Chirac government to allow the erstwhile terrorist to serve his sentence nearby, and to do so as soon as possible.

This is a small taste of what would have occurred if the jury had given Moussaoui the death penalty. The French government would have given this much more visibility even today had that occurred, and it would have continued for years until we executed the supposedly mentally ill terrorist. As it is, if the French want to confirm American opinion of their nation, then they should by all means pursue this diplomatic effort. It will give us plenty of opportunity to remind the Chirac government of its lack of fidelity in its pledge to support us if we went back to the Security Council just once more on Iraq. We can also talk about all of the bilateral efforts between Paris and Baghdad that undermined the sanctions regime, sent military arms to Saddam Hussein, and paid bribes and kickbacks to the Ba'athist regime that Oil-For-Food specifically sought to sideline.

If the French get their hands on Moussaoui, we will only wake up a few years later to French pronouncements of miracle cures and rehabilitation, and watch the video of the AQ terrorist gleefully leaving the French prison over the protests of the American government. We do not wish to rely on French tenacity in the war on terror; we learned that lesson a long time ago. Let the French try to invoke whatever treaties they want to request Moussaoui's extradition, and let them stomp their feet when we tell them to pound sand.

I just hope we do. I am not worried about Bush turrning him over, but what about a future President?

Moussaoui Offers Final Diatribe in Court

Yahoo! News reported U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema sent Zacarias Moussaoui to prison for life Thursday, to "die with a whimper," for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks:

Brinkema firmly refused to be interrupted by the 37-year-old defendant as she disputed his declaration from a day earlier: "America, you lost. ... I won." "Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want," she said. She went on: "You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won."
Way to go Judge.
And she said it was proper he will be kept away from outsiders, unable to speak publicly again. "Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory," she said, "but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper." At that point, Moussaoui tried again to interrupt her, but she raised her voice and spoke over him. "You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending." Brinkema sentenced Moussaoui to six life terms without the chance of parole, with two terms to be served consecutively.

Volunteer EMT

Warren Bell wrote on The Corner on National Review Online Greg Pollowitz from NRO's Sixers blog sends this:

I got called a chickenhawk the other day. I think one of the greatest missed opportunities since 9/11 is that the govt. didn't create a way for 30+ year old guys who want to help, but really can't, to serve. My idea is that the govt. should create a sort of "Minuteman"/volunteer paramedic corps. Thousands of guys our age would train to be EMTs to be prepared for the next 9/11. After participants get the required classroom certification, you'd have to dedicate 4 shifts a month on an ambulance crew or in an ER to maintain current. Also, after classroom certification, you'd spend two weeks at a military base getting advanced training for dirty bombs, chem attacks, etc. with a annual one week commitment for more training. These volunteer EMTs would have their medical kits with them at all times (or as much as possible). When the next 9/11 happens (or Katrina), the EMTs would have a set plan in place. From around the country, the volunteers would group up to be ordered where to go. You could have thousands of trained volunteers ready to go anywhere in the country in under 24 hrs.
As I see it, this is the only way to really have the number of first responders available for a major crisis in such a way that it is affordable. Plus, it gives guys our age the chance to do something. What do you think?

Me: I would do it. I would like to have that kind of training for any number of situations, including when I sometimes worry I might have to give myself a "MacGyver"-style tracheotomy. I assume EMT training is no small thing, but even if the training were a scaled-down version, it seems like it could come in handy in a real disaster.

This sounds like a really good idea. My health does not permit me to do it, but if I was mobile, and if this option existed, I certainly would do it. And I think he is wrong when he says that there would be thousands who would do it. I suspect the number is in thearea of a hundred thousand.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, Olympian?

ABC News reported She's a former first lady, a United States senator, and a potential 2008 presidential candidate. But to hear Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tell it, all of that pales in comparison to her real childhood dreams. "I wanted desperately to be an Olympic athlete,... I tried everything. I ran every race, and if I was really lucky I finished second to last…I couldn't jump, I couldn't run, I couldn't swim."

Don't let that stop you. Maybe they will make lieing an Olympic event.

After determining she'd never be an athlete, she set her sights on becoming an astronaut.

I always thought she was spacy.

"So I wrote to NASA and said, 'How do I sign up to be an astronaut?"' she said. "And they wrote back very politely and said, 'We don't take girls."'

Next went the dream of a career in medicine. "I volunteered at the hospital but kept getting lightheaded and woozy when I saw anyone in any kind of distress," she said.

So much for a medical career.

She also abandoned hopes of becoming a scientist or mathematician because she didn't have the best grades in those subjects.

So you'll be a bad scientise or a bad mathematician.

That, she said, left her current career choice — one that was shaped at the family dinner table.

What's that? Being a cook???

Fox, BBC, Al Jazeera most trusted: poll

Yahoo! News reported One-quarter of consumers abandoned a news source over the past year because they lost trust in its reporting, according to a new survey that also found the BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera the most trusted brands in their respective home regions.

One out of three ain't bad.

"The jury is still out on blogs," he added. "Just as many people distrust them as trust them."

I agree with the jury; I trust some, and distrust others.

Morocco women preachers appointed

BBC News reported Morocco has appointed 50 women as state preachers for the first time as part of the government's drive to promote a more tolerant version of Islam.

I am definitely in favor of promoting a tolerant version of Islam over the more violent version. Will Briton deport some of its radical clerics that promote violence, and bring some of these women in to run the Mosques?

The Islamic guides, called Mourchidats, will be able to give basic religious instruction in mosques. But they will not be able to lead Friday prayers, which will remain a male preserve.

One step at a time.

Since suicide bombers struck Casablanca in 2003, there has been a crackdown on suspected Islamic militants. The country has also been attempting to modernise its human rights, especially for women, while not alienating conservative Muslims.

Growing Unease for Some Blacks on Immigration

NYT But despite some sympathy for the nation's illegal immigrants, many black professionals, academics and blue-collar workers feel increasingly uneasy as they watch Hispanics flex their political muscle while assuming the mantle of a seminal black struggle for justice. Some blacks bristle at the comparison between the civil rights movement and the immigrant demonstrations, pointing out that black protesters in the 1960's were American citizens and had endured centuries of enslavement, rapes, lynchings and discrimination before they started marching.

They are right there, but the most important reason for them to be concerned is that black teenagers have the highest unemployment, and employeers are not willing to pay much for employees with no experience, and if they can fill those low end jobs with illegals that they can pay cash for, they will do that rather than pay young blacks and have to pay social security taxes for them.

Others worry about the plight of low-skilled black workers, who sometimes compete with immigrants for entry-level jobs.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Life for Moussaoui.

Moussaoui avoids the death penalty and gets life in the SuperMax prison. It is probably just as good. He wanted death, so that he could be a martyr. He still may get it, if there are security lapses at the Super Max prison, otherwise he can just rot in prison.

Why (Legal or Illegal) Immigrants Are Better for Texas than California

Virginia Postrel wrote It's the political economy, stupid. (Nasty phrase, that.) Texas has no income tax, which means public services are funded by sales and property taxes. Everyone, regardless of income or legal status, pays sales and property taxes, either directly or indirectly through rent. California, by contrast, relies heavily on a very progressive income tax that doesn't fall on people who are paid off the books or who don't earn much money in the first place. Liberals who support immigration should rethink their love of progressive income taxes.

Good point

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