The 'oldest hatred' thrives in Britain

JPost's Melanie Philips on Jew Hatred in Britain

Demographic change and crude political calculation explain some of this. There are 1.8 million Muslims in Britain and 280,000 identifying Jews. Senior Labor figures say privately that, as a result, the Jews have got to get used to the fact that their concerns are no longer of any account, that the Muslim vote is the only show in town and that therefore the Labor Party will adopt the "Muslim narrative" on Israel/Palestine.

...Public debate in Britain is now marked by a collapse of objectivity, truth, fairness and balance caused by a post-Christian and anti-Western victim culture, which stands truth and morality on their heads. The outcome is that British people are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behavior -- which has produced a tendency to equate and then invert the role of the perpetrators of violence and that of their victims.

Gonna Write Me a Letter

BOTW includes this great letter to the editor on liberal bellyaching on the choice of the new pope.

Yesterday's item about liberals' unhappiness with Benedict XVI brought an interesting observation from reader Roger Gore:

Regarding Andrew Sullivan, et al., I find all this politicking and commentary that surrounds the new pope (and the process of election, which itself seems far too founded in the ways of the world) a bit curious.

I am not Catholic, but it seems to me that if the pope is really God's mouthpiece on the earth--as the Catholic Church claims he is--then why the dissent? Either the man speaks for God, or he does not. If he does, the dissent is at best foolish, for who in his right mind would think to argue with Almighty God over his own doctrine? Can God really be lobbied, swayed, and convinced over same-sex marriage, condoms, celibacy, etc.? If the pope does not speak for God, then the Catholic Church is void of its stated 'divine authority,' and so why have a pope to begin with?

Indeed. If you're not Catholic, and especially if you're an atheist or agnostic, then it makes sense to regard the church as just another worldly institution. After all, you don't believe in papal infallibility or the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. But if you do believe in these ideas, what could it mean that you oppose the new pope and his adherence to tradition, other than that you're disappointed in or angry at God for not changing his mind?

Ovation for The Pope's Declaration

E.J. Dionne on the first, defining speech from new Pope Benedict. This type of theologian we haven't seen on a grand scale in awhile. (Pebble to BOTW). We can only hope that this shakes up the moral relativism in Europe.

"We are moving," he declared, toward "a dictatorship of relativism . . . that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure."

The modern world, Ratzinger insisted, has jumped "from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, up to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and on and on."

Those are fighting words. They guaranteed that Ratzinger, who was Pope John Paul II's enforcer of orthodoxy, will either set the church's course -- or offer his fellow cardinals the ideas they choose to react against. Decades from now many conservative Catholics will see the war against the "dictatorship of relativism" as their central mission. It's not a line you forget.

Michael Novak concurs with Dionne (another pebble to BOTW). No wonder he drives the liberals crazy.

To the meaninglessness of relativism, Ratzinger counter poses respect for the distinctive, incommensurable image of God in every single human being, from the most helpless to the seemingly most powerful, together with a sense of our solidarity with one another in the bosom of our Creator. This fundamental vision of the immortal value both of the individual person and the whole human community in solidarity has been the motor-power, the spiritual dynamic overdrive, of an increasingly global (catholic) civilization.

That, at least, is the way he sees it. He is willing to argue out his case with all comers.

Limosine Liberals and Selfishness and Imposing Costs on the Poor

Thomas Sowell on the reason for the high price of real estate in Silicon Valley.

What has happened essentially is that those already inside the castle have pulled up the drawbridge, so that outsiders can't get in. Politically, this selfishness poses as idealism.

Much of this exclusionary agenda is pushed by people who inherited great wealth and are using it to buy a sense of importance as deep thinkers and moral leaders protecting the environment. The foundations and movements they spearhead are driving working people out of areas dominated by limousine liberals, who are constantly proclaiming their concern for the poor, the children and minorities.

Meanwhile the poor, the children, and minorities are being increasingly forced out of the vast area of the San Francisco peninsula by astronomical housing prices and are moving out into California's interior valleys. But they are not safe there either.

The same wealthy busybodies who have made it an ordeal for less affluent people to try to live on the San Francisco peninsula are now pursuing them out into the interior valleys, where the environmentalist foundations and movements are trying to get the same housing restrictions imposed.

And the quote of the quote of the day...

This is ultimately not about the environment but about egos. As T.S. Eliot said, more than fifty years ago: "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

Really, really, really Reform

Jewish Pagans Break New Ground

Millennia ago, so the story goes, Abraham smashed his father's idols and founded the Jewish religion. Accordingly, his descendents' first goal was to build a fence around abstract monotheism, separating it from the Paganism in which it had taken root, and which, to them, represented all that Judaism was not. This explains Jews' second commandment, our moratorium on graven images, and our status as the first of the three major monotheistic faiths. Are Jewish Pagans, then, the ultimate contradiction in terms?

Apparently not to the author. I would guess that these people (all women in this story -- I wonder the significance of that) had almost zero understanding of Judaism and what it is all about, regardless of the Bat Mitzvahs and Seders they had.

Letter of the Day: Priceless

Letter of the day as seen in BOTW.

On Friday we noted that a score of Ohio University students and others had staged a 'die-in' to protest the liberation of Iraq. The Post, the student newspaper, carried a letter from Marc Fencil, a senior who is also a Marine currently stationed in Iraq, that is so excellent we reprint it in full:

It's a shame that I'm here in Iraq with the Marines right now and not back at Ohio University completing my senior year and joining in blissful ignorance with the enlightened, war-seasoned protesters who participated in the recent 'die-in' at College Gate. It would appear that all the action is back home, but why don't we make sure? That's right, this is an open invitation for you to cut your hair, take a shower, get in shape and come on over! If Michael Moore can shave and lose enough weight to fit into a pair of camouflage utilities, then he can come too!

Make sure you all say your goodbyes to your loved ones though, because you won't be seeing them for at least the next nine months. You need to get here quick because I don't want you to miss a thing. You missed last month's discovery of a basement full of suicide vests from the former regime (I'm sure Saddam's henchmen just wore them because they were trendy though). You weren't here for the opening of a brand new school we built either. You might also notice women exercising their new freedom of walking to the market unaccompanied by their husbands.

There is a man here, we just call him al-Zarqawi, but we think he'd be delighted to sit down and give you some advice on how you can further disrespect the victims of Sept. 11 and the 1,600 of America's bravest who have laid down their lives for a safer world. Of course he'll still call you "infidel" but since you already agree that there is no real evil in the world, I see no reason for you to be afraid. Besides, didn't you say that radical Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance?

I'm warning you though--it's not going to be all fun and games over here. You might have bad dreams for the next several nights after you zip up the body bag over a friend's disfigured face. I know you think that nothing, even a world free of terror for one's children, is worth dying for, but bear with me here. We're going to live in conditions you've never dreamt about. You should get here soon though, because the temperatures are going to be over 130 degrees very soon and we will be carrying full combat loads (we're still going to work though). When it's all over, I promise you can go back to your coffee houses and preach about social justice and peace while you continue to live outside of reality.

If you decide to decline my offer, then at least you should sleep well tonight knowing that men wearing black facemasks and carrying AK-47s yelling "Allahu Akbar" over here are proud of you and are forever indebted to you for advancing their cause of terror. While you ponder this, I'll get back to the real "die-in" over here. I don't mind.

What can we say but "Semper fi"?

WSJ.com - High-Octane Amnesia

JERRY TAYLOR and PETER VAN DOREN write of the new coalition to encourage more energy independence through government intervention in the WSJ.com

The Energy Future Coalition -- the operation overseeing this campaign -- is really an 'Energy Past Coalition' that suffers from a severe case of amnesia. The stated policies that this crowd promotes -- sharply increased subsidies for domestic alternative-fuels industries and aggressive government-mandated conservation -- were textbook economic fiascos when adopted 30 years ago and will fare no better were we to enthusiastically re-embrace them again.

They go on to discuss the government sponsored Synthetic Fuels Corporation which ended up only building one goal gasification plant using $1.5 Billion in federally guaranteed loans and had to be sold for a mere $85 million after bankruptcy. Another example of how poorly government interferes in the energy market.

Government solutions just don't work to solve market problems.

Unfortunately, when it comes to government intervention in energy markets, past is prologue. Ethanol and other forms of biomass energy -- the modern iteration of the Synfuels program embraced by the Energy Future Coalition -- are an open joke among economists and generally opposed by environmentalists. Already on the receiving end of about $1 billion of federal largesse per year, ethanol requires more energy to produce than it yields upon combustion and produces more worrisome air pollution than even conventional gasoline. In the electricity sector, biomass fuels generate more pollutants than natural gas-fired electricity (the fuel that biomass would likely displace), according to a recent survey of the literature by economists Thomas Sundqvist and Patrik Soderholm.

They hit the proverbial homerun with their closing:

However one feels about foreign oil, the belief that government can intelligently pick winners in energy markets or promote conservation in an economically reasonable manner is belied by an avalanche of real-world evidence. The best way to weaken al Qaeda is by killing bin Laden and those who support him, not by subsidizing GM to make cars they wouldn't otherwise make.

State of the Union

DANIEL HANNAN is correct in his article in the WSJ about President Bush's wrong attitude toward the EU and its new constitution.

It is a paradox. George W. Bush, we are forever being told, is a conservative hard man, a scourge of international lawyers, a unilateralist. If he has one guiding principle in foreign affairs, it is a preference for national democracies over supranational bureaucracies. On such issues as Kyoto, the International Criminal Court or the United Nations, he takes the robust view that elected politicians are preferable to unaccountable functionaries. Yet, when it comes to the European Union, he is happy to support the Western world's most remote, backward and antidemocratic project.

European integration, he says, is a force for peace and freedom on Earth. Really? Where? In Iran, where the EU is cuddling up to murderous ayatollahs? In China, where it not only wants to lift the arms embargo but is collaborating with Beijing on the Galileo satellite system to challenge the 'technological imperialism' of America's GPS? In Cuba, where it refuses to back anti-Castro dissidents? Or perhaps within its own borders, where, through the proposed constitution, it plans to transfer yet more powers from elected national assemblies to unelected Brussels commissars?

...When it comes to the EU, though, Washington is still frozen in the Cold War, preferring to humor remote elites over encouraging democratization.

...Where the U.S. Constitution is chiefly concerned with the rights of the individual, the European Constitution is chiefly concerned with the powers of the state. Where the U.S. Constitution (in my version) is 11 pages long, the European Constitution runs to 438 pages. Where the U.S. Constitution restricts itself to delineating the authority of government and establishing a proper balance between federal and state jurisdictions, the EU Constitution busies itself with such minutiae as the rights of asylum seekers and the status of the disabled. Where the Declaration of Independence offers "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights guarantees the right to "strike action" and "affordable housing."

Perhaps President Bush takes the view that, if the Europeans want to lumber themselves with a top-heavy and illiberal system of governance, that is their business. He ought, though, ask himself whether the constitution is in the U.S. interest.

...Every superpower is resented, of course; but there is more to this than envy. Anti-Americanism in Europe has an ideological basis. Consider the areas where EU policy is most directly at odds with that of the U.S.: Iran, China, Cuba, Israel. There is a common theme linking these policy disputes: In each of them, the EU favors stability over democracy.

It is no surprise, then, that the EU should itself be at the point of adopting a constitution that strengthens the rulers at the expense of the ruled. When American critics accuse the EU of hypocrisy for cuddling up to tyrants, they are missing the point. Europe's apparatchiks have never been wild about democracy. When they get a result they dislike -- as when Danish and Irish voters rejected EU treaties, for example -- they simply ignore it. It is only natural that they should extend the same way of thinking to, say, Iraq or Palestine.

...Mr. Bush might glance at Article I-15 of the proposed constitution: "The Common Foreign and Security policy shall apply to all aspects of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security. Member States shall support the Common Foreign and Security Policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity." It is worth asking whether, if this clause had already been in effect, Britain would have been allowed to join the Iraq war.

The residue of eventhink

Saul Singer writes in JPost about eventhink -- the notion that being evenhanded is more important than siding with right and justice.

It is time we junked eventhink, because it blinds us from seeing, let alone addressing, the root causes of the conflict.

To return to cops and robbers, an anti-crime policy that did not distinguish between criminals and their victims would obviously fail. Yet making such distinctions requires taking sides, and taking sides detracts from mediating, which makes agreements, and therefore peace, harder to reach, right?

Wrong. The disconnect is this: Peace does not come from agreements; lasting agreements come from changing the conditions that cause war.
In our case, war does not come from the lack of a Palestinian state, even if creating such a state were advisable. War comes from the Arab dream of destroying Israel. Anything that helps crush that dream advances peace; anything that encourages it drives peace further away.

We must be honest and recognize that what the current titular head of the PLO, Farouq Qaddumi, said openly on Iranian TV just four months ago is what much of the Arab world still believes: 'At this stage there will be two states. Many years from now there will be only one' (www.memri.org).

According to eventhink, this is not something to talk about in polite company, because it harms the prospects for agreement. But if peace, not just agreements, is the goal, the more the US exposes, condemns and rejects the Arab destructionist dream, the better.

Israel preparing Ashkelon for post-disengagement rocket attacks

IMRA carries the unsurprising story...

Israel Television Channel Two News reported this evening that Israel is preparing for the rocket attacks that are expected to hit Ashkelon after Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.

The radar system for tracking incoming rockets and loudspeaker system so that the public can be warned to take cover a few seconds before the rockets slam into the city are already being installed. In addition, the roofs of school buildings are being reinforced.

It was not clear from the report as to what measures will protect the strategic targets located in Ashkelon (tank farms, etc.).

It should be noted that the expectation of rocket attacks against Ashkelon after the withdrawal was presented in the same tone as a report on preparations for bad weather (inevitable).

New York Court Puts Tax Bite On Telecommuting

WSJ on the latest from Big Brother...

In a case that could have wide implications for the growing practice of telecommuting, New York's highest court ruled that a man who lives out of state and works by computer for a New York firm must pay New York state tax on his full income.

The New York Court of Appeals said computer programmer Thomas Huckaby, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., owed New York income tax for his full salary, not just the time he spent working at his employer's New York offices.

Mr. Huckaby, whose home state doesn't have an income tax, paid New York state tax on about 25% of his income over two years for the time he spent working there for the National Organization of Industrial Trade Unions.

The court upheld a state tax-department ruling that all his income should be taxed. That amounts to $4,387 plus interest. However, the ruling could lead to much greater income for the state as it is applied to the growing field of telecommuting.

...Marc Violette, spokesman for state Assistant Solicitor General Julie Mereson, said, "New York provides the job, New York provides the professional opportunity, and New York should be able to tax that income, even if the employee for his own convenience was working outside of New York state."

The issue split the court, and the majority acknowledged the decision could discourage telecommuting. [Oh, really...]

They Already Know the Disengagement Will Be a Failure

Arutz Sheva on what the IDF already knows will happen after the pre-emptive surrender.

Official IDF sources predict that the withdrawal from Gaza will lead to Palestinian terrorism and violence worse than the previous intifadas, writes Yediot Acharonot's senior military correspondent.

IDF sources predict that immediately after the disengagement, the ceasefire is expected to end with terrorist attacks in and from Judea and Samaria. Among the threats are mortar and Kassam rockets on Israel's new toll-way Highway 6, as well as other areas in the coastal plain and the Afula area. The "regular" ambush attacks on roads, as well as attacks on army bases and towns in Judea and Samaria, are also expected.

The IDF Central Command is already preparing for the next round of armed conflict, correspondent Alex Fishman writes. It is assumedthat it will begin in September. The preparations are mainly in the form of trying to stop the massive weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza, and from there to Judea/Samaria.

The Palestinian terrorists are heavily-armed, Fishman writes: "Despite the successes in discovering arms-smuggling tunnels [between Egypt and Gaza], in the battle between smuggling and thwarting smuggling, the smugglers have won."

According to army estimates, in the eight-month period between July 2004 and February 2005, over 3,000 assault rifles were smuggled into Gaza, as well as 400,000 bullets, 400 pistols, and 600 kilograms of explosives.

In addition, over 180 anti-tank rocket launchers and 5 anti-aircraft rockets are now in the possession of the Palestinian terrorists.

The army recently intercepted a shipment of RPG anti-tank missile launchers at the Shoket Junction near Be'er Sheva, on their way to the Mt. Hevron region. Some 20 such launchers were recovered over the past year – as opposed to an unknown amount that have made their way in. Once the RPG rockets become a common weapon in Judea and Samaria, Fishman writes, "the IDF will no longer enjoy freedom of movement in its jeeps on the roadways, nor will it be able to use jeeps to pursue terrorists and make arrests in the cities... Is it conceivable that the army will only be able to use armed personnel carriers and tanks in Judea and Samaria? And what about the civilian traffic?"

In short, Fishman sums up, "stopping the smuggling has become a matter of national existence. It is liable to spell the difference between a diplomatic agreement and a comprehensive war against the Palestinians."

The Mossad, the police, the Shabak (General Security Service), government offices, and the army have all begun working in various ways to collect intelligence and try to thwart smugglings, and the work is being concentrated in the office of the Operations Commander in the IDF General Staff.

Fishman notes that three attempts have already been made in the Shomron to launch Kassam rockets. Arutz-7 reported that a plot to manufacture deadly Kassam rockets there was thwarted last week with the arrest of eight Islamic Jihad terrorist cell members in Jenin. Earlier in the month, the IDF discovered a Kassam rocket factory near Jenin.