Swedish Food Blogger Wins Election

The Swedish Blogger behind Anne's Food, who posts very nice recipes for baked goods, has been elected to local Parliament in the just-completed election.

Congratulations!

Sam Harris: Liberals Must Fight Islamism

Opinion Journal's Best of the Web tipped us off to this interesting LA Times Oped by anti-religious writer Sam Harris:

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.

To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.

Here's a link to Sam Harris's website.

Bill Donohue: Muslim Reaction Proves Pope's Point

Catholic League director Dr. William Donohue defends the Pope's comments in a recent press release:

“One of the points that the pope made in his speech at Regensburg University was the necessity of linking faith to reason. He warned that uncoupling the twin values had horrendous consequences, leading people of faith to resort to violence. Ironically, the violent reaction, and the calls for more violence, on the part of some Muslims underscores the pope’s point. The response of violence to non-violence is barbaric.

“In Somalia, Muslims were urged by a cleric to ‘hunt down’ the pope and kill him. ‘Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,’ said Sheik Abubakar Hassan Malin. No doubt that this ‘man of God’ must be happy now that a nun was shot outside a children’s hospital in the nation’s capital. The Mujahideen Shura Council referred to the pope as ‘the worshipper of the cross,’ and pledged to ‘break the cross and spill the wine’ in the ‘house of the dog from Rome.’ The group, which posted its call to violence on the Internet, also said that God will enable Muslims ‘to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen.’ Seven churches were firebombed in the West Bank and Gaza by gun-wielding Palestinians, using lighter fluid to burn the churches. And today, in the Pakistani-controlled section of Kashmir, Muslims took to the streets chanting ‘Death to the Pope,’ burning him in effigy.

“No wonder the pope has spoken against Turkey (where an official compared him to Hitler) joining the European Union. Not until Islam matures and Muslims come to reject the wanton destruction of innocent human life is there any chance of a real dialogue. The scene of Muslims calling for Jews and Christians to be murdered with impunity is all too common, as this latest demonstration of hate proves.”

Joshua Muravchik on Human Rights Watch's Silent Support for Genocide

From the Weekly Standard:

Most remarkably, Human Rights Watch did not take note of the contrasting goals of the combatants. Hezbollah's declared aim, in the words of its "spiritual" leader, Sheikh Fadlallah, is to "obliterate" Israel, while Israel's goal boiled down to not being obliterated. Human Rights Watch justifies this self-imposed moral blindness on the grounds that its touchstone is law, not morality. But why, then, was it deafeningly silent on the overriding legal issue that the conflict presented--namely, genocide?

International human rights law consists mostly of multi lateral treaties, called conventions. The most fundamental and important of these treaties, because it concerns the ultimate offense against human rights, is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Presumably because of the weightiness of the issue and the overwhelming moral stakes, its enforcement provisions differ from those of most other human rights treaties. The usual treaty is simply a pledge of good behavior: Each signatory state promises to undertake or refrain from certain acts within its own jurisdiction. But the Genocide Convention enjoins its parties "to prevent and to punish" genocide wherever it may occur and whoever commits it. In other words, when a state signs, for example, the Convention on Racial Discrimination, it promises to stamp out this abomination within its borders, but when it signs the Genocide Convention, it in effect promises to go to war to stop someone else from committing genocide. (This explains the 1994 decision by the Clinton White House not to call the mass murder in Rwanda "genocide," for fear that this would obligate the United States to take action to stop it.)

The convention defines "genocide" as any of a variety of acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." Clearly, Hezbollah's announced goal of obliterating the state of Israel constitutes the intent to destroy a "national group," namely, Israelis. Even if one were to consider that destroying Israel is not the same as destroying the Jewish people, Hezbollah stands no less guilty under the terms of the convention. Some Hezbollah apologists might claim that the group intends only, as its spokesmen sometimes say, to drive the Jews "back" to Europe, i.e., that it intends "merely" ethnic cleansing, not genocide. But even if such a statement of intent is given credence, the reasoning is fatuous. Most Israeli Jews did not come from Europe. They either are native born or come from Arab countries where they would not be taken back and where they would find no safety if they were.

LeBoutillier: Bush Surrendered to Bin Laden

John LeBoutillier thinks the more Bush talks, the worse things get:

The President’s 9/11 speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of that tragic day points out why a solid majority of Americans no longer trust him - and believe his is already a ‘failed presidency.’

His pledge - dragged out of a dark, musty closet after several years of silence on the topic - to “get” Osama Bin Laden no matter how difficult it is - is no longer believable. And that is why GW Bush is not considered “honest and trust-worthy” by 58% of the American people in the most recent polling.

After Bill Clinton’s direct, finger-pointing lies to the American people, GW Bush had promised to “restore honor and dignity to the White House.”

In the view of many, he, too, has repeatedly lied to the American people about Iraq and WMD - and especially about how hard we are really trying to get Osama Bin Laden.

This Administration says one thing - and then does another. Case in point: while the President of the United States pledges to do everything possible to kill or capture Osama Bin Lden, his CIA disbanded the Bin Laden Unit which was created exclusively to hunt him down!

Yes, the White House tried to put a band-aid on that embarrassing revelation a few weeks ago by muttering some typical bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo about “shifting assets” and “changing lines of authority.”

But the facts speak for themselves: five years ago the president told the American people his administration would do everything possible to get Osama.

Five years later it is a fair question to ask: do you believe the President has woken up every day with getting Osama as his top priority? Even one of his top priorities? Or how about this question: which excited GW Bush, son of G HW Bush, more: getting Osama or getting Saddam?

Here is something we all need to remember: the President of the United States sets priorities and those priorities quickly filter down the bureaucracy and the chain of command. Everyone underneath the President wants to please him. So his top priority quicky becomes their top priority...

...1) When he got focused on Iraq in the summer of 2002, every single event and statement from all his subordinates was also focused on Iraq. Every speech, TV appearance, radio show - everything - was centered on toppling Saddam. Suddenly, Osama was the Forgotten Enemy. No mention of him...many months went by, measured by reporters, when Osama’s name was not even mentioned by GW Bush. Indeed, Mr. Bush had pivoted away from Osama and became obsessed with getting Saddam.

Bush’s own indifference to really bagging Osama filtered down and is reflected in the closing of the Osama CIA desk.

So Mr. Bush’s words in Monday night’s speech are indeed empty words - meaningless, useless statements.

Al Qaeda Responds to Pope's Call for Dialogue

From the International Herald Tribune:

CAIRO, Egypt Al-Qaida in Iraq and its allies warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were "doomed" and proclaimed that the holy war would continue until Islam dominates the world.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum about the pope's remarks last week on Islam. The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately independently verified.

"You infidels and despotic, we will continue our jihad (holy war) and never stop until God avails us to chop your necks and raise the fluttering banner of monotheism when God's rule is established governing all people and nations," the statement said.

US Recognizes Islamic Emirate of Waziristan

The US government, in the person of Richard Boucher, has surrendered to the Taliban in Pakistan, according to Bill Roggio:

As the Taliban flaunt their new-found power in Pakistan, the U.S. Department of State's [former] press secretary Richard Boucher has inexplicably endorsed the “Waziristan Accord”...

...Mr. Boucher has chosen to echo the Pakistani party line of Major General Shaukat Sultan, a government spokesman, and Northwest Frontier Province Governor Lt Gen. Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, who has essentially thrown in his lot with the Islamists. Mr Boucher's second to last statement, “Talibanisation will not be allowed, in the area or in the cities near the tribal region,” is absurd on its face, as the recent release of over 2,500 Taliban and al-Qaeda, and their subsequent return to Wazriristan demonstrates. The Taliban has repeatedly violated the terms of the truce – only Pakistani government violations will lead to instability. Dadullah is clear the Afghan insurgency is being driven from safe havens in western Pakistan. And the Taliban's role in dictating the terms of the truce are clear.

Cyrus Nowrasteh on Why He Made The Path to 9/11

From The Wall Street Journal:

"The Path to 9/11" was intended to remind us of the common enemy we face. Like the 9/11 Report itself, it is meant to enable us to better defend ourselves from a future attack. Past is prologue, and 9/11 is merely another step in an escalating Islamic fundamentalist reign of terror. By dramatizing the step-by-step increase in attacks on America--all of which, in fact, occurred--we are better able to see the pattern and anticipate the future. That was the point of the series, its only intention. Call it the canary in the coal mine. Call it John O'Neill in the FBI.

Despite intense political pressure to pull the film right up until airtime, Disney/ABC stood tall and refused to give in. For this--for not buckling to threats from Democratic senators threatening to revoke ABC station licenses--Disney CEO Rober Iger and ABC executives deserve every commendation. Hence the 28 million viewers over two nights, and the ratings victory Monday night (little reported by the media), are gratifying indeed.

"The Path to 9/11" was set in the time before the event, and in a world in which no party had the political will to act. The principals did not know then what we know now. It is also indisputable that Bill Clinton entered office a month before the first attack on the World Trade Center. Eight years then went by, replete with terrorist assaults on Americans and American interests overseas. George W. Bush was in office eight months before 9/11. Those who actually watched the entire miniseries know that he was given no special treatment.

Somali Gunmen Kill Italian Nun in Pope Protest

From Reuters report:

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Gunmen killed an Italian nun at a children's hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday in an attack that drew immediate speculation of links to Muslim anger over the Pope's recent remarks on Islam.

The Catholic nun's guard also died from pistol shots in the latest attack on foreign personnel in volatile Somalia.

The assassinations were a blow to Mogadishu's new Islamist rulers' attempt to prove they have pacified one of the world's most lawless cities since chasing out warlords in June.

The bodyguard died instantly, but the nun, from the Missionaries of the Consolation order based in Nepi near Rome, was rushed into an operating theatre after being hit by three or four bullets in the chest, stomach and back.

"She died in the hospital treatment room," doctor Ali Mohamed Hassan told Reuters. "She was shot outside the hospital, going to her house just across the gate."

A nun from the Missionaries order identified her as sister Leonella Sgorbati, born in 1940, in Piacenza in northern Italy. In Somalia since 2002, she trained nurses at the SOS Kindergarten hospital.

The Italian government said the nun and two other Italian nuns working with her had been repeatedly advised to leave Somalia, which was formerly ruled by Italy.

Sunday's death provoked scenes of mourning at the hospital.

"I was in class when I heard about six to eight shots, I ran out and saw sister bleeding," Fatuma Hassan, 21, told Reuters.

"We're so sad. It's a big loss."

Pakistan Releases Daniel Pearl's Killers

The Daily Telegraph reports that Pakistan has released thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners, including killers of Daniel Pearl (ht Bill Roggio):

Five years after American-led coalition forces overthrew the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom, United States officials have been horrified to discover that thousands of foreign fighters detained by Pakistan after fleeing the battleground in Afghanistan have been quietly released and allowed to return to their home countries.

Pakistani lawyers acting for the militants claim they have freed 2,500 foreigners who were originally held on suspicion of having links to al-Qa'eda or the Taliban over the past four years.

On his blog, Bill Roggio says the Telegraph plays down the Daniel Pearl connection. So, Roggio lists the names of released prisoners directly involved in the Daniel Pearl plot:

Khalid Khawaja: "Khalid Khawaja is a retired squadron leader of the Pakistan Air Force who was an official in Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, in the mid 1980s. After he wrote a critical letter to General Zia ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan from 1977 till 1988, in which he labeled Zia as hypocrite, he was removed from the ISI and forced to retire from the airforce. He then went straight to Afghanistan in 1987 and fought against the Soviets along side with Osama Bin Laden, developing a relationship of firm friendship and trust. Khalid Khawaja’s name resurfaced when US reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted and subsequently killed. Pearl had come to Pakistan and met Khalid Khawaja in order to investigate the jihadi network of revered sufi, Syed Mubarak Ali Gailani."

Mansour Hasnain: A member of the group that kidnapped and murdered Danny Pearl. He also was "a militant of the Harkat-al-Mujahedin group, is one of those who hijacked an Indian Airlines jet in December 1999 and forced New Delhi to release three militants -- including Omar and Azhar."

Mohammad Hashim Qadeer: "Suspected of being one of [Daniel] Pearl’s actual killers, was arrested in August 2005 and has notable al-Qaida links" and "ties with the banned extremist groups Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen and Jaish-e-Muhammad."

Mohammad Bashir: Another Pakistani complicit in the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Pope Protesters Firebomb West Bank Churches

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Two churches in the West Bank were hit by firebombs early Saturday, witnesses and clergy said, and a group claiming responsibility said the attacks were meant as a protest against comments by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam.

The firebombs left black scorch marks on the walls and windows of a Roman Catholic and an Anglican church in the West Bank city of Nablus. Father Yousef, a priest at the Anglican Church, said several firebombs hit the outside wall of the church.

In a phone call to The Associated Press, a group calling itself the "Lions of Monotheism" claimed responsibility. The caller said the attacks were carried out to protest the pope's remarks about Islam.

What the Pope Said

From the Guardian's transcript, it appears the talk was actually about the relation of reason and science to theology:

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium.

I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn.

That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves.

We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties.

Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas - something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned - the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience.

The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole.

This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.

Has Pope Benedict Ignited a New Crusade?

That's the gist of charges by Islamic leaders reported in this article in Ha'aretz:

"We do not accept the apology through Vatican channels ... and ask him [Benedict] to offer a personal apology - not through his officials - to Muslims for this false reading [of Islam]," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah told worshippers in his Friday prayers sermon.

Fadlallah's words were some of the strongest yet in response to the pontiff's remarks on Islam's prophet Mohammed and holy war, during a speech this week in Germany, which angered many in the Muslim world.

"We call on the Pope to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam. We do not want him to succumb to the propaganda of the enemy led by Judaism and imperialism against Islam," Fadlallah said.

Dmitri Simes on Bush's Torture Lobbying

From The National Interest:

So, here we are now in the United States, after a victory in the Cold War, where the President of the United States—and not just any President, but one who has made moralism his trademark—is asking Congress to approve legislation that would allow finding people guilty of serious crimes without revealing key evidence against them. Joseph Stalin used to say that “the [security] organs don’t make mistakes.” Do we really want to have a legal system making the same assumption about the CIA?

...It’s troubling that Mr. Bush does not accept as self-evident truth that torture is wrong and un-American. The argument that it may save innocent lives misses the point. Through the history of combat, most torture was not inflicted by pathological sadists, but rather by interrogators who wanted to get information that could save the lives of their troops and civilians. If the United States makes it acceptable to use “alternative techniques” against enemy combatants, it is a no-brainer that American soldiers and even ordinary Americans living abroad would be in great peril.

More broadly, in taking the positions he does on torture, President Bush should forget about the ideological struggle he has proclaimed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. Since as a practical matter that the vast majority of those subjected to “alternative techniques” are likely to be Muslims—and in the age of the internet, their stories are bound to be quickly known all throughout the Islamic world—all Mr. Bush’s claims about his noble desires to make the world safe for democracy would sound hollow. Senator John McCain, Senator John Warner, Senator Lindsey Graham, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and retired Army General John Vessey are exactly right to insist on modifying the President’s military tribunal plans on the grounds of both security and morality. No improved homeland security procedures, no tighter screening of airline passengers, or even better examination of containers at American ports, can compensate for turning millions of Muslims into America’s enemies. Yet President Bush is proposing another step in that direction.

Agustin Blazquez on Kofi Annan's Cuban Visit

From Agustin Blazquez, this email message:

The "wonderful" United Nations at work!!!

Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General visited with the totalitarian tyrant of Cuba, however he refused an invitation from the dissidents to meet with them in Havana. How thoughtful and sensitive to the over 100,000 Castro victims and about two million exiles worldwide. Agustin Blazquez, Sept. 15, 2006 ABIP

The Poetry International Web

Just found out about this international poetry website from Very Like a Whale (in our blogroll): Poetry International Web.

Nicholas Sarkozy Goes to Washington

The French minister of the interior, leading candidate in the French election, came to Washington and New York to demonstrate French solidarity with America, according to The Washington Post:

Sarkozy said the French remember American heroism in France's defense in two world wars. He also recalled that the United States and France have never gone to war, a situation that contrasts sharply with the violence that marked U.S.-British ties in early U.S. history.

He's certainly won my endorsement. Vive Sarkozy!

Orianna Fallaci

Michelle Malkin reports that Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci has died of cancer, aged 77. Here's the Reuters story.And here's a link to the AP. And here's the Times of London obit. An excerpt:

Fallaci, who had been ill with cancer for several years, died at a private clinic in her home city of Florence overnight, said Paolo Klun, of the RCS publishing group, which published Fallaci’s work. She had returned to Florence in the last days of her life after living for decades in New York. In recent years, she had gained a second notoriety for her vitriolic writings on Islam.

Small, beautiful, and extraordinarily tough, Fallaci was an Italian resistance fighter who became a war correspondent in the 1950s and 1960s, covering the Vietnam War and conflicts in the Middle East and Latin America. She was shot three times and beaten by Mexican police covering student riots in 1968.

I'd really like to see a TV movie-of-the-week about her life...

The Tin Star (1957)

Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, and Betsy Palmer star in The Tin Star, an Anthony Mann western that still resonates with today's war on terrorism. The tin star of the title is pinned to Tony Perkins' vest--but he's obviously not up to the job. Enter Henry Fonda as bounty-hunter Morg Hickman, riding into town with a dead body on his saddle to collect the reward for bringing back a criminal "Dead or Alive." It's a sophisticated film, about the meaning of justice. Neville Brand plays Bart Bogardus, a racist villian who has the town quaking--until Henry Fonda shows up. John McIntyre is Doc McCord, whose character represents what little goodness was left in the town before Fonda's arrival. The other players are all excellent, especially the cowardly and weak town elders--business leaders who mean to do the right thing, but when the going gets tough, cut and run. In keeping with Howard Suber's theme of American individualism in Hollywood movies, eventually Tony Perkins stands up to the town bully, and Henry Fonda rides off into the sunset, with his faith in himself restored, as well...

Will James Wolfensohn Move to Kazakhstan?

Shades of German Chancellor Schroeder working for Gazprom, the former World Bank chief has been offered a job in Almaty by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev, according to RIAN.ru:

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has offered the post of advisor in a project to develop a regional financial center to the World Bank's former president James Wolfensohn, a financial expert said Thursday.

The Kazakh government is implementing the project in Almaty, the country's financial capital, to attract foreign investors and help Kazakh business enter world stock markets.

"The former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, met with the Kazakh president yesterday to discuss plans for the development of the center, and Wolfensohn was offered the post of advisor for financial development of the center in Almaty," said Arken Arystanov, chairman of the center's regulatory agency.