THE CARTOON RELIGION
By now, everyone is aware of the Great Mohammed Cartoon Fiasco – but you learned about it way back in October in To The Point’s Blasphemous Cartoons. As the controversy gained steam, we talked about it again last month in Standing Up To Moslem Bullies, which noted: The question we need to ask Moslems is: Until you start showing respect and tolerance for our values, religion, and civilization, why should we show any respect and tolerance for yours? Since then, a number of newspapers in Europe have stood up to Moslem bullies and published the cartoons – even the BBC showed them! (All 12 of the original cartoons, plus the original article publishing them in Jyllands-Posten, are here.) It’s interesting that Europeans are rejecting the Moslem bullies, while no US newspaper has so far had the guts to do so. The world’s biggest honorary Euroweenie turned out to be Bill Clinton, who condemned the “totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.” As the fat kid who wore the Big Boy jeans while his mom ran a call-girl service back in Hot Springs, and who is so under-endowed his girlfriends in Arkansas called him Little Willie, he has a pathological compulsion to be popular – even with Islamofascists. So we can dismiss him. For the battle has finally been joined. Who would have guessed the Clash of Civilizations would be comedic? Finally, Islam has picked a fight with the West in which the West will actually fight back, has picked a fight it will lose. Finally, folks are figuring out that Islam has a fatal weak spot: it is so insecure that it can’t take the heat of ridicule.
ARGUMENT AGAINST JACK’S CELEBRATION OF HAMAS’ VICTORY
This is Dennis “The Wizard” Turner’s rebuttal to my Celebrating Hamas of last week. My comments are at the end. ---JW The core of Jack’s celebration is that now Europe and America could no longer delude themselves about the Palestinian’s intentions. Funding, diplomatic support, and pressure on Israel for further concessions would dry up. Hamas’ victory was a week ago Wednesday (1/25). Already the international community’s initial comments are weakening. I will give pertinent extracts from a few articles published just six days later (1/31).
DVD MATH
You know what they say about computers - the minute the newest models come off the assembly line they're already obsolete, because back in the lab they've already developed a prototype two generations ahead of the most advanced commercially available systems. As the old saying goes, "If cars had progressed as fast as computers, we would be driving at 500 MPH in a $25 car that gets 2 million miles per gallon and seats the population of China." This is relevant to many of us who are interested in burning DVDs ...
GOOGLE AND THE CIA
Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Human Rights, is so mad at Google for capitulating to the Chicoms he is going to hold hearings next month on the operating procedures of US Internet companies in China. He can expect to be getting a call from CIA Director Porter Goss politely requesting that he shut up. He’ll tell Smith he can vent for a little while longer, enough to make Google execs sweat and be receptive to the call they’ll be getting from Langley. But as soon as the Google boys turn cooperative, Smith had better turn quiet. Google’s Chicom Collaboration presents a marvelous intelligence opportunity.
BYE BYE BASHAR
The Syrian-Iranian terror alliance goes back a quarter-century, when Hezbollah was created to wage terror war against American and French forces in Lebanon. There was a neat division of labor: Syria controlled the territory, and Iran ran the organization. Hezbollah's murderous successes are legendary, from the suicide bombings against the French and American Marine barracks to a similar operation against the American embassy, all in Beirut in 1983, to massive bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina in 1992. That alliance remains intact, and provides the base of the terror war in Iraq today. Now the Iranians are concerned at signs of cracks in the edifice of the Assad regime. The Assad family's grip on Syria is weakening, and this is welcome news indeed, both for the long-suffering Syrian people and for us. The Iranians are desperate to keep Assad in power, and Hezbollah armed to the teeth. Should things go the other way, Iran would lose its principal ally in the war against us in Iraq.
BLACK DEMOCRAT POTS
It was no way to treat a lady. Washington Post ombudswoman Deborah Howell wrote a column praising her paper for exposing lobbyist Jack Abramoff. She was deluged with so much obscene email from outraged liberals the Post had to shut down one of its Web sites. Mr. Abramoff pled guilty earlier this month to defrauding his clients (Indian tribes who owned casinos) and the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Howell's critics were in high dudgeon over a distinction without a difference. In the 7th paragraph of her story lauding reporter Susan Schmidt, she wrote: "And (Abramoff) had made substantial contributions to both major parties." "I heard that I was lying, that Democrats never got a penny of Abramoff-tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal," a stunned Ms. Howell wrote in her column last Sunday. All of Mr. Abramoff's personal contributions went to Republicans. But the big money was what Mr. Abramoff directed his clients to contribute.
CELEBRATING HAMAS
Dennis “The Wizard” Turner only sleeps on the Jewish Sabbath. Every other day and night he spends at the Aroma Café in Jerusalem with his laptop, sending me a never-ending stream of emails telling me how wrong I am about things. About twenty-seven times a day, I get an emailed article from him with a note, “Jack, you are so wrong about Sharon… Jack, you are so wrong about Gaza… Jack, you are so wrong about Olmert and Kadima…” So I can just imagine how totally wrong Dennis will say I am about Hamas winning the Palestinian elections. For I don’t think it’s a disaster at all. I think it’s an opportunity. I’m happy Hamas won. (Dennis has now collapsed into a twitching heap on the café floor. I hope he didn’t let his laptop crash on the floor as well.) It’s time to celebrate the end of moral goo, the end of pretending Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority were “people we could work with,” the end of all the evasion and desperate avoidance of reality. At last, it’s the End of Pretend.
WHAT THE ARAB WORLD THINKS OF TORTURE
Torture is accepted and even expected in the Arab world. Might makes right. Arab men – not those nice Arab men you may know who have immigrated to America, but Arab men living in the Arab world – prove their manhood by the way they treat their enemy. After all, it's what Mohammed did to the nonbelievers - Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians in the Koran - the 'holy book' allegedly mishandled in Guantanamo prison. Arab Moslem men gain honor by shaming, belittling, abusing and torturing their enemy in the most horrific ways. As someone who came from the Arab world and knows how they think, it frustrates me to see self-appointed self-righteous politicians and media pundits, oblivious to Arabic culture and thinking, criticizing America's actions at Guantanamo. Actually Gitmo is a joke as far as the Arabs are concerned. Prison? You call that a prison? You know what prisoners call Guantanamo among themselves? Al muntazah al-dini lilmujaheden al Moslemin, The Religious Resort for Islamic Militants.
OBL: STILL DEAD
We’ve gotten a number of queries regarding the corporeal status of Osama Bin Laden, given that Michael Ledeen, in Who’s An Iraqi?, reported that OBL croaked in December, yet he came out with an audiotape in January. Here’s the deal.
ACHIEVING PROSPERITY IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE
Suppose you were appointed global economic czar, and your task was to bring the world's per capita income up to the level of Ireland – which is almost that of the US. Would you: (A) Insist the world's rich nations transfer substantial wealth though massive foreign aid to the poor nations? (B) Insist all nations adopt policies that would make them as economically free as the top 10 freest economies today?