Seeing Race Through a Liberal Lens

Jason Riley is a black editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal. He has experienced the focus on race and finds that Liberals are more race conscious that Conservatives.

Your wife, who unlike you is white, and who is expecting your first child, has been receiving the oddest reactions to the news of her pregnancy. Upon finding out, friends can't resist informing her that "interracial children are beautiful." It's said in a tone that suggests deep gratitude and admiration, although the reasons are a little unclear.

The comment may be kindly meant, as a sort of reflexive compliment, but it inevitably suggests that she is being congratulated for her willingness to place the aesthetic enhancement of the populace above the imperatives of racial purity. She's heard the remark, or some variation of it, from a dozen different people if she's heard it from one. And more often than not, your wife tells you, it's the first thing they blurt out, even before asking about gender and due dates.

Wondering how to respond, your wife turns to you for advice. You mull it over and begin rationalizing. These are friends, after all, who bear no ill-will. And while you find the comments more revealing than crude, you don't doubt your friends' sincerity. You advise the mother-to-be to laugh it off.

A short time later, at a wedding reception in London, your wife finds herself chatting with a Danish woman she has just met. Back at the hotel, your wife informs you that the woman asked her, "How do you feel about having a baby who will look nothing like you? I have a lot of friends who have interracial babies, and they feel totally alienated from their children."

Wondering whether to expect more such questions and how to respond, your wife turns to you for advice. You tell her to avoid Scandinavian women for the balance of her pregnancy (and you promise to do the same).

* * *
It's no surprise that these comments all came from white people; surveys have long demonstrated that blacks are much more accommodating of interracial relationships. More noteworthy is that in all but a couple of cases, the remarks came from white people parked on the political left, the kind of superior folks who might run you down in their Prius for even suggesting that they harbor racial hang-ups. As liberals constantly tell themselves, only conservatives have race issues.

But you know the truth is closer to the opposite. It is the left's obsession with skin pigmentation -- invoking it everywhere and always, regardless of its relevance -- that keeps race front and center not only in our public policy debates but even in everyday life. In his latest book, "White Guilt," Shelby Steele tackles this phenomenon with his usual peerless eloquence. He describes the endless frustration of dealing with whites "who have built a large part of their moral identity and, possibly, their politics around how they respond to your color."

* * *
Last year, you and your wife quit Brooklyn for a shady cul-de-sac in a hamlet on the Hudson River, 45 minutes north of New York City. Two months after you settled in, you attended a Christmas party up the block, where a woman welcomed you to the neighborhood by saying, "I'm sure you chose our town for its diversity. That's what we like about it." Another chimed in, "Jason, you obviously believe in diversity. I mean, you're in an interracial marriage."

Ignoring the last comment, you smiled and told them that your decision was based on the fact that you couldn't afford properties in the more expensive (and less "diverse") adjacent towns, which you heard had better schools. You were half joking, but judging by their expressions your new neighbors weren't amused.

More recently, you and your wife attended an engagement party in Greenwich Village for a longtime friend, and you spent the latter part of the evening talking to the future father-in-law. He's a corporate lawyer in the Midwest, and the conversation moves genially from parenting to taxes and tort reform -- topics that interest him and that you cover as a Journal editorialist. Realizing you'd monopolized him long enough, you begin to excuse yourself. You congratulate him once again and sing the praises of your friend's parents, generous and thoughtful people whom you and your wife have gotten to know quite well over the years.

But before you can break free, the man moves closer and says that he has a personal query. He asks how you can be such good friends with this family his daughter is marrying into, "given that you're black and they're conservative. Doesn't that bother you? How do you deal with that?"

You know the answer probably isn't in your cocktail, but you stare at the glass you're holding long enough for him to regret the line of questioning. He starts apologizing. You instinctively tell him he's done nothing wrong. Having been raised to behave a certain way in public, and unable to respond in kind without betraying that upbringing, you mumble something about his premise being off-base and then say you have to check on your spouse, who's somewhere heavy with your beautiful child. You walk away.

Wondering whether to expect more such questions and how to respond, you turn to your wife for advice. She advises you fetch the coats so that you two can go home.

Clinton spied on Princess Di?

Byron York has the story:

If the Clinton administration did engage in surveillance of Diana/Forstmann, it is not clear if it was done with or without a warrant. “To get a FISA warrant, they would have had to believe that either Forstmann or Diana was an agent of a foreign power,” says one former Justice Department official. That, the official adds, would be an unlikely scenario. “To get a criminal warrant, they would have had to had a proceeding going on in which they got a judge to give them a warrant” — another unlikely scenario. “Or perhaps,” the official concludes, “the NSA did it.”

The National Security Agency released a statement last night saying, “NSA did not target Princess Diana’s communications.” A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency told the Washington Post that any suggestion the CIA wiretapped Diana was “rubbish.” Neither statement seems to be a definitive denial.

If the Clinton administration did engage in surveillance of Princess Diana and Theodore Forstmann, without a warrant, it would appear to run contrary to statements made by former administration officials during the Bush warrantless-wiretap controversy. After the existence of the Bush program was made public last December, some high-ranking veterans of the Clinton administration said they had not engaged in similar efforts to by-pass FISA. “Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton-Gore administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law,” former Vice President Al Gore said.

The Press: When in Doubt, Go with the Template.

The press corps is not only stupid, unreliable and arrogant, but it is also terribly prejudiced. when they don't know how to treat a situation, they fall back on "the template;" a narrative that encompasses their basic prejudices.

Throughout all of this there is a standard typecast character: the American enlisted infantryman. Usually he is portrayed with undercurrents of victimhood (this is one of the innovations in the Standard Narrative since WWII.). We see such images in the recent gaffes of Senator Kerry and Congressman Rangel, in which they respectively questioned the intelligence and alternative employment prospects of military personnel. Running through this undercurrent are a couple of others: a sort of class warfare vibe, in which it is assumed that only the poor do the fighting, and a related guilt vibe, in which it is posited that since the troops are merely pitiable, poor, undereducated, unemployable automatons, the best way to "support" them is to bring them home. This entire panoply of implied images even applies when troops are painted in a semi-heroic light. See Forrest Gump.


There's one more aspect to the Standard Narrative: frequent "horror of war" type memes. These include as many references as possible to PTSD, torture, civilian deaths, and atrocities. These things do happen of course. War is, of course, horrible. But in the standard narrative, they frequently come to dominate, rather than to be portrayed in relationship to their frequency or context.

A Muslim Comments on the Flying Imams

The first thing one must understand about this whole hullabaloo with the Muslim imams taken off a Phoenix-bound plane in Minneapolis is that it most definitely was not about the right to prayer or freedom of worship.

And much as the imams and their handlers may try, it is certainly not about victimization.
...
We are all creatures of passion. This fiasco has stirred the passionate cry of victimization from the Muslim activist community and imam community. But where were the news conferences, the rallies to protest the endless litany of atrocities performed by people who act supposedly in my religion's name? Where are the denunciations, not against terrorism in the abstract, but clear denunciations of al-Qaida or Hamas, of Wahhabism or militant Islamism, of Darfurian genocide or misogyny and honor killings, to name a few? There is no cry, there is no rage. At best, there is the most tepid of disclaimers. In short, there is no passion. But for victimization, always.

Only when Americans see that animating passion will they believe that we Muslims are totally against the fascists that have hijacked our religion. There is only so much bandwidth in the American culture to focus upon Islam and Muslims. If we fill it with our shouts of victimization, then the real problems from within and outside our faith community will never be heard.
...
Our predicament is unique, fragile and precarious. We Muslims are a relatively new minority in a nation that gives us freedoms that no other Muslim nation would allow.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, a radical subset of our faith community is seeking to destroy the basis for this liberty.

Either we predominantly direct our passions against these radicals or Americans will not count us as allies in this consuming struggle.

The Burning Iraqis and the AP: This Horse is Not Dead Yet ... By a Long Shot

Confederate Yankee Fisks the latest "explantion" by the AP:

Kathleen Carroll, the Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press, just can't seem to do the required legwork necessary to resolve the questions surrounding six immolations and four mosque burnings alleged in news reports by anonymous reporters working for her organization. She does, however, try her best to deflect criticism in her latest response to the emerging scandal this afternoon.

Read the whole thing...

Associated Press Cheat Sheet

Through a confidential informant, I've gotten access to an Associated Press cheat sheet. It provides their highly trained, professional journalists with crucial guidance on describing people and events. I reprint it here in its entirety. Don't thank me... it's for the all the budding journalists in the audience.

Click on the link.

Look for the miracle

"We don’t need to look very far back to see the mechanism of why these things fail. Rather, all we need to spot is where the miracle needs to occur in order for it to succeed. " Bill Whittle

Interesting commentary on the ISG report:

The Iraqi Miracle
I read through the executive summary and a good deal of the report of the Iraqi Survey Group. And I have read and heard a good deal of commentary and analysis. I am not usually a big fan of turning the name of something into an insult, but I like Rush Limbaugh's "Iraqi Surrender Group."

I was most struck by the group's conclusion that convincing Iran and Syria to become forces for stability in Iraq is one of the keys to success. Success being defined as the removal of US Troops from Iraq - victory in Iraq is apparently not a consideration.

Syria and Iran are currently the primary forces for instability in Iraq. They are supplying weapons, training and probably personnel to the terrorist forces in Iraq. They do not want Iraq to become a stable, secure and successful democracy, and they are working hard to prevent that. A stable, secure and successful democracy in Iraq would be a very bad influence on the citizens of Iran and Syria. They might decide they want that for themselves. Once they see freedom, oppressing them will be that much harder. And wasn't that one of the reasons for invading Iraq in the first place. Eliminate Saddam and his terror supporting oppressive regime, deal with the WMD issue once and for all, establish a democratic Iraq as an example to the rest of Middle East. That was the plan. Now we're supposed to convince the regimes that according to the plan would be taken out by their own people to help us?

While I was reading the report - and the buzz surrounding it, there was a thought in the back of my mind that I needed to try to answer the wishful thinking it was based upon, and then I remembered that the answer had already been given. It had been given before the ISG was even conceived.

Bill Whittle wrote in March 2004

We don’t need to look very far back to see the mechanism of why these things fail. Rather, all we need to spot is where the miracle needs to occur in order for it to succeed.
The phrase that I kept filling in between the line of the ISG report is "and then a miracle occurs."

Whittle's example

We will set up a society where all people work and share equally -- and then a miracle occurs. And all the laziness, deception, hoarding, cheating and stealing that marks human, primate, mammalian and lower animal behavior ceases to exist because the map says so.

The Problem for the AP and Captain Hussein

The problem is not one isolated story:

We also know that Jamil Hussein has consistently been a source for at least 60 news stories over two years, and that Jamil Hussein is just one of many apparently fake sources that has driven Associated Press reporting in Iraq.

For years we have been hearing reports from our troops in Iraq that the press reports don't represent what they are experiencing. Troops in an impossible situation become dispirited. In Iraq they are not. They are proud of what they are doing. It's the press that carries the miasma of defeat.

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone. And Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen potentially fake Iraqi policemen used in news reports the AP disseminates around the world. This does not begin to attempt to account for non-offical sources which the AP will have an even harder time substantiating. Quite literally, almost all AP reporting from Iraq not verified from reporters of other news organizations is now suspect, and with good reason.

Instead of affecting one show on one network watched by 14 million viewers as Rathergate did, "Jamilgate" means the Associated Press may have been delivering news of questionable accuracy to one billion people a day for two years or more. In this evolving instance of faux journalism, "60 Minutes" is now potentially 60 billion false impressions, or more.

A principled, professional news organization owes its consumers the truth. To date, the Associated Press, as voiced by comments from officers international editor John Daniszewski and executive editor Kathleen Carroll, has refused to address the rampant inconsistencies in the "burning men" story, produce physical evidence proving their allegations, or produce star source Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein. Arrogantly, they attack the messenger (both U.S military and Iraqi government sources and bloggers), and insist we must believe them, even though they give us no compelling reason to do so, and many reasons to doubt them.

They have not proved their claims with facts, nor produced the police captain they have cited as a source on multiple stories over two years.

How much of what we see and hear reported by the MSM represents "reality" and how much is enemy propaganda? this is a legitimate question and not one that can be cavalierly dismissed by arrogant claims of objectivity and truth telling.

The AP's "Burning Iraqis" Story Will Not Go Quietly

Mary Katherine Ham on reporters:

Just because the story is bigger, the impact greater, and the game more dangerous in Iraq does not mean that the journalistic obligation to the truth changes. If anything, it becomes more important to assure far-away readers that reporting on far-away lands is accurate.

But the world’s most elite professional journalists don’t agree. They like to think notebooks and pens, and even truth, are made especially for them, delivered in little velvet-lined boxes alongside their j-school diplomas. Anyone who would dare question their sole proprietorship thereof certainly has ulterior motives.

A Day Inside Fallujah

Bill Roggio from Iraq.

Not the crap the AP spins.

Rumsfeld's Farewell

From the DOD.

Mark Steyn on David Gregory, the AP and the MSM

Video via O'Reilly.

Senate Panel Debunks Global Warming Extremists

Just inc case the new Democrat controlled Senate deletes this link, here is the full text.

SENATOR INHOFE ANNOUNCES PUBLIC RELEASE OF “SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO DEBUNKING GLOBAL WARMING”

EPW FACT OF THE DAY: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 08, 2006

Contact: Marc Morano (Marc_Morano@epw.senate.gov ), Matt Dempsey (Matthew_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov )

Washington D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the outgoing Chairman of Environment & Public Works Committee, is pleased to announce the public release of the Senate Committee published booklet entitled “A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism. Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge To Journalists who Cover Global Warming.” Click here to download the "Skeptic's Guide"

(http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/6341044%20Hot%20&%20Cold%20Media.pdf)]

The color glossy 64 page booklet -- previously was only available in hardcopy to the media and policy makers -- includes speeches, graphs, press releases and scientific articles refuting catastrophe climate fears presented by the media, the United Nations, Hollywood and former Vice President turned-foreign-lobbyist Al Gore.

The “Skeptic’s Guide” includes a copy of Senator Inhofe’s 50 minute Senate floor speech http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759 delivered on September 25, 2006 challenging the media to improve its reporting.

The ‘Skeptic’s Guide’, which has received recognition by the LA Times and Congressional Quarterly, is now available free for international distribution on the Senate Environmental & Public Works Web site (http://epw.senate.gov/w_papers.cfm?party=rep)]

The book, which features web links to all supporting documentation, also serves as a handbook to identify the major players in media bias when it comes to poor climate science reporting. The guide presents a reporter’s virtual who’s-who’s of embarrassing and one-sided media coverage, with a focus on such reporters as CBS News “60 Minutes” Scott Pelley, ABC News reporter Bill Blakemore, CNN’s Miles O’Brien, and former NBC Newsman Tom Brokaw.

Senator Inhofe’s “Skeptic’s Guide” also includes hard hitting critiques of the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Associated Press, Reuters, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post.

Senator Inhofe has challenged the media in a series of speeches and hearings to stop the unfounded hype.

“The American people are fed up with the media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific “consensus” that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a 'climate emergency' that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve,” Senator Inhofe said in October.

Skepticism that human C02 emissions are creating a “climate catastrophe” has grown in recent times. In September, renowned French geophysicists and Socialist Party member Claude Allegre, converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics.

Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism. See: (http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777)

Related Links:
12/06/2006 - Inhofe Says Global Warming Media Hearing Exposed Alarmist Media (http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=266540)
10/17/2006 - Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming – Caps Year of Vindication for Skeptics (http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777)
10/30/2006 - “I Don’t Like The Word ‘Balance’’- Says ABC News Global Warming Reporter (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=265464)
10/24/2006 - Senator Inhofe Credited For Prompting Newsweek Admission of Error on 70's Predictions of Coming Ice Age - In Case You Missed It.... (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=265087 )
09/25/2006 – Senator Inhofe Speech: “Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming” (http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)

Lileks on the Surrender Monkeys

I heard some of the confirmation hearings for the new SecDef and was impressed, providing they’ve changed the name of the office to the Secretary of Deference. I think they should have pressed him to list all the other countries he opposed “attacking” just so everyone’s clear and we can begin the new year on the same page.

The Bush doctrine has been dead for some time, but this was the funeral oration. I don’t believe in “rope-a-dope,” and I don’t believe in the miraculous Israeli strike, and I don’t think the momentum can be reversed. It’s as if we invaded France and spent three years getting their government back on their feet before proceeding to Berlin. Given this, the debate over the ISG’s recommendations is rather superfluous, but the report does tell you where some people’s heads have become permanently socketed. Thanks to Captain Ed, who provided the following excerpt:

• Syria’s full adherence to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for
Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory.

• Syria’s full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik
Hariri and Pierre Gemayel.

• A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah. (This step would do much to solve Israel’s problem with Hezbollah.)

• Syria’s use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force
soldiers.

• A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon.

All conducted under the watchful eyes of Unicorns, of course. Imagine a government report on organized crime, demanding the following:

* The Mafia’s full adherance to the RICO and IRS statutes concerning independent contractors, including but not limited to Social Security contributions, FICA regulations, as well as compliance with state and federal laws concerning murder, extortion and kidnapping

* The Mafia’s full cooperation with all investigations into the deaths of Artie “Two Sheds” Palini, Ricky “The Squid” Piscatori, Jackie the Gaspipe, Tommy Shoes, and 16,302 others

* A verifiable cessation of Mafia contributions to local law enforcement officials

* The Mafia should use its influence with the Russian and Irish mobs to find out what the hell happened to that poor guy who wandered into the back room when they were all having a sit-down

* A verifiable cessation of Mafia efforts to undermine and circumvent the laws in the states of New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Chicago, as well as Nevada and portions of Kansas City which Johnny Mook swears he has no control over, but some of those hits just have his style written all over them

If those things are done, well, the price of garbage hauling in selected municipalities might decrease. But I wouldn’t count on them happening, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that we should give the Mafia Staten Island in the hopes some age-old territorial grievance will be settled for good.

Happy infamy day, by the way.

Exit Rumsfeld, Smiling

Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration and the author of several books. He has some excellent contacts in the government and tells us something that we probably did not know:

Few know that in early 2003 - a month or more before the Iraq invasion - President Bush was presented with two plans for post-war Iraq. The first, written by CIA Director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell, provided for a long occupation of Iraq and the nation-building that the president renounced in his 2000 campaign. The second, a Pentagon plan authored by Rumsfeld's team, provided for the establishment of a provisional government before the invasion and American withdrawal within months of Saddam's overthrow. The president, convinced by Powell that "if you break it, you own it", chose the Powell-Tenet plan and ordered Rumsfeld to carry it out.

Well! Read the whole thing!

and here's more:

What Rumsfeld's Critics Don't Get

On a Wing and a Prayer: Grievance theater at Minneapolis International Airport

From the Wall Street Journal:

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Those are the words that started it all. Six bearded imams are said to have shouted them out while offering evening prayers as they and 141 other passengers waited at the gate for their flight out of Minneapolis International Airport. It was three days before Thanksgiving. Allahu Akbar: God is great.

Initial media reports of the incident did not include the disturbing details about what happened after they boarded US Airways flight 300, but the story quickly went national with provocative headlines: "Six Muslims Ejected from US Air Flight for Praying." Yes, they were praying--but let's be clear about this. The very last human sound on the cockpit voice recorder of United flight 93 before it screamed into the ground at 580 miles per hour is the sound of male voices shouting "Allahu Akbar" in a moment of religious ecstasy.
[snip]

Given that Islamic terrorists continue their obsession with turning airplanes into weapons of mass destruction, it is nothing short of obscene that these six religious leaders--fresh from attending a conference of the North American Imams Federation, featuring discussions on "Imams and Politics" and "Imams and the Media"--chose to turn that airport into a stage and that airplane into a prop in the service of their need for grievance theater. The reality is, these passengers endured a frightening 3 1/2-hour ordeal, which included a front-to-back sweep of the aircraft with a bomb-sniffing dog, in order to advance the provocative agenda of these imams in, of all the inappropriate places after 9/11, U.S. airports.

"Allahu Akbar" was just the opening act. After boarding, they did not take their assigned seats but dispersed to seats in the first row of first class, in the midcabin exit rows and in the rear--the exact configuration of the 9/11 execution teams. The head of the group, seated closest to the cockpit, and two others asked for a seatbelt extension, kept on board for obese people. A heavy metal buckle at the end of a long strap, it can easily be used as a lethal weapon. The three men rolled them up and placed them on the floor under their seats. And lest this entire incident be written off as simple cultural ignorance, a frightened Arabic-speaking passenger pulled aside a crew member and translated the imams' suspicious conversations, which included angry denunciations of Americans, furious grumblings about U.S. foreign policy, Osama Bin Laden and "killing Saddam."

Predictably, these imams and their attorneys now suggest that another passenger who penned a frantic note of warning and slipped it to a flight attendant was somehow a hysterical Islamophobe. Let us remember that but for their performance at the gate this passenger might never have noticed these men or their behavior on board, much less have the slightest clue as to their religion or political passions. Of course, that was the point of the shouting. According to the police report, yet another alarmed passenger who frequently travels to the Middle East described a conversation with one of the imams. The 31-year-old Egyptian expressed fundamentalist Muslim views, and stated the he would go to whatever measures necessary to obey all the tenets set out in the Koran.

They, too, were praying. The passengers and crew of flight 93 lost their valiant fight to take back the plane just one hour and 20 minutes after it pushed back from the gate. Until the hijackers stormed the cockpit door, they were just a handful of Middle Eastern-looking men on their way to sunny California. So, yes, let's be exceedingly clear about the whole matter. Some 3,000 men, women and children are dead because the unassuming people on those airplanes did not look at them and see murderers. Or dangerous Arabs. Or fanatical Muslims. They saw a few guys in chinos.

[snip]

Ultimately, the most despicable aspect about the imams' behavior is that when they pierced the normally quiet hum of a passenger waiting area with shouts of "Allahu Akbar"and deliberately engaged in terrorist-associated behavior that was sure to trigger suspicion, they exploited the fear that began with the Sept. 11 attacks. The imams, experienced travelers all, counted on the security system established after 9/11 to kick in, and now they plan not only to benefit financially from the proper operation of that system but to substantially weaken it--with help from the Saudi-endowed attorneys at CAIR.

"No Blood for Cheese"

THE UNITED STATES plans to establish permanent bases on the Moon, according to a report in the New York Times citing Bush Administration officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2004, the federal government has been developing plans for new space hardware to deploy personnel to the Moon and establish a foothold near the lunar south pole. Once there, unspecified “other countries” and “commercial enterprises” could “expand the outpost in order to develop scientific and other interests,” says a senior administration official.

The official declined to elaborate on what those “other interests” might be, but initial reports hint at efforts to seize and exploit the satellite’s natural resources.

[snip]

Terrance Resnik, holding a handmade sign that read “Stop U.S. Lunar Imperialism,” agreed with his companion. “Who profits?” asked Resnik, before answering his own question. The corporations, that’s who!”

“Follow the money.” Candless agreed. “It will lead you straight to (Vice President Richard) Cheney, and his no-bid buddies at Bechtel and Halliburton.”

“This is not a peaceful venture,” proclaimed Sandra Gutierrez, a student. “Bush is taking the first steps towards establishing a galactic empire.” Gutierrez also carried a handmade sign, demanding “No Permanent Bases on the Moon!”

“Bottom line, it’s a unilateral invasion of a pristine planet, in order to steal its natural resources.” Candless declared. “We’ve worn out Gaia, and now Bush wants to rape Luna. Where will it end?” When asked what resources the Moon had to steal, he looked puzzled. “You don’t know?” Candless asked, his voice tinged with disbelief.

When no answer was forthcoming, Candless shook his head, and proceeded with his group in a march around Lafayette Park. “Hands off the Moon!” he chanted.

“Hands off the Moon!” came the booming reply.

“No Blood for Cheese!”

Patronizing the "Southern and African" Christian

The Wall Street Journal's NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY has a fascinating essay entitled: The Limits of Tolerance. I reproduce it in full because it may be in the "subscription only" edition.

Last week, Andrew M. Greeley, the well-known liberal priest and sociologist of all things Catholic gave a celebrity interview to his fans. Though his main interlocutor was Robert Orsi, the chairman of the religion department at Harvard, Father Greeley also took some questions from the audience, most of whose members were gathered here for the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion. One person asked about the potential for the lay group Voice of the Faithful to transform the church, another about whether nuns should return to wearing habits. Then a middle-aged woman in the back of the room asked Father Greeley about the changing face of the Catholic Church. The greatest growth in the world-wide Catholic population, she noted, has been coming for some years from new believers in South America and Africa, and the trend shows no signs of abating. What effect would this have on the church?

"We will depend on them for vitality," Father Greeley predicted. "But they will continue to depend on us for the ideas."

To judge by a murmuring restlessness in the crowd, more than a few audience members were surprised such a remark. It seemed -- how to put it? -- patronizing. Do people in the Global South have no ideas of their own? Is theirs a faith of pure emotion? Catherine Barsotti, a professor at Centro Hispano de Estudios Teológicos outside of Los Angeles who attended the talk, told me afterward that Father Greeley is, generally, "a voice of sanity in the Catholic Church, [someone who is] trying to get the church to hear people it doesn't like to hear." Which is why, she added, "I can't believe he meant what he said."

When pressed, though, Father Greeley didn't take back his remark. Instead he went further, waxing eloquent about how people in South America have a "whole different approach to religion." He marveled at the way that Catholics in Brazil ask people from "all different faiths" to pray for a sick child. He recommended going to Mexico "if you want to find out what the church was like before Trent." (He was referring to the 16th-century council that codified so much Roman Catholic doctrine.) He claimed that Mexicans "have patron saints for pick-pockets and prostitutes." Catholicism in Mexico is "a religion of joy and celebration. We have much to learn from them." Yes, it sounds like a compliment, but the condescension -- those people and their quaint ways -- is unmistakable.

Timothy Shah, a senior fellow in religion and world affairs at the Pew Forum, believes that Father Greeley's attitude is "fairly widespread" among academics and theologians in Europe and North America. (We are the smart ones; they are mere folk co-religionists.) He cites the recent controversy within the Episcopal Church over the issue of homosexuality. When African primates declared at the church's 1998 conference that homosexual practice is "incompatible with Scripture," the American bishop John Shelby Spong, of Newark, N.J., suggested that African Christianity is backward: "They've yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we've had to face in the developing world."

Mr. Shah does acknowledge that much of the wealth and many of the educational institutions within the major churches are located in Europe and North America. But, he argues, it's "just simple ignorance to assume that faith resides in the [Global South] but not reason." As John Paul II wrote in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." It's hard to imagine the two wings attaching themselves to different continents.

In response to Father Greeley's comments and those of other scholars who agree with him, Mr. Shah cites the proliferation of institutions in Asia, South America and Africa that combine intellectual firepower with a serious faith commitment: Pentecostal universities in sub-Saharan countries, evangelical and Catholic schools in the Philippines and South Korea and South Africa. Then there are the many seminaries and universities in North America and Europe that have been set up by Christians from the Global South like the Oxford Center for Mission Studies founded by an Indian theologian, the Rev. Dr. Vinay Samuel. The center's governing board includes Kwame Bediako, a Ghanaian Presbyterian minister and the author of several impressive books on African Christianity.

But persuading North Americans and Europeans to have more respect for newcomers may be a losing battle, according to Philip Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom." Mr. Jenkins laughs knowingly when I ask him about this problem. "Every time there has been a shift in Christianity, older churches have always adopted this very patronizing attitude." He points to a dialogue that occurred in Constantinople in 970 between a leading cleric of the Orthodox Church and Liutprand, the Italian bishop of Cremona. The Orthodox cleric called Liutprand's beliefs "too young," suggesting that (in Mr. Jenkins's words) "the new churches simply do not have the intellectual capacity to understand the sophisticated theological debates then roiling the advanced world." Liutprand replied that the older churches are more decadent and prone to heresy. Indeed, Mr. Jenkins observes that often "new churches are the defenders of orthodoxy."

Father Greeley isn't exactly known as a defender of orthodoxy, of course. But he is ostensibly a believer in the multiculturalist ethic -- hearing "people the church doesn't want to hear." Well, up to a point.

Islam gets concessions; infidels get conquered

From Jihad Watch:

IN THE DAYS before Pope Benedict XVI's visit last Thursday to the Hagia Sophia complex in Istanbul, Muslims and Turks expressed fear, apprehension and rage. "The risk," according to Turkey's independent newspaper Vatan, "is that Benedict will send Turkey's Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims." Apparently making the sign of the cross or any other gesture of Christian worship in Hagia Sophia constitutes such a sacrilege.

Built in the 6th century, Hagia Sophia — Greek for "Holy Wisdom" — was Christendom's greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople — now Istanbul — was finally sacked by Turks in 1453, and Hagia Sophia's crosses were desecrated, its icons defaced. Along with thousands of other churches in the Byzantine Empire, it was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. Nearly 500 years later, in 1935, as part of reformer Kemal Ataturk's drive to modernize Turkey, Hagia Sophia was secularized and transformed into a museum.

Protests aimed at keeping the pope out of Hagia Sophia rocked Istanbul right up to the morning of his visit to the site. Contrast that intolerance with the tolerance granted Muslims in regard to the Al Aqsa mosque — this time, an Islamic site in Jerusalem annexed by Judaism. Unlike the permanent Muslim desecration of Hagia Sophia, after Israel's victory in the 1967 war, the Jews did not deface or convert the mosque into a Jewish synagogue or temple, even though the Al Aqsa mosque is deliberately built atop the remains of the Temple Mount, the holiest site of Judaism and, by extension, an important site for Christians. Moreover, since reclaiming the Temple Mount, Israel has granted Muslims control over the Al Aqsa mosque (except during times of crises).

All this illustrates the privileged status that many Muslims expect in the international arena. When Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories — such as Constantinople, not to mention all of North Africa, Spain and southwest Asia — those whom they have conquered as well as their descendants are not to expect any apologies, let alone political or territorial concessions.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Documents Hizballah War Crimes, World Yawns

Nothing surprising here, and many of the pictures and videos were the subject of previous LGF posts during the Lebanon War, but at least the New York Times is finally confronting the truth on some level: Offering Video, Israel Answers Critics on War.