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Moderate Islam: is there hope?

Posted by Richard on July 31, 2005

Friday, I posted about Italian journalist Fiamma Nirenstein’s depressing look at how the friends and relatives of the Sharm el-Sheik bombing victims felt about these terrorist attacks. In a nutshell, they deplored such acts, but were certain that Muslims weren’t to blame; it had to be the work of Israelis and Americans. If that’s how "mainstream" Arab Muslims generally think, it’s grounds for serious pessimism.

Today at Winds of Change, Donald Sensing offers evidence for a contrary, more optimistic view of the future of "mainstream" Islam. He cites an AP story about prominent voices in Egypt speaking out sharply:

Stunned by terror attacks at a Red Sea resort, Egyptians are having a remarkably frank debate about whether mosques and schools — and the government itself — should be blamed for promoting Islamic extremism.

Even pro-government media say authorities have created a climate where young people are turning into radicals and suicide bombers.

The debate since Sharm has been a deepening of the soul-searching across the Arab world in recent years over whether religious interpretations need reform in the face of attacks by Muslim radicals.

The debate began, hesitantly, after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. And the voices have grown with each act of terrorism — particularly ones in the Middle East. A series of attacks in Saudi Arabia in 2003 forced that country to begin acting against extremist thought.

What was unusual about the self-criticism after Sharm was that it came from government media — and even from within the Islamic clerical hierarchy picked by the government.

"There is no use denying. … We incited the crime of Sharm el-Sheik," ran a bold red headline of a lead editorial Wednesday by Al-Musawwar’s editor in chief, Abdel-Qader Shohaib.

The bombers "are a product of a society that produces extremist fossilized minds that are easy to be controlled," Shohaib wrote.

Go read Sensing’s entire post. He has much more, and it’s not Pollyanna-ish; he’s appropriately cautious and notes some of the mixed signals (although he seems not to question the sincerity of the Fiqh Council’s recent fatwah here in the U.S.; for a more critical view, see The Counterterrorism Blog).

As usual, Little Green Footballs offers plenty of posts and links for you to chew on, and most of them don’t encourage optimism. For instance, there’s this report on British police cooperation with a leading "moderate" Muslim cleric:

British police invited the most respected Islamic cleric in Birmingham to join them in a press conference promoting cooperation between Muslims and law enforcement.

They were shocked … shocked! … when Sheikh Mohammad Naseem proceeded to call Tony Blair a liar, and said DNA evidence is meaningless, the bombing suspects could have been “innocent passengers,” and there’s no such thing as Al Qaeda.

And LGF linked to The Spectator’s fascinating new cover story, "The myth of moderate Islam" by Patrick Sookhdeo (registration required; try BugMeNot). Its picture of the Muslim community in Britain gives pause:

On 8 July the London-based Muslim Weekly unblushingly published a lengthy opinion article by Abid Ullah Jan entitled ‘Islam, Faith and Power’. The gist of the article is that Muslims should strive to gain political and military power over non-Muslims, that warfare is obligatory for all Muslims, and that the Islamic state, Islam and Sharia (Islamic law) should be established throughout the world. All is supported with quotations from the Koran. It concludes with a veiled threat to Britain. The bombings the previous day were a perfect illustration of what Jan was advocating, and the editor evidently felt no need to withdraw the article or to apologise for it. His newspaper is widely read and distributed across the UK.

Sookhdeo explains the problem with Islamic scholarship: The Koran is full of contradictory texts, so the scholars adopted

… the rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done. Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away from peace and towards war. For the peaceable verses of the Koran are almost all earlier, dating from Mohammed’s time in Mecca, while those which advocate war and violence are almost all later, dating from after his flight to Medina. Though jihad has a variety of meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed’s own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and torture.

So there is plenty of justification available for the Islamist interpretation of Islam. And Britain’s embrace of multiculturalism certainly hasn’t helped soften and modernize Muslim thinking, suggesting this frightening future (emphasis added):

British Muslims now have Sharia in areas of finance and mortgages; halal food in schools, hospitals and prisons; faith schools funded by the state; prayer rooms in every police station in London; and much more. This process has been assisted by the British government through its philosophy of multiculturalism, which has allowed some Muslims to consolidate and create a parallel society in the UK.

The Muslim community now inhabits principally the urban centres of England as well as some parts of Scotland and Wales. It forms a spine running down the centre of England from Bradford to London, with ribs extending east and west. It is said that within 10 to 15 years most British cities in these areas will have Muslim-majority populations, and will be under local Islamic political control, with the Muslim community living under Sharia.

What happens after this stage depends on which of the two main religious traditions among Pakistani-background British Muslims gains the ascendancy. The Barelwi majority believe in a slow evolution, gradually consolidating their Muslim societies, and finally achieving an Islamic state. The Deobandi minority argue for a quicker process using politics and violence to achieve the same result. Ultimately, both believe in the goal of an Islamic state in Britain where Muslims will govern their own affairs and, as the finishing touch, everyone else’s affairs as well.

Thus, according to Sookhdeo, the peaceful majority and violent minority both agree on the goal: Sharia law and dhimmitude for all the infidels. They disagree only on the means to best achieve the goal.

Sookdheo argues that Muslims must begin a difficult, painful, and profoundly fundamental reform of their faith:

They must with honesty recognise the violence that has existed in their history in the same way that Christians have had to do, for Christianity has a very dark past. Some Muslims have, with great courage, begun to do this.

Secondly, they must look at the reinterpretation of their texts, the Koran, hadith and Sharia, and the reformation of their faith. Mundir Badr Haloum has described this as ‘exorcising’ the terrorism from Islam. …

Such reform — the changing of certain fairly central theological principles — will not be easy to achieve. It will be a long, hard road for Islam to get its house in order so that it can co-exist peacefully with the rest of society in the 21st century.

He sees some indications of this happening. Read the whole thing.

Is there hope for moderate Islam? I think there are positive signs, but I wish there were more. Whenever I see a story about the future of Islam, I keep my fingers crossed and repeat to myself "the transformational power of Liberty, the transformational power of Liberty…"  

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Mars pictures from ESA

Posted by Richard on July 31, 2005

Antigravitas said, "You probably already know about the ice lake on Mars, but did you actually look at the pictures?" Actually, I didn’t even know about the ice lake, and Jack is right — the pictures are amazing. Here’s a little one:

The pictures were taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, and the image quality is really something. There are lots more at the ESA Mars Express site. Be sure to check out the glacial activity pix under Recent Images.

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Quote worth posting

Posted by Richard on July 29, 2005

Some people do a "quote of the day" or "quote of the week," but I’m not organized (or anal) enough to follow some kind of fixed schedule like that. So let’s call this the Quote Most Worthy of Posting Since the Last Quote I Posted:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C. S. Lewis

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The problem of Muslim “moderates”

Posted by Richard on July 29, 2005

Italian journalist Fiamma Nirenstein went to Sharm el-Sheik Hospital and spoke with the friends and relatives of people wounded in the terrorist bombings. They are, she said, poor workers who return to their families in the villages near Cairo for one week a month. They live ten to a room in Sharm el-Sheik and work in the tourism industry that’s the reason for Sharm el-Sheik’s existence. They are:

the typical "moderate Muslim" that the holy rage of the jihadists destroys with fury, the one infected by the contact with the West and also the one that in our Western dreams and in many European and American experts’ analyses should suddenly rise against the extreme Islam, their enemy.

So, let’s test this thesis and ask: "Do they hate terrorists?" The answer is "Yes, very much so," and they really do, – they close their fists and watch in rage and repeat to me that they deeply hope that Mr. Mubarak will catch them all, will put them in prison, will kill them. Are they ready to fight them? Yes, at every level, with their hands, if requested, and with demonstrations that actually, while I’m in Sharm, suddenly appear in the hot streets and just in front of the cameras of the international press: "Down with terrorism," "We are against terrorism"…

But then, if it’s so, why can the great moderate Muslim world not really fight their own enemy? They themselves give me the answers: "Bin Laden? The Muslim Brotherhood? Certainly the terrorist attacks are not their work, no! This is a lie. A Muslim could never do this. And if they say they do it in the name of Islam, they are not Islamic; or, most likely, this shows, like the television says, that someone uses the name of Islam just to hide the real perpetrators."

Anyhow, Islam is out of the question, And then, we ask again, who is behind the attacks? Well, you know the answer, they smile with a smart expression. Mahmoud, who comes from a periphery of Cairo, where he now cannot go back because he doesn’t have the money for a bus ticket, knows the answer, and so do all his other friends, about 10, all from the same town, now all together as one, standing in the corridor of the Hospital of Sharm, no air-conditioning, their friend Khaled in bed with a wound in his back ("I was lucky. Nadem had both of his legs amputated," Khaled says).

They know the answer, yes: the television said that only the Israelis and the Americans have a real interest in seeing Egypt on its knees; General Fuad Allam said that the perpetrators of the Taba attack of October 2004 were apparently linked to the Israeli security forces, and so, supposedly, it is today. Also Al-Jazeera and even Al-Arabia interviewed "experts" to confirm this point of view. A big, beautiful guy with a red T-shirt just puts it down bluntly: "We know only what the television tells us."

So, yes, the "moderate," mainstream Muslims deplore bombings and killings and terrorism. But that isn’t really enough, is it?

(HT: LGF)

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Alternative radio programming

Posted by Richard on July 29, 2005

The terrorist organization known as Hamas, a Wahabbi organization with funding and support from Saudi Arabia, has been firing rockets and mortars at the Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip, even as those communities prepare for their evacuation as part of the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. These attacks are expected to escalate as the evacuation date approaches.

WorldNetDaily reports that Hamas, which is wildly popular in the Gaza Strip, has been putting its official radio station to an interesting use:

Sources say Hamas operations coordinators in Gaza use the station to provide terrorists with directions such as the exact coordinates in and near Gaza City from which to launch the rockets and mortars and the trajectory to be used in firing the Qassam missiles.

Qassams, about four feet in length, lack a guidance system and are launched by terrorists using the rocket’s trajectory and known travel distance to aim at a particular Jewish community.

"The radio station is not only broadcasting incitement, but, incredibly, broadcasting military instructions to carry out attacks against Israel," said a security source.

 Of course, the Palestinian Authority acted immediately to put a stop to this outrage, right? Yeah, right:

The Palestinian Authority’s Interior Ministry recently announced on its website it would "take all the necessary legal means" against Al Aqsa Voice, which "damages national unity and is a blatant and overt violation both of the law and professional ethics."

No action was taken against the radio station. Still, Hamas, on its site, strongly condemned the Interior Ministry’s threat, calling it "a calculated blow against us and an action against the free media, [an institution] protected by all international treaties … ."

I found this to be rather bizarre:

Voice of Al Aqsa is broadcast both on FM and on the Internet with programming that routinely incites violence against Israel. The station was bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces in May 2004, but was rebuilt quickly and resumed broadcasts shortly thereafter.

The Society for Internet Research told WND the Al Aqsa Internet site is hosted by a Miami, Fla.-based company, Vault Networks. The site’s live radio stream, assigned to the "Habeeb Net Internet Cafe" in Gaza, is currently down, but the FM radio broadcast is fully functional. The Internet broadcast upstream provider is Barak ITC, a large Israeli telecommunications company.

An Israeli company? An Israeli company?? Stalin famously said that the capitalists would sell him the rope with which to hang them. Apparently, some Israelis will sell the paleostinians the bandwidth with which to kill Jews. Disgusting.

So, let’s compare and contrast, shall we?

  • The Israeli government is forcibly removing all Jewish settlers, withdrawing its forces, and turning the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority in order to demonstrate its commitment to a peaceful two-state solution.
  • The political organization that represents, by all accounts, the majority of paleostinians in the Gaza Strip, is attacking the Jewish settlers with rockets and mortars, even as they’re packing up and leaving, in order to demonstrate … um … its commitment to … um … wiping all Jews off the face of the earth.

The Western intelligentsia — when it isn’t overtly anti-Israel — argues that we must find some compromise between the two sides. What do you suppose a compromise between those two points of view would look like? How many dead Jews do you thing Hamas will accept as a "reasonable accommodation" of their "legitimate grievances"?

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Shuttle problem persists

Posted by Richard on July 28, 2005

After more than two years and a billion dollars, NASA still hasn’t solved the problem of the fuel tank foam peeling off in chunks and potentially damaging the critical shuttle tiles:

The detection of another large breakaway piece of insulating foam is a potentially devastating setback for NASA and a bitter counterpoint to the elation of the seemingly perfect launching of the Discovery, a return to flight for the shuttle fleet that was hailed as an inspiring comeback for the space program. "We decided it was safe to fly as is," Parsons said. "Obviously, we were wrong."

This seems like a good time to remember what William Anderson of the von Mises Institute pointed out just over two years ago — the Columbia crew died because of irrational environmentalism:

… the particular foam that was in use at the time was an environmental substitute replacing a material that had worked well. However, the previous foam used to insulate the Columbia’s external fuel tanks contained Freon, which is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) that the EPA banned because of the ozone depletion scare.

As Steven Milloy reports, NASA could have sought an exemption. Freon, after all, is inert and nontoxic, and its connection to ozone depletion is tenuous at best. However, having been burned by the EPA once before (as I will point out), NASA succumbed to what Milloy calls "PC foam." He writes, "PC foam was an immediate problem. The first mission with PC foam resulted in 11 times more damaged thermal tiles on Columbia than the previous mission with Freon-based foam.

Furthermore, the damage was obvious—and quite severe. Milloy writes that following the 1997 Columbia mission, "more than 100 tiles were damaged beyond repair, well over the normal count of 40."

As did the Challenger crew in 1986:

It was an unusually cold morning at Cape Canaveral, too cold for the O-rings to perform properly. That is well-known. What most people do not know is that the material used to make the O-rings was a substitute to replace a product that the Environmental Protection Agency had banned because it contained asbestos.

The original O-rings used between the rocket joints came from an over-the-counter putty that had been used safely and effectively for a long time. However, in its war against the use of asbestos anywhere, anytime, the EPA forbade NASA from using that product at all after the space agency had sought an exemption. The EPA, not surprisingly, refused that request, something that would ultimately lead to the next disaster 17 years later. The new product, not surprisingly, failed and we know the rest of the story.

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Che backlash

Posted by Richard on July 28, 2005

The backlash against the glamorization of Che continues to build. You may have seen ads for these T-shirts:

Gil Milbauer at A Reasonable Man recommends another design that’s even more direct:

I like that one. It doesn’t mince words. To get yours, or just get a chuckle from their clever and well-designed site and their other products, go to Che-Mart. It’s from the folks behind the Communists for Kerry site, which I visited several times during the election campaign (it was pretty funny), but haven’t been to since and didn’t realize was still being updated.

UPDATE: Che-Mart is being "censored by CafePress.com" — OK, it’s not censorship, since CafePress isn’t a government, but it sucks, nonetheless:

We have put a lot of work into this site – only to find out that CafePress.com is going to censor our T-Shirts and other merchandise! The anti-capitalist hero Che cannot put his face on the shirts anymore because some capitalist running pig dog oppressor has trademarked his face!

To put it more accurately, there are no restrictions on left-leaning images at CafePress.com! Slurs and hateful caricatures of George Bush are all over its shops. But making fun of Che Guevara is a big no-no!

We are not the only one – see CafePress Watch blog!

Please contact us if you have any offers, advise, or suggestions.

Trademark? How the hell can you trademark a drawing of Che? I can see a copyright, but then these shirts would be satirical fair use.

As of right now, the order page is still working, so I’ve ordered the shirt. We’ll see. Maybe it’ll become a collector’s item.

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Muslims value democracy

Posted by Richard on July 27, 2005

R.J. Rummel points out an astonishing finding from the World Values Survey: Arab Muslims value democracy more highly than any of the other group of societies covered by the survey. Other Muslims value democracy slightly less highly, but still more than most other groups. Rummel cites these findings from the studies of Muslim societies:

The major differences in values lie along two dimensions (75% of the variance) a traditional vs. secular rational dimension, or religiosity vs. economic development; and a survival values vs. self-expression (e.g., economic security over self-expression).

As low income societies, fourteen Islamic societies tend to emphasize tradition and survival values (e.g., low tolerance of outgroups such as gays and women, and low valuation of freedom of speech and political participation), except for Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran, which tend to be more secular-rational.

The correlations between secular ration[al] societies across the globe and freedom is.83.

To the statement that, "Democracy may have problems but it’s better than any other form of government," the people of five Arab countries strongly agreed. See the table below. Note with amazement how this agreement is greater than that for the sample from other regions, such as Western Europe. That for other Muslim nations is a little lower, but still greater than for Latin American and U.S./Canada/Australia/New Zealand.

Rummel’s conclusion? The Bush Doctrine is the right medicine:

As Natan Sharansky wrote in his important and informative book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, what most clearly distinguishes democracy from nondemocracies is that in nondemocracies people live in fear. We see this in the Arab countries. Th[u]s if the democratization the Arab people value is to come, it must come from pressure from the outside. In this, the Forward Strategy of Freedom of President Bush is well aligned with our understanding of the Middle East, and it is working.

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Blogarama

Posted by Richard on July 26, 2005

Blogarama - The Blogs Directory

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Blair: “Not one inch”

Posted by Richard on July 26, 2005

Courtesy of Harry’s Place, one of the islands of left-wing sanity in a sea of Chomsky-Galloway-Moore-Dean madness, here are Prime Minister Tony Blair’s remarks today regarding terrorism:

"I want to make one thing very clear to you, whatever excuse or justification people use, I do not believe we should give one inch to them.

"Not in this country and the way we live our lives here, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in our support for two states, Israel and Palestine, not in our support for the alliances we choose including with America.

"Not one inch should we give to these people.

"And I want to say this to you – I may offend people when I say this, but I am going to say it nonetheless – September 11 for me was a wake-up call.

"Do you know what I think the problem is? A lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again.

"We are not going to deal with this problem, with the roots as deep as they are, until we confront these people at every single level.

"And not just their methods but their ideas."

The prime minister slammed the "obscenity" of people saying it was "concern for Iraq" that drives them to terrorism.

"If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing them?" he asked.

"What is happening in Iraq is that ordinary decent Iraqis are being butchered by these people with the same terrorist ideology that is killing people in different parts of the world."

Blair said there should be no compromise with the "warped logic" of terrorists.

"We shouldn’t even allow them a vestige of an excuse for what they do."

In his media briefing, the prime minister also warned against the "complete nonsense" of saying there is equivalence between coalition actions in Iraq and the work of terrorists.

"It is time we stopped saying ‘ok, we abhor their methods but we kind of see something in their ideas or maybe they have got a sliver of excuse or justification’.

"They have got no justification for it.

"And one other thing I want to say while I’m on this subject, neither have they got any justification for killing people in Israel either.

"There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, Iraq, London, Egypt, Turkey, in the United States of America. There is no justification for it, period.

"And we will start to beat this when we stand up and confront the ideology of this evil. No just the methods but the ideas."

Not just the methods but the ideas. Bravo.

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A genuine hero

Posted by Richard on July 26, 2005

Go read this. Be patient, it’s a long page with lots of pictures (well-chosen and worth the wait). Go get the Kleenex while it loads.

This is the story of a genuine hero, the kind of story that, in a just universe, would be widely reported on the network and cable news shows and in the papers. It’s the story of how Capt. Brian Chontosh earned the Navy Cross, our second-highest award for combat bravery.

The story was written by journalist and broadcaster Bob Lonsberry, and the page was created by Mary Jones. The Marine Corps has the story here, and it verifies Bob’s account. But it’s dry. Bob’s words and Mary’s pictures bring the story alive, and Bob does some much-needed editorializing:

The odd fact about the American media in this war is that it’s not covering the American military. The most plugged-in nation in the world is receiving virtually no true information about what its warriors are doing.

"By his outstanding  display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty, 1st Lt. Chontosh reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service."

That’s what the citation says. And that’s what nobody will hear. That’s what doesn’t seem to be making the evening news.

Accounts of American valor are dismissed by the press as propaganda, yet accounts of American difficulties are heralded as objectivity. It makes you wonder if the role of the media is to inform or to depress – to report or to deride. To tell the truth, or to feed us lies.

But I guess it doesn’t matter. We’re going to turn out all right. As long as men like Brian Chontosh wear our uniform.

Oorah!

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Pond scum

Posted by Richard on July 26, 2005

How contemptible is this:

The family of a Marine who was killed in Iraq is furious with Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll for showing up uninvited at his funeral this week, handing out her business card and then saying "our government" is against the war.

Rhonda Goodrich of Indiana, Pa., said yesterday that a funeral was held Tuesday at a church in Carnegie for her brother-in-law, Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, 32.

She said he "died bravely and courageously in Iraq on July 10, serving his country."

[Lt. Gov. Knoll] sat down next to a Goodrich family member and, during the distribution of communion, said, "Who are you?" Then she handed the family member one of her business cards, which Goodrich said she still has.

What really upset the family, Goodrich said, is that Knoll said, ‘I want you to know our government is against this war,’ " Goodrich said.

Michelle Malkin has updates here and here. Greyhawk has more, and he ties in two other exploiters of soldiers’ funerals, Michael Moore and Fred Phelps (the "God Hates Fags" guy).

Greyhawk’s info on Phelps is a must read, as is the post he links to at USS Neverdock. It seems that Phelps isn’t some "religious right" nut after all, he’s a "religious left" nut: Democrat, civil rights lawyer (now disbarred), long-time Al Gore supporter and fundraiser, candidate for governor and senator of Kansas in Democratic primaries. The Phelpses were Gore’s guests at the ’93 and ’97 inaugurals.

So, was Knoll’s behavior more or less contemptible than this?

Vandals are compounding the grief of a Tri-state soldier’s family.

Not even 24-hours after Private First Class Tim Hines’s wife and family said goodbye at his funeral, American flags that had adorned their Fairfield yard were piled beneath a car and burned.

Hines’ sister-in-law woke up to hear her car alarm around 5:30 a.m. and saw her car on fire.

As firefighters brought the fire under control they discovered a pile of around 20 American flags underneath the car.

Neighbors say Hines’ wife’s family had flags line their front yard and on the porch.

Those were taken as well as flags in neighboring yards.

Hines was injured in Iraq and flown to Walter Reed Hospital in the Washington, D.C. area, but succumbed to the injuries before he could return home.

Hines’ wife Katy is eight-months pregnant with their second child. She buried her husband on Friday.

Katy Hines had just moved back into her parents’ home and woke up to find her sister’s car consumed by flames.

Discuss. Propose appropriate punishments for each case. Extra points awarded for creativity.

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More great reading from the Watcher of Weasels

Posted by Richard on July 25, 2005

You say you’ve read all the posts in this week’s Carnival of Liberty, and you’re looking for more good stuff to read? Well, the Watcher of Weasels is ready to help.

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on. Call it shameless link whorage, I don’t care. 🙂

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Carnival of Liberty 4

Posted by Richard on July 25, 2005

The 4th Carnival of Liberty is up at Eric’s Grumbles. Wow, what a list of entries! If I had the morning free, I’d spend it reading all these great-sounding posts. If you have some time, why not check them out? If not now, maybe later — they aren’t going anywhere.

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Greenpeace indifferent to slash-and-burn by left

Posted by Richard on July 24, 2005

Venezuela’s Hato Pinero is part cattle ranch and part nature preserve. In fact, more than two-thirds of its 190,000 acres are forests and rock formations — protected ecosystems used only for environmental research and endangered species habitat — and massive seasonally flooded savannahs — used only for minimum impact grazing during the summer (dry) months.

Experts consider Hato Pinero one of the world’s environmental treasures, housing countless endangered, rare, and unique birds (over 350 species), animals, and tropical plants (over 850). It’s been featured on the Discovery Channel, PBS’s Nature, and National Geographic. For over 20 years, it has hosted scores of research studies from the Smithsonian, the World Wildlife Fund, and other world-renowned universities and institutions. It’s also become a popular ecotourism destination and has been studied as a model of sustainable and eco-friendly use.

Now, Hato Pinero is at the brink of total destruction. The mix of environmentally sensitive ranching and ecosystem preservation will be replaced by conuco farming: a slash-and-burn technique that quickly exhausts the soil and then moves on to burn a new parcel.

Surely, in the face of such an environmental catastrophe, Greenpeace would be willing at least to issue a press release condemning the perpetrators of this outrage, right? And it would of course alert its members and urge them to write letters or something, wouldn’t it? If asked nicely?

Well, no. It wouldn’t. You see, in this instance, the preservers of Hato Pinero are [spit] private landowners, and the perpetrators of its destruction are the glorious people’s revolutionary progressive heroes, the Chavez regime, bravely confiscating the eeevil large private landholdings and turning them into essentially collective farms made up of sharecroppers under the thumb of the government. Greenpeace apparently can’t be bothered protecting environmental treasures from depredation by communists, only by capitalists.

Publius Pundit has even more links.

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