What "Never Again" Means

What "Never Again" means:

1) It does not mean that we all go the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and think hard about what the Germans did.

2) It does not mean that we honor the Holocaust dead by making nice movies like "Shindler's List."

3) It does not mean that we wear T-shirts that say "Stop the Genocide in Darfur."

4) It does not mean blaming the United States for the Rwandan dead two years after the last victim has been buried.

5) It does not mean increasing the U.N.'s budget.

6) It does not mean having good intentions.

This is what "Never Again" means:

[Israeli] Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter responded to the new law Friday night, saying, "Whoever makes Jews anywhere wear the yellow star again, will find themselves in a coffin draped in black."

That is what "Never Again" means.

Islamic Fascism

***Please see update below***

Regular and long-time readers know that my own analysis of matters in the Islamic world have led me to reluctantly conclude that we are seeing in that civilization a choice, both broadly popular and actively welcomed, for an Islamic version of fascism that glorifies the Volk (the "ummah"), stigmatizes the Jews (the "Jews") and the West (the "Americans") as responsible for all the Volk's failings and promises a rebirth of the Volkish civilization through a civilization-wide will to power ready, willing and able to use violence to achieve its aims.

With each passing month, I have become more, not less, convinced that this analysis is in its essentials correct.

In this second go-round with fascism, many commentators on the right who recognize it as such see the West, and especially America, as more-or-less occupying the role of Great Britain circa 1936: while some of the leadership and some of the people see and understand the full implications of the coming threat, most of the political and cultural leadership, for a variety of reasons--not the least of which is a love of peace and a hatred of war, disagree strongly with those who see such a threat.

As a result, these conservatives claim, like in WWII we will end up fighting a disastrous, monstrous, devastatingly destructive world-war at some point if we do not wake up and fight now at a much lower cost. It is, of course, one of the deep ironies of the historical record that those most truly devoted in their hearts to the cause of peace were those most directly responsible for bringing about conditions that led to a war many times of worse magnitude than, say, a punitive Anglo-French expedition into the Rhineland would have wrought when Hitler marched in to re-militarize it.

My scenario, I'm very sorry to say, is not quite so rosy. If I thought that there remained in the West today a fighting spirit eqivalent to that slumbering in the United States and Great Britain in 1938 that merely needs to be properly woken up, I would not be half so worried about the future as I am now.

It seems to me that the current West, racked as it is with deeply conflicting political ideals, inward-looking, more apt to see the partisan across the aisle as a bigger threat than any foreign enemy, is more alike to France in 1938: on paper and in theory the strongest power, yet, in its spirit, divided and brittle.

Like that France of so long ago, I find it likely what we will have to collectively drink the dregs of defeat down to the last bitter swallow before we have shorn away enough irrelevancies and find our own De Gaulle. Of finding him or her, I have no doubt, nor do I have doubt of the West's ultimate victory.

It was in this context, this background of thought so to speak, that I brought to my desk this morning for my usual on-line review of the West's major newspapers. It was with this dark foreboding that I came across the following in today's National Post:

Iran eyes badges for Jews
Law would require non-Muslim insignia

Chris Wattie
National Post

Friday, May 19, 2006

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

In other words, this:



Avert your eyes if you must, make excuses for it, blame it on Bush or the United States if it makes you feel better. None of that will stop what is coming, nor save you from the time-honored ultimate question:

Which side are you on?

UPDATE: The Iranian government is strongly denying that any such legislation has been passed and says that the bill in question would merely provide incentives to persons to wear more traditional clothing.

Let us take their assurances at face value. Let us then turn to the statement today of the President of the Iranian Republic, openly threatening the nations of Southern Europe:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The enemies of the Iranian people should know: Confronting this people will bring them nothing but defeat, humiliation, and misery.

[...]

As I stand before you, I’d like to say a few words to some European countries, which consider themselves to be the standard bearers of the Iranian people’s progress.

We say to you: Do not sacrifice the interests of your people, and the interest of all European people - especially the southern European countries - for the sake of immature decisions. We recommend that you do not sacrifice the interests of Europe for the sake of the interests of others.

Your best course of action is to follow the letter of the law. You say that you want to grant incentives to the Iranians.

They think they are dealing with a four-year-old child, who can be given nuts and chocolates in exchange for the gold in his hands.

Why? We say to you...

Crowd: Death to America. Death to America. Death to America. Death to America. Death to America.

Death to America. It's not just a slogan. They mean it.

Tim Davis, Foreign Service Officer

My former colleague and A-100 classmate Tim Davis, currently posted in Iraq, is featured on the State Department's website this month. The page contains both a short bio and an interview with Tim.

Tim is a former Marine, a dedicated officer and an All-Around Good Guy, exactly the kind of guy you want representing the United States abroad. I can also tell you that if the you-know-what ever hit the fan, he is also the kind of guy you'd want to have your back, and not just because he is by far the largest man in the attached photo (though that is part of it!).

I post this both because I want you to visit the State Dept site and get to know Tim better, and also because I get a lot of inquiries from people who want to know what kind of people join the Foreign Service. I'm no expert and, God knows, I have my own issues with the FS culture, but in my personal experience the people I got to know during my all-too-short time there were very much like Tim.

The kind of people who will walk into a combat zone to help organize an election or show up for work on the visa line despite being badly beaten and robbed the night before in a dangerous Latin American city.

The Oil Rolls On

Last night, the Edmonton Oilers, the lowly number 8 seed in the Western Conference, eliminated the heavily-favored San Jose Sharks from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, winning the series four games to two. ESPN and AP pick up the story:

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) -- Dwayne Roloson and the Edmonton Oilers protected the Canadian national anthem from another round of booing. They knocked out San Jose before the Sharks could get the series back home.

Michael Peca and Shawn Horcoff scored in front of a sellout crowd of pompom-waving fans Wednesday night, and Roloson made 24 saves in the biggest game of his career as the eighth-seeded Oilers beat the Sharks 2-0 in Game 6 of the quarterfinal series.

That put the Oilers in the Western Conference finals for the first time in 14 years.

"No one wanted to go back for Game 7 in San Jose," Horcoff said. "To come back and win four straight against that team shows a lot about our character."

After dropping the first two games in San Jose, Edmonton stormed back with four straight victories. It is the first time the Oilers rallied from an 0-2 deficit to win a series. They won two in a row at home and took Game 5 in San Jose after fans there booed the Canadian anthem.

And, that's not all, but apparently the fans in San Jose booed the Canadian National Anthem! (Gee, do you think the AP reporter is Canadian?)

I have never seen such a classless display by an American sports crowd. Showing such disregard to our cousin to the north was not only disrespectful, it was downright stupid. Where, exactly, do San Jose fans think Jonathan Cheechoo and captain Patrick Marleau are from? Not that I'm shocked overmuch; having had the extreme misfortune of having to live for a time in the Bay Area I am all-too-aware of the kinds of self-important jerks that area seems to attract.

The Oilers are one of those teams that are not supposed to win, but do. Ever more enjoyable, they do it the old-fashioned way: they out-work, out-hustle and out-smart the other team, showing a ton of character and heart while doing so. In fact, they very much remind me of the similarly-outclassed-yet-victorious 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers. The Ducks will have their hands full, to say the least, in what promises to be a very good Western Conference Final.

Oh, and one more thing:

Edmonton fans cheered the U.S. national anthem so loudly that the noise drowned out singer Paul Lorieau.

You won't find that kind of class in San Jose.

The West Lothian Question Rolls On

Last week, I posited that PM Blair's new cabinet choices may have accidentally set in motion a constitutional crisis. New evidence in today's Telegraph that this may, in fact, be the case. Columnist Simon Heffer writes there today that "Being Ruled by Scots is No Joke for the English Majority".

A sample:

The English did not start this quarrel: the Scots did, by voting to break up the kingdom. For, be in no doubt, and irrespective of the obtuse and

self-serving speeches Mr Brown makes about "Britishness", the United Kingdom as we grew up to understand it is over. The people of England, who were never asked whether they wanted their own parliament, nor ever offered one, now see the Scots in a different light.

In terms of the political class, they are an over-represented and increasingly unaccountable minority whose job it is to raise taxes from the English to spend on the Scots. The English understand this and resent it. Perhaps the Scots think it is jolly funny for the English to be on the receiving end of a Raj for a change, with Mr Reid installed in viceregal splendour in Whitehall.

They should be aware that our sense of humour, legendary though it is, does not extend that far.

This is still a minor issue, but it is just so well-poised at the chink in the British Constitution's armor (I should say armour) that it may very well lead to something out of proportion to the offense.

At the very least, I'd say this episode has made an English Parliament a substantial likelihood.

Take a Close Look and What Do You See?

The University of Colorado just finished the horrific McCarthyite project it undertook when lefty professor Ward Churchill came to national notice by referring to the dead of 9.11 as "little Eichmans."

All you conservatives out there will be shocked, shocked to discover that, upon a rational, dispassionate, close examination of Churchill's academic conduct, the good professor is...well, he's full of shit.

But, hey, don't take my word for it!

Take it away Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee of Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado at Boulder! (I apologize in advance for the difficult formatting, the original is a .pdf with a mind of its own)

The Committee was charged with investigating seven allegations:

Allegation A: Misrepresentation of General Allotment Act of 1887
Allegation B: Misrepresentation of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990
Allegation C: Captain John Smith and smallpox in New England, 1614-1618
Allegation D: Smallpox epidemic at Fort Clark and beyond, 1837-1840
Allegation E: Plagiarism of a pamphlet by the Dam the Dams group
Allegation F: Plagiarism of Professor Rebecca Robbins
Allegation G: Plagiarism of Professor Fay G. Cohen

Based on its investigation of those allegations, the Committee unanimously found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Professor Churchill committed several forms of academic misconduct as defined in the policy statements of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Colorado system:

1. Falsification, as discussed in Allegations A, B, C, and D.
2. Fabrication, as discussed in Allegations C and D.
3. Plagiarism, as discussed in Allegations E and G.
4. Failure to comply with established standards regarding author names on publications, as discussed most fully in Allegation F but also in Allegations A, B,and D.
5. Serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research, as discussed in Allegation D.

The Committee did not find fabrication in the first sub-question of Allegation D or
plagiarism in Allegation F.

The Committee noted additionally that Professor Churchill was disrespectful of Indian
oral traditions when dealing with the Mandan/Fort Clark smallpox epidemic of 1837, both in his essays and during the course of this investigation, as discussed in Allegation D.

The Committee found that Professor Churchill’s misconduct was deliberate and not a matter of an occasional careless error. The Committee found that similar patterns recurred throughout the essays it examined. The Committee therefore concluded that the degree of his misconduct was serious, but differed on the sanction warranted.

* * * [Two members recommended suspension without pay for two years, three recommended removal of tenure and dismissal]

Finally, the Committee had the following comments about its report:

The Committee notes that the Laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado
define "academic freedom" as "the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and teach truth as the faculty member sees it, subject to no control or authority save the control and authority of the rational methods by which truth is established."

We understand and were careful to distinguish "misconduct in research," which is
addressed by the University of Colorado’s Administrative Policy Statement on Misconduct in Research and Authorship, from the issue of "truth" addressed by
the Regents' Laws' definition of academic freedom. The Committee observes
also that the allegations we were asked to investigate were initiated in the wake of the public outcry concerning some highly controversial essays by Professor
Churchill dealing with, among other things, the 9/11 tragedy. While not
endorsing either the tone or the contents of those essays, the Committee reaffirms,
as the University has already acknowledged, that Professor Churchill's right to
publish his views was protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of free speech. Although those essays played no part in our deliberations, the Committee expresses its concern regarding the timing and
perhaps the motives for the University's decision to forward charges made in that
context. We point out finally that when Professor Churchill was hired as an
Associate Professor with tenure in 1991 and promoted to (full) Professor in 1997,
the University knew that he did not have a Ph.D. or law degree, as commonly
expected for faculty at this institution, and was aware that he was a controversial
public intellectual.

In short, Churchill is an unqualified professor who routinely uses falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism in advancing his lies, but becuase the Fox News crowd wants his head the Committee is troubled by having to admit it.

Ladies and gentlemen, you could not wish for a better example of the modern college professoriate than that presented by this report.

Why I Am Not a Leftist, Part II

The happy folks over at Daily Kos provide this update and link as part of their mid-day open thread:

Seven House members get arrested protesting at the Embassy of Sudan.

Click on the link and you find out that liberal notables Barbara Lee (sporting a T-shirt saying "End the Darfur Genocide") and John Lewis were arrested.

Congressional Black Caucus spokeswoman Myra Dandridge said the group would continue to hold protests at the embassy.

"All 43 members will have an opportunity to protest here and get arrested," she said.

Yes, everyone will have an opporunity to strike a blow against the evil genocide by getting arrested in Washington DC!

Do I even need to point out the pointless narcissism of all this political theatre?

Ending the Islamic Fascist regime of Sudan and its genocidal policies would take...wait for it...an American-led invasion to over-turn the insane government, an occupation of the country, suppression of the inevitible Islamist insurrection that would follow, and the long and painful support of a new Sudanese government.

And we all know how people like Lee and Lewis feel about that, don't we?

There's the Left for you in a nut-shell. All for provocative t-shirts and protesting, but when the real issue comes up there is nothing more important than peace. Even peace with genocidal killers.

"Saving" Darfur is only popular insofar as no action will be required. If boots ever do hit the ground in Sudan, I expect Lee and Lewis will be leading the charge to End the War Now and to Bring the Troops Home.

Foreign Service Officer Chris Allison Kicks Ass, Takes Names.

My former colleague Chris Allison, currently posted in India, has just won the American Foreign Service Association's prestigious W. Avery Herriman Award for Constructive Dissent. This award is given out annually to an FSO who has made a strong case for a change in policy, in this case immigration policy.

I could bore you with the details, but let's just let Chris speak for himself. Besides being interesting, it's also a rare glimpse for non-FSOs to see what the life is like. I've edited some of Chris' post below; all you need to know is that it is somewhere in India. Here is how Chris tells the story:

I didn't even know that I had been nominated for this until I found the notice in my e-mail telling me that I had won. My jaw dropped to my knees. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy about it.

One of my bosses here in India nominated me for all of the work that I have done on H-1B visa fraud and abuse, especially in terms of cracking down on H-1B petitioner fraud. Without getting too much into the arcana of H-1B law (on which subject I know far more than any sane conoff ought), suffice it to say that H-1B abuse had gotten completely out of control in India. Money changes hands for petition sponsorship, petitioners aren't paying workers like they're supposed to, petitioners are petitioning workers without actually having jobs for them, petitioners are petitioning family members, petitioners are often nothing more than other H-1B workers who have incorporated themselves, etc. Nothing new, really--people have been bringing this stuff up for years--but I made the right noise on the subject at the right time and got some people to listen to me.

Finally, some policy-level changes appear to be under way. I certainly wasn't the only person involved in this, either here or elsewhere, but I led the charge here, and did some evangelizing on the subject at other posts and with various folks in Washington.

The funny thing is that all I was ever really after was a stricter interpretation of the existing rules. This, to me, seems like an awfully peculiar definition of dissent. I had the full support of our management from the beginning, and did not meet that much resistance along the way from the various folks I talked to on the
issue. It certainly took a lot of work, and not a little heartbreak now and again, but I never really felt like I was dissenting per se. No firey staff meetings where I threw down a dossier in disgust and stormed out; no all-or-nothing 'I'll stake my career on this' ill-advised dissent channel cables; no late-night agonizing and soul-searching about whether I should just keep my head down and shut up.

In fact, the feeling I got was that a lot of people were just patiently waiting for somebody else to bring these things up. I happened to be the one to do it, or at least to be the most vocal about it. The most I can lay claim to is maybe giving voice to post's collective dissent on the subject.

But hey, I'll take it. India has not exactly been a dream posting, not least because of the crummy H-1Bs that occupy our days and trouble our dreams at night, so it was nice to know that somebody out there was paying attention. Prize money never did anybody any harm, either.

Being on the front lines of America's dysfunctional immigration system is not the easiest of jobs. Doing that job while using your position to make it better and to better protect the American people is exceptional. Chris' suggestions will make life more difficult for the H-1B scam artists out there.

Well done, Chris!

A New Low

The White House's press secretary's office released official "excerpts" from the President's speech on immigration this afternoon and they fell like a lead balloon (or, for you stoners out there, a led zeppelin) amongst the right Blogosphere. From La Shawn Barber to Michelle Malkin to Power Line to NRO's The Corner, the response has been the same: we are about to witness a President commit political suicide, live on TV.

When the National Guard bit of the speech leaked late last week, I commented at LGF that my contempt for the President had found a new low: how else is a conservative supposed to react to an obvious "let's throw a bone to the stupid bubbas" move like this? It's so contemptible in its assumptions of the motivations and desires of conservatives with regard to immigration that the stunt very nearly passes into beneath contempt territory.

For my commenting pains, I was labelled a "defeatist," a "Democrat" and a "liberal in hiding," which given my current company as of this writing is pretty funny when you think about it. But even the Bush fanboi contingent over at LGF is starting to wake up. It will be interesting to see if tonight's speech pushes the approval rating even lower than where it is now (and where it is now is well below what was once thought to be the natural base of any President, regardless of policy or performance).

When it comes to legal immigration, we could learn a lot from our neighbor to the North. Like Canada, we should institute a points-based immigration system designed to bring in who we want and need and to exclude everyone else. After all, the United States is the top of the immigration market. Only a government as deeply dysfunctional and downright stupid as the USG could take an extreme seller's market and offer its goods for nothing.

So, let's draw up a list. Who do we need? Engineers? Physicists? Doctors and nurses? Teachers? Believe me, there would be no shortage of applicants.

Instead, we offer immigration based on blood relations to LPRs and AmCits and, oh yes, we also offer thousands of slots at random, through a lottery.

I'm serious. You couln't make up a policy more laughable than that, could you? It's like a bunch of drunk "model Congress" students passed actual legislation and no one has noticed it for a few decades. (Actually, the main architect of the legislation was a Kennedy, so....)

With regard to illegals, it's like drugs. You can't hope to dent the supply, but you can reduce demand. How? Education, moral suasion and really, really punitive measures. Jail a few landscape company owners for 30 years, seize the wife's Lexus and his Explorer, yank the kid out of U.S.C. and you'll see the others shape up right away.

That's the sad thing. It's all rather simple, actually. It's certainly not rocket science.

We want immigrants, we need immigrants. But we get to decide who gets in and who doesn't and we should do so rationally.

Enforce the law, Mr. President.

You know, like that oath you took?