Friday, November 18. 2005
Poitiers, Redux Steyn: "The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.'' Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was ''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.'' Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman." Read entire.
Decaf unhealthy? Always knew there was something fishy about the concept. One Christian view of sex (not necessarily endorsing this view, but it's interesting). Natural Family Planning Outreach "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." A piece by Brian on Community of the Desperate. Real Meal. What good is a GOP majority? Ankle Biter Stavins on climate change remedies, recommending economic incentives. Env. Economics. Am I an idiot not to stay awake at night worrying about this? Climate does change, for whatever reasons. It has never been static. Heck, we were just covered under a mile of ice in New England a short ten thousand years ago, and will be again. The enviro-nuts are short-term thinkers. They need to think more Progressively: Change is Good - right? And if things warm up, we'll need less evil oil! And nature will take its course. What? Me worry? Hey, Al Gore - chill - or should I say, take a Prozac and a scotch and warm up and enjoy life. Che bella vita, as Bird Dog sometimes says. The collected works of Bin Ladin, LGF Iraqi bloggers: No Oil "Mr. President, Build that Wall". Gates of Vienna on Immigration. Are we ever lucky to need a wall to keep interlopers out, instead of to keep people in? I doubt that even most liberals want govt experts taking over a family function like this. MassRight. However, a true socialist would be happy, as more power accrues to the Almighty and Omniscient State. It is the dawning of the Age of Eurabia, etc. Iowahawk
Wednesday, November 16. 2005
Pajamas Media has changed to OSM - Open Source Media. Synthstuff has details. Wonder whether we should join. We could not understand the contract when it first came out. Story of the UN's effort to take over the internet: Paxety Al Gore deeply, deeply concerned about warming. Reasoned Audacity
Tough Love at the Olin Foundation: Town Hall A quote: "Pound for pound, the largest left-leaning foundations outspent the top conservative foundations last year by more than 10 to 1 in a market where grants worth $32 billion were made by foundations managing combined assets of more than $475 billion. The Ford Foundation, for example, sits atop roughly $11 billion worth of assets, while the conservative John M. Olin Foundation - which just spent down its portfolio and closed its doors - never reached so much as $120 million worth of assets under management in a given year. And yet, John J. Miller recently published a book entitled A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America . " Animal Farm at Dartmouth: Powerline Greatest threat to our kids: Pens. FMFT "Repub Nervous Nellies" on Iraq: RWNH A blogger we have just discovered, or who just discovered Maggie's: Musafir's Musings. Mostly moderate-sounding rational politics (if "rational politics" is not an oxymoron), but I can see that his interests go beyond politics. Krauthammer on France: "As the French seem to learn every 70 years, appeasement does not work. It merely whets the appetite. And the angry alien young were already hungry." Read entire. Pension Crisis: A dull subject, but one of critical importance to millions of people. AOL News. PBS distorts history of Crusades. Big surprise there. View from 1776
Interview with Murdoch, via Drudge: "The Internet is certainly ... you know, it's ... I was operating -- we've all been operating -- during a changing model of communications: television, moving pictures and so on. But the Internet has been the most fundamental change during my lifetime and for hundreds of years. Someone the other day said, "It's the biggest thing since Gutenberg," and then someone else said, "No, it's the biggest thing since the invention of writing." With the technology that goes with it, the fact is that everybody now is empowered: Anyone can buy what they want, shop where they want, talk to anybody in the world that they want (and) state their own opinions. There's no mystery to a blog: Put up your thoughts (and) find friends. And the younger people are, the more time they're spending on it -- it's extraordinary. We bought (MySpace.com) a few weeks ago and just closed the deal last night, legally. There are 32 million people already registered on that, and there are 125,000 a day being added to it. They're finding common interests: When they're 17 or 18, they go on looking for dates; if they're 25, there are 3 (million) or 4 million young mothers out there talking about things. Within that, there are lots and lots of communities, and they can all blog -- they can all write in a personal diary every week, or whatever they want." Read entire interview.
"Barbarians at the Gates of Paris" - Dalrymple: "Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975—and at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France. Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order." Read entire at City Journal.
Tuesday, November 15. 2005
GWYNNIE’S MEDIA INNUENDO AWARD – CATEGORY: HEADLINE We have awarded November’s Media Innuendo Award to London’s Metro newspaper (the free paper distributed by London’s public transportation system, www.metro.co.uk) for this classically (and probably intentionally) misleading headline, which perfectly illustrates the media’s ability to imply conclusions not warranted by the facts: Blair told: War has fuelled terrorism On our return from England, we showed this newspaper to an educated group of New England Yankees and asked a simple, professorial question: “What is the Fact revealed here?” Shame on them – they were suckered in and talked about the war and its effect on terrorism. NO, children, the Fact here is that Blair was told something! In the Metro’s paragraph one, we learn that this came from “his own advisors”. In paragraph two, we learn it came from “a group of Islamic experts appointed in the wake of the July 7 bombings in London”. In paragraph six, we are told that “the experts ranged from Inayat Bungawala, of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, to outspoken ‘curry king’ Sir Gulam Noon.” We had to turn to the Daily Telegraph to learn that the entire panel was composed of Muslims opposed to any attempt to outlaw radical groups such as Hizb-ut-tahrir and Muhajiroun, saying such an attempt “risked alienating law-abiding Muslims and driving fanatics underground.” The Muslim report concluded that the Government’s Terrorism Bill “could lead to a significant chill factor in the Muslim community in expressing legitimate support for self-determination struggles around the world.” Like al-Qaeda, of course. Knowing, then, from where the report came and its biases, go back to the headline: the Fact is that Blair received biased opinion from a special interest group attempting to influence legislation; the headline phrases it in such a clever way that it appears that the group’s conclusion is the Fact the Metro is reporting. The Metro clearly deserves this month’s Media Innuendo Award.
France Atlas wonders how France will deal with their multicultural nightmare. Dinocrat notes that the EU will provide France with 58 jobs to help solve the crisis. No Oil asks "Who done it?" in an excellent wide-ranging review of the subject of Moslem immigration, and quotes Steyn thus: "The trouble with the social democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything. At the very least, European citizens should recognise that the governing class has failed, that the conventional wisdom has run its course, and that it is highly unlikely that those culturally confident Muslims will wish to assimilate with anything as shrivelled and barren as contemporary European identity."
Preventing Apophis from colliding with earth: CSM. Please don't let it fall on my house - it was just painted. Humorless, fun-deficient person acts offended by "Pick a bale of cotton"- Newsmax Moonbats galore, via LGF European Riot update: Gateway Edwardian standards for youth: Miriam GOP's improving hopes: RWN Ezmerai speaks: Cao Affirmative Action in France? CSM How Sen. Lieberman is harming CT: Daily News
Monday, November 14. 2005
Virus Warning Going Around Was a Hoax Thanks, Alert Reader.
Political Science for Dummies: DEMOCRATIC | You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you. | REPUBLICANISM | You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So? | SOCIALIST | You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow. | COMMUNIST | You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour. | CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE | You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows. | BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE | You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain. | AMERICAN CORPORATION | You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up. | FRENCH CORPORATION | You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good. | JAPANESE CORPORATION | You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school. | GERMAN CORPORATION | You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year. | ITALIAN CORPORATION | You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good. | RUSSIAN CORPORATION | You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have. | TALIBAN CORPORATION | You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons. | IRAQI CORPORATION | You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing. | POLISH CORPORATION | You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them. | BELGIAN CORPORATION | You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy. | FLORIDA CORPORATION | You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow. | CALIFORNIA CORPORATION | You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegals.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders. |
Five questions for Muslims: Prager Rioting in France subsiding? Or is it just the reporting that's subsiding? My Way Bush Derangement Syndrome from Dr. Sannity, via Powerline Free Trade and Argentina: TCS Did Tamiflu cause deaths? AOL news Patriotism and Politics, from Protein - a quote: What we are seeing now, however, is a cynical, orchestrated attempt to weaken the President—and importantly, one that is based on what most Congressional Democrats know to be a faulty premise, that Bush either “lied” or “manipulated intelligence” to take us into war.
Read entire.
Tuesday, November 8. 2005
 We have had lots of new readers lately, which is very gratifying to us slaves chained to our keyboards in the sunless, dirt-floor basement of Maggie's Farm. A hearty welcome to our new visitors.
If you want to take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with what we do, click a few categories in the upper left. As you can see, we are motivated by curiosity, and we just follow our doggy noses. Your Editor is away this week (no, not hunting this time. Northern Italy, to get a decent meal, and maybe catch Dylan in Bologna), but we'll try not to let the well run entirely dry by pre-posting some things. The Dylanologist may have some inspiration, but he is unpredictable. Back on Monday with jet lag, fresh photos and fresh blogging energy. Bird Dog, Editor Dog in Chief P.S. Also, whoever can identify or guess those tattoos on our Dr. Bliss, "The Psychoanalyst," wins a free one-year subscription to the blog. Will get to the responses when I get back.
Two Must- Reads for today 1. Baehr on Riots and the MSM in Am. Thinker 2. Scrapple Face on the French Moslem Riots
The Unraveling of the New York Times If things get any worse at the NYT, I might begin to feel sorry for them. It is said that newspapers, in general, have been in a secular downturn, but I have no doubt that, at least at the NYT, their knee-jerk lefty bias and propagandizing has cost them both respect and circulation. Howard Kurtz looks at morale and profits at the NYT, in WaPo
The Truth-Teller: Mark Steyn "France's over-regulated sclerotic economy profoundly obstructs the social mobility of immigrants, even Mr Debris - whoops, sorry - even Mr Debré cannot be so out of touch as to think "seriously" that the rioters are rioting for "a fairer, more fraternal society". But maybe he does. The political class and the media seem to serve as mutual reinforcers of their obsolete illusions. Or as the Washington Post's headline put it: "Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition". Actually, they're very easy to "recognise": just look out the window, they're the ones torching your Renault 5. I'd wager the "French" "youth" find that headline as hilarious as the Jets in West Side Story half a century ago, when they taunted Officer Krupke with "society's" attempts to "understand" them: we're depraved on account of we're deprived. Perhaps some enterprising Paris impresario will mount a production of West Eid Story with choreographed gangs of North African Muslims sashaying through the Place de la Republique, incinerating as they go. In fact, "rage" seems the least of it: it's the "glee" and "contempt" you're struck by. And "rage" in the sense of spontaneous anger is a very slapdash characterisation of what, after two weeks, is looking like a rather shrewd and disciplined campaign. This business of car burning, for example. In Iraq, the "insurgents" quickly got the hang of setting some second-hand Nissan alight at just the right moment so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press hotel balcony in time for NBC's Today show and Good Morning, America." Read entire.
Very Old Light From Science Daily: "Scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope say they have detected light that may be from the earliest objects in the universe. If confirmed, the observation provides a glimpse of an era more than 13 billion years ago when, after the fading embers of the theorized Big Bang gave way to millions of years of pervasive darkness, the universe came alive." Read entire.
Another sad tale of academic Maoism: Protein Terror a la carte: from Travel Wire News Canadians ban Halloween, Miriam via RWNH
Mirengoff on Eurabia: "In a certain kind of liberal universe, French Muslim rioters are victims who want nothing more than to enjoy the bourgeoise pleasures of secular France. Iraqi Muslims, by contrast, have little yearning for freedom, self-government, and prosperity, preferring civil war, a Saddam-style strong man, and/or a theocracy. They are victims of U.S. aggression, which denies them these things, at least temporarily. To me, however, it seems plausible that Iraqis Muslims will find satisfaction in their own democratic state before European Muslims will find satisfaction in a western-style democracy." Read entire: Powerline
Monday, November 7. 2005
News refuses to characterize the French "youths": Ankle-Biter A hybrid update from Glenn, here. Newspaper circulation continues to decline, via Drudge, here. Living in Eurabia: Atlas (We like to call it Euristan) IRS hassles anti-war church. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More on tuition discounts for illegals: Imm. Blog
No, it's not from a grocery store tabloid. Warmflash and Weiss in Scientific American: "Most scientists have long assumed that life on Earth is a homegrown phenomenon. According to the conventional hypothesis, the earliest living cells emerged as a result of chemical evolution on our planet billions of years ago in a process called abiogenesis. The alternative possibility--that living cells or their precursors arrived from space--strikes many people as science fiction. Developments over the past decade, however, have given new credibility to the idea that Earth's biosphere could have arisen from an extraterrestrial seed." Read entire.
Douthat reviews Dowd's book: "AS WITH MUCH of what Dowd writes, it's hard to know how seriously to take her mix of cheap shots and caricature. Still, it's worth at least suggesting, by way of counterpoint, that the world we inhabit isn't one in which the feminists have been backlashed into retreat for the last 40 years--it's a world where feminism won, at least insofar as it could, and the sexual confusion that so dismays Dowd is the unexpected consequence of its victory." Read entire. Immigration legislation update. Barone. Istanbul Update. Eurozine
Saturday, November 5. 2005
Charlie Rich and the Democrats I tend to assume that everyone who is online reads Powerline regularly, if not daily. However, this past week they have outdone themselves with quality of thought and writing. They keep getting better. Scott somehow manages to combine the great Charlie Rich with the Dems' Behind Closed Doors antics, but their whole week sets an impossibly high standard for the rest of the blogosphere. These guys have jobs, too?
France, more From Dinocrat: "A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.” All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities." Read entire.
Crash on the Levee From NYT: "The senators asked the engineering experts whether the corps should be trying right now to design and rebuild the levees to resist the strongest storms, those of Category 5. They replied that it would be best to work in stages, starting with the goal of resisting Category 3 storms, a level that can be attained relatively quickly. Any broader plan, they suggested, should include restoring the wetlands that create a protective buffer against oncoming storms." Read entire.
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