Evolution of religious bigotry (The Darwin Fish)

There is a person in my office who has exhibites a “Darwin Fish.” I found it mildly offensive but was at a loss to explain why. Jonah Goldberg has the best explanation I have ever read.

Traditionally, the fish pictogram conjures the miracle of the loaves and fishes as well as the Greek word IXOYE, which not only means fish but serves as an acronym, in Greek, for "Jesus Christ the Son of God [Is] Savior." Christians persecuted by the Romans used to draw the Jesus fish in the dirt with a stick or a finger as a way to tip off fellow Christians that they weren't alone.

In America, the easiest place to find this ancient symbol is on the back of cars. Recently, however, it seems as if Jesus fish have become outnumbered by Darwin fish. No doubt you've seen these too. The fish symbol is "updated" with little feet coming off the bottom, and "IXOYE" or "Jesus" is replaced with either "Darwin" or "Evolve."
...
As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. "Namely: It's acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it. A plaque with 'Shalom' written inside a Star of David would hardly attract notice; a plaque with 'Usury' written inside the same symbol would be an outrage."

But the most annoying aspect of the Darwin fish is the false bravado it represents. It's a courageous pose without consequence. Like so much other Christian-baiting in American popular culture, sporting your Darwin fish is a way to speak truth to power on the cheap.

Goldberg's article is about the film FITNA and the courage of Geert Wilders vs. the "brave" people who put up their bumper stickers or office signs.

Whatever the faults of "Fitna," it ain't no Darwin fish.

Geert Wilders' film could very, very easily get him killed. (He's already guarded around the clock.) It essentially picks up the work of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a jihadi for criticizing Islam.

"Fitna" is certainly provocative, yet it has good reason to provoke. A cancer of violence, bigotry and cruelty is metastasizing within the Islamic world.

It's fine for Muslim moderates to say they aren't part of the cancer; and that some have, in response to the film, is a positive sign. But more often, diagnosing or even observing this cancer -- in film, book or cartoon -- is dubbed "intolerant" while calls for violence, censorship and even murder are treated as understandable, if regrettable, expressions of well-deserved anger.

It's not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, but they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor inclined to use violence.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.

Sadr’s Triumphant Surrender

From Dean's World

The media appear to be unanimous: by getting his butt kicked, surrendering control of Basra, and being mocked as an Iranian catspaw Sadr has… succeeded.

This is bizarre. It’s beginning to sound like the Drive-by-media’s version of Hillary’s great Bosnia adventure.

The reporting all has a Baghdad dateline. The people actually on the ground and feeding this line to tools like the NY Times include a former Captain in Saddam’s army, [Calling on my experience as a captain in the Iraqi Army before the 2003 invasion] Qais Mizher.


If you look at the NY Times website you will note that there are 313 reports that include this individual. So we are getting the view of a former member of Saddam’s officer corps as our window into what’s happening in Basra.

Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign

Really? The same Iraqi politicians who were so opposed to Sadr they boycotted talks aimed at a peaceful resolution, calling it a “law and order” issue, thus preventing a quorum?

and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

Yes, how strange that he would talk to the enemy when negotiating that enemy’s surrender. Bizarre, yet. Perhaps even unique in the annals of war.

I have written a parody of the reporting in the Times as how they would have reported the battle of Gettysburg HERE.

UPDATE:

Michael Ledeen opined on this, which is a useful backgrounder for people who wonder what is going on and why.

The Shi’ites are killing one another all over Iraq, most notably in Basra. Jules Crittendon, as always, has a fine roundup of the (mis)coverage from the MSM, delivers all the right insults (I particularly enjoyed watching the back of his hand slap the unctious Tony Cordesman) and asks all the right questions. What kicked this off? Who’s fighting whom? Who’s gonna win? Is it good for us or bad for us?

Read the rest.

The Tall Tale of Tuzla: Hillary Clinton and her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia

Christopher Hitchens spares no adjectives in explaining why Hillary's lies about her visit to Bosnia is worse than you imagine.

An Amazing Confession of Faith: The mustard seed in global strategy

From, the Asia Times (H/T Instapundit) by Spengler. The Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter's. Allam converted from Islam to Christianity and has been under constant guard due to death threats from both inside and outside of Italy. That this should be the case is a stain not just on Islam but on Western civilization.

Since September 2001, the would-be wizards of Western strategy have tried to conjure an "Islamic reformation", or a "moderate Islam", or "Islamic democracy". None of this matters now, for as Magdi Allam tells us, the matter on the agenda is not to persuade Muslims to act like liberal Westerners, but instead to convince them to cease to be Muslims. The use of the world "revolution" is Magdi Allam's:

His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

There is no deference to mutual respect and multi-culturalism. Magdi Allam forsook Islam because he considers it to be "inherently evil". As he wrote to his editor at the Corriere della Sera:

My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy ...

I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a "moderate Islam", assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive [emphasis added].

Far more important than denouncing the evils of Islam, though, is Magdi Allam's embrace of what he calls the God of faith and reason:

The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ has reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness of a tendency where hate and intolerance in before the "other", condemning it uncritically as an "enemy", and ascending to love and respect for one's "neighbor", who is always and in any case a person; thus my mind has been released from the obscurantism of an ideology which legitimates lying and dissimulation, the violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission and tyranny - permitting me to adhere to the authentic religion of Truth, of Life, and freedom. Upon my first Easter as a Christian I have not only discovered Jesus, but I have discovered for the first time the true and only God, which is the God of Faith and Reason ...

Praise be to God for such brave men. Compare that to the lickspittle cowards in Holland and at the EU who have rushed to denounce FITNA to appease the murderous rage of Islamofascism.

Welcome Freepers. Go HERE for more.

The Ad The Democrats are Afraid Of

"Middle classism" or " Two Americas"?

From NRO's The Corner:

Would somebody do the calculus?

Is "the brilliant" (and I do mean brilliant) Rev. Wright's current purported $1.6 million 10,000 sq. ft. mansion (cum elevator and butler's pantry) under construction in a gated Chicago community a better reflection of his hated black "middle classism," or is the Obamas' $1.65 million stately domicile more indicative of Michelle's former lack of pride in America?

Perhaps kindred populist John Edwards of two Americas and 30,000 sq.ft fame can adjudicate.

Here's the Wright pad


And Obama's gated mansion.

Picking up the trash in Basra

The NY Times has a story about the fearless Shiite militias in Basra who are punching the lights out of the hapless Iraqi army ... but have inexplicably just surrendered.

Here's the real reason the central government moved in on Basra, the place is a mess.



Look at the litter in the street! And the overcrowded pickup. That's illegal!

Welcome Freepers, for more on the story, click HERE.

Shiite Militias Cling to Swaths of Basra and Stage Raids (The Battle of Gettysburg as reported by the New York Times)

I picked up a copy of the NY Times while waiting for a coffee at Starbucks after church today and started to read the story about the battle in Basra. Click here to read the Timesmen’s report.

Note the fact that the people who supplied the information to the Times were Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam, Mudafer al-Husaini, Hosham Hussein and other Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriya and Diyala Province.

According to the Times, the initiative is on the part of the Shiite militias, with the Iraqi army simply the punching bag for the militia.

Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.

That's not the way it's being reported by other, more credible witnesses in Iraq.
Here's Bill Roggio Sadr orders followers to end fighting

Six days after the Iraqi government launched Operation Knights’ Charge in Basrah against the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia terror groups, Muqtada al Sadr, the Leader of the Mahdi Army, has called for his fighters to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi security forces. Sadr’s call for an end to the fighting comes as his Mahdi Army has taken serious losses since the operation began.

So I thought I would have a little fun with it and see if we could substitute a few names and dates. Here’s the New York Times version of the battle of Gettysburg as reported by Times reporters:

July 1, 1863

WASHINGTON — Confederate troops in Pennsylvania openly controlled wide swaths of the State on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Federal government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the rebels witnesses said, as American political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.

Witnesses in Gettysburg said members of the most powerful army in the Confederacy, the Army of Northern Virginia were setting up checkpoints and controlling traffic in many places ringing the central district controlled by some of the 90,000 Federal Army involved in the assault. Confederate cavalry under Jeb Stuart were regularly attacking the government forces, then quickly retreating.

Senior members of several political parties said the operation, ordered by President Lincoln, had been poorly planned. The growing discontent adds a new level of complication to the Federal effort to demonstrate that the Lincoln administration had made strides toward being able to operate a unified country and keep the peace without sacrificing thousands of American troops.

Mr. Lincoln has staked his reputation on the success of the Gettysburg assault, fulfilling a longstanding administration desire for him to boldly take on the Confederates.

But as criticism of the assault has risen, it has brought into question another American benchmark of progress in this struggle: political reconciliation.


After their brilliant victory, the Army of Northern Virginia left Pennsylvania.

Stake Through Their Hearts:

Michael Yon on line.

Long and well written articles from the front lines, not from well fortified hotel rooms or somewhere in the Midwest.

The sun was setting over Nineveh as four terrorists driving tons of explosives closed on their targets. On August 14, 2007, the Yezidi villages of Qahtaniya and Jazeera were under attack, but only the terrorists knew it as they drove their trucks straight into the hearts of the communities.

The shockwave from detonation far outpaced the speed of sound. Buildings and humans were ripped apart and hurled asunder. Superheated poisonous gases from the explosions gathered the smoke and dust and lofted heavenward, while the second detonation quickly followed. The terrorists had landed their first blows straight through the heart of the Yezidi community, turning a wedding party into hundreds of funerals.

Read the rest...

Obama's Parents

Your parents are not your fault. But this is interesting.

I, for one, take the traditional view of why the good Senator would deliberately exclude of any dates, timeline, or other information about his parents' meeting, falling in love, and marriage from his autobiography — though he does, of course, include his date of birth. And he was right to do so, before he had reason to know that he would become a successful national figure whose life would be picked apart by the media for inconsistencies and fibs. The very quick divorce, hot on the heels of the already abandoned Ann Dunham finding out that she was in a polygamous marriage, suggests that she did a really admirable job of shielding her son from all sorts of harsh truths.

Latest Modified Obama Hangout

Doesn't Obama get it? Every time he contextualizes Wright, he loses. Every time Obama impugns the motives of those who worried over the relationship, he loses. Every time Obama suggests that Wright was a healer whose words were misused by those suspect to inflame ("[it] spoke to some of the racial divisions we have") he loses.

Wright's clips indeed did speak to "racial divisions," but by slurring whites, Jews, Italians, the WWII generation, and the United States. Other than radical African-Americans, Central American Marxists, Libyans and the Palestinians, almost every one else was fair game. He was not just "stupid" but cruel and uncouth. He did not misspeak "five or six" times, as did a Ferraro, a McCain, an Obama himself, or a Clinton on various topics, but systematically offered a written and spoken ideology of separatism and venom. And those who believe that are not themselves trying to do what Wright did. Would that Obama spend as much time criticizing Wright as he does the critics of Wright.

The controversy is no longer Wright (whose 20 years of slander and hatred lie like foul verbal IEDs buried deeply amid thousands of words in transcripts and texts, and go off the more the media navigates over them). Nor is the rub just Obama's past comments on Wright or his own landmark speech on race.

Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father

It now turns out that Hillary is not the only one lying about their past.

From the Washington Post:

Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which "history replays itself" and by how "two generations of two families -- separated by distance, culture and wealth -- can intersect in strange and wonderful ways."

It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.

Read the whole thing.

Shut Up About Race Already

Jonah Goldberg puts his tongue firmly in his cheek:

Thank God for Barack Obama. Until his “More Perfect Union” speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race.

“Maybe this’ll be the beginning of a conversation,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan proclaimed on Meet the Press. The Chicago Tribune reported that “many voters, black and white, say they were moved by Obama’s speech ... which they see as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race.” Newspaper editorial boards agree. In the words of the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Prodding Americans to confront their racial differences is, by itself, an accomplishment of historical proportions.”

Because so many agree on this brilliant new strategy to heal our national wounds, I can only assume that I’m the one missing something. But when one luminary after another smacks his forehead like someone who forgot to have a V8 in epiphanic awe over the genius of Obama’s call for a national conversation on race, all I can do is wonder: “What on Earth are you people talking about?”

“Universities were moving to incorporate the issues Mr. Obama raised into classroom discussions and course work,” the New York Times reported within 48 hours of the speech.

Oh, thank goodness Obama fired the starter’s pistol in the race to discuss race. Here I’d been under the impression that every major university in the country already had boatloads of courses dedicated to race in America. I’d even read somewhere that professors had incorporated racial themes into classes on everything from Shakespeare to the mating habits of snail darters. I also had some vague memory that these universities recruited black students and other racial minorities, on the grounds that interracial conversations on campus are as important as talking about math, science, and literature. A ghost of an image in my mind’s eye seemed to reveal African-American studies centers, banners for Black History Month, and copies of books like Race Matters and The Future of the Race lining shelves at college bookstores.

Were all the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream? Also disappearing down the memory hole, apparently, were the debates that followed Hurricane Katrina, Trent Lott’s remarks about Strom Thurmond, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, the publication of The Bell Curve, and O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Not to mention the ongoing national chatter about affirmative action, racial disparities in prison sentences and racial profiling by law enforcement.

And the thousands of hours of newscasts, television dramas, and movies — remember films such as 2004’s Oscar-winning Crash? — dedicated to racial issues? It’s as if they never existed.

But here's the truth:

...when they say we need more conversation, they really mean their version of reality should win the day. Replace “conversation” with “instruction” and you’ll have a better sense of where these people are coming from and where they want their “dialogue” to take us

The Liberal editorial writers no more want a conversation on race that they want to see their newspapers go out of business. They want the opportunity to once again lecture and hector. They want to be the ones to outlast everyone else in the meeting and by so doing, win the argument. They want to be the Brownshirts in the streets who intimidate everyone else into submission. They want the solidarity of Fascism with their ideas the only ones permitted.

Dialog on race? Don't be an ass! The country has been immersed in a discussion of race since the first Arab and African slavers sold their countrymen (a long standing and time honored tradition) to the first Europeans who brought them to these shores. We fought a long and bloody war over race. And today the biggest, baddest race baiters are no longer white men with KKK hoods but Black preachers whose right to preach racial hatred is being defended by the chi-chi white wine and brie crowd typified by the editorail writers of rags like the Virginian Pilot.

In their defense of Wright, they don't address the truth or falsity of Wrights racist, anti-semitic and moonbat conspiracy pronouncements. They address the issue by infantalizing Black people:

Most may wish that Wright wasn’t speaking for anyone else, but he was.

And do they join in denouncing this? Come one, this is the Virginina Pilot!

Is this how they treat racist remarks by the KKK? No! This is how people treat children who are not really responsible for their actions. This is the racism of White Liberals who treat Blacks as less than human.

They state that the denunciation of Wright's rants is an attempt to dvide the country.
They suggest that there should be a common understanding, some middle ground, between people who believe that the American government invented AIDS to wipe out Black people and the rest of us.

And this is the kind of people who have been facilitating the dialog on race that we have had for the last 100 years. It's little wonder that the Wrights, Jacksons, Farrakhans and Sharptons of this world have prospered and have radicalized large segments of Black culture. People like those who write for the Pilot are at fault. They have been the excusers, the enablers, the facilitators of the race hustlers and race baiters. And the rewards? Here is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's new $1.6 million house under construction.


As Liberal Fascist Mark Rudd liked to say "Up against the wall, motherfucker."

Islamofascists are not a fringe: By definition, thirty-six per cent can't be "extremist". It's mainstream

From The Corner at National Review Online:

John McCain might like to ponder this story:

Excerpts from a conversation in a car during "Operation Badr," recorded covertly by police:

Person 3: "What happens, what happens at the Parliament?"

Person 1: "We go and kill everybody."

Person 3: "And then what?"

Informant: "And then read about it ..."

Person 1: "We get victory."

That's not in the Sunni Triangle, that's in Toronto: Young Muslims who've spent virtually their entire lives in the west. Interestingly, the above guys also met with the two Georgia Tech students currently facing trial. Not sure whether they're on scholarships, but they're another stirring tribute to the soothing effect of western education on the jihadist brow:

As the film shot by the Georgia students was played in court, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee’s voice could be heard on the soundtrack: “This is where our brothers attacked the Pentagon.”

“Allahu Akbar,” responds young Ahmed. God is great.

A couple of readers have pointed out that John McCain at least has the guts to refer to "radical Muslim extremists". But "extremism" surely means views out on the fringe: Thirty-six per cent of young Muslim men favor the death penalty for apostasy. That's 36 per cent not in Yemen or Waziristan but in the United Kingdom. By definition, thirty-six per cent can't be "extremist". It's mainstream.

Ssome more detail about the plot:
Alleged Toronto terror plot detailed in court

Details of the alleged plot, which also included storming Parliament Hill and beheading politicians, emerged in a factum filed by the Crown that described the case against the accused as "shocking and sensational."

Investigation Concludes Saddam Was A Terrorist Threat

Via Flopping Aces:

The Iraqi tyrant didn’t “just” aid anti-American terrorist groups; he explicitly ordered them to attack.

From the Pentagon report that the MSM said was proof that Saddam was no threat Mark Eichenlaub:

“Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces.”

Instead of squabbling over who is and isn’t a member of al-Qaeda and what the requirements of a “link” or “connection” are, this report details Saddam’s broad support for (and sometimes direction of) a multitude of terrorist groups targeting Americans and American allies. Based on the Iraqi Perspectives Project, Saddam’s Iraq did not just use terrorism against America and her allies but took advantage of “the rising fundamentalism in the region” as an “opportunity to make terrorism . . . a formal instrument of state power.” Because of Saddam’s removal, which came at considerable cost in American blood and gold, a “formal instrument” of state terrorism is no longer secretly plotting to kill Americans. The American public deserves to know what a threat was removed for that price.

Ann Russell on Wagner's Ring Trilogy

Anna Russell giving a synopsis of "Das Rheingold"


Anna Russell parodying Wagner's "Die Walküre"


Anna Russell storming through "Siegfried"


Anna Russell finishing off Wagner's "Götterdämmerung"

Kangaroo court is now in session

Mark Steyn:
Could it be that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has the only fax machine that prints double sided?

Unfortunately for the CHRC, Marc Lemire has been inconsiderate enough to defend himself, and their determination to obstruct him has wound up making the issue not him but them, and some of their dodgier practices. Let's start with the easy stuff first. If Bill Baergen doesn't like my scare quotes round "human rights," let's move 'em: The "Canadian" Human Rights Commission does not treat all Canadians equally. The lead investigator testifying on Tuesday, Dean Steacy, is blind, but the justice his commission administers certainly isn't: if you're one of their allies, they'll start lurking on websites before you've made a formal complaint. But, if you're not simpatico, they'll reject your complaint on the grounds that it was on double-sided paper. Which was what happened to Mr. Lemire, when he tried to file his own Section 13 complaint against the police. Apparently, Mr. Lemire's complaint was double-sided — which came as news to Mr. Lemire, since he faxed it in. But by the time it uncoiled itself at the other end it had become the first double-sided fax on the planet. "I don't know what happened to the fax," said Mr. Steacy non-committally. Hey, it's a federal bureaucracy: things happen. Evidently one reason why Richard Warman has been the complainant on every Section 13 case since 2002 is that he's the only one who remembers the critical single-sided rule.

Mother of All Cultural Battles

After listening to these autobiographical excerpts from Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, read out loud by Obama himself, I’m left with the conviction that, in the 2008 election we are facing the mother of all cultural battles. E.J. Dionne thinks the political culture wars are over. Well, I’ve been rebutting "end of the culture wars" declarations for eight years. They always prove out wrong. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, we’re certain to see a huge cultural battle in 2008. But it’s now evident that even a Hillary campaign would be tame by comparison to the cultural confrontation flowing from an Obama nomination. The transformation of the 2008 campaign into a full-fledged cultural battle is what is really emerging from the Jeremiah Wright flap.

A president who identifies with Malcolm X? A man who grew up alienated from ordinary American life and determined to avoid becoming a "sellout" by hanging with Marxist professors and radical feminists? In his commentary, Mark Steyn highlights Obama’s alienation — the fact that even his many radical gestures never felt quite satisfying. Yet it’s important to emphasize that Obama’s inability to feel fully satisfied by radicalism wasn’t overcome by rejecting radicalism. On the contrary, when Jeremiah Wright came along and offered himself as a substitute father figure, Obama overcame his alienation and embraced leftist organizing and Wright’s radical sermons in earnest. Obama finally grew up when he threw away his alienated radical pose and embraced the real radical thing instead.

FITNA And Islamofascist Rage

Pre-emptive Rage by Diana West in the Washington Times was written before the film was released:

The film is by Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament who wants to reverse the Islamization of Europe and believes the Koran should be banned along with Hitler's "Mein Kampf" for inciting hatred and violence. The film is called "Fitna," Arabic for upheaval. And just the thought of "Fitna" has Europe in upheaval, cowering before widely anticipated Islamic outrage expected to range from diplomatic huff, to economic boycott, to rioting, even bloodshed, over this still unseen ten-minute film.

Such mass psychosis has erupted before — Satanic Verses Rage, Koran Rage, Cartoon Rage, Pope Rage, even Teddy Bear Rage. But never has an Islamic "rage" begun to build without actual cause. For the first time, we are seeing rage preparations and precautions before "offense" has been given or taken.

The Film was 16 minutes, not 10 and was shown on LiveLeak. LiveLeak has taken it down because of threats to its personnel.

The reaction from the supposed defenders of Western freedom was nothing short of sickening:

At a press conference earlier this year, the online Dutch site NIS News Bulletin reported that Mr. Balkenende "stressed repeatedly and with irritation that Wilders and no one else was responsible for any violence that might break out after his film's release." And when Sheikh Tantawi indicates that providing "protection" for Mr. Wilders is a bad idea, it not only sounds like a mafia don calling for a hit, it also echoes the dean of Dutch journalists, Henk Hofland. As Thomas Landen of The Brussels Journal reports, Mr. Hofland urged the Dutch government to withdraw state protection from Mr. Wilders, who lives under constant threat of assassination. "Let him feel what it is like for those whose lives he endangers," said Mr. Hofland, adding that any murders committed in retaliation for Mr. Wilders' opinions on Islam would be the responsibility of Mr. Wilders, not the murderers.

Volokh watched it:

Parts of it are an indubitably sound reminder of the dangers posed by extremist Islam, and the support that it finds from some traditional Islamic religious teachings.

Other parts assert that extremist Islam is a problem at the heart of the Islamic world generally, and of Islam in the Netherlands and in Europe, and not just a tangential matter (the way that fundamentalist Mormon outliers are tangential to modern Mormonism, or, even more extremely, the way the Branch Davidians were tangential to the Seventh-Day Adventists from whom they sprang). But here too Wilders' view seems sound: Unfortunately, while by all accounts most Muslims do not adhere to the extremists' views, the extremist movement is prominent enough in Middle Eastern and European Islam that it is indeed a peril to freedom.

Nor does the rhetoric strike me as excessive. This is of course a rhetorical work, not an academic inquiry, and it's trying to stir people emotionally. But I didn't see much of hyperbole or gratuitious insults. Wilders is arguing against an important and dangerous ideological movement; my sense is that his approach is well within bounds of legitimate criticism.

The Belmont Clubs Wetchard

By publishing the film Wilders has accepted responsibility for crossing a line in the sand. This act will provoke two possible responses. Protests, boycotts, demonstrations and legal action are almost certain to follow demanding the withdrawal of the film of Wilder's censure. There is also a high probability that attempts will be made to attack Western targets in general in reprisal. Radical Islamists, perhaps accustomed to authoritarian social situations, may regard the Dutch broadcasters unwillingness to broadcast Wilder's film as a mere exercise in "plausible deniability" and hold Western society "collectively responsible" anyway.

But the real significance of Wilder's film is to illustrate the growing loss of control by Western governments over the narrative over the nature of the War on Terror. By criticizing Islam itself, a growing number of voices including Geert Wilders and recent convert Magdi Cristiano Allam (who called Islam "inherently evil") have taken one more step towards tearing down the notion, so carefully constructed by George Bush after September 11 of separating terrorism from the "religion of peace".

This is an incredibly important point. Thanks to the connectivity of the Internet, ideas that governments consider "dangerous" can't be stifled any longer. That's why when LiveLeak dropped it, the FITNA has already been downloaded to literally thousands of computers who spread it like a virus. I have several links.

Scott at Powerline

The Dutch Prime Minister says he rejects the interpretation, but he seems to do so because he fears that it has some merit. His comments put me in mind of the bumper sticker "Support mental health or I'll kill you."

The film would not be worthy of note were it not for the fear and threats of violence that the its release has generated. The Iranian regime that commits mass murder in the name of Islam has condemned the film as "hideous" and called on European governments to block the showing of the film. Or else, I guess.

From Little Green Footballs:

Following the release of Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, the European Union is quick to reassure the Islamic world that the whole idea of “free speech” is probably overrated: EU condemns Dutch anti-Islam film.

I have in the past deplored the lack of respect shown for various religions, especially when they could be considered blasphemous ("Piss Christ" is an example that comes to mind). However, that horse has left the barn, at least in regards to Christianity and Judaism. Those who are in the forefront of trying to silence Wilders were also the ones manning the barricades in support of Andres Serrano . The motivations appear to be a mixture: hatred of Christians and Jews, hatred of Western Civilization and rank cowardice.

And today via ReutersU.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned as "offensively anti-Islamic" a Dutch lawmaker's film that accuses the Koran of inciting violence.
The story was reported by Lewis Krauskopf and edited by Mohammad Zargham. You can't make this stuff up.

"...it's not important for me to succeed, only for my friends to fail."

Mark Steyn on the Clintons:

About this business of Hillary coming under intense sniping, I have some sympathy. The Clintons got away with this sort of thing for so long that you can't blame them for wondering how they missed the memo advising that henceforth the old rules no longer apply.

Bill, being warier, was usually canny enough to set his fantasies just far enough back in time that live cable footage was unlikely to be available – his vivid memories of entirely mythical black church burnings in his childhood, etc. But Hillary liked to live a little more dangerously. The defining fiction arose back in the mid-Nineties when she visited New Zealand and met Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Everest, and for some reason decided to tell him he was the guy her parents had named her after.

Hmm. Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest in 1953. Hillary Rodham was born in 1947, when Sir Edmund was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper and a somewhat unlikely inspiration for two young parents in the Chicago suburbs. If any of the bigshot U.S. newspaper correspondents on the trip noticed this inconsistency, they kept it to themselves. I mentioned it in Britain's Sunday Telegraph at the time, but like so many other improbabilities in the Clinton record it sailed on indestructibly for years. By 2004 it was preserved for the ages in Bill Clinton's autobiography, on page (gulp) 870:

"Sir Edmund Hillary, who had explored the South Pole in the 1950s, was the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest and, most important, was the man Chelsea's mother had been named for."

Eventually, when it was noticed that Hillary was born six years before the ascent of Everest, Clinton aides tried assuring skeptics that her parents had seen a press interview with Sir Edmund in his beekeeping days, Mr. and Mrs. Rodham apparently being the only Illinois subscribers to The New Zealand Apiarist. Then, in the early days of her presidential campaign, Sen. Clinton quietly withdrew the story, by which time the damage was done. Edmund Hillary passed away a couple of months back, and, as I recall, the New York Times headline read:

"New Zealander For Whom Sen. Clinton Named Dies; Also First Man To Climb Everest. Sen. Clinton Was At The Summit To Greet Him, After Landing Under Heavy Sniper Fire From The Abominable Snowman."

Read the whole thing. At this point the smart money is on Hillary to fight on forever even if it leads to a Democrat loss in November.