Misogyny Day

I recall with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach the horrific murder in 1989 of 14 female students in a classroom on the campus of the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, an engineering school of the Universite de Montreal. A deranged young man named Marc Lepine stormed the classroom with a hunting rifle, ordered the men out and then systematically began killing the remaining female students while loudly proclaiming his hatred for women, especially Quebecoise women.

I felt at the time a sense of gender betrayal. Instinctive conservative that I am, the fact that a man would single out women for brutality offended my sense of everything it means to be a man. For that alone, Lepine's crime would always remain with me; it signifies to me the ultimate betrayal of modern maleness.

That is, of course, not how it was seen by the majority. Most observers took Lepine's murderous actions as just an extreme outlier of an all-too-common cultural phenomena of male violence against women. As such, each anniversary of the massacre is marked in Canada with commemorations by womens' groups and the CBC about the tragedy of male violence against women and how modern man comes with a little part of Marc Lepine in every version.

After all these years and a turn to the right, you'd have thought I would have known better than to fall for the official story. Like the MSM stories about "youths" (for example, the "youths" who terrorized 200 passengers on a SNCF train from Nice to Lyon on New Year's Eve) who never seem to have an ethnicity unless they are white, it appears that a very important fact about Marc Lepine was left out of the reports.

Like, for example, his name wasn't "Marc Lepine" at all.

His name, as the Great Mark Steyn points out today in a column in MacLean's, was in fact "Gamil Gharbi." It turns out that "Marc" adopted the name in an attempt to distance himself from his Algerian immigrant Muslim father, though "Marc" never bothered to have it legally changed.

New Sisyphus Pop Quiz: Can you guess the difference between identifying the killer as "Marc Lepine" rather than "Gamil Gharbi"?

By identifying "Marc" with a common Quebecois name the ideologues were able to turn "Lepine's" killing into a parable about Western man's horrific violence against women.

By identifying Gamil Gharbi as the killer, all you have is yet another sad example of Islam's disfunctional and completely over-the-top misogyny.

But that isn't much of a story, now is it?

Andew Sullivan Explains It All For You

Andrew Sullivan is a widely read and even more widely respected blogger. It was he, along with a few others, that first realized the inherent power of this new medium and put it to good use. One may disagree with him, as I often do nowadays, but one cannot deny that he adds value to the argument.

Or, so I had always thought until lately. Over the past view weeks my regular visits to get the Daily Dish have been performed more grudgingly than ever before. Then, on Tuesday, I checked in and caught Andrew's first post of that day:

CONSERVATIVES AGAINST WIRE-TAPPING: Remember when conservatives believed in restraining government power, not allowing it to spend as if there were no tomorrow and to let it wiretap citizens without so much as the flimsiest of rubber-stamping court checks? It turns out there are still some conservatives willing to resist the imposition of an above-the-law executive. Digby cites several sources here. Glenn Greenwald surveys the scene here. Bill Safire is on board. Even one priest in the Bush-cult called Powerline has demurred. Cato has suggested that if the president can simply break the law when he feels like it in pursuing the war on terror, why bother with the Patriot Act at all? Or the McCain Amendment?

I realized that is was posts like this that were starting to wear me down and cause me to lose respect for Sullivan. Look at that post again. What do you see? Anger, certainly. Derision and mocking of conservatives, yes. Sharp wit deployed against people Sullivan disagrees with, absolutely.

But is there an argument here? A case? Anything persuasive to one who doesn't already share Sullivan's conclusions?

I don't think so, and it's these types of posts that are beginning to be the hallmark of the Daily Dish. Sullivan not only has failed to deal with the tough questions about torture and the limits of executive power that have been vigorously and honorably debated in the conservative Blogosphere he doesn't even acknowledge that such a debate exists. Instead, with a frightening certainty that he projects onto his opponents, Sullivan merely surveys the facts and announces that Bush has instituted a policy of torture.

Similarly, he refuses to engage in the debate about the NSA wiretap story and instead just simply concludes that the President is out-of-control and is being aided and abetted in this abuse of power by hypocritical conservatives. So, he just slams Powerline as a "Bush-cult" instead of dealing with their argument. In fact, he doesn't even acknowledge that there is a debate worth having.

Nor is today's offering any different. Check out these posts and ask yourself: is this a man engaged in debate or in denouncing bad guys?

THE ORWELLIAN WORLD OF DICK CHENEY: Try reconciling what we know for a fact about what the administration has done and the words uttered by the vice-president yesterday:

"I was in Washington in the 1970s, at a time when there was great and legitimate concern about civil liberties and about potential abuses within the executive branch. I had the honor of serving as White House Chief of Staff to President Ford, and that experience shapes my own outlook to this very day."

"Serving immediately after a period of turmoil, all of us in the Ford administration worked hard to restore people's confidence in the government. We were adamant about following the law and protecting civil liberties of all Americans, and we did so. Three decades later, I work for a President who shares those same values. He has made clear from the outset, both publicly and privately, that our duty to uphold the law of the land admits no exceptions in wartime. The President himself put it best: He said, "We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them."

So why violate our principles by authorizing torture of detainees? Why retain the right to torture them even after a law has been passed to prevent it? Why violate the terms of the 1978 law that was precisely a result of the worries about civil liberties after Vietnam and Watergate? And is there any connection between what the vice-president says and what he actually does? My extended take here.

There no argument here on why the Vice President is wrong nor any acknowledgement of the wider debate. Sullivan simply decrees that the administration: 1) has illegally authorized torture, 2) still is authorizing torture, 3) is in violation of FISA, and 4) has in Vice President Cheney a man who is a hypocritical, lying bastard. As for his "extended take," you won't be surprised to hear that it also fails to inform its British readership that people who disagree with Sullivan exist.

If one simply relied on Sullivan's site one would be unaware that there is an intense debate, with good points on both sides, about all these issues and that there is no clear consensus, let alone a legal case, that Sullivan's conclusions are correct. Yet, (in a manner very reminiscent of the British press) they are presented as givens, as facts everyone acknowledges and whose truth is unassailable. And, so, for a certain readership, they are.

Ironically, the very Blogosphere that Sullivan helped to create is now a repository for a wide, rich debate over the issues Sullivan has declared closed to debate.

Of course, were any of Sullivan's assertions to be factually true, one would expect the Administration to be in a lot of trouble. Yet, contrary to every expectation of every critic of the President's like Sullivan, the Administration keeps winning case after case after case, and has demonstrated to the public at large that its actions are both within the law and necessary to winning the war on terror. I guess the federal judiciary and the American public aren't as smart as our British superiors when it comes to U.S. Constitutional law.

If the President is a torturer and in violation of the law, including the Constitution, as Sullivan believes, one also has to believe that he is getting away with it by some massive trick that has fooled every appellate court in the land all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which have all ruled in his favor for four long, litigious years since September, 2001.

But of course, to talk about that would be to engage in debate. And why sully one's hands with debate when one can just insult and sneer?

Neo-Cons Push More Phoney Intelligence in Effort to Start Another Useless War

They're doing it again.

Not content with setting up the American people and the entire world via the U.N. Security Council with false intelligence from the CIA about so-called "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the hands of the legitimate government of Iraq, a country that never attacked us and had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, the Neo-Cons are now pushing yet another "intelligence report" in what is a laughably transparent attempt to engage us in another needless and pointless war. This time the gun barrels of the chicken-hawks are pointed at (surprise!) another country that just happens to be full of what makes Halliburton happy: oil. And, as usual, the so-called "intelligence" is vague and speaks of "might" and "may" while presenting no clear evidence.

The Neo-Con house organ, The Wall St. Journal, a paper with numerous links to the Isreali hard right, including it's new editorial board member Bret Stephens (who used to edit the hard right, pro-settler and anti-Arab Jerusalem Post), naturally was chosen as the vehicle for this smear campaign designed to ignite fear in the hearts of average Americans as a way of getting them to support yet another mad adventure in the Middle East.

And what does this new American intelligence say? Well, if you can stomach their lies, read it yourself (here):

Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile

The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes.

Scientists in Tehran are also shopping for parts for a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe, with "import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily", the report seen by the Guardian concludes.

* * *

The 55-page intelligence assessment, dated July 1 2005, draws upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies, and has been used to brief European government ministers and to warn leading industrialists of the need for vigilance when exporting equipment or expertise to so-called rogue states.
It concludes that Syria and Pakistan have also been buying technology and chemicals needed to develop rocket programmes and to enrich uranium. It outlines the role played by Russia in the escalating Middle East arms build-up, and examines the part that dozens of Chinese front companies have played in North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

But it is the detailed assessment of Iran's nuclear purchasing programme that will most most alarm western leaders, who have long refused to believe Tehran's insistence that it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons and is trying only to develop nuclear power for electricity. Governments in the west and elsewhere have also been dismayed by recent pronouncements from the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said that Holocaust denial is a "scientific debate" and that Israel should be "wiped off the map".

* * *

The assessment declares that Iran has developed an extensive web of front companies, official bodies, academic institutes and middlemen dedicated to obtaining - in western Europe and in the former Soviet Union - the expertise, training, and equipment for nuclear programmes, missile development, and biological and chemical weapons arsenals.

"In addition to sensitive goods, Iran continues intensively to seek the technology and know-how for military applications of all kinds," it says.

The document lists scores of Iranian companies and institutions involved in the arms race. It also details Tehran's growing determination to perfect a ballistic missile capable of delivering warheads far beyond its borders.

It notes that Iran harbours ambitions of developing a space programme, but is currently concentrating on upgrading and extending the range of its Shahab-3 missile, which has a range of 750 miles - capable of reaching Israel.

Iranian scientists are said to be building wind tunnels to assist in missile design, developing navigation technology, and acquiring metering and calibration technology, motion simulators and x-ray machines designed to examine rocket parts. The next generation of the Shahab ("shooting star" in Persian) should be capable of reaching Austria and Italy.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've heard this all before, from the lying mouth of Colin Powell. Don't think I'm going to fall for it again.

Wait.

Okay, never mind. I see now that this story is actually from leading left-wing newspaper The Guardian and the intelligence report the story describes is a secret report compiled by the intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany and Belgium and not those of the United States.

I'll have to think about this and what it means and get back to you.

/DailyKosSpeak off

Tuesday's Non-Ireland Mentioning (Almost) Quick Notes

Having been whacked upside the head by every Irish-American this side of Boston for impugning the honor of the Irish Republic, it's time for some quick notes.

-- Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin and other right-wing bloggers have been making a lot of noise this morning over an AP photo with a caption that describes the subject of the photo as the "mother of three martyrs" to the Palestinian cause. This is interesting not only in that it reveals the shameless bias of the AP but also the whole problem built into the AP's "stringer" structure. Simply put, having local Arab reporters cover events in the Middle East is going to result in reports that reflect the wide pan-Arab (and largely pan-Muslim) mindset, and, increasingly, that mindset is firmly fixed on a variant of grievance-fuelled fascism. Had the AP relied on Germans to report on what was going on in Germany circa 1936 we would have seen similar results.

-- I'm not as convinced as others in the Blogosphere about the impending importance of illegal immigration as a national issue driving politics. As someone who grew up in Southern California, I've spent a lifetime thinking about these issues and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no solution that is conceivable without a massive political change. And that just isn't going to happen any time soon.

First, one must start with some truths. The business-oriented Right, broadly defined, has no real problem with illegal immigration because illegal immigrants are providing a very hard-working, steady flow of cheap labor. The government-oriented Left, also broadly defined, has no real problem with it either because illegal immigrants provide a huge constituency for government programs, studies and initiatives and, critically, they tend to vote Democrat, the natural party of government. In between and around these two positions are those who worry about the immigrants' effect on our national culture and institutions. However, given the historical presence of immigration and past worries to the same effect, these concerns are mostly discounted by observers of the debate. One can, as Samuel Huntington has done, point out that massive Latin American immigration to the United States is different in scope and in kind from that of yesteryear in that the homeland remains so close-and in the case of Mexico one that still carries claims upon many a Southwestern state of the Union-as to not require the "leap of assimilation" made by earlier immigrants, but, at the end of the day, most people are going to read this as just so many more "these new guys are different" arguments that were made against the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, etc.

The end result is enough of a stalemate that no one talks about it and the status quo goes on and on. I just don't see that changing.

-- Joseph Epstein has a delightful piece in the new Commentary about the future of newspapers. In one passage, he summarizes his contemporary news reading habits, which track mine to a remarkable extent:

I do subscribe to the New York Times, which I read without a scintilla of glee. I feel I need it, chiefly to discover who in my cultural world has died, or been honored (probably unjustly), or has turned out some new piece of work that I ought to be aware of. I rarely give the daily Times more than a half-hour, if that. I begin with the obituaries. Next, I check the op-ed page, mostly to see if anyone has hit upon a novel way of denigrating President Bush; the answer is invariably no, though they seem never to tire of trying. I glimpse the letters to the editor in hopes of finding someone after my own heart. I almost never read the editorials, following the advice of the journalist Jack Germond who once compared the writing of a newspaper editorial to wetting oneself in a dark-blue serge suit: "It gives you a nice warm feeling, but nobody notices."

-- A number of commentators and email correspondents have pointed out that my post below on Eire's sympathy for the German state upon the death of its Fuhrer neglects to mention that many Irish volunteered for the British Army and fought in WWII. This is certainly true and the omission was due to a drafting error in which I seemed to suggest that all volunteers in that good fight came only from Northern Ireland. It is true that many Irishmen from Eire fought in WWII, and most did so with great distinction (again, including my own grandfather).

-- I've been attempting to read Gen. Tommy Franks' "autobiography" American Soldier for about two weeks now. It is simply horribly written, even with the ghost writer, who, truth be told, I suspect is responsible for a lot of the drivel. Still, there are some nuggets to be gleaned from the mess. First, one is struck by the widespread and apparently unchallenged assumption at the flag rank level around Centcom that the root of all evil in the Middle East is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The idea that that particular conflict is of a parcel of a larger conflict, or, heavens forbid, a deep-rooted problem in modern Islam, is simply not present. What is most galling about this is that the genesis of this assumption seems to be from our generals being told this is so by Arab leaders again and again and again. This is just accepted and not challenged in the least.

Second, in a very bland book in which General Franks has virtually nothing bad to say about anyone (every staff officer a winner, every politician wise, every Army wife understanding), the only figure in contemporary times who comes in for scathing criticism is Richard Clarke, who the general takes to task for talking about his self-importance much more than coming up with any operational suggestions.

Third, and most disturbingly, are the stories about the President's orders with regard to Islamic "holy" sites, such as mosques. For example, Franks relays the now well-known story of how in the early stages of the Afghan campaign U.S. forces had their eye on a high-level Taliban convoy near Kandahar via a Predator drone. Franks reveals that it was not JAG attorney advice that had him hold fire, but the President himself. The convoy, which our intelligence thought was either Mullah Omar or some other high-ranking Taliban figure, stopped and dismounted in the courtyard of a building identified as a mosque. Seeking approval to fire, JAG declared it a valid military target. Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles were being loaded into the mosque. Even so, the President declined authority to fire, saying that we must not hit any "holy" sites.

This is just ridiculous. How many Christian churches and cathedrals were blasted in World War II? The result of this bad war fighting strategy has been nothing less than the further use by Islamists of "holy" sites as refuges. If they use them as such, they are targets. It is they who have defiled the "holy" site, not us.

We don't know for sure who was in that convoy. What we do know, however, is that a valuable military target was spared because the President of the United States is overly sensitive about offending Islam. I don't subscribe to the Bush-is-a-moron line of thinking, but with regards to this particular topic, Bush has acted, well, stupidly.

-- Hugh Hewitt passes along an anecdote from a law professor who served at Guantanamo for a bit. The professor reports that there was an escape attempt that involved tunneling and even the manufacture of homemade bombs. How did this happen in the middle of a secure U.S. base?

The prisoners were working in a small building they had designated as a "mosque" and guards were "forbidden" to enter.

Sheer lunacy.

-- Okay, enough of the heavy stuff.

-- Have you seen the hand puppet Jennifer Lopez "Taco-Flavored Kisses" episode of South Park? I seriously thought I was going to bust a gut. Totally inappropriate and very, very funny. I don't always like SP, but I have to admit that one got to me. Now, if I could only get the damn song out of my head.

-- Is it just me of is the whole "Jon Stewart is so brilliant" meme getting seriously tiresome? And what's with all the Pope jokes? Is he really that funny?

-- I got a chance to preview Turbine's upcoming Dungeons and Dragons Online for 10 days thanks to my pre-order. I can't really talk about it much, due to the NDA that comes with the beta opportunity, but I can say that despite the limited time I have to play it, I have been playing Everquest II instead.

-- New Year's Resolution: lose some weight and write that book you've been talking about for years about the need for a political, military and economic union between the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand (and perhaps Ireland).

-- Wish me luck. I'll need it.

President Chavez Speaks His Mind

The international left, including its American wing, has been making eyes at President Chavez for some time now. Apparently, the sight of a noble Latin American leader speaking up for "solidarity" and "democratic socialism" still has the power to quicken the pulse of good lefties everywhere.

Never mind the authoritarian manner, the subversion of the rule of law, the absolutely insane economic plan that runs contrary to everything we've learned about basic economics over the past fifty years. What's important is that he says the right things about "imperialism" and the evil designs of the United States.

And now President Chavez has let us know who the real enemy is! (Hint: it's the same old enemy).

From a speech delivered in Venezuela to a local development organization. (You can find the official Venezuelan government transcript here.:

No habia dinero y donde estaba el dinero?
El dinero en Venezuela se concentro... asi como en el mundo, porque esto es un
fenomeno mundial saben? Acabo de leer esta madrugada el ultimo informe de la
Organizacion de Naciones Unidas sobre la situacion del mundo y es alarmante por
eso es que digo que hoy mas que nunca antes jamas en 2005 anos nos hace falta
Jesus el Cristo, porque el mundo, el mundo, se esta acabando el mundo cada dia,
cada dia, la riqueza del mundo, porque Dios, la naturaleza es sabia, el mundo tiene agua suficiente para que todos tuvieramos agua, el mundo tiene riquezas
suficientes, tierras suficientes para producir alimentos para toda la poblacion
mundial, el mundo tiene suficientes piedras y minerales para las construcciones,
para que no hubiera nadie sin vivienda. El mundo tiene para todos, pues, pero
resulta que unas minorias, los descendientes de los mismos que crucificaron a
Cristo, los descendientes de los mismos que echaron a Bolivar de aqui y tambien lo crucificaron a su manera en Santa Marta, alla en Colombia. Una minoria se adueno de las riquezas del mundo, una minoria se adueno del oro del planeta, de la plata, de los minerales, de las aguas, de las tierras buenas, del petroleo, de las riquezas, pues, y han concentrado las riquezas en pocas manos: menos del diez por ciento de la poblacion del mundo es duena de mas de la mitad de la riqueza de todo el mundo y a la... mas de la mitad de los pobladores del planeta son pobres y cada dia hay mas pobres en el mundo entero.

Translation: You [the audience] didn't have money, and where was that money? The money in Venezuela was concentrated with them...like it is in the world, for this is a worldwide phenomena, you know? I just finished reading early this morning the latest report from the United Nations about the world situation, and it's alarming because it says that today more than ever before, 2005 years after they killed Jesus Christ, because the world, the world, is worsening every day, every day, the riches of the world, because God, nature provides, the world has sufficent water for those who need water, the world has sufficent riches, land sufficient to produce foodstuffs for the entire world population, the world has sufficient stone and minerals for construction, so that there is no shortage for anyone who is living. The world has these things for all, sure, but because of some minorities, the decendents of those same people who killed Christ, the decendents of the same people who fought Bolivar, and also those who crucified them in Santa Marta, over in Colombia. A minority that has seized the riches of the world, a minority that has seized the gold of the planet, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good land, the oil, all these riches, well, and they have concentrated the riches in only a few hands: less than 10 percent of the world population has more than half the riches of the entire world..and more than half the entire population of the planet is poor and each day there are more poor in the entire world.

(NOTE: I've done my best with this translation..it's close...please help if you can.

It seems, as always, that "democratic socialism" has more in common with National Socialism than is apparent at first glance. No wonder Chavez is always a hit with the Al-Jazeera crowd: moonbat leftism and insane anti-Semitism always go down well there.