Good piece by novelist Andrew Klavan about Hollywood's unwillingness to make a pro-war movie.

As luck would have it, he just happened to agreed to be the guest on Tuesday's Hoist the Black Flag.

You can get his bio and the list of his books from his website, AndrewKlavan.com.

Thanks to Ogre Gunner for the tip, and for sort of getting a good guest for me and Jeff this week.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (17)
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And as a bonus, contains quotes of stuff Jefferson actually said, as opposed to the fake Jefferson quotes John Kerry continues to use after they've long since been debunked as completely specious.

Hey, the man paid $18.59 for Stuff Jefferson Said, 3rd Ed., Rev., on eBay, and damnit, he's going to get his money's worth.

Anyway, this article is a must-read. It details America's first serious confrontation with the jihadists-- and it's shocking how much hasn't changed. Both in terms of the jihadists' claims of a God-granted right to slaughter, enslave, rape, and murder, and the limp-wristed response by many in the West to this Religion of Perpetual Mayhem and Barbarism.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, then serving as American ambassadors to France and Britain, respectively, met in 1786 in London with the Tripolitan Ambassador to Britain, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja. These future American presidents were attempting to negotiate a peace treaty which would spare the United States the ravages of jihad piracy—murder, enslavement (with ransoming for redemption), and expropriation of valuable commercial assets—emanating from the Barbary states (modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, known collectively in Arabic as the Maghrib). During their discussions, they questioned Ambassador Adja as to the source of the unprovoked animus directed at the nascent United States republic. Jefferson and Adams, in their subsequent report to the Continental Congress, recorded the Tripolitan Ambassador’s justification:

Â… that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Thus as Joshua London’s Victory in Tripoli elaborates in lucid prose, an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East. Moreover, these jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years—exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States.

...

The Barbary jihad piracy which confronted America soon after our nation was established (i.e., between 1786-1815), was an enduring, formidable enterprise. During the 16th and 17th centuries, as many Europeans were captured, sold, and enslaved by the Barbary corsairs as were West Africans made captive and shipped for plantation labor in the Americas by European slave traders. Robert DavisÂ’ methodical enumeration indicates that between one, and one and one-quarter million white European Christians were enslaved by the Barbary Muslims from 1530 through 1780.

...

Joshua London's compelling narrative of America's political and military efforts during the Barbary wars highlights—appositely—the experiences of William Eaton. Eaton's triumphs and travails during his tenure as consul to Tunis (1799-1803), and later U.S. naval agent to the Barbary states, mirrored those of the young American nation he served.

...

Eaton agonized over the gulf between the enormous potential and depressing reality of the Barbary states. ...Eaton concluded that Islam itself, certainly as practiced in Barbary, was the source of this backwardness:

Considered as a nation, they are deplorably wretched, because they have no property in the soil to inspire an ambition to cultivate it. They are abject slaves to the despotism of their government, and they are humiliated by tyranny, the worst of all tyrannies, the despotism of priestcraft. They live in more solemn fear of the frowns of a bigot who has been dead and rotten above a thousand years, than of the living despot whose frown would cost them their livesÂ…The ignorance, superstitious tradition and civil and religious tyranny, which depress the human mind here, exclude improvement of every kindÂ…

...

Joshua London concludes his engrossing, carefully researched, and intellectually honest account of the Barbary wars with this insightful analysis:

During the war with Tripoli, the United States began to test William EatonÂ’s hypothesis that fighting back and protecting the national honor and national interest with force was the best way to end Barbary piracy. Just at the moment of triumph, however, President Thomas Jefferson wavered and settled on the side of expediency. JeffersonÂ’s lack of resolve left American interests unguarded, and once again American maritime trade felt the Barbary terror. By 1816, however, the United States finally provded that William Eaton was right. This success ignited the imagination of the Old World powers to rise up against the Barbary pirates.

Hugh Fitzgerald at Jihadwatch.org has a companion piece, with similar quotes but with some additional material. John Quincy Adams, it seems, was not given to "Religion of Peace" apologism:

Â….he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankindÂ…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of GodÂ…the faithful follower of the prophet may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

Think John Kerry will be quoting those genuine quotes from Jefferson, Madison, and John Quincy Adams?

Of course not. But then, neither will George Bush, either.

Fitzgerald writes:

As one reads and ponders these remarks by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, one is struck by the self-assurance that they represent civilization, and that Islam and its representatives did not, and it would have been ludicrous to pretend otherwise. Islam did not change between 1786 or 1805 or 1830 and today. The doctrine of Jihad did not change. The Qur’an was not a different Qur’an; the Hadith were not differently ranked from the way muhaddithin had ranked them, according to various levels of authenticity, nearly a thousand years before. If anything, the forces of Islam were far weaker then, and far less able, therefore, to conduct Jihad. The only instrument available was military, and in military matters the Muslims were hopelessly surpassed by the technology of a much more advanced civilization – more advanced in every possible way. So what happened? How is it that today no Western leader can bring himself to write about Islam as Jefferson, Adams, John Quincy Adams, or even in modern times, as Churchill did in The River War?

"Civilization" and "progress" happened, and that's not always a good thing.

If a civilization is to survive in the face of perpetual attacks and outrages, it must have some degree of confidence in itself. We generally mark it as "progress" when we doubt ourselves, when we question our own assumptions and dogmas and subjective views; but there is a time for questioning, and a time to put questions aside. Not put them aside forever; but put the "question yourself" imperative decidedly lower on our civilizational list of priorities.

The Muslim jihadists don't question themselves at all. They believe, without question, that they have the right to murder, rape, maim, and enslave anyone who is an infidel. That is barbarism.

But to do nothing but question one's own actions and motives in the face of such an implacable and merciless enemy isn't "progress," it's stupidity, moral cowardice, and suicide.

The definition of a liberal, in foreign policy, is someone who won't take his own side in a fight. I'm afraid we don't have that luxury any more.

Thanks to JackM. of Letters from Desolation Row for the first article. (BTW, JackM. is answering all and sundry questions you may have.)

Thanks to Craig for the second one.

Not To Undermine A Serious Point With a Non-Serious Quote, But...

"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind... Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph."

Okay, that's a Conan quote, from my favorite Conan story, Beyond the Black River. It also appears, however, in Stuff Jefferson Said After Reading An Issue of Weird Tales, Vol. 1.

I guess it's pretty silly to quote Conan in this context. But there are advantages to barbarism -- energy, cultural confidence (even when that confidence far exceeds what a culture has, objectively, to be confident about), and a ruthlessness from which the forces of civilization naturally flinch.

Civilization is important.

But if a civilization is to survive, it must not grow so decadent, so vain in exulting its own sophistication, that it can view its own survival in "objective" terms that do not favor itself over the enemy.

At some point, a civilization needs to embrace some of the virtues of barbarism when it is faced with barbaric attacks. Otherwise, it will perish, no matter how much stronger or more advanced it may appear on paper, for a simple lack of willpower enough to actually bother saving itself.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (31)
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Female journalist Atwar Bahjat brutally murdered in videotaped murder-porn, in Iraq.

This word "peace" you keep using. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Meanwhile, more moderate members of the Religion of Peace merely arrest a blogger in Egypt.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (27)
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They claim they "estimate" that FoxNews gave Bush an additional 10,000 votes in Florida, far exceeding his 530+ victory there.

First reaction: What liberal drivel.

Second reaction: Well, they do have a point. Of course, a fair and balanced network, if it is effective at all, must, to some extent, level the playing field and add voters to the column of the candidate disfavored by the MSM.

Third reaction: They do have a point, but but what liberal drivel. Their study does not even bother to estimate how many more votes Gore won in Florida (or the rest of the nation) due to the rest of the MSM's favoritism of him.

Yes, Fox News helped Bush garner some votes. (As did the WSJ's editorial page and the minority of local newspapers that were favorable towards Bush.) But certainly the liberal outlets gave Gore a hell of a lot more votes, and yet that doesn't seem worthy of examination.

Because, you know-- you can only be partisan from the right. If you seem to be in favor of Gore with your story selection, emphasis, and editorializing, that's not really a partisan media advocating for Gore; that's just common sense.

So the study is really an examination of how FoxNews' irrational partisanship trumped the MSM's plain-old horse sense.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (21)
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Which is for the best, I think.

Reposting some Cool Facts About Mike:

* Mike is dumber than a sack of retards.

* Mike is known to have satisfied thousands of women, simply by never meeting them. "I'll never know what I missed out on," said one woman calling herself "Claire." "And I think it's better for both of us that way."

* Mike still wonders why they built a near-identical version of the Statue of Liberty on The Planet of the Apes. He considers this a "continuity error" that almost ruins the film. "It just doesn't make sense," he says, "that Apes, who hate humans, would build a statue of a human. And it just strains credibility it looks so much like our own Statute of Liberty." He also doesn't understand why Darth Vader had to lie and shit about being Luke's father.

* Mike is sexually aroused by Optimus Prime, and is certain he has a secret third transformation into the shape of a "Magic Hat" vibrator.

* On Prom Night, Mike announced to his date that he wanted to "make love to [her] so badly..." He was true to his word, and, baffled by female sexual geography, wound up copulating with her armpit.

* His date was his mentally-challenged first cousin Jennifer, or "Jemfahhh," as she calls herself. Her prom dress consisted of a burlap sack adorned with shiny red star-stickers and severed heads from her Strawberry Shortcake dolls who were "bad" that day, and needed to be "punished."

* Mike was sexually confused by the rape scene in Deliverance as a young child, and to this day still sports (smallish) erections when he watches the Superman movies. When he orgasms, he's prone to cry out, "O.. o... o... OTISVILLE!"

* Mike spends upwards of sixteen hours a day watching the knife-vendors on cable infomercials. He has a collection of three thousand "tactical folders" and Plasti-Grip Bowies, as well as the prize of his collection, a limited-edition replica three-bladed rocket-sword from The Sword and the Sorceror, signed by the film's star Lee Horsely's business manager Hiram Steinwitz. He's pretty sure that if "the shit ever goes down," he can do some "serious shit" with his Gilette Mach 3 version of a longsword.

* Mike's favorite websites are the Daily Kos, Eschaton, Fire Dog Lake Blog, and SecretSausage.com. He posts on the first three as "Mike the Liberal Avenger" and on the last as "Curious in Poughkipsie."

* Mike believes the Monkees left "clues" in their albums and shows that Peter Tork had been killed at one point and replaced by a double. "Last Train to Clarksville explains it all," he says confidently. "The 'train' is a conveyer belt, and 'Clarksville' is the crematorium at the Clarksville Funeral Home." He has detailed this theory on his own website -- PeterTorkIsDead.net -- as well as under the name "Curious in Poughkipsie" on SecretSausage.com.

* When Mike plays D&D, he always wants to play a half-gnome, half-elf. 'Nuff said.

* The closest Mike has ever come to a female gentalia was an art-history slide-show about Georgia O'Keefe. He found her paintings "chilling, like something out of an H.R. Geiger nightmare."

More cool facts about Mike in the comments here and of course here.

Because Lionel Ritchie Says It So Well: The "Goodbye Medley," which is just Say You, Say Me with special guest vocals by Pat O'Brien, Paul Anka, a cowbell, and the Lightning Bolt geek.

Content warning. But I thought we should solemnize the occasion with a farewell song. [Actually, the goodbye theme proper starts at around 2:02 or 2:03. Before that is a long medley of Paul Anka songs.]

[Thanks to See-Dubya for the mash-up.]

Countdown To Banning: No, he hasn't been banned yet. I figured I'd give him the chance to spam Bush's poll numbers for the rest of the day.

The magical moment should happen around 12:01 AM Eastern Time. Or thereabouts.

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (44)
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Free speech and all that, but there is a point at which a troll becomes tiresome, and makes a blog less enjoyable.

Hey, people come here mostly for fun and to chat and to exchange jokes and such, and having a permanent poop in the punchbowl sort of ruins that.

So, I'm thinking of s-canning Mike. Thoughts?

I'm not going to justify it on grounds of off-topic posting, or abuse, etc. Yeah, he does all that kind of crap, but that kind of justification is for liberals, who can never admit that they're acting in less than perfect angelic accordance with some higher objective standard.

Nah, I'm going to just admit the reason for his banning, if I do ban him, is that he's a dickhead, he's immature, he's tedious, and I really don't like him. I'd be acting out of, get this, self-interest. I want this blog to be fun, and if Mike is just too gratingly stupid to permit fun, then it's in my personal, selfish, mercenary interest to ban him.

Arbitrary. Capricious. Completely subjective. Utterly self-serving.

The way Dick Cheney would want it.

And that's just the f'n' way it is.

Let me know.

I have a feeling I know what the answer will be, so Mike, you might want to start preparing a valedictory.

PS, Mike: I've notified my attorneys already about this legally perilous step I might be taking. They've advised me that you could win millions of dollars against me, based on the punitive damages awarded in Rosenberg v. All the people you represent and work with, but I'm willing to take that chance.

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (99)
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Meant to post about this last night, but got wrapped up in Wold Newton.

But other people wrote about it.

There seems to be a pattern here. The NYT can't rouse itself to say anything good about the American military, but it sure comes a-runnin' to defend terrorist killer Zarqawi's martial honor, doesn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 06:40 PM | Comments (55)
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Background: Ray McGovern, identified only as a "former CIA official" by the MSM, has some "interesting theories," as it turns out. He claims, as Islamist nutbags do, that an Israeli company had prior warning of 9/11 and that's why Jews didn't show up for work that day, as lunatic poet Amiri Baraka claims. (PS, they did show up for work, idiot.)

The MSM doesn't report that, ever.

Now, Andrew Sullivan claimed that Ray McGovern was NOT a "crazed lefty" and therefore his criticisms of Rumsfeld should be taken quite seriously. How did Sullivan not know that he was in fact a "crazed lefty"? Because he doesn't read conservative blogs or newsorganizations anymore; he now relies on Kos, Josh Marshall, Atrios, etc., for his information.

So: Excitable Andrew has been caught in another big error.

Can he just admit this? Not quite. He does confess the factual error but then insists his larger point was still bang-on correct-- that Ray McGovern should be listened to seriously, despite his rank anti-semitism and conspiracy-theorist lunacies.

How can he square that circle? Well, if he can't blame himself, obviously he can still blame Bush:

It seems my description of him as not being a "crazed lefty" was wrong on at least one count. But then this administration has turned many previously sane, moderate people into those who want to scream at the dishonesty and incompetence of their own government.

Ah. He was sane, but Bush drove him bananas.

Perhaps this is Excitable Andy's way of making a desperate cry for help. Has Saint Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache been driven crazy by Moby Bush as well?

What interests me is that no one has denied that McGovern was indeed the man who used to brief the president's own father on intelligence...

Of course that interests you, you narcissitic little shitheel; that's the one goddamn thing you got right, so plainly that is the most important datum in your nonsensical rant, as far as you're concerned.

The fact that you called him no "crazed lefty"? That doesn't interest Sullivan. Only that which furthers (or at least does not diminish) Sullivan's ego interests Sullivan.

What a dishonest, narcissistic jagoff.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (50)
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No solid evidence, the article says, that Goss actually attended, except that he shares a fondness for poker and cigars. And whether there or not, there's no evidence he did anything more criminal than call a raise with king-nine offsuit.

That is fair, though, I think. It's a reasonable guess, given the sudden resignation. Not that he did anything wrong, necessarily, but that he was there, at least sometimes, and that causes political problems.

I note, however, the media has yet to investiage the stronger links between Mary McCarthy, Richard Clarke, anti-semitic conspiracy peddler Roy McGovern, and the rest of the neoliberal peace-in-our-time brigades in the CIA.

And I wonder if the liberal cabal of leakers, determined to continue to fight for their right to oppose the government they're supposed to be serving, helped the Justice Department along with their inquiries. Counterattack?

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (171)
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When I was a kid, I found a book in the detective section of the library -- I think about pulp hero Doc Savage -- that had a strange geneology printed on the flypaper. It was lifted from sci-fi writer Philip Jose Farmer, who'd written a couple of fictitious biographies, one for Tarzan, the other for Doc Savage.

He postulated that in 1795 a strange meteor struck in Wold Newton, England, irradiating eighteen passers-by in two coaches with weird energies. The meteor strike affected everyone in those coaches, as well as all their unborn progeny for decades to come, causing them to have high levels of intelligence and strength and other gifts.

Long story short: he constructed a "Wold Newton" family tree of all those affected by the meteor strike, and their descendants, and it turns out that most of the great characters of pulp and detective fiction are closely related, all descended from those original 18 present at the Wold Newton meteor strike.

Doc Savage, The Shadow, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarity, the Green Hornet, the Lone Ranger, Tarzan, Nero Wolfe, Dracula, Van Helsing, Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, Allen Quartermain and even James Bond and Batman are close cousins of each other, all basically low-level superheroes due to the same cosmic blast. And of course John Carter of Mars, the Continental Op, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Travis McGee, and Lew Archer.

It's kind of a cool idea, at least to a twelve year old. Some links make sense; The Lone Ranger (John Reid) and the Green Hornet (Britt Reid) share a last name, so they're grandfather-grandson. The Shadow's squeeze, Margo Lane, is obviously the sister of Superman's belle, Lois. Etc.

Other links are, of course, just dopey.

I saw the idea again mentioned in a website about The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (the comic book); apparently Alan Moore is a fan of the theory, and incorporated subtle nods to the Wold Newton family tree in his books about the characters. He invented a character named "Campion Bond," for example, in his comic book, one of the ancestors, it seems, of James Bond.

Anyway, cruising the Internet last night, I came across this goofy geneology for the third time. And apparently it's a cool idea to a lot of adults, too, who really should be doing better things with their time. But they've taken Farmer's idea and basically attempted to link virtually every fictitious hero to the Wold Newton strike, from James West and Artemis Gordon of The Wild, Wild West to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Conan to, um, Michael Knight, aka, The Knight Rider.

Goofy stuff. There's a big circle of "Wold Newton geneologists" who crank out long essays attempting to link every heroic character you can think of, and furthermore ret-con their chronologies, so that everything is supposed to fit in the "Newtonverse" with as few contradictions as possible.

Basically, it's a big waste of time, although an occasionally fun one. I got sucked in for a couple of hours last night, and was surprised to learn that Victor Von Frankenstein had raped (?) an assistant's finance named Anna Spengler, who would one day have a great-great-great-granchild named Egon Spengler, who operated with a team of paranormal eliminators called The Ghostbusters.

See? It's GOOFY. And there are maybe a hundred or more essays about this by dozens of writers making connections and referring back to eachother's "discoveries' as if it's an academic discipline. But it's kind of fun, if you like, as most twelve-year-olds due, the "crossover" story where Superman teams up with Batman, or Batman teams up with Sherlock Holmes. I think they need to put the breaks on trying to link everyone, no matter how lame; why the short-lived 1970's series The Invisible Man had to be linked into this I have no good idea. No one remembers it, and no one liked it at the time; why bother bringing in lame characters?

And of course no geekiness is complete without linking in Star Trek. Yes, indeed, Spock traces his human parentage to none other than Sherlock Holmes, of course.

I felt dirty reading it. I took the night off from porn, but wound up indulging in something far less healthy. That's how geeky it all is.

A Link... I remember that Roger Zelazny said that his entire Chronicles of Amber series was just based on an idea of Philip Jose Farmer's. I wonder if he was referring to the Wold Newton thing, given that the Chronicles of Amber are all about a large family of superheroes all gifted by the same background event. (In Zelazny, the fact that they're all from another dimension and have walked the power-bestowing "Pattern.")

Bond And Philip Marlowe Are Related, Of Course: At least in real life. Ian Fleming's Bond series was going nowhere, with indifferent sales, and he decided to kill Bond off. Fleming's friend, Raymond Chandler, urged him not to do so, feeling the character had a lot of potential, and just needed to find his audience.

From Russia, With Love ends, strangely, with Bond apparently (but not definitely) killed by Rosa Klubb's poison-dagger-shoes; I think this is where Fleming decided to half-take Chandler's advice and leave Bond's fate vague. If the book sold well, Bond would be given a reprieve; if it went nowhere, well, he died in that hotel room.

Of course, soon after, John F. Kennedy mentioned that one of the books he was reading was From Russia, With Love, thus skyrocketing that book (and the books that came before it) on to the best seller lists, and ultimately getting a pair of producers interested in making films about Bond.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (29)
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