Carrying Firearms On Shabbat

This article relates that Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the first Chief Rabbi of the Army, and later the Chief Rabbi of Israel wrote:

...that a firearm is something that is needed for Shabbat observance, because it is intended for security, enabling a Jew to celebrate the Shabbat in peace. Even though shooting a gun is a form of igniting fire, something normally prohibited on Shabbat, in situations where life is imperiled, shooting a gun is a mitzvah.

Rabbi Yehoshua Neurvert has a slightly different but supportive opinion.

What Rabbi Yehoshua Neurvert writes in his treatise on Shabbat, "Shmirat Shabbat K’Hilchatah," differs somewhat in his understanding, stating that a firearm is indeed categorized as “muktzah” since firing (ignited fire) is prohibited on Shabbat. Nonetheless, he rules that carrying a firearm on Shabbat is allowed since it has a definite value as a deterrent - discouraging enemies from attacking Jews on Shabbat. Therefore, it is needed for the observance of Shabbat. Furthermore, since carrying a firearm is a deterrent, there is no need for immediate danger in order to carry one. When the enemies of the Jews know that we are ready to defend ourselves, mobs are less likely to rise up against us.

Wake Up Christians; You're Next

A Islamo-fascist-induced exodus of Christians from the Middle East:

Christians in the Palestinian territories have dropped from 15 percent of the Arab population in 1950 to just 2 percent today. Both Bethlehem and Nazareth, which had been overwhelmingly Christian towns, now have strong Muslim majorities. Today three-fourths of all Bethlehem Christians live abroad, and more Jerusalem Christians live in Sydney, Australia than in the place of their birth.

...

The single greatest cause of this emigration is pressure from radical Islam.

Then Why Didn't He Back Us?

Vladimir Putin weighed in on Islamo-fascists last year.

The Russian president, a former KGB spy operative, spoke at great length about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and the war in Chechnya. He said Chechen Muslims want a Caliphate — or Muslim state "on Russia soil."

Putin said that Islamic "radicals have much more ambitious goals. They talk about setting up a worldwide Caliphate and the need to kill Americans and their allies.

"They talk about the need to kill all ... non-Muslims, or 'crusaders,' as they put it. If you are a Christian, you are in danger," Putin said.

"If you decided to abandon your faith and become an atheist, you also are to be liquidated according to their concept. You are in danger if you decide to become a Muslim. It is not going to save you anyway because they believe traditional Islam is hostile to their goals."

If he believes this, why did he not back us in Iraq and elsewhere?

Not New But Still Good Ideas

Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld says hold parents of underage homicide bombers responsible.

The Israelis should make an example of at least one such Palestinian family, by confiscating their reward, imprisoning them, trying them for the crime of contributing to the murder of their own child, and if found guilty, executing them.

Putting such parents on trial would show the world what kind of demented individuals these parents are. It would reveal the depth of their hatred of Jews to the point that they are willing to turn their children into suicidal bombers.

I like this other method just as well.

In a previous article, we urged the Israeli government to create a new settlement for every attack by a suicide bomber.

No Phony 'Cease-Fires' With Terrorism

Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post what the PLO/PA has said for years---that they want Israel, not just the disputed territories.

On May 23, just a week ago, the official newspaper of the supposedly reformed Palestinian Authority carried a front-page picture of the latest suicide bomber dressed in suicide-bomber regalia. It then referred to the place where she did her murdering as "occupied Afula." The town of Afula is in Israel's Galilee. It is not occupied. It is not in the West Bank or Gaza. It is within Israel. If Afula is occupied, then Tel Aviv is occupied, Haifa is occupied and Israel's very existence is a crime.

...His [Mahmoud Abbas, prime minister of the PA] objective, he says, is to persuade the suicide bombing specialists -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- to accept a temporary cease-fire. This would be a disaster for any prospect of peace. It means that the terrorists who have been hunted down by Israel ever since it finally decided to strike back after last year's Passover massacre would receive immediate sanctuary: time to rebuild, regroup, rearm and prepare for the next, more deadly orgy of violence.

If what Abbas means by peace is that the terrorists just lay low for a while, then it is not a peace of the brave but a peace of the knave.

Isn't Not the Poverty, Stupid

The NYT points out that homicide bombers are more well-off than the average.

A remarkable 57 percent of suicide bombers have some education beyond high school, compared with just 15 percent of the population of comparable age.

So it's the civil liberties of the country of origin. How about other factors?

Once a country's degree of civil liberties is taken into account ... income per capita bears no relation to involvement in terrorism.
Apart from the size of a country and the extent of its civil liberties, no factor that I could find — including the literacy rate, infant mortality rate, terrain, ethnic divisions and religious fractionalization — could predict whether people from that country were more or less likely to take part in international terrorism.

Meat Growing On Trees?

Is this serious?

Fruit from the new Meat Trees, developed by British scientists using gene-splicing technology, closely resembles ordinary grapefruit. But when you peel the large fruit open, inside is fresh beef.

I wonder if it would be kosher?

Insights to The Right To Bear Arms

Rachel Lucas posts portions of Judge Kozinski's dissenting opinion in Silveira v. Lockyer, including these gems:

"The majority falls prey to the delusion—popular in some circles—that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth—born of experience—is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks’ homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process. [See Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, 80 Geo. L.J. 309, 338 (1991)]. In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised their right to bear arms to defend against racial mob violence. As Chief Justice Taney well appreciated, the institution of slavery required a class of people who lacked the means to resist. [See Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 417 (1857) (finding black citizenship unthinkable because it would give blacks the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went”)]. A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history—Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. [See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99.] If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars."

Let's Add Pharmaceutical Benefits On Top of This!

The US Treasury is reporting that the US faces $44.2 trillion in liabilities for future health care and pension obligations. How high can we go if we add additional medical benefits like pharmaceutical benefits on top of this?

If the Bush administration covered this up as FT reports, I'd guess that they were timing the release instead. I would would push the report when asking Congress to start cutting back on this largesse.

You can get a copy of the report here.

I still do not expect anything to be done about the problem. As soon as Republicans talk about cutting back on social programs, the issues are demagogued by the Democrats.

Last Letters from Soldiers Who Gave Their Lives For Our Freedom

Thanks to LGF for this link.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill

You Just Might Be An Assimilated Jewish Liberal...

A somewhat funny/sad take on the left.

Those who watch the Tennessee Country Music Network or Comedy Central have come across comedian Jeff Foxworthy. Foxworthy’s shtick, based on an exaggerated hillbilly accent and mannerisms, revolves around his making pointed observations followed by his standard joke line, “then you just might be a redneck.

If Foxworthy were Jewish, he could do a similar shtick based on the refrain (all together now) “then you just might be an assimilated Jewish liberal.”

The Disputed Territories Are NOT Occupied

Prof. Talia Einhorn, of the T.M.C. Asser Institute, an institute for international law in The Hague writes:

the Israeli presence in Yesha does not constitute "occupation," and moreover, that the U.N. Partition Resolution of 1947 that mentions a "new Arab state" is of the "recommendation" type and not the "mandatory" type.

The idea of a Palestinian state in 1947 was only a recommendation, not an edict of the UN.

Prof. Einhorn says that there is nothing in international law that requires a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean - not even the UN Partition Resolution of Nov. 29, 1947.

In fact, the most cited UN resolutions are nothing more than recommendations and are not enforceable by force.

She further writes that Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for negotiations and a "withdrawal from territories" (not "withdrawal from the territories") captured in 1967, are similarly "recommendations." These resolutions were drawn up under the UN Charter's Clause VI, which deals with non-mandatory recommendations.

Punching Bag?

Edward Luttwak, in attempting to explain the sheer lack of further terrorism in the wake of 9/11 and the Battle for Iraq, comes up with this as his first:

One explanation for the absence of microterrorism is that the Islamist movement in general is in decline, probably because it is now associated with defeat from Afghanistan to Palestine, or at least a persistent failure to win, as in Chechnya and Kashmir. Islam as a faith was originally validated by victory, hence the defeats of the Islamists everywhere imply that they themselves are not favoured by God.

Another Encouraging Sign?

This disgusting article in Ha'aretz reveals, yet again, why peace is so far away in the Middle East.

Sixty percent of the Palestinians support suicide bombings, according to a survey conducted last month by the Palestinian research institute, JMCC. Sixty percent are in favor, and only 30 percent against.

This quote is the only thing worthwhile in the article, so skip it.

A Basic Replicator?

This NYT article explores the world of 3-D printing -- using computer-driven systems to create real-world 3-D objects.

"We can do a ball in a ball in a ball," she said. "We've got really cool ball bearings."

Expecting Changes In the Middle East Anytime Soon?

This NYT article shows what happens when you talk about reform too much in Saudi Arabia.

In the first sign that it has already wearied of the public debate over the possible roots of extremist thought in Saudi Arabia, the government ordered the removal today of the the editor in chief of Al Watan, the daily newspaper which had been most outspoken on the subject.
The editor, Jamal A. Khashoggi, one of the country's leading experts on political Islam, declined to comment on his firing.

A state of disbelief...

"How can this happen now, at this time?" asked one writer at Al Watan. "They are doing what the radicals want. A lot of journalists are asking what is going to change in Saudi Arabia. If they fired Jamal Khashoggi, nothing is going to change."

Why Peace Is A Longshot

In Benny Morris's review of the book The Palestinian People: A History come some on-target observations:

In their new book, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal write that their "central argument" is that "the creation of the Palestinian nation has been as much the product of events, acts, and institutions at the grassroots level as it has been the doing of top leaders." So let us attend to the grassroots: to judge by Palestinian opinion polls and street demonstrations, most Palestinians today do not seek only the liberation of the territories from Israel’s occupation. They seek also the destruction of Israel. And the masses express their hatred of the Jewish state by supporting suicide bombings inside Israel proper, against buses, supermarkets, and restaurants. For the Palestinians, each suicide bombing represents a microcosmic assault on Israel’s existence; and each street celebration following successful bombings testifies to the popularity of the method and the goal.

...

I have spent the past twenty years studying the hundred years of Zionist-Palestinian conflict. I have come away from my examination of the history of the conflict with a sense of the instinctive rejectionism that runs like a dark thread through Palestinian history- a rejection, to the point of absurdity, of the history of the Jewish link to the land of Israel; a rejection of the legitimacy of Jewish claims to Palestine; a rejection of the right of the Jewish state to exist. And, worse, this rejectionism has over the decades been leavened by a healthy dose of antisemitism, a perception of the Jew as God’s and humanity’s unchosen.

...

In 1934, when David Ben-Gurion told the Cambridge-educated Musa al-Alami, a moderate notable who was assistant attorney general of Mandatory Palestine, that Zionism was bringing progress and prosperity to the Arabs, Alami replied that he would sooner Palestine remain "impoverished and barren for another hundred years" than see Zionism succeed.

...

Palestinian leaders and preachers, guided by history and religion, have traditionally seen the Jews as an inferior race whose proper place was as an abased minority in a Muslim polity; and the present situation, with an Arab minority under Jewish rule, is regarded as a perversion of nature and divine will.

...

Nothing more revealing was said at the Camp David summit in the summer of 2000 than Arafat’s response to President Clinton’s effort to persuade him to compromise over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (Al-Haram al-Sharif, the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock). Arafat said: "What temple? The Jews had no temples there. It’s a legend." Arafat - and this is common fare in sermons in the mosques of the West Bank and Gaza - was denying that the Jewish people had any historic connection to Jerusalem and, by extension, to Palestine.

...

The Palestinian and pan-Arab rout of 1948, the nakba or "catastrophe," and the continuous defeats that Israel has since inflicted on the Arab world, as Kimmerling and Migdal rightly perceive, are seen by most Palestinians (and probably by most Arabs and Muslims) as a basic violation or disruption of the "cosmic order," something humiliating and unfathomable. Arafat likes to compare himself to Saladin (who was also the hero of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad), the Muslim Kurdish general who defeated the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Arafat continuously speaks of "planting the Arab flag on the walls of Jerusalem" as Saladin did in 1187. That act symbolised the destruction of the Crusader state - and Arafat’s use of the phrase is understood by his Arab listeners to refer to the destruction of the Zionist "kingdom."

Russia Presses Iran Over Nuclear Fuel

This NYT article gives another benefit of America's winning of the Battle for Iraq.

Russia has responded to US pressure by telling Iran it will not supply nuclear fuel for the reactor it is constructing unless the Islamic republic agrees to intrusive inspections of all its nuclear facilities, US and European officials say.

Given that a former Iranian prime minister called for bombing Israel with a nuclear weapon as soon as one is developed, this is a positive development.

Say It Ain't So, GI Joe!

What will we do without the A10? We still need close air support to protect our troops. Look what it did in Iraq recently.

The United States Army had arrived at a Tigris River bridge on the edge of Baghdad to find Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers positioned at the other end. A deadly crossfire ensued. A call for help went out, and despite heavy clouds and fog, down the river came two A-10's at an altitude of less than 1,000 feet, spitting out a mix of armor-piercing and explosive bullets at the rate of 3,900 rounds per minute. The Iraqi resistance was obliterated. This was a classic case of "close air support."

I cannot believe the Army will rely on fighters firing from standoff range. The A10 gives the Army what it needs: A tank with wings that is heavily armed, heavily armored, flies low, and has a long loitering time.

the F-35's price tag means the Air Force will not jeopardize the aircraft by sending it low where an enemy with an AK-47 can bring it down. (Yes, the aircraft will be that vulnerable.)

Check out this JINSA article on the A10, "the whistling death".

Rather than being streamlined for aerodynamic efficiency, the A-10 was literally designed around the massive 30mm cannon created specifically for the A-X program — the General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger gun system. Fully loaded, with ammunition drum and loading mechanisms attached, the GAU-8/A measures more than 20 feet long and weighs almost 4,000 lbs. The Gatling gun fires a mix of depleted uranium (DU) and high-explosive (HE) shells, each nearly a foot in length, at a rate of over 3,900 rounds per minute — fast enough to expend a combat load in less than 15 seconds. Used against armored vehicles, the GAU-8/A shreds conventional armor plate and overwhelms even the latest reactive armor, providing just enough brute force and lack of finesse to alienate the core of the U.S. Air Force.

What If SCO Is Right?

The article What If SCO Is Right? has an interesting discussion on the merits and potential outcomes of the SCO case against Linux for IP theft.

I expect that this will mostly cause FUD. Even if true, the offending parts will only set back Linux until they can be replaced or IBM buys SCO just to cheaply put this one to pasture.

Yet Another Reason Not to Set Your Hopes Too High For Peace in the Middle East

Women may be terror suicide bombers, Muslim scholar rules

"This obligation reaches the extent that a woman should go out for jihad even without the permission of her husband, and the son without the consent of his parents."

Wireless Distribution

News.com reports on yet another way to bring wireless to the masses.

The answer to providing broadband for all could lie in the skies with balloons offering a new way to deliver fast internet services.

Just 18 base stations would provide total UK coverage, from densely populated towns to the remotest cottage in the Scottish Highlands.

Radio ID Chips May Track Banknotes

News.com reports on the proposed use of RFID chips in Euro currency.

Radio tags the size of a grain of sand could be embedded in the euro note if a reported deal between the European Central Bank (ECB) and Japanese electronics maker Hitachi is signed.

As I've previously stated, currency counterfeiting will continue to be a greater problem as it becomes easier and cheaper for the average person to copy money easily.

To add to the problem, businesses also find it hard to judge a note's authenticity, as current equipment cannot tell between bogus currency and old notes with worn-out security marks. Among the security features in the current euro are threads visible under ultraviolet light.

There are obvious privacy concerns.

"RFID (radio frequency identification) tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in. It would, therefore, also prevent money-laundering, make it possible to track illegal transactions and even prevent kidnappers demanding unmarked bills," [Frost and Sullivan analyst Prianka] Chopra said.

But the article also discusses how easy it makes counting money.

Moroccans Turn Out Against Terrorism

Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting "no to terrorism" thronged the streets of Casablanca today, nine days after 43 people were killed in coordinated suicide attacks in the city.

One can only wonder and whether they would extend the same thoughts to mothers and their children in Israel.

One of My Favorite Essays as a Response to the Leftist Mentality

TJ Rogers hits the proverbial homerun.

Why We Need the Electoral College

Will Hively in Math Against Tyranny from Discover Magazine, November, 1996, shows why the Electoral College actually increases the voting power of US citizens.

Why Sharon Is Willing To Negotiate With The PLO

DEBKAfile contains this interesting quote from Ariel Sharon in arguing in favor of accepting the "Road Map".

Maintaining three and a half million Palestinians under occupation [SIC!] is a bad thing. One and a half million are in the care of international organizations. Do we want to take over? Can we? We have to let the occupation go without compromising our national security. It is not possible for us to stay forever in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem. Fifteen years ago I decided that any effort was worthwhile – limited only by our security needs – for an accommodation that left us holding onto areas vital to our security and turned the rest over to a Palestinian state - even though I cherish every scrap of our homeland as much as anyone here. I will continue dedicate myself to that effort in the hope of a settlement that leads to peace.

In my view, Sharon sees the following options to the Palestinian problem and their likelihood:
1. Kill them -- immoral, not Jewish, not going to happen
2. Transfer them -- not going to happen, will not be accepted by the US or the "international community", could start a regional war
3. Maintain the status quo (West Bank and Gaza retained by Israel, although still disputed territories) -- intolerable to the Israeli population's moral character and morale
4. Annex the territories -- causes a long term demographic problem with millions of Palestinians becoming citizens, resident aliens, or transferred (See #2); how could Israel deny rights to so many people living in its midst

Since he believes that something must change the current situation, he has chosen the path of a two state solution.

Any Link Between Inflation and Federal Deficits

The Washington Times

The preponderance of research argues strongly that inflation or deflation expectations and anticipated real returns on investment (ie., economic growth) are the major determinants of interest rates. While there may be a connection between deficits and rates, it's a fuzzy connection.

Example of Why Ninth Circuit Is Overturned So Often

Did You Hear the One About the Armed Robber Who… -- 05/23/2003

The federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that although Deshon Rene Odom was carrying a loaded revolver when he robbed a Los Angeles bank, he "never intentionally displayed the gun," and therefore he should not stand convicted of armed robbery.

Placing "Issues" Into Movie and TV Scripts

The National PolicyCenterhas an interesting article on the writing of storylines and scripts by liberal foundations to promote their causes, akin to product placements in TV shows and movies.

While the effort uses many of the usual PR devices such as bookings on TV talk shows and newspaper op-eds, it also relies heavily on "issues placement," i.e., references to the need to provide universal coverage scripted into a variety of TV dramas and sitcoms.

Slim Chances for Peace in the Middle East

Thanks to LGF for this clip from a recent BBC interview with Islamofascist leader Mahmoud Zahar. You can find a summary on Arutz Sheva and the video on the BBC.

Q. You know what you're telling me? That under no circumstances will you give up violence until you've pushed Israel into the sea. That's what you want, isn't it?

Z. Who is saying that?

Q. You're saying that.

Z. I'm telling you frankly, the attitude of Islam is not to accept a foreign state in this area.

This is one of the best shows of tenacity in pursuing real answers from an evasive guest that I have seen in a long time.

More on Tommy Friedman

The Jewish Press carries an article by Mandell I. Ganchrow points out again Thomas Friedman's self-absorption in his own importance as he tries to push the Israelis to be as reckless as they were over the last 10 years and even to throw the residents of Judea and Samaria out of their homes.

He transmits a sense of desperation that unless his vision of peace in the Middle East will be accepted, there can be no peace.

And what have all the efforts at using the "carrot" approach achieved? Friedman cannot identify even a single one.

Mr. Friedman does not point to any lasting results from the Madrid Conference, which came about from the first President Bush’s toughness. Indeed the PLO was not an official delegate to Madrid. No permanent advance in the peace process resulted.

So, as the old saying goes, repeating the same thing over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, not living in Judea and Samaria.

On what basis does Mr. Friedman label the settler movement “lunatic”? Perhaps those who gave away Jewish land, and who armed a Palestinian army and sent Palestinian young people to America to learn to be snipers, are really the ones whose mental state should be examined.

Sick Bastards

Newsday reports on the complete fabrication of the so-called impact of the UN-based sanctions on Iraq that were doubling its infant mortality rate. Here is what Iraqi doctors said at the time.

Throughout the 13 years of UN sanctions on Iraq that were ended yesterday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.

"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq."

Here is what they're saying now.

Under the sanctions regime, "We had the ability to get all the drugs we needed," said Ibn Al-Baladi's chief resident, Dr. Hussein Shihab. "Instead of that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much, because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces."

But wait, it gets more depraved.

Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues until authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly parades in coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi state television and visiting journalists. The parents were ordered to wail with grief - no matter how many weeks had passed since their babies had died - and to shout to the cameras that the sanctions had killed their children, the doctors said. Afterward, the parents would be rewarded with food or money.

A Sordid Admission

Apparently, Indiana University has been lying to the Supreme Court (in its amicus brief in support of The University of Michigan's reverse-discrimination case) about the extent that it lowered its admissions for minority candidates. Peter Wood in NRO reports on the efforts of Scott Dillon to uncover what IU has actually been doing, having to resort to state FOIA-type requests to get past IU's stonewalling.

Roughly speaking, to meet our de facto quotas, we must leapfrog less qualified minority applicants over approximately 330 more qualified non-minority applicants each year, many of whom, of course, will be Indiana residents.

According to this NRO article,

As Dillon explains, "For each year for almost a decade, the average black student offered admission had an LSAT score of roughly the 30th percentile nationally, while the average non-minority admit had an LSAT score in roughly the 80th percentile."

One glaring omission I see is that people that support affirmative action can never define the case for when affirmative action ends. Can there ever be a bar set to say "That's it. Task accomplished."? Is it time? How long is enough? 50 years? 100 years? 250 years?

Palestinian Widow Decries Suicide Bombing

The Globe and Mail reports on the widow of a Palestinian husband and father killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. Perhaps, enough Palestinians are finally realizing that most Israelis want peace with them.

"I have always thought that this bombing is wrong, and now it has found me in my own home," Mrs. al-Tawil said, dressed in the head scarf of a devout Muslim and the dark mourning clothes of a new widow.

"Suicide bombings are a big mistake. Jews are like us. They are on their way to work. This is against the will of God. They are ordinary people like us."

Why would the Israelis actually help the kids of Palestinians if they really just wanted to murder them in the end???

...A plasterer by trade, Mr. al-Tawil took a job just over a year ago cleaning at Hadassah Hospital. He wanted to work there to be closer to his 13-year-old daughter, Iman, who has Down syndrome and is being treated at the hospital for leukemia. When she was in hospital for long periods, he often slept in the room with her.

[Emphasis mine]

Barely-known Charities

Amish Tech Support has some extremely funny barely-known charities.
My favorites are:

Doctors Without Barnes and Nobles
* Teaming up with Doctors Without Borders, the DWBAN works hard to bring upscale discount bookseller franchises to Third World countries.

International Solidarity Bowel Movement
* Because as we all know, left-wing Westerners who volunteer themselves as human shields are just like the Palestinians: they're pretty much full of shit.

National Raffle Association
* You'll have to pry this raffle ticket out of my cold, head hands.

National Association For The Advancement Of Crazy People
* This offshoot of the traditional NAACP was founded when Michael Jackson stopped being white, started acting crazy, and spent all his money on llamas and child pornography. Now, more than ever, he needs the support of his fans, the younger the better.

Carrot and the Stick

David Warren's newest column in the Ottowa Citizen contains this nugget at the end:

What links Jerusalem with Riyadh with Baghdad, and ultimately with every other city in the Middle East, is the carrots. Wherever Colin Powell or senior members of his State Department go to offer more, there will be violence. Wherever the stick is waved -- as recently in Iraq -- there will be fresh thinking. It really is time we began to master this silly little paradox.

We in the West often see carrots as offers of reconciliation and goodwill; in other parts of the world, they are despised as emanations of the weak. The State Department needs to learn the difference, fast.

By the way, David Warren has consistently had great columns this year in the buildup and aftermath of the Battle for Iraq (of the World War IV).

Thomas Friedman

Ben Shapiro in The Jewish Press has a great opinion piece on Thomas Friedman's wacky ways and why he is so utterly wrong so often.

Thomas Friedman is a sucker because he believes that he never makes mistakes. Friedman believes he knows the universal theory to explain all political events: economics. As Friedman explains on his website, globalization "now shapes virtually everyone`s domestic politics and international relations." Friedman's theory means that nations always act in their own economic self-interest, that leaders are rational, and that the majority of any population wants economic prosperity above all else.

There's only one problem: This is utter bunk.

...Thomas Friedman is no doubt an intelligent man. Yet he is slobberingly sycophantic toward those who play up to him. He wholeheartedly believes that he is infallible. His vision is clouded by his own inflated view of himself. Thomas Friedman is a sucker, made to order.

Loved This Post on LGF

Loved this post on LGF

A BBC report on the latest threatening Al Qaeda audiotape contains this revealing passage:

Norway, meanwhile, says it has no idea why it was singled out for attacks on its interests.

BBC's Lars Bevanger in Oslo says people there were baffled because Norway has a reputation for its attempts to bring peace to the Middle East.
"What? You mean, in spite of our anti-Israel stance and attempts to appease the Islamists in our own country, Al Qaeda still wants to kill us? How can this be?"

I’ve got one word for Norway: infidels.

Counterfeiting in the Digital Age

The Telegraph has an interesting article on how the technological advancements in printer technology and price have enabled counterfeiting to be conducted for such a low cost.

Fierce competition in the inkjet market has made digital colour printers so cheap and the print quality so high that a £100 printer can produce fake banknotes that are easily mistaken for genuine currency in dim light, it says.

This is a problem that will only get worse as the technology improves, the prices drop, and more people come into the know. As has already begun, materials besides ink and paper will be needed in currency. In addition, we may see the need to add currency verifiers to cash registers in order to verify whether currency is valid or not.

Of course, given most people's experience with trying to get a bill to be accepted in a Coke machine or change machine, we may just use plastic more. This would require a substantial change in the cost for processing sub-$1 and sub-$5 payments to make it worthwhile for the merchants. Perhaps, the government will issue its own plastic cash cards in place of / addition to paper currency [as opposed to a credit card].

I Want One for My Backyard

The BBC is showing this cool device:

A set of four glass ramps positioned in a square clearly show water travelling up each of them before it pours off the top, only to start again at the bottom of the next ramp.

It is a sight which defies logic, and has become probably the most memorable image of this year's show.

Michael Medved on Lysistrata

A while back, Michael Medved had an interesting interview with three women who were putting on the play Lysistrata. This play by Aristophanes deals with the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The Athens women forced a peace by refusing sex with their husbands. The neo-coms believe that this is a good model to promote peace in the world. [As if evil didn't exist.]

Michael asked the guests whether or not they knew the historic background of the Peloponnesian War and the outcome of this forced peace. None of the three women knew. Only one woman even wanted to know.

Michael pointed out that after this peace, Athens was eventually overrun by the Spartans.

...the Athenians surrendered totally to the Spartans, who tore down the walls of the city, barred them from ever having a navy, and installed their own oligarchic government...

None of the three women believed that this made a difference in their beliefs.

William Bennett, Gambling, and Inconsistency

BOTW has an excellent commentary on the brouhaha surrounding William Bennett's gambling discovery, entitled Fish and Chips.

The Washington Monthly, fresh from its big exposé of President Bush's hidden agenda--you know, the one he talks about in all his speeches--has a new scoop, one it came up with in an odd collaboration with Newsweek. It seems William Bennett, President Reagan's secretary of education and the first President Bush's "drug czar," likes to gamble, and is quite a high roller.

You can see why this would be a big scandal. Oh sure, Bennett hasn't actually held public office in over a decade. But still it's news when it turns out he's been violating the law.

Only he hasn't been violating the law. According to The Washington Monthly, "Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas"--places where gambling has been legal for decades.

But still he's a hypocrite, right? After all, he often argues that gambling should be outlawed. Actually, he doesn't. The Washington Monthly reports that "Bennett and his organization, Empower America, oppose the extension of casino gambling in the states." But apparently they take no position on casino gambling where it's already legal. And while he "has opined on everything from drinking to 'homosexual unions' to 'The Ricki Lake Show' to wife-swapping," gambling "has largely escaped Bennett's wrath."

So maybe Bennett has a conflict of interest. After all, the gambling industry has one of the most vigorous lobbies in Washington, the American Gaming Association, and its president, Frank Fahrenkopf, is a former Republican National Committee chairman. But there's no apparent connection here either; Bill Bennett is not a gambling-industry lobbyist.

OK, but even if Bennett's gambling is entirely legal and above board, he's squandering money on which his family depends, right? Well, uh, no. The Washington Monthly quotes Bennett as saying: "I don't play the 'milk money.' I don't put my family at risk, and I don't owe anyone anything"--and then acknowledges that "the documents offer no reason to contradict Bennett on these points."

So maybe this all comes down to that old Washington adage that the coverup is worse than the crime. Yeah, that must be it--except that Bennett isn't covering up anything. He freely acknowledges that he gambles "for fairly high stakes."

What, then, is all the fuss about? It seems to be nothing more than that Bennett thinks and writes a lot about virtue, and he indulges in a vice. In other words, the crack reporters at Newsweek and The Washington Monthly are shocked, shocked to learn that human beings are fallible. This may be news to them, but not to most people.

Incidentally, Bennett's gambling isn't news either. Time reported in 1996 that he had won a jackpot in a Las Vegas casino and that, while "sheepish," he acknowledged that he does gamble. Newsweek's reward for teaming up with The Washington Monthly is to get scooped by its main rival by seven years!

Behavior of UN Employees Is a Reflection of Their Morality

May 5, 2003
BOTW points out an interesting article in Time about a "strike-induced" looting of the UN cafeteria. This sort of behavior shows the behavior that they tolerate in others.

The decision to make the cafeterias into "no pay zones" spread through the 40-acre complex like wildfire. Soon, the hungry patrons came running. "It was chaos, wild, something out of a war scene," said one Aramark executive who was present. "They took everything, even the silverware," she said. Another witness from U.N. security said the cafeteria was "stripped bare." And another told TIME that the cafeteria raid was "unbelievable, crowds of people just taking everything in sight; they stripped the place bare." And yet another astonished witness said that "chickens, turkeys, souffles, casseroles all went out the door (unpaid)."

The mob then moved on to the Viennese Café, a popular snack bar in the U.N.'s conference room facility. It was also stripped bare. The takers included some well-known diplomats who finished off the raid with free drinks at the lounge for delegates. When asked how much liquor was lifted from the U.N. bar, one U.S. diplomat responded: "I stopped counting the bottles." He then excused himself and headed towards the men's room.

Time had this interesting followup:

In response to our original report, the U.N.'s communications department wrote us to say that the incident could not be considered looting. According to the U.N., Restaurant Associates had opened the doors and allowed hungry U.N. employees to take what they wanted. As for the silverware, U.N. security did not receive any formal complaints about stolen items.

That the UN could not take a stand against brazen theft is a further indication of the UN's moral bankruptcy.

Where I Stand

Take this test from The Political Compass to see where you fall on the political spectrum.

I fall close to Milton Friedman. I'll post the picture of my score when I'm able to link to it.

Too cool!

Laks has developed a watch with up to 128MB of built-in memory. Pretty soon, you'll be able to take the story of your life with you everywhere---medical records, tax records, budgets, pictures, everything!

Of course, I hope that you don't have to walk around with the USB cable permanently attached.

Hitachi multi-layer DVD holds 200 films

This article from ZD-Net discusses a new technology from Hitachi that may allow up to 400 hours of video or the equivalent of 200 movies on a single disk based on the use of multi-layer technology. They expect the technology to be deployable in 2007.

Hitachi has developed a DVD system with multiple layers, which allows far more information to be stored on a single disk.

Although 2007 seems like a long way off, if we look at the curve of increasing disk capacity, I'll bet that this isn't too far off. The article does not state how large the capacity of the disks are, but we can make some calculations based on today's DVDs. Today's DVD is 4.7GB for ~2 hours. This would make the new disks about 1TB in size!

Finally...

Associated Press (May 20, 2003)
Finally, a few Palestinians are realizing where their problems substantially come from. Angry Palestinians Lash Out at Militants. Only when the vast majority of the Palestinians truly want peace, demonstrate for it, and are willing to risk themselves for it will there be peace.

"They (the militants) claim they are heroes," said Mohammed Zaaneen, 30, a farmer, as he carried rocks into the street. "They brought us only destruction and made us homeless. They used our farms, our houses and our children ... to hide."

The Power of Software

One of the reasons that fighting Internet theft of copyrighted material is going to be nearly impossible is due to the ability of software to encapsulate skill.

In the world outside the Internet, companies can design a product's security to keep honest people honest and to defeat the typical thief. The number of people that are able to defeat a system can be kept to a minimum for a fairly small amount of money, usually. The information to defeat said product can usually kept isolated as well. Even if the information were to leak out, the 2 previously mentioned parties would not be able to take advantage of it.

On the Internet, as long as one person can break a security "fence", he can take his knowledge encapsulate it into software and enable people with much lower skill levels to also "jump the fence". In addition, a virtually free distribution system ensures that it is quite easy and inexpensive to provide this information and ability to anyone that wants it.

The Great Hydrogen Myth

Alan Caruba (February 2003)
An exellent article from the National Anxiety Center on why chasing after hydrogen power is pouring money down the drain.

The simple fact is that it still costs far more money to extract hydrogen, breaking its molecule away from others in order to use it to create energy. This is a bad idea.

Some Interesting Child Rearing Practices In The Arab World

Some Interesting Child Rearing Practices In The Arab World
by Sander J. Breiner, M.D.

Interesting article by Michigan state psychiatry professor on Arab personality issues from South Carolina Dept of Mental Health---More opinion that substantive changes are needed in Arab society to sustain democratization in the Middle East.

A True Islamic Reformation

frontpagemag
By Ibn Warraq
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 19, 2003

Warraq calls for the separation of mosque and state and the promotion of secularization in the Islamic world.

Learning from how secularization took place in the West, secularisation in Islamic societies can be promoted by:

- Scholarly Criticism of the Koran;
- Secular education encouraging critical thought;
- Encouraging religious pluralism by defending non-Muslims in Islamic societies;
- Encouraging secular democracies not tyrannies; and
- The practice of self-criticism.

But he seems to be asking Islam to become the equivalent of liberal Christianity and Judaism.


The relationship between Islam and the rest of the world will only change when the views on the Right change.