Random Fate

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Prepared?

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.
   -Dan Quayle

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
   -James Thurber

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
   -Benjamin Franklin

I didn't know recipes were so popular...

Ever since I posted my recipe for beef stroganoff, that post has gotten around 40% of the hits to Random Fate. I guess I should get cracking on posting my Southern green beans and bloody mary recipes!!!

Selective outrage is universal

There is a post by Owen at Boots and Sabers about "Selective Outrage", addressing a comment by Ted Kennedy saying that the war in Iraq has made a terrorist attack that uses a nuclear weapon more likely rather than less likely as claimed by the administration. This comment mirrors Republican assertions (specifically by Vice President Dick Cheney) that a Kerry Presidency would make terrorist attacks more likely.

Selective outrage is present on BOTH sides. I see no outcry from the right-wing over the mailings by Republicans saying that Kerry would outlaw the Christian Bible, just as there was no outcry from the left-wing over the remarks by Kennedy.

Debate is dead in the United States. This death is exemplified by the spirit that has been consistently shown by the right-wing where any questioning the administration on the conduct of the war in Iraq is unpatriotic at best and could be considered treason. Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice has an excellent post about how this is repugnant and turning at least one voter away from the current administration. The left-wing, which claims to value diversity of opinion immediately excoriates anyone who does not follow the party line. See any Democratic Underground posting thread where someone even tries to present a rational, non-attacking questioning of the beliefs presented. You need the agreement of both sides to have a debate, but sadly the only agreement both wings of political belief have is to suppress any dissent and call it treason.

I am disgusted by BOTH sides because of the hypocrisy I see in their selective outrage. Every time I read a weblog from the right-wing complaining about the left-wing, or a left-wing weblog complaining about the right-wing, I am disgusted because of when their own side commits the same outrage, there is silence (with some exceptions, such as Baldilocks, who did call foul on Republicans trying to Nader on the ballot only in the states where the potential votes lost by Kerry would swing the state to Bush).

As I have said before, each side needs to police their own, and if that does not happen soon, we will lose the democracy that we claim to be trying to establish in the Middle East.

(Thanks to John of Argghhh! for the link to the Selective Outrage post)

An import that we might just need

After seeing UK Prime Minister Tony Blair speak at his party convention, I realize that I like the British style of politics much better than the US style. He doesn't call his political opponents evil, and he uses sophisticated humor to make his points. None of the blunderbuss, two-by-four to the face, ham-handed, over-the-top blustering as I have seen from both George W. Bush and John Kerry.

His response to heckling is outstanding as well, pointing out how at least they live in a country where people can speak their minds. I haven't seen politicians in the US (including the current candidates for President) be able to handle themselves so well. Possibly the rough and tumble question time in Parliament has allowed him to learn how to keep his choo-choo from derailing under pressure and deviation from the "script" that rules all major political activity in the US.

Finally, the way that Blair is addressing the Iraq issue, admitting very bluntly that the intelligence was wrong regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction capability versus potential to develop and actually apologizing for that mistake. He then tempered that statement by saying that he could not apologize for removing Saddam Hussein from power, which was a head on acknowledgment that the information was wrong but that the war was in his view still the right thing to do. Admitting error is the first step in learning and critically important in not repeating mistakes. Although I don't agree with the entire Labour agenda in the UK, especially many of the social welfare provisions, I could vote for this man as compared to how I have always had to vote in Presidential elections, which is against the worse of the two candidates. Too bad we have no one like Blair in the US willing to run for President and actually get nominated by a major party.

How odd... a nation without a written constitution seems to have evolved a political style that is much more sophisticated than the nation with the oldest written constitution still governing the country.

Not what I expected to see in Belgium

Parking in Europe isn't ALWAYS difficult, if you have the right kind of vehicle...

A photo for the Armourer of Blogworld

While I was in Brussels, I went to the Belgian Royal Military Museum (that's only a rough translation of the name...). I took many photos, but I took this one especially for John of Argghhh! Look at the sign on the door to understand why (click on the thumbnail to get a bigger image):





I'll post more photos from the museum and the rest of my trip soon.

Thoughts for the day...

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
   -Peter Drucker

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
   -Will Durant

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
   -John Adams

...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
   -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Back in Grenoble

I'm back in France, but now that I have internet access, I have little time to use it. I hope to put up some photos later today, after work.

Visiting Brugges (rhymes with "deluge")

I enjoyed my visit to Brugges today, despite the weather, which was completely miserable. Well, I shouldn't say completely miserable, it was intermittently miserable interspersed with periods requiring either gills or scuba gear to continue breathing. I was able to get a few photos, but not nearly as many as I'd like. I'll either violate copyright and scan in a few photos from the tour books I have or do a Google search later to get a pointer to some good photos of this beautiful town.

I was able to get some photos inside the large cathedral in the town. There is a Michelangelo statue of the Madonna and Child that although not well known is a remarkable work. Unfortunately, my head on photos were blurred from camera shake. I was avoiding the use of flash both to preserve the artwork in the church from damage (although others weren't showing the same consideration) along with trying to get good photos in the natural light rather than the artificial contrast of flash photography. Here is the photo that turned out well enough to post, from an angle. The odd ghost image near the statue is from the plexiglass protection of the work. About 15 years ago some nutcase came in and attacked the statue with a hammer, so now you cannot approach closer than about 15 feet and have to look through the plexiglass.

(click on any photo for a larger image)

Here is a fresco that for some unknown, unaccountable reason was covered up long ago and rediscovered only within the last 20 years:

I believe these are confessional boxes, but I'm not entirely sure:

I have many other photos from this church, including some of crypts that they have found beneath the church. I'll post those later when I'm not paying an exorbitant amount for internet access.

Tomorrow will likely be Brussels, and Sunday I may go to Ghent.

A comment on fashions for women in Europe

I have seen more belly buttons of women (even after the weather has turned a bit cold and a lot rainy) in the past month than I had in my entire life before I moved to France.

Not that I’m complaining, not at all.

The women in Europe seem exude the attitude that they know they are sexy, and they dress accordingly. Calf length black leather boots with black stockings, sandals with spike heels, and blouses that show off cleavage and give glimpses of the lacy underwear beneath are the rule, not the exception. I rarely see women “dressed-down”, even if they are just going out to buy bread in the morning.

As a friend of mine would say, “The scenery is breathtaking!” and it is. Well, for a man at least...

Some quotes to think about...

A realist is one who knows that the pessimist is right.
   -Jeff Ehrlich

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
   -Herman Melville

For four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum.
   -J. W. Schopf

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you have to concentrate on.
   -Robert S. Strauss

Natural talent will abandon you, hard work will take you nowhere, and attitude will get you slapped upside the head.
   -Michael Wikoff

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
   -Russell Baker

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
   -Winston Churchill

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
   -Yogi Berra

A preview

I'm busy at the technical conference, and I haven't had time to put together any photos to post, but here's a preview of some of the photos I took yesterday in the cloudy weather:

(click on any picture for a larger image)

The parking lot outside the Leuven train station. There are more bicycles in this one photo than all the other bikes I've seen in my entire life added together. Do you think many people ride bikes here?

The city hall here in Leuven, which is a small town for Europe, doesn't look like one typical of small-town America.

I have yet to go to a town in Belgium that did not have a canal or twenty.

Some interesting photos on the way

I arrived in Brussels safely, and I am now in Leuven, where I have already taken some interesting (and one amusing) photos. I didn't bring my cable to transfer the photos with me while I'm on business today, but I hope to find another internet cafe tomorrow (similar to the one I'm in now) to upload some to Random Fate.

I've now been mistaken for Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Surprisingly few people here in Europe spot me as an American right away. How odd, I always thought I was typical...

Photos of the area around Grenoble, France

I went for a bike ride yesterday, mostly uphill. I stopped at a small park in a village near Grenoble and took a few photos. The park was on the grounds of a mansion that I need to do some research on, but the name is Mairie de Montbonnot Click on any photo to get a larger image.

The entry gate:

The Mansion:

The Dent de Crolles (literally, the Tooth of Crolles, dent is the word used for this kind of geologic feature here):




The site where I work is near the base of the Dent de Crolles.

Now, I'm off to Belgium for a business trip. I'm staying a few extra days for some sightseeing, so expect more photos after I return, but possible few posts here until then!

When do we assign collective responsibility?

The post I've been struggling with for over a week (before I got derailed yesterday) relates to what criteria do we use to blame an entire group, whether it be a nation, an ethnic group, a religion, a political party, or any other group, for the actions of some small percentage of the members of that group. Every day I read weblogs where the Democrats or Republicans are said to all be like some yahoo who tears up a sign and frightens a little girl or some moron who kicks a protester who is being held down by security. Every day I read weblogs where in reaction to yet another atrocity by Islamist nihilistic terrorists the authors write "Islam, the religion of peace my ass!!!" or other pejorative statements. Collective responsibility is routinely assigned for the actions of a few.

In the former Soviet Union, the Russians took actions that directly resulted in thousands and thousands if not millions of deaths of non-Russians in the USSR, yet I do not hear that all Russians are evil. In "the Great Leap Forward" in China, millions died for no legitimate reason, yet I do not hear cries that all Chinese are evil. In the years before World War II, the Germans instituted an organized effort to wipe out all members of the Jewish religion, yet I do not hear condemnation of all Germans. Why is it so easy to assign collective responsibility now for acts that while no less heinous do NOT result in the deaths of millions?

I know that some will say, "But it was the Communists that committed the atrocities in the USSR and China, and the Nazis who did it in Germany." That is indeed true, however, it is not all members who follow Islam who are committing the atrocities that prompt many to condemn all of Islam. John of Argghhh! pointed this out earlier this year, identifying Wahabism as the Nazism of Islam, yet I still read over and over again that all of Islam is evil.

The Economist magazine has published a good analysis of the current divisions within Islam:

THREE years after the attacks on New York and Washington, the anguish among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims has not diminished. Other Muslim fanatics have carried out other fearful crimes in the name of Islam. And non-Muslim armies have stomped into Muslim-populated lands to prosecute a war on terror that some perceive as a war on Islam.

The result is that ordinary Muslims find themselves confronted with increasingly fierce claims for possession of their faith. Rival narratives have emerged at either end of the extremely broad Muslim spectrum, and they could scarcely be more different. Expressing one view, a prominent Arab columnist decries the fact that while it is obvious that all Muslims are not terrorists, it is sadly apparent that these days nearly all terrorists happen to be Muslims. The spokesman for a jihadist group in Iraq dissents. Wherever you cast your eye, he writes in a recent posting to the internet, you find only one truth, which is that infidels are slaying Muslims “in every way, in every land, and with overspilling hatred.”

The two views produce radically different conclusions. With growing stridency, Muslim liberals are saying that it is high time for Muslims to act, to stop their faith from being hijacked and turned into a cult-like vehicle for a clash of civilisations. Their sense is that the violence of a radical minority is not merely ruining sympathy for just Muslim causes in such contested places as Chechnya and Palestine, it is beginning to threaten Muslims' peaceful coexistence with others everywhere.

For their part, the jihadists voice the conviction that sympathy for Muslim causes never existed in the first place. Islam, they say, is so imperilled that fighting for its survival is not merely right, but a sublime duty. And so vicious are its enemies that any means may be used to deter them, the more shockingly cruel, the more effective. Ultimately, they believe, Islam will triumph only if all foreign influence is chased from a vast, unified Islamic state.

To the non-Muslim world, there is little doubt which view is more realistic. Three years ago, it was only Americans who asked Why Do They Hate Us? The same question is now being asked by Indonesians, Spaniards, Turks, Australians, Nepalese, French, Italians, Russians and others whose citizens have fallen victim to jihadist “vengeance”. The puzzle is how so many Muslims could for so long remain oblivious to the extremism in their midst.

Egypt's leading newspaper, the government-owned daily Al Ahram, provided a clue recently. On September 1st, it relegated to inside pages the brutal massacre of 12 Nepalese kitchen workers by Iraqi guerrillas, who claimed to be “executing God's judgment” against “Buddhist invaders”. A day later, Al Ahram put on its front-page news that rioters in Katmandu, the Nepalese capital, had attacked a mosque—but did not explain what they were angry about. A slip, perhaps, but the omission reflected a pattern, repeated across the Muslim world, of harping on Muslim injury.

There is nothing abnormal in rooting for your own. American coverage of, say, Iraq, is hardly exemplary in even-handedness. The trouble comes with the cumulative effect of repeating a tale of Muslim victimhood, of amplifying it through mosque sermons and manipulating it for short-term political gain. All too many governments have found it convenient to direct their own peoples' grievances into offshore arenas, such as Iraq, and so deflect demands for empowerment closer to home.

Seeing the world through a lens of victimhood has grown into a comfortable habit. So it is that some Arab commentators have explained the kidnapping and murder of foreign civilians in Iraq as the work of American agents. The agents' aim, says Galal Duweidar, who edits Cairo's mass-circulation daily, Al Akhbar, is to “demonstrate the barbarism of Arabs and Muslims and so justify Washington's war on Iraq and its purported war on ‘terror'.”

This distorted viewpoint in the Muslim community adds credence to using a Nazi analogy to understand events. Hitler rose to power on a tide of anger arising from the feeling of victimhood after the punitive actions of the Allies towards Germany in the wake of World War I. That anger was manipulated by Hitler through demagoguery, just as Muslim anger (justified or not) is being manipulated by Islamofascist demagogues.

The Economist article continues with:

Such conspiratorial views seem to reflect a need to sustain coherent plot-lines to explain what are, in fact, rather messy situations. America's occupation of Iraq must be seen to be just as wicked as Israel's occupation of the West Bank, or Russia's of Chechnya. Resistance to all these onslaughts must therefore be noble, however ugly its manifestations may appear.

The desire to paint Muslim resistance with glory leads to peculiar equivocations. Yusef Qaradawi, the most popular television preacher in the Arab world, says that while Islam distinguishes between soldiers and civilians in war, it is hard to make this distinction in practice. Killing prisoners is sometimes justified, he argues, but disfiguring their bodies is a sin. Adel al-Muada, an Islamist radical who is the deputy speaker of Bahrain's parliament, recently declared that while he personally condemned the attacks on New York and Washington, he could not condemn Osama bin Laden because there was “no proof” that he was responsible.

Such wilful blurring of lines is made easier by the way the war on terror has been conducted. The lumping of a range of movements that happen to have a Muslim colouring—some of them at root ethnic, some national, some indeed religious—under the single rubric of terrorism can perhaps be portrayed as “moral clarity”, but it tramples on the real grievances behind many of the causes.

Scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo have made it difficult to maintain that there exist universal notions of human rights, rather than particularist and discriminatory ones. America's record in Iraq is not pretty. The past week's imagery alone has included a bombed ambulance, a dead infant being removed from a shelled building, and the on-camera killing of an Arab television journalist.

Even so, the sheer nastiness of jihadist violence has begun to generate a powerful groundswell of angry Muslim opposition. The coincidence of the anniversary of September 11th 2001 with the horrific slaughter of schoolchildren at Beslan provoked a chorus of condemnation. This was not only against terrorism, but also against the clerics whose extremist interpretations support that terrorism.

Why, demands a former Kuwaiti minister writing in the Saudi daily Al Sharq al Awsat, have we not heard a single fatwa against Osama bin Laden, when Muslims fell over themselves to condemn Salman Rushdie for writing a “vapid” novel? Who has done more damage to Islam? Muslims must no longer remain silent, declares an editorial in the Egyptian weekly Rose al-Yusef; our fear of speaking out has become the terrorists' fifth column.

Islam is no more unified than any other group, and less so than many. So why is it that we persist in assigning responsibility to all of Islam for the heinous acts of a few? As pointed out before, we do not condemn all Germans for the acts of the Nazis, we do not condemn all Russians for the acts of the Communists.

Why is it I read over and over again cries for the return of personal responsibility, but then I read from those same sources a blanket assignment of responsibility to the group rather than holding the actual perpetrators accountable?

I read over and over again statements that offer a blanket condemnation of all Democrats because of the actions of a few.

I read over and over again statements that offer a blanket condemnation of all Republicans because of the actions of a few.

Are we really so lazy that we are unwilling to make distinctions between the individual actors and the groups?

Suggestions, anyone?

I'm working with some professional designers (the Web Divas) on revamping my site here. Suggestions, ideas, complaints, any kind of inputs are welcome by email or comment!

A yummy carnival

A new Carnival of the Recipes is up at Prochein Amy. I didn't get my recipe out in time, but go try the recipes of those who did!

Can we fact-check each other as well as we do the mainstream media?

Here's more on the now infamous photo allegedly showing a little girl "being mugged" by alleged "Kerry supporters".

From Rising Hegemon (see his post for the photos he refers to):

Serial Republican Victim complains for the THIRD straight presidential election of being assaulted and has his family assist.
...
What are the odds, this allegedly angry sign-ripper in the union shirt, holding the fragments of a ripped Bush sign is either the guy in the grey sweater or the blue shirt?

So was Parlock having one of his sons portray a union stooge?

This guy is a serial disrupter with pretty much the same story every time.

Remember this when the Cornerites and Little Green Snot Bubbles spout off and try to make this a big story...especially in the wake of the known abuse protestors get at the regular "Triumph of the Will" functions that comprise a Bush Campaign appearance.

Since we're so proud of ourselves for taking down CBS News over forged memos, are we equally prepared to take down a faked incident involving a Republican trying to make Democrats look cruel and mean if it was indeed a little play staged for the benefit of photographers? Are we willing to call shenanigans on an incident that is being widely publicized as "truth" by bloggers if it is found to be entirely staged?

I'm waiting for the fact-check brigade to do their job here, even if they are not dressed in their pajamas.

If your lenses are distorted, don't blame someone else when you run into a wall

Lest anyone think I'm picking on the right-wing, I have problems with the distortions coming from the direction of the left-wing. Oliver Willis recently posted a condemnation of a statement by Vice President Dick Cheney, saying that Cheney implied "those kids in Russia got what they were asking for because their country didn't think invading Iraq was a good idea."

Sorry, Oliver, what the Vice President said was:

I think some have hoped that if they kept their heads down and stayed out of the line of fire, they wouldn't get hit. I think what happened in Russia now demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target. That Russia, of course, didn't support us in Iraq, they didn't get involved in sending troops there, they've gotten hit anyway.

When viewed through a lens that is not predisposed to distort statements from the Vice President as evil, this statement says:

Not supporting the actions of the United States in Iraq does not provide any immunity from terrorist actions.

"Deserve" was never mentioned, nor was it even implied. Vice President Cheney can be taken to task for being incomplete in the facts, he can be taken to task for not doing a full analysis of the origins of the terrorism in question, but he CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be taken to task for saying "the kids deserved it" because he did NOT say that. If you want to argue against re-electing the President and the Vice President, you should definitely do so; however, there are plenty of items in the record that are indisputable in their interpretation that would serve your cause better. Reading meanings that are not present into statements of those you oppose does not gain you any credibility.

Let's score cheap points instead of policing our own

I was going to write a post about the recent incident that resulted in a photo of a little girl sitting on her father's shoulders, crying because of the "meanie Kerry supporters" surrounding her who tore up a Bush-Cheney sign. John of Argghhh! had a post on this incident today, and I could not restrain myself from commenting. I'm not trying to pick on John in particular here, but unfortunately, his post is when the straw hit the back of my camel. Here is the comment I left:

John, I have big issues with a father taking his little girl to an event where he will deliberately provoke a reaction. BOTH sides are guilty of behaving badly. Recall my post on how protesters who made it into the Republican convention were kicked by someone while being held down by security with a link to the video? The post is here:

http://www.randomfate.net/RF-new/archives/001065.html

(note: original link from The Moderate Voice)

Note that the person being kicked is a woman, and the kicker can be assumed to be a Republican and a Bush supporter. In my mind, even if the protester was "asking for it", kicking is out of line and far worse than what is described as "mugging a little girl" who's father placed her in a position where he should have known that at the least there would be shouting. I don't know of many little girls that wouldn't cry when shouting is directed towards their father.

So... looks to me that the "family values" party has men who don't value their families enough to keep their little girls out of bad and potentially violent situations, and the right-wingers who are calling for civility here never complained about the woman being kicked during the Republican convention.

Yes, this has pissed me off, because BOTH sides are behaving badly, and NEITHER side is policing themselves, instead they are trying to score cheap points every time something stupid like this happens.

I cannot believe that those leaning towards the right-wing side of the spectrum have not taken this father to task for risking his little girl. I cannot believe that this photo of a little girl crying means more to those leaning towards the right-wing than one of their own kicking a protester while that protester is being held down. Tearing up a sign is one thing, physical assault is quite another. Does this mean it's OK as long as it's being done by a Bush supporter, but not OK when being done by a Kerry supporter?

I'm tired of the self-righteous attitude I see on BOTH sides ever time something like this happens. "They are evil because some of them behaved badly!!! We would NEVER, EVER act like that!" when BOTH sides HAVE acted JUST LIKE THAT. Instead of scoring points when your opponents behave badly, why don't you devote even 10% of your outrage towards your OWN who behave badly?

UPDATE: John pointed out that what I wrote above could be interpreted by those who choose to do so that I am defending the bad behavior of the Kerry supporters using the "well they deserved it" defense. I am NOT defending the behavior at all, I find it absolutely despicable. However, despicable behavior is being shown by BOTH sides, but NEITHER side devotes even 10% of their outrage at bad behavior towards those who are on "their side". I challenge those listed in John's post to take their own to task for behaving badly, starting with describing how a Bush supporter kicking a protester who is being held down is unacceptable behavior no matter which candidate that protester supports or which candidate the person performing the assault supports.

Dean's World

Wes Roth

Allah (John's link didn't go to that photo, I'll have to search for it)

Marcland

Travelling Shoes (sic)

Wizbang

Captain's Quarters

Milblog

Little Green Footballs

Power Line

Instapundit

dislogue

UPDATE 2: There are others out there who are condemning ALL bad behavior, or who are wondering what the father in this case was trying to accomplish by exposing his child to a potentially bad situation:

esoterically.net

Jeremy's Jeremiad!

UPDATE 3: Was this incident staged? There is at least one assertion that it was. It will be interesting to see if the fact-check brigade will dog-pile on this as much as on the CBS forged memos story.

UPDATE 4: I haven't seen any evidence that the incident was deliberately staged to the extent asserted by the Rising Hegemon. This assertion was that Phil Parlock, the father in the photo, had one of his sons tear up the sign for the purposes of the photo. Given that there has been bad behavior from BOTH Democrats and Republicans, this is likely yet another example of idiots behaving like spoiled children and choosing to not suppress their impulses. This behavior is completely unacceptable no matter who engages in it.

I don't cut Parlock any slack in this either, however. This man has a track record of inciting incidents at Democrat-sponsored events (see the Rising Hegemon post for links). I am not saying at all that his daughter deserved to be frightened, but Parlock is in contention for "worst father of the year" because I believe he knew that something would happen. He is being extremely disingenuous when he says, "I am completely overwhelmed. I had no idea. We don’t go for the press. We go for the message." With his history, he did indeed have an "idea," and if he didn't, he's too stupid to deserve to have children.

In danger of "winning the war and losing the peace"

I'm a bit short of time to write at this moment, so I encourage you to read Pennywit, where he has posted a roundup of links on the situation in Iraq and concludes with a discussion of the need for a new plan.

Read the whole thing.

Bullets aren't just points in a memo...

While we're worrying about proportional fonts and acronyms for events occurring with respect to a war that was over 30 years ago, the war that is on NOW may be coming off the rails.

Wake up, folks... Are the people at the wheel (in this case, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) steering us towards a disaster? Read this (link lifted from Pennywit, read his post, too), and tell me if "memogate" is worth more energy than what is being devoted to understanding what is happening in Iraq TODAY.

If the "green zone" in Iraq can no longer be kept secure, what is occurring in the rest of the country? Can a viable democracy really be established in what is essentially a war zone that is beginning to rival Beirut during the height of the Lebanese Civil War?

Here we bloggers are, patting ourselves on the back because we "exposed" the mainstream media... PEOPLE ARE DYING IN IRAQ, OUR SERVICE MEN AND WOMEN!!!!!!!!

To Hell the Goddamned forgeries, they are a NON-ISSUE now. What is important? What are our priorities? My priorities do not include strutting around proud to be a blogger because some of my colleagues cried "foul" when the mainstream media fucked up. Mine are winning the war we are in now, and making damn sure our government does not needlessly place the lives of our military in danger through arrogant incompetence.

What are your priorities?

A legitimate question

If John Kerry apparently cannot lead an effective national campaign, responding to changing circumstances, is that an indication of how he might perform as President of the United States?

Some quotes for the day

Both madmen and geniuses see something that no one else does. The difference, of course, is whether or not it's actually there.
   -Michael Wikoff

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.
   -Oscar Wilde

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of a dilemma.
   -H. L. Mencken

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
   -George Orwell

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
   -George Bernard Shaw

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
   -Oscar Levant

The whole story?

Joe Gandelman, The Moderate Voice, fears that we may end up with the worst of all political worlds when the CBS forged memo story finally plays out. Apparently, there is now an assertion that the memos themselves were not original, but they "reflect real documents that once existed." This means that the forgeries that were easily exposed by bloggers will be thought of as only one part of the story. As Joe writes, "And, in the end, it'll be far easier to prove (if the report is true) that the documents are fake than that the contents are real (how do you confirm that?)." It appears that though weblogs sped the process of showing the memos themselves were forgeries the "old media" uncovered the possibility that the contents may reflect actual circumstances. As much as the traditional media are held in contempt by many bloggers, there are many stories that they do get right, and it would serve both the media and bloggers better by teaming up instead of sniping at each other.

On a related topic, all this self-congratulation I've seen everywhere on blogs that didn't even participate in proving the memos as forgeries is starting to strike a sour note. It reminds me of something I was told by my father when I was a child:

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

There is another wee bit of wisdom we need to keep in mind before we congratulate ourselves:

It ain't over 'till it's over.
   -Yogi Berra

They wouldn't report it if no one payed attention...

They wouldn't publish "biased" news if no one read it...

They wouldn't pay the high salaries of sports starts if no one paid to see the games...

They wouldn't make more "reality TV" or shows filled with gratuitous sexual innuendo if no one watched...

They wouldn't play schlocky, manufactured music on the radio if no one listened...

They wouldn't mud-sling if it didn't win votes...

"They" are after a buck, or votes, or power, and "they" use the most expedient way to gain the goal.

"They" pay attention to the collective choices that the public makes.

Ultimately, who is responsible?

Think about it...

We are losing focus

Pennywit has beaten me to commenting on a column at MSNBC.com that discusses the current situation in Iraq. I think you should read his entire post, but the most important point is his final line, "All the 'good news' out of Iraq -- schools built, soccer fields, etc. -- won't mean squat unless the United States can root out the insurgency."

So many are so focused on the forged memos and bringing down Dan Rather or on adding to the furor over what may or may not have occurred over 30 years ago that we are forgetting that the terrorism inside Iraq is escalating to the point where the military victory is in danger of being squandered. Appearing more and more often are admissions by administration officials and military commanders that many regions of Iraq are effectively not under control of the interim government there.

Come on, boys and girls, Dan Rather is already toast, there is no need to continue turning up the heat. Vietnam, Swift Boats, and the National Guard Service of our two presidential candidates are a part of HISTORY that do not need to be rehashed to the point where in continuing to focus on those divisions we repeat the mistakes of that time. Our people are dying NOW, the quick military victories in Iraq and Afghanistan are slipping away NOW. If we want to win the war we are in NOW, stop focusing on the PAST.

Blogworld is gaining more cartographers...

...and I'm still nowhere to be found on any map.

I must be in that unexplored region marked "here there be dragons!"

---

(Of course, I'm not sure the King of Fools has it right when he has the Drudge Report under "balance"... but that's just me...)

A request for help

Time to pull together and help find a missing person. Go to In Search of Utopia for details.

This is important folks, and it's a way we can do some good. Go spread the word.

And now for something completely out of this world

It appears that astronomers may have been able to take a photo of a planet in another solar system. Here is a false-color photo from the infrared part of the spectrum.

Image credit ESO/VLT, from Space.com

They are working to confirm that the apparent planet is really just a more distant star from the brown dwarf that is the bright star in the image. If you want the whole story, go to Space.com.

And now for something completely different than politics...

Chris Noble has a very interesting post on some problems in the railroad industry. Since transportation of goods and resources is a key part of the national economy, understanding the problems in the railroad industry is important.

Asking "Why?" is not a weakness

Michael Moran has a column at MSNBC.com that expresses similar views to what I wrote about yesterday:

In one of the most poignant lines from the 9/11 commission report, the panel noted how out of touch with the wider world Americans were in the late 1990s as their music, clothes, movies, values and corporate brands reached the most remote corners of the globe:

“America stood out as an object for admiration, envy, and blame. This created a kind of cultural asymmetry. To us, Afghanistan seemed very far away. To members of al Qaeda, America seemed very close. In a sense, they were more globalized than we were.” — 9/11 commission report, p. 340

For all the talk since the attacks of reformed intelligence agencies, tightened security and spreading democracy abroad, Americans seem to be lapsing back into navel-gazing. What else could explain the focus on Vietnam-era military records at a time when American troops are fighting two separate wars overseas?

At the root of this denial is an erosion of national humility — a stubborn inability to examine our own actions that prevents us from getting beyond the question of “how” we were attacked and to the question of “why?”

We know today some of the answers to “how?” Sclerotic as it may be, the American bureaucracy appears resigned to accepting some of the changes the 9/11 commission proposed, though the fight to blunt some of the more radical ideas, like making someone accountable for such failures, will go on.

But addressing the “why” of the attack is far more difficult. Understand, the question is not why al-Qaida ordered the attacks, or why individual attackers were motivated to commit suicide. The cult of death that exists at the fringes of Islam explains that all too well.

The deeper “why,” however, concerns the enormous gap between the way Americans view their actions abroad and the way the rest of the planet is viewing them. How did America go from a country viewed by many as, in Ronald Reagan’s words, “the last best hope of mankind,” to being ranked in polls by many as a greater threat to world peace than Osama bin Laden?

There are specific suggestions on how to change things for the better at the end of the article. Except for the point regarding the United Nations Security Council, which has proven to be even more ineffectual than a paper tiger even in the case of obvious genocide in Sudan, his ideas make a lot of sense, especially the ones on making sure we don't lose in Afghanistan and on creating "a 'target nations' action group" where those nations that are prominent targets of nuclear weapons wielded by terrorists band together to take preemptive action when necessary.

Asking "Why?" is not whining, as some right-wingers accuse, it is the key to winning the war. To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy, not only the "who," but also the "why." Moran has a point when he mentions an erosion of national humility. Yes, we have much to be proud of, but pride without humility is arrogance. We must never lose the ability to question ourselves in a rational, reasonable way. As was said by a man 2400 years ago in a book that is still studied worldwide:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
   -Sun-Tzu

Take a breath, exhale, then take another

While I have been among the more vocal in saying we need to take some kind of action regarding North Korea and their nuclear weapons program, the data from a mushroom cloud reported in the north of that country on September 9 need to be studied before we reach the conclusion that North Korea performed a nuclear weapon test. Contrary to popular belief, mushroom clouds can be created under more circumstances than a nuclear explosion. Taking a few days to let experts analyze data will not harm us, and it will allow us time to think about the proper reaction if it was indeed a nuclear test.

While weblogs have many admirable qualities, proportionate and reasonable reactions to events are not among them.

...on lessons once learned and now apparently lost

The world did not change on September 11, 2001. What changed was the perception of the world held by the average American. This is an important difference that has gotten lost in all of the sound and fury over the election, the "War on Terror", and the sniping between the radical left and the radical right.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the vast majority of Americans had only a superficial understanding of the world outside North America, when they bothered thinking about anything outside of the United States at all. For the decade before September 11, 2001, the United States did nothing to create the hatred that was manifested by the murders committed on that day. That hatred existed long before, was reared by the progenitors of a radical philosophy not unlike what has been seen many times in history, and continues to be nurtured by those same leaders and their successors. The followers have only a superficial understanding of the world outside of their own community, and that perception is distorted by both ignorance and the rage arising from feeling helpless. The truth is that they are not helpless, but that they are not willing to take responsibility for where they are. The truth also is that they have no true leaders willing to teach that responsibility and to lead them out of their self-induced poverty. Instead, they follow the leaders who blame others for their woes and offer a chance to strike back against those they blame.

The world did not change on September 11, 2001. What changed was the perception of the world held by the average American, but since that terrible day the world has changed, and not for the better. Unless the nature of those changes and the reasons underlying them are understood, America runs the risk of not only losing more lives, both of soldiers and at home, but also of losing the war we now find ourselves waging.

On the morning of September 11, 2004, the vast majority of Americans still only have a superficial understanding of the world outside of North America, when they bother trying to understand anything outside of the United States instead of simply reacting with fear towards the unknown. In the three years since September 11, 2001, the United States has engaged in one war directly linked to the murders committed on that day. That war has nearly been forgotten in the shadows cast by a second war that was justified using several reasons, and the shadows darken because the apparent clarity of those reasons has become muddied as time passes and more blood is spilled. Today, atrocity builds upon atrocity in a spiral of escalating horror because each barbarity numbs our souls more and our enemies need to keep the terror alive to feed their insatiable lust for vengeance.

Since what happened 35 years ago in the context of the Vietnam War is apparently more politically current than what is to be done now to fight the war we are in now, we should at least recall that war was lost not on the battlefield but in the United States itself. The divisions inside the nation forced the politicians to change policy in such a way that abandoned South Vietnam and effectively lost the war. As Napoleon said, the moral is to the physical as three is to one. The United States is now as divided as it was during the darkest days of the Vietnam War. Regardless of who wins the election in 2004, the administration that follows needs to explain to the entire citizenry of the United States the nature of the war we are now in, the larger war, not just the Iraq War, why this larger war needs to be fought, and how it can be won. We cannot win the war as a nation divided the way we are now. A leadership that consists of preaching to the choir the rosy scenarios of a democratic domino effect in the MidEast is not true leadership, and it worse than whistling in the dark. Unfortunately that is what I have seen in the past three years.

The moral is to the physical as three is to one. We applied this in birthing our nation. The Founders in fighting the American Revolution never had the resources to defeat the British Empire. George Washington lost many more battles than he won. Independence was gained only when the British no longer had the will to fight to keep control of the rebellious colonies.

The moral is to the physical as three is to one. That should have been proven to us on September 11, 2001, where the efforts of 19 murdered thousands and terrorized millions. We will not win the war we are now waging by "nuking 'em till they glow," nor will we win it solely through other military means. In Vietnam, we won every battle, but we never destroyed the will of our enemy to fight. We run the same risk now if we do not attack our enemies in ways that destroy their will to fight, to sacrifice, and to die. We are not making these efforts to understand the weaknesses of what motivates our enemies, and we are not defeating the motivation that drives them to attack us. Until we do this, we are on the path to losing this war.

UPDATE: From Mark Helprin, an article that better states the point I try to make above. Read the whole thing, published by The Wall Street Journal at OpinionJournal:

We have followed a confusion of war aims that seem to report after the fact what we have done rather than to direct what we do. We could, by threatening the existence of Middle Eastern regimes, which live to hold power, enforce our insistence that the Arab world eradicate the terrorists within its midst. Instead, we have embarked upon the messianic transformation of an entire region, indeed an entire civilization, in response to our inability to pacify even a single one of its countries. As long as our war aims stray from the disciplined, justifiable, and attainable objective of self-defense, we will be courting failure.

Our strategy has been deeply inadequate especially in light of the fact that we have refused to build up our forces even as our aims have expanded to the point of absurdity. We might have based in northern Saudi Arabia within easy range of the key regimes that succor terrorism, free to coerce their cooperation by putting their survival in question. Our remounted infantry would have been refreshed, reinforced, properly supported, unaffected by insurgency, and ready to strike. The paradigm would have shifted from conquer, occupy, fail, and withdraw--to strike, return, and re-energize. At the same time, we would not have solicited challenges, as we do now, from anyone who sees that although we may be occupying Iraq, Iraq is also occupying us.

We have abstained from mounting an effective civil defense. Only a fraction of a fraction of our wealth would be required to control the borders of and entry to our sovereign territory, and not that much more to discover, produce, and stockpile effective immunizations, antidotes, and treatments in regard to biological and chemical warfare. Thirty years ago the entire country had been immunized against smallpox. Now, no one is, and the attempt to cover a minuscule part of the population failed miserably and was abandoned. Not only does this state of affairs leave us vulnerable to a smallpox epidemic, it stimulates the terrorists to bring one about. So with civil aviation, which, despite the wreckage and tragedy of September 11, is protected in an inefficient, irresponsible, and desultory fashion.

...

Neither the 9/11 commission, the president, nor the Democratic nominee has a clear vision of how to fight and defend in this war. Partly this is because so many Americans do not yet feel, as some day they may, the gravity of what we are facing.

Three years on, that is where we stand: our strategy shiftless, reactive, irrelevantly grandiose; our war aims undefined; our preparations insufficient; our civil defense neglected; our polity divided into support for either a hapless and incompetent administration that in a parliamentary system would have been turned out long ago, or an opposition so used to appeasement of America's rivals, critics, and enemies that they cannot even do a credible job of pretending to be resolute.

Will it take more atrocities, more mass-murders committed within the borders of the United States to wake up BOTH the left-wing and right-wing from their mutual fantasies of destroying their political opponents to see the true enemy?

note: The next to the last paragraph in the quoted passages above was edited to add "9/11" to the sentence beginning "Neither the commission, the president..." for clarity.

Not all is doom and gloom

Those of you with high bandwidth connections have to watch this. Watch the whole thing with the sound on.

If you know anything about past (and current) trends in computer gaming, you'll appreciate it.

Link from David at In Search of Utopia.

Struggling

I'm struggling to write an essay/post that has been germinating for a while now, and in attempting to get this damn thing out of my head and into writing I have been reading other weblogs to stimulate my mind. On the right-leaning weblogs I've seen endless ranting about how the news media is obviously biased towards the Democrats, as exemplified by the forged memo imbroglio. After getting my fill of that, I turn to the left-leaning weblogs, where I see widespread accusations that the media has an obvious Conservative bias.

Holy mirror-image, Batman!!!!

Perhaps the news media appears biased to both sides because politics has become so distorted that any examination of it becomes an exercise in trying to extract a true image from a fun-house mirror. Joe Gandelman (The Moderate Voice) posted a link at Dean's World today to an editorial by Doug Bandow, described as a Reaganite conservative, at Salon.com of all places. The editorial is well worth reading, despite having to watch an ad for a "day pass" to Salon, not the least of which because it raises the question of whether conservatives "believe in anything other than power? Are they serious about their rhetoric on limited, constitutionally restrained government?" This is a question that can legitimately be asked of liberals as well, given the apparent motivations behind the forged memos.

Perhaps mirror-image is the wrong imagery. When crunch time comes in the quest for power, both sides throw their ideals out the window, both sides say and do whatever it takes to get and keep power. Not a mirror-image at all, for in a mirror right is left, and left is right. More like twins. During this election, we are forced to choose between a man who apparently has no principles upon which to base his policies, and a man who's policies do not conform with his stated principles.

It is past time to demand better of our political parties and our government.

Yes, I am angry

A satirical comment on the "revelations" of the Vietnam-era military service of both George W. Bush and John F. Kerry:

My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
   -Ashleigh Brilliant

To everyone: Stop arguing about a war we LOST THREE DECADES AGO and start figuring out how we are going to WIN the war we are in NOW. We are on the path to LOSE the war we are in NOW for the exact same reason that we LOST the Vietnam War, the God-damned Baby Boomers are too busy gazing at themselves to even notice the world at large. The "Greatest Generation" raised a bunch of self-indulgent narcissists who will be the destruction of the United States and the principles upon which it was founded.

My message to the Baby Boomers: GROW UP. You are adults now; you are the generation now responsible for running things. Stop your self-obsessive sniping and look at the world around you. Address the crisis that is underway NOW, don't continue the arguments you started 35 years ago because the world doesn't care and our enemies will take advantage of your inattention.

Finally, the beef stroganoff recipe

OK, I had to cook this again here in France to make sure I didn't forget something, and I'm not an expert at writing recipes so no complaints, please!!! Keep in mind that I "cook by smell", so I've estimated the amounts for some of the additives here, especially since I'm here in metric-land and I don't have tablespoon and teaspoon measuring spoons. As is usual in cooking increase or decrease the amounts of spices to taste. I like both red and black pepper along with worcestershire sauce, so there may be too much of both in there for you.

UPDATE: I've adjusted some quantities here, so use the recipe as posted now, not the one posted on Wednesday morning!

One more warning: this recipe is NOT heart-healthy... it has a lot of butter and sour cream in it!!!

Ingredients:

1 small to medium sized onion (white or yellow)

2 tablespoons of butter

1 tablespoon of mushroom base or ~1/4 cup of substitute (see below for more info on this)

1 and 1/2 or 2 pounds of beef cut into bite-sized chunks (good cuts taste better, but even "stew beef" turns out pretty tasty)

two small cans of sliced mushrooms, drain the cans before adding

1 cup of red wine (use whatever you're drinking while you're cooking this, that's what I do)

2 teaspoons of flour (do not use self rising flour, use the pure, undiluted stuff)

red (cayenne) pepper, finely ground

black pepper, finely ground

worcestershire sauce

1 and 1/2 cups of sour cream (do NOT use non-fat sour cream, use the regular stuff)

extra wide egg noodles (enough for 8 servings)

Instructions:

open the wine and pour yourself a glass (well, that's how I always start...)

dice the onion finely

melt the butter in a medium to large deep skillet (preferably one that you have a lid for) over a low to medium heat, not enough to scorch the butter!

once the butter is fully melted, add the mushroom base and the onions, saute the onions for a few minutes at the same heat

once the onions have softened and soaked up some of the color of the mushroom base, add the beef and turn the heat up just a bit

while the beef is cooking, sprinkle a quarter teaspoon of red pepper, half a teaspoon of black pepper, and half a teaspoon of worcestershire sauce over the beef

start heating the water for the egg noodles

when the beef is about 1/2 done and you are turning it, sprinkle half a teaspoon of the black pepper, and a quarter teaspoon of worcestershire sauce again, add a quarter teaspoon of the red pepper if you really like red pepper

when the beef looks like it's fully cooked, lower the heat a bit to about the same level as when you were melting the butter, add the mushrooms, and put the lid on the skillet

while the skillet is simmering, mix the two teaspoons of flour with the one cup of red wine thoroughly so there are no clumps

roughly 5 minutes after adding the mushroos, hopefully by this point the water for the noodles is boiling, so add the egg noodles, they should cook for about 8 to 9 minutes for al dente

right after adding the noodles to the boiling water, add the wine/flour mix to the skillet, and leave the lid off for it to simmer for about 5 minutes over low to medium heat, if after 5 minutes the liquid seems thin, add another teaspoon of flour, try to add it slowly so it doesn't clump but instead thickens the liquid

when checking the consistency of the sauce at 5 minutes, this is the main time I check on how it smells... sometimes I add more worcestershire sauce, sometimes more black pepper, occasionally more red pepper, whatever the smell seems to be "lacking"

when the noodles are ready (8 to 9 minutes until al dente, usually), drain them (tip: add a small bit of vegetable oil to them and mix well while they are in the colander so they don't stick together!!!) and put them in a bowl

reduce the heat on the skillet to low and add the sour cream, thoroughly mix the sour cream (sometimes I add 2 cups instead of one, depending on how much sauce I have) and leave the skillet on low heat while you put the noodles on plates

turn of the heat to the skillet, put the beef and sauce over the noodles, and eat accompanied using the red wine you used in the recipe!

MUSHROOM BASE:

There is a wonderful product I've found called "mushroom base" that is sold in small jars with a black label. I have no idea who makes it, or how widely it's distributed; it's sold along with similar chicken and beef bases generally in the soup aisle next to the beef and chicken bullion. It's a thick sauce with the consistency of jam or marmalade. I took the beef stroganoff recipe off the label of this product and modified it to what you see above. I've found a way to substitute for this ingredient if you can't find it. The recipe for making the substitute:

Ingredients:

1/2 a cup of water

fresh mushrooms (your favorite kind) thoroughly washed and sliced (chopped in a food processor is better)

beef bullion (the cube or powdered kind, enough for one cup)

Instructions:

start with the water and add the chopped or sliced mushrooms until there is just enough water to cover them all (sorry for the imprecise quantities... I'm having enough problems over here in France to deal with the metric-English conversions, too!!!)

add the beef bullion and boil until there is only half of the liquid left

strain the mushrooms out and use the 1/4 cup of liquid in the recipe above to substitute for the mushroom base (NOTE: very, very salty... not for those on low salt diets!!)

To defeat the enemy, you must first identify the enemy

Beth, of She Who Will Be Obeyed!, left a comment to my post below on some voices being raised in the Muslim world against the terrorism:

What I find frightening, Jack, is that some of the examples you point to seem to say that the killings were bad! But.... kidnappings are okay?!!

Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of Egypt's largest Islamic group, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said in general, kidnappings may be justified, but killings are not. He said the school siege did not fit the Islamic concept of jihad, or holy war.

"What happened yesterday is not jihad because our Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings; it is not about taking them away," Akef told The Associated Press.

To me, until these people denounce jihad altogether and agree to live like civilized human beings who don't kidnap, terrorize, threaten, treat women as belongings or enslave other people, etc., I will not entertain any notion that Islam is a 'religion of peace'.

My response was mainly directed at the last sentence, because it sounds an awful lot like condemning of the whole for the actions of a few:

I find frightening many of the same things that you do. What tempers me from saying "Islam is evil" is that I saw people who were nominally Christian in the South think that lynching people because of their skin color was perfectly acceptable and even to be encouraged. They used Christian religious arguments to justify their actions. Looking a bit farther back in the past, the Christian Holy Bible was used to justify black slavery in the United States. An entire population of millions was brutalized over two centuries by a people who called themselves Christian. This does not mean Christianity is evil.

Is there a difference in terms of the actions taken? Yes, there is, although more people died in slavery and more children were separated forcibly from their families in the United States during the period of slavery than have been killed by Wahabist nihilists even now.

I work with a large number of muslims, and in my discussions with these people, they do not subscribe to what the mullahs in the Middle East or the radical clerics living in non-Arab countries preach, and they are equally horrified at the acts perpetrated supposedly in the name of Islam. Should they be speaking out against these acts? Yes, but this is not the first time people should be speaking out and do not. History is littered with instances where people were condemned to death or other horrors because of the silence of others. It is also far easier to condemn others for not speaking out than it is to speak out yourself. Look at a recent post by Boudicia (I may have mis-spelled it, sorry) where she described a tirade by an alcoholic in Florida towards his wife because he couldn't buy beer. Should someone have spoken out in her defense? Depending on the situation, probably. Did someone do so? Not likely. Again, a matter of degree, but it illustrates my point. Unless we speak out against evil in our own lives, who are we to condemn others for not speaking out?

Fundamentally, my point is that Islam is no more a monolith than Christianity. If we condemn all of Islam based on the actions of a minority, then we should condemn Christianity for many actions taken by the church in the past 2000 years, for actions even more recent that used Christianity as a justification, and even for some of the events of World War II, where the church was found to have assisted Nazi Germany in their "Final Solution".

I prefer to condemn Wahabism, which is why I have a link to John's post on "Wahabism delenda est" prominently displayed on my blog. Wahabism is not all of Islam, just as the radical denominations of Christianity that insist that a wife "submit to and obey her husband in all matters" and force the women to wear dresses, not allowing them to wear slacks, are not all of Christianity. Wahabism is evil. Islam is not evil, and saying Islam is evil diffuses our effort at defeating those who are evil.

Today, Pennywit posted a link to an article in Time on reforms being undertaken in Islam in the United States. It shows that there is change occurring within Islam, but as with every change, especially in religion, it is slow and incremental. Recall how long it took to overcome many of the less desirable aspects of Christianity. I'm posting the entire article below because Time has a bad habit of making things unavailable except to subscribers after a short time.

Shaking Up Islam in America

By ASRA Q. NOMANI

Pundits have long been asking whether Islam is ready for a reform. The answer is that across the U.S., a quiet tide of Islamic reform is very much under way. In Chicago last year, the Downtown Islamic Center made room for four women on its board after they protested the design of a new mosque that would have given women inadequate space in which to pray. Instead, women got access to the main hall when the new mosque opened in July. In Dearborn, Mich., earlier this year, Imam Mohammed Mardini welcomed Christian women who weren't covering their hair, over the protests of men who wanted them barred. In Sacramento, Calif., not long ago, mosque leaders wrote their bylaws with clauses guaranteeing tolerance and gender equity. In New York City an e-magazine, Muslim WakeUp!, organizes monthly gatherings for Muslims who want to make their communities more tolerant.

Over the past year I have found myself on the front lines of the struggle over Islam's future in America. Last November, my mother, niece and I walked through the front door of our hometown mosque in Morgantown, W.Va., and prayed in the main sanctuary. In so doing we defied a policy that women enter through a back door and pray in an isolated balcony. Then, in the spring, my father resigned from the board of the mosque to protest speeches spewed from the pulpit that were hateful to non-Muslims. As a result of our protests, my family was vilified by local Muslims. I even face a secret trial to banish me from the mosque.

But our protests have also helped bring about a transformation. In May the first woman was elected to mosque leadership. In June mosque authorities publicly reversed policy and said women could enter through the front door and pray in the main hall. Since our actions began, more women attend worship services. Last month we won an even bigger victory. A Ph.D. student declared from the pulpit that "one of the most important fundamentals of our religion is to love and be loyal to Islam and the Muslims and to hate and renounce the disbelievers," the "cursed" Jews and Christians. I immediately protested the sermon, as did others. In the past, leaders have looked the other way. This time they called an emergency meeting and did the right thing. They fired the student from his post giving sermons.

Those of us pushing for reforms are not seeking to change Islam. We are questioning defective doctrine from an intellectual and theological position, using the Koran, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and ijtihad, or critical reasoning, as ideological weapons in the war over how Muslim communities define themselves. Islamic scholar Amina Wadud notes that we are emboldened to take public action to reject the way extremists have defined Islam since 9/11. We are in the midst of jihad li tajdid al-ruh al-Islami, a struggle for the soul of Islam.

The dilemma facing most Muslims is that this war pits us against ourselves. For guidance, we need look no further than the lessons from the time of the Prophet Muhammad. In Mecca in the 7th century, the Prophet faced off against his own tribe, the Quraysh, for worshipping false idols. In much the same way, modern Muslims are pitted against people worshipping false idols of hatred, violence and intolerance. After he fled Mecca, the Prophet heard a chapter of the Koran called Al-Nisa (The Women), which said, "O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice as witnesses to God, even if it may be against yourselves, your parents or your kin." With this philosophy, he built a vibrant, inclusive community and returned to Mecca to claim the city that is today the heart of Islam.

The rest of the Muslim world is watching how reform takes hold in the American Muslim community. Throughout the world, Muslims have been forced to explore the meaning of their beliefs. But as Malika Zeghal, a visiting scholar of Islam at the University of Chicago Divinity School, points out, it is in America, with its freedoms, that Muslims can reform not just their souls but also their communities. "In the rest of the world, Muslims are making change in the inner world," she says. "American Muslims also feel empowered to make change externally."

The test is here and now for the building of a new, 21st century Muslim community, based on the principles Islam gave us in the 7th century. Reform is inevitable, but it won't come easy.

Asra Q. Nomani is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming Standing Alone in Mecca, about women's place in Islam

I reiterate, if we insist upon calling Islam the enemy, we dilute our efforts towards millions who do not wish us ill because we are not willing to make the distinction necessary to focus on those who do wish us ill. As John of Argghhh! pointed out, the Wahabist branch of Islam is the twisted origin of much of the nihilistic terrorism that we are dealing with. In order to fight terrorism, destroy both Wahabism AND the conditions that support it and feed it so that it flourishes, do not declare hatred towards the entire faith of Islam, a population of millions of which only hundreds are our true enemies. Declaring hatred of Islam as a whole merely adds fuel to the fires that Wahabism uses to incite the violence towards us.

20,000 visits

Random Fate has finally passed the 20,000 visit milestone. This seems like as good a time as any to answer a question posed by a commenter when I posted that I was taking a break to think about some things. The question was in essence, "Why do you blog?"

The answer is not to be a "large mammal" in the blog ecosystem. The answer is not to get a lot of visits (although I would like them!!!), it's taken over a year to get to 20,000, a number that others met within a month or two of starting. If I wanted either a high ranking in the ecosystem or high visit rate I would need to actively promote my blog, which I do not do in any of the ways that have been publicized by more than a few bloggers.

I don't want to tell other people what to think. I work very hard when I post my opinions or commentaries to have people draw their own conclusions, which is why I end many posts with a question rather than a definitive statement.

I don't feel a compelling need to voice my opinion on every topic du jour. There are many things I have written little or nothing about that have generated huge volumes of posts in blogworld as a whole. I only write when I feel I can add a new insight, whether it is because it is in an area that I have some expertise, or if I have personal experience that relates, or if I have access to news sources that others do not have. If I have nothing special to add, I usually feel that unless it is something very important, it is better to not add to the imbroglios that tend to arise with every major event in the news.

I thought I had an answer to the question of why I write here, but that answer has escaped me at the moment. All I do have is what the answer is not. I'll have to ponder it for a while.

Just because we don't hear about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist...

In another example of how the United States is isolated by its own lazy media, editorials in newspapers in Muslim countries are indeed denouncing the terrorism committed by Islamists. There is a small collection of excerpts at Amygdala along with a link to more. While the voices are not loud, not nearly as loud as many feel they should be, it is incorrect to say there is absolutely no recognition in the Muslim community of who the terrorists are.

Link via The Moderate Voice.

Quotes on thinking

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-B. F. Skinner

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
-Don Marquis

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
-Aldous Huxley

We cannot fight the true enemy if we are fighting amongst ourselves

I must add my voice to that of Joe Gandelman:

All sides need to cool it.

The Moderate Voice has a link to a video showing an incident at the Young Republican Convention, where punching and kicking between protesters and delegates occurred. As Joe says, this is completely unacceptable. It does not matter "who started it." We are all Americans, we cannot allow ourselves to tear our nation apart even in good times, much less when there are so many others actively working to destroy us.

This is a direct result of the poisonous political climate, an atmosphere that is not improved by many of the rants I read on weblogs. Again, I ask that you think before you post in anger a vitriolic rant that demonizes and dehumanizes your fellow citizens who happen to be your political opponents. Using words like "traitor" or equating current political leaders to Hitler or Stalin not only diminishes the power of words that should be reserved only for the most heinous of crimes, it also elevates the emotions of rage and directs them inwards towards ourselves rather than outwards towards our true foes. In this age where school children are murdered, shot in the back while trying to escape violence, we need to recognize that our political opponents are not the enemy, those who are murdering innocents are the appropriate target of our rage and hatred.

On a lighter note

From CNN.com:

Muppets Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker defeated Dr. Strangelove, Dana Scully of "X Files" fame and Star Trek's Mr. Spock to be voted Britain's favorite screen scientists on Monday.

They beat their closest rival by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percent of the 43,000 votes cast in an Internet poll.

Spock came in a distance second with 15 percent followed by The Doctor, from Dr Who, who garnered 13 percent. Scully, the only woman in the poll, came in sixth.

"They are accessible, humorous and occasionally blow each other up," said Roland Jackson, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA).

The balding, white-coated Honeydew and flame-haired, bulging-eyed Beaker created an array of crazy gadgets on the popular television show.

"They're the kind of scientists you would like to be but never quite dared to," said Alan Slater, a scientist at the University of Exeter in southwestern England.

Given that I put "scientist" down as my profession on my 1040 tax form every year, I'm not sure exactly what I think of this...

Maybe you're better if you're not trying to make a buck...

The Commissar certainly has creativity in both his link-fests and in his generation of trackbacks.

The level of creativity that I've encountered in weblogs astounds me at times, especially in how long it is maintained by those like the Commissar, LeeAnn, and others such as Rob who spin tall tales intermixed with true stories so skillfully it's almost impossible to separate them.

Makes you wonder what's wrong with Hollywood sometimes...

Outsider views of US politics

Since John of Argghhh! is posting one outsider view of George Bush, I thought I would provide what I felt was a very balanced view of the presidency of George W. Bush from an outsider as well, the online version of The Economist magazine. It is worth reading the entire article. As an enticement, here is the final paragraph:

Tumultuous though it has been, and despite the passions it arouses, Mr Bush's first term should in the end be judged in the same measured way as most previous ones. It is a mixed bag: successes and failures must be set beside each other. And deciding whether Mr Bush deserves a second term calls for more than an appraisal of his own record: the American people will have to judge whether Mr Kerry, another mixture of good and bad, represents a better choice. At his convention in Boston, Mr Kerry made an effort to cast the Democratic Party in a new light. Mr Bush needs to attempt something similar in New York. More of the same just will not do.

There is another article from the same magazine that is linked within this first article, again, well worth reading in its entirety. A passage to provide an incentive to read the article:

It is true that Iraq has raised doubts about the doctrine of prevention and pre-emption. But the debate has shown that the alternative “rules for going to war” are, from America's viewpoint, far worse. This is the claim, particularly espoused by France and Germany, that, except in the case of actual attack or imminent threat, countries cannot use military force legitimately without the approval of the Security Council. No American president would ever accept, or has ever accepted, such an idea. If others insist that the alternative to unilateralism is the UN, America will stick with unilateralism.

Most important, the underlying rationale of Mr Bush's transformed policy has not really changed. This is that there is a huge gap in military power between America and everyone else, that the country has opportunities denied to anyone else and that traditional alliances are therefore useful rather than necessary. Iraq has shown that the exercise of American power is harder than the administration thought; but the exercise of power is still what matters most to Mr Bush. In that sense, his foreign policy is being refined, not retooled.

Mr Bush once campaigned as a proponent of a “humble” foreign policy. In practice, he has not provided one. On the domestic front, he has been equally surprising. And despite the narrowness of his mandate, he has proved as polarising at home as he is abroad. Consider, next, the peculiar character of the president's domestic conservatism.

Sadly, it appears that the news media in the United Kingdom provide a more nuanced view of our politics than the domestic media.

Cold War II?

Is this the ultimate sign that in the end (especially after the victory of the West in the Cold War) it is really the economy, stupid?

Read it, and think about it...

In the end, what is most important? Feeding our loved ones, then giving them shelter, then being able to give them the things that make them happy.

Will we win the so-called War on Terror the same way we won the Cold War, after a long, slow slog where those without realized that their own governments were the real reason why they didn't have what we have?

Link from The Moderate Voice.

How incredibly odd...

This is probably because the iTunes playlist I have going is playing several songs in a row from the early to mid 1980s, but I find myself wondering what my ex-wife would think of me as I am now, not as I was when we met 22 years ago, or who I was a bit over 8 years ago when we finally divorced.

I have no desire to even see or even speak to this woman again, ever...

Odd the thoughts that arise late in the evening like ghosts from the past, tormenting us with possibilities.

Meanwhile, in the real world...

Astronomers are making progress in finding planets that resemble Earth more than Jupiter. From CNN.com:

Our planet is not alone. It may not even be lonely.

Astronomers on Tuesday announced the discovery of a new -- and possibly abundant -- class of planets that has more in common with Earth than the uninhabitable gas giants previously discovered.

"We are closer to answering the question, 'Are we alone in the universe?'" said Anne Kinney, director of NASA's Universe Division, Science Mission Directorate. "We aim to answer that question by looking for planets, eventually imaging them and ultimately diagnosing the presence of life on those planets."

Astronomers found the two planets, among the smallest ever detected, orbit different stars less then 50 light years from Earth. One planet circles a red dwarf star, the most abundant in our Milky Way galaxy, igniting hope that the discoveries may just be the beginning.

Why is this important?

Well, I tend to think in the long term, the very, very, very long term.

To preserve our species we need to expand, just as the Old World expanded into the New World starting around half a millennium ago. Yes, interstellar travel is just a dream today, but so were so many other things that are now commonplace, including flying over oceans, computers that can be activated by voice command, even DVDs would be inconceivable to people alive merely a century ago.

We need the dreamers, for in the end it is they who will save us, both physically and spiritually.

Some quotes for our candidates for President

What Kerry needs to understand:

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
   -Dr. Samuel Johnson

What Bush needs to understand:

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
   -John F. Kennedy , speech prepared for delivery in Dallas the day of his assassination, November 22, 1963

This election is about leadership

Pennywit has two posts that partially describe my dilemma on deciding how to vote this year. Despite the extensive quotes below, I suggest you read both posts in full.

The first post is on the leadership of President George W. Bush. I don't agree with everything in this post, but it does outline the difference in the leadership we saw in the days following September 11, 2001, and what has been displayed in the subsequent War on Terror which has been far less inspiring.

I've read some coverage of last night's speeches by Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Their message, hammered home by their bipartisan credentials, is that President Bush should be re-elected because he is a solid leader in the war on terror.

They have a solid point. If this year's election were a choice between John Kerry and the President Bush who emerged shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then there would be no contest.

The President Bush I saw in the weeks after 9/11 was a vision of what a president should be. Decisive. Bipartisan. Optimistic. Forceful.

However, I'm not voting for that president on November 2. Rather, I'm voting on the man that President Bush has been for the rest of his term, and I find that man wanting.

Speakers last night touted President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. That invasion has caused the United States to suffer from an overextended military. The tactics used resulted in what Bush has termed a "catastrophic victory," and deficiencies in the days following that victory continue to bedevil us in Iraq.

In conducting the war on terror, President Bush has chosen to press at the boundaries of constitutional law. In Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, prisoners have been held without regard for rights guaranteed in the Constitution (for Gitmo detainees) or in the Geneva conventions (for prisoners held abroad).

He was ready to invade Iraq without a hint of congressional approval -- a situation that would have caused the Founders to roll in their graves as the president waged an illegal war.

The second post discusses how Senator John Kerry has not shown a positive reason regarding how his leadership is any better than that of Bush. Pennywit describes well how this is not something we should have to search for:

I haven't seen evidence of leadership in Kerry's time in the Senate. Maybe there is an example of leadership there, buried in the sands of time that are two decades in a legislature. But I haven't seen Kerry highlight it.

And, in fact, it's not my job to dig for it. I'm a blogger, not a political hack. If Kerry's going to show that he's a leader, it's his damn job to do it. Not mine to go through forty years of Kerry memorabilia.

And I'm waiting for this particular element of the Kerry persona to come to the fore.

Pennywit also writes something I was planning to post about:

On the flip side, I have gained at least some sense of the person the Kerry is during this election. In terms of leadership style, Kerry strikes me as an individual who is far more thoughtful than President Bush is when it comes to matters of policy.

While this is often characterized as "flip-flopping," I believe that this quality -- the ability to consider multiple approaches to a problem, as well as multiple stands, before reaching a decision and acting on it -- will better serve this country's purposes than Bush's model, which relies on damning torpedoes and moving full speed ahead.

The willingness to consider multiple points of view, rather than focus on one course of action and follow it no matter what, will allow U.S. policy to more quickly adapt to the changing circumstances in the war on terror.

This neatly encapsulates my largest concern about how this war is being waged and my fundamental issue with the current President. There is an inflexibility in the Bush administration that I find troubling. It appears as if President Bush confuses the words "resolution" and "inflexible", "determined" and "stubborn". The recent apparent admissions of the failure to adequately plan for and resource the aftermath of the Iraq invasion illustrate the point. Instead of admitting that the planning was inadequate, the spin-inducing phrase "catastrophic success" is now the new talking point (and note that link showing the use of this phase in association with Iraq is dated March of 2003). Even the use of the mealy-mouthed "mistakes were made" would be better than the spinning that is going on now. If you never admit mistakes, you never learn from them.

Please note, I am not saying that the invasion itself was mistaken. That question can only truly be answered with the perspective of history. What I am saying is that the failure to plan for all foreseeable contingencies of the aftermath of a war that you start voluntarily borders on the unforgivable, and the members of the Bush administration who were supposed to take care of this are not being held responsible in any meaningful way. My definition of leadership and loyalty does not include defending what is not defensible, just as it does not include being so inflexible that you are incapable of learning from mistakes.

Unfortunately, Kerry approaches the opposite extreme, and I question his ability to show true firmness and resolve in the face of opposition. You must have the ability to consider all sides of an issue, but once you have decided upon the proper course, you cannot temporize and try to completely avoid confrontation.

So, we either have rigidity that alienates allies and does not learn from mistakes, or we have broken reeds that turn whichever way the wind blows. Unless either candidate shows some sign that they understand firmness with flexibility, again I will have to decide who is the least dangerous to our nation and not who is best equipped to lead because both major party candidates are inadequate.