The Golden Gate

The more I read of Josh Trevino, the more I like him.

Over at Politics from Left to Right, which features left-leaning Chris Nolan as well, Trevino takes on the whole “Multiculturalism/Clash of Civilizations” conversation with gusto, and makes some very good, fundamental points in his dialogue with Nolan.

Here are just a couple:

Nolan’s objections to the clash of civilizations thesis are as follows:

* We cannot afford to set “one set of social or cultural mores….above another.”

This is self-refuting: the very act of the assertion sets the social and cultural mores of tolerance — or multiculturalism, as you prefer — above all else. This is an act wholly impossible to avoid. If you find that things have intrinsic moral characteristics by virtue of their being — for example, if you sense that a man blowing up a bus in the name of his faith is somehow in all contexts a moral wrong — then you are setting a particular social or cultural more above others (in this case, that holding that there are contexts wherein bus-bombing is quite acceptable). If culture and its trappings were no more than an accretion of aesthetic or pragmatic preferences (curry rather than barbecue, pagodas rather than Gothic, llamas rather than yaks), then we might safely consign it to some manner of rough equality, and hence fundamental irrelevance. Because culture carries with it the baggage of history, ideas and practices, we do so only as an act of willful ignorance.

* The modern phenomenon of Islamist terror is mostly a circumstantial reflection of technology and historical particulars.

Nolan overstates the effect of technology and the “connected, always-on digital age” of which she is a fan. It is indisputable that Islamist terror makes full use of the tools of the modern age, from aircraft to the internet. Many draw the lesson from this that the moral quality of the terror is therefore something new, and that the means of fighting it are new as well. Both assumptions are wrong. The folly of the “new” warfare finds its expression in the deathly maw of Iraq. What makes modern Islamist terror so unique is not its modern veneer but its barbarous ferocity: suicides, beheadings, the wanton slaughter of noncombatants, and public gloating over the same not commonly seen in the West since the Thirty Years’ War. Its cardinal quality is how profoundly primitive it is. Modernity abets its fury, but does not define its being. Having just closed out a century in which Rwandans massacred a million of their own in one hundred days with muscle power and machetes, we cannot afford to forget the overriding force that is the human will to annihilation.

Trevino is great. I discovered him during his commentaries on the whole “Live8″ benefit last month, and was really inspired and moved by his reports from a Scottish airport during the initial aftermath of the 7/7 London terror attacks.

So, go check out Josh Trevino right now. You’ll be glad you did.

California Conservative offers some thoughts on the SEIU and Teamsters Unions splitting off from the big AFL-CIO labor organization. This means that the the AFL-CIO has lost 3.2 million of its previous 13 million or so members.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…we are witnessing a fight over who gets to preside over a declining labor movement. Two of the largest and more successful unions, the Service Employees International and the Teamsters, are rebelling against the leadership of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. The irony is that it wasn’t all that long ago, in 1995, that Mr. Sweeney won his job with his own coup against Lane Kirkland, the Cold War hero and more moderate labor voice.

In the wake of the GOP takeover of Congress the year before, Mr. Sweeney promised to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into electoral politics to stop the Gingrich revolution. He staffed AFL-CIO headquarters with activists from the political left–environmental groups, culturally liberal outfits–and made the union consortium a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.

A decade later we can see how that turned out. Democrats remain in the House and Senate minority, and union membership continues to decline across the American economy. The unionized share of the total U.S. work force has been sliding steadily for years, and was down again last year to 12.5% from 12.9% in 2003. In the more dynamic private sector, only 7.9% of employees now carry the union label.

Yes, and if you take a close look at the curves on the chart above, you’ll see that a much greater percentage of all Government workers — approximately 35% — are Unionized than are workers in the “real world” private sector (8%). One might conclude that it’s the Government Unions that are keeping the labor “movement” alive, to the extent that it IS still alive.

And, of course, those Government Unions are supported with our tax dollars.

The Wall Street Journal piece says it clearly:

The tragedy is that neither [union] faction is offering an agenda that will make workers more prosperous in our increasingly competitive global economy.

Precisely. And as far as serving the taxpayers and businesses of our nation is concerned, it must be asked: are Government Unions helping or harming the cause of more efficient and effective Governenmental operations? Are we getting “bang for our bucks?” And, really, is this the best we can do for workers? Government Unions — extorting from the public they ostensibly “serve?”

The recent BART transit strike brinksmanship is an object lesson, and quite fresh in our collective memory.

I suggest that perhaps it’s time to move beyond the old adversarial class-warfare Union-versus-management model. Surely we can do better than what we’ve got, now. And I think it’s clear, we’re going to have to. The old style Union model is dying out.

This man writes and saves me the hassle. You must read his latest piece. Here is a taste:

As stalwart as the Bush administration has been in the current conflict with Islamic jihadists, judging from the op-ed in last Saturday’s New York Times by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend, it still entertains dangerous illusions about the enemy we are facing.

Hadley and Townsend reprise the narrative the administration has used all along in making sense of our adversary. Those wishing to destroy us are enemies of freedom who espouse a totalitarian ideology akin to fascism and communism. As such, they are driven by a diseased passion for domination that will brook no dissent nor allow for ideals such as tolerance and human rights. And they gain traction from “conditions of despair and feelings of resentment where freedom is denied.” Thus America must promote democratic freedom and prosperity to remove those conditions, for “people everywhere prefer freedom to slavery and will embrace it whenever they can, because freedom is the wish of every human being.” Finally, since these terrorists are enemies of Islam as well, we must support those Muslims who “are speaking the truth about their proud religion and history, and seizing it back from those who would hijack it for evil ends.”

The key to this mistaken interpretation is the short shrift given to the power of spiritual needs — an omission surprising given how religious the media keeps telling us this administration is. That ignoring of spiritual reality is what makes the analogy with fascism and communism false. Both of those ideologies were anti-Christian: fascism was a species of debased Romantic neo-paganism, and communism was blatantly atheist. As such, both ran counter to the powerful Judeo-Christian forces that shaped European and Russian civilization, and so could not satisfy for long the spiritual yearnings of the people, yearnings denied their traditional expressions. Thus these ideologies were doomed because they denied not just political freedom, but the powerful human need for religious expression and spiritual experience.

For many, just another reason to hate us.

via: LGF

Cox and Forkum have this post that is worth a peek. Here is the ‘toon:

Here is an excerpt from the text of the post:

It has been sobering this past week watching some of my “woollier” colleagues (in Vicki Woods’s self-designation) gradually awake to the realisation that the real suicide bomb is “multiculturalism”. Its remorseless tick-tock, suddenly louder than the ethnic drumming at an anti-globalisation demo, drove poor old Boris Johnson into rampaging around this page last Thursday like some demented late-night karaoke one-man Fiddler on the Roof, stamping his feet and bellowing, “Tradition! Tradition!” Boris’s plea for more Britishness was heartfelt and valiant, but I’m not sure I’d bet on it. The London bombers were, to the naked eye, assimilated – they ate fish ‘n’ chips, played cricket, sported appalling leisurewear. They’d adopted so many trees we couldn’t see they lacked the big overarching forest – the essence of identity, of allegiance. As I’ve said before, you can’t assimilate with a nullity – which is what multiculturalism is. ….

I would say that while I think that the typical way multiculturalism is applied or advocated has its own pathology, simultaneously, there are things in all cultures to be honored. It may be their ideas, it may be their architecture, it may be their belief systems. It is not multiculturalism per se that is the real suicide bomb, but the advocating of multi-cult for multi-cult’s sake without really taking a look at results in the world of each culture that is. It is the pathologies of cultures that should be unflinchingly condemned while simultaneously embracing the beauty and health in them. it is, again, a both/and, not an either/or.

I could write all day about that, and hope I have the time to in the future.

Has another Great piece out:

First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.

Yasser Arafat, replete with holster and rants at the U.N., had become a “moderate” and was thus free to steal millions of his good-behavior money. If Hamas got European cash, it would become reasonable, ostracize its “military wing,” and cease its lynching and vigilantism.

When some tried to explain that Wars 1-3 (1947, 1956, 1967) had nothing to do with the West Bank, such bothersome details fell on deaf ears.

When it was pointed out that Germans were not blowing up Poles to get back lost parts of East Prussia nor were Tibetans sending suicide bombers into Chinese cities to recover their country, such analogies were caricatured.

When the call for a “Right of Return” was making the rounds, few cared to listen that over a half-million forgotten Jews had been cleansed from Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and lost billions in property.

When the U.N. and the EU talked about “refugee camps,” none asked why for a half-century the Arab world could not build decent housing for its victimized brethren, or why 1 million Arabs voted in Israel, but not one freely in any Arab country.

The security fence became “The Wall,” and evoked slurs that it was analogous to barriers in Korea or Berlin that more often kept people in than out. Few wondered why Arabs who wished to destroy Israel would mind not being able to live or visit Israel.

Go and read it all for it is good.

Nobody’s Business reports that the International Criminal Court is actually PAYING accused war criminals to turn themselves in. On top of that, the accused’s family gets a “double salary,” a per-child bonus, plus four paid-for trips to the Hague per year to visit the accused war criminal.

Wow.

But wait, it gets better — the really senior war criminals get a MILLION DOLLAR bonus for turning themselves in, on top of all the other payments.

It’s the world turned upside down.

And both Nobody’s Business and Bill Quick of Daily Pundit wonder what else the indicted were able to negotiate before they turned themselves in? Maybe reduced charges? Reduced sentences? I mean, the whole thing just reeks.

Bill Quick puts it well:

What can I say? There are no words. This transcends farce into some new, even more absurd plane of surrealism. It goes without saying, of course, that there was an under-the-table negotiation about the verdict and sentence, and that the whole thing is an abomination that exposes the foulness at the center of the philosophy that could even consider making deals with mass-murdering fiends in exchange for the appearance of credibility for this pathetic perversion of justice. I am so glad that Bush refused to sign onto this “court”.

***JASON ADDS: WTF!? It is clear that our international institutions are ill and need radical therapy or complete disbanding and reconstruction. I am stunned.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has an article by Lew Rockwell on the Kelo decision and further thoughts on decentralization:

…Back to the libertarian presumption in favor of decentralization. There are several reasons for it.

First, under decentralization, jurisdictions must compete for residents and capital, which provides some incentive for greater degrees of freedom, if only because local despotism is neither popular nor productive. If despots insist on ruling anyway, people and capital will find a way to leave. If there is only one will and one actor, you cannot escape.

Second, localism internalizes corruption so that it can be more easily spotted and uprooted. Along the same lines, local government corruption can be rather benign by comparison; it is easier, on a middle-class budget, to pay off the zoning board than to bribe the State Department.

Third, tyranny on the local level minimizes damage to the same extent that macro-tyranny maximizes it. If Hitler had ruled only Berlin, Stalin only Moscow, and FDR only Washington, the effects of their demented policies might have been contained. This is not only a utilitarian consideration. It means that evil people are prevented from violating the rights of people outside their jurisdiction.

Fourth…

Go read it all.

I am moving this week so posting from me will be light.

This is not good:

OFF DUTY and two weeks into a deployment to the badlands of Dagestan on the border of Chechnya, the Russian Special Forces men thought that they were going to a relaxing bath.
Three lorries carrying the 50 troops had just pulled up at the Ariel public bath-house in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, when a homemade bomb detonated. Shrapnel killed ten soldiers and wounded more than twenty other servicemen and civilian bystanders.

The bombing was the latest indication that Dagestan, an ancient Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, is spinning out of control — and threatening to pull down the rest of Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus.

Dagestan is not only the biggest and most populous of the seven semi-autonomous republics of the North Caucasus — a region dominated by impoverished, non-Russian Muslim peoples — it is also the most strategic: a large chunk of the Russian Caspian coast lies here, making Dagestan a key transport route for trade and oil.

This is a very useful little link for those who ride San Francisco’s Muni public transit system.

And even if you don’t ride Muni, check it out anyway — there may be something like this coming to your community, soon.

This site is even more useful if you’ve got a mobile internet device of some kind (Laptop, Treo, etc.)

…is the title of a post from the eternally indispensable LGF.

I am stunned at the humanity of our military in the face of all that they experience and the distortions in the MSM. What grace. Indeed.

Capitalism is the Cure. Here is two-thirds of the article:

Most people forget that pre-industrial Europe was vastly poorer than contemporary Africa and had a much lower life expectancy. Even a relatively well-off country like France is estimated to have suffered seven general famines in the 15th century, thirteen in the 16th, eleven in the 17th and sixteen in the 18th. And disease was rampant. Given an utter lack of sanitation, the bubonic plague, typhus and other diseases recurred incessantly into the 18th century, killing tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands at a time.

The effect on life expectancy was predictable. In parts of France, in the middle of the 17th century, only 58 percent reached their 15th birthday, and life expectancy was 20. In Ireland, life expectancy in 1800 was a mere 19 years. In early 18th century London, more than 74 percent of the children died before reaching age five.

Then a dramatic change occurred throughout Europe. The population of England doubled between 1750 and 1820, with childhood mortality dropping to 31.8 percent by 1830. Something happened that enabled people to stay alive.

What did that early period lack that the later period had? Capitalism. What does Africa lack that the West has? Capitalism. It is capitalism that enabled the West to rise to great prosperity. The lack of capitalism is responsible for Africa’s crushing poverty.

What is capitalism? It is an economic system in which all property is privately owned, a system without government regulation and government handouts. It is a free economy, a system in which individuals are free to produce, to trade, and to make-and keep-a profit.

Capitalism is a social system based on individual rights, the right of every individual to his life, his liberty and the pursuit of his own happiness. The thinkers of the Enlightenment, including John Locke and the Founding Fathers, brought these ideas to the forefront in Europe and America. The result was an economic revolution, which-in a relatively brief time-transformed the West from a poverty-stricken region to one of great productive wealth. This system of freedom liberated the most creative minds of Western society, resulting in a torrent of innovations-from James Watt’s steam engine to Louis Pasteur’s germ theory to Henry Ford’s automobile to the Wright Brothers’ airplane and much more. This new freedom, and the Industrial Revolution it spawned, resulted in vast increases in agricultural and industrial production.

Creative minds-from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs-flourish only under freedom. The result is new products, new jobs, new wealth, in short: the furtherance of life on earth, in length, quantity and quality. Under the kings, theocracies, military dictatorships and socialist regimes that dominate Africa, such minds are stifled. The result is stagnation, poverty and death.

And from Dr Thomas Sowell:

“Forgiveness” of foreign debts is always high on the agenda of those on the political left.

At any given moment, this would of course free up money that African governments could spend to help relieve their people’s distress — assuming that this is what they would spend it for. But why would anyone think that promoting irresponsible government borrowing by periodically “forgiving” their debts is going to help African countries in the long run?

As for the people of Africa, they have to survive in the short run in order to get to the long run. So emergency aid for emergency conditions makes far more sense than long-run “foreign aid” programs with an almost unbroken track record of failure, not only in Africa but around the world.

Years ago, a courageous economist in India pointed out that, however helpful it was to receive food from abroad during India’s famines, the long-run policy of continually giving wheat to India was just reducing the ability of Indian farmers to grow wheat and sell it for a price that would cover their costs.

Eventually the policy of continually dumping wheat into India was stopped and today India produces so much wheat that it has been able to send some to Africa to deal with African famines.

Promoting dependency and irresponsible borrowing is not the way to help the poor internationally any more than these are ways of helping the poor at home. Such policies benefit the bureaucracies that administer foreign aid and enable vain people to see themselves as saviors, even when they are doing more harm than good.

From Walter Williams:

Did you learn that the United States is rich because we have bountiful natural resources? That has to be nonsense. Africa and South America are probably the richest continents in natural resources but are home to the world’s most miserably poor people. On the other hand, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and England are poor in natural resources, but their people are among the world’s richest.

Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That’s nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world’s poorest people.

There’s no complete explanation for why some countries are affluent while others are poor, but there are some leads. Rank countries along a continuum according to whether they are closer to being free-market economies or whether they’re closer to socialist or planned economies. Then, rank countries by per-capita income. We will find a general, not perfect, pattern whereby those countries having a larger free-market sector produce a higher standard of living for their citizens than those at the socialist end of the continuum.

What is more important is that if we ranked countries according to how Freedom House or Amnesty International rates their human-rights guarantees, we’d see that citizens of countries with market economies are not only richer, but they tend to enjoy a greater measure of human-rights protections. While there is no complete explanation for the correlation between free markets, higher wealth and human-rights protections, you can bet the rent money that the correlation is not simply coincidental.

Read all three.

San Francisco _Chronicle_ columnist Jon Carroll weighs in on the San Francisco Supervisors’ USS _Iowa_ vote:

I love these people, but they drive me crazy. I had a girlfriend like that once; I think we’ve all had girlfriends like that once. Aren’t all girlfriends like that?

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors — well-meaning folks, but they make me nuts. Just this week, they rejected a plan to bring the battleship Iowa to San Francisco and turn it into a tourist attraction and museum. Why? Cecilia M. Vega of this very newspaper summed up the reasons given for the decision: “the widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, the unequal treatment of gay and lesbian enlisted men and women, and the city’s reputation as a home of the peace movement.”

The music tinkles, the picture ripples, and we take you into the near future for some more resolutions by the supes:

* The San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week voted to tear down Mission Dolores. “Indigenous American people were kept there in near slave conditions and forcibly recruited to a nonnative religion,” said Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. “We need to tear it down ancient adobe brick by ancient adobe brick.” He added: “History just sucks, and now we have a chance to do something about it.”

* The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to tear down Fort Point after it was brought to its attention that the fort had once had a military purpose. “The people of San Francisco do not want a part of the 19th century war machine within their city limits,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. “Researchers tell me that, at one time, guns actually protruded from those cute little holes in the side of the building. The fort should be replaced by a nice new dog run.”

* The San Francisco Board of Supervisors decided to turn the War Memorial Veterans Building, home of Herbst Theatre, into an indoor farmers’ market. “I was shocked to learn,” said Supervisor Tom Ammiano, “that some of the veterans who use this building killed foreign citizens as part of an invading army. Additionally, the armed forces in which they served virtually criminalized gay and lesbian behavior. Shame, I say, shame.

* The San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week voted to disband itself. “The board is steeped in the culture of sexism, racism and homophobia, ” said Supervisor Bevan Dufty. “For a long time, it was just a bunch of old white guys making decisions for the entire city. I feel personally soiled by being a member of this group, and ask that my colleagues to join me in ritual self-mutilation directly after the meeting.”

Yes, it’s a sick, sick city. Given the amount of bad behavior that has taken place in its various apartments and public spaces, we should probably raze the whole joint and start over. And then, because humans are imperfect and often idiotic, there’d be more sexism and racism and murder and extortion and nonmedical marijuana being sold to people who just want to get high, and .. . life is a cesspool. Let’s give up and not think about it anymore.

As usual, Carroll is poignant and funny. Treat yourself — go read the entire thing.

US News has some good news:

Bush Well on Way to Meeting Deficit Promise . Here are the opening paragraphs:

So the deficit—the federal budget deficit—is declining sharply, more sharply than just about anyone in mainstream media anticipated. According to figures from the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit is projected to decline from $412 billion in 2004 to $333 billion in 2005, a 19 percent decline. OMB further projects, obviously with less certitude, that it will decline to $162 billion in 2008.

If so, that will mean that George W. Bush will have more than kept his promise to cut the deficit in half in his second term. Back in February, OMB projected a 2005 deficit of $427 billion.

Read it all if you are concerned, as I am, about deficits.

…gets beat over the head like a mushy headed idiot by Cassandra at Villainous Company.

She quotes the Bi-Partisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report:

Wilson’s assertions — both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information — were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report. The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address.

AND, there’s a lot more. Go and read it all.

I would also say that critical thinking courses should be _required_ in schools of journalism. Probably way too much to ask. Way.

They reject the USS Iowa. Check it here…

SO, as I said, last night I checked out the big San Francisco Homeownership Summit. Turnout seemed real good, about 225 or so by my rough count. Pols included Mayor Newsom, Supervisors Bevan Dufty, Fiona Ma (late) and Sean Elsbernd. Also somebody (didn’t catch the name) from the Mayors office of Housing, Ted Lowenberg from the Small Property Owners of San Francisco, Wade Randlett of SFSOS, Michael Sullivan, the director of Plan C San Francisco, A TIC/Condo Loan rep from Sterling Bank, plus quite a few other folks; I didn’t catch all the names.

All night the room was abuzz with the announcement in yesterday’s San Francisco _Examiner_ that the long-sought Personal TIC Loans are now finally available. This is potentially real big news for the San Francisco housing market. Personal TIC loans — where the buyer of each unit in a TIC arrangement can take out their own seperate Mortgage — removes one of the most daunting drawbacks of the TIC process, namely: sharing a joint Mortgage with your neighbors (sometimes lots and LOTS of neighbors.)

Now, each unit can have its own seperate Mortgage, and this should make it much more attractive not to mention much easier for people to form TICs to buy homes in San Francisco. Though e-Loan is the first lender to announce this new Personal TIC Loan, everybody anticipates that several other lenders will soon follow suit and begin offering this new Personal TIC Mortgage.

So, naturally, in light of this dramatic announcement, at the Homeownership Summit there was lots of talk about TICs and the Condo conversion process, as well as possible moves by anti-Homeownership members of the Board of Supervisors to stifle or otherwise derail the use of the new Personal TIC loans.

The over-arching theme of the evening was the value of homeownership, the social good it promotes and how increasing the percentage of San Franciscans who own rather than rent is the #1 goal of all the groups assembled at the event. And over and over the point was made: pro-Homeownership forces are not interested in HARMING renters. Rather, the pro-Homeownership movement wants to HELP renters BECOME homeowners! (The statistic was cited that somewhere north of 80% of Renters surveyed had said that they wanted to become Homeowners, but they didn’t feel it was possible to do so in San Francisco.) One of the recurring themes of the Homeownership summit was what that would mean for the City as a whole to have more people participating in the “ownership society.”

Political action, organizing and speaking out were emphasized throughout the evening. Overall, it was an informative and energetic two hours.

The groups and leaders assembled talked about various frustrations at past ballot-box and legislative setbacks, but also reflected on past wins in the California Court system (supporting homeownership and private property rights.) Several people promised new initiatives to support and expand homeownership in San Francisco. Expect executive, legal and leguslative moves in the near future.

Also, Mayor Newsom said several times during his remarks: “if you have good ideas, send them our way, and we’ll do our best to make sure they happen.”

Personally, I enjoyed the Summit. I met a few leaders, and exchanged a few remarks — and cards — after the summit.

Positivity all ’round.

From Cox and Forkum:

One particular passage reveals the Times blindness to the real issue. They write that if Governor Pataki attempts to “appease one small, vocal group of protesters,” “he runs the risk of turning ground zero into a place where we bury the freedoms that define this nation.”

“Bury”? The Times has the gall to use the word “bury”? There are actual Americans buried at Ground Zero, murdered because they lived in a free county, and the Times’ main concern is not the victims but that Ground Zero have an art gallery able to exhibit “controversial images of 9/11 and America’s role in the world,” all in the name of “free speech.”

The real issues are how to properly use the hallowed ground of the WTC site to memorialize 9/11 victims and to historically document the attacks, and whether or not the IFC “freedom museum” and “arts center” are distractions from (and potentially even desecrations of) that memorial. As currently planned, the WTC memorial is already buried beneath the International Freedom Center building. With left-leaning individuals deeply involved in the IFC, it’s not difficult to imagine how much worse it can get.

And there’s more. Go read it. Here is the cartoon:

You can read and sign the Take Back the Memorial petition here.

via LGF:

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove’s head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we’d say the White House political guru deserves a prize—perhaps the next iteration of the “Truth-Telling” award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real “whistleblower” in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility. He’s the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

Media chants aside, there’s no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband’s selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he’d obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn’t even know Ms. Plame’s name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.

On the “no underlying crime” point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times’s Judith Miller out of jail.

“While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear—at least on the public record—that a crime took place,” the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.

From The Wall Street Journal. You will want to read it all.

From US NEWS:

Democrats are always a little dumbfounded when they get some advantage over President Bush and the GOP. And this week, they can’t believe their luck.

Not just because the White House has seemed completely unprepared to deal with questions about its involvement in l’affaire Plame but also because the man in their sights is their archenemy, Karl Rove.

And later:

“The partisan attacks against Karl Rove are out of control and entirely inappropriate,” said North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who heads the Senate GOP’s campaign committee. “He is a distinguished member of the White House, and he is my friend.” And friends count for something in this town. Brian Nick, Dole’s spokesman at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, says the Rove saga is a signal not of Democratic advantage but of failure.

“It is another venue for Democrats to attack Republicans because they don’t have an agenda,” Nick says. “They are not going to cause us a problem. That is not a party right now that has a clear understanding of where they are going.”

Can’t say I disagree with Nick on that one.

The first nuclear explosion is remembered:

Lawrence Johnston, a University of Idaho physics professor emeritus, will join other scientists invited by the National Academy of Sciences to Washington, D.C., July 14 to recall the 1945 detonation of the first nuclear weapon.

The symposium will mark the 60th anniversary of Trinity, the first manmade nuclear explosion. The event will feature 11 scientists and veterans who participated in the test at the Trinity site on New Mexico’s Alamogordo Bombing Range.

Johnston witnessed the successful early morning test July 16, 1945, and the later use of nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. He is believed to be the only person to witness all three.

Hey, the San Francisco Homeownership Summit is happening this evening, so I thought it was worth a reminder. Since I first mentioned it, I found this video interview (Quicktime and Windows Media) with Wade Randlett, the leader of SFSOS — the organization that is hosting tonight’s Homeownership Summit. Checking out the interview and the group’s (somewhat minimal) website, it’s clear that SFSOS is a centrist group focused on bread-and-butter quality of life and homeownership issues. In other words, the kinds of issues that tend to get ignored in San Francisco.

If you’re interested in becoming a Homeowner or supporting opportunities for others to become homeowners themselves in San Francisco, come by the Homeownership Summit tonight, if you can. I’ll be there. And I’ll be sure to report back to you my impressions of the event.

July 13 Summit Will Address Bleak Prospects for Homeownership for Middle Class

The spiraling cost of homeownership in San Francisco and the lack of concern on the part of a majority of the members of the Board of Supervisors about the exodus of teachers, firefighters, police and nurses from the city who just cannot afford to buy here has created a homeownership emergency. Already the number of families in the city has plummeted to around 10 percent of the population. Artificially limiting the supply of ownership housing, as the supervisors have done, has driven the prices of ownership housing to unprecedented levels and attacked those on the lower rungs of the ownership housing ladder.

What’s left of the middle class in San Francisco needs to react to this homeownership emergency. The members of the Board of Supervisors who have opposed the expansion of ownership housing opportunities in San Francisco need to be confronted. To allow this to happen in the most forceful manner possible, the grassroots lobbying organization, SFSOS, is forming a new coalition of like-minded citizens and civic organizations to take whatever measures are necessary to create new homeownership opportunities for the middle class in the city. Its efforts will begin with a city-wide Homeownership Summit to educate and organize concerned citizens and the members of participating organizations.

The Summit will be held at St. Mary’s Cathedral conference facility on Wednesday, July 13, from 6-8 pm. Participants will include SFSOS, Plan C, the Small Property Owners of San Francisco, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, the Coalition for Better Housing, the San Francisco TIC Coalition, as well as legal, financial and real estate experts.

The event is being hosted by SFSOS, an advocacy group whose self-proclaimed mission is “the return of clean, safe neighborhoods, protecting the rights of the ignored, while moving toward a vibrant economy, improved public services and greater opportunity for all.” As SFSOS seems dedicated to free market-orniented solutions and expanding homeownership, I believe this “Homeownership Summit” is probably worth a look.

I like the panels they’ve announced:

* “How to Protect Yourself from the Board of Supervisors” – A discussion on legal, banking and other private sector resources for the homeowner.

* “Where Do We Go From Here?” – A discussion of political and public sector strategies and campaigns to repair the homeownership climate in SF.

Also, they’ve gotten a whole range of City notables and organizations on board as backers, panelists and speakers, including the Association of Realtors, Small Property Owners of San Francisco, and Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Fiona Ma (two generally pro free market Supervisors).

The flyer for the event can be found here. (PDF format.)

I will be attending this event, and I’ll be sure to report back. If you live in the area and decide to drop by, I’ll be the one passing out cards promoting The Golden Gate. Say hello, if you’ve a mind to.

Christopher Hitchens lays it out clearly and concisely:

We know very well what the “grievances” of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won’t abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor’s liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

FOR a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.

It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on “our” values or “our” way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Read the whole thing.

We do not use the word “evil” anymore, even with apolitical criminals, whose crimes are called sicknesses now, or syndromes, caused by — what is it this week? society? parents? TV? — and who need our understanding and accommodation, not our rejection or punishment. All the more so for avowedly political murders like those in London.

Leftists who call for more understanding or dialogue or compromise, are not understanding the Muslim “other.” They are projecting themselves onto the terrorists, imagining what it would take to cool themselves off if they were ever that mad about something.

No-f*cking-sh*t.

Ezra says it is terrifyingly simple.

No, not that Intel. Check it over at US News: the CIA kind of intel is opening up.

Dr Thomas Barnett has been suggesting an open-source CIA for sometime.

How to Lose a War:

Thursday’s attack in London is the latest blow struck in the war that began on Sept. 11. Its origins are easy to fathom: A minority of Muslim extremists, their numbers in the few millions, resents deeply the erosion of life in the Middle East and other Muslim areas. A globalized communications system reminds them daily how far behind a Pakistan is from India, how much better a South Korea or China is doing than Egypt, or how more humane life is in an Infidel North America or Europe than in Syria or Algeria.

Autocratic regimes, statist economies, gender apartheid, corruption, the absence of a free press — all that and more retard economic growth from the Gulf to Morocco. In response, theocratic regimes like the Taliban and the Iranian mullocracy blame the West for their own self-inflicted misery and inadequacies. But more often, clever dictators such as a Baathist Saddam, the Saudi Royal family, an Egyptian kleptocracy, or the Pakistani military regime allow Islamicists some rein, if not covert support, to deflect blame from their own failures onto the United States and the “Jews.”

A shamed Islamic street — ill-housed, ill-fed, and ill-informed — is nourished on the mythology that a purer creed and a return to the 8th century alone can reclaim past glories of the caliphate, and stop the decadent intrusion of Western consumerism and popular culture.

Read it all.

Posting has been light this weekend. I have been leading a workshop. Rich has been doing what Rich does [see below]. Once I recover from the weekend and feel more physically and emotionally resourceful, I will be posting like a crazed, pajama-clad man again.

Heh.

Indeed.

RICH ADDS: Actually, while Jason was leading his course this past weekend, I was busy participating in the “Sports for the Worlds Children” Charity Softball Tournament. I had a great time and I am just a bit achy and sunburned today to show for it (but not too sore, on either front.)

I don’t know about “crazed” or “pajama clad,” but you’ll also be seeing some more stuff from me as the week gets cranking, here.

Oh, and, Sports for the Worlds Children is a great cause. Go here to give them some support.

The word “terrorism” is thrown around a lot. I think that if we are to have this mean something, we should define it:

“The _intentional_ targeting of civilians and non-military use targets for the purpose of placing fear into the populace of a certain nation or peoples thereby influencing policy of the government of said nation or peoples.”

Thoughts? Feedback? Additions? Put ‘em in the comment section [which will now require registration as a result of SPAM trolls].

A (partial) list of Al Qaeda/Islamic Jihadist attacks:

* 1993: Six people killed in bomb attack at the World Trade Center in New York.

* 1993: US Marines attacked in Mogadishu, Somalia.

* 1994: Explosion on a Philippine Airlines jet bound for Tokyo killed one and injured ten.

* 1995: 7 killed by truck bombing in in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia at US Headquarters.

* 1996: 19 US servicemen killed in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, when the Khobar Towers housing complex was blown up by a suicide bomber.

* 1998: American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania attacked in suicide truck bombings. Approximately 230 people killed.

* 2000: USS Cole attacked by suicide speedboat. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 others were injured in the blast which blew a hole in the port side of the destroyer.

* 2001: 2,986 people killed as hijacked planes are flown into New York’s Twin Towers and the US Pentagon, and in a fourth hijacked airliner. The Pentagon is damaged, the Twin Towers are destroyed.

* 2002: Five people killed when terrorists hurled grenades into a church in Pakistan.

* 2002: Twenty one people, including 18 German tourists, killed when an ancient synagogue was bombed in Tunis.

* 2002: French oil tanker, the Limburg, attacked by a suicide speed boat off the coast of Yemen. One crew member died.

* 2002: 202 people, mostly Australians, killed by a bomb in a Bali nightclub.

* 2002: Sixteen dead, including three bombers, at the Israeli Paradise Hotel in Mombassa, Kenya. Two missiles missed an Israeli plane carrying 200 people.

* 2003: Suicide bombers hit three compounds for foreign workers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The 34 dead included nine attackers.

* 2003: Fourteen suicide bombers attacked four targets in the Moroccan capital Casablanca. Forty one people were killed.

* 2003: Twelve killed by car bomb outside Marriott Hotel in Indonesian capital Jakarta.

* 2003: Housing complex in Riyadh attacked by suicide car bomb. Seventeen dead, 100 hurt.

* 2003: Two synagogues in Istanbul attacked, killing 23 and wounding at least 300.

* 2003: Attacks on British Consulate and HSBC bank in Istanbul killed 27 and injured more than 450. Among the dead was Consul-General Roger Scott.

* 2004: In Madrid, Spain ten bombs remotely detonated on four trains in the rush hour killed 191 commuters and wounded 2,000.

* 2004: Gunmen stormed residential buildings for foreign workers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Twenty two workers killed.

* 2004: Gunmen attacked a BBC crew in Suweidi, Saudi Arabia. Irish cameraman Simon Cumber was killed and BBC correspondent Frank Gardener injured.

* 2004: American engineer Paul Johnson murdered by his kidnappers in Riyadh.

* 2004: At least 40 people killed when three suicide bombings hit resorts on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. At the Taba Hilton, a huge car bomb killed at least 30 people.

* 2004: Five staff and four gunmen killed in a raid on US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

* 2004: 344 civilians were killed, at least 172 of them children, and hundreds more wounded in the town of Beslan, Russia as jihadist terrorists took over a primary school. The terrorists rigged bombs and held the children and adults captive for three days.

* 2005: 50 people killed and more than 700 wounded in London, England when 4 timed bombs explode, three in the Underground train system and a fourth on a double-decked London bus.

(Data for this list compiled from various sources, including Wikipedia, The Sun, and Paul Berman.)

This list is not complete. It does not, for example, reflect the hundreds of attacks in Israel which have maimed and killed thousands of civilians in that country. Nor does this list pretend to be an exhaustive catalog all “successful” al Qaeda/Jihadist attacks in other countries. Nor does this list reflect the untold number of attacks which were foiled at the last minute by fate or quick-thinking police officers or customs agents (eg: Shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in 2001 trying to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami, the failed speedboat attack in 2000 that was apparently a “trial run” for the bombing of the USS Cole.)

***JASON ADDS: I often hear the debate between “war” and a “law enforcement issue” when one speaks of terrorism. You can pretty much tell which side of the aisle someone sits on by their answer. So which is it? I say it is both. Within the nations connected by freer trade and globalization it is clearly a law enforcement issue. They have the rule of law. They have law enforcement that is mostly integrous. Outside of that “Connected Core” as Dr Thomas Barnett would put it, it is war. So it is both/and, not either/or. Blair knows we are not going to bomb the london neighborhoods the Al Qaeda cells are located in in London. And Yemen knows they better go after their cells or we will bomb those site there. Both/And.