#2
Dr Ozdowski says while Australian universities are secular and it is important to keep them that way, there are measures such as providing prayer spaces that can help.
Bad start there, Doc. Accomodating Muslim demands in any way shape or form is just the thin edge of an even bigger wedge. Stop now before it gets out of control, as it is most assuredly going to do.
"When we expect Muslim students to attend classes on Friday, we need to help them so they can pray as well," he said.
No you do not. All Muslims know that if there are legitimate circumstances preventing timely observance then they are not being sinful. Any who claim otherwise are pushing the usual bullshit agenda of endlessly offended Muslim sensitivities.
"When we deal with nurses' training, some Islamic women were saying, 'We don't like to touch bodies of men,' but it's not appropriate," he said.
"If they do not wish to touch all their patients which require nursing, then perhaps they should think about some other profession when it's not required."
These whiners need to slag off. They can specialize in Ob-Gyn if they want. Too bad the first step usually involves obtaining status as an LVN or RN. I can just envision one of these finnickey Islamic nurses letting a man needlessly die out of refusal to provide critical first aid. No mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for someonenot even a womanwho choked while eating a BLT.
Though I'm fairly sure most of you read LGF, his link to Zombie's new archive deserves some highlighting. I linked to Zombie's comment, you'll need to scroll up for the link to Zombie's site, but DO NOT view (Zombie's link, the LGF link is fine) from your work computer. You may not wish to view at all; they are horrific.
#1
I'll trust you on that one, Seafarious -- I need nightmare-free sleep. It's quite enough for me to know intellectually that the jihadis have gone well beyond mean into unadulterated evil.
General Pervez Musharraf was surprised. Visiting New York for a session of the UN, the last thing the Pakistani president expected was to be confronted with evidence of his countrys secret sales of nuclear bomb technology and equipment to members of the axis of evil.
Yet here on the polished wooden table of Musharrafs hotel suite, George Tenet, director of the CIA, was laying out a sheaf of incriminating evidence. There were intricate drawings of Pakistans P-1 uranium-enrich-ing centrifuge, with part numbers, dates and signatures. And there were details of the activities of Abdul Qadeer A Q Khan, the so-called Father of the Pakistani Bomb: his travels around the world, bank statements, even paperwork showing what his organisation had offered for sale and to which countries.
A senior Musharraf aide described it disingenuously as the most embarrassing moment in the presidents life not because of the evidence but because he had felt Pakistan was on a long leash as it was integral to the Americans war on terror. It was only three months since President George W Bush had cancelled a $1 billion debt and instigated a new $3 billion military and economic assistance package for Pakistan.
Now the leash was being wound in, but Musharraf got over his surprise. He moved on and thought, so be it. He was a survivor. Pakistan was a survivor. We would adapt to a new reality, a source said.
But he was not going to confess all: Musharraf would play dumb until he ascertained what the US knew and whom we could blame.
Posted by: john frum ||
09/03/2007 06:20 ||
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#1
Pakistan is Operations central but ideology and funding comes from Saudi!!!!!
Posted by: Paul ||
09/03/2007 7:13 Comments ||
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#2
After Taliban-al-Queda launched aggressive war against America on 9-11, one option was to carpet bomb southern Afghanistan for the Northern Alliance. In World War 2, the USAF - under the Allied framework of "Bomber Command" - unleashed annihilation bombing of "built up areas" in enemy territory. Why the hell did we chose to grant special treatment to Islamofascists, when even the Nazis didn't slaughter over 3000 people on US soil? Kandahar could have been flattened, like Dresden. Either Mushy and Kharzai shape up, or we set up a new "Bomber Command," and make waste of Central Asian savages.
#3
Four years on, Khan is still under house arrest, and Musharraf is still in power. In a further exercise in realpolitik, another political deal is being stitched together to keep him in the presidency as Americas best hope of maintaining stability in this geopolitically vital but desperately unstable country.
The "realpolitik" of this situation had damn well better include the precise location and coordinates of every single nuclear device and store of weapons grade material within Pakistani borders. Musharraf has run with the fox and hunted with the hounds for far too long.
Robert Gallucci, who as a young US diplomat tracked its nuclear programme from inception in 1972 and ended his career as Bushs adviser on WMD, describes Pakistan as the number one threat to the world at this moment in time. He warns: If it all goes off, a nuclear bomb in a US or European city, Im sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistans direction.
We had also damn well better have samples of Pakistani fissile material to isotopically fingerprint their nuclear materials. If this has not already been delivered, then Pakistan should be put on notice that a single terrorist nuclear attack upon American soil will see Islamabad and the entire country reduced to fine ash.
Much of the programme had been funded using hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid diverted by the Pakistan military.
Typical Muslim ingratitude. I'd certainly like to see if it has ever been the case that aid to Islamic countries has not been diverted into channels opposing American interests.
Muslim majority countries will never by reliable allies for America. They are inherently unstable and driven by such inimical ideology that there is no useful way for them to participate in global progress. The West must begin a campaign of sequentially toppling Islamic regimes around the world. Not a single one of them is worthy of governing a central African village, much less an entire nation. Political Islam must die.
#4
According to Mark Hibbs, editor of Nucleonics, the Khan network is very much active.. Pakistan needs to to obtain the components for its bomb program.
Posted by: john frum ||
09/03/2007 14:55 Comments ||
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Original Title: To Old Times (Peggy Noonan) Her subtitle is my title.
Once I went hot-air ballooning in Normandy. It was the summer of 1991. It was exciting to float over the beautiful French hills and the farms with crisp crops in the fields. It was dusk, and we amused ourselves calling out "Bonsoir!" to cows and people in little cars. We had been up for an hour or so when we had a problem and had to land. We looked for an open field, aimed toward it, and came down a little hard. The gondola dragged, tipped and spilled us out. A half dozen of us emerged scrambling and laughing with relief.
Suddenly before us stood an old man with a cracked and weathered face. He was about 80, in rough work clothes. He was like a Life magazine photo from 1938: "French farmer hoes his field." He'd seen us coming from his farmhouse and stood before us with a look of astonishment as the huge bright balloon deflated and tumbled about.
One of us spoke French and explained our situation. The farmer said, or asked, "You are American." We nodded, and he made a gesture-I'll be back!-and ran to the house. He came back with an ancient bottle of Calvados, the local brandy. It was literally covered in dust and dry dirt, as if someone had saved it a long time.
He told us-this will seem unlikely, and it amazed us-that he had not seen an American in many, many years, and we asked when. "The invasion," he said. The Normandy invasion.
Then he poured the Calvados and made a toast. I wish I had notes on what he said. Our French speaker translated it into something like, "To old times." And we raised our glasses knowing we were having a moment of unearned tenderness. Lucky Yanks, that a wind had blown us to it.
That was 16 years ago, and I haven't seen some of the people with me since that day, but I know every one of us remembers it and keeps it in his good-memory horde.
He didn't welcome us because he knew us. He didn't treat us like royalty because we had done anything for him. He honored us because we were related to, were the sons and daughters of, the men of the Normandy Invasion. The men who had fought their way through France hedgerow by hedgerow, who'd jumped from planes in the dark and climbed the cliffs and given France back to the French. He thought we were of their sort. And he knew they were good. He'd seen them, when he was young.
I've been thinking of the old man because of Iraq and the coming debate on our future there. Whatever we do or should do, there is one fact that is going to be left on the ground there when we're gone. That is the impression made by, and the future memories left by, American troops in their dealings with the Iraqi people.
I don't mean the impression left by the power and strength of our military. I mean the impression left by the character of our troops&0151; by their nature and generosity, by their kindness. By their tradition of these things.
The American troops in Iraq, our men and women, are inspiring, and we all know it. But whenever you say it, you sound like a greasy pol: "I support our valiant troops, though I oppose the war," or "If you oppose the war, you are ignoring the safety and imperiling the sacrifice of our gallant troops."
I suspect that in their sophistication&0151;and they are sophisticated&0151;our troops are grimly amused by this. Soldiers are used to being used. They just do their job.
We know of the broad humanitarian aspects of the occupation&0151;the hospitals being built, the schools restored, the services administered, the kids treated by armed forces doctors. But then there are all the stories that don't quite make it to the top of the heap, and that in a way tell you more. The lieutenant in the First Cavalry who was concerned about Iraqi kids in the countryside who didn't have shoes, so he wrote home, started a drive, and got 3,000 pairs sent over. The lieutenant colonel from California who spent his off-hours emailing hospitals back home to get a wheelchair for a girl with cerebral palsy.
The Internet is littered with these stories. So is Iraq. I always notice the pictures from the wire services, pictures that have nothing to do with government propaganda. The Marine on patrol laughing with the local street kids; the nurse treating the sick mother.
A funny thing. We're so used to thinking of American troops as good guys that we forget: They're good guys! They have American class.
And it is not possible that the good people of Iraq are not noticing, and that in some way down the road the sum of these acts will not come to have some special meaning, some special weight of its own. The actor Gary Sinise helps run Operation Iraqi Children, which delivers school supplies with the help of U.S. forces. When he visits Baghdad grade schools, the kids yell, "Lieutenant Dan!"&0151;his role in "Forrest Gump," the story of another good man.
Some say we're the Roman Empire, but I don't think the soldiers of Rome were known for their kindness, nor the people of Rome for their decency. Some speak of Abu Ghraib, but the humiliation of prisoners there was news because it was American troops acting in a way that was out of the order of things, and apart from tradition. It was weird. And they were busted by other American troops.
You could say soldiers of every country do some good in war beyond fighting, and that is true enough. But this makes me think of the statue I saw once in Vienna, a heroic casting of a Red Army soldier. Quite stirring. The man who showed it to me pleasantly said it had a local nickname, "The Unknown Rapist." There are similar memorials in Estonia and Berlin; they all have the same nickname. My point is not to insult Russian soldiers, who had been born into a world of communism, atheism, and Stalin's institutionalization of brutish ways of being. I only mean to note the stellar reputation of American troops in the same war at the same time. They were good guys.
They're still good.
We should ponder, some day when this is over, what it is we do to grow such men, and women, what exactly goes into the making of them.
Whatever is decided in Washington I hope our soldiers know what we really think of them, and what millions in Iraq must, also. I hope some day they get some earned tenderness, and wind up over the hills of Iraq, and land, and an old guy comes out and says, "Are you an American?" And they say yes and he says, "A toast, to old times."
Someday...[wipes tear]
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/03/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Whe I was at engineer school another student invited me to drink a Calvados. A farm-made one. Thinking it was wine (I have not been raised in France) I too, large sip of it. It was liquid fire.
Calvaos is a liquor amde from apples who goes around 50% alchol. But farm-amde Calvados like offered to me and to this guy is 60-65% alcohol.
Now you are warned about the dangers of overflying Normandy.
#2
JFM, reminds me of slivovitz (plum brandy)in my old country. Usually distilled for 50%, but sometimes going as high as 70% (had a supply from a friend--a catholic priest that made the best slivovitz wide and far, ~65%). The best quality (no cores, no molded fruits in the fermenting barrel made from oak planks) is a marvellous drink. You could drink it till you drop'd, but no hangover in the morning, no headache, just a mighty thirst.
#3
As I conclude my tour here, this time as a contractor, I can tell without hesitation that American Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, and yes Sailors have no doubt whatsoever that the American people are 100% percent behind them and are praying for them daily! These brave men and women are indeed the new "Greatest Generation" and they clearly understand the purpose of this very difficult and bloody endeavor. The are smart and savy, a damn site beyond what I was at the age. They are polite and respectful to old codgers like me, and fix my computer when it goes down for 500th time, and with a smile. They are tough and have grit! They clearly understand the betrayal and hypocracy of the MSM and liberal politicians. They are keenly aware of the threat to western civilization that we currently face and remember 9/11 vividly. Just as their fathers, they mourn their dead with patriots tears and prayers learned from the mom and dad. They e-mail and call their folks back home often, as they should. There is no draft, and probably never will be again. That day is over. These brave men and women are all volunteers and are silently very proud of their involvement and their vital role in ridding the planet of these evil, butchering vermin. After I am long gone and they are old and grey I know these brave warrior professionals will muster in court house lawns, Legion or VFW halls, or schools and carry the colors of our nation proudly at parades. I hope they will recall with great honor and pride their days in the Iraqi Theater of Operations (ITO), and remember their fallen brothers. It's what we do as Americans. It is called honor and tradition, it is good. We must never falter, we must never fail in the doing of it. If you can't love anything else, love and pray for a soldier. God will respect you for it! God Bless and keep them all!
. . . Our own senator Dianne Feinstein wants us Californians to carpool and only run our dishwashers when they're full (both reasonable suggestions). But her motivation for our frugality isn't saving the earth -- it's to offset her many trips on her husband's Gulfstream IV. Aviation experts say that just one cross-country round trip on a GIV churns out between 83,000 to 90,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. Meantime, while the eco-moralizing Kerrys and Feinsteins are choking the clouds with private coast-to-coast jaunts, the average earth-raping American, on a per-capita basis, produces just 50,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from all activities (including driving those shameful SUVs) in an entire year. Let them eat carbon cake, John.
Indeed, the mere business of being green (or at least appearing to be) takes a nauseating toll. Of late, actor Leonardo DiCaprio has become a leading, high-profile spokesperson for the green movement because . . . well, he's pretty. Which is precisely why Vanity Fair, for its so-called "Green Issue" (printed on high-quality, non-recycled paper, by the way) flew Leo, photographer Annie Leibovtiz, and an untold number of assistants, makeup artists, and assorted hangers-on to Iceland to produce an earth-saving photograph of the Green Idol on a glacier alongside the polar bear cub Knut (who in fact was Photoshopped in from Berlin). Puffed VF: "Now three and a half months old, little Knut has become a powerful (if not controversial) symbol of what this planet has to lose to global warming. Such ecological concerns are familiar to actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio, so it seemed natural to pair these two handsome boys on Annie Leibovitz's cover for this year's Green Issue."
You can almost hear the exchange at the Vanity Fair editorial meeting. Junior art director: "What if we really make a green statement, and just drive Leo and Annie down to the San Diego Zoo in a Prius and take a polar-bear shot there?" Editorial green director: "What? No way! We need to fly the entire crew halfway around the world and back and spend at least a few days hacking around on that precious ice to get the perfect green shot I want! Now, call my secretary and get a limo; I'm late for my lunch at the Four Seasons."
Posted by: Mike ||
09/03/2007 08:56 ||
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#1
You missed the best part of the article (IMHO):
Which finally gets around to my point: Our leaders and media pundits aren't panicking about global warming and touting the bliss of going green because they're actually worried about the future of the planet. They're making a fuss because they think global warming is going to affect them. Why, if New York City turns into Venice and LA dries up and Aspen melts, where are we going to host our gala save-the-earth benefit dinners? Why, I could even lose two or three of my six homes!
How do I know this is true? Because, thus far at least, global warming is -- as Al Gore actually gets right -- inconvenient, not a true problem. Sure, it's been a hot summer. Maybe hotter than usual. It might get a little worse, or it might not. We live on a geologically and atmospherically active planet; temperature variations are the norm. Sorry, Boomers: It's not always going to be 75 and sunny the way it was that glorious day at Woodstock. Meantime, turn up the air con a bit, or go for a swim. You're not going to die.
The thing is, while the hysterics are fretting about the "horrors" of global warming and the plight of poor little Knut, more than one million people (most of them women and children) are dying every single year -- today, right now -- of malaria. That's a problem we can fix, easily, inexpensively. A few strategic squirts of DDT, some smartly dispensed prophylactic medicines, and we could save the lives of more than one million people every single year almost overnight.
Does anybody care? Are they making movies and books about the malaria crisis? No, malaria is over there, not here. Right now, we've all got to focus on getting green and making everybody give up their SUVs so we don't burn up our planet. After all, it's a pretty long walk from the bullet-proof Suburban to the GIV. And I hate to sweat.
#2
A few strategic squirts of DDT, some smartly dispensed prophylactic medicines, and we could save the lives of more than one million people every single year almost overnight.
I don't think saving lives is on the Green agenda, though. Green is the new Red.
#3
eLarson, of course saving lives is not on their agenda. Rather the opposite, they would love to see a reduction of entire earth population to 500 million based on their "sustainability" formulas--with a ratio of greens (the leading elite as they put it, replace "leading" with "ruling" to get the correct meaning) to non-greens about 1 to 20 (transl: 20 slaves toiling for each green).
It was a surprise to Janice Boddy when she realized that the altering of female genitals through surgery, professional or amateur, looms large whenever the Sudan is mentioned. In 1976, when she went there for the first time, she was interested in studying religious beliefs of rural Muslim women. But her fellow graduate students in Canada made it clear that when they thought of the Sudan they thought first of female circumcision. This is yet another variant of Edward Said's anti-orientalism BS about ideological "creation of the other" for colonialist ends. According to the dogma, only 3rd worlders like Kim Jong Il and bin-Laden can "represent" their authentic world view. Westerners have no moral right to pass judgement; we have a moral obligation to bend to the anti-colonial will. Bite me!
Moreover, the women in the village she chose for her anthropological research insisted that she should learn about this practice and see it performed if she hoped to understand them. She followed this advice and eventually concluded that circumcision validates the village women's lives, safeguards their fertility and establishes "the meaningful parameters of their selfhood."
"Aaaaiiieee! The pain!"
"Just relax, Dearie! It's validating your life!"
"It hurts!"
"It'll safeguard your fertility!"
"You rotten bastards! You CUT MY PUBIC LIPS OFF!"
"Just think of it as setting the meaningful paramaters of your selfhood!"
"You're USING THEM TO MAKE SOUP!"
Now chair of the anthropology department at the University of Toronto, she boldly addresses this question with her new book, Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (Princeton University Press). The fact that she then falls on her face, academically speaking, does not necessarily diminish her bravery.
Her readers discover, almost at the beginning, that she has a limited idea of academic detachment and fairness. A chronology of events at the front of her book twice uses the politics-laden term "propaganda" to describe Britain's efforts in the 1940s to publicize the harm done by genital cutting. But then she quickly buckles down to her own propaganda project, a storm of disapproval directed at those who argue against the ritual cutting of female genitals.
In her first four pages she says this worldwide campaign has been sustained by imperialistic logic and spurious empathy. Much of its literature, she claims, is "moralizing and polemical" as well as self-righteous. Its supporters, including the 1995 World Conference of Women in Beijing, have "leaped to condemn what they've only presumed to understand." The word for Boddy's approach is "tendentious"-- obviously, it's calculated to promote a particular view...
#5
Women do the operations, and they are done with kitchen utensils and without sterilization or use of antibiotics. Although non-Muslim groups adopted the cult practise, its sick rationale is Koranic: if the capacity for sexual arousal is removed from women, then they won't cheat on Muslim men. The talk about "preserving fertility" is BS. The time has come to deal with tenured radicals.
#7
She followed this advice and eventually concluded that circumcision validates the village women's lives, safeguards their fertility and establishes "the meaningful parameters of their selfhood."
This sort of moral relativism is the most preposterous drivel imaginable. Boddy should be forced to undergo a one year court-ordered series of novocaine injections to her clitoris (without a topical anesthesia prep) in order that her own sexual arousal can be like that of the mutilated women she claims are so "validated".
This is the ultimate betrayal, when free women in open societies pervert their liberty to speak out against tyranny and, instead, help perpetuate savagery. Witness the logical extension of liberal "open-mindedness" brought full circle to the point of "anything goes". Witness the typical liberal rejection of anything that white Christian progressive society has originated in favor of whatever barbaric "traditions" invented by some backwater tribe of nomadic illiterates.
I would pay good money to see a debate between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Janice Boddy. Ali would eat Boddy's lunch before her chair got warm. There needs to be a concerted global effort to expose and disgrace this sort of vicious tommyrot the moment it raises its evil little pinhead.
They do operate on moral absolutes: colonialism and Western supremacism is bad; anti-colonialism and Islamic supremacism is good. Consideration of 1400 years of Muslim aggression and their wholesale destruction of native cultures is abridged, because it won't lead to a politically correct conclusion. Muslim conquerers did NOT set up self-administered Native Indian reserve lands, as we did; they indoctrinated captives on threat of murder and raped women after murdering adult males. Take away tenure and this type of garbage won't get to print.
#9
They do operate on moral absolutes: colonialism and Western supremacism is bad; anti-colonialism and Islamic supremacism is good.
My only nitpick would be that intentional support of Islamic supremacism can only be immoral. However, it is not a worthy reply to an argument which deserves much more scathing analysis. Few better dissections of modern liberalism are available than Evan Sayet's 'How Modern Liberals "Think"'
If anyone has not watched this video, WATCH IT NOW.
Sayet absolutely nails liberal rejection of tolerant Western culture.
#10
Ms. Boddy's moral and cultural relativism is the same mental disease that 'celebrates' diversity... to the extreme of excusing Mayan human sacrifices as 'valid', and non-judgementalism as a virtue. Disgusting fools.
It certainly could be - if practiced against the MEN.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/03/2007 16:23 Comments ||
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#12
Ya know, if Allan wanted women to have no feeling, then he would have made the necessary changes. So, jerkoffs of Islam are correcting their Allan ? Say what ?
This is a link to more links at Cadillac Tight. He points us to an interesting discussion by guest bloggers at Andrew Sullivan's place (while AS is on his honeymoon!) about the future of the liberal movement once GWB's not around to absorb all the hatred.
#2
I agree that once Bush leaves office, there will be this huge well of irrational hatred that has nowhere to go. The question then becomes - does it die out, or find another target?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/03/2007 6:54 Comments ||
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#3
Bush is just the focal point. With him gone, it'll spread to hatred of all good things.
Unless a Trunk gets elected, in which case, it'll just transfer.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/03/2007 7:48 Comments ||
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#4
The Bush Hatred Syndrome has almost become a mental illness that has fixated on him. The answer is they will simply find another target no mo uro.
#5
My hope is that electors place security over quixotic notions of freedom. Bush's inclusivist nation-building has been a disaster, and it is an adjunct of UN rabble democracy. Regardless of who wins the next Presidential election; indulgence of the enemy will lead them to reckless conduct that will compel the type of harsh disproportionate retaliation that should have commenced on Sept 12, 2001.
As I write, the Bush regime is participating with Howard Dean, in a convention of the Islamic Society of North America, notwithstanding the DoJ's current Trial pleadings against the ISNA as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a Texas terror case. I don't hate Bush, but I condemn his liberalism. More Christians have been murdered under his tenure than in any time since the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre. So much for "faith based" politics. It is a fact; under Bush-Clinton, Muslims have been treated as more-equal-than-others. By placing an void of certain victory before voters, Bush has diminished re-electability of the GOP. A Dem regime might want Islamofascists to vote; inevitably, an American majority will want them to die.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
