"FREE David Hicks," reads the sign Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters is displaying on a giant inflatable pig at his Australian concert venues. As gestures go, this is probably as offensive as it gets; Hicks (or Mohammed Dawood, to use his preferred title) converted to Islam seven years ago and his new religion regards pigs as unclean.
Hell, Dawood's religion regards even seeing-eye dogs as unclean. Islamic taxi drivers in Melbourne have refused to accept blind passengers because they were accompanied by evil labradors. Who knows what such touchy folk might make of a whole massive pig daubed with the name of their co-religionist? For shame, Roger Waters. The next round of Islamic rioting is all your fault.
Meanwhile, please spare a thought for The Sun-Herald's Alex Mitchell, whose candidate for Australian of the Year was unaccountably defeated this week. Last year Alex wrote: "For his refusal to grovel to his jailers at Guantanamo and his unbreakable spirit, Hicks should receive nominations from all over the country to become this year's Australian of the Year. Let's hope that servicemen and women and people of good will send in entries to bring him home in glory from the illegal gulag of the fanatical idiocy of the Bush Administration.''
It's curious Mitchell denounces the Bush administration's "fanatical idiocy'' but wants to reward Hicks's idiotic fanaticism with glory and honour.
Similarly, the other day John Pilger was complaining in The Guardian about Australians fighting "faraway people with whom they have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion''. Which is exactly what Hicks was up to, yet Pilger regards the al-Qaeda member as some type of human rights victim.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2007 10:53 ||
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#1
"FREE David Hicks," reads the sign Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters is displaying on a giant inflatable pig...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...Nice work, ya burnt out hippie.
Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem. The result? In 1973 we imported 34.8 percent of our oil. Today we import 60.3 percent.
And what does this president propose? Another great technological fix. For Jimmy Carter, it was the magic of synfuels. For George Bush, it's the wonders of ethanol. Our fuel will grow on trees. Well, stalks, with even fancier higher-tech variants to come from cellulose and other (literal) rubbish.
It is very American to believe that chemists are going to discover the cure for geopolitical weakness. It is even more American to imagine that it can be done painlessly. Ethanol for everyone. Farmers get a huge cash crop. Consumers get more supply. And the country ends up more secure.
This is nonsense. As my colleague Robert Samuelson demonstrates, biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it.
Even worse, the happy talk displaces any discussion about here-and-now measures that would have a rapid and revolutionary effect on oil consumption and dependence. No one talks about them because they have unhidden costs. Politicians hate unhidden costs.
There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.
First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation -- fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of "renewable and alternative fuels in 2017'' and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies -- of the kind we have been trying for three decades.
Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 -- with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury -- and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings.
No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It's the essence of capitalism.
Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference.
We will always need some oil. And the more of it that is ours, the better. It is tautological that nothing more directly reduces dependence on foreign oil than substituting domestic for foreign production. Yet ANWR is now so politically dead that the president did not even mention it in the State of the Union, or his energy address the next day.
He did bring up, to enthusiastic congressional applause, global warming. No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.
What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere.
Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated -- very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn't pollute the atmosphere. At all.
There is no free lunch. Producing energy is going to produce waste. You pick your poison and you find a way to manage it. Want to do something about global warming? How many global warming activists are willing to say the word nuclear?
So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.
#1
Yeah Charles, while you're at it, point out that thousands die every year from 'safe clean' solar energy. Little things they seem to forget like skin cancer and heat prostration. The Sun, the largest continuous thermonuclear reaction in the neighborhood. Caution, overexposure can cause death.
#2
The US does have the capability for energy independence - but it would come with a cost, and not just for the US. For the sake of the argument assume gasahol as the 'answer' - to plant enough cropland for that purpose would eliminate all surplus and export agricultural capacity. Maybe China then gets cheaper oil from KSA, but where do they get replacement soybeans? They'll pay more, and eventually the poorer consumers with little of value to trade will starve. Think 'North Korea', but without nukes and missiles. In the long run, I'd rather have the agricultural land and fresh water supply than all the oil in the Middle East.
#3
There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.
He left out the most obvious thing we can do: Conquer the oil-fields of western "Iran" and northern "Saudi" Arabia. Instant energy independence combined with the impoverishment of our worst enemies while holding the tether on the ChiComs. It is more than a twofer; it's the obvious solution to our problems.
#4
There are two ways to look at energy in the future:
More energy, more energy use, greater efficiency, less and cleaner waste, and improved standard of living around the world. Or,
Less energy, forced conservation, stalled technology, expensive waste disposal, and a slowly diminishing standard of living around the world.
In past, the former example has always proven true, but doomsayers ALWAYS say that the latter example is the unavoidable future. They said it in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and continue to say it today.
So whenever the subject is mentioned, it should ALWAYS be remembered that the doomsayers are ALWAYS wrong. They are batting a thousand. Whatever they say, the opposite will happen. They are impervious to facts, logic and reason. Anyone who takes their advice is a fool.
#6
One mistake I made on the ethanol question was to look at it in a static sense. Back in the 80s and 90s, corn was the only source (at least in the USA) of ethanol and the process by which it was extracted was pretty inefficient requiring huge amounts of natural gas. I used to declaim the idiocy of this process and of the subsidy.
However, the world changes. The ethanol process has become far more efficient and, far more importantly, there is reason to expect that sources other than corn can be used to provide the base material (even sewage sludge and waste from chicken/pig/cattle ops). Assuming this works out, the 'waste of the taxpayers money' will have evolved into a carbon negative, job producing industry in the next 20 years.
OK, it won't solve the energy problem. But CK's solutions aren't politically feasible ($4/gal tax on gas, yeah right).
#7
The way I see it there are two issues here: Short term, long term.
Short term there are somethings we can do. Ethanol/Methenol mixed into gas to cut down in the gasoline percentage used by sporty cars. Biodiesel mixed into diesel to cut down on the diesel percentage used by slow ponderous vehicles. Laws that promote SUVs and trucks and other vehicles to shift over to diesel. We can adjust the amount of booze/biodiesel content as we go. Oh, and increase drilling.
Long term. Nuke plants. Don't wait for fourth generation plants that can create hydrogen, start plopping out third generation pebble-bed nuclear plants now. Hydrogen's a joke, we will see batteries and plug-in hybrids long before hydrogen and we'll need lots of power.
Both long and short term should have been proposed on Sept 12 as requirements for our long term security.
#8
This "energy independence" thing is a stunningly widespread much-ado-about-nothing.
First, there is no "problem". At least none that can be materially affected by any of the measures mentioned by CK or folks here.
Petroleum is a key commodity for all modern economies, for energy and other uses, and nothing will change that - not taxing gasoline, not more driling in ANWR, whatever.
Achieving "energy independence" would achieve exactly what? Would we REALLY then just sit by watching football and make jokes about some chaos in the MidEast that had the effect of empowering jihadis and giving them the keys to hundreds of billions in revenue? Of course not.
No economically, technically, or politically feasible or DESIRABLE set of moves will materially affect the global use of petroleum. The economic cost of artificially replacing petroleum (i.e., replacing it based on policy and not real market price signals) would be crippling, and is unthinkable. Besides which, if the US were to pursue this imaginary course, no one else would (think of the Kyoto-related greenhouse gas silliness, and how any "compliance" by the US would be more than compensated for by non-compliant growth in Asia).
There's not the remotest chance of driving the price of petroleum down significantly, in a sustained manner. So we can't "de-fund" the mullahs. Recall that Tom Friedman is in love with this concept - a reminder that it is in fact likely to be utterly infeasible.
There's also not the slightest chance we could reduce our petroleum use enough to make us indifferent to the global oil economy. But just for the sake of clarification, assume there were.
Economically, we're still tied to the global economy (duh - globalization, which benefits all and that includes us), and unlikely to sit by while it is driven into the ground by chaos in the oil sector. Strategically, we're absolutely unable to sit by and let the oil revenues be used for WMD development, terrorism, etc. - recall that THIS is the reason we're in Iraq to begin with.
Shame on me for my laziness in not assembling the data and doing the rigorous quantitative and literary economic exposition to debunk this "energy independence" concept. It's a head-shaker that it's been in dozens of SOTUs. It's simply a non-starter - based on an economically and strategically incorrect analysis of the situation, and not logically thought through.
#9
The U.S's capability for energy independence is the same as the Amish community's capability for the same. Live an Amish lifestyle & have a great degree of energy independence. I agree with CK. The US (and the Rantburg commenters) are not at all serious about energy independence.
#10
Now, Verlaine's #8 comment was a serious one. I don't agree that the dependence of the US on imported oil is "much ado about nothing." I don't agree that there is a "real market" in the oil import/export business: the pricing is driven by monopoly forces of government & corporations, the entire Rantburg community has no say in the pricing one way or the other, unless an Exxon CEO or a Saudi prince contribute regularly here. Part of the world oil price is the 4 GI's murdered in Karbala this week, and this never seems to enter the pricing discussion. I do agree there is not the remotest chance of driving down the cost of oil. However, we can de-fund the Iranian mullahs rather easily by shutting down their oil import/export facilities with a brief bombing campaign which they more than a little deserve since 1979. In any case, no level of funding will help dead mullahs.
I think Verlaine presupposes that if rule of law & a barely humane order somehow break out in the Muslim oil fields and the jihadis somehow lose their ability to threaten the rest of the world, all will be well with the oil import business. This really needs some serious discussion.
WASHINGTON -- What's America's strategy in the Middle East? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week sketched a new framework based on what she calls the "realignment'' of states that want to contain Iran and its radical Muslim proxies.
In an interview Tuesday, Rice summarized the new strategy that has been coming together over the last several months. Although many of its elements have been previewed in recent weeks by commentators such as Columbia University scholar Gary Sick, Rice's comments were an unusually detailed public explanation of the new American effort to create a de facto alliance between Israel and moderate Arab states against Iranian extremism.
Rice said the new approach reflects the growing Arab concern about Iran's attempt to project power through its proxies: "After the war in Lebanon, the Middle East really did begin to clarify into an extremist element allied with Iran, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. On the other side were the targets of this extremism -- the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Palestinians -- and those who want to resist, such as the Saudis, Egypt and Jordan.''
America's recent show of force against Iran -- seizing Iranian operatives in Iraq and sending additional warships to the Persian Gulf -- was part of this broader effort to reassure the Saudis and others that, despite its troubles in Iraq, America remains a reliable ally against a rising Iran. "The U.S. has to demonstrate that it is present in the Gulf, and going to be present in the Gulf,'' Rice told me.
Realignment is linked with a new U.S. effort to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rice is encouraging both sides to explore so-called "final-status issues'' -- such as borders, the status of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to a homeland -- rather than remain deadlocked over the so-called "road map.''
The effort to contain Iranian-backed pressure took on new urgency this week, as Hezbollah's campaign against the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora spawned a spasm of violence that left at least four dead. America, France and Saudi Arabia quickly organized a $7.6 billion financial rescue package for Siniora, but that hasn't stemmed the rising sectarian tension in Lebanon between Sunnis who back Siniora and Shiite supporters of Hezbollah.
Critics may see Rice's realignment strategy as another high-risk roll of the dice by the Bush administration in a region that is already polarized by the Iraq War and sectarian conflict. These critics may also question the central role of Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic monarchy that many Arabs regard as a bastion of the status quo.
"The reception will be very skeptical'' among some Arabs, cautioned one prominent official who is normally among the most pro-American in the region. "Increasing the fault line between Sunnis and Shiites is a mistake,'' he argued. State Department officials would counter that it was Iran that moved the fault line by encouraging Hezbollah's provocative behavior in Lebanon.
The Bush administration's thinking about realignment helps explain why it has resisted engaging Syria and Iran, as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton report. As Rice put it, "You have a 'pan' movement, across the region. The war in Lebanon crystallized it for everyone. You can't just leave it there. ... If you concentrate on engaging Syria and Iran, you may lose the chance to do the realignment.''
On Syria, Rice said the administration is seeking a change of policy, rather than regime change. Asked about an offer made in an interview with me last month by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem to help the U.S. provide greater security in Iraq, she said: "If the Syrians want to stabilize Iraq, why don't they do it?'' As for Israeli interest in exploring the Syrian initiative, she noted recent private peace feelers between Syrians and Israelis and suggested that if the Israelis decide there is something important, they will pursue it.
The administration's tougher stance against Iran arguably has already produced some results. Iran's firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be in political trouble with the ruling mullahs, in part because his reckless talk alienated other Muslims. But the strongest leverage against Iran appears to be the West's unified diplomatic coalition. "The Security Council resolution (condemning Iran's nuclear program and mandating mild sanctions) has had more of an effect than I thought it would,'' Rice said.
The realignment strategy poses as many questions as it answers -- not least the anomaly of supporting Sunni resistance to Iran at the same time the U.S. augments its military support for a Shiite-led government in Iraq. But as with any strategy, Rice's realignment idea has the virtue of offering a basis for discussion and careful thinking about a region perched on the edge of a volcano.
#3
I disagree. We have realized that the Sunni nations are paranoid about the Shiite nations. Saudi alone is so scared they are investing $100B to do whatever they can to stop the Iranians. Both Egypt and Saudi are talking about going nuclear out of fear that Iran is going nuclear.
Damn. If there ever was a good opportunity to get all the Sunni nations on our side, now is the time. Golden opportunities abound. Rice must be nearly overwhelmed with all the perspective alliances we could make to further our interests.
We could get them to sit on al-Qaeda and other extremists in their countries, get them to make movements towards greater democracy and economic liberalization. We might even get troop commitments from the Sunnis to go into Lebanon and clean Hizbollah's clocks. They might lean on Hamas, another Iranian proxy.
Already, the Egyptian military is very attuned to the US military because of the Bright Star exercises. Imagine if Saudi, Yemen and other Sunni nations sent large chunks of their military to participate in those exercises? Evan Oman, which is Ibadhi, not Sunni or Shiite, would possibly want on board, for fear of the Shiite.
Hell, you might even get Afghan and Pakistani army involved.
The Iranians would about crap themselves.
We could even offer the Sunnis a goal of capturing Syria, and giving control of that nation to its 80% Sunni majority, after smiting the Alawite Shiites who work on Iran's behalf against the Sunnis.
Best of all, we might use it as a major icebreaker between the Sunni nations and Israel.
#4
OK, Anonymoose. I'll bite. What do we do to the Kurds with this pro-Sunni plan? If the plan does not work in our favor, wouldn't it sour the one group of people who have the least animosity towards us? It sure would be nice to have a base in the area with a fairly grateful and cooperative populace.
#6
Jules: The Kurds have no love for Iranian Shiites. And if the US and the Sunnis want to replace the Alawite regime in Syria with a Sunni majority, it just might make an excellent opportunity for the Syrian Kurds to break off and join with the Iraqi Kurds.
gromgoru: Just because it is highly unlikely that the Arabs will ever be our true friends, does not mean that we might find great advantage in a friendly, if temporary, entente with them. Mutual self-interest and all that.
Remember that our conquest of Iraq, and the resulting functional democracy has put tremendous pressure on every dictator in the ME, resulting in incremental democratic change about everywhere.
By being the force that can unify their self-interest against the Iranians, we will open the door to all sorts of opportunities purely in our interest.
For example, in past we realized after the Arab-Israeli war that Egypt did have the potential for having a serious army--if not yet. And this army might prove difficult to the US military at some future time. So when the opportunity presented itself, we decided to not only give them military hardware, but train with them.
Not a waste of money at all. Because the #1 thing we trained the Egyptian army was to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, to never, ever, to fight the US military. If necessary to overthrow their civilian leaders with a military coup and junta, but NEVER fight the US.
Well worth the investment. But anything we would pull off while the Arab world is unified against the Iranians would be aimed at the ME 20 or 30 years down the road.
We would slip in all sorts of democratic notions and supports, to keep the ball rolling there. We would lean on them to back off from Israel, yet put the blocks to Hamas and Hezbollah. We would possibly even get some WoT assistance with those countries leaning on their fanatics.
Just all sorts of goodies. With us smack dab in the middle of it.
#8
#6 Anonymoose, I though hard about my response to your post. And then I thought "Why bother?". Anybone who believes that USA profited by any dealings it had with Arabs is way beyond my poor powers of persuasion.
Sarah Honig, THE JERUSALEM POST
Israel sadly provides the unimpeachably ultimate illustration for Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly. Ours is a folly so extreme as to jeopardize this nation's very survivability.
For more than 13 years Israel's leaders have made folly their yardstick for sanity and prudence. The more their strategy negates the most basic self-preservation instincts and elementary common sense, the more it's hyped as nothing less than the hallmark of sound-mindedness and wisdom. Tuchman defined folly as policy which is plainly inimical to the self-interest of the collective pursuing it. Moreover, it has to be implemented over time, not just in one extraordinary flash of irrationality. The folly must be espoused by more than a single misguided figurehead and constitute groupthink. Most significantly, Tuchman's definition hinges on the delivery in advance of cogent warnings against the foreseen impending calamitous consequences of the given folly.
Everything that has happened to Israel since Oslo introduced into our midst the incipient Palestinian state (Tuchman's Trojan horse counterpart), fully measures up to Tuchman's folly criteria (and then some). Indeed the initial folly keeps spawning spin-off follies and the offshoot misguided leadership then begets even more irresponsible fantasy-addicted, consensus-skewing successors.
Ehud Olmert's slipshod and bamboozling ways are Oslo's predictable derivatives. They're evolutions of Osloite delusions - colossally grotesque progressions of the folly Tuchman identified. Were this suicide-scale folly stopped now, Israelis might heave a united sigh of relief at having barely dodged the fatal bullet. But to read our headlines, this is wishful thinking. If the polls are borne out, we may yet acutely miss Olmert - unreal as that sounds.
Said polls, for instance, show that the one Kadima character still incomprehensibly popular is Tzipi Livni (notwithstanding, obviously, the dire inadequacy of her foreign policy and abysmally bungled advocacy of Israel's cause). So if the rug is irretrievably pulled from under Olmert's wobbly feet (by, say, the Winograd Commission), Kadima's council of sages may opt to avoid elections by crowning Livni instead. Theoretically - especially given our parliamentarians' penchant for sleaze - they may actually pull this travesty off.
It's, therefore, not inconceivable that Livni - after a mere few kowtowing years in public life - will be meteorically catapulted to the top, with even fewer qualifications than Olmert, and fewer principles (if that's possible). In other words, the folly as delineated by Tuchman might yet be even more mind-bogglingly exacerbated. We seem inexorably bound to deteriorate from bad to worse, to beyond-belief worse.
During her junket to Tokyo last week, Livni offered insight into her ethical makeup when taking time (from apparently pitching Israel's case) to laud Dan Halutz for "bringing a high standard of values as an army officer, and we can learn from that, and like that our soldiers too, about taking responsibility. I think his action is worth admiring. I have much respect for the chief of General Staff."
The above - it need be noted - was uttered in Livni's native Hebrew, so the jumbled sentence-structure cannot be ascribed to the encumbrances (for her) of English syntax. That said, her supercilious gibberish is most telling. With patronizing self-conferred moral authority, she presumes to enlighten us, and "our soldiers too," that it's above and beyond one's obligation to quit in the wake of failure.
Should Halutz - by her norms - have done everything to evade accountability? Does one resign only when no other choice remains (just before the inquiry commission lowers its ax)? Is this intrinsically commendable or deplorable? Why does Livni exude such esteem for a commander who did so much harm (or failed to prevent it) to Israel's military deterrence? Wouldn't it have been more honorable to have stepped down sooner, rather than wait it out as a lame duck with a bunch of lame excuses, hoping against hope to limp through a loophole?
Livni, as Ariel Sharon's fawning accomplice, knows better than the plebeians how Halutz became chief of General Staff and why. She knows his predecessor, Moshe Ya'alon, was kicked out on the eve of disengagement because he wasn't a yes-man and couldn't be absolutely trusted to collaborate in perpetrating Israel's single most tragic folly since Oslo.
But Halutz was Omri Sharon's bosom-bud, a Sharon-family crony and a reliable accessory. He indeed performed the task assigned him to perfection and expelled more than 9,000 compatriots from their homes. He excelled at confronting Jews, but, alas, didn't equally excel at confronting the Jewish state's genocidal enemies.
His appointment and record in office are products of the ideological breakdown that, particularly since Oslo, pollutes this land - and perniciously so the IDF. Folly marketed as pragmatism took over. That's why Livni conveniently shed her convictions. That's why the IDF was run like a business enterprise, where career and personal advancement matter most.
Thus managerial superficiality, accommodating mediocrity and covering rear ends became indispensable in order not to compromise promotion prospects. Halutz isn't the sacrificial offering. This stock-portfolio ditcher (during combat) epitomizes the malaise.
Livni, disengagement's co-conspirator, does as well. Hence, though she admitted that "disengagement was a mistake" - one for which she too is liable - her ministry continues to draw blueprints for another whopping unilateral withdrawal. A team she appointed is currently busy reviving and promoting plans to remove at least 100,000 Israelis from Judea and Samaria. Olmert pleads the same ignorance he did regarding Livni's other recent freelance initiatives.
It's hard to let go of folly and Livni isn't about to, especially when for her folly proved so profitable. Where would she be if she hadn't abandoned her once-professed ideals and enlisted enthusiastically in Zion's lucrative march of folly? In our cynical state, folly may yet take her farther than she dreams and others dread.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2007 10:47 ||
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... How I wish that CORE's Martin Luther King Jr. dinner at the Hilton last week could have been televised nationally. I stood up and cheered (and believe me, that wasn't easy) after listening to honoree Ayaan Hirsi Ali's speech. This beautiful Somali woman suffered genital mutilation at age 5, fled from to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage, educated herself, and became a member of the Dutch Parliament. She is now living in America, and she gave a perfect wakeup call on our endangered culture.
A few highlights of her speech follow: "Sixty years ago it was the Nazis in Europe who were bent on exterminating in the name of racial purity. Today it is a global network of radical Muslims who call for a holocaust in the name of their faith"; "Human beings are equal; cultures are not"; "A culture that spends millions on saving a baby girl's life is not equal to one that uses its first encounter with natal technology to undertake mass abortion simply because girls are not welcome."
Ms. Ali made several comparisons between America's culture, which respects the rights of women, and the one from which she escaped. She was raised in parts of Africa Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya which were independent. The white man had exited, but she claims he did not take oppression with him, saying: "Almost all the bigotry and persecution in Africa nowadays is committed by blacks against other blacks." Speaking from experience, she listed acts such as mutilation, beatings, rape, and murder that were "committed against girls and women in the most intimate setting of all, the home, by dad or mom, by a brother or a sister, by a husband or his mother."
Ms. Ali has dubbed our benign culture as "ladies first," because she had never heard those words until she came to a Western nation. She warns, however, that it is "this culture that is under threat today. Many of those born into it take it for granted or, worse, apologize for it."
Immigrants are not storming to get into Mexico or any Muslim country. They are seeking what was built by our "freedom for all" culture. Yet we are bending over backward to accommodate different cultures and making sure that others are not offended by all things Americana. This is not only irrational, it's suicidal.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2007 11:04 ||
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#1
the $$$ quote:
"Yet we are bending over backward to accommodate different cultures and making sure that others are not offended by all things Americana. This is not only irrational, it's suicidal."
#4
"Immigrants are not storming to get into Mexico or any Muslim country."
This isn't obvious however to the LLL....never will be! Even Chicoms are changing...only one culture is definitely retrogressing to the 7th century and will cause mayhem trying.
Full multi-page article at link from Policy Review.
...The need to blame
To identify primal fear as the denominator common to the anti-American scapegoating now emanating from some quarters in Europe is not to suggest anything like sinister intent. The same is true of the pundits who have made a different industry of scapegoating in the U.S. All have their reasons, and the overriding reason is an obvious one. There is something deeply human about the desire to find all the things scapegoats can provide: a vessel to bear one's anxieties and outrages, a target that won't hit back, a welcome distraction from the real thing.
On the positive side of the ledger, the threat of Islamism as a problem within the West and not merely emanating from outside it is indeed beginning to get the airing it deserves, at least in the United States. The appearance of the Phillips, Berlinski, and Bawer books is one sign, as are other serious treatments now in the works. So is the attention the subject now garners in news and commentary that comes largely (though not exclusively) from the right.
On the negative side, the record of ideas from the last few years also suggests that we too need to keep our guard up. That is why the appearance of scapegoating since 9/11 bears watching all its own: because freedom can be curtailed one baby step at a time, and fuzzy ideas about reality only accelerate them. Who would have guessed 20 years ago that by 2006, a Norwegian man eating lunch in the restaurant beneath the parliament would be asked to remove his jacket because the Star of David on it is now considered a "provocation"? Or that German cultural authorities at a flagship opera would opt for pre-emptive self-censorship? Getting from here to there had to start small: One pulled punch at a time in a newspaper editorial, one more act of omission in calling a spade a club, one more clever set of reasons for why something that is not the obvious thing is really the menace that walks among us.
As for what looking into reality requires of us if we are not to take refuge in scapegoats, it is no wonder that the temptation to look elsewhere continues strong. The real thing was apparently on near-perfect display in Amsterdam at Theo van Gogh's murder trial, where according to Ian Buruma the murderer Bouyeri finally broke his silence to address van Gogh's mother as follows:
He wanted her to know that he didn't kill her son because he [Theo] was Dutch, or because he, Mohammed, felt insulted as a Moroccan. Theo was no hypocrite, he continued, for he had simply spoken his mind. "So the story that I felt insulted as a Moroccan, or because he called me a goat fr, that is all nonsense. I acted out of faith. And I made it clear that if it had been my own father, or my little brother, I would have done the same thing . . . if I were ever released, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same."
In the face of a reality like that, who wouldn't rather pin the tail of "our most pressing issue" on some other donkey Spanish-speaking illegals, right-wing Christians, George Bush, Israel and the Jews, even and ultimately America itself? The deformation of political truth to avoid recognition of the Islamist threat which is one of its current defining features is a normal response to an abnormally terrible fact. Unfortunately, that does not make it any less inimical to freedom.
#1
Not I. In the face of reality like that, I find Ian Buruma and only Ian Buruma guilty of the murder of Theo van Gogh. Islam was his motive. He still clings to his reason to kill, so he must be made an example. What's so confusing about it ?
#2
Thank you so much, 3dc. An excellent article that I feel is well balanced and addresses a meta-issue that makes many of the loose pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
For instance, her going after SOME elements of the anti-illegal immigrant issue is spot-on: she points out that SOME of them talk as if illegal immigration is a greater danger to the Republic than Radical Islam. yet, she does not tar EVERYONE concerned with Illegal immigrants with the same broad brush, but does point out that, when weighed in the scales of danger, poor catholic mexicans crossing the border to get jobs pose a lesser threat than Islamists posing as students while planning terrorist attacks. A problem, yes. The BIGGEST problem we're facing? No way. I found that helpful.
Here's a great quote:
In sum, just as the paleoconservative and nativist wings of the right appear to have channeled the anxiety of the post-9/11 years into one relatively safe scapegoat largely Hispanic illegal immigrants so have the libertarians and some liberal allies fingered their own culprit in the theocrats, Christocrats, Christianists, and Christian nationalists. At the heart of their case is an obnoxious positing of moral equivalence among fundamentalists and theocrats irrespective of religious stripe. Accordingly, anyone believing anything based on any holy writ whatever is suspect, no matter whether the message being received is that two hundred babes must die in Chechnya tomorrow or that two hundred trees should be planted in Tel Aviv by Texan evangelicals to hasten the second coming. As with the example of illegal immigration, this rhetoric all makes perfect sense or would in a world where Jerry Falwell calls down fatwas on NARAL, the 700 Club sends suicide bombers into the Key West Fantasy Fest, and Richard John Neuhaus posts death warrants on ewtn whenever he wants the members of Moveon.org decapitated.
This goes into my list of "articles to cite to prove my point".
Posted by: BA ||
01/26/2007 10:02 Comments ||
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#4
A very interesting read, thanks 3dc for posting it.
I think the author misses the point about anti-immigration sentiment in the US today. It doesn't have anything to do with "brown-skinned" immigrants; it has to do with real or perceived economic threat as numbers surge. Ask a few Germans about the economic impact of joining Eastern and Western Germany; they get it.
"No, perhaps the anti-Americanism of today is best understood instead as a way of being furious in public with somebody for the insecurities and anxieties wrought by Islamist terrorism in this world, including in increasingly Muslim Europe an option made even more attractive by the safe bet that Americans, unlike some other people, are unlikely to respond to this rhetoric, let alone to editorial cartoons, by burning cars, slitting throats, or issuing death threats in places like Paris and Amsterdam and Regensburg and London."
It is astonishing to me, though, that Europeans, frightened and unhinged as they may be, prefer to scapegoat the US (the one country that presents Europe with a real chance of countering the threat) over forgetting pride, holding their noses and helping America make sure that an undefeatable force-"Islamism"-doesn't cause their beloved countries to disappear forever. I guess, like the Palestinians, they have their choices to make. If helping America is so distasteful, they will choose the "Hamas" way and precipitate their own despair and loss, but will keep the "pride" derived from their anti-Americanism.
#5
Jules, you are right about the economic-impact intent behind the "anti-illegal" backlash against the Beltway. But, I'd also add, there are a LOT of us out there that disagree with it, just because it's our laws.
Listen, I can NOT blame them for doing their darndest to cross the Rio Grande, in search of a better life. I DO fault the gov't for not enforcing the law, and for having silly policies (like "Catch and Release") that could result in jihadis (not just Mexicans) entering with intents to do us harm.
Posted by: BA ||
01/26/2007 11:02 Comments ||
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#6
Exactly, BA. The law-abiding aspect and the linguistic unity aspect also are important. Like you said, in their shoes, I would try to escape my terrible circumstances. I'm sure they don't appreciate our view of the "rule of law" aspect, if for no other reason than that "law" in Mexico is so soluble with its bribes and so inescapable in its questionable convictions, it has little in common with our understanding of the word.
Ah well, I'll let it go and return to the thread's topic. I actually saw a couple non-Americans stand up for the US on a BBC blog the other day-it was truly surprising. That site is nearly wall to wall US hatred.
#7
I think the author misses the point about anti-immigration sentiment...
I read this, or something very like it, a few weeks ago, and it seemed to me that the author was trying desperately to find scapegoats of the right to match those of the left, so as to appear even-handed.
I read a lot of righty blogs, and I don't hear anywhere near the hysteria that the author seems to find, just a disgust with the government for not enforcing its own damned laws.
So either she's reaching, or y'all are not the right-wing death-beasts you thought you were.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
"FREE 
... How I wish that CORE's Martin Luther King Jr. dinner at the Hilton last week could have been televised nationally. I stood up and cheered (and believe me, that wasn't easy) after listening to honoree Ayaan Hirsi Ali's speech. This beautiful Somali woman suffered genital mutilation at age 5, fled from to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage, educated herself, and became a member of the Dutch Parliament. She is now living in America, and she gave a perfect wakeup call on our endangered culture.
