"Zarkman" live at Iowahawk!

"Zarkman" is liveblogging the Iraq situation at Iowahawk. Much more entertaining than what you will be getting on the MSM. Check it out here.

Pennsylvania Politics -- Howard Fineman Just Doesn't Get It!

In an earlier post I referred to the "bubble" in which the MSM operates. Nobody exemplifies this alternative reality better than Howard Fineman of Newsweek. His recent column on Senator Santorum reveals his staggering ignorance of even the basics of both state and national politics.

Consider this ridiculous statement:

It’s important to understand that George W. Bush and Karl Rove never have had the goal of winning over the bulk of independent voters, let alone self-identified Democrats, on any issue—let alone an issue as controversial as the war in Iraq. Rather, the Bush-Rove aim always is to create or keep a critical mass of operational support. And that, in turn, means keeping the “base” —the Republican Party—together and in line. With both chambers of Congress in GOP hands, with the “Mainstream Media” divided into warring camps, the Bush White House can pursue its my-way-or-the-highway theory of leadership.

This is a wildly partisan and inccurate way of characterizing the political skills of a president who determinedly has occupied the middle of the political spectrum [a fact that frustrates Democrats, like Fineberg, who have consistently tried unsuccessfully to hang the "right-wing" lable on one of the least partisan presidents of recent memory]. Anyone who considers Bush to be a right-wing ideologue should talk to a few right wingers and ask their opinion of him.

That bit about the MSM being divided is ridiculous. Sure there are internecine bloodlettings at the , the WaPo, and a few other places, but this is more in the form of the pod-people identifying and ruthlessly casting out deviationists in their midst. These kerfluffles are, in other words, expressions of community solidarity rather than disarray.

Bush, unlike any Democrat since Jimmah Carter, won the presidency by attracting a majority of the voters. Only two Democrats since World War Two have achieved that level and only one (LBJ running on the wave of emotion after JFK's assassination) got a higher percentage of the vote than Dubya. If anyone is persistently outside the mainstream of American political opinion it is the Democratic Party, not Dubya. [By the way, Republicans have gotten an absolute majority of the vote seven times since WWII.] You don't win absolute majorities by "mobilizing you base."

The idea that Bush is political poison with Pennsylvania independents is just ludicrous. [I know -- I am one of those Pennsylvania independents.] It is, however, a fiction that the national Democratic Party is trying to foster. By making it, Fineman is revealing that he, not Dubya, is the partisan hack.

It is true that Santorum is playing it cagey with regard to his relations with Bush because this is a contentious and fluid situation and he is doing what every smart politician does -- try to preserve his flexibility.

A little context please. Fineman notes that Santorum is running twelve points behind Casey, but doesn't tell us that he bottomed out at eighteen points down just six weeks ago, and is making a significant comeback. He also doesn't tell us that Santorum's approval ratings have consistently hovered around 50% even during his slide in the preference polls.

The idea that Bush forced Santorum to attend the Philadelphia speech is again ridiculous and part of the way Democrats think Republicans operate. I have talked to people who are in a position to know about that sort of thing, and it just ain't so.

Read Howard's inanities here.

Sorry about the rant, but Fineman presses my buttons. He perfectly embodies the smugness, the ignorance, and the self-regard that tarnishes so much of the MSM. I find it hard to believe that anyone takes this guy seriously.

Cheech the Screech Owl

NY Times reports:

SARASOTA - Veterinary staff members from Pelican Man's Bird Sanctuary were a little surprised when they were recently called to rescue a screech owl found perched in a Christmas tree that had been inside a house for five days. But the story got stranger still when medical staff examined the owl back at the sanctuary's hospital and noticed a sweet smoky smell coming from the bird. Staff took turns sniffing the bird and agreed. Not only did the bird smell of marijuana, it was clearly feeling the effects. ''The owl was leaning back on its backside and 'vegging' out,'' said Jeffrey Dering, the sanctuary's executive director. A blood sample confirmed the diagnosis: The owl was stoned. The staff briefly considered giving the bird a bag of Cheetos, but decided to simply let the drug wear off. The owl was fine by the next day.

Read the whole thing here.

The Oldest Iraqi Voter

Omar at Iraq the Model is liveblogging the Iraqi elections. Check him out here and keep coming back for updates.

An excerpt:

Muhaisin Bidairy Abdullah who was born in 1900 and I think he is the oldest amongst the voters came leaning on his grandsons and could hardly breathe with tears visible in his eyes…maybe because he won’t be able to attend the next elections.

Just think of the history this man has seen! His determination to be part of this moment touches me deeply.

Another Left-wing Myth Exploded

CNS Reports:

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.

Liberals in the aftermath of the storm were quick to allege that the Bush administration delayed its response to the catastrophe because most of the victims were black.

Damu Smith, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, in September said that the federal government "ignored us, they forgot about us ... because we look like we look."

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in October said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasn't fit to help the storm's victims because "there are not enough blacks high up in FEMA" and added that, "certainly the Red Cross is the same."

Rapper Kanye West used his time on NBC's telethon for the hurricane victims to charge that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

But the state's demographic information suggests that whites in New Orleans died at a higher rate than minorities.

Read it here.

Well, well, now. What are we to make of this? It now appears that nearly all of the on-the-spot reporting was erroneous. What is more, the errors were not random but systematic. They formed a pattern, one that revealed a view of the world very much at odds with reality. In the reporters world racism is rampant and deadly; Republicans don't care about the poor and are particularly uninterested in the fate of blacks and other minorities; Bush is an incompetent fool; left unsupervised and unsupported blacks quickly descend into a Hobbsean world of universal strife and suffering. You know those tunes. You hear them played every night on the evening news.

Is this, as many conservatives suppose, a conscious conspiracy to keep blacks dependent on the state and to demonize Republicans? Probably not. Bernie Goldberg, is closer to the truth when he asserts that the major news sources exist in a bubble -- a self-contained informational feedback loop -- in which certain "truths," learned in the age of the Civil Rights struggle, Vietnam, and the Watergate scandals, are perpetuated and promulgated long after they have ceased to have much correspondence with the contours of the real world. New York reporters looked at Katrina and saw, not New Orleans, but Selma and Birmingham, they look at Baghdad and see Hanoi, they look at Bush and see Nixon.

It is a bizarre counter reality, but it has had remarkable staying power, and has real political consequences. As such, it is a subject that should be of interest to historians, but sadly the media myth has not attracted much attention.

What a wonderful dissertation subject it would make.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

I hadn't realized that this was available on the net, but of course it would be.

The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, in 1973-74.

This is one of the great reference books. Just check out the list of contributors here.

Here's the main site. Definitely worth checking out!!!

Cronulla Beach Riots

Bilious Young Fogey has a nice series of posts on the Cronulla beach riots and their aftermath. Needless to say, the American media has been completely tone-deaf on the whole matter.

Start here and scroll down. [ignore the auto-porn if you can]

Pennsylvania Politics -- Santorum Creeps Back, Scranton Looks Strong

The latest Quinnipiac Poll results are out and they have a mixed message for Santorum, who still trails Bobby Casey by double digits.

The AP headlines the idea that support for President Bush is hurting Santorum, but that is unlikely to be much of a factor next fall. If things go well in Iraq, as I expect they will, Bush will no longer be a liability. Santorum is playing it cagey. A couple of weeks ago, when Bush spoke at
Tobyhanna, Santorum was conspicuous by his absence, but this weekend he, along with Sen. Specter, attended Bush's address in Philadelphia.

The poll shows that Santorum still trails Casey by 12 percentage points [50 to 38] but that is a marked improvement over the last poll, taken in October, in which he trailed by eighteen points. Santorum's approval rating also rose from 43 to 48% over the same period. He's beginning to creep back into contention and there's a long way to go before the election.

Casey's strong numbers might also be illusory. His disapproval numbers are at an unrealistic 6%. This figure simply shows that nobody knows anything bad about him. But nobody knows anything good about him either, except that his dad was one of the all time good guys. At some point Casey is going to have to stop being the invisible candidate and start taking stands on issues. And every time he takes a stand he will alienate some portion of the electorate. What I'm saying is that these current poll results are worse than useless. They are actually misleading.

Incumbent Democrat Ed Rendell continues to lead all potential Republican challengers for the governorship. The situation on the Republican side, though, is beginning to clear up. State Sen. Jeff Piccola [my favorite] is fading fast as is businessman Jim Panyard, and the race now is a two-man contest between Lynn Swann and former Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton III. Both of them now trail Rendell by about 12 percentage points, which will diminish once the Republicans unite behind a single candidate. Rendell is not popular in Pennsylvania and is certainly vulnerable.

Swanny is a political novice, and is running strong simply on the basis of name recognition. Scranton is the probable nominee. Right now for both Swann and Casey name recognition is enough. The voters just aren't paying much attention yet. As they do things will begin to sort out and the race will narrow.

Things will start to get interesting soon. Stay tuned....

The AP story is here.

The poll results are here.

Flowers for Algernon?

This I find more than a bit disturbing....

AP reports:

SAN FRANCISCO - Add another creation to the strange scientific menagerie where animal species are being mixed together in ever more exotic combinations. Scientists announced Monday that they had created mice with small amounts of human brain cells...

[T]he researchers created the mice by injecting about 100,000 human embryonic stem cells per mouse into the brains of 14-day-old rodent embryos.
...

[T]he work adds to the growing ethical concerns of mixing human and animal cells when it comes to stem cell and cloning research. After all, mice are 97.5 percent genetically identical to humans.

"The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics.

Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the "yuck factor."

Three top cloning researchers, for instance, have applied for a patent that contemplates fusing a complete set of human DNA into animal eggs in order to manufacturer human embryonic stem cells.

One of the patent applicants, Jose Cibelli, first attempted such an experiment in 1998 when he fused cells from his cheek into cow eggs.

"The idea is to hijack the machinery of the egg," said Cibelli, whose current work at Michigan State University does not involve human material because that would violate state law.

Researchers argue that co-mingling human and animal tissue is vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.

Others have performed similar experiments with rabbit and chicken eggs while University of California-Irvine researchers have reported making paralyzed rodents walk after injecting them with human nerve cells.

Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer. But the brain poses an additional level of concern because some envision nightmare scenarios in which a human mind might be trapped in an animal head.

Read it here.

I take the "yuck factor" very seriously. It is a marker of social consensus -- something that should always be considered by those who would make public policy, even [perhaps especially] in matters that touch boundaries of scientific knowledge. Science policy is too important to be left to the scientists.

And what might be the outcome of genetic mixing between humans and rodents? Check out the picture above.

Sharon Blinks, Ahmedinejad Rants

On Sunday the Times reported that Israel was planning military strikes against Iran's emerging nuclear capability. Just why this was leaked is a matter of speculation, but it was clearly a response to recent threats made by Iranian president Ahmadinejad who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Well, we're now at stage two of the facedown, and Ahmadnijad shows no tendency to back away from his extreme statements.

AP reports:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reiterated his doubt about the Holocaust and called on Muslim nations to take a proactive stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, state media reported Tuesday.

Read it here.

But Sharon is backing away from the Times story.

The Scotsman reports:

ISRAEL yesterday denied that it was planning to launch an attack on Iranian nuclear installations in March.

But it did not rule out using force if international diplomatic efforts to prevent Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons capability failed to bear fruit.

Read it here.

So what are we to make of this?

For years now, as Iran's drive for nuclear weapons has become increasingly obvious, there have been attempts on the part of the "international community" to dissuade that nation's radical leaders from their purposes. All have failed. Statements of "concern" and even "strong concern" from UN officials have been no more effective in Iran than elsewhere. The long-awaited democratic revolution in Iran failed to materialize. The American invasion of Iraq, while it may have given the Mullahs pause, ultimately failed to dissuade them as Iraqi "insurgents" [many of them funded by Iran] and disapproval from the "international community" imposed limits on America's ability to operate freely in that region. Some critics have even argued that America's invasion of Iraq spurred Iran to greater efforts to obtain a nuclear arsenal. Hopes then focused on EU diplomatic and economic pressures, but these "soft" alternatives once again failed to deflect Iran's government from its course.

The election of Ahmadinejad precipitated the current crisis. He is something of an anomalous figure. The first President since the Islamic revolution who was not also a cleric, he has been seen by some naifs in academia and at State as an indication that Iran is moving away from its theocratic past.

But the new President is no secularist. In fact, he seems in many of his pronouncements to be nothing less than an Islamist radical. What he represents, more than anything else, is a repudiation of politics as usual, which for a generation has been dominated by a corrupt alliance of Shiite theocrats and middle-class business interests.

Ahmadinejad's base, it would seem, is among the poor and marginally employed young people who have not benefited from the past thirty years of Islamic rule. In power he has consolidated his rule in classic despotic ways, purging moderates from all branches of government and replacing them with his devoted followers, while at the same time rallying the nation against an external enemy [Israel] and an imminent threat [US invasion] to justify extreme measures.

We have seen this movie before and nobody yet has written a happy ending for it.

So what is a responsible leader like Sharon to do? He can threaten military action, but now that Iran has upped the ante, if he does not follow through with effective and disabling strikes he simply plays into Ahmedinejad's hands.

The US is trying to get the whole matter referred to the UN Security Council, but that will probably be worse than useless. Protracted debate between the UN and Iran will simply provide cover for Ahmadinejan's radical agenda. On the other hand, a UN resolution authorizing force might legitimate multi-national actions to contain Iran. But, so long as Russia and China, and an stunningly corrupt France sit on the Security Council, no serious resolution will be forthcoming.

And what if Sharon does strike, with either active or tacit cooperation from US forces in Iraq? Well, the Islamists will have a field day with that one.

As I said, there are no good outcomes to this movie.

Stay tuned..., this one is gonna get really nasty.

Beslan Update

Investigation into the Beslan massacre suggests a much higher level of incompetence and total disregard for human life on the part of the Russian military than was previously appreciated. Of course this in no way excuses the monsters who created the situation in the first place, although some will probably see it that way.

The upshot is that one of the command centers in Beslan set out to eliminate the terrorists, not to free the hostages. For this group, it would have been very convenient if the hostages were removed from the equation. Troops could then move in and wipe out the bad guys, and civilian deaths could be blamed on a miscue by the terrorists.

The simplest way to accomplish this would be to set off the terrorists’ own bomb. But here they ran into a little problem: The snipers couldn’t get a clear shot at the terrorist with his foot on the detonator.

This problem was resolved with the help of a grenade launcher. Did the feds have the plans for the school? Yes. Did the plans indicate where the basketball hoop was attached to the wall? Yes. Did they know the bomb was hung up in the hoop? Yes.

The snipers needed a clear shot. A soldier with a grenade launcher could fire from the roof of any nearby apartment building.

Robert Mayer, over at Publius Pundit, reports the findings [here].

For a long time foreign policy "realists" and especially members of the intelligence services openly admired the brutality with which Soviet and Chinese governments dealt with opponents. The implication was that the West, with its elaborate concerns for human rights was too "soft" and therefore vulnerable to attacks. First Afghanistan, and now Chechnya has blown the lid off that assumption. A brutal response does not deter terrorists who seek a glorious martyrdom, but then, as we have also seen, neither does concern for human rights. The point is Islamic terrorists view their opponents' record on human rights with complete indifference.

COOL TIMEWASTER! Check This One Out!

Want to live in the world of the "Living Dead"? Now here's your chance. "The city is dying, and the urban dead are filling its streets.

"Urban Dead" is a free browser-based MMORPG where you start as a living citizen trying to survive in the midst of brain-eating zombies. You have only a limited number of moves each day and you have to take care to get to cover before you run out or else you might come back tomorrow as a zombie.

If you survive, you can start to accumulate survival skills, but survival is not easy. Since July more than 185,000 citizens have been zombified.

Be warned, this one is addictive!!

Happy Zombie Hunting!!!

Check it out here.

Good luck.

Even More Good News Out of Iraq

The BBC, no friend of Dubya there, reports:

Survey finds optimism in new Iraq

An opinion poll suggests Iraqis are generally optimistic about their lives, in spite of the violence that has plagued Iraq since the US-led invasion.
...

The BBC News website's World Affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, says the survey shows a degree of optimism at variance with the usual depiction of the country as one in total chaos.

The findings are more in line with the kind of arguments currently being deployed by US President George W Bush, he says.

...

Interviewers found that 71% of those questioned said things were currently very or quite good in their personal lives, while 29% found their lives very or quite bad.

When asked whether their lives would improve in the coming year, 64% said things would be better and 12% said they expected things to be worse.

However, Iraqis appear to have a more negative view of the overall situation in their country, with 53% answering that the situation is bad, and 44% saying it is good.

But they were more hopeful for the future - 69% expect Iraq to improve, while 11% say it will worsen. [empasis mine]

Read the whole thing here.

AND THERE'S THIS:

ABC reports:

Dec. 12, 2005 — Surprising levels of optimism prevail in Iraq with living conditions improved, security more a national worry than a local one, and expectations for the future high.
...

An ABC News poll in Iraq, conducted with Time magazine and other media partners, includes some remarkable results: Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.

"Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in a poll in June 2004. And 61 percent say local security is good — up from 49 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February, 2004.

Read it here.

Well, now. This is interesting. At a time when Democrats have bet the house on failure in Iraq, things seem to be turning decisively in Dubya's favor.

Could this be another rope-a-dope moment? It's starting to look like it.

And So It Begins....

AP reports:

Patients, soldiers and prisoners began voting Monday in parliamentary elections, a few days ahead of the general population.

Read the whole article here.

Omar at Iraq the Model is photoblogging the election. Check him out here.

Iran, the Bomb, and the Middle East

Things are getting really, I mean REALLY, dicey in the Middle East these days. Things are threatening to spin out of control. The key is Iran. Since Ahmedinejad's election Iran has been picking fights with everyone, sort of like France in 1792.

Iranian troops have been probing Iraqi and allied defenses in the Persian Gulf; Iranian agents have been infiltrating across the border into the southern regions of Iraq; Iran has made tactical alliances with militia groups, both Shiite and Sunni, throughout Eastern Iraq. In addition Iranian agents have been cooperating with remnants of the Taliban resisting the new regime in Afghanistan, and Iran has reportedly been instigating terrorist attacks against Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, and of course Iran has become a major haven for Islamist radicals. Clearly Iran is trying to position itself to take advantage of any opportunities that might arise in the region if, as is widely expected, American forces are withdrawn or drastically reduced there.

And this is not the biggest worry. Iran has stubbornly pushed ahead with a program for developing nuclear weapons. This is not a direct threat to the United States homeland, but is intended to nullify US power in the region. Iran clearly has plans for the future and sees the US as the most important obstacle to achieving its goals. Nuclear weapons, aimed at Europe or Israel, or at US forces in the region, would severely constrain America's ability to act in the Middle East and would therefore vastly expand Iran's freedom of action in the region. And, let us not forget, they would present a real threat to potential competitors for power within the Middle East. What I fear is that, just as as Qaeda dreams of a restored Caliphate, Iran's leaders dream of a restored Persian empire and are systematically acquiring the means to make that dream a reality.

For half a century after WWII the Cold War imposed a gruesome stability on power relations throughout much of the world. This did not preclude widespread violence both between states and within them, but it did limit the aspirations of client states. Now, since the collapse of the Soviet empire, ambitious regimes throughtout the world have been making their bids for at least regional dominance. In Iraq, in France, in Venezuela, in the Balkans, in China, in India and Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Korea, and elsewhere imperial dreams have been stirred by the collapse of the old World Order. The history of the next few decades will be dominated by attempts to contain and come to terms with these rising regional powers and that burden, I fear, will primarily fall upon the United States. The EU, its own grandiose plans currently in disarray, has shown itself to be stunningly ineffective in dealing with turmoil even on its own borders. Russia, beset by internal conflicts and haunted by memories of former empire, presents more problems than solutions. China clearly has ambitions that make it one of the challenges to be faced. So far, the most effective force for order has been a loose association of "Anglosphere" states, and that is unlikely to change in the near future. The challenge posed by Iran must be met by the US and its closest allies, or it will be largely unimpeded.

What might be the immediate effects of Iranian nuclearization? Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson have published through the US Army War College an extensive analysis of that question. [here]. Here's a summary of their conclusions:

First, Iran could dramatically up the price of oil by interfering with the free passage of vessels in and through the Persian Gulf as it did during the l980s or by threatening to use terrorist proxies to target other states’ oil facilities. Second, it could diminish American influence in the Gulf and Middle East by increasing the pace and scope of terrorist activities against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, Israel, and other perceived supporters of the United States. Finally, it could become a nuclear proliferation model for the world and its neighbors (including many states that otherwise would be more dependent on the United States for their security) by continuing to insist that it has a right to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then withdrawing once it decides to get a bomb.

And that's not counting the insanely belligerent stance that Iran's new regime has been taking toward Israel. There is real danger here.

Israel recognizes the danger and is increasingly likely to undertake actions that will make the situation throughout the region even more problematic. Just this weekend the Times of London reported:

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

NI_MPU('middle');

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran.

A senior White House source said the threat of a nuclear Iran was moving to the top of the international agenda and the issue now was: “What next?” That question would have to be answered in the next few months, he said.

Defence sources in Israel believe the end of March to be the “point of no return” after which Iran will have the technical expertise to enrich uranium in sufficient quantities to build a nuclear warhead in two to four years.

“Israel — and not only Israel — cannot accept a nuclear Iran,” Sharon warned recently. “We have the ability to deal with this and we’re making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation.”

Read the whole thing here.

Here there are two alarming developments. First, Iran seems to be far closer to acquiring nuclear capacity than was generally assumed which means that the crisis is coming much more quickly than we anticipated. Secondly, the belligerent declarations of Sharon, which match those of Ahmedinejad, are raising tensions to levels that cannot be long tolerated without resolution. Both Israel and Iran are now in a position where they have to either put up or shut up. Israel cannot afford to back down from these threats and Iran's current leadership is just unstable enough to push matters toward a violent conclusion. Whatever the outcome, the United States is being drawn unwillingly and very quickly into very dangerous waters.

Ironically, Iranian belligerence may be an important factor promoting stability in Iraq. In recent days many Sunni clerics who had disdained earlier elections have suddenly changed their minds.

FALLUJA/RAMADI Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday's polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

Read it here.

What accounts for this volte face? Abu Khaleel thinks that Iran has something to do with it. Seeking a reason for a sudden upsurge in popularity for the Allawi slate, he writes:

[T]he important thing is that many ordinary people, Sunni and Shiite, are looking favorably at [former Prime Minister Allawi]. He is posing as the “secular” politician. I am constantly surprised by the number of people, ordinary Iraqis from all walks of life, in Baghdad, the mixed areas and the western provinces who are supporting him - far more than during the last elections. They see him as the only one capable of standing up to the “Shiite” religious, pro- Islamic Iran fundamentalists, who has a chance of having a say in forming the next Parliament and the next government. Many people have already forgotten, or chosen to forget, that it was he who sanctioned the bombing of Fallujah II and Najaf; that his interim government saw the introduction of corruption to an unprecedented level; and that he is self-confessed CIA man. We have a saying that reflects this mood and that we hear repeatedly these days. It says something like: “He who sees death accepts fever”.

Read it here.

I'll say one thing for Ahmadinejad, he sure shakes things up and captures people's attentions.

The Hypocrisy of the McCarthyites

Senator Eugene McCarthy died the other day, and this weekend the MSM was filled with tributes to this man who energized the anti-war movement of another era. The nostalgia was palpable, but false. Most of the reporters eulogizing this man of integrity are much too young to have authentic political memories of 1968. What they "remember" is largely what they have been told. I myself, don't have much in the way of direct memories of McCarthy' campaign. I spent 1968 overseas in uniform. But I do remember my reaction when hearing of the "keep clean for Gene" movement [here], in which young anti-war activists cut their long hair, shaved their beards and moustaches, and adopted respectable modes of dress and deportment so as not to alienate middle-class voters.

These young people, these "idealists" who sanctimoniously claimed to represent "authenticity," who consistently demanded that we "tell it like it is," who railed against hypocrisy and assumed the mantle of virtue in a corrupt culture, were disguising themselves. They were pretending to be something that they were not. And why? To gain political advantage! That, it seemed to me, was the apogee of cynicism and hypocrisy. I never could take them seriously after that.

The self-serving lies, the corruption, the cynicism, the double standards -- all the things that make the Left so repulsive today -- they were all there from the beginning.

UPDATE:

Speaking of Hitchens, he has a fond memory of McCarthy that makes it clear that the Senator was a much better man than many of those who rallied to his cause. Read it here.

Excellent News From Iraq

Reuters reports:

FALLUJA/RAMADI Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday's polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.

"We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote," said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam's Baath party.

"Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters."

The shift is encouraging for Washington, which hopes to draw Sunni Arabs into peaceful politics in order to defuse the insurgency.

Read it here.

This is, after all, the point of the whole thing..., to institute, and more importantly, to legitimize, democratic principles.

Miss Lebanon

And to honor the democratic revolution, Miss Lebanon, Lamita Frangieh (in the center).

More Miss World

Some of the Miss World runners-up. Clockwise from the upper left:

Miss India (Sindhura Gadde); Swimsuit winners (Miss Mexico, Miss Russia, and Miss Moldova); Miss Canada (Ramona Rina Amiri); Miss Moldova (Irina Dolovova) [again, I couldn't resist]; and Miss Italy, (Sofia Bruscoli) [my personal favorite].

UPDATE:

Tigerhawk [here] has an extended post on "The Geopolitical Significance of the Miss World Contest." His basic point seems to be that few of these women fit the ethnic stereotypes of their countries of origin. That is certainly true, and it testifies to the ways in which the globalization of opportunities is thoroughly scrambling world populations and creating an ethnically non- specific international standard of female beauty. He also has a link to lots of Sofia pictures.

And, for more Miss Moldova, check out this site. [hubba, hubba!]

On a universal standard of beauty see here.

Miss World, 2005

And this year's winner is..., Miss Iceland, Unnur Birna Vilhjalmsdottir, and here's the best part..., she's a cop!

Can't you just hear her now?
"Alright buddy..., spread 'em."

I can see the guys right now lining up to be frisked.

The bad news..., she's studying to become a lawyer.