10% of that countries population, according to the not-at-all-likely-to-inspire-additional-Islamic-animus-named-Professor, Raphael Israeli.

See, Professor Israeli, citing the land of burning Peugeots, has apparently quantified this figure. Here is the Professor:

"Where there are large Muslim populations who are prepared to use violence you are in trouble. If there is only 1 or 2 per cent they don't dare to do it - they don't have the backing of big communities. They know they are drowned in the environment of non-Muslims and are better behaved."

In Australia, Muslims account for about 1.5 per cent of the population.

Professor Israeli said that in France, which has the highest proportion of Muslims in Europe at about 10 per cent, it was already too late. There were regions even the police were scared to enter, and militant Muslims were changing the country's political, economic and cultural fabric, and demanding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies.

"French people say they are strangers in their own country. This is a point of no return.

"If you are on a collision course, what can you do? You can't put them all in prison, and anyway they are not all violent. You can't send them all back. You are really in trouble. It's irreversible."

This actually relates to something that has bothered me since the news broke about the possibility of "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" in...Salt Lake City.

I mean, the Muslim population of Salt Lake City could probably hold prayer meetings inside a phone booth. And when you stand out as different, isnt it natural to feel that your actions are magnified or that more "eyes" are on you all the time?

So, wouldn't that serve to limit your actions? After all, it must be harder to feel you could get away with something if you also feel everyone is watching you.

So how emboldened must jihadist Muslims in, say, Dearborn, Michigan or in huge population centers like New York City, feel? In those cities they readily mix in and become "invisible" as their numbers are large enough to make their existence part of the normal backdrop of everyday life. And if they are comfortable, and emboldened, how daring might their plots be?

After all, as the Professor says:

"The trains in London and Madrid were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists but by Muslims, so it is them we have to beware," he said.

Indeed.

You say you want to hear more from Professor Israeli? I live to serve.

Professor Israeli, an expert on Islamic history from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has been brought to Australia by the Shalom Institute of the University of NSW. The Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council is co-hosting many of his activities.

He said Muslim immigrants had a reputation for manipulating the values of Western countries, taking advantage of their hospitality and tolerance.

"Greeks or Italians or Jews don't use violence. There is no Italian or Jewish Hilaly [a reference to the controversial cleric Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly of Lakemba mosque]. Why?"

Well, for starters, the Greeks don't use violence (unless a vicious slap fight counts) because they are all gay. Tim Hardaway told me that. The Italians? Well, sure...if the Mafia existed, the Mafia might do some bad things. If it existed. The Jews? Oy, don't get me started, what with their blood drinking and their control of the media and their cut-throat diamond business.

Besides, Sully implies that Pope Benedict XVI is a controversial Catholic cleric. Hasn't Israeli gotten an "Important Action Alert" about this?

All kidding aside, the Professor has an important point underneath all this rather un-PC speak. It's a question of assimilation. The groups that he singles out have managed the trick of assimilating into the mainstream of the cultures they joined, while also retaining the traits that make them unique.

With radical Muslims, however, this feat seems increasingly impossible. When immigrants to a place like Canada can start demanding that Sharia be the governing law, or when Canadian officials have to start putting out the word (as has happened recently) that stoning women is not an acceptable form of punishment in Canada, it shows that not only do many Muslims not want to assimilate, their view of assimilation is "join our ways or die".

They are basically the Borg, if the Borg were still stuck in the 11th Century.

So how does one deal with the Borg?

Professor Israeli said that in Australia a few imams had preached violence. "You should not let fundamentalist imams come here. Screen them 1000 times before they are admitted, and after they are admitted screen what they say in the mosque."

I'd call that a starting point for the Aussies. You go after the body by killing the head, after all, and there can be little question that Mosques and Madrassas are often the center of Jihadist "calls to action" and organization.

Anyway, this article made me curious as to what the US population of Muslims was in percentage terms. I have no idea what sort of methodology (if any) Israeli used to come up with his "10%" figure, but lets assume that there is, in reality, a "tipping point" number, and that Israeli may have actually come within a point or two either way of expressing it.

Wikipedia has a fascinating demographic page here. It states that among those people who express a religious preference, the Muslim population of the United States is currently at 0.6%, but that it has increased 109% since 1990.

Oh...and the 1.5% Muslim population in Australia? That's roughly equal to the proportion of Latter Day Saints in the United States.

The closest number to 10%?

Methodists. At 7.2%.

But as Professor Israeli would remind us, they don't blow up trains.

Posted by: Jack M. at 06:46 AM | Comments (224)
Post contains 963 words, total size 6 kb.

Hi kids.

If you're having trouble reaching some of the other mu.nu sites, it's because our hosting provider is doing some maintenance on their power systems. They did notify me, but I forgot about it until about half an hour before it was due to happen.

Only one of our servers affected... but it's the one with most of the blogs on it.

It should be back online soon.

Update: Real soon... Any time now...

Update: We have a pulse!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:49 AM | Comments (25)
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Not with a whimper...

The Baghdad neighborhoods targeted by the Americans — Shaab, Ur and Baida — lie north of the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, which had been off-limits until Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lifted his protection of the notorious Mahdi Army, the largest Shiite militia.

Last year, U.S. soldiers came under intense sniper fire in those neighborhoods from Mahdi Army militiamen who were expanding into Shiite areas outside Sadr City.

This time, however, Iraqis watched in curiosity as some 2,500-3,000 troops — or an entire Stryker brigade — fanned out in the area, going house-to-house looking for weapons or suspected militia fighters as part of what it called "Operation Law and Order."

The increased security measures drew a mixed response from Iraqis — some angry over the inconvenience, others embracing any effort to stop the rampant violence.

"My friends and I who are the old women of the neighborhood went to the soldiers and welcomed them and prayed that God would help them to defeat the terrorists," said Um Sabah of the Mashtaal area in eastern Baghdad. "Although, the presence of army and vehicles is not very comfortable, we welcome it because it is for the sake of Iraq."

There was little if any resistance. Soldiers even teased one young girl about her taste in music after they found her doing homework on a couch, wearing white and pink socks with a poster of Shakira on the wall.

...

Staff Sgt. Michael James, 32, of Chillicothe, Mo., said the area in northeastern Baghdad had been targeted before but not in such force.

"This is the final clearing. We're trying to hit all the major hotspots. I don't think it has ever been cleared as fully as it will be today," said James, of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

James said he wasn't surprised that the troops did find more as they hunkered down in a so-called Joint Security Station in the area for the night.

"It's never clear. These guys are going to have safe-houses all over the place. Whenever we come into one area, I'm sure they just move on," he said. "Just our presence alone is enough to push the bad guys out. They're not stupid enough to fight an entire battalion, because they will lose."

...but a bang:

A NATO airstrike early Wednesday destroyed a compound housing a Taliban leader blamed for a wave of violence across southern Afghanistan, killing him and at least 10 others, NATO said.

NATO said the slain Taliban chief was linked to an uprising in the nearby town of Musa Qala, which the Taliban overran Feb. 1, and an attack Tuesday against a dam in nearby Kajaki.

"We have removed yet another Taliban enemy leader who will no longer threaten the peace and security of the Afghan people and their future," said Lt. Col. Angela Billings, a spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The airstrike, which hit a compound in a small village outside Musa Qala, killed 11 Taliban fighters, NATO said.

Provincial Police Chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail said nine fighters were killed. Wali Mohammad, a Musa Qala resident, said by telephone that a total of 20 people were killed in the strike. There was no way to independently verify the number at the remote site.

Malakhail said he had no reports of civilian casualties, but Abdul Ali, a tribal elder, said some family members who lived at the compound were also killed. But NATO said there was no evidence that any civilians had died, and that observers saw the bodies of 11 "military-age males" pulled out of the compound, but no women or children.

Posted by: Ace at 01:52 AM | Comments (12)
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Just One Minute is having fun covering the Scooter Libby trial, but he seems to have the most fun pointing out the egregious errors about the most basic fundamentals of the case committed on a daily basis by the NYT's team of crack incompetents.

This is very basic stuff here, he sighs, after correcting, again, the Timesmen's J-school certified butchery of basic facts and background of the case.

Oh -- and I'm not talking about contentious stuff like whether Saddam Hussein had WMD's or ties to terrorists. I mean the basic chronology of the case that everyone, except the NYT's experts, seems to agree upon.

The Times super-duper experts do possess, however, the virtue of holding on to a child's magical capacity to be surprised by sheer wondrousness of the world, for example, confessing "surprise," as they say, at learning obscure facts known only by an eldritch elect who've mastered the arcane search device called "Google."

In fact, quite a few people in the media appear to be watching an Alternate Reality Trial according to Maguire, Murray Waas, for example, calling it curious that certain facts weren't asked about by lawyers when in fact those facts were asked about. Stuff like that.

A lot of the media seems to have been absent the day they taught journalism in journalism school.

What I like most about Maguire's coverage is that it tests my long-standing theory that just about any decent blogger (or any halfway bright American who can write a coherent sentence) could, with very little prep, step in and do the media's scary-hard job of writin' down shit that other people say as well as the media experts can.

So, we have here media experts and bloggers covering the exact same event at the exact same time.

Funny how it's the blogger who manages to not miss entire lines of questioning and at least is able to bluff a rough working knowlege of the prosecution's case.

Something Waas and the NYT's subatomic fissionists are having some difficulty with, despite those vaunted multiple layers of painstaking fact-checking editorial oversight.

Oh, PS: Libby probably walks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 AM | Comments (9)
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Mary Katherine Ham is confused: But the Group of 88 said that their crusade was just about protecting innocent women, right?

Strangely, the fraternity has not been shut down by the university in advance of a trial, and the university says further it will wait for the police to wrap up their investigation before beginning their own.

I guess they've just learned from past mistakes, right?

Compare this discription of the alleged rapist from The Chronicle:

The alleged victim told police she was raped in the bathroom by a black man in his late teens or early 20s, 6-foot-1 and wearing a black do-rag, gray sweatshirt and jeans, according to a DPD statement released Sunday.

...with this description from the Duke-Lacrosse-Rape hyping News & Observer:

Police had not charged anyone but released a description of a suspect. The man is described as being in his late teens or early 20s, about 6-foot-1 and wearing a black do-rag, a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, according to a police news release.

Notice a word that's oddly gone missing from the police's news release?

I just hope the dear "victim" in last year's case hasn't made things harder for this girl if, in fact, her story is true.

Of course it has, unfortunately. All women charging rape have had their lives made more difficult by The Heroic Stripper of Durham. And by Nifong, of course: It's a prosecutor's job to screen out absurd claims before they go further into the arrest and trial process.

And there will, sadly, be some racial payback here, too, if past patterns hold.

By the way? Those pot-banging protestors who did so much to fast-track the Duke Lacrosse players towards arrest?

Now imagine they're white, as Matthew McConnahey says. As they almost all are, a motely assortment of professional protestors and/or permanent, lifetime "students" majoring in chasing undergrad tail into their mid-fifties.

Just pointing that out for some racial balance, not to suggest they betrayed their race or anything. (I have to announce the obvious like that otherwise stupid leftwing blogs will make accusations along those lines.) I always figured it was the black community that stirred the pot on this initially; nope, it seems stupid white liberals took the initiative.

Bad guys all around. Stupidity has no race, nor cowardice, nor corruption, though they all do seem to gravitate towards a particular politics.

Shock! Mike Nifong took over the Duke No-Rape investigation when it could benefit him politically.

So has he asked to take over this investigation, which cannot benefit him politically?

Oddly enough, the answer is no -- this time around, he's willing to let his cops do their jobs and stuff.

So I guess just everyone around is learning from past "errors."

Oh well! That's why God gave pencils erasers!

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 AM | Comments (14)
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Pretty good rant. Worth reading, even if you don't care about the subject (i.e., how everyone connected with Gizmodo is a total fucking jerkoff).

Consumer electronics are a joke. It's everyone's fault but mine. You assholes.

These guys want me to write a weekly column, but I hate consumer electronics, I hate marketing, and I hate you people, because you're all so dumb. If you're lucky and I need the money, I will.

I gave up two years of my life writing about gadgets for this site. ...

And you guys just ate it up. Kept buying shitty phones and broken media devices green and dripping with DRM. You broke the site, clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon, to read the latest announcements of the most trivial jerk-off products, completely ignoring the stories about technology actually making a difference to real human beings, because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket to impress your friends and make you forget for just a few minutes, blood coursing as you tremblingly cut through the blister pack, that your life is utterly void of any lasting purpose.

...

You want to know the punchline? The average Joe that makes up the market is smarter than you saps. The market-at-large waits until a clear leader emerges, then takes a modest plunge. You may think you're making up the "bleeding edge" of "gadget pimpatude" but you're really just a loose confederation of marks the consumer electronics industry uses as free market research and easy money.

...

While we're on the subject of your torpid, irresponsible copy, stop calling stuff "*tastic." Especially "geektastic," your slackest-jawed portmanteau. Would you drop that bon mot to a woman you were trying to hit on in real life? Of course you would, because I know you guys, and you're dorks.

A commenter pointed me to that, but it was so long ago I forget who.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 AM | Comments (14)
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Dated, but I liked this Apprentice parody I did, with The Donald grilling prominent Democrats about who should be fired for losing "the task" of winning the 2004 election.

What I realized in writing this was that there were a couple of parts to a sketch. The premise -- obviously, you need that. You need a basic framework, an idea, that the jokes flow from.

But just as important as the premise is what I think of as "the tweak" -- the random, unexpected gag. The premise is crucial, but most of the jokes that flow from it are pretty obvious. It's the stuff that comes from the tweak that produces genuine surprises. And in this Trump parodies, it was always the tweak stuff that I had the most fun with, that actually had me laughing.

I've shelved a lot of premises because I couldn't think of a decent tweak to them to balance out the obvious stuff with some unexpected gags.

Anyway, my problem with this FoxNews show is that there's no tweak I see in any of the cuts. The premise? Well, it's conservatives delivering liberal-bashing gags. The tweak? Non-existent. The targets are obvious; so are the means of bashing them. Nowhere along the way is there something that isn't as thuddingly expected and repetitive as a jackhammer tearing up the street under your windown at 6:30 AM.

Anyway, sorry to be all Professor of Comedy on you guys, as Howard Stern used to call Chevy Chase's pontifications about humor.

No Tweak Here: This James Bond parody is okay. I wrote it the day after the 7/7 London Bombings, and I guess my primary interest was making a point, not making laughs.

Still, there's no tweak in this, and the jokes pretty much proceed predictably from the premise. I like some of the jokes, but there's really nothing surprising in the bit. If anyone else had the premise, they would have written a very similar sketch -- because it's all implicit from the premise.

There's just nothing unexpected that I can point to and say, "There, that's just a random bit of humor that is wholly independent from the premise" that would differentiate my version of the Bond spoof from anyone else's.

Another Trump Parody: Still funny in parts, but here you see the problem with trying to basically re-write a sketch according to an old formula.

Freepers Hate New Fox "Comedy" Show: I had expected them to like it more, because, well, a lot of the stuff commenters claimed was hilarious wasn't really all that funny. Like Dennis Miller appearances on Leno -- often amusing, kind of witty, but usually not hilarious. Overstating the humor value of a bit just because it was right-leaning.

So I figured they'd be more charitable about the new Fox show than others.

Boy, was I wrong. They hate it. And they also seem to find FoxNews increasingly... embarassing. Mostly they're bothered by the celebrity fluffiness of the channel lately.

I think FoxNews might have hit the period of "hubris" and "decadence" in the rise-and-fall trajectory. Which would be a shame, because damn, I really used to be a huge fan.

And they could get me back, too, if they laid off the embarassingly pandering right-wing red-meat stuff. Yes, I want to be pandered to, as anyone does. I just don't want it to be so obvious that I feel dirty about it all.

And they could maybe focus more on actual news and less on crap like Anna Nicole Smith's death. Isn't that what Greta is for? Isn't an hour a day enough for in-depth coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's preliminary inquest?

Anyway, back to this show. I'm now trying to fight the opinion that seems to be gripping everyone that the show is hiddeously bad, though I was an early adopter of that position myself.

The show is bad, but there's a snowball effect going on where the show has gone from merely amateurish and hack to a blasphemous affront to the laws of God and man. I'm serious: It sucks, but it only sucks about 30% more than Jon Stewart. And I feel kind of bad about being part of an Internet mob that's now pretty much smashing down Joel Surnow's doors waving pitchforks and torches and screaming "The Abomination must die!"

At any rate, this has got to be one of the most disasterous attempts at generating Internet buzz in quite a while. The show has gone from being tepidly anticipated to being blamed for Old Yeller's rabies. He got that from a wolf, you know. None of the writers of this show were anywhere near him.

Two benefits, though: 1, lowered expections (like, subterraneanly lowered), and 2, big ratings for the deput. This is now appointment-viewing, because so many are anticipating the Superbowl of Vile.

But: Is a show that is obviously doomed to failure worth tarnishing FoxNews' reputation further?

Not only is this an obviously, unabashedly rightwing show (belying FoxNews' fair and balanced motto), not only is it an (alleged) entertainment show (belying the claim that FoxNews is, well, a news channel), but it's laughably inept -- piercing the we-can't-do-any-wrong-even-if-we-try-to-screw-up aura of success FoxNews has enjoyed for six or seven years now.

Is it worth it? Is one weekly comedy show, airing for a half hour, worth the potential damage to the brand as a whole?

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 PM | Comments (30)
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And that's the actual quote. But there's so much more.

The five time All Star was asked how he would deal with a gay teammate.

"First of all I wouldn't want him on my team," said Hardaway. "Second of all, if he was on my team I would really distance myself from him because I don't think that's right and I don't think he should be in the locker room when we're in the locker room."

Le Batard took Hardaway to task, pointing out that his comments were 'flatly homophobic' and bigoted, but that only seemed to stir up the former point guard.

"Well, you know, I hate gay people," Hardaway said in response to Le Batard. "I let it be known I don't like gay people. I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic. It shouldn't be in the world, in the United States, I don't like it."

Okay, homophobia is bad, but it exists.

The interesting thing here is that the liberals' thirty year Tolerance Project has been applied only to whites and particularly straight white males. Only these folks get mau-maued with charges of hatred.

By and large. There are exceptions here and there.

And the liberal Coalition of the Oppressed has sort of kept itself together by fixating its collective ire on the enemy -- Straight White Males.

Blacks have been given a pass. There was an incident in the NBA about ten years ago when some New York Knicks said, basically, that anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is going to Hell. Including Jews. And that produced a small brouhaha.

(Christians, you see, aren't allowed to say what just about every other religious believer can say, i.e., "My religion is the correct one and God will reward me for following it." Whites have been browbeaten a bit into accepting this -- that such statements are impolitic, impolite, and perhaps even "hateful" -- but not blacks.)

And the players didn't apologize much for it, because they didn't think they'd done anything wrong. Blacks have not been relentless instructed to be "sensitive" to other cultures, religions, races and lifestyles for thirty years now.

The liberal PC cops don't dare imposing their own rules on their political bretheren for fear of being told to fuck off, and alienating members of the coalition. These are weapons to be used against one's enemies, not against one's allies.

But that political calculation comes at a price. Because it wasn't a prominent white guy questioning whether Joe Lieberman could put aside his Jewish dual-loyalties enough to serve as Vice President -- it was a local NAACP chapter head, a black guy. And now a black guy saying, without any embarassment whatsoever, that he hates gays.

The liberals are going to have to knock Hardaway around a bit (as he should be), but they can't be relishing the prospect of doing so. Minorities -- members of the Coaltion -- are without sin and incapable of biogotry and hatred, the Standard Model claims. College courses preach that blacks can't be guilty of such things, even in theory.

It's really about time that those who profess to be so concerned with hatred began policing their own political confreres for the sins they're so eager to extirpate in those outside the Coalition.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 PM | Comments (84)
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I guess it's the topic of the day.

It's.. okay. But celebrity cameos tend to be okay. The actual jokes... well, meh. I liked Ann Coulter's self-spoof at the end. Which is what this show seems to be lacking -- self-spoofing. Maybe too many people wouldn't get it, but I find the best way to poke fun at liberals is to play up/play into the stereotypes so dear to their heart.

At Hot Air, half the commenters say they love it, so who knows, maybe they've figured this thing out right. You don't need everyone to like a book or movie or show; you just need a relatively small minority of the public. Maybe even just a third or quarter of FoxNews' audience. Hey, no one's watching on Sunday anyhow.

The other half hate it. But so what, I guess. Hate is no different than indifference. Either way, you're not watching it.

lorien1973 writes:

Baby Jesus is crying because that was so bad

Good luck to them, I guess. They're doing something different -- presenting a conservative alternative to really bad TV comedy writing, a field dominated thusfar by liberals.

I hope that the show proves that conservatives can write bad TV comedy just as poorly as any of those smarty-pants NYU and Harvard Lampoon goons.

I guess this proves that "clapper" comedy is just as popular on the right as it is on the left. Margaret Cho has been making money off people with absolutely no functioning taste in humor for years, just giving them non-joke jokes that flatter their liberal sensibilities, and garner claps and fake "solidarity laughs" in return.

Stewart too. And Colbert.

Why should liberals be the only ones riding this wonderful let's-pretend-it's-funny-because-they're-making-fun-of-our-ideological-opponents gravy train? It's time to get ours.

Posted by: Ace at 08:17 PM | Comments (53)
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Of course the Muslims are chanting "Death to Valentine's Day!" -- "Death to" is kind of their "gezundheit" -- but the Hindus ain't lovin' it either.

Quite frankly, I don't have a lot of outrage about this.

Everyone hates this holiday. Couples hate the holiday because of the pressures it brings to suddenly "be romantic." Singles hate this holiday because it reminds them they're alone. Liberals hate this holiday as cheesy ersatz corporate invention; conservatives hate it as a phony corporate celebration of hedonism over real, lasting love.

Straights hate it for its overtones as a gay-camp ironic spoof of romance, whereas gays hate it as an exclusionary affirmation of heterosexual love.

Christians hate it as promoting pomiscuity, atheists hate it as venerating a minor Catholic saint, and Hindus and Muslims hate it for spreading Christian idolatry and atheistic materialism.

Hey -- I've got a crazy idea. Maybe we're all right about this one.

Not a goddamned person in the world likes this holiday, except of course for the frigging feminists, who celebrate today as Pooter Emancipation Day.

Suggestion: Given that St. Valentined died a macabre death-by-fire, let's just all agree that we'll keep the holiday, but it will now be a wintertime Halloween, but only a more kick-ass version. Only macabre, scary costumes are allowed, no celebrites, no superheroes, no fairy princesses or that other gay shit.

We could call it, oh, Halloween II. We just need to buy the rights from John Carpenter.

Posted by: Ace at 07:26 PM | Comments (26)
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