CONTEMPT OF TRUTH
My friend Bill Roggio, an Army veteran and Web logger who was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq last fall, was a guest this week on a segment of the CNN show "On the Story." The topic was news coverage from Iraq.
"On the Story" gets even lower ratings than the average CNN show, so there's a question of how representative of American public opinion audience reaction is. But before the segment with Bill began, host Ali Velshi conducted a little poll.
"Give me a show of hands if you have confidence in the news coming out of Iraq," Mr. Velshi asked the studio audience. "It looks like about 30 percent of you."
"Let's see a show of hands of those of you who don't have confidence like (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld says," he asked. "That looks like 90 percent of you."
Mr. Roggio responded by giving the media a D+. "Reporting often is inaccurate, usually lacks context, often aids al Qaeda, and is why Americans like those in the audience have been so misinformed."THE FRENCH DISEASE
On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus departed the Spanish port of Palos at the mouth of the Rio Tinto. After discovering islands he named San Salvador (in the Bahamas), Juana (Cuba), and Hispaniola on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, he returned from his epochal voyage, reaching Palos on March 15, 1493. According to the journal of Spanish physician Ruy Diaz de l'Isla, the pilot of Columbus's ship had contracted a previously unknown disease marked by severe fever and frightful skin eruptions.
The pilot wasn't the only one. By the time Columbus reached Barcelona, several of his sailors had come down with this strange new disease and were treated by the mystified Dr. de l'Isla. Unbeknownst to them, the sailors had acquired the disease through cohabitation with infected native "Indian" women on the discovered islands.
Europe had finally begun to recover from the Black Death of the bubonic plague in the middle 1300's, which had killed fully half of all Europeans. Once again, Europe was ravaged by a plague to become known as morbus gallicus, the French Disease. It would kill one third of the entire population of Europe.
Today we are witnessing the effects of another French Disease on the streets of Paris and on the campuses of dozens of universities throughout France. The social disease of the French Anti-Capitalist Welfare State has obviously caused severe brain damage among French students.
THE OPPORTUNITY OF APOSTASY
The way I look at things, the best news of the week is the story of Abdul Rahman being on trial and facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting from Islam to Christianity.
What a fantastic opportunity to put Sharia Islam on the defensive, make it once again the laughingstock of the world, and start forcing it out of the Dark Ages. The case of Abdul Rahman shines a spotlight on the moral inferiority of Sharia Islam compared to the world's other major religions.
Once again, like the Cartoon Jihad, Islam has demonstrated a mortal vulnerability. The lesson to be learned here is that the key to victory in the War on Islamofascism is to be on the constant search for its vulnerabilities.
THE NIGHTMARE OF METH
If it hasn't already arrived in your community, it will be there soon: the nightmare of addiction to methamphetamine. Supplanting cocaine in drug use, it's much easier and cheaper to make than coke. A "meth lab" requires only simple equipment like bottles and tubing, easily acquired ingredients, and can be set up in a small space in most any building.
Not only is it cheaper than coke, the high the addict gets from meth is far more intense - and thus far more addictive. Meth users get a sudden rush of pleasure lasting several minutes, followed by a euphoric high that continues for up to 12 hours. It leaves cocaine in the dust.
Both cocaine and meth cause the excessive release of the brain chemical or neurotransmitter that controls pleasure called dopamine. Having sex raises dopamine levels in the brain to about 200 units. Cocaine spikes dopamine levels to 350 units. Methamphetamine spikes at 1,250 - more than 12 times the base level of 100.
As Dr. Richard Rawson, associate director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at the UCLA Medical School, notes, "Methamphetamine produces the mother of all dopamine releases."THE 10TH CENTURY AND THE 20TH
When I was an undergraduate at UCLA, my favorite professor was Dr. H. L. Kostanick. He taught political geography. He never used a lectern or notes. Always dressed impeccably in a coat, tie, and sweater vest, he would stand before us, hands in his pockets, and explain the world to us.
Every lecture, no matter about what part of the world, was fascinating. But most memorable of all was his lecture on the Middle East. "Ladies and gentlemen, the most critical thing to understand about conflict in the Middle East," he told us, "is that it is not a conflict between Arab and Jew. It is a conflict between the 10th century and the 20th."
Dr. Kostanick (who was not Jewish - his family was from Macedonia in northern Greece) delivered that lecture in 1965. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw Dr. Wafa Sultan on Al-Jazeera TV.Chapter Twenty-Three: MALINCHE AND MONTEZUMA
When they woke up the next morning, Cortez and Malinali bathed in the freshwater pool in their courtyard, and strolled among the sweet-smelling fruit trees and rose bushes in their palace garden. "My captain," she asked him, "you have chosen this day to meet the Great Montezuma and enter Tenochtitlan. What do you call this day and why have you chosen it?"
"This day is November 8th in the year of Our Lord 1519. There is nothing special about this day - it just happens to be the day we have come here. Why do you ask, my Lady?"
"Because all the people of Tenochtitlan, I have heard, are talking about this day. They went to sleep last night in terror, including Montezuma. For just as you chose to arrive in the land of the Mesheeka in a 1-Reed year, Quetzacoatl's year of return, so now you choose to enter the Mesheeka capital on a 1-Wind day - the one day of the year that bears the sign of Quetzacoatl in his guise of the whirlwind. The whirlwind that brings upheaval and destruction. The whirlwind that brings, the Mesheeka are whispering, the ‘disembowelment of the world'."
"The whirlwind?" Cortez exclaimed with a snap of his head. He stopped, clasped his hand around Malinali's and held them tightly. "Every Christian who reads the Bible knows the story of the prophet Hosea," he told her. "He warned his people of Israel that God would allow them to be conquered for their unfaithfulness to Him. This happened many, many centuries ago[1]. Yet his famous warning seems now to be directed at the Mesheeka:
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: the grain shall have no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: and if it does, strangers shall swallow it up.[2]
"The Mesheeka have sown the wind with their evil. I know I am but a sinful man, not this god they confuse me with. But the One True God acted through Hosea, and these constant coincidences between me and these legends of Quetzacoatl are perhaps saying that He has sent us as the whirlwind which the Mesheeka must reap, that we are the strangers who must swallow up their evil."
Malinali's eyes were wide with wonder as they gazed into those of Cortez. "That is what my father prayed for, that is what I prayed for, my Captain, and that is what I now believe. Let us both pray to the Christian God in thanks for this whirlwind."
MAKING EXCUSES FOR MOSLEM VIOLENCE
On March 3, Mohammed Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old graduate of the University of North Carolina, rented an SUV and drove it into "the Pit," an area between two libraries on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill where students congregate, injuring nine.
Mr. Taheri-azar told police he made the attack "to avenge the deaths of Moslems around the world." He smiled and waved at his arraignment, and told reporters he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."
In Chapel Hill, university officials have refused to characterize Mr. Taheri-azar's assault as either a hate crime or an act of terror. When some students protested the attack, there was a counter protest.
"By calling it religious violence, you are telling people that Moslems are violent," sophomore Johnathon Pourzal complained to the Durham Herald Sun.
Gee, I wonder what would give people that idea?THE WASHINGTON POST’S WARPED VIEW OF IRAN
As part of its relentless campaign to blame all of mankind's misfortunes on George W. Bush, this Tuesday (3/14) the Washington Post unleashed Karl Vick (my candidate for the Walter Duranty Memorial Prize) and David Finkel on American efforts to help Iranians who dare to challenge the mullahs.
In keeping with the paradigm established by Walter Duranty - the New York Times reporter who never found Stalin the least bit objectionable - Vick/Finkel blame Bush for the ongoing savagery of the Islamic republic.
No matter that pro-democracy dissidents have been arrested, tortured, and murdered for 27 long years in Iran. Such news would undermine the whole thrust of the Post's latest effort at agitprop, so we don't hear anything about anti-regime protests, even though they are the true background to all events in contemporary Iran.
NIGERIAN PERSIA
Nigeria is a large country in western Africa, more than twice the size of California with an enormous population of almost 130 million. It is a make-believe country, a colonial construction of the 19th century British cobbling together 250 ethnic groups for the imperial heck of it. The northern half of the place is mostly Moslem, the southern half mostly Christian or animist.
Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world. Bottomlessly, hopelessly corrupt. It is also one of the world's biggest oil producers, pumping out 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd), providing the country's greatest source of revenue. An overwhelming portion of the oil billions are ripped off by government officials and their cronies. The tiniest fraction goes to the people who live where the oil is produced.
That's the Delta region of the Niger, the river after which Nigeria is named. Inhabited by the Christian-animist Ijaw and Ibo tribes, there are almost no roads, schools, hospitals, or employment. It should be no surprise that a full-on armed guerrilla insurgency has emerged among these people - and their target is the oil installations.
Production is currently down 556,000 barrels to below 1.8 million bpd. The pipelines supplying gas to Nigeria's power stations have been blown causing a drastic reduction in national electricity output from 4,500 megawatts to 2,500. Large areas of the country are now experiencing blackouts.
Yesterday (Wednesday 3/16), Nigeria's Power and Steel Minister Liyel Imoke announced that the power blackout will continue "for some time," because repair workers accompanied by military forces "have not been able to access the vandalized areas of the gas pipeline. The situation is beyond our control."
Sounds just like Iran.
GEEK HUMOR
I was sitting at Aroma Café this morning when another geek sat at the table next to me and booted up his laptop. A woman, also a regular with a laptop, sat nearby, and another customer made a joke about Aroma becoming an internet café.
The three of us traded a few geek jokes. There are so many funny computer stories and anecdotes out there, it's a wonder some headliner comedian/comedienne hasn't come up with a related routine.
Something like - "Did you hear the one about the computer programmer who gets shipwrecked on a desert island with a gorgeous blonde?