This exerpt from the Bill Whittle essay entitled “WAR”;

There are two images I will never forget, and I expect I will think of them often in the days and weeks to come. For in the front row of this parade of horror and depravity, I have watched a fundamentalist Islamic crowd stone two women to death. They were covered head to toe in shockingly white linen – the better to see the bloodstains. Taken into a field and buried up to their waists, they looked like odd white sails on a sand horizon, until the stones began to fly, leaving red carnations where they landed. One of the women just crumpled, bent at the waist, and I still pray that this person was knocked unconscious within the first minute or so. The other did not go peacefully into that good night. She died fighting and struggling, enduring the most sickening lurches as the unseen stones fell on her, twisting under that now-scarlet hood, trying to protect her face as best she could, as hundreds of her friends and relatives vented their rage, calling out the name of their god as we would cheer on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar! Allahu Ackbar!
I will not forget that image.
And I will not forget another one, either. As long as I draw breath, I swear I will never forget the sight of two people holding hands, and leaping from 108 stories above the hard concrete sidewalks that I myself have walked, gawking skyward at one of the wonders of the world. I will not forget them. I will not forget their fall, the spin that finally tore their hands apart as they fell forever, forever down that quarter-mile. I will never stop wondering what they said to each other in that last moment, or their cries to each other as they launched themselves to their deaths, having watched their friends take the same leap a few moments before. I will never forget what an unimaginable hell that their cozy office, full of coffee mugs and pictures of grandchildren, had become in order for them to make that choice, with the ruins of their friends visible on the streets so far below them.

His book, Silent America, is now out.

Imagine is “America’s alternative national anthem since 9/11�?
Words fail me.
And that’s something I have in common with John Lennon at the time he was writing that saccharine totalitarian dirge. – Andrew Stuttaford

A Belmont Club history review for the modern Nazi distortionist.

If Hitler was altogether more evil than we can conceive, he arose from a time and circumstance which few if any can still remember. Any comparisons between the 1945 and 2004 are likely to be inexact. Those who point to the shooting of Jihadi in Fallujah by a US Marine as evidence that America is drifting into Nazism would do well to remember that in 1945, American troops who arrived in Dachau were so disgusted by what they saw they executed hundreds of SS guards on the spot. This is a link to remarkable photographs of the incident.

“The killing of unarmed POWs did not trouble many of the men in I company that day for to them the SS guards did not deserve the same protected status as enemy soldiers who have been captured after a valiant fight.

To many of the men in I company, the SS were nothing more than wild, vicious animals whose role in this war was to starve, brutalize, torment, torture and murder helpless civilians.” Flint Whitlock, The Rock of Anzio, From Sicily to Dachau: A history of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division.

Iraq link roundup:
Greyhawk: It’s a good thing we’re communicating by written words now rather than spoken, because there’s a helicopter parked about 50 yards from me, still running, an ambulance next to it with a guy on a stretcher in between. It’s loud – but it’s also dark out right now so I can’t see if it’s an American on that stretcher or an Iraqi. Whoever it is they’re on their way out now. A must read.
Jeremy Brown on the current peril of Iraqi blogger Zayed. (Healing Iraq).
Rising concerns in Europe about the “growing ethnic tensions as EU nations struggle to absorb a steady stream of poor, mostly Muslim immigrants.”
James Joyner has the MSM versions, plus good news on debt forgiveness.
Donald Sensing on the Marine shooting, and how it might be viewed under the Geneva Convention.
Powerline sums coverage up succintly today –

Today, the Associated Press reports: “Violent Attacks Sweep Baghdad; GI Killed”: […] Baghdad is, I believe, a city approximately equal to Los Angeles in area and population. One can fairly question whether incidents occurring in six locations constitute “widespread clashes” “sweep[ing] Baghdad.” But, as always, the tone of the coverage of the Iraq war reflects the agenda of those who write the news.

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University writes on the effects of left wing groupthink at universities, and the effect it has on career advancement and curriculum.

Yet while the lack of conservative minds on college campuses is increasingly indisputable, the question remains: Why?
The obvious answer, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is that academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers. What allows them to do that, while at the same time they deny it, is that the bias takes a subtle form. Although I’ve met several conservative intellectuals in the last year who would love an academic post but have given up after years of trying, outright blackballing is rare. The disparate outcome emerges through an indirect filtering process that runs from graduate school to tenure and beyond.

Continue reading →

Movie reviewer Neal McLennan on Team America, World Police On John Gormley Live

“I don’t even know what to say about this movie… it’s just simply bizarre. ”
“Not a movie for kids. At all.”
“so so so not for children…”
“Fantastically crude. I can’t quote you any lines because they are so far beyond the pale in terms of bad taste.”
“Language is unbelievable”
“The sexual situations are as graphic as you can get with two wooden puppets”
“Flip side… one of the best, which is pathetic… political satires I’ve seen in years and years and years…”
“One long pulling down the pants of the self righteous on the right and on the left.”
“7.5 out of 10”
“When I say this is offensive, I’m not saying just for children. 35 year dock workers are going to be offended.”
Comparisons: Dr.Strangelove and Network
“The funniest puppet movie of all time, the most offensive puppet movie of all time.”

Now I really want to see this thing.

I am humbled. I can’t look directly at it anymore without screaming.

The Belmont Club has been following the French diplomatic movements in seeking release of the journalists kidnapped in Iraq.

If the French are not seeking to pay monetary or some other type of ransom to obtain the release of the two Frenchmen kidnapped by Iraqi terrorists nothing in their actions of the past few days makes sense. The French Foreign Minister, Michel Barner, is on tour of Middle Eastern capitals to seek support for the release of the hostages.
[…]
But the descent of so many French diplomats on Middle Eastern capitals suggests it is trying to cut a political deal with the terrorists and their backers. Since France has ruled out rescinding the headscarf ban to preserve the appearance of amour propre, the obvious alterntive is to make someone else make concessions. That someone will probably be Iraq. This may have sparked off the exchange between Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the Quai de Orsay. According to Xinhua:

… Allawi declared earlier Monday that the kidnapping of two French journalists showed that there was “no possible neutrality” in Iraq and that those who do not fight at the government level can not escape terrorism. “None of the civilized countries can escape,” he said, noting “there is no possible neutrality, as shows the kidnapping of the French journalists.” “The French deluded themselves if they would hope to stay outside,” he added.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s declaration, which came after the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq and accused France’s position towards terrorism, was “unacceptable,” the French Foreign Ministry said Monday. “This declaration seems in fact to have cast doubt on France’s determination in the fight against terrorism … France is leading untiringly a resolute action against this scourge and it is always bringing its support and contribution to all the initiatives of the international community in this field,” said Cecile Pozzo di Borgo, spokeswoman of the French Foreign Ministry. The spokeswoman reiterated her country’s call for efforts to seek a “political solution” to the Iraqi crisis, adding that “the organization of free and democratic elections would permit to get together conditions of a real political and economic reconstruction of Iraq”. France has opposed the US-led Iraq war and has no troops in Iraq.

This suggests that the French diplomats are attempting to link the release of the French hostages to changes in the method and manner in which the Iraqi elections will be held.

Stay tuned.

Quote of the Day:

“I use to be a Grim Reaper, Then I started taking antidepressants…now I am not grim anymore, I am just a Reaper and I only do catch and release for the fun of it….you should see the looks on peoples faces ……Hhhhhhhaaaarrrrrrrrr….!!!!!!” – From a Ducatti forum sigfile.

Jeff Jarvis writes;

Character is not a measure of competence. And what I really want in a President is competence. Jimmy Carter had character; he was a terrible President. Jerry Ford was his Republican counterpart: good guy, nothing President. Bill Clinton ended up with a cracked character but I say he was a good President. Richard Nixon had the character of a cockroach, yet he was, in many ways, quite competent.

I wasn’t aware the two qualities were mutually exclusive. Without character, competence promises you little more than a highly successful psychopath. See Joseph Mengele.
I also wasn’t aware that it was possible for someone as smart as Jeff to have such a fundamental lack of understanding about what character is. Or that all human beings of the age and political experience of those seeking presidential office will have had plenty of tests of their character, both small and significant, to be measured by. Character does not lie dormant until tested by crisis. It is measured in the day to day decisions we make as we grow from childhood to adulthood.
But, most of all, character is not about being without flaws. Character is the ability to recognize ones flaws and rise above them.
C. Dodd Harris emails;

Jarvis has been very impressive since 9/11, proving that one can be a liberal in one’s sensibilities and yet still retain some sense. But he will only really come fully into the light when he can finally admit to himself that Clinton really wasn’t an especially good President. Not bad, per se, but far too flawed – by the very character deficiencies Jarvis would excuse – to ever have been anything other than an placeholder President. By doing little, he managed to ride the waves created by better men and retain the office (which was all he really cared about), but no-one will remember him in 100 years. Bolder men like Bush, Reagan and Roosevelt meanwhile, will be marked down as linchpins of history.
Mr. Jarvis is only a step away, truth be told, as he is surely aware just how much the very size of the problem that loosed the shingles from his own eyes – Islamofascist terrorism – can be laid at the feckless feet of Bill Clinton’s lack of willingness to do anything about it. But he’s not quite ready to take the plunge just yet. Hence, the tortured arguments about how character isn’t important in Presidential aspirants.
Great thinkers all the way back to Aristotle have considered the inculcation of virtue the single most important task of any society. Because, as the Founders understood, without character not much else matters. That’s why they considered character the principal factor in measuring fitness for public office.

Via Jeff Jarvis

7 World Trade Center rising from the ashes.

There’s nothing like running Hell bent for leather at the enemy with your grenade and it’s fuse flying madly in the wind, and upon spotting an enemy combatant, to grab one end of the grenade in your teeth, pull, and let the rest fly. One of the kids would say “Man we don’t keep bombs like that in our bathroom. All we got is these stick-on headbands.”

Cyril Doll on Canada Day celebrations in Calgary. Which is today, of course. (Only in Canada do we work on our national holiday, if it means trading it for a long weekend.)

Last Sunday, I was counted among the 30 odd thousand fans who attended the Stampeder-Alouettes football match. In a fit of unbridled patriotism the staff working the doors to McMahon stadium enthusiastically handed out little Canadian flags to the good people in attendance. “Maybe Shelia Copps will be singing the national anthem,” I wondered to myself. Alas, time told that was not the case.
As the game wore on and the Alouettes successfully began to lay the smack down on the Stamps, my attention diverted away from the field to the stands itself. I noticed hundreds of these little flags gracing the cement floor of the bleachers, along with all the spilt beer, chewing gum and excess nacho cheese. Unfortunate, but again I say you would never see such disrespect for a flag in America nor I suspect Mexico nor as say Croatia nor Germany. Maybe because those countries actually fought for their independence, whereas we Canadians were thrown a bone from Great Britain once they figured they had all the fur they needed? Was it not our first Prime Minister who ran with this British style of governance and then gave it to us making so bold as to claim the West will be Canada�s crown colony? Now, as a Westerner it seems to me that these reports of patriotism- gone-bad maybe stem from this laid-back Canadian attitude. Oh well, since nobody else is here this morning maybe I’ll just go and do my Canadian duty and hit the pub, because I… am… Canadian.

Yup.

Cosby, again.
But this time, with applause, and support from Jesse Jackson.

“Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it’s cursing and calling each other n—— as they’re walking up and down the street,” Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund’s annual conference.
“They think they’re hip,” the entertainer said. “They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere.”

If only we could hear First Nations leaders speak with this much unapologetic honesty.

Michelle Malkin is sympathetic, but unhappy about Vice President Dick Cheney’s suggestion to Patrick Leahy in the Senate.

I am still have nightmares about the dangling heads of Nick Berg and Paul Johnson and Kim Sun-Il, and all the mainstream media will be prattling on about today is Dick Cheney’s use of the F word.

She’s asking for more creative suggestions. “Feel free to leave the profanity-free putdown you would have used on Leahy.”
Unfortunately, the damage is done. The only befitting action now for Cheney is a full, unequivocal retraction:

“I was out of line, Mr. Leahy. I take it back. “
“Unfuck yourself.”

Prior to [9/11], Conservatives, however distasteful, were inchoate; they had tacitly acknowledged the intellectual leadership of the Liberal project. No more. Now Liberals were confronted with people who didn’t want to read the New York Times, were unimpressed by celebrity and didn’t want to go to Harvard. Many liberals didn’t recognize “their” familiar country any more. James Lileks described the intensity of the revulsion at the barbarians at the gates; not Osama Bin Laden, but rather someone else.

I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen — Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated.

[…]
Through the long summer of 1990s, the wounds festered as the infection deepened. It was masked by the ineffectual cologne of NGO projects, corrupt aid delivery, United Nations peacekeeping public relations projects, by selective media coverage and by the jangling of fund raising concerts at which a Secretary General appeared, like some secular pope, to give his blessing, until the boil burst over Manhattan on that bright autumn day. As the debris showered on New York it obscured the fact that a new post-post-colonial ideology was ready to push the Liberal edifice aside and take up the challenge of Islamic terrorism; underneath the War for Terror there was now a War for the West.
James Lilek’s friends must know that electing John Kerry to the White House will not restore the antebellum world. Things have gone too far for that. The Third World in general and the Islamic World in particular have burst their bounds; they can no longer be herded into the decrepit and threadbare tent of the United Nations; the Kyoto climate agreement; the International Criminal Court or any of Potemkin treaties woven by the European Union. Islamic fundamentalists are openly attacking Russia; besetting India; seizing British naval vessels; threatening to interdict the Straits of Malacca; menacing the House of Saud; renewing hostilities in Kosovo; bombing trains in Spain; raging through the Sudan and building nuclear enrichment plants. No Clintonian ceremony in the Rose Garden can replace the planets in their old orbits. All John Kerry can do if he must pay the price of restoring the Liberal dream is to withdraw, like Prince Prospero, into the artificial gaieties of last Bal Masque while the Red Death stalks without.

Go read it all.

Professor Bainbridge has a piece on the difference between positive rights and negative rights. For Canadians, a worthwhile reminder that governments that purport to protect one’s “right” to employment, to health care, for example, provide them at a great cost to negative rights and personal liberty.

If the majority thinks all employees should be paid a living wage, the freedom of individual employees to take a lower wage and of individual employers to offer a lower wage is circumscribed. Again, we often see the same sort of disregard for private property and freedom of contract in nominal democracies as in totalitarian regimes.

Saskatchewan provides a recent example of the danger of postive rights governments – withdrawel of government “guaranteed” rights to health care in rural Saskatchewan.
In forcing a “right to health care”, the state has prohibited private providers from operating in the system. So, when the state decides that it cannot or will not provide service to a segment of the population, those citizens suddenly find that instead of having a “right” – their access to health care has been effectively prohibited by the same government that claims to guarantee it.

Something tells me Sean is going to win this battle, if attitude counts for anything.

Not that this is a startling revelation. But, in contrast to the timeless wisdom we are reminded of in the wake of Reagan’s passing, Jaeger has some quotes to remind us just how clueless our former prime minister was.

“We have a great deal to learn from the Soviet Union . . . a country from which we have a great deal to benefit.”