Shutterbug Canned for Scalia Snap

So, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia makes a obscene hand gesture in church and tells his critics they can f**k off, and the guy who took the photograph gets canned!

Freelance photographer Peter Smith, who was working for the Boston Archdiocese magazine, was fired by the Catholic organization after his photo of Scalia making a rude Italian hand gesture (click above to see the exclusive image) was published in the Boston Globe. The church magazine got first crack at the shot, but they declined on "journalistic grounds" since there's just nothing newsworthy about a prominent Catholic Supreme Court justice cursing his critics and making obscene gestures in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

If freedom of speech applies to the people who make the laws, shouldn't it apply to the rest of us? Just wondering.

P.S. Award for best headline on this story goes to UPI: Photo fuels flap over Scalia's flip. Nice work, Moonies!

Red State Blues

It's hard for a liberal not to do a little gloating over the following map that depicts President Bush's approval ratings by state:



Where, oh where have the red states gone? Only Alabama, which is lucky it has such a short Gulf coastline; the great state of Wyoming, where Cheney is king; and Utah, aka OrrinHatchsylvania, managed to break the 50% mark—and just barely. Every other state that was red in 2004 has taken on a distinct shade of blue.

Battleground states like Florida and Oregon are disenchanted with Bush, and Ohio and Pennsylvania are even more so. Even Texas has turned against its native son. So much for that red state revolution that so enthralled the Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs of the world. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean all these states will vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, but it's got to send a shiver up the collective Republican spine.

If Bush's approval ratings stay this low, the Republicans may well be run right out of Washington to be replaced by Democrats, who are, on average, marginally less corrupt and wrongheaded than their GOP counterparts. God bless the two party system!

Vive la Violence!

Sacre bleu! It turns out that the French love a little bit of good, old-fashioned street violence. This from a New York Times article (that I'm not going to link to because TimeSelect sucks but you can find here):

"In France, we always imagine violence to be political because of our revolutions, but this isn't the case," said Sebastian Roché, a political scientist who specializes in delinquency in the suburbs. "The casseurs are people who are apart from the political protests. Their movement is apolitical. It is about banal violence — thefts, muggings, aggression."

Yes, if only the violence were a little less banal. Then it would be perfect.

Oh, unless it's Muslims being violent. Then it's a threat to Western Civilization^TM rather than a life-affirming embodiment of it. Vive la difference! Just don't be different.

Danish PM Blasts Business

Random Platitudes is back after a brief intermission with part 8 of his exploration of the cartoon crisis from a Danish perspective.

This installment deals with Danish businesses, which were threatened by a boycott from the Muslim world following the printing of the controversial Muhammad cartoons. In the non-Danish Western press, this issue was dealt with rather uncritically. RP takes a look at the internal debates between Danish companies, which were trying to avoid being boycotted, and the Danish government, which was—in the person of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen—trying to look tough on the freedom of speech issue.

Some major Danish companies, including dairy giant Arla, distanced themselves from Jyllands-Posten and the cartoons, having already suffered through a domestic boycott thanks to their heavy-handed competitive tactics. Others, like shipping giant A.P. Møller, had nothing to worry about since Qatar wasn't about to shelve their $5 billion offshore oil field project.

Rasmussen, as always, wanted to score some political points off the cartoon crisis, so he publicly chastised Danish companies for being "unprincipled" (for giving humanitarian aid to the Red Crescent, for example) and he came down hard on Denmark's intellectual PEN club as well for not supporting the government line on the cartoons.

According to RP, Rasmussen's decision to go on the offensive to take on Danish intellectuals and business interests "was to be one of the most potentially self-destructive decisions of his political career." Click here to read more.

Jill Carroll Released

Great news today with the release of journalist Jill Carroll in Iraq. I guess if you're going to get abducted, better to have it be done by these guys, who apparently did not abuse her, than the people who took Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl.

It's instructive to remember that Carroll went over to Iraq as a freelancer because of the terrible journalism job market here in the States. (The Washington Post just announced 80 layoffs in its newsroom, the latest in a long line of carnage that stretches back to 2000.)

Carroll's horrible ordeal pretty much guarantees her a job or a book deal (if she still wants to work in journalism), but that's a hell of a way to make it in the business. To bad so many people have to take Jill's path since the idle scions of the super-rich are increasingly taking the newsroom jobs that daddy got them. Alas.

Hooters Air Goes Bust

After several years of sagging sales, Hooters Air went belly-up today. Apparently the company's debt load, which has been described by experts as "top-heavy", was just too large for the company to adequately support. Hooters Air executives also blamed their woes on difficulties faced trying to negotiate with businessmen who just wouldn't look them in the eyes.

While their dreams of air supremacy may be deflated, Hooters will continue to offer their signature service: providing a place for men to go to "get some wings and watch the game" without technically lying to their wives.

Charles Taylor Captured

After escaping custody in Nigeria, former Liberian president Charles Taylor was captured last night as he attempted to Cross into Cameroon. He has been returned to Liberia where he will await his date with a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone.

Here's what Taylor is charged with:

war crimes (murder, taking hostages); crimes against humanity (extermination, rape, murder, sexual slavery); and other serious violations of international humanitarian law (use of child soldiers) in Sierra Leone.

According to Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, "Charles Taylor is one of the single greatest causes of spreading wars in West Africa."

As usual, a bad day for former dictators turns out to be a good day for the rest of us. Taylor will finally get his day in court, likely followed by a lifetime behind bars, right where he belongs.

We'd Rather Not Know

Remember the good old days, back when we believed Whitney Houston when she declared, "Whitney don't smoke no crack"? Back when the most disgusting thing we knew about her—apart from the fact that she married Bobby Brown, that is—involved "doody bubbles"?

Well, if you prefer your innocence, avert your eyes. According to Tina Brown (that's Bobby Brown's sister, not the famous editor), Whitney do do crack.

I did crack with Whitney. The truth needs to come out. She won't stay off the drugs. It's every single day. It's so ugly. Everyone is so scared she's going to O.D.

Well, at least it would make for a compelling episode of Being Bobby Brown (for a change). But that's not the worst of it, by far. See if you can still picture Whitney singing "I Will Always Love You" after reading this description from the National Enquirer:

In the most explosive interview ever about Whitney, Tina tells how the 42-year-old singer spends days locked in her bedroom amid piles of garbage smoking crack, using sex toys to satisfy herself and ignoring personal hygiene.

"The Greatest Love of All", indeed. Now I've got to go and get my memory erased.

Protestors Do the Robot

It turns out that the massive protests against anti-illegal immigration legislation were coordinated and organized by Spanish-language radio personalities. DJs gave protesters their "marching orders", which included bringing American flags and picking up their trash.

Aha!, say some conservatives. We knew it! These demonstrations weren't "spontaneous", which means that they're illegitimate. Only spontaneous demonstrations can really reflect the feelings of those involved.

Indeed. Just like the 1963 March on Washington during which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. It was organized by a multitude of groups, including the SCLC and the NAACP. In fact, most civil rights marches were organized by religious and social justice groups, so they don't count either.

To hit a little closer to the GOP heart, the 2000 Florida recount demonstrations don't count because they were organized by GOP staffers themselves. The same goes for any anti-abortion rallies organized by churches that bus in their supporters to intimidate pregnant teens. Gosh, according to this standard, the only demonstration that would really count to some conservatives is an honest-to-God riot. Now that's a platform they can run on in 2008.

GOP Debate 'Burns' On

Republicans are in a pickle of a jam over illegal immigration. On the one hand, they need to placate their xenophobic base. On the other hand, they don't want to alienate millions of Latino voters, many of whom have voted Republican in the past thanks to "family values" issues.

One of the new anti-immigration talking points that's popping up in Republican circles is that illegal immigration is bad for America because it "hurts the poor." This is a momentous occasion because it marks the first time many GOP politicians have ever uttered the phrase "hurts the poor" without touching their fingertips together and saying, "excellent".

Bush Deals New Card

President Bush's long-time chief of staff, Andy Card, is calling it quits. Announcing his resignation, a teary-eyed Card said, "You're a good man, Mr. President," which, in Bush administration lingo, is code for "you're an abject, miserable failure."

Card's replacement was named as budget director, Joshua Bolten. You read that right. Budget. This from an administration that's never seen a million-dollar project that couldn't be turned into a ten-million-dollar project. Apparently the White House's WMD Czar was unavailable for the post.

The 'Curse' of Religious Literalism

According to a controversial Islamic tradition, all a husband needs to do to divorce his wife is say "talaq", or "divorce", three times. In the Indian state of West Bengal, local Muslim leaders have declared a couple divorced because the husband invoked the so-called "triple talaq" in his sleep.

Notwithstanding that the triple talaq is a hideously sexist practice (only the husband can declare it) with little standing in Islamic jurisprudence, this case exposes the base stupidity of religious literalism. Religious literalism has a long and glorious history in all faiths, and can be thanked, amongst other things, for attempts to teach Creationism in public schools in America. Put into practice, it almost always does violence to the faith it purports to uphold.

In the case of talaq, the only philosophical foundation for the practice is that its utterance represents an exercise of the husband's will and intentions. By insisting that the same words uttered while sleeping are no different than ones uttered while awake, the local imams have removed this philosophical foundation and turned the words into some sort of magic incantation; a "hocus pocus" phrase divorced (if you will) from the intention they represent. For a religion that doesn't even allow representations of the Prophet lest people worship him and not Allah, it is fair to say that magic words amount to a blasphemy in and of themselves.

And just what the world needed: yet another reason to lay off the Ambien.

Running Out the Debt Clock

Presidents are perennially concerned with their legacies. Especially after l'affaire Monica Lewinsky, such a concern was said to animate President Clinton's final years in office. Now, even if Iraq is somehow resurrected from its black hole of violence , President Bush can rest assured he will have a legacy as well. In the history books of the future, may well be known as the man who broke the national debt clock.

Conceived in the Reagan era and erected in 1989 south of Times Square, a giant ticker has displayed the rising of the national debt, dollar by dollar (except in those heady Clinton years when, because the clock was not designed to run backwards, it was shrouded in red, white and blue until, sure enough, President Bush pressed it back into service in 2002). The problem? Well, the clock is only designed to display a 13-digit number.

Sometime in the next two years, the total amount of US government borrowing is going to break through the 10-trillion-dollar mark and, lacking space for the extra digit such a figure would require, the clock is in danger of running itself into obsolescence.

Way to go, President Bush! Thanks so much for that $300 tax refund. That'll take the edge off of my family's approximate $90,000 share of the debt. What a triumph for conservatism, and compassionate, too!

Afghanistan Backs Down

Charges against Abdul Rahman, who faced a possible death penalty for converting to Christianity, have been dropped. For now, at least.

According to Afghan officials, Rahman's case has been dropped due to a lack of evidence and questions about the legal foundation of the case. He's not totally out of the woods, however, because the case has been sent back to prosecutors who could reintroduce charges. In the meantime, Rahman will be released from prison.

It appears that Karzai is getting his wish, making the case go away without stooping to undemocratic means to do so. One hopes it will stay this way. A word of advice for Mr. Rahman: get the hell out of Afghanistan while you still have your head. Maybe you can go back when they've made it through their medieval period.

Marriage of Convenience

In September 2005, President Viktor Yushchenko ousted Yuliya Tymoshenko from her position as Ukranian prime minister. Now, Yushchenko's Our Ukraine Party is not expected to win enough seats in parliament to form a government. In order to prevent pro-Russia hardliner Viktor Yanukovych from regaining control of the country, Tymoshenko is forced to contemplate aligning her block with Our Ukraine. Here are her thoughts on that prospect:

I am reminded of Queen Victoria's advice to her daughter on her wedding night: "Close your eyes and think of England."

You Don't Need a Weatherman...

Bob Dylan once told us "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." At the New York Times this may be true. What they need is an ombudsman. Here's a bizarre correction from today's "Week in Review":

A picture caption last Sunday about wildfires in Texas misstated the direction of the winds that blew plumes of smoke across the Panhandle. They were southwesterly (that is, from the southwest), not northeasterly.

All the news that's fit to print, indeed.

Faith-Based Diplomacy

There's an interesting little tidbit from Condoleezza Rice buried in an AFP story about Abdul Rahman. The report mentions that the Secretary of State phoned Afghan president Hamid Karzai yesterday to voice Washington's concerns about the man being threatened with execution for converting to Islam. Apparently, during the conversation, Rice said this:

There is no more fundamental issue for the United States than freedom of religion and religious conscience.

While freedom of religion is certainly vital to a truly open society, is it more fundamental than democracy or respect for human life? What an odd thing to say.

It's doubly confusing considering the fact that Bush and his "conservative" buddies are doing everything they can to make sure that his personal religious beliefs dictate the way we give provide AIDS relief to Africa, the way we conduct scientific research, the way charities in operate in the United States, what kids can and can't study in school, whose love is worth celebrating, how much control we can have over the heath care of loved ones, ad infinitum.

Sounds more like the freedom of one religion to me.

To Hell With Health

In January, we learned that the health benefits of soy, the alleged miracle bean, may have been overstated. We've already been through this with oat bran. Now, a new study is casting aspersions on the health benefits of fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids. What's next? Vitamin C causes genital warts?

Let's sum up the wisdom we've gleaned from our friends in the nutrition sciences in recent years:

• Pork rinds and bacon are great for weight loss—or, they'll explode your heart on contact
• Several cups of coffee per day is just fine and dandy—or, you're digging your own grave one skinny caramel macchiato at a time
• Drinking milk helps you lose weight—or, it makes you fatter than the heifer it came from
• Carbs are evil and deadly, worse than the terrorists—or, carbs are evil and deadly, just not quite as bad as the terrorists

You know what? Just stop. No more testing, no more studies. Obviously every trip to the refrigerator is like walking through a minefield. The last thing we need is a bunch of people arguing over where we should or shouldn't step. Let us heal/poison ourselves in peace. Heck, maybe while I'm waiting for that swordfish embolism or yellow fin aneurism, you guys will decide that I really just cured my hepatitis and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma instead. Better yet, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

Who's up for sushi?

Albright Sees the Light

There is a sane and important editorial in the LA Times written by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright that basically expands upon issues I wrote about in my last post. Under the title "Good versus evil isn't a strategy", Albright disputes what she calls the Manichean world view of the Bush administration and sheds some light on the real battles we face in the Middle East.

It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction.... The first [suggestion] is to understand that although we all want to "end tyranny in this world," that is a fantasy unless we begin to solve hard problems. Iraq is increasingly a gang war that can be solved in one of two ways: by one side imposing its will or by all the legitimate players having a piece of the power.

What this means is, we have to scrap the "axis of evil" bullocks and engage with Iran, because there will be no peace in Iraq without support from Iran. I only hope Albright is correct when she opines that Iran's "choleric and anti-Semitic new president...will be swallowed up by internal rivals if he is not unwittingly propped up by external foes." There's already some evidence to support her claim.

Albright goes on to say that she "hopes" the future of the Middle East is determined by those serious about fomenting democracy.

But hope is not a policy. In the short term, we must recognize that the region will be shaped primarily by fairly ruthless power politics in which the clash between good and evil will be swamped by differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, Arab and Kurd, Kurd and Turk, Hashemite and Saudi, secular and religious and, of course, Arab and Jew.

I hope all the xenophobes and Bush acolytes read enough of Albright's editorial to get to this part, because this is the crux. There's not a Western culture and a Muslim culture that are locked in battle. There is a patchwork of Middle Eastern cultures, ethnicities and ideologies, all locked in a bitter battle amongst themselves. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we might actually start helping to solve this problem. Planning an airstrike against Tehran isn't going to help. Even Christopher "This is a Battle for Civilization" Hitchens admitted that much.

Now it just remains to be seen if Albright can get an oil tanker named after her. I guess pursuing peace in the Middle East probably isn't the way to go about that.

Radical Islam, Broken Societies

Wow, Andrew Sullivan really blows hot and cold on Islam. A couple of days ago he was practically sneering at the idea of moderate Muslims, as he has done many times before. Then yesterday, in response to the Abdul Rahman case, he writes this:

I know there are moderate Muslims. I know that in Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia and India, for example, these kinds of views are not common. I also know that it wasn't that long ago that Christians held similar views about heretics or Jews, and that today's fundamentalist Christianity is often supportive of the death penalty and torture. But that a religious faith contains this kind of fanatical intolerance and violence anywhere is disturbing. It's barbaric. And it is in the Middle East that this kind of theocratic fascism is ascendant.

First off, I'm glad to see him step back from the precipice. We're not ever going to make progress against militant Islam if we continue to pretend like that's all there is.

I agree with Sullivan's statement that religious faith with fanatical intolerance is disturbing. Of course you find that in any and every religion. There are plenty of hateful Christian groups right here in America, and I just wrote the other day about some particularly distasteful remarks made by a Kabbalist rabbi. The problem is—and it's an indisputable one—there seems to be more of it in Muslim societies.

But, not in every Muslim society, as Sullivan adroitly points out. In fact, Muslim intolerance tends to occur in the most backwards societies—the ones that were colonized to all hell and then left to rot. It's no surprise at all that the horrible case of Abdul Rahman is happening in Afghanistan, a country with arguably the most tragic history of any of the Muslim nations. It's the most stunted society, and it's also the most intolerant. That seems to be pretty fair evidence that Islamic intolerance is a symptom of geo-political influences rather than a flaw within Islam itself.

Let's not forget that if Christian societies took the Bible literally and applied laws based upon it, we'd be no different from Afghanistan. There's nothing special about Islam; there's something special about huge swaths of the Muslim world. We must fight against religious intolerance wherever we find it, but we must not fool ourselves into believing that theology is our only problem in the fight against Islamism.

Who Would Jesus Waterboard?

Just to show that I'm not totally against Andrew Sullivan, he's always been totally on the mark in his opposition to torture. Yesterday, he highlighted a depressing poll that shows widespread support for torture from the American public—especially from Christians. One would think, particularly in light of The Passion of the Christ, that Christians would disapprove of torture. Alas.

Today, Sullivan posted his response to an email that suggests that Christians have a long history of doing horrible, evil things in the pursuit of their faith. Here's Sullivan's rejoinder: "All I can say is that faith founded genuinely on Jesus could not begin to endorse such a concept..." He goes on to claim "Christianity will survive Christianism."

Quite right. All I would ask is this: Is it too much to ask him to cast the same discerning eye on Islam that he does on his own religion?

Apostasy and Absolutism

Weblogistan has been abuzz in recent days, discussing the strange case of Abdul Rahman, an Afghani who faces a possible death sentence for converting to Christianity. (He has not been "sentenced to death," as so many bloggers have alleged—he hasn't even been tried yet.)

In particular, xenophobic bloggers and Christian "activists" have seized on this terrible case to prove their contentions that Islam is an evil religion that simply is not compatible with Western Civilization^TM. Most prominent among these offenders is, as always, Andrew Sullivan. On March 20, Sullivan wrote a brief post called "'Tolerance' in Afghanistan" in which he quoted the barbaric words of the prosecuting attorney in the case and then made this sarcastic appeal:

There are many Muslims in the West and elsewhere who do not support or tolerate this kind of medieval oppression. I look forward to hearing their protests. Please let me know of any I might have missed.

I fully understand his hostility to this case in particular. What I don't appreciate is his underlying hostility to Islam in general. Sullivan fluctuates between recognizing moderate Muslims in good faith (as in the case of the anti-extremist manifesto published by his friends Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji) and wringing his hands over the dearth of moderate voices and the fundamental incompatibility of Islam with the West.

The problem with viewing the entire Muslim world as a monolithic swamp of intolerance (apart from oversimplifying things to the point of utter absurdity) is that it undermines the logic of trying to affect political change in the region—attempts that Sullivan, paradoxically, supports. If this view is accurate, then there's really no difference between Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, or between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It's a view that simply makes no sense. If the only way to be a tolerant Muslim is to be an apostate Muslim, then we are left with only two choices, both of which Sullivan would presumably reject: we can leave them all to rot, or we can pull an Ann Coulter and invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity.

In this light, Sullivan's sarcastic call for Muslim protests over the Abdul Rahman case is unseemly. It assumes, first of all, that none will be forthcoming because all those terrible Muslims really do believe you should be killed for abandoning Islam. Secondly, the implication that all Muslims are somehow responsible for the conduct of all other Muslims, wherever they are, and therefore have a responsibility to speak out about every atrocity is nothing more than stereotyping at its ugliest and most xenophobic. I am not responsible for everything done in the name of Christianity; why on earth should Mehmet in Istanbul be held responsible for something Ali does in Medina? It's actually a very insulting expectation to have. Just because you're ignorant about the endless variety in the practice of Islam doesn't mean that it's adherents have a duty to educate you. Pundit, heal thyself.

The first thing to realize in the Abdul Rahman case is that there's a tremendous "duh" factor involved. Of course most people, Muslim or otherwise, don't agree with it. Assuming that if someone does not speak out against this ridiculous case means they support the prosecution is absurd and degrading. Expecting Muslims to speak out on this case and every other one like it is akin to forcing foreigners to sign a loyalty oath and then continually reaffirm it. Reasonableness is a trait that is assumed in non-Muslims until proven otherwise. Sullivan and his ilk have a different standard for all Muslims. They are, in a manner of speaking, guilty until proven innocent—a belief that would appear to stand in contradiction to Sullivan's own proclaimed ideals.

That said, two of the most prominent Muslim organizations in America have come out against the impending trial of Abdul Rahman. This statement is from the website of the Council on American-Islamic Relations:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, called for Mr. Rahman's release, saying that the Koran supported religious freedom and that Islam was never compulsory. CAIR said its position was endorsed by the Fiqh Council of North America, a committee of Islamic legal scholars.... "the man’s conversion is a personal matter not subject to the intervention of the state.... Islam advocates both freedom of religion and freedom of conscience..."

So sorry to disappoint those of you hoping this wouldn't happen.

This obscene apostasy trial is notable not because it tells us something about mainstream Islam, but because it tells us a whole lot about modern-day Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai and the Pashtun plurality from which he comes have created a Kabul-centric government that has done little to address the regional and ethnic divides in the country. The New York Sun quotes a representative of Human Rights Watch as saying, "This represents politics in Afghanistan being played out on this guy's body." According to their source, Karzai's lack of control over the judiciary is linked to "efforts to win support from a regional warlord, Abdul Sayyaf."

So we have a leader of an exceedingly fragile democracy who is trying to live up to his more liberal beliefs while keeping the country from falling apart. That's why we don't see a ham-fisted attempt on the part of the Afghan government to stop this case. It is apparent that Karzai would like the case to be dropped without having to resort to undemocratic means to achieve this goal. Many reports indicate that the government has been working diligently behind the scenes to make this happen. Here's hoping they're successful.

In the meantime, to hold Afghanistan up as the exemplar of mainstream Islamic belief is, to say the least, to argue in extremely bad faith.

Goose-Steppers of the Enlightenment

In the great Clash of Civilizations^TM that pits the Western world against the Muslim world, we can always count on the West, bastion of Enlightenment values that we surely are, to be on the side of tolerance and freedom. In that spirit, it's worth noting an AFP report that quotes an article in the Italian daily Repubblica about how soccer hooligans and neo-Nazis are gearing up for a bloodbath during this summer's World Cup. Their target? Muslims.

According to "ultras" hooligans associated with AS Roma, "neo-Nazis across Europe met in Braunau in Austria to plan attacks against supporters from Islamic countries during the World Cup in Germany from June 9 to July 9."

"We are united. For the first time we are talking and planning together, with the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, everyone with the same objective. At the World Cup there will be a massacre," said the Italian ultra. "We will all be in Germany and there will be Turks, Algerians and Tunisians. The Turks, we can't stand them. In [Italy] there are not many, but in Germany, there are many of those guys there. They are Islamic terrorists. We will attack them. They are all enemies that need to be eliminated, just like the police."

Charming. If nothing else, this illustrates the myth of "Western culture." These European neo-Nazis are heirs to the same Western tradition of tolerance and openness that I am, but do I have anything in common with them at all? I sure hope not. There's no such thing as a single "Western culture." Instead, there are a multiplicity of cultures under the umbrella of Western civilization, and some of them, as our European friends have shown us, are unspeakably evil. Perhaps our culture warriors should remember this the next time they ascribe a monolithic, evil culture to the entire Muslim world.

If we want moderate Muslims to denounce the very real and troubling extremism of some of their co-religionists, it's every bit as important that we don't forget to denounce the no-less-real extremism produced by our own societies. It's not about equivalency. It's about common decency. Ultimately, we're all on the same side, here. Right?

Madonna Causes Bird Flu?

What's a girl like Madonna to do? It's no secret that she's deeply immersed in Kabbalah, the once-obscure form of Jewish mysticism that, thanks in large part to the Material Girl (or Esther, to call her by her "Kabbalah name"), has taken over Hollywood like the next incarnation of Transcendental Meditation. Everywhere you look, anorexic wrists are sporting red Kabbalah strings and doe-eyed starlets are sipping "completely positive, healing energy" from their bottles of Kabbalah water (only $1.75 per half-liter!).

Why this love for Kabbalah in the entertainment ranks? It allows them the excitement of cultural squatting while fulfilling their basic need to feel superior to the rest of America. Madonna, obviously, has a ravenous appetite for that sense of superiority. After all, she already has a bazillion dollars and a phony British accent. That would be enough for most people.

Hollywood Kabbalah, like Richard Gere's Buddhism, has a certain hippy-dippy, experimental cachet, and many adherents like to believe that they're slaking their spiritual thirst without contaminating themselves with the orthodoxies associated with mainstream religion in America. That said, I wonder what Madonna's reaction is to this from a recent Reuters article:

An outbreak of deadly bird flu in Israel is God's punishment for calls in election ads to legalize gay marriages, according to Rabbi David Basri, a prominent sage preaching Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism....The bird flu outbreak stemmed from far-left political parties "strengthening and encouraging homosexuality," Rabbi Basri's son quoted him as saying.

Pat Robertson couldn't have said it better. Basri's comments were brought on, in part, by a political advertisement in Israel that shows two brides kissing. I certainly hope the rabbi didn't catch the "duet" between Madonna and Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards!

This is not to say that Kabbalah in general is as intolerant as, say, fundamentalist Christianity. It just goes to show that when you do spiritual cherry picking, you sometimes end up with the pits.

P.S. If this proclamation had come from a Muslim, Weblogistan would be going crazy. Where's your outrage, Andrew Sullivan?

The Colder Side of Global Warming

It's the second day of spring, and, after virtually no snow all winter, we're getting buried by a freak late snowstorm here in the Midwest. Rush Limbaugh started his program yesterday with a glib one-liner about how this spring snowstorm proves that global warming is a crock. Drudge, a weather porn addict if there ever was one, loves to highlight events that seem to contradict global warming.

Not so fast, my modern day flat-earthers! Wishful thinking is not going to change the data and an erroneous appeal to "logic" won't keep old Rush's south Florida studios above the waterline. The global climate is a complex thing, and complex things often defy the base logic of men like Rush and Drudge.

As several scientists have warned, global warming will be full of surprises. Warming over the past half-century has already brought more erratic and extreme weather. Some climatologists are increasingly concerned about the stability of the climate system itself and the potential for abrupt shifts - to warmer or even much colder states.

Erratic and extreme weather—like record hurricane seasons, November tornados, heat waves and, yes, spring blizzards. Anyone paying attention to the weather at all knows that something screwy is going on. The quotation above offers an explanation. That's from a 2003 Boston Globe article by Dr. Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, and James J. McCarthy, professor of oceanography at Harvard University and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We're just going to have to decide who we trust when it comes to the global climate: scientists who specialize in the global climate, or right-wing pundits who wouldn't know an isobar from a hole in the ozone layer.

The Ravages of Time

Drudge has a photo of President George Bush on his site that took me aback. In it the president looks so old; haggard almost. It's a graphic reminder of the toll the presidency takes. Here's a picture of George Bush in 2000 compared with Bush in 2006:



The same thing happened to President Clinton, who entered the Oval Office in 1992 looking youthful and vibrant, only to emerge in 2000 white-haired and wizened by his 8 years in office.



Nothing can compare, however, to the transformation that John F. Kennedy underwent, despite spending only three years in office:

Putin Backs Election Fraud, Again

Anyone harboring hope that Russian president Vladimir Putin is not succumbing to his authoritarian tendencies suffered yet another blow today with the presidential election results in Belarus. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory with 82.6 percent of the vote in a contest he termed "honest and democratic".

Putin (l.) and Lukashenko have a meeting of the minds

The United States, the European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe all beg to differ. The US claimed the election was run in a "climate of fear" and White House spokesman Scott McClellan echoed Belarussian opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich's calls for a new election. The OSCE stated that "a pattern of intimidation and the suppression of independent voices was evident."

But have no fear. Lukashenko is not left without a friend in the world. He always has old, reliable Vladimir Putin, who congratulated him on his victory, saying, "the results of the election testify to the fact that the voters trust in your course." Just as he has done in elections in Georgia and Ukraine, Putin comes down on the side of authoritarianism against democracy and reform. Maintaining Russian influence in former satellite states is Putin's goal—a goal that might make those of us who can remember the old Soviet Union a bit uneasy.

In addition to a history of rigged elections, Lukashenko and his henchman have been implicated in the disappearances of opposition candidates and journalists and have been accused of anti-Semitic activities. The Committee to Protect Journalists listed Belarus in the top 10 "Worst Places to be a Journalist" in 2003. It remains to be seen if Milinkevich and his supporters will be able to pressure Belarus into new elections—or whether they’ll be allowed to stage further protests at all. We all know what side Putin comes down on in all of this.

Last year the United States described Lukashenko as "Europe's last dictator." Vladimir Putin is well on his way to making that claim obsolete.

Party Politics in Denmark

Random Platitudes has posted part 7 of his look at the cartoon crisis from a Danish perspective. This epistle is devoted entirely to the political fallout inside Denmark.

RP highlights polls that show that the major opposition party, the Social Democrats, lost electoral support during the cartoon crisis, not because they attacked the ruling party, but because they tempered their response to the crisis for fear of appearing too "immigrant-friendly."

The ruling party's support remained constant, with big gains for the xenophobic Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti) and the Danish Social Liberal Party (Radikale Venstre).

Clearly, the DPP were gaining as a result of a public perception that they represented a "tough stance" on "Islamic aggression" towards a Denmark that increasingly considered itself the wronged party.

That is not to say that Denmark has become a more xenophobic place on balance. The Social Liberal Party also saw gains from last October to this February, and they are a party that has "made working for a stable multi-ethnic Danish society a key plank of their platform." The party is home to several moderate Muslim politicians, including Naser Khader.

In response to the crisis, he had been instrumental in forming a moderate Muslim political network, Demokratiske Muslimer ("Democratic Muslims"), which strove to bring a moderate Muslim viewpoint to the debate, both in Denmark and in the Islamic world.

Of course, his existence has barely made a ripple in the international press (only 32 hits in Google News), but why would it? Complex political realites simply don't fit the template so many pundits are working off of here. Denmark is enlightened and Western (and therefore has no xenophobic tendencies), the "Muslim world" is backwards and threatening, and never the twain shall meet.

Not to burst that bubble, but here's what Khader's party had to say in the Danish parliament:

We agree that JP [= Jyllands-Posten] has the right to publish illustrations and text that provoke and test limits. That right to freedom of speech is something that we will defend every day. But we also have the right to have an opinion about what we read in a newspaper. Isn't that what the intent of the provocations in JP, among others, is?

This idea, in the shrill atmosphere of Weblogistan and beyond, is tantamount to heresy. Black or white! And choose fast! Life is never that simple, of course, but real life doesn't matter when you're working at the lofty level of a clash of civilizations.

A for Anti-Intellectual

On Friday, I wrote about how conservatives are in high dudgeon over V for Vendetta, a new film that has been called anti-American and pro-terrorist. Well, this weekend I did something that most of the complainers won't bother to do. I actually saw the movie.

Overall, it's a very good film, with an exceptional performance by Natalie Portman as an accidental activist who is swept up and carried along by events that are—at least in the beginning—beyond her control. I don't want to spoil anything here, and I don't particularly feel like writing a film review. I will say, unequivocally, that anyone who dismisses this film as an attack on America (which is hardly mentioned) or a paean to terrorism is either unspeakably stupid or willfully anti-intellectual.

V for Vendetta is rife with moral ambiguity and the viewer is not sure whether to admire or to abhor the masked vigilante "hero" who has a penchant for making very loud, explosive statements. That is the point! People who dismiss this film out of hand are committing the first and greatest sin against art: they're refusing to see it as a work of the imagination. Instead, it must be taken literally. Art, for these dullards, is not there to provoke thought, but rather to provide instruction (or, in this case, marching orders).

The imagined future dystopia of this film could not be a fantasy, a thought experiment or a "what if" scenario; it is necessarily meant to be a factual representation of our situation here and now (never mind that it was first dreamt up in the early 80s, when George W. Bush was about as far away from the presidency as a person could get).

Not every artist has a mission to provide answers. In fact, most artists prefer to ask questions and provoke discussions. V for Vendetta will do that, if you're open for a discussion. The political pundits-turned-critics have no knowledge of art as anything other than politics, and they certainly have no interest in discussion or debate. To them, this film is no different from a statement by Charles Schumer or a proclamation on the floor of the House of Representatives by Russ Feingold.

Underlying all of this anti-Intellectualism is a basic contempt for the American public. Because they're too thickheaded to look at a film as anything other than an attempt to reproduce reality, they assume that we're the same way. They think we're too stupid to watch a movie and not come out of the theater brainwashed zombies. The irony in the fact that it is these very people who act like groupthink zombies and use their Fox News Channels and Rush Limbaugh programs to try to dumb-down the American public is almost too great to miss. The fact that they do miss it only proves my point.

O for Overreaction

I just don't get all the fuss about the new movie V for Vendetta, which opens today. "The hero is a terrorist," whine right-wingers, panties tightly in a bunch. Drudge has the opening as his main story right now, complete with a headline that reads "Let's Blow Up Parliament." Right wing pundit Debbie Schlussel called it "a horrid, anti-American, pro-terrorist film."

Now, a caveat. I haven't seen this movie yet (and neither have many of the people complaining about it), but I've heard enough to be scratching my head over all the controversy. Yes, the film's "hero", who has been described as character of ambiguous morality in many reviews, is a terrorist hell-bent on destroying the British government via shock and awe. But, this isn't Tony Blair's England we're talking about.

V for Vendetta, based on an 80s comic book, takes place in an alternate-reality universe where, as if the Nazis had won World War II, a Hitleresque demagogue (played by John Hurt) rules over Britain with an iron fist. Our hero/anti-hero is fighting against totalitarianism, which, at least back in the Cold War days, was the right wing's bread and butter.

If someone had the chance to blow up the Reichstag in 1939, killing Hitler and his generals, should they not have done it? Would it have been terrorism if they had? Would right-wingers have been up in arms if Winston Smith had an open shot at Big Brother and took it? Remember, this is "a boot stamping on a human face—forever." Is fighting against that not valued by the right wing?

V for Vendetta opens up a Pandora 's box of uncomfortable questions. It's like the naively relativistic postcard sold in head shops and college student centers around the country that wonders at the difference between a "terrorist" and a "freedom fighter." To some extent, of course, that distinction is in the eye of the beholder. Let's not forget that President Reagan called the brutal Contra guerillas "freedom fighters" and the "moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers." There's certainly some relativism built into this equation, but not entirely. As a human civilization, we are capable of coming to something at least close to an objective definition of freedom. We're even better at agreeing—because we’ve had so much experience with it—on what totalitarianism is.

Is V for Vendetta promoting terrorism against America and the West, as so many conservatives argue? Only if we are, on balance, promoting the cause of totalitarianism. Whatever our failings (and they're many), I would say that we aren't. If right-wingers see themselves reflected back in John Hurt's steely eyes, that's their problem, not mine.

I'll weigh in again once I've seen it.

Fear Factor

Last night our dear and fearless leader proved that he is, well, fearless. During a pep talk/cheerleading session with GOP fat-cat donors, President Bush said, "we don't fear the future. We welcome it." He went on to add, "we can be like they are. Come on, baby. Don't fear the future. Baby take my hand."

Why would Bush fear the future? He doesn't worry about the past or the present either. President Bush just pushes onward with eerie confidence, seemingly oblivious to the massive debts he's racking up or the degree to which he is disliked by the majority of the American people.

Good news for Bush: it seems to be working. Republican donors gave $8 million to the GOP at the event last night (or eight nine-millionths of the new national debt ceiling). And one of Bush's talking points last night? More tax cuts! Oy.

Favorite line from last night's speech:

I can stand up here and tell you that we have delivered results for the American people, and we've got an agenda to continue to do so.

"It would be a bald-faced lie," Bush continued, "but I can stand up here and say it. Don't fear the future! Who needs a little more cowbell?"

Innumeracy on Capital Hill

Today, the Senate voted to increase the national debt limit to $9 trillion. That's a nine with twelve zeros. Democrats refused to support this necessary bill, forcing Republican lawmakers to take the black mark on their voting records instead under the rarely invoked "you broke it, now you go fix it, jerk!" rule in the Senate.

So, nine trillion. That's a lot of dough. It works out, as the newspapers will tell us tomorrow morning, to about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Here's what else you can get for a cool $9T, in terms that our materialistic culture can understand:

• 155,172,413 Cadillac Escalades (2007)
• 529,723,366,686 copies of Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson
• 849,056,603,773 boxes of Dick Cheney^TM 28 gauge birdshot cartriges (25 to a box!)
• 30,000,000,000 $300 tax refund checks to pay down the budget surplus (oops!)
• 3,750,000 Republican Congressmen
• 12,857 U.S. Presidential election campaigns (all candidates)
• 112.5 Googles (market value)
• 180 more years of war in Iraq

Coincidentally (or not??), that's the same number of Bill Gateses you could buy. But on the up side, all we have to do, as a society, is produce 180 more philanthropic Bill Gates-types who could bail us out of all this. Or our children could starve. Either way.

Ban a Book for Freedom!

According to an article written in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (hello, old friend!), a German vigilante citizens' group is attempting to ban the Qur'an—in the name of freedom and Western values.

An indictment has been prepared in five German states, "charging that the holy book of the Moslems...is incompatible with the German constitution." What's the problem with the Qur'an?

The Quran says that it is the words of Allah. According to the views of several, including leading, Moslems in Germany, it is literally and absolutely true at all time and in all places, the indictment says.

That's weird. The U.S. is run by a man who, as a fundamentalist Christian, believes the same thing about the Bible. But that's ok, because it's Christian, and no Christian has ever stood in the way of freedom or liberty. Plus, there aren't any rational Germans who would believe such nonsense. Not, say, the current Pope...

The indictment is against the 200 verses of 114 suras (chapters) of the Quran that are not compatible with the constitution, including demagoguery, incitement to murder, murder and mutilation, war, acceptance of thievery against infidels, meaning all non-Moslems. Verses are also pointed out where the equal rights of men and women are not upheld and where people of different faiths are oppressed.

It's been a while since my Sunday school days, but I seem to remember something in the Bible about smiting, there's certainly a bit about stoning homosexuals, and it might have a thing or two to say on the equality of women, too. Oh, here's one: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church" (I Corinthians 14:34-35). You go, Paul! Tell it like it is!

Now, where was I? Oh, right, the Qur'an is an evil book full of violence and hate and should therefore be banned. It's also been a while since my last world history class, but I think the Germans have been down this path before. I can't remember how that turned out...

According to Jutta Starke, author of the Hamburg indictment against the Qur'an, "it is a task of Sisyphean dimensions to inform the media, politicians and churches of the true intentions of Islam in the enlightened world of the West." It's a shock that her fingertips don't burn whenever she tries to type the word "enlightened" on her keyboard. As if Islam has a "true intention." Islam, like any other religion, has many different followers with many different agendas. To try to paint all Muslims as equivalent to the worst among them is pure demagoguery. Hey, maybe her indictment should be banned!

The driving force behind the attempt to ban the Qur'an in Germany is a group called Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen (Federal Association of the Citizen Movements, in English), that we'll call BDB for short. By their own account, the BDB "is a union of citizen movements, which are engaged in preserving liberal-democratic principles and against the formation of islamistic [sic] enclaves in Europe." I can't remember when banning books became part of the "liberal-democratic" tradition, but it's been a while since my last "bullshitting away liberal values" class, too.

On their website, one can find a grotesque political "analysis" of Islam, and a link to their info page where the set out the values that they're fighting for and complain about the fact that they are being overrun by Muslims who breed too much.

Home region (Heimat) means recognition, preservation and respect for our culture, language and circumstances in life. The development of islamic-dominated communities within a democratic country is undermining democratic principles and is preventing integration. The BDB is making an effort for the conversation and the protection of our home. Diversity of the regions with its different cultural characteristics is a responsibility for us. We are not alone with this agenda in Europe.

So, the BDB wants to maintain the diversity of Germany's regions, which means limiting the influence of Muslims who, being so different, take away from Germany's diversity. Follow that logic?

Amongst the proposals of the BDB is a new standard for immigration. In addition to a language test and proof that a prospective immigrant has "unlimited willingness for integration," the BDB proposes the following:

—Cultural differences are resulting in borders and have to be considered, which means further immigration from the islamic countries should be limited

—Renuncation [sic] of islamic power symbols of muslims living in germany

—Prohibitation [sic] of clubs and unities hostile towards integration

Remember, this is to be done in defense of freedom and liberty. It also assumes that all problems with integrating Muslims into German society are caused by the Muslims themselves, apportioning no blame to a German population that treats Muslims like second-class citizens (if they’re lucky).

They affirm that religion and politics must be kept separate, but seem oblivious to the fact that an attempt to use the laws to prevent Muslims from practicing their religion flies entirely in the face of free expression. There shouldn't be an established state religion, but the government ought not prevent the free expression of religion either. Banning the Qur’an would kind of do that. Freedom is a two-way street, but these Germans want it to be one-way, and hell, the Muslims can be speed bumps, for all they care.

The total lack of awareness that what they're doing is absolutely antithetical to notions of freedom and liberty, from the BDB to the sycophantic Jyllands-Posten write up, is proof that these people are not concerned with universal liberty. When they get behind efforts to ban the Qur'an, it becomes clear that their purpose is not to defend freedom, but to keep Europe for the Europeans. Dressing their bigotry up in the garments of the enlightenment is a grievous insult to the defenders of liberty wherever they may be found.

Sullivan Sounds Alarm on Islam, Again

In a post entitled "Facing Down the Bullies", Andrew Sullivan alerts his readers to a "very credible death threat" against Salman Rushdie and the other eleven signatories to an anti-Islamist manifesto occasioned by the Muhammad cartoon protests. The threat was posted on Ummah.net, which Sullivan refers to as a "British Islamist site."

The only problem: it's not. Or is only if no distinction whatsoever is made between the word "Islamic" and the word "Islamist." Ummah.net is a general clearing house for people seeking information about Islam and it features some Islam-related news (much of it poorly written and anti-American, but no more so than Michael Moore). Here's an example of the kind of Islamic radicalism being touted by Ummah.net:

We should pray too that God in His infinite Mercy will guide us to do good, avoid evil and shun intolerance and bigotry.... We should implore our Lord to allow children of all races, nations and creeds to know laughter and banish forever the tears from their eyes.... We face a potential debacle because we have abused our faith. We have allowed the voices of intolerance and extremism to smother the gentler tones of those who prefer to work for inclusiveness and moderation.

If that's Islamism, sign me up! I struggle to see how this differs in any way from the message that Sullivan has been seeking ever since the cartoon crisis broke.

The post in question, which appears to have been removed from the site (I can't locate it, at least), was apparently in the website's online forum. There's a thread up now in the forum that discusses the death threat, which was allegedly posted on Saturday. If you read it, you'll notice that it has one thing in common with most non-Islamic online forums: it appears to be written entirely by 15-year-old boys.

On what authority does Andrew Sullivan deem the threat "very credible"? I wouldn't regard anything written in these forums as even moderately credible. Standing up against death threats and intimidation is one thing—and a great thing. But it's no excuse for having your facts wrong. Why, when it comes to Islam, does Sullivan always seem to jump the gun?

Update: Sullivan has updated his blog with a post that bears a description of Ummah.net that is a little more nuanced than "Islamist." Good for him.

The Army's Arab Handbook

The U.S. Army has put out a remarkably even-handed booklet (large PDF) on "Arab Cultural Awareness" for use by soldiers in Iraq. It contains vital information, such as the fact that all Muslims are not Arabs, and all Arabs are not Muslims (nor are they all terrorists)—oh, and they basically invented mathematics.

There's a lot of generalization in the 66-page booklet, but it has a wealth of very valuable information. It's true, Arabs are people, too.

One question: Why is it only coming out now, after we've been in Iraq for three years?

(Hat tip: Tiercel)

An Open Letter to Europe

It's all well and good to lecture Muslims about the value Western cultures put on the freedom of speech and religion. Your argument would be much more convincing, however, if you practiced what you preach. It would be much less hypocritical of you to proudly tout your "right to offend" if you didn't have so many laws prohibiting just that.

• Austria prohibits the ridiculing of a religion. Penalty—6 months in jail. Holocaust denial is also a crime. Historian David Irving has just been sentenced to three years in prison for violating that law.
  
• Britain outlaws blasphemy against the Anglican Church and has no codified free speech protection.
  
• Denmark has a law against anyone who "publicly offends or insults a religion that is recognized in the country." Penalty—Fines and up to four months in jail.
  
• France outlaws religious hatred. In 2005, the Catholic Church succeeded in banning a fashion ad based on the Last Supper. According to the judge, the ad was "a gratuitous...act of intrusion on people's innermost beliefs." Holocaust denial is also a crime.
  
• Germany has a law against blasphemy that was last used in 1994 to ban a musical comedy. Holocaust denial is a crime.
  
• Italy has a law against "outrage to a religion." A case against Oriana Fallaci is now pending on charges that she violated this law.
  
• The Netherlands bans "scornful blasphemy." Penalty—three months in jail and a fine of 70 euros.
  
• Norway has a "public order law dating from the 1930s which in principle outlaws blasphemy." Penalty—six months in jail.
  
• Poland has a law against "publicly offending a person's religious feelings." Penalty—up to two years in prison. Artist Dorota Nieznalska is currently being prosecuted under this law.
  
• Portugal outlaws religious hatred, as does Spain.

People are fond of saying that freedom of speech is freedom of speech, period. Once you start to limit it, you don't really have it. If you want to lecture the rest of the world about your precious freedoms, at least have the common decency to wipe the stain of blasphemy and anti-free speech laws off your books. Doing so may prompt a debate that will reveal just how comfortable Europeans would be with real freedom of speech. If you want people to see you as enlightened, you have to act enlightened.

The Rule of Law

Carla Martin made a mistake. The kind of mistake first-year law students know not to make. She made it seven times. Martin, a Transportation Security Administration lawyer working for the prosecution in Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial, coached seven witnesses by sending them trial transcripts.

Here's what the judge had to say: "I don't think in the annals of criminal law there has ever been a case with this many significant problems." Wow! I guess this shouldn't surprise anybody; it's just another example of massive government incompetence in the War on Terror.

When I look at this terrible blunder that may save Moussaoui from execution, however, I see a small glimmer of hope. Think about it—there's no question that the Bush administration would like to see Moussaoui strung up from the nearest tree. But, rather than having a kangaroo court as so many have alleged, we have a federal judge who puts the rule of law above the wishes of the current administration—just as it should be.

But let's not fool ourselves. Moussaoui's is an isolated case of a terror suspect who managed to get an actual trial in a U.S. court. Most detainees in his situation are being sodomized in Guantanamo or some other god-forsaken place where the rule of law doesn't apply—in accordance with official U.S. policy.

The Letter and the Law

More sanity and even-handedness from Random Platitudes on the Danish cartoon controversy today. In part six, our Danish insider takes us through the some of the diplomatic wrangling surrounding the post-cartoon crisis and takes a look at the inner workings of the Danish parliament as well.

RP directs his attention to Muslim calls for blasphemy laws amidst the unrest following the publishing and subsequent republishing of the caricatures of Muhammad.

Demonstrating a lack of understanding of basic principles of civil liberties, the Muslim countries began to put pressure on the UN and the EU to adopt resolutions intended to prevent or prohibit the defamation of religions—in effect, to make the UN and EU adopt laws against blasphemy, superseding freedom of the press.

I would agree that such pressure from Muslim groups constitutes a lack of understanding of the basic principles of civil liberties, but, for those of you still insisting that this is a "clash of civilizations", it bears pointing out that such a move hardly constitutes a lack of understanding of European culture. Europe is absolutely rife with anti-blasphemy laws, even if many of them are rarely invoked.

Denmark, for example, has a law against anyone who "publicly offends or insults a religion that is recognized in the country," punishable with fines and up to four months in jail. Norway mandates six months in jail for blasphemers. Britain just tried (and failed, thank God—so to speak) to enact a law against inciting religious hatred. Germany's anti-blasphemy law was invoked as recently as 1994 "to ban a musical comedy that ridiculed the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by portraying crucified pigs." Italy has a law against "outrage to a religion," which was successfully used to prosecute the journalist Oriana Fallaci over her anti-Islam comments. The oh-so-tolerant Netherlands bans "scornful blasphemy," you can get six months for ridiculing a religion in Austria, and "publicly offending a person's religious feelings" could land you in the slammer for two years in Poland.

The crux of part six is a diplomatic letter written by Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt that was sent to various international organizations and made clear that Egypt was not "asking for judicial retribution to be visited on Jyllands-Posten or the caricaturists." RP's suggestion is that the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, may have withheld this information from the Danish parliament in an attempt to "score points in domestic politics, by appealing to the xenophobic trends among the voters." Not only was this move "amazingly short-sighted", it may have actually been illegal.

For details on that, read RP's post.

No Justice, No Amnesia

Students rip down a mud-splattered Milosevic poster in Belgrade in 2000

The sad thing about Slobodan Milosevic dying in prison is that he will never be found guilty for the hideous crimes he perpetrated against his enemies, and against the Serbian people themselves. What's worse, the cult of personality that surrounds the man (whose first name, in one of the great bitter ironies of history, means "freedom") is trying to dress poor Slobo's remains in martyr's garments. From a highly recommended Christopher Hitchens article in Slate:

One can see, forming in the swamps of nationalism and superstition, a myth of martyrdom dimly taking shape. This would be the worst outcome, since Milosevic began and ended, as all such dictators do, by ruining his own people and degrading his own country.

The Hitchens article is also worth a read because he lays out the "highlights of his more lurid criminal career" and doesn't forget to mention the "realists" in the American camp who thought Slobo to be quite the fellow, some right up until the NATO bombing campaign in 1999 (the similarity between this and certain American interests coddling and enabling Saddam Hussein should not be overlooked).

So, there will be no guilty verdict, and Milosevic's legacy will undoubtedly be a topic of hot debate. But the war crimes trial in the Hague was not entirely a lost cause:

An enormous archive of atrocity has been amassed and videotaped and cataloged, and one day history will be very grateful for it. No denial or revisionism will be possible in this case.

That won't stop people from trying, of course, but they will be, demonstrably, on the wrong side of history.

Oh My God! Chef Killed Chef!

You bastard!!

No more Salisbury steak, children. No more sweet love down by the fire. No more chocolate salty balls. Chef is dead. Isaac Hayes has quit South Park.

"There is a place in this world for satire," said Hayes, "but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins." Citing his 40 years of civil rights activism, Hayes said he could no longer work for the Comedy Central cartoon program.

Why now, you ask? South Park has been pushing the envelope ever since its very first episode, which featured a battle royale between Jesus and Santa over Christmas. Since then, South Park has mocked every major religion known to man. They had an episode devoted to pedophilia by Catholic priests, they had a pictorial representation of Muhammad years before the cartoon crisis, they had Cartman lampooning evangelicals—they have even portrayed God as a giant, but wise, rat. So where does the line between satire and bigotry lie?

For Hayes, it's when the show took on Tom Cruise and the Scientologists. Hayes is an adherent of this quasi-religion invented by L. Ron Hubbard (the man who invented "the machine that measures human gullibility", according to the Onion). And Scientology may have piles of money and throngs of very, very straight Hollywood believers, but the one thing they don't have is a sense of humor. Their believers aren't allowed to have one either. It's kind of strange for a religion that believes bad feelings are caused by the disembodied souls of aliens brought to Earth by the evil galactic overlord Xenu, but there you have it.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, are having none of Hayes' bogus reasoning. "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology," said Stone. "He has no problem—and he's cashed plenty of checks—with our show making fun of Christians."

Well, goodbye Chef, and good riddance Isaac Hayes, you lousy hypocrite.

Slobo vs. the Super-Hos

Slobodan Milosevic, the infamous "Butcher of the Balkans", is dead. No great loss for humanity, but there's a real sense that he escaped judgment for his hideous crimes. Not that you'd really know any of this from watching the news over the weekend.

Sure, Slobo made the crawl on all the major news networks, but there was barely a mention of the former nemesis of America on the programs themselves. Apparently the dead Dubai ports deal was a more pressing concern to the American public. We've moved on to a new war, you see, and there's no sense getting distracted by one that we actually won. Conservatives don't want to speak of it for fear of having to say something positive about President Clinton. Liberals don't want to mention it for fear of having to admit that American military might can actually be used for good.

Coverage of Milosevic's death has been better on the Internet, but, as always, the Web is a reflection of our true inner selves. This morning, a Google News search for "Slobodan Milosevic" yielded 6,510 hits. That's a pretty flimsy number, considering the shadow he cast over Europe in the 1990s. By way of comparison, Google News searches for "Paris Hilton" and "Britney Spears" yielded 3,810 and 3,050 hits, respectively, even though they haven't done a single newsworthy thing in recent memory.

That's Google News, mind you, not plain old Google, where the two blonde bimbos utterly blow poor Slobo out of the water. Let's see what news events are behind these numbers.

Slobodan Milosevic

• Died
• May have been poisoned in prison
• Was on trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity
• Used nationalism to justify genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia

Paris Hilton

• Didn't die
• May have been drunk
• Is allegedly considering a tummy tuck
• Possibly has a broken toe
• Has a restraining order against her because she's batshit crazy
• Has repeatedly been accused of crimes against fashion and basic decency

Britney Spears

• Didn't die, either
• May have been drunk
• Might be having another baby
• Definitely went to Hawaii
• Is not that innocent
• Has repeatedly been accused of crimes against the human genome

Actually, when you put those two together, they really are as important as Slobodan Milosevic. After all, what the two tarts did happened in America, where Slobo's so 1999. Get with the times!

If you're looking for another reason why America should be wiped off the face of the planet, you'll find it here.

Frist Gives Dubai Diagnosis

For all intents and purposes, the Dubai port deal is dead. The weekend news talk shows were full of politicians doing their post-mortems and explaining how they really weren't xenophobes, it's just that we can't have Arabs running our ports. Because they'll kill us all the first chance they get.

Not so fast, says Bill Frist. After viewing fifteen minutes of heavily edited videotape in which the Dubai Ports World deal appears to respond to a colorful balloon held in front of its face, the Tennessee Republican and remote diagnosis wizard declared that it might be too soon to pull the plug on the deal.

Whether it's about business interests or photo ops with severly brain dmamged women, Dr. Frist is as pro-life as they come.

No Port in a Storm

Thanks to knee-jerk bigotry, naive nativism and crass political opportunism, the Dubai port deal is dead. There's no reason to believe that we'll be any safer for it, but the xenophobes have spoken. Maybe now Haliburton can come in and grab the ports contract. Everybody would love that! Hmmm. Maybe that was the plan all along...

So, it's been established that Dubai is too much of a terrorist-Arab-bogeyman threat to do business in America. Meanwhile, the United States is setting up an "Iran office" in Dubai as part of a new State Department plan to "encourage" policy change in Iran.

Several new positions are being created worldwide for the new Iran office. In addition to beefing up Washington-based staff working on Iran, a regional center will be built in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to focus on neighboring Iran with four new foreign service posts and four local employees to do outreach.

The fact that Dubai is allowing this looks suspiciously like the action of an ally in the War on Terror and a country interested in having a moderating effect on the region. That can't be true, of course. The voice of bipartisanship has spoken. Funny, it sounds just like Archie Bunker.

Aussie Asses Appeased

Finally, something for Americans to feel good about! We're not the only lard lads on the planet. As if to balance out the tremendous weight of Americans on the other side of the globe, our friends Down Under are expanding at an alarming rate. 62% of Aussie men and 45% of women are overweight or obese, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

'Toilet seat'? That's a funny name. I'd call it a 'chozwozzer'.

Apparently, Australia's consumer design regulatory agency got tired of constantly hearing about shattered toilet seats in Outback outhouses and have called for new, sturdier commode facilities designed to withstand the growing Australian ass. Current toilet seats are designed to bear 100 pounds, which is plenty for an average seated adult. The Standards Australia review committee is set to recommend that new toilet seats be designed to withstand a punishing 330 pounds. I can just hear the Fosters ad now: Ginormous asses, it's Australian for average!

Alas, America always has to be number one. For a little over $150.00, you can be the owner of a Big John Toilet Seat, made with pride in the U.S of A. The Big John is designed to support an inexplicable 1,200 pounds. Now that's a lot of good, old-fashioned American ass!

The Vandals of Denmark

Sometimes a headline just catches your eye. Like this one: "Denmark's Little Mermaid vandalised with dildo." According to the article:

Denmark's national symbol, the Little Mermaid sculpture perched on a rock overlooking the Copenhagen port, was splattered with green paint by vandals and adorned with a dildo.

The Little Mermaid, in happier times.

The rock she sits on was scrawled with "8 marts", the date of International Women's Day, but police aren't willing to say it was crazy, feminazi lesbians just yet. I suppose the inclusion of the sex toy makes Muslim fanatics an unlikely group to focus on.

Inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen story, the statue has watched over Copenhagen's port since 1913. Her vigil has been anything but placid, however.

In the past 40 years, she has been decapitated twice, most recently in January 1998 after a 1990 attempt failed. She has had a bra and knickers painted on her, has been entirely covered in paint on more than one occasion, and has had her right arm cut off. In September 2003, attackers tossed the bronze artwork in the water, where police later recovered it...

And I thought Danes were supposed to be hyper-reasonable Scandinavian socialists (you know, the rich kind). Who would have guessed that they're actually the frat boys of northern Europe?

It's not all fun and games, though. In December of 2004, the statue was "draped in a burka and a sash reading 'Turkey in the EU?' by opponents of the Muslim country's entry into the block." Anti-Muslim sentiment in Denmark? Surely you jest! Reinforcing the frat boy image, this particular act of vandalism proves that some Danes don't like to hit the books so much. They should know that you'd never, ever find a woman in a burka in Turkey.

Unless, gasp!, Denmark's anti-Muslim contingent just thinks all Muslims are exactly the same. Where could we ever find more evidence of that?

Realpolitik on the 'Arab Street'

After a bit of a break, Random Platitudes is back with part five of his dissection of the Muhammad cartoon controversy, providing an interesting and valuable look at events from a Danish historian and lecturer.

In part five, the crisis is just erupting across the world and Danish embassies in Muslim countries are coming under attack.

It may be a coincidence that the first two locations where the demonstrations turned from protest to violent attack on embassies were in Syria and Lebanon. It may likewise be coincidental that insufficient local police were present to deter the demonstrators from the attacks.

I think RP is being too kind by half, but it's fair to assume that he doesn't believe in coincidences in this particular case. What RP adds to the debate here is a solid reason for why Syria, Lebanon and, later, Iran, would have some of the most conspicuous riots.

That the first attacks on embassies take place in Syria (and its dependent neighbour, Lebanon) and Iran coincides remarkably with the interests of precisely the two countries with most to gain from pressuring the weakest member of the UNSC.

The UNSC issue is covered in more detail in part three.

RP is also one of the few commentators to note that the cartoons were a popular cause not only for Islamic fundamentalists, but for anti-Islamic bigots as well, who embraced the "inevitable need for a major war between Islam and the West (as if either of these two concepts were monolithic entities)."

Part five also contains an interesting anecdote about a squabble within Jyllands-Posten between Flemming Rose, the man behind the initial publishing of the cartoons, and editor-in-chief Carsten Juste. When Iran decided to test free speech in the West by holding a contest for the "best" Holocaust cartoons, Rose, "in interviews with CNN and the Danish TV2 on February 8 2006, had declared that Jyllands-Posten was ready to publish the results of the contest in its pages." Unfortunately for Rose, he made this commitment without the knowledge of Juste, who promptly disavowed his comments. Rose was, as RP puts it, "sent off 'on vacation.'"

RP wonders whether this decision shows that Jyllands-Posten has limits to what they will print and if it exposes an anti-Islam bias on the part of the paper. He also entertains the possibility that the decision not to print the Holocaust cartoons could "reasonably be viewed as an attempt to put an end to the crisis by avoiding further provocations of any kind—a sensible act on the part of the beleaguered newspaper editor."

As usual, RP is provocative and fair-minded. This series is well worth a look.

De-Selecting The New York Times

We stand on a digital brink of sorts. Will the Internet remain free and egalitarian, or will it be split, as Newsweek recently warned, into "first class and steerage"?

When The New York Times made the cynical decision last year to launch TimesSelect, they secreted their columnists behind an elitest firewall and shoved us bloggers (well, the poor ones, anyway) down next to the engine room with all the Irish step dancers.

They say that there are now a bajillion blogs out there, so we may as well leverage the influence of Weblogistan to do some good. Hence the De-Selecting the Times Pledge! Bloggers who sign this document pledge to not link to the New York Times website. Not just TimesSelect articles, but any articles. Bloggers must direct an enormous amount of traffic to the Times website, but if that traffic were to dry up, they might think twice about putting a $49.95 price tag on "all the news that's fit to print."

Of course, this pledge is a little bit like those sexual abstinence pledges kids take in high school: you're going to have to break it every once in a while. That's understandable. We can still make a difference by making a conscious effort to not link to the Times unless there's just no other source available (for example, the inside story on their next plagiarist).

Help keep the web free and fair—sign the pledge.

Krazee-Eyez Killa

Last night on Screamfest Hardball, Chris Matthews got into a discussion with Philadelphia talk radio host and columnist Michael Smerconish about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Smerconish: I mean, isn't there really some consensus that bin Laden is probably holed up on the Pakistani side of the border right now? I mean, I look at this as almost what Nixon faced with Cambodia during the Vietnam War. I'm not sure we shouldn't be going into Pakistan, Chris.

Matthews: You mean, not withstanding the opposition of the government to an intrusion, just go to war with Pakistan as well?

Smerconish: You see what we did with regard to al-Zawahiri, a couple of weeks ago when we thought we had him. We went in with a predator, we bombed and later we apologized. I think we need a little bit more of that activity.

Let me assure you, the eerie effect of hearing Smerconish advocate secret Cambodia-style incursions and bombing runs inside the borders of an allied nation is greatly enhanced when gazing into his steely, serial killer-esque eyes. It's almost enough to convince you that it really is a good idea to take unilateral military action against a key ally in the War on Terror that happens to also be a nuclear power with a largely anti-American population and a military dictator with a tenuous grip on power against whom regular assassination attempts are made.

Look into his eyes. You're getting very, very sleepy.

Minitrue Speaks: War Is Peace

You've really got to hand it to them. The current U.S. administration is as good distorting, evading and just plain lying through their teeth as any administration in recent memory.

   Ceci n'est pas le torture

Earlier today, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gave a speech to a London think-tank in which he defended America's treatment of terror suspects and proclaimed that "the United States abhors torture and respects the rights of detainees." So why all the blood and gore at U.S. detention facilities? There must be a rash of trip and fall accidents among the prisoners.

Gonzales added that the U.S. did not use a practice called "rendering", in which detainees are shipped off for torture in other countries. This claim is demonstrably false, but the slippery Attorney General can claim it's true because the administration allegedly "sought assurances from foreign governments before transporting detainees there, and did not transport anyone 'to a country if we believe it more likely than not that the individual would be tortured.'"

Lucky for the Bush administration, the wink and nod is still part of the international lexicon. As long as some brutal dictator gives his "word", or the U.S. determines that the chance of a detainee being tortured does not exceed 49.9%, then there's no problem. How compassionate. So, as long as, say, the murderous Islom Karimov promises he won't torture a prisoner, there's no problem shipping him off to Uzbekistan, where the favored method of torture is boiling people alive. Really.

Now, everybody knows that the U.S. tortures people. There are pictures, for chrissakes! And there's corroboration from one of the highest legal authorities in the military that this torture is not due to rogue soldiers, but is mandated by official policy. So, how does the Bush administration get away with denying what is obviously true? Semantics and shades of meaning—also known as absolute bullshit.

Considering the fact that the Republicans flipped out when Bill Clinton ruminated on what the meaning of "is" is, this administration's willingness to evade the truth by using legalese is, to say the least, hypocritical. Let's not forget that George Bush ran for president as a straight shooter and a man of the people. This is about as far away from that as you can get.

In his speech in London, Gonzales "acknowledged that people might interpret the term 'torture' in different ways. The U.S. abides by its own definition, which he said was the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical suffering." To add another shade of murk to the whole affair, "severe" suffering has been defined as the equivalent of "organ failure." Anything less? Well, that's just frat-boy antics. If you disagree, you're no better than the terrorists, just like the International Red Cross.

The administration's plan to avoid charges of torture is truly worthy of Orwell (it brings to mind not only 1984 but the Soviet treachery outlined in Homage to Catalonia as well):

• We don't torture people.
• We get to define what "torture" means.
• "Torture" is defined as "that which we do not do."
• By definition, objectively, we don't engage in torture.

Feel better now?

"The United States has always been and remains a great defender of human rights and the rule of law," Gonzales said. "I regret that there has been concern or confusion about our commitment to the rule of law." This is perhaps the most dishonest thing Gonzales said during his speech. The confusion has been caused by our government, first in its attempt to deny the charges of torture and then in its logic-defying acrobatics aimed, essentially, at making a lump of shit look as pure as the driven snow. The Bush administration might regret that someone took photos at Abu Ghraib, but they certainly don't regret their policies. It's plain to see: they're proud of them, and they think they're right. That has to be the scariest thing.

Rush 'In Touch' With Bigotry

Rush Limbaugh kicked off his radio program today by lambasting George Clooney for his acceptance speech at the Oscars last night. Here's what Clooney said when accepting the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his work in Syriana:

I would say that, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I'm proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.

Rush seized on the "out of touch" line to accuse Clooney and Hollywood liberals of thumbing their noses at the average American and being insufferable elitists. While this is arguably an accurate representation of many attitudes in Hollywood, Rush's outburst tells us quite a bit about his own true feelings.

By taking Clooney to task for his speech, he is implicitly taking a stance against AIDS education, against civil rights for blacks and against the expression of a social conscience in general. By his own logic, Rush believes that because they ran counter to majority opinion at the time, the movie industry simply shouldn’t have tried to deal with these subjects. Is this really what he believes? I guess it's not so hard to imagine.

Rush also revealed himself for the opportunistic hypocrite that he is by dressing Hollywood down for its refusal to mirror public opinion. Just last week when the abysmal Bush poll numbers came out, Rush extolled the virtues of a leader who isn't buffeted by the winds of prevailing opinion but makes judgments based on deeply-held principles regardless of what the polls say. I guess that same standard doesn't apply to artists—especially not ones that Rush happens to disagree with.

Of course, Clooney's speech was heartfelt, but it presented an overly rosy view of Hollywood as a radical paradise for the Avant Garde. After all, Hollywood produced middle-America-friendly fare like The Passion and Narnia, and there's no shortage of vile dreck that appeals to the stupidity and bigotry of Rush's great moral majority, either.

In Other Rush News

Early on in the program (I can only last so long, after all), Rush brought up the case of the UNC student who tried to run over a bunch of people "to avenge the mistreatment of Muslims" by the United States. "Where did he get the idea that the U.S. systematically mistreats Muslims," he asked, "Al Gore? It's the democrats..." Actually, I'm pretty sure it's the widespread abuse of Muslims that goes on at U.S.-run detention centers as a matter of official government policy. That's probably where he got the idea.

Homeland Insecurity

Doesn't this just take the cake? There are reports in the news today that U.S. Department of Homeland Security "is having difficulty safeguarding its own headquarters." Guards at the Washington, D.C. complex have taken complaints of "inadequate training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and biological threats" to Congress.

An example cited in the Washington Post article is appalling and is worth citing at length:

...when an envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at Homeland Security Department headquarters, guards said they watched in amazement as superiors carried it by the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating people nearby.

I'm surprised they didn't taste it in an attempt to determine what it was. One of the complaints brought to Congress was that guards at DHS have no training for responding to an attack with WMD, which is richly ironic considering the fact that DHS is supposed to be protecting the nation from just such a threat.

The problem might start with the security firm that has been charged with guarding the DHS facility. It's called Wackenhut Services Inc, which is not a name that inspires confidence, sounding more like a third-rate Chuck E. Cheese's than a private security outfit. The firm has been criticized in the past for an inability to defend a nuclear laboratory against a simulated terrorist attack and improperly transporting nuclear weapons. Just because Bush can't pronounce the word doesn't mean he should put us all at risk.

There's a lesson in here somewhere. Giving an agency a reassuring name like "Homeland Security"—or, say, hanging a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"—doesn't mean it's actually true. I know this is a radical idea, but it might be time for some competent leadership in Washington. Just a thought.

Overheard on CNN

Last night on CNN, senior Pentagon correspondent and globe-trotter Jamie McIntyre was reporting on his recent trip to Afghanistan when he said an astonishing thing. Speaking about Afghanistan's chances for a successful post-war state relative to Iraq's, McIntyre made the following comment:

...Afghanistan actually has a better chance over the long term. It doesn't have the same ethnic divide.

Anybody who knows even a little bit about Afghanistan—hell, anyone who's read The Kite Runner—knows this is false. Iraq has two major ethnic groups, Arabs (75-80%) and Kurds (15-20%), with a scattering of other ethnicities making up the remaining 3-5%. Arabic and Kurdish are the two commonly-spoken languages. The most significant division in Iraqi society is not ethnic, it's the religious divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

In contrast, Afghanistan is a patchwork of different ethnicities cobbled together to form a state that makes little sense as a single polity. The dominant ethnic group, Pashtuns, make up about 42% of the population. The rest of Afghanistan is spread between a number of significant ethnic minorities: Tajiks (27%), Hazaras (9%), Uzbeks (9%), Aimaqs (4%), Turkmens (3%), Baluchis (2%) and several other groups making up the remaining 4%. Pashto and Dari are the official languages (with over 1/3 of the population speaking the latter), but Turkic languages like Uzbek and Turkmen are spoken in the north of the country (Tajik, which is also spoken in the north, is virtually identical to Dari/Persian and is likely counted as such in demographic studies).

Afghanistan is not only made up of many different ethnic groups, it is geographically divided largely along ethnic lines. The Pashtuns take up the broad middle section of the country, including the capital of Kabul. Hazaras dominate the central and north-central regions of the country and Turkmens, Uzbeks and Tajiks are concentrated in the north along Afghanistan's border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Adding to Afghanistan's precarious ethnic identity is the fact that the current government of the country is strongly dominated by the Pashtuns, who have long been the ruling caste of Afghanistan. (If you've read The Kite Runner, you may remember that the Pashtuns used the Hazaras as servants.) There are a number of Central Asia experts who see the dominance of Pashtuns in the government as a significant source of friction and discontent among the statistical majority of the population that is not Pashtun. To complicate matters even further, years of war have prevented a full and accurate Afghan census from being taken since sometime in the 1970s. There are some who believe that the size of the Pashtun population has been deliberately inflated to justify their dominance in the political sphere.

I'm just a regular guy with an Internet connection and an inquiring mind, and I know this. How does CNN's Jamie McIntyre, an alleged expert, get away with talking such nonsense? There's a clue in his CNN biography:

Working out of CNN's office inside the Pentagon, McIntyre finds most of his stories by roaming the building's 17.5 miles of corridors...

It turns out that McIntyre spends much of his time hanging around with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and his reporting must reflect thinking inside the Pentagon. In fact, his analysis from last night is actually his uncritical regurgitation of the opinion of General James Jones, the U.S. European commander and supreme allied commander, who McIntyre calls a "very impressive person."

This kind of base-level ignorance seems to be endemic in the U.S. military and among the wonks who craft our War on Terror policies. They didn't anticipate the issues that are facing Iraq now and it looks like they aren't paying attention to one of the major challenges Afghanistan faces in its transition to a functional state. If they don't realize that Afghanistan is more than just Kabul, it's going to be a hard road ahead.

Down the Right Path

I have to say I'm extremely heartened to see Andrew Sullivan's post on Islam and Locke (and not because of the link back to me):

Keep sending me moderate Muslim statements. They matter. And they are too often drowned out.

And this from one of the more vociferous defenders of the Danish cartoons. Maybe he's turned a corner. Maybe he realizes that the flipside of criticizing negative manifestations of Islam is bolstering the positive ones.

Anyway, let's take him up on that offer. Send him whatever you've got on moderate Muslims—that'll stick it to the Iron Mullahs and xenophobic bigots at the same time, and that sounds just about perfect in my book.

12 Angry 'Men'

On Friday, Andrew Sullivan wrote about how the daughter of one of the Mohammad cartoonists was threatened by twelve Muslim men at her school. He used this as an occasion to note that "fascism is alive and well in Europe" (still no mention of the neo-fascist British National Party's enthusiastic support of the Danish cartoons on his blog, though).

Today, Sullivan was good enough to issue a correction because the story was bogus. The twelve Muslim men were actually a half-dozen 6th-grade girls (budding members of the shot put team, I suppose?) and their "attack" will presumably not require the cartoonist's daughter to go into hiding as Sullivan claimed on Friday.

In today's post, Sullivan says that Jens Rohde, the source of the false rumor and spokesman for the Danish prime minister, "has retracted [the allegation]." Let's listen to Mr. Rohde retract that statement:

Jyllands-Posten: Aren't you guilty of misinforming in the Mohammad-case, just like the imams have been accused of doing?

Jens Rohde: Now I'm being compared to the imams? Honestly, I'm not making this up. But seen in the light of hindsight I shouldn't have taken that meeting and stood up for the cartoonist and the members of Danish Union of Journalists, if they think it's so terrible now.

Truly heartfelt, no? It is worth noting that the ruling "Liberal" Party in Denmark is a right-of-center party with a history of exploiting anti-Muslim prejudice in Denmark (details here) and the prime minister played a part in kicking the cartoon crisis up to the next level by ignoring diplomatic protocol and refusing out of hand to meet with 11 Muslim diplomats to discuss the issue back in early October of 2005 (details here).

Full marks to Sullivan for running his correction, but I still can't help thinking he really wishes the story were true to bolster his "creeping fascism in Europe" theory. He's right to say that threats of violence against the cartoonists are unacceptable, and the fact that they have received over 100 death threats is disgusting. Divide that by 12 (the number of cartoonists), however, and you still don't get as many death threats as the dozen Martin Scorsese got for The Last Temptation of Christ. He was forced to attend the premiere accompanied by four bodyguards. Was fascism alive and well in America in 1988?

He'd never say that for a couple of reasons: first, he is comfortable with American society; second, he is comfortable with Christianity. Not so with Islam, which he naturally views as somewhat more alien. What Sullivan doesn't know about Islam could fill a book—and has filled a bunch of them, most of which are available at the local library. Perhaps he should check a few of them out.

Another Moderate Muslim Manifesto

This past week, a moderate Muslim manifesto endorsed by Salman Rushdie and other creative Muslim intellectuals got a lot of notice in western Weblogistan from such commentators as Andrew Sullivan. Now there's a new manifesto by Turks Mustafa Akyol and Zeyno Baran that is less secular than the Rushdie document, but no less strident. A sample:

While we understand the feelings of our co-religionists, we strongly urge them to refrain from rage and violence. A zeal for Allah is rightful only when it is expressed in an enlightened manner, since Allah himself has ordained a restrained response.... No state, community or individual has a right to impose Islam on others. People should accept and practice Islam not because they are forced to do so, but because they believe in its teachings.

The manifesto also recognizes the right of Israel to peacefully coexist with Palestine and condemns anti-Semitism in no uncertain terms.

I don't know anything about Akyol, but Baran works as an analyst for the right-wing Nixon Center and has an uncomfortably close relationship with the totalitarian regime in Uzbekistan. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, I guess.

The Buck Stops Where?

It's starting to look like Brownie may have been doing a heckuva job after all. New video obtained by the Associated Press proves that Mike Brown of FEMA basically predicted the entire Hurricane Katrina disaster scenario in advance and communicated grave warnings to President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff in person.

Let's not say that Brown has gone to lily-white—this still doesn't explain all those emails about Nordstrom and Baton Rouge eateries while Gulf Coast residents were drowning—but it would be safe to say that the media (including this humble corner of the "sub-alternative" media) piled on poor Brownie a bit.

What's worse, President Bush and his lackey Chertoff allowed Brown to take the fall when it looks more and more like the massive failures started at the top, dooming the FEMA effort from the get-go. Sadly, this is nothing new for Bush, whose philosophy seems to be one of cognative dissonance: blissful confidence juxtaposed with buck-passing and never, ever admitting a mistake.

Scooter Libby has taken the fall for the Plame leak while Bush, Cheney and Rove watch from the sidelines. Low-level soldiers face courts martial for abuses at Abu Ghraib while the architects of our grizzly policies are untouchable at the top. Heck, they even tried to blame poor Harry Whittington for standing in the vice presidential firing line before they realized that quail wouldn't fly.

Bush may be a wannabe Truman, but at least Harry knew where the buck stopped.

Update: Now it looks like Chertoff may be the next to go. Anything to protect the king.

Point, Click, Get Suspended

The Associated Press has a very strange story about California middle school students who got in trouble for surfing the Internet.

It will come as little surprise that the story involves MySpace.com, scourge of parents and teachers everywhere. One of the students faces expulsion for "allegedly posting graphic threats against a classmate." Fair enough, seeing as how the post expressed a wish to "take a shotgun and blast her in the head over a thousand times."

What's weird is the other students who, according to the AP, "were suspended for viewing the posting." Since when is it a crime to look at a website (other than child porn, that is)? And how would people necessarily know what they would find by following a link? The most disturbing aspect of this is, how did the school know what its students were up to on their home computers after school?

Either there's something fishy going on, or the school's statement is incomplete. Did the kids reply approvingly to the original post? If not, what's the big deal? The other day I visited the neo-fascist BNP website while researching an article I was writing about the cartoon controversy. That doesn't mean I approve of the group. Hell, I go on Drudge Report all the time. I never figured the thought police would be watching.

Presidential Idol

Perhaps you've heard about a Fox television show called American Idol. Some sort of contest to see who can sing the crappiest music in the most conventional way. Apparently it's quite popular.

On Wednesday night, viewers phoned in 42 million votes to decide who got booted and who didn't on last night's show. For the sake of comparison, that's a scant 17 million fewer votes than John Kerry managed in the 2004 presidential election, and almost 10 times what Ralph Nader polled.

Sure, some people probably voted more than once, but hey, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that never happens in presidential elections, too. My proposal is that we farm out the 2008 election to Fox. The Fox & Friends anchors can judge the early rounds, weeding out crazy people and free-thinkers, and the final slate of candidates can be eliminated one by one based on phone-in votes.

One of the downsides of our current election system is that the field gets narrowed down too early and then there's an incredibly dull stretch where two guys each try to convince the American public that their entire life up to this point has not been a sham, that they look better in hunting gear and they're the one you'd rather have a beer with even though they each have more money than a dozen third world countries.

Using the American Idol model, the suspense of the race would be spread out, with gradual eliminations leaving only two candidates standing. Whichever one can sing "The Greatest Love of All" best, wins. Simple as that. The race for the presidency is already a popularity contest; this is just the next logical step.

It would be hot, dawg!

Lowbrows, No-brows and Ignorami

A new study from the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago proves what Lisa Simpson already knows: as a nation, we're a stultifying pack of slack-jawed yokels.

The study quizzed 1,000 random Americans on their respective knowledge of The Simpsons and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

...just 28 percent of respondents could name more than one of the five freedoms listed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment—about the same proportion that could name all five Simpson family members or could recall the three judges on Fox TV's top-rated "American Idol."

Only 8% could name three freedoms listed in the First Amendment, and an embarrassing one person could name all five. (They are press, speech, assembly, religion and petition for redress of grievances, by the way.)

Considering the recent debates occasioned by the Muhammad cartoon crisis, it may come as a surprise that fully 1/3 of those polled forgot freedom of speech and only 24% recalled freedom of religion. A mouth-breathing 20% believed that the right to own and raise pets is guaranteed by the First Amendment.

In the immortal words of Mark Twain, who had our country pegged over a hundred years ago and still does:

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

Or, in the words of our new ant overlords, whom I, for one, hail: "Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!"

George Bush—Confidence Man

George Bush seems to be confident an awful lot of the time. He doesn't think there will be a civil war in Iraq; he is confident that Osama Bin Laden will be captured—he's even quite sure that his horrible approval ratings have no bearing on the political capital he would like to spend.

Generally speaking, confidence is a quality people look for, especially in their leaders. That said, supreme confidence that flies in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is, at best, arrogant and, at worst, psychotic. More and more I wonder if Bush's confidence may be based on the childish notion that everything will work out in the end because God is on his side. What him worry, right?

Now, new video has surfaced of Bush and other leaders at a pre-Katrina disaster preparedness briefing.

On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's fateful landfall, President Bush was confident. His homeland security chief appeared relaxed. And warnings of the coming destruction—breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues—were delivered in dramatic terms to all involved.... The president didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared." (emphasis added)

I guess that sort of shoots down the whole "we didn't know how bad it could get" argument. Had they not known what could have happened, that's one thing. If they did know, however—and it's obvious that they did—then it must mean they didn't care. (Take it away, Kanye.)

One thing's for certain: the next time President Bush says he's feeling "confident", it just might be a good idea to take cover.

The Case for Nuance

When you're backed up against a wall, shades of grey disappear into stark black and white; people who feel threatened at their core rarely have an eye for nuance. This phenomenon is in full evidence in the global Muhammad cartoon crisis.

Most obviously, a number of aggrieved and disenfranchised Muslims have sought shelter in the welcoming embrace of the Islamist imams who are, like parasites, preying on the most vulnerable members of their societies. The fear that the U.S. in particular and the West in general is engaged in a "war on Islam"—a precept that some in the Muslim world have little reason to doubt—is being cynically exploited to theocratic ends.

Similarly, many in the West have fallen into what amounts to an unthinking acceptance of the Samuel Huntington thesis of a "clash of civilizations." There is, so the theory goes, something intrinsically incompatible between Western culture and Islamic (or to use the old term, Oriental) culture. One (ours, of course) is rational, progressive and dynamic. The other is irrational, tyrannical and reactionary.

The problem with the Manichean worldview is that it is almost always wrong, at least to a degree. Things never fall into neat categories, and this is especially true when you're talking about the attitudes and actions of billions of people. To draw the line between two "cultures"—as if there are only two—is nothing more than an invitation to oversimplification. In such a worldview, intra-cultural disputes (such as those between Sunnis and Shiites, or between Bill O'Reilly and the French) simply don't fit. In order to maintain the thesis, then, these disputes need to be minimized or ignored.

The statement released by moderate Muslim writers and intellectuals yesterday speaks to this point:

It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats. Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations.

Salman Rushdie and his cohorts do an important thing by rejecting the clash of cultures argument. By focusing on an intellectual divide rather than a geocultural one, they sidestep the broad stereotyping required by the latter. If the debate we face is one between "democracy" and "theocracy", we need not lump all Muslims into the theocracy camp (nor do we need to see all Westerners as small-d democrats). Couching the debate in these terms allows for nuance. It invites thought rather than us vs. them categorization.

Part of the task for the partisans of democracy, then, is to oppose theocracy in all of its forms, with an understanding that "theocracy" can and should be distinguished from religious belief itself. The essential ingredient of theocracy is the desire to impose a specific religious belief on a population by using laws and, usually, force. You don't need to be secular to be a democrat; you just need to respect the secularism of the public sphere. A moderate Muslim, then, would be any Muslim who respects democracy, regardless of his or her own personal faith.

Perhaps with this approach it will be possible to move past the bigotry and broad stereotyping of entire populations that has so far characterized the debate. Let's hope that the statement does more than make a few people sit up and say, "oh yeah, there may be some moderate Muslims after all." It should be the new starting point for the whole discussion.

Responding to some critics of a post he wrote about a play that was facing pressure from Jewish groups in New York, Andrew Sullivan wrote, "There are fine nuances here; and I should have been more attuned to them." Perhaps, with his eager acceptance of the writers' statement, he's willing to admit as much about the so-called "cultural" clash between Islam and the West.

As fellow free-speech zealot (in the good sense) Christopher Hitchens wrote when the cartoon riots erupted, there are some in the West susceptible to the "assumption, dangerous in many ways, that the first lynch mob on the scene is actually the genuine voice of the people. There's an insult to Islam, if you like."

The problem with nuance is that it complicates matters. Then again, a simple solution to a complicated problem is, invariably, an incorrect solution. The best way to move forward is to take a step back and examine our assumptions. If we suppose to be standard-bearers of rationality and enlightenment, then we would do well not to forget Matthew Arnold's admonition, by way of Bishop Wilson, from Culture and Anarchy:

First, never go against the best light you have; secondly, take care that your light be not darkness.

Moderate Muslims Speak Out, Again

Various sources, including Andrew "I Can't Find Any Moderate Muslims" Sullivan, are linking to a statement from, gasp!, moderate Muslims about the cartoon crisis. Here's a snippet:

To counter [Islamism], we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people. We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

The document was signed by a number of Muslim writers, including Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The statement is right on target, asserting the right to secularism, which is just as important as religious freedom. Muslims, like anyone else, should be free from discrimination and oppression, whether by horrible regimes in the Middle East or by xenophobic Westerners.

The authors mention "Islamophobia" and draw a distinction between criticizing Islam and stigmatizing its adherents. Sadly, so many commentators from the West were so quick to back up the free-speech rights of the European press that they ended up violating this very distinction. The willingness of so many people to paint all Muslims as terrorists while at the same time never questioning the motives of any of the groups in favor of the cartoons (like the neo-fascist BNP in Britain) points to another important distinction: a "critical spirit" without critical faculties can be a dangerous thing.

Moderate Muslims are a new discovery for Sullivan (he highlighted another one yesterday) who, as recently as Feb. 10, was coming uncomfortably close to advocating ethnic cleansing and concentration camps for Europe's Muslims. It's never too late, I suppose. I just hope his definition of a "moderate" Muslim doesn't simply translate into a "secular" one.

To those out there who keep asking where the moderates are, they're here, they're speaking out, and maybe you should pay attention for a change. As I wrote yesterday, the moderate Muslims aren't hard to find, unless your rhetorical point is better made by pretending they don't exist.

'I Don't Need Your Civil War'

A Reuters headline from yesterday: "Bush denies Iraq civil war threat."

Asked what Washington would do if civil war broke out in Iraq, Bush told ABC News: "I don't buy your premise that there's going to be a civil war." He said he had spoken to leaders of all Iraqi sects and "I heard loud and clear that they understand that they're going to choose unification, and we're going to help them do so".

   Downtown Baghdad, yesterday

And that's President Bush in a nutshell: supreme confidence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (His optimism is also proof that, at least according to George Will, Bush is not a conservative.) The fact that he has expressed his confidence in the capture of Bin Laden should make us very worried indeed.

In addition to his perpetually rosy outlook on Iraq, George "You're Doing a Heckuva Job, Brownie" Bush has expressed confidence that the levees in New Orleans will hold, Nick and Jessica will be able to work things out, he still has political capital despite abysmal poll numbers, there's nothing going on between Brad and Angelina, nobody from the White House leaked Valerie Plame's identity, Nicole Richie is just "a little bit thin" and Hillary Clinton has no ambitions beyond her Senate seat.

Is this the product of all that "alternative media" he consumes, or could it be the Xanax?

In related news, President Bush has doomed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to an ignominious fall with these chilling words: "He's doing a fine job."