When Nature Blows

"...thousands of people simultaneously went bug-eyed and slack-jawed over the following theretofore unpredictable consequence of a big-time hurricane..."

Yesterday, Barack Obama visited the "victims" of the Iowa floods. Wasn't that special? I hear things went well, inasmuch as nobody asked him anything like the following questions:

1. Where the heck is FEMA?
   
2. When do I get my check?
   
3. What stadium should we hole up in?
   
4. How long will it be before we start to cannibalize one another?
   
5. Where are all the movie stars to lend their support?
   
6. Did the Republicans blow up the levees?
   
7. Is it true that George Bush hates rural Midwesterners?
   
8. Where will we be housed, more or less indefinitely, at taxpayer expense?
   
9. Why us? Good God, man, why is it always us?
   
10. What's the best place to start looting?

Instead, they listened politely as Obama speechified; then they got back to the business of drying out anything that was still wet, and generally getting on with their lives.

Those fools! Where is the outrage? Where are their demands?

*************

I lived through Hurricane Wilma in 2005, which, according to Wikipedia, was "...the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin." Hurricanes (like hurricane Katrina, for example!) usually give plenty of warning. We knew for several days that Wilma was coming, and that it would hit Monday morning.

So... Sunday I went out and 1) bought enough ice to fill all the coolers, 2) topped off the cars with gas, and 3) got some cash from the ATM. I already had a box in the garage marked “hurricane,” with batteries, battery powered lights, and a little battery powered TV, plus some small propane tanks that are part of the camping gear. I checked and had a full tank of propane for the grill. All that took less than an hour.

I like to procrastinate as much as the next fellow, but even I was able to manage that level of preparation.

Then the storm hit, and thousands of people simultaneously went bug-eyed and slack-jawed over the following theretofore unpredictable consequence of a big-time hurricane:

The power went out! The electrically powered gas station pumps didn’t work, so no one could buy gas who hadn't bought it already. The few enterprising gas stations with owners who eventually hooked up to generators were so popular that people sat in lines for as much as 12 hours at a time–and sometimes they still didn’t get gas, and had to return the next day for another long wait. There were occasional fistfights, and police had to manage the traffic.

As I say, the power went out. Therefore refrigerators and freezers were not functioning. After the first couple of days, a government agency was handing out bags of ice at various locations. People stood in lines for endless hours for their allotment of exactly two bags. Most of them had walked to get the ice because they happened to be the same people who hadn’t put gas in their cars prior to the storm. Then they walked home again. Before they got home, the ice had turned to water. Astonished, many of them started the whole process all over the next day, and the day after that, each time with—brace yourself—the same result!

Did I mention that the power went out? Generators were a hot commodity. Home Depot had them, in very limited supply. Three hundred people would begin to queue up four hours before the stores opened. The first thirty or forty people got generators. The rest went home and came back the next day, when (it was rumored) there might be a delivery of a few more.

Still, everybody handled the entire crisis with seamless grace and aplomb, compared with what happened in New Orleans.

In Praise of Macintosh

"[Microsoft] Windows is like the earliest Ford automobiles: you can have any operating system you want, as long as it’s bleak."

Having worked for so long on a Macintosh, a far superior (and, admittedly, slightly more expensive) computer, I have been spoiled; and have lost touch with you afflicted proletarians, toiling under the grim and unforgiving aegis of the Microsoft Death Star.

It is easy for us, the enlightened and blessed minority, to forget what it’s like out there for the vast majority of the oppressed masses, cringing virtually every moment of your waking lives under a cruel lash of conformity and enforced dysfunction.

It’s not your fault: with no chance to compare that which is imposed by your Dark Overlords with that which is freely chosen—the dull and monochrome of Windows versus the full spectrum of freedom, light and color that is the Mac—how are you to know any different? Totalitarian regimes of every age have kept their subjects in the dark, shut off from any alternative way of being.

(Windows is like the earliest Ford automobiles: you can have any operating system you want, as long as it’s bleak.)

I didn’t want to feel superior. I have always been an enemy of class distinctions, even—no, especially!—in an instance like this, when I am comfortably ensconced in the bosom of the advantaged stratum. To the ramparts! Side by side with our disadvantaged brethren!

It’s not as if your cruel masters in Redmond haven’t made valiant efforts to at least make their flagship product SEEM friendly and, well, sensible—even sort of comparable!

Look how closely (if clumsily) the desktop on your computer has impersonated the one on mine: drop-down menus—check; mouse and pointer—check; desktop “icons”—check. 

These impersonations have been cleverly instituted and insidiously established by the faceless operatives of the Dark Side—gradually, with as little fanfare as possible, so that even the most observant of observers might easily forget, by and by, where those innovations originated; and might come to concur with the Bill Gates character in the film “Pirates of Silicon Valley” that all ideas, and especially the ones that have accumulated to make up the design of my desktop (and later, yours) are just “out there somewhere”—a part of the atmosphere we all breathe—and belong, therefore, to everyone, and thus to no one.

Blizzards of legal action have been triggered by the imitation of such desktop items as the Macintosh “trash can” (on a Windows desktop, the ‘greener-than-thou’ “recycle bin”); and the switch of the default orientation of external drives, new files and the like from the right side of the desktop (Macintosh) to the left (Windows). Whoa! I bet nobody saw that coming. “Whatever do you mean? That’s COMPLETELY different and therefore original!”

The “desktop,” by the way, is itself an innovation of the Mac, “adopted” elsewhere in due course.

But let’s not split more hairs.

Here we have scratched at the surface, literally—the part of the computer we all see every day. Let’s not carry on and dissect the whole of it—including what’s under the hood—and worry over who developed what, and who “borrowed” from whom. I think that pattern has already been established. To go further can only engender ill feelings.

Yours, I mean. Not mine. I’m happy with my computer. :)

Welcome (Sort of) to AmeriKa

"We don’t know how the finest minds of the United States Congress were so fiendishly beguiled; [perhaps] some sort of brain-altering hypnotic trance..."

Dear Sir,

My wife and I are immigrants and have just completed our interview for naturalization. We hope to be sworn in, in due course, as citizens of this Great Country and be able to vote in the Nov. Presidential election. We have just been told at an Independence Day gathering that Pres. Bush has found a way to sign legislation into law, circumventing Congress, and has in fact passed several such laws (although no examples could be given). We find this very alarming. Is it true?

—Two New Citizens (maybe)

***

Dear Two New Citizens Maybe:

Sadly, it is true.

Thank you for your query. There are, as you probably know, many benefits to American citizenship, not least among them access to federal government jobs, and the right to get your whole family admitted to our shores, and likewise to get them set up with cushy government posts. What a country!

However, all is not rosy here in the so-called Land of the Free, thanks to George W. Bush and his cruel minions. You have been let in on a little secret that many long-standing citizens of this country still do not know: Bush has, indeed, found a way, as you write, to “sign legislation into law, circumventing Congress,” and he has in fact “passed several such laws.” The fact that “no examples could be given” is merely an indication of the depth and breadth of this sinister conspiracy to first destroy our Constitution and then blow up the world.

We first began to realize the power of the Bushies to influence events when they somehow persuaded the majority of Congress to vote for the “liberation” of Iraq. Liberation! What a laugh! More like, “oil grab for Halliburton”!

We don’t know how the finest minds of the United States Congress were so fiendishly beguiled (although our best guess is some sort of brain-altering hypnotic trance imposed by means of laser beams and subliminal messages broadcast on C-Span).

The important thing is that we know it WAS done; and furthermore, that it was not a “one-off” event, because every time a vote has come up in Congress to continue to fund this illegal war of genocide against the freedom fighters of Al Qaeda, the vote has ultimately gone Bush’s way. Coincidence? Not likely.

Setting aside the issue of HOW these evil pranks have been played, there remains the question of WHY. Are Bush and his foul cohort simply evil beings?

We’re thinking: yes! They’re Republicans, after all, which means they are all sexually repressed, moralizing, war-mongering, Bible-thumping retards with one brain between them (Karl Rove’s).

Stupid but devious, Bush’s vile toadies are running things now, and none of us are safe. They are spying on us all—listening to our phone calls, intercepting emails, snooping in our library records, and probably reading our very thoughts somehow.

They torture prisoners by squirting water in their noses; imprison enemy combatants without as much as a by-your-leave; and carry on their wicked foreign policy as if all the problems in the world were caused by terrorists and assorted foreign troublemakers, instead of the real source: the Dark Lord Dick Cheney.

It’s a grim picture, to be sure. But even a vicious parasite like George W. Bush can’t hold on to power forever. Come November, a new breeze with blow across this country, and it will carry with it a message of Hope and Change, Change and Hope as it purges the foul, stale stench of Republican chicanery from our weary midst.

And you, new citizens, will share in a new kind of Amerika. Welcome!

Man Versus the Asteroid

"...we are incapable of 'raping' the environment; the most sinister effect we can have... is to pester it a little, and briefly at that."

[The following is a response to this article.]

Jan— Thanks for sending me your paper, “Global Warming is a Controversial Political Football.”

I am at a disadvantage, not having been able to read either Jack Rabideau’s or Jon Frangipani’s articles, but as you can see, that significant handicap doesn’t prevent me from barging into the discussion anyway.

You write that nowhere in Mr. Frangipani’s article, to which Mr. Rabideau’s article is apparently a response, is global warming mentioned. It is worthy that you point that out, if for no other reason than to frame the terms of the discourse; furthermore if Mr. Rabideau wrote primarily about global warming in response to an article on another subject, he has done you and his other readers a disservice—a 'bait and switch.'

I'm pleased that you agree that “He [Mr. Rabideau] is correct about the Earth’s ability to rejuvenate and rehabilitate itself.”

I concur that the Earth will be just fine, by and by, without us (unless the asteroid strikes!) and can easily slough off any effects, negative or otherwise, of our brief sojourn here. I would say further that we would be hard pressed to have ANY impact that would outlive us for long.

One example: we only recently, in the scheme of things, discovered the pyramids of Chichén-Itzá and Teotihuacan, which the Mayans and their predecessors surely thought were destined to last forever, but which nature promptly proceeded to wreck and then hide from prying eyes for about a millennium.

Your generous assessment of some of Mr. Rabideau’s salient points (“allow me to first debate in favor of Mr. Rabideau’s point of view”) reflects well on you. However, you show your teeth a bit in your reference to “…we humans with all our pollution and raping of the environment…”

I have to say we are incapable of “raping” the environment; the absolute most sinister effect we can have on the Earth, assuming we really put our devious minds to it, is to pester it a little, and briefly at that—and furthermore, that whatever temporary ill effects we may have can be effects that only annoy and even maybe endanger us, but not the planet.

Having said that, I do agree with you: We ARE stewards, of a sort, of the tiny sliver of Earth’s crust upon which we fancy ourselves holding sway; but remember that we have taken on that responsibility voluntarily, with the best of intentions, and deserve full credit for it. All those who curse mankind for its very existence (the most rabidly “environmentalist” of the environmentalists) should try to bear that in mind.

You write: “I can not find anything wrong with having compassion and acting responsibly when it comes to the environment.” I can’t either. And I challenge anyone to present a cogent argument to the contrary.

Where people differ is in the emphasis. Is this given thing a big deal, or just nature doing what it will? Is that other thing not to be bothered about, or is it an existential foreshadowing of planetary doom?

In whose estimation—and when—does a “concern” become a “crisis”? A local event, like the water in the Everglades, doesn’t cut much ice on, say, most of the continent of Africa, since every day is Earth Day when you wake up on earth, scratch at it all day for enough food to stay alive, and then sleep on it again that night.

Here again, the “developed” countries take a beating they don’t deserve. Because environmental stewardship is an ethical construct to which only the denizens of the “developed” countries have given any thought, to their—our—everlasting credit.

Everlasting, that is, until we go extinct, or the asteroid hits.

Women Entombed

Entombed is, I think, precisely the right word to describe the condition of women under the authority of the Islamic “fundamentalists” in those parts of the world where Shariah law holds them in its grip—entombed in their houses, and entombed in their head-to-toe shrouds.

Where, on the subject of such women, are the voices of that significant faction of the Left, the feminists? Is the enslavement of some women acceptable to that faction? How about the rest of the package: genital mutilation, forced marriages replete with beatings and all manner of other abuses, “honor” killings, and stoning for (suspected) adultery? Do the feminists of the West simply regard such atrocities as part of the “culture” of Islamic societies and thus somehow beyond serious reproach?

Did Western women deserve their own emacipation from tired old restrictions, their individuality encouraged and cherished, their hopes nurtured and celebrated and regarded as a birthright—but not those other women? Some of us were under the impression that the aspirations of the feminists were universal (they kept telling us just that)—that all women sought the same degree of liberation, and deserved it, and had it coming.

The feminists evidently fought battles and scored what they regarded as victories not for WOMEN, but for SOME WOMEN. Women like them: women in the West—that is to say, women who had the good fortune to be born somewhere other than under the grim and suffocating cloak of Islamic tyranny.

“Sexism” is a word we used to hear with great frequency—as defined in the West as describing something akin to the malediction that “women don’t belong in ________ (fill in the blank)”. But if some males in the West harbored “Neanderthal” notions of women’s “place,” even the least evolved among us were absolute pikers compared to those who believe that:

“Allah made women deficient in religion, in intellect, and in emotions…” 

“…the righteous women are devoutly obedient…” 

“Scourge them and beat them…”

Those are just a few tidbits describing the attitudes of half a billion men in the so-called Muslim world, give or take a few (and of an increasing number of Muslim men in the West as well). There is of course a great deal more—a whole host of strictures regarding the insufficiency of women to conduct their own lives without brutal and uncompromising supervision.

Aforementioned are clitorectomies (too clinical a word for removing what are regarded as the dangerous parts of a female with a sharp rock or a piece of glass) without benefit of either anesthesia or antiseptics; forced marriages, often to much older men, and just as often to complete strangers, who are enjoined to “scourge them and beat them” if they displease in any way; “honor” killings, wherein a selected (male) member of the family is tasked with murdering a wayward female relative who has deviated from the “true path”—that is, from her prescribed obligations under the cruel rubric of medievalist dogma.

What have the feminists of the West to say about these lively activities? Is a pass given to such atrocities because they happen “over there” and are therefore none of the business of the inhabitants of the West? Wither the universal sisterhood? Did it never exist?

If not, then fine. But if Western progenitors of women’s rights are going to keep to their own backyard and their own provincial concerns—their very own rights and privileges, and no one else’s—they should bear in mind that as goes the rest of the world, so goes their little corner, too, thanks to the languid attitude among the chattering classes in the West toward the encroachment of creeping Islamism, and its attendant and inevitable barbarities.

Islamic fundamentalism is coming; indeed in some parts of Europe and North America, it is already here. Honor killings, to take one stark example, have occurred with ever-greater frequency in Canada and the United States in this, the 21st century.

It will happen again—as will many more incidents of the same sort. So the question remains: whither the sisterhood? And for that matter, wither the men of the Left, who marched in solidarity with the feminists, and called themselves feminists, too?

If the feminists of the West don’t care about women elsewhere—and evidently they don’t—what will it take to energize them to what will soon enough become their very own cause? Will they not protest, at last, until their own entombment is upon them?

My Fellow Americans

An Open Letter to Two New American Citizens

Well, now look what you’ve done. Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten yourselves into.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s start at the beginning:

I know where you two are from; everyone else might as well know it, too. South Africa! Afrique de Sud! Land of vast wine farms, thanks to the French. Land of row upon row of citrus trees, thanks to the Dutch. Land of tea time and parliamentary impulses, thanks to the Brits. A far-flung outpost of the British Empire. If Australia is the Wonder Down Under, you are expatriates from the Wonder Not Quite So Far Down Under.

Boers, you are. Dutchmen, perhaps, if you’ll pardon my saying so. And worse: beneficiaries of the stain of—Apartheid!

You BASTARDS! Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just that I’ve heard a lot about you people over the last few decades, and none of it has been good. Never mind that you were born into that system, and didn’t have much to say about it. As you will soon see, that kind of excuse doesn’t cut any ice around here.

Which brings me to your newly acquired citizenship. You thought being responsible for Apartheid was rough. Now you’ve taken on the mantle of American citizenship, which makes you complicit in so much more. To wit:

1) GENOCIDE AGAINST AMERICA’S INDIGINOUS PEOPLE! You are Americans now. You may as well have personally passed out smallpox-infested blankets to the Indians (sorry, I mean the 'Native Americans').

2) SLAVERY! As American citizens, you may be tempted to protest that you sacrificed 600,000 lives in a civil war to end slavery. Don’t give me that guff. For all the textbooks know, you invented slavery. Hang your heads in shame.

3) CAPITALISM! Just because your so-called “free market system” has made you an economic powerhouse and the envy of the world, and just because wherever people emulate that system they prosper, there are still poor people on the planet, so obviously your fancy-pants capitalism doesn’t work.

4) GLOBALIZATION! You’re Americans now, and it’s all your fault that societies on the other side of the world aren’t nearly as quaint as they used to be. Maybe they liked being impoverished and without hope. Who are you to say? Whose business is it of yours to go barging into their countries, offering them jobs and technology and “outsourcing” your prosperity?

5) FOREIGN AID! Sure, it sounds nice that you give more aid to other countries than anyone else. But who says they want your lousy aid? Sure, they accept it, and maybe it saves a few hundred thousand lives every year; but have you thought about the impact it has on their self-esteem? Didn’t think of that, did you, cowboy?

I’ll stop there. There is plenty more for you to feel guilty about, but as just-minted American citizens, you can only absorb so much at a time. When you're ready, all you have to do is turn on the news to learn much more about how bad you really are.

Having said all that…

Now that you really are Americans, I can let you in on a little secret: all that stuff is rubbish.

The best thing about being Americans is... we're better than everybody else. It’s true!

We invented everything. (Go ahead, try to think of ten things we didn’t invent.)

We rule the planet through commerce and culture. We’re the economic engine that runs the world, and everybody everywhere wants to get on board.

We have the mightiest military the world has ever seen (and it has seen quite a few). Our enemies fear us; our friends rely on us. We can be anywhere in four hours, if we’re not there already.

People envy us and even hate us; but the ones who can afford it can’t wait to send their kids here to get an education. We have a problem keeping people out of our country. (Most other countries have a problem keeping them in.)

We write more books. We read more books. We know more. We are smarter, richer, and better looking than everybody else.

And we owe all that to people like you.

America is made up of people like you—people from somewhere else. We are all from somewhere else. This country is made up of people who wanted more, and had the courage and determination to go find it.

Your average Ivan or Ng or Pablo—or Johannes—doesn’t pick up and leave his country of birth, no matter how unhappy he is. He’s too frightened, or lazy, or complacent. It takes a special kind of person to do what you did—what all Americans have done since the beginning. Those are the kind of people we want here. Risk-takers. Dreamers. Hard workers. People like us.

People like you. Welcome, my fellow Americans.

"I Want to Take Those Profits..."

The noted economist Hillary Clinton had it right, back in 2007, when she said, “The other day the oil companies reported the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits, and I want to put them in a strategic energy fund, that will begin to fund alternative smart energy alternatives and technologies that will begin to actually move us towards the direction of independence.”

Right on, Sister! All power to the State!

Bugger those oil companies, with their fancy “exploration” and their offshore platforms (not off OUR shores, thank Congress). They make too much money. If we take it all away from them, we can… well, we can do something with it, that’s for sure. Maybe we’ll do like Hillary said, and begin to start to do something to maybe kind of move us in a certain sort of direction.

We’ll “take those profits,” and those oil company creeps will just have to keep drilling for more (only not around here, or course; not around here); and if they make more profits, we’ll be right there to punch them in their capitalist faces and take their profits again, and send them back to bring us more oil. And they’ll do it, too, and keep doing it, because… because we’ll pass a law!

“Henceforth, everybody in the oil business will keep pumping oil—with certain restrictions—and refining oil—with certain restrictions—and despite those restrictions they will simultaneously make the price of oil come down somehow; and if they make any profits, they will hand them over. And furthermore, they will continue to produce more oil. Somehow.”

We need alternatives and technologies, like Hillary said. And the only way to do that is to have government take charge. We sure can’t expect the so-called “private sector” to do it. When is the last time you heard of some “entrepreneur” inventing some kind of alternative to anything? Or some “private industry” types developing a new technology?

We need government action! Especially now, with oil prices so much higher than ever before. Coal? Too dirty. Nuclear power? Too scary. Wind farms off the coast of Nantucket? Forget about it.

No, those oil companies are going to have to keep pumping oil, and selling it cheap. And all they need to do is observe the following very few, extremely reasonable restrictions already in place:

• No drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  
• No exploring for oil in the Pacific Ocean.
  
• No exploring for oil in the Atlantic Ocean.
  
• No more drilling (enough, already) in the Gulf of Mexico.
  
• None of that icky oil shale business.
  
• No more building refineries or fixing up old ones.
  
• No drilling anywhere in the good old U.S.A. except where they are already drilling—and we might decide they should stop drilling in those places, too.
  
• No drilling anywhere else around here, either. Let the Chinese do it.
  

We also propose that we:

1. Tax “windfall profits” on oil companies. It worked like a charm in the 1970’s. (Ok, maybe it didn’t; but there is no reason to think that doing exactly the same thing again won’t work now.)
2. Prosecute the oil company executives for “price gouging” just as soon as we figure out what that really means.
3. Carry on the same policies we have had for the last few decades, which WOULD have resulted in lower prices and nicer alternatives by now if those oil company guys weren’t such rapacious bastards.
4. Drag the oil company CEO’s in front of congressional committees and read them the riot act. (Actually, we've done that already, but let’s do it again and be REALLY MEAN this time.
5. Go ask the Saudis to pump more oil, and sell it to us cheaper. (Actually, we've done that already, too, but let’s do it again and ask REALLY NICE this time.)

We have a clear and comprehensive energy policy. Our plan is to reduce the use of oil while keeping it abundant and cheap by forcing the oil companies to produce it while drilling absolutely nowhere. In the opinion of your government, there is no reason this plan shouldn’t work. (And if it doesn’t, we’ll know who to blame.)

The Shadow of the Sword

“Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion.” —Tony Blair

“Islam is a religion of peace.” —George W. Bush

“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! ...Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]… Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword!” —Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

If you don't know which one is right, you haven’t been reading your Koran.

We might as well start off right here with the usual chin music about how “most Muslims are peaceful and blah, blah blah…” It’s a fact. Most Muslims didn’t pick the religion; they were born into it. To them, it seems to have its good points; and it sure helps keep the kids in line. Still…

Most Muslims don’t strap bombs to themselves or fly airplanes into buildings; but at least a reported 28% admit that they think activities like that are justified “in some cases.” That’s also a fact, whether we like it or not (we don’t).

It’s a topic of discussion that has the demonstrated capacity to drive its enthusiasts to homicide. Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali collaborated in Denmark with Theo Van Gogh (a distant descendant of the painter) to make a seemingly harmless little film about some of the travails of women under Islam; Van Gogh was murdered in the street for his trouble. Hirsi Ali has been under round the clock protection ever since: the killer left her a threatening letter spiked into his victim’s chest. According to that young enthusiast and a lot of others of his ilk, the like-minded devotee who kills Hirsi Ali gets a one-way, first-class ticket to paradise.

Speaking of Denmark, a few cartoons get published and there are riots in the streets. More than a hundred people die in the aftermath.

Speaking of riots, thousands run amok in Paris night after night, setting cars and buildings on fire. The authorities blame the “unrest” on “disaffected youth” and possibly “marginalization” and maybe even “racism.” But nobody’s fooled by the doubletalk, including the ones doing the doubletalking. They’re just trying to manage the havoc.

Speaking of havoc… the Pope quotes a leader of the long-gone Byzantine Empire and his observation that Islam has been spread by the sword (see the Ayatollah, above). More riots ensue, more people die. More “disaffected youth” march in the streets and clamor in London parks waving signs that say, “BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM,” and “SLAUGHTER THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM” and “BUTCHER THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM.” The message: “Kill anyone who says ours is a violent religion.”

The problem is that Islam HAS been spread by the sword - or the threat of the sword. The great armies of Islam weren’t overrunning southern Europe to ring doorbells and sell cookies. There was mass killing, and lots of children and women sold into slavery, and copious booty carried away. There was plunder, wreck and ruin.

But that was then; what does that have to do with now? Why bring all that unpleasantness up? Besides, “the Crusades were violent, too, and blah, blah, blah..." That’s also a fact.

Setting aside all the historical arguments against that comparison, the comparison still doesn't wash; we are left with a single, unimpeachable fact: one group's violence doesn't mitigate another's. And here is a comparison we should make, and should keep in mind: the Crusades ended centuries ago; the Islamists are killing people now. Perhaps we should march in the streets to protest the launching of the eighth Crusade. Weren't the first seven enough? Let's make a note to get a consensus going on that, just as soon as we deal with what is happening in the world today.

The issue looms large, and promises to loom larger. The most popular name for newborns in England today is Mohammad. There are Muslim neighborhoods that are off limits to the police - in France. But that’s Europe’s problem, n’est-ce pas? No, it’s ours, too. Because there are plenty of imams (Islamic clerics) right over here on our side of the pond who dream out loud about the day when “the banner of Islam will fly over the White House.” How will that be accomplished? I refer you again to the words of the Ayatollah.

And they don’t just dream it; they mean it to happen. The religion tells them that the world is divided into “dar al-Islam” and “dar al-harb”: the House of Islam and the House of War. The House of Islam is wherever Islam rules over every aspect of life, including government, law, and every conceivable thought, word and deed.

The House of War is everywhere else. The Ayatollah wasn’t the only one who recognized that his religion says it is required of every Muslim to make war on everyone, everywhere - until Islam rules the earth. When they talk about the inhabitants of the House of War, they mean us. That’s what the religion keeps reminding the imams, and that’s what they keep reminding the masses.

There is timelessness to the religion of Islam that most Westerners have trouble understanding. Mohammad lived in a violent world - but then again, he was committing a lot of the violence. And Islam says that he was the ideal man, the absolute best ever, and the example every Muslim should emulate, forever. Not just sort of emulate except for the icky parts; not an example that needs to be reformulated for modern times, like substituting the word “pester” for every instance of the word “kill”; but an absolute and timeless way for every true Muslim to behave.

To our modern sensibilities, lively activities like beheading enemies, stoning women to death, and cutting off people’s hands and feet seem a tad harsh. But Islam says that Mohammad did all these things, and ordered all these things to be done - and that no one should presume to improve on his example. Even ostensibly moderate leaders in ostensibly moderate Muslim countries are of the opinion that even if beheadings and stonings and cutting off the hands of thieves aren’t standard practices currently, they will be, once “purely Islamic” government is in place.

The traditions are designed to carry on. And so are the old hostilities. In Mohammad’s time, on the Arabian Peninsula, the Muslims were few and the Jews were many; the Jews represented a real threat to the burgeoning plan to spread the new religion far and wide (plus there was booty to be had by attacking the Jews).

The Jews, who today amount to one quarter of one percent of the world’s population, and are only a tiny fraction of the people residing in the Middle East, still give Muslims the vapors. The Islamists can’t get over their ancient grudges because their religion tells them that the holy books say what they say, and nothing has really changed; and furthermore, that to abandon those old grievances means abandoning their religion. Christians may be born with Original Sin, but the Muslims are born with Original Anger, and a mandate to remake the world in the image of a seventh century warlord.

There are a host of problems particular to the parts of the world that consider themselves Muslim land. And there is an almost unwavering conviction, handed down over fourteen centuries and still going strong, that the problems in those countries will disappear if they just get a little more Islamic - that the source of all the trouble is not too much religion, but not enough of it.

Meanwhile, since they’re having so much trouble getting the purest of Islamic societies off the ground in those countries, why not branch out into Europe, where tolerance is practically a religion in itself? What more fertile ground to impose an imperialist and autocratic theocracy than a region of the world steeped, as is Europe, in self-effacement and self-castigation and rendered utterly incapable of defending its own traditions? Multicultural claptrap evidently means never being allowed to cast a critical eye on any culture… except one’s own.

We in North America need to remember that what is happening in Europe now will happen here later - and not necessarily much later.

Christians have been proselytizing since the beginning, so trying to convert the unconverted isn’t specific to any religion, including Islam. There has been blood spilled and ample cruelty committed in the name of Christianity. The difference is that the violence wasn’t built into Christianity; it’s not part of the fabric of the religion – and it has always been lamented afterward. None of that is true of Islam, where everything good that has ever happened is “…thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword.”

The One True Religion

Muslims have the One True Religion. How do we know? Some of them have told us, and continue to tell us, in word and in deed (mostly deed). This is a great blessing for the world, because it means we can all stop looking for the One True Religion. More importantly, we can all stop wasting time believing in any of the others.

For thousands of years the Jews thought they had the One True Religion. (Some believe it still, but the Muslims will correct that error in due time; they're working on it now.)

When the Christians came along they were quite sure they had it; and just to finalize the matter, they invented Hell, and told the Jews that they were welcome to go there, and good riddance. Such was their confidence that they had invented the One True Religion.

And such has been the confidence of every other religion. There have been a million or so of them cobbled together, used for a time, and discarded once another one came along that showed more promise. Some of them last only a little while; some last for thousands of years. There are at least 10,000 religions in the world today, flickering in and out of existence. And no one has ever been able to prove that any one of them is not the True One.

Every single religion comes equipped with the sublime and inerrant Word of God. It is not just the Word, but the final Word, the real thing, and an absolutely genuine article. Timeless and unchanging, the Word is carved into the lofty stone faces of mighty mountains. It is written in the stars. It is unerring and everlasting, the great and inarguable Word of the Supreme Creator. Not a single letter is out of place. It is perfect from start to finish. It is infallible. Every version of it is infallible.

Consider, for example, the Old Testament verse that talks about "...the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof..." Foolish people will make the mistake of believing that it is a misprint of some kind. But nothing could be farther from the truth; there are no misprints in holy books. It is our problem if we happen to be unfamiliar with cud-chewing, hoofed bunny rabbits, like the ones they must have had back in Old Testament times.

Everyone waits for the final, revealed Word of God - waits patiently. Some groups wait centuries; some wait millennia. Some don't even know they were waiting; when it is revealed to them it's a surprise - they thought they already had it and the matter was settled previously. Fortunately for them, the recipients of the current eternal Word of God always stand ready to set them straight.

Thus, the Word of God is always eternal - for a while. Each iteration of the final and everlasting Word of God cancels out all the others, no matter how long the previous ones have been in business. And each is exactly as final and as unquestionable as the ones that came before - not to be doubted, not to be trifled with.

Some religions pass along the New Eternal Truth in a casual way, by word of mouth. But all the long-lasting, big-time religions come standard with their own manual; and contained within each manual is the specially revealed Word of God - revealed at last and exclusively to a particular group of people, with the instruction that they spread the news.

And spread it they do, with dogged and steadfast diligence.

Every religion has in common the certainty, among its admirers, that it, at last, is the One True Religion, and that the ones that came before it were merely vile and evil pretenses. And most religions also have in common the conviction that the rest of the world needs to join the One True Religion, and be quick about it.

For it angers people to the point of homicide that there are others in the world who carelessly go on believing their own brand of religion while the One True Religion is finally available.

Anyone who doubts the arrival of the One True Religion needs to be persuaded, and the persuasion can take many forms. Sometimes it is something mild, like shunning (tame as shunning may be, some people can't bear it for long). Sometimes it is relatively severe, like slaughtering every man, woman, child and farm animal on this side of the horizon. But no matter the details, the intention is the same. The point to be made is that the One True Religion is here, and the matter is settled.

Most religions regard themselves as 'inclusive.' Indeed, most are inclusive to a fault - a bloody fault. They insist that everyone join: not just people who foolishly cling to their old religions, despite the new evidence; but also people who don't have a religion at all, and therefore might be regarded as members of a non-competing group. Indeed, those with no religion tend to anger the believers of the each successive One True Religion most of all.

Lately some Muslims have begun crowding the edges of our consciousness to tell us that the search for the One True Religion is over, and they have the manual to prove it. They’ve had the religion and the manual for a while, but just recently have begun to get our attention in some very spectacular ways.

And we really have no good reason to believe they are not in possession of the real One True Religion, at last. Who are we to argue, we wretched believers in other things - or no things? They have much on their side of the case. Ardor, conviction, devotion and fervor mark their attitude toward the whole business. And enthusiasm. Great howling storms of enthusiasm.

Islam is no casual sort of religion that you pick up on one day of the week and set aside the other six. It is a comprehensive enterprise, with a million and one rules already, and more being discovered every day. There is not a scant detail of life that has escaped notice in the manual and its accompanying rulebooks, and no measure that can’t be enforced upon the whole crowd of us through tireless and ruthless vigilance.

Some measures may seem a bit harsh to some of us at first - like those regarding how to punish assorted miscreants (thieves, adulterers, unbelievers, murderers, women in colorful clothes, and so on). But there is nothing that human beings cannot learn to accept as commonplace, given time; and no amount of blood is too much to spill in the service of the One True Religion.

It is no small thing that some of the more animated devotees of the Muslim faith are willing to share their way of life with us - share it relentlessly, forcefully, unflinchingly. They know that theirs is a superior way to live; they know it not by evidence, but by feeling, by conviction. And they are so thoroughly interested in our welfare that they mean for us to know it, too.

Chicken Little Went to Town

"One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when—KERPLUNK—an acorn fell on her head. "'Oh my goodness!' said Chicken Little. 'The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king.'"

Al Gore has come a long way since the days when he was moping around the house in his bathrobe all day, looking under the sofa cushions for his misplaced presidential election victory. He grew fat; he grew a beard. His future looked grim.

Al was having a tough time getting over being robbed, in 2000, of his chance to take joyrides on Air Force One. And even some of his hardcore fans hadn't forgotten the slightly tawdry spectacle of those endless vote recounts during which the Al-Gore-For-President Creative Recount Team struggled mightily to include, on their side of the ledger, hanging chads, pregnant chads, and even chads that weren't pregnant yet but hoped to start a family some day.

The whole thing looked a bit unsporting, and that wasn't the only thing. Al is rumored to have a tendency to polish the apple just a little too much, like allegedly claiming that he and Tipper were the inspiration for the book and movie Love Story; or that he exposed the trouble at Love Canal, even though, strictly speaking, he didn’t; or that he "took the initiative in creating the internet," and so on.

But that’s all behind him now. Even the coveted Presidency is nothing compared to Al’s accomplishments of late. George W. got to be President of the United States, but big deal: Al got to be Captain Earth!

It’s been a wild ride. Books. A docu-drama. An academy award. An Emmy. And then… the Nobel Prize!

Al won the Big Enchilada—and for peace, no less! So what if Planet Al hasn't contributed anything to peace, specifically? Neither did any of the recent menagerie of Peace Prize recipients, like the vile terrorist toad, Yassir Arafat. Or that perennial embarrassment, Jimmy Carter, for that matter - although Yassir and Jimmy did talk a good game on the subject. Or Rigoberta Menchu, that fraud, who proved that even lying, Marxist, gravy train hobos like herself can still get a fast plane ride to Stockholm if the political tailwinds are favorable.

Still, who would have believed that there was a Nobel on the shelf for Al? How do you motivate a bunch of old ninnies who live in a place guaranteed to have nine months a year of brain-numbing sub-Arctic cold at the absolute northern edge of nowhere - how do you get that crowd whipped into a fearful frenzy about the WARMING of anything?

Well, you can’t. The fact is that they gave the peace medallion to Al for other reasons. (“Castigate the industrial West and win a prize!”)

Arafat, Carter, Menchu, et al - those awards are not the hoof prints of your standard collection of conservationist crackpots and free-range tree huggers. Al’s global enthusiasms are beside the point. The Nobel panel is a different sort of beast - a political animal. “Bugger the details of this global warming thing,” seemed to be the general tone on the Prize Committee. “I like the cut of this Gore fellow’s jib.”

During the Deluge According to Al, the oceans will rise up and swamp the arid precincts of Kansas and Missouri. We'll be fishing for trout off ledges in the Rockies, and there will be beachfront property high in the Appalachian Mountains. Suntan enthusiasts will compete with moon shiners for the best spots to spread out.

And who’s to say Al isn’t right? Who can prove it? Everybody likes to drag out the 70's version of this story - global cooling - as if they've uncovered some grand canard. Sure, global cooling hasn’t come to pass just yet. But so what? This isn't over, and it never will be. The globe will be cooling and warming and cooling again forever, and nobody will ever be able to prove that it's not our fault.

Surely every blink of the human eye is a horrible affront to Nature. It must be so. What else are we to think, when there are surely too many of us for our own good; when our very existence fouls the land and the water, and every breath we exhale helps convert the oceans to a boiling, toxic stew? Or so say Chicken Little, and Henny Penny, and Cocky Locky, and Goosey Poosey. And Al.

From Zero Population Growth through The Late Great Planet Earth, from the ozone layer to global cooling to global warming - right through to whatever comes next - stalwart nags like Al have been telling the true believers that WE are the problem for so long, we reflexively roll over and beg for forgiveness, and for further instruction on how to do better - how to leave a smaller, lighter ‘footprint’ upon the sad and angry face of the Earth.

The Earth hates us; we know that now, thanks to Al and his friends. Yes, fish befoul the water with their effluvium, and never give it a thought. But fish are part of Nature, whereas we are... something else.

Besides, there's money in this thing. Companies like the one Al is invested in can sell "carbon credits" the way the Vatican used to sell Papal indulgences, and who's the wiser?

Al’s really onto something this time. He’s a Big Picture guy, and the picture doesn’t get any bigger than this. Why settle for even a grand role on the great stage when he can be Captain Earth? What’s more important than Everything in the World, and the world, too?

March of the Confused

Extremely confused demonstrators in front of the White House.

There is straightforward honesty in that sign, whatever its other shortcomings: "CAN U TELL THE DIFFERENCE [between Bush, Hitler, Israel, and Nazi Germany]? I CAN'T."

There may be a few other things these two haven't quite figured out just yet.

I won't be the first to point out that If they had tried this in front of Hitler's house, their confusion would have been very short-lived.

The Saudis: Very Foreign Policy

Audience with King Saud, December, 1932

Hello, Your Majesty! I know you’re a busy man, what with the new government and all the wives and kids and the squabbling among the tribes and whatnot, so I’ll get right to the point:

Have I got a deal for you! Bear with me while I outline the plan. You see, we have this thing we call oil. You may know it as that stuff that sometimes gets the camels’ feet all black and sticky. You chaps over here don’t have any use for it, but where I come from in the Heathen West, we’re crazy about the stuff.

So here’s what we want to do: first, we run around all over our side of the world developing a fine appetite for everything about oil. We do it all: we invent machines that need it, develop whole new technologies that use it, and come up with processes to turn it into all kinds of useful stuff. In other words, we create a huge market for it!

Next we send some people over to explore for oil in your neighborhood —with your kind permission, of course, sir!

Did I mention this is a no-lose proposition for you? See, if we don’t find any oil, we just go away! No cost, no obligation on your part, and sorry we bothered you.

But if we do find some oil — well, King, this is your lucky century! We’ll send our engineers over here to get it out of the ground; pump it and ship it and tidy up afterward; and (here comes the really good part) pay you so much for it that you’ll be rich beyond imagining!

That’s right! Instead of, say, killing you and taking your oil (the way you guys have always done things, if you don’t mind me saying so), we’ll make a deal with you to pay you enormous sums of money to take the oil away!

But wait, there’s more! We’ve done our homework, sir, and we happen to know that you’ve already made arrangements with the Wahhabis and various other wild and crazy local boys who happen to infest your fine sandbox over here, to sort of let them call the shots, religion-wise, if you just stick to the governing thing. And a fine arrangement it is, Your Grace. You’re a sly fox, you are! Because they’re a bloodthirsty bunch, if you’ll pardon my candor, and anything you can do to keep that crowd in line is well worth the effort.

See, here’s where we come in again. We are going to pay you so much for oil that you can dole out goodies to those rascals and keep them occupied running madrassas and raving in mosques until the camels come home. And just in case they still get a little restless once in a while, they can go raise hell with somebody over the borders somewhere, and leave you alone.

Now we also recognize that occasionally those rascals of yours are going to wander a little far off the reservation (as we say back home), and we might even find some of them causing trouble in our neck of the woods. Not to worry! As long as the oil keeps flowing, you’re an ally and that’s all there is to say about it.

Want to build a few madrassas in our neighborhoods? No skin off our noses. The radical lads want to get a nice head of steam and blow up a few things? Who are we to object too much? A deal is a deal, and that’s just the way it is.

You see, we have our own bunch of troublemakers, so we know what you’re going through.

It’s because of them that we don’t just drill for oil in our own backyard and keep all the proceeds for ourselves. And it’s because of them that we’ll make deals with the likes of you, Your Majesty, and risk having your religious rejects come over to our part of the globe to preach hellfire and ritual beheadings to the locals, and maybe even knock down a few buildings.

So what do you say, Your Kingship, Sir? Have we got a deal?

Saint Icon of the Rubble

The LEBANESE PIETA
...as promulgated by the New York Times.

Miraculously, the unfortunate young man lying across the center of the photo was seen later, alive and well, and ready for his next photo op.

For details on this and other photo frauds - as well as information about careers in the highly lucrative field of VERY creative news reporting - see ZombieTime

Take a Terrorist Home With You

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your recent letter voicing your concerns regarding our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington.

You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the efforts of citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the terrorist retraining program. We call this new division the "Liberals Accepting Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your very own detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you may just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you demanded in your letter.

Above all, please heed the large orange notice attached to his cage: "DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS."

Although Ahmed is an extremely violent sociopath, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his "understandable attitude problem" will help him overcome these character flaws. We hope you are correct in describing his problems as mere "cultural differences" with heretofore neglected "root causes." Perhaps your plan to offer counseling will turn out to be just what he needs.

It may be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. Note that your detainee's meal requirements are simple, but we strongly suggest serving meals that do not require utensils, particularly knives and forks.

Your adopted terrorist may bite you, given the chance, but the results of his rabies test have so far been negative, so there is probably no reason to worry. He is also very proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We suggest that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group.

Furthermore, Ahmed is expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend him.

Your adopted terrorist will not wish to interact with the female members of your family (except sexually) since he views women as subhuman. However, he will be eager to assist with the religious education of your sons. And rest assured that Ahmed absolutely loves animals, especially cats and dogs. He prefers them roasted, but raw is fine, too, if they have not been dead for more than two or three days.

I want to thank you personally for taking on this responsibility; and if you have any advice for us regarding how to provide care for drug addicted, homicidal schizophrenics, I encourage you to share those views with us as well.

We can always use the help.

Cordially,
George W. Bush

The Clan of the Porpoise Heads

Peering out of the rubber mouth, the woman wearing the big porpoise head expressed frustration that her objections to free trade were not being taken seriously.

She and her cohorts, all similarly attired, were on a Miami street outside a meeting of the North American Free Trade Commission, complaining that the police were preventing them from fully expressing their views.

The anti-free-traders were many and varied, though not so many and quite a bit more varied than had been expected. That is, the crowds were smaller than anticipated, but the deviations from the subject at hand were many, like the woman from the Clan of the Porpoise Heads.

Maybe all the protesters should have carried little reminder cards with them, with "FREE TRADE BAD" written on them, so they could remind themselves why they were there.

Then again, maybe a lot of them were there just for giggles. Some things are just more fun when the press is watching. "WHAT DO WE WANT?" "SOMETHING!" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT?" "SOON!"

Not one of the protesters made a lick of sense when explaining their views, or why (or even if) they take exception to the exercise of free trade.

Many wore gas masks. There was not a clue available as to why. Did the gas masks signify that free trade stinks? Some wore gas masks and capes, like refugees from a Darth Vader look-alike contest.

One chap did manage to express his conviction that "big corporations" were going to make bunches of money, while somehow taking jobs away from everybody, too. He was unable to explain how the corporations were going to manage to make lots of money appear, while simultaneously making every job in two hemispheres disappear. (Some corporations with labor problems might like to know.)

Another enthusiastic participant, quite pleased with himself, announced that he was "for peace and freedom," and who can argue with that? What a splendid fellow! Although in his case, it turned out that he wanted to smash the front window of the place and barge into the meeting to express his enthusiasms more forcefully. He wanted the freedom to literally crash the party, and to be left in peace while he did it.

But of course it isn't free trade that these ersatz street philosophers object to; it's capitalism, which is a word to describe people buying and selling what they want, to and from other people who want to buy or sell it.

Communism still blights the landscape of three or four isolated outposts of human misery; but it wheezes with every breath and is slumping toward the graveyard of gruesome experiments. Socialism lives on, but mostly only in the hearts of people like those observed on the streets.

So with communism withering away, and socialism so widely discredited that even Marx, were he to come back to life, would whack himself on the forehead and cry, "What was I THINKING? THAT won't work!" - there isn't much left for your average free-range activist except to wear silly costumes and try to latch onto something to complain about.

Either that, or go get a job, before the big corporations somehow take them all away.