Aug 2, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
The worst outcome of the war in Iraq is that the Bush Administration seems to be completely helpless in the face of much more serious threats. This from a news story on Monday:
Iran has broken the seals on nuclear equipment monitored by United Nations inspectors and is once again building and testing machines that could make fissile material for nuclear weapons...Western sources said Iranian officials last month reclaimed equipment for uranium enrichment centrifuges sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The centrifuges separate the fissile isotope U235. In what may be a further escalation, some Western sources said Iran was carrying out its threat to begin producing uranium hexafluoride, the gas fed into the centrifuges, but the claim could not immediately be corroborated. [NYSun]
From Cox and Forkum:
Aug 2, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
A column in the New York Sun reports on Nicolas Sarkozy, a popular French politician whose star is rising:
Mr.Sarkozy's popularity is evidence that the French have had enough of Chirac and everything he represents--good news for France, good news for America. Mr. Chirac is of the neo-Gaullist school that conflates French nationalism with anti-Americanism.
Mr. Sarkozy adores America and has declared himself proud that critics call him more American than French. Mr. Chirac believes in the primacy of the Franco-German relationship. Mr. Sarkozy is indifferent to Germany, instead favoring alliances with Britain, Spain, and America.
Mr. Chirac opposes a referendum on the European constitution; Mr. Sarkozy insists upon it. Mr. Chirac delivers patronizing lecture to the new European Union member states of Eastern Europe--"badly brought up," he called them for their support of America's policy in Iraq--but Mr. Sarkozy, with his Hungarian background, gets along with them splendidly.
Mr. Sarkozy is said to have opposed Chirac's stance on the Iraq war.
Mr. Chirac courts the Arabs. Mr. Sarkozy prefers the Israelis. Mr. Sarkozy, unlike Mr. Chirac, is not a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration...
Aug 1, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's the cutting edge of victimology:
Last week, the Congressional Black Caucus released a report that concluded that blacks are disproportionately affected by climate change.
According to the report, blacks are more likely to live in polluted areas, to lose their jobs, or even to die in heat waves because of climate change. All this suffering, even though "both historically and at present, African Americans emit less greenhouse gas" than other Americans, according to the report.
Thus we see a marriage of two great themes of modern American public
life: identity politics and environmental hand-wringing. Even if a problem affects the entire planet, some group will find a way to don the mantle of victimhood. [NYSun]
Aug 1, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From the Houston Chronicle: Pregnant al Sadr commander an unlikely warrior in Iraq.Umm Muhammad's green eyes flashed one day last week as she listened to the imam at a run-down Baghdad mosque preach about how women should be silent and unseen, traveling only "from the home to the grave."
She knew the edict didn't apply to her; the same imam had blessed her before battle when she became one of the first female commanders in rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi's Army militia.
"Even my husband didn't know I was fighting, or he pretended not to know," Muhammad, 34, said. "He tells me, 'One day you're going to go and never come back.' I tell him I dream of martyrdom."
The article bends over backwards to put the best possible spin on the fact that women, mothers even, are volunteering to blow themselves up to murder other people -- and planning to train their kids to do the same. The words "terror" or "terrorism" don't even appear in the article. These new female terrorists are "soldiers" and "warriors." It's as if we're to take these developments as a positive sign that feminism is taking hold among Islamists in Iraq. And "rebel cleric"? Al-Sadr is wanted for murder by the Iraqi government. Apparently the writer didn't think that little fact was relevant.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran basically the same article as above. But The Detroit Free Press ran another version that had this tidbit:Women fought alongside men during al-Sadr's uprising against U.S. forces in April, and at least two female guerrillas died in combat. Their funeral banners proclaimed them shaheeda, the feminine form of the Arabic word for martyr.
Sabriya Beqal, a 50-year-old mother of eight, was killed by U.S. fire last month as she was bringing water to the Mahdi's Army fighters camped out in her courtyard, her family said. Her sons and other militiamen carried her coffin to the cemetery and noted the shock of passersby who overheard that the fallen fighter was a woman.
"No less than 10 Americans will be killed to avenge my mother," said Beqal's 25-year-old son, Ahmed. "She was such an honor for us. All my friends wish their mothers could be martyrs, too. When we're all dead, we know the women will still be there, fighting."
It's been said before, but if so many of the enemy are wishing for martyrdom, we ought to help them reach their goal before they have a chance to take others with them.Aug 1, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
This talk confronts claims that the real meaning of jihad is a benign "inner struggle," and not war for the expansion of Islamic rule. Such claims are contrary to history; even mystical orthodox philosophers such as Al-Ghazali confirmed the meaning of jihad as war. Claims that jihad is an "inner struggle" are best seen either as the apologetics of those who do not want to face the fact that jihad means war, or who wish to cover up this fact in order to achieve the ends of Islamic rule. What the claimants call an "inner jihad" is a process of internal intellectual evasion, in which facts and conclusions contrary to support for Islam are suppressed. The outward political manifestations of such deception are censorship and propaganda, which are used to further Islamic rule. Islamic totalitarianism remains an active, and dangerous, force in the world, which must be confronted intellectually and defeated militarily.
Who: Dr. John Lewis, Senior Research Scholar in History and Classics, Social Philosophy and Policy Center
What: A talk explaining the real meaning of jihad: a war for the expansion of Islamic rule. A Q & A will follow.
Where: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University , Israel
When: June 2, 2008, from 6 to 8 PM
Admission is FREE. The lecture will be open to the public and the media.
Dr. John Lewis is a research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center , Bowling Green State University , and a visiting scholar for the year 2007-2008. He has been an associate professor of history at Ashland University . He holds a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge , a BA in history from the University of Rhode Island He has taught at the University of London , and was a visiting scholar at Rice University. Dr. Lewis has published in classical journals such as Polis and Dikç . He is consulting editor of The Objective Standard, and writes for Capitalism Magazine. He is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens and Early Greek Lawgivers. His book on military history, Nothing Less Than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History, is in production with Princeton University Press.Aug 1, 2004 | Dollars & Crosses
On write in candidate John Galt Jr. (Pennsylvania):
A writer, this candidate explains that he assumed the identity "John Galt Jr." several years ago after being deeply influenced by the John Galt character in Ayn Rand's classic libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged. Galt is waging a write-in campaign for President in 2004, just as he did in 2000. As for views, he supports drug legalization, "direct democracy, that is to say [having] the people voting on what should and shouldn't be laws." Galt advocates environmentalist views, supports drug legalization -- and, surprisingly, is also rather hostile towards corporations ("We need new laws to limit the powers and scopes of corporate involvement in community and politics"). Galt's 2000 VP runningmate was Kay Lee, a drug legalization activist from Florida. [Politics1]
Being for a proper government, Ayn Rand was no libertarian. And "John Galt Jr." is no John Galt.
