Would be funny if it weren't so sad... Australian letters to the editor take issue with a liberal politician's terming of the London bombers as sub-human filth.

More understanding and intelligent analysis is required, they whine.

For crying out loud.

These people would have no problem calling James Byrd's killers sub-human filth. So I believe they are required to explain whence comes this wellspring of sympathy for similar butchers. Is it just that they think the ends justify the means?

From the Conservative Grapevine, chock-a-block with lefty inanity.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (14)
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When they're not doing tens of thousands of dollars worth of property damage, sometimes our little Trust Fund Trotskys decide to nearly kill cops with blows to the head.

But we can't chill their right to dissent, right?

Protesting is just fine. Even when done semi-illegally without a permit. So long as the crowds disperse when ordered to by police.

But we have a hard-corps of travelling vandals and attempted murderers moving from city to city and disrupting the lives of everyone trying to, you know, just live, all because mommy didn't breastfeed them or daddy didn't teach them how to throw a football.

It's well past time to start locking these people up for the various laws they break -- even the petty ones -- and not merely catching-and-releasing them, sentencing them to the time served (two or three days they spent in jail).

If you run with these sorts of miscreants, judges must stop showing leniency in the name of "political dissent." This is not dissent; these are real crimes. No one's political leanings give them the right to smash windows and set fire to SUV's.

Our judges understand this principle when violence comes from the right. How on earth do they justify an exemption for leftists, anarchists, and attention-craving solipsists of ultra-violence?

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (85)
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It asks some of the hard questions. Gingerly. But I guess that's the only way you can ask the hard questions.

Worth reading in full, but here's a good run:

The most important question is for Muslims, and the authorities' attitude towards them. Embedded in modern government are too many advisers who believe in a quietist policy. To them, the most important thing is to avoid a "backlash" against Muslims. But the truth is that the backlash only threatens because the terror strikes. Mired in ignorance, our Government (let alone the Opposition) has little idea how to find the trends in Islam that could really improve the life of our country, and run with them.

It is only when you start thinking about what we are not getting from leaders of British Muslims, and indeed Muslim religious leadership throughout the world, that you start to see how much needs doing. The moderates are not pressed hard for anything more than a general condemnation of the extremists.

When did you last hear criticisms of named extremist groups and organisations by Muslim leaders, or support for their expulsion, imprisonment or extradition? How often do you see fatwas issued against suicide bombers and other terrorists, or statements by learned men declaring that people who commit such deeds will go to hell?

When do Muslim leaders and congregations insist that a particular imam leave his mosque because of the poison that he disseminates every Friday? When did a British Muslim last go after a Muslim who advocates or practises violence with anything like the zeal with which so many went after Salman Rushdie?

Why is not more stigma attached to the Muslims who are murdering other Muslims every day in Iraq and the Middle East?

What communal protection is offered to those Muslims who really are brave and confront Islamist violence, or the poor treatment of women, or call for democracy in the Middle East? How much do mainstream political parties with Muslim councillors and candidates really insist on their religious moderation and co-opt them to extrude the bad people lurking within their communities?

I understand and accept that there are many moderates among British Muslims, but I want to know why Britain gets so pitifully little to show for their moderation.

When a nation, a race, a political movement, a group of workers, the followers of a religion have legitimate grievances, there generally arises amongst them a champion who can command respect for his advocacy of peace, his willingness to fight without weapons and to win by moral authority. There may be many such grievances for Muslims in Britain, and in the West, but we are still waiting for the Gandhi or the Martin Luther King to give them the right voice.

I'll try to say something here. Gingerly.

Of course we don't want a backlash against Muslims, either here or in Britain. Or in Europe generally. Or anywhere.

But.

If it is incumbent upon the more rational non-Muslim voices to restrain their more easily excitable correligionists, such as to avert a backlash against Muslims, don't Muslims have the same, if not a greater, responsibility?

If I heard someone talking about fire-bombing a mosque, I'd report it to the police.

Many Muslims, I think, would not do the same with respect to someone talking about violence against non-Muslims. There is loyalty to fellow Muslims --- combined with a general soft sympathy for such talk, if not such action -- that precludes many Muslims from "turning on" a fellow Muslim, even one talking about arson or murder.

Let's say it: It is unacceptable for anyone to put misfounded religious or ethic loyalty above one's general duty as a human being to do what one can to avoid strive, maiming, arson and murder.

If the leaders -- both political and opinion -- in the non-Muslim world were not constantly making it clear that counter-terrorism against Muslims was unacceptable, there would in fact be more bloody-minded non-Muslims engaging in random acts of anti-Muslim terrrorism.

But our leaders do make that perfectly clear. There is no -- repeat, no -- undercurrent of opinion or thought among non-Muslims suggesting that a little payback is just jake. Our "clerics" do not hint at it, our elected leaders do not equivocate on the point, our opinion-shapers and even our populist rabble-rousers (like the Rev. Sharpton) do not make statements that could be taken as an endorsement or justification for harming Muslim civilians.

Is this the case in the Muslim world, particularly in Europe?

The answer is clearly no.

Granted, we non-Muslims must do what we can to avoid "backlash" against Muslims.

But it is even more crucial that responsible Muslims do what they can to avoid "backlash" against non-Muslims.

Muslims don't want a lot of dark talk of violence against Muslims. Will they comprehend that we non-Muslims find it equally unaccepable that so much dark talk of violence against non-Muslims is permitted in mosques?

Incidentally, so long as we're so concerned about "backlash" -- the anti-Christian anti-Jew anti-Hindu anti-"apostate Muslim" "backlash" seems to have a much greater bodycount than the alleged anti-Muslim "backlash."

It sure would be nice to see Muslims have 1% of the concern for the "backlash" against the non-Muslim world -- the world that is actually experiencing mass-butchery at the hands of Muslims -- as they do for the hypothetical, always-on-the-horizon-but-never-quite-arriving "backlash" against themselves.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (37)
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One of the mustiest things on the Internet. It's an audio of some guys doing a D&D parody, with visuals provided by old 8-bit videogame characters.

Pretty funny. But old.

Thanks to Constantine.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (14)
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Okay, it's not really all that ironic, even by the loosey-goosey Alanis Morissette standards.

The character was based on an acquaintance of his, a man calling himself "Henry Nemo."

Okay, we're getting closer to irony.

I'm not saying it's funny. Just saying-- something. Not sure what.

Thanks to CraigC.

Posted by: Ace at 04:59 PM | Comments (13)
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Very minor "spoilers," in the sense that I give away the Fantastic Four are transformed into superheroes, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm don't get along well, and Victor Von Doom likes metal masks and hates Reed Richards.

Not quite so fantastic two-and-a-half star effort. Trouble is, you've seen virtually all (and I do mean "virtually all") the cool fighting and special effects and humor in the trailers; the rest -- what you're paying your money for -- is fairly low-budget filler material. It's unobjectionable stuff, but it's not really the big-bang roller-coaster one expects from a summer superhero "blockbuster."

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Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (24)
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Thomas Freidman spends a lot of time burbling gauzy happy-talk, but he's on the right track here, with the right more-in-sadness-than-anger tone:

Yesterday's bombings in downtown London are profoundly disturbing. In part, that is because a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country. In part, it's because one assault may have involved a suicide bomber, bringing this terrible jihadist weapon into the heart of a major Western capital. That would be deeply troubling because open societies depend on trust - on trusting that the person sitting next to you on the bus or subway is not wearing dynamite.

The attacks are also deeply disturbing because when jihadist bombers take their madness into the heart of our open societies, our societies are never again quite as open. Indeed, we all just lost a little freedom yesterday.

But maybe the most important aspect of the London bombings is this: When jihadist-style bombings happen in Riyadh, that is a Muslim-Muslim problem. That is a police problem for Saudi Arabia. But when Al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London Underground, that becomes a civilizational problem. Every Muslim living in a Western society suddenly becomes a suspect, becomes a potential walking bomb. And when that happens, it means Western countries are going to be tempted to crack down even harder on their own Muslim populations.

That, too, is deeply troubling. The more Western societies - particularly the big European societies, which have much larger Muslim populations than America - look on their own Muslims with suspicion, the more internal tensions this creates, and the more alienated their already alienated Muslim youth become. This is exactly what Osama bin Laden dreamed of with 9/11: to create a great gulf between the Muslim world and the globalizing West.

...

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed.

Spot on.

Friedman hits the politically-correct notes about what a tragedy it would be were Western governments forced to essentially quarantine Muslim populations due to the murderous viral epidemic running through them, but...

Sometimes selfishness is reason enough to act.

True enough, an end to Muslim immigration to the West would impose hardships on many Muslims seeking little more than an adequate avenue for economic success. But there are other hardships that must be considered as well-- the hardships we all experience when our daily lives are disrupted -- or, more than disrupted: snuffed out like a candle-flame by a blast of explosive-driven shockwave wind -- due to our continuing attempts to do the "right" thing rather than the "easy" thing.

But we will not persist in doing the "right" thing if we do not sense some serious attempts in the Muslim communities to do the right thing as well. If Muslim communities continue to softly support these murderers, the easy thing to do will in fact become the right thing to do.

Even us backward, racist conservatives do have some attraction to the liberal dream of different races and religions living in harmony and forging a better future together. But this is looking more and more like just that -- a dream, and only a dream -- and if Muslims cannot or, more likely, will not restrain their most vicious thugs and butchers, than the non-Muslim host populations will feel less obligation to restrain their own most selfish impulses.

A Fair Attempt By A Muslim To Do Just That: But more please... and it cannot come from merely the most assimilated and Western-oriented Muslims. It has to come from the clergy and less-assimilated adherents as well:

To make a difference in the world, we have to make meaningful change in ourselves. There is little point endlessly complaining about how misunderstood we are when by sheer thoughtlessness some of the good and decent people talk and behave in ways that confirm the very prejudices and stereotypes we object to. There is little point in insisting Islam is a religion of peace, whose central principle is justice, when the traditional language of religion we use and the way we operate invokes images of war and defiance, emphasises exclusivity, and prejudicially stereotypes non-Muslims.

As Muslims we decode what lies behind these messages. We know that what sounds like blood curdling rhetoric intends to teach us peace, tolerance and numerous virtues. You might call it the “onward Christian soldiers” syndrome, “marching as to war”. What it means to those in the pews is “follow the path of the Prince of Peace”. But in whichever religious tradition it occurs – and it afflicts them all – eventually such language has to be jettisoned. It always gives aid and comfort to those who would pervert the message to their own malicious, brutal ends.

To be peaceful and tolerant and to implement the values our religion teaches, we have to find new language and fresh ways appropriate to our condition here and now in Britain. And that means as Muslims we have to resolve the dilemma of tradition. We have to reason our way beyond our past.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (21)
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Long, detailed, and devastating. Must-read from the Weekly Standard, again.

Here's a bit. Miltary prosecutors listed these points as evidence that a detainee at Guantanamo is an enemy combatant:

1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.

2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.

3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.

4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan.

5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000.

6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition.

7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members.

8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida.

9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997.

10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels.

11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.

13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002.

On OBL's payroll, part of the Iraqi army, travelling with a member of Iraqi Intelligence to conduct terrorism.

Link? Certainly our MSM didn't think so. The AP had gotten the story through a Freedom of Information Act request and so felt obligated to run... something. But they un-sexed-up the information as much as they could:

But after briefly describing the documents, the AP article downplayed its own scoop with a sentence almost as amusing as it is inane: "There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him traveling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence."

Oh? Was that all? "No indication" of the Iraqi's involvement in terrorism, except travelling to Pakistan to commit terrorism with a member of Saddam's IIS.

Sort of like saying there was "no indication" of OJ Simpson's involvement in the Rockingham murders, except for his leaving more of his DNA around than Ron Jeremy at a Swank mixer.

The Weekly standard opines:

That sentence minimizing the importance of the findings was enough, apparently, to convince most newspaper editors around the country not to run the AP story.

And there's more, of course. Including Al Gore -- yeahp, Al Gore -- criticizing the first Bush administration in the 2000 campaign for not doing enough to combat Iraq's support of world terrorism.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (11)
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Kinda easy.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 PM | Comments (12)
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The Mercurial Martinet has finally addressed the quotes dug up by Taranto (and, um, first by me) in which Sullivan was pretty damn gung-ho about arm twisting and other forms of "abuse" against murderous monsters.

Listen to this f'n' jackass spin:

Nothing I'm not used to. Yesterday, James Taranto took yet another dig at my early attitude to reports of "poor treatment" of terrorist captives. In January 2002 and for a while thereafter, I somewhat summarily dismissed reports of mistreatment of detainees as probably enemy propaganda and certainly not something that should worry us too much:

These terrorists are not soldiers. They are beneath such an honorific. They are not even criminals. In that respect, Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's contempt for the whines of those complaining about poor treatment is fully justified.

I'm not proud of those sentences, but they rested on a basic level of trust that of course enemy combatants might be treated roughly, but would not be subject to systematic abuse, torture or beatings.

Asshole, what the fuck does "treated roughly" mean if not "abuse" and "beatings"? What the fuck did you think you were talking about? Denying terrorists the right to watch VH-1's Behind the Music: ? & The Mysterions?

And as for torture: let's say this hysterical little twat has cried "torture!" after ridiculous reports of female soldiers forcibly raping (via the vagina, not some object) male terrorist prisoners. (See beyond the jump; content warning.)

More:

This was the American military. This was the Bush administration, people I trusted. I had no idea - and perhaps I should be held responsible for my naivete -

Perhaps. But only "perhaps."

Remember, this was also before Bush supported the Federal Marriage Amendment.

-that memos were being written allowing for torture and abuse to occur under the legal cover of a president's wartime authority.

The memos did not allow torture. They did allow mild non-injurious coercive contact.

The self-same "rought treatment" Andy was once so high on.

Abu Ghraib had not yet been exposed.

Fuck you, pal. That was pretty obviously Amateur Hour. Real, trained torturers don't take pictures of their torture sessions and send them around through cell-phones.

And stacking prisoners in a game of Naked Arab Jenga is not generally considered a useful interrogation tactic.

The hundreds of incidents of abuse, the dozens of prisoners who died while in captivity, the smaller number who have indeed been confirmed as tortured to death: these facts I did not then know. But after Abu Ghraib, I obviously changed my tune.

Just in case you're keeping track: Abu Ghraib was right around the time of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision on gay marriage, and Bush's opposition that ruling.

Not that there's a connection.

If that could happen, I worried about what else could have occurred. I read the record. I explored the evidence. I came to a different conclusion. The facts available to me changed; and so I changed my mind. Why is that open process to be mocked? When you blog half a million words a year, and you do so for five years, and you use the blog form as a way to think out loud, the notion that your views will remain identical throughout strikes me as preposterous. When the facts available to me change, I change my mind. But then I guess I'm not James Taranto.

When people change their minds, it's considered forthright to admit doing so. They ought not need be badgered into it by the mocking of Taranto (and myself).

Why was he mocked? Because he would not admit he changed his tune. And without the mocking-- he'd have never have admitted it.

Just like his stealthy shift in allegiance to Kerry-- something else he didn't admit until mocked about it by writers at NRO's The Corner.

Forced to admit he's changed his position, he now pats himself on the back for doing so... but what's so terrific about changing one's position? There's nothing necessarily wrong with it; but the Shrill Shill just keeps heaping praise upon himself for everyfuckinglittlething he does.

I've changed my position on Andrew Sullivan. Am I similarly heroic?

From The Vault: Excitable Andy Loses His Shit Over Claims of "Rape" By Female Soldiers. Content Warning.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (50)
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