Saturday, August 27, 2005

Academic Propaganda

Lee Kaplan< wrote in FrontPage magazine Several months ago, as part of an investigation into allegations of anti-Israel indoctrination, I completed a course called “Politics of the Middle East” 155B at Diablo Valley College in northern California.

In a detailed article for Frontpagemag about my experiences, I revealed that the professor of the course, an imam named Amer Araim, had taught things that were patently untrue and that one would expect to find in the classrooms of totalitarian Middle East societies like Saudi Arabia or Iran. (Among other historically illiterate claims, he informed students that, throughout its war for independence, Israel boasted a military superior to the invading Arab armies.)

If that was true, then why were the Arabs foolish enough to invade?
Shortly after the publication of that article, I met with Mark Edelstein, the president of Diablo Valley College. Edelstein also arranged for the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Alice Murillo, who is responsible for course content at the college, to attend the meeting. I asked Edelstein if he’d read my article after I completed the course. He said he had.

I began the meeting by saying, “The reason I wanted to meet and speak with you is not as an investigative journalist, but as a member of the community. I live here. I feel that the man you have teaching does not belong in the classroom, and if you are going to continue offering this class, you need to get someone who can teach truthfully to the students, not lie to them or give them false information. If you can’t find someone to replace him, you should not offer the class.” “I don’t think you or I will ever agree on how to conduct higher education,” Edelstein replied. Besides, he said, having someone like Araim teach a course offered a broader education to students at the college.
Would they be interested in having David Duke teach a course in Black History? It would certainly broaden their education.


I found this line of argument unpersuasive. “Araim,” I noted, “taught students in the class that Jews and Christians are not persecuted in the Arab countries of the Middle East. He also told the class that women are not stoned in Iran.” I asked Vice President Murillo whether she was aware that this was a common practice in Islamic countries. She replied she had not heard about such things.
She certainly is not well read.
I was taken aback by that response. After all, she was responsible for the course content. “These things are reported about constantly in the newspapers,” I said. “I don’t mean to be offensive, but I’m appalled that as an academic responsible for choosing what is taught about the Middle East, and who is responsible over the faculty to teach that, that you are unaware of such things.” Murillo was unmoved. “There are lots of things in the newspaper,” she replied.
True, and does she believe everything the MSM publishes?
I tried a different tack: “Do you think it broadens students’ education when the instructor lies to them or teaches them things that are considered only acceptable in the totalitarian societies of the Middle East? The course was patently anti-Israel and to a lesser degree against the United States.” I explained how, in tandem with film professor Ken Valentine (who students have complained is a Marxist ideologue), Araim had shown a two-hour propaganda film produced by the PLO to a captive audience. I then pointed out that the film, which in my view was anti-Semitic, had claimed that boatloads of Jews came to Palestine and stole Arab homes. I also noted that when I attempted to challenge this perspective, by explaining to Professor Araim that the Zionist movement legally purchased all their land prior to 1948 and that Jordan was supposed to be part of Israel, he simply dismissed it as untrue.
That is certainly what the Balfour Declaration called for.
Moreover, I said, Araim had repeatedly told students that Israel is an “apartheid” state,
If that was true, why do the Arabs with Jewish citizenship live in the same cities as Jewish residents
and that the terrorist groups Hizbollah and Hamas are “liberation” movements. “He lectured in class that the Sheba Farms in northern Israel was a justifiable reason for Hizbollah to attack Israel. Even the United Nations said Sheba Farms was never part of Lebanon,” I said. I repeated my point: “Don’t you think you instructors have an obligation to teach the truth?” “There are different truths,” replied Edelstein. “The instructor, by teaching from his own perspective, gives the students the ability to develop critical thinking,” he answered. “We allow our instructors to teach from their perspectives.”
If the students are not taught both sides, how are they to think for themselves?
“No sir,” I objected, “an instructor can teach his point of view, but he has to back it up with scholarly research and facts. If he lies to the students to get them to adhere to his own opinions, that’s indoctrination.” Araim clearly had no desire to show both sides of the issue, I explained. Whenever the accuracy of his instruction was called into question, he brushed it aside as “propaganda.”

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Diverse Ideas

Danny Carlton blogged Schools fear students may be exposed to diverse ideas - From USAToday...

Is intelligent design science or religion? That's the question a U.S. district court judge in Harrisburg will consider starting Sept. 26, and Dover voters will weigh Nov. 4.
The two tests arise from a long struggle to discredit evolution, the theory that life forms evolved over billions of years through a natural process. Though broadly accepted by scientists, evolution has long been challenged by creationists who say God created the universe.
Interesting how the paper seems to assume scientists and Creationists are mutually exclusive concepts.
And even if you accept the fact that strict Creationism, which holds that Genesis is literally true, is inconsistent with Evolution, Intelligent Design, which holds that God used Evolution as one of the tools he used in Creation, is not inconsistent with Evolution
Never mind the numerous Creationists with advanced science degrees who also work in scientific fields.
Courts repeatedly have found that teaching creationism in public schools amounts to promoting a religious viewpoint, in violation of the Constitution. Now come intelligent-design advocates. Hoping to avoid church-state conflicts, they don't discuss the identity of the designer, and they deny any link to creationism.
Okay, the truth...activists judges using the courts to enforce their own religious viewpoints have declared the acknowledgment of a higher being as “the establishment of religion”
Even though all branches of Christianity, Judiasm, and Islam all believe in a higher being
while the forced assumption that there is no higher being gets a pass on being called religion, even though it does enforce a religious viewpoint — Atheism.
And I believe that the Supreme Court established that Secular Humanism is a religion.
The line should read, “Hoping to avoid the illogical labyrinth of court forced procelytation of the religion of Evolution, they don't discuss the identity of the designer...”

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Talk radio

LAT reported Talk is cheap — unless it's political talk on the radio, and then it's influential. At least it has been. Now some people think the talk bubble has, if not burst, begun to lose its wind. Since these days the medium is overwhelmingly and partisanly Republican, those on the blue side of the aisle fervently want this to be true. Those in the red pews argue that talk is, in some ways, a victim of its own success and of an audience whose attention waxes and wanes with the election cycle. As more than one person interviewed for this column pointed out, Rush Limbaugh can't really be expected to go on adding stations, because he's already everywhere. Still, however you measure these things, broadcasting professionals agree that audiences for political talk shows have declined significantly throughout this year. That's certainly been true in Los Angeles. This week, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis-St. Paul reported that Limbaugh has lost 43% of his audience there, while Sean Hannity's has declined by 63%. An executive at the station that airs both programs in the Twin Cities told the paper, "We have really become concerned with what I could call their tight play list of topics revolving around politics." A Clear Channel programming executive in Northern California, where declines also have occurred, admitted, "We're not sure yet what's really going on."

The Blogosphere certain has given conservatives another place to express their opinion, but I do not think that Talk Radio is dead. I suspect as the next election cycle draws near, many will be talking and listening. The Left is just upset that it's attempt at Air America has been such a bust

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I Got Tagged

Greta tagged Chris and Chris in turn tagged Epler with this game of numbers, and he tagged me. So here I go:

10 years ago: I lived where I am living now, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, doing computer consulting work such as

  • developing a package to be used in a gasoline station to allow sale of gasoline using a credit card in countries where the phone lines were not good enough to allow the sales to be authorized online
  • developing software for a hand-held Bible Computer, capable of rearching for a particular word or words, and displaying the text which contains that word
  • developing a system that can be used by a Federal Government agency to ask a series of questions, and then based on the answers select the clauses that the Federal Acquisition Regulations require be in a government contract.
My health had deteriorated to the point where it was becoming increasingly more difficult for me to go out and find such consulting opportunities, so I found myself doing less and less, and just living on my savings.

5 years ago: I was no longer able to go out and find consulting opportunities (although I could still have done them in my home had I found them. I began spend more of my time refurbishing computers, and on March 23, 2002 I started HelpingTulsa

1 year ago: I was busy with HelpingTulsa. We had just posted pictures of our most popular image, the Children's Image, in use by St Marks Methodist Church in their Summer Day Camp, and we had just sent 20 computers to Sierra Leone, and 42 computers to a variety of recipients in the Tulsa area. I finally had qualified for Disability Payments under Medicare so I was no longer draining my bank account trying to survive even though home-bound with my disability.

1 day ago: I was still recovering from three solid days working with a Peace Corp Volunteer from Nairobi refurbishing 40 computers for a literacy project in Kenya

5 Favorite Snacks:
  • Peanut Butter on Ritz Crackers
  • Ritz Crackers by themselves
  • Hard boiled eggs
  • cheddar cheese
  • Low carb ice cream
5 Songs I know the words to:
I do not sing

What I would do with Five Million Dollars:
  • Expand HelpingTulsa significantly
  • I cant think of anything else
5 Places I would escape to for a while (all unlikely, since I am home-bound):
  • Computer convention in Las Vegas
  • visit my siblings
  • shows in Branson
  • visit the other computer refurbishing projects we have helped get started
  • help get a computer refurbishing project get started somewhere
5 Things I would not wear:
  • suit
  • tie
  • shirt buttoned at the neck
  • Cant think of anything else
5 Favorite T.V. Programs
  • Fox News
  • Touched by an Angel (sorry it is no longer on)
  • CSI
  • CSI Miami
  • House
5 Greatest Joys:
  • Helping others
  • Teaching people to refurbish computers
  • Blogging
  • Working on web pages
  • Watching TV
5 Favorite Toys:
  • Computer
  • Internet
  • PhotoShop
  • UltraEdit
  • WS-FTP LE
5 People I will Tag to play:

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Big Plans for Gaza

NYT reported Where the Israeli settlement of Netzarim once drew rage and mortar fire, Palestinian planners envision a cultural center and museum. In place of the settlement of Morag they see an agricultural research facility. Looking ahead 10 years after the Israeli departure from the Gaza Strip, they picture this isolated, conflict-blown strip of sand transformed into a tidy place linked internally by light rail and a coastal parkway and connected to the world by an airport and seaport.

Such is the outline sketched in an internal 10-year plan for the strip, obtained by The New York Times. The plan assumes that the population will grow by one million, to 2.3 million. It also assumes that the violence will not resume, that Israel will let Palestinian planes take off and that the governing Palestinian Authority will develop the land competently....

The 10-year plan envisions two main cities - Gaza City in the north and Khan Yunis in the south - four east-west "green corridors" and the creation of free-trade zones near the proposed airport and harbor and "industrial estates" along the boundary with Israel.... According to the plan, the Gush Katif bloc in the south should be given over to agriculture and maybe "tourist villages/resorts

They are not likely to have tourists unless they decide to live in peace with Israel. If they start rocket attacks across the wall, they should expect repisal attacks that will drive off any tourists.
under close environmental supervision." Kfar Darom, it says, should also be dedicated to agriculture. But the seaport, which officials want to build with $88 million from various European governments, is the most extensive project announced so far. Mr. Dahlan says the inland area "will be the station for support services." The project shows, he said, that "there are new chances on the horizon."
Are they economic opportunities that come from peace with Israel, or is the purpose of the seaport to import more rockets to fire on Israel?
Yet the seaport illustrates problems peculiar to investing in the Palestinian territories. All that remains of the previous attempt at a port are a gouge in the dunes leading to the sea and a buckled cement floor strewn with broken glass and shredded steel. During the current Palestinian uprising against Israel the army demolished the structure that donors had built, and work stopped. While Israel has given its permission to build the new seaport, it has not reached any agreement with the Palestinians to operate it.
They probably want to see if this "Palestinian State" wants to live in peace, or continue the war.
Several Palestinian businessmen and economists said the project made little sense. If relations with Israel are good, they said, they can continue using the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod, or Port Said in Egypt. If they are bad, they said, Israel will not let them use their new port.
Precisely. I think they have figured it out.
"I think most people realize it's not in the top list of priorities for the Gazan economy, or for the Palestinian economy," said Jawdat N. Khoudary, one of the biggest contractors here.
He is right. Their top priority should be decent housing for the residents, and jobs.
But Salah Abdel Shafi, an economist in Gaza, argued for the project, saying, "It is feasible that this port could be used not just by Palestinians but even by Jordanians and Iraqis in the long term." But he added, "This requires a completely normal situation
With peace all things are possible. Do the Palestinians want peace?
, where borders are more or less open in the region." Citing a risk of terrorist attack, Israel imposes tight restrictions on the movement of people or goods from Gaza.

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Tolerance of a Small Italian Town

NYT reported After the bombs in London in July, the first offer from the new Muslim leadership here was to form posses to keep an eye on possible militants. This city, gentle and refined, the home of Stradivarius, declined. Another idea that did not work was a possible service by both Muslims and Christians in the treasure of a cathedral here - which, prosecutors say, Muslim militants considered blowing up three years ago. But Sadiq el-Hassan, a leader at Cremona's mosque, insisted that because the London bombings made future attacks in Europe a near certainty, something long overdue had to happen: Muslims, finally, needed to take a stand. "Our mistake is that we were quiet," said Mr. Hassan, 40, a Tunisian who in dress and speech seems nearly Italian. "After all that happened after Sept. 11, we never came out and said, 'These things are bad.' But it's not too late."

It would have been nice if they had taken a stand after 9/11, but 7/7 was much closer to home, and they definitely need to come out now.
It may not be too late, but Muslim leaders here worry that time is nonetheless running out on Italy's patience with them - and that worry has set off an unusual degree of self-criticism. It has not happened much in Europe, but Mr. Hassan is now planning for the Muslims of Cremona to show publicly that they are as much against terrorism and violence as Italians are. In coming weeks, Muslims will march - in numbers, Mr. Hassan hopes - against extremism carried out in the name of Islam. "If the million Muslims who live in Italy don't say anything, it means we are giving a green light to the terrorists," he said.
Precisely why I believe that CAIR needs to come out much more strongly against what the terrorists are doing here, before we even think of trusting them.
To optimists like Mayor Gian Carlo Corada, the march - initiated entirely by Muslims - could become a model for how the uneasy relationship between Muslim immigrants and Europeans can be redefined. Muslims, he said, could begin aligning themselves more clearly for values that are more European; Europeans, in turn, would be more open to true integration.
Actually I dont think Europeans oppose true integration; it is the Muslims that seem opposed to it, and who want Sharia law to replace British or Italian law.

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The end of mythology

Caroline B. Glick wrote in Townhall The deportation of the Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria over the past week and a half and surrounding events have put paid to two of the foundational myths of the narrative that has been propounded for the past 30 years by the Israeli and international Left.... The foundational myth of the Left is that Jewish extremism, not Palestinian terrorism, is the cause of Israel's present security woes and the source of the constant wars that have plagued us since the dawn of modern Zionism. What we saw this week was that these people – whom one British reporter standing outside the synagogue in the now-ruined city of Neveh Dekalim ever so eloquently referred to last Thursday as "the hardest of the hard-line settlers" – are anything but extreme. The expelled residents of Gush Katif – from the farmers of Atzmona, Katif, Netzarim, Netzer Hazani and Kfar Darom, the surfers and fishermen of Shirat Hayam, the Torah scholars of Neveh Dekalim and the mothers of Gadid – are not "hard-line" or "extremists." They are the finest sons and daughters of Israel. They are the bravest soldiers in the Israeli military and the most patriotic citizens that Israel has produced. This truth was exposed to all in their darkest hour. As they were physically ejected from their homes and synagogues, they behaved with the most exquisite patriotism, heroism and humility.

And the settlers forced to leave Gaza were actually contributing to the Palestinian economy, because they provided jobs in agriculture and small-industry, but the terrorists among the Palestinians did not care for the Palestinians that wanted jobs, they just wanted to kill Jews, and it was not feasible to include the Gaza settlements inside Israel's wall.
When we contrast the behavior of the expelled Jews to that of the Palestinians over the same period, we see, too, that for the Palestinians, terrorism is not a weapon of weakness or evidence of desperation, but rather a strategic choice. It is a weapon that defines them as a society as much as moderation and humility characterize the now homeless Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria.... PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly dismissed the Gaza pullout, scoffing that the area comprises "only five percent of Palestine."
If he does not want the land, he does not have to take it. And it will be interesting to see how he can replace the jobs that the Israelis provided when they were in the settlements.
Like his lieutenants Muhammad Dahlan and Qurei, Abbas has repeatedly threatened that unless Israel immediately follows the withdrawal from Gaza with further withdrawals in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, the terror will continue.
But once Israel completes its wall it will have much more defensible borders, and will be able to concentrate on responding to terrorists rocket attacks with devistating reprisals
And it already has. On Thursday rockets again rained down on Sderot and Wednesday night 21 year old Shmuel Mett was stabbed to death in Jerusalem....Were Katyusha rockets to start falling on runways at Ben-Gurion Airport or on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, Israel's economy would simply cease to function. Given the state of Palestinian society, and simple geography, it is both logically incoherent and strategically ridiculous to think that any withdrawal from Judea and Samaria would do anything other than enable and encourage such attacks.

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Comporable Worth

Linda Chaves wrote in OpinionJournal Liberals pillory John Roberts for having opposed a silly idea. - Two decades have passed since feminists lost their battle for "comparable worth," a bureaucratic scheme that would have replaced the free market in determining wages. But recent headlines on the John Roberts nomination make it seem like the mid-1980s all over again.... At issue were comments in a memo Mr. Roberts wrote while a young White House lawyer in 1984. Asked to recommend whether the Reagan administration should remain neutral on comparable worth, he called the idea "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist." He was right. Nonetheless, comparable worth, repudiated by policy makers and courts 20 years ago, has been revived as a stick with which to beat a seemingly invincible nominee.

The Left has to have something to beat him with
Comparable worth is no mere variant of equal pay for equal work, which has been the law since 1963. It is illegal for an employer to pay a woman less than a man to trim a tree or to hire a male day-care worker at a higher salary than a female; it is also illegal to bar women from tree-trimming or men from day-care work. Yet for complex social and historical reasons, men and women still tend to do different jobs, although this is less true today than it was in the mid-'80s. In 1983, fewer than 6% of employed engineers were women; by the late '90s, that number had almost doubled to 11%, still far short of parity. The "remedy" is not to pay less for jobs that are dominated by men but to encourage more women to become electricians or tree-trimmers. This was the conclusion of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights after extensive research and public hearings in 1985 when I directed the agency. We opposed comparable-worth legislation and lawsuits, arguing that such efforts would actually discourage women from breaking out of sex-stereotyped roles and undermine the free market system.
The other alternative: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, is Communism

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Military Kin Likelier to Back War

Salon reported People with friends or relatives serving in Iraq are more likely than others to have a positive view of a generally unpopular war, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

And they are the ones who would really know what is going on, vs people here that only have the distorted reports from the MSM to go by.

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Sunnis defiant

Telegraph reports Tortuous negotiations to decide the constitution of the new Iraq collapsed early today with the government admitting that they had reached "the end of the road". Saleh al-Mutlaq, a leading Sunni negotiator, said no agreement was reached on the draft text and called on Iraqis to reject it in a referendum in October. His bloc rejected a compromise offered by the majority Shia and Kurds on the key issue of federalism, which Sunnis fear will rob them of influence and wealth derived from oil. While a minority voice, the Sunnis can kill the constitution. Under the terms of the referendum, it will have to be torn up if, as anticipated, two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote No.

It is amazing how stupid the Sunnis can be. They boycotted the election that would have given them representation in the constitution writing convention, then the appointed Sunnis were upset when they were not able to dictate terms. They could have had the idea of federalism postponed to a new assembly where they might have been able to get people elected to push for more power in the central government. If they now push for this constitution to be voted down, they encourage separation into three different countries, with the Kurds in the north having plenty of oil, and the Shi'ites in the south having plenty of oil, and they would be in the center, with no oil, and a landlocked country with plenty of sand.

Hopefully saner heads will prevail before the Constitution comes up for a vote in October.

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Saturday, August 27

This Day In History

  • 1770   German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart.
  • 1660   John Milton’s books were burned in London, because of the author’s attacks on King Charles II.
  • 1858   The first cabled news dispatch was sent to, and published by, "The New York Sun" newspaper. The story was about China meeting the peace demands of England and France.
  • 1859   Edwin L. Drake drilled the first successful U.S. oil well near Titusville, Pa.
  • 1883   The island volcano Krakatoa erupted; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.
  • 1892   Fire seriously damaged New York City's original Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street.
  • 1928   The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
  • 1945   American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government in World War II.
  • 1962   The United States launched the Mariner 2 space probe, which flew past Venus the following December.
  • 1967   The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was found dead in his London flat from an overdose of sleeping pills.
  • 1979   British war hero Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed off the coast of Ireland in a boat explosion; the Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility.
  • 2001   Israeli helicopters fired a pair of rockets through office windows and killed senior PLO leader Mustafa Zibri.
  • 2003   A granite monument of the Ten Commandments that became a lightning rod in a legal storm over church and state was wheeled from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building in Montgomery.
Happy Birthday To
  • 551 B.C.   Confucius (K’ung Fu-tzu) (philosopher; died in 479 B.C.) 1809   Hannibal Hamlin (15th U.S. Vice President [under Abraham Lincoln: 1861-1865]; died July 4, 1891)
  • 1908   Lyndon (Baines) Johnson (36th U.S. President)
  • 1910   Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) (Nobel Peace Prize-winner [1979]: missionary, humanitarian; died Sep 5, 1997; died Sep 5, 1997)
  • 1916   Martha Raye (Margaret Teresa Yvonne Reed) (comedienne, actress: McMillan and Wife, All Star Revue, The Martha Raye Show, The Concorde, Airport ’79, Rhythm on the Range; winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award [1969], Presidential Medal of Freedom [1993]; died Oct 19, 1994)
  • 1943   Tuesday Weld (Susan Kerr) (actress)

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Friday, August 26, 2005

Good news stats on re-enlistments

BostonHerald reports One of the most significant stories of the summer is getting almost no notice among the media elite. The Army is meeting its recruiting and retention goals for active-duty soldiers. Remarkably, units under the most pressure in Iraq are heavily oversubscribed for re-enlistment. Though newspapers around the country carried wire service stories of the Pentagon's Aug. 10 announcement, there wasn't a peep from The New York Times, The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times on the subject. Recruits in July totaled 109 percent of the Army's goal, the second straight month above target. In aggregate, the four services were 4 percent over (the Navy fell 1 percent short). The Pentagon says the Army will still fall short for the fiscal year, and reserve components are still not signing up enough new members (though re-upping targets are being met by the National Guard units of the Army and Air Force). Still, the enlistments ought to prove that America's young men and women still believe in their country and its difficult mission in Iraq, despite all that Cindy Sheehan and her band of like-minded demonstrators can do. The New York Post dug a little deeper than the bare-bones announcement. Every one of the Army's 10 combat divisions has exceeded its re-enlistment goal for the fiscal year so far. The 1st Cavalry Division was at 136 percent; the 3rd Infantry Division at 117 percent. As author Ralph Peters noted, "This is unprecedented in wartime.'' The troops are not doing this for the bonuses – only 60 percent get re-enlistment money, and the great bulk of those are $12,400 a year or less. They are not doing it for loot and booty, to impress the old crowd back home, or to learn a trade. They are risking life and limb because they care passionately about the job. We wonder what we have done to deserve soldiers of such devotion. They deserve all the best we can give them, in equipment, sound policy and honor.

I agree completely.
WaPo reports the same news as Army Likely to Meet August's, But Not Year's, Recruiting Goal
Expanding Force in Coming Months Expected to Be Difficult

The Army is expected to meet or exceed its monthly recruiting goal for August but is likely to miss its annual goal for the fiscal year that ends next month amid one of the most difficult recruiting environments since it became an all-volunteer force, the Army's chief of staff said yesterday. Should the Army meet its goal of recruiting about 10,000 new active-duty troops this month, it will be the third consecutive month in which the service succeeded after several months of significantly missing its mark.
If they succeeded in the last three months, why do you think expanding the force in coming months will be difficult.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker told reporters yesterday that he expects the Army to miss its annual goal of 80,000 new active-duty recruits by "a couple thousand," adding that he expects recruiting in September and during the next fiscal year to be "difficult."

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Abbas Says It Undermines Peace

NYT reports The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel on Thursday of undermining peace efforts with an undercover military raid in the West Bank city of Tulkarm in which five Palestinians were killed. Israel said all five were "armed wanted terrorists," including an Islamic Jihad leader who had orchestrated two suicide bombings, but Palestinians said three of the dead were unarmed teenagers.

Who do you believe?
Israel's evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank improved the atmosphere recently, but a series of violent incidents has prompted renewed recriminations. On Wednesday night a 21-year-old Jewish seminary student from Britain, Shmuel Matt, was stabbed to death in Old City of Jerusalem, while on Thursday rocket fire hit northern and southern Israel.
Sharon sharply criticized an Israeli that shot several Palestinians a week ago. Did Abbas criticize the killing of Shmuel Matt or the rocket fire that hit northern and southern Israel?

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Does That Mean Democracy?

NYT reports A hot breeze blew through the reed hut just on the banks of the Nile yesterday. President Hosni Mubarak, his shirt collar opened, sat casually inside as a local man recited a poem and the man's wife served the president a glass of tea. For television viewers around Egypt, it looked as though Mr. Mubarak had visited a village to mingle with its people and for them, in turn, to offer him their praise. "I swear to God, oh Mubarak, that I am in love with you," the man, Mahmoud Fathy, declared through a toothless grin. But this was a one-time, carefully scripted moment intended to make the president look like a man of the people, part of his campaign for election to a fifth six-year term.

Horrors. We have never seen photo ops in our campaigns, have we?
The theater of politics has arrived in Egypt, a country that has never known democracy. But many people are asking what it means that campaign posters are going up and that opposition candidates are criticizing the government. The campaign season - a mere 19 days before the Sept. 7 election - has sparked a debate about whether Egypt's first multicandidate presidential campaign is an honest first step toward a freer and more open political life in Egypt or merely a facade intended to help preserve the power of the old guard.
Mubarak was the only candidate in all previous elections. This time he has a number of opponents. He may win, but the Egyptian people have learned what it is like to decide for themselves who to vote for, and they are not going to be able to put that genie back in the bottle.

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Muslim opinion

Jonah Goldberg wrote in Townhall According to the massive Pew Global Attitudes Survey, views of the United States have been improving. We're not exactly back to the days when Kuwaiti babies were being named George Bush, but the trends are in our favor. The share of people with a favorable view of America went up in Indonesia by some 23 points, in Lebanon by 15 points, and in Jordan by 16 points. Trends in France, Germany, Russia and India have been moving our way, too. But the news gets even better. Support for terrorism and Osama Bin Laden has been plummeting across the Arab and Muslim world (save for in Jordan, where the large Palestinian population plays a big role). Support for democracy, meanwhile, has improved. According to Pew, "nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries." The share of those supporting suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians has fallen by more than one-third in Lebanon - where democracy is on the move, by the way - and by 16 and 27 points in Pakistan and Morocco, respectively. Similar declines in support for Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida and the like have been recorded.

Somehow the idea of having a say in how their government is run is more appealing than blowing themselves up on the promise of a reward in the hereafter, especially when that promise comes from a cleric that is not even considering blowing himself up.
No doubt these numbers are imperfect and hardly speak to a single cause. In Indonesia, our generous tsunami relief helped a great deal. In Lebanon, terrorism isn't just something that happens to Israelis and Americans - it's something that could snuff out the rebirth of democracy there (it's also a reminder of the civil war few wish to return to). And across the Arab world, opinions have been shifted by images of Iraqi "insurgents" slaughtering innocent men, women and children while Americans are trying to build schools and hospitals.
The news has gotten out, despite efforts by the MSM and the Arab Press to suppress it.
But here in the United States opinions remain fixed. Opponents of the war are convinced that every day we are in Iraq we are making things worse for America and the world. One could certainly argue that we're making things worse for America, in that the war has not gone as well as many of its supporters had hoped or expected. But even if you could prove that the war was a mistake in every way, to say that it never should have happened is not a good argument for abandoning the project. If a man is stabbed in the chest, you don't cure him by simply yanking the knife out. In other words, the old talking points on both sides do not matter anymore.
The Left does not really want us to get out. They know we won't, and many on their side are opposed to cutting and running. They just want to hurt Bush any way they can.
There is an important lesson for President Bush in all this. The message of his recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars was that we need to "stay the course." That has been his talking point for a very long time. And, in fairness, if your policy is to stay the course, then saying "stay the course" has a certain irrefutable logic to it. But on any long journey, even if the course remains the same the terrain may change. Much has changed in Iraq. The Iraqi army is progressing, even as bombers target recruiting stations. The marshlands have been restored. There's an enormous car-buying boom in Iraq, which is surely a sign of confidence. Morale - to the consternation of our domestic media - is still very high among American regular troops (less so among National Guardsmen). And, let's not forget, the messy process of constitution-writing is unfolding before our very eyes.
In about 1/10 the time it took us.
For reasons so imponderable that a cottage industry of West Wing Kremlinologists has sprung up, President Bush seems incapable or unwilling to make his case in light of the new realities. One may stay the course, and cross mountains and valleys. Let's hear less about the destination and more about crossing the mountains and valleys.Jonah Goldberg wrote in Townhall According to the massive Pew Global Attitudes Survey, views of the United States have been improving. We're not exactly back to the days when Kuwaiti babies were being named George Bush, but the trends are in our favor. The share of people with a favorable view of America went up in Indonesia by some 23 points, in Lebanon by 15 points, and in Jordan by 16 points. Trends in France, Germany, Russia and India have been moving our way, too. But the news gets even better. Support for terrorism and Osama Bin Laden has been plummeting across the Arab and Muslim world (save for in Jordan, where the large Palestinian population plays a big role). Support for democracy, meanwhile, has improved. According to Pew, "nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries." The share of those supporting suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians has fallen by more than one-third in Lebanon - where democracy is on the move, by the way - and by 16 and 27 points in Pakistan and Morocco, respectively. Similar declines in support for Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida and the like have been recorded.
Somehow the idea of having a say in how their government is run is more appealing than blowing themselves up on the promise of a reward in the hereafter, especially when that promise comes from a cleric that is not even considering blowing himself up.
No doubt these numbers are imperfect and hardly speak to a single cause. In Indonesia, our generous tsunami relief helped a great deal. In Lebanon, terrorism isn't just something that happens to Israelis and Americans - it's something that could snuff out the rebirth of democracy there (it's also a reminder of the civil war few wish to return to). And across the Arab world, opinions have been shifted by images of Iraqi "insurgents" slaughtering innocent men, women and children while Americans are trying to build schools and hospitals.
The news has gotten out, despite efforts by the MSM and the Arab Press to suppress it.
But here in the United States opinions remain fixed. Opponents of the war are convinced that every day we are in Iraq we are making things worse for America and the world. One could certainly argue that we're making things worse for America, in that the war has not gone as well as many of its supporters had hoped or expected. But even if you could prove that the war was a mistake in every way, to say that it never should have happened is not a good argument for abandoning the project. If a man is stabbed in the chest, you don't cure him by simply yanking the knife out. In other words, the old talking points on both sides do not matter anymore.
The Left does not really want us to get out. They know we won't, and many on their side are opposed to cutting and running. They just want to hurt Bush any way they can.
There is an important lesson for President Bush in all this. The message of his recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars was that we need to "stay the course." That has been his talking point for a very long time. And, in fairness, if your policy is to stay the course, then saying "stay the course" has a certain irrefutable logic to it. But on any long journey, even if the course remains the same the terrain may change. Much has changed in Iraq. The Iraqi army is progressing, even as bombers target recruiting stations. The marshlands have been restored. There's an enormous car-buying boom in Iraq, which is surely a sign of confidence. Morale - to the consternation of our domestic media - is still very high among American regular troops (less so among National Guardsmen). And, let's not forget, the messy process of constitution-writing is unfolding before our very eyes.
In about 1/10 the time it took us.
For reasons so imponderable that a cottage industry of West Wing Kremlinologists has sprung up, President Bush seems incapable or unwilling to make his case in light of the new realities. One may stay the course, and cross mountains and valleys. Let's hear less about the destination and more about crossing the mountains and valleys.Jonah Goldberg wrote in Townhall According to the massive Pew Global Attitudes Survey, views of the United States have been improving. We're not exactly back to the days when Kuwaiti babies were being named George Bush, but the trends are in our favor. The share of people with a favorable view of America went up in Indonesia by some 23 points, in Lebanon by 15 points, and in Jordan by 16 points. Trends in France, Germany, Russia and India have been moving our way, too. But the news gets even better. Support for terrorism and Osama Bin Laden has been plummeting across the Arab and Muslim world (save for in Jordan, where the large Palestinian population plays a big role). Support for democracy, meanwhile, has improved. According to Pew, "nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries." The share of those supporting suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians has fallen by more than one-third in Lebanon - where democracy is on the move, by the way - and by 16 and 27 points in Pakistan and Morocco, respectively. Similar declines in support for Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida and the like have been recorded.
Somehow the idea of having a say in how their government is run is more appealing than blowing themselves up on the promise of a reward in the hereafter, especially when that promise comes from a cleric that is not even considering blowing himself up.
No doubt these numbers are imperfect and hardly speak to a single cause. In Indonesia, our generous tsunami relief helped a great deal. In Lebanon, terrorism isn't just something that happens to Israelis and Americans - it's something that could snuff out the rebirth of democracy there (it's also a reminder of the civil war few wish to return to). And across the Arab world, opinions have been shifted by images of Iraqi "insurgents" slaughtering innocent men, women and children while Americans are trying to build schools and hospitals.
The news has gotten out, despite efforts by the MSM and the Arab Press to suppress it.
But here in the United States opinions remain fixed. Opponents of the war are convinced that every day we are in Iraq we are making things worse for America and the world. One could certainly argue that we're making things worse for America, in that the war has not gone as well as many of its supporters had hoped or expected. But even if you could prove that the war was a mistake in every way, to say that it never should have happened is not a good argument for abandoning the project. If a man is stabbed in the chest, you don't cure him by simply yanking the knife out. In other words, the old talking points on both sides do not matter anymore.
The Left does not really want us to get out. They know we won't, and many on their side are opposed to cutting and running. They just want to hurt Bush any way they can.
There is an important lesson for President Bush in all this. The message of his recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars was that we need to "stay the course." That has been his talking point for a very long time. And, in fairness, if your policy is to stay the course, then saying "stay the course" has a certain irrefutable logic to it. But on any long journey, even if the course remains the same the terrain may change. Much has changed in Iraq. The Iraqi army is progressing, even as bombers target recruiting stations. The marshlands have been restored. There's an enormous car-buying boom in Iraq, which is surely a sign of confidence. Morale - to the consternation of our domestic media - is still very high among American regular troops (less so among National Guardsmen). And, let's not forget, the messy process of constitution-writing is unfolding before our very eyes.
In about 1/10 the time it took us.
For reasons so imponderable that a cottage industry of West Wing Kremlinologists has sprung up, President Bush seems incapable or unwilling to make his case in light of the new realities. One may stay the course, and cross mountains and valleys. Let's hear less about the destination and more about crossing the mountains and valleys.
Why? Do you want them to try to micromanage that too?

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The Stakes After Gaza

Charles Krauthammer wrote in JWR The world has noted — though it will not credit, and will soon forget — those deeply moving scenes of the Israeli evacuation of Gaza: the discipline and self-control of the Israeli army; the cohesion of a society torn over policy but determined to follow the dictates of democracy; and the deep, abiding attachment of Israelis to every inch of soil they have reclaimed from sand and swamp.... In my view, the religious messianists who are saying this are totally wrong in their strategic assessment. Gaza was a necessary retreat in order to hold higher, more defensible and more critical ground elsewhere.

I agree completely.
Nonetheless, the parallel images carried an unintended truth. It is not the Gaza withdrawal itself but what follows that could lead to another and final extinction of Jewish independence, this time not just for 2,000 years but forever. What follows is the world saying, almost in unison, that the Gaza evacuation is just the beginning of a total Israeli retreat, one Dunkirk to be followed by many more.
That is not going to happen. I believe Israel will complete its wall, and retalliate swiftly and strongly to any incursions over the wall, and they will wait for a Palestinian administration willing to live in peace with Israel.
What follows is Condoleezza Rice declaring that "it cannot be Gaza only,"
And it was not Gaza only. Israel also withdrew from four settlements in the West Bank. But it definitely is now the Palestinian's turn to show they want peace.
a thrilling encouragement to the Palestinians jeering the Israeli withdrawal with chants of "Gaza today, Jerusalem tomorrow." Is this what the Bush administration wants? More unilateral concessions to an implacable enemy whose "moderate" leader, Mahmoud Abbas, declares that "we will not rest until they leave from all our land" — when Palestinian maps show "our land" as nothing less than all of British Palestine with Israel totally eradicated? This is a prescription for Israel's suicide. Or rather murder, because the Israelis are not prepared to march blindly into further unrequited concessions. The final concession will be getting into boats and sailing back to where? Poland? In his policy-setting Rose Garden speech of June 2002, President Bush explicitly endorsed a Palestinian state and said that to achieve it, the next step was up to the Palestinians. Since then the only thing the Palestinians have done is to bury Yasser Arafat, an act of reverence but not exactly an initiative. In the interim, the Israelis have withdrawn from Gaza, destroyed four West Bank settlements to create geographic contiguity for Palestinian territory in the northern West Bank, and once again repeated their support of a Palestinian state. The Palestinian response has been Katyusha rockets into Sderot, promises of renewed terrorism and chants for total victory. The Arabs are a great people. They have 21 states stretching from the Atlantic to the frontier of Persia. They will soon have a 22nd state called Palestine.
Maybe efforts need to be made to remove some of the 21, to put them into a defense mode.
The only question is whether its establishment will be on the grave of the world's only Jewish state. What is at stake is whether the world, led by the United States, will demand Arab acceptance of that single Jewish state, or whether the United States will continue to push Israel from one concession to another until one day another arch is erected, this time in Jerusalem itself, commemorating the destruction of history's third and last Jewish commonwealth.

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Jobs and Immigrants

OpinionJournal editorialized America needs more, not fewer, workers from overseas. - Political pressure for an immigration crackdown seems to be building, with allegedly serious people even debating a 2,000-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

I believe the wall is a very good idea, and I would even like to see one on the border with Canada as well. At the same time I support the idea of a guest worker program, where we bring in as many workers as we need, but we need to be able to know what countries they come from, whether or not they have criminal backgrounds, and that we be able to track where they are when they are in our country, and that they leave when they are supposed to leave.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. economy, the demand for foreign workers continues, as shown by the collapse of the H-1B visa program. Since the restrictionists won't tell you about this, allow us to explain. Each year, the U.S. issues a set number of H-1B visas to educated foreign professionals with specialized skills. Earlier this month the Department of Homeland Security, which administers the program, announced that the annual H-1B cap of 65,000 already has been reached for next year. In fact, it was reached in record time, or 14 months prior to the fiscal year in which the visas would be used. What this effectively means is that any number of fields dependent on high-skilled labor could be facing worker shortages: science, medicine, engineering, computer programming. It also means that tens of thousands of foreigners--who've graduated from U.S. universities and applied for the visas to stay here and work for American firms--will be shipped home to start companies or work for our global competitors. Congress sets the H-1B cap and could lift it as it has done in the past for short periods. Typically, however, that's a years-long political process and cold comfort to companies that in the near term may be forced to look outside the U.S. to hire. Rather than trying to guess the number of foreign workers our economy needs year-to-year, Congress would be better off removing the cap altogether and letting the market decide.
I have no problem with that, as long as we know what countries the people are from, and as long as we know they don't have a criminal background.

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Friday, August 26

This Day In History

  • 1847   Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic.
  • 1498   The master artist, Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the "Pieta". Originally intended as a monument for his tomb, Michelangelo’s Florentine Pieta has interested historians for centuries because the four- figure sculpture does not feature the perfect proportions that are the hallmark of Michelangelo’s work.
  • 1842   The U.S. Congress established the fiscal year, which begins on July 1st.
  • 1873   The first public school kindergarten in the U.S. was authorized by the school board of St. Louis, MO.
  • 1883   The first of a series of increasingly violent explosions occurred on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa. On the morning of the next day, the world’s largest explosion was heard some three thousand miles away. The volcanic island exploded, spewing five cubic miles of earth into the air -- fifty miles high. It created tidal waves up to 120 feet high, killed 36,000 people and caused oceanic and atmospheric changes over a period of many years.
  • 1910   Mother Teresa was born Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia.
  • 1920   The 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was certified by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. The amendment prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex -- in the voting booth. In other words, it gave women in the United States the right to vote. In 1973, Congresswoman Bella Abzug presented a bill to Congress designating this day as Women’s Equality Day. The President issued a proclamation and in 1974 it became Public Law #93-382.
  • 1939   Major league baseball was televised for the first time as experimental station W2XBS broadcast a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
  • 1957   The Soviet Union announced it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.
  • 1961   The International Hockey Hall of Fame opened in Toronto.
  • 1964   President Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated for a term of office in his own right at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J.
  • 1974   Aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh died at age 72.
  • 1978   Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice was elected the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church following the death of Paul VI. The new pontiff took the name John Paul I.
  • 1992   A no-fly zone was imposed on southern Iraq. Operation Southern Watch was orchestrated by the United States, France and Britain. The campaign supported U.N. Security Council resolutions containing Iraq, protecting Kuwait, and keeping pressure on Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime.
  • 2003   Investigators concluded that NASA's overconfident management and inattention to safety doomed the space shuttle Columbia as much as did damage to the craft.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1838   John Wilkes Booth (actor, assassin: shot and killed U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC; killed [or committed suicide] Apr 26, 1865)
  • 1873   Lee DeForest (inventor: held patents for hundreds items including the triode tube: a three element vacuum tube which later became the audion tube: a significant invention that made radio possible; autobiography: ‘Father of Radio’ [1950]; died June 30, 1961)
  • 1906   Albert Sabin (polio researcher: the Sabin oral polio vaccine; died Mar 03, 1993)
  • 1935   Geraldine Ferraro (1st woman to be nominated for vice president of the U.S. by a major political party [Democratic Party, 1984])
  • 1980   Macaulay Culkin (actor: Home Alone series)

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Thursday, August 25, 2005

To Wall or not To Wall

Jonah Goldberg wrote on National Review Online I'm torn between two symbolic arguments about the future of this country. Symbolism matters in politics, a lot.... On the one hand, I hate the symbolism of building a wall along our southern border. It would be both literally and figuratively ugly. It would change the narrative of this country in a significant way and send a terrible signal to the world of a fortress America. I don't think that's the only rational interpretation of such a wall, but few can dispute that's how it would be received by the rest of the planet (and our own media).

You may hate it, but I like the idea. This does not mean we should stop immigration, but that we should control it, and not let people in with criminal records, and we need to know where everyone that comes in is.
On the other hand, I think the symbolic significance of what's going on now is destructive and has the potential to poison our politics for a long time to come. Even grade-school textbooks make it clear that a country is defined by its borders. People instinctively understand that a nation that can't control its borders is a nation that lacks the confidence and will to stand up for its principles. It creates a culture of lawlessness, breeds contempt for lawmakers, and activates some of the baser instincts of the public.

Critics charge that these base instincts — xenophobia, chauvinism, racism — are precisely what motivates people to call for a wall in the first place. I'm sure that's true for some, but not for everybody. Personally, I have no problem with legal immigration, even very high levels of it. But my preferred immigration policy is to have one. When you don't enforce the laws, you are in fact saying that the laws don't matter. If this country wants 10 million legal immigrants a year, fine. Let's have 10 million. But not 10 million legals and 3 or 4 million illegals as well. No line jumpers. Period.
I agree completely
Working on the fairly reasonable — but not definite — assumption that a wall would actually work, one benefit would be that these emotional reactions would subside. But if every politician and movement in America that calls for taking illegal immigration seriously is reflexively denounced as "anti-immigration," never mind racist, then you won't get rid of those sentiments, you'll feed them. In other words, if you don't have a reasonable "anti" immigration movement, you will get an unreasonable one. That's what's happening in parts of Europe.

Opponents rightly say you don't need a wall if you simply enforce the laws we have now. O.K. But there's very little reason to believe that moment is just around the corner.
I want to see us enforcing the laws we have now AND have a wall that makes sure that we control our borders (both of them - North and South)
They sound like the guys watching Noah load the ark, saying, "All that work will be unnecessary once the rain stops." And, whenever politicians suggest actually doing that, many of the same critics object to that symbolism as well. Indeed, enforcing the laws by placing thousands of armed men — troops, in effect — along the U.S. border isn't a great look, either. And, historically, troops on the border is a bigger provocation than concrete.

Meanwhile, the Republicans, caving to the business lobby, take the lead opposing a better solution: vigorous prosecution of businesses who hire illegals. If either party were serious about enforcing any of those laws, a wall would be unnecessary.
I disagree. Vigorous prosecution of businees who hire illegals would solve the problem of illegal immigration from Mexicans (and other Central and South Americans) that come over just for the jobs, but we still need to control drug smugglers and radical Muslims who are not coming in to get a job picking lettuce or washing cars.
A wall would not in any sense be "unfair" to Mexicans any more than locks on your windows are unfair to people who want to break into your house and sleep on your couch. A wall would simply put Mexico — and the more than 100,000 "other than Mexicans" who cross our southern border — at the same "disadvantage" as would-be immigrants from Nigeria and New Zealand. They'd have to fill out a form and wait in line.

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Al Qaeda Coming Through!

Deroy Murdock wrote in National Review Online Two Democratic governors, New Mexico's Bill Richardson and Arizona's Janet Napolitano, have sounded the klaxons over the bedlam on America's border with Mexico. On August 12, Richardson (who happens to be of Mexican ancestry) declared a state of emergency in four of his state's border counties. Three days later, Napolitano followed, placing four of Arizona's frontier counties in emergency status. Beyond the usual complaints about illegal aliens straining public services, Richardson cited "kidnapping, murder, destruction of property, and the death of livestock" among the rationales for his crisis proclamation; Napolitano denounced "violent gangs, coyotes, and other dangerous criminals."

I suspect they did it to help Hillary get to the right of the Bush administratioin, but in any event we need to do something about illegal immigration
While those reasons are disturbing enough, Americans should worry even more about the growing numbers of foreigners breaking into the U.S. from nations awash in Islamic extremism. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R., Colo.) points to Border Patrol documents that show how America's southern and northern borders routinely are traversed by predominantly Muslim Middle Easterners and North Africans. Between October 1, 2002, and June 30, 2003, Department of Homeland Security figures show 4,226 Special Interest Aliens were apprehended on America's Mexican and Canadian borders. By June 30, 2004, that number had swelled 42.5 percent to 6,022 SIAs from "Countries of Interest" such as those the State Department considers sponsors of terrorism (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria) and others where militant Islam simmers (Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen).
We may not have space to retain people from South American countries, but we damn sure better be locking all of these people up.
Full fiscal-year 2004 data record the capture of 7 Saudis, 10 Syrians, 18 Lebanese, 19 Iranians, 25 Egyptians, 28 Jordanians, and 164 Pakistanis, among others. If these figures seem small, recall the havoc 19 Middle Easterners unleashed on September 11. "One must take into account that even the most conservative estimates of the number of folks getting by the Border Patrol are two or three times the number caught," Tancredo said. If so, at least 18,000 SIAs entered America just in the first nine months of 2004.

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British Detail Policy on Radicals

WaPo reported The British government will deport and ban people who "foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence," the country's top law enforcement official announced Wednesday. Home Secretary Charles Clarke outlined the new policy, the most detailed explanation to date of proposals announced this month by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Clarke said a list of "unacceptable behaviors" includes the use of Web sites, writing, preaching, publishing or distributing materials that "seek to provoke others to terrorist acts" or "foster hatred." "Individuals who seek to create fear, distrust and division in order to stir up terrorist activity will not be tolerated by the government or by our communities," Clarke said. His statement detailed measures directly resulting from last month's transit system bombings in London, which killed 56 people, including four presumed bombers, and injured 700.

Good for the British. When will the rest of Europe do the same?

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Arafat's Heir Comes to Gaza

Steven Stalinsky wrote in JWR s this column reported last week, the Tunis-based head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Farouk Qaddumi, whose official position on Israel is that it should be destroyed, will move into Gaza this summer. He is a possible successor and key rival to the Palestinian Authority's current leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Qaddumi will be bringing with him a "volunteer popular army" of at least 1,500, according to Saudi press reports from August 3.

When they begin launching rocket attacks on Israel, and when Israel counter-attacks, hopefully they will be able to wipe him and his 1,500 member army out in one major attack.
Mr. Qaddumi confers often with terrorist groups and regimes. At a September 4, 2003, meeting in Lebanon with the head of Hezbollah, Shiekh Hassan Nasrallah, Mr. Qaddumi announced "a cohesion between the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance." Over the last decade, he repeatedly met with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership in Damascus to plan "the liberation of Palestine." He also has served as a point person between Palestinian Arabs and the Iranian regime. In an interview from Iran with Al-Jazeera broadcast on December 20, 2004, Mr. Qaddumi noted that Yasser Arafat was the first Arab leader to visit Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 - a slight directed toward America. The PLO chief said on-air that the purpose of his visit to the Islamic Republic was to strategize with the regime on the "liberation of Palestine." When asked if it was true "that Iran is infiltrating the Palestinian ranks, as far as Gaza, through the Hezbollah Cadres, or the Palestinian Islamic organizations in Iran," he responded that it was "good" and "truly positive" and that the PLO "welcomed all Arab and Islamic organizations to infiltrate." In a December 12, 2004, interview on Iran's Al-'Alam TV, he said the "cooperation between the PLO and Iran" includes working "to liberate Jerusalem."

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Despite Media Blackout, Fallujah Rebuilds

Michael Fumento wrote on Townhall After crisscrossing Fallujah by foot and Humvee in May, I reported on tremendous progress being made to restore “the city we had to destroy to save.” Actually fighting left most of the town unscathed; most damage was from three decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein. And rebuilding began almost immediately.

Good news from Iraq rarely gets a single story compared to the many thousands on a war protestor’s stake-out in Texas.

That is because the MSM sees no reason to report anything good. Their objective is to destroy GWB, and if that means destroying the US as well, they really don't care.
Yet it occurs nonetheless. The following is from an e-mail by Navy Lt. Cameron Chen, head of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion at Camp Fallujah, with which I had a short embed. You’ll see Chen doesn’t wear a mini-skirt and shake pom-poms but he’s certainly optimistic.


“The city is slowly rebuilding and returning to life. Some report that it's now the safest city in the Sunni Triangle due to the heavy presence of Iraqi police and army. Every major intersection now has unarmed Iraqi police directing traffic in crisp short-sleeve button down shirts, white gloves, black flack vests, and dark blue pants. More frequently we’re responding to IEDs [improvised explosive devices] reported by local children, police and informants.

“The 10pm-5am curfew is still in effect. But people can be seen on the streets up until the last minutes before 10. The streets remain unlit at night although there are green neon lights around the minarets of the major mosques. Lines at the gas stations can be over a hundred cars long. Ironic since we are in the heart of oil country.” A reason for this, which the media rarely report, is that the Iraqi government subsidizes gasoline so that it’s virtually free. Sell tickets to a pro football games for five cents apiece and see what kind of line you get. The subsidies also encourage smugglers, who can buy dirt cheap and sell exorbitantly high.
No, Fallujah doesn’t rival Jamaica as a vacation resort. But last year at this time it was the epicenter of Iraq terrorism, filled with decapitators and bomb-makers. If progress can be made there, it can be made anywhere in Iraq. Don’t listen to the “quagmire” crowd. This war is being won.

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Right strategy

Victor Davis Hanson wrote in JWR "Brilliant tactician, lousy strategist." So goes the conventional wisdom about the old bulldozer Ariel Sharon. But that assessment is exactly backward. Sharon's strategic insight has always proved more impressive than his messy tactical operations. For now, keep that in mind — even as we seem to watch divided Israelis yell at each other while united Palestinians gloat about expelling the Zionists.

Gen. Sharon's counterattack across the Suez Canal in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur war was also seen as reckless, in its disregard for logistics and lines of communication. His 1982 army that invaded Lebanon proved tactically lax in allowing allied Christian militias to commit atrocities. But Sharon's long-term thinking? That's another story altogether. Trapping the Egyptian 3rd Army in the Sinai, and then showing the world that Cairo itself was defenseless in the path of an Israeli armored division, was a strategic masterpiece aimed at ending the 1973 war outright to Israel's advantage.

The march into Lebanon forced Yasser Arafat out of the Middle East for a decade — and he might have been discredited for good as a defeated terrorist had third parties not escorted him to Tunis or brought him back under the Oslo accords. So Sharon was always a strategic thinker, and we are seeing his accustomed foresight working in the controversial exodus from Gaza.

The Israeli military is crafting defensible borders, not unlike the old Roman decision to stay on its own side of the Rhine and Danube rivers. In Sharon's thinking, it no longer made any sense to periodically send in thousands of soldiers in Gaza to protect less than 10,000 Israeli civilians abroad, when a demographic time bomb of too few Jews was ticking inside Israel proper. But Gaza itself is only a tessera in a far larger strategic mosaic. The Israelis also press on with the border fence that will in large part end suicide bombings. The barrier will grant the Palestinians what they clamor for, but perhaps also fear — their own isolated state that they must now govern or let the world watch devolve into something like the Afghanistan of the Taliban. Once Israel is out of Gaza and has fenced off slivers of the West Bank near Jerusalem deemed vital for its security, Sharon can bide his time until a responsible Palestinian government emerges as a serious interlocutor.

And although there will be rocket attacks from Gaza across the wall, he can treat Gaza as an independent Palestinian state attacking a neighbor, and retaliate with massive force.
Then any lingering disagreements over disputed land can be relegated to the status of a Tibet, northern Cyprus, Kashmir or the Sakhalin and Kurile Islands — all postbellum "contested" territories that do not prompt commensurate attention from the Muslim world, Europe or the United Nations. Palestine as a sovereign state rather than a perpetually "occupied " territory also inherits the responsibility of all mature nations to police its own. So when Hamas and co. press on with their killing — most likely through rocket attacks over the fence — they do so as representatives of a new Palestinian nation. In response, Israel can strike back at an aggressor without worry about the blowback on isolated vulnerable Israeli settlements.
Brilliant

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Israel monitoring goings-on

Christine Spolar wrote in JER Palestinian Authority doesn't want Israel monitoring goings-on at Gaza border

I wonder why
Border control of the Gaza Strip now dominates discussions between Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority and, as Israel continues to wind down operations in Gaza, there is little harmony over how people and goods will move in and out of Palestinian territory.... Israeli defense officials Wednesday recommended people or goods leaving Gaza could move directly into Egypt through an existing crossing in the city of Rafah, at the southern end of the Palestinian territory. Israelis are insisting, however, that all goods and people entering Gaza must pass through a tri-country crossing at Kerem Shalom, where Israeli officials could also verify goods and identities. "That's not workable," said Palestinian adviser Saeb Erekat, one of three Palestinian aides who Wednesday attended a breakfast meeting and discussion afterward between Abbas and Mubarak. "We can work with the idea of a third party monitoring the Rafah crossing to ensure security. But we do not want Israel telling us how to keep people and goods coming in and out of Gaza," Erekat said.
They must be planning on importing a lot of rockets.

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Iraq's Federalist Papers

OpinionJournal wrote The constitution empowers legislators, not clerics. - Iraq's first freely elected government continues to vindicate the belief that the Mideast can be transformed, starting with Saddam Hussein's former tyranny. Its draft constitution, which appears headed for parliamentary approval tonight, reflects a remarkable spirit of compromise--and even enlightenment--among the country's political, ethnic and religious factions.

It took us several years; they have done it in several months.
The word "compromise" is key here. If we were drafting the document, there are many things we might have done differently. But the point of democracy is that countries have to find their own way on difficult issues. Americans also shouldn't be too quick to conclude that anything that sounds odd or unfamiliar to liberal ears is evidence of failure. While this constitution does indeed contain general appeals to religion, it is fundamentally a document that empowers legislators, not clerics.
And they may well have seen the problems we have had when a few unelected judges erected a Separation of Church and State that would probably have shocked most of our founding fathers, who never intended for any such separation (it was a phrase in a letter that one founding father wrote).
Take the role of Islam, which is designated as "a" (not "the") "basic source of legislation." Some critics see this as evidence of incipient theocracy. But in what Western democracy are laws not generally in accord with the Judeo-Christian moral heritage? In any case, interpretation of that clause will be up to elected representatives.

The same holds true for family law. There has been much American huffing and puffing about a provision that might allow matters such as divorce to be handled by religious courts if individuals so choose. But the same clause begins with a strong affirmation of individual rights, and does not itself rewrite Iraq's current family laws but merely paves the way for a future parliament to do so. No doubt some Iraqis will want to establish the primacy of Shariah law, but they will have to prevail in a diverse parliament and in a society in which women have asserted themselves since the fall of Saddam.
And in a parliament where 25% of the members are women.

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What a Gas!

Malia Zimmerman wrote in OpinionJournal Several hundred families on the normally sleepy island of Molokai lined up in their cars for more than a mile on July 28, desperate to buy gasoline before the pumps shut down. There were still two more days before a barge would arrive with a month's supply of gas, and by nightfall the island's only three gas stations would be dry. Many of Molokai's 6,800 residents are too young to remember Richard Nixon as their president or the gas crises of the early 1970s. But they may soon be seeing more Nixon-era-like lines, gas shortages and even rationing. In a thoroughly misguided attempt to stem the rising price of gas, Hawaii is set to impose Nixon-style price caps on all the islands' pumps.

Price Control is definitely misguided. It will only result in shortages. If Hawaii wants to lower the price of gas, they would do better to see if there are any offshore areas nearby where they could encourage drilling, and possibly building a new refinery (since we have a major shortage of new refineries, which results in higher gas prices every year).
The law, set to take effect Sept. 1, ties the price of gas to the wholesale price of gasoline at three price points on the U.S. mainland. Charged with the unenviable job of implementing the gas-cap program, Hawaii's Public Utilities Commission says local industry expects the caps to increase prices by an estimated 30 cents a gallon, with costs on Oahu rising from the current price of $2.68 a gallon to more than $3. PUC says industry leaders also expect more shortages (especially in remote areas), the closure of one of two oil refineries, the halting of wholesale marketers' operations, and reduced investment in the state after the caps go into effect. Owners of gas stations on remote neighboring islands say prices will likely soar after Sept. 1, from just over $3 a gallon to more than $4.

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Justice Weighs Desire v. Duty (Duty Prevails)

NYT reported It is not every day that a Supreme Court justice calls his own decisions unwise. But with unusual candor, Justice John Paul Stevens did that last week in a speech in which he explored the gap that sometimes lies between a judge's desire and duty. Addressing a bar association meeting in Las Vegas, Justice Stevens dissected several of the recent term's decisions, including his own majority opinions in two of the term's most prominent cases. The outcomes were "unwise," he said, but "in each I was convinced that the law compelled a result that I would have opposed if I were a legislator."

Well in the case of Kelo you certainly were wrong, but why don't you resign from the bench and run for the legislature, where you can vote what you think is right.
In one, the eminent domain case that became the term's most controversial decision, he said that his majority opinion that upheld the government's "taking" of private homes for a commercial development in New London, Conn., brought about a result "entirely divorced from my judgment concerning the wisdom of the program" that was under constitutional attack. His own view, Justice Stevens told the Clark County Bar Association, was that "the free play of market forces is more likely to produce acceptable results in the long run than the best-intentioned plans of public officials." But he said that the planned development fit the definition of "public use" that, in his view, the Constitution permitted for the exercise of eminent domain.
But the public were not going to use the land in Kelo; it was to go to a private development area. And exactly what "law" required you to overrule what the Constitution says? This may be news to Justice Stevens, but I thought that all Supreme Court Justices were told this on the first day, but the Constitution superceeds a law, not the other way around.
Dr. Steven Taylor: blogged While I wholly appreciate that a Justice should not be supplanting the law with his or her opinion, it seems to me that the very definition of “public use” was what was at issue, and that it is most difficult to look at the Takings Clause and come to the conclusion that Stevens reached.... As such, I am not so impressed with Stevens’ argument that judicial restraint made him do it.

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Unspinning the NY Times' military mendacity

Jack Kelly wrote in JWR Colonel Thomas Spoehr is annoyed with New York Times reporter Michael Moss, for what I think is a good reason. Spoehr is the director of materiel for the Army staff. He had a good news story to tell Moss, which Moss converted into a bad news story.

The MSM frequently distorts things to make things in Iraq look worse than they are, and to avoid telling the good news.
Here is the story as Spoehr tells it:
Last year, senior leaders of the Army became aware of technological developments which make it possible to improve the "Interceptor" body armor worn by our troops.... The "Interceptor" is the best body armor manufactured in the world today, and represents a remarkable improvement over the protective vests worn by our troops in the first Gulf War, and Somalia in 1993. Those vests could protect against shrapnel, but a rifle bullet would cut right through them.... There is little evidence insurgents in Iraq are using the special types of ammunition that can defeat the "Interceptor." But the Army wanted to be proactive, to defeat a potential threat before it emerged.....
Here's how the story was presented by Moss in the New York Times Aug. 14th: "For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks of insurgents.

"The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon's procurement system."

Spoehr told Moss all the things he told me, but there is not a single positive quote in his story. "You would get the impression that our soldiers were in harm's way or at risk," Spoehr said. "That is not true." Americans are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, because all news about Iraq is presented as bad news, even when it isn't.


Michelle Malkin blogged Hot off the press: the latest fabrications from the Associated Press and the New York Times.

Scott @PowerLine blogged They distort, you deride - This unsparing column supports a powerful conclusion: "Americans are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, because all news about Iraq is presented as bad news, even when it isn't."

Glenn Reynolds blogged Read the whole thing. You know, calling sources to check their quotes in Big Media is an interesting approach.

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Michael Graham, spiked by ABC

Brent Bozell wrote in Townhall Remember this the next time ABC toots its own horn as a defender of free speech. Michael Graham, a popular talk-radio host on ABC-owned WMAL in Washington, D.C., publicly declared that "Islam is a terror organization." Under pressure from a radical Islamic group, ABC fired him. Left alone as a sentence, Graham's charge is a wild overgeneralization. But he didn't utter a sentence. He delivered an entire series of oral essays over a four-day period exploring the point. Graham plainly stated in print and on the air that he had "great sympathy for Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true 'religion of peace.' I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims." But his main point was unquestionably clear and disturbing: Millions of Muslims refuse to condemn terrorists in their midst and tell pollsters that suicide bombings and other acts of terror are defensible. With their firing, it's clear that the timid ABC brass wasn't listening to Graham. It was listening to the Council on Islamic-American Relations, a radical lobby that fights so-called "Islamophobia" in the media.

Actually they were worried because CAIR began to attack their advertisers, which is why I think that supporters of Michael Graham should do the same thing, and boycott WMAL advertisers.
CNSNews.com reported that CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper went so far as to blame a recent alleged hate crime against a pregnant Muslim woman in Virginia on Michael Graham.

Michelle Malkin blogged Meanwhile, Brent Bozell helpfully reminds us that ABC News apparently had no objection to George Stephanopoulos' description of Jesse Helms as a "terrorist"
Of course not. George served in the Clinton Administration, and hence he knows the secret handshake, and hence can say anything he wants to about conservatives.
on This Week in 1997:
Sam Donaldson: "I think Governor Weld has done this country a service in a sense, even though I think that he's been shot down in the ocean now, and that is by allowing the country to see Senator Helms in action. Over the years I've run into him two or three times at receptions here and he's the most gentlemanly, courtly, friendly, pleasant individual you would ever hope to meet. But, when you see him in action, you see beneath that courtliness beats the heart of a dictator and I think the country is appalled."

George Stephanopoulos: "Or a terrorist. The President is really, I think made a mistake because he's been negotiating with a terrorist here."

--Exchange on ABC's This Week, September 14, 1997

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Thursday, August 25

This Day In History

  • 1718   Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans.
  • 1825   Uruguay declared its independence from Brazil.
  • 1875   Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.
  • 1902   The first Arabic daily newspaper in the U.S., "Al-Hoda", began publication in New York City.
  • 1916   The National Park Service was established within the Department of the Interior.
  • 1920   Ethelda Bleibtrey became the first woman to win an event for the United States in Olympic competition. She won the 100-meter freestyle swimming competition at Antwerp, Belgium.
  • 1920   The first airplane to fly from New York to Alaska arrived in Nome on this day.
  • 1921   The United States signed a peace treaty with Germany.
  • 1932   Charles H. Calhoun, Sr. shot a hole in one on the third hole of the Washington, GA golf course. “Yeah, so?” Well, just moments later, Mr. Calhoun’s son, Charles Jr., playing in the same foursome, repeated the feat with an identical ace!
  • 1939   Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter, the leader of Murder, Incorporated, gave himself up to columnist Walter Winchell in New York City. Winchell turned the underworld leader over to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
  • 1943   U.S. forces overran New Georgia in the Solomon Islands during World War II.
  • 1950   President Harry S. Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
  • 1975   The album ''Born to Run'' by Bruce Springsteen was released.
  • 1981   The U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet.
  • 1984   Author Truman Capote was found dead at age 59.
  • 1985   Samantha Smith, the schoolgirl whose letter to Yuri V. Andropov resulted in her peace tour of the Soviet Union, was killed with her father in an airplane crash in Maine.
  • 1989   Pete Rose, baseball's all-time hits leader, was out   of baseball (banned for life). Rose signed a five-page agreement with A. Bartlett Giamatti, comissioner of baseball, who charged that Rose, as Cincinnati Reds manager, bet on baseball games.
  • 1991   The day the Soviet Union began to break apart, and Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist party. (He resigned the presidency of the Soviet Union on Dec 25, 1991).
  • 1991   The Russian Communist party issued a declaration of full independence for Belarus, the Soviet state that had declared its independence on July 27, 1991. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine formed the Commonwealth of Independent States to coordinate economic activities, defence and foreign relations.
  • 1992   One of the worst natural disasters to hit the United States occurred on this day as Hurricane Andrew crashed into southern Florida. Andrew left a trail of destruction that killed at least 20 people, left over 50,000 without homes and caused billions of dollars in property damage.
  • 1995   Microsoft officially rolled out their Windows 95 operating system. Midnight parties at retailers across the U.S. offered the new system for sale to those who just couldn’t wait any longer. NBC’s Jay Leno hosted the official launch party at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. The company lit up the Empire State Building with the Windows 95 logo colors, and licensed the Rolling Stones song, "Start Me Up", to use in its TV advertisements (for $12 million).
  • 1996   Tiger Woods won his third U.S. Amateur Championship in a row. Steve Scott, a 19-year-old from the University of Florida, led from the third hole all the way to the next-to-the-last hole of the 36-hole final and lost on the second playoff hole. Woods is the only golfer to win three U.S. Amateurs in succession.
  • 1997   The tobacco industry agreed to an $11.3 billion settlement with the state of Florida.
  • 1998   Retired Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell died at age 90.
  • 2001   R&B singer Aaliyah was killed with eight others in a plane crash in the Bahamas at age 22.
  • 2003   Tennis champion Pete Sampras announced his retirement during a news conference at the U.S. Open in New York.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1819   Allan Pinkerton (created first private detective agency [1850], making him first private eye; hired by Abraham Lincoln as first Secret Service officer [foiled first attempt on Lincoln’s life]; died July 1, 1884)
  • 1850   Charles Richet (Nobel Prize-winning physiologist [for his work on anaphylaxis: 1913]; died Dec 4, 1935)
  • 1900   Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (Nobel Prize-winning biochemist [for his discovery of co-enzyme A and its importance for intermediary metabolism: 1953]; died in 1981)
  • 1913   Bob Crosby (bandleader)
  • 1913   Don DeFore (actor: Hazel, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Jumping Jacks, My Friend Irma, The Stork Club; died Dec 22, 1993)
  • 1913   Walt Kelly (cartoonist: Pogo; animator: Fantasia [1940], The Reluctant Dragon [1941]; died Oct 19, 1973)
  • 1918   Leonard Bernstein (conductor: New York Philharmonic Orchestra; composer: West Side Story, On the Town, My Sister Eileen, On the Waterfront, Jeremiah, The Age of Anxiety, Kaddish, Chichester Psalms, Mass, Songfest; died Oct 14, 1990)
  • 1918   Richard Greene (actor)
  • 1919   George Wallace (Governor of Alabama; candidate for U.S. President: paralyzed by gunshot wounds as subject of assassination attempt [1972]; died Sep 13, 1998)
  • 1921   Monty Hall (Halparin) (TV host: Let’s Make a Deal, Keep Talking, NBC Comedy Playhouse)
  • 1925   Donald O’Connor (dancer, singer, actor: Singin’ in the Rain, Francis the Talking Mule series, The Donald O’Connor Show, Call Me Madam, Walking My Baby Back Home, There’s No Business Like Show Business, The Buster Keaton Story, Toys, Out to Sea; died Sep 27, 2003)
  • 1930   Sir Sean Connery (Academy Award-winning actor: The Untouchables [1987]; The Rock, First Knight, The Hunt for Red October, Highlander, Rising Sun, Outland, The Longest Day, Dragonheart, Entrapment; “Bond. James Bond.”: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever)
  • 1961   Billy Ray Cyrus (singer: Achy Breaky Heart)
  • 1970   Claudia Schiffer (supermodel; actress)

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Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Radical Muslims told to leave Australia

Yahoo! News reported Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law have been told to get out of Australia. A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television.

That makes a lot of sense. If Muslims are foolish enough to want to live under Sharia law, there are countries they can go to where they will find exactly what they are looking for.
"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. "If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practises it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked move to the other country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off". "Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off," he said. Muslim schools will have to denounce terrorism as part of an effort to stamp out home-grown extremism under measures announced after Howard's meeting with 14 Islamic leaders Tuesday.
Glad to see it. We should do it here, and other European countries should do the same.
The prime minister called the meeting in the wake of last month's London bombings by British-born Muslims, amid fears that Australia could be the target of a similar attack by disaffected members of its small Muslim community. "The purpose of the meeting was to identify ways of preventing the emergence of any terrorist behaviour in this country," Howard told commercial radio Wednesday. "You won't change the minds of people who are hardened fanatics and hardened extremists. You have to identify them and take measures to ensure that they don't become a problem." Asked if he was prepared to "get inside" mosques and schools to ensure there was no support for terrorism, Howard said: "Yes, to the extent necessary".

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