Dean's World

Biggest lie of the last 20 years: "Saddam was America's puppet."

Best comment of the week goes to Tom W.:

Yup, the U.S. armed Saddam, all right.

With T-72 tanks, BMP armored personnel carriers, AK-47 rifles, Pecheneg machine guns, Degtyarov-Shpagin Krupnokaliberny heavy machine guns, Bazalt RPGs, MiGs, Antonovs, SCUDs, Tunguska air-defense systems, and all the other weaponry produced by American manufacturers.

You want to talk about lying liars and the lies they tell? Let's start with the bullsh** that America produced the racist neo-Nazi regime of Saddam Hussein, because after all, Donald Rumsfeld once, when he was "Special Envoy to the Middle East," met with every Middle Eastern dictator personally, and smiled and shook his hand, even while he delivered the news that America disproved of their recent actions.

Americaphobia: it's as real as Islamophobia, but too many Muslims are too stupid to recognize this reality.

If you have even a middling level interest in politics, you have this memory I'll bet:

When did you become aware that there was such a thing as a President of the United States, and, when did you become aware of who the man sitting in that office was at the moment by name?

For example, I knew George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's name probably around the age of 6 or 7. But, being born in the middle of 1966, I have no memory of who the (then) current sitting President was except a very very nebulous memory of some funny looking balding guy with a big nose resigning. Gerald Ford is the first POTUS (President Of The United States) that I clearly remember. And of course since I was just a child, all I remembered about him was his geniality, his sincerity, and he seemed to calm down a lot of the adults around me who were upset.

Now, to be clear, I am not writing this as a peaen to Gerald Ford. My own judgment of him is that he was a mediocre President, a middle-of-the-road Republican, and an American success story in his own right. He's wrongly accused of backing genocide in East Timor, by the way, but that's another subject. I'm telling you, he was the first President I remember with pristine clarity, and the most powerful impression I had of him as a kid was that he calmed people down in a time when they were very angry and upset.

Now, rather than turning this into a discussion of the merits or demerits of Gerald Ford, I invite you in the comments to share this:

Who is the first *sitting* President of the United States that *you* mostly clearly remember becoming aware of? And what impression of him did you have at the time?

For example, I'll bet our regular commenter and surly curmudgeon Arnold Harris will treat us to his memories of Harry S Truman. I look forward to reading such reminscences if he shares them.

But I'll bet others among you have such memories too, and would like to share them. Who was *your* first President?

By the way, when it's all over, I have a Richard Nixon story to tell that you won't believe. Actually, it's The Queen's story, so maybe I'll invite her to write an essay on it later on. The Esmay extended family (through the Kondraciuks) has an interesting Nixon story to tell. But for now, let's forget that:

Who was *your* first sitting President that you remember clearly, and what did you think about him at the time?

(Note: While I'm an American and thus asking this from an obviously American perspective, I'll be curious to see what people born outside the United States have to say to the same question.)

Iraq sees dramatically low death toll

BAGHDAD - The civilian death toll in Iraq fell to its lowest level in recent memory Saturday, with only four people killed or found dead nationwide, according to reports from police, morgue officials and credible witnesses.
...
Saturday's decline in deaths was in line with a sharp drop in September of both Iraqi civilian and U.S. military fatalities.

Well, to no one's surprise, Richard Dawkins loved Christopher Hitchens' anti-religion book.

I've always been curious if folks like Dawkins have ever considered the possibility that religion is, in fact, an evolutionarily inborn trait and, if so, how futile it would be to try to browbeat people out of it--or why the trait would have developed in the first place. The notion that it's just rumors and myths strikes me as severely lacking (and is probably why I gave up on atheism myself).

Lee Harvey Oswald, a moody disaffected semi-psychotic Marxist, acting alone, shot and killed the President of the United States in 1963.

It's intellectually plausible that he had some supporters we don't know about. But he alone fired the gun. With that one rifle. And it was only a mildly difficult shot for a trained marksman. No "magic bullet" required.

Conspiracy theories mostly fail because they require too many people to act in concert to support the lie. Which only works when there is a profit motive. And there was none here.

There might have been Mob involvement, but I sort of doubt it. It would require too much coordination and too much coverup.

Discuss.

He's baaack!

Complete with Islamic songs and calls for cities in Israel to return to Palestine, Friday's episode apparently sought to prepare children for their end-of-year examinations — with Farfur being told that cheating is forbidden.

Asked why by an Al-Aqsa television reporter, he looked left and right to see what his friends were writing and answered: "Because the Jews destroyed my home and I left my books and notes under the rubble."

"I'm calling on all children to read more and more to prepare for exams because the Jews don't want us to learn," Farfur then said after being told he had failed the test.

The Arab League is planning an official visit to Israel to discuss peace plans.

Yes, yes, there's always endless talk of peace plans, and proposals tend to be one sided. But this is big if you ask me. This has never happened before. Just by doing this the Arab League grants Israel a level of respect and legitimacy they've never been willing to give it before.

Say a prayer and hope. Nothing will change overnight, but...

(Thanks DanielH!)

Do you think the Rape of the Sabine Women actually happened?

My own take is that it's got about as much truth behind it as the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. And that the real truth behind this myth is in how Roman women and men saw themselves, rather than what actually happened.

But you tell me.

report from the Guardian:

The American government wants to impose travel restrictions on British citizens of Pakistani origin because of concerns about terrorism, according to a report today.

In talks with the British government, the US homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, called for British Pakistanis to apply for a visa before travelling to the US, according to the New York Times.

The newspaper claimed that US officials were concerned about the number of terrorist plots in Britain involving citizens with ties to Pakistan.

It is understood that the British government is resisting any attempts to single out particular ethnic groups for travel restrictions. The Foreign Office has yet to comment on the report.

The NYT provides some context, noting that the US government cites the case of Omar Khyam:

the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.

American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

There are of course multiple ways to solve this problem:

Among the options that have been put on the table, according to British officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of canceling the entire visa waiver program that allows all Britons entry to the United States without a visa. Another option, politically fraught as it is, would be to single out Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring them to make visa applications for the United States.

Rather than impose any visa restrictions, the British government has told Washington it would prefer if the Americans simply deported Britons who failed screening once they arrived at an airport in the United States, British officials said. The British also screen at their end, and share intelligence with the Americans.

Singling out any specific ethnic group is nothing more than collective punishment. The British proposal is the most reasonable one, but barring that, I say that no Briton should be allowed into Fortress America without a visa application. Of course, that's a rather naive view, isn't it? above all else, we must preserve our double standards.

In this thread about Gen. Petraeus resident anti-Islamophobe warrior Ali Eteraz said this:

" i opposed the war but even as i opposed it i was like: we cant do this alone. we went in with freaking poland (have they ever resisted anyone) and freaking spain (who still elect socialists). i mean, come on!"

Well, I for one appreciate learning all I can about Islam, so I don't mistakenly condemn the religion. I'd much rather condemn the fascist terrorists that are perverting it.

I'd appreciate it, if, in return people would READ HISTORY before making moronic claims about an entire group of PEOPLE that they obviously know NOTHING ABOUT.

Hypocrite!!!

For those of you that want to know about Poland and their many victories in war and their countless uprisings and resistance of Communism, Nazism and the like read it here. Better yet, you can read The History of Poland online.

Or you can just rely on the ignorance of others to guide you. But if you do, remember, I'll be waiting and I won't be this nice next time.

Update: Thanks to all of you, in the comments, for your support of Poland and her people. Your recognition of their valor and resistance in history is a soothing balm for the sting of ignorance displayed by others.

The MSM's simulated self-flagellation over its "role" in the "runup" to the Iraq war is reaching a nauseating crescendo.

Good luck to these people.

Also, protests against Islamic radicalism in Pakistan. Un-possible! You can't be a Muslim and oppose terrorism and oppression! Must be some kinda nasty trick.

(Via Instapundit.)

Martin notes how you can be horribly fooled by the latest scams, and how to avoid it.

"Just don't click that link" is rule #1.

*This article bumped to the top. See update below.*

I must say, I'm geeked.

For years now I've recognized that Professor Peter Duesberg of Berkeley is one of the most wrongly-maligned scientists on the planet. He may not be right about everything but he simply does not deserve the kicking-around he's gotten.

I've also said for some time that he is responsible for a theory on what causes cancer that is almost certainly correct. I've been saying so for years, and often been patronized for it. But based on what I knew was going on behind the scenes, I repeatedly told Dean's World readers to watch for it, because it would be coming in the popular press.

Slowly, it's been happening, like a snowball building. We've all been watching it happen (here, for example). Now it has reached a new level: the latest issue of Scientific American has a major article by Peter on Cancer, and it pretty firmly establishes, to anyone who reads it, that the aneuploidy theory of carcinogenesis is very serious and may just be the most important development in cancer research in decades.

He is the man responsible for bringing it to light. No one can deny it, although many would like to.

An interesting sidelight is that, because of his AIDS heresy (Peter has never believed that HIV kills t-cells), he has been permanently locked out of any funding from our often corrupt, unaccountable, cronyism-laced funding system for scientific research. As Professor Richard Strohman recently stated:

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly congratulate my long time friend and colleague, Peter Duesberg, on this quite remarkable 'breakthrough' into completely mainstream recognition.

I would also like to point out that even the "Disclaimer" is to his credit. In much the same way as with the Rene Magritte painting that declares itself not to be a pipe, one cannot help but be caught on the horns of several logical and semantic dilemmas when encountering it.

The one that first comes to mind as particularly relevant to Peter and AIDS is that it does seem impossible that a man who might just be correct concerning something as complicated as the genetic basis of malignancy could be so totally wrong about something as straightforward as whether HIV kills T-cells.

America's system of funding scientific research has been labeled as "peer review." This is, much too often, a lie. In many cases--not all, but many--it needs to be called "Crony Review." Peter still to this day cannot get a grant application approved to save his life. This despite an exceptional record of achievement before he dared question whether HIV really kills t-cells. And despite the fact that over ten years ago he advanced what may well be the most important development in cancer research in a generation.

While millions died, our corrupt Crony Review system blew it big time. Peter's not the only one who illustrates this fundamental breakdown in scientific protocol, but he's probably the most egregious example.

A scientist who has made major contributions in important areas, but questions the consensus view, should not be punished for it should he? Yet Peter has been, repeatedly.

It is high time that the American taxpayer stops being scared of scientists, and starts asking pointed questions about how our tax dollars are spent on this funding system. As Al Gore is so fond of noting:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

It's not conspiracy. It's the bureaucracy, stupid.

Government incompetence married to corporate self-interest: it's not a good thing.

In any case, without that sideline: check out the latest Scientific American, which should be on news stands now. Hated dissident Peter Duesberg is on the cover because no one can deny that he's fundamentally changed the face of cancer research. And how cool is that?

You read it here first.

*Update*: For some reason an earlier thread linked to this one by Celia Farber disappeared. In any case, I got some emails from Professor Duesberg and put them into the comments here.

I am jacking this from a listserv I'm on as it relates to the discussion about religious supremacism in which I held that believing in the truth of your religion to the exclusion of others' religion is a form of supremacism:

"The Islam I know is about mercy, reason, knowledge ,compassion, tolerance, respect, moderation and social justice. Anything else is deviation by people who claim to be Muslim and not necessarily Islam."

As a believing evangelical Christian, this is how I understand my faith as well.

I try to convey the point to others that true Christ Spirit is one of mercy, compassion, tolerance, respect, joy, health and social justice. (I have some reservations about the role of reason and moderation — which I think have their places, but sometimes need to be de-emphasized in deference to heart wisdom and other spiritual leadings and insights.)

Therefore I don't understand the Christ Spirit as exclusive to the Christian faith, but see it as present in all Faiths which sincerely honor those values, and particularly including Islam as I understand it.

One paradox I see in all this is that I know many Christians who interpret our faith in a strictly exclusivist way However, while I see their exclusivism as contradicting my understanding of that aspect of Divine Truth which underlies the value of tolerance, their worship and meditation clearly increases their compassion and wisdom in many other respects — just as profoundly as does the worship and meditation of non-exclusivist believers. They understand the intensification of their exclusivist convictions to be part of the same spiritual endeavor as the deepening of compassion. In worship they may experience very similar subjective confirmations for both enhanced compassion and intensified doctrinal exclusivism. My heart understanding tells me that I am to honor and validate the integrity and sincerity of these believers, and the Truths they affirm in the domains of compassion and social justice, even though I am also led to reject some of their exclusivist and intolerant interpretations of our faith.

I see the same paradox among Muslims.

I would love to see Islam become more like this Evangelical Christianity.

I see that the credibility-impaired global warming politician-scientists are angry that other politicians aren't toeing the line sufficiently for them.

This community of researchers, laced as it is with croneyism and an opaque, non-accountable "peer review" funding system where they get to spend tax money on each other to protect their incomes, has no scientific credibility anymore. The Wegman Report pretty much said all that needs to be said about these people. If they won't clean up their act, and instead keep issuing ever more dire warnings (which coincidentally result in more money and more prestigious careers for themselves), and keep giving condescending, head-patting, "look at me I'm a saint" answers to pointed questions, there's no reason the rest of us should look at their sky-is-falling predictions with any less skepticism than we look at research put forward by tobacco company scientists.

These people are political bureaucrats, and they need to be treated like political bureaucrats.

*Update*: Argh, had the first link wrong. Sorry about that. This is what I meant to link.

I re-read her accounting of our meeting the previous night, shaking my head. “It’s a little disconcerting reading your descriptions. I’m supposed to be the writer, you’re supposed to be the subject.” I was sitting comfortably in her hospital room that next morning, waiting for them to move her downstairs.

“You watch me, I watch you,” she replied, a bit distractedly. She sat up, turned a bit to her right, and began scooting to the edge of her bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting out of bed.”

I restrained myself from offering to help. If she wanted it, she’d ask. There was obviously no point in trying to talk her out of anything.

“These journals,” I asked. “How long have you been keeping them?”

“About 170 years,” she said offhandedly as she turned further to her right, and hooked her leg over the edge.

I laughed. I loved the deadpan way she said things like that. She was clearly a flake, but the most entertaining flake I’d ever met. She flicked a look at me, smiled, and then concentrated again on her leg. I didn’t know where this relationship was going, but there was no doubt that it would be interesting.

“Well, I can already see how parts of the project might be done,” I said. “I think I can use some of your journal entries directly. Not all of them, since you ramble a bit, but I can definitely see how with a little work and careful editing we can lift parts of your journals straight into the book, maybe weave it in with some of our interview transcripts. Could be tricky, but might work. Do you write these every day?”

She scooted some more, grabbed the rail, and put her foot to the ground. She scratched absently at the stump of her left leg.

“You’d know better than I, but that sounds workable,” she said. “And no, not every day, but frequently, whenever something I deem significant happens, or when something’s troubling me.” She was flexing her toes, testing the floor, wincing slightly at its cold temperature.

“They’re remarkably detailed. Do you have an eidetic memory?”

She shook her head. “No. But I’ve got a good one. Writing helps me remember things, keep my thoughts ordered.” She was rocking back and forth sideways, testing her balance.

“So where are the rest of them?” I asked.

Before answering, she startled me by standing straight up on her one leg, facing away from me. I noticed then just how very thin and tiny she seemed. She couldn’t have been much more than 5’3”, which astonished me because she had such a large presence about her. She didn’t seem to care at all that I could see her backside through the open back of the hospital gown. She looked like she had almost no fat at all on her, which looked very unhealthy. With her back to me like that, I could almost believe her missing forearm was simply bent forward out of my vision, but the left leg was still obviously, tragically, almost completely gone.

She then startled me again by leaning backwards like a ballerina and slowly bending her back into a “U” shape. I could hear it crinkle and pop a little, and then she was staring at me upside-down.

She said, “I have some that I wrote some time ago in a steamer trunk. The rest I mostly destroyed. Except for the web site, which I’m still thinking about doing away with.”

“Okay, that’s three questions I have to ask all at once.”

“Go,” she said, straightening up, the back of her head to me again. Her hand was still on to the bedrail.

“Well, why do you write them if you plan to destroy most of them?”

“Because I write them for me, not for anybody else, and I already told you why I write them: to help me organize my thoughts and memories. Once I’ve done it I don’t need them anymore, most of the time. Besides, most of them are trash, just rambles. Some would be dangerous if someone found them.”

She bent at the knee very deeply, almost touching it to the floor, then lost control and spun around, almost losing her grip. She sat there on the floor in an awkward, strained position facing me, her right arm and shoulder twisted severely. I jumped up, but she shot an angry look my way and I stopped. She was shaking a little, trying to pull herself up. Then her eyes relented.

“All right, this is very uncomfortable. I suppose I could use a hand.” She was sweating, and panting hard.

READ MORE

Methuselah's Daughter, A Novel

Roger Simon notes that two of Iraq's best bloggers are routinely trashed by many on the left, and I think he's right about why.

PARIS (AFP) - People dying of cancer are turning to the Internet in a frantic attempt to buy under-the-counter versions of an untested, unlicensed tumour-shrinking chemical, science journals reported Wednesday.
...
Doctors are also being urged by patients to request special authorisation from national regulatory agencies so that they can prescribe the drug.

"At first, (people enquiring) were quite honest," researcher Evangelos Michelakis told the British science weekly. "But now we're getting emails from people asking for dosage information for, say, a 150-pound (70-kilo) golden retriever."

Because DCA has been around for years, its structure cannot be patented and pharmaceutical companies are not interested in developing the drug.

Michelakis is raising money with the hope of starting his own small-scale clinical trial "within the next few months," Nature said.

G. Willow Wilson (Who Is A Girl) and I recently had an interesting Google chat. --Dean

Willow: hey, how you doing?

me: Willow!
How are ya?
I'm reading Ali's latest to Spencer. I'm amazed at his fortitude.

Willow: me too
i don't have the stamina for conversations like that
i think you have to have kind of a disregard for your own sanity to participate in them. [smile] fortunately ali does

me: Hahahaha.

Willow: how are you coping with the Dean's World shakeup? you get my email?

me: I'm coping splendidly well actually.
Honestly, I'm enjoying blogging again.
I'd stopped for a while there just because this topic was making me spiritually sick.
I've gotten condemnation on other sites, but less than I expected.

Willow: i'm glad you're enjoying blogging again

me: It is a very weird head space to have many thousands of readers and hundreds of commenters when this is only something I do as a hobby.

Willow: i bet! that's the power of new media
i think it's great
hey
out of the blogging world
what is the atmosphere over there? in terms of this islamophobia debate?
i only get the press
i don't see what people are saying on the street

me: Hmm.
That's an interesting question.
I think that casual bigotry about Muslims is common, but that rarely translates into action that I see. If that makes sense.

Willow: it does
"damn towelheads" vs. "let's go kill the towelheads"

me: Yeah more or less.
There was some stupid political nonsense over a Muslim who was elected to Congress, for example.

Willow: yeah the keith ellison thing
well
they said the same stuff about kennedy
for being catholic

me: Graffiti now and then.
Rude commentary when the subject comes up.
I do fear what will happen if there is another significant terrorist attack though. I always have. It's one reason why I've always been pretty hawkish. There is a simply marvelous essay on something called the Jacksonian tradition in America that explains what I fear on that score.

Willow: i am very worried about what will happen if there is another terrorist attack. i wouldn't be surprised if there started to be demands for loyalty oaths and whatnot

me: Yep.

Willow: i wouldn't have any problem taking one, funnily enough--I really don't see where pride should come into it--but it's depressing and sad on a human level to be singled out. esp when you're one of the people trying (in your own tiny capacity) to fix things

me: That's pretty much how I feel about it.

Willow: things are interesting here...there is a great deal of animosity toward the wahhabi-influenced fundamentalism, but it's a resigned animosity. The problem is that the regimes are so repressive. The fundies are the only ones crazy enough to act out and advertise themselves because they don't value their own lives. Ordinary people don't want to expose themselves to the wrath of a state that punishes any act of protest, whether it's pro-fundie or anti-fundie

me: That has long been obvious to me what's been going on. The real problem is the lack of freedom.

Willow: oh yeah
ultra liberals will pish and pshaw about the necessity of freedom, but man, are you screwed if you don't have any
your hands are literally tied, literally.
it creates a situation in which only nutcases will rise to the top

me: I know. I've been watching closely for years now. Even though I've never been there, it's entirely obvious to me that this is exactly what is happening. Repressive regimes are all alike.

Willow: they really are. they create the same circumstances over and over again. that's what frustrates me so much about the western right...on the one hand, they wax poetic about freedom, on the other, they condemn people who don't have any for failing to act as if they do

me: I've studied a lot about how communist and classic fascist regimes work. It was always the same.

Willow: it must be built into human psychology, oppression and the response to oppression

me: Well, Bernard Lewis has had some amazingly insightful things to say about that. Amongst other things he notes that prior to the 20th century such regimes simply could not exist. Technology made that level of repression possible.
Modern technology also can be an amazingly subversive tool toward undermining such regimes, however.

Willow: Which is absolutely true, I think. Poor Bernard Lewis. The old school Edward Said-ites are kicking themselves now; the new breed of 'orientalist' makes the old one look like enlightened social reformers

me: They should be kicking themselves.

Willow: Yeah they missed the boat. I think if Said were still alive he would have steered the course of the post-colonial discussion into more realistic waters, but he's dead
Devji might save it. i don't know.

me: I'm quite a bit more negative on Said than you are, but, in any case, you're right that it's moot.

Willow: he had some good ideas, but i think his anger colored a lot of their expression. he's too anti-spiritual at the end of the day. There are links between the eastern and western canon that he ignores as a result

me: His anti-Western, anti-Israeli stuff completely colors my opinion of him.

Willow: you should read power politics and culture. it clarifies a lot of that stuff. his criticism was easy to de-contextualize but it wasn't mad hatred. he did get too close to apologetics for unapologizable things though
the way i see it
if someone asks you "as a muslim, do you condemn terrorism?"
the answer is YES
not "Why should i be asked that as a muslim?"
he wasn't a muslim
but same idea

me: Well it is... I don't know what the word is, I was going to say "astounding" but it's not astounding... it is frustrating, I guess, how the terms of the debate are always about Muslims.

Willow: oh yeah
i'm sick of it

me: For example, I have noted to my astonishment that Yasser Arafat is now routinely referred to as an "Islamic Terrorist."
Which is like, "Whaaaah?"
It would be like calling Hitler a Christian Dictator because he was, after all, baptized a Roman Catholic.

Willow: right, exactly. karen armstrong (who i know a lot of people are not a fan of, but who says some intelligent things) said once that while she was growing up catholic in london at a time when the IRA was bombing the tube on a weekly basis, no one talked about 'catholic terrorism'

me: I've tried making that same point to some of my friends but it flies right past them. Even the Catholic ones.
Could I publish this conversation?

Willow: sure, yeah
anything for posterity [smile]

me: Sweet.
????
That's a joke, right?

Willow: oh yeah
i was pretending to be a pretentious historian
like my words are so great they must be preserved

me: Heh. Cool.

I don't know the topic well enough to tell you if Hitch has nailed it here, but he sure seems as if he's done his homework. I invite substantive comments as to whether and how he is wrong.

Why should we care? He suggests a couple of reasons, but here's one that will capture the imagination of some regular readers here... and annoy some, and probably a contributor or two, as well:

All over the non-Muslim world, we hear incessant demands that those who believe in the literal truth of the Quran be granted "respect." We are supposed to watch what we say about Islam, lest by any chance we be considered "offensive." A fair number of authors and academics in the West now have to live under police protection or endure prosecution in the courts for not observing this taboo with sufficient care. A stupid term — Islamophobia — has been put into circulation to try and suggest that a foul prejudice lurks behind any misgivings about Islam's infallible "message."

Well, this idiotic masochism has to be dropped. There may have been a handful of ugly incidents, provoked by lumpen elements, after certain episodes of Muslim terrorism. But no true secularist or even Christian has been involved in anything like the torching of a mosque. (The last time that such a thing did happen on any scale — in Bosnia — the United States and Britain intervened militarily to put a stop to it. We also overthrew the Taliban, which was slaughtering the Hazara Shiite minority in Afghanistan.) But where are the denunciations from centers of Sunni and Shiite authority of the daily murder and torture of Islamic co-religionists? Of the regular desecration of holy sites and holy books? Of the paranoid insults thrown so carelessly and callously by one Muslim group at another? This mounting ghastliness is a bit more worthy of condemnation, surely, than a few Danish cartoons or a false rumor about a profaned copy of the Quran in Guantanamo. The civilized world — yes I do mean to say that — should find its own voice and state firmly to Muslim leaders and citizens that respect is something to be earned and not demanded with menace.

Earned, he explains, by Muslims taking a breather from brutally slaughtering each other.

I've noticed lately that I find it harder and harder to be patient with people on this blog.

It's a character flaw, although it's gotten worse the longer I've gone on with it. Interesting, eh?

I've been avoiding writing about the story getting all the attention these days: the Speaker of the House wanting access to an airplane that would fly coast to coast without refueling. But the stupid story just won't go away.

The newly sworn-in Speaker of the House is not demanding anything unreasonable. Previous Speakers have long had access to an airplane for professional use. This should not be surprising. As it happened, the last few Speakers all were from the eastern or middle states. They had airplanes that could fly them to their home districts.

The current Speaker is offering to fly commercial so long as it's non-stop and she can use her security entourage. Which is a really frickin' stupid idea.

Give her the damned plane and shut up. This is making my head hurt. Even the White House says so for crying out loud.

A day after former center John Amaechi became the first NBA player to publicly come out, everybody is talking about the British-raised athlete and the idea of gay players in the NBA. Mr. Amaechi, who spent five seasons with four teams, acknowledged that he was gay yesterday, making him the sixth professional male athlete from one of the four major U.S. sports — basketball, baseball, football, hockey — to openly discuss his homosexuality. He details his life in his autobiography Man in the Middle, which will be released on February 14.

Martina Navratilova, perhaps the world's most famous openly gay athlete, lauded Mr. Amaechi for taking a courageous stand and said it's imperative for athletes to come out because of what she called an epidemic of suicides among young lesbians and gays. "It's hugely important for the kids so they don't feel alone in the world. We're role models," she said. "He will definitely help a lot of kids growing up to feel better about themselves."

Grant Hill, who said he didn't know Mr. Amaechi when he was with the Orlando Magic, also applauded the decision to go public. "The fact that John has done this, maybe it will give others the comfort or confidence to come out as well, whether they are playing or retiring," Mr. Hill said.

LeBron James, however, said he didn't think an openly gay person could survive in the league and worried about any players who have not revealed they are gay. "With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy," Mr. James said. "So that's like the No. 1 thing as teammates — we all trust each other. You've heard of the in-room, locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays in there. It's a trust factor, honestly. A big trust factor."

News that Mr. Amaechi had come out surprised some players. "For real? He's gay for real?" said Steven Hunter of the Philadelphia Sixers, who added he would be fine with an openly gay teammate. "As long as he don't make any advances toward me I'm fine with it," he said. "As long as he came to play basketball like a man and conducted himself like a good person, I'd be fine with it." Shavlik Randolph of the Philadelphia Sixers acknowledged that it's a new situation. "As long as you don't bring your gayness on me I'm fine," Mr. Randolph said. "As far as business-wise, I'm sure I could play with him. But I think it would create a little awkwardness in the locker room."

My response: Who? Never heard of him before opening up my morning newspaper about the story. So he is gay. And? Much fuss about nothing. Was he a good basketball player? Is he a productive, law-abiding member of society? What young gay person in today's America would be stupid enough to believe that they are the only one in the world, given gay portrayals in media and real life?

"Naturally," wrote the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, in one of her essays on poetry, "I prefer I writer who feels but doesn't write to one who writes but doesn't feel."

I'm with her. The world is dying from repression, wherever you look. I know of no more brilliant prophecy of our castrated society than the novella "St. Mawr," by D.H. Lawrence, in which an American Aristocrat falls in love with a horse who throws her British, Upper U, perfectly ghastly, erudite, pithy, nothing-from-the-hips down husband off his back. Fixes it so he is liteally as well as figuratively paralyzed from the waist.

An outtake--a scene between the society bound, depressed mother and the nature seeking, isolationist daughter, as they prepare to sail back to America, from England.

"My dear daughter, whatever else the human animal might be, he'd be a dangerous commodity." "I wish he would, mother. I'm dying of these empty, dangerless men, who are only sentimental and spiteful."

"Nonsense, you're not dying.

"I am, mother."

The deep, wild, merciless humor of D. H. Lawrence rarely gets acknowledged.

Since I am having so much fun, and before the net comes down and closes around me and lifts me thrashing to my next cage, let me quote the ever brilliant Mr. Lawrence on what he meant with that horse, St. Mawr, (and do read it if you haven't for it is Lawrence at his terrifying best.)

In his last work, Apocalypse, written in 1931, Lawrence explained:

"The horse is a dominant symbol...he links us, the first palpable and throbbing link with the ruddy-glowing Almighty of potency: he is the beginning even of our godhead in the flesh and as a symbol he roams the dark underworld meadows of the soul...Within the last fifty years man has lost the horse. Now man is lost...lost to life and power."

Lawrence wrote that in 1931.

So why do I bring this up? Because I am thinking of blood rush, rage, horses, war. Men. Women. The word. Lawrence's Mawr is said to be, "...a conflict between the raw vitality of wild nature and what he considered to be the sterility and sickness of modern industrial society."

And thank Pan he is not here to see this.

We live in a world where we have permitted the pharmaceutical industry to govern even the blood flow of the male erection. In modern journalism, which I like to spitefully call Pottery Barn Journalism, we have de-weeded all words and sentiment that grow against prediction-- a very precisely measured height of grass blade. All else makes us panic and reach for our "crazy" metaphors. No wonder Hunter S. Thompson could take no more. When blood flows into language, when feelings get to be real feelings and not lies, sulphuric and ungovernable, we all rush in to close the wound, an instinctive tourniquet against blood flow. I do it too. But I have been alerted to the disingenuity of this reflex. An epistolary exchange, here:

On the Iraq war: First he lost the Liberals. That was ok, because he never had them anyway. Then he lost the Moderates (for instance, I stopped supporting the war in mid- to late- 2005). That was ok; he only needs 50%+1 to make a majority. Of course, losing the moderates cost him his 50%+1, but that was ok, he still had his base...

Now he’s lost the National Review Online. Why? Because ultimately, only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on 12 fronts! For those who don’t know, Bush losing support from the NRO is like Hezbollah losing support from Iran...

Gods be good people, what will it take for the American President to give up his insane quest to reshape the Middle East? Perhaps it’s necessary, but Bush is not the man who can make it happen...

(Crossposted at The Punning Pundit, a site you should read more often)

Neo has concluding thoughts worth reading.

I just got an email from someone informing me that any criticism of the Rabbi who threatened to sue Seattle-Tacoma airport is "Jew-hatred." No qualifiers even. Just outright Jew-hatred.

Well. Glad I know that now. Otherwise I might have been confused.

I hate to die.