Watcher's Council Results, 9/29/06

The Council has spoken! Complete results can be found here on the site of our fearless leader, Watcher of Weasels








For Council Posts the winner was :

Soccer Dad: Unhinged or calculated Soccer Dad wins, for the second time in three weeks..must be something in the water out there in the Land of Marble Porches! Here he takes on the Clinton Fox meltdown. He feels that it was nothing more than a phoney, calculated move designed to ramp up the base prior to the midterms and obsecure the reputation the Democrats have of being soft on defence and national security. I agree.... Mr. Bill does very little by accident. Congrats, Soccer Dad!


Second place was a tie betweeen:

J O S H U A P U N D I T: A real peace proposal for the Middle East In this piece I address the question: Are the Arabs serious about resolving the Arab Israeli conflict, or are they merely seeking to destroy Israel over time? I think it's time we found out. The Arab Israeli conflict has been used by Muslims to justify violence and terrorism for almost 60 years. In this piece, I outlined, using the form of a prospective reply by Israel to the Arab's 2002 Saudi Peace Plan which the entire Arab League has endorsed, what a realistic, fair and just solution designed to actually resolve the major issues and end the points of conflict would look like.

It's significant that I have not recieved a single comment or e-mail from an Arab in America or the Middle East.. when I write on the Arab Israeli conflict, I normally get quite a few.

And:

The Sundries Shack: No Commitment! Jimmie wrote a superb piece on a theme similar to the Mark Steyn piece I profiled on JoshuaPundit - why are we so afraid to extoll the virtues of our culture? Or as Steyn put it, if a culture's past is unworthy of survival, why would its future be? Great job, Jimmie!

For non-council posts the winner was:
Isaac Schrödinger: Fear and Loathing in The Land of the Pure. Isaac Schrödinger writes movingly about the plight of Muslims who leave Islam in Muslim countries:

`I was born in an Ahmadi Muslim family in Pakistan. I’m a Pakistani citizen. The attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 and the reactions of Muslims to it changed my mindset. I left Islam in January of 2002.' (BTW, FF notes that Ahmadis are considered heretics by Sunni and Shiite Muslims)

Schrödinger only mentions it obliquely, but his essay is part of his fight to continue residing in Canada. He's now threatened with deportation, which in his case would amount to a death sentence.


Hearty kudos to all the winners!!

Update! The Senate just passed the detainee bill!

The nerve of those filthy Americans! How dare they tryto take away our right to kill them!


Woo hoo!

In the end, the Senate Democrats realized that, with people already considering them weak on national defence, the last thing they needed was to impede common sense legislation like this.

The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end to be signed into law. The House of Representatives passed almost identical legislation on Wednesday by 253-168 and was expected to endorse the Senate bill on Friday, then ship it to the White House.

Here's a link to the roll call: U.S. Senate: Legislation & Records Home > Votes > Roll Call Vote

Remember these 34 Senators who tried to handcuff the war against jihad when you vote..

A post by Abbagav:It's Not Actually "Holocaust Denial"

One of my esteemed fellow members of the Watcher's Council, Abba Gav produced a fine post this week..unfortunately, he's had problems with his site or his server.

It seems a shame that his post should consigned to the ozone because of something like that, and it definately deserves to be read...so here it is in it's entirety:

It's Not Actually "Holocaust Denial"
Calling it Holocaust denial makes it sound almost benign to me.

Take Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for instance. When people call him simply a Holocaust denier, it sounds to me as if he is inadvertantly being misdiagnosed as being merely in psychological denial, unable to believe something so horrible could actually have occurred -- heck, I think a lot of us would prefer that kind of Holocaust denial for ourselves too. But Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial is not just a compassionate inability to comprehend the truth of certain historical facts; he is not simply asking for a review of the footnotes in our kids' history books.

At least for Ahmadinejad, it's not "Holocaust denial." It's Holocaust envy.

In case anyone doubts it, let's look at what Israeli Foreign Minister,Tzipi Livni, had to say about this Holocaust envier recently at the U.N (follow the links to see that her words clearly include Ahmadinejad specifically):


Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that Iranian leaders pose the biggest threat to international values as they 'speak proudly' of their wish to destroy Israel and pursue weapons to achieve that objective.

Speaking at the annual General Assembly session, Livni said that the international community must stand up against Iran, which she claimed is pursuing the weapons to destroy Israel, a reference to its nuclear program.

'There is no greater challenge to our values than that posed by the leaders of Iran,' Livni said. 'They deny and mock the Holocaust. They speak proudly and openly of their desire to wipe Israel off the map . And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective, to imperil the region and to threaten the world.'

Why does Ahmadinejad deny there was a Holocaust? Does he feel that the attempt to systematically wipe out an entire people is so wrong that he wishes it had never occured? It seems kind of doubtful, since he openly and proudly speaks of his own desire to accomplish the very thing he denies having happened, the very Holocaust he envies.

No, his Holocaust envy is a tactic designed to divide those who otherwise would be reminding themselves never to forget. He speaks to Germany, selling himself as one who would absolve that nation's historical record, and free it to ignore if not actually support with a newly clear conscience his efforts to destroy Jews once more. He speaks to nations that still, if only tentatively, shy away from their hidden hatreds that scant decades ago led them to complicitly load their Jews onto trains and transports, further emboldening diplomats who find it once more fashionable to disparage the Jews' sh***y little country at their sophisticated soirees. He speaks at anti-Semitic rallies throughout the Islamic world where he is greeted like a rock star, leading chants of " Death to the Jews," offering himself as the annointed harbinger of those hateful hopes. In short, while there are those who claim Muslims are the new Jews, Ahmadinejad begs to differ: he'd prefer the Jews to be the new Jews.

The irony in the Iranian President's competing positions is almost too much to bear. He simultaneously claims there wasn't a Holocaust -- not that there's anything wrong with Jewish Holocausts, mind you -- and that he'd also like the chance at pulling off one of those Holocaust things himself, if the world would kindly just stand back and give him the chance.

In a world already slowly sinking beneath a sea of ridiculous irony, the Iranian President arrives on the scene like a rhetorical Hurricane Mahmoud. (Are we even allowed to use Arab or Islamic names for hurricanes anymore? In a list of hurricane name assignments from 2002 to 2007, there has been only one -- Omar -- and that one all the way back in 2002. Although, in fairness, they didn't use George or Dick either.)

The only arguably good news I see in the recent U.N. gathering, and Ahmadinejad's speech among the many worrisome words uttered there, is that at least this time he made no claim of possessing a golden aura that religiously and prophetically transfixed his infidel audience while he spoke. Perhaps he is finally beginning to realize God is not backing the side that wants to kill masses of Jews yet again. But then again, and no less likely, maybe he believes his plans are now far enough along that he no longer feels he needs God's help.

But I know the rest of us could use a little heavenly help. As Rosh HaShannah approaches, let's pray God guards us all against the approching threat of a world with Iranian nukes in the hands of Holocaust enviers.

The detainee bill winds its way through the Senate

President Bush is urging senators to send him the detainee bill to sign before they adjourn. It amazes me how tough this has been, for such an obviously necessary bit of legislation.

Backers of the new bill beat a key challenge today to the bill, which sets rules for interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects. The vote was a startling 51-48, rejecting an amendment that would have restored the rights of foreign suspects deemed as enemy combatants and mostly held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions.

I mean, if you catch somebody shooting at our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, they should be able to `challenge' our right to take them prisoner and interrorgate them?
What universe do some of these senators live in?

"People shouldn't forget there's still an enemy out there that wants to do harm to the United States, and therefore a lot of my discussion with the members of the Senate was to remind them of this solemn responsibility," Bush said.

Well, he's right on this one...I just hope President Bush remembers that little statement..say, when it comes to dealing with Iran, or with domestic jihadis.

And I would also remind terrorist appeasors like Arlen Spector(r-PA), Patrick Leahy (d-VT) and Carl Levin (d-MI) that habeus corpus (the legal name for this right)has been suspended before in time of war and national emergency.

So, what else is in this bill that's so horrible? Not much.

The bill sets standards for interrogating suspects, but through a complex set of rules that could allow techniques like sleep deprivation and prolonged time in stress positions.

The bill prohibits and defines such widely accepted atrocities as rape and torture, but otherwise allows the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, the treaty that sets standards for the treatment of war prisoners.

It establishes military commissions that would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them, and allow limited use of evidence obtained by coercion. The bill also expands the definition of "enemy combatants" to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups.

I especially like that last bit, that includes jihadi enablers in the mix.

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said the bill should not "create a long-term battle with the courts over everybody that's being detained. It is a function of the military and the executive branch to conduct a war."

I guess some democrats forgot that...though, given the lackadaisical way we've waged this war, I can understand their lapse of memory even if I can't excuse it.

More to the point was Missouri Sen. Christopher `Kit' Bond (r-MO) when he said there were "partisan efforts to slow the fight against terror."

Of course there are, Senator Bond! The last thing these people want is to have to vote against a bill that directly highlights their obstruction of the war effort a month before the midterms...

"Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters," said Senator Bond, alluding to opponents of the bill. "They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to hamper us in our fight to protect our families."

Well said, Senator. That's exactly what they want.

These people labor under the allusion that the Geneva Convention somehow guarantees humane treatment of our prisoners as a quid pro quo,

There are a number of Americans who spent time as the involuntary `guests' of the Nazis, the Japanese, the North Koreans, Hezbollah, North Vietnam and the Soviets who could tell them exactly how well that's worked in the past.

And I guarantee you, convicting and hanging a few jihadis, followed by a pigskin burial would go a lot farther towards stopping jihad recruitment among Muslims than merely keeping them in relative luxury at Club Gitmo.

Take away the inducement of jihad coochie heaven and 72 virgins as sex slaves and the idea of blowing yourself up to murder the infidel becomes a lot harder to sell to a potential shahid.

In case anyone's interested, that's exactly how the US defeated Islamic terrorism the last time we fought against it.

It's time we got a clue and started taking this war seriously.

The Chinese use lazers in attempt to blind our spy sattelites

The Telegraph (the UK) has the story on how China is using powerful lazer weapons to try to disable American satellites by "blinding" their sensitive surveillance devices.

The guidance systems technology these weapons are based on came from - guess who?- Loral, the major military defence firm and heavy Democratic party donor in the 1990's who was allowed to ship previously classified military technology to the Chinese by the Clinton administration in exchange for campaign cash...yet another thing America owes to Mr. Bill.

The attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to enlist China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran.

And to avoid disturbing all of the economic activity we have with China, naturally...

According to the military affairs publication `Defense News', there had been a fierce internal debate within within the Bush Administration over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon's annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat.

"After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.

The document said that China could blind American satellites with a ground-based laser firing a beam of light to prevent spy photography as they pass over China.

According to senior American officials: "China not only has the capability, but has exercised it." American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under attack "several times" in recent years.

Satellites are fairly vulnerable to attack because they have predetermined orbits, allowing an enemy to know when and where they will appear in range.

At the same time, China is engaged in a large-scale espionage efforts against American high-tech firms. Several spy rings have been cracked and the FBI is increasing the number of counter-intel staff tracking Chinese espionage, according to the article.

I would note that I personally think China is less of a threat to us then some other areas...everybody is making too much money, the Chinese have billions in our banking system and China has historically never been an imperialist nation, provided its borders weren't threatened.

Still, this kind of activity bears watching, to say the least. And we had better not repeat the mistake of declassifying and shipping years worth of state of the art defence technology to a potentially hostile nation..who might just decide to peddle it somewhere else.

Hezbollah violates truce, attacks armory in Israel

You won't see it in the mainstream media, but Hezbollah attacked an arms depot in Kibbutz Shomera, Israel this morning and got away with a large quantity of side-arms, anti-tank weapons, LAU rockets and hundreds of combat grenades.

A few hours later, the IDF went into the South Lebanese town of Merwahin opposite Kibbutz Shomera and questioned the villagers about the robbery.

Kibbutz Shomera is not far from the area where Hezbollah set off the war by crossing into Israel, killing 8 Israeli soldiers and kidnapping kidnapped Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev on July 12.

This is a major violation of the ceasefire, but no more than most of the rest of it, which has become a giant game of `let's pretend'.

The Israelis are still more or less in place because of disagreement over UNIFIL’s rules of engagement..what it is allowed to do and what it is not allowed to do.They were talking about withdrawing all Israeli forces by Yom Kippur (October 2nd this year) but as one IDF commander quipped `we didn't say which year!'

The Olmert government has a vested interest in keeping the IDF where it is anyway. One of the chief constraints keeping Olmert, Livni, Peretz and the rest of the gang from being tossed out of office is the natural Israeli reluctance to play politics when the troops are still engaged.

That restraint may not last too much longer.

One month after a UN Security Council resolution ended the war, UNIFIL commanders say that they cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example (in violation of the UN arms embargo), they're not allowed to stop it because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution (1701) that deployed them, they have to be authorized first to action by the Lebanese army!

Any wonder that the rearming of Hezbollah is continuing at a rapid pace, with no interference by anyone?

The UN commanders constantly repeat, ad nasuem, that their job is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by `supporting the Lebanese army' and that they will only follow the directions of the Lebanese Army and comply with its requests.

Let's keep in mind that more than 40% of the Lebanese army is Shiite, with loyalty towards Hezbollah Hizballah or their Shiite commanders rather than the Lebanese government...which has a significant Hezbollah presence anyway.

The mission assigned to UNIFIL under Resolution 1701 in the first place was to enforce an arms embargo and to prevent Hezbolah from continuing its attacks on Israel and destabilizing the area.

They have failed on both counts.And the Olmert government still continues to pretend that everything is ju-ust fine.

Beheading Mozart

Yesterday, in Short Takes, I reported on the cancellation by the Deutsch Oper of four performances of Mozart's classic opera `Idomeneo' because of the fear of Muslim violence since the final scene shows the severed heads of Mohammed, Buddha,Jesus,and Poseidon on stage.

This story looks like it may be headed for something of a happy ending.

The theme of the opera is the attempted predominance of man over G-d, and the opera has been in repetoire almost since Mozart wrote it, 225 years ago.

The scene in question is not original, but was put in by the director, Hans Neuenfels, who created this scene for the 2003 production of the opera that the Deutsce Oper was staging; the libretto certainly suggests such a scene.

The performances were cancelled by Deutsche Oper director Kirsten Harms after the police had warned her of an "incalculable" security risk if she went ahead with the production.

The cancelation elicited a veritable howl of protest all over Europe, following so closely on Islamic riots over the MoToons and Pope Benedict's inocuous remarks. In my experience, the two things you DON'T mess around with when it comes to Germans is their beer and their music.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel got involved and said Germans should not cave in to fears of Islamic violence.

"Why are we bowing to Islam?" read Thursday's front page of the top-selling daily Bild. Inside, the paper showed a photoshp image of Berlin's parliament building with minarets and an Islamic crescent superimposed on its central glass dome.

Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber said succumbing to fear represented a victory for terrorists. "We must never give up our constitutional freedoms out of fear of Islamist thought-terrorism," he told Bild.

I must admit, I like that phrase, although it's somewhat clumsy in English compared to the German `gedanketerrorismus'.

Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble cleverly linked the controversy to a conference held yesterday designed to encourage assimilation of Germany's 3 million Muslims into being an `integral part of our society' in Schaeuble's words. It was attended by representatives of every Muslim group in Germany, including Eyup Kohler, chairman of the German Muslims Council and was overall positive in outlook.

The minister, in a statement after the meeting, said: "We all hold the same view with regard to resolving the problems. We will collectively implement our works to address those problems. It is good to determine that Islam is part of this country on the base of federal constitution, and see that Muslims openly declare their acceptance of our present order."(emphasis mine)

The opera came up, of course...and one point on which the 30 participants in a landmark conference held here on Wednesday agreed on, according to Schäuble is that they would all like to see the Deutsche Oper of Berlin reinstate the Mozart opera. As a matter of fact, the 30 representatives, drawn equally from the German government and Germany’s Muslim population, want to go see the opera together!

"We have, in a very tolerant tone, laid out quite different positions," Schäuble said. "That was the point."

The fact that the majority of Germany's Muslims are Turkish in origin rather than Arabs and thus more open to the idea of a secular society may make the job easier for Schäuble...and for Germany.

And Oper Direktor Kirsten Harms? People are calling for her head, or at least her job..for bowing to `gedanketerrorismus'.

Who you gonna believe...me or your lyin' ears? The Dems manage to accuse someone of being a secret Jew and a Klansman in the same election!

When in doubt, use the race card, I suppose. At least if you're dealing with a conservative and it's a close election.

The Dems have managed to accuse a GOP candidate of being both a secret Jew and a Klansman..all in the same election!

George Allen(r-VA) is the incumbent running for re-election in a race that was targeted by the DNC, but without much success until he made a verbal gaff, calling an East Indian from the opposing campaign who appeared to be stalking his appearances as `macacca' a word that could have some racial inferences in a foreign country but has none here.

Allen got out of that by explaining that he was unaware of any racial overtones and apologizing..but apparently it gave the Democrats a few ideas.

The first shot was a totally out of the blue question by a `progressive' reporter on Allen's mother, to the effect of `are you now or have you ever been a Jooo or of Joooish heritage..and maybe a secret spy for the Israeli Mossad?'

Allen, correctly, went off on her, but later fumbled the ball by throwing in a couple of references to his love of pork products as a way of distancing himself..which somehow didn't sit too well coming from someone who has consistently been a strong supporter of Israel.

The Democrats, figuring that, after all, they already had both the Jewish AND the anti-Semitic sorry, `anti-Zionist' vote locked up, next went after the Black vote citing Allen's alleged use of the dreaded `N' word, supposedly in college. Two ex-teammates of his (both longtime Democrats) alleged that he had used the word in college, as did Larry Sabato, a well known political scientist and, to anyone who's looked at his site, another Democrat.

Now, this brings several questions to my mind.

George Allen has been a US senator and a public figure for awhile. Why are these people suddenly surfacing with their allegation now? Were they in hibernation? Maybe held as hostages by Hezbollah for the last five years? Lost in the Amazon? Amnesiacs, perhaps, cured by the miracle of stem cell research?

Or maybe, just maybe, is the current desperation in the Democratic party to regain power in this election cycle and Allen's giving them an idea with the `maccaca' comment have something to do with it?

There are a number of other people who knew George Allen in college and were on the football team with him that say this is a bunch of, er, hogwash. They somehow aren't getting the Main Stream media attention.

Sabato had a particularly suspicious way of handling this. When asked directly by a TV interviewer about the exact circumstances under which he heard Allen use racial slurs, his initial response was "I'm not going to get into that."

Now, let's say you and I were college classmates fifteen years ago and all of a sudden, I surfaced on national TV to accuse you, a politician running for re-election of using racial slurs. Would it be illegitimate to ask me to back it up with some actual hard information? To at least have the stones to directly say when and where I heard you pop off?

But Sabato, a member of the media culture in good standing, got a pass and was just allowed to spew and walk away.

Spew, by the way, is the right word. When Sabato was finally pressed for an actual answer a day or so later, he suddenly weasled out with a different story. Turns out, he later told USA TODAY political reporter Jill Lawrence that he never personally heard Allen use the n-word, but his story now is that he believes the senator did because "people I know and trust" have told him it happened!

Apparently that kind of ridiculous hearsay is enough to defame somebody and trash his reputation when a senate seat might be up for grabs.

Larry Sabato has some major explaining to do, especially as to why anyone should trust his impartiality and judgment as a political commentator anymore after this nonsense.

As for Jim Webb, the fact that he allowed this shameful travesty to go on in his name without condemning it out of hand is unfortunately a good indication of his overall moral character, and something the good people of Virginia should consider when they vote.

Them's some harsh words, but that's how I see it.

Watcher's Council Nominations, 9/27/06

Every week, the Watcher's Council nominate two posts each, one from the Council members and one from outside for consideration by the whole Council. The complete list of this weekÂ’s Council nominations can be found at our fearless leader's site Watcher of Weasels


1. J O S H U A P U N D I T: A real peace proposal for the Middle East The Arab Israeli conflict has been used by Muslims to justify violence and terrorism for almost 60 years. I think it's time that we either went for a real breakthrough, or finally revealed what the real obstacles are (like Israel's very existence). I chose to outline, using the form of a prospective reply by Israel to the Arab's 2002 Saudi Peace Plan which the entire Arab League has endorsed, what a realistic, fair and just solution designed to actually resolve the major issues and end the points of conflict would look like. Are the Arabs actually seeking a peaceful solution after all this time, or merely Israel's destruction? Here's one way to find out for sure.

2. Gates of Vienna: A Sure Cure for Paranoid Hysteria and Stuffed Shirts: RidiculeAh, Dymphna.Here she makes the entirely valid point that one of the biggest weapons we have in the War Against Jihad is our sense of humor.Something the Islamic world is notably deficient in as a general rule.

3.Done With Mirrors: Ouch Callimachus does a follow up on his winning post of civilian Iraqi contractors by profiling one of them, and allowing her to take a little exception to the spin put on Iraq by a New York Times reporter. She makes the point that while this reporter found Iraq so very dangerous to work in he had to hide in a bunker, she, all 5 feet tall and 89 pounds sopping wet was able to come and go with impunity, without anything like the impressive securityarrangementss the boys in the MSM stationed in Iraq enjoyed.

4. Soccer Dad: Unhinged or calculated Soccer Dad comes up with another scintillating post, this time on the Clinton meltdown. He feels it was calculated and designed to ramp up the base prior to the midterms. I agree.... Mr. Bill does very little by accident. Excellent job.

5.AbbaGav - It's Not Actually "Holocaust Denial" Ooh, I liked this... Abbagav makes the point that Iran's Ahmadinejad and his ilk are not really `Holocaust deniers' so much as Holocaust enviers. Nicely done...


6. Right Wing Nut House: BEWARE OF THE DRAFT AND OTHEROCTOBERR SURPRISESA fine piece by Rick Moran on some of the mythology prevalent on the Left as the midterm elections get closer. The impetus for this piece appears a screed by a political has been named Gary Hart..once heir apparent for the Democratic nomination until he succumbed to rampant clintonitus before gaining the prize.

7. The Sundries Shack: No Commitment! Jimmie writes on a theme similar to the Mark Steyn piece I profiled on JoshuaPundit - why are we so afraid toextoll the virtues of our culture? Or as Steyn put it, if a culture's past is unworthy of survival, why would its future be?

8.Rhymes With Right: NY Times Comes Out For Dirty Elections Greg looks at the furor among leftists surrounding proposals that voters should (heaven forbid!) show a valid ID to confirm their identitybeforee they are given a ballot. Here's the skinny, Greg: In California (and probably in your home state of Texas as well) illegal aliens vote in large numbers and are even truckedaroundd to different precincts to vote multiple times. Since this is done exclusively by the Left, the Times and other leftists want it continued. End of story.

9. ShrinkWrapped: A Missed Opportunity ShrinkWrap's take on the Bill Clinton meltdown. Shrinks makes the very good point that,in times of national testing, ex-presidents are in a unique position to add to national unity and help bridge fierce partisanship for the national good. Of course, Mr. Bill failed miserably, except at his own self-aggrandizement - which is pretty much a summation of his presidency, if not his entire life.


10. The Glittering Eye: Considering the Big Picture in the War on Terror Dave makes the valid point that globalization has had a major effect on accentuating Islamic terrorism. My only complaint is that I would have loved to see his take in detail on the questions raised in the beginning of the piece. Maybe next week! Nicely done.


11.Stifling of dissent LXXVI : Socratic Rhythm MethodMatt examines the Illinois controversy surrounding pharmacists who refuse to sell birth control products on moral grounds.

12. The Education Wonks: Flag Burning Teacher Beats The Rap - EdWonk writes about Kentucky high school teacher Dan Holden, who burned two American flags as anillustrationn of `free speech' and has, of course, gotten away with it. To my mind, the so-called `rap' is not the only thing that deserves to be beaten...and busted out of the county, to use a quaint but expressive Southernism.

If some creep decides to insult my beloved country by burning its flag in front of me, I hope that my subsequent reaction will be excused by good Liberals everywhere with the usual rationalization - `sure, I don't personally condone it, but you have to understand his background, and his rage..'



Enjoy!

MSNBC's Tucker Carlson gets a lesson in Taqiya from CAIR

You'll love this.

In Ohio, a car dealer had planned a group of funny ads saying that they were going to wage a `jihad' on high auto prices, talked about a fatwa friday and promised `free swords for the kiddies'. Under extreme pressure from CAIR, the ads were pulled.

In this YouTube clip a fully burka'd CAIR Rep squirms every which way when asked reasonable questions by Tucker Carlson: `This is making fun of radical extremists. Why would CAIR be against that? Why would CAIR put itself on the side of radical Muslims?'

A superb example of an attempt at Taqiya, and a real must see...

The horrors of Club Gitmo...and Camp Pendleton

Life ain't bad at all if you're a Muslim terrorist domiciled in our tropical resort at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba..AKA Club Gitmo.

The lucky 455 residents of this resort are fed 3 square meals per day of strictly halal food and given the opportunity to perform their daily prayers, to fast and to perform terawih prayers during Ramadan.

The food served to the residents of Club Gitmo is better in many cases than the food being served to our troops in the Armed Services. Believe it or not, Congressional decree prevents the military from serving MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat – vacuum packed sealed food bags served to U.S. troops) to detainees because it would be considered "abuse." I'm sure our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan would be proud and happy to know that the people that were shooting at them are now being fed better than they are...

Here's a sample halal menu, served just last week:

*Orange Glazed Chicken
*Rice Pilaf
*Steamed Peas & Mushrooms
*Fruit Roupee

Ummm, ummm, ummm!

In addition, on Ramadan the guests at Club Gitmo are served lamb, dates and honey as part of their holiday meals...with extra large portions to make up for the daily fast.

What's more, during Ramadan,medical personnel are constantly in attendence to monitor the prisoners and make sure that no one gets ill or dehydrated during the Ramadan fast. As a general rule, guests at Club Gitmo receive medical and dental care equivalent to the level of care given our own military.

`Mommy, I wanna go to Club Gitmo for Ramadan!'


Guests at Gitmo get clothing, a pair of shoes and slippers,toiletries, towels, a new mattress, sheets, a prayer mat, a copy of the Quran and tasbih (prayer beads)..all provided by the largesse of the infidel American taxpayers. An arrow pointing to Mecca is painted on the floor of their cells or their bed frames.

Residents get regular periods for recreation in several designated areas. In each area, there is a soccer ball and a black arrow pointing to Mecca just in case prayer time comes up during a match.

There have been numerous incidents involving assaults on guards..a favorite Club Gitmo tradition involves pelting the guards with feces, urine and other substances. The guards,of course, are strictly forbidden to physically retaliate or respond to verbal or physical abuse by Gitmo's residents.

At Club Gitmo, the guest is always right.

In contrast, let's take a look at some other guests of the American taxpayer and the facilities they merit..

7 American Marines and one Sailor are currently being held virtually incommunicado in the brig at Camp Pendleton because of an accusation that they are all connected in the murder of a civilian in Iraq.

Because a former marine officer turned congressman named John Murtha made an issue by accusing them of being `murderers' on national television, they have been treated very differently that the guests at Club Gitmo, and it's obvious that they are being made an example of as a political sop to the 'Arab street'.

According to one of the defence attorneys, former brigadier General David Brahms,the government’s case seems to rest primarily on statements signed by the accused themselves, statements that defenders of the "Pendleton 8" say are highly suspect.

In spite of the fact the accused hail from all over the country, each with different dialects. educational levels and outlooks from their upbringing, Brahms said the statements "look remarkably alike."

The government has yet to comply with rules of discovery and share any other evidence it may have with defense attorneys or allow the defense to examine the alleged crime scene...so the case basically depends on statements screwed out of incarcerated and intimidated junior enlisted personnel, by Iraqis with a probable axe to grind, and on a completely contaminated crime scene in Iraq that the defence attoneys were forbidden access to.

Lovely.

According to Brahms, several of the marines were kept incarcerated in high security solitary lockdown for a month before charges were even filed. And the NCIS (Naval Crimes Investigation Service) put each of the accused in a room for up to eight hours without food or bathroom breaks, threatened them with facing the death penalty if they didn’t cooperate, wrote up statements for them rather than taking statements, then browbeat the suspects into signing them.

The attorneys allege that the accused were told if they signed there would be some form of non-judicial punishment, such as being busted down a stripe. Instead, after they signed, those promises were broken and they were flown to Camp Pendleton and placed in lockdown in the brig. Unlike the guests at Cub Gitmo, the accused, until last week, were kept under Maximum Security, Solitary Confinement and normally shackled whenever they were out of their cells.

There have also been complaints about the defendents receiving adequate medical care. One of the marines, Lance Corporal Lawrence Pennington was reportedly denied a dental visit for three months, in spite of his complaints about pain.

I guess it's all in the vacation plan you sign up for: Enlist as an Islamic terrorist and a known murderer and you too may end up with a tropical island paradise vacation at Club Gitmo.

Enlist as a marine or sailor and get on the wrong side of a headlines seeking congressman and a military pushed to be politically correct and you are presumed guilty until proven innocent - and end up with much less desireable facilities and amenities.

Anybody need any more evidence that we're not taking this war seriously?

Mark Steyn: `The Apathy of Defeat'

Mark Steyn asks the question:If our cultural past isn't worth defending, why should our future be?

UPDATE: Some of you have had trouble accessing the link to the piece, so here it is in full:

"Five years after the (a) all too predictable blowback to U.S. foreign policy born of decades of poverty and desperation or (b) controlled explosion by Bush-Cheney-Halliburton-Zionist agents (delete according to taste), I get a lot of mail on the lines of: C'mon, man, cut to the chase--are we gonna win or lose?

Well, let me come at that in an evasive non-chase-cutting manner and circle around to it very gradually. I gave a speech in Sydney last month and among the audience was a lady called Pauline Hanson. A decade ago, Miss Hanson exploded onto the political scene Down Under on an explicitly nativist platform, forming the One Nation Party and arguing that Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians." She was mocked mercilessly as a former fish'n'chip shop owner, a 14-year-old school-leaver, an old slapper of dubious romantic attachments, etc. On the last point, I must say, having seen her in a little black number on the TV show Dancing with the Stars, I thought she was a fine-looking woman, an impression confirmed when she stood up to ask her question.

Nonetheless, her question was a little overwrought. After some remarks about "grave concern for Australia," flag-burning, immigrants who "do not want to assimilate," and "a push for multiculturalism," she ended with: "This is not just happening in Australia. We see it happening worldwide, as you said, in the western societies. I want to ask you who's doing it, why is it happening?"

Now I don't happen to agree with all the "swamped by Asians" stuff. An ability to prioritize is essential in politics and, simply as a practical matter, there's no point in our present struggle in making enemies of large numbers of potential allies. So I took refuge in a big philosophical answer, and said I thought it all went back to the battlefields of the Somme. The ruling classes of the great powers believed they had lost their moral authority in the First World War and, although they rallied sufficiently to defeat Nazism and fascism and eventually communism, they never truly recovered their cultural confidence.

There's always been a market for self-loathing in free societies: after all, the most effectively anti-western idea of all was itself an invention of the West, cooked up by Karl Marx while sitting in the Reading Room of the British Library. The obvious defect in communism is that it's decrepit and joyless and therefore of limited appeal. Fascism, likewise, had many takers in those parts of the cultural West that were politically deficient--i.e., continental Europe--but it had minimal support in the heart of the political West--i.e., the English-speaking world. So the counter-tribalists came up with something subtler and suppler than communism and fascism--the slipperiest ism of all. The great strength of "multiculturalism" is not that it's an argument against the West but that it short-circuits the possibility of argument. If there's no difference between English Common Law and native healing circles and Tamil Tiger fundraisers and gay marriage and sharia, then what's to discuss? Even to want to debate the merits is to find oneself on the wrong side--for, if the core belief of multiculturalism is that there's nothing to discuss and everything's equally nice and fluffy, then to favour honest argument puts you, by definition, on the extremist side.

I'm sure most of my colleagues at the Western Standard have found themselves in this situation on call-in shows or at public meetings. You point out, for example, that there are very few "free" Muslim societies. And your questioner retorts: "Well, that's just your opinion." And so you pull up a few facts about GDP per capita, freedom of religion, life expectancy, women's rights, etc. And she says: "Well, you're just imposing your values on them." And you realize that the great advantage of cultural relativism is that it renders argument impossible. There is no longer enough agreed reality. It's like playing tennis with an opponent who thinks your ace is a social construct.

To be sure, there are still those who are beyond the pale. Indeed, in a culture of boundless tolerance, there are all kinds of things we won't tolerate. Hating Jews, for example, is strictly verboten. Well, it's verboten if you're an elderly white male of German extraction, like Reni Sentana-Ries (formerly Reinhard Gustav Mueller) of Edmonton. Herr Sentana-Ries was sentenced to 16 months in jail by the Court of Queen's Bench for anti-Semitic screeds on his widely unread website in which he referred to Jews as "subhuman" "debauched" "demons."

On the other hand, if you're not an elderly white male of German extraction, if you're a large crowd of persons of, ahem, non-German extraction and you march through downtown Calgary with placards reading "DEATH TO THE JEWS," nobody prosecutes you. If you're the A-list imams at the Grand Mosque of Stockholm and you sell cassettes referring to Jews as "the brothers of pigs and apes" and urging believers to go out and kill them, Sweden's chancellor of justice, Goran Lambertz, says no problem, these are just the routine designations "used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict"--i.e., threatening to kill Jew pigs is just part of the vibrant multicultural tapestry. The president of Iran, like the hapless Herr Sentana-Ries, is also a Holocaust denier and one with rather more advanced plans for resuming implementation of the final solution. But he gets photo ops with the UN secretary-general and EU officials.

In other words, Jew-hating isn't the problem, only Jew-hating by certain narrowly defined types of Jew-haters. Even white men can get away with Jew-hating these days--not the old-school neo-Nazi white-supremacist jackboots-a-go-go Jew-hating, but certainly the new school of Jews-are-today's-Nazis disproportionate ambulance-targeting neo-apartheid Jew-hating.

The Fuehrer isn't coming out of retirement and, even if he does, there aren't enough Jews left in Europe to man a decent genocide. And it seems oddly apposite that the more we fetishize an extinct enemy the more Jews in Britain and Australia and even Montreal are targeted by the new Jew-haters. The question is: what other than Hitler is our society prepared to make a moral judgment over? Bernard Lewis, the West's pre-eminent scholar of Islam, worked for British intelligence through the grimmest hours of the Second World War. "In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told The Wall Street Journal a few months ago. "It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy."
Western Standard Cruise

That first is the most important: it's not just that "we don't know who we are" but that cultural relativism strips the question of its basic legitimacy. In Britain, they used to say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the sort of line it's easy to mock as a lot of Victorian hooey. But it contains an important truth. This present conflict will be won (if at all) in the kindergarten classes of America's grade schools, and Canada's, and Britain's and Europe's. Because the resolve necessary to win a war can't be put on and taken off like a suit of armour. It has to be bred in the bone, and sustained by the broader institutions of society. And the typical western education, even when it's not telling you that your country's principal legacy is racism and oppression, teaches history in a vacuum--random facts, a few approved figures, but no overarching heroic narrative. And, if the past isn't worth defending, why should the future be?

Which brings me back to where we came in: are we gonna win or lose? I'd say right now the best bet for much of the world is a slow ongoing incremental defeat, the kind most folks don't notice until it's too late. That's to say, in 20 years' time many relatively pleasant parts of the planet are going to be a lot less pleasant. That doesn't mean "Islamofascism" or "radical Islam" or even just plain "Islam" is going to win. But it's interesting that big-shot analysts in Moscow and Beijing have concluded that, just as Hizb'allah is a useful proxy for Iran, so the broader jihad can be a useful (if unwitting) proxy for Russia and China. I doubt that will work out too well for them in the long run, but they're not wrong to conclude that a civilization's overwhelming military dominance, economic dominance and technological dominance count for naught if it's ideologically insecure. The issue is self-defence. If you're a genuine cultural relativist--if you really believe our society is no better or worse than any other--you're about to get the opportunity not just to talk the talk but to walk the walk. Good luck.

Short takes, 9/26/06

JoshuaPundit has a new feature : Short Takes. This will encompass tuff I see that I think merits the attention of Joshua's Army members and that I will embellish with a few lines of the wit, wisdom, insight and written insurgency you've come to expect from your pal Freedom Fighter.

This is an attempt to cover more ground in less time and compress a lot into a small space, rather like the young gentleman seen above. This is as opposed to longer pieces, which will continue to be devoted to what I consider are larger and more important stories and issues. This is an experiment, so let's see how it goes. And of course, let me know if this format is to your liking:

*Shinzo Abe has become Japan's New Leader with a conservative, nationalist pro-American pro west agenda.
His rise to power marks a new direction for Japanese politics.

Among other things, Abe has pledged to revise Japan's post WWII pacifist constitution and strengthen Japan's military. Good news...

* In more proof that Islamic intimidation works, the world reknowned Deustch Oper cancelled a scheduled performance of Mozart's 'Ideomeno'..and probably any subsequent performances of this classic.
The decision was made when Berlin security officials warned that putting on the opera as planned would present an "incalculable security risk".

In the production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon and the Prophet Mohammad, which sit on chairs.

And here, I thought a lot of Muslims liked severed heads! Ooops I forgot... only infidel's severed heads...

* Adolf Hitler is in the news today, with an English auction house selling Hitler paintings .
Actually, Der Fuhrer was a good painter..he could do a bedroom, two coats in record time.

* Pakistan's President Pervaz Musharraf's new book, `In the Line Of Fire' has ticked a lot of people off. For one thing, he asserts that Pakistan received millions of dollars in bounty money from the US for captured terrorists,and admits finally that that the Pakistani Army aided terrorist attacks against Indian Kashmir and that Pakistani scientist AQ Khan helped Iranextensively.

This should pretty much be a death knell, at least for a while on any India/Pakistan talks...and maybe clue a few people in our government in on Pakistan's status as an `ally' in the war on jihad.

* Condi Rice and the US government are still mentally masturbating (sorry) over the idea of sanctions on Iran. While in this article she's mostly talking about gasoline, even Ms. Rice, who's no idiot has to know that `sanctions' are a ridiculous idea and will not work in the least. Nothing is a substitute for a good, forceful full on anti-jihad assault and regime change.

* The Jihadi regime in Somalia continues to tighten the screws, dispersing any protests to sharia rule and 20 arresting 20 women who had the courage to stand up to the jihadis. No telling what will happen to them....for now, most people in Mogadishu seem to have a wait and see attitude and to welcome even a semblence of law and order. They'll find out the reality soon enough.

* Afghanistan, like Iraq is in turmoil. Today, a suicide bomber murdered 18 Afghanis in the Southern province of Kandahar. The US quasi-withdrawal in favor of NATO appears to have been somewhat premature, and U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeil is slated to take over command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan currently headed by British Army three-star, Lt. Gen. David Richards.

Did Mr. Bill `lose his temper'? Don't bet on it.

The blogosphere is all agog at ex-president Bill Clinton's apparent melt down on Chris Wallace's Fox News show.

I believe they're misjudinging Mr. Bill.

First of all, nothing our ex-president does is by accident. This screed by Clinton was designed to counteract the very real perception by many Americans that the Democratic party is `weak on Islamic terrorism' and energize the base in the run up to the November midterms.

I wouldn't be surprised if Clinton rehearsed this.

Second, by asking the question, Wallace played neatly into Mr. Bill's hands quite nicely, giving weight to the absurb position that Clinton and many on the left have had all along..that we only have a conflict with al Qaeda and with Osama bin-Laden and it's all just a law enforcement problem.

Our fixation with Osama and al Qaeda is a real indication of how little we're taking this war seriously.

Magically eliminate Osama bin Laden from the face of the earth and would anything change? Is the jihad against America and the west suddenly going to be called off? Will Iran's leaders forego their nuclear weapons program and join with Dubbya in singing `kumbaya' in Farsi at a barbecue in Crawford? Is Hezbollah going to disband its cells in Europe and America? Are the Saudis going to foreswear Wahabism and stop importing jihad through the mosques and madrassahs they control in the west because Osama is now highfiving with Mo' and Allah?

I don't think so.

The reality is that Osama and the boys from al Qaeda are little more than subcontractors for jihad, and they would be unable to operate if they weren't being harbored, funded, aided and abetted by certain Islamic nations, just like a number of other Muslim groups operating as a spearpoint in service of the great war against the west. Until we see that, understand that al Qaeda is merely one of the poison branches rather than the whole tree and are willing to act on that reality, we haven't a hope of pursuing this war successfully.

Oh, just for the record, here's a nice quote from Richard Clarke's book, the one Mr. Bill kept insisting that Chris Wallace read courtesy of the NRO's Byron York:

" [I]t’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.

Clinton did not give up in the sense of an executive who gives an order and then moves on to other things, thinking the order is being carried out when in fact it is being ignored. Instead, Clinton knew at the time that his top military and intelligence officials were dragging their feet on going after bin Laden and al Qaeda. He gave up rather than use his authority to force them into action."

Mr. Bill obviously had other priorities.

Pope Benedict meets with Muslim envoys, and bows to the intimidation

Pope Benedict XVI met today with a number of Islamic envoys to try and defuse some of the Muslim rage generated by his remarks on Islam.

The full text of pope's remarks to Muslim leaders at Castel Gandolfo can be read here.

Essentially, it was yet another call for `dialogue' and for the renunciation of violence done in the name of religion.

The remarks themselves were inocuous, and on the surface, there's nothing wrong with the Pope meeting with Muslim envoys..except that there is, given the context.

While this meeting and the Pope's remarks and assurances of respect for Islam will no doubt help to quiet things down and to ease the threat against Christians and Church property located in Muslim ruled lands, it obsecures the Pope's central premise in his original remarks - the Christian concept that G-d is a reasonable diety who has no mandate for forced conversion, violence and compulsion in religion.

Whether the Pope has actually apologized, it gives the appearance of an apology to the Muslim world..which is exactly how it is being represented by the Muslim press and the Islamic religious establishment, as a succesful exercise in intimidation.

As usual with these occurances, there has been no corresponding apology, no condemnation of the violence that occurred or call for peaceful dialogue from the Islamic world. Just like the MoToons controversy, from the Muslim's perspective, they `won' - and forced the Pope into acknowledging their power.

With all respect to Pope Benedict's position, this was a mistake on his part, and one that will be felt in the future.

Caroline Glick` A prayer for 5767'

The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick writes an inciteful piece on why the controversy over Pope Benedict's remarks on Islam is a message to Israel and the Jews as well, and relates to the controversy over the existence of Israel...here's a sample:

"Pope Benedict XVI has become political Islam's newest excuse for rioting. Mobs from Rawalpindi to Ramallah are burning him in effigy. Muslim leaders from Gaza to Indonesia to Qatar, from Turkey to Washington and London are attacking the pope and demanding that he apologize to Islam for what they consider to be a heinous attack against their religion. {...}

Benedict quoted from a dialogue between Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar of Islam circa 1391 where the emperor criticized harshly the Islamic practice of forcibly converting non-Muslims to Islam.

In the pope's words, the Byzantine emperor, "addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'

"The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God,' he says, 'is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature.'"

As Benedict explained, the harsh judgment that the Byzantine emperor rendered on Islam stemmed directly from his Christian understanding of God as a reasonable deity.

....limiting an analysis of Benedict's lecture to the Muslim world's hysterical reaction would ignore the pope's central point. Benedict's overarching message in that lecture was that to survive, a culture must be willing to embrace its identity, for if it does not, it won't even be capable of understanding why it should survive.

While Benedict's specific message was to his fellow Christians, the Jewish people should take heed of his general message. Today, the Jewish people, in Israel and throughout the world find ourselves under attack from all quarters. The rise of anti-Semitism globally, and particularly in the Islamic world, finds us in a period of grave self-doubt. Like the Europeans, our ability to defend ourselves against the swelling ranks of haters is dependent on our ability as a people and as individuals to embrace our identity as Jews."

Read the whole thing here.

A commendation and a mention in dispatches to long time Joshua's Army member Zeb Gardner for bringing this to FF's attention..

Europe continues edging to the right..this time in Switzerland

In the latest example confirming my analysis of Europe continuing to move rightwards, the Swiss voted heavily ( over 70%) in favor today of ratifying tough restrictions sharply limiting asylum seekers and non-European workers efforts to gain entry to Switzerland.

While Switzerland's Swiss Socialist Party and various politicians on the Left warned of damage to Switzerland's humanitarian reputation and got enough signatures opposing the new laws to force a referendum, they lost badly at the polls.

Switzerland's restrictions on asylum seekers and non-European workers are now some of the toughest in the West.

All asylum seekers will now be required to have a valid passport, and the new law denies financial assistance to failed asylum-seekers and threatens them with longer periods of detention if they refuse to leave.

Voters also approved policy showing clear preferences for job seekers from the European Union, and from non-EU Switzerland's allies within the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), as opposed to those from outside the two blocs.

The latter will only be accepted if they have special skills the country needs and get a special dispensation..which means that in Switzerland's case, very few will be accepted at all.

In the same referendum, Swiss voters rejected an attempt by center-left parties to essentially create a `hidden tax' on Swiss workers by redirecting part of the Swiss central bank's profit to the public welfare system.

This trend will definitely continue, as the nations of Europe attempt to reclaim their countries.

Is Osama dead? Who cares?

First of all,my apologies for the light output of the last few days. I have been rather unavailable this weekend.

The BI-IG non-story this week has been speculation on the demise of Osama bin-Laden, caused by a leaked French intel report from the the DGSE (France's foreign intelligence agency) printed by a French regional newspaper L'Est Républicain on Saturday.

The report said: "The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his lower limbs. They are waiting to get more details, notably the exact place of his burial, before officially announcing the news."

The Saudi embassy in Washington DC said: "The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no evidence to support recent media reports that Osama bin Laden is dead. Information that has been reported otherwise is purely speculative and cannot be independently verified."

Of course, as we know, rumours of bin-Laden's death have circulated before.

The fixation with Osama bin-Laden and al Qaeda is just another symptom of our refusal to take this war seriously. I'd love somebody to explain to me how his death would change anything. Is the jihad suddenly going to be called off? Will Iran's leaders forego their nuclear weapons program and join with Dubbya in singing `kumbaya' in Farsi at a barbecue in Crawford? Is Hezbollah going to disband its cells in Europe and America? Are the Saudis going to foreswear Wahabism and stop importing jihad through the mosques and madrassahs they control in the west, because Osama is now highfiving with Mo' and Allah?

I don't think so.

Osama was never more than a subcontractor for jihad, and he and al Qaeda could not operate if they weren't being aided and abetted by certain Islamic nations.No Islamic jihadi organizations could. Put 100 Americans in a room and ask them to name some of those nations, and I bet you half of them could come up with a half dozen without even breaking a sweat. What's more, they would pretty much be the same six countries, and the only reason the percentage of Americans guessing correctly would be only 50% is because of most Americans' lamentable unfamiliarity with geography.

Our government, however, knows exactly who's involved and where all of these places are. What they're planning on doing about it is a lot more interesting question to me than Osama's problems with the local tap water in Waziristan.

Weekend Monkey Sez: Remember... please drink responsibly

Have a great weekend!

L'Shana Tova !

Happy New Year! Celebrating 5,767 years with the same management.