Dean's World

Carpe Bonum gives this account of his participation in one of Citizen's Smash's San Diego-based Operation Thank You events held to thank the military. It's well worth reading and has lots of links.

And here's what Smash has to say about it.

Would believe former Federal Reserve Chairman and current UN Oil-for-food scandal investigator Paul Volker?

Be careful what your kids take to school....

....but this...(?)

UPDATE: This short piece from the Atlanta Constitution is truly haunting and says a lot about the story linked above:

Pastor Alan Jones, who was to have married the couple today, briefly addressed the media Saturday morning.

” John [Mason, Jennifer Wilbanks’ fiance] is a man of faith and he said just an hour ago, everyone has a right to make a mistake. There’s still a lot of pain. No one in this house had any idea that Jennifer was a runaway bride. Jennifer needs help.

“John Mason will not talk to the media for a couple of days” because he’s so tired.

He said he did not know about any future wedding plans.

“Remember what we were praying yesterday, let her be a runaway bride.”

This story is truly a tragedy. It's clear this young woman had no idea that her story would get this kind of massive attention. And, you can be sure, she had no idea people would be torn up over her disappearance and claims she had been kidnapped. Just when you think you've seen every twist on a news story you realize: there are still some surprises out there.

On TV they're speculating as to whether the couple will eventually marry. It would appear to be difficult -- but then, as we said above, there are always surprises.

The eye in the sky reportedly saw it all.

U.S. and Italian authorities have agreed to disagree over the March 4 day from U.S. military fire of Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent who had just freed journalist hostage Giuliana Sgrena. But it turns out there was a witness to one important bone of contention:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US satellite reportedly recorded a checkpoint shooting in Iraq last month, enabling investigators to reconstruct how fast a car carrying a top Italian intelligence official and a freed hostage was traveling when US troops opened fire.

The report, which aired Thursday on CBS News, said US investigators concluded from the recording that the car was traveling at a speed of more than 60 miles (96 km) per hour.

Giuliana Sgrena has said the car was traveling at a normal speed of about 30 miles an hour when the soldiers opened fired, wounding her and killing Nicola Calipari, the Italian agent who had just secured her release from a month's captivity.

US soldiers said at the time of the March 4 incident that the car approached at a high rate of speed and that they fired only after it failed to respond to hand signals, flashing bright lights and warning shots.

U.S. and Italian officials are at still odds over various aspects of the case. CBS, citing Pentagon officials, said US officials believe the satellite is as good as an eyewitness when it comes to the speed of the car:

It said the soldiers manning the checkpoint first spotted the Italian car when it was 137 yards (meters) away. By the time they opened fire and brought the car to a halt, it was 46 yards (meters) away. CBS said that happened in less than three seconds, which meant the car had to be going over 60 miles an hour.

Meanwhile, this is still a huge issue in Italy:

• Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says CBS was wrong in saying Italy paid a ransom. He says he hasn't talked to George Bush and restated Italy's good relations with the U.S and its commitment to the war in Iraq.

• Sgrena calls it a cover up and is calling for the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq.

• The BBC reports that the continued controversy is expected to intensify pressure on Italian leaders to pull Italy out of Iraq. Italy's PM has been one of Bush's staunchest allies. This will also add to Berlusconi's long list of domestic woes.

  UPDATE: The U.S. Army's report has formally cleared the soldiers and recommends no action against them in a report released today, the AP reports:

  The investigation concluded the killing may well have been prevented by better coordination between Italian and U.S. forces in Iraq....

  The U.S. investigation concluded the vehicle had failed to slow down as it approached the checkpoint and the soldiers who fired at it had acted in accordance with the rules of engagement.

  None of this will make any difference in the any. This controversy has just gotten too politicized in Italy, where some are using it to demand Italy pull out of Iraq. Anything the U.S. presents will be called a whitewash which implies that the only "true" verdict would be one that says the soldiers shot at them without there being any explanation for it (oh: that they were intentionally whacking journalists..that'll be the implication).

...there's a video...What was he saying as it took place?..Was this justifiable force? CLICK HERE and you decide (and comment).

PS: The grand jury chose not to view the tape you'll be watching.

Just guess.

No, not Joan Rivers (close). Not Mic Jagger (close). Not William Shatner's first wig (close).

It's your favorite food. The food you were RAISED ON:

CHICAGO (AFP) - Every six seconds, someone in the United States eats a Twinkie, the creme-filled sponge cake that has climbed to iconic status since its inception 75 years ago.

And if today you ate one of the ones made 75 years ago, it'd still be fresh. MORE:

To fuel this passion, Hostess factories pump out 500 million of the sweet, yellow cakes at speeds of up to 1,000 Twinkies a minute.

"It's such a simple treat. It's comfort food," explained Hostess brand manager Anne Drozda.

The Twinkie was invented in a Chicago bakery in April 1930 by a baker who wanted to make better use of shortcake pans when strawberries were out of season....The creme-filled cakes sold two for a nickel in the 1930s and soon became a national favorite. Their iconic status was sealed in 1999 when the White House included Twinkies in the millennium time capsule because they represented "an object of enduring American symbolism."

The treat has played a role in a number of movies, including a scene in Ghostbusters where it is used to illustrate a spike in ghostly appearances. Twinkies were also a favorite treat of Pink Lady Jan in the musical and film "Grease."

A man running for city council in Minneapolis was indicted in 1986 for breaching the Fair Campaign Practices Act after he served coffee, Twinkies and Ho-Hos to senior citizens at campaign stops.

In any event, George Belair was eventually cleared of the allegations, but lost the election. OH: and we were just joking about Twinkies still being fresh after 75 years. A Twinkie has a shelf life of 25 days...but it's a lot shorter in my house..

...a new restaurant. No soup for you!

The UK is holding elections soon, and while I would normally consider it arrogant for an American to tell the average Brit how to vote, I feel that the times we live in are so perilous and difficult, the future so uncertan, that I must speak out.

I ask my British brethren to please consider this important plea:

VOTE FOR INSANITY, YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE!

As I have it in my plans to eventually take over the world, I recently found myself reading about the Freemasons.

Among the more amusing facts I turned up on the site was learning that the Anti-Masonic Party once nominated a Mason for President.

Neo-neo-con has some long and interesting thoughts on American viewpoints on the Vietnam war, written in response to a comment I left her. Click here to read it.

Her piece is good and deserves to be read in its entirety. But I do want to respond to one thing: I did not intend my comment to be read, as she put it, to mean "Where were you in the mid- to late-70s, oh bleeding-heart Vietnam War protesters? Didn't the terrible aftermath of the Vietnam War convince you that you had been wrong to work so hard for US withdrawal? And, if so, why not?" as she suggests. Not quite, anyway.

I think it's clear that there were basically five types of people who opposed the Vietnam war:

1) Isolationists of the "this is none of our business" variety.

2) People who just didn't want themselves or their brothers, husbands, and sons drafted.

3) Liberals who thought it was a lost, doomed cause.

4) Pacifists of the "all war is bad" variety.

5) Communists, communist apologists, and generally anti-American dips***s.

The only people I really hold in contempt are groups 4 and 5. Pacifism is immoral, selfish, and destructive. Communism is as evil as Nazism. But the others are people I can understand and respect.

What disturbs me is that, in retrospect, a lot of people just sort of accept as axiomatic an historical view which reads, "this was an evil racist immoral war fought becuase America was a bunch of bullies and/or wanted to fuel the military-industrial complex." Honestly, that's the only position I take strong exception to. That and the revisionist history that goes along with it, most of which seems to have been concocted by groups 4 and 5.

Ho Chi Minh was never, ever a "freedom fighter," nor even a home-grown hero. Nor was he ever a sincere revolutionary who wanted help from the Western powers and only turned communist because "we gave him no choice." All of that is pure commie propaganda bulls**t. He was a KGB stooge and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist radical from day one. And when he got into power, exactly what the anti-communists said would happen did happen: the bloodletting was horrendous, and the oppression incalculable. The much-maligned "domino theory" was also vindicated, as neighboring regimes quickly fell (or in some cases very nearly fell) to totalitarianism.

Now it may be that we never should have gone there in the first place. It may also be that we made the right choice in going but conducted ourselves poorly. All of that is debateable. Either way, it is fair to say that America cannot stop all oppression and genocide worldwide.

In retrospect, the only thing I find genuinely contemptible in our exit was that, after the U.S. troop withdrawl, we broke our promise to the government of South Vietnam. We suddenly, and with little warning, cut off all the funding we had promised to give them so that they could defend themselves--and then sat on our hands while hundreds of thousands were butchered in the camps and millions more fled for their lives, with quite possibly as many drowning or dying of exposure as died in Uncle Ho's "re-education" camps.

Indeed, even while all that was going on, some of the dips**t radicals here at home were still congratulating themselves and patting themselves on the back.

I also think we should have been working much harder from the beginning to hold free and fair elections in that country. Alas, the foreign-policy "realists," whose thinking is today mirrored by the so-called "reality based community," simply didn't think that was a priority, or didn't think that the Vietnamese could handle a real democracy anyway. So we did not get serious about trying until it was all but too late.

Ultimately I think the real lessons of Vietnam are not whether one side or the other was correct. The real lesson is that anyone who thinks there are easy and obvious answers in war or peace is being foolish. If you opposed American intervention in that area, that doesn't make you a bad person. On the other hand, if you can't acknowledge that by pulling out, we left those people to suffer a horrible fate, then you're either deeply ignorant or just plain dishonest. (And when I say "you" I don't mean anyone in particular. It's a generic "you.")

Maybe giving up and leaving was making the best of a bad situation. But it's wrong not to acknowledge what the cost of giving up really was.

Honestly, the only people who should apologize are those who accepted and helped spread communist propaganda--and who still haven't faced up to the monster that Ho Chi Minh really was all along.

The newest entry in the "products every pastor should have" catalog: the glow-in-the-dark Bible. Perfect for those Halloween homilies where you turn all the church lights off, stick a flashlight under your chin, and scare the bejeezus into the kids.

Then if that doesn't work, you can scare the devil out of them with the Fire Bible.

(You know the sad thing is, I'm one of those people who's very tempted to buy products like these just to have as conversation pieces. But then, I've been sorely tempted more than once to buy an Origami Boulder, so you know there's something wrong with me.)

THE TRUTH HURTS, DON'T IT????

The first five times I heard it, I thought it was hilarious. But it was all downhill from there. Maybe it's something about being white and growing up in the suburbs, but...

Stewart Brand has an excellent piece on environmental heresies, and predicts that in the next ten years or so the environmentalist movement will "reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power."

I certainly hope so, on at least three of those anyway. The environmentalist movement's absolute irrationality on at least two of those issues drove me to turn my back on most of it.

For example, fear of overpopulation is simply not rational. It has no scientific basis whatsoever. The world is not overcrowded in any meaningful sense of the word, nor is there any reason to believe it ever will be. Furthermore, in any free society--one which is democratic and fundamentally free--more people equates to greater wealth and prosperity for all. Greater population--in free societies--also equates to massive improvements in the natural environment. (Those of you who complain about snarled up traffic jams and such are barking up the wrong tree if you think it's caused by overpopulation, by the way. The real problem is called "poor urban planning" and there are ready solutions to that if we have the will. Ditto the much-ballyhooed nonsense about "sprawl.")

Fear of nuclear power by the environmentalist movement is even more disturbing and depressing. It, too, has little basis in rationality, and is driven almost entirely by fear and ignorance. Nuclear power is quite simply the cheapest, cleanest, safest form of power generation ever invented, and would and should be considered the greatest boon to environmental health that humanity has ever conceived. Instead we continue to have irrational, utterly unfounded terror of nuclear waste, and we allow freak occurrences like Chernobyl--a disaster no worse than many non-nuclear accidents, by the way, and which would have been impossible with modern nuclear plant designs--to continually keep us from using this incredibly beneficial technology.

Brand does the one rational fear of nuclear power: that breeder reactors can be used to create materials for nuclear weapons. The solution to that particular problem is much simpler than he suggests, however. The fact is that free amd democratic regimes are no danger to each other. They simply are not--both the scientific and historical data all bear this out. Thus, a simple worldwide program to deny nuclear technology to any regime which does not enshrine free elections and free speech into its rule of law should suffice to alleviate that concern. (And should help with our current efforts to promote democracy and freedom around the world.)

I am mildly skeptical of Brand's views on genetically modified foods, if only because I find myself wondering how long before that leads us to creating entirely new species. That said: I remain open-minded on the subject.

Anyway, his whole piece is good, and I hope his predictions pan out. Click here to give it a read.

(Thanks, Gerund.)

Well, it's about time.

Could it be The Radical Middle?

Quoted:

"Slavery was undoubtedly the immediate fomenting cause of the woeful American conflict. It was the great political factor around which the passions of the sections had long been gathered --the tallest pine in the the political forest around whose top the fiercest lightnings were to blaze and whose trunk was destined to be shivered in the earthquake shocks of war. But slavery was far from being the sole cause of the prolonged conflict. Neither its destruction on the one hand, nor its defense on the other, was the energizing force that held the contending armies to four years of bloody work. I apprehend that if all living union soldiers were summoned to the witness-stand, everyone of them would testify that it was the preservation of the American Union and not the destruction of Southern slavery that induced him to volunteer at the call of his Country. As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps 80% of her armies were neither slave holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its begining to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the union." --General John Brown Gordon

Quoted:

Historian Hans L. Trefousse wrote: "It is true that Lincoln never, prior to 1862, advocated federal action to end slavery in the states where it existed. Constitutional obligations were important to him, and he hoped that putting an end to the expansion of the institution would in the end cause its demise in the South." "It would do no good to go ahead, any faster than the country," President Lincoln told the Rev. Charles Edwards Lester, himself an emancipation advocate. Mr. Lincoln made his comments after he reversed General John C. Fremont's order of emancipation in Missouri in the summer of 1861: "I think [Massachusetts Senator Charles] Sumner and the rest of you would upset our applecart altogether if you had your way. We'll fetch 'em; just give us a little time. We didn't go into the war to put down slavery, but to put the flag back, and to act differ at this moment, would, I have no doubt, not only weaken our cause but smack of bad faith; for I never should have had votes enough to send me here if the people had supposed I should try to use my power to upset slavery. Why, the first thing you'd see, would be a mutiny in the army. No, we must wait until every other means has been exhausted. This thunderbolt will keep." (From Mr. Lincoln and Freedom)

Quoted:

"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." --Robert E. Lee, five years before the Civil War began

Those of you who quote history and its actors out of context do a grave disservice not just to history, but to the people who are its inheritors--and quite often, to yourselves.

I have as much contempt for people who slam and smear southerners and their heritage (including cringing self-hating southerners), and for those who assume that honoring that heritage amounts to racism, as I do for racist idiots who expropriate the symbols of a long-gone era to justify their own bitter, hateful ideologies.

That's about all I have left to say on the matter.

Sgt. Hasan Akbar, who set off a grenade in order to kill his fellow soldiers, has been sentenced to death.

I am not generally a big death penalty supporter. I've got issues with it. But in a case like this? I have no pity.

None.

(Thanks for the tip, Kevin.)

Protest Warrior now has videos on DVD!

There's been another IKEA riot.

What qualities of stackable bookcases, swedish meatballs and plastic chairs provoke such passion?

But don't take my word for it, read the South Carolina "Causes of Secession" document. The document is broken down into roughly 3 parts. Part one lays out the constitutional legality for their secession, part two lays out the duties of the federal government towards the states. Part three lays out how those duties have not been carried out. Part 3 is all about slavery.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery[...]

Most of us are familiar with the magnificent closing of Lincolns second inaugural address

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

What about the soldiers? The Union Soldiers went to war with a song on their lips: John Brow’s Body (audio link). Some lyrics from that song:
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
His soul goes marching on.
Northern Soldiers believed the war to be about Slavery...

The belief that the American Civil War was about something other than Slavery is a canard. Many people come by this believe honestly, though they do it by looking at their history textbooks, rather than the historical record. If we can truthfully say that the Confederacy was wrenched from the Union in order to keep slavery alive, then we must say that the armies called to help create that nation were also fighting for Slavery. The banners they fought under were banners supporting slavery...

We may honor Davis and Lee as men of passion and genius. Let us not forget the cause to which they dedicated that very passion and genius. We may honor the brave soldiers on both sides as paying the price for our nation’s Original Sin. It would be dishonoring their memories to forget that they died to expunge the sin of slavery...

Our friend Jayne has recently set up a blog for her mother's art work.

A certain class of star radiates so much that it's thought to make it impossible for matter to fall into it. Yet the stars grow more massive over time anyway. Astronomers are struggling to figure out why.

First of all, I swear to God, The Queen and I absolutely did not collude on this. I was at work on break last night, and she was at home, when she wrote this post: Are We In Danger Of Becoming A Theocracy?

I don't entirely agree with her position, but I have to think something must be in the air. She was responding to still another blogger on the same subject.

Meanwhile, Tim over at the always-excellent "Crack the Bell" weblog raises the issue of the following flag, also referred to as the St. Andrew's Cross:

First off, you should read Tim's piece, which raises the issues this flag brings up very well. You can click right here to read it. I disavow none of it. None of it at all.

When I wrote my article on flags, I almost mentioned this particular flag. But I knew that if I did so, it would raise a host of distracting and thorny issues. Those outside of the United States probably have no great interest in that particular flag, but many Americans have quite adrenaline-inducing reactions to it. I sort of hoped to avoid the issue, but being an American by birth (and southern by the grace of God), I guess I have no choice.

So first, I will say: Yes, that is indeed known as Saint Andrew's Cross. Those who designed it called it that. Quite probably because so many of them were of Scottish and Irish ancestry.

That flag is more commonly known as the "Confederate flag" or simply "the rebel flag." During what America calls her Great Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865, this flag represented the cessesionist states. And yes, without doubt, it was an explicitely Christian symbol. Then again, many of those who fought against it viewed it as a violation of their Christian values.

I am troubled by bringing this flag up. My problem with it is not its background as a Christian symbol--it was--but rather that it injects the politics of mid-19th century America into the international politics of the early 21st.

I would ask Tim, for example, if he really believes that the people of Scotland, or even the people of Jamaica, would like to be associated with this rebel flag?

But deeper than that, I'll make a personal statement: I have both Yankee and Rebel roots. I do. Furthermore, I feel them both deeply. Whatever you think of me, it's just the truth: I relate to both Union and Confederate thinking on a very fundamental level.

What should you make of that? Well, honestly, what can you make of it?

I can tell you that the Esmays, whose lineage I can trace all the way back to the late 1700s, were always yankees. I can point to the names of my Esmay ancestors who fought in the civil war, and they all fought for President Lincoln. Yes, all of them. If you search through civil war records of those who served, you'll find a few Esmays. They all fought for--and some died for--the Union.

Yet in my matrilineal lines, there may have been those who fought for Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. To be honest with you, I would not be in the least bit ashamed of that, even though I believe slavery is one of the most vile blights on the (very lengthy) list of mankind's sins (as Robert E. Lee also believed). I would not be ashamed. Why should I be?

Those people were not me. But more than that: Were not there Germans who fought under Hitler who served with valor and distinction? Was Rommel truly a villain? Was every soldier who fought under Stalin in the war against Hitler to be despised? Was every soldier who served under Custer a monster? Was every Japanese officer who served under Tojo a dishonorable scumbag?

When General Lee finally surrendered to General Grant, and America's great civil war ended, President Lincoln declared that the nation must heal itself. He proclaimed that all those who had fought on the part of the south should be treated with honor and dignity. "With malice toward none, with charity toward all," we should go about the business of binding the nation's wounds. Yes, the unconscionable business of slavery--which more than 80% of the soldiers who fought for the confederacy had never been a part of--was ended. But now it was time for our brothers who fought against each other to forgive each other.

And so it was ended--as it should have been ended. In the intervening decades, the men who had fought in that war--whether they had worn blue or grey, whether they had served Lincoln or Davis, Grant or Lee--viewed each other as brethren, and honored each other. They considered themselves to have been a part of what they called "the Great Army of the Republic." No matter whose side they had fought on, they all knew they were part of it, and that it was over, and that they forgave each other.

And the evil institution of slavery, which most of the men who fought for the South never really cared much about--since most of them were way too poor to have ever owned slaves in the first place--was ended.

Yet today, very sadly, some want to renew the image of those stars and bars, that flag that flew over the Confederate States of America, and to fight over it still. Yet here is the funny part, as I see it:

There are now two camps who today invoke that symbol to their own ends. And both, quite frankly, are dishonoring its memory.

First there are those stupid and belligerent racists--some southerners, but some perverse northerners whose ancestors never had any part in it--who raise it as a symbol of "white power," of "putting the nigger in his place," of Jim Crow, and even (laughably) of "the south shall rise again."

But I must tell you there is a second group that seeks to attack this symbol of long-dead honor: those who seek, in their own arrogance, to assert their moral superiority.

In all honestly, and from the bottom of my heart: I grew up in Texas and spent a good part of my youth in Virginia. That being the case, I was exposed many times as a child to the Rebel Flag. And I tell you without the slightest evasion that as a child I never once--never once, ever--associated the image of that rebel flag, that St. Andrew's Cross, with hatred for black people, or an urge to restore slavery.

Never. Not even once. Ever.

Furthermore, I know many people--atheists, Christians, apatheists, even Jews, who look upon that symbol of the confederacy and think no such things. Rather, they think something that Abraham Lincoln himself would have agreed with: "that is a symbol of men who fought and suffered and sometimes died, honorably and well in many cases, for a cause that they believed in but was ultimately wrong. We can honor their sacrifice without endorsing all they believed."

Many people would be content to leave it at that.

I wish more were.

From the mailbag:

An extremist Muslim leader from Northern Virginia was convicted of inciting his followers to train overseas to commit violence against the United States.

Timimi, 41, was convicted of inspiring a group of his Northern Virginia followers to attend terrorist training camps in Pakistan and prepare to battle American troops among other charges. The government's case against Timimi was based on a meeting he attended on Sept. 16, 2001. According to court papers, Timimi allegedly told his followers that "the time had come for them to go abroad and join the mujahideen (evil doers) in violent jihad in Afghanistan,".

Nor surprisingly, many of the Muslim "leaders" in Washington DC have come to the defense of Tamimi by arguing that his conviction was nothing more than a witch hunt and that he was merely a "Muslim scholar" exercising his rights to free speech.

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism do not share these beliefs. Ali Al-Tamimi is a well known extremist and he represents everything that has gone wrong with the Muslim world. His evil words have cast a dark cloud over the rest of the Muslim community and we are glad that justice was served.

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism have argued time and time again that the Muslim community must not tolerate people like Ali Al-Tamimi. We strongly urge American Muslim organizations to read the poison that Al-Tamimi has spread in the Muslim community and not assume that he was unjustly accused. He is an evil man and Muslims must not wait on federal authorities to remove evil doers like Tamimi from our community. Moderate Moslems must take the initiative and discredit people like Tamimi.

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism are pleased with the verdict against Ali Al-Tamimi. We are however, disappointed in the responses of some American Muslim organizations to his verdict. By categorizing every conviction against every Muslim as a witch hunt, American Muslim leaders are closing their eyes to the sad fact that we have a problem with extremism and that Muslims are the only ones who can defeat extremist ideologies from the Muslim community.

For more information, visit or website at www.freemuslims.org

Here are some flags. Apologies in advance that they're not all quite to the same scale, they're just what I've found randomly searching on the web. Anyway, do you notice what these flags all have in common?

(Flag of the Dominican Republic)

(Flag of Switzerland)

(Flag of Sweden)

(Flag of Iceland)

(Flag of Norway)

(Flag of Denmark)

(Flag of Finland)

(Flag of Greece)

(Flag of the nation of Georgia.)

In case you were wondering, those are all crucifixes. Christian crucifixes. Here are three more that a most Americans don't know but probably should:

(Flag of Saint Patrick, historically representing Ireland, now North Ireland)

(Flag of Saint George, representing England)

(Flag of Saint Andrew, representing Scotland)

Put those last three together, and you get what some Americans very wrongly think is the "English flag."

(The Union Jack, representing the United Kingdom.)

Interestingly, that particular collection of three crucifixes is found on at least two other national flags that I know of:

(New Zealand)

(Australia)

There are surely some I've missed.

Oh wait, here's one: It's also known as the St. Andrew's cross, and was designed by Christians to represent their nation:

(Flag of Jamaica)

Interestingly, most of these countries have officially established state religions--state churches which receive taxpayer funding and official recognition at government functions.

I find myself wondering: how can anyone bear to live in any of these oppressive theocracies? Surely they must all be on the slippery slope toward Taliban-style rule.

Discuss.

A Finnish gentleman recently wrote me as follows:

Hello Dean,

I've been reading your Blog for some time; it has been a useful resource, telling about things that our media does not tell us. I understand that you are busy and might not have time to answer - that's ok. However, I'd have suggestion for something that you might want to write about to us non-Americans.

See, it is about W, the president. The intelligentsia in Finland has decided that Bush is a fundamentalist in the most ugly sense of the word. Our media very much likes to support this claim. But is it true in any meaningful sense? What would you say to a person, a European and a Finn, who uses the "Bush card" to promote flat-out atheism or religious liberalism[1]? That is, all except secular people and very liberal religionists are fundamentalists, Bush is a fundamentalist, therefore all "fundamentalists" are dangerous, yadda, yadda.

Anyways, I thank you for the interesting blog.

Yours,

Mikko

[1] Take a note that in Finland the state and the Evangelical Lutheran church are still legally connected, the church receives money from the state, and the church has a huge pressure to conform - money talks and theology walks, if you know what I mean.

Mikko: I must tell you that you should listen to the wise learned men and women of the Finnish intelligentsia. They clearly know whereof they speak. Already Archbishop Bush has implemented mandatory prayers and tithing to replace the singing of the national anthem and everyday taxation. Women are now forced to give up their careers and stay home and make babies, and all Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, and Druids are being rounded up into secret camps run by the Reverend Jerry Falwell.

Also, all television not produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman is soon to be banned. Ann Landers has been declared our patron saint. I have also recently learned from my secret government sources that Bush was about to get rid of the homosexuals except that at the last minute his wife Laura (or as we are all expected to call her, "Mother Superior Laura") told him she loved certain fashion designers. So apparently they're rethinking that--for the moment.

Please be sure to spread the word to your Finnish brethren not to make the mistake we Americans took in electing this American Taliban as our President! We are so stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! We were blind and now it's too late, too laaaaaaaate.....!

(I invite readers to use the comments to share their own stories of America's fall into the dark depths of ignorance and backwardness, and any encounters they may have had with Mad Mullah Bush or his worshipful supporters.)

The latest issue of The New Libertarian is available at Q and O.

The flea asks me to answer some ifs, so:

If I could be a musician... I'd play blues/jazz/rock guitar like a combination of Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and would form a band with Bo Bice.

If I could be a chef... I'd constantly be searching the various cuisines of the world, looking for the most unusual and interesting dishes, constantly seeking something new to expose people to.

If I could be a psychologist... I'd try to force the entire profession to stop using psychoanalysis as a treatment for any condition until they'd done the double-blind studies to find methods that actually work and aren't just pointless whining or navel gazing.

If I could be a librarian... I'd find some way to go back in time and salvage the entire contents of the library at Alexandria.

If I could be an athlete... I'd be a professional skydiver.

Bonus:

If I could be a writer... I'd finally have an agent for this bleeping novel.

I'm supposed to tag three others with this. Who can I annoy with it? Let's see...

The evil on American Idol has been vanquished: Bye, bye Constantine! You smoldering, teen idol wannabe!

I shall not miss you. No, I shall not miss you.

I long ago grew utterly weary of the arguments over "Weapons of Mass Destruction" vis-a-vis Iraq. It's seems so pointless, so fruitless. Yes, it's true that WMDs were mentioned most often by the Bush administration; no, it's not true that they were given as "the reason" for action. Yes it's true that they were mentioned most prominently by Colin Powell at the U.N.--but that happend after the U.S. Congress had made the decision to declare war (and it is Congress, not the President, that does that). Yes, the probable existence of WMDs was high on the priority list, but over a dozen other reasons were prominently mentioned and debated over the course of an entire year in this country--yet today we act like those were all meaningless or "not really" part of the debate.

Yes it's disturbing that the intelligence was wrong, but then, mature people know that intel is never 100% accurate, so the the question always is: how much risk are you willing to take one way or the other? And how much does that invalidate the dozen-plus other reasons we all spent over a year debating in this country?

Yes, yes, it's all entirely true that most Democrats, including such worthies as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and John Edwards all saw exactly the same intel as Bush and came to exactly the same conclusions--but who cares? It's all about partisan games for some people, and is never about anything else.

Whatever.

That more or less sums it all up for me: whatever. I simply no longer have the energy. Here we have one of the greatest military victories in world history, absolutely the lowest casualty rate of any major conflict in history, and one of the greatest blows for human rights in world history, and an occupation that has demonstrably gone much better in many important respects than the occupation of Japan or Germany after World War II went. For some, they won't acknowledge any of it.

The whole thing just depresses me.

Still, I did get at least a little amusement out of this post on "eating crow" and remembering what others said in the past on the subject.

I also enjoyed this link roundup refuting the "WMDs were the reason we invaded" canard. What's more depressing is that the so-called "Paper of Record" is still repeating the falsehoods.

So much for the "Bush lied!" and "reality based" crowd. Whatever.

An easy one:

"Are they [representatives] feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations, getting wined and dined by special interest groups? Or are they working hard to represent their constituents? The people have a right to know."

Oh man, the Army sure got whupped by those Iraqis.

Matt Sheffield of Rather Biased fame now has his own blog: Virtual Scratchpad.

If there's anyone whose blog belongs on that blogroll you think I've missed, feel free to let me know...

Cathy Young, my favorite writer at Reason, is taking religious conservatives to task for accusing people of religious bigotry.

I dunno man. I get what she's saying--I do. Then again, I remember the "Jesusland" cracks all too well, not to mention all the cheap potshots these days at the new Pope for his supposed "Nazi background." And I do see a lot of handwringing about the vague, nebulously-defined "religious right" and dark intimations that America is devolving into a "theocracy" because of these people.

I'm also frequently shocked at just how often guys like Fred Phelps are defined archetypal members of the "religious right" when he's not even a religious conservative by most reasonable political or theological frames of reference.

Mind you, I have serious issues with specific religious conservatives, notably guys like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell. Still, the "religious right" bogeyman has long failed to impress me as anything but a rhetorical club, a slap at anyone who brings her religion with her into the ballot box or into the public square--whereas relatively few ever attack people on the religious left for their own political activism (I've very rarely, for example, seen "separation of church and state" and "impending theocracy" thrown at Jesse Jackson, or at people like Bill Clinton and Al Gore for all the campaigning they did in churches).

There's something to be said for decrying people who fling accusations of bigotry around casually, but I can't say I blame religious conservatives for finally saying "enough is enough, we aren't Nazis, we're citizens exercising our right to free speech and our right to participate in the democratic process."

The latest Grand Rounds, a carnival of the healers and those interested in being healed, is posted at Dr. Tony's blog.

Interesting to see that history repeats itself.

The accusation of racism really is the McCarthyism of today.

It's also, I'm happy to say, starting to lose its sting, because the notion of America as a terribly racist country grows less and less credible all the time.

My prediction: the less credible it gets, the more hysterical the claims to the contrary will become--until finally everyone just acknowledges that the past is, well, the past.

She's right in every important respect.

(Via Bogus Gold.)

Pixy Misa, responding to the question "are you guys liberals or conservatives?" said:

We're classical liberals. For those of us fortunate enough to live in Australia this means we're Liberals. Either way, that makes us conservatives, which these days makes us progressives, because all the communists are reactionaries.

And if you understood every word of that and just nodded, you've been hanging out at Dean's World waaaay too long.

The comment was left in Ace's celebration of the Syrian bugout of Lebanon, which I fear may be premature--I'm pretty sure Assad and his bully boys will be pulling a fast one the minute they get a chance (if they haven't already).

Smash says his home town of San Diego is turning into a banana republic.

Right on.

(Thanks Dwayne.)

Received this morning:

The Q Television Network is a national television network dedicated to the needs of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and even straight communities. We proudly feature unique in-house productions such as Q on the Move, On Q Live!, and Women on Women.

Our goal is to bring quality lifestyle programming before a nationwide audience. In order to do this, we need your help! Please support the Q Television Network by encouraging your blog readers to visit http://www.qtelevision.com/main/iwantqnetwork.asp to request QTN from their local cable companies.

We can't do this without community support, so please spread the word. The Q Television Network thanks you and hopes to be in your area very soon! For more information, please visit our website at http://www.qtelevision.com or email website@qtelevision.com.

Thanks, Alex QTN Website Support

I hear certain folks gnashing their teeth already....

I loved Bo's performance but wasn't sure the audience and judges would. I was glad to be wrong.

I loved Carrie's song choice. I didn't agree with the judges.

I have to admit: Anthony gave his best performance yet, and picking a Celine Dione song was very gutsy--and he did it very well! It was the first time I was genuinely impressed with him. I've always thought he was a nice voice with no soul. Until now. If he can keep that up he's a contender still.

Vonzell was just--wow. The girl's got everything. It's been amazing to watch her mature as an artist. In the first several weeks of the show I really didn't know why she was there. Now I do. She just might win.

I have to say that this was the first time I genuinely enjoyed Constantine's performance. Obviously I like that kind of music, but it also felt like this was the first time he was really being himself--and the judges all ripped him. If he'd showed that personality throughout I would have been a bigger fan all along.

I was probably the only one who liked Scott's performance. I really did. That said: obviously others didn't, and Simon's probably right that he's gone this week.

(Speaking of which, someone must have told Paula Abdul how annoying she was getting. She was actually bearable this week.)

Rusty interviews Roy Hallums' daughter.

The latest Storyblogging Carnival is available at Back of the Envelope.

Via AP

HAYY EL-RAMEL, Lebanon - As soon as the truckloads of Syrian soldiers had left for home, Mariam Majzoub started dishing out paint to erase the last vestiges of their 29-year presence.

Her children, nephews, nieces and neighbors stuck Lebanese flags on top of the abandoned posts near her home in this tiny Bekaa Valley village, slapped whitewash on the walls and celebrated the departure date in green paint: "Independence 2005, Sunday, April 17."

"We started dancing in the street even before they turned the corner," said Mazjoub, her plump face glowing with joy. "We could finally express ourselves, and there was nothing they could do about it."

Even if an anti-Syrian government takes power, its leaders are hesitant to do anything to antagonize Damascus, such as entering into peace talks with Israel.

The most amazing aspect of this development is the demonstration of the power of indirect warfare. The US did not actually have to drive the Syrians out of Lebanon simply had to make their position untenable, in a manner analogous, but on a much grander scale, than the way a flanking operation turns a line. What do the Syrians gain by pulling back? They 'shorten their lines' by reducing their geopolitical vulnerabilities. The Syrian withdrawal, paradoxically, may be intended to make Damascus slightly less vulnerable. Yet because Syria depended so much upon Lebanon for easy money there are bound to be internal represcussions. For the moment Syria and Iran — more on this later if I have the time — are on the strategic defensive.

The eastern Lebanese Bekaa valley was a strategically important region for Syria's own security, particularly in facing arch-foe Israel. But to Bekaa villagers, strategy and high diplomacy can wait; right now they're savoring such simple pleasures as grazing their sheep by Syrian military installations that were long off-limits to them.

"Freedom is beautiful," said Salim Rabah, 58, a retired merchant who lives 500 yards from an abandoned Syrian checkpoint.

Hate is and has been Lebanon's weapon of mass destruction. That weapon was not a gun pointing outward, but a suicide-bomber's belt strapped around Lebanon's very own waist.

Some of the tent-city residents have told me their goals are not only national. The goals of some of them (but not all of them) also are global. They truly believe they are resolving the clash of civilizations here in Beirut by proving that Christian and Islamic civilizations can co-exist in peace and in friendship. Lebanon has long been a bridge between East and West. In the future it may play the crucial role of a peace broker.

But it is not going to work if Lebanon cannot become a mature liberal democracy. Dictatorships notoriously use divide-and-rule tactics to pit their enemies against one another. Syria has been playing that game inside Lebanon - and on the world stage - for a long time. Terrorism is only one of the sinister byproducts of that. War is another.

Lebanon's civil war drew in four foreign powers: Syria, Iran, Israel, and the United States. Those four powers are still simmering in a state of cold war today. Naturally enough, the two that are ruled by dictatorships - Syria and Iran - are also state sponsors of terrorism.

A victory by Lebanon's democratic opposition will deliver a blow against Syria, a blow against Iran's Hezbollah proxy, a blow against dictatorship, a blow against terrorism, and a blow against hate. I've said it before and I'll say it again: These people are fighting not only for themselves and for their own country, but - sometimes consciously and sometimes not - on my behalf and for my country too.

Children are not miniature adults.

I begin with this reminder because it is apparent that many in our society have forgotten this fact. Children are incapable of making rational decisions, don't know what is good for them, and have no concept of delayed gratification as they live in the never-ending "now". As a parent I struggle with this fact on a daily basis - from explaining what a word means in terms my child understands to making sure he receives the proper nutrition to stay healthy.

For parents, that's just common sense, right?

In my house, the Cartoon Network vies with Fox News and the Discovery Channel for dominance of the TV. Being a kid at heart, I enjoy cartoons and anime and find that most of the stuff around today is of much higher quality than the Hannah-Barbera stuff I grew up with in the late 1960s and 1970s. Unfortunately the commercials are far worse though. During breaks between cartoons you will see ads in which adults - especially fathers - are portrayed as complete morons, with the kids sassing back with a witty - at least to a kid - remark. You'll also see an advertisement for a CD of pop songs sung by children. Most pop songs are about love - and the CD mirrors that subject.

It's just plain creepy to hear adolescents singing love songs originally sung by adults. I mean we are not talking girls in their late teens - but ten and eleven year olds pining away.

Similarly I attended The Kid's school talent contest last week and saw a handful of all-girl acts sing and dance on stage. While the song choices were innocuous for the most part, I raised an eyebrow over way that some of the girls danced and the way they were semi-dressed. In a high school I would have thought that the suggestive dancing and dance costumes would be inappropriate, but we are talking about primary school - girls in the second and third grades.

Have I become a prude - or have some parents completely lost their minds?

It's hard to say "no". I struggle with this word myself - especially when facing an adversary like The Kid who is completely reliant upon me to provide him with everything. He will use any and every tactic to make me fulfill each and every whim that passes through his mind. He is a child and must manipulate; I am a parent and must control. This is a constant battle between two powerful forces yet the stakes are high: the raising of a creative, independent, intelligent human being.

Gil Reavil has written a book called " Smut: A Sex-Industry Insider (and Concerned Father) Says Enough is Enough". It is excerpted here at NRO. He writes:

"But we also have left unfulfilled our function as guardians of their cultural environment. The boundaries of their world have been repeatedly breached, many times by people interested in making money and dismissive of all other considerations. All too often, our children are exposed to the loud, frenzied, garish spectacle of adult sexuality. They get their faces rubbed in it."

Consumption lies at the heart of our society - not sexual liberation. The only reason why sex pervades our culture is because it sells. If prayer moved product you could bet that our TVs would be filled chanting monks and bowed heads, but it doesn't. Britney Spears doesn't bump and grind on stage for fun - she does it for cold hard cash. Take that away and she would disappear.

Instead of falling into the liberal trap of debating morality, let's talk about the underlying reason for our society's obsession with sex: pure commerce. People get rich by appealing to our basest instinct, yet this doesn't bother Leftists at all. It must be the only means of getting rich that the Left supports.

Republicans and the Right aren't blameless either. The Right has played into the hands of liberals by falling for the morality-trap, and the laissez-faire pro-business supporters of Republicans must recognize that their "hands off" idealism supports this unique sales tool. As Dean Esmay has often said, corporations are not "natural" - they are contrivances of the state. Republicans need to recognize that corporations are amoral and need to be controlled to a great degree. We wouldn't allow a company to sell products to Iran, yet we allow thousands of them to pitch products using sex. Both are threats to our national interests.

Raising children has never been easy, but we chose to be parents. We owe it to our children to make sure that we provide for them, protect them and fight for them at all times. While we may tire, we must never, ever surrender.

I am not a Luddite - quite the opposite really. In my house I have no less than two modern wirelessly networked computers, one of which I built myself. I also have two ancient but working ones, plus an original 1977 Atari 2600 "Heavy Sixer" manufactured in Sunnyvale CA. a couple of PDAs and a PS2. I received my first computer in 1982 - a TI99-4A that taught me Basic, my first computer language. Since then I have taught myself a few more and finally made computers a full-time profession in 1997. I am old school. I have never forgotten DOS and trust it more than Windows, jumping to the command line to do things more often than the younger generation does, if they do such a thing at all (psst! Under XP it's Run->CMD).

Hopefully this will reassure you when I say that I for the most part computers are a wonderful and expensive waste of time. If you want to boost your productivity by purchasing a computer for anything other than using a database (the best reason to use a computer IMO), then you might want to consider doing something else with your money - like buying a good day planner.

I posit this based on the following:

First, I work mostly with Microsoft products. Some will inevitably say that's the problem, but in the private sector one doesn't have much choice. I have used MS Word and Excel for over 12 years and am continually amazed at how much time I have to spend getting my spreadsheets and documents to look right. I spend more time formatting my documents than actually writing them - which defeats the purpose of using these programs. As a result I often find myself composing in Dreamweaver - a web publishing program - because the simple choices afforded by HTML keep me focused on what I'm writing, not how it looks. In fact, that's where this article originated. Formatting does not make better writing or more accurate spreadsheets - so the output remains the same while the time spent on that output increases.

Second, I spend more time maintaining the programs on my PC than ever. Because of the increasing security threats on the web posed by viruses, spyware, DNS poisoning, and other malware I have to keep not only my OS up to date (XP - which updates itself automatically) but also my anti-spyware and anti-virus programs. PC Magazine recently dedicated a cover story to security, and according to that I'm not even doing enough. New Scientist has an article this week that discusses the threat posed by DNS cache poisoning, so even when I'm doing everything to protect my PC at work, I could still be at risk. If I add this time to that spent on my writing, I'm increasingly less productive. That's not including the trouble I have with existing programs failing to work after upgrading another program or adding another piece of hardware. I tried to burn the Kid a CD of his favorite songs last night, and I found that I had to send the disk image across the LAN and burn it on the other PC because Nero couldn't recognize my CD burner anymore. Add yet another thing to my "to-do" list that doesn't produce essays, business process documentation or The Kid's music CDs.

Third, I like to think I know a thing or two about computers, but I often run into problems that simply baffle me and resist all attempts at resolution without burning up serious amounts of time. If I can blow three hours on a problem, just imagine how long it would take the average person who doesn't devote his career to them.

For the past two decades government statisticians have been looking for the productivity boost brought about through technology, but so far they haven' t found it. When you have bosses spending hours deciding between Arial and Verdana in a Powerpoint presentation (as one of my friends recently mentioned to me) it's obvious where that productivity has gone: out the Windows.

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. This week we've got prisoner releases, an open letter, a birthday, a remembrance, an anniversary, and more.

Both Truth Teller of A Citizen of Mosul and Free Writer at Iraq Blog Count note the release of a number of prisoners in Mosul and the official apology that followed it:

Truth Teller

For the first time in Iraq (I guess) a responsible authority in Iraq apologize frankly in a publics and in front of the TV lens, to the prisoners, telling them they are arrested by mistake. And this mistake can happened in a circumstances like this. He asked them to cooperate with the policemen in controlling the peace in the city!

This speaks received acceptance from all the audiences.

Free Writer

It was my first time in life to hear an Iraqi official apologizing publicly to Iraqi citizen; this is really a positive sign of improving civil society. He was the Mayer of Mosul in front of a 110 released innocents, who were suspected as a terrorist or criminals.

In facts hundreds of people are captured as a suspects near crime scenes or near a terror sites, but the bad thing in that, many of them are completely innocents; it was only their bad luck.

Aunt Najma of A Star from Mosul has turned 17.

Imad Khadduri of Free Iraq continues to be stridently anti-occupation. I'd link to his posts more frequently but, since he only has daily permalinks rather than links to individual posts, it's rather difficult to do. He's unquestionably the foremost news aggregrator for bad news from Iraq including the misdeeds of the American forces there, the failures of the current Iraqi government, the difficulties and hazards of life in Iraq today, etc. Sort of a reverse Arthur Chrenkoff.

Raed Jarrar of Raed in the Middle has a personal remembrance of Marla Ruzicka, who was killed there about a week ago:

It is a sad irony that the very tables that we created to contain names of civilian casualties, contain her name now.

Mohammed of Iraq the Model updates us on the state of politics in Iraq today.

Kurdo has an open letter to British politician George Galloway that you really should read.

Ali of Free Iraqi notes the power of just asking a few questions:

I think one of the main problems in Arab-Muslim communities is that the vast majority from the illiterate to even highly educated people do not ask enough questions. On the other hand, I've noticed (mainly through blogging ) that westerns in general and Americans in particular always have so many questions to ask and rarely settle with one point of view and accept it as the truth.

But an important question here is, why Arabs and Muslims do not care a lot about searching for answers?

Today is neurotic iraqi wife's first wedding anniversary. You might want to go over and give her your best wishes.

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

Reverend Sensing (always worth reading--no, seriously, always) recently took Muslims to task for abhorrent behavior--in this case, a group of Muslims who lynched a guy because they thought he'd burned a copy of the Koran.

Well, you know, I'm down with that condemnation. Of course I am. The only exception I took to any of Sensing's words were these two lines:

"Religious tolerance for thee, but not for me. I’ll start listening to Muslims giving me advice about religious toleraance when Christians can openly, publicly worship in in Saudi Arabia."

Oooh man! So, so close to something I couldn't disagree with. But, as I noted in the good reverend's comments, there is this article every Christian should click right here to read, written not long ago by Presbyterian lay theologian Stephen R. Haynes, which I quote briefly here:

WHAT CAN CHRISTIANS who want to remember Rwanda learn from this genocide? Most scholarly analyses ignore the religious dimensions of the tragedy, portraying the Hutu extermination campaign as an indictment of European colonialism or a metaphor for the dilemmas of post-cold-war foreign policy. But there are important exceptions. For instance, Timothy Longman’s contribution to In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in The Twentieth Century documents the active involvement of church personnel and institutions in the genocide: 'Numerous priests, pastors, nuns, brothers, catechists, and Catholic and Protestant lay leaders supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings,' Longman writes. And he remarks that more people may have been killed in church buildings than anywhere else.

Last I heard--anyone who wishes to correct me should do so--a substantial number of those butchered in the Rwanda genocide were muslims.

Now, in Rev. Sensing's comments, one learned fellow named Chuck Pelto took me to task a little, saying, "I do believe that more people have been slaughtered by atheists than by the ‘religious’ in the Twentieth Century....So, don’t pat yourself on the back too quickly, compadre."

Presumably, Chuck is not familiar with my writings on this subject. Perhaps I need to make a "definitive posting" on it and put it in my archives, although anyone who searches around knows my view on this. Clearly--and irrefutably--the greatest murderers of the 20th century were atheists. You need only add up the Communist body count. If you do so, then those of us who've said things like "religion is the opiate of the masses" need to hide our heads in shame.

Chuck on the other hand tried to add Hitler's body count to the atheists' horrendous, stupifying, 100 million+ total. But nope, that doesn't work. He wasn't an atheist. Neither was his regime atheist. Some try to pin his vile crimes on Christians, but that dog won't hunt either--Hitler's having used some Christian symbolism and rhetoric won't hide the fact that he was basically a pagan mysic trying to restore a perverse form of Asatru to Germany.

Which, come to think of it, makes the 20th century horrors come full circle: the atheists, the monotheists, and the polytheists all have their hideous monsters in their closets, now don't they?

But there is a ray of hope: We're all united in our hatred of the Jews.

It's good that we can all get together on something, isn't it?

;-)

More seriously: I've seen a good bit of Catholic-bashing this last couple of weeks. The elevation of the new Roman Catholic Pope seems to have brought a lot of that out. Especially from people who love to bring up religious persecution by the Roman Catholic Church. This brought to mind this fabulous article more people should read:

The Protestant Inquisition: "Reformation" Intolerance and Persecution, by Catholic theologian Dave Armstrong.

In it, Armstrong documents pretty much everything you Lutherans, Calvinists, and other papist-bashers ought to be apologizing to Rome for--if we're going to be in the business of cringing about our spiritual forefathers, anyay.

(Yeah I'm being flip but you should read it. Some of you guys who kick around the Catholics for the Inquisitions really need to shut up and learn the meaning of the words "forgiveness" and "humility.")

In closing, I'll mention something that Father Dan Madigan (a Jesuit, no surprise) wrote not long ago:

If one considers the history of warfare as a whole, the conflicts between Muslims and Christians pale into insignificance against the much bloodier conflicts waged between groups professing the same religion.

The history of the Muslim community has been marred since the beginning by internecine war – and continues to be so even up to our own times: East and West Pakistan; Iran and Iraq; Iraq and Kuwait; in Algeria, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Indonesia to name only the most striking examples.

Virtually all the European wars up until our own time have been fought between rival groups of Christians. And if we think we have left that bitter history behind, let us not forget the 800,000 Christians murdered by their fellow Christians in Rwanda, or the Christian Serbs and Croats who fought one another as well as Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.

Indeed, anyone who knows history knows that America's First Amendment came into place because our founding fathers were afraid of the endless wars of one group of Christian against another that so many of them had escaped from in Europe.

Anyway, you can read Father Madigan's most-excellent piece by clicking right here.

Lovely and cantankerous Rhianna recently pointed me to this treasure trove of foul language and vile insults from around the world:

Insult Monger's Swearsaurus.

Te futueo et equum tuum, y'all.

The Washington Post had a front page story today about A. Aaron Weisburd, founder of Internet Haganah, a site that monitors the pro-terror sites around the web.

Weisburd, 41, a half-Irish, half-Jewish New Yorker, said that like other Americans he was deeply affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He wanted to enlist in the military, but his age and health issues made that impossible.

So he started a website that tracks the hate-sites and alerts his readers, who often take matters into their own hands. Weisburd himself operates completely within the law by asking ISPs to remove such hate sites. Needless to say, some civil libertarians aren't happy with Weisburd, and neither is the federal government.

Weisburd said an analyst from a federal agency recently wrote him a scathing letter calling him a "grave threat to national security" because his work was interfering with its investigations.

I've often wondered why the government hasn't availed itself of the deep pool of knowledge and intense patriotism of IT pros. Instead of criticizing Weisburd, I think they should hire him.

Love you.

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism's scheduled May 15 demonstration for democracy and freedom is on-track and has garnered 50 organizations in solidarity and support.

Smash is covering the mayor's sudden resignation.

So is Joe.

From Captain Scarlet at Silent Running:

A non-resident Indian American group of industrialists are planning to penetrate the American and European car market with electric, hydrogen and solar powered vehicles designed and manufactured in India. The initial testing showed a 64 horse power vehicle with 300 mile range can cost merely $4,000 with $1 for 180 miles of travel. That is a major break through says industry experts. If they can pull it through, India may have achieved the biggest technological breakthrough of the millennium.