yes, i'm back.

i laughed out loud, pleasantly scandalized by Rumsfeld's comments on the "old Europe." Andrew Sullivan calls the new alliance, minus France and Germany, "the Anglosphere."

Come on in: the Anglosphere is freedom’s new home
The Sunday Times | 2/2/03 | Andrew Sullivan

And then Donald Rumsfeld blurted out what many privately think: France and Germany are the old Europe, with sclerotic economies, anachronistic aspirations for world power, and terribly weak leaders, shored up by appeals to crude anti-Americanism (Schröder) or to the fact that they’re not actually neo-fascist (Chirac).

That’s why when The Wall Street Journal and The Times published a letter from eight European leaders calling for unity in facing down Saddam, it was big in the United States. The chattering classes began to talk about another kind of international coalition: not one based on power-politics, or geographic proximity, but on a shared commitment to civil society and free economies, and a determination not to appease but to confront international terrorism.

and here's a great piece by George Will:
Bush's stance on Iraq
Chicago Sun Times | 2/2/03 | GeorgeWill

What is the pedigree of the idea that France, more than, say, the United Kingdom or Italy--whose leaders visited the White House last week--speaks for ''Europe,'' more than do the eight nations whose leaders on Wednesday endorsed U.S. policy? (The combined population of Britain, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland is 232 million. The combined population of France and Germany is 143 million.) France has a population significantly smaller than, and shrinking relative to, the populations of, among many other nations, Vietnam and Egypt. France has a per capita gross domestic product smaller than that of Denmark or Japan, among others. So why should France referee the game of nations?

and Mark Steyn takes a swing as well:
French opposed to war--unless it's their own
Chicago Sun Times | 2/2/03 | MARK STEYN

Ah, but for those with a big sophisticated Continental brain it's all more complicated than that. Say what you like about Jacques Chirac--call him irresponsible, call him unreliable, throw in shifty, devious, corrupt and absurdly conceited. But he's not stupid. The issue for the French is very straightforward: What's in it for us?

Nelson Mandela? what an ass! he should shut his pie hole and concentrate on the dismal state of his own country. here's Hitchens on Mandela:
Race and Rescue - Nelson Mandela's odious views on Iraq
Slate/MSN.com | 2/1/03 | Christopher Hitchens

It's a strong field in which to compete, but the contest for the most stupid remarks about the impending confrontation with Saddam Hussein has apparently been won by Nelson Mandela. Not content with describing this confrontation as a "holocaust" and attributing every administration motive to the greed for oil, the first president of liberated South Africa said that contempt had been shown for the United Nations because Kofi Annan was black, and that such things never used to happen when U.N. general secretaries were white. (This is the second time in six months that Mandela has said this and the second time that Kofi Annan has had no comment on the suggestion.)

a discussion of some of the evidence to be presented by Colin Powell this week:
How Saddam hides illegal weapon sites
Observer | 2/3/03 | Kamal Ahmed and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow

Saddam Hussein is using an elaborate network of deception to frustrate the United Nations' weapons inspectors and conceal Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to new intelligence documents released by Downing Street.

In a significant escalation of pressure on the Iraqi leader, the documents say that more than 20,000 Iraqi intelligence officers are using psychological intimidation against inspectors, checking their backgrounds to see 'if they are young, nervous [or] vulnerable in some way'.

wow. could this be what caused Scott Ritter's weird turnaround. they had something on him concerning young girls?

and by the way, isn't it nice to not see Ritter on TV anymore. bye bye, Scotty, ya fuckin' perv.

in yesterday's JERUSALEM DIARIST: 261 dead, Chezi Goldberg writes what i've been sputtering into my coffee for a long time: that when a big terrorist operation is discovered we should respond as if it had succeeded, whether it does or not. when plots to blow up LAX, or the George Washington Bridge and the Holland Tunnel in NY, were discovered in the 1990s the US should have done what it only did after the horror of 9/11 - recognize the gravity and begin ruthlessly rooting them out.

referring to the recent attempted downing of an Israeli passenger jet in Kenya, Goldberg writes:

When we here look at a miraculous escape from a deadly attack and breathe a sigh of relief, we lose the war on terrorism.

Our attitude should be: The terrorists intended to down a plane with 261 innocent commercial air travelers aboard. They did not succeed, thank G-d. However, their intentions were clear. We must consider their intentions and take action with a state of mind as if they had succeeded...

Since when does a government have to wait until a massacre happens to do something to change reality. Why do people have to die for something to be done to prevent further death from happening?

When the terror attack Pi Glilot Refinery was miraculously averted, Shimon Peres, then foreign minister was quoted as saying that had the attack been successful and killed tens of thousands of Israelis, it would have been considered an act of war against Israel.

In other words, since the attack did not kill ten thousand Israelis, Israel would not take action. In simpler terms, it seems that until people die, no one wants to do anything to prevent deaths. Unfortunately, when I look around me at the senseless and avoidable carnage taking place in Israel and other places frequented by Jews and Israelis, it becomes clear that Peres was not speaking out of turn. Seems pretty clear to me that he was expressing government policy.

no longer. pre-emption will increasingly rule the day in the US, Israel, Britain, and Australia, thereby saving thousands of lives.


and here's just another reason i thank God every night that Al Gore wasn't elected. let's hear it for cowboy presidents!

U.S. Can Target American al-Qaida Agents
ABC News 12/3

American citizens working for al-Qaida overseas can legally be targeted and killed by the CIA under President Bush's rules for the war on terrorism, U.S. officials say.

The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept. 11 attacks that directs the CIA to covertly attack al-Qaida anywhere in the world. The authority makes no exception for Americans, so permission to strike them is understood rather than specifically described, officials said.

and more items on the Miss World slaughter:

Moralizing About Those Miss World, Ahem, Riots....

The Western fifth column, agitated by further evidence of the irrationality and violence of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism, instead tried to pin the blame for these events on an imaginative assortment of invented villains which included culturally-insensitive Miss World officials, the southern-Nigerian Christian political establishment, the Nigerian journalist who dared to make a satirical reference to Islam's founder's proclivity for beautiful women and multiple wives, and of course that classic 'all-occasions' whipping boy, "Western culture." All that was missing was a flurry of editorials and commentaries blaming the riots on the United States, George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

Morally neutral reporting is dishonest reporting
Jewish World Review 12/4 Dennis Prager

Under the guise of "objectivity," virtually every major news agency, newspaper and television news network in the West is feeding its readers and viewers a morally neutral view of world events that is so distorted as to verge on mendacity.

when the following press release from the Miss World organization was brought to my attention I actually had to go to their web site to verify it before i would believe it. it is real.

12/3 Miss World Media Center

Press release from the Miss World Organisation:

The Miss World Organisation and all of the Miss World contestants were shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling comments made in the Nigerian Newspaper "This Day" that led to such a tragic loss of life.

Miss World brings together young women who are from many faiths.

The views expressed in this article were offensive to all of us and caused considerable anguish, for all the Miss World contestants, crew and staff.

Our deepest sympathies are extended to all those people who have been affected.

Reports in some British Newspapers claim that Miss World was responsible for this,

This comment was totally and utterly without foundation and it is said that the pen is mightier than the sword, ironically both by the Nigerian Editorial and some British Editorial they can have tragic consequences.
Contact Us

Miss World Office: missworld2002@rwtl.co.uk

Votes for contestants will not be taken through this email address.

let's try to ignore the tortured english (you'd think they would have at least one native english speaker on staff) and get to the point: two hundred people are killed and these people are "shocked and deeply saddened" not at the perpetrators, but at the editorial writer and his "appalling comments" that "led to" the killings. they found the "views expressed" to be offensive and experienced "considerable anguish" at being exposed to these views - so anguished they've decided to set down their wine glasses, and step over the corpses to come out and make this statement so the whole world can know their moral clarity

this truly sounds like something out of a friday night sermon in Iran or Saudi Arabia but it comes from what is ostensibly a legitimate international organization.

who are these people? time to begin letters to their sponsors.

here's Andrew Sullivan from a few days ago on the media's predictably upside down response to the massacres in Nigeria:

Now imagine a scenario in which, say, the play "Corpus Christi" was produced in New York (as it was). The play was highly offensive to some fundamentalists because it depicted Jesus as gay. What if a mob of enraged Christians, after a holy sermon at a neighboring church, had decided to torch the office of the New York Times because they ran a favorable review, or to burn down the theater? What if they killed hundreds of innocent bystanders in their rage? What if they issued a call to all faithful Christians to kill playwright Terence McNally for his blasphemy? Do you think the rampage would be described as "atheist-Christian riots"? Do you think leftists would call on the playwright to be more sensitive in future? Would the mayor of New York blame the theater? Yet when it comes to a far, far deadlier menace to our freedoms than fundamentalist Christianity, much of the left is silent or, worse, making excuses for this Islamist threat.

This is what cultural relativism, p.c. journalism and decadent feminism amounts to: a failure to grasp that freedom is under attack. The only reason I am writing this column is because I live in a free society. One of the keys to that free society is freedom of the press - even to be disrespectful, annoying, blasphemous. What just happened in Nigeria is that a newspaper's offices were burned to the ground, a journalist has had a death sentence pronounced on her, and hundreds of people have been killed because of radical Islam's hatred of our freedoms. The propriety, politics and principles of a beauty pageant are utterly irrelevant. If I don't like such a pageant, I have many ways to protest. But killing people isn't one of them. That isn't so hard a line to grasp. So why have so few grasped it?

big-ass story of the weekend:

Howard: I’m prepared to act against terrorists in Asian countries

SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday he was prepared to act against terrorists in neighbouring Asian countries and that international law and the UN Charter should be changed to empower nations to strike pre-emptively against terrorists who plan to attack them.

whew! sorry for the absence recently. you can always check terrapindream to see what latest crisis is keeping me from posting here. lately it's been cars and power (our solar system and two generators all broke at once).

let's start with a heavy hit 'cause i'm pissed! Ann Coulter raises hell yet again with Beauty pageants can be murder

Inasmuch as liberals are demanding that Americans ritualistically proclaim, "Islam is a religion of peace," Muslims might do their part by not killing people all the time.

Recently, the Religion of Peace suffered a PR setback when Muslims in Nigeria welcomed the Miss World beauty pageant by slaughtering Christians in the street and burning churches to the ground. At last count, more than 200 people were dead, hundreds more were injured and thousands were left without homes. Also, the Nigerian contestant's chances of winning "Miss Congeniality" were dashed.

and she rightly points out the New York Times biased whitewash coverage of anything Islam:

The New York Times can't bear to think that their little darlings – angry, violent Muslims – could be at fault in this melee. That makes no sense because Islam is a Religion of Peace. So the Times reviewed the facts, processed it through the PC prism, and spat out the headline: "Religious Violence in Nigeria Drives Out Miss World Event." According to the Times, rampaging Muslims pouring out of mosques to kill Christians and torch churches resulted from "the tinderbox of religious passions in the country."

Islam is peaceful, but religion causes violence. Pay no attention to the fact that the most bloodthirsty cult in the 20th century was an atheistic sect known as communism. But that was not "true communism," just as Muslim terrorists are not practicing "true Islam." The ironic thing is, liberals would hate Muslims who practiced only "true Islam." Without the terrorism, Muslims would just be another group of "anti-choice" fanatics.

awesome Coulter as usual. now let's move to the big topic this week - the Saudis. before the articles, let me say i think Bush knows the whole deal with Saudi Arabia, and when we've secured Iraq we will deal with the House of Saud. Iran will topple on its own after Iraq goes, but we will bring down the Saudis - not necessarily with miltary power, but they will go.

in Bush and the Saudi princess, Mark Steyn writes about the Princess Haifa revelations and ponders the awkwardness of it all:

Bush must have known for the best part of a year that in the run-up to 11 September Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa, had been making regular transfers from her Washington bank account to a couple of known associates of the terrorists. Bandar must have known Bush knew. Each party knows the other party knows they’re engaged in a charade, but they observe the niceties, with Laura showing Princess Haifa the ranch, Bush hailing the ‘eternal friendship’ between the Saudi and American people, and Bandar regretting, as the Saudis always do, that they’re unable to be more helpful.

he also mentions the lie, propogated by Saudi apologists in Europe and the US, that al-Qaeda and the Saudis are bitter enemies:

The fawning legions of ex-ambassadors to Riyadh have been all over the TV assuring us that, oh, no, al-Qa’eda hate the House of Saud and want to overthrow it. But, interestingly, though Osama’s boys are happy to topple New York landmarks, slaughter Balinese nightclubbers, blow up French oil tankers, kill Philippine missionaries, take out Tunisian synagogues and hijack Moscow musicals, you can’t help noticing they do absolutely zip against the regime they allegedly loathe. There are 6,000 Saudi princes, but none of ’em ever gets assassinated. And, if anything mildly explosive goes off in the Kingdom, it somehow manages to get blamed on Western bootleggers. Statistically speaking, if you’re looking for the spot on the planet where you’re least likely to be blown to shreds by an al-Qa’eda nutcake, it’s hard to beat Riyadh. If al-Qa’eda hated the rest of us the way they supposedly hate King Fahd and co., the world would be as harmonious as a Seventies Coke commercial.

Steyn questions Bush convincingly for sure:

And what was he doing with Bush at the ranch in September? Most heads of government don’t get invited to Crawford. As I’ve said before, Australia’s John Howard, unlike Crown Prince Abdullah, is a real ally in the war on terror, but he’s still waiting for ranch privileges; Alberta, not Saudi Arabia, is America’s principal foreign source of energy, but premier Ralph Klein can’t get past the assistant deputy under-secretary. Meanwhile, Bandar, a humble ambassador from an economically moribund theocratic dictatorship, gets received like a head of state. Nothing quite explains the administration’s willingness to assist the Saudis in making a mockery of America’s war on terror. Even murkier rumours that the royal house has the goods on Bush and Cheney for some dark oil-biz shenanigans can’t account for the scale of the administration’s denial. We have a huge Saudi-financed pile of American corpses, the Saudis are openly unco-operative, and meanwhile back at the ranch it’s ribs with Princess Haifa.

next, Chris Weinkopf (who i worked with briefly in New York and who influenced me politically at a crucial time in my life) explains why Bush seems to be oblivious:

Jumping the Gun on Saudi Arabia
FrontPageMagazine.com 11/27

Barely a year into the War on Terror, it’s clear that the Administration’s strategy has been decidedly methodical. Due in no small part to the degradation of American military strength during the Clinton years, the war has necessarily been fought in phases. Phase One was the invasion of Afghanistan and the elimination of the Taliban. Phase Two will be the liberation of Iraq. Where the Administration proceeds from there remains to be seen, but all signs point to an onward march. Saudi Arabia is not alone among Middle Eastern countries in dire need of reform—Iran and Syria have also enjoyed a free pass thus far. The leaders of all three countries will eventually have to choose between fanaticism and their survival.

the sooner the better.

In light of the present circumstances, it makes sense for the White House to refrain from exerting diplomatic pressure (let alone military pressure) on Saudi Arabia. Simple divide-and-conquer strategy dictates the importance of preserving the U.S.–Saudi friendship of convenience at least throughout the invasion of Iraq—especially as there’s hope that the Saudis will let U.S. bombers operate from their air bases.

After the liberation of Iraq, the entire dynamic of Middle Eastern politics changes dramatically—most especially for Saudi Arabia. The establishment of a friendly regime in Baghdad will lessen America’s dependence on the kingdom’s oil supplies and military bases, thus freeing the Administration to put far more diplomatic pressure on the monarchy. The credible threat of force—with attacks launched from new U.S. military installations in Baghdad—should be more than enough to prompt some serious soul-searching among the Saudi royals.

All of which suggests that for Bush, taking it easy on Saudi Arabia isn’t the result of strategic blindness, but tactical forethought. It’s fine and good for Lieberman and other legislators of both parties to denounce the klepotcratic sheiks, but the commander-in-chief must tread more carefully.

on another unresolved issue, this from IMRA:
5 ISRAELIS WHO WERE DETAINED AFTER 9/11 TO SUE NEW JERSEY POET

Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner has written to New Jersey Governor
James E. McGreevey demanding that he fire the State's poet laureate, Amiri
Bakara, or she will initiate legal proceedings against his office. The
Tel-Aviv lawyer, who heads Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center, represents
five young Israelis who were detained by Federal authorities for visa
violations after the 9/11 attack. The five allege that the New Jersey poet's
controversial poem, "Somebody Blew Up America" implies that they knew in
advance that the World Trade Center would be attacked and has grievously
defamed their reputation.

good for them. i hope they win. the state of NJ took on a whole lot of trouble by naming this no-talent loser to the post of Poet Laureate. i wonder what poet is going to want to be the next PL of NJ after the first one they could think of is a racist Jew-hater who can't even write! check this out from Baraka's barely literate statement defending the poem:

The relevance of this to Bush call for a "War on Terrorism", is that Black people feel we have always been victims of terror, governmental and general, so we cannot get as frenzied and hysterical as the people who while asking us to dismiss our history and contemporary reality to join them, in the name of a shallow "patriotism" in attacking the majority of people in the world, especially people of color and in the third world.

and finally, this one i missed last week: Academia Silent on Militant Islam
11/25 Jonathan Calt Harris
FrontPageMagazine.com

Interested in knowing more about “The Rug Producing Bazaaris of the Holy City of Qum”? Curious about the “Ceramic Production & Consumption in Almohad Seville”? Fascinated by the latest scholarship on “Changes in Religious Celebrations among Moroccan Immigrant Women in the Netherlands”?

If so, then the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference on November 23-26 in Washington is your cup of tea. But if you want to gain insights into the dangers of militant Islam to America, you’ll probably want to take a pass on this particular meeting.

returning monday - happy thanksgiving to American readers. go here to see a small part of what i'm thankful for.

At Least 105 Dead in Nigeria Anti-Miss World Riots

Fighting raged on Friday in the Nigerian city of Kaduna, where more than 100 people have died in three days of riots stoked by Muslim fury over the country's staging of next month's Miss World (news - web sites) contest.

i've been sick and tired of Muslim fury for a good long time now.

____________________

please go and read this at little green footballs: 11/21/2002: Harvard Does the Wrong Thing

it's the kind of thing that sends me beyond anger into a complete, placid bewilderment.

____________________

exclamation by a mechanic while looking at the engine of my old one ton van:

"well, i'll be dipped in dog doo!"

all the action with me has been analog. story here. trying to get a vehicle, any vehicle, to run.

i'm beginning to watch this story:

Release The Videotapes
Notra Trulock, III 11/8
Accuracy In Media

A quick, easy way to resolve the controversy over John Doe Number 2 would be to simply release the videotapes and photographs and let the American public judge for itself. Release the tapes and bring this case to closure. The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing deserve nothing less.

about that new bin Laden tape - something isn't right.

nice try. he's dead.

yeah, i believe it's from al-qaeda, and that we in the west could get hit big soon, but it's not bin Laden. poor Robert Fisk...

The Fantasy Life of American Liberals
Charles Krauthammer
The Weekly Standard 11/16

In America, the fascists have achieved power, riding the smile of their front man "boy king," too dense perhaps even to know the interests he serves. This theme reached its comic apogee in Barbra Streisand's now famous, gloriously misspelled antiwar memo to Dick Gephardt, in which she explained that the reason Bush was dragging the nation to war with Iraq was to serve the "oil industry, the chemical companies, the logging industry." On to Baghdad--for the timber!

This is truly bizarre. George Bush, extremist? This is a president who passed an education bill essentially written by Ted Kennedy. His tax reform involves the most modest of rate cuts for the upper brackets and is what any Keynesian would have done in the face of a recession. It is, for example, more moderate than the (John) Kennedy tax cuts. The other alleged parts of his agenda--the environmental rape, the imposition of theocracy, the abolition of civil liberties (Moyers: "secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine")--are nothing but the delusion of liberals made quite mad by defeat.

no articles this morning. well, this one is big: the execution of the Pakistani guy who killed two CIA agents in Arlington in 1993 went forward this morning in Virginia.

welcome, terrapindream readers.

terrapindream is my other text site - the personal side of the story. the gallery, which is how it all began for me on the web, is a collection of digital collages of a cartoon religious nature. see it at pranadesign.com

you know i'm in the process of replying to An Open Letter To Terry Baker but i just don't have time to do everything, you know. i wasn't meaning to ignore it. it's just that i'm ironically swamped with work and human interaction since moving to the middle of nowhere. i can't win.