Dean's World

Mohammed has an update. Looks like there are going to be some cabinet changes. And, there are still two unfilled seats because various factions within the parliament are still fighting over them. However, it looks like Prime Minister Maliki has finally had just about enough: he's promising to use his Constitutional powers to unilaterally appoint people to these jobs if the various arguing factions won't come to an agreement between themselves.

See now the funny thing is, to some people this somehow all looks bad. But in point of fact it is precisely how democratic politics works. These folks in Baghdad are doing a remarkable job.

Via the Telegraph*

Foreign terrorists, led by fighters from Saudi Arabia, are behind an upsurge in attacks against British troops in Basra, military sources said yesterday...

..The Saudi influence on terrorism in Shia-dominated Basra has not been previously reported but has caused concern among military commanders because of their training, technology and finance.

Although the majority of Saudi Arabians are Sunni, the minority Shia have taken part in terrorist attacks.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, admitted that a recent surge in violence was a cause of "major concern". Dozens of soldiers have been targeted by advanced "improvised explosive devices" (IED) that the Army has been unable to disable or jam.

Morale is also being affected by the continual danger, with older soldiers saying the apprehension is similar to that experienced on the streets of Northern Ireland in the 70s and early 80s.

"People are dying and morale is being affected by it," said an officer operating in Iraq.

"The perception is that attacks are becoming more lethal and better targeted and the delivery process is more effective. There is a definite sense that we are still making progress but because there is no real defence against IEDs people are feeling a bit glummer."

Commanders are concerned that Saudi and other foreign fighters are co-ordinating the attacks in a "consensual environment", in which the locals will not tell the military where roadside bombs have been planted. "The concern is that support for our presence is going down," a defence source said.

There is also a strong belief, particularly among the Americans, that Iran is continuing to ferry bombs to Baghdad via Basra.

According to MSNBC's report, Sheik Saleh Al Luhaidan, President of the Supreme Judicial Council (Chief Justice) with a rank of a minister, member of Council of Senior Clerics, (the highest religious body in the country) appointed by King Abdullah said last October:

"If someone knows that he is capable of entering Iraq in order to join the fight, and if his intention is to raise up the word of God, then he is free to do so," ...

He warns Iraq is risky because "evil satellites and drone aircraft" watch the borders. But he says going is religiously permissible."

* Link thanks to Jihadwatch

Gateway Pundit has an excellent compilation of data on Iraq.

And so we see once again what's really going on in Iraq: the fascist "insurgency" intentionally manipulates the U.S. and international media, knowing full well that if they can convince enough people that the war is hopeless we'll simply unilaterally withdraw.

There is one problem with those numbers, by the way: the entire death toll due to violence in Iraq is indeed low compared to some of America's biggest cities, but, if the entirety of the United States had a death toll from violence that looked like what our worst cities look like, this would be a staggeringly violent nation. People living in hot zones like Baghdad really are putting up with some terrible violence. Still, it should be remembered who's causing that violence, and why.

I see that Michael Moore is being sued by Sgt. Peter Damon, a wounded double-amputee veteran who Moore put into his 2004 hate-propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11.

I'd like to see the family of Major Gregory Stone join the lawsuit, along with the many others who've come out since that film's release and revealed how Moore shamelessly lied about and grossly distorted what they said and did and believed.

I don't think there's a more loathsome man in America than Michael Moore. I hope they take away every penny that traitorous pig ever made on his terrorist recruitment film.

Update: Hmm, Mikey is looking better these days, isn't he?

A. Nany Moose posted an important comment that helps explain much about Africa, and which I did not pay enough attention to in my series on Mortacracies, most of which are in Africa. Because of its importance, and as a way of indexing it for search engines, I include it here.

Moose wrote:

Culture accounts for so much when we consider the problems of contemporary Africa. I was intrigued by this comment from Friday's blog:

"What evidence is there that any sort of humanitarian aid will ever do any good in Africa? If you read books like Michael Maren's 'The Road To Hell,' it becomes clear that it's no use giving a man a fish or even teaching him to catch them if his fish are merely going to be taken away by the next gunman to come along."

This comment made me think of a story told by friends who recently visited Africa. They stayed with an American couple who own a successful chicken farm in Zimbabwe. Most of the farm staff are tribal folk, and the American couple have, on several occasions, tried to set up the more promising staff members in their own chicken farming businesses. On these occasions they offered space for the chicken coops and runs at nominal cost, provided chickens on loan, and taught the staff members standard business practices. In every case the operations were successful--they became profitable nearly immediately, and everyone was delighted for a short while. Nevertheless, the new chicken farming entrepreneurs invariably failed within a year or two.

(Continued here)

In my recent post on Gore getting smeared (again) for his global warming advocacy, I made some statements that were incorrect in the comment thread and would like to acknowleddge them (and thank Jody and Casey Chris Moore in particular).

First, I claimed that the output of a star drops off with the fourth power of distance. This is, as Casey Chris Moore points out, incorrect - as a simple review of basic geometry would suggest, if you define the surface area of increasing radius spheres, and postulate that the energy over that surface is to remains a constant, then it must be a inverse-squared law.

My error was in confusing from my flawed memory the luminance relation with distance, with the luminance relation with temperature. In fact the output of a star varies with the fourth power to its blackbody temperature:

l ~ σT⁴

where for a perfect black body, σ = 5.67 × 10^-8 W m^-2 K^-4 (the so-called Stefan-Boltzmann constant).

Also, Jody provided a link to information I had not seen before that indicates that the power output of the sun is indeed variable. From that article:

"Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century. If a trend, comparable to the one found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.

It is important to note the very big "If" in the quote above, for the purposes of trying to relate solar output to global warming. Again, given the absolute neccessity of keeping all these factors in proper account, and also making sure predictions fit to past observations, there is no substitute for computer modeling, despite what the skeptic Mr Gray claims.

BTW, RealClimate had a piece discussing the warming "trend" observed on Mars that I think is fair and rigorous. The RC folks also discuss the relevance of solar output in the following posts:

Did the Sun hit record highs over the last few decades?

The lure of solar forcing

A critique on Veizer’s Celestial Climate Driver

Read them and draw your own conclusions.

FWIW, Casey also takes me to task for my incredulity at dismissing computer models, and asks why models can't take 1950's data and predict 1975 weather. The answer however is that climate and weather are not the same thing.The sheer idiocy of Gray's skepticism for computer models is indeed a credibility-shredding position. On this point, you need to learn more about what climate models are for. Predicting weather is decidedly NOT the point.

And finally, I am sorry for the poor state of political wrangling in the HIV-AIDS debate, but rejecting the validity of peer review and the basic mechanism of how science works in this country as a result is an extreme cynic's perspective which I don't share. If HIV-AIDS is one anecdote, then my own field (medical physics) is the opposite and equal one. So I am still not even remotely sympathetic to cries of government bias and funding problems claimed by the skeptics. That's a cop-out - when you lose the debate on the facts, cry conspiracy.

Thanks, guys, for keeping me honest.

UPDATE: sorry Chris. Got you mixed up with Casey on the comment thread.

In his entire televised career, Carl Sagan never once said, "billions and billions."

In his entire motion picture career, you can not find even a single instance of Carey Grant saying, "Judy, Judy, Judy."

You can watch Casablanca a thousand times, and never once will Humphrey Bogart ever say "Play it again Sam."

Go on, check me on that.

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

When I read this Eric Muller critique of Benedict XVI's recent speech at Auschwitz, I was simply stunned by both its ferocity and by the number of assertions he made about what the Pope was "really saying" versus what the man actually said.

I am not in the least bit Jewish that I'm aware of. But I've volunteered to help the ZOA, and am a supporter of the Holocaust Remembrance Project and generally of Israel.

Nor do I have any German ancestors that I'm aware of... hmm, no, wait, I think my maternal great grandfather came over to the US from Germany in the early 1900s. I think. So you know, maybe I've got a profound pro-German streak that I'm not aware of. But I don't think so, especially since both my paternal grandparents were veterans of World War II and were part of the fight against Germany.

Blah blah, who cares, right? Well after reading Muller's piece, all I can say is:

Eric, there are too serious academic scholars who say the German people, or at least vast swaths of them, were bullied and terrified into following Hitler's gang of criminals. A gang of criminals who were never legitimately elected. I can point you to academic sources that debunk the "Hitler was elected" nonsense any time you like. He and his group of thugs seized power, through terror, duplicity, and coercion. They then constructed an image of German national unity that had nothing to do with what everyday Germans actually thought. Indeed, if that's what you think Nazi Germany was, then you're actually buying into the illusion that Hitler himself tried to create.

I would also note that Hitler's false promises of prosperity and greatness were based on lies that turned out to be murderous, totalitarian, and horrific. Some are of the philosophical bent that an economic and social system based on lies will wind up making false promises it cannot possibly sustain--like the vision of the great, glorious, perfect third reich united in socialism and corporatism under the all-beneficent state that would cleanse all ugliness and badness (read: Jews and other undesirables) from our midsts.

And I would note that for the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church to assert that an attack on the Jewish people is as an attack on Christianity itself is a simply extraordinary statement for any Christian, let alone the patriarch of a church that not so long ago (only a few centuries, which is the blink of an eye in Jewish history) was hellbent on persecuting Jews or converting them by force. Now he says an assault on the Jews is a direct assault on his own church, effectively throwing Jews under their direct protection--and you're mad about that?

And how could you ever expect the patron of a church not to take special notice of members of his own flock, a Roman Catholic who was made a saint because she sacrificed her life to save Jews? He's not to take special notice of her memorial that's right there in front of him? You're going to get mad at him for this?

I'm not Catholic, but oy vey Mr. Muller, get a grip!

(Via Instapundit.)

Snicker.

(Thanks Jerry.)

There used to be a semi-regular urban legend that rocketed around the internet every couple of years, that the FCC was considering putting a tax on emails. Thanks to a lot of rigorous debunking, this myth seems mostly to have subsided, but I bet it comes back again soon. Because unless CNet has started publishing rumors, the European parliament is debating taxing emails and instant messaging.

This is probably a very bad idea, but I'm not looking forward to my mailbox being glutted again with rumors that the U.S. Congress or the FCC are thinking about this too.

(Thanks Sam.)

The Prince and I went to see X-Men III: The Last Stand today. We both loved it. The reviews have been very mixed, so I went in not expecting much and wound up thoroughly enjoying myself. And of course my 8 year old was thrilled.

Some friends of mine who are fans of the comic from way back were annoyed by it. Me? I didn't think any of the liberties they took were too great, but I stopped reading the X-Men comics 20 years ago. They seem to take liberties but stay true to the essence of the characters and universe.

There may be spoilers in the comments, and I'll give one small spoiler: I'm not convinced anyone who was killed in the movie is really dead. ;-)

The Nazi reference attacks on Gore by "climate skeptics" just don't stop coming. Now, acclaimed skeptic Bill Gray, a cantankerous meteorologist who believes that global warming is a natural process and will reverse itself in twenty years, comes out with this gem (in a long article in the WaPo):

Somehow Hitler keeps popping into the discussion. Gore draws a parallel between fighting global warming and fighting the Nazis. Novelist Michael Crichton, in State of Fear , ends with an appendix comparing the theory of global warming to the theory of eugenics — the belief, prominently promoted by Nazis, that the gene pool of the human species was degenerating due to higher reproductive rates of "inferior" people. Both, he contends, are examples of junk science, supported by intellectual elites who will later conveniently forget they signed on to such craziness.

And Gray has no governor on his rhetoric. At one point during our meeting in Colorado he blurts out, "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."

Is it possible for any skeptic of global warming to make their point as methodically and rationally as the realClimate folks do, without resorting to ad hominem smearing? Frankly I don't think so, else we would actually have seen some by now.

A casual observer might well ask, if the skeptics have such sound rationale for rebutting the global warming message, why don't they actually rebut the message via peer review? Instead they attack the messengers - and apparently when it comes to Al Gore, no intermediate comparisons are warranted, let's just go straight for the Nazi comparison and save time.

In case you're curious, Gray's basis for skepticism is that he believes that computer model simulations are bogus and that the intuition of meterologists "in the field" is superior:

The skeptics scoff at climate models. They're just computer programs. They have to interpret innumerable feedback loops, all the convective forces, the evaporation, the winds, the ocean currents, the changing albedo (reflectivity) of Earth's surface, on and on and on. [...] The models can't even predict the weather in two weeks, much less 100 years, he says. "They sit in this ivory tower, playing around, and they don't tell us if this is going to be a hot summer coming up. Why not? Because the models are no damn good!" [...] Gray's crusade against global warming "hysteria" began in the early 1990s, when he saw enormous sums of federal research money going toward computer modeling rather than his kind of science, the old-fashioned stuff based on direct observation. Gray often cites the ascendancy of Gore to the vice presidency as the start of his own problems with federal funding. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stopped giving him research grants. So did NASA. All the money was going to computer models. The field was going off on this wild tangent.

Numerical models can't predict the future, he says. They don't even pretend to predict the weather in the coming season — "but they make predictions of 50 or 100 years from now and ask you to believe the Earth will get warmer."

The modelers are equation pushers.

"They haven't been down in the trenches, making forecasts and understanding stuff!"

And then the skeptics switch 180 degrees and say that hey - "global warming isn't just not happenning, it's also a Good Thing if it happens". To wit:

Plants like carbon dioxide. Trees devour it. This demonized molecule, CO2, isn't some kind of toxin or contaminant or pollutant — it's fertilizer.

They even have cut an ad - essentially, global warming: don't worry, be happy! The closer?

"Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution. We call it life."

I for one welcome our Ent overlords. Hoom.

What I find particulary interesting in the WaPo piece however is that the skeptics actually keep each other at some arm's length. For example, Gray says of noted skeptic Michael Lindzen, a professor at MIT:

"Lindzen, he's a hard guy to deal with," Gray says. "He doesn't think he can learn anything from me."

Which is correct. Lindzen says of Gray: "His knowledge of theory is frustratingly poor, but he knows more about hurricanes than anyone in the world. I regard him in his own peculiar way as a national resource."

The question comes to mind then, why aren't there anti-warming scientific conferences? Why not a collaboration? Does it really make sense for a scientists to say that there's nothing he/she can learn from another scientist in the same field? Perhaps because they aren't practicing science?

And it's not like these guys are being frozen out of the peer review or being denied funding (as they often like to compain). Lindzen is a professor at MIT. Gray is fully funded by the CEI. Both have extensive media pulpits, books, websites, etc.

The truth is that the skeptics, like with Intelligent Design, can't compete on the level field of peer review. And they know it. So on one hand they fabricate excuses of victimization, and on the other they retreat to that playing field where volume, not content, matters most: the field of public opinion.

Which is why they hate Al Gore. And why in their minds, he really is a Nazi. And that outburst by Gray above reveals in one second the true nature of their crusade - and the rotten foundations of their work.

Meanwhile, Mexico collects taxes equivalent to 9.7 percent of GDP, a figure on a par with Haiti; there is painfully little to spend on education and health care, which means there is no social mobility and little job opportunity.
...
In short, Mexico is so corrupt, so oligopolistic, so rotting inside with the privilege of the rich that it has to send its poor and its potential political activists to another country. And on top of that, it tries to blame the United States for its own failures.

When I was in Mexico last fall, after dozens of visits over the years, people on every political and social level confirmed these accusations, complaining to me of Fox's failures. Forty families still own 60 percent of Mexico. There are no voluntary organizations, no civic involvement, no family foundations – and thus, no accountability, allowing corruption to flourish. Mexico gains $28 billion from oil revenue and $20 billion from immigrant remittances. There is virtually no industrialization, no small business, no real chance at individual entrepreneurship. Under Fox, it has created only one-tenth of the 1 million jobs needed.

Ah, but there are new voices of change, of reason, of self-awareness in Mexico, in place of the hoary anti-gringo rants: the beginnings of a transformation of the debate.

By word of mouth repetition, by slovenliness about checking facts, by fitting in with ideological propensities, erroneous "facts" may in time become furniture of the mind. Such are that Hitler was elected democratically (he lost both elections in which he ran and "was appointed Chancellor"), or that Stalin killed 20 million (he killed about 43 million). One such erroneous fact is that the Vietnam War was a Civil War.

This idea was very much promoted by the "anti-war" crowd and the Vietnam propagandists, for if true it meant the United States had no business interfering in an internal Vietnamese conflict, and it justified the North's total takeover of South Vietnam in 1975. However, that Vietnam was one country is not historically correct.

(Continued here)

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. This week we've got sightseeing, the Haditha Massacre, losses in translation, a new Iraqi blog, and much, much more.

24 Steps to Liberty reports the perils of wearing shorts in today's Iraq.

Imad Khadduri is still pitching the Jessie MacBeth video. I also found new links (since the video was revealed as a hoax) to the video on other Iraqi blogs. As I commented last week, the harm has already been done.

Freedom of Mind is signing off:

But what I hate the most is my countrymen's attitude, passive attitude to be more exact. I was talking the other day with a friend of mine, who currently live in Syria, he said a lot of things that really pissed me off, but there was one thing that made go ballistic, he said that Iraq was imposed upon him as a country, that he had no choice of being Iraqi. What the hell is that crap about? I'm sorry, but if Iraqis feel that way, then we have no choice whatsoever of being a country, let alone a civilized one. If we keep asking people to help us and don't help ourselves, if we keep waiting for god or people to help us, if we keep silent about everything that's going on today, then we are doomed, then its our end, then we are signing our countries death certificate, and very much likely our own. God be with you beloved Iraq, there are little left who truly loved it.

There were a number of posts in the Iraqi blogosphere this week on the Haditha Massacre. This one from The Truth About Iraqis is probably the best.

Hammorabi has a long somewhat rambling post on the War on Terror, generally. He blames United States policy of the last 25 years.

Omar of Iraq the Model disagrees with CNN's translation of the statement of the Iraqi Foreign Minister on Iran's nuclear development program.

Ishtar of Iraqi Screen writes about the growth in inter-tribal warfare there.

I generally avoid linking to posts from Iraqi ex-pats but I found this post from IraqPundit on the “Islamism of the absurd” irresistible.

As they prepare to leave Iraq, neurotic iraqi wife and Hubby ventured out of the Green Zone to do some sightseeing. Pictures.

Fatima of Thoughts from Baghdad takes a walk in her neighborhood. She has pictures, too.

Thought Riot posts on the Jews of Baghdad.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the blog Baghdad Connect but it's worth a look. Hat tip: Asterism.

Also, check out the impressive list of links to sites of Kurdish and general Iraqi interest in Miriam of Pearls of Iraq's blogroll under “Other Links”. She has a link to Iraqi Save the Children, a link to a site on the Iraqi railway system, and an enormous number of other interesting sites.

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

On the ongoing topic of irrational Islamophobia, I would like today to examine a claim I've often been confronted with, namely, that the early Muslim community slaughtered a Jewish tribe known as the Banu Quarayza. This supposedly shows that the Muslims are inherently barbaric and warlike. You can read a fairly neutral accounting of this massacre right here.

Now, here's the thing: I don't find anything wrong with criticizing that sort of behavior in a modern context. In the context of ancient times, however, I have a hard time getting particularly worked up over it. The Muslim perspective on that has traditionally been that the Banu Quarayza had attacked the early Muslim community on more than one occasion. After multiple conflicts the Quarayza had been under a peace treaty with the Muslims, and then broke it. That was the last straw and they decided to just wipe this tribe out by killing all the men.

I would have to say that if you're a secular humanist, an atheist or an agnostic who rejects all religion, then, criticizing this incident is quite easy. Mind you, if you are such a person, you should also be willing to acknowledge the many crimes of radical secularists and sworn atheists, like Stalin and Mao, and stop pretending that religion by itself is automatically the cause of all the world's ills.

But you know, I think it takes a special blend of ignorance and hypocrisy for Christians or Jews to use the incident with the Quarayza tribe as proof that Islam is especially violent and evil.

----

From The Book of Numbers, chapter 31 (with bold added by me to emphasize interesting parts):

1 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the children of Israel. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” 3 So Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm some of yourselves for war, and let them go against the Midianites to take vengeance for the LORD on Midian. 4 A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war.”

5 So there were recruited from the divisions of Israel one thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. 6 Then Moses sent them to the war, one thousand from each tribe; he sent them to the war with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, with the holy articles and the signal trumpets in his hand. 7 And they warred against the Midianites, just as the LORD commanded Moses, and they killed all the males. 8 They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of those who were killed—Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword.

9 And the children of Israel took the women of Midian captive, with their little ones, and took as spoil all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their goods. 10 They also burned with fire all the cities where they dwelt, and all their forts. 11 And they took all the spoil and all the booty—of man and beast.

12 Then they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the children of Israel, to the camp in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho. 13 And Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation, went to meet them outside the camp. 14 But Moses was angry with the officers of the army, with the captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from the battle. 15 And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? 16 Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. 18 But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.

---

From the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 21:

10 “When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hand, and you take them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her and would take her for your wife, 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. 13 She shall put off the clothes of her captivity, remain in your house, and mourn her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall set her free, but you certainly shall not sell her for money; you shall not treat her brutally, because you have humbled her.

---

I can pull out a lot more like this. It's amazing what you find in the Bible when you actually read it.

It's rather interesting, by the way, that Moses would order every Midianite male child to be slaughtered. Moses himself was, by tradition, spared when Pharoah ordered the deaths of all Jewish male children, because his mother and sister conspired to float him in a basket down the Nile and had him adopted by Pharoah's daughter. Yet now here he is, as an adult and leader himself, ordering even more draconian sanctions against the Midianites.

One of the things I like best about the Bible is that you can see it as a "warts and all" presentation. Most of the Biblical prophets were flawed and often did things that seem dumb, nasty, or duplicitous. Some of the stuff David did was amazingly brutal, for example, and was clearly sinful by his own faith's standards. Rather than trying to cover this stuff up and prettify it, the Jews through the centuries just recorded it all, and added it to their commentary.

In any case, the above passages, as well as any number of other things that can be found in the Bible, make Jews or Christians who attack Muhammed for having occasionally been warlike look rather odd. Such people inevitably grow furious with me and demand, demand that I stop comparing their faith with Islam. "I don't like it when you do that Dean! It makes me mad! You need to stop!"

Feh. A reasoned, rational discussion of a religion will usually involve comparing and contrasting it with other traditions. It will also include talking to members of that faith about how they see it, about what they believe about it, how they as adherants actually interpret it. Outside criticism is also fine, but it ought to be based on respect and a committment to understanding. For example, the Jews for Judaism can explain rather eloquently why they reject the Gospel. They don't attack the Gospel, but they've clearly read it and understood the Christian faith very well, and can give reasonable answers as to why they don't believe it. They can also usually tell you precisely why they reject Islam, although they don't get asked that as much.

Christians who really and truly understand their faith, and its traditions going back over the last 2,000 years, can explain to you why they believe the Jews have fundamentally erred. They can also explain, in non-angry, non-offensive terms, why they think Muhammed couldn't have been a real prophet.

That's the basis of a decent dialogue.

Those with a vendetta, on the other hand, tend to muddy up the waters considerably in their effort to paint The Other as evil.

The Pope recently had an interesting visit to Poland, including a stop at the Auschwitz concentration camp (which most people probably don't know isn't in Germany--the Nazis set it up in conquered Poland).

One odd quote in the story has the Pope saying, "In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?" That seems an almost un-Popelike question. Our friend Larry takes issue with Benedict over that quote, but I'd note that it's quite possible, likely even, that the man's words were not quite what's reported. He was probably speaking in German or Polish, so we're working with a translation, and he may also be being quoted out of context.

Svend White, whose blog Akram's Razor won a 2005 Brass Crescent for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition, penned a handy guide for understanding Muslim language.

For example, Rule #5 - "It's always jihad" :

Related to Rule 4 is the fact that any event involving Muslims is always jihad. Not the concept of a peaceful personal struggle to do the right thing that most Muslims, sly foxes that they are, claim to intend when using the word. Nor is it the noble campaigns for good causes that normal, Christian people think of when they talk about "crusades". Anything a Muslims does is always violent holy war directed against everyone around them.

Whether they're pinning prayers to their graduation gowns or just standing by the road licking an ice cream cone, it's jihad and you're under siege like the Viennese facing the Ottoman hordes in 1529. Don't let the social economic and political realities of near complete Muslim powerlessness in the modern, Western/Christian-dominated world distract you from the fact that you are an oppressed Dhimmi living under the yoke of Muslim tyranny.

Is Roobart Sbunsar paying attention?

"I will invade Russia from the West!" said Napoleon. The Russians froze him out and he ran off with his tail between his legs.

Hitler said "I've got a better idea, I've got a better idea.... oh no, it was the same idea!"

Scott's got a throat-lumper.

Remember what it is we memorialize this weekend.

The hated (and so eminently hateworthy) Mullah regime in Iran is experiencing widespread protests against oppression, despite their best efforts to beat it down or deny it's happening.

Godspeed to the protestors.

Well, it looks like Kevin Smith's Clerks II was well-received at Cannes--with an 8-minute standing ovation no less.

It should be interesting to see if American audiences respond the same. I'm a big fan of Kevin's work so I'm looking forward to seeing it myself.

(Thanks Jerry.)

Malkin's got a pretty good rant on hypocrisy this week.

Imagine, if you will, that evidence surfaces that the President of the United States, or the Secretary of State, or even some minor member of the White House staff, was committing crimes. Imagine if the Congress declared that they wanted to investigate those allegations, and the White House responded by saying that it would be a violation of the "separation of powers" for the Congress to investigate anything that happens in the White House.

Or imagine that evidence surfaced that a judge was committing crimes and there was evidence in his judicial chambers. Now imagine another judge refusing to issue a warrant for the FBI to search the offending judge's chambers, claiming that it would "violate the separation of powers" for the executive branch (which runs the FBI) to investigate the judicial branch.

All pretty obviously fatuous, right? Yet somehow, it has come to light in recent days that members of Congress, in both parties, are outraged that the FBI recently got a warrant from a judge to search a congressman's office. They don't even deny that the congressman in question was probably guilty: the search turned up what they were looking for, namely, evidence that the Congressman and his staff were accepting bribes. One of his staff members has already been convicted in fact.

But Congress is yelping. Why? Because they say it violates "separation of powers" to have a judge issue a warrant for the FBI to search a congressional office.

This is tripe. What is actually being suggested here is that members of Congress are basically a privileged class that's above the law. Which ought to infuriate anyone who hears it. Check your Constitution, children: the only such immunity members of Congress have is that they can't be arrested while travelling to or from a legislative session, or prosecuted for statements made during a legislative session.

We should work to fire any member of congress who tries to put forth this bogus line of argument that members of Congress are immune to the judicial process if they do something illegal. We should fire anyone who says so, up to and including Denny Hastert, the speaker of the House, or any member of the majority or minority leadership who tries to sell this tripe.

Professor Reynolds (a law professor, as most people know) has extensive links here and also here.

The argument that congress can't be investigated by the other two branches is bogus on its face. Every bit as bogus as Richard Nixon trying to claim that the White House was immune to various parts of the Watergate investigations.

I have been planning on writing a response to this Robert Spencer piece for the last week or two, as promised, because (after I got over my anger at Charles Johnson for his unprovoked attack on me and actually read Robert's piece) I found it mostly thoughtful, with a few irksome assertions, and deserving of a thorough and thoughtful response. Then I got some snotty and condescending email from him the other day, and I see Spencer's turned from thoughtful and specific to tendentious and nasty, making sure to emphasize how unimportant I am and how meaningless my views are. And of course Charles Johnson is issuing gratuitous slams on me again, while both of their hateful little groups of commenters gleefully mock me, slander Islam and muslims, and declare me unimportant.

I've noticed that this is a pattern: whenever someone links me repeatedly in order to attack me (which happens several times a week these days), they go out of their way to declare how unimportant I am and how no one reads me. This almost always comes from people (like Robert Spencer) who have a lot fewer readers than I do. What is the purpose of such assertions, except to belittle?

In any case: while I thought Spencer's first piece was (mostly) thoughtful and should be answered in detail, and that maybe I'd misjudged him, his recent juvenile emails, and his newest piece addressing me, make it clearer just what kind of guy he is. It suggests that my first impressions of him were correct after all.

Still, let's try to get to the meat of this: Spencer's ultimate argument is based on a red herring: I (and others) are supposed to point to any mainstream school of Islamic thought that completely rejects holy war (violent jihad). Well, none of them do. So what? I never thought they did.

Hey Robert! The Bible says not one word anywhere in it about slavery being wrong. Prove me wrong! Prove me wrong! Sure you say that some mainstream Christian groups have changed their ways on this, but their Bible and the vast majority of the faith's history do not agree! Prove me wrong, prove me wrong!

Would you consider that statement to be tendentious? Pernicious? Mean-spirited? Well, you should, because it would be, because while Christianity does have a long and sorry history of embracing slavery, and the Bible does indeed fail to condemn slavery, in recent centuries Christians have been instrumental in ending the practice, and Christians are still fighting it, and they are to be applauded for it.

But Robert's tedious request reads exactly like that to me. Ditto his bizarre request that someone provide him with Islamic texts sufficient to make violent radicals put down their weapons--which I think any sane person would view as an outright impossibility.

Now here's the thing: I knew this was impossible before I'd ever heard of Robert Spencer, and so did Robert Spencer. So what is the purpose of this argument? Well one of us, apparently, finds the fact far more significant than the other one does. And one of us apparantly makes a living selling books and on speaking engagements to explain how violent jihadism is to be found in Islamic scholarship. The other goes out of his way to befriend muslims who are anti-terrorism, and to highlight writings by muslims who reject terrorism. One of us obviously wants to help muslims, while the other insists that no he doesn't hate muslims he just doesn't trust any of them who object to violence on religious grounds.

Robert takes issue with this statement I made two weeks ago:

1) Take the most tendentious and pernicious interpretations of what the Koran says, in the ways that the most radical clerics of Islam interpret them.

2) Declare that these are the inescapably correct views.

3) Declare that he doesn't hate muslims or all of Islam, but that no one can prove him wrong about what he "inescapably" concludes about the religion.

Now to be honest that was a throwaway line in the comments section from two weeks ago, based on what little I'd seen of his site in the past and some of his emails. After I read his first public response to me I thought maybe I'd misjudged him. But with yesterday's emails and new piece on his blog, I see that no, I was basically right. The only thing I got wrong was saying "the koran" when I should have said, more broadly, "Islamic scholarship."

Spencer says he doesn't do anything like this, but in fact this is exactly what he's doing here. Apparently, from what I can see, he does it for a living, which is probably why he's calling out high-traffic bloggers to pick fights with: it's an absolute certainty that I have a lot more readers than he does, and he probably knows it despite his obsessively repeated suggestions that nobody reads me and that I am utterly unimportant to him (yes, so unimportant he feels the need to send me obsessive, juvenile emails and repeated taunts from his blog).

Yes, Robert, there is a violent part of Koranic scholarship and tradition. Through all strains of it that I'm aware of. I've never thought or believed otherwise, nor have I ever suggested otherwise. But what conclusion does Robert draw from this? I think he gives us a great insight into his character with this bit:

And as for the Christian Scriptures, it is ironic that Esmay speaks of people going "ballistic," since it is unlikely that any of the Christians he may have offended have shot, stabbed, or beheaded him, or want to. But in any case, his all-religions-are-the-same assumption founders on the fact that Christianity and Judaism have well-developed traditions that reject literalism on things approved of in the Old Testament such as stoning adulterers and slavery.

Tendentious to say the least, and hardly a statement from a man of good will. I have muslim readers and muslim contributors, Robert, as well as many atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jewish, and other types as well, and none of them have shot, stabbed, or beheaded me, nor do I have a shred of evidence that any of them want to.

And that's what's so troubling about you, Robert: you repeatedly claim that you don't have it in for muslims at all, but then you drop nasty lines like that one, all while demanding that someone falsify things that anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows is patently unfalsifiable. Not to mention saying something as inflammatory (and wrong) as the notion that I think all religions are the same.

What also troubles me, Robert, is that you claim you want to defeat jihadist terrorism, and you also claim you want to support muslims who work toward examining troubling aspects within their faith, but you accuse muslims who disagree with you of lying to you--they apparently can't just be wrong, or draw different conclusions from you. And you admit that despite your vast study of Islam (yes, you've read a lot, you make a point of mentioning it so often... over and over again) you have made no efforts whatsoever to recruit any muslims to your cause of countering violent jihadism.

What have you done to open up dialogue with muslims, to bring them your concerns directly and actually, y'know, work with them constructively, in dialogue and in good faith? I don't see any evidence that you're even vaguely interested in that. Your coreligionist the Pope is, but you, strangely, are not.

I also think a blogger can be judged by his comments section, especially the ones he repeatedly lets stand over time without response. And Robert, much like Charles Johnson, has got people infesting his comments who regularly spew things like this:

"Read the Koran Mr. Esmay. It is, in short, hate literature."

Or this:

"The question then becomes: how can Islam be reconstructed, when you take away the crucial, rotten pillar Prophet Mohammed ?"

Yeah, Robert doesn't have it in for the entire religion of Islam. He doesn't have it in for Muslims. It's just his readers who do. That most be soooo inconvenient.

I think, Robert, that if you were truly interested in dialogue with muslims, in helping muslims counter violent jihadism, in helping them challenge the dangerous elements among their coreligionists, or to encourage them toward reexamining troubling aspects of the faith, then finding muslims to work with, even collaborate with, would be at the top of your agenda. But apparently, it's not at the top of your agenda. Apparently, it's not even on your agenda. You content yourself to play childish "King of the Hill" games, crossing your arms and daring anyone to try to defeat your red herring arguments. I'm sure it helps you keep collecting those book royalties and speaker fees. Those people who hate the entire religion of Islam are eager to lap up everything you dish out, after all.

Oh yeah, and by the way? Whining that you had your views on Islam (correctly) identified as "right wing" is pretty silly. I get called right-wing all the time and I don't whine about it--my views are quite right-wing on some things, after all. My lovely wife Rosemary is more right-wing than I am, and she wouldn't take offense at that characterization either. I also get called left-wing a lot too by the way, since many of my views can be fairly categorized that way. These things happen when you're a classical liberal. But anyone who watches your schtick, Robert, and reads the people in your comments section, knows exactly who your audience is. It's most definitely not people of good faith who want to work with muslims against terrorism. Indeed, it's pretty obvious that you are not a person of good faith who wants to work with muslims against terrorism. If you were, you'd be actually working with muslims who oppose terrorism, as opposed to throwing raw meat at fringe right-wingers who have a hate-on for for the entire faith of Islam.

It's also rather silly to whine about people making assumptions about you, and never bother to find out that the young lady you crossed swords with, Matoko, is not a "fellow." [Snicker] Not that I agree with her on everything, but that was pretty funny dude.

Neo continues the discussion.

I tend to lose my temper more with people, but I am increasingly learning that doing that is a sign of weakness. Usually with me it's just a matter of exhaustion: debunking the same tired arguments time after time after time is maddening.

She just got back from Israel:

In Jerusalem and in other places that are popular spots for excursions -- Jaffa, Cesarea, Acre -- one is vividly reminded of this land's extraordinary history, from Roman conquest and Jewish resistance to the ravages inflicted by both Christians and Muslims as they vied for possession of the Holy Land. Historic ironies abound. Today, a virulent strain of religious intolerance in general and anti-Semitism in particular infects far too much of the Muslim world, to such a degree that some claim these traits are endemic to Islam.

Yet listen to any local tour guide talk about the history of Jerusalem, and it becomes overwhelmingly clear that historically in this region, Christians were far more intolerant toward Muslims and Jews than Muslims were to Christians and Jews.

In today's Jerusalem, the three great religions seem, at least on the face of it, to coexist in peace. An Orthodox Jew can be seen walking peacefully through the Old City's Muslim quarter. The golden dome of the Mosque of Omar can be seen above the Western Wall that is probably Judaism's most sacred site; and Christian churches of many denominations are only a few steps away. Priests, monks, and nuns mix freely with Hasidic Jews and Muslims in traditional garb.

You can read the rest here.

Notice how he's got the slide back before removing the clip.

Analysis: Iraq, Vietnam have parallels

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The silhouettes that roar through the Baghdad twilight are sleeker than the helicopters of an earlier time. The wind brings dust, not drenching monsoons. The river snaking seaward is called Tigris, not Mekong. And this war's not fought to the wail of Jimi Hendrix's guitar.

There is an odd thing about humor. Have you ever noticed? It's like a drug. Once in a while you come across something that makes you laugh so hard you can't stop. You're completely out of control. It's physically painful but you can't stop.

The British TV show "Fawlty Towers" often did that to me. I remember when I first saw this vignette, I nearly passed out. Literally, the room went black and I was gasping for air:

I suppose if you've never seen the series this seems only mildly amusing. In the context of the whole show though? Wow. I literally almost blacked out.

Ever had that experience?

I sense Ardolino's pernicious involvement.

Aziz is beginning a Carnival of Muslim bloggers.

This is a very good idea.

Brian Ulrich has a must-read post that summarizes the history of Jews and Muslims in the middle east.

Some highlights, in conveniently digestible factoid format:

- Documents such as the Covenant of Umar (third caliph) were the inspiration for many of the dhimmitude laws, but these guidelines were never in the Qur'an.

- The Covenant was really theory, but in practice was rarely fully implemented by local rulers. The prejudices and stereotypes against Christians and Jews in practice were analogous to those against Hispanics in modern America.

- The Cairo Geniza is a vast collection of correspondences of medieval Egyptian Jewry, that fully demonstrate how well-integrated Jews and Christians were in the Islamic society, and that they played important political and social roles therein.

- Muslim rulers relied on Jewish and Christian religious leaders to help govern their respective communities.

- The Crusades and the Mongol invasions were when a cohesive pan-Islamic identity really began to emerge - as external threats often have a crystallizing effect on identity.

- Anti-semitism in its present form in the middle east was largely a European import of recent (post-colonial) origin.

Brian later posts a related note from the Qur'an, namely 9:29:

"Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allâh, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allâh and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islâm) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Brian explains, using the uncontroversial Yusuf Ali translation,

the first 29 verses of this were proclaimed to reflect the policy of the new state following this victory. It was an aggressive policy against those who had attacked or betrayed the Muslims. At this point, again according to the Muslim tradition, there was a warlike environment in which fighting for the faith was required. Now granted, I strongly suspect that later generations of Muslims used this to justify expansionist policies, but that hardly seems the most natural interpretation - plausible perhaps within this sura, but not in the context of the Qur'an as a whole. The last clause is grammatically complicated; as Bernard Lewis noted in his book there are a bunch of different interpretations, particularly of the last word. This is also clearly a source for the later practice of jizya, something also affirmed in hadiths about Muhammad's relationship with the Jews of Khaybar, though there humiliation wasn't an issue - the aggression here seems to be entirely based on the specific conditions it is addressing.

I have little to add to Brian's commentary, and also look forward to his coming discussion of Sura 5, especially verses 12 onwards. In addition, I think that the matter of the Banu Qurayzah is important and I will address that in a future post.

Brian teaches Middle Eastern history at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, my alma mater. He also blogs regularly at American Footprints, the absolute best liberal foreign policy group blog out there.

"Taliban Offensive Busted"

In this blog a made some comments on the Vietnam War. This elicited a number of responses on the cross post on Dean's World, which I will answer on Sunday. In particular, these are that the Vietnam War was a civil war, that the South was not an independent country, that the military mislead the American public about "there was light at the end of the tunnel," and that we failed to focus on winning the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese. Myths all, and I will explain why.

(Continued here)

Ouch.

Now I feel bad for having reprinted it myself (although only in thumbnail).

Only 114 days left until Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Why don't snakes have balls?

either i get flamed for it, or it sinks into the ether without a trace, but I've posted a screed at DailyKos about human rights, and I am pretty sure it won't be making the Recommended List.

Posting it at 2am probably doesn't help, either.

btw, hat tip to Rudy. well done, sir.

Noooooooooooo!

A Swedish film:

(Thanks Jerry.)

So what's going on with you?

Read anything interesting lately?

The U.S. and other militaries around the world are constantly updating their technology and their ways of doing things. Murdoc's got the latest rundown of what's new in Defense Technology.

Ardolino is still strangely silent.

I think he fears the Ninjews.

It is an interesting thing to consider the crimes of atheists over the last century. Within living memory some of the most brutal, incalculably cruel regimes in human history were headed by avowed atheists. Atheists who won't admit this to be true scare the crap out of me, to be honest. They number in their ranks Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kim, and quite a few other noteworthy mass-murderers. Thus, angry, self-righteous atheists make me a little ill.

Of late I've been rethinking my atheism. I'm not sure I have the requisite faith to believe that there is simply no higher power in the universe at all, or that 90%+ of the human race is simply wrong to seek something in faith.

One of the most moving moments for me as an observer of religion was when Pope John Paul II of the Roman Catholic Church went to Israel, put a prayer into the Western Wall, and publicly wept and prayed for forgiveness of Christians for their persecution of the Jews.

What particularly interests me about that, though, is that when I bring it up, Protestants I know often nod and say, "yes, the Catholic Church sure has a lot to ask forgiveness for!"

Ahem.

What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? Since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing, we can not tolerate them if we do not wish to share in their lies, curses, and blasphemy. In this way we cannot quench the inextinguishable fire of divine rage nor convert the Jews. We must prayerfully and reverentially practice a merciful severity. Perhaps we may save a few from the fire and flames [of hell]. We must not seek vengeance. They are surely being punished a thousand times more than we might wish them. Let me give you my honest advice.

First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in order that God may see that we are Christians, and that we have not wittingly tolerated or approved of such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of His Son and His Christians.

Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they perpetrate the same things there that they do in their synagogues. For this reason they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realize that they are not masters in our land, as they boast, but miserable captives, as they complain of incessantly before God with bitter wailing.

Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught.

Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more...

Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews. For they have no business in the rural districts since they are not nobles, nor officials, nor merchants, nor the like. Let them stay at home...If you princes and nobles do not close the road legally to such exploiters, then some troop ought to ride against them, for they will learn from this pamphlet what the Jews are and how to handle them and that they ought not to be protected. You ought not, you cannot protect them, unless in the eyes of God you want to share all their abomination...

To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden - the Jews...

Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew. When you lay eyes on or think of a Jew you must say to yourself: Alas, that mouth which I there behold has cursed and execrated and maligned every Saturday my dear Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed me with his precious blood; in addition, it prayed and pleaded before God that I, my wife and children, and all Christians might be stabbed to death and perish miserably. And he himself would gladly do this if he were able, in order to appropriate our goods...

Such a desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish lot are these Jews, who for these fourteen hundred years [Emphasis mine--Dean] have been and still are our plague, our pestilence, and our misfortune.

I have read and heard many stories about the Jews which agree with this judgment of Christ, namely, how they have poisoned wells, made assassinations, kidnapped children, as related before. I have heard that one Jew sent another Jew, and this by means of a Christian, a pot of blood, together with a barrel of wine, in which when drunk empty, a dead Jew was found. There are many other similar stories. For their kidnapping of children they have often been burned at the stake or banished (as we already heard). I am well aware that they deny all of this. However, it all coincides with the judgment of Christ which declares that they are venomous, bitter, vindictive, tricky serpents, assassins, and children of the devil, who sting and work harm stealthily wherever they cannot do it openly. For this reason, I would like to see them where there are no Christians. The Turks and other heathen do not tolerate what we Christians endure from these venomous serpents and young devils...next to the devil, a Christian has no more bitter and galling foe than a Jew. There is no other to whom we accord as many benefactions and from whom we suffer as much as we do from these base children of the devil, this brood of vipers.

Which Priest said that? Why, none other than Protestant reformer Martin Luther, in his famous 1543 tract, "On The Jews And Their Lies."

You can read a complete translation of Luther's famous tract right here. Historically, the Nazis were quick to quote from this tract, as well as from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to justify their pogram to anyone who tried to disagree on religious grounds.

An interesting coincidence is that Kristallnacht was staged on the night of Martin Luther's birthday.

For the record, when John Paul II made that prayer I mentioned above, he wasn't asking for forgiveness for the Roman Catholic Church. He was asking forgiveness for all of Christianity. Whether all of his fellow Christians wanted it or not, that was his prayer.

Interestingly, it wasn't until the 1980s that any major Lutheran congregation began the process of formally discussing the idea of repudiating Luther's writings on the Jews. None that I'm aware of has actually acknowledged forthrightly that he was an anti-semite and that his writings had an influence on Jewish persecution in the years that followed. Indeed, some still use the excuse, "he wasn't anti-Jew, he was just anti-Judaism," which has to be among the most mealy-mouthed, creepy, non-apologetic apologetics I've ever heard. (Sorry guys, but it is.)

Without trying to drag in an old argument, I am often a bit disturbed when I hear people say that the religion of Islam needs "to go through a Reformation." I wonder how many people realize that the Reformation was two bloody centuries of mass murders, persecution, and intolerance by both Protestants and Catholics; see, for example, the history of the Protestant Inquisitions. Mass murder and/or forced conversion of Catholics, Jews, and Muslims was very much part of the Protestant (Calvinist and Lutheran) program.

It was a rather remarkable--some might say miraculous--thing when the American Constitution embraced freedom of religion and rejected any idea of a Federal church. They didn't repudiate religious involvement in poltics--indeed, the Constitution forbids any requirement of a religious oath for public office, which means Christians and anyone else is free to vote their consciences and express their faith in the voting booth, just so long as there is no established state church. But in the 1700s, true freedom of religion was still radical in the Western world (which is to say, in Christendom). It's certainly not something the Calvinists or the Lutherans practiced at all in Europe. Some are fond of quoting nice things they said about freedom of conscience, but they don't like talking about what happened when those early Protestants actually took political power. (See, again, history of the Protestant Inquisitions.) Nor was freedom of religion particularly popular in Rome back then.

Moving back to modern times, I have noticed that the anti-Catholic strain still runs very high in American evangelicals. It still seems to me to stem directly from the bloody Reformation era; Catholics are idolaters and saint-worshippers, Catholics ignore the Bible, Catholics think the Pope is incapable of sin and is never wrong in anything he says, etc. All of that is quite false to Catholic doctrine and practice, yet they're still quite commonly and perniciously repeated.

Of course, everybody knows that in the early days the Christians were persecuted by Jewish and Roman authorities. We also know that Catholics often persecuted the Protestants, and that the Protestants had some pretty strong arguments against many practices of the Catholic church of the 1500s. There's no denying any of that.

I think as I've said many times before, if dredging things like this up is used to make people feel guilty or inferior or as a sort of game of "who's worse than who," then it's unhealthy. But acknowledging the simple truth of things like this is generally the first step in establishing real trust and really honest discussions.

Honestly, as someone who years ago lost his faith, I always find it hard to think about going back to a church or a faith tradition that won't acknowledge its own sins forthrightly. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn so strongly toward Orthodoxy; neither the Oriental Orthodox, nor the Eastern Orthodox, nor the Roman Catholic, deny that they are part of an unbroken chain of a living church that has continued for 2,000 years, including the many sins and failings of its members and leaders throughout history. That, as opposed to those strains of Christianity that seek to reinvent themselves anew with every generation and with every little cottage-sized church they form, imagining that nothing that came before has anything to do with who they are now or in what may come in the future--the kindest word for such striking me as "hubris."

I'm sure you'll have your own thoughts you'll want to share. Feel free, although I'll probably be gone for the rest of the day. (Yes, other things will be posted--I use Powerblogs' most excellent timed posting feature to keep things appearing throughout the day, even if I'm not here. Which I won't be today.)

I have written a lot on the principles of freedom, including its psychological, social, and political aspects, and how these aspects function at the interpersonal, social, and international levels. For each aspect and level I have tried to sum up my analysis in a First, Second, Third, and Fourth Master Principle. The question is now what final principle do these previous ones imply? Whether in reference to individuals and societies, to families, organizations, and nations, or to intergroup and international relations, the one Principle that distills waging peace is this.

(Continued here)

Sgt. Russell Lee Klika's been taking photographs while he's on duty in Iraq. Here's an amazing sample:

More here and also here.

That one with the soldiers searching for mass graves near polluted water is absolutely eerie. I'd assumed it was some sort of retouched thing but that's just contaminated water, shot from above.

You can click on most of the images to get bigger versions by the way.

As I've mentioned many times, we cannot count on the mainstream media anymore to tell us the story of what's happening in Iraq or Afghanistan. People like Klika tell us far more than they ever do.

(Via Ninja Hater.)

The Commissar has an important question. (Look on the left sidebar when you get there.)

There is a movement afoot to start charging web sites for access to the web. This is a little difficult conceptually for some people to understand, which is probably why it's not getting more discussion than it does. But it would essentially make it legal for internet backbone providers to start charging a heck of a lot more to web sites for the bandwidth they use. The backbone providers say this is only fair, but those who oppose it believe that this is j