Right Wing Nut House

I’ve been remiss in my duties as a member of the Watchers Council. I neglected to post the results from our vote of August 5.

Yours truly carried away top honors in the Council category with my post on the coming (probable?) bird flu pandemic called “The Coming Catastrophe.

Finishing first in the Non Council category was “The American Islamic Leaders’ ‘Fatwa’ is Bogus” by The Counterterrorism Blog. Finishing a close second was Michael J. Totten’s “Fisking Juan Cole: A Photo Gallery.”

This week’s vote had The Education Wonks coming in first with “Washington’s Wasteful Ways: Alaskan Pork Chops.” Dymphna from Gates of Vienna finished a close second with “Guess What? Anatomy is Destiny.”

In the Non Council category, The Dawn Patrol’s “Planned Parenthood Fantasizes About Blowing Up ‘Anti-Choicers’” won the honors for top post.

If you’d like to participate in this week’s Watcher’s vote, go here and follow instructions.

The votes having been counted, Gates of Vienna won the latest Watcher’s vote with a thoughtful piece entitled Is Britain too Decadent to Survive? Finishing second was “In for the Long Haul: What Needs to Happen in the War on Terror” from The Glittering Eye. Nice chart Eye!

In the non Council category Norm Geras won for his Apologists Among Us while Stephen Green’s “Not Getting It Department” finished in the runner up spot.

If you’d like to participate in this week’s Watcher’s vote, go here and follow instructions.

The votes were cast last week in the weekly Watcher’s Council’s best post contest and the winner in the Council category was a great read by Jimmie at The Sundries Shack entitled I Despair. Second place went to Dymphna’s post at Gates of Vienna called A Functional Philosophical Structure Must Have an Understanding of Evil.

In the non-Council category, Winds of Change with their excellent flash presentation on terrorism finished in the top spot. Neptunus Lex and Rythmns Part 8 finished in the runner up position.

If you’d like to participate in the Watcher’s Council vote, go here and follow instructions.

Last week’s vote for the Council’s best was extremely close. In the end, thanks to the tie breaking vote being cast by the Watcher himself, The Education Wonks came away with top honors for their excellent article on “Border Freebies: Using The Race Card To Get An Education.”

I finished in a four way tie for second with E-Claire (”Happy Independence Day”), Dr. Sanity (”A Brief History Lesson”), and Rymes with Right (”Just say no to Journalistic Privilege”).

Finishing first in the non Council category was Makaha Surf Report’s excellent post “Today I Leave for War.”

Finishing second was Varifrank’s “Nostalgia is a Mental Disease.”

Some excellent bloggy goodness from the Watcher!

“Better Late Than Never” Edition…

Last weeks Watcher’s Council vote was a real nail biter but in the end, The House emerged triumphant with my post entitled The Left’s “Word Deficit.”

Finishing a close second was an excellent piece by Dymphna of Gates of Vienna called Pimping Misery. Is the United Nations salvageable?

The world has gotten smaller and the rate of change has increased exponentially so the last thing we need is central control. It can’t respond quickly enough, as the Tsumani aftermath proved; it has no moral authority, as illustrated in Darfur, and it has no accountability, as Oil for Food demonstrates, continuing to bubble out vast reserves of corruption and downright evil.

The world not only doesn’t need the United Nations, the sad fact is the world would be a better place without the United Nations. If it ever had any usefulness that utility is so long past it’s no longer visible.

Agreed, with one small caveat: If the UN didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. This yearning for one world government is an outgrowth of the socialist impulse that has colored European politics for nearly 150 years and is probably with us to stay. Prior to World War I, the dream of a supranational organization that would prevent war, regulate trade, and generally unite mankind in peace and harmony was pretty much confined to a few philosophers (Immanuel Kant) and nutcases (Hegel). It took liberal saint Woodrow Wilson (and the slaughter of 20 million during World War I) to create the League of Nations. And when that failed, it took another liberal saint in FDR to try again with the UN.

What these efforts have in common is a denial of man’s natural inclinations, i.e. the urge to disobey as many of the ten commandments as possible especially nos. 6 through 10 with a special emphasis on #6 and #7. There may in fact be a formula out there for some kind of worldwide extra-governmental organization. But it will never be invented by a liberal. Only a conservative would recognize the inherent evil of human beings and create a world body accordingly.

I’m kidding of course. No conservative would be so stupid.

Tied for second in the voting with Dymphna was the good Dr. Sanity and a fascinating post on terrorist enablers: (”The Consequences of Enabling Terror”)

Whatever Michael Jackson was or wasn’t doing with those young boys was hardly a mystery to the boys’ mothers and/or families, which had to be complicit and enable Jackson’s behavior (the kids didn’t get to the Ranch on foot, nor did they stay overnight without permission). No, it served the purposes of the parents to enable Jackson’s behavior. It serves the purposes of the Feminists et al, to ignore the brutality of Islam towards women, in favor of demanding that the Harvard President whimper and wallow before them in abject apology for remarks that were scientifically justified.

Yes I am angry. And I’m fed up with such insane moral equivalence.

I’ve decided that it isn’t just a question of moral equivalence as the good Doctor Sanity so rightly points out. It’s also people who have fallen in love with the sound of their own arguments. It must be very sweet sounding to these lickspittles to hear the word “Gulag” or “Hitler” come out of their mouths when they talk about America or George Bush. The endorphins released in the brain when making such analogies must make the comparisons to evil and tyrants irresistable. There is, in fact, a recognized pathology at work here.

It’s called looniness.

Finishing a close third was Council newbie Rhymes with Right. Greg’s post on the SCOTUS Kelo decision is spot on: (SCOTUS: Your Property is not your Own)

Imagine that – these poor dumb citizens believed that they had the right to decide when and if they would sell their homes and property to private developers, and at what price.

Didn’t they know that the government has the right to give them a low-ball price for their homes and turn around and sell them at that sweetheart price to a favored local developer or appealing corporation. After all, why should a homeowner be able to decide that he wants to stay in his house when a multinational corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars wants the lot for parking at their new offices? And don’t you understand that government should be able to decide that it would be economically beneficial to have a 100-house neighborhood consisting of million dollar homes rather than 500 houses valued at a mere $100,000 – it will bring a better sort of person, too. If the old owners can’t find a house in the town they grew up in – let them buy trailers!

Given the spate of seizures since the decision was handed down, this may be the most disasterous ruling made by the Supreme Court since Plessy v Ferguson which upheld the excreable notion of “seperate but equal” facilities for the races. Not even the made up privacy right granted in Roe v Wade caused as much constitutional mischief as this ruling has the potential to do.

John Hindraker of Powerline (writing in The Weekly Standard) doesn’t agree. But the question of the immediate and dire impact on individual American citizens and their right to be secure in their property is answered with more and more examples of Kelo type seizures that have come to light in the past week.

The impact will be most heavily felt in very small towns and ex-urban areas where the confluence of money, politics, personal relationships, and greed are most in evidence. Part-time politicians who are elected as Trustees or Assemblymen and whose campaigns are bankrolled by developers are wide open to the kind of corruption Kelo invites.

These are real world situations not theoretical constitutional constructs. It remains to be seen whether there will be any protections that can be legislated short of a constitutional amendment re-affirming our property rights.

The winning Non-Council piece was submitted by Maxed out Mama and it’s a doozy. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, best selling author, winner of numerous academic prizes…and moonbat extraordinaire: (Ehrlich’s Wit and Wisdom)

“We must institute the Chinese Communist system of compulsory abortion in various forms of infanticide so that each couple will have only one child. We must hope that our government doesn’t wait until it, too, decides that coercive measures can solve America’s population problem…. The price of personal freedom in making childbearing decisions may be the destruction of the world.”
[Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University]

You know what’s really cool? The German government is thinking about imposing penalties upon childless people in an attempt to boost their birthrate RIGHT NOW. Europe’s decline and fall basically is rooted in the declining birthrate. One thing I love about these types - no matter what the problem, they can always come up with a reason why the government must to force people to do something for their own good.

Has there ever been an individual more wrong, more often, in the history of popular culture? Because that’s been Ehrlich’s enduring appeal; his dreams of catastrophe have resonated with the scientifically illiterate, the ignorant, and the anti-industrialization crowd ever since his best selling The Population Bomb became the bible a certain segement of the anti-science left. Here’s Ehrlich, writing in 1970, on the world food situation in 1980:

“This vast tragedy, however, is nothing compared to the nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s) … A situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.”

Read the entire post if for no other reason than to realize that the very same people who were enthusiastically agreeing with him in the 1970’s and 1980’s are behind the Global Warming scare of today.

If you’d like to participate in this week’s Watcher’s Council, go here and follow instructions.

The vote is in for this week’s Watcher’s Council and coming out on top was The Sundries Shack with a post entitled “What’s the Real Question in America.” Jimmie takes a column by WAPO’s Fred Hiatt on the reason that editorials in that august publication fixate on American sins apart piece by piece. Here’s Mr. Hiatt on why there aren’t more editorials on Zarqawi’s inhumanity:

But it’s also true that The Post has published more editorials criticizing Donald Rumsfeld than Abu Musab Zarqawi. That’s partly because, to the extent that editorials are meant to educate or explain, there isn’t all that much to say about Zarqawi’s evil that isn’t evident to most Post readers; and to the extent that editorials are meant to influence, there’s no point in addressing messages to the beheaders of the world.

And Jimmie’s response:

Did you catch that? You don’t see editorials about Zarqawi because, 1) we already know everything we need to know about him, and 2) he wouldn’t listen to us anyway.

But that jumps over a more important point. Newspaper editorials really aren’t about delivering facts. That’s what the news articles are suppoed to do. Editorials exist to deliver opinion - their job is to persuade, not to inform. Perhaps Hiatt’s confusion about the role of a newspaper editorial might also explain the problem with so many news articles. If he, a veteran reporter, believes that editorials are supposed to deliver facts, might he also believe that news articles are supposed to deliver opinions? It’s a fair question, I think.

A fair question that we’ll never get an answer to.

Finishing second in the voting was E.Claire’s excellent rant against the leftist idiots who want to turn the memorial at Ground Zero into an anti-American Disneyland. Here, Claire gently takes the organizers to task for their use of the word “freedom:”

“Not a word to shy away from?!? Whendahell have Americans ever shied awya from using the word “Freedom”?!? I hear President Bush use it regularly as his choices have freed 50 million people in the last few years.

Whatinhell, you might ask, does this have to do with US being attacked by raving 7th century religious nuts?

Gently, Claire…Oh Well. Read the whole thing but be forewarned; take your blood pressure meds before doing so.

Another excellent post from the Council was Gates of Vienna’s “The Slave Owner’s Book Store.” A Saudi couple in Colorado were keeping an Indonesian woman as a virtual slave:

If you were wondering how she escaped, the authorities were given “a tip” that the family was harboring an illegal alien. They got a search warrant in November, 2004 and discovered the slave. She was removed from the home and legal proceedings began.

If the benighted MSM doesn’t bury this story under toilet paper, it will be interesting to see how the trial goes and what the sentence is. Perhaps old Al-Turki should talk to Michael Jackson, see what the secret is.

Indeed.

Thw winning non-Council post was from Winds of Change entitled “Zimbabwe Changed My Mind: Guns Are A Human Right:”

As many of you know, I’m from Canada. We have a pretty different attitude to guns up here, and I must say that American gun culture has always kind of puzzled me. To me, one no more had a right to a gun than one did to a car.

The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world.

Even though I myself am something of a lukewarm 2nd Amendment supporter, I can see the truth in what he says. There is also truth in the idea pushed by gun rights supporters here that America will never know tyranny as long as people have a right to keep and bear arms.

Something to be said for that too.

If you’d like to participate in next week’s watcher’s vote, go here and follow instructions.

This week’s Watchers Council vote is in and once again, The House ended up in the winners circle. My post “Remembering Why I Love History” finished first in the Council category.

Finishing second was an eye-opening post by the Sundries Shack on Hillary Clinton’s rhetorical dive off the deep end in a fundraising speech. “In a Perfect World, We’d Never Let Her Run” illustrates why this lamp throwing harridan is unfit to be President of the United States:

I’m very intolerant of people who can’t tell the difference between George Bush and Fidel Castro, Adolph Hitler, or Josef Stalin. I wish I could make a time machine and drag them back to hear the screams of children gassed to death, to see women raped and slaughtered, to witness the last minutes of human beings worked to death in labor camps just so they’d never, ever forget what a real dictatorship is.

I’m serious about this. The speech Hillary Clinton made ought to disqualify her from ever running for elected office in this country ever again. And I’m not talking about a legal prohibition either, so just settle down and put away your “fascist” signs. I’m saying that we, the people, ought to shout down that sort of dangerous and idiotic nonsense the very moment it’s uttered and vote them down so hard that their ears ring.

Amen to that, Jimmie.

Another good post from the Council this week was from E-Claire who blogged the tongue-in-cheek San Francisco 49ers training film that was a hot item in the Shadow Media last week. It’s called “SF Stages Gala Offendapalooza.”You may recall that the video purported to give lessons to rookies on how to act in certain situations in the moonbat capitol of the world. Of course, every minority interest group in the city wanted to horn in on the publicity generated by the racy film by condemning it from their own “special perspective.” Here are a couple of those perspectives and who the film actually “demeaned:”

“…women”

Now, these are professional sex workers engaged in the profession of ..er, sex work. They were hired by the team for the job of showing their boobies on tape, a little fakey girl-kissing, some poorly acted ‘admiration’ of Reynolds’ unit, and rather more giggling and simpering than I thought necessary. But, hey—that’s a personal taste thing. heh, heh heh heh heh heh… she said “taste”… *BANG* heh, heh heh … whe said “ba..ow!”

“bisexual community”
Nobody ever takes the bisexual community seriously, so I won’t either. Nevertheless, I am offended for the bisexual community; just on GP.

The Smarter Cop in “Who’s the Dummy, Again?” sees Kerry channeling Danny Kaye:

Folks, I have a feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg. What we’re dealing with is a really small man with a Walter Mitty-sized imagination.

Ayup.

In the Non Council category, Winds of Change won with a powerful post “THIS is a Gulag:”

In addition to the most common category of camps that practiced hard physical labour and prisons of various sorts, other forms also existed.

–Psikhushka the forced medical treatment in psychiatric imprisonment was used, in lieu of camps, to isolate and break down political prisoners. This practice became much more common after the official dismantling of the Gulag system.

One thing to remember about the psychiatric prisons is that at the same time Mikail Gorbachev was recieving the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s estimated that more than 25,000 perfectly healthy political dissidents were languishing in these “hospitals.” Obviously these poor souls must have been sick if they couldn’t recognize that they were living in a workers’ paradise.

The hospitals, now closed, will be a blight on Russian medicine - as much as the Nazi medical experiments were on German medicine - for years to come.

If you’d like to submit a post to the Council for next week’s vote, go here and follow instructions.

The votes are in from this week’s Watcher’s Council and once again, it was a tough choice. I was lucky enough to walk away with top honors for my post on the possible Bird Flu pandemic entitled “A Killer in the Shadows” but there were several other worthy posts in the Council category I’d like to highlight.

Dr. Sanity has become the poet laureate of the Council lately with this gem about the beheader Zarqawi and the hope that he’s close to death as a result of wounds he recently received in “A Prayer for Zarqawi:”

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord your soul to keep;
And if He keeps it very well,
It’s sure to find its way to hell.

But if you don’t, it’s no surprise–
A coward never lives his lies.
You’ve sent so many to the Lord,
It’s only fair you face His sword.

E-Claire has some advice for the President regarding the schmucks at Amnesty International in “Hey Dubya: Don’t Feed the Moonbats:”

I heard a rep. of “Human Rights Watch” on the raadio yesterday. He out and out said that they hold the US to a “higher standard” than they do “people with less developed armies.” Talk about Racist…. He might as well have come out with it: “Those little brown people just aren’t as capable as you taller, whiter, more technologically advanced people. We expect so little of them and so much of you.”

The blind credulity of these infantile dopes is beyond comprehension. Whyinhell would the White House even deign to respond to them?!?

Good question, although Gregory Djerejian believes the Prez should have taken the opportunity to come clean about prisoner mistreatment worldwide.

I agree with Greg up to a point. He wants a blue ribbon independent panel to look into the allegations of torture. I think a panel like that could easily morph into a 9/11 Committee - a partisan tug of war that wouldn’t do anyone much good in the long run. For the moment, all the critics of the Pentagon’s handling of torture allegations have on its investigations is that they’re moving too slowly. Given the nature of the charges and the conflicting testimony of the participants, I don’t see how they could go much faster. That being said, I think the President should get out front of the various torture investigations. Right now it’s like Chinese water torture. The information is coming out in dribs and drabs which only allows his enemies to take each allegation out of context and dwell on it lovingly, massaging it and milking it for all that it’s worth.

The problem is exactly the opposite of what his critics charge; the incidents are isolated and disconnected. If torture was administration policy - like the Nazis “Final Solution” or even Stalin’s “gulag” - it would be easier to trace. Holocaust historians have Heydrich’s train schedules and accountings from the death camps themselves to go by. In the administration’s case, critics like to point to the Justice Department memos that explored a myriad of interrogation options, all of which were eventually rejected. The fact that they were even discussed causes these critic’s imaginations to take flight and not set down until they end up in the same place as Amnesty International - La-La Land.

Finally, in the Council category The Smarter Cop blogs the recent arrest of terror suspects here in America in “Terrorists in your Backyard:”

Next time you’re in a mall’s food court with your daughter and you see a kindly old man smiling at her, try not to overreact, but at least consider this:

Shah saw a girl nearby looking at him and he smiled back.
The Bronx man, the son of a Malcolm X lieutenant, then turned to the agent and said, “I could be joking and smiling and then cutting their throats in the next second,” the complaint said.

This is Exhibit A for the point many have been trying to put across both to the general population and to our ignorant bureaucrats who seem to be caving to CAIR and other organizations sympathetic to Islamicists - it’s their intended goal to blend into our society and appear as we do, even as every moment they wish to shed our blood. They’re just waiting for the right time.

Chilling, that.

In the non-Council category, the winner was Bloggledygook’s “Taking Islam Seriously” in which Daniel Berczik fisks this column by Frank Rich right smartly:

In today’s Dubai, home to cutting-edge resort design and prestigious golf and tennis tournaments (in which, we presume, women sometimes wear shorts or tennis skirts) it is still unlawful to be allowed entry into the country if one’s passport is stamped by Israeli Customs. Will keeping the pages of an odd Koran or two dry really change the rancid philosophy that holds 1.5 billion people in a death grip of shame, perversion and hatred?

Yet Mr. Rich can’t let himself go that far, because that would actually serve to put him to the right of this administration even as it would install him directly in the center of American public opinion. Those complaining about Koran abuse see the latest yawning episode as either a shameful display of America’s arrogance and disrespect for the world’s second largest religion or one more foul-up by a government and its military that only serves to make the fight harder.

Great writing. Great thinking.

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watcher’s Vote, go here and follow instructions.

This week’s Watchers Vote featured so many good posts I had a hard time trying to decide who to vote for.

Dr. Sanity was channeling John Lennon in an uproarious spoof of “Imagine:”

Imagine there’s no Jihad
It’s easy if you try
No more suicide bombers
Who plan for you to die
Imagine every nation
with all their people free…

Imagine no Osama,
It isn’t hard to do,
And no Zarqawi
(He discovered he’s a Jew!)
Imagine all those mullahs,
buried under ground…

Heh.

The Glittering Eye continues to blog on intellectual property rights, this time what the WTO is doing about the problem:

In practice the situation is quite different with at least three competing groups: Europe and the United States (who have well-developed traditions of intellectual property law, bodies of law, and enforcement), a group of dissenters led by Brazil and India and including a number of South American and Asian countries who are pushing for recognition of national origin as a source of rights in the intellectual property law of biotechnology (who don’t have similar traditions, bodies, or enforcement, possibly motivated by memories of past exploitation), and the African countries who want no part of much of the bloody thing (probably with similar motivations). We’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming years

And I’m sure Dave will keep us updated.

Wallo World has a must read post about a new Mark Cuban venture that not only sounds like a fantastic idea, but could revolutionize the movie biz. Wouldn’t it be great if, on the same day a movie premiered in theaters, you could also watch it on TV or rent the DVD at your favorite video rental store?

The theory behind 2929 goes like this: Over the past few years, Mr. Cuban and Mr. Wagner have acquired or built HDNet Films, which funds smaller budget movies, Magnolia Pictures for distribution, Landmark Theaters for exhibiting, and HDNet and HDNet Movies for cable broadcast. Consumers with access to those cable networks will be able to see a film at home on the day it comes out. Or they can see it in the theater or, once details are worked out, simply buy the DVD. By closing the window between when a movie is released and when it becomes available on DVD - usually about four months - 2929 will save on marketing by not having to advertise twice.

Sue and I talked about this yesterday. We had just seen Revenge of the Sith and we both thought that even if it was on TV the same day, we’d definitely go to a theater and gladly plunk down the $6 to watch it there. But what about a light comedy like The Longest Yard? We both agreed having the option of watching it on pay per view would be fantastic. We both agreed that big-budget action movies like Sith would probably still be worth seeing in a theater. But having the other options would be a dream come true.

I think this would also change the way movies are made and marketed. After a while, it will be pretty clear which movies will do well in theaters and which will do better in the so-called aftermarket of TV and video. Producers and directors will tailor some films for the smaller screen while others will realize their full impact on the big screens in theaters. And as the article Bill links to indicates, marketing costs for movies would be reduced dramatically. Theater prices may actually stabilize or (God forbid!) go down.

All in all a great deal for the consumer.

Finishing second in the council category was Little Red Blog’s piece on Linda Foley’s outrageous remarks entitled “Neither First nor Last:”

As for the Little Red Blog’s view, it’s simple. Foley lives in an alternate reality. In her reality, saying the U.S. military targets journalist doesn’t mean that members of the service, the troops, target journalist. With 100 different ways to say that the U.S. military purposefully and willfully targets journalist, Foley manages to believe that the military isn’t the troops. In her reality their comes a point when a member of the armed forces, formerly known as a troop, becomes part and parcel of the “U.S. military” and is no longer worth supporting.

Spot on.

And the winning post was this gem from Gates of Vienna on some very strange and troubling goings on in Spain regarding the investigation into the 3/11 bombing of the train station:

We’re spiraling downward here in this stranger-than-fiction recount. Carmen Toro alledgedly supplied explosives for the bombings. And in Mr. Toro’s personal phonebook was the cellphone number for the chief of Tedax (the above mentioned Spanish bomb squad). When the investigating judge called the number, it turned out that a member of the bomb squad answered the phone. Creepy, no?

Creepy, yes. And begs the question asked eloquently by Dymphna:

Calling the MSM, calling the MSM. Hello? Anyone there?

In the non Council category, Citizen Smash revisits a massacre:

The building hasn’t been used in several years, so before we can move in we have a lot of cleaning and repairing to do. Everyone pitches in – soldiers and sailors, officers and enlisted work side-by-side to clean up over a decade’s worth of dust, grime, and general neglect. But despite all the activity, the hallways remain strangely quiet.

“Blood.”

Read the entire thing. Very moving. Very powerful.

There is much more “bloggy goodness” (love that Glenn, sounds delicious!) at the Watcher’s website And if you wish to particpate in the weekly Watcher’s vote, go here for instructions.

The totals are in from this week’s Watchers Council vote and once again, yours truly managed to come out on top. Also once again, the Watcher himself had to exercise his powers as Chairman and cast the tie breaking vote. This time, it was between my post “Please Don’t Run, Newt’ and an article I voted for from The Glittering Eye entitled “Intellectual Property and the Trade Deficit.”

The Eye’s article was an eye opener (sorry ’bout that, but it fit too nicely!). Did you know that 90% of application software in China is pirated? It’s unbelievable the amount of money this country is losing not just in software, but in other intellectual property like music and movies. It’s so bad that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has estimated U.S. companies lose more than $200 billion in China each year because of sales of counterfeited and pirated goods:

Yes, $200 BILLION. Our trade deficit with China in 2004 was $162 billion or, said another way, if China were playing fairly and honestly all other things being equal we’d be running a $48 billion dollar surplus with China. And nobody (except for the Chinese) would be talking about revaluing currencies or Americans consuming too much.

I don’t see any real likelihood of this situation righting itself, the Chinese are unlikely to take anything but show measures to correct things, and I don’t believe that any outside agency (like the WTO) will actually do anything to correct the situation.

And the scary and depressing thing of it is; nothing can be done.

Read the whole thing. It’s, as I said. a real eye opener.

In the non-Council categoy, Varifrank won with an excellent essay “I Got Your Desecration Right Here Pal.” A sampling:

Hello, my name is Fabrizio Quattrocchi. I was captured by Muslim holy warriors and tortured before cameras, just for their sport. In the end, they set aside of any respect for international law common, human decency or even the restraint of their own religious doctrine and beheaded me. I shouldn’t have expected any special treatment as this is a common act that they perform even among their own people. However, you won’t see the video of my beheading because I died like a man rather than the sniveling coward they wanted me to be.

I just want you all to know that I find all Muslims who decry to horrors of “George Bush and abu-ghraib” and now this desecration of the Koran to be a bit, shall we say “shallow” in light of the fact that the same “abu-ghraib” that you decry under Bush was a charnel house under Saddam, and yet you said nothing since it was a fellow Muslim doing the killing Oh, and I tell you, the International Red Cross coming out for concern over “civilian deaths in iraq” now that Saddam is gone is rich, real rich. Where was all the concern when the Kurds were being gassed? Where was all the concern for the marsh arabs then, eh? Where’s all the indignity when the supposedly holy kingdom of Saudi Arabia works so hard at killing and subjugating so many of the worlds Muslims. See any Christians in Arabia? No, Golly why is that? Oh that’s right, because it’s a death sentence

I think he’s upset. We all should be.

Second place in the non-Council category went to Austin Bay for his thoughtful article on the fallout from the Newsweek scandal, calling it the press’ “Abu Ghraib,” and a great round-up of reaction from the world media:

But why might this be the press’ Abu Ghraib? Here’s the connection: globe-girdling technology has once again amplified foolish behavior, lack of professionalism, and disregard for consequences into a tragedy. Consider Abu Ghraib, without the fevered hyperbole of The Nation or The Guardian. The behavior of US troops at the prison was inexcuseable –frat rat hazing, trailer trash porn, street punk threat taken up ten quanta to felony prisoner abuse. But dump the hyperbole and call Abu Ghraib what it was: rank felony abuse, not deadly torture. The global dissemination of Lynndie England’s dog leash photos, etc., (and magnification of the abuse by anti-American critics) made Abu Ghraib the political and historical scar it is. The US soldiers committed a crime, but information technology made the crime an international fiasco.

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