Lileks Solves Terrorism Problem

James Lileks is a national treasure. Funny, wise and smart. And he’s a dad.

He also has some funny, wise and smart things to say about Gitmo and the War on Terror.

Read the whole thing.

Excerpts:

I can believe that a good-hearted person is truly, deeply, madly worried about Gitmo; I have a liberal friend who’s been worried about Gitmo since the British tabs ran the photos that Shocked the World. You know, the one with the guys in hoods and shackles, portrayed somehow as if they’d been scooped up in Operation Gather Innocent Lambs.
….
Never mind that they get their Korans, their arrows on the cell floor pointing to Mecca – and does anyone doubt that the arrows actually point the right way? Never mind that the food must be prepared by cooks who have to incorporate the prisoners’ convictions that the infidel is unclean, and must don gloves to prevent kafir infestation. Never mind any of that. Hoods. Shackles. Poor dears.
….
[re the Left’s desires] “I want the interrogators to get the information, but not if it makes prisoners crap in their pants or pull out their hair.” Agreed. I would like them to get the information without any sort of effort whatsoever. It’s a fair cop, guv. Here’s where we’ve stored the fertilizer and here are the names of my associates. Now if you’ll show me to my cell, I’d like to get started whiling away the time until most of the networks are compromised and the Iranian government has fallen, after which we can talk about letting me return home. Jolly good!” But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Conversely, I don’t want them to beat the hell out of these people until they spit names and teeth, in no particular order. But I don’t care if they make them stay awake most of the day for a month or two. I really don’t. I’m sorry. We’re talking about people who will not be satisfied until Israel is gone and the United States crippled. I’d like to know what they know, and if they wet themselves in the process, I do not regard this is as the equivalent of uprooting several million people to Alaska to build a canal dressed only in long johns.

PETA KILLS CAT AND HER KITTENS

PETA is a national spectacle with its HQ in our fair city, Norfolk, Virginia. It is widely known for terrifying children who go to KFC or McDonalds. It is continually in court harassing the circus. Its primary methods of operation are to commit outrages against the American people for the purpose of collecting donations for its executive staff.

One of it’s lesser-know tasks is collecting pets from animal shelters and killing them. Why shelters allow PETA to do this is the subject for another day. However, they recently expanded their “services” to North Carolina. And here, according the Virginian Pilot, is what happened.

At least one county in North Carolina has cut its relationship with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals after two PETA workers were arrested Wednesday for allegedly dumping animal carcasses into a trash container behind a grocery in Ahoskie , N.C.

“As of today, we have temporarily suspended our agreement with PETA until the issues are resolved,” Sue Gay, health director for Northampton County, said Friday evening.
In a news conference at PETA’s Norfolk headquarters Friday, President Ingrid Newkirk said the dumping was “hideous, it’s wrong, and it never should have happened.”
Police suspected that PETA workers were killing the dogs and cats they were picking up from shelters and clinics because carcasses wrapped in plastic bags were found in the bins every Wednesday for four straight weeks, according to Ahoskie police Detective Jeremy Roberts. A total of 80 dead animals were dumped, he said.

Officers staked out the garbage bins, which were at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
They found 18 dead dogs in the container and 13 other animal carcasses in the van, which was registered to PETA, and arrested the two workers.

The animals were alive when they were picked up earlier in the day, Roberts said, adding, “We don’t know exactly how they were killed.”

Newkirk said they were likely given a lethal injection of a barbiturate that the organization is licensed to use.

PETA usually takes the animals back to Norfolk to be euthanized, Newkirk said, in a process that involves a single hypodermic shot and a gentle caress.
Very few are ever put up for adoption, she said.

“We won’t shy away from doing society’s dirty work as long as the alternative is a life of misery and a bad or slow death,” Newkirk said.

Last year, she said, 2,278 animals were euthanized in Virginia, 7,641 sterilized and 361 put up for adoption. She said she was not sure if the North Carolina animals were part of those statistics.

Animals were not supposed to be killed in North Carolina, except by veterinarians hired by the organization or if they were in too much pain to travel, PETA said.
After they are killed, Newkirk said, the carcasses are supposed to be sent to a crematorium, not dumped in bins.

“That conduct disgusts us,” Newkirk said of the dumping. “It shames us. It violates our own protocols, it happened without our knowledge and can never be allowed to happen again. But our work is important and our work must go on.”

The two PETA employees: Adria J. Hinkle, 27, of Norfolk , and Andrew B. Cook , 24, of Virginia Beach, appeared Friday in Hertford County District Court . Each faces 31 felony charges of animal cruelty and eight counts of illegal disposal of dead animals and one of trespassing.

A probable cause hearing was set for July 19 . PETA will pay for their attorneys, Newkirk said.

Hinkle has been suspended for 90 days, but Cook, who was hired only weeks ago as her assistant, has not been suspended, Newkirk said.

Newkirk said she had not yet spoken to the two workers.

Outside the courthouse, Larry Overton , an Ahoskie lawyer who represented Hinkle until she could retain an attorney, said, “She is devastated about the way this situation was handled. I believe there are some explanations that will mitigate some of the facts.”

Newkirk said her organization got involved in North Carolina after learning about conditions at shelters there. She said PETA investigators found that animals were dying in the shelters or being put to death inhumanely.

She said the organization let all those involved in North Carolina know that what PETA was offering was a better way to put the animals down, not an adoption service.
“PETA has never made a secret of the fact that most of the animals from North Carolina are euthanized,” Newkirk said.

But Gay said that was not the understanding she had with the organization.
“What I understood,” she said, “was that they would pick up the animals from us and they would be assessed as to whether they could be adopted or not.”

Many of the animals were strays and sick, she said, and probably not good candidates for adoption. But there was supposed to be an examination by PETA’s medical team.
PETA has veterinarians on staff to make sure the animals are healthy enough to be adopted, Gay said, “and if they are healthy enough, there would be an attempt to adopt it out.”

Tonya Northcott , a veterinary technician at the Ahoskie Animal Hospital, said that among the dead found Wednesday were a mother cat and her two kittens picked up that day by PETA.

“There was nothing wrong with them,” she said of the animals, noting that they had been dewormed and that she had been told there would be no problem finding homes for the cats.
“They’ll never get another one of them from us,” she said”

I have often been bemused by the things that people will support. I have been angered by the fact that PETA appears to get millions of dollars from people who either approve of their actions or are totally oblivious of what this odious group does.

This cannot be allowed to die as simply a local story. Spread the word!

Dick Durbin: The Ring Of Familiarity

Captain's Quarters recalls that the Left's smear of American soldiers is not new.

John Kerry:

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

This formed a pattern that was widely repeated by the Left until the US abandoned it allies in South Viet Nam and left the people to the tender mercies of Communist "re-education camps," the killing fields of Cambodia and the thousands of "Boat People" who subsequently died trying to escape via the south China Sea.


Read the whole thing.

News Media Morality

What is the MSM’s responsibility to the American people regarding terrorism?

That may be the wrong question. The “MSM” – while remarkably uniform in many respects – is actually a collection of individuals. There is no “thing” known as the MSM with a single body, mind and soul. There are only individuals. So let me rephrase the question.

What should the people who produce the news consider to be their responsibility regarding terrorism? My overarching answer is to act ethically. To act ethically in the information business is to present facts in such a way that those who receive those facts understand what happened.

To do that you need context. Lack of context is what you get from the much derided “used car salesman” or from Dick Durbin. One will tell you what a creampuff “this little beauty” is, guaranteed to run … neglecting to add: "until it leaves the lot." The other will tell you that the Gulag, Nazi death camps or the Cambodian killing fields were just like Gitmo with the air conditioning dialed to the wrong temperature.

What is it about the ethics of the people who bring us the news? Why do those who shout most loudly about their superior “journalistic ethics” are widely perceived as having the most base morals? Of operating in an ethical vacuum?

Which brings me to Daniel Henninger’s column in the Wall Street Journal of June 17, 2005: Terrorism for Everyman.

As far as I can tell, this is the recent news out of Iraq:

Yesterday: "Six U.S. Servicemen Die in Iraq Violence."

Wednesday: "Surge of Violence Leaves 52 Dead in Iraq."

Monday: "Iraq-Bombing Update: Additional Bombings, Death Toll 10."

It is possible to extend this headline exercise of Iraq news to the horizon. As a physical principle no less established than the second law of thermodynamics, U.S. opinion polls in June outputted these headlines and stories:

June 12: "A Growing Public Restlessness: The June [Post-ABC News] survey found that 58% of its 1,002 respondents now disapprove of the way Bush is handling both the economy and the situation in Iraq.

June 11, AP: "Only 41% said they support Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, also a low-water mark." The "war," of course, extends no further than these bombing reports.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the maestro of the Iraqi civilian slaughterhouse, has produced a steady shower of human blood, and as often happens, blood has been a public-opinion downer. Perhaps in his next life al-Zarqawi can come back as an American marketing consultant. Having established there is a U.S. market for American-associated death in Iraq, such as the front page of the Yahoo! news portal, al-Zarqawi is supplying it with daily product. The up-or-down polls he reads are his profit-and-loss statement.

He concludes:

Little wonder, then, that our own news coverage of these repeated slaughters of civilians in Iraq also lacks any normative or moral context unfavorable to the perpetrators. And little wonder that in such a world the only "side" many people in the U.S. feel comfortable with is heading for the exits.

Martin Kaplan is a Fascist!

James Lileks is an unusually astute, talented and funny observer of modern life.

He has this to say about one of the recurring themes of avant garde liberalism : Christophobia. Here he comments on remarks made by Martin Kaplan regarding Christian fundamentalists.

Martin Kaplan has a distinguished resume. I would like to thank Marty for adapting “Noises Off” for the screen, which contained about 27 uninterrupted minutes of Nicole Sheridan in lingerie. He also wrote speeches for Mondale, a man who could sent charging elephants into an instant narcoleptic fit, and he has the sort of scientific, journalistic and creative resume that would make him a fascinating dinner companion, right up until the moment when he said something stupid:

"Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, calls the new Christer offensive a drive toward 'theocratic oligopoly. The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country,' adding that 'e-mails to the FCC are more worrisome to me than boycotts' in terms of their chilling effect ."

…“Religious fascism.”

One of the mantras you hear invoked from time to time is “words mean something.” But they obviously don’t. When intelligent men can make such a specious observation you realize that “fascism” has ceased to mean anything at all, and exists now as an all-purpose slur, a tar-soaked brush to slap on anything you don’t like. Whether the Soup Nazi actually believes in exterminating the Jews and bending the nation towards race-based collectivism and militarism is irrelevant; what matters is that he doesn’t want to give you some of that yummy chowder.

If one means “religious fascism” as the use of the power of the state to achieve a particular moral objective, you could argue that progressive taxation is “fascism,” inasmuch as it assumes that the rich should pay more for the good of all, and this moral imperative should be enforced by law. I would not make that argument, because it would be vile. Progressive taxation is many things, but it’s not fascism. On the other hand, I’m at a disadvantage here; if gentlemen like Mr. Kaplan feel free to drop the f-bomb in order to claim the moral high ground, why should I stand down here in the moat complaining? So I put it to you that Mr. Kaplan is a fascist himself. Period. There you go! That's easy. If pressed, I will only note that there are some of his ideas which bear a resemblance to policies one occasionally finds in fascist states - inasmuch as he wrote comedy movies, and they had funny films in Hitler's Germany, too. I mean, draw your own conclusions, people.

It’s curious that this word should re-enter domestic politics at the same time we are not only fighting actual religious fascists, but are embroiled in a controversy over the mistreatment of the tome they regard as their instruction manual. …

Read the whole thing…

UPDATE: More HERE AT HUGH HEWITT

Schiavo Autopsy

Patterico links to and comments on the Schiavo autopsy. Mark Furman has a book coming out on this case by the end of the month. It should be fascinating reading.

The ONE thing to remember is that the MSM and advocates on both sides with lie (I think I'll stop using the euphemism "spin") about this case. It is too emotionally and politically charged.

When Did Terrri Schiavo Die?

Vanderleun writing in The American Digest nails it:

Weasel Lead of the Year, But the Year Is Young

IN THE WASHINGTON POST'S REPORT,
Schiavo Autopsy Shows Severe Brain Damage the lead to the story by staff writers David Brown and William Branigin reads: "Terri Schiavo died of the effects of a profound and prolonged lack of oxygen to her brain on a day in 1990, but what caused that event isn't known and may never be, the physician who performed her autopsy said today."

It is hard to conceive of a more tone-deaf lead. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive that such a lead was put into the newspaper without a full awareness on the part of all concerned of its meaning and its less than subtle editorial message.

An editor with a normal sense of ethics and balance would, at the very least, sent this construction back for a rewrite, or have cut it out right. As it stands, in tone and intent, it poisons all that comes after.

First of all note that it is a statement attributed to the "physician who performed her autopsy." At the same time, it is not contained within quotation marks so it cannot strictly been seen as a statement by the physician in question. If that is the case, is it then a paraphrase of his remarks -- some sort of "condensation" of a longer statement? We can't know. We can't be sure. On the one hand we are presented with a controversial assertion (Death by lack of oxygen to the brain) which, as the writers and editors must surely know, will be seen by others as death by starvation following the removal to a feeding tube. This latter view is essentially dismissed by the lead assertion in what is supposed to be a news story.
Following this set up the story does relate the "facts" as revealed in the autopsy, but it has already, thanks to the very first sentence, sacrificed its credibility on the altar of "the world as the WAPO staff thinks it should be." In this world, even the reporters of the the news get to slip in a veiled assertion on the point when life ends ('Why, shucks, its the time when your brain doesn't get enough oxygen.... Everybody agrees with that, don't they?')

Well, actually, if you'd been paying attention to the entire Schiavo controversy you might have noticed that a lot of people don't agree with that. It is just that it would seem that none of those people hold writing or editorial positions at the Washington Post, where it would seem experts on where life ends are as numerous as experts at when life begins -- as long as it doesn't begin at conception.

Indeed, if you read the rest of the report, there's nothing to support the attributed statement of the physician on the death of Terry Schiavo. The only direct quote we are given is "Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not." This, of course, contradicts the lead since Schiavo could have been killed by a lack of oxygen to her brain in 1990 or starvation in 2005, but not both.

Day by Day

By Chris Muir

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Christopher Hitchens is a Lefty who supports the War on Terror. He is not only possessed of a razor sharp wit, but the ability to write well. There are many subjects on which I disagree with Hitchens (he is a militant atheist, wrote an “exposé” of Mother Teresa, and is a socialist) but he is relentless in his support of freedom for the Iraqis and Kurds. Read the whole thing on Slate.

A favorite slice of reality TV in today's Iraq is the melodramatically named program Terrorism in the Grip of Justice. Aired on state-run Al Iraqiya, which doesn't require a satellite dish, it shows the confessions of captured "insurgents," mainly foreign fighters. When possible, it also shows the videos that these people have made, so that, for example, a man can be viewed as he slices a victim's throat and then viewed, looking much less brave, as he explains where he comes from, how he was taught to rehearse beheadings and throat-slittings on animals, and other insights into the trade. On occasion, these characters are confronted with the families of their victims. At other times, they have been able to tell the families of the missing what happened to their loved ones. The aim is to demystify the holy warriors and also to encourage civilians to call in with further tips.

[snip]

The forces of al-Qaida and its surrogate organizations are not signatory to the conventions and naturally express contempt for them. They have no battle order or uniform and are represented by no authority with which terms can be negotiated. Nor can they claim, as actual guerrilla movements like the Algerian FLN have done in the past, to be the future representatives of their countries or peoples. In Afghanistan and Iraq, they sought to destroy the electoral process that alone can confer true legitimacy, and they are in many, if not most, cases not even citizens of the countries concerned. Their announced aim is the destruction of all nonbelievers, and their avowed method is indiscriminate and random murder. They are more like pirates, hijackers, or torturers—three categories of people who have in the past been declared outside the protection of any law.

Scientist Discover New Planet

From Scrappleface:

Earth-Like Planet Found Near Our Sun
by Scott Ott
(2005-06-14) -- Researchers announced today that they have discovered evidence of an earth-like planet approximately 93 million miles away from the sun in our own solar system.

While astrophysicists have not seen the rocky orb through a telescope, it has many of the characteristics of our own home planet and yet is "clearly an alien world."

The team picked up electronic transmissions from an apparent civilization on the earth-like planet in a language similar to English. They have tentatively named the planet MSCNNYT-13.

"News transmissions received from MSCNNYT-13 during the past week paint a picture of a bizarre civilization," said one unnamed scientist. "It's tempting to draw parallels between our own rational world and the people on this new planet, but if we had become as obsessed as they are with trivia, gossip and perversion I don't think we would have lasted this long."

A spokesman for NASA said no missions are planned to explore MSCNNYT-13 because "we couldn't learn enough from them to justify the expense."

Day By Day

Unlikely to Make Newsweek

Indian Muslims ask a boy to urinate on a U.S. flag during a protest against the alleged desecration of the Koran during a demonstration in Calcutta May 20, 2005.

Dr. Sanity and MSM

Dr. Sanity's blog has a great article on hysteria, both the clinical type and the type practiced by the MSM. It's worth reading in full.

Here is a partial listing (in no particular order) of what the media is Obsessed by (on the LEFT) , compared to what they appear Indifferent to (on the Right):

Gitmo Torture

Michael Jackson ... Once

OK. I have not written about Michael Jackson because I don’t really care about celebrities and their trials. I am not into pop culture. But now that the verdict is in, I will make some comments about Jackson, the trial, justice and the media circus.

To understand this case, and the jury verdict, it’s important to separate two issues: (1) is Jackson a pedophile and (2) did he molest the 13-year-old Gavin Arviso?

The widespread assumption is that Jackson is a pedophile and therefore molested Arviso. If Jackson were not a pedophile, why would he invite little boys to share his bed? Unfortunately for the prosecution, the jury was not asked to determine if he was a pedophile, they were asked to find specifically if he molested Gavin Arviso. The jury found that the direct testimony of the accuser and his mother was not sufficiently credible and acquitted Jackson.

I believe the jury did a credible job. In Jackson they had a defendant who raised conflicting emotions. To his fans, Jackson is one of the most famous personalities in the world and a great artist, the object of adoration. To most other people, Jackson is grotesque; a surgical freak who dresses bizarrely and who invites little boys into his bed. He deserves to be put away on general priciples.

Here is my own theory about Jackson, a person who I have never met and whose life I care little about. Michael Jackson is a little boy inhabiting the body of a 46 year-old man. He never had a childhood, as we understand that phase. Brought onto the stage by a demanding family, he has been a pop super star since he was a pre-teen. Jackson is not normal now and he has never been normal.

But he did become incredibly rich.

Think about Neverland. It’s not the creation of a middle-aged man. Jackson used his wealth to create a personal children’s park for himself with all of the things that a little boy would want: his own personal Disneyland with amusement park rides, animals … and little friends. Little friends his own emotional age in a desperate, bizarre attempt to create a childhood he never had, complete with milk, cookies and sleepovers.

To normal people, inviting young boys to sleep in an adult male’s bed is not just bizarre, it’s perverted. But if you are a 12 year-old inhabiting a 46 year-old body, hard as it may be to understand, it’s just possible that, as Michael Jackson said: “it’s not sexual.”

Call me naive, call me blind to the obvious, but to send someone to jail to 20 years should take more than a well-deserved reputation for being a rich freak with strange tastes.

I think justice was served.

Steyn Alert - on China

An excerpt:

The internal contradictions of Commie-capitalism will, in the end, scupper the present arrangements in Beijing. China manufactures the products for some of the biggest brands in the world, but it's also the biggest thief of copyrights and patents of those same brands. It makes almost all Disney's official merchandising, yet it's also the country that defrauds Disney and pirates its movies. The new China's contempt for the concept of intellectual property arises from the old China's contempt for the concept of all private property: because most big Chinese businesses are (in one form or another) government-controlled, they've failed to understand the link between property rights and economic development.

China hasn't invented or discovered anything of significance in half a millennium, but the careless assumption that intellectual property is something to be stolen rather than protected shows why. If you're a resource-poor nation (as China is), long-term prosperity comes from liberating the creative energies of your people - and Beijing still has no interest in that. If a blogger attempts to use the words "freedom" or "democracy" or "Taiwan independence" on Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal, he gets the message: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech." How pathetic is that? Not just for the Microsoft-spined Corporation, which should be ashamed of itself, but for the Chinese government, which pretends to be a world power but is terrified of words.

Jane Fonda's Treason

Jane Fonda is so OVER!

Who cares? Is she still alive?

Well, yes, she is, and has written an autobiography, "My Life So Far." And more importantly, she is emblematic of a type that is active today: the actor/activist siding with a brutal enemy. We can learn something from “Hanoi Jane” and perhaps handle her modern, younger incarnations better than we did her.

Front Page magazine has an article that compares and contrasts Fonda’s autobiography with "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda In North Vietnam."

It’s fairly long, but worth reading. Some excerpts:

For three decades Jane Fonda obfuscated, distorted and lied about virtually everything connected with her wartime trip to North Vietnam: her motive, her acts, her intent, and her contribution to the Communists’ war effort. With the aid of clever handlers, she so successfully suppressed and spun her conduct in Hanoi that many Americans didn’t know what she had done there, and, more important, the legal significance.
….

By herself, Jane Fonda is unimportant—confused, defensive, narcissistic, empty—a woman who admits in her autobiography that "Maybe I simply become whatever the man I am with wants me to be: ‘sex kitten’ [Roger Vadim], ‘controversial activist’ [Tom Hayden], ‘ladylike wife on the arm of corporate mogul’ [Ted Turner]." But Fonda-ism is important because Americans who give aid and comfort to our enemies – Communists then, jihadists now -- put at risk, not only our cherished institutions, but—in today’s world—our very existence.

Fred on American Education

“WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bursting into tears, eighth-grader Anurag Kashyap of California became the U.S. spelling champ Thursday… Tied for second place were 11-year-old Samir Patel, who is home-schooled in Colleyville, Texas, and Aliya Deri, 13, a Pleasanton, California, student.” Indian kids have won first place in five of the last seven years.

Might be there’s a pattern here? Nah.

A friend in California has an Asia wife (which both he and I recommend), and so is among the few whites plugged into the state’s Asian community. He reports that the Asians are contemptuous of whites. (“Lazy, not very smart.”) The evidence supports them. They also believe that the chief aim of schooling in America is to coddle blacks and Latinos, which baffles them. Me too, but it isn’t my problem.

Top twelve students on the USA Math Olympiad 2003: Boris Alexeev, Jae Bae, Daniel Kane, Anders Kaseorg (home-schooled), Mark Lipson, Tiankai Liu, Po-Ru Loh, Po-Ling Loh, Aaron Pixton, Kwokfung Tang, Tony Zhang, Yan Zhang.

Take out Asians and Jews out of measures of high intellectual performance in America, and you aren’t left with much. The foregoing doesn’t look much different from staffing lists I have encountered for such things as research teams at Bell Labs. A friend, writing a book on Harvard, calculates that Asians and Jews make up about forty-five percent of the school. The Asians know this, of course. They figure the future is theirs. So do I.

"HOUSTON CHRONICLE, May 19, 2005: HISD [Houston Independent School District] sees its passing rates [on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills] fall in every grade and a racial gap grow even wider."

The contempt of the Asians for witless round-eyes is understandable. They, in my considerable experience, are intensely competitive and look toward results. Whites just don’t care. I remember staying with a friend in Canada who had rooming with her a Chinese woman who was working on a degree at a local university. She only barely spoke English, but among other things was also studying French, a required course I suppose, and passing it by brute force. She needed that degree to bring her family over. She was going to get it, and that was that. She seldom came out of her room, because that was where her books were. Might be hard to compete with.

Winners of the 2004 William Lowell Putnam mathematics competition, a very high-end test: Reid W. Barton, Daniel M. Kane, Emanuel Stoica, Ana Caraiani, Suehyun Kwon, Mihai Manea, Nikifor C. Bliznashki, Oaz Nir, Lingren Zhang, Olena Bormashenko, Ralph Furmaniak, Michael A. Lipnowski, Po-Ru Loh, Mehmet B. Yenmez, and Rumen I. Zarev.

American schools lurch after “diversity” like drunks who have discovered a bottle of Night Train on the sidewalk, and collect what educationists call “minorities.”

By “minority” they mean of course non-performing minorities: Anglo-Saxons, Chinese, Jews, and Greeks are all minorities, but they are not failures, and so aren't really minorities. The Asians, all that I know, all that anyone I know knows, do not give a wan, etiolated damn about non-performers. Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans are very racially conscious. They quietly regard whites as inferior, blacks as barbarians.
Ah, and the Asians are smart, and do not come out of their rooms until they have finished.

New York Daily News, May 10, 2005: A stunning 81% of the city's eighth-graders flunked the state's basic social studies exam last year - and the scores have gone down annually since the test debuted in 2001.

The comedy of the thing is that the United States has deliberately chosen to convert itself into a continent of half-literate iPod-carrying dolts. To me it is entertaining; to the rising Asian nations it is an inexplicable gift: The US, their competition, has put its children into the hands of simian gurglers mewling about diversity, which, while positively weird as seen through slanted eyes, it bodes well for Asia. It is a bit like watching an opposing running back set off in the wrong direction.

The slave coders of Mumbai don’t worry about diversity. They are busy writing computer code. Our code.

Even better:
“CLOVIS, N.M. (April 29) - A call about a possible weapon at a middle school prompted police to put armed officers on rooftops, close nearby streets and lock down the school. All over a giant burrito.”

A kid brings his lunch wrapped in a newspaper so the school goes crazy and puts snipers on the roofs. I love this stuff. It’s better than The Simpsons. Do you suppose they do that in Tokyo? The Mad Burrito Assassin isn’t unusual. Little boys often get suspended or led out in handcuffs by cops for things like pointing and saying “Bang,” because heavily womanized schools can’t maintain order.

The Weekly Standard, 05/09/05, writing of the politicization of textbooks in American schools: “Thus, a chapter on climate in a fifth-grade science textbook in the Discovery Works series, published by Houghton Mifflin (2000), opens with a Native American explanation for the changing seasons: "Crow moon is the name given to spring because that is when the crows return. April is the month of Sprouting Grass Moon." Students meander through three pages of Algonquin lore before they learn that climate is affected by the rotation and tilt of Earth--not by the return of the crows.”

Oh, baby. I love it when you talk like that. Crow Moon, yet. All that neat stuff about crows will definitely impress Japanese guys designing supercomputers.
I imagine:

Teacher to classroom full of Asian kids: “Wun Lung, given two functions u(x) and v(x), the first derivative of uv with respect to x is u(dv/dx) + v(du/dx). True or false?”To gringo kids: “Billy, if during Grub Moon, one heart-warming aboriginal finds seven repellent grubs to eat, and another heart-warming aboriginal finds nine, how many will they have together?” (Answer: They won’t have a clue because their number system doesn’t go that high.)

From Gene Expression (gnxp.com)
“Mean GRE Verbal Score for Education PhDs:449

Mean GRE Verbal Score for Engineers:471

Mean GRE Quantitative Score for Education PhDs:527

Mean GRE Quantitative Score for Engineers:722

Number of other disciplines, out of 5, with mean scores higher than Education PhDs: 5Source:http://ftp.ets.org/pub/gre/994994.pdf”

Gosh, do you reckon the Singaporeans give phony doctorates to the dimmest dregs of their already bus-station schools?

Detroit News, Tuesday, January 18, 2005: Forty-seven percent of Detroit’s adult population is functionally illiterate.

Come on, we can do better than that. Let’s try for eighty percent within five years. Meanwhile I’m going to get my eyes done and break out my old Mandarin books. Hey, the Chinese are smart, the food’s good and the women are splendid. “Ni hau? Jende, wo mei-you kan-gwo numma hau-kan-de syau-jyeh.” Used to work. Might still.

One Thing Must Never Change

Bob Lonsberry writes a column that is worth pondering, especially on this Sunday.

A lady wrote me the other day, about her granddaughter, a young woman of 24.

A young woman who had been gravely ill.

Who had lingered long at the door of death and cried mightily for the help of God. They were of a conservative faith, of commandments and promises, and the family and its circle of friends had put the matter in the Lord’s hands.

And he had heard their prayers.

She strengthened and rallied and recovered and lived. And is now altogether better.

And she is leaving her family.

To move in with her boyfriend.

To live with him, without benefit of marriage, as if she was his wife.

And the grandmother wondered what to do. She was disappointed that her granddaughter had clung to God in her hour of need, but seemed to be turning from him now that her need was passed. She was heartbroken that the young woman would be doing what the family considered immoral.

And she asked me what she should do.

Not that she thought I was any great font of wisdom, or even because she was thinking I would answer. She was merely asking rhetorically.

But I answered anyway.

I told her she should love the girl. Period. That she should love her as she always had and that neither this mistake nor any mistake should come between them.

Maybe it’s simplistic, but I think that is the answer to virtually every question. Especially questions within the family.

And I don’t claim any keen insight in saying that. I have learned it by observation. By observation of people I admire and a God I worship.

We are all sinners, and have keenly disappointed, I suspect, the father of us all. And yet I do not believe that his love for us is diminished in the least. And as I have seen people whose lives have strayed and darkened come back and work to better themselves and their conduct, I have seen God move quickly and lovingly to embrace them and accept them.

The parable of the Prodigal Son was about him and us. We are squandering our birthright and he is making ready to slaughter the fatted calf.

Which can all sound like mumbo jumbo.

So remember this: As parents, relatives and friends, our job is simple. We must merely love.

Not that it will always be easy, or even natural, but our responsibility will constantly be clear. We are to love.

And we are to remember that the most when it is the hardest, or when we are the most disappointed. When it seems like the object of our love least wants it, that is when it must be the most sure.

When we feel that we have been spit upon, when we feel that our loved one has turned his back upon us. When we feel that she is rejecting everything we stand for and believe in.

That is when the commandment to love is most clear.

And it is a commandment to fathers as well as mothers, to cousins as well as siblings. There can be no disowning, no distancing, no shunning or rejection. They are our kin, they are us. We are theirs and they are ours.

Whether they go to jail or turn to drugs or abandon our faith or stop returning calls. There must be something certain in their lives, something which, should they choose, they can always rely on.

And that is our love.

And our acceptance, if not always our approval. They will do things that sadden us and with which we disagree, things which we believe will endanger their very souls. We are not expected to ratify those things, or facilitate them, or quietly accept their existence. But neither are we to harp and nag.

Our position is known, it can be lovingly repeated. Advice can be offered and a hand up from difficulty should always be extended. But chastising may not work and neither may condemnation.

Rather, we must stand for who we are and what we believe, and we must be a beacon back should our loved one choose to come. And until then we should love, through the pain and the consequence and the confused wanderings.

We should stand by them.

Just as God has stood by us.

Because if we don’t, it may not be them who has strayed. It may be us.

And it may not be their fault they founder and sink.

It may be ours.

12,000 Heros

Quick, How many American troops have been killed in Iraq? Ted Koppel can tell you their names, and does on Nightline.

Next question: how many Iraqis have been killed by terrorists since the fall of Saddam? No idea? Not reported in the MSM? Ted Koppel not reading their names? Must not fit in with the melody of the song the MSM's playing.

The Wall street Jouranl now gives us the number, via the Iraqi government:

Ever since the beginning of major combat operations in Iraq in March 2003, the media have kept a precise count of U.S. casualty figures, which now stand at nearly 1,700 killed and more than 6,400 wounded. There's also been plenty of tendentious speculation about the number of Iraqis killed by coalition action, the purpose of which is to cast Iraq's liberation as an unmitigated horror for Iraqis.

What has not been so carefully tracked, however, is the number of Iraqis killed by insurgent violence: the worshippers murdered as they pray in their mosques, the ranks of unemployed mowed down as they stand in line at government recruitment offices, and so on. We read about such incidents nearly every day but never see the cumulative death toll, perhaps because the cause of ordinary Iraqis finds few champions among trendy Western human-rights organizations.

Now the government of Iraq has gone and done that favor for itself. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr released statistics last week showing that some 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by insurgents in the last 18 months. Of these victims, the overwhelming majority have been Iraqi Shiites, indicating that what al Jazeera and friends call the "resistance against U.S. occupation" is in fact a jihadist and Baathist attack against the country's democratic government. "I have not seen any 'resistance,'" Mr. Jabr told the Washington Post. "There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."

Too bad some of our own politicians can't show as much moral clarity. Too bad, too, that every time we magnify every U.S. misdeed in Iraq, real or fabricated, we turn our gaze from the real source of the country's misery.