Isaac Schrödinger

The Meaning of Peace

The largest Muslim nation on Earth embraces intolerance at the state level:

The Indonesian government has halted all religious activities of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, handing a victory to Islamic extremists and tarnishing Indonesia's reputation as a moderate, pluralistic Muslim nation.

The decree, approved June 10 by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, falls short of an outright ban on Ahmadis, but orders them to stop practicing their faith and "return to mainstream Islam." Ahmadis now face arrest for practicing their beliefs.

Ahmadis have been openly discriminated against in Pakistan. For instance, one has to officially state that they don't prescribe to Ahmadi beliefs on passport and national ID applications. Otherwise, one gets marked for discrimination.

Now, in Indonesia it's open season on Ahmadis -- a tiny group numbering 200,000 in a nation with over 200 million people.

Muslim countries truly excel at thuggery.

Link via IBA.

Married to Darth Vader

Weasal Zippers: Confirmed: Ahmadinejad's Wife is a Babe!.....

In the comments: She's pretty tall for a nine-year-old.

Ouch!

First link via Instapundit.

The Definition of Courage

Koonj:

As my brother in Pakistan tells me, Pakistanis are talking about Pakistani Harvard student Samad Khurram, who declined to receive an award at Roots Academy from U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson in protest of US policies and actions, such as the bombing in Mohmand Agency.

This Pakistani student, who is living in one of the richest places in the world (in America) and attending the most prestigious university of them all (also in America), protests American foreign policy by refusing to accept an award from his Pakistani high school.

The fellow sure has principles.

I believe, however, that gestures such as these may vent some of the great frustration that the less powerful in the world feel toward US imperialistic policies. Such gestures enable them to hold their heads up high again for a bit, and, - well, - keep the peace a bit longer.

Peace has never been kept by dim, idealistic and gutless students.

What Can't the Neocons Do?

They is everywhere I tell you!

We Are The Sinners

Bruce Bawer: The Times, It Ain’t a-Changin’.

Routinely, news organizations suppress, downplay, or misrepresent developments that reflect badly on Islam; they go out of their way to find stories that reflect (or that can be spun in such a way as to reflect) positively on it; and they publish professors and intellectuals and “experts” like Feldman, who share the media’s determination to obscure the central role of jihadist ideology in the current clash between Islam and Western democracy and to point the finger instead (as Feldman does) at European racism.

This is a particular Western disease that I don't fully understand. It's easy to see why vast majorities in Muslim nations blame the Jews and the West for their failures because they don't want to even remotely equate Islam with disaster. But why do so many Westerners blame themselves for being the innocent recipients of copious amounts of halaal loathing?

No (Fashion) Sense

Yikes!

Drowning in Cash

Gateway Pundit posts about the benefits of oil revenue.

The second sentence of the first comment cracked me up.

Hilter Off the Hook

Michael C. Moynihan: Pat Buchanan Prevents the Holocaust.

Churchill was such a doofus for provoking Hilter.

Link via Daimnation.

Damian Penny has a one-sentence summation at the end here.

All The World Needs is a Little Honey

Holy pooh! It's spectacular self-parody.

Human Rights!

The Telegraph:

The UN Human Rights Council said the UK must "consider holding a referendum on the desirability or otherwise of a written constitution, preferably republican".

Um, yeah:

The council has 29 members including Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Sri Lanka.

Link via Daimnation:

the UN Human Rights Council includes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, against whom I'm sure a similar resolution will be directed any day now.

Some monarchies are more equal than others.

The Anti-Empire

Daimnation:

The rhetorical phrase "democratic empire" is patently silly. Internally, it's an ideological oxymoron. Externally, Germany and Japan - upon whom we forced democracy - are hardly subject dominions.

I've never understood that criticism either. The US is a weird sort of empire -- one that spends hundreds of billions of dollars of its own money to help other nations while not demanding any financial favors in return. One can, of course, disagree with the usefulness of such a policy but repeatedly calling the US an empire for engaging in this behavior is getting tired.

An Offensive Incident

Daily Times via Ezra Levant:

Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the production of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch legislator, sources in the Interior Ministry told Daily Times on Saturday.

What I wrote two years ago:

It is vitally important that the West not put Islam or any other religion off-limits to critical analysis. For only in the West can a person safely write that the obliteration of a Jewish tribe, the taking of sex-slaves, and the confiscation of non-Muslim property is something not to be celebrated and emulated.

I wouldn't bet on the EU to hold.

Ezra Levant points out the asininity:

My favourite part of the story is the last two sentences. They fit together perfectly, almost like a Shakespearian rhyming couplet.

Here they are:

They said that the delegation would also tell the EU that if such acts against Islam are not controlled, more attacks on the EU diplomatic missions abroad could not be ruled out.

Sources said that the delegation would also hold discussions on inter-religious harmony during its meetings with the EU leaders.

So tastefully thuggish.

The Cost of Free Speech

Armies of Liberation:

Amnesty International has today condemned the jailing of a leading journalist in Yemen just days before an event in London at which the journalist is in line for a human rights media award.

More:

Mr Al-Khaiwani, who was on trial with 13 other defendants, appears to have been convicted as a result of his professional work as a journalist, including his coverage of armed clashes between government forces and supporters of the late Zaidi Shia cleric Hussein Badr al-Din al-Huthi in the northern Yemeni province of Sa'dah. Some of the cases defendants were charged with violent activities and one is believed to have been sentenced to death.

Mr Al-Khaiwani is one of many activist journalist and critics of the state in Yemen who have been persecuted for their peaceful criticism of government policies.

Why Do They Hate Us?

The Copenhagen Post via LFG:

Danes need look no further than their own newspapers to find the reason for the car bombing that severely damaged their embassy in Pakistan on Monday, according to Rohan Gunaranta, an international terrorism expert from Pakistan.

'There is still a lot of dissatisfaction here about the cartoons, as well as the fact that the Danish government still has not condemned them or the people that were responsible for them. As long as that hasn't happened, Denmark will be under the constant threat of militant muslims,' Gunaranta said.

Pakistan's sick ambassador gets into the act:

'It isn't just the people of Pakistan that feel they have been harassed by what your newspaper has begun,' she said. 'I'd like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?'

The logic is impeccable; the same species of it is used when a woman is raped in Muslim lands. You see, she must not have covered herself properly. She is ultimately responsible for enticing Muslims into committing barbaric acts.

The ambassador conveniently forgets that death and carnage has been the forte of Muslims for centuries -- largely because their role model was a psychotic, cruel and deeply immoral man. The violent reaction of the umma across the globe and the Let's Blame The West mentality of "educated" Muslims shows that the cartoons weren't off the mark.

Supporting the Troops

The Apostate:

I say, if they can’t drink until 21, they can’t pick up guns and kill people either.

Good point. The drinking age ought to be lowered.

Our male troops are also rapists. They rape their fellow soldiers and the women of countries they invade. If your son is a person of ordinary moral strength, he will become a rapist. To me, that’s a sufficient reason to keep a recruiter away from your son.

She has quite a low opinion of men.

Coddling Muslims in the UK

Continuing with the theme, another link here:

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

Does he think that Muslims can't take the heat?

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

A taste of what the officer said:

"He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

Lovely chap.

Link via Instapundit.

A Fixed Game

Nice title: Bishops in Chess Games.

To deal with the "baptism problem", various schemes have been tried. The missionary experts have tried "secret baptism", "delayed baptism" and "self-baptism" and found them all to be inadequate because Muslim social and family structure is such that whenever a member leaves Islam, it is perceived as a calamitous event for the entire family.

Most of the cases cited where people have resorted to violence are rooted more in disputes over family honour and reputation than in Islamic jurisprudence. In a world where reputation is crucial to the process of finding good marriage partners for siblings, being known as a family with members who have left the faith is highly damaging. This distinction, however, is lost on many Church strategists. Instead, they have consistently blamed Islamic jurisprudence for the anger that is generated and have resorted to what can only be described as an attempt to rewrite Islamic history.

It seems the author is saying that Islamic jurisprudence doesn't advocate using force against ex-Muslims.

But then the very next paragraph:

In recent years, there have been a series of attempts, posited within the interfaith framework, to get Muslim scholars here in the West to issue global verdicts rendering the "law of apostasy in traditional Islam" not only inapplicable in the current context but also historically invalid and unjustified. The purpose, of course, for seeking such a ruling is that it would facilitate the exporting of it to countries where missionaries are having difficulties at the point of baptism with family members of people who convert to Christianity.

Correct. But if that apostasy law is not the cause of harm towards ex-Muslims then why would Christian missionaries ask for it to be declared invalid?

Allah Damn It!

I've been blogging since 2004 and yet they didn't include me in the list. Really, what does a murtad have to do?

My day is totally ruined.

The CHRC Gets Heat

Ezra Levant via Small Dead Animals:

The Conservative government has introduced a motion to Parliament's Justice Committee proposing an investigation into the abusive, corrupt practises of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The motion specifically refers to public "concerns" about the CHRC's "investigative techniques" and their "interpretation and application" of the section 13 thought crimes provision.

Good.

Sissy-in-Chief?

Hillary Clinton comes off so small in comparison to the other mentioned women. She's practically microscopic!

Link via Foreign Dispatches.

The Way The World Doesn't Work

Callimachus writes about his son and the state of American education:

He's in 11th grade. His course in American history -- or whatever name they disguise that by these days -- is coming to an end and the finale is a big project that will largely determine his grade for the quarter. In my high school, the college-tracked kids were taking electives by that time, and I remember writing two 20-page papers, on topics of the student's choice, approved by the teacher. One of mine was on the legal challenge to Reconstruction after the Civil War, the other was on the Congress of Vienna.

My son's comparable assignment: To write about the significance of the lyrics of "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.

It gets worse.

Also see this awful news from the UK:

There is indeed something Satanic about a person who has no interests other than themselves. And by insisting that everything be “relevant” and discouraging the development of broader interests, the educational authorities in Britain are doing great harm to the children put in their charge.

It Ain't Bleeding

Gateway Pundit:

This past year Iraq has disappeared from the front pages of the nation's newspapers and from the nightly network newscasts.

Gee, I wonder why ...

1984 in 2008

The Telegraph via Hardocp:

The Home Office will create a database to store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year under plans currently under discussion, it has emerged.

Big Brother wants to look out for you.

The reasoning given is ludicrous:

The Government wants to create the system to fight terrorism and crime. The police and security services believe it will make it easier to access important data as communications become more complex.

Just a tiny problem:

About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated three billion emails are sent every day.

When true terrorists send emails or make calls, all they have to do is use code. How can the government convict on that basis (assuming they actually get the info)?

Barack F. Obama

Don Surber via Instapundit:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama questions Republican Sen. John McCain’s commitment to the troops. [That's rich coming from a guy who doesn't even support the war. -- Isaac.] CQ Politics has the video. McCain has the son in Iraq.

Barack Obama is like John Kerry; the more he talks the more unappealing he becomes.

Give Appeasement a Chance

Pat Buchanan:

Chamberlain's negotiated deal with Hitler averted a European war -- at the expense of the Czech nation. That was appeasement.

German tanks, however, did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939. Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson's 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.

Later:

The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.

You read that right: The deadliest war in human history was started because the Poles refused to appease Hitler!

Fools can often see that appeasing a monster only increases the appetite of the beast, yet Buchanan extracts the exactly wrong lesson from history.

James Taranto:

One wonders if there is any point at which Buchanan would have said, "This time, Herr Fuehrer, you've gone too far!"

Apparently not.

Links via LFG.

Ignorant and Impotent

I didn't think it could happen but it did. My opinion of Senator Obama just tanked. (It wasn't that high to begin with.)

if elected, Obama promises to do his best to even the martial playing field world wide by gutting the military strength of the US — ostensibly, to divert that spending (from one of the few areas where government should be spending) to areas more in tune with his “vision” and to the vision of progressives everywhere

It's almost like he wants to lose the election.

Not Enough Faith

It always sounds awful.

Socialism Going Out of Fashion?

I hope this coolness flourishes here in Canada.

Is America (Still) Great?

The Apostate:

Our leaders, the best among them, don’t do a very good job of representing our values. Half of them are in power to prevent government from actually doing anything useful — on principle, because dammit! they believe in “small government.”

More:

The people give generously to charities for services the government should be providing.

Since when was it the job of the US government to provide money for charity? There are tons of charities that one might not support. Why should any government take your money and distribute it among them?

I'd rather have the government not tax me for that sort of stuff; I don't mind giving money to worthy causes -- causes which I doubt the government would finance.

Still if you're feeling generous, here's a sample letter for the feds.

"Dear Federal Government,

I have so little time and energy for charities. So, here's [insert amount of money]. I trust you'll use it well!

Hugs and Kisses
[Insert name.]"

Moving on:

The people vote. The people fight. It’s not their fault that they are being systematically disenfranchised and it’s not their fault they don’t have the time, between holding down two jobs and taking care of their kids and doing the housework, to look up “the issues” on candidates’ websites.

So ... whose fault is it?

Working with what's given, there's a lesson here: Manage your lifestyle and don't have too many kids so that you can follow "the issues" on candidates' websites.

Or you can cut down on the TV viewing a little.

“Freedom” rings hollow when one examines America’s recent crimes against human rights at home and abroad.

America has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the grand enterprise of establishing democracy, freedom and human rights in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no guarantees; history will eventually decide if she fails or succeed.

There is, however, nothing criminal about this matter. If you want to see "crimes against human rights", then just look at the other side.

You don’t have to have a college education or any kind of authority to have faith in your humanity in this country — as an American, you are free. I hope this spirit prevails over the impending disasters and Americans, when it comes down to it, fight to keep their freedom. They’ve lost it already on the books.

I'm a bit dense to see that loss.

P.S. Yes, Larry and I are buying guns if the jackboots do come. Larry’s always been an anti-gun liberal [...]

Some freedoms can be compromised.

A commenter asked why The Apostate supports Hillary over Obama. The answer starts off thusly:

For me personally? Because she’s a woman.

I wonder what the reaction would be if someone asked a Democrat, "Why do you support Obama over Hillary?" and the answer was, "Because he's a man. (Not much of one but still a man!)"

Later in another comment:

DCC, about letting the people off easy… I didn’t use to. But think about it: They did elect both Gore and Kerry, you know? If the Republicans stole two elections, that is NOT the fault of the people.

Wow. They "stole" the one in 2004 as well by winning the electoral college again. Why those dastardly Republicans!

By the way, the answer to the question is a resounding, "Hell Yeah!"

Just How Dumb Can One Be?

This dumb (via LFG):

Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.

The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. From the view of 1938, what Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable, according to the prevailing idea of the nation-state.

Stefan Sharkansky:

promoting appeasement of Hamas and Iran now by saying that appeasing Hitler in 1938 was reasonable at the time, is not a very persuasive argument.

Indeed.

Those Crazy Chinese!

This is not a joke:

Apparently, the Chinese, in their all-out effort to hold onto Tibet (for reasons I do not understand, but I’m eager to be educated on the subject), “passed” decreed that Lamas in Tibet have to get permission from the Chinese government to be reincarnated.

I didn't know that the means of production included that.

Chinese Communists Motto: All your reincarnations are belong to us.

Link via Granite Grok.

Not Bowing to Terror

Haaretz via Isreallycool:

Award-winning American actor Jon Voight visited Israeli victims of Palestinian rocket attacks in Sderot on Tuesday, taking pictures with children and speaking out harshly against latest truce efforts to stop the rocket barrages and Israeli reprisals in Gaza.

Voight says it like it is:

"They are barbarians," Voight said, referring to the Gaza militants. "They are relentless, looking to destroy (Israel)," the actor said. "If somebody breaks your leg, don't give another. Don't play this game."

Apostate-in-Chief

An op-ed about Senator Obama in The New York Times. [Registration required. Use Bug Me Not.] Here, the author is writing about apostasy:

it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

This leads to a solid, and unpleasing, conclusion.

First link emailed by slickdpdx who blogs at Known Unknowns.

The Hatred of Freedom

CBC via Celestial Junk:

Police in Halifax are investigating a complaint about a political cartoon that some members of a local Islamic group claim is a hate crime.

The cartoon, published April 18 in the Chronicle Herald newspaper, depicts a woman in a burka holding a sign that reads, "I want millions," and she says, "I can put it towards my husband's next training camp."

Later on:

In an interview with the Herald before the cartoon ran, Jamal said she wanted to sue the federal government for what her family has gone through and told the reporter, "I want millions," Leger noted.

"[MacKinnon] depicted her exactly the way she looks and used her own words, and that's the genius of cartooning that you're able to do that," he said.

Why do such Muslims get upset at those who merely point out the idiocies rather than the idiot? It's almost as if they don't have a rational response to the cartoonist. Their only recourse is to silence him. This has the effect of making free speech regarding Islam a bit expensive.

Hillary Clinton Meltdown

Celestial Junk: Possibly the Funniest YouTube Ever.

The little bit of Beethoven at the end makes it a classic.

Democracy = Suicide ?

Macleans:

Palestinian Arabs present a challenge to Israel that is at once more straightforward and infinitely more difficult to solve. Within one or two decades, the number of Muslim and Christian Arabs living under Israeli control (including in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself) will surpass the number of Israeli Jews. When that happens, if there is still no Palestinian state (and in the absence of large-scale ethnic cleansing), Israelis will be forced to choose between two futures. Their country will either be Jewish, but not democratic — in other words, a Jewish minority will control a land mostly inhabited by Palestinians — or Israel will be democratic, but not Jewish, because Arabs will form the majority in what will become a bi-national state.

Link via Elphi Delphi.

Who Needs Democracy?

The Guardian:

Vivienne Westwood
Fashion designer

"Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don't vote for Ken - he's the best thing in politics. Unthinkable."

David Thompson:

Ms Westwood appears to have difficulty grasping the concept of democracy, which generally entails the possibility that other people – perhaps a great many of them – will have preferences that differ from one’s own. Still, there’s an almost charming megalomania to the implication that a system which allows people to vote on those preferences must be a “sham” when the people doing the voting disagree with Vivienne Westwood.

Anything But The "R"

Tim Blair:

She should tell them he’s a member of the Taliban. They’d be cool with it.

Read the relevant story here.

Bad Words

The nature of freedom of speech in Canada:

Hmm. "History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes." Commissar Lynch provides, as she would say, "no substantiation for these claims." But then she's a "hate speech" prosecutor and, as we know, Canada's "human rights" procedures aren't subject to tiresome requirements like evidence. So she's made an argument from authority: the great Queen's Counsel has risen from her throne in the Star Chamber and pronounced, and let that suffice. Those of us who occupy less exalted positions in the realm might wish to ponder the evidence for her assertions.

Read the whole thing.

Link via Celestial Junk.

Submission: Baby Steps

The Daily Star:

About 1,500 children were due to take part in a parade to commemorate the patron saint of England on Wednesday.

But council bosses in Bradford, West Yorks, have ditched the event over concerns it could upset the Asian community, many of them Muslim.

Gateway Pundit:

The police fear for the safety of the children in the parade.

The Fat Kiss of Death

Tim Blair:

Michael Moore - who supported Ralph Nader in 2000 (then later claimed to have been a Gore Democrat) and backed Wesley Clark in 2004 - now urges his remaining fans to vote for Obama.

Obama is so screwed.

Quote of the Day

Cliff May:

Surely, if there’s one thing we should know about Islamists it’s that they generally venerate, rather than dismiss, “ancient documents.”

Hunh. Jimmy Carter continues to enhance his position as the worst American president of the 20th century.

Loathing Liberty

Bruce Bawer: Hating America.

One excerpt:

Hutton is a true statist, the sort of person who feels less than fully comfortable in societies where the government fails to make its presence sufficiently felt: “In a world that is wholly private,” he writes, “we lose our bearings; deprived of any public anchor, all we have are our individual subjective values to guide us.” Part and parcel of this philosophy (which might well be straight out of Mao’s Little Red Book) is an enthusiasm for, as he puts it rather clunkily, “publicly owned TV stations with a mandate to provide a universal public service as guarantors that ordinary citizens will have access to core news and comment delivered as objectively as possible.” In other words, the way to ensure objective reporting is to put the government in charge! Hutton is dismayed that the U.S. spends too little money on public TV and that “only 2.2 percent of viewers” watch it; by contrast, he’s delighted with “European governments and the EU,” because they’re “aggressive in their regulation of broadcasting content” and ban, for example, “racist expression.” He favors, in short, allowing government bureaucrats to decide what is and isn’t racist (or, for that matter, sexist or homophobic) and to punish transgressors. It’s breathtaking to see a writer so eager to quash freedom of speech.

Read the entire piece.

Herstory!

You Tube: How Hillary Can Still Win.

Pejman:

She should major in miracles.

Obama Uncensored

Right Wing News: Barack Obama In Quotes: Version 1.0

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff." -- Barack Obama

What's arugula?

Another quote:

"The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person..." -- Barack Obama

He just keeps on digging.

Freedom of Speech

Kate:

Someone in media asked me in private conversation why this issue is so heated, so personal. I answered, "Then, you don't understand. This is an existential threat to the Canadian blogosphere. This is not about what we say - this is about who we are."

Yup.

We Can Defeat Them

Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

I have some very serious "domestic policy" differences with Newt Gingrich. I never thought I would find myself watching him speak and wishing he were our front runner candidate for president, but viewing these two superb short statements by him did just that.

Click here for the first video. Watch the second here.

Barack “37” Obama

Michelle Malkin:

When I think of “small-town Pennsylvania,” I think of the people of faith and fortitude I met last week–with open hearts, big smiles, and a boundless belief in the ability to help others, even on a shoestring budget and a steep political incline.

Click here to find out what Obama thinks of these Americans.

McCain's Opponents

How can one be this historically ignorant and politically stupid?

In a newspaper interview in his home state, Rockefeller let loose this stinker: "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

Huntley writes:

Never mind that laser-guided missiles hadn't been invented during the Vietnam war. Bombing is a part of warfare, and McCain was serving his country as have legions of other bomber airmen. Rockefeller smeared them all. One further point: McCain was a prisoner of war in Hanoi when U.S. planes bombed the city, on the orders of McCain's admiral father.

Gus Van Horn offers his take on the matter.

No, My Lord

Samizdata:

David Selbourne is one of those intellectual figures who swims in similar currents to that of John Gray: mixing a sort of gloomy, conservative (small c) dislike of much modern culture and public life; a sort of grumpy dislike of the inevitably messy impact of individual liberty combined with a sort of authoritarian desire for those in power to somehow rein in all this terrible individualist excess and take us back to say, 1950. Tim Worstall, well known around here, subjects his latest article to a fairly gentle fisking.

While not subjected to a full-scale fisking, he's still thrashed.

Harsh Life of a Billionaire

Pejman:

For the first time in my life, being a billionaire seems like a bad thing.

He does have a valid point.

Riots in Egypt

Yahoo via the Sandmonkey:

Egyptians angry with the government about high prices set fire to shops and two schools in a Nile Delta textile town on Sunday after police thwarted plans for a general strike and countrywide protests.

Police fought battles through the streets of Mahalla el-Kubra with the protesters, led by textile workers who tried to go on strike for more pay to compensate for inflation.

The demonstrators set ablaze a primary school, a preparatory school and a travel agency, among other shops in the working-class town, and stopped an incoming train by putting blazing tires on the railway tracks, witnesses said.

US out of Egyp-, er, never mind.

Rights and Wrongs

Ezra Levant:

Yesterday I wrote about Michael Noonan and his intellectually incoherent Op-Ed in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. Noonan is the boss of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, who compares his battles to the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid.

So what has Nova Scotia's answer to Nelson Mandela been up to? What injustices has he and his team of freedom fighters been fighting?

What follows is not-so-riveting.

Great Leap Backward

The Epoch Times via Daimnation:

A rally that was billed as promoting "anti-violence" turned hostile on Saturday as flag-waving Chinese denounced Tibetans who they blamed for the recent turmoil in Tibet in which 100 are said to have died.

Here's some of that anti-violence rhetoric:

"Dalai Lama die there!" some Chinese shouted at a group of Tibetans who had gathered across the street from the square to protest. "Leave Canada!" others urged.

The cherry on top:

They also sang communist party songs.

Idiots.

The Sound of Evil

A Bengali in T.O.: Geert Wilders' Fitna - A Review.

Honestly, a high school student could have produced a better Islam-critical animation. That the verses and their "controversial" meanings (when taken out of context) has been explained numerous times is immaterial.

Oddly enough the author doesn't enlighten us with the relevant context. Perhaps he can provide a few links to resources where Westerners can learn about the proper Islamic time and place for terror.

In fact, the only good thing about Fitna is the recitation of the said verses of the Quran. The qari who recited those verses had a melodious voice.

I can relate. Last year, I saw a brief documentary regarding the Nazis. I just couldn't help but gush, "Oh, what sexy uniforms!"

Exposing Hatred is ... Hate Speech?

Michael van der Galien:

At this moment, a Muslim group has already taken action. “A Dutch judge is due on Friday to hear the petition of a Muslim group seeking an independent review of an anti-Koran film by lawmaker Geert Wilders to see whether it violates hate speech laws.”

In the petition the group says that “the situation of Muslims in the Netherlands is comparable with that of our Jewish fellow-citizens in the 1930s.”

Amazing. Muslims largely deny the Holocaust; at best they are completely ignorant, at worst they're sad that Hitler didn't finish the job. Still, they have no qualms about making this fatuous comparison.

After the piece is over, we get this info:

Michael van der Galien is the founder and editor-in-chief of PoliGazette and Chief Political Reviewer at Monsters and Critics.

The PoliGazette website is down.

Update: PoliGazette is back up.

Why was it down? It seems to be a mystery ...