By Mark Steyn Four years ago, The Economist ran a cover story on the winner of the Brazilian election, the socialist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. It was an event of great hemispherical significance. Hence the headline: "The Meaning Of Lula."
The following week, a Canadian reader, Asif Niazi, wrote to the magazine: "Sir, The meaning of Lula in Urdu, is penis."
No doubt. It would not surprise me to learn that the meaning of Chavez, as in Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, in Arabic is similarly situated. An awful lot of geopolitics gets lost in translation, especially when you're not keeping up.
Since 9/11, Latin America has dropped off the radar, but you don't have to know the lingo to figure out it clearly doesn't mean what it did five years ago at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.
In April 2001 I spent a pleasant weekend on the Grand Allee inhaling the heady perfume of Surete du Quebec tear gas and dodging lumps of concrete lobbed over the security fence by the anti-glob mob. The fence itself was covered in protest bras hung there by anti-Bush feminist groups.
"VIVA" said the left cup. "CASTRO" said the right. On another, "MA MERE" (left) "IS NOT FOR SALE" (right). 48D, if you're wondering how they got four words on. I'm not much for manning the barricades and urging revolution, but it's not without its appeal when you're stuck inside the perimeter making chit-chat with the deputy trade minister of Costa Rica.
That was the point: hemispheric normality. As the Bush administration liked to note, the Americas were now a shining sea of democracy, save for the aging and irrelevant Fidel, who was the only head of government not invited to the summit. But, other than that, no more generalissimos in the presidential palace; they were republics, but no longer bananas.
When Mr. Bush arrived, he was greeted by Canada's Jean Chretien. "Bienvenue. That means welcome," said the prime minister, being a bit of a lula. But what did Bush care? He was looking south: That was the future, and they were his big amigos.
THEN SEPTEMBER 11 happened. And the amigos weren't quite so friendly, or at any rate helpful, and Mr. Bush found himself holed up with the usual pasty white blokes like Tony Blair and John Howard, back in the Anglosphere with not an enchilada in sight. And everyone was so busy boning up on Shari'a and Wahhabis and Kurds and Pushtuns that very few of us noticed that Latin America was slipping back to its old ways.
Frank Gaffney's new book War Footing is sub-titled Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World and includes, as one might expect, suggestions for the home front, the Middle East, the transnational agencies. But it's some of the other chapters that give you pause when it comes to the bigger picture - for example, he urges Washington to "Counteract the reemergence of totalitarianism in Latin America."
That doesn't sound like the fellows Condi and Colin were cooing over in Quebec. Yet, as Gaffney writes, "Many Latin American countries are imploding rather than developing. The region's most influential leaders are thugs. It is a magnet for Islamist terrorists and a breeding ground for hostile political movements. The key leader is Chavez, the billionaire dictator of Venezuela, who has declared a Latino jihad against the United States."
Chavez's revolutionary mentor is Fidel Castro and the new kid on the block has been happy to pump cash infusions into the old boy's impoverished basket-case. "Venezuela," writes Gaffney, "has more energy resources than Iraq and supplies one-fifth of the oil sold in America."
In 1999, when Chavez came to power, oil was under 10 bucks a barrel. Now it's pushing $70. And, just like the Saudis, Chavez is using his windfall in all kinds of malign ways, not merely propping up the elderly Cuban dictator but funding would-be "Chavismo" movements in Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Paraguay, Ecuador.
And Chavismo fans are found way beyond the hemisphere. Senor Chavez was in London last week as a guest of the mayor, Ken Livingstone. The Venezuelan President said Bush was a "madman" who should be "strapped down," and Blair was an "ally of Hitler" who should "go to hell."
WHAT ELSE does a Euroleftie need to know before rolling out the red carpet? Last year, the British MP George Galloway was in Syria to see Baby Assad and gave a pep talk to Araby's only remaining Ba'athist regime:
"What your lives would be if from the Atlantic to the Gulf we had one Arab union - all this land, 300 million people, all this oil and gas and water, occupied by a people who speak the same language, follow the same religions, listen to the same Umm Kulthum. The Arabs would be a superpower in the world... Hundreds of thousands are ready to fight the Americans in the Middle East, and in Latin America there is revolution everywhere. Fidel Castro is feeling young again. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile are all electing left-wing governments which are challenging American domination. And in Venezuela, the hero Hugo Chavez has stood against them over and over and over again."
At first glance, an Islamo-Chavismo alliance sounds like the bus-and-truck version of the Hitler-Stalin pact. But it's foolish to underestimate the damage it could do. As Gaffney points out, American taxpayers are in the onerous position of funding both sides in this war. The price of oil is $50 per barrel higher than it was on 9/11.
"Looking at it another way," writes Gaffney, "Saudi Arabia - which currently exports about 10 mbd - receives an extra half billion dollars every day." Where does it go? It goes to Saudi Arabia's real principal export: ideology - the radical imams and madrassahs the Saudis fund in almost every corner of the world.
What to do? Gaffney proposes Americans switch over to FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles). He's right. The telegram has been replaced by the e-mail and the Victrola has yielded to the CD player, but aside from losing the rumble seat and adding a few cup-holders, the automobile is essentially unchanged from a century ago.
AFTER 9/11, Bush told the world: You're either with us or with the terrorists. But an America that for no reason other than its lack of will continues to finance its enemies' ideology has clearly checked the "both of the above" box.
It's hardly surprising, then, that the other players are concluding that, if forced to make a choice, they're with the terrorists.
Muslim populations in the Caucasus and western China pose some long-term issues for Moscow and Beijing but, in the meantime, both figure the jihad's America's problem and it's in their interest to keep it that way. Hence, Russo-Chinese support for every troublemaker on the planet, from Iran's kooky president to Chavismo in America's backyard.
The meaning of Chavez in just about any language is "opportunity."
#2
You said it, JE. I don't care much for the title - it's misleading. She's not venting, she's nailing it to the barn door.
Fallaci sees the threat of Islamic fundamentalism as a revival of the Fascism that she and her sisters grew up fighting. She told me, I am convinced that the situation is politically substantially the same as in 1938, with the pact in Munich, when England and France did not understand a thing. With the Muslims, we have done the same thing. She elaborated, in an e-mail, Look at the Muslims: in Europe they go on with their chadors and their burkas and their djellabahs. They go on with the habits preached by the Koran, they go on with mistreating their wives and daughters. They refuse our culture, in short, and try to impose their culture, or so-called culture, on us. . . . I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture. Toward my values, my principles, my civilization. It is not only my duty toward my Christian roots. It is my duty toward freedom and toward the freedom fighter I am since I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism. Islamism is the new Nazi-Fascism. With Nazi-Fascism, no compromise is possible. No hypocritical tolerance. And those who do not understand this simple reality are feeding the suicide of the West.
#5
By Holy Crap I mean that I am blown away by this LADY.
Everyone has to read this article.
HEr books are going on my summer reading list.
Honesty and experience thrown in your face like a pitcher of Ice Water.
I already beleive all this and it's still ice water.
A FRIEND of mine took his daughter to visit the famous City Lights in San Francisco, explaining that this store is important because years ago it sold books no other store would - even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive. So, though my friend is no Ward Churchill fan, he didn't really mind the prominent display of books by the guy who famously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns."
But it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that, because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.
"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."
#8
It's particularly repugnant that someone who fought against actual fascism in World War II should be deemed a fascist by a snotty San Francisco clerk.
"I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion. But the struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions. Which wants to impose its Mein Kampf, its Koran, on the whole planet. Which has done so for one thousand and four hundred years. That is, since its birth. Which, unlike any other religion, slaughters and decapitates or enslaves all those who live differently.
[...]
Youve got to get old, because you have nothing to lose, she said over lunch that afternoon. You have this respectability that is given to you, more or less. But you dont give a damn. It is the ne plus ultra of freedom. And things that I didnt used to say beforeyou know, there is in each of us a form of timidity, of cautiousnessnow I open my big mouth. I say, What are you going to do to me? You go fuck yourselfI say what I want.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Holland's outspoken parliamentarian, may move to the United States. She'll bring her challenging, discomforting ideas with her.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is easy to applaud from afar. The Somali-born activist fled a forced marriage and found refuge in Holland, where within a decade she became a member of parliament. In perfect Dutch, she has denounced abuse of women in Holland's Islamic ghettos and in traditional Islam worldwide. When her co-producer in a film on this theme was murdered, a note on his corpse warned Ali was next. Still, she continued to speak out.
But Ali has ended up leaving Holland. This month, in a hailstorm of controversy, she announced she's moving here to work for the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Actually, she had to leave. Dutch immigration chief Rita Verdonk stripped Ali's Dutch citizenship this month because she'd lied on her application for asylum.
No one could call this revelation news. Its first source was Ali herself, who disclosed the application lie in 2002 and voiced remorse. She used a relative's surname, she explained, because her powerful Somali father was pursuing her. It was only when a Dutch TV show revived the issue this month that Verdonk acted.
The affair has drawn intense criticism within the Netherlands and perhaps more internationally. Even before the asylum question, Ali already was making many Dutch uneasy.
In a tiny nation that prizes its ethnic tolerance and civic calm, Ali insisted on discussing the brutality in Holland's Muslim enclaves. After her film partner's murder, Ali became an uncomfortable reminder of the unaddressed tensions in Holland's multicultural society.
Uneasy with the tumult surrounding her, Holland's authorities defended her half-heartedly. Given police protection, Ali was nevertheless evicted from her apartment when neighbors claimed her presence jeopardized their own safety.
And even as she enraged extremist Muslims and discomfited authorities, Ali alienated other groups as well. In the eyes of some moderate Muslims, Ali's harsh critiques fueled anti-Muslim hate rather than Islamic reform.
Finally, Ali blamed Holland's mass immigration as a conduit for anti-democratic, anti-woman values. A sincere critique, her view was eagerly co-opted by xenophobes in Europe and this country, too.
Pro-woman, pro-West and intellectually fearless, Ali is sure to thrive here. But as challenging as this self-described "Muslim atheist" has been for the Dutch, she may be more so for Americans. A colleague of Ali's, for instance, told Time magazine that Ali sharply opposes Christianity's incursions into U.S. public life. America will be the better with Ali's bold, original voice. And it should brace for some uncomfortable ideas.
Gee, somehow I think America is up to the challange.
#1
I look forward to her first candid article about how the Dutch ostracized her.
We ARE up to it, you're right. There will no doubt be disagreements, as she was surrounded by Euro-idealist indoctrination for so many years. That said, I look forward to her contritbutios in the land of ideas.
Of all the many marvelous Ronald Reagan lines, this is my favorite: ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.''
He said it in his inaugural address in 1981, and, despite a Democrat-controlled Congress, he lived it. It sums up his legacy abroad: Across post-Communist Europe, from Lithuania to Bulgaria to Slovenia, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments.
But it's an important distinction for non-totalitarian states, too. For example, in May 2004 the then-Canadian government proudly announced that in the last month the country had "created" 56,100 new jobs. That's terrific news, isn't it? The old economic engine positively roaring away in top gear. But on closer inspection, of those 56,100 new jobs, 4,200 were self-employed, 8,900 were in private businesses, and the remaining 43,000 were on the public payroll. That's why they call it "creating jobs": 77 percent of new jobs were government jobs, paid for by the poor schlubs working away in the remaining 23 percent; the "good news" was merely an acceleration of the remorseless transfer from the dynamic sector of the economy to the non-dynamic. For too much of its recent history, Canada has been a government that has a nation. And across the pond the European Union is a government that has a continent.
Which current member of the Republican Party's creme de la creme could utter that Reagan line and mean it? Take the speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert. Last week, something very unusual happened: There was a story out of Washington that didn't reflect badly on the Republican Party's competence or self-discipline. It was about a Democrat! Fellow from Louisiana called William Jefferson. Corruption investigation. Don't worry, if you're too distracted by "American Idol," it's not hard to follow, you just need to know one little visual image: According to an FBI affidavit, this Democrat congressman was caught on video taking a hundred-grand bribe from a government informer and then storing it in his freezer. That's what the scandal's supposed to be: Democrat Icecapades of 2006. All the GOP had to do was keep out of the way and let Jefferson and his Dem defenders skate across the thin ice like Tonya Harding with her lumpy tights full of used twenties. It was a perfect story: No Republicans need be harmed in the making of this scandal.
So what does Hastert do? He and the House Republican leadership intervene in the case on behalf of the Democrat: They're strenuously objecting to the FBI having the appalling lese majeste to go to court, obtain a warrant and search Jefferson's office. In constitutional terms, they claim it violates the separation of powers. In political terms, they're climbing right into the Frigidaire with Jefferson's crisp chilled billfold. What does the Republican base's despair with Congress boil down to? That the Gingrich revolutionaries have turned into the pampered potentates of pre-1994 Washington, a remote insulated arrogant elite interested only in protecting the privileges of the permanent governing class. But how best to confirm it? Hmm. What about if we send the Republican speaker out to argue that congressmen are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. law-enforcement agencies?
After all, the GOP's 1994 Contract with America stated pretty plainly that henceforth "all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress."
But that was a long time ago, wasn't it?
The constitutional point is clear. Congressional "immunity" is merely the Founders' retention of the English parliamentary privilege. That's to say, an elected representative cannot be tried for anything he says on the floor of the legislature. The reason for that is to create a climate in which parliamentary members are free to speak the truth. Yet oddly enough, as the gruesome "comprehensive immigration reform" farrago made plain, that's about the one thing they don't do: The Senate bill was bulldozed through by a phalanx of evasions and euphemisms and obfuscations and cheap sneers -- the cheapest being John McCain's complaint that those who object to illegal aliens being rewarded for their lawbreaking with backdated Social Security and other entitlements are forcing them to "ride in the back of the bus."
Oh, please. The illegals are getting to ride in the front of the bus. It's the foreign-born spouse of the U.S. citizen midway through his decadelong application for permanent residence who's going to be shunted to the back of the bus.
In other words, the Hastert-McCain Congress is now the complete inversion of what it's meant to be: They won't exercise their right to brave honest debate but they will claim the right for congressmen to keep evidence of crime and corruption in their offices without having to be bound by footling piffle like court-ordered search warrants.
By the way, even if one were in favor of the "comprehensive immigration reform" bill, it's a complete fantasy. Anyone who's had any experience of U.S. immigration knows that there is no way you can toss another 15 million people into the waiting room of a system that can barely process routine non-discretionary applications in under a decade. But then the ever greater disconnect between ineptly drafted legislation and reality seems to be of no interest to the United States Congress. City Journal's Nicole Gelinas had an interesting story the other day about the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley regulatory reforms, poorly drafted and hastily passed in the wake of the Enron collapse. The regulatory burden imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley has increased the cost of being a medium-sized public company by 223 percent since 2002. As a result, growing companies are choosing to list themselves not on the New York Stock Exchange but in London, Luxembourg and Hong Kong. Sarbanes-Oxley is a badly written law that forces companies to devote inordinate time and money in hopes of being in compliance with its vague requirements. It makes more sense to go elsewhere. In other words, the cost of access to U.S. equity markets has become too high.
But hey, that's not a problem for federal legislators who've moved on to frolic in other pastures. I said the other day that McCain and Specter and Sarbanes and Lott and the rest were presidents-for-life of the one-party state of Incumbistan. Between all the comprehensive immigration reform and corporate governance reform and campaign-finance reform and campaign-finance-reform reform and all the other changes, McCain and Co. sail on, eternally unchanging, decade after decade. There are no plans for Senate governance reform or Trent Lott finance reform. Incumbistan is a government that has a nation.
#2
JT, not one muthaf8cka in all of congress has the nuts to call for that from what I've seen, though I hope I'm wrong. It would prolly take an amendment to the constitution like w/presidential two-term limit to make it happen. Unfortunately I think 70% of our politicians are p*ssies so I doubt we see it in the next 10 yrs.
By Ahmed Charai
A historic tragedy is at play before our own eyes: Another Munich, when some European democracies thought they could avoid the war by appeasing Nazism. Winston Churchill said: "You accepted shame to avoid war, now you will have both." History's verdict was simply merciless.
When the shooting's over and the last mullah's been hung — always assuming the Marshamallow People don't simply surrender, of course — history's verdict will be equally merciless toward today's Chomskies and Mother Sheehans.
Today, Arab but also Western diplomats are making the same mistake toward the "green fascism." Thus, their "smart" strategy will consist in involving these groups in a democratic process; Islamists would then, they believe, change their behavior.
To just about the same extent Hitler did.
But this is a blatant failure to recognize Islam, history and democracy. Islamism is born out of a reaction to attempts to modernize Arab/Muslim society. Its credo, "There's No Power than that of God," pretends to be democracy's antithesis, which means the People's Power. Forgetting Islamism's origin is tantamount to illusion.
Gawd knows they remind us often enough. And the world's innalekshuls seem resolutely intent on concentrating on the Abu Ghraib trees while ignoring the Islamic forest.
Extremism is a form of political activity that rejects the principles of parliamentary democracy. Extremist ideology and practices are based on intolerance, exclusion, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and ultranationalism. Extremism is a danger for any democratic state because its fanatic character may be used to justify violence. Even if it doesn't directly advocate violence, extremism creates a climate conducive to violence.
Continued on Page 49
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#1
It is not a matter of "modernizing Islam" but of "Islamizing modernity."
This is taken from a great recent essay. I wish I could remember who wrote it and where it is published. The point of the essay was that Zawahiri had realized that by staying on the defensive, modernity would slowly whittle away at traditional Islamic society and eventually overwhelm it. Declaring jihad, attacking and destroying jahili Arab regimes and promoting dawa in the West, was the only hope for Islam. Of course when Zawahiri formulated his strategy, he probably had no idea of the crises of will and demography that lay in Europe's near future. Nor did he understand that the jahili Arab regimes would be such tough nuts to crack. The author of the essay described Zawahiri's strategy as Islamizing modernity.
#2
11A5S, the essay was written by Roberto A.M. Bertacchini and Piersandro Vanzan S.I. and titled The Islamic Question. (Scroll down to the essay.)
Here's the part you were referencing: .... For the zealots, everything that comes from the outside is like poison to their traditional ways of life, so they hold that there is only one way to avert cultural catastrophe: expel the invader and hermetically seal off the borders, so nothing can pollute or corrupt their miniature world. This is, in part, the position of Osama Bin Laden, who is opposed to the American presence, not only in Iraq, but also in Saudi Arabia.
But this defensive program would never work against Western civilization. Unlike all previous civilizations, it is not localized or territorially circumscribed. The pervasiveness of the global village is such that there is only one way to escape its grasp: destroy it. And this is Al-Zawahiris ideological program, which he pursues with a complex strategy. For the formula of modernizing Islam, he substitutes another: Islamizing modernity, and therefore the West.
Within the Muslim world, Islamization means de-Westernizing everything: from political and cultural institutions to economic ones, even to the point of rethinking banking operations. On the outside, it means spreading Islam through vigorous missionary activity, in both Europe and the United States: this activity is supported above all by Saudia Arabia. But according to the most radical interpretations, Islamizing the West means violently attacking its political and economic power, without sparing the civilian population.....
#3
Modern islam = fascisim. It really is that simple. You can't have democracy and the islam the Saudi's and Ben Laden's want. We made this choice 60+ years ago and we are having to make it again. Are the going down Fascists going down or is it us that will go down?
#4
It is not a matter of "modernizing Islam" but of "Islamizing modernity."
GK and 11A5S : not sure at all, but I rather think this formule has been first pronounced by a french islam sepcialist (and a bit of an an apologist, since his thesis was the end of the islamist "failed revolution" in the late 90's), Gilles Kepel.
A quite serious scholar, but very "islamically correct" if you ask me.
#6
Muslim world = RUSSIA = most economy-dependent, competitive, innovation-centric males die by an average age of 40-50, leaving milyuhns and zigluhns of emotions/hormones-intensive tween youths to be guided by surviving adult females = elderly whom as class are usually NOT physically strong enough over time to stop them. THE WOMEN CAN'T SPEND IT IFF THE MEN DON'T BUILD IT, OR THERE ARE NO MEN OR NOT ENUFF MEN TO BUILD IT OR PROTECT IT, NOW CAN THEY!?
It was February of 1945three months before the end of World War II in Europe. Eighteen-year-old Sergeant Joseph George of West Virginia was stationed in Lorient, France. It was evening, and George was preparing to go on patrol. The Americans were hoping to locate landmines buried by the Germans.
Sergeant George had been on patrol duty the night before. As he told his friend Private James Caudill, he was tiredtired and scared. Private Caudill offered to take the patrol on his behalf. He pointed out that, at age 36, he was nearly two decades older than George. He told Georgewho had already been blown off a torpedoed shipYoure young. Go home. Get married. Live a rich, full life. And then Private Caudill went out on patrol. A few hours later, he was killed by a German sniper.
The actions of Private Caudill echo the values and valor of generations of military men and women we remember today. And they are an example of the sort of behavior we almost take for granted when it comes to our men and women in uniform who fight just wars.
What is a just war? One that is defined as providing a proportionate response to evil, to protect non-combatants, among other considerations. Today, our military men and women around the world are fighting to resist evil. Ridding the world of Islamo-fascismby just meansis a good and loving act.
This willingness to sacrifice on behalf of our neighbors is why military service is considered such a high calling for Christiansand part of what makes just wars just. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica puts his discussion of just war in his chapter on charitythe love of God and neighbor. John Calvin agreed; he called soldiering justly a God-like act, because it imitates Gods restraining evil out of love for His creatures.
A world in which free nations refuse to fight just wars would be a world where evil is unchecked and where the strong would be free to prey on the weakas we are now seeing in Darfur.
Our soldiers willingness to defend the defenseless around the world makes me proud to be an American. Their willingness to lay down their lives is a reflection of how the Christian worldview has influenced our society, which is why American soldiers, by the way, are welcomed all over the world, as historian Stephen Ambrose wrote, while soldiers from other cultures are feared.
So what of Sgt. Joseph George? He returned safely home to West Virginia. He married, fathered five sons. One of themPrinceton Professor Robert Georgeis a good friend of mine. Hes devoted much of his life to fighting the moral evils of our time: abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and efforts to redefine marriage in a way that would destroy it.
In John 15:13, Jesus said, Greater love has no man than this, that [he] lay down his life for his friends. The story of Private Caudill and Sergeant George makes one realize more deeply what a tremendous gift this is. Its why the George family has remembered Private Caudill in prayers for sixty-one years.
Today, Memorial Day, we ought to remember the sacrifices of all the Private Caudills in all the wars Americans have foughtand we should pray for those who are still in the fieldlaying down their lives for each other, for us, and for the freedom of strangers. Thats a very Christian thing to do.
Pasnau on Churchill
...One might laugh, that is, if the whole affair were not so depressing. Perhaps its most unfortunate aspect, beyond the immediate and very serious damage to CU, is the impression it seems to have left in some quarters that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here my own experience is relevant. In the course of my duties evaluating the work of my colleagues, I have never encountered a single instance of fraud or misconduct, or even the bare allegation of such. Will Academic defenders apply this 'tip of the iceberg' defense to the US military forces in light of the (as yet just alleged) Marine war crime in Haditha?
#2
Pasnau, head of Churchill's department, is concerned that Churchill's behavior will be regarded as but 'the tip of the iceberg' and thus stain all of academia.
I, a nobody, am concerned that the Marines' (alleged) behavior will be regarded as but 'the tip of the iceberg' and thus stain all of the US military.
I think that to claim the Marines are the tip of the iceberg but Churchill is an isolated instance is absurd, but I fear that will be the prevailing viewpoint in the media.
#3
I thought Churchill was the head of his own department? Pasnau is the head of the philosophy department. In the full letter, Pasnau is less concerned with Churchill's actions than the punishment that the review committee recommended. Pasnau says Churchill's violations clearly warrant firing, but most of the panel members shied away from that outcome. A better analogy would be to the Moussaoui case (though I believe death would be a lesser punishment to Moussaoui than rotting, forgotten, in prison).
#5
i read the Pasnau letter, and I didn't see him making any such comparison.
Hit the link and go read the whole thing. He rather nicely napalms Ward Churchill:
A careful reading of the original report, next to his response, shows him to have misstated and ignored the committee's findings at every stage. Indeed, one might almost laugh at the way his slipshod responses reenact the very sorts of intellectual failings that the report originally highlighted. . . . were such misconduct discovered among my own faculty, or in my own field at large, I would be the first to seek that person's dismissal.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/29/2006 15:46 Comments ||
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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.
Four years ago, The Economist ran a cover story on the winner of the Brazilian election, the socialist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. It was an event of great hemispherical significance. Hence the headline: "The Meaning Of Lula."
