A religion of peace?

From CNN:

KADUNA, Nigeria -- Dozens have been killed in northern Nigeria in rioting that erupted after a newspaper suggested the Prophet Mohammad would have approved of the Miss World beauty contest.

The death toll in the town of Kaduna was an estimated 105 with a further 521 injured taken to hospital, aid workers said on Friday.

Angry mobs in the mainly-Muslim city 600 kilometres (375 miles) northwest of Lagos burnt Christian churches and rampaged through the streets stabbing, bludgeoning and burning bystanders to death.

Shops were looted, cars were overturned and scorched while makeshift barricades were set alight. Fires also burned in mosques and windows were smashed.

Shehu Sani of the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress told The Associated Press he watched a crowd stab a young man, force a petrol-filled tyre around his neck and burn him alive. Sani said he saw three other bodies elsewhere in the city.

I don't understand this.

I'll even grant you that all religions, at some time, have done similar atrocities. But this strikes me as beyond the pale. A newspaper remarks that the Prophet would have picked a beauty queen, and the religious fanatics go berserk in an orgy of rioting. "Orgy" is precisely the word for people who drag people from their cars and beat them to death. Who stab someone and, not content that he'll probably bleed to death, stick a gas-filled tired around his neck, light it off, and watch him burn to death. You watch people behave like this and they cease to be human. Not because of where they are. Not because of their race and ethnicity. Because of what they're doing.

And they do this was crying, "God is great!"

God is great, throw another infidel on the fire! Better than shrimp.

A religion of peace ... my ass. Religions go through phases, or so it seems, and their fundamentalist members can't adopt to the modern world. Here is an entire continent caught in the throes of the 20th century (not yet the 21st for them, really), and fundamentalist members of Islam can't hack it. Because of the inherent nature of the religion, binding itself to governing people in all aspects of their life, these members have inordinate influence. What do I mean? Islam is not just a religion, it is a method of government. Islam doesn't just rule the mosques of Saudi Arabia, it rules the country. This is the norm for Islam.

Contrast with, say, the US. It is arguable that we are a Christian nation, that many of the laws of the land (including the Constitution) are built on Christian principles. But while a priest may hold sway over his parish, he doesn't run the city (unless he's elected, of course). A bishop is not a state governor, the Pope is not President. Oh, oops, let's not forget that priest, bishop, and pope are designations of a particular flavor of Christianity. No doubt a Baptist will take offense, let alone a (gasp) Protestant. Bring on the Lutherans!

That Christian-based document, the Constitution, even has a clause that says that Christians can't run the whole show (First Amendment, separation of church and state, etc.). This would be antithecal for the Muslim world. They do not separate the two, church and state. They are one and the same.

And people riot, cry out "God is Great!" and kill hundreds.

3,000 Americans die and they cheer, clap, revel in the glory. A great victory, they say, worth of celebration. Even if I buy the argument, that they are celebrating a strike back against the Great Satan, the Oppressor of the Universe, that it's just peachy to slaughter people going about their every day lives, as opposed to military forces, I contract that with a gory battle in US history. Forgive me, but at the moment I can't remember the specific name of the battle involved, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

World War 2, the Pacific War. The US has taken an island and the Japanese want it back. They send an invasion fleet. We hit it with all we've got and essentially blow 'em out of the water. Warships and transports, all sent to the bottom of the sea. Now the unanticipated occurs. The overwhelming majority of the Japanese landing troops survive. They're floating in the ocean. The water is warm; odds of survival are exceptionally high. Worse, for the Allies, the tide is carrying them right toward the beach they want to invade! In all likelihood, they will come ashore and the battle will be joined, precisely what sinking the Japanese fleet should have prevented.

A grim decision is reached, orders issued. For the next several hours, Navy and Army fighters and bombers strafe and bomb all those men floating helplessly in the water, killing thousands, leaving the chunks and survivors for the sharks.

I have read several accounts of this battle. Not a single one revels in it as a great victory. Not a single one cries in God's glory for the thousands slaughtered. In my mind, this was far worse than nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet was equally necessary in the context of an all-out war! Accounts tell of men returning from a single strafing run and refusing to do another. No one was ordered to make any of these strikes, mind you; all had to volunteer, understanding what they were being asked to do: wholesale slaughter. Many volunteered, accepting the necessity, and perhaps heeding the classic questions regarding who will do the hard things. "If not now, when? If not me, who?" And no doubt many reveled in the blood. But there was no widespread cheering and clapping and leaping about advancing behavior, reveling not in the victory but in the slaughter!

So excuse me if I have my doubts about a "religion of peace." All religions may claim that mantle; these practioners, in Nigeria and elsewhere, make a mockery of it.

Tests, Part 2 & 3

CLAVDIVS You're not the fool everyone takes you for. You put on a show to stay under the radar. Underneath your bumbling exterior, you are a shrewd and calculating person. You don't enjoy being in the spotlight, but you can take charge if absolutely neccessary. But trust no one, not even your best friend, because you never know who might betray you. You were portrayed by Derek Jacobi.

Which I, Claudius Character are You? created by
Shiny Objects



Congratulations, you're San Francisco, the city of change.
What US city are you? Take the quiz by Girlwithagun.

Damn, I love the news!

This on MSNBC:

Iraq, facing a Friday deadline and the threat of war, accepted a tough new U.N. resolution that will return weapons inspectors to the country after nearly four years, the country’s U.N. ambassador said Wednesday. Baghdad’s approval of the resolution means inspectors should be on the ground in Iraq within a matter of days, although testing Saddam Hussein’s compliance could take months.

Damn, that makes things sound great, don't it? Only, while they report there are no conditions, Iraq tosses in their favorite kinds of conditions, qualifiers that only they can judge! And I quote from their letter:

We hereby ask you to inform the Security Council that we are prepared to receive the inspectors within the assigned timetable. The parties concerned should bear in mind that wer are in our holy month of Ramadan which means that the people are fasting, and this holy month will be followed by Muslim's Eid. [So we can stall a bit and a bit and a bit more because that's what we do, don'tcha know.] Nevertheless, we will cooperate with the concerned UN bodies and officials on the background of all this, and of the tripartite, French-Russian-China, statement. Dealing with the inspectors, the government of Iraq will, also, take into consideration, their way of conduct, the intentions of those who are ill-intentioned amongst them and their improper approach in showing respect to the people's national dignity, their independence and security, and their country's security, independence and sovereignty. [So don't send any American or British pig-boys; they are right out!] We are eager to see them perform their duties in accordance with the international law as soon as possible. If they do so, professionally and lawfully, without any premeditated intentions, the lairs' lies will be exposed to public opinion, and the declared objective of the Security Council will be achieved.

Emphasis and [snotty little bracket] comments are mine.

Just what is meant by "in accordance with international law"? Who defines if they're conduct is in compliance? Sounds like the same old qualifiers and stalls. And what would a letter from Iraq be without a little show at that bastard place, the Zionist Entity!

It will then become the lawful duty of the Security Council to lift the blockade and all other unjust sanctions on Iraq. If it does not, all the people's of good will in the world, in addition to Iraq, will tell it to do so. The SC will be compelled to before the public opinion and the law to activate paragraph 14 of its resolution No. 687, by applying it to the Zionist entity (Israel), and then, to all the Middle East region, to make it a region void of mass destruction weapons. The number of just people will, then, increase in the world, and Iraq's possibility of driving away the cawing of the crows of evil that daily raid its land, and kill Iraqis and destroy their property by their bombs. This will help the stability of the region and the world, if it is accompanied by a resolution that will not be based on double standards, to put an end to Zionist occupation of Palestine, and other occupied Arab territories, and if the warmongers stop their aggressions on the Muslims and the world.

So, get rid of Israel if you want peace from Iraq. And what "other occupied Arab territories" are they referring to?

Oh, the duplicity of diplomacy.

The Real Issue

James Q. Wilson writes about The Reform Islam Needs and asks, "The West reconciled religion and freedom. Can Muslims do the same?"

We are engaged in a struggle to defeat terrorism. I have no advice on how to win that struggle, but I have some thoughts as to why it exists. It is not, I think, because Islam is at war with the West or because Palestinians are trying to displace Israelis. The struggle exists, I think, because the West has mastered the problem of reconciling religion and freedom, while several Middle Eastern nations have not. The story of that mastery and that failure occupies several centuries of human history, in which one dominant culture, the world of Islam, was displaced by a new culture, that of the West.

This is a point I've tried to make several times, though not nearly as well as here. I tend to simply say, "They must don't like us." I don't believe there is anything the west could do to prevent Osama, Arafat, and other Islamists to "like" us, or even leave us alone in the long run. Listen to what they preach. It's not all just anti-American or anti-Israeli rhetoric, though that's all their apologists want to hear; makes things easier for them.

This "religion of peace" -- nearly implying that other religions aren't -- has its teachers saying that it's all right to rob, steal, kill, etc., from "non-believers." It rejects out of hand the entire notion of equal rights for women, as Maureen Dowd recently found out first hand.

I find it amazing that the very people who recoil in horror from Christian fundamentalists, who want them shut up and shut away, are perfectly happy listening to the rantings, mutterings, proclamations, and sheer hate speech of Islamic fundamentalists. And in my book, the Islamists make those Christian overachievers look positively liberal.

Quiz Time, Part 1

you have an ominosity quotient of seven. you are as ominous as the creators of this quiz. which terrifies us. find out your ominosity quotient.

Can it be said better?

I think not. Victor Davis Hanson chimes in on The End of an Era and almost makes one nostalgic for the 60's:

The mantras of the 1960s and 1970s were "coalition governments" and "free elections." The United States was supposed to predicate its support on representation of all spectra of views under democratic auspices, i.e., anything other that what had emerged for a time in Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Greece, or Argentina. Such right-wing autocracies were corrupt, authoritarian, and murderous. In other words, like the present Palestinian Authority, they brooked no opposition, lynched or shot dissidents with or without show trials, and embezzled foreign aid. Yet today a democratic Israel — with a vociferous press, an antiwar movement, a plentitude of parties, regular elections, and a civilian-controlled military — is as demonized as Mr. Arafat is praised by Western intellectuals. Do we see protest signs that say "Support the democratic peoples of Israel in their struggle against sexist, homophobic, and fundamentalist reactionaries"?

The contradictions I read and hear every day from the left, Liberals, and Democrats (and I'm willing to separate the three out, rather than lump them into one amorphous pile of goo) get more and more hysterical. Find a web site or Blog that purports to be pro-Democratic and you read a stunning variety of whines, cries, sobs, and sheer bullshit the likes of which I've never witnessed. It's just possible that such things would have happened given the same resources during the Clinton Reign, but I doubt it.

As an example of the stimulating, intellectual debate and reaction from The Left, I give you Eschaton // Comments:

I, too, blame the American people. Sure, the Democrats are a putrid excuse for a political party, and yes, the media bias in favor of the right is hard to ignore. But in this case, it shouldn't have mattered. The last two years should have demonstrated to everyone with a pulse and a few functioning neurons how malevolent the Republican party is, how destructive their policies are, and just how much they cannot be trusted. This nation should have voted overwhelming Democratic for no other reason than to repudiate the Republican regime. Instead, millions upon millions of our fellow citizens -- and I call them that with shame -- enthusiastically decided to give these thugs total control. Fuck you, America. You deserve what you've got coming.

As pointed out by Andrea Harris.

The Day After

Such an election night. Felt more like a presidential race. I truly loved the notion that all the media outlets had to do their work the old-fashioned way. That is, analysis had to wait until they got actual vote counts, rather than exit polls. One hopes that last night will set an example for elections to come, but somehow I doubt it. Especially seeing those collapsed, sad, sorry faces on CNN, shocked (shocked, I say) at the notion that Republicans had succeeded so well.

No doubt that includes Jonathan Alter at msnbc.com, who wrote on October 30, 2002:

Even (or perhaps especially) with Republican mourners in attendance, the political message was clear: President Bush may be popular. He may have run out the clock with Iraq talk. The economy might not be cutting for Democrats as much as they hoped. But Democrats are going to bottle that Wellstone passion on Election Day. The strange thing is, it just might work for them -- and not just in Minnesota, where Walter Mondale will likely waltz into the Senate.

Well, oops for him.

And oops again, in this Tuesday blog entry:

Long story short: Just what everybody says. Republicans surge, but it doesn’t matter so much in the close races. Democrats retain the Senate by two, Republicans, the House. Dems clinch the governorships, and a bunch of conservative Southern Democrats go down, which may be a good thing, in terms of repealing that lunatic tax cut, since Daschle and company can stop worrying about those turncoats everytime someone in the party has a decent idea.

He also mentions with horror that Rush Limbaugh was going to be an analyst for NBC last night...

And congrats to the folks at CNBC for the balance, perspicacity and intellectual openness to invite the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal to be their regular political analysts. I guess the problem here is that Generalissimo Francisco Franco really is dead, and CNBC wanted the Next Best Thing.

Guess he missed ABC having Cokie Roberts and George Stephanopoulos as their only commentators, obviously their rendition of "fair and balanced."

And then there's this fair and balanced fellow:

It's like I said, I feel bad for my party, I feel bad for my friends, but if I'd been running one of these campaigns, if I'd invested a year of my life in running one of these campaigns, I'd be near suicidal right now. Instead, I'm just vaguely depressed.

"Vaguely depressed" my ass. He looked knocked out last night on TV. Poor fellow.

And more whining. Paul Begala, "Democratic analyst," says:

Take what happened in Georgia as an example. Max Cleland is an incumbent senator, I think he did do a good job in a tough state, and he ran a good campaign, and Saxby Chambliss, a Republican congressman, came in and beat him. Why? I think Max went along with Bush on the tax cut, he went along with Bush on the war with Iraq, and Bush came in here and beat his ass.

There should be a lesson there: If you vote with Bush and you're a Democrat, he's going to come into your state and beat your ass anyway.

They've been saying the same thing about Carnahan. Too bad for them. What, so Bush was supposed to come in and campaign for the Democrats? Are these people insane?

Well, yes, but that's another issue.

But the excuses just keep on coming, with Gebby whining:

"What you've got to look at is the incredible amount of special interest money that was on their side," said Mr. Gephardt, the House minority leader. "There were races where we were outspent 4 to 1, 5 to 1, the pharmaceutical companies probably spent $60 million across the country."

Lovely dodge word, "probably." Of course, Gray Davis spent more than that just fighting off the re-election challenge of an idiot. Isn't that called, "Buying the election"? Oh, sorry, that's only if it's a Republican....

It's all too funny. I would laugh except that I'm stuck with Grayout Davis as governor for another four years. I remain optimistic, however, that one day his "campaigning" will catch up with him and those happy young men and women with handcuffs will come a-knockin' at his office door. One can but hope....

Once more, pigs take flight

A report I never thought I'd see states:

"The people who carry out suicide bombings are not martyrs, they're war criminals, and so are the people who help plan such attacks," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The scale and systematic nature of these attacks sets them apart from other abuses committed in times of conflict. They clearly fall under the category of crimes against humanity."

Aren't you stunned? This is the group which has continuously slammed Israeli actions in response to these attacks. Naturally, this report was necessary to restore to HRW some level of credibility. Equally naturally....

A Hamas political leader disagreed.

"This report is neglecting all the Arab Muslim scholars who are not recognizing these operations as a suicide. [It] is accepting the [terminology of] Israel, describing such operation as suicide operation," said Mahmoud El Zahar. "This operation is not suicide, these are martyrs."

Of course it "neglects" those "scholars," because they're idiots. Oh, I know, that's not in keeping with the spirit of debate, insulting someone, but so what? They are idiots when they make such distinctions. "He didn't kill himself, he martyred himself! Those little children were, er, ah, incidental. Yes, yes. Too bad there weren't any military targets around. Wait, wait! All Zionist pigs are military targets! All of them, even their kitty cats!"

It gets better, though:

Principles of international law require that those in authority be held accountable when people under their control commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. Leaders who order such crimes, fail to take action to prevent them or fail to punish the perpetrators are also responsible for the crimes, the group said.

[...]

The report criticized the Palestinians for arguing that Israeli actions -- like destroying P.A. [Palestinian Authority] security installations -- has undermined its ability to act.

"Even when that capacity was largely intact," the report said, "the P.A. took no effective action to bring to justice those who incited, planned, or assisted in carrying out bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians."

The P.A. instead, the report said, often let the perpetrators back onto the streets soon afterward.

So, from this it would naturally flow that Yasser ("I am General!") Arafat will soon be facing investigation for war crimes? Yippee!

It's a beautiful day....