A gang of serial rapists has been prowling the North, raping Jewish women as revenge for IDF actions in the West Bank, police revealed Tuesday after arresting six suspects.
"We are raping Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories," one of the six suspects told investigators from the Northern District Central Investigative Unit (CIU) during questioning. During their questioning and their brief appearance at the Nazareth Magistrate's Court Tuesday, none of the four main suspects indicated that they felt remorse for their actions.
This is the latest in a long tradition where clerics call for chastity belts, because women are uncovered meat. We're looking at a culture where
Rape is learned behavior in the home. Peter is absolutely correct in describing the insidious sexual dichotomy of Muslim male supremacy over the lowly denigrated female. Pierre underscored the degree to which a family will defend its own rapist because of alleged "honor." Why should it surprise us that they have moved out into the streets and feel entitled to rape?
At the ideological level which Gudrun has so aptly introduced into this discussion, we encounter the classic practice of taqiya, lit. 'guarding one's self' more commonly thought of dissimulation and its insidious behavior of orchestrating jihad by every possible means in a clandestine manner. Rape is just one more weapon in the jihadi arsenal for Dar el-dawaa and Dar ash-shahada.
This morning Sigmund, Carl and Alfred looks at the reaction from the Left. What reaction there is.
SC&A does bring up a crucial point,
Terror and hate- and the defense of terror and hate- are driven by an ideology of evil, period.
Freedom and democracy are antithetical to hate and terrorism because freedom usurps the power of the terrorist. With out the power to instill fear and punishment, the terrorist is nothing.
In the Middle East, the icons of freedom are the US and Israel. Freedom of all kinds, success and ever growing potential are what the terrorist must destroy. Prosperity is the fifth column the terrorists fear most. They cannot abide by a culture that is prosperous, because that culture seeks growth and progress. The terrorists cannot abide economic and educational progress because those things weaken their grip.
In the meantime, it's time to teach women to protect themselves with firearms, because that's what things have come to.
Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero of WXDJ-FM come back with a new prank as they fool Fidel Castro on the phone, pretending to be Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
A stronger Mr Castro appeared defiant on a recent video. The ailing Cuban President, Fidel Castro, has spoken publicly for the first time since falling ill last July. He was heard speaking live on the daily radio programme of his ally, the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez.
Fidel, tu me has convertido en una especie de emisario, de fuente, quién quiere saber de Fidel, yo le digo la verdad, (sobre) su recuperación. "You have turned me into a kind of messenger, a source, about who wants to know about Fidel, I tell them the truth about his recovery".
We need new names in both our politics and our news broadcasts. The same damn people have held sway over everything for too damn long.
Read the whole post.
Yet I know exactly how she feels:
These people all make me tired. I'm tired of looking at them, reading about them, listening to them blab on and on. I'm tired of their tired excuse-making and double-talk. I'm tired of hearing that these people are greatest of people and that only haters could not absolutely adore them, at all times.
HOLLYWOOD'S wealthy liberals can now avoid any guilt they might feel for consuming so much non-renewable fossil fuel in their private jets, their SUVs, and their multiple air-conditioned mansions. This year's Oscar goodie bag contained gift certificates representing 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gas reductions from TerraPass, which describes itself as a "carbon offset retailer." The 100,000 pounds "are enough to balance out an average year in the life of an Academy Award presenter," a press release from TerraPass asserts. "For example, 100,000 pounds is the total amount of carbon dioxide created by 20,000 miles of driving, 40,000 miles on commercial airlines, 20 hours in a private jet and a large house in Los Angeles. The greenhouse gas reductions will be accomplished through TerraPass' [program] of verified wind energy, cow power [collecting methane from manure] and efficiency projects." Voila, guilt-free consumption!
Oh, gooody! Just what I always wanted, a gift certificate for 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gas reductions!
One of the dissonant rhymes of history is at this moment taking place in Venezuela. If you listen closely, you will be able to hear the repugnant sounds of a familiar oppression in Hugo Chavez' "socialist paradise."
He is clamping down on the press; he is nationalizing all the industry; he is threatening jail to anyone who opposes him. Things are beginning to fall apart, so the solution for thugs like Chavez is to just get more control. As once was pointed out to Darth Vader in a similar context, I believe, "The more you tighten your grip, the more people will slip through your fingers."
Dr. Sanity is right on the money.
The only thing I disagree with is this,
Awash collectivist fervor, it won't be long before the Venezuelan people will begin to realize they have been conned by an expert.
While a significant number of Venezuelans realize they have been conned, and many are wanting to leave (so much so that Doral, an area of Miami, is now Doralzuela to the locals), Hugo's core constituency, which is found among the large underclass of what by all criteria should have been a rich country, will take a very long time, if ever, to wake up to reality.
Why?
First of all, they see Hugo as "people like us". While Hugo, unlike Lula of Brazil, didn't rise from the underclass, Hugo has convinced them that he is one of them.
The prior Venezuelan administrations failed to turn oil money into a means of developing its most valuable resource, its people. And the people know it.
Chavez also knows the power of nationalistic propaganda in Latin America, which goes hand-in-hand with anti-Americanism. It goes like this:
[Insert contry's name here] is THE country, and the USA wants to take over [Insert contry's name here]'s assets, and will invade.
In Venezuela's case there's the oil, so of course this feeds into the fallacy. That the USA borders with one of the largest, most prosperous, most resource-rich countries with one of the most educated populations in the world, a country which has oil, and that country is so sure that the USA's not going to invade that it, for all practical purposes doesn't have an army that amounts to much, would never cross the mind of the afflicted with anti-American paranoia.
Additonally, Latin American politics, not just Venezuelan politics, have traditionally been based in the politics of envy. Marxist ideology, with its belief that "the rich are rich because they make us poor" and many variations on this theme, is the mothers' milk of this mentality.
Meanwhile, the government has vastly expanded its own media holdings. It runs three national TV channels, as well as Telesur, an international news channel set up by Mr Chávez as an answer to CNN. It recently bought CMT, a small Caracas channel, to broadcast Telesur at home. It has pumped money and other resources into "alternative" and "community" media, most of which are dependent on the state and are unlikely to adopt a critical stance.
Mr Chávez this month relaunched his weekly "Hello President" programme as a 90-minute nightly radio show, with a TV version once a week. Promising "exclusives" in every edition, he used the first to announce a new decree against "hoarders and speculators" with six-year jail terms for offenders. He also regularly obliges all TV and radio stations to broadcast his rambling speeches live.
And let's not underestimate the power of never wanting to admit one is wrong. The more insecure a person, the more difficult it is for them to admit they are wrong. Hugo's constituency is not only psychologically insecure, but in most precarious economical and physical straits. For Hugo's core constituency to admit they are wrong would mean the collapse of all they hold dear, at least for now.
Venezuela has spent more than four billion dollars on arms purchase that include rifles, ships, helicopters and planes in the past two years. This transforms the country into a large weapons buyer, leaving behind big purchasers such as Iran and Pakistan.
What should the USA do? For starters, off-shore drilling, drilling in ANWAR, and encougaring conservation in the USA will decrease dependence on Venezuelan oil - the source of Hugo's riches.
Encouraging free trade with friendly Latin American countries, and abolishing all agricultural subsidies and tariffs in the trade with those countries will boost their economies and ours.
Hugo knows that prosperity is his enemy. Let's encourage prosperity, then.
Bayrou's socialeconomic program, in which every economic measure is linked to a corresponding "social" or welfare measure, is based on the assumption that an unfettered, flourishing economy does not automatically favor the general welfare. Bayrou's recipe for stimulating the sluggish French economy is a plodding reform package involving a balanced budget and small increment improvements - a 5% yearly increase in the research budget over a ten-year period, a referendum to reform the pension system, improved synergy between academic and professional spheres, slight advantages to employees willing to work 39 instead of 35 hours. He would make deficit spending unconstitutional, tax fossil fuel to encourage alternate energy sources, and somehow prod banks to invest in business.
Bayrou proposes a Small Business Act similar to the one established in the U.S. in the Fifties. This would favor small business in bidding for modest government contracts, and reduce the employer’s contribution to the employee's social protection package; a contribution that doubles the real cost of French salaries.
In the interim, Bayrou would institute a quick fix for job creation: every company would be allowed an exoneration of the employer's social security contribution for two newly hired employees. Similar selective exonerations have been applied in the past without ever demonstrating their effectiveness. Bayrou believes that the only thing missing is the spark! Something that would awaken and liberate energies, create a momentum, run on its own steam. But that wouldn't be socialeconomy! It would be crude, crass American money-worshiping capitalism.
Martin Luther protested against the selling of indulgences and got excommunicated. Nowadays you protest against the purchasing of carbon offsets and you get excommunicated, too. Some things never change.
I had a great time doing this morning's podcast with John Chappell of Inside Europe: Iberian Notes and Jose Miguel Guardia of Pajamas Media and Barcepundit. As promised, we talked about the March 11 terrorist trials, and illegal immigration into the EU.
The trial of 29 people accused of planning, supporting, and carrying out the March 11, 2004 explosions in the Madrid trains started eleven days ago on February 15. Missing from the trial are the four suspects who blew themselves up in a Madrid apartment during a police raid
Among the dead is the alleged ringleader of the Madrid bombings, Sarhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, a Tunisian named in the international arrest warrants, the authorities say.
Brett Stephens explains the rules under which the suspects are investigated when in a Napoleonic code judiciary, as Spain has.
During the podcast we also talked about the possible sentences. The way the Spanish laws work, no matter how long a sentence, the culprit serves only a maximum term of forty years.
You can listen to the podcast here:
How are the subjects of terrorism and immigration related?
Europe, however, is also a magnet for immigration: It will attract up to 1 million newcomers this year. But the European experience with immigration is quite different from that of America. Part of the reason is that many immigrants to Europe end up on welfare, while in the United States, almost all immigrants take one or more entry-level jobs and work their way up the economic ladder. Welfare is simply not the American way.
Islamic Conquest of Europe?
Moreover, most immigrants to the United States are fully integrated into American society by the second generation, regardless of their country of origin. By contrast, most immigrants to Europe are Muslims who refuse to assimilate and instead tend to cluster in marginalized ghettos on the outskirts of cities across the continent.
Here, too, the American experience is quite different. The best available estimates show that there are between 1.9 million and 2.8 million Muslims in the United States. And unlike their European counterparts, American Muslims generally do not feel marginalized or isolated from political participation. According to a 2004 Zogby Poll, American Muslims are more educated and affluent than the national average, with 59 percent of them holding at least an undergraduate college degree. Moreover, the majority of American Muslims are employed in professional fields, with one in three having an income over $75,000 a year.
But back to Europe: The Muslim population of Europe has more than doubled since 1980, and according to some estimates, there are some 25 million Muslims living on the continent today. Demographers predict that this figure may double by 2015, and that the number of Muslims could outnumber non-Muslims in all of Western Europe by mid-century. This prompted Princeton University's Bernard Lewis to tell the German newspaper Die Welt that 'Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.'
This reality is already influencing European foreign policymaking and does not auger well for the future of transatlantic relations. Indeed, many analysts believe that the steady weakening of Europe is the underlying cause for the widespread anti-American and anti-Israel bigotry found among Europe's elites, many of whom are bowing to pressure from Muslim residents as a way to buy a fake peace with radical Islamists. Says Fouad Ajami, a well-known authority of the Arab world: 'In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam.'
John links to Aaron Hanscom's interview with Professor Javier Jordan of the University of Granada, and of Jihad Monitor, who explains further,
The analysis of personal profiles of more than 300 jihadists arrested in Spain shows that there is a significant proportion that belong to the middle-class, have family, are fluent in Spanish and have even obtained Spanish citizenship. For example, in the Abu Dahdah network, an Al Qaeda cell dismantled at the end of 2001, half of the members would be classified as "socioeconomically integrated."
Social exclusion, imprisonment or arriving to Spain without family and work are factors that can make an individual even more vulnerable to the recruitment process. Under these circumstances, the jihadist group offers friendship, camaraderie and material support, while inculcating the subject with radical ideas. Nevertheless, the process can occur without any material favors being offered. To explain it in simpler terms, the key ingredient is the "bad company" one keeps. In most cases, jihadist values are spread through confidential ties and friendships.
Follow Barcepundit's links for more background on the trial.
Botched investigations, feeble sentences, massive unrestrained illegal immigration into a welfare state, and social isolation of immigrants add up to an explosive mess.
We'll do a follow-up podcast as the trial develops.
10 ancient ossuaries - small caskets used to store bones - discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980
is evidence, because
One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son
All I can say is, if the name Jesus was anywhere near as common in Judea 2,000 years ago as it is today in Spanish-speaking countries (and the Phillipines - I knew a Philipino named Jesus), Cameron's got his work cut out for him.
Heck, even The Dude found Jesus at the bowling alley:
Hello, could you help me promote this freedom video as much as you can, if you agree to its contents, of course. It’s about Egypt’s real nature and the accelerating imprisonment of freedom fighters in general, and bloggers like Kareem and many others under severe threats from the Egyptian Government.
Many thanks, Ahmad
Here is the link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbEM6soTHOA
Here's the video: About.com has how to help Abdel Kareem, including the following,
Reporters Without Borders states that Egypt is bucking to host a stage of the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in 2009 (ironically, the country is on the group's list of 13 Internet enemies). Lobby against Egypt's inclusion in this event by contacting Nitin Desai, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Adviser for Internet Governance, at igf@unog.ch. (Mailing address and phone/fax numbers here.)
Neo-Neocon's Romeo and Juliet post reminded me of when I was in school.
I went to an all-girls Catholic school in Puerto Rico, run by Vincentine nuns. When I first started at that school the nuns used to wear Flying Nun hats but the school was located in Santurce, not San Tanco. The nuns were addressed as Sor (Sister), and unlike other orders, kept their original names. I never saw any of them take flight but they were notoriously bad drivers. The only people taking flight were those who got in their way.
The nuns wore their flying hats which they later changed to regular veils, probably to save on starch, and made us wear the ugliest possible uniform and Bass penny loafers. In the lower grades we had to wear lace-up oxfords, uglier yet.
Being first short and skinny and later tall and skinny, I looked like a pale stick for all my school years - I looked awful in that thing. Have you ever had a nightmare where you show up naked at an important event? I have had nightmares where I show up wearing my old school uniform.
After I left school I have never purchased a pair of Bass penny loafers, either.
Being in that school for eleven years accounts for a lot of my ideosyncracies. One of the better ones is my love of movies.
A few blocks away from my school, El Metro (as in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, not underground/subway metro), the most modern cinema in the area, was located. The nuns took us on field trips to watch nun-approved movies.
I remember the time that we walked from the school to El Metro to see the re-release of Ben Hur. By the time we got to our seats I ended up in the next-to-last seat in my row, and much to my chagrin Sor C.G. (whose name I withold in case she ever reads this) sat next to me after everybody else was seated. Sor C.G. was one of the weirder nuns in the large gaggle of weird nuns from that convent. Well, Ben Hur got rowing, and Charlton Heston was looking Pretty Damn Good shackled at the oars, when much to my surprise Sor C.G. let out a deep deep sigh.
I wonder if she ever told that one in confession.
But back to Romeo and Juliet.
Ever-watchful for our virtue, one good day the school principal, Sor P. (name withheld to protect the guilty, again), came to our classroom during religion class. If memory serves me right, Sor C.G. was the religion teacher that year. Sor P. sat "inconspicuosly" in the rear of the classrom and at a strategic point in the class formally announced that none us girls should see Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet.
Discreet glances were exchanged among us girls, and I for one made a mental note to go see Romeo and Juliet right away.
Sor P. went from classroom to classroom making the same announcement.
The next day must have been either a Saturday or one of the many holidays they have in Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico and France must be tied for record number of paid holidays), because four of my friends and I walked to the movie theater and saw Romeo and Juliet. All of our mothers, who had not seen the movie, approved of the excursion and some might have even been pleased at our sudden interest in high culture.
By the time our mothers caught on to the fact that R&J had a nude scene we'd seen the movie at least twice.
My friends and I loved the movie. We all let our hair grow to Juliet lengths (I had nearly-waist-long hair for all of my teens), and danced with jingle bells on our wrists. Stores started carrying dresses with Juliet sleeves and we talked our moms into buying them for us. I memorized the theme music and can still play it on the piano.
Romeo and Juliet was a huge success at El Metro and played for long enough that my friends and I memorized the dialogue.
Zefferelli should have sent the nuns a thank-you note.
The WSJ tells us how to cook a steak. Since the article is by subscription only on line, as a service to my readers I'm copying it:
Preheat your oven to 450F degrees
On the stove top, heat a large, dry skillet until it is very hot. Season the steak (a 4-5 lbs porterhouse or bone-in-ribeye steak, 1 1/2" to 2" thick) well with salt and pepper and sear for 2-3 minutes on each side, until it has a dark crust [Note If your smoke alarm is very sensitive, like mine is, make sure to run the hood fan or you'll get blasted]
Place skillet in preheated oven for about 14 minutes for a 1 1/2" steak. Cook to between rare and medium rare, because residual heat will continue cooking the meat while it is resting. To test for doneness, press your finger to the meat: it should yield to the touch but not be soft. The chef says a thermometer will pierce the meat and allow the juices to run out.
Rest steak for at least 5 minutes before slicing or serving
Tester's note: If you don't feel confident about judging the doneness of the meat the way professionals do, use an instant-read thermometer to be sure the meat has reached an internal temperature of 120F for rare or medium rare
And here's the steak:
Baked potato with sour cream and butter, a salad, and maybe some green beans with almonds.
The consequences of the verdict and sentence are grave, both for Abdel Kareem and the for the Egyptian blogosphere in general.
If Abdel Kareem’s appeals are unsuccessful, he will have to spend the next four years in prison, where he could very likely get killed by an over-enthusiastic believer. His other option is to spend the next four years in solitary confinement, which won’t probably bode well for his mental health. Dead or crazy, those are his options now.
As far as the blogosphere, the implications are equally dangerous. This verdict sets a legal precedent for prosecuting someone for what they write on the Internet, on charges that are not easily defined or defended against. This could be used to prosecute any blogger the government feels like punishing, and serves a huge blow to freedom of speech in Egypt.
CK:...Hillary has been running for 20 years. Her husband that gave the keynote address at the convention in 1988, and remember when Bill ran, he said you buy one, you get one free. So she and her husband have been in the business of the presidency, organizing, laying the groundwork, for twenty years. Here she is, all of a sudden, this guy comes out of nowhere on the back of one book, two years in the Senate, and a media swoon, and she's asking herself how is this possible, and she's, you know, her coronation is interrupted, and her strategy has to be to challenge this guy over and over again, on whatever it is, as a way to knock him off his course. Either he fights back and then he ends up in the gutter with her, and he loses his sheen, or he runs away, and everybody says he’s weak, he doesn’t have the stomach and the fight to be a president. So it's going to happen over and over again. This is round one, it's a fifteen rounder.
HH: Juan, do you agree with that analysis?
JW: Yeah, I think that's pretty wise. I mean, the difficulty here is I think Obama wants to rise above the static. He just doesn’t have the money, he doesn't have the organization, he doesn't have Bill Clinton and all of the people who have benefited from Clinton’s time in the White House, he doesn’t have all the political consultants who are on the payroll. So what Obama has got to do at this point is rely on momentum, and say that he is part of a new kind of American, and especially Democratic Party politics that's not the politics of polarization, that he is simply looking to pull people together, and he wants, he has the capacity to capture the middle of the American electorate in the general election, and assure the Democrats a win. So if he gets involved in the dirty, you know, trading dirt with Hillary Clinton, that's not to his advantage. And Geffen this week, now some people might say Geffen did that without Obama's permission, but when he starts saying, when Geffen starts talking about the Clintons a liars, when he starts talking about Hillary as overscripted, overproduced, inauthentic, a lot of people think oh, is that Obama? And then Hillary's people say Obama's got to apologize. Obama's got to return the money. Obama says no, it wasn't me. I'm not returning anything. That's not to Obama's advantage, although I think if you look back over the last week or so, it's Hillary who's taken the shots here. I think Hillary has been damaged. I don't know that it was so wise for her to elevate that Maureen Dowd column to the kind of height that she did by responding to it so angrily.
Hillary's iron has been shown more in the cause of getting first her husband and then herself elected, at least so far. And she's tainted by the brush of her own possible corruption as well as Bill Clinton's moral failings, and her own compromises in service of his career and the preservation of their marriage.
Several years ago I was very sick with blood sugar problems, and since it was not diabetes it took months before the condition was diagnosed correctly. By the time it was diagnosed I was bedridden, needing help to get to the bathroom, and fainting frequently. I had also lost 30 lbs from my usual weight, to the point where the clothes I'm wearing would hang as if on a hanger. I was so weak that I despaired of ever being able to return to a normal life.
In a word, I was desperate.
In the depths of my desperation I tried to hang on to any positive thought, and for some reason the words of the hymn Amazing Grace (which I posted yesterday), particularly,
The Lord has promised good to me. His Word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be As long as life endures.
kept returning to my mind, like those pesky songs that get in your head and play over and over.
I do not know how I recalled those words since I'm not particularly religious, don't remember hymns or lyrics and most of the time I don't even understand the words being sung, but I held on to those words as a means to my regaining my health.
And, thank God, I was able to find the way to get better. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, by far, which was complicated by the fact that I had a completely inept doctor and was given bad medical advise by him and other members of his staff.
It took me nearly five years before I could carry a normal schedule.
A few years later, one Sunday in church the rector held his annual sing-along service, where he'd ask people to request their favorite hymn. I asked for Amazing Grace, of course, and before we sang, he told the story of the song.
I don't cry often, but I cried when I heard it. I had no idea it was connected to the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, which the British accomplished in the nineteenth century. March, 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the slave trade's abolition in Britain.
While I still frequently sing the hymn (quietly to myself, since I sing like a frog), I totally forgot the story behind it until I saw the trailers for the movie a couple of weeks ago.
This morning I was taking care of personal matters when I read an email from Caitlin Bozell,
Hi Fausta,
I would like to let you know that, today, the epic story of abiding faith and uncommon courage, Amazing Grace, comes out in theaters everywhere. It tells the story of William Wilberforce and a community of abolitionists as they awaken the conscience of a nation by taking on the most powerful interests of their day to end the British slave trade. It is the true story of a reluctant leader called to do the impossible in order to allow truth and justice to prevail
Many inspiring global crusades have been launched in order to finish the work that Wilberforce started over 200 years ago. Behind the film Amazing Grace is a movement against modern-day slavery called The Amazing Change campaign, created to make freedom a reality the estimated 27 million slaves in the sex and labor industries today.
The Amazing Change website has information on present-day slavery, among them the fact that there are more slaves in the world today than during all 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
I have posted about slavery for a fewyearsnow. Let's hope this film will bring new energy into the work that's needed to end this horrible crime.
It is thus fitting that John Wesley happened to write his last letter--sent in February 1791, days before his death--to William Wilberforce. Wesley urged Wilberforce to devote himself unstintingly to his antislavery campaign, a "glorious enterprise" that opposed "that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature." Wesley also urged him to "go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it."
Wesley had begun preaching against slavery 20 years before and in 1774 published an abolitionist tract, "Thoughts on Slavery." Wilberforce came into contact with the burgeoning antislavery movement in 1787, when he met Thomas Clarkson, an evangelical Anglican who had devoted his life to the abolitionist cause. Two years later, Wilberforce gave his first speech against the slave trade in Parliament.
As for the hymn "Amazing Grace," from which the film takes its name, it is the work of a friend of Wilberforce's named John Newton (played in the movie by Albert Finney). Newton had spent a dissolute youth as a seaman and eventually became a slave-ship captain. In his 20s he underwent a kind of spiritual crisis, reading the Bible and Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ." A decade later, having heard Wesley preach, he fell in with England's evangelical movement and left sea-faring and slave-trading behind. Years later, under the influence of Wilberforce's admonitions, he joined the antislavery campaign. The famous hymn amounted to an autobiography of his conversion: "Amazing grace . . . that saved a wretch like me." In the most moving moment of the film--and one of the few that addresses a Christian theme directly--the aged and now-blind Newton declares to Wilberforce: "I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior."
This idea of slaving as sin is key. As sociologist Rodney Stark noted in "For the Glory of God" (2003), the abolition of slavery in the West during the 19th century was a uniquely Christian endeavor. When chattel slavery, long absent from Europe, reappeared in imperial form in the 16th and 17th centuries--mostly in response to the need for cheap labor in the New World--the first calls to end the practice came from pious Christians, notably the Quakers. Evangelicals, not least Methodists, quickly joined the cause, and a movement was born.
Thanks to Wilberforce, the movement's most visible champion, Britain ended slavery well before America, but the abolitionist cause in America, too, was driven by Christian churches more than is often acknowledged.
Abolition was, strictly speaking, impractical. According to Adam Hochschild's history of abolition, "Bury the Chains," Britain was a country "where profits from West Indian plantations gave a large boost to the economy, where customs duties on slave-grown sugar were an important source of government revenue, and where ... the trade itself had increased to almost unparalleled levels, bringing prosperity to key ports, including London itself."
How to overcome all this? The abolitionists called on the British people to live up to their professed faith. If they believed that all men were created in the image of God, how could they sanction treating some of them as chattel? They pushed the public's nose down into the facts of what happened on the slave ships, countering the propaganda about slaves enjoying their journey. They mobilized public opinion in an unprecedented way, producing petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of people.
The scheme in Britain is, of course, rather different. (It is not necessary to believe that such schemes have been consciously elaborated, incidentally; rather, they are inherent in the statism that comes naturally to so many politicians because of their self-importance.) The hoops that bind the government to the consultants who advise it in its perennially failing schemes of modernization are those of gold. As Craig demonstrates (though without understanding all the implications), the consultants need failure in Britain to perpetuate the contracts that allow them to charge so outrageously and virtually ad libitum (Craig suggests that $140 billion has disappeared so far, with no end in sight); and, in turn, the government benefits from having this rich but utterly dependent clientele.
The beauty of the system is that dependence on expensive failure reaches quite low levels of the administration: for example, all those “civilians” (as nonpolice workers for the police are called) in P.C. Copperfield’s police station, as well as the educational psychologists whom Frank Chalk derides. The state has become a vast and intricate system of patronage, whose influence very few can entirely escape. It is essentially corporatist: the central government, avid for power, sets itself up as an authority on everything and claims to be omnicompetent both morally and in practice; and by means of taxation, licensing, regulation, and bureaucracy, it destroys the independence of all organizations that intervene between it and the individual citizen. If it can draw enough citizens into dependence on it, the central government can remain in power, if not forever, then for a very long time, at least until a crisis or cataclysm forces change.
At the very end of the chain of patronage in the British state is the underclass, who (to change the metaphor slightly) form the scavengers or bottom-feeders of the whole corporatist ecosystem. Impoverished and degraded as they might be, they are nonetheless essential to the whole system, for their existence provides an ideological proof of the necessity of providential government in the first place, as well as justifying many employment opportunities in themselves. Both Copperfield and Chalk describe with great eloquence precisely what I have seen myself in this most wretched stratum of society: large numbers of people corrupted to the very fiber of their being by having been deprived of responsibility, purpose, and self-respect, void of hope and fear alike, living in as near to purgatory as anywhere in modern society can come.
Good news on Iraq: Senate Democrats are moving to rewrite history, by limiting the Iraq war authorization they voted in 2002. Good news how? Well, if you are a surrender enthusiast, it's a step in the right direction! But if you believe the United States must fight and win in Iraq as in all the theaters of this generational war on Islamic extremism, then every move the anti-war Democrats make to undercut a wartime president and troops in the field is a shot in the foot that will drive Americans farther from them.
More good news about Iraq: Sen. Joseph Lieberman says the Democratic measure to undercut the troops could make a Republican out of him. This highly principled Democrat's moral stance is an example the rest of them should follow, but the bad news is, they won't. But Hillary's new embrace of defeatism may be just the thing to underscore what a bankrupt position it is. She's not the only 2008 hopeful playing politics with war.
This is the third ad campaign from 18DoughtyStreet.com and this week's two minute ad attacks the high spending, low delivery record of London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Everything the advert says is sourced here.
At that link, I find items 8, 9 and 10 particularly interesting,
8 Al-Qaradawi is the strongest force for the modernisation of Islam "Unbelievably, Mayor Livingstone asserted in the question period that Yusuf al Qaradawi was the "strongest force for modernization of Islam - he is the future of Islam." 9 Qaradawi describes suicide bombing against Israel as duty 'Recently he told Al-Jazeera that he was not alone in believing that suicide bombings in Palestinian territories were a legitimate form of self defence for people who have no aircraft or tanks. He said hundreds of other Islamic scholars are of the same opinion. In this respect, he is very much in tune with what the vast majority of people in the Arab world believe. Defending suicide bombings that target Israeli civilians Sheikh A-Qaradawi told the BBC programme Newsnight that "an Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier.'
Following that, I read Sigmund Carl and Alfred's devastating account of his experience. I did a brief post on it and later deleted it because I could not come up with any words of consolation.
The Anchoress posts about Hillary's demand that Obama return the money he's raised,
Well, slap my ass and call me Sally, but it seems to me that a strong and confident campaign does not demand that other candidates denounce their supporters and return contribution checks to them, but this is what Hillary Clinton's campaign does all the time! Particularly if an opponent's donor has dared to say something mean about poor old Hillary, who is just a girl and should be treated nice, because politics is about niceness and sweetness, and she would never, never indulge in a scorched earth, slash-and-burn sort of politics, herself.
BEING ONLY A MAN, I often tire of the endless things of man; of his vanity and his violence which, as all the things of men must, resides in me as well as in you.
Fernando Araujo was Colombia's Minister of Development when was kidnapped by the Colombian FARC narcoterrorists on December 4, 2000, while he was jogging. He survived for six years tied up to a hammock until his escape last December 31, 2006, wondering through the jungle until he was rescued. Last Monday Colombian President Alvaro Uribe named him Foreign Minister.
Investor's Business Daily explains what this means in the context of the war on terrorism, Proof Of Life In A Latin American Ally War On Terror: Why would a sensible ally like Colombia pull a bit of magic realism and name a recently escaped hostage its new foreign minister? Because it's trying to tell us something.
But patriotism prompts people to do heroic things. This willingness to put nation before self may be the new role Araujo can play in helping Colombia persuade the U.S. Congress and the rest of the world to support its need for victory. It might be a brilliant choice for Uribe.
Putting a former hostage forward seemed to be Uribe's intention. He noted that Araujo "himself suffered our national tragedy, which we are committed to ending."
The message is important because not everyone outside Colombia understands. Leading the pack is the new Democrat-controlled Congress. It controls the $586 million in anti-terror funding the U.S. has earmarked for Colombia, money that's vital to the survival of an embattled ally and critical to our own national security.
Instead of focusing on that, Democrats like Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds assistance to Colombia, are chiefly interested in criticizing our leading ally in South America.
The new majority wants to cut Colombia's aid at a time when Colombia is seeking more. If the Democrats succeed, they will be squandering a chance to deliver a potential death blow to Colombian narcoterrorists.
Democrats have complained about Colombia's human rights record, demanding pristine standards from a nation that has been in a full-blown war since 1966. They also want to renegotiate a U.S.-Colombia free-trade pact, kvetching about labor rules, salaries and benefit packages.
They've even come up with a new one — blaming Colombia for global warming because of an increase in air shipments of its roses. Never mind that those commercial rose fields were once illegal coca patches.
Nitpicking is one thing, but these Democrats are the same people who have increased aid to Ecuador as that country pursues failed socialist models and turns into the nastiest anti-American regime this side of Venezuela.
Worst of all, Democrats like Leahy try to micromanage Colombia's war, demanding that Uribe fight all factions with equal vigor instead of first taking on the most deadly enemies, like FARC. That's why Uribe lost his last foreign minister. Her brother was accused of involvement with paramilitaries, but she had no involvement herself.
Uribe and Araujo are from different political parties, but both are determined to win Colombia's war against terror. Their willingness to put aside political differences to achieve victory is admirable. If only congressional Democrats would do the same.
You can watch until 2PM EST France2's interview of Araujo here, under Bogota: portrait de Fernando Araujo. The France2 anchorman refers to Araujo's new post as a "symbollic gesture". Nonsense. It is an act of courage.
Le Monde Diplomatique Director Ignacio Ramonet is gathering a "consencus" of French journalists to write an "authorized" retrospective of Castro's paradise on earth.
The Czech Republic said on Tuesday it would not be intimidated by Russia over plans to site parts of a U.S. missile defense system on its territory and said attempts at "blackmail" by Moscow would backfire.
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said threats by Russian officials over the plans, which would involve placing a radar system on Czech land and a missile battery in Poland, would only make Czechs more determined to defend themselves.
"He killed her because she was not observing the Islamic code of dress. She was also campaigning for emancipation of women," said Nazir Ahmad, a local officer. ... The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a recent report said that violence against women had increased alarmingly, with some of the incidents incited by Mullahs opposed to women’s emancipation.
I don't think Marie Claire will be talking about this any time soon.
Venezuela is beefing up its military capabilities by land, sea and air in preparation for what one senior official called a possible "asymmetrical conflict" with the United States.
Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States Bernardo Alvarez said that while his country is preparing for possible warfare with the United States -- a notion President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly asserted -- Venezuela is nonetheless in complete compliance with international and regional non-proliferation treaties.
By characterizing a warfare scenario with the United States as "asymmetrical," the ambassador was acknowledging the distinct firepower and personnel advantage of the United States, though he noted his country was preparing itself for defense nonetheless. ... The ambassador's remarks follow a recent report that Venezuela's latest arms improvement will focus on the country's navy, which is said to be interested in purchasing nine additional submarines.
Having already spent $3.4 billion on Russian arms, including assault rifles and fighter jets, the Venezuelan Navy is planning to spend $3 billion more to create the largest submarine fleet in the region by 2012, according to Venezuelan Navy Vice Adm. Armando Laguna. ... The submarines will be the "diesel-electric variety," said Laguna in a recent communiqué, quoted earlier this month by Brazil's leading newspaper, Estado de Sao Paulo, and will weigh in at approximately 1,750 metric tons apiece. The Venezuelan Navy is currently considering bids from German, France and Russia, the odds-on favorite, for the new vessel contracts.
I think the 'acceptance' of FGM (and thus the culture that allows for FGM), comes about as a response to 'white man's guilt over colonialism.
If we accept and endorse FGM, well, maybe that might mitigate some of the colonialist 'guilt' over colonialism.
This is the convoluted (and erroneous) logic that is behind so much of European anti semitism. If the Europeans can paint Israel as racist and evil, well, maybe the Holocaust wasn't perpetrated against innocents, but rather 'maybe they had it coming'- and thus, European ambivalence and acquiescence to the Holocaust might be mitigated.
To consider FGM as an 'acceptable cultural alternative' is to accept radical hatreds and bigotry as 'acceptable alternatives' and to assign them equal status to the values of free and civilized cultures.
What's next- the celebration of cannibalism, bestiality and pedophilia?
I wonder if the American journalists who were so eager to challenge the detailed presentation of actual physical evidence of Iran’s murderous actions against coalition forces in Iraq, will expose the mullahs’ blatant falsification. I rather doubt it. And I don’t expect the paladins of the dying media to draw the obvious, and important conclusion: the mullahs are facing discontent so deep that their internal enemies are resorting to very dangerous acts of violence against the instruments of repression.
Ironically, such a moment, extended long enough, could actually end the war - in victory for us, of course, so don't hold your breath. But this particular moment ended all too swiftly. It was a purely symbolic silence, of course. Non-binding, unsustainable for more than a few blinks of an eye. While a statement of support and demonstration of fortitude at least near the levels of "the troops" would have been most welcome, real silence would certainly have been preferable to today's history-making* moment.
I just watched Anthony Bourdain's episode from Puerto Rico and he had the most delicious-looking plate of mofongo stuffed with shrimp.
I lived in Puerto Rico for nineteen years and never had that. I had a lot of mofongo, but never stuffed with frehsly-caught shrimp. It looked glorious.
I'll have to find out where he had it. It was some dinky place on a beach somewhere.
And it looked g-o-o-d.
If any of my readers know where the place is, please let me know.
Earlier this month I was posting about Chirac's deal with the Iranian where he's trying to make a deal on Lebanon and trying to protect French UNIFIL troops.
An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.
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Dinocrat writes about economics and global warming
Our question today is this: is there an survival purpose to the religious madness that grips the most fervent Global Warming adherents, turning them into harpies and hysterics? We think the answer is probably yes. The ancient story of Pharaoh’s dream tells us that the affluent and powerful have always had a little internal alarm bell warning them about the saven years of lean following the seven years of fat. Preparing for the lean times, and, as importantly, trying to ward them off, has been important for human survival — then and now.
Most people in America today have absolutely no idea how we became so rich over the last 130 years. They have no idea about the nexus of laws, an enterprising spirit of the people, available capital, good accounting, an expanding market, low cost resources, technology and engineering, and an adequate monetary policy that created the relative paradise that is capitalist America — a point we have made over and over again.
(h/t Larwyn)
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SoCal Pundit discusses 24 in Attack of the Show. 24 is on tonight. You know what I'll be doing.
What will provide me more blogging material than Hillary as POTUS? Hillary as POTUS with Bill as Senator-for-life. (h/t Linda and four other friends)
"Why not?" Begala added. "He excelled as attorney general and governor of Arkansas, he excelled as president and he’s been a model of the modern Senate spouse."
Fausta was born and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico and is a long-term resident of Princeton, New Jersey. She discusses New Jersey, taxation, current events, and how news are reported in the French and Spanish-language media at Fausta's Blog.
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From Jim "Very cool." ". . .one of the Garden Stateâ??s premier bloggers"
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