Oh sure, that whole "DHS investigating student for reading Mao" thing turned out to be a total fraud, buuuuuut....

C'mon, you know where this is heading, right?

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 PM | Comments (16)
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WAS: Moderate Muslims To Challenge Islamofascists' Fatwas

It's the discussion that keeps popping up. Scan down in the comments if you're interested.

(Original post follows.)

From Allah. No, the one who blogs.

It's becoming known as the war of the fatwas: the dizzying exchange of proclamations between Islamic moderates and militants on what it means to be Muslim. The duels have been waged everywhere from pamphlets to cyberspace.

Now some Muslim leaders seek to shift tactics against radicals. Their hope rests in one of Islam's most elemental questions: Who has the real authority to make religious rulings and other interpretations of the faith?

Proposals to sharply control the issuing of fatwas — the nonbinding edicts on Muslim life, law and duties — are still little more than loose concepts and would require potentially stormy challenges to Islam's traditions of decentralized leadership.

But there are some influential backers such as Jordan's King Abdullah II. They argue that bold changes are needed in Islam's hierarchy to isolate radical clerics and discredit terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who have used self-styled religious decrees to justify their views and actions.

Abdullah, who brought his anti-terrorist message to Athens last week, has appealed for moderate Muslims to take decisive control over fatwas and religious guidance. In early December, Abdullah told the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference that failure to establish a clear framework to interpret Islam leaves the door open for radicals to strengthen their ranks.

The summit in Mecca, Saudi Arabia — Islam's holiest site — wrapped up with a statement reinforcing that only "those who are authorized" can issue fatwas. The monarchs, prime ministers and other delegates, however, could reach little common ground on a proposal to give a single body of Islamic law experts greater oversight of all fatwas covering the Muslim world.

Sometimes reform requires decentralization, as the Catholic Church needed in the 1500's. (Or, rather, it at least needed the challenge of the Protestant movement to clean up.) Maybe sometimes reform requires centralization.

The trouble is that people believe what and whom they wish to believe, and a quasi-official Islamic heirarchy condeming terrorism is unlikely to convince murderers that Islam means peace.

Real change is likely to come when, say, Iran's youth demands democracy, whiskey, sexy, or when Saudi women are permitted to read the "Arab Sex and the City."

From the first link in the above paragraph:

Mohsen Kadivar, a mid-ranking cleric and philosophy lecturer whose views landed him in prison a few years back, told Reuters that young people in secular Turkey were more interested in religion than those in Iran. "This shows that religion is voluntary. Forcing it on society has the opposite effect," he said.

Keep forcing it on them, then. A wise woman once said, "The tighter you clutch your fist, Lord Vader, the more systems will slip through your fingers."

Thanks to Allah for all those good links.

Posted by: Ace at 05:41 PM | Comments (416)
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British schoolbooks being revised to not place such an emphasis on the whole Azi-Nay ing-thay.

They'll begin emphasizing other important facts about Germany. They'll try to "balance" its 12 year history of genocidal fascism with all the good things Germany has given us.

Top Ten "Balanced" Facts --Some Good, Some Bad-- To Be Stressed About Germany In New British History Textbooks

10. Kraftwerk

9. Somewhere in Dusseldorf there's a pensioner who bombed your granddad while he was planting leeks

8. Guys who wear Lederhosen and yet only look about 25% gay

7. They know how to keep the death-trains running on time

6. Were it not for Germany, David Hasselhoff never would have had a career in music (not sure how to categorize that one)

5. Nena (but also: Nena's frighteningly hairy armpits)

4. The Vokswagon Van, the preferred vehicle of psychopathic serial-killers

3. They make wicked-sick porn; plus, you have a 30% chance of getting laid just by toting around a book of Rilke's poetry

2. Killed north of 30 million people, a good fraction of that in industrialized state-sanctioned murder-factories, but still whine about the bombing of Dresden, as if they weren't begging for it -- for crying out loud, look what we did to Japan, and they didn't even kill Glenn Miller

...And the Number One "Balanced" Fact To Be Stressed About Germany In New British History Textbooks...

1. They still scare the French absolutely shitless

The French are our cowardly-canaries-in-the-German-crazytime-coalmine. We'll know Germany is a threat again the moment the French start kissing our fat American asses again.

Thanks to Allah for both the link and the the suggestions about Kraftwerk and Lederhosen.

It's official: I am Allah's blog-bitch.

Posted by: Ace at 02:07 PM | Comments (28)
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They say winning a war requires firepower, manpower, willpower, and staying power.

It also requires a belief that the cause is just and the mission achievable.

50% isn't a lot, but it'll do.

Posted by: Ace at 01:54 PM | Comments (3)
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Okay, they're not giant and they're not mutant. They're also not mecha, actually. They don't even sting. But they are trained, and that's something:

Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.

The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.

"You can rear them by the thousands, and you can train them within a matter of minutes," says Joe Lewis, a U.S. Agriculture Department entomologist. "This is just the very tip of the iceberg of a very new resource."

Lewis and others at the University of Georgia-Tifton Campus developed a handheld "Wasp Hound" to contain the wasps while they sniff out chemicals and other substances.

Lewis and his partner, University of Georgia biological engineer Glen Rains, say their device is ready for pilot tests and could be available for commercial use in five to 10 years.

Rains says the wasps could one day be used instead of dogs to check for explosives in cargo containers coming in to the nation's seaports, in vehicles crossing at border checkpoints, at airports and anywhere else where security should be tight.

Organotech: Catch the Fever!

Professor Henry Jones: I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky...

Thanks to Scott.

Posted by: Ace at 01:39 PM | Comments (15)
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Just what the headline says.

This is all part of the Information Age's core mission-- to leave couples with nothing at all to talk about together. The next study will answer men's favorite question: "Did you, you know, have an orgasm? Seriously. You can tell me the truth. A little one? Really, or are you just being nice? Because halfway through that I could have sworn you whispered something in my ear that sounded like you were asking for help with a crossword-puzzle clue. Scraps of meat are always 'orts,' honey. Now seriously-- did you? I thought you got a little excited right before you started doing today's Jumble."

I'd give a hat-tip to the guy who sent me this, but it's getting embarassing.

Correction: Originally I wrote "computer program" rather than "study." The headline of the actual story mentions a computer, but then it isn't mentioned again. I suppose computers are involved only in the database. So, alas, there's no computer program that can definitively answer this question.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (18)
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Again from Allah. No, the other one.

Today's Joseph and Mary would face 15 checkpoints

By Stephen Farrell

THE road from Nazareth to Bethlehem begins by dropping down from a ridge south of Galilee into the Jezreel Valley, looking out across Jordan and Samaria.
It is a 90-mile route defined by the journey of Mary and Joseph 2,000 years ago, although Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are unhelpful about the exact route, and the Bible does not mention the traditional nativity scene donkey.

Any direct route that foot passengers would have taken in the era of Caesar Augustus, retraced today, inevitably draws you into the tangled skein of modern Middle East politics, through Israel and the occupied West Bank, past Hamas strongholds and extremist Jewish settlements lying Islamic cheek by Zionist jowl.

But first you slam into a checkpoint. The first, that is, of 15 Israeli military roadblocks and mobile checkpoints that now control passage along the roads south from Nazareth.
...

This is a controversial stretch of tarmac — in effect an Israeli-only road in the heart of the occupied Palestinian Territories along which, local farmers and Israeli soldiers confirm, only Palestinian doctors and humanitarian vehicles can pass. However, a British newspaper has no problem. Just as Joseph and Mary, as Jews, would have been allowed to pass.

...

Inside Bethlehem, goodwill is hard to find. Since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000 Christmas celebrations have been dismal, Dr Victor Batarseh, the town’s mayor, says, pointing to a dwindling Christian population and the rising wall. “Now Bethlehem has become a big prison for its citizens. We are remembered one day a year. On Christmas Eve all the world speaks of Bethlehem but they give nothing to us. Nothing.”

Gee, I used to be a supporter of the Israeli security fence, but now that you've told me that Mary and Joseph would have had to show ID along their route, I've completely changed my position!

Related Times UK headline: Israeli Gunships Kill Hamas Leader, The Same As They Killed Jesus (Except With Hellfire Missiles)

Posted by: Ace at 11:52 AM | Comments (18)
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Apparently journalists have their own Hypocratic oath, which begins, "First, do no good:"

In the same column by Howard Kurtz, he also reports on a New York Times reporter,Kurt Eichenwald, who was doing a story about child pornography. In the course of reporting on the story he came to know a 18-year-old boy who was filming pornography in order to support his drug habit. Eichenwald persuaded the boy to give up drugs and start cooperating with the FBI to stop other children from being lured into this world and to arrest some of the ringleaders.

You and I might think that this was a good thing. No one should stand by and see other children pulled into such a life if we could stop it. But in the crazy ethics of journalists, this becomes a serious question....

Jack Shafer of Slate does not think that this is what journalists should be doing and he has some questions about Eichenwald's involvement in the child porn story.

What extraordinary intervention! The analogies aren't perfect, but imagine a Times reporter encountering an 18-year-old who had been thrust into the illicit drug business at 13 as a consequence of his neglectful family and unscrupulous dealers? Would he help the young man leave the drug trade and find him a lawyer at a Washington firm who is "a former federal prosecutor," as Eichenwald did Berry? Not likely. Would a Times reporter extend similar assistance to an 18-year-old female prostitute? An 18-year-old fence? A seller of illegal guns? No way.

To the argument that Eichenwald deserves our praise for aiding the adult Berry, who has been victimized, I offer this counterargument: Hasn't the Times put the next reporter assigned to the online pornography story into a nasty jam? Will the just-turned-18-years-old subjects expect future reporters to 1) help get them a lawyer who will 2) assist them in becoming witnesses for the prosecution, because Eichenwald helped Berry? Will online pornographers and other allied criminals now regard reporters as agents of the state? Don't be surprised if they start treating reporters as cops.

You know, they had a non-interference code on Star Trek called the Prime Directive. And Kirk violated that all the time.

Reporters are not only reporters before they're Americans -- we already knew that from Mike Wallace -- but they're reporters before they're human beings.

I wonder what Jack Schafer would do if he happened to come upon a car wreck upon the highway. Would he immediately begin typing up a story on his Blackberry as the victims slowly died from blood-loss? Or would he assist the victims? I certainly hope he'd do the latter.

It should be noted that reporters "interfere" in events by the simple act of reportage. Reporting changes things. The Plame story was not an issue until the MSM, goaded by left-wing bloggers, decided to make it such. Is the invention of controversaries less objectionable than helping a drug-addict involved in underage porn out of his horrific situation?

Apparently so, at least according to the Doyennes of Journalistic Ethics.

I'm not even sure they believe this crap. I just think they like talking about themselves, and it's easiest to write about yourself. We'll see a lot of MSM chin-stroking, hand-wringing, and pud-pulling over this non-issue simply because it's easy and fun to bang out column-inches talking about yourself and your friends.

And yet, you know, they have this major code against making themselves part of the story.

Riiiiiight.

Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (26)
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I can see this:

So, why is John Marshall and thousands of other overweight people discouraged by Jared? Loss of fantasy.

“I used to feel pretty good about myself and not worry so much about all the extra weight I carry around. I would tell myself that if I just lost a few pounds, I’d be a pretty handsome guy” Marshall explains “But after seeing Jared on TV so much, I realized there might be just another homely, unattractive guy under all this fat, there goes that hope!”.

That's a parody from "The Spoof," by the way, in case it seemed so plausible you thought it was real.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (9)
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People really seemed to like this clip of William Shatner doing Rocket Man in 1978, as well as Stewie's parody of it.

And a commenter recently asked about the "Lazy Sunday" short on SNL, a very funny rap about The Chronic-- (What?) --cles of Narnia. I've linked it before, but if you missed it, it's here, and well worth watching.

A rare thing to say these days about something on Saturday Night Live.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (4)
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