October 10, 2005 Issue
The American Conservative
Christopher Hitchens, an unreconstructed Bolshevik, finds his natural home on the pro-war Right.
There is no denying Christopher Hitchens’s skill as a public figure: he is seldom at a loss for words, sometimes entertaining, and occasionally even right. But he keeps getting important things wrong because, throughout his political wanderings, there persists a strange loyalty to an obscure bloodthirsty revolutionary and to the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution. For Hitchens—now honored throughout the neoconservative Right—remains what he has been throughout his public life, a disciple of Leon Trotsky and a talented writer and polemicist—perhaps the most talented polemicist the Bolshevik tradition has produced in the West.
Given Hitchens’s current role as a neocon fellow traveler, it is instructive (not to mention fun) to recall with whom he used to travel. When the United States was locked in a mortal struggle with Soviet Communism, Hitchens was at best AWOL, at worst pulling for the other team. From his safe post at The New Statesman and later The Nation, Hitchens opposed every effort to defeat Communism—including the defense of South Vietnam, the deployment of cruise missiles and Pershing missiles in Europe, the invasion of Grenada, American support for the Contras, and Reagan’s military buildup. Hitchens can be sensitive about his past—he is quite angry with his brother Peter for letting us know that Christopher used to joke about not caring “if the Red Army waters its horses in Hendon”—but there can be no doubt where Hitchens stood during the Cold War. He was faithfully following Leon Trotsky, who wrote in 1939, “the defense of the USSR coincides for us with the preparation of world revolution.”
Rather than worrying about Soviet Communism, Hitchens spent his Nation years fighting against what he called “a regime of crime and corruption in the White House. ... necessitated by a war on revolution overseas and on democracy at home.” This description—typical of Hitchens’s invective against Ronald Reagan—was contained in a fawning letter to “Comrade Ramirez,” a functionary of the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua. Hitchens unbosomed that, far from hoping for an American victory in the Cold War, he was hoping for a “socialist renewal in the Soviet Union.” Hitchens also told his friend in Managua, “It is quite likely that historians will record this unhappy period not as an age of Reagan at all, but as a footnote to the age of Mikhail Gorbachev.”
Elsewhere, Hitchens turned out lines worthy of Soviet Life, such as this observation from a pre-invasion visit to the budding Communist dictatorship in Grenada: “The general enthusiasm, the internationalism and the determination of the Grenadan people is an inspiring thing to witness.”
Then there was the column Hitchens wrote in 1982, blasting anti-Communists for talking about “appeasement” and “Finlandization.” In the midst of Hitchens’s long-winded explanation of why these were “bogus ideological words” and their use was “an insult—and not only to Finland,” comes a plangent reminder of the place Hitchens was happy to call home during the Cold War: an advertisement enticing readers to “spend Your Vacation with The Nation and Cruise Up the Volga.” The CPUSA was not listed as a sponsor, but that would probably have been redundant for a trip also sponsored by the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
More insight into Hitchens’s long love affair with Bolshevism came with the publication in 2002 of his close friend Martin Amis’s Koba the Dread, a masterful account of the mass murder with which the Bolsheviks busied themselves after seizing power in October 1917. Hitchens told Amis, “Lenin was ... a great man” and implored him not to “fall for moral equivalence.” What Hitchens warned against was not viewing the West as equivalent to the USSR (a view generally attacked at The Nation only by those asserting straightforward Soviet superiority), but a belief that Soviet Communism could legitimately be compared to its (slightly less) murderous rival, Nazism.
It is true that, even as Trotsky had criticized Stalin, Hitchens felt free to criticize the USSR occasionally at The Nation—though generally without the venom reserved for the “Christian bigots” and “thwarted militarists” Hitchens saw in the “Reagan junta,” the “fascists” allied with the United States against Communism, and such obvious evildoers as Mother Teresa. But Hitchens, still following Trotsky, generally coupled these criticisms with attacks on the West or on anti-Communists, as in a 1986 piece on Chernobyl, where he devoted almost all his space to describing “two cases of potential and actual nuclear irradiation that were visited on unsuspecting peoples by NATO governments.” And after Solidarity had been outlawed and Lech Walesa imprisoned, Hitchens participated in a Nation forum on Communism and Poland in which—to his credit—he wrote that it was legitimate to defend the “Polish workers movement,” but also fretted about “the Manichaean anti-Communism of the bad old days,” wished that Walesa had denounced Pinochet, and rebuked Susan Sontag for saying that Communism was akin to fascism and that the reliably anti-Communist Readers’ Digest had done a better job of informing its readers of the realities of Communism than had The Nation or The New Statesman—coincidentally (or not) Hitchens’s journalistic homes during the Cold War.
Hitchens also asserted that most of the Left did not have a problem with Poland, ignoring the fatuousness of the other contributors to the forum and his own magazine, which wanted to “transcend the hand-wringing platitudes of the Reagan Administration and to create some distance between radical Americans and the evident hypocrisy of ‘Let Poland Be Poland.’”
Hitchens, too, had distinct limits to his sympathy for the Poles: the next time Hitchens managed to write about Poland in The Nation, in January 1983, it was to mock the Poles, including John Paul II and Lech Walesa, for their religious beliefs. While the world watched the courage of Catholic Poland with admiration, Hitchens sneered. There is a reason streets in Poland are being named after Ronald Reagan and not writers for The Nation.
Hitchens has never apologized for his Trotskyism. As he told British writer Johann Hari in October 2004, “I don’t regret anything. ... [The socialist movement’s] achievements were real, and I’m glad I was a part of it.” And in the July/August 2004 issue of The Atlantic, Hitchens wrote a hagiographic essay about a figure whom he claimed “always was … a prophetic moralist.” Hitchens was not writing about Mother Teresa or John Paul II, but about Leon Trotsky—a man who was an active participant in and apologist for Lenin’s Red Terror, the inventor of the “blocking units” that would gun down Russian troops foolish enough to defy the commissars by retreating, and the author of such witty aphorisms as “We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life.”
Hitchens also took Amis to task for Koba the Dread in The Atlantic, criticizing him for suggesting the dreaded moral equivalence between the Nazis and the Communists and for wondering if the right side won the Russian Civil War. Hitchens’s dogged determination to defend Lenin shows that he is, at heart, as intense a believer as any radical Islamist. After all, it was one thing to believe in 1917 that the Bolsheviks might be better than the Romanovs; it is quite another to believe that still today, tens of millions of corpses later.
Amis had also made the mistake, in a letter to Hitchens, of urging his friend to turn his back on Trotsky because Hitchens’s “prophetic moralist” was really a “nun-killer.” Amis should have realized that an appeal based on sympathy for nuns was hardly the way to his friend’s heart, and Hitchens responded by mocking Amis for having a “special horror of Bolshevik anti-clericalism.” What Amis has a “special horror of” is eloquently described in his book: a regime that killed 2,691 priests, 1,962 monks, and 3,447 nuns of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922 alone. None of this bloodshed bothers Hitchens, who has recently written that “Secularism ... only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state.” Since the American Revolution did not produce a single executed clergyman, Hitchens is here singing the praises of the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks.
Indeed, nothing shows Hitchens’s continuing fidelity to the Bolshevik ideal more than his hatred for religion. He told the Guardian on May 31, 2005, “I can’t stand anyone who believes in God, who invokes the divinity ... I mean, that to me is a horrible, repulsive thing.” But Hitchens is by no means equal in his contempt for religions. He has written favorably of Judaism and described Islam as having been a “civilizing and creative force in many societies.” Hitchens has no such kind words for Christianity, especially as manifested in the Roman Catholic Church. This is hardly surprising: the Roman Catholic Church was Bolshevism’s most consistent and successful adversary, beginning with the 1920 defense of Warsaw from Trotsky’s Red Army, when the future Pius XI, in Norman Davies’s words, “stood on the ramparts of Radzymin and cursed the advancing hordes of Antichrist in person” and the Polish Army—dismissed by Trotsky as being “steeped in priests’ lies”—prevented the Red Army from watering its horses anywhere near Hendon.
A straightforward description of all Hitchens’s anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine—he recently argued, in essence, that Judge Roberts should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court because he is Catholic—but his most disgusting, and revealing, anti-Catholic spasm was his reaction to the death of John Paul II, a man he dismissed as “an elderly and querulous celibate, who came too late and who stayed too long.”
Speaking ill of the dead is a Hitchens trademark, with Mother Teresa, Bob Hope, and Ronald Reagan—whom Hitchens described as “dumb as a stump” and a “cruel and stupid lizard”—each rating a bilious sendoff. But John Paul II rated two. Hitchens blamed the pope for such wide-ranging evils as the “enslavement of the Middle East” and “the millions who will die needlessly from AIDS,” a disease whose sexual transmission would cease if Catholic teaching were followed. Hitchens also blasted John Paul for harboring Cardinal Law from justice, ignoring the fact that Cardinal Law was never convicted of any crime or even indicted because, as the prosecutor told the Boston Globe, “there was no intent that we have found to assist in any way in criminal acts.”
Hitchens also criticized the pope for opposing the First Gulf War, writing, “I have never read any deployment of Augustinian argument ... that would not qualify it as a just war.” Yet at the time, Hitchens denounced the First Gulf War as a “contrived war” of “discreditable origins,” blamed the United States for “the infliction of a Dresden on the Iraqi people,” and looked forward to “fresh Augustinian tautologies from our churchmen about proportionality in a just war.”
But the most repellent aspect of Hitchens’s diatribes was the sly way he sought to minimize John Paul’s role in the transformation of Eastern Europe, implying that the credit belonged to “the Polish workers” and “Warsaw’s dissident intellectuals … who thought of Cardinal Glemp … as one of their main enemies.” The reality of Poland is deeply embarrassing to someone who views the world as Hitchens does, which is why he indulges in fantasies about nameless “workers” and secular intellectuals battling evil Catholics.
The bare facts are these: the institution in Poland that gave dissidents, even secular intellectuals, the civic space to operate during the years of Soviet rule was the Catholic Church. The “Polish workers” who began the revolt that ended up toppling the Soviet Union were the workers at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, who during their historic strike decorated the main gate of the shipyard with precisely two pictures—one of John Paul II, one of Our Lady of Czestochowa. (Leon Trotsky was nowhere in sight.) The leader of those workers was Lech Walesa, who posed in his first photograph after the strike under a crucifix, who afterwards customarily wore an icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa on his lapel, who signed the Gdansk agreement ending the strike with a souvenir pen bearing the likeness of John Paul II, and who left his Nobel Peace Prize as a votive offering at the Jasna Gora monastery where the famous icon of Our Lady is found. All of these symbolic gestures were carefully considered and show the profoundly Catholic nature of the peaceful Polish revolt that ended up discrediting Bolshevism in both its Stalinist and Trotskyist variants. Regardless of their views on other issues, Poles credit John Paul’s epochal 1979 visit with inspiring all that followed. Indeed, the dissident publication Robotnik—– associated with the sort of intellectuals Hitchens wants to credit instead of the pope—wrote the epitaph for Soviet Communism just 10 days after John Paul’s triumphant Mass in Krakow before the largest gathering in Polish history, in words that Hitchens would never write, or even acknowledge having been written: “Pathetically silent was the ideology created without God and against God.”
So where does this lover of Trotsky and hater of God, this despiser of religion and tradition and devotee of “permanent revolution,” this anti-Catholic bigot and reviler of Reagan and John Paul, now find an ideological home? Among the neoconservatives, naturally. As Hitchens told Johann Hari in the same interview where he said “I don’t regret anything,” he admires Paul Wolfowitz, whom he described as a “real bleeding heart.” According to Hari, Hitchens sees neoconservatism as a “distinctively new strain of thought, preached by ex-leftists, who believed in using US power to spread democracy.” Hari also wrote that Hitchens believes that if neoconservatism “can become dominant within the Republican Party, it can turn US power into a revolutionary force.” Barry Didcock came to a similar conclusion in the June 5, 2005 Sunday Herald after interviewing Hitchens: “The way Hitchens tells it, he began to realize, as the 1990s wore on, that US force could and should be used to fight what he saw as the forces of fascism.” Hitchens still wants world revolution; the only difference is that now he sees us Americans as perfectly placed to do the fighting and the dying needed to achieve his Trotskyist dream.
As both the Hari and Didcock interviews make clear, Hitchens was able to overcome his past squeamishness about American military force not because America is threatened, but because the threat now comes from men who believe in Allah rather than Marx. Didcock notes, “the origins of [Hitchens’s] position lie in his long-held distaste for religion,” and Hitchens told Hari, “The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represent all the most reactionary elements on earth. ... However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this.”
Hitchens also wrote—in the same column in which he extolled the priest-killing potency of the French and Russian Revolutions—that “George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the US armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled.” Hitchens’s entire politics is motivated by his hatred of religion and tradition; he’d be just as happy bombing St. Peter’s as the Taliban.
Needless to say, Hitchens’s views have nothing to do with American conservatism or even American patriotism, which sees America as a real country and a real place, not as a template onto which foreigners project their ideological fantasies. None of the Founders wanted to use American power to bring about world revolution, nor did they believe in wasting American blood and treasure in grandiose ideological crusades. Neither did Ronald Reagan. While effusive in his praise for the neocons, Hitchens told Hari that he would never join “the Buchanan-Reagan right.”
For their part, the neocons have warmly embraced Hitchens. His writing is welcomed at The Weekly Standard, which also gave a glowing review to his latest book, and at FrontPageMag.com, which has given him three sycophantic interviews and describes him as “one of the most prominent political and cultural essayists of our time.” Regulars at National Review Online praise and link to Hitchens’s work, and David Frum has boasted there of his friendship with Hitchens. Recently, Hitchens was even allowed to post in NRO’s Corner to respond to Ramesh Ponnuru’s flaccid criticism of his Catholic-bashing piece on Judge Roberts. (Ponnuru agreed that he found Hitchens’s outbursts on the pope “bracing,” but he drew the line when Hitchens used his anti-Catholicism against the Bush administration.) NRO has hardly been as accommodating to any of the traditional conservatives its writers have smeared.
The irony, of course, is that Hitchens has hardly cast his lot with the “Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom” school of conservatism. The neocons prattle on endlessly about “moral clarity” and display a fondness for ideological purges but have never been anything but indulgent toward Hitchens. They have not criticized his Bolshevism or his hatred of religion. In fact, one of the Hitchens columns Frum praised at NRO described the Catholic Church as “foolish” and Opus Dei as a “sinister cult organization.” Let us not even pause to consider what Frum would have done if some paleoconservative had written a glowing essay describing Rudolf Hess as a “prophetic moralist”: whole forests would need to be felled to print his denunciations of the miscreant.
What the mutual embrace of Hitchens and the neocons tells us is that Hitchens’s assessment of neoconservatism is essentially correct: the regnant force in American conservatism today is warmed-over Trotskyism, which views America merely as the embodiment of the ideology of global revolution. This is, admittedly, a depressing conclusion. But there is hope. Hitchens spent the first half of his ideological career riding a dying horse. He may have just started riding another one.
____________________________________________
Tom Piatak writes from Cleveland, Ohio.
October 10, 2005 Issue
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Mark Steyn: Islamist Way or No Way
The Australian
October 04, 2005
IT'S not just the environmentalists who think globally and act locally. The jihadi who murdered Newcastle woman Jennifer Williamson, Perth teenager Brendan Fitzgerald and a couple of dozen more Australians, Indonesians, Japanese and others had certain things in common with the July 7 London Tube killers. For example, Azahari bin Husin, who police believe may be the bomb-maker behind this weekend's atrocity, completed a doctorate at England's Reading University.
The contribution of the British education system to the jihad is really quite remarkable.
But, on the other hand, despite Clive Williams's game attempt to connect the two on this page yesterday, nobody seriously thinks what happened in Bali has anything to do with Iraq. There are, in the end, no root causes, or anyway not ones that can be negotiated by troop withdrawals or a Palestinian state. There is only a metastasising cancer that preys on whatever local conditions are to hand. Five days before the slaughter in Bali, nine Islamists were arrested in Paris for reportedly plotting to attack the Metro. Must be all those French troops in Iraq, right? So much for the sterling efforts of President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, as the two chief obstructionists of Bush-Blair-Howard neo-con-Zionist warmongering these past three years.
When the suicide bombers self-detonated on Saturday, the travel section of Britain's The Sunday Telegraph had already gone to press, its lead story a feature on how Bali's economy had bounced back from the carnage of 2002. We all want to believe that: one terrorist attack is like a tsunami or hurricane, just one of those things, blows in out of the blue, then the familiar contours of the landscape return. But two attacks are a permanent feature, the way things are and will be for some years, as one by one the bars and hotels and clubs and restaurants shut up shop. Many of the Australians injured this weekend had waited to return to Bali, just to make sure it was "safe". But it isn't, and it won't be for a long time, and by the time it is it won't be the Bali that Westerners flocked to before 2002.
I found myself behind a car in Vermont, in the US, the other day; it had a one-word bumper sticker with the injunction "COEXIST". It's one of those sentiments beloved of Western progressives, one designed principally to flatter their sense of moral superiority. The C was the Islamic crescent, the O was the hippie peace sign, the X was the Star of David and the T was the Christian cross. Very nice, hard to argue with. But the reality is, it's the first of those symbols that has a problem with coexistence. Take the crescent out of the equation and you wouldn't need a bumper sticker at all. Indeed, coexistence is what the Islamists are at war with; or, if you prefer, pluralism, the idea that different groups can rub along together within the same general neighbourhood. There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one's views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact.
"Men of intemperate mind never can be free; their passions forge their fetters," wrote Edmund Burke. And, in that sense, Bali is more symbolic of the Islamofascist strategy than London or Madrid, Beslan or Istanbul. The jihad has held out against some tough enemies: the Israelis in the West Bank, the Russians in Chechnya; these are primal conflicts. But what's the beef in Bali? Oh, to be sure, to the more fastidious Islamist some of those decadent hedonist fornicating Westerners whooping it up are a little offensive. But they'd be offensive whoever they were and whatever they did. It's the reality of a pluralist enclave within the world's largest Muslim nation that offends. It's the coexistence, stupid.
So even Muslims v (your team here) doesn't quite cover it. You don't have to have a team or even be aware that you belong to any side. You can be a hippie-dippy hey-man-I-love-everybody-whatever-your-bag-is-cool backpacking Dutch stoner, and they'll blow you up with as much enthusiasm as if you were Dick Cheney. As a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden put it in 2002, explaining why they bombed a French oil tanker: "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels."
No problem. In our time, even the most fascistic ideologies have been savvy enough to cover their darker impulses in sappy labels. The Soviet bloc was comprised of wall-to-wall "people's republics", which is the precise opposite of what they were: a stylistic audacity Orwell caught perfectly in 1984, with its Ministry of Truth (that is, official lies). But the Islamists don't even bother going through the traditional rhetorical feints. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. "We are here as on a darkling plain ..." wrote Matthew Arnold in the famous concluding lines to Dover Beach, "where ignorant armies clash by night".
But we choose in large part to stay in ignorance. Blow up the London Underground during a G8 summit and the world's leaders twitter about how tragic and ironic it is that this should have happened just as they're taking steps to deal with the issues, as though the terrorists are upset about poverty in Africa and global warming.
So, even in a great blinding flash of clarity, we can't wait to switch the lights off and go back to fumbling around on the darkling plain. Bali three years ago and Bali three days ago light up the sky: they make unavoidable the truth that Islamism is a classic "armed doctrine"; it exists to destroy. The reality of Bali's contribution to Indonesia's economic health is irrelevant. The jihadists would rather that the country be poorer and purer than prosperous and pluralist. For one thing, it's richer soil for them. If the Islamofascists gain formal control of Indonesia, it won't be a parochial, self-absorbed dictatorship such as Suharto's but a launching pad for an Islamic superstate across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Can they pull it off? The reality is that there are more Muslim states than a half-century ago, many more Muslims within non-Muslim states, and many more of those Muslims are radicalised and fundamentalist. It's not hard to understand. All you have to do is take them at their word.
As Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gottingen University in Germany, said in an interesting speech a few months after September 11, "Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms, these mean different things to each of them. The word peace, for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or House of Islam -- to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought. Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar a-Salam, or House of Peace."
That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies inruins.
Mark Steyn, a columnist with the Telegraph Group, is a regular contributor to The Australian's Opinion page.
October 04, 2005
IT'S not just the environmentalists who think globally and act locally. The jihadi who murdered Newcastle woman Jennifer Williamson, Perth teenager Brendan Fitzgerald and a couple of dozen more Australians, Indonesians, Japanese and others had certain things in common with the July 7 London Tube killers. For example, Azahari bin Husin, who police believe may be the bomb-maker behind this weekend's atrocity, completed a doctorate at England's Reading University.
The contribution of the British education system to the jihad is really quite remarkable.
But, on the other hand, despite Clive Williams's game attempt to connect the two on this page yesterday, nobody seriously thinks what happened in Bali has anything to do with Iraq. There are, in the end, no root causes, or anyway not ones that can be negotiated by troop withdrawals or a Palestinian state. There is only a metastasising cancer that preys on whatever local conditions are to hand. Five days before the slaughter in Bali, nine Islamists were arrested in Paris for reportedly plotting to attack the Metro. Must be all those French troops in Iraq, right? So much for the sterling efforts of President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, as the two chief obstructionists of Bush-Blair-Howard neo-con-Zionist warmongering these past three years.
When the suicide bombers self-detonated on Saturday, the travel section of Britain's The Sunday Telegraph had already gone to press, its lead story a feature on how Bali's economy had bounced back from the carnage of 2002. We all want to believe that: one terrorist attack is like a tsunami or hurricane, just one of those things, blows in out of the blue, then the familiar contours of the landscape return. But two attacks are a permanent feature, the way things are and will be for some years, as one by one the bars and hotels and clubs and restaurants shut up shop. Many of the Australians injured this weekend had waited to return to Bali, just to make sure it was "safe". But it isn't, and it won't be for a long time, and by the time it is it won't be the Bali that Westerners flocked to before 2002.
I found myself behind a car in Vermont, in the US, the other day; it had a one-word bumper sticker with the injunction "COEXIST". It's one of those sentiments beloved of Western progressives, one designed principally to flatter their sense of moral superiority. The C was the Islamic crescent, the O was the hippie peace sign, the X was the Star of David and the T was the Christian cross. Very nice, hard to argue with. But the reality is, it's the first of those symbols that has a problem with coexistence. Take the crescent out of the equation and you wouldn't need a bumper sticker at all. Indeed, coexistence is what the Islamists are at war with; or, if you prefer, pluralism, the idea that different groups can rub along together within the same general neighbourhood. There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one's views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact.
"Men of intemperate mind never can be free; their passions forge their fetters," wrote Edmund Burke. And, in that sense, Bali is more symbolic of the Islamofascist strategy than London or Madrid, Beslan or Istanbul. The jihad has held out against some tough enemies: the Israelis in the West Bank, the Russians in Chechnya; these are primal conflicts. But what's the beef in Bali? Oh, to be sure, to the more fastidious Islamist some of those decadent hedonist fornicating Westerners whooping it up are a little offensive. But they'd be offensive whoever they were and whatever they did. It's the reality of a pluralist enclave within the world's largest Muslim nation that offends. It's the coexistence, stupid.
So even Muslims v (your team here) doesn't quite cover it. You don't have to have a team or even be aware that you belong to any side. You can be a hippie-dippy hey-man-I-love-everybody-whatever-your-bag-is-cool backpacking Dutch stoner, and they'll blow you up with as much enthusiasm as if you were Dick Cheney. As a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden put it in 2002, explaining why they bombed a French oil tanker: "We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels."
No problem. In our time, even the most fascistic ideologies have been savvy enough to cover their darker impulses in sappy labels. The Soviet bloc was comprised of wall-to-wall "people's republics", which is the precise opposite of what they were: a stylistic audacity Orwell caught perfectly in 1984, with its Ministry of Truth (that is, official lies). But the Islamists don't even bother going through the traditional rhetorical feints. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. "We are here as on a darkling plain ..." wrote Matthew Arnold in the famous concluding lines to Dover Beach, "where ignorant armies clash by night".
But we choose in large part to stay in ignorance. Blow up the London Underground during a G8 summit and the world's leaders twitter about how tragic and ironic it is that this should have happened just as they're taking steps to deal with the issues, as though the terrorists are upset about poverty in Africa and global warming.
So, even in a great blinding flash of clarity, we can't wait to switch the lights off and go back to fumbling around on the darkling plain. Bali three years ago and Bali three days ago light up the sky: they make unavoidable the truth that Islamism is a classic "armed doctrine"; it exists to destroy. The reality of Bali's contribution to Indonesia's economic health is irrelevant. The jihadists would rather that the country be poorer and purer than prosperous and pluralist. For one thing, it's richer soil for them. If the Islamofascists gain formal control of Indonesia, it won't be a parochial, self-absorbed dictatorship such as Suharto's but a launching pad for an Islamic superstate across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Can they pull it off? The reality is that there are more Muslim states than a half-century ago, many more Muslims within non-Muslim states, and many more of those Muslims are radicalised and fundamentalist. It's not hard to understand. All you have to do is take them at their word.
As Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gottingen University in Germany, said in an interesting speech a few months after September 11, "Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms, these mean different things to each of them. The word peace, for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or House of Islam -- to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought. Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar a-Salam, or House of Peace."
That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies inruins.
Mark Steyn, a columnist with the Telegraph Group, is a regular contributor to The Australian's Opinion page.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Mark Steyn: Media Deserves Blame For New Orleans Debacle
October 2, 2005
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Dan Rather was on ''Larry King Live'' the other night and was asked about the Katrina coverage. Now, say what you like about Dan, but he knows his meteorological phenomena. I've always thought there was something quintessentially American about Dan's hurricane editions of the CBS news -- not the part of the show where he's reporting on the actual hurricane, but the bit where he says "And today's other headlines,'' as if it's the most normal thing in the world to be reading "The Dow closed 19 points down today" while wrapped around a lamppost in your sou'wester with a rusting doublewide flying over your shoulder.
Yet Hurricane Dan professed himself delighted with his successors. "They took us there to the hurricane," he told Larry. "They put the facts in front of us and, very important, they sucked up their guts and talked truth to power."
Er, no. The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff -- and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.
Most of the media are still in Dan mode, sucking up their guts and congratulating themselves about what a swell job they did during Katrina. CNN producers were advising their guests to "be angry," and there was so much to get angry about, not least the fact that no matter how angry you got on air Anderson Cooper was always much better at it. And Mayor Nagin as well. To show he was angry, he said "frickin'" all the frickin' time so that by the end of a typical Nagin soundbite you felt as if you'd been gang-fricked. "That frickin' Superdome," he raged. "Five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
But nobody got killed by a hooligan in the Superdome. The problem wasn't rape and murder, but the rather more prosaic lack of bathroom facilities. As Ben Stein put it, it was the media that rioted. They grabbed every lurid rumor and took it for a wild joyride across prime time. There was a real story in there -- big hurricane, people dead -- but it wasn't enough, and certainly not for damaging President Bush.
Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?
Four years ago, you'll recall, we were bogged down in "the brutal Afghan winter." By "we," I don't mean the military but the media. The line on Afghanistan was that it was the white man's grave. Actually, it was the grave that was white; the man was more of a blueish color thanks to temperatures "so cold that eyelids crust and saliva turns to sludge in the mouth," according to Knight-Ridder's Tom Ifield. "Realistically," reported New York's Daily News, "U.S. forces have a window of two or three weeks before the brutal Afghan winter begins to foreclose options."
Er, no. "Realistically," U.S. forces turned out to have a window of four years, which is how long they've been waiting for the "fast, fast approaching" (ABC's ''Nightline'') brutal Afghan winter to show up. It's Knight-Ridder's news reports that turn to sludge on your lips. The "brutal Afghan winter" is a media fiction.
How many times does this have to happen before the press seriously examines why so many of them get the big stories wrong in exactly the same way? After decades of boasting about "hiring diversity," everybody in America's newsrooms is now so remarkably diverse they all make exactly the same mistakes. Oughtn't that to be just a teensy bit disquieting even to the most blinkered journalism professor?
How appropriate that it should be Dan Rather, always late to yesterday's conventional wisdom, to bless the media's fraudulent coverage of Katrina. Dan was back, along with his dismissed producer Mary Mapes, to defend his fake-memo story from last year. Another interviewer, his former CBS colleague Marvin Kalb, sympathized at the way Rather's terrific story had somehow gotten lost in a lot of tedious quibbling about the fact that the 1970s typewritten memos amazingly used the default font of Microsoft Word: "The focus was not on the substance of your story," complained Marvin to Dan. "The National Guard aspect of the whole thing sort of dropped to the side, and this media focus was on you."
The critics had, as Mary Mapes puts it in her new book, "nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface." To this day, as Dan likes to moan, the White House is still refusing to address the substance of the story.
There's a reason for that. If I say "King Zog of Albania today launched a blistering critique of the CBS News Division," and you point out that King Zog of Albania died in 1961, that's it -- it's over.
Doesn't matter how blistering the critique is. And that goes for the hurricane, too. You can't indict Bush for failing to respond when you've spent the previous week demanding he respond to fake crises -- mass murder, mass child rape, five-figure body counts.
Oh, well. Even at CNN, hurricane fever can't last forever. According to the headline writers at the network's Web site on Thursday:
"Bush Narrows Supreme Court List: Judges, Lawyers Being Considered, Analysts Say."
Well, those "analysts" lent a devastating blow to those of us who thought the president would push the envelope, think outside the box and appoint a busboy or exotic dancer. But no. After two centuries of the same-old same-old, it's still "judges, lawyers being considered." But it's good to know the media are reverting to ponderous statements of the obvious after a wild and wacky couple of weeks' worth of statements of the obviously wrong.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Dan Rather was on ''Larry King Live'' the other night and was asked about the Katrina coverage. Now, say what you like about Dan, but he knows his meteorological phenomena. I've always thought there was something quintessentially American about Dan's hurricane editions of the CBS news -- not the part of the show where he's reporting on the actual hurricane, but the bit where he says "And today's other headlines,'' as if it's the most normal thing in the world to be reading "The Dow closed 19 points down today" while wrapped around a lamppost in your sou'wester with a rusting doublewide flying over your shoulder.
Yet Hurricane Dan professed himself delighted with his successors. "They took us there to the hurricane," he told Larry. "They put the facts in front of us and, very important, they sucked up their guts and talked truth to power."
Er, no. The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn't talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans' Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they'd been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff -- and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.
Most of the media are still in Dan mode, sucking up their guts and congratulating themselves about what a swell job they did during Katrina. CNN producers were advising their guests to "be angry," and there was so much to get angry about, not least the fact that no matter how angry you got on air Anderson Cooper was always much better at it. And Mayor Nagin as well. To show he was angry, he said "frickin'" all the frickin' time so that by the end of a typical Nagin soundbite you felt as if you'd been gang-fricked. "That frickin' Superdome," he raged. "Five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
But nobody got killed by a hooligan in the Superdome. The problem wasn't rape and murder, but the rather more prosaic lack of bathroom facilities. As Ben Stein put it, it was the media that rioted. They grabbed every lurid rumor and took it for a wild joyride across prime time. There was a real story in there -- big hurricane, people dead -- but it wasn't enough, and certainly not for damaging President Bush.
Think about that: Hurricane week was in large part a week of drivel, mostly the bizarre fantasies of New Orleans' incompetent police chief but amplified hugely by a gullible media. Given everything we now know they got wrong in Louisiana, where they speak the language, how likely is it that the great blundering herd are getting it any more accurate in Iraq?
Four years ago, you'll recall, we were bogged down in "the brutal Afghan winter." By "we," I don't mean the military but the media. The line on Afghanistan was that it was the white man's grave. Actually, it was the grave that was white; the man was more of a blueish color thanks to temperatures "so cold that eyelids crust and saliva turns to sludge in the mouth," according to Knight-Ridder's Tom Ifield. "Realistically," reported New York's Daily News, "U.S. forces have a window of two or three weeks before the brutal Afghan winter begins to foreclose options."
Er, no. "Realistically," U.S. forces turned out to have a window of four years, which is how long they've been waiting for the "fast, fast approaching" (ABC's ''Nightline'') brutal Afghan winter to show up. It's Knight-Ridder's news reports that turn to sludge on your lips. The "brutal Afghan winter" is a media fiction.
How many times does this have to happen before the press seriously examines why so many of them get the big stories wrong in exactly the same way? After decades of boasting about "hiring diversity," everybody in America's newsrooms is now so remarkably diverse they all make exactly the same mistakes. Oughtn't that to be just a teensy bit disquieting even to the most blinkered journalism professor?
How appropriate that it should be Dan Rather, always late to yesterday's conventional wisdom, to bless the media's fraudulent coverage of Katrina. Dan was back, along with his dismissed producer Mary Mapes, to defend his fake-memo story from last year. Another interviewer, his former CBS colleague Marvin Kalb, sympathized at the way Rather's terrific story had somehow gotten lost in a lot of tedious quibbling about the fact that the 1970s typewritten memos amazingly used the default font of Microsoft Word: "The focus was not on the substance of your story," complained Marvin to Dan. "The National Guard aspect of the whole thing sort of dropped to the side, and this media focus was on you."
The critics had, as Mary Mapes puts it in her new book, "nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface." To this day, as Dan likes to moan, the White House is still refusing to address the substance of the story.
There's a reason for that. If I say "King Zog of Albania today launched a blistering critique of the CBS News Division," and you point out that King Zog of Albania died in 1961, that's it -- it's over.
Doesn't matter how blistering the critique is. And that goes for the hurricane, too. You can't indict Bush for failing to respond when you've spent the previous week demanding he respond to fake crises -- mass murder, mass child rape, five-figure body counts.
Oh, well. Even at CNN, hurricane fever can't last forever. According to the headline writers at the network's Web site on Thursday:
"Bush Narrows Supreme Court List: Judges, Lawyers Being Considered, Analysts Say."
Well, those "analysts" lent a devastating blow to those of us who thought the president would push the envelope, think outside the box and appoint a busboy or exotic dancer. But no. After two centuries of the same-old same-old, it's still "judges, lawyers being considered." But it's good to know the media are reverting to ponderous statements of the obvious after a wild and wacky couple of weeks' worth of statements of the obviously wrong.
Pat Buchanan: The GOP's Broken Hammer
October 2, 2005
The photo on page 3 of The Washington Times was a metaphor for the Bush administration and the Republican Party.
It is a shot of the most powerful vice president in history, hunched over, gazing down, as he slowly mounts the steps of the White House, with the aid of a cane. But where Dick Cheney is recuperating smoothly from knee surgery, the administration appears in need of resuscitation.
The words of Claudius again come to mind: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."
The charge by District Attorney Ronnie Earle of Travis County, Texas, that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay engaged in a "criminal conspiracy" may be a shot in the back from a partisan prosecutor. But that does not alter history.
Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican in Congress, is the first House leader in a century to be indicted. And given The Hammer's previous problems -- three citations from the House ethics committee and reports of miles of first-class travel courtesy of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- it is hard to see how DeLay recovers his luster or his power.
This same week, the ranking Senate Republican, Majority Leader Bill Frist, came under SEC investigation for his fortuitous sale, out of his blind trust, of his block of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, days before the shares sank on news of a bad earnings report. Frist claims he sold the stock to clear his portfolio of any potential conflict of interest, should he declare for president. But other Frist family members, who are presumably not declaring for higher office, also appear to have dumped HCA shares.
The Frist case is a simple but deadly serious one. Did he and his family, as insiders, use privileged information to unload their HCA shares on an unsuspecting public that took a bath when the HCA stock tanked?
Frist denies it. Thus, his integrity, credibility and career are all on the line. He will need a clean bill of health from U.S. investigators to remain viable as a presidential candidate. And even a clean bill of health will not stop cynical snickers that, by divine intervention, Frist's blind trust miraculously recovered its sight -- just in time to save him a small fortune.
A bedeviled Bush did not need this grief. His own White House already has ethics clouds swirling above: the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert asset; the procurement chief at the White House, David Safavian, having just been collared in a land deal involving Abramoff; and charges of cronyism in naming "Brownie" and the boys to run FEMA.
Now, we learn that Ms. Julie Myers, 36, niece of Gen. Myers and currently betrothed to the chief of staff to Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff, is to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is housed inside Homeland Security. All in the family.
Ethics clouds, cronyism, nepotism aside, Bush's approval is at 40 percent. Social Security reform seems dead. Disapproval of Bush as a war leader is now two-to-one, and half the nation believes Iraq to have been a mistake and we ought to get out.
Pile on top of this the daily beating the president gets for Katrina, gas prices at $3.00 a gallon, Americans about to get the first bills for home heating oil, consumer confidence plunging to a two-year low, Bush's refusal to deal with the border crisis and a GOP rebellion over spending, and you have the ingredients of a party uprising and a political tsunami in 2006.
All the news is not bad. The nomination of John Roberts as chief justice could, if supported by one or two more conservative jurists, be a crown jewel in the Bush legacy. And though Rita and Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, threw the budget back into deep deficit and may knock a point off of GDP, tax revenues have been soaring at record rates.
Nor is Bush alone in encountering second-term turbulence. Nixon had Watergate. Carter did not get a second term. Reagan was knocked off stride by Iran-Contra. Bush I did not get a second term. Clinton got impeached. Yet, no taint of personal scandal has directly touched this president.
Moreover, if the Republican Party looks like the New York Yankees in disarray, the Democrats look like they have a mortal lock on the league cellar. On the war, the economy, the Supreme Court, they have nothing to offer but negativity.
The left seems to be as unhappy with its leaders as the right is becoming, and there is no third party out there, and no primaries in which to pick new leaders for two-and-a-half years.
Houston, we have a problem.
Copyright 2005 Creators Syndicate
The photo on page 3 of The Washington Times was a metaphor for the Bush administration and the Republican Party.
It is a shot of the most powerful vice president in history, hunched over, gazing down, as he slowly mounts the steps of the White House, with the aid of a cane. But where Dick Cheney is recuperating smoothly from knee surgery, the administration appears in need of resuscitation.
The words of Claudius again come to mind: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."
The charge by District Attorney Ronnie Earle of Travis County, Texas, that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay engaged in a "criminal conspiracy" may be a shot in the back from a partisan prosecutor. But that does not alter history.
Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican in Congress, is the first House leader in a century to be indicted. And given The Hammer's previous problems -- three citations from the House ethics committee and reports of miles of first-class travel courtesy of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- it is hard to see how DeLay recovers his luster or his power.
This same week, the ranking Senate Republican, Majority Leader Bill Frist, came under SEC investigation for his fortuitous sale, out of his blind trust, of his block of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, days before the shares sank on news of a bad earnings report. Frist claims he sold the stock to clear his portfolio of any potential conflict of interest, should he declare for president. But other Frist family members, who are presumably not declaring for higher office, also appear to have dumped HCA shares.
The Frist case is a simple but deadly serious one. Did he and his family, as insiders, use privileged information to unload their HCA shares on an unsuspecting public that took a bath when the HCA stock tanked?
Frist denies it. Thus, his integrity, credibility and career are all on the line. He will need a clean bill of health from U.S. investigators to remain viable as a presidential candidate. And even a clean bill of health will not stop cynical snickers that, by divine intervention, Frist's blind trust miraculously recovered its sight -- just in time to save him a small fortune.
A bedeviled Bush did not need this grief. His own White House already has ethics clouds swirling above: the investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert asset; the procurement chief at the White House, David Safavian, having just been collared in a land deal involving Abramoff; and charges of cronyism in naming "Brownie" and the boys to run FEMA.
Now, we learn that Ms. Julie Myers, 36, niece of Gen. Myers and currently betrothed to the chief of staff to Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff, is to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is housed inside Homeland Security. All in the family.
Ethics clouds, cronyism, nepotism aside, Bush's approval is at 40 percent. Social Security reform seems dead. Disapproval of Bush as a war leader is now two-to-one, and half the nation believes Iraq to have been a mistake and we ought to get out.
Pile on top of this the daily beating the president gets for Katrina, gas prices at $3.00 a gallon, Americans about to get the first bills for home heating oil, consumer confidence plunging to a two-year low, Bush's refusal to deal with the border crisis and a GOP rebellion over spending, and you have the ingredients of a party uprising and a political tsunami in 2006.
All the news is not bad. The nomination of John Roberts as chief justice could, if supported by one or two more conservative jurists, be a crown jewel in the Bush legacy. And though Rita and Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, threw the budget back into deep deficit and may knock a point off of GDP, tax revenues have been soaring at record rates.
Nor is Bush alone in encountering second-term turbulence. Nixon had Watergate. Carter did not get a second term. Reagan was knocked off stride by Iran-Contra. Bush I did not get a second term. Clinton got impeached. Yet, no taint of personal scandal has directly touched this president.
Moreover, if the Republican Party looks like the New York Yankees in disarray, the Democrats look like they have a mortal lock on the league cellar. On the war, the economy, the Supreme Court, they have nothing to offer but negativity.
The left seems to be as unhappy with its leaders as the right is becoming, and there is no third party out there, and no primaries in which to pick new leaders for two-and-a-half years.
Houston, we have a problem.
Copyright 2005 Creators Syndicate
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Bob Smizik: Bad Sports When Boys Play Against Girls
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This startling piece of news was revealed in these very pages last week: In Pennsylvania high schools, boys are eligible to participate in any girls' sport they choose.
It previously had been believed boys could participate in girls' sports only when that particular sport was not offered to boys at their school.
Not so. The doors are wide open for macho young men who wish to test their athletic prowess against girls.
There might be any number of boys out there who feel the need to compete against opponents that, generally speaking, are smaller, slower and weaker than them. There also might be some boys -- teens being what they are -- who just might think it's a kick to go out en masse and perhaps take over a girls' team.
It's perfectly legal. And perfectly ridiculous.
Five years ago I witnessed such an athletic event. The Woodland Hills girls' field hockey team used four boys in a game against Fox Chapel. Woodland Hills did not have a boys' field hockey team. Two of Woodland Hills' boys -- actually, they were young men -- looked more like they belonged on the football team.
It was disgusting sight, and I'm not talking about the boys competing in kilts. I'm talking about the coach of the Woodland Hills team allowing this to happen. I'm talking about the principal of Woodland Hills not heading this off before it became an issue. I'm talking about the PIAA and WPIAL sticking their heads in the sand and ignoring the issue because of the specter of a costly and possibly losing court battle.
These are the people who are supposed to be watching out for our children. If they are allowing boys to compete against girls and merely shaking their head in dismay, they're not doing their job.
Girls should not have to compete against boys. It is the epitome of unfairness and goes against everything athletic competition stands for.
Of course, there will be yahoos out there insisting if girls can play on boys' teams, then boys have a right to play on girls' teams. That's not even apples and oranges; that's apples and meatloaf.
Does this make sense?
If freshmen are eligible to play on the varsity -- and they are -- should seniors be eligible to play on the freshman team?
Of course, they shouldn't. Seniors would have an unfair advantage in any number of areas over freshmen. Just as boys have any number of advantages -- speed, size, strength -- over girls.
Girls who are athletic enough to compete on a boys' team should be congratulated, much the same as a freshman who can make the varsity. Boys who compete on girls' teams should be condemned, much the same as a senior wishing to compete against freshmen.
High schools should do everything possible to discourage boys from competing against girls and that means taking the issue to court if necessary.
That's what the Ann Arbor, Mich., school district is doing. It's a school district that puts fairness and safety in front of political correctness.
Maxime Goovaerts is 13. He's 5-foot, about 100 pounds and a native of Belgium. He wanted to go out for his middle school girls' field hockey team. The school district said no. When the Goovaerts family threatened a lawsuit, the Ann Arbor School District didn't back down. The matter went to court last week.
George Fornero, the superintendent of the Ann Arbor schools, said: "We're pretty strong in our position that this is a girls' sport. We don't want to get in a situation where we take up slots with boys for girls' teams or the boys physically dominate the girls out there."
This is an administrator with a backbone.
Too bad two Western Pennsylvania school districts didn't have similar gumption.
Pietro Pezzella, a 5-8, 140-pound senior, is a member of the New Brighton girls' volleyball team. Josh King, a 6-5, 175-pound senior, is a member of the Southmoreland girls' volleyball team.
Both of these school districts abdicated their responsibility. Sure, there's no boys' volleyball teams at those schools. So what. Let these aspiring athletes try another sport if the competitive urge is so great in them.
They should not be allowed to compete against girls. This isn't just a fairness issue. It's a safety issue.
In 1999, a Fox Chapel player was sent to the hospital twice in boy-involved injuries with Woodland Hills, which, by the way, has boys on its field hockey team again this season.
No one wants to take on this issue. The schools defer to the WPIAL. The WPIAL defers to the PIAA. The PIAA looks to the courts and doesn't want the expense of a lawsuit.
One of the most positive things happening in athletics in the past 30 years is the way girls and women have been given a chance to compete, just as men have for decades before that. Bully boys and weak-kneed educators should not be allowed to undo this remarkable achievement.
(Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This startling piece of news was revealed in these very pages last week: In Pennsylvania high schools, boys are eligible to participate in any girls' sport they choose.
It previously had been believed boys could participate in girls' sports only when that particular sport was not offered to boys at their school.
Not so. The doors are wide open for macho young men who wish to test their athletic prowess against girls.
There might be any number of boys out there who feel the need to compete against opponents that, generally speaking, are smaller, slower and weaker than them. There also might be some boys -- teens being what they are -- who just might think it's a kick to go out en masse and perhaps take over a girls' team.
It's perfectly legal. And perfectly ridiculous.
Five years ago I witnessed such an athletic event. The Woodland Hills girls' field hockey team used four boys in a game against Fox Chapel. Woodland Hills did not have a boys' field hockey team. Two of Woodland Hills' boys -- actually, they were young men -- looked more like they belonged on the football team.
It was disgusting sight, and I'm not talking about the boys competing in kilts. I'm talking about the coach of the Woodland Hills team allowing this to happen. I'm talking about the principal of Woodland Hills not heading this off before it became an issue. I'm talking about the PIAA and WPIAL sticking their heads in the sand and ignoring the issue because of the specter of a costly and possibly losing court battle.
These are the people who are supposed to be watching out for our children. If they are allowing boys to compete against girls and merely shaking their head in dismay, they're not doing their job.
Girls should not have to compete against boys. It is the epitome of unfairness and goes against everything athletic competition stands for.
Of course, there will be yahoos out there insisting if girls can play on boys' teams, then boys have a right to play on girls' teams. That's not even apples and oranges; that's apples and meatloaf.
Does this make sense?
If freshmen are eligible to play on the varsity -- and they are -- should seniors be eligible to play on the freshman team?
Of course, they shouldn't. Seniors would have an unfair advantage in any number of areas over freshmen. Just as boys have any number of advantages -- speed, size, strength -- over girls.
Girls who are athletic enough to compete on a boys' team should be congratulated, much the same as a freshman who can make the varsity. Boys who compete on girls' teams should be condemned, much the same as a senior wishing to compete against freshmen.
High schools should do everything possible to discourage boys from competing against girls and that means taking the issue to court if necessary.
That's what the Ann Arbor, Mich., school district is doing. It's a school district that puts fairness and safety in front of political correctness.
Maxime Goovaerts is 13. He's 5-foot, about 100 pounds and a native of Belgium. He wanted to go out for his middle school girls' field hockey team. The school district said no. When the Goovaerts family threatened a lawsuit, the Ann Arbor School District didn't back down. The matter went to court last week.
George Fornero, the superintendent of the Ann Arbor schools, said: "We're pretty strong in our position that this is a girls' sport. We don't want to get in a situation where we take up slots with boys for girls' teams or the boys physically dominate the girls out there."
This is an administrator with a backbone.
Too bad two Western Pennsylvania school districts didn't have similar gumption.
Pietro Pezzella, a 5-8, 140-pound senior, is a member of the New Brighton girls' volleyball team. Josh King, a 6-5, 175-pound senior, is a member of the Southmoreland girls' volleyball team.
Both of these school districts abdicated their responsibility. Sure, there's no boys' volleyball teams at those schools. So what. Let these aspiring athletes try another sport if the competitive urge is so great in them.
They should not be allowed to compete against girls. This isn't just a fairness issue. It's a safety issue.
In 1999, a Fox Chapel player was sent to the hospital twice in boy-involved injuries with Woodland Hills, which, by the way, has boys on its field hockey team again this season.
No one wants to take on this issue. The schools defer to the WPIAL. The WPIAL defers to the PIAA. The PIAA looks to the courts and doesn't want the expense of a lawsuit.
One of the most positive things happening in athletics in the past 30 years is the way girls and women have been given a chance to compete, just as men have for decades before that. Bully boys and weak-kneed educators should not be allowed to undo this remarkable achievement.
(Bob Smizik can be reached at bsmizik@post-gazette.com.)
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Mike S. Adams: Primer on Firearms Basics
Getting into the world of firearms
Mike S. Adams (archive)
September 27, 2005
Thanks for your following letter, Matt, which I received this afternoon:
Do you think at some point you could write a column on some of the basics of getting into the world of firearms? Specifically, I'm looking for tips on acquiring weapons for home defense and hunting. While I'm not a survivalist weirdo, I have no intention of waiting for any level of government to ride to the rescue, should bad times come along.
Since I have been hit with numerous requests (mostly post-Katrina) from people looking for that first firearm, I am pleased to respond with a column on the topic. Since you used the word “weapons” (plural) and spoke of “getting into the world of firearms” (again plural) I have a number of recommendations for you. And here they are:
Marlin .22 Magnum, Model 25 MN. We are going to start you off with an inexpensive gun you can easily pick up at WalMart. I bought my Model 25 five years ago for just $150, although they cost about $170 now. Take your new .22 magnum out to the country and fire a few shots at a paper plate taped on the side of a tree stump. Start out at 25 yards. When you get confident, you can put an inexpensive Simmons scope on it for those 50-yard raccoon shots. I have a big back yard and, for me, a part of home defense is getting rid of those raccoons that tear up everything in sight. Your varmint problems will soon be a thing of the past with this little bolt action rifle. It will also teach you patience and shot discipline better than a .22 semi-automatic. Remember, Matt, every shot counts so don’t waste ammo. In fact, make sure that you always buy more than you just shot after a day at the range. Some people call that stockpiling. I call it an investment in your future.
Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, Model 686. I usually recommend a four-inch barrel but I want you to get a six-inch stainless model. This will help you in the realm of hunting and self-defense. For example, a 145-grain Winchester silver tip will stop that coyote you run into while deer hunting. It will also help stop any intruder (it will even stop his pit bull, for that matter). Keep this gun under your bed and loaded at all times.
Also, this is a great revolver for your wife (assuming you are married, which is another choice I recommend) to get used to shooting. Put some light 110-grain .38 Special rounds in it and see how she likes it. With a big six-inch barrel, it will be easy to handle with hardly any recoil.
Benelli Nova 12-gauge. I have a couple of Remington 870 pump shotguns. But, recently, I bought a 24-inch barrel Nova with Advantage Timber camouflage. I will use mine – a super magnum that takes 3 ½-inch loads – to hunt a turkey this Thanksgiving. You can use yours for varmint hunting, quail hunting, and a number of other purposes with the right 2 3/4 –inch load. Some light buckshot will also make this a good home defense weapon, provided you are in an open space (the barrel is a little long for this particular function).
Stoeger Double-barreled 20-gauge Supreme Coach Gun. If you really want your wife to get into this (to make it a family affair), she needs her own shotgun. I recommend the nickel-plated version because it’s so darned pretty. Let her keep it under her side of the bed and, please, stay on her good side. For more details, see this link: http://www.stoegerindustries.com/firearms/coach-supreme.tpl.
Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. A lot of people who saw what recently happened in New Orleans have concluded that every man needs an assault rifle. I came to that conclusion years ago. Go to WalMart and get this nice .223 semi-automatic for around $500 (I got mine when they were $375). Then get a scope (the rings are included with this model). I would also recommend several 30-round magazines by Thurmold. I have fired hundreds of rounds through mine without a single jam – even when firing as rapidly as possible. You might also want a flash suppressor, which will keep the muzzle low while you fire away. This is a fun gun that helps explain why I never picked up golf.
Browning A-bolt .270. And, of course, you will need a long-range bolt action rifle when you start bagging deer. My 30.06 Browning A-Bolt Medallion is probably my favorite weapon. Deer, black bear, and boar like it much less. I recommend the .270 to the novice because it has less recoil and will still get the job done. Winchester Power Point rounds (130-grain bullets) are very cheap and more than adequate. Mail me later for venison recipes.
Ruger Super Redhawk .454 Casull. I have no business recommending this gun to you, Matt. Nonetheless, buy it anyway. This gun takes Colt 45 rounds that are great for home defense. When, somewhere down the road, you feel like handling a very powerful handgun, this will provide some great entertainment with the .454 Casull rounds. Get the model with the 9 ½-inch barrel and kill a wild boar. Then kill a black bear. Then put a scope on it (the scope rings are included) and kill a deer at 100 yards. After you are done with your assignments, call me and let me know whether I have given you good advice.
Thanks for writing, Matt. And welcome to my world.
©2005 Mike S. Adams
Contact Mike S. Adams Read Adams's biography
Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor
David Limbaugh says Mike Adams's first book "is a brilliant, but disturbing expose of life in postmodern academia today. No one better reveals the fraud pervading America's college campuses under the seductive euphemisms of political correctness, multiculturalism, and diversity-destructive forces that have led to sheer chaos. Adams is a modern-day Jeremiah whose warnings we cannot afford to ignore." Order it today and save 32% off the cover price!
Mike S. Adams (archive)
September 27, 2005
Thanks for your following letter, Matt, which I received this afternoon:
Do you think at some point you could write a column on some of the basics of getting into the world of firearms? Specifically, I'm looking for tips on acquiring weapons for home defense and hunting. While I'm not a survivalist weirdo, I have no intention of waiting for any level of government to ride to the rescue, should bad times come along.
Since I have been hit with numerous requests (mostly post-Katrina) from people looking for that first firearm, I am pleased to respond with a column on the topic. Since you used the word “weapons” (plural) and spoke of “getting into the world of firearms” (again plural) I have a number of recommendations for you. And here they are:
Marlin .22 Magnum, Model 25 MN. We are going to start you off with an inexpensive gun you can easily pick up at WalMart. I bought my Model 25 five years ago for just $150, although they cost about $170 now. Take your new .22 magnum out to the country and fire a few shots at a paper plate taped on the side of a tree stump. Start out at 25 yards. When you get confident, you can put an inexpensive Simmons scope on it for those 50-yard raccoon shots. I have a big back yard and, for me, a part of home defense is getting rid of those raccoons that tear up everything in sight. Your varmint problems will soon be a thing of the past with this little bolt action rifle. It will also teach you patience and shot discipline better than a .22 semi-automatic. Remember, Matt, every shot counts so don’t waste ammo. In fact, make sure that you always buy more than you just shot after a day at the range. Some people call that stockpiling. I call it an investment in your future.
Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, Model 686. I usually recommend a four-inch barrel but I want you to get a six-inch stainless model. This will help you in the realm of hunting and self-defense. For example, a 145-grain Winchester silver tip will stop that coyote you run into while deer hunting. It will also help stop any intruder (it will even stop his pit bull, for that matter). Keep this gun under your bed and loaded at all times.
Also, this is a great revolver for your wife (assuming you are married, which is another choice I recommend) to get used to shooting. Put some light 110-grain .38 Special rounds in it and see how she likes it. With a big six-inch barrel, it will be easy to handle with hardly any recoil.
Benelli Nova 12-gauge. I have a couple of Remington 870 pump shotguns. But, recently, I bought a 24-inch barrel Nova with Advantage Timber camouflage. I will use mine – a super magnum that takes 3 ½-inch loads – to hunt a turkey this Thanksgiving. You can use yours for varmint hunting, quail hunting, and a number of other purposes with the right 2 3/4 –inch load. Some light buckshot will also make this a good home defense weapon, provided you are in an open space (the barrel is a little long for this particular function).
Stoeger Double-barreled 20-gauge Supreme Coach Gun. If you really want your wife to get into this (to make it a family affair), she needs her own shotgun. I recommend the nickel-plated version because it’s so darned pretty. Let her keep it under her side of the bed and, please, stay on her good side. For more details, see this link: http://www.stoegerindustries.com/firearms/coach-supreme.tpl.
Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. A lot of people who saw what recently happened in New Orleans have concluded that every man needs an assault rifle. I came to that conclusion years ago. Go to WalMart and get this nice .223 semi-automatic for around $500 (I got mine when they were $375). Then get a scope (the rings are included with this model). I would also recommend several 30-round magazines by Thurmold. I have fired hundreds of rounds through mine without a single jam – even when firing as rapidly as possible. You might also want a flash suppressor, which will keep the muzzle low while you fire away. This is a fun gun that helps explain why I never picked up golf.
Browning A-bolt .270. And, of course, you will need a long-range bolt action rifle when you start bagging deer. My 30.06 Browning A-Bolt Medallion is probably my favorite weapon. Deer, black bear, and boar like it much less. I recommend the .270 to the novice because it has less recoil and will still get the job done. Winchester Power Point rounds (130-grain bullets) are very cheap and more than adequate. Mail me later for venison recipes.
Ruger Super Redhawk .454 Casull. I have no business recommending this gun to you, Matt. Nonetheless, buy it anyway. This gun takes Colt 45 rounds that are great for home defense. When, somewhere down the road, you feel like handling a very powerful handgun, this will provide some great entertainment with the .454 Casull rounds. Get the model with the 9 ½-inch barrel and kill a wild boar. Then kill a black bear. Then put a scope on it (the scope rings are included) and kill a deer at 100 yards. After you are done with your assignments, call me and let me know whether I have given you good advice.
Thanks for writing, Matt. And welcome to my world.
©2005 Mike S. Adams
Contact Mike S. Adams Read Adams's biography
Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor
David Limbaugh says Mike Adams's first book "is a brilliant, but disturbing expose of life in postmodern academia today. No one better reveals the fraud pervading America's college campuses under the seductive euphemisms of political correctness, multiculturalism, and diversity-destructive forces that have led to sheer chaos. Adams is a modern-day Jeremiah whose warnings we cannot afford to ignore." Order it today and save 32% off the cover price!
Christopher Hitchens: Anti-War, My Foot
The phony peaceniks who protested in Washington.
Slate.com
Updated Monday, Sept. 26, 2005, at 11:19 AM PT
Are they really "anti-war"?
Saturday's demonstration in Washington, in favor of immediate withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, was the product of an opportunistic alliance between two other very disparate "coalitions." Here is how the New York Times (after a front-page and an inside headline, one of them reading "Speaking Up Against War" and one of them reading "Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities") described the two constituenciess of the event:
The protests were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.
The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.
The group self-lovingly calling itself "United for Peace and Justice" is by no means "narrow" in its "antiwar focus" but rather represents a very extended alliance between the Old and the New Left, some of it honorable and some of it redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest. Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left very well, I can tell you that the Worker's World Party—Ramsey Clark's core outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite some principled political criticism on their own account. And those who just tag along … well, they just tag along.
To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.
Some of the leading figures in this "movement," such as George Galloway and Michael Moore, are obnoxious enough to come right out and say that they support the Baathist-jihadist alliance. Others prefer to declare their sympathy in more surreptitious fashion. The easy way to tell what's going on is this: Just listen until they start to criticize such gangsters even a little, and then wait a few seconds before the speaker says that, bad as these people are, they were invented or created by the United States. That bad, huh? (You might think that such an accusation—these thugs were cloned by the American empire for God's sake—would lead to instant condemnation. But if you thought that, gentle reader, you would be wrong.)
The two preferred metaphors are, depending on the speaker, that the Bin-Ladenists are the fish that swim in the water of Muslim discontent or the mosquitoes that rise from the swamp of Muslim discontent. (Quite often, the same images are used in the same harangue.) The "fish in the water" is an old trope, borrowed from Mao's hoary theory of guerrilla warfare and possessing a certain appeal to comrades who used to pore over the Little Red Book. The mosquitoes are somehow new and hover above the water rather than slip through it. No matter. The toxic nature of the "water" or "swamp" is always the same: American support for Israel.
Thus, the existence of the Taliban regime cannot be swamplike, presumably because mosquitoes are born and not made. The huge swamp that was Saddam's Iraq has only become a swamp since 2003. The organized murder of Muslims by Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan is only a logical reaction to the summit of globalizers at Davos. The stoning and veiling of women must be a reaction to Zionism. While the attack on the World Trade Center—well, who needs reminding that chickens, or is it mosquitoes, come home to roost?
There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a "peace" movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as "progressive."
Related in Slate:
Last month, Christopher Hitchens skewered the anti-war movement's den mother, Cindy Sheenan, for what he called her "sinister piffle," here; he wrote about the consequence of Bush granting her wish here. Is leftist gadfly Michael Moore producing Leni Reifenstahl-caliber propaganda for the anti-war crowd? Read Hitchens' analysis of Moore's "Baathist-jihadist" work, Fahrenheit 911, here. The late Jude Wanniski, Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics guru, wasn't a Trotskyite, but like George Galloway he was an "unreconstructed Saddamophile," according to Timothy Noah. Click here to read why, if conservative bomb-thrower Ann Coulter had her way, this bunch would be on trial for Treason.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent books include Love, Poverty, and War and Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
Slate.com
Updated Monday, Sept. 26, 2005, at 11:19 AM PT
Are they really "anti-war"?
Saturday's demonstration in Washington, in favor of immediate withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, was the product of an opportunistic alliance between two other very disparate "coalitions." Here is how the New York Times (after a front-page and an inside headline, one of them reading "Speaking Up Against War" and one of them reading "Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities") described the two constituenciess of the event:
The protests were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.
The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.
The group self-lovingly calling itself "United for Peace and Justice" is by no means "narrow" in its "antiwar focus" but rather represents a very extended alliance between the Old and the New Left, some of it honorable and some of it redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest. Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left very well, I can tell you that the Worker's World Party—Ramsey Clark's core outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite some principled political criticism on their own account. And those who just tag along … well, they just tag along.
To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.
Some of the leading figures in this "movement," such as George Galloway and Michael Moore, are obnoxious enough to come right out and say that they support the Baathist-jihadist alliance. Others prefer to declare their sympathy in more surreptitious fashion. The easy way to tell what's going on is this: Just listen until they start to criticize such gangsters even a little, and then wait a few seconds before the speaker says that, bad as these people are, they were invented or created by the United States. That bad, huh? (You might think that such an accusation—these thugs were cloned by the American empire for God's sake—would lead to instant condemnation. But if you thought that, gentle reader, you would be wrong.)
The two preferred metaphors are, depending on the speaker, that the Bin-Ladenists are the fish that swim in the water of Muslim discontent or the mosquitoes that rise from the swamp of Muslim discontent. (Quite often, the same images are used in the same harangue.) The "fish in the water" is an old trope, borrowed from Mao's hoary theory of guerrilla warfare and possessing a certain appeal to comrades who used to pore over the Little Red Book. The mosquitoes are somehow new and hover above the water rather than slip through it. No matter. The toxic nature of the "water" or "swamp" is always the same: American support for Israel.
Thus, the existence of the Taliban regime cannot be swamplike, presumably because mosquitoes are born and not made. The huge swamp that was Saddam's Iraq has only become a swamp since 2003. The organized murder of Muslims by Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan is only a logical reaction to the summit of globalizers at Davos. The stoning and veiling of women must be a reaction to Zionism. While the attack on the World Trade Center—well, who needs reminding that chickens, or is it mosquitoes, come home to roost?
There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a "peace" movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as "progressive."
Related in Slate:
Last month, Christopher Hitchens skewered the anti-war movement's den mother, Cindy Sheenan, for what he called her "sinister piffle," here; he wrote about the consequence of Bush granting her wish here. Is leftist gadfly Michael Moore producing Leni Reifenstahl-caliber propaganda for the anti-war crowd? Read Hitchens' analysis of Moore's "Baathist-jihadist" work, Fahrenheit 911, here. The late Jude Wanniski, Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics guru, wasn't a Trotskyite, but like George Galloway he was an "unreconstructed Saddamophile," according to Timothy Noah. Click here to read why, if conservative bomb-thrower Ann Coulter had her way, this bunch would be on trial for Treason.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent books include Love, Poverty, and War and Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
Increase in Yellowstone Grizzly Population Spurs Debate
By JIM ROBBINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
September 26, 2005
BOZEMAN, Mont. - By all accounts the turnaround of the Yellowstone grizzly is an all-too-rare success story of the Endangered Species Act.
After dwindling to 200 or so by the 1970's, the number of the big bears in the mountains and grassy meadows around Yellowstone National Park has grown to more than 600, thanks to the federal protections given to the species in 1975.
"It's the biggest success story under the Endangered Species Act because grizzly bears are one of the toughest species to manage," said Chris Servheen, who has been working on efforts to protect and to re-establish grizzlies in Yellowstone and elsewhere for 25 years and is coordinator for grizzly bear recovery for the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula, Mont.
While there is widespread agreement that the story is a good one, however, there is disagreement on the next chapter.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, saying that the mission to bring the bear back has been accomplished, will propose removing the bear from the list of threatened species this fall and, after a comment period, make a final decision in 2006. Delisting has happened for only about 15 species out of the 1,830 on the imperiled list.
But opponents of delisting say the bear is still endangered, primarily because of threats to critical food sources.
Both sides say the science is on their side.
While the federal government says safeguards are in place to reinstate federal protections if the bear population falls, critics are beyond skeptical, many saying they do not trust the Bush administration on conservation issues.
"Quite frankly, they are lying through their teeth about relisting the bear," said Craig Pease, a population biologist who teaches science at the Vermont Law School and has studied the Yellowstone population.
Louisa Willcox, who advocates for bears with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Livingston, Mont., said the administration has been hostile to the Endangered Species Act. "How can we be sure they'll rush in and list the bear if something happens?" Ms. Willcox said.
Whether to recognize the Yellowstone bears as a recovered population is not just an abstract scientific debate. Grizzlies, which occasionally prey on people, are moving out of the park's mountain wilderness and federal forest refuges and into areas with growing human populations. Removing protections would allow the bears to be hunted.
Since the late 1960's, there have been 17 fatalities involving bears and many more attacks in Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, home to the only other large population of the bears in the lower 48 states. In mid-September an elk hunter was attacked and wounded by a grizzly in the wilderness near Cody, Wyo.
"As bear numbers increase they are getting into places they haven't been seen in 50 or 100 years," Dr. Servheen said.
One place where the bears are showing up is at the two-room Valley School, on the South Fork of the Shoshone River southeast of Yellowstone. Recently, a grizzly bear charged a couple of fishermen and followed them to their vehicle near the school, then scared a fencing crew into their truck.
Audra Morrow, the teacher for the four students at Valley School, recalls cooking dinner in her log cabin next to the school when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a grizzly sow with two cubs headed her direction. "I was face to face with Momma," Ms. Morrow said. "I was cooking a veggie burger. I'm convinced that's why she left." She now keeps a loaded shotgun and cans of pepper spray within reach, and local parents erected a fence around the school's playground.
While people who live along the South Fork of the Shoshone are used to a wild way of life, many say the bear population is too big and support removing the bears' protection. Ms. Willcox believes hunting will not solve the problem. "It's the nature of that ground," she says. "Bears move through there. If you remove a bear another bear will replace it."
Along with Old Faithful, bears were once the heart of a visit to Yellowstone Park. Both black bears and grizzly bears were allowed to wander the roads and to beg for handouts or be watched by delighted tourists as they scavenged in dumps. In 1967, two backpackers were attacked and killed by grizzly bears in separate incidents on the same night in Glacier National Park.
Biologists believed the bears attacked because they had lost their fear of humans, and officials in both parks ended the "Yogi Bear period," forcing bears to return to an all-wild diet. Bears who pursued human food were shot, and from 1969 until 1971 more than 220 grizzlies were killed in Yellowstone. By the early 1970's, the number of bears had plummeted to fewer than 200.
In the 1980's biologists began an aggressive campaign to bring the bear back. Helped by environmental groups, rewards were offered for poachers, sheep were moved out of bear country, garbage cans were replaced with bearproof versions and campers were given rules on keeping food away from bears.
The grizzly bear population is the healthiest it has been in 30 years, and biologists say it is growing 4 percent to 7 percent a year.
"Does that mean you turn your back and walk away?" said Chuck Schwartz, who personally supports delisting and heads the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team in Bozeman, a collection of biologists and other scientists from state and federal agencies who oversee greater Yellowstone. "Absolutely not. It's an animal that requires a high degree of vigilance."
Critics say that in the push to delist, federal agencies have painted an overly rosy picture and that the numbers are suspect. Dr. Pease of the Vermont Law School thinks the reproductive rate is much less than what is claimed. But, he says, the interagency team has refused to release some of its research for other scientists to analyze. "There's every reason to mistrust them," he said.
A critical element in the Yellowstone grizzlies' future is that they are an island population, a remnant of a much larger one that once extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Midwest. While bears in Glacier are connected to much larger Canadian populations, bears in the Yellowstone area are, in terms of numbers and genetics, on their own. A disease could decimate the population.
The plan designates a 9,200-square-mile primary conservation area, more than a third of which is Yellowstone. The conservation area contains 90 percent of the bear population and would continue many of the same restrictions on livestock grazing, roads and other development that are currently in place. "The average bear won't see any difference" after delisting, Dr. Servheen said.
If bear numbers decline below a certain level or other threats emerge, Dr. Servheen said, there are plans to relist the bear in as little as two weeks.
The sooner bears are delisted, said Marcos Gonzalez, a ranch foreman at the Brown Thomas Meadows Ranch near the Valley School, the better. Mr. Gonzalez is worried about bears near the school that his 7-year-old daughter, Alejandra, attends. "You used to see them once in a while," he said. "Now it's everywhere, all the time."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
September 26, 2005
BOZEMAN, Mont. - By all accounts the turnaround of the Yellowstone grizzly is an all-too-rare success story of the Endangered Species Act.After dwindling to 200 or so by the 1970's, the number of the big bears in the mountains and grassy meadows around Yellowstone National Park has grown to more than 600, thanks to the federal protections given to the species in 1975.
"It's the biggest success story under the Endangered Species Act because grizzly bears are one of the toughest species to manage," said Chris Servheen, who has been working on efforts to protect and to re-establish grizzlies in Yellowstone and elsewhere for 25 years and is coordinator for grizzly bear recovery for the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula, Mont.
While there is widespread agreement that the story is a good one, however, there is disagreement on the next chapter.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, saying that the mission to bring the bear back has been accomplished, will propose removing the bear from the list of threatened species this fall and, after a comment period, make a final decision in 2006. Delisting has happened for only about 15 species out of the 1,830 on the imperiled list.
But opponents of delisting say the bear is still endangered, primarily because of threats to critical food sources.
Both sides say the science is on their side.
While the federal government says safeguards are in place to reinstate federal protections if the bear population falls, critics are beyond skeptical, many saying they do not trust the Bush administration on conservation issues.
"Quite frankly, they are lying through their teeth about relisting the bear," said Craig Pease, a population biologist who teaches science at the Vermont Law School and has studied the Yellowstone population.
Louisa Willcox, who advocates for bears with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Livingston, Mont., said the administration has been hostile to the Endangered Species Act. "How can we be sure they'll rush in and list the bear if something happens?" Ms. Willcox said.
Whether to recognize the Yellowstone bears as a recovered population is not just an abstract scientific debate. Grizzlies, which occasionally prey on people, are moving out of the park's mountain wilderness and federal forest refuges and into areas with growing human populations. Removing protections would allow the bears to be hunted.
Since the late 1960's, there have been 17 fatalities involving bears and many more attacks in Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, home to the only other large population of the bears in the lower 48 states. In mid-September an elk hunter was attacked and wounded by a grizzly in the wilderness near Cody, Wyo.
"As bear numbers increase they are getting into places they haven't been seen in 50 or 100 years," Dr. Servheen said.
One place where the bears are showing up is at the two-room Valley School, on the South Fork of the Shoshone River southeast of Yellowstone. Recently, a grizzly bear charged a couple of fishermen and followed them to their vehicle near the school, then scared a fencing crew into their truck.
Audra Morrow, the teacher for the four students at Valley School, recalls cooking dinner in her log cabin next to the school when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a grizzly sow with two cubs headed her direction. "I was face to face with Momma," Ms. Morrow said. "I was cooking a veggie burger. I'm convinced that's why she left." She now keeps a loaded shotgun and cans of pepper spray within reach, and local parents erected a fence around the school's playground.
While people who live along the South Fork of the Shoshone are used to a wild way of life, many say the bear population is too big and support removing the bears' protection. Ms. Willcox believes hunting will not solve the problem. "It's the nature of that ground," she says. "Bears move through there. If you remove a bear another bear will replace it."
Along with Old Faithful, bears were once the heart of a visit to Yellowstone Park. Both black bears and grizzly bears were allowed to wander the roads and to beg for handouts or be watched by delighted tourists as they scavenged in dumps. In 1967, two backpackers were attacked and killed by grizzly bears in separate incidents on the same night in Glacier National Park.
Biologists believed the bears attacked because they had lost their fear of humans, and officials in both parks ended the "Yogi Bear period," forcing bears to return to an all-wild diet. Bears who pursued human food were shot, and from 1969 until 1971 more than 220 grizzlies were killed in Yellowstone. By the early 1970's, the number of bears had plummeted to fewer than 200.
In the 1980's biologists began an aggressive campaign to bring the bear back. Helped by environmental groups, rewards were offered for poachers, sheep were moved out of bear country, garbage cans were replaced with bearproof versions and campers were given rules on keeping food away from bears.
The grizzly bear population is the healthiest it has been in 30 years, and biologists say it is growing 4 percent to 7 percent a year.
"Does that mean you turn your back and walk away?" said Chuck Schwartz, who personally supports delisting and heads the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team in Bozeman, a collection of biologists and other scientists from state and federal agencies who oversee greater Yellowstone. "Absolutely not. It's an animal that requires a high degree of vigilance."
Critics say that in the push to delist, federal agencies have painted an overly rosy picture and that the numbers are suspect. Dr. Pease of the Vermont Law School thinks the reproductive rate is much less than what is claimed. But, he says, the interagency team has refused to release some of its research for other scientists to analyze. "There's every reason to mistrust them," he said.
A critical element in the Yellowstone grizzlies' future is that they are an island population, a remnant of a much larger one that once extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Midwest. While bears in Glacier are connected to much larger Canadian populations, bears in the Yellowstone area are, in terms of numbers and genetics, on their own. A disease could decimate the population.
The plan designates a 9,200-square-mile primary conservation area, more than a third of which is Yellowstone. The conservation area contains 90 percent of the bear population and would continue many of the same restrictions on livestock grazing, roads and other development that are currently in place. "The average bear won't see any difference" after delisting, Dr. Servheen said.
If bear numbers decline below a certain level or other threats emerge, Dr. Servheen said, there are plans to relist the bear in as little as two weeks.
The sooner bears are delisted, said Marcos Gonzalez, a ranch foreman at the Brown Thomas Meadows Ranch near the Valley School, the better. Mr. Gonzalez is worried about bears near the school that his 7-year-old daughter, Alejandra, attends. "You used to see them once in a while," he said. "Now it's everywhere, all the time."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Monday, September 26, 2005
John Fund: Louisiana- A Swamp of Corruption
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana's political culture needs a cleanup too.
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, September 26, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Perhaps no footage from Hurricane Katrina was replayed more often than the "Meet the Press" clip of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La., telling Tim Russert that bureaucrats had "committed murder" in the storm's aftermath. He sobbed as he told about a colleague's mother drowning in her nursing home after begging her son on the phone for four days to save her from the rising waters. Talk show host Don Imus said he had never seen such gripping testimony on TV in his life.
But MSNBC.com later found the story didn't hold up. Eva Rodrigue, the 92-year-old mother of Thomas Rodrique, the parish's emergency services director, did drown--but not because federal or state officials failed to rescue her. Mr. Rodrique said his mother died the day of the hurricane because the nursing home's owners ignored commands to evacuate. The owners are now under indictment for negligent homicide. Mr. Rodrique says his mother never spoke with him, and he can't explain why his boss, Mr. Broussard, got it so wrong.
Mr. Broussard returned to "Meet the Press" yesterday to punch back at critics of his obviously embellished statement. "What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death?" he roared. When Mr. Russert continued to point out the discrepancies in his account, Mr. Broussard told him "Man, get out of my face" and then said the bureaucrats and officials who failed his region "should be strung up. Those people should be burned at the stake."
**********
No state turns out better demagogues than Louisiana--the state that Huey Long ruled with an near-fascistic fist and that inspired the new Sean Penn version of "All the King's Men" that hits movie theaters this November. While the Bush administration and Congress aren't in danger of being fried as witches, they better figure out that they and the taxpayers are about to be fleeced like sheep as they ship south $62 billion in emergency aid with few controls or safeguards.
More will be coming. Last week, Louisiana's two senators didn't even blink when they asked the feds for an ultimate total of $250 billion in assistance just for their state. "We recognize that it's a very high number," Sen. Mary Landrieu admitted. "But this is an unprecedented national tragedy and needs an unprecedented national response."
Even if the total ends up far short of that figure, the opportunity for fraud and waste will be unprecedented. "We're getting a lot of calls" on emergency aid abuses, reports Gen. Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. Last week, police officers found a treasure trove of food, drinks, chainsaws and roof tarps in the home of Cedric Floyd, chief administrative officer for the Jefferson Parish suburb of Kenner. Mr. Floyd is one of several city workers who will likely be charged with pilfering.
Despite assurances from President Bush, "the government is fighting this war [on waste] with Civil War weapons, and we're just overwhelmed," Joshua Schwartz, co-director of the George Washington University Law School's procurement law program, told Knight Ridder. Democrats are already scoring political points. Rep. David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is lamenting the lack of accountability in the aid package. He is calling for "the beginning of some new thinking" on how to handle disaster relief.
Put bluntly, the local political cultures don't engender confidence that aid won't be diverted from the people who truly need and deserve it. While the feds can try to ride herd on the money, here's hoping folks in the region take the opportunity to finally demand their own political housecleaning. Change is past due. Last year, Lou Riegel, the agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans office, described Louisiana's public corruption as "epidemic, endemic, and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt."
Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of elected officials per capita convicted of crimes (Mississippi takes top prize). In just the past generation, the Pelican State has had a governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted. Last year, three top officials at Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness were indicted on charges they obstructed a probe into how federal money bought out flood-prone homes. Last March the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered Louisiana to repay $30 million in flood-control grants it had awarded to 23 parishes.
Much of the region has long had a relaxed attitude towards corruption. ABC's Cokie Roberts, whose parents, Hale and Lindy Boggs, both represented New Orleans in Congress, was only half-joking when her first suggestion for speeding reconstruction was releasing convicted former governor Edwin Edwards from prison because he "knows how to get things done."
But there is room for optimism. "The hurricane was so big and traumatic it could jolt the relaxed political culture," says Ron Faucheux, a Democratic former state legislator from New Orleans. He also notes that 2007 will inject new blood into Louisiana's Legislature when term limits kick in for the first time and force almost half its old-boy members to step down.
**********
As for New Orleans, no city in America would better serve its most vulnerable residents with a clean sweep of its institutions. Just this summer, associates of former mayor Marc Morial were indicted for alleged kickbacks involving public contracts. Last month the FBI raided the home and car of Rep. William Jefferson as part of a probe into allegations he had misused his office.
It is the city's dysfunctional police force that needs immediate attention. Lt. Gen. Steven Baum, chief of the Pentagon's National Guard bureau, lamented the poststorm "disintegration" of the force. City residents have long endured men in blue who not only fail to fight crime but sometimes engage in it, with more than 50 officers going to prison in the past dozen years, two of them to death row. When one police district was caught altering its data, Chief Eddie Compass said, "I don't need an outside agency coming in. I think we have proven that we are capable of taking care of our own house."
Indeed, many local officials are quick to attack any outsiders who question the local way of doing things. Sen. Landrieu is especially sensitive since politics is her family's business. Her father was mayor of New Orleans, her aunt sits on the city's school board, and her brother is the state's lieutenant governor. She did a passable imitation of the overwrought Aaron Brossard when she told ABC News that if President Bush utters any criticism of how local officials responded to the disaster "I might have to punch him--literally."
But some questions must be asked before city residents decide whether to return. "We can't go back to the way we've done things," says former congressman Bob Livingston, a Republican. He notes that the Orleans Parish Levee Board allowed money to be diverted from levees into many other projects. Those included a local casino, a convention center and a Mardi Gras fountain. "We were trying to be good neighbors," former board member Jim Livingston (no relation to Bob) explained to me.
Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who grew up in New Orleans, says the area must leave behind an economy and political culture that belongs to the last century. He notes that Houston has become the South's energy capital, Atlanta its commercial capital and Charlotte its financial center. "Katrina provides a chance to give up populism and embrace reform," he says. The area has given the country so much--in music, in cuisine, in style. But it has also bred a fatalistic attitude which has left too many people with little belief that things can be better. As William Faulkner put it, people too often endure rather than hope.
**********
The massive federal aid now flowing to the region should give victims of Katrina and Rita some hope--along with the knowledge the country has embraced them. It is up to them to seize the opportunity and make a fresh start. If that means abandoning some of the comfortable practices of the past and electing fewer demagogues, the next generation will appreciate that Katrina's survivors chose not just to rebuild their homes but to begin "some new thinking."
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, September 26, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Perhaps no footage from Hurricane Katrina was replayed more often than the "Meet the Press" clip of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La., telling Tim Russert that bureaucrats had "committed murder" in the storm's aftermath. He sobbed as he told about a colleague's mother drowning in her nursing home after begging her son on the phone for four days to save her from the rising waters. Talk show host Don Imus said he had never seen such gripping testimony on TV in his life.
But MSNBC.com later found the story didn't hold up. Eva Rodrigue, the 92-year-old mother of Thomas Rodrique, the parish's emergency services director, did drown--but not because federal or state officials failed to rescue her. Mr. Rodrique said his mother died the day of the hurricane because the nursing home's owners ignored commands to evacuate. The owners are now under indictment for negligent homicide. Mr. Rodrique says his mother never spoke with him, and he can't explain why his boss, Mr. Broussard, got it so wrong.
Mr. Broussard returned to "Meet the Press" yesterday to punch back at critics of his obviously embellished statement. "What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death?" he roared. When Mr. Russert continued to point out the discrepancies in his account, Mr. Broussard told him "Man, get out of my face" and then said the bureaucrats and officials who failed his region "should be strung up. Those people should be burned at the stake."
**********
No state turns out better demagogues than Louisiana--the state that Huey Long ruled with an near-fascistic fist and that inspired the new Sean Penn version of "All the King's Men" that hits movie theaters this November. While the Bush administration and Congress aren't in danger of being fried as witches, they better figure out that they and the taxpayers are about to be fleeced like sheep as they ship south $62 billion in emergency aid with few controls or safeguards.
More will be coming. Last week, Louisiana's two senators didn't even blink when they asked the feds for an ultimate total of $250 billion in assistance just for their state. "We recognize that it's a very high number," Sen. Mary Landrieu admitted. "But this is an unprecedented national tragedy and needs an unprecedented national response."
Even if the total ends up far short of that figure, the opportunity for fraud and waste will be unprecedented. "We're getting a lot of calls" on emergency aid abuses, reports Gen. Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. Last week, police officers found a treasure trove of food, drinks, chainsaws and roof tarps in the home of Cedric Floyd, chief administrative officer for the Jefferson Parish suburb of Kenner. Mr. Floyd is one of several city workers who will likely be charged with pilfering.
Despite assurances from President Bush, "the government is fighting this war [on waste] with Civil War weapons, and we're just overwhelmed," Joshua Schwartz, co-director of the George Washington University Law School's procurement law program, told Knight Ridder. Democrats are already scoring political points. Rep. David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is lamenting the lack of accountability in the aid package. He is calling for "the beginning of some new thinking" on how to handle disaster relief.
Put bluntly, the local political cultures don't engender confidence that aid won't be diverted from the people who truly need and deserve it. While the feds can try to ride herd on the money, here's hoping folks in the region take the opportunity to finally demand their own political housecleaning. Change is past due. Last year, Lou Riegel, the agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans office, described Louisiana's public corruption as "epidemic, endemic, and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt."
Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of elected officials per capita convicted of crimes (Mississippi takes top prize). In just the past generation, the Pelican State has had a governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted. Last year, three top officials at Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness were indicted on charges they obstructed a probe into how federal money bought out flood-prone homes. Last March the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered Louisiana to repay $30 million in flood-control grants it had awarded to 23 parishes.
Much of the region has long had a relaxed attitude towards corruption. ABC's Cokie Roberts, whose parents, Hale and Lindy Boggs, both represented New Orleans in Congress, was only half-joking when her first suggestion for speeding reconstruction was releasing convicted former governor Edwin Edwards from prison because he "knows how to get things done."
But there is room for optimism. "The hurricane was so big and traumatic it could jolt the relaxed political culture," says Ron Faucheux, a Democratic former state legislator from New Orleans. He also notes that 2007 will inject new blood into Louisiana's Legislature when term limits kick in for the first time and force almost half its old-boy members to step down.
**********
As for New Orleans, no city in America would better serve its most vulnerable residents with a clean sweep of its institutions. Just this summer, associates of former mayor Marc Morial were indicted for alleged kickbacks involving public contracts. Last month the FBI raided the home and car of Rep. William Jefferson as part of a probe into allegations he had misused his office.
It is the city's dysfunctional police force that needs immediate attention. Lt. Gen. Steven Baum, chief of the Pentagon's National Guard bureau, lamented the poststorm "disintegration" of the force. City residents have long endured men in blue who not only fail to fight crime but sometimes engage in it, with more than 50 officers going to prison in the past dozen years, two of them to death row. When one police district was caught altering its data, Chief Eddie Compass said, "I don't need an outside agency coming in. I think we have proven that we are capable of taking care of our own house."
Indeed, many local officials are quick to attack any outsiders who question the local way of doing things. Sen. Landrieu is especially sensitive since politics is her family's business. Her father was mayor of New Orleans, her aunt sits on the city's school board, and her brother is the state's lieutenant governor. She did a passable imitation of the overwrought Aaron Brossard when she told ABC News that if President Bush utters any criticism of how local officials responded to the disaster "I might have to punch him--literally."
But some questions must be asked before city residents decide whether to return. "We can't go back to the way we've done things," says former congressman Bob Livingston, a Republican. He notes that the Orleans Parish Levee Board allowed money to be diverted from levees into many other projects. Those included a local casino, a convention center and a Mardi Gras fountain. "We were trying to be good neighbors," former board member Jim Livingston (no relation to Bob) explained to me.
Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who grew up in New Orleans, says the area must leave behind an economy and political culture that belongs to the last century. He notes that Houston has become the South's energy capital, Atlanta its commercial capital and Charlotte its financial center. "Katrina provides a chance to give up populism and embrace reform," he says. The area has given the country so much--in music, in cuisine, in style. But it has also bred a fatalistic attitude which has left too many people with little belief that things can be better. As William Faulkner put it, people too often endure rather than hope.
**********
The massive federal aid now flowing to the region should give victims of Katrina and Rita some hope--along with the knowledge the country has embraced them. It is up to them to seize the opportunity and make a fresh start. If that means abandoning some of the comfortable practices of the past and electing fewer demagogues, the next generation will appreciate that Katrina's survivors chose not just to rebuild their homes but to begin "some new thinking."
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Nancy Kobrin Reviews ''The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam'
What You Can't Say About Islam
By Nancy Kobrin
FrontPageMagazine.com
September 23, 2005
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
By Robert Spencer
Regnery Publishing, Inc.: Washington D.C. 2005
To order a copy, click here.
Recently, I was invited to teach 300 law enforcement officers about Islam, radical Islam and Islamist terrorists. It was an honor and a privilege, but it was also difficult work: It is no small task making sure that these officers, really our first line of defense in the war on terrorism, fully understand both the history of Islam and the motivations of those who are willing to murder in its name.
But it is especially challenging for the officers. Beyond being able to distinguish moderate Islam from more extremist strains, they must be on good terms with the local Muslim community in order for its members to trust them with sensitive information, which, at times, must be turned into actionable intelligence. They are not afforded the luxury of time. The question before them is no longer if Islamic suicide attacks will occur but when and where.
Equally as important, they must understand why. Why do terrorists lash out in the name of Islam? To explain this to my officer students, I attempted to demystify the somewhat exotic light in which Islam is too commonly held. I recounted the history of Islam, pointing out that the five Pillars of Islam have their equivalents in Judaism because the prophet Muhammad had borrowed extensively from the Jews with the hope that they would convert. When that didn’t happen, I noted, he turned to jihad. Still, despite my reliance on everything from PowerPoint presentations to video clips, I struggled to come up with more vivid images that might shed light on why this supposedly peace-loving religion drives some of its adherents to commit acts of mass murder.
If only I had Robert Spencer’s new work, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and The Crusades), my teaching would have gone much more smoothly.
Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, an invaluable web site that daily informs readers of Islam’s global jihad, cuts right to the chase in this absorbing antidote to the received wisdom about Islam. He turns his attention to the most problematic nature of Islam: its ideologies of warring. In this context, Spencer discusses not just the more gruesomely familiar form of jihad, suicide attacks, but also jihad in the form of Islamic proselytizing, da’wa, in which prisoners are pressured to revert to Islam. (It is “revert” instead of convert because Islam holds that we were all born Muslim, except that our parents lost the correct path, the sabil, and raised us incorrectly.) Spencer also examines Islam’s hostility to women, as well as its historical denigration of religious and ethnic minorities living under Islamic rule, Ahl al-Dhimma.
Spencer repeatedly demonstrates that jihad is part and parcel of the fabric of Islam; it is ingrained in the very ideologies of the holy text, the Qur’an. Spencer minces no words. Two of his chapters are aptly subtitled “Religion of War” and “Religion of Intolerance.” He also takes remarkably precise aim at the politically correct myths that preclude an honest discussion about Islam.
Chances are, you’ve heard them all: “The Qur’an teaches believers to take up arms only in self-defense;” “The Qur’an and the bible are equally violent;” “Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists;” “Islam was once the foundation of a great cultural and scientific flowering;” “Christianity and Islam spread in pretty much the same way;” “The Crusades were an unprovoked attack by Europe against the Islamic world;” “The Crusades were fought to convert Muslims to Christianity by force;” “The Crusades were called against Jews in addition to Muslims;” “The Crusades were bloodier than the Islamic jihads;” and “The Crusades accomplished nothing.”
Against such feel-good bromides, Spencer quotes Ibn Warraq, a Muslim apostate and author who wrote that while there are moderate Muslims, Islam itself is not moderate. Most people are in denial when it comes to this candid observation. As for the misunderstood Crusades, Spencer sets the record straight: the Crusades were waged as a defense against the relentless onslaught of Islamic jihad. My favorite PC myth—concerning the supposedly Great Golden Age of Islamic Spain—is convincingly laid to rest by Spencer.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam is replete with useful, and user-friendly informational boxes. One such box traces current jihadist behavior back to the life and times of Muhammad, thereby proving the degree to which Islam is influenced by the warlord mentality of the prophet. Another box contrasts Muhammad’s bellicosity with the peaceful message of Jesus: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44), while Muhammad’s ideology is one of power: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” (Qur’an 8:60) Not exactly the pacifist portrayed by conventional wisdom.
Another valuable feature of the book is the list of bullet points that accompanies each chapter. Titled “Guess what?” it presents some uncomfortable truths about the Islam. For instance, turn to Chapter 6, “Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill,” and you discover the following: Islam’s only overarching moral principle is “if it is good for Islam, it’s right.” Spencer does not flinch from pointing out that “Islam allows for lying, as well as stealing and killing in certain circumstances,” and that “This leads to large-scale deception campaigns today.” You won’t hear that from the peddlers of political correctness.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Spencer’s book is its timeliness. Islam is widely acknowledged to be the world’s fastest growing religion, but few know just how fast. In fact, Islam is estimated to have reached 1.5 billion adherents thereby surpassing Christianity’s 1.2 billion faithful and dwarfing Judaism’s world-wide population at a mere 13-15 million. Leading counter-terrorist expert, R. Paz, who heads Prism, (The Project for the Research of Islamist Movements, www.e-prism.org), recently told the Christian Science Monitor that while most Muslims are in the moderate camp, "If we're talking about percentages, maybe the supporters of global jihad are only 1 percent of the Muslim world.'' That means, then, that there are about 15 million would-be Muslim terrorists.
In other words, the need to understand Islam will only grow more urgent. Spencer has done a remarkable job lifting the veil on its tenets. Previously, the failure to counter the specious arguments of Islam’s politically correct defenders may have been understandable. Similarly, many could be forgiven for doubting whether Islam could really show so little capacity for seeking middle ground. Now, with the publication of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), they no longer have an excuse.
To order a copy of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), click here.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com
Nancy Kobrin is an affiliated professor to the University of Haifa, Arabist, psychoanalyst and author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh's New Clothes: Islamic Suicide Terror and What It's Really All About.
By Nancy Kobrin
FrontPageMagazine.com
September 23, 2005
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
By Robert Spencer
Regnery Publishing, Inc.: Washington D.C. 2005
To order a copy, click here.
Recently, I was invited to teach 300 law enforcement officers about Islam, radical Islam and Islamist terrorists. It was an honor and a privilege, but it was also difficult work: It is no small task making sure that these officers, really our first line of defense in the war on terrorism, fully understand both the history of Islam and the motivations of those who are willing to murder in its name.
But it is especially challenging for the officers. Beyond being able to distinguish moderate Islam from more extremist strains, they must be on good terms with the local Muslim community in order for its members to trust them with sensitive information, which, at times, must be turned into actionable intelligence. They are not afforded the luxury of time. The question before them is no longer if Islamic suicide attacks will occur but when and where.
Equally as important, they must understand why. Why do terrorists lash out in the name of Islam? To explain this to my officer students, I attempted to demystify the somewhat exotic light in which Islam is too commonly held. I recounted the history of Islam, pointing out that the five Pillars of Islam have their equivalents in Judaism because the prophet Muhammad had borrowed extensively from the Jews with the hope that they would convert. When that didn’t happen, I noted, he turned to jihad. Still, despite my reliance on everything from PowerPoint presentations to video clips, I struggled to come up with more vivid images that might shed light on why this supposedly peace-loving religion drives some of its adherents to commit acts of mass murder.
If only I had Robert Spencer’s new work, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and The Crusades), my teaching would have gone much more smoothly.
Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, an invaluable web site that daily informs readers of Islam’s global jihad, cuts right to the chase in this absorbing antidote to the received wisdom about Islam. He turns his attention to the most problematic nature of Islam: its ideologies of warring. In this context, Spencer discusses not just the more gruesomely familiar form of jihad, suicide attacks, but also jihad in the form of Islamic proselytizing, da’wa, in which prisoners are pressured to revert to Islam. (It is “revert” instead of convert because Islam holds that we were all born Muslim, except that our parents lost the correct path, the sabil, and raised us incorrectly.) Spencer also examines Islam’s hostility to women, as well as its historical denigration of religious and ethnic minorities living under Islamic rule, Ahl al-Dhimma.
Spencer repeatedly demonstrates that jihad is part and parcel of the fabric of Islam; it is ingrained in the very ideologies of the holy text, the Qur’an. Spencer minces no words. Two of his chapters are aptly subtitled “Religion of War” and “Religion of Intolerance.” He also takes remarkably precise aim at the politically correct myths that preclude an honest discussion about Islam.
Chances are, you’ve heard them all: “The Qur’an teaches believers to take up arms only in self-defense;” “The Qur’an and the bible are equally violent;” “Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists;” “Islam was once the foundation of a great cultural and scientific flowering;” “Christianity and Islam spread in pretty much the same way;” “The Crusades were an unprovoked attack by Europe against the Islamic world;” “The Crusades were fought to convert Muslims to Christianity by force;” “The Crusades were called against Jews in addition to Muslims;” “The Crusades were bloodier than the Islamic jihads;” and “The Crusades accomplished nothing.”
Against such feel-good bromides, Spencer quotes Ibn Warraq, a Muslim apostate and author who wrote that while there are moderate Muslims, Islam itself is not moderate. Most people are in denial when it comes to this candid observation. As for the misunderstood Crusades, Spencer sets the record straight: the Crusades were waged as a defense against the relentless onslaught of Islamic jihad. My favorite PC myth—concerning the supposedly Great Golden Age of Islamic Spain—is convincingly laid to rest by Spencer.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam is replete with useful, and user-friendly informational boxes. One such box traces current jihadist behavior back to the life and times of Muhammad, thereby proving the degree to which Islam is influenced by the warlord mentality of the prophet. Another box contrasts Muhammad’s bellicosity with the peaceful message of Jesus: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44), while Muhammad’s ideology is one of power: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” (Qur’an 8:60) Not exactly the pacifist portrayed by conventional wisdom.
Another valuable feature of the book is the list of bullet points that accompanies each chapter. Titled “Guess what?” it presents some uncomfortable truths about the Islam. For instance, turn to Chapter 6, “Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill,” and you discover the following: Islam’s only overarching moral principle is “if it is good for Islam, it’s right.” Spencer does not flinch from pointing out that “Islam allows for lying, as well as stealing and killing in certain circumstances,” and that “This leads to large-scale deception campaigns today.” You won’t hear that from the peddlers of political correctness.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Spencer’s book is its timeliness. Islam is widely acknowledged to be the world’s fastest growing religion, but few know just how fast. In fact, Islam is estimated to have reached 1.5 billion adherents thereby surpassing Christianity’s 1.2 billion faithful and dwarfing Judaism’s world-wide population at a mere 13-15 million. Leading counter-terrorist expert, R. Paz, who heads Prism, (The Project for the Research of Islamist Movements, www.e-prism.org), recently told the Christian Science Monitor that while most Muslims are in the moderate camp, "If we're talking about percentages, maybe the supporters of global jihad are only 1 percent of the Muslim world.'' That means, then, that there are about 15 million would-be Muslim terrorists.
In other words, the need to understand Islam will only grow more urgent. Spencer has done a remarkable job lifting the veil on its tenets. Previously, the failure to counter the specious arguments of Islam’s politically correct defenders may have been understandable. Similarly, many could be forgiven for doubting whether Islam could really show so little capacity for seeking middle ground. Now, with the publication of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), they no longer have an excuse.
To order a copy of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), click here.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com
Nancy Kobrin is an affiliated professor to the University of Haifa, Arabist, psychoanalyst and author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh's New Clothes: Islamic Suicide Terror and What It's Really All About.
Mark Steyn: Politicians Not Giving Us Much of a Choice
September 25, 2005
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
American politics seems to have dwindled down to a choice between a big government party and a big permanently-out-of-government party. The Senate Democrats had two months to cook up a reason to vote against John Roberts and the best California's Dianne Feinstein could manage come the big day was that she'd wanted to hear him "talking to me as a son, a husband and a father." In that case, get off the judiciary committee and go audition for ''Return To Bridges of Madison County,'' or ''What Women Want 2'' ("Mel Gibson is nominated to the Supreme Court but, despite being sensitive and a good listener, is accused of being a conservative theocrat").
That slab of meaningless emotive exhibitionism would make a good epitaph for the Democratic Party. The reality of life as a bigshot Dem is that what John Roberts is like "as a father" is less important than what George Soros is like as a sugar daddy. The more money shoveled at the party by Moveon.org, Hollywood, NOW and other unrepresentative fringes, the less it's able to see over the big pile of green to the electorate beyond. A party as thoroughly Sorosized as the Democrats is perforce downsized.
To be sure, they have many institutional advantages: If you watch the TV news, you'd still think Cindy Sheehan was an emblematic bereaved army mom, rather than a pitiful crackpot calling for Bush to pull his troops out of "occupied New Orleans." Her Million-Moan March washed up in Washington on Thursday to besiege the White House. As the Associated Press put it, "Sheehan, Supporters Descend On The Capital." There were 29 supporters. Can two-and-a-half dozen people "descend" on any capital city bigger than the South Sandwich Islands'? Surely her media boosters were cringing with embarrassment at their own impotence. Since its star columnist Maureen Dowd got the hots for Mrs. Sheehan's "moral authority," the New York Times has run some 70 stories on Cindy -- and every story they ran attracted another 0.4142857 of a supporter to her march on the capital.
Nonetheless, Hillary Rodham Clinton has yielded to "pressure" from all those 0.41428s and agreed to meet with Mrs. Sheehan to "explain" her vote for the Iraq war. The dwindling stars of today's Democratic Party expend most of their energy jumping through the ever smaller hoops of an ever kookier fringe.
These days one party raises a ton of money from George Soros and the other raises a ton of money from you. George Bush has committed to spending $200 billion on Gulf Coast "hurricane relief." The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore put the figure in perspective: There are supposedly half-a-million families displaced by Katrina. For $200 billion, you could give every family 400,000 bucks, and they could build their own beachfront home virtually anywhere in America except next door to Barbra Streisand's pad.
For 400 grand, they could all move into the Plaza Hotel -- with a view of Central Park, not the cheap rooms looking out on 58th -- and live off the 30-dollar Snickers from the mini-bar. Oh, sure, some might blow the $400,000 on beer and strippers, as several hurricane "victims" have already done with their complimentary Fedit-credit cards at the Baby Dolls Club in Houston. "You lost your whole house," said Abby, one of the eponymous dolls, "you might want some beer in a strip club."
But even Abby, skilled as she no doubt is, would have a hard job taking as much off as the "public servants" of Louisiana will once that $200 billion starts sluicing through the sewers of its kleptocrat bureaucracy. Even taking the gloomiest view of human nature's partiality to beer in a strip club, giving every displaced Gulf Coast family an instant 401(k) with an instant 400k would be unlikely to be as economically wasteful as a 200 bil government program -- unless, that is, it's going straight to the Army Corps of Engineers to build the world's highest seawall out of unused Sacagawea dollar coins.
Big-time Republicans tell me Bush's profligacy is doing a great job of neutralizing the Dem advantage in the spending-is-caring stakes. This may have been true initially -- in the same sense as undercover cops neutralize a massive heroin-smuggling operation by infiltrating it. But, if they're still running the heroin operation five years later, it looks less like neutralization and more like a change of management.
Savvier GOP types say, ah, well, Bush is the war president, his priority's the war, and he doesn't want a lot of domestic nickel-and-diming to distract from his prosecution of it. I like that argument even less. One lesson of Sept. 11 is that a government that tries to do everything is likely to do most of it badly. You could make the case that the government simply doesn't have the resources even to read the immigration applications of young single men from hotbeds of terrorism -- but not if that same government apparently has no problem finding the resources to fund Congressman Young's now famous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. If a thousandth of the care lavished on the Don Young Bridge had been lavished by U.S. Immigration on the 9/11 killers' visa paperwork, things might have gone very differently.
More to the point, domestic policy isn't a distraction from the war, it's a key front in it. Alaskan oil is part of the war on terror, so is increased refinery capacity. One reason why half the country's tuned out Iraq, Afghanistan and all the rest is because they can't see any connection between Bush foreign policy and their own lives. Way back in the summer of 2002, I wrote, "Sept. 11 is not just an event, hermetically sealed from everything before and after, but a context. Everything that's wrong with the environmental movement, with the teachers' unions, with the big-government bureaucracies can be seen through the prism of their responses to that day."
Ambitious presidents seize on extreme events to change the culture, as FDR did, using the Depression to transform the nature of the federal government. In allowing the eco-crazies to get away with prioritizing the world's biggest mosquito herd over Alaskan oil, and the teaching establishment with insisting that there's nothing wrong with the most overfunded public education system in the world that can't be fixed with even more wasted dollars, and the bureaucracy with creating an instantly sclerotic jobs-for-life federalized airport security (that just walked off the job in Houston), the Republicans missed their post-9/11 opportunity.
Instead of changing the nature of the federal government, the Republican majority in Washington seems to be changing the nature of the Republican Party. The Democrats' approach to government has been Sorosized, the GOP's has been supersized. Some choice.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
American politics seems to have dwindled down to a choice between a big government party and a big permanently-out-of-government party. The Senate Democrats had two months to cook up a reason to vote against John Roberts and the best California's Dianne Feinstein could manage come the big day was that she'd wanted to hear him "talking to me as a son, a husband and a father." In that case, get off the judiciary committee and go audition for ''Return To Bridges of Madison County,'' or ''What Women Want 2'' ("Mel Gibson is nominated to the Supreme Court but, despite being sensitive and a good listener, is accused of being a conservative theocrat").
That slab of meaningless emotive exhibitionism would make a good epitaph for the Democratic Party. The reality of life as a bigshot Dem is that what John Roberts is like "as a father" is less important than what George Soros is like as a sugar daddy. The more money shoveled at the party by Moveon.org, Hollywood, NOW and other unrepresentative fringes, the less it's able to see over the big pile of green to the electorate beyond. A party as thoroughly Sorosized as the Democrats is perforce downsized.
To be sure, they have many institutional advantages: If you watch the TV news, you'd still think Cindy Sheehan was an emblematic bereaved army mom, rather than a pitiful crackpot calling for Bush to pull his troops out of "occupied New Orleans." Her Million-Moan March washed up in Washington on Thursday to besiege the White House. As the Associated Press put it, "Sheehan, Supporters Descend On The Capital." There were 29 supporters. Can two-and-a-half dozen people "descend" on any capital city bigger than the South Sandwich Islands'? Surely her media boosters were cringing with embarrassment at their own impotence. Since its star columnist Maureen Dowd got the hots for Mrs. Sheehan's "moral authority," the New York Times has run some 70 stories on Cindy -- and every story they ran attracted another 0.4142857 of a supporter to her march on the capital.
Nonetheless, Hillary Rodham Clinton has yielded to "pressure" from all those 0.41428s and agreed to meet with Mrs. Sheehan to "explain" her vote for the Iraq war. The dwindling stars of today's Democratic Party expend most of their energy jumping through the ever smaller hoops of an ever kookier fringe.
These days one party raises a ton of money from George Soros and the other raises a ton of money from you. George Bush has committed to spending $200 billion on Gulf Coast "hurricane relief." The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore put the figure in perspective: There are supposedly half-a-million families displaced by Katrina. For $200 billion, you could give every family 400,000 bucks, and they could build their own beachfront home virtually anywhere in America except next door to Barbra Streisand's pad.
For 400 grand, they could all move into the Plaza Hotel -- with a view of Central Park, not the cheap rooms looking out on 58th -- and live off the 30-dollar Snickers from the mini-bar. Oh, sure, some might blow the $400,000 on beer and strippers, as several hurricane "victims" have already done with their complimentary Fedit-credit cards at the Baby Dolls Club in Houston. "You lost your whole house," said Abby, one of the eponymous dolls, "you might want some beer in a strip club."
But even Abby, skilled as she no doubt is, would have a hard job taking as much off as the "public servants" of Louisiana will once that $200 billion starts sluicing through the sewers of its kleptocrat bureaucracy. Even taking the gloomiest view of human nature's partiality to beer in a strip club, giving every displaced Gulf Coast family an instant 401(k) with an instant 400k would be unlikely to be as economically wasteful as a 200 bil government program -- unless, that is, it's going straight to the Army Corps of Engineers to build the world's highest seawall out of unused Sacagawea dollar coins.
Big-time Republicans tell me Bush's profligacy is doing a great job of neutralizing the Dem advantage in the spending-is-caring stakes. This may have been true initially -- in the same sense as undercover cops neutralize a massive heroin-smuggling operation by infiltrating it. But, if they're still running the heroin operation five years later, it looks less like neutralization and more like a change of management.
Savvier GOP types say, ah, well, Bush is the war president, his priority's the war, and he doesn't want a lot of domestic nickel-and-diming to distract from his prosecution of it. I like that argument even less. One lesson of Sept. 11 is that a government that tries to do everything is likely to do most of it badly. You could make the case that the government simply doesn't have the resources even to read the immigration applications of young single men from hotbeds of terrorism -- but not if that same government apparently has no problem finding the resources to fund Congressman Young's now famous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. If a thousandth of the care lavished on the Don Young Bridge had been lavished by U.S. Immigration on the 9/11 killers' visa paperwork, things might have gone very differently.
More to the point, domestic policy isn't a distraction from the war, it's a key front in it. Alaskan oil is part of the war on terror, so is increased refinery capacity. One reason why half the country's tuned out Iraq, Afghanistan and all the rest is because they can't see any connection between Bush foreign policy and their own lives. Way back in the summer of 2002, I wrote, "Sept. 11 is not just an event, hermetically sealed from everything before and after, but a context. Everything that's wrong with the environmental movement, with the teachers' unions, with the big-government bureaucracies can be seen through the prism of their responses to that day."
Ambitious presidents seize on extreme events to change the culture, as FDR did, using the Depression to transform the nature of the federal government. In allowing the eco-crazies to get away with prioritizing the world's biggest mosquito herd over Alaskan oil, and the teaching establishment with insisting that there's nothing wrong with the most overfunded public education system in the world that can't be fixed with even more wasted dollars, and the bureaucracy with creating an instantly sclerotic jobs-for-life federalized airport security (that just walked off the job in Houston), the Republicans missed their post-9/11 opportunity.
Instead of changing the nature of the federal government, the Republican majority in Washington seems to be changing the nature of the Republican Party. The Democrats' approach to government has been Sorosized, the GOP's has been supersized. Some choice.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Christopher Hitchens: 'Galloway is a Hot, Blustering Bully...'
[I watched the deabte between Galloway and Hitchens the other night on C-Span...highly recommended viewing...if only to prove to oneself that there really are people out there who think like George Galloway. What a complete boob. I have many reservations about the military campaign in Iraq but I found Mr. Hitchens' musings on the Middle East to be infinitely more coherent than the childish rants of Mr. Galloway...and I've not found Hitchens to be an inveterate liar as Mr. Galloway can be most accurately described. - jtf]
'Galloway is a hot, blustering bully - but I'm staying on his case until the very end'
(Filed: 18/09/2005)
Telegraph.co.uk
The experience of spending some hours on a public platform with George Galloway is disappointingly similar to the experience of watching him on al Jazeera, or on Syrian state television. One learns exactly nothing that one did not already know.
When addressing audiences in the Middle East, his metaphors of martyrdom and rape, and his celebration of the "resistance" forces are a little more florid, perhaps, but I shall have to concede that even in New York he has the nerve to tell an audience that the atrocities of September 2001 were essentially the fault of the United States itself. That was not his finest moment - and nor was it by any means his lowest one - but I began to see again his essential appeal, which is an utter indifference to embarrassment.
It had taken me some time to bring him onto a fair field with no favour. After his loud and rude refusal to answer direct questions from a Senate sub-committee, and after his personal insults to me when I had asked him some questions of my own, and after the almost uniformly good press that he achieved for these tactics, I challenged him to a public debate.
A challenge was also issued to me and Galloway by the Labour Friends of Iraq, a group which brings together people who are divided on the intervention itself but which offers help to the embattled secular and democratic forces in that stricken country. Despite repeated applications, Galloway declined any formal reply and tersely said "not under your aegis" when approached in the Commons by Gary Kent, the director of the group.
As Galloway's book tour was in preparation in the United States, however, he was subjected to the same challenge by a number of interested parties, and began to see that it might be hard to avoid. His agents and representatives did their best to discourage any deal, most notably by demanding that he get twice the fee (to cover travel costs) that I would receive for the same event, but after I had said that I would in principle do it for nothing - which is what we would both have been paid if it was a Labour-type event - they acceded. (If there's any dough left after the other night, the organisers have rather decently offered me a third of it.)
So there we were. Obviously I am suspect as a juror in my own cause, but put yourself the following hypothetical case. Mr A challenges Mr B, saying that he appears on the available evidence to be a handmaiden to dictators and a recipient of their hospitality. Mr B replies that Mr A is a piece of ordure, or some other unmentionable substance. The riposte is hailed as a tremendous piece of repartee, as well as a full and complete answer to the challenge. Perhaps my own professional journalistic colleagues do not wish to seem to favour one of their own, but I have always had difficulty in seeing the pith or brilliance of this.
In point of fact, having quoted Mr Galloway's recent speech in Damascus ("The Syrian people are fortunate in having Bashar al-Assad as their leader") and having further pointed out that Mr Assad decided not to show his face in New York last week, as the UN investigation into the murder of Rafik Hariri rolled up more and more Syrian agents, I was given a full answer by being told that I had metamorphosed back from a butterfly into a slug, with a consequent trail of slime in my wake. I did not have the lepidopteral presence of mind to point out, at that moment, that butterflies pupate from sturdy and furry caterpillars.
I reiterated my point that the Syrian people have no say in their own good fortune, since they inherit a Dauphin from an absolute monarch. That did me no good at all in some circles. What I should have done, I now realise, is to say that George Galloway knows all about slime because he's so far inside the posterior passage of a murderous dictator that one can barely glimpse his Gucci buckles. That would have won me golden opinions. I suppose it would also have re-defined the old term "slug-fest".
I have often wondered how a certain type of public figure manages to keep his fluttering stomach under control. To all appearances they somehow remain as cool - as Aunt Dahlia's chef, Anatole, once phrased it - "as some cucumbers".
Mr Galloway is hot and blustering rather than cool, and he may not have appreciated that I am staying with him until the very end of this argument, but he does manage to survive by making extraordinary claims and then moving on to the next appointment. When I asked him in public if he would deny having discussed oil-for-food allocations with Tariq Aziz in person, he said that he would sign such an affidavit right away if I had it on me. That boast is one that I shall give him the chance to make good upon, if he has a pen handy.
So on one hand we have a bipartisan Senate committee, and on the other we have a man with a big and dirty mouth. And the coverage splits the difference - quite often in the bigmouth's favour. I don't think this is completely explained by the way that the British press cowers before our restrictive and archaic libel laws - which do not apply in the United States. I believe that there is a sick and surreptitious fascination with people of a certain thuggish unscrupulousness, from Mike Tyson to Henry Kissinger, and that many press hacks have a secret vicarious love for such people.
I wish them joy of this. They enable Mr Galloway to lecture a captive audience in Syria, fawning upon a despot and saying that with "145 military operations a day" that the people he describes as "these poor Iraqis… are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars" and then to fly to America to commiserate with the mother of one of the dead soldiers. (Galloway was, remember, expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 after it interpreted some of his comments as an incitement to attack Coalition troops.)
On Wednesday night in Manhattan, however, he made the mistake that all demagogues and bullies make, and forgot that he was on television and on the record, and sought only to please his own section of the crowd. He answered questions with crude abuse. I have plenty of time and patience to spare on this, and was addressing myself to a larger audience, and I never ask a question to which I don't know the answer. So we shall see, shan't we?
• Edited highlights of the debate, broadcast last night on Radio 4, can be accessed at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4
• Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Daily Mirror. His briefing on Galloway can be read at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/exit.jhtml;jsessionid=GP5SC3RNNSSLRQFIQMFSM5WAVCBQ0JVC?exit=http://www.hitchensweb.com
'Galloway is a hot, blustering bully - but I'm staying on his case until the very end'
(Filed: 18/09/2005)
Telegraph.co.uk
The experience of spending some hours on a public platform with George Galloway is disappointingly similar to the experience of watching him on al Jazeera, or on Syrian state television. One learns exactly nothing that one did not already know.
When addressing audiences in the Middle East, his metaphors of martyrdom and rape, and his celebration of the "resistance" forces are a little more florid, perhaps, but I shall have to concede that even in New York he has the nerve to tell an audience that the atrocities of September 2001 were essentially the fault of the United States itself. That was not his finest moment - and nor was it by any means his lowest one - but I began to see again his essential appeal, which is an utter indifference to embarrassment.
It had taken me some time to bring him onto a fair field with no favour. After his loud and rude refusal to answer direct questions from a Senate sub-committee, and after his personal insults to me when I had asked him some questions of my own, and after the almost uniformly good press that he achieved for these tactics, I challenged him to a public debate.
A challenge was also issued to me and Galloway by the Labour Friends of Iraq, a group which brings together people who are divided on the intervention itself but which offers help to the embattled secular and democratic forces in that stricken country. Despite repeated applications, Galloway declined any formal reply and tersely said "not under your aegis" when approached in the Commons by Gary Kent, the director of the group.
As Galloway's book tour was in preparation in the United States, however, he was subjected to the same challenge by a number of interested parties, and began to see that it might be hard to avoid. His agents and representatives did their best to discourage any deal, most notably by demanding that he get twice the fee (to cover travel costs) that I would receive for the same event, but after I had said that I would in principle do it for nothing - which is what we would both have been paid if it was a Labour-type event - they acceded. (If there's any dough left after the other night, the organisers have rather decently offered me a third of it.)
So there we were. Obviously I am suspect as a juror in my own cause, but put yourself the following hypothetical case. Mr A challenges Mr B, saying that he appears on the available evidence to be a handmaiden to dictators and a recipient of their hospitality. Mr B replies that Mr A is a piece of ordure, or some other unmentionable substance. The riposte is hailed as a tremendous piece of repartee, as well as a full and complete answer to the challenge. Perhaps my own professional journalistic colleagues do not wish to seem to favour one of their own, but I have always had difficulty in seeing the pith or brilliance of this.
In point of fact, having quoted Mr Galloway's recent speech in Damascus ("The Syrian people are fortunate in having Bashar al-Assad as their leader") and having further pointed out that Mr Assad decided not to show his face in New York last week, as the UN investigation into the murder of Rafik Hariri rolled up more and more Syrian agents, I was given a full answer by being told that I had metamorphosed back from a butterfly into a slug, with a consequent trail of slime in my wake. I did not have the lepidopteral presence of mind to point out, at that moment, that butterflies pupate from sturdy and furry caterpillars.
I reiterated my point that the Syrian people have no say in their own good fortune, since they inherit a Dauphin from an absolute monarch. That did me no good at all in some circles. What I should have done, I now realise, is to say that George Galloway knows all about slime because he's so far inside the posterior passage of a murderous dictator that one can barely glimpse his Gucci buckles. That would have won me golden opinions. I suppose it would also have re-defined the old term "slug-fest".
I have often wondered how a certain type of public figure manages to keep his fluttering stomach under control. To all appearances they somehow remain as cool - as Aunt Dahlia's chef, Anatole, once phrased it - "as some cucumbers".
Mr Galloway is hot and blustering rather than cool, and he may not have appreciated that I am staying with him until the very end of this argument, but he does manage to survive by making extraordinary claims and then moving on to the next appointment. When I asked him in public if he would deny having discussed oil-for-food allocations with Tariq Aziz in person, he said that he would sign such an affidavit right away if I had it on me. That boast is one that I shall give him the chance to make good upon, if he has a pen handy.
So on one hand we have a bipartisan Senate committee, and on the other we have a man with a big and dirty mouth. And the coverage splits the difference - quite often in the bigmouth's favour. I don't think this is completely explained by the way that the British press cowers before our restrictive and archaic libel laws - which do not apply in the United States. I believe that there is a sick and surreptitious fascination with people of a certain thuggish unscrupulousness, from Mike Tyson to Henry Kissinger, and that many press hacks have a secret vicarious love for such people.
I wish them joy of this. They enable Mr Galloway to lecture a captive audience in Syria, fawning upon a despot and saying that with "145 military operations a day" that the people he describes as "these poor Iraqis… are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars" and then to fly to America to commiserate with the mother of one of the dead soldiers. (Galloway was, remember, expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 after it interpreted some of his comments as an incitement to attack Coalition troops.)
On Wednesday night in Manhattan, however, he made the mistake that all demagogues and bullies make, and forgot that he was on television and on the record, and sought only to please his own section of the crowd. He answered questions with crude abuse. I have plenty of time and patience to spare on this, and was addressing myself to a larger audience, and I never ask a question to which I don't know the answer. So we shall see, shan't we?
• Edited highlights of the debate, broadcast last night on Radio 4, can be accessed at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4
• Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Daily Mirror. His briefing on Galloway can be read at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/exit.jhtml;jsessionid=GP5SC3RNNSSLRQFIQMFSM5WAVCBQ0JVC?exit=http://www.hitchensweb.com
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Joshua Muravchik: The U.N.'s Terrorism Gap
September 18, 2005
latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary
JOSHUA MURAVCHIK is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book "The Future of the United Nations: Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward" (AEI Press).
THE MOST SHOCKING outcome of last week's U.N. summit was the failure, once again, of the world organization to take a definitive stand against terrorism. It was scarcely surprising that the 191 member-states could not come to agreement on adding members to the Security Council or on sweeping management reforms or on foreign aid, however disappointing these failures were to some. But a long-overdue declaration on terrorism had seemed well within reach.That it was needed in the first place will surprise many. The sad fact is that the U.N. has never spoken clearly on this issue, thanks to the stubborn efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, made up of 56 states — nearly 30% of the U.N.'s membership.
After 9/11, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan took it upon himself to secure a blanket condemnation of terrorism, but it was beaten back by the OIC. Last year, after the attack that killed hundreds of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia, Annan tried to get a resolution of this kind through the Security Council but was forced to settle for equivocal language in order to secure the votes of OIC members Pakistan and Algeria.
A proposed U.N. convention against terrorism has been stalled since 1997. The holdup? How to define terrorism. But this is nothing more than a semantic trick. The Islamic states insist that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. Putting a bomb in a market or train or bus is not an act of terrorism, they say, if it is done for a righteous purpose; namely national liberation or resistance to occupation.
To say there is a problem of definition is to focus on a word. The real question is whether it is ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants. For the Islamic states, the answer is yes.
Not only have they succeeded in blocking anti-terror resolutions, they have secured votes endorsing their approach. In 1970, the General Assembly adopted a resolution "reaffirm[ing] … the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples and peoples under alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal." This has been repeated several times by the General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights. Everyone understands that the last phrase is a euphemism for terrorism.
Still, it had seemed that in the aftermath of 9/11, the bombings in Bali, Madrid and London and the shootings in Beslan, not to mention the continuing carnage in Iraq and Israel, that the time had come to turn a new page. Last year, the U.N.'s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change proposed to cut the Gordian knot by having the U.N. embrace this common-sense language: "Any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act."
This proposal apparently enjoyed the support of the panel's two key Islamic representatives, Nafis Sadik of Pakistan and Amr Moussa of Egypt, who is the secretary-general of the Arab League. Annan embraced this language and included it in the proposals he sent to last week's summit. With Annan and the U.S. representatives working together, supported by other Western diplomats, and with Moussa having already signed on, it looked as if the new language would sail through.
But then Islamic states again dug in their heels, and these words were stripped out of the final document. In its place was a ringing denunciation of terrorism, which, however, leaves Islamic leaders free to insist, as leading Sunni theologian Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi did recently, that bombings of civilians in places such as Israel and Iraq carried out to "resist occupation" are not covered by this resolution because they do not amount to terrorism.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns claimed victory nonetheless because we had at least blocked an explicit reiteration of the U.N.'s support for terrorism. "Sometimes in diplomacy, defeating negative measures is a very important achievement," he said. If blocking yet another pro-terror resolution is an achievement by U.N. standards, then the institution's moral corruption may prove harder to cure than the material corruption so much at the center of attention.
latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary
JOSHUA MURAVCHIK is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the new book "The Future of the United Nations: Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward" (AEI Press).
THE MOST SHOCKING outcome of last week's U.N. summit was the failure, once again, of the world organization to take a definitive stand against terrorism. It was scarcely surprising that the 191 member-states could not come to agreement on adding members to the Security Council or on sweeping management reforms or on foreign aid, however disappointing these failures were to some. But a long-overdue declaration on terrorism had seemed well within reach.That it was needed in the first place will surprise many. The sad fact is that the U.N. has never spoken clearly on this issue, thanks to the stubborn efforts of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, made up of 56 states — nearly 30% of the U.N.'s membership.
After 9/11, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan took it upon himself to secure a blanket condemnation of terrorism, but it was beaten back by the OIC. Last year, after the attack that killed hundreds of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia, Annan tried to get a resolution of this kind through the Security Council but was forced to settle for equivocal language in order to secure the votes of OIC members Pakistan and Algeria.
A proposed U.N. convention against terrorism has been stalled since 1997. The holdup? How to define terrorism. But this is nothing more than a semantic trick. The Islamic states insist that terrorism must be defined not by the nature of the act but by its purpose. Putting a bomb in a market or train or bus is not an act of terrorism, they say, if it is done for a righteous purpose; namely national liberation or resistance to occupation.
To say there is a problem of definition is to focus on a word. The real question is whether it is ever legitimate to target women, children and other noncombatants. For the Islamic states, the answer is yes.
Not only have they succeeded in blocking anti-terror resolutions, they have secured votes endorsing their approach. In 1970, the General Assembly adopted a resolution "reaffirm[ing] … the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples and peoples under alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal." This has been repeated several times by the General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights. Everyone understands that the last phrase is a euphemism for terrorism.
Still, it had seemed that in the aftermath of 9/11, the bombings in Bali, Madrid and London and the shootings in Beslan, not to mention the continuing carnage in Iraq and Israel, that the time had come to turn a new page. Last year, the U.N.'s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change proposed to cut the Gordian knot by having the U.N. embrace this common-sense language: "Any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act."
This proposal apparently enjoyed the support of the panel's two key Islamic representatives, Nafis Sadik of Pakistan and Amr Moussa of Egypt, who is the secretary-general of the Arab League. Annan embraced this language and included it in the proposals he sent to last week's summit. With Annan and the U.S. representatives working together, supported by other Western diplomats, and with Moussa having already signed on, it looked as if the new language would sail through.
But then Islamic states again dug in their heels, and these words were stripped out of the final document. In its place was a ringing denunciation of terrorism, which, however, leaves Islamic leaders free to insist, as leading Sunni theologian Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi did recently, that bombings of civilians in places such as Israel and Iraq carried out to "resist occupation" are not covered by this resolution because they do not amount to terrorism.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns claimed victory nonetheless because we had at least blocked an explicit reiteration of the U.N.'s support for terrorism. "Sometimes in diplomacy, defeating negative measures is a very important achievement," he said. If blocking yet another pro-terror resolution is an achievement by U.N. standards, then the institution's moral corruption may prove harder to cure than the material corruption so much at the center of attention.
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