Maybe I am being clueless but...

[Dominique Strauss-Kahn and some other rich, important banker asshole. He is the one on the right but does it matter?]

The rape allegations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn are puzzling. On the one hand, given a contest between a poor immigrant maid and a powerful wealthy banker, it is hard not to side with the maid. But there are problems with her story.

From the May 17th Telegraph --

The maid alleges that when she arrived to clean the IMF managing director's suite at noon on Saturday, he locked her inside, attempted to rape her and forced her to give him oral sex.

How is that possible? How would one lock a hotel room door from the inside such that one could not get out? Hotel doors lock from the inside to keep intruders out, but are designed for quick and easy exit in case of fire. If anyone reading this has ever seen a hotel door that worked any other way I will be glad to be corrected, but I haven't seen one nor do I expect to.

If she was able to repel his attempt to rape her, she was willing and able to resist by force. There is no allegation of coercion with a weapon or threat of one, only of force. If she could keep him out of her vagina, how could she not keep him out of her mouth?

If the maid did not want Dominique Strauss-Kahn's penis in her mouth and she was not so intimidated as to be afraid to resist, why would she not just have kept her jaw closed? Or once inside, not have bitten his penis and bitten it hard?

Her husband's description of the maid, though affectionate, makes her sound plain, obese, and unstable. As Strauss-Kahn showed by raising a million in cash for bail on short notice, he could lay his hands on plenty of money. New York has no end of hookers and it is a certainty that a rich, smart, connected guy like Strauss-Kahn could have had no end of women in his room with a phone call, every one of them more attractive than the African maid.

It is conventional to say that rape is a crime of violence rather than one of sexual desire. Which makes sense here. Nothing about the maid was more attractive than any one of the high-priced hookers Strauss-Kahn could easily have afforded. So it wasn't a sex crime. It was a crime of violence plain and simple. Which is to say that for the maid's accusation to be true, Strauss-Kahn would have to have a screw loose.

Conversely, for Strauss-Kahn's denial to be true, either the accusation is an attempt at blackmail, or the maid is the one with a screw loose.

This is beginning to have a something of the odor of the poor innocent woman who was raped by the Duke lacrosse team in 2006 . Except she wasn't. In the end the prosecutor in that case was disbarred for concealing exonerating evidence and the woman went to jail.

And the 1987 Tawana Brawley case in which a poor woman from the slums was raped and abused by New York police officers, smeared with dog shit, and kidnapped inside a large canvas sack. Except she wasn't. Forensic evidence demonstrated that every allegation she made was false. The Reverend Al Sharpton adopted her cause but never apologized or retracted when she was proven a liar. The prosecutor he smeared in the press sued for defamation and got a judgment of $345,000 against him.

The underlying problem is that treating a woman's word as sacrosanct gives crazy and malicious women too much power to destroy whomever they don't like by false allegations. But treating a woman's word as something to be ignored or dismissed gives men a carte blanche to rape women and get away with it. There seems to be no balanced way to do it. The world is full of liars and head cases and there is no reliable way to deal with them. The legal system tends to lynch the poor and hand out hereditary 'Get Out of Jail Free' cards to the rich.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is an international banker and a leader of the Socialist Party of France, and a candidate to run against the current President, Nicholas Sarkozy, in 2012. It is not too much to suppose that a socialist international banker would make some powerful enemies. Nor is it too much to suppose that a prospective candidate for President might be subject to dirty tricks by the regime. Or by friends of the regime.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Socialists would have won the Presidency in 2005 if their candidate had not been the inept but stunningly beautiful Segolene Royal. Nor unreasonable to suppose that the Socialists would have an excellent chance against the increasingly unpopular Nicholas Sarkozy if their candidate in 2012 were an experienced world banker like Strauss-Kahn. One does not have to be John LeCarre to suspect a plot here.

It is not clear what is going on in the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, except that it is not what we are being told.

Could It Be Any More Obviously Class War?

from today's Washington Post --

A Democratic measure that would have repealed tax subsidies for the five biggest oil companies failed to clear the Senate on Tuesday, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance in a near-party-line vote.

The Senate rejected S.940, or the “Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act,” in a 52-to-48 vote. Three Democrats – Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Mark Begich (Alaska) – joined nearly all Republican in voting against the measure, while two Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) – voted “yes.”

Democrats had contended that the bill, which would have repealed $21 billion in tax subsidies for the top five oil companies over the next decade, represented a step toward addressing the country’s soaring deficit and rising gas prices. The White House issued an official statement of administration policy earlier Tuesday saying that it strongly backed the bill.

But even as Democratic leaders had been strongly pushing the measure, it was expected that the bill would fall short. That’s the case, too, with a separate energy-related measure that will be on the Senate floor Wednesday – a Republican-sponsored bill aimed at increasing domestic energy production.

The end result: the congressional debate over addressing rising gas prices will have little changed by week’s end.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) maintained Tuesday that the subsidy issue will continue to play a role in the debate over raising the debt ceiling. Asked what he expected to come from the vote on the Democratic measure, Reid told reporters that he expected that a final deal on the debt ceiling would include a repeal of tax subsidies for the top five oil companies.

Mind you, this was the Democratic majority Senate, NOT the Republican House.

Eye Candy with Music

El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife from Daniel López on Vimeo.

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Another Amazing Coincidence

[John Profumo]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. Which is a good thing for the rich and powerful. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and also a leader of the French Socialist Party. He was considered a strong candidate to run against Nicholas Sarkozy for the Presidency of the French Republic.

But he got caught in a sex scandal so the rich and powerful were saved.

Elliot Spitzer had been a crusading Attorney-General for the State of New York who investigated and prosecuted a number of Wall Street criminals whom both the US Attorney for New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission somehow forgot to investigate and prosecute. He was so popular that he was handily elected Governor of New York. He was discussed as a possible presidential candidate.

But he got caught in a sex scandal so the rich and powerful were saved.

Julian Assange published the Wikileaks documents. He didn't say anything. He didn't claim anything. He didn't prove anything. He just published what people in positions of power had themselves said. He clearly was going to publish more.

But he got caught got in a sex scandal so the rich and powerful were saved.

John Edwards was a smart successful trial attorney, a poor boy who made tons of money in his practice and was elected US Senator from North Carolina. He was a supporter of labor unions and working people's interests. He was a strong candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But he got caught in a sex scandal so the rich and powerful were saved.

The rich and powerful sure are lucky that everyone who opposes them just happens to get caught in sex scandals.

The Other Side of Things

[The Southern Cross on the flag of Samoa. It also appears on the flags of Australia, Brazil, New Guinea, New Zealand, and the US Army's Americal Division.]

Pretty exciting Southern Hemisphere day yesterday. Saw the entirety of the constellation of Scorpio with the brilliant binary red giant Antares, the Heart of the Scorpion, in the midst of it. It is huge and obvious. And then as plain as night, high in the sky, was the Southern Cross. IMpressive. In Centaurus I saw the bright star Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our own, 4.3 light years away. I waved and conveyed your regards.

I even got up at five and went out to see the close grouping of Venus, Mars, and Jupiter predicted for this morning near the dawn horizon. At five one can go out bare-ass-naked without concern for weather or being seen. I was not seen nor sadly were the planets because of the clouds.

Other interesting facts learned -- a small amount of Polynesian ukulele music goes a long way, even when accompanied by local dance troupes. Especially when accompanied by local dance troupes.

The Bin Laden Situation

The latest bulletin: At this moment Osama Bin Laden remains dead. It is not known how long this situation can go on. More as it develops.

Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead! The Wicked Witch!

Two things were new about the assault on the Abbottabad compound. One is that when the Al Qaeda people used Osama's youngest wife as a human shield, the Special Operations Forces and Navy Seals unhesitatingly shot her and the men using her as a shield. Openly doing that is novel.

The second thing is that is there is no pretense of being sorry "that any human being has been killed". No one in the government nor in the public is going through even the slightest shedding of crocodile tears over the violent death of Bin Laden.

Both of these changes represent the diminution of an always perfunctory pretense of the sacredness of human life. Given the brutality of the wars of the past centuries, it has never been more than a gesture, an insincere politeness.

Now even that has been discarded.

A Middle East Peace Agreement At Last!

[Mahmoud Abbas, Barack Obama, and Ismail Haniyeh after signing the Palestinian peace accords]

Fatah and Hamas Said to Reach Deal to End Schism Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Wed, April 27, 2011 -- 12:33 PM ET

Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian movements, reached understandings on Wednesday to end the years-long internal Palestinian schism, according to Egyptian and Palestinian officials.

Citing an Egyptian official, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that delegations led by Azzam al-Ahmed of Fatah and Moussa Abu Marzouk of Hamas had agreed in Cairo on issues including the formation of a temporary unity government and the holding of Palestinian elections.

Fortunately the Palestinians will have the same good faith in keeping agreements with one another that they have had in keeping agreements with Israel. This should last as long as the Oslo Accords did in 1993.

Where Does the Word "Jew" Come From?

[Master Kung, Confucius, said that before there could be right rule there had to be right naming of things]

In Hebrew, our people are called Yehudim, after our country Yehudah. When the Romans came, they called our country Judea and its people Judeans. We were expelled from our country after two long wars of rebellion against the Romans, in the year 70 CE and again in 135.

The refugees in the Roman Empire were called Judeans. Over the centuries Roman Latin morphed into other languages and each of the new European languages adopted new words for the Judeans. German preserves much of the original spelling in calling us "Jude" and plural "Juden". Spanish calls us "Judio" and "Judios". Dutch is "Jood". Russian is "Yoodei". In each, both the sense and sound of "Judean" is preserved.

It is a meaning worth considering. The homeland of the Jews, even the right to a homeland of the Jews, can be, and was, debated at great length. But can one really debate what is the homeland of the Judeans?

But the long, long antisemitic tradition of denying and obscuring our right to our homeland was not to be brushed aside so lightly.

The lands of Judea and Samaria were called by their proper names on maps and in common usage until the 1980's. At which time they somehow became the West Bank. When I first heard of the West Bank, it took me a while to figure out what it referred to. it is a strange term. It means the western bank of the Jordan River.

The "West Bank" includes cities such as Qalqilya and Ramallah that are some fifty miles from the Jordan. It is as though San Francisco were said to be on the South Bank of the Russian River fifty miles north, or Boston to be on the East Bank of the Hudson. It is an entirely modern and invented phrase. There is no West Bankian people, no West Bankian language, no history of West Bankia, no tradition of West Bankian life under the British or the Romans or the Ottomans.

It is hard not to believe that expression was invented precisely to avoid calling Judea and Samaria by their actual names. And a moment's thought shows why one would want to do that.

If the headline reads, "Jews invade West Bank, Build Settlements", it is easy to be convinced that it is an atrocity and an aggression and that the settlements must be illegal encroachments on the rights of the West Bankians.

It would be ever so much harder for Arabs, leftists, and journalists to keep a straight face while protesting if the headline read, "Judeans return to Judea". Which is precisely why the name was changed.

Remember every time you see the phrase "West Bank" that you are being lied to, being manipulated for someone else's political agenda, an agenda that doesn't do well if things are called by their real names.

Why Life is Worth Living 2, Or, More About Donuts

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Why Life is Worth Living 1

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A Spending Problem? Or a Revenue Problem?

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Almost all Federal expenditures are for Medicare, Social Security, and Defense. None of which anyone wants to cut. Remember this graph the next time you hear a Republican mouthing off about "Washington doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem." The real problem is that the Republicans are LYING. There is not a thing they themselves are willing to cut that is more than merely symbolic and politically, not economically, motivated.

If the economy is not to founder still more, the rich must pay more taxes. Simple as that.

More Arrigoni

Arrigoni's organizaton, the International Solidarity Movement reported Vittorio Arrigoni's death on its website with an article which concluded

Khaleel Shaheen, of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and a friend of Vittorio’s in Gaza says:

What has happened today is a black day in Palestinian history. The horrific murder of our friend Vittorio is totally condemned. We ask the local authorities to bring the criminals to justice as soon as possible. He is in our minds always. He is a hero of Palestine.

Since the Palestinians and their friends are obviously moral people who strenuously object to wanton murder, one wonders what the ISM said on their website about the Fogel murders.

The search term "Fogel" on the ISM website turns up only a denial that the police searches in the West Bank were related to the Fogel murders. And of course no mention that the searches quickly led to the arrest of the murderers -- whose DNA was found at the scene and who confessed to the murders without remorse.

Israel has no death penalty but the murder of the Fogel family has led to calls for legislating one for especially egregious cases of multiple murders like this one. It remains to be seen whether the rabbinate can restrain the public sentiment in favor of instituting a death penalty.

Terrible News, Your Excellency

[Vittorio Arrigoni]

The Times reports that a member of the hard-left pro-Palestinian group ISM (International Solidarity Movement) has come to a bad end. Vittorio Arrigoni went to Gaza to participate in protests against Israel. He wrote to a friend, "“I am very tense, exhausted, if they don’t kill anyone in the next 24 hours, I am getting out Thursday. Your V.” Which is to say he went there hoping someone would be killed in the fighting so that he could pretend to be angry about it.

Instead he was kidnapped by a Palestinian group named Tawhid and Jihad. T & J offered to trade him to Hamas for the leader of their organization whom Hamas had arrested earlier. (Though the line between arrested and kidnapped is a tad thinner in Gaza than in other places.) They gave Hamas a 30 hour deadline to comply.

The scandal, even by Gaza standards, is that T & J strangled Arrigoni with a plastic cord twenty four hours before their own deadline. Whether they never intended to free Arrigoni no matter what Hamas did, or whether they were afraid Hamas was onto them and had to get away fast, and murdered Arrigoni lest he identify them is not clear. But then, what is clear in Gaza?

What is so charming about all this is that the fundamental premise of ISM is its cynicism, its deliberate dismissal of fairness. And as cynical and cool as Arrigoni thought he was, he was nowhere near cynical enough to understand how murderous and primitive his hosts were. Arrigoni, as an Italian, was deliberately suspending his own notions of fairness and decency by participating in ISM. He assumed that his Palestinian hosts were doing the same. He didn't realize that people like Hamas and Tawhid and Jihad are not suspending principles of fairness and decency. By Western standards, they don't have any. By being in ISM, Arrigoni was defying Italian social norms. The Arabs who killed him were acting out Palestinian social norms, not defying them.

Arrigoni went to Gaza hoping Palestinians would be killed so he could use their deaths as propaganda for his cause. And the Palestinians who killed him did so to use his death as propaganda for their cause. The word for that is "justice".

But wait, it gets better. His captors didn't just kill Arrigoni. They tortured him first. According to the Palestinian doctor who performed the autopsy, while his hands were tied behind his back and before being strangled, Arrigoni was beaten above and behind the ear with a sharp heavy object. So the theory that he was being held as a hostage for exchange goes awry. Especially with his having been strangled six hours into a thirty hour deadline. So the line between political violence and random murders thins to invisibility for the Left's fair-haired boys?

After Arrigoni was kidnapped/arrested, T & J took credit for his abduction and sent an ultimatum to Hamas demanding the release of their leader. After Arrigoni's body was found, T & J denied having abducted him. Hamas, for its part, claimed Israel had kidnapped and killed Arrigoni. Since the alternative was to admit their control of Gaza appears to be slipping, that was the best Hamas could do.

Clearly these people need, deserve, and ought to have a state of their own in which to rationally and responsibly work out their destiny as a community. And I guarantee you that that is exactly what the UN General Assembly is going to vote to do some time this year.

For Jews, the temptation to laugh up one's sleeve at a European Israel-hater being beaten and strangled by Arab Israel-haters, the very people he supposedly had gone to Gaza to help, is strong. Fortunately we are too mature and forgiving to do that. (snicker) (chortle) (yuk yuk yuk) HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

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A Respite From All This Zionist Propaganda

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Stung by criticisms that I always take Israel's side in this blog, I have decided to include some views from the other side. Here is a video taken from Hamas' own website. It shows Hamas launching rockets at Israeli towns from in front of a school and a mosque.

The Goldstone Report refudiated Israeli claims that rockets were being launched by Hamas from Gaza schools, mosques, and hospitals. Now Hamas says -- and shows -- otherwise.

First Goldstone admitted the main premises of his report were false. Now Hamas agrees. Of course neither sees any connection between the admitted falsity of the report on the one hand and withdrawing it on the other.

Lil Buck and Yo-yo Ma

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Desolado

We are the second longest-lived mammals, after the bowhead whale. Bowheads are believed to occasionally swim for two hundred years. A human being, typically a woman, who lives a century is noteworthy. Every other mammal is gone sooner than we and the bowheads are. It is our great longevity which enables us not to be devastated by sunset and the end of day.

La Paz

[Gray whales come annually to the Sea of Cortez to give birth and to mate]

La Paz is an interesting place. It stands in a hard desert like so many western cities, but does not have the diverted waters of the Colorado to sustain it. Instead there are natural springs in the nearby mountains which provide the city with a meager supply of brackish water. The hills around the town are peopled by huge saguaro cactuses but are uninhabitable to everyone else. So much so that there are no Indians indigenous to the area. Nevertheless it prospers, even flourishes.

La Paz is the state capital of Baja California Sur (BCS) and thus has the benefit of the state government offices being here. It is a port with a large ferry terminal connecting Baja with Mazatlan and the mainland. There is an army base here and a navy base, and a university. Which is to say there is substantial government spending here.

There is a substantial tourist trade as well. Various pale people come here as respite from northern winters to loll on soft warm sand beaches, to swim in the shallow aquamarine waters of the bahia. There is another group, who carefully distinguish themselves from the former, the expatriates. Contrary to the received notions of Yanqui imperialism, the majority of these settlers are Canadians.

One sharp dividing line between the two groups is how they feel about the new Home Depot on the edge of town. The tourists are aghast at the introduction of a big box store into their fantasy of quaintness. The ex-pats, particularly the handy Canadians, are delighted to be able to cheaply buy tools and materials to work on their casas, casitas, and villas. The Home Depot makes the ex-pats feel more connected to La Paz, the turistas feel less connected.

As a tourist visiting an ex-pat, I am staying in a lovely villa on a hillside with a vast view of the Bahia and the city, of the sunset and the city lights, from its four terrassos (verandas).

There is a wonderful architectural inversion here. Ex-pats look for traditional old-fashioned Mexican houses - with internal courtyards, breezeways, and ironwork. Those with the money, taste, and/or dedication for it, build or convert houses to the Mexican rustic style of fifty or more years ago. Here there are rich colors and textures, bougainvillea, cool terra cotta floors, vivid colored tiles punctuated by elaborately painted ones. Soft breezes cool the shaded rooms. Rough saw work with deliberately faded colors. In this villa the owner has assembled no end of Mexican folk art artifacts and art works -- here there seems little difference between the two.

The neighboring houses on this hill belong to middle class Mexicans. In La Paz, as elsewhere, higher incomes go with higher elevations. The Mexicans regard rustic Mexicana the same way prosperous Americans regard rustic Americana -- worth visiting but not something to live in. One wonders if there is not in their future the same transformation that changed San Franciscans' attitude toward Victorian houses from dismissiveness to adulation. It is not clear whether this ex-pat villa, named Luna y Mar, is behind the curve or ahead of it. Whether it is a breath of the past or an intimation of the future, Luna Mar is lovely. La vida es dulce y soave.

Our Palestinian Friends

Let it not be said that I consider all Muslims to be assholes because of the actions of a few. It's not as though large numbers of them are despicable subhumans who endorse the murder of children.

Hamas has already taken credit for the attack with the following statement:

Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza targeted with number of mortar shells the nearby Israeli settlements, bus driver and other Israeli settler were injured after a shell targeted their [plainly marked big yellow school] bus driving in the southern Israeli kibbutz of Sa’ad April 7, 2011.

Not that it matters, but the ‘settlements’ in question are inside the 1949 armistice lines, and ‘the other Israeli settler’ is 16 (some reports say 13) years old.

But you say, doesn’t it look bad to kill children?

Not to many Palestinian Arabs:

Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children – Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and three-month old baby Hadas – were murdered in the Israeli town of Itamar on March 11.

“63% of the Palestinians oppose and 32% support the attack in the Itamar settlement in the West Bank in which a family of five was murdered.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, official PA newspaper, April 7, 2011] — PMW

Just one out of three! Imagine my relief.

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More from The Religion of Peace

Gaza Mortar Hits Bus; Child, Civilians Wounded

Reports of Ongoing Fire

Schoolbus hit by anti-tank missile

Jerusalem, April 7 - A projectile fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza hit a bus carrying Israeli civilians today, injuring three people, including a young boy. The driver is reported to be in critical condition. The 13 year old has serious head wounds and medics are fighting to save his life.

As many as 50 children had been on the bus as it made its way from a regional middle school to drop them at their homes.

Alon Schuster, head of the Shaar haNegev regional authority, said the bus had been completely destroyed and confirmed that a teenage boy was seriously wounded.

The driver was also injured.

“The bus was heading from Nahal Oz to the school, and only one child and the driver were left on the bus, and they were hurt,” said Yenina Banea, a local resident. “The other kids had just gotten off.

“We are all in shelters and hear bombing around us. Until two minutes ago (4:28 pm Israel time) we kept hearing bombs, but I didn’t know if it’s in Israel or in Gaza.

All the kids are in shelters,” she said.

Minutes later there were reports of a direct hit on a home in the Israeli community of Ein Hashlosha. No further details were immediately available.

The first mortar or anti-tank missile was launched at Kibbutz Saad close to the Gaza-Israel border, as children were returning from school.

178 mortars and rockets were launched from Gaza at Israel so far this year.

Residents in the area have been ordered into their bomb shelters.

"Hamas is responsible for any strikes that originate in Gaza," said Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

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What's With the Glenn Beck T-shirt Guy?

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58th Century Hagaddah

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April Fool's?

The New York Times reported today that because a preacher in Florida threatened to burn a copy of the koran, a mob in Mazar-al-sharif in northern Afghanistan stormed the UN compound there and killed 12 people. Five were Nepali guards, two were Europeans, one of them a woman, and five were Afghans. It was reported that two were beheaded. No Americans, let alone any Florida preachers, were in the compound.

These are the people we have committed our soldiers and our money to protect from being ruled by religious fanatics. Does anybody see a problem here? Trying to keep Afghanistan from being ruled by religious fanatics is like trying to keep America from being ruled by the Republicans and Democrats.

The problem is that just when events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria create a small opening in the general impression that Muslims are assholes, the Afghans slam it shut. The notion that such people should continue to be allowed to enter the US becomes every day more and more far-fetched.

I have seen mobs shouting "Death to America!", not in some primitive mountain country, but at demonstrations in San Francisco. It is not racism or bigotry to want to them out of the country.

It is to be remembered that 9-11 was not an attack from outside the country. It was launched from Logan Airport in Boston. It was perpetrated by Muslims who were in the country illegally. They were allowed in and allowed to stay by INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents who didn't enforce the law because they were afraid of being accused of being Islamophobic. It is time for us and the INS to get over that fear.

Immigration quotas from Muslim countries should be restricted to somewhere around zero. It becomes more and more imperative that our immigration laws be strictly enforced and that those who can legally be deported be promptly sent home.

How many more massacres will it take before we realize that Islamophobia is a reasonable response? Restricting immigration is the very least we can do. There are plenty of law-abiding Chinese and Indians and Mexicans and everybody else who want to come here. Let's receive our immigrants from countries without public beheadings, let's receive immigrants whose religious faith does not include jihad against us.

Update: 3 April 2011

In the past two days 12 more people have been killed in riots in Afghanistan, making a total of 24.

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Quixote & Panza

From the Jerusalem Post --

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I Don't Normally Follow Politics but....

The Daily Show - Back in Black - Trump 2012
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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Just Being Smarmy....

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[The new daughter-in-law]

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Amazingly Convenient Coincidence

[The Oswald-Ruby Band rocking in Dallas, 1963]

The guy who published the Wikileaks documents, Julian Assange, has been arrested in England. A British court has just ruled in favor of his being extradited to Sweden to face rape charges. The Wikileaks papers deeply embarrassed the government and military establishment of the United States. They proved what everyone knew but could not prove. Among them was the totally unsurprising revelation that the Karzai government of Afghanistan is totally corrupt and that the war is being conducted in part by bribing tribal leaders. And that the US government knows all about it. And a bunch of other things as well.

Wikipedia lists a lengthy series of applications of power to stifle Wikileaks -- including the VISA-Mastercard cartel cancelling their credit cards and several countries from Germany to Thailand blocking access to the Wikileaks website.

What an amazing coincidence that shortly after embarrassing the US government Assange should be charged with a serious crime. The Los Angeles Times reported that one of the two rape charges consisted of his having sex with a woman without a condom after she had asked him to use one. Nothing about force or threat, just failure to wear the condom. That is bad manners, not rape.

The second rape charge is from another woman who claims that Assange started having sex with her while she was asleep and could not consent. I do not know the details but that sounds like the woman was in bed with Assange without her clothes. Again, there is no claim of force or threat. If a woman takes off her clothes and gets in bad with a man, that may not be consent per se, but it is pretty close. The woman woke up to find Assange having sex with her but apparently did not then object or push him off. Which sounds like she woke up and then acquiesced. That is bad taste, not rape.

To call these charges trumped-up gives them more credit than they deserve. What appears to be going on here is the government, having been caught in a whole series of crimes and scandals, has set out to make the story be about Assange rather than about itself.

One can hope that the story will unravel as Watergate did. The jury will laugh the stupid charges out of court, the women will be interrogated and name who put them up to it. That person will face criminal charges of conspiracy and civil liability and will 'fess up to who put him up to it. And the trail will go right back to the pigs in charge. One can wonder if there will be a series of mysterious deaths as in the Kennedy-Oswald-Ruby-Kilgallen murders of 1963.

Wonderful News!

[Irish voters]

The long-time governing party in Ireland, Fianna Fail, was crushed in recent elections because of its demonstrable incompetence. The winning parties formed a coalition. They are Fine Gael, a center-right business party and Irish Labor, a socialist party. The two parties are on the opposite sides of every issue. So instead of one party that cannot govern, Ireland now has two. Way to go, geniuses!

Oh by the way....

[It seemed like a good idea at the time?]

from an article in yesterday's New York Times about dating a prehistoric campsite in Texas containing pre-Clovis artifacts (before this dig no one knew there had been pre-Clovis anything) --

Given the lack of sufficient organic material buried around the tools, the radiocarbon dating method was useless. Instead, earth scientists at the University of Illinois, Chicago, used a newer technique known as optically stimulated luminescence. This measures light energy trapped in minerals to reveal how long ago the soil was last exposed to sunlight.

Quite apart from the stunning revelation that there have been people in North America longer than anyone thought, is the 'oh-by-the-way' mention of the new technology used to date it.

Optically stimulated luminescence is hugely important for all the stuff it can be used for directly, and just as important for confirming and refining dates found by other means like radio-carbon dating, uranium dating, tree rings, oxygen isotope dating, ice cores and seabottom ooze dating, and the venerable suite-of-fossils dating, every one of which has serious limitations. Optically stimulated luminescence is potentially huge for the dating of practically anything and everything. Our understanding of the history of everything that has happened in the past many thousands of years is about take a huge leap forward. Wikipedia says it can be used to date things buried between 300 and 100,000 years ago.

With their usual acumen the Times didn't think to mention it except in passing.

More Lights in the Sky

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Oops!

[Then-Senator Joe Biden speaking in 2007]

The Vice-President putting his foot in his mouth retroactively.

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A 1.5 Gigapixel Picture of the Inaugural

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

Click on the link above. The whole point of this picture is how much you can zoom in.

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Dead Pool Score Update

Harvey 21 Jack 0

Elizabeth Taylor, an over rated actor but a great movie star. "Cleopatra" was a dud, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Butterfield 8" were cheesy, over-acted productions, but "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" was her shining moment, her best performance. Her films, except for "Virginia Woolf" and maybe "National Velvet" unfortunately, do not hold up with time.

Even Arabs Can Rock

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Jews Seize St. Petersburg! Actual Footage!

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This seeming trifle is actually important.

Before 1917 Jews were not even allowed to be in St. Petersburg because it was beyond the Pale of (Jewish) Settlement. My grandfather had to bribe a policeman to travel by train from Latvia, inside the Pale, to neighboring Estonia, outside it.

Under Stalin and his successors, Jews were not permitted to publicly practice Judaism anywhere in the Soviet Union.

Today, for the first time ever, Jews in Russia are free to be Jews, free to be themselves. It is an immense step forward for Russia, and in our own time. Those who think our times are shallow and bleak aren't seeing what is right in front of them.

The vast green building in the background toward the end of the video is the Czar's Winter Palace, where the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. Nearby is the Nevsky Prospekt where Raskolnikov walked and raved in "Crime and Punishment".

The Tsunami

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Even if you could view it from a safe place, where do you go when it's over?

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The Shape of Things to Come

[The Persian Gulf has 55% of the world's oil reserves and 40% of its gas.]

Today Saudi troops fired on protesters in Bahrain. Bahrain is an island sheikdom in the Persian Gulf a mile off the coast of eastern Saudi Arabia. The majority of the people in Bahrain and most of the protesters are Shi'ites. The wealthy class and the royal family of Bahrain are Sunni.

The main Sunni power in the Persian Gulf is Saudi Arabia. The main Shi'ite power in the Gulf is Iran. The fighting in Bahrain can easily be seen as a struggle between Shi'ites and Sunnis. So can the fighting in Iraq. One is reminded of the Cold War when various countries and parties fought over seemingly local issues but in each case the underlying reality was that they were proxies for one side or the other.

In theory the endless Angolan civil war was between people who believed in socialism and anti-colonialism and people who believed in property rights and civil society. Behind one side was Cuban military and financial support and behind the other Portuguese military and financial support. But behind Cuba and Portugal were the Soviet Union and the United States.

During the Cold War it was not always clear whether the United States itself was a proxy for world capitalism and the Soviet Union for world socialism. Or the other way around. Even now it is not clear since the Soviet Union and world socialism, after long declines, collapsed simultaneously.

Similarly it is not clear whether Saudi power in the Gulf and Iranian power are proxies for Sunnism and Shi'ism respectively, or vice-versa. But it is beginning to look like it is becoming a wider conflict no matter how one looks at it.

Just as we use the expression 'World War' followed or preceded by a number to describe the catastrophes in Europe, we might do the same in the Middle East. The First Gulf War was the monster, fought from 1980 to 1988 between Sunni Iraq, then ruled by the lovable Saddam Hussein, and revolutionary Iran which had just overthrown the Shah, and ruled by the equally lovable Ayatollah Khomeini. It is estimated that Iraq lost 300,000 killed. 'Killed' mind you, not the vaguer 'killed and wounded' which is a military fact of the loss of effective troops. 'Killed' is human lives. Figures are less certain for Iran but the Wikipedia estimate is that 500,000 to one million were killed on the Iranian side. 800,000 to 1,300,000 killed altogether.

For comparison, in all the fighting, all the terrorism, and all the wars fought between Israel and its enemies over the past 100 years, the total number of dead on all sides is estimated at 51,000. More died in individual battles in the First Gulf War than that. While not specifically fought over religion, Gulf War I was nevertheless fought between a Sunni-controlled country and a Shi'ite country. Since Iraq was and is a majority Shi'ite country the export of the Iranian revolution to Iraq would have meant the overthrow of Sunni minority rule.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In 1991 the United States and its allies drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The Second Gulf War was a mere skirmish compared to its predecessor. Of the 959,000 coalition troops who participated, 396 were killed, 1,200 Kuwaitis died, and 20,000 to 35,000 Iraqis did not make it home. If one considers the almost 100 to 1 ratio between coalition deaths and Iraqi deaths, one sees the wisdom of the Marine Corps' unofficial motto, "Do not eff with the United States".

The Third Gulf War began in 2003 with the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. After a brief initial phase of American and British forces defeating the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein, it soon degenerated into a long grinding civil war between minority Sunni forces unwilling to see an end to their centuries-old domination of Iraqi-Mesopotamian society, and Shi'ite forces supported by the United States.

Now with the transformation of the Third Gulf War into a Sunni - Shi'ite civil war in Iraq, it seems to be spreading into a Sunni - Shi'ite religious war all around the Persian Gulf. The Third Gulf War, currently a civil war in Iraq, seems likely to morph into the Fourth Gulf War, a prolonged conflict between Shi'ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

What has just emerged in Bahrain, with Saudi troops firing into crowds of Bahraini protestors is a pattern of Sunnis shooting Shi'ites. This is just getting started and it can only get worse before it gets better.

And we, as Americans, are stuck with the morally and politically bankrupt but awash-in-oil Saudi regime as our ally.

Just for a sense of scale,

Egypt 80 million people

Iran 75 million

Iraq 31 million (about 20 million Shi'ite)

Saudi Arabia 27 million

Israel 7.5 million (about 5 million Jews)

Bahrain 0.8 million (about 0.5 million Shi'ite)

Just as an aside about how good an ally Saudi Arabia is to the United States. Muslims are not automatically anti-American and anti-Israel. The primary nexus between Islam and anti-American Islam, between Islam and terrorist fanaticism, between Islam and fanatic anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, is the world-wide network of Wahhabi madrassas or religious schools. Which are entirely funded by Saudi Arabia.

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How This Works

[Half a loaf]

Palestinians murdered the Fogel family two days ago. They broke into the family home and stabbed the husband and wife to death. And then murdered their three children, one of whom was a baby.

How does one deal with people who do not hesitate to murder children? The easy and obvious response would be to kill as many of their fellow Palestinians as one can get one's hands on. But the Palestinians have shown over and over that they have no respect for anyone's life, not even their own.

There also is not much deterrent value. The Palestinians have also shown over and over that they are unable to grasp the notion of their acts having consequences, that anything that happens to them is their own doing. Palestinians seem unable to grasp the connection between Israeli reprisals and the Palestinian atrocity that preceded them.

Which is to say that Palestinians are hard to motivate and hard to deter. The one thing they have shown to be a powerful motivator is Israeli settlement in the West Bank. The Palestinians quite rightly see the Israeli settlements as eroding the amount of land that they can reasonably claim in any eventual peace settlement.

Which is why the Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, responded to the wanton murder of the Fogel family not by announcing air strikes or commando raids. After informing Washington, he announced the construction of new apartments in Ma'aleh Admumim, a suburb of Jerusalem. The town and the new apartments are in an area of the West Bank claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians.

Since the Palestinians do not fear Israeli military reprisals but do fear construction of new apartments in the West Bank, that is a great response to their terrorism. It is a punishment feared by people who do not fear death.

It is also a good example of why Israel is a successful society and Palestine is a failed one. Palestinians act out their national purposes by murder of children and self-defeating rage. Israel acts out its national purpose and its anger at the murder of Jewish children by building homes in our ancient homeland. Having won the wars, Israel is now winning the peace as well.

If this cycle continues, in the end Israel will have settled the West Bank and the Palestinians will be left with nothing.

Which makes it ironic that Israel is pressing the Palestinians to make peace and accept a two state solution and the Palestinians continue to refuse to negotiate. The Palestinians have been fighting and killing for the One State Solution so long, Palestine and no Israel, that they are in the process of getting it. But it will be Israel and no Palestine. And they will deserve what they get.

Lights in the Sky

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The two moving lights are the International Space Station and the space shuttle Discovery separating.

Pictures of Afghanistan

Click on photos to enlarge.

[Mai in Kabul]

[Retired wives]

[Mujahedeen]

[Woman in burqqah]

YMCA

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I have finally recovered from my winter funk enough to join the YMCA. This was after a week of promising myself then stalling or finding something else that just absolutely had to be done first, but in the end didn't get done anyway. That this turning over of a new leaf is an act of will is indubitable. That it amazingly happens to have occurred just as spring returns in earnest to the northern hemisphere is mere coincidence. Instead of staying in bed until 11 I am now up at the crack of 8. Which is to say that because there is now morning light in the mornings, I have left off semi-hibernating. There are now evenings that are not simply the onset of night in the afternoon.

I was uncertain about joining the YMCA since I qualify neither as 'Y' nor 'C'. But I have re-yclept it to 'Ye Mortal Curmudgeon Association' and I qualify handsomely. It seems like everyone I know or meet is having or has had horrible medical problems. I am starting to wonder when it will be my turn. My medical exams showed that I am in good health but too fat. The opportunities for sliding into horrible medical problems on account of the fat are manifold and manifest.

So I have started breakfasting on Faux Oeufs Turquoise a l'Oignon which sounds better in French but is still only barely edible. And have been to the aforesaid YMCA twice so far in two days and mean to go there again today.

I have been listening to Joseph Conrad's 'Lord Jim' on an iPod while I exercise (The YMCA seems to be a front for Apple.) and am reminded again of what an extraordinarily good writer he is, and all the more when one considers that English was not his native language.

The Berkeley YMCA is not a Wilde of homosexuals as the video would suggest but a Congregation of puritans. Berkeley's besetting vice is self-righteousness and nowhere does one feel more virtuous than when working out in a gym. The hard pious faces go a long way toward explaining the universality of escape into iPods. Appropriately they don't seem to care even for one another, being tolerant only of their own Puritanism, not that of others.

I have a bet with Pelfrey as to which of us loses more weight by June. I am intent on winning -- just this once.

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Not Guilty!

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

This is from the pope who as a young man was a member of Hitler Youth. There are pictures of him in his Hitler Jugend uniform. For HIM to forgive US is impudence on a cosmic scale.

There is a saying, "Justice delayed is justice denied." How about when it is delayed 2000 years? So I think I can speak for Jews everywhere in wishing Benedict XVI a hearty "Fuck you!".

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Zenga! Zenga!

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What does it tell you about the UN that Libya was on the UN Human Rights Council while it was ruled by an iron-handed military dictator but has been expelled from the Council now that it is driving him out?

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