Barry and the Bomb-Thrower

In today's Wall Street Journal, Stanley Kurtz sets out the result of his research into the relationship between The Chosen One and Bill Ayers in a piece entitled, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools." The New York Times and Washington Post may want to use his work as the jumping-off point for their in-depth investigative reports into the nasty world of radical leftist connections trailing Mr. Obama. Keep in mind that -- by any definition -- Bill Ayers is a terrorist:

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

[snip]

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

[snip]

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Read the whole thing. Of course, inquiry into a Presidential nominee's connection to a known terrorist is not nearly so interesting as exploring whether Governor Palin can pronounce the name of the Minister of Agriculture of Berzerkistan, but maybe when those sorts of more important matters are fully reported, the Times and Post might think about redeploying some of their troops from Nome to Chicago. Just a thought.

G&S Reads Old Media

From the newly free, and ever-relevant, Atlantic Monthly:

Like Sen. Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates strongly doubted the wisdom of invading Iraq. Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group, which, except for a throw-away sentence about a temporary surge of forces in Baghdad, was inclined to withdraw our forces from combat operations back in 2006. Therefore, when Gates became defense secretary, many assumed he would push for a retreat from our commitment to the Baghdad government. But he did the opposite.

[snip]

The Democrats may well be right that the invasion was a strategic mistake that cost us greatly both in the Middle East and in the rest of the world. But their dire predictions from two years ago don't look very good in hindsight. And so they need to start thinking constructively about Iraq, not destructively. To wit, as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage -- another opponent of the war -- has said, the United States will be known and remembered as much by how it got out of Iraq as by how it got in. Armitage is thinking constructively in a way that Obama and company need to.

[snip]

In other words, the closer we get to the election, the more consequences Obama's public position may have for events on the ground in Iraq. And Obama's position can surely evolve in a direction that acknowledges the need to stay tough there, even as he continues to claim credit for having been against the project from the beginning. Rather than blur the distinction between him and McCain, he can subtly shift on Iraq in a way that demonstrates just how serious a thinker he is on foreign policy.

Read the whole thing.

Die, Plastic-Boobed Infidels!

TEHRAN, Iran - (Associated Press) A top Iranian judiciary official warned Monday against the "destructive" cultural and social consequences of importing Barbie dolls and other Western toys.

In the latest salvo in a more than decade-old government campaign against Barbie, Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi said in an official letter to Vice President Parviz Davoudi that the doll and other Western toys are a "danger" that need to be stopped.

"The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger," said the letter, a copy of which was made available to The Associated Press.

[snip]

"The displays of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spiderman and Harry Potter ... as well as the irregular importation of unsanctioned computer games and movies are all warning bells to the officials in the cultural arena," his letter said.

Najafabadi said Iran is the world's third biggest importer of toys and warned that smuggled imports pose a threat to the "identity" of the new generation.

"Undoubtedly, the personality and identity of the new generation and our children, as a result of unrestricted importation of toys, has been put at risk and caused irreparable damages," he said.

Mattel Inc., the maker of Barbie, had no immediate comment on the Iranian letter.

Barbie is sold wearing swimsuits and miniskirts in a society where women must wear head scarves in public and men and women are not allowed to swim together.

In 1996, the head of a government-backed children's agency called Barbie a "Trojan horse" sneaking in Western influences such as makeup and revealing clothes.

Authorities launched a campaign of confiscating Barbies from toy shops in 2002, denouncing the un-Islamic sensibilities of the iconic American doll. But the campaign was eventually dropped.

Also in 2002, Iran introduced its own competing dolls — the twins Dara and Sara — who were designed to promote traditional values with their modest clothing and pro-family stories. But the dolls proved unable to stem the Barbie tide.

New Weapon of Mass Indifference

WASHINGTON—Calling it the most effective tool to date in the War on Terror, the Pentagon announced Monday that it had developed a new chemical weapon called "ennui gas," a nerve agent that overwhelms its victims with sudden philosophical distress over the meaningless tedium of human life and a sinking sense that everything they have ever accomplished ultimately amounts to dust.

"When the enemy inhales the gas, he will immediately retreat to his bedroom, lock the door, stare at the ceiling, pick idly at his fingernails, and muse upon the similarities between fingernails and the fragility of life," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "While he broods over the futility of memory extinguished and the plaintive whisper of existence unhaunted by all but nothingness, that is when we strike."

Read the whole thing, HERE.

Lions and Tigers and Fitna . . . .

Oh My!

According to the BBC:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has strongly condemned a controversial film on Islam made by a Dutch politician, calling it "offensively anti-Islamic".

Several Muslim countries have also condemned the film, a 15-minute polemic by the far-right MP Geert Wilder, which was posted online on Thursday.

Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran and Bangladesh were among those to protest.

The film sets verses from the Koran against a background of violent images from terror attacks.

"I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders' offensively anti-Islamic film," Mr Ban said in a statement.

"The right of free expression is not at stake here," he added. "Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility."

The EU's Slovenian presidency said the film served no purpose other than "inflaming hatred".

You will not be surprised to learn that the murderous savages whose murderous savagery was depicted in the film threatened . . . . well, more of same to employees of the website that first posted the film online. More HERE. In their world, the fact that they are offended is not merely important, it is the only matter of fact germane to "discussion" of the topic.

Fortunately, we don't live under the rule of Secretary's General, or Islamic Councils. That being the case, you ought perhaps to decide for yourself.

Fitna:



[update] If the emissaries of the Religion of Peace put the arm on YouTube, then Pat Dollard has posted the film, with this introductory commentary:

Bring it, you miserable pedophile-worshipping piglet pukes…we will NEVER bow to your bullshit yappity yapping.

A very rude fellow. He appears to be ignorant of the rules: it's OK to be an anti-Semite; it's OK to insult the Pope; it's OK to make fun of Christianity. But one may never criticize Muslims. I think it has something to do with their self-esteem. Whatever.

[update II] Several correspondents have observed that the above was produced by a stolid, sober Dutchman and, as a consequence, it is . . . well . . . not very upbeat. They remind us of this quintessentially American video, from a couple of years ago:

Mirabile Dictu!

Could it be? Do you suppose! The Holy Koran preserved by the hand of Allah from the death missiles of the Zionist Pigs?!!?

Not so much.

Excuse Me?

What do you suppose an "ex-suspect" is? Someone once "suspected" of something (oh, say, a crime, for example), who is no longer "suspected" of committing that crime. Not being a "suspect" may not be quite the same thing as being innocent, but it's a step in the right direction.

But English -- she is the slippery language, no? Oh, yes!

"Thinking . . .

. . . the Unthinkable" is what this sort of analysis used to be called:

It is theoretically possible that the Israeli state, economy and organized society might just survive such an almost-mortal blow. Iran would not survive as an organized society. "Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term."

The analysis of a nuclear conflict in the Middle East is from Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies. His conclusion is: "The only way to win is not to play." Lest that seem obvious, recall that it conflicts with the conclusion of Iranian "moderate" Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani who has explained:

When the Islamic world acquires atomic weapons, the strategy of the West will hit a dead-end -- since the use of a single atomic bomb has the power to destroy Israel completely, while it will only cause partial damage to the Islamic world.

Is it time?

Do we really have to start thinking seriously about the presidential election? Are you sure?

November 5, 1605

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

More HERE, HERE, and, inevitably, there is The Guardian.

The Good Old Days

In the Good Old Days, the Government needed money to kill the Nazis, or feed Europe, and taxes were necessary to pay the bills. But it appears that in our post-post-Modern Era, where everything new gets old again, taxes are an independent good, and more is better:

This country’s meager tax take puts its economic prospects at risk and leaves the government ill equipped to face the challenges from globalization.

See? Low taxes = bad economic prospects. High taxes = equipment to face globalization. Please note the entire absence of analysis (nay! the absence of definitions!) of what it means actually to be "equipped", or precisely what "challenges" are posed by "globalization." And, of course, we needn't worry our little heads about anything so retro as pondering whether those challenges (whatever they might be) are best faced by bureaucrats, armed with my money (after subtracting their skim).

Lest you believe wrongly that this sentiment is an anomaly, there's more:

Politicians on the right have continuously paraded the specter of statism to rally voters’ support for tax cuts, mainly for the rich. But the meager tax take leaves the United States ill prepared to compete. From universal health insurance to decent unemployment insurance, other rich nations provide their citizens benefits that the United States government simply cannot afford.

Well of course tax cuts benefit "the rich," since they're pretty much the only folks who pay taxes these days. (Depending upon your definition of "the rich." When it comes to the "soaking" thereof, that nasty cold damp trickles down deep into the socks of the middle class.) And do you really want that lady down at the DMV to be the one deciding whether your kid -- who's just hit her head pretty hard -- really, really needs that "free" Government-provided MRI? We didn't think so.

The bottom line is clear: You don't pay enough tax. You should pay more. It's your patriotic duty.

But enough. You think we're either making this stuff up or we're quoting Scott Ott, right? Nope. See for yourself.

Gun Control & Genocide

Since it's the Left that has the franchise to insist that the current administration in Washington is little different from the Nazis, how come they simultaneously are such enthusiastic supporters of gun "control"?

Consider:

Whatever may be said about the U.S. House of Representatives committee vote concerning the use of the term “genocide” in reference to Turkey’s atrocities against the Armenians during World War I, two facts are indisputable: It was gun confiscation that made the atrocities possible. And it was the possession of firearms that saved many Armenians.

If you're convinced that BushHitler's storm troopers may break down your door at any minute, and rip you from the loving embrace of your favorite farm animal, wouldn't it make more sense to have a weapon close at hand?

Shouldn't there be a Gay Communist Gun Club somewhere or other?

On the Other Hand

In the City Journal, Walter Olson observes:

Given the hothouse ideological atmosphere of today’s legal academia, it’s quite possible that administrators at Long Island’s Hofstra Law School had no idea that they’d touch off a furor when they invited Lynne Stewart, the disbarred felon and radical lawyer, to lecture on legal ethics. It’s not, after all, as if they were bringing in someone really controversial—someone, say, like Larry Summers or Donald Rumsfeld.

I have no desire to listen to Lynne Stewart speak on legal ethics, but probably not for the same reasons that have caused the instant controversy. Ms. Stewart is an old, hard-Left ideologue, and accordingly, lawyer or no, has no "legal ethics" as that term is normally understood. If she can promote the cause, that's what's important, and outdated notions of "right" and "wrong" are hopelessly bourgeois, and irrelevant to the ongoing class struggle. Because of this, she has nothing to say -- she operates in a world wholly foreign to Western liberal democracy. It's not that she's a bad person, or that I'm awed by the irony of it, it's just that she's irrelevant to any serious discussion of legal ethics.

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2007

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Now That You Mention It

The Times (the real one, you twit) has done some investigating, and reports:

Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.

Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.

The Times investigation casts serious doubts on government statements that foreign preachers are to blame for spreading the creed of radical Islam in Britain’s mosques and its policy of enouraging the recruitment of more “home-grown” preachers.

Mr ul Haq, 36, was educated and trained at an Islamic seminary in Britain and is part of a new generation of British imams who share a similar radical agenda. He heaps scorn on any Muslims who say they are “proud to be British” and argues that friendship with a Jew or a Christian makes “a mockery of Allah’s religion”.

For a moment there, while pondering the "loaths Western values" description, we thought this was going to be just one more article about the Episcopal Church.

The President Speaks

The President has suggested that our only choices may be "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

No -- not that president, you twit: this president.

Your Federal Men in Action

The Knoxville News Sentinel reports:

Acting under the authority of the Patriot Act, the [FBI] agents had obtained a search warrant that allowed them to clandestinely enter the property, search for evidence and not tell anyone about it until the government or a judge was ready to let the owners know they’d been there.

The story describes the execution of a "sneak & peak" warrant, a particularly useful technique when the bosses and accomplices of the target can be expected to destroy evidence and themselves run for cover at the first sign of attention from the authorities. A critical tool when the ultimate object of the investigation is to prevent some atrocity, or to bag the individuals actually responsible, rather than their underlings.

And what was this particular sneak & peak, Patriot Act search related to? Terrorism? Foreign intelligence? Organized crime?

Not exactly.

Lolterizt!

Lolcats are so last year; the whole meme has a damp mustiness about it.

Next wave? Lolterizt, courtesy of those sick puppies at IMAO:




G&S certifies that no cats were harmed in the production of these images mocking the R.O.P.

Well, Sure -- But Can She Cook?

Girl on the Right expresses her radical feminist side while vacationing in Vegas:



H/T to Ms. Kathy, who's positively stamping her foot with envy.