I've now discovered my most popular post. It's this one. I had gotten several comments on it recently despite the fact that it's almost seven months old. When I checked my referrals I figured it out. When you put in the post's title (or a slight variation) into Yahoo, I'm in the first four or five results. Odd. At least the comments are entertaining.
Matthew 10:16
"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
Four members of a lefty group called Christian Peacemaker Teams were taken hostage in Iraq. I imagine their first thought was one of amazement that the people they're supposed to be helping would kidnap them. Unfortunately for them, their kidnappers don't give a damn. The four are Westerners (one American, one Briton, and two Canadians) and that's enough. They go out preaching peace and denouncing the "torture" committed by America while simultaneously declaring that the brutal men who bomb children, behead civilians, and threaten innocents are merely misunderstood or are pushed into their sadistic lifestyle by American actions. Even now their parent group has the following statement on their main page:
We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. governments due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people.
Fools. The Iraq war is merely an excuse for jihadis, a justification to others for actions they already thought were justified. These four could wind up with their heads lying atop their stomachs instead of their necks and it will not be because of America. It will be because they are from a decadent West and because they are Christian. To men who regularly murder Muslim Iraqis accused of being collaborators, being a Christian Westerner accused of being a spy is more than enough justification for killing. The kidnappers are infected with a violent permutation of a religion and they will not listen to reason; they have no use for it.
The fact that this group works for peace is, in and of itself, noble. They have, however, forgotten the first part of that verse up above. They are not wise as serpents, they are naïve as children. They traipse around a country ignorant of the sort of men who have sworn their destruction – ignorant of what they are, what they do, and why they do it. Jesus instructed His followers to be peaceful, but not to be stupid and not to be ignorant of the world around them. The CPT folks haven't succeeded in this. They don’t understand the nature of conflicts or of evil men and so their methods and policies are accordingly confused. Their lack of serpentine shrewdness makes them harmful to themselves and others, so they wind up failing the verse’s second component as well.
If the hostages are released, and I hope they are, I would like to think they will have learned something about evil.
But I wouldn't count on it.
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Mozilla released Firefox 1.5 today and I like it. It seems to load faster and the caching is better than before. The big feature I really like is the ability to rearrange the browser tabs. I don't know why they weren't able to include it previously, but I'm also not a programmer.
Anyway, this blog recommends it. Get it here.
Oh, but be careful if you have any extensions to which you're particularly attached. Not all of them can work with 1.5 yet.
I'm quite busy this week so that's why posting is/will be light.
Oddly enough, my hit count has gone way up recently. For some reason, my referrals from search engines (for various search strings) has just about doubled. This wasn't a gradual increase, it was sudden. And I don't know why.
Mary Katherine Ham at Wizbang posts on Howard Dean's appearance on Meet the Press and notes that Dean kept mentioning that the Dems have a whole bunch of plans to solve the country's problems, but when pressed, he couldn't give a single plan specific. Instead, he kept begging off and saying that they would become known next year during the midterm campaigns. That and he bizarrely claimed the Dems don't need to give specifics because they're not in control of Congress.
MR. RUSSERT: But there's no Democratic plan on Social Security. There's no Democratic plan on the deficit problem. There's no specifics. They say, "Well, we want a strong Social Security. We want to reduce the deficit. We want health care for everyone," but there's no plan how to pay for it.
DR. DEAN: Right now it's not our job to give out specifics. We have no control in the House. We have no control in the Senate. It's our job is to stop this administration, this corrupt and incompetent administration, from doing more damage to America. And that's what we're going to do. We're doing our best. Look at the trouble they're having putting together a budget. Why is that? Because there's still a few moderate Republicans left who don't think it's OK to cut school lunch programs, who don't think it's OK to do some of the appalling things that they're doing in their budget. I saw a show last night which showed a young African-American man in California at the UC of Davis who hoped to go to law school. The Republicans want to cut $14 billion out of higher education so this kid can't go to law school. We're going to do better than that, and together, America can do better than that.
MR. RUSSERT: But is it enough for you to say to the country, "Trust us, the other guy's no good. We'll do better, but we're not going to tell you specifically how we're going to deal with Iraq."
DR. DEAN: We will. When the time comes, we will do that.
MR. RUSSERT: When's the time going to come?
DR. DEAN: The time is fast-approaching. And I outlined the broad outlines of our agenda. We're going to have specific plans in all of these areas.
I'm not really sure why not being in the majority means you don't have to tell what your plan is. One would think that if you want to become the majority, then it would be a good idea to release the details. Dean also makes it clear that the concern of the Democrats is simply to oppose the Republicans and the Bush administration at every turn, no matter what.
As Ham notes, this strategy of being anti-Bush and having lots of plans but no details is eerily similar to that of John Kerry’s last year. After watching the second presidential debate, I wrote the following:
Kerry's response for everything is that he has a plan. I've got a plan for health care, I've got a plan for tort reform, I've got a plan for Iraq, I've got a plan for alliance building, I've got a plan for taxes, I've got a plan for using the bathroom after the debate. As if having plans is supposed to make me feel better. Generally speaking, when people start telling me they have some kind of grand plan for a problem, I assume they're blowing smoke up my ass (so to speak). He's dodging the issues. By just saying he has plans that will work, he's avoiding actually discussing the content of those plans. What's the content of the plans, Senator? What problems do they have? How do you reason that these plans work? Just saying you have a plan inspires zero confidence. And having plans doesn't mean they'll work. Football coaches go into games with plans too, but that doesn't mean they won't fall apart on the first play of the game.
It seems Dean hasn't learned.
One of the especially nice things about the increasing miniaturization and spread of technology is that it's opening up worlds previously hidden to us. Sure, there are there are the pervs who use small cameras to take upskirt pics (I said here that science will always be exploited for pervy purposes), but there are also stories like this. In North Korea, dissidents have managed to smuggle out images and video of the prison camps Kim Jong Il's regime claims do not exist and also street scenes it would rather you not see:
Images from video smuggled from North Korea show a public execution and what appears to be a concentration camp housing political prisoners, according to a CNN documentary set to air Sunday night.
…
Sarah McDonald, who produced and directed the documentary, "Undercover in the Secret State," said her crew interviewed a man who had been in a camp shown in the movie."What he described, we didn't put it in the film," she said Friday from London, England. "It is so appalling, you just can't imagine. He said that 95 percent of people who go into that prison die in the prison. Their whole motivation is to kill these people, but they won't let them die easily.
"They — they torture them to death over a very long period of time."
…
Other images from the film include emaciated children begging and stealing on streets littered with dead bodies and a nearby market selling bags of rice that had been provided by the United Nations for famine relief.
Nothing quite like a worker's paradise.
Because cell phone cameras, as well as dedicated digital cameras and vidcams, are essentially spy cams and because they're in so many hands, we're getting to see things that simply weren't possible before now. Regimes are having trouble restricting their use.
This goes for technology generally. China censors what internet sites its citizens may see and has recently restricted cell phone text messaging. A communist country (especially of the Stalinist derivation) depends on being able to limit and monitor what information gets to its people. In the days of dinosaur media, this was a relatively easy task. Newspapers, broadcast TV, and movies1 were by nature large operations that could not be done discreetly; they required government patronage and control. Violations were obvious. Now, though, entire books can be carried on a memory card the size of a postage stamp. Publishing your thoughts to the world takes only a few mouse clicks. Audio podcasting is increasing in popularity and as memory and bandwidth costs lower, vidcasts will come along as well. And the commies are desperate to control it all.
It remains to be seen that they can. Information among a populace is like a flow of water. It will leak through any cracks it can find and will steadily beat at its barriers, constantly eroding them until it finally breaks through.
According to the Guardian, 1,100 lawyers on Saddam Hussein's defense team have withdrawn from the case because they fear for their safefty.
If you're like me, your reaction should be, 1,100 lawyers are on his defense team?! That is a mess of lawyers. I can see why he might need a team of attorneys, but 1,100? Now, to their credit, they seem to actually serve more than just Saddam; they're also defending seven other folks on trial with Hussein.1 If so, that still makes for 137 lawyers per person, which seems a bit much.
So I was looking up the lyrics to The Simpsons' "Talkin' Softball" song and this page topped Google's results. Here are the lyrics as transcribed by some numbskull:
Well Mr. Burns had done it
The power plant had won it
With Roger Clemming Clucking all the while
Mike Socher's tragic illness made a smile
With Wey Boggs lay unconcious on the bar-room tileWe're talking softball
From main to sandiego
We're talking softball
Manning Lee and Ken Sego
Ken Griffy's grotesquely swollen jaw
Steve Sax and his run-in with the law
We're talking Homer, Ozzie and the Straw
Ummm… yeah… Manning Lee instead of Mattingly; Ken Sego instead of Cancesco; and then Wey Boggs and Mike Socher?
If you don't have a clue what's being said in a song, it's best not to guess at it when submitting lyrics to websites.
For the record, here are the correct lyrics:
Well Mr. Burns had done it,
The power plant had won it,
With Roger Clemens clucking all the while,
Mike Scioscia's tragic illness made us smile,
While Wade Boggs lay unconscious on the barroom tile…We're talkin' softball…
From Maine to San Diego.
Talkin' softball…
Mattingly and Canseco.
Ken Griffey's grotesquely swollen jaw.
Steve Sax and his run-in with the law.
We're talkin' Homer… Ozzie and the Straw.
Could someone explain why Jesse Jackson is getting involved in the conflict between the Eagles and Terrell Owens? He released a statement in which he claims that the punishment T.O. received is not proportionate to his actions. Before getting to the statement itself, there's simply no reason for Jackson to get into this other than that he's chasing headlines. I suppose no racial debacle has taken place recently and Jesse was getting desperate. I was worried that he may try to claim racism was a factor in T.O. getting suspended for the season, but there's not even that.
As to the statement, Jesse says,
Terrell Owens did an interview last week and engaged in some unsportsmanlike speech, deemed detrimental to the team, but nonetheless free speech.
…
The Eagles have suspended T.O. for four games without pay and have decided to deactivate him for the rest of the year.
…
This punishment is much too severe for the charge. If he had been caught shaving points, selling drugs, carrying a gun or fighting some fans, who provoked him, and he had not shown sufficient restraint, we could understand the severe suspension, because those are very serious and illegal acts. Unfortunately for T.O., who belatedly apologized three days after the infraction, the real question is do his comments warrant a penalty this severe?
The punishment wasn't just for him mouthing off in that interview, it was for a series of incidents in which he was a complete jerk and his actions were detrimental to the team. As an employer, the Eagles should be able to fire people for cause and T.O. provided plenty of cause. He was a cancer on the team and was effectively let go. The team is limited only by his contract as to how or when they do so.
Jesse's appeal to free speech also holds no water. Speech has consequences and T.O. is suffering those consequences. The right to free speech is not a positive right, it's a negative right that forbids the government from limiting it. The Eagles can do whatever they want. If T.O. were to go on the air talking about the team's playbook, surely he should be punished for that, even though it too is supposed to be free speech.
Jesse also says that T.O.'s "heart is contrite." As I said here, that's false. He issued a non-apology in which he ducked any real responsibility or showed no guilt. Being a jerk in sports isn't punished enough as it is. Let T.O. be made an example of his own doing.
Bruce Willis has just become my favorite actor.
Tough guy actor Bruce Willis apparently wants to chip in on the bounties that are now on the heads of Islamofascists Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
…
Bruce Willis is such a die-hard patriot that he's offering $1 million to any civilian who turns in terror kingpins Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The hairless Hollywood he-man announced his bounty offer on MSNBC's "Rita Cosby: Live and Direct" this week.
There are already sizable sums on these guys' heads, so this probably won't make a big difference, but I gotta like a guy who's willing to put up that much cash for the capture (or heads) of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and al-Zarqawi.
And if that weren't enough to make me like him, there's this:
Willis also revealed he was in talks to make a movie about the Deuce Four, the soldiers whose heroic exploits have been chronicled by embedded blogger Michael Yon.1
And then this!:
Willis complained about media coverage of the war:
"I am baffled to understand why the things that I saw happening in Iraq, really good things happening in Iraq, are not being reported on."
That's it. I'm going out to buy Die Hard, all three of 'em. No, that's not enough. This deserves even getting Hudson Hawk.
Related to the last post, if the West's tolerance often works against it, then militant Islam's predilection for violence is its greatest weakness. It could have (and has) comfortably exploited the West's tolerance, gained footholds and political power, and gradually made changes in its favor. Instead, it perpetrated the events on 9/11 and woke up America to its threat. Then it roused the even sleepier Europeans by bombing a Spanish train, murdering Theo Van Gogh, sending death threats to a Dutch newspaper, and rioting across France, making them aware of the danger in their midst.1 Then, if that weren't enough, they attack their own base. They set off bombs in Saudi Arabia, bomb hotels in Egypt and Jordan, and commit unusually abhorrent atrocities in Iraq. In doing so, they turn their supporters against them. It's a remarkably bad strategy, but because their primary tactic is violence, violence, violence, they are unable to do otherwise even when it works against their best interests. It’s a self-destructive pattern.
LGF points to this piece about the Church of England's plan to apologize for the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.
"We do believe that the church has a visionary role for reconciliation beyond that of any government," one of the authors, Bishop Richard Harries of Oxford, told BBC Radio.
That role involves what the report called "truth and reconciliation" meetings with Muslim leaders that would give Christian counterparts the opportunity to perform a "public act of institutional penance" for the West's "long litany of errors" in dealing with Iraq, including the 2003 war.
An apology is a contrite expression proffered by party A to party B when A has wronged B in some way. This means that for an apology to be warranted, B must have a grievance against A (the apology must be applicable – it would make no sense to apologize to B when it was actually party C who was wronged) and the grievance must be legitimate in that it is something worthy of apology and for which A should feel sorry. So are these conditions met?
First off, why need we apologize to Muslim leaders for attacking Iraq? We weren't attacking Islam, we were going after a secular dictator. A dictator that killed his own people, held the living in the grip of fear, attacked his fellow Muslim countries, and had institutionalized rape, torture, and murder. Unless the Muslim leaders want to claim that those are values that Islam holds dear, then they shouldn't be concerned that we overthrew the man who did those things and we accordingly do not need to apologize.
If you would like to say, though, that this really was an attack on Islam in that we were going after Islamic terrorism, then what does that entail? We certainly didn't attack Islam, per se, or else we would have established tidy concentration camps for all Muslims in the U.S. Rather we were/are going after violent Islamist extremism that advocates the murdering of civilians, beheading innocents, killing children and then rigging the kids' bodies so as to blow up the parents who retrieve them. Again, unless the Muslim leaders care to hold up such activities as representative of Islam itself, then there is nothing for which we need to apologize. If they perhaps want to claim that Islam does support these things, then they certainly do not deserve any apology (we apologize for preventing you from blowing up innocents?) and they too are a threat.
So as concerns the war in Iraq and the war against Islamic terrorism, an apology to Muslim leaders simply isn't applicable since no affront was made towards peaceful Islam. The only way an apology could apply is if the leaders in question are themselves violent Islamists and then they too are not only enemies, but also repugnant people to whom no apology is warranted since justice is being served to them. Their grievance is not legitimate.
If you perhaps want to inflate this into an apology not just for our current actions, but also for the Crusades, colonialism, and other past behavior to Muslims in general, my response is that maybe that can occur when the Muslim world is also willing to apologize for its actions towards the West. Our poor cultural memory seems to forget that up until around the 1700′s, the West suffered disproportionately at the hands of the Muslim world, to the point that it was nearly wiped out at several points. Turkey, the Mediterranean Middle-East, and North Africa, for example, were at one time, thoroughly Western domains until they were conquered by Muslim armies. Spain, Greece, and parts of Eastern Europe changed hands several times. Istanbul, of course, was once Constantinople, a crown jewel of the Roman Empire. So if Muslim leaders deserve an apology for rough treatment from the West, then the West is equally deserving of an apology from those same Muslim leaders for the same reason.
So why would the Church of England (or other liberal Christians generally) think an apology is warranted? I can only imagine that it is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of whom they are dealing with. The great mistake many in the West make is believing that everybody is fundamentally like themselves. Perhaps at same truly basic human level this is true, but cultural, religious, and economic differences prevent similarities from going beyond that. Their perception of the world is very different and in some ways, these differences are positive. In many other ways, however, they are negative, and more importantly, they are bad for us. While the CofE seeks to apologize to Muslim leaders and engage in reconciliation, many of those leaders (especially those of the Wahhabist inclination) envision the eventual domination of Islam over the world, the forced subjugation of the West, and the crescent flag flying over the Vatican. Reconciliation requires that both (or all, depending on the case) parties be willing to meet in the middle and resolve problems. Groups like the CofE, however, seem to be quite willing to march across the center ground and meet the others wholly on their side. They give away the farm and demand no sacrifice or penance from the other side. Essentially, they execute an unconditional surrender.
I have said in the past that no power can ever defeat the West; the West can only defeat itself. Powers hostile to the West use and exploit the West's tolerance and inclusiveness (perhaps its greatest strengths and also its greatest weaknesses) against itself. Its tendency for self-reflection and correction (again, highly valuable) are equally dangerous. While I don't at all propose the West lose these qualities, they must be used with wisdom and discretion, and this is lost on the CofE and others. When used well, the qualities are good, but they are self-defeating when used poorly.
So while the Church of England may commune with moderate Muslim leaders (I obviously don't mean to impugn all Muslims, as many… most… are not subject to the charges leveled above; it is the militant variety with which I am concerned and which the CofE is happily including), those moderate Muslims don't need an apology as the apology the CofE is proposing is not applicable to them since they are moderates. The militant Muslim leaders obviously don't warrant an apology. So to whom is the CofE apologizing?
People often like to romanticize the high seas pirates of a few centuries ago and call them swashbucklers, adventurers, etc. Think of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, or even the fictional "Jack Sparrow" of Pirates of the Caribbean. Truth is, most of the old pirates were sociopath bastards who thieved for a living (even the "licensed" ones with letters of mark).
That's why it should be enlightening for these folks when stories of the Somali pirates come out. They recently attacked a cruise ship with machine guns and RPG's, and, according to eyewitnesses account, seemed to be having an enjoyable time. It appears they have a mother ship that's been spotted a few times and they've even taken seven ships and their crews captive. Arrr, just like the pirates of yore getting their booty and galley slaves.
This has been a big problem along the Somali coast since Somalia’s government is practically non-existent and the country is run by warlords who are probably also doing the pirating. It's also, however, along a busy trade route and commercial businesses frown upon their ships, crews, and goods getting shot at. So what to do?
Some of the world's leading shipping bodies called on the U.N. to urgently address the issue.
Since the UN has no power in the region (and has actually proven itself to be incompetent there) and no navy to police the place, this seems like an excellent idea. What has the UN done with its terrific might?
On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council criticized Somalia's squabbling government and urged rival factions to work to confront the chaos and piracy plaguing the lawless nation.
The council expressed "serious concern" about the recent wave of pirate attacks off the coast, and urged regional powers and international bodies to address the problem urgently.
Ouch. Nothing stings more than strongly worded letters. Just look at how Iran and North Korea quake before the UN's serious concern.
Of course, if people really wanted to take care of the pirates, they'd ask the U.S. navy to patrol the coastline and do some housecleaning. It's unlikely that Somalia would take such action, though, since they probably still hold a grudge against us trying to salvage their godforsaken hellhole almost 15 years ago.
If you think cats in sinks are simply adorable, then you'll love catsinsinks.com and it's random picture generator.
If you tip the glass a little too much, then Modern Drunkard Magazine is your site.
Which compels me to include Monty Python's Bruces drinking song:
And finally, Taking Your Camera has a post that's really a reprint of an e-mail forward of funny things flight attendants have said, but several of them are quite funny. Here are the two best:
11. "Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and, in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments."
19. Part of a flight attendant's arrival announcement: "We'd like to thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you'll think of US Airways."
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