The wages of allowing terror

Siggy forwarded this article, Machete-wielding teens attack Australian school

A group of teenagers armed with baseball bats and machetes attacked Australian teachers and students on Monday, injuring 18 people and forcing a high school in Sydney to be locked down, police said.

Five youths barged into the morning assembly at Merrylands High School in south-west Sydney, witnesses said, grabbing students before starting to smash windows at the school.

Five punks injure eighteen people and terrify hundreds.

Siggy then posted, Terror Down Under. He explains that

When violence or threats of violence are considered legitimate forms of political or social expression, inevitably violence or threats of violence will manifest themselves.Terror has become an accepted form of political and social expression, that status granted by those who most profess to be non violent or peaceful.
...
If we allow or excuse terror elsewhere, it is only a matter of time before that terror will manifest itself on our shores. What is terror here has to be regarded as terror everywhere, no matter what one might think of the 'cause.'

Go read the rest.



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Hero of the year, the "none-of-the-above" primary, focus on Afgahnistan, and other Sunday items

Hero of the year:

Siggy has The Other "Person Of The Year", Dr. Liviu Librescu, who saved the lives of his Virginia Tech students at the cost of his own.


Click on the photo above for more on Dr. Librescu.

As far as TIME's kleptocrat goes, Vladimir Putin will now use Time magazine's honor to enhance his own power, as one would expect.

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Yesterday I mentioned that Sarko was visiting Afghanistan. Well, Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi went to Afghanistan this weekend, too:

Mr Rudd said: "We're committed to being here for the long haul."

He added: "Over the next several months, I would also be encouraging other friends and partners and allies in Nato to continue their commitments and where possible extend them."

Matt Dupee at Long Wars Journal reports on Northwestern Afghanistan: Badghis province seeks security, revitalization

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The "none-of-the-above" primaries: Ed Morrissey asks, Can't anyone play this here game?

Skip the lede of this story and check the numbers at the link. Even the best showing for the candidates, Barack Obama (-6%) and John McCain (-11%) have bigger negatives than positives among all voters. This doesn't bode well for the 2008 campaign in either the primaries or the general election. Not only has no one really caught fire, but no one has managed to convert more voters than they've driven off.

At least neither party has an "annointed".

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Michael Drida picks this week's WSJ's 5 best Christmas stories:

Full of make-believe and festivity, this wonderful narrative poem possesses a Mozartean lightness and wit. Luckily, several modern versions, particularly those by W.S. Merwin and Simon Armitage, deftly replicate much of the feel and rhythm of the Middle English original. On New Year's Day an eerie Green Knight challenges a champion from King Arthur's court to exchange ax blows. Sir Gawain duly slices through the stranger's neck, only to see the decapitated torso pick up the head, which then speaks: Remember, the Green Knight says, to meet me in a year and a day at the Green Chapel. But where is that? The following winter, riding to what must be certain death, Gawain finds himself alone and desolate on Christmas Eve. Miraculously, a castle hoves into view. There the famous knight is welcomed by a red-bearded lord, the man's beautiful lady and a hideous bent-backed old woman. For the next three days Gawain savors all the sumptuous delights of the Christmas season--while each morning in his bedchamber the seductive wife tempts him to surrender to more sinful pleasures. There are, however, mysteries about this castle--and they are not resolved until Gawain fearfully bows his head to receive the promised ax stroke from the Green Knight.

Sir Gawain is one of my favorite books, and you can find it on line here. I suggest you read the modern English versions, since the Middle English is particularly difficult.

The other four books are




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Christmas shoes, you ask?
Steve Madden Women's Luvvy Pump in red patent, which I featured last month:


Let everybody else wear a red sweater!

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Pat has the CARNIVAL OF THE CHRISTMAS INSANITIES - Special Edition!

Calderon says Australia is Mexico

State of Mexico Addressed, by Invitation Only: Calderon Delivers Speech At Ceremonial Palace (emphasis added),

The Mexican government, he said, would continue to "energetically protest unilateral actions" of the U.S. Congress on the immigration front that he said "exacerbate the persecution of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S." He boasted that Mexican consulates in the United States have been buttressed to protect the rights of millions of Mexicans living there illegally.

"Wherever there is a Mexican," he said, "that is Mexico."

Going by that logic, Australia is Mexico.

Can't wait for the Mexican government to start handing out how-to manuals on how to sneak illegally into the Land Down Under.

But then, who can blame the guy. It's a heck of a lot easier to claim the whole world is yours to do as you please than it is to clean up the centuries-long endemic problems affecting a country you lead, isn't it?

Flopping Aces, Hot Air, Blue Crab Boulevard, Irish Spy, and Cop the Truth also posted on this (h/t Larwyn).



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Aussie Catholics rioting over Osama-Jesus?

No, of course they aren't.

It's the time of year for the Blake Prize in the land down under, but it's always season for taking potshots at us Catholics, so here we have what passes for art these days:

Artist defends Osama-as-Jesus

Priscilla Joyce Bracks' Bearded Orientals, Making the Empire Cross is a lenticular image in which the viewer can flip between portraits of Jesus and Osama bin Laden, by shifting slightly from side to side.

Isn't that precious: Bearded Orientals, Making the Empire Cross. Because you know, you gotta include references to empire (be it British, or whatever) and the Cross, since the image itself wasn't laying on the offensive stuff thick enough.

Of course anyone who awards a prize for this "religious art" is morally bankrupt, and it shows: Reverend Rod Pattenden, who awarded the $15,000 prize to the competition winner says about Bearded Orientals, Making the Empire Cross that

the artist was questioning "the idea that you can have absolute good and absolute evil. Life's a bit more complicated than that".

Ponder that for a moment: A clergyman who does not believe in absolute good.

Completing the dhimmitude and complete moral equivalence of the bien pensant, a statue of the Virgin Mary shrouded by a Muslim burqa was also a Blake Prize entry.

If you haven't heard of the Blake Prize, it's a $15,000 prize awarded for religious art,

The Reverend Rod Pattenden, who awarded the $15,000 prize to the competition winner in Sydney yesterday, said his mission was to spark debate about spirituality in a world that was "cynical, degraded and in crisis".

With competition like this, it ought to be.

As if the anti-Catholic imagery is not insulting enough, Reverend Rod manages to fling yet one more insult while he's at it,

Mr Pattenden said he did not expect controversy to result from the exhibition at the National Art School Gallery "because the Christian community doesn't look at art a great deal".

With crap like this being called prize-winning "art", why would it want to?

Meanwhile, over in Sweden, Lars Vilks is receiving death threats.

Captain Ed wants to know, When Exactly Did Art Die?

Update:
Aussie Islamic Leader: Mary in a Burqa is 'Not At All Offensive'

Update, Friday 31 August:
Don't take offense, shut the gate, via Janette.

Sicko, and Friday round-up

Updated
Via Larwyn, Prepare to be Sickened by SiCKO

Literally every day, the mainstream media in the countries whose government-run medical systems Moore holds up as superior models publish stories documenting the failure of mandatory, no-opt-out, state-run medical care. The laundry list of ills, in the U.K. alone, includes patients waiting months or even years for critical drugs and treatments (sometimes becoming disabled or dying because of the delay or lack of care), people denied therapies altogether because of rationing or cost (see, for example, an article last February in The Scotsman, “Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS”), an explosion in the size of the medical bureaucracy, and thousands of physicians taking to the streets earlier this year to protest.

One bottom line, so to speak, is particularly telling: Moore, who is obese, would most likely be denied a number of common health care procedures and treatments in one of his favored government-controlled socialist medicine systems, the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS), because of his excessive weight. Recently, the cash-strapped NHS actually started limiting or prohibiting therapies for residents who are fat or who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.

In Princeton, the Public Library has been banging the drum on socialized health care for a while, inviting Paul Krugman to ignore the facts about the French healthcare system and featuring a film on Cuba's healthcare at the Princeton Human Rights Film Festival, by which they not only managed to ignore Cuba's huuman rights record but also Cuba's apartheid health care system, even when three members of the audience tried to talk about it.

I expect the PPL will be showing SICKO soon.

Update: Michael Moore's Shticko: His health care jeremiad won't win any converts

And I won't be surprised if Sicko has wonderful things to say about the Venezuelan healthcare; too bad Michael didn't bring along any Norwegian reporters

Speaking of Venezuela,
Remember the fallen viaduct in Caracas?

Well, a new one's up.

In other Venezuelan news, The constitutional changes draft has been leaked: the path to an eternal Chavez dictatorship and kiss what's left of your private property good-bye. Update Dymphna has more on Hugo's latest.
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Joe finds some Academic Fantasies Exploited

Abbas: Hamas Creating ‘Empire of Darkness’ unlike Fatah's sweetness and lignt. The Guardian blames the US and Israel, of course.

Tony Blair's going to Rome

Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of secular Britain. Indeed.

El Cafe Cubano continues the Friday fast for all political prisoners

Unlike the Brits who allowed themselves to be taken hostage, the Aussies repelled an Iranian attempt to capture a boarding party. Update: Richard North has more on the story and how it's covered by the blogs and by the MSM.
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Via Irwin, June 20, 2007 Paul Krugman Four Years Ago Today. Krugman's wrong on things other than French healthcare, too.
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Via Bob, Harvard Dean of Freshmen Advertises "Scintillating and Sexy" Talk, since college students don't think of sex at all.
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George not-in-my-back-yard Clooney


technorati: SICKO
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Those uncomfortable cheerleaders

Last night before dinner The Husband (TH) was cooking something in the pressure cooker and sipping on a beer when I (F) said,

F: Did you hear that Russell Crowe says that the rugby team he owns in Sydney quote "has discarded its cheerleaders" unquote this season because they made male fans feel uncomfortable? (h/t PC Watch)

TH: Uncomfortable?
(takes a sip from his beer, looks at cheeleader photo, smiles, has more beer)
More like they made the male fans' wives uncomfortable.
F (reading from the article): "The Hollywood star also said his wife, Danielle Spencer, supported the club's controversial move".
TH: I knew it.
F: They're replacing the cheerleaders with some sort of marching band. "The whole idea of percussion will be exciting for the crowd".
TH: Well, the Rockettes do great percussion. I wonder if they travel.

(Rockette trivia for you guys: Back in the 1970s the height limit was 5'9". Now it's 5'10 1/2".)
(TH likes the Rockette picture, even when "it's not as good as a whole row of them")