Target Centermass

Month: February 2006

  • Another Mohammed Cartoon Link Dump

    Shameful appeasement

    The past several days of mayhem throughout the Muslim world — all thanks to a handful of mild cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed — have provided a clarifying moment for those still uncertain about what the West faces from radical disciples of the Islamic faith.

    What’s clear is that East and West are not just cultures apart, but centuries, and that certain elements of the Muslim world would like to drag us back into the Dark Ages.

    What is also clear is that the West’s own leaders, both in Europe and the USA, as well as many of our own journalists, have been weak-spined when it comes to defending the principles of free expression that the artists in Denmark were exploring.

    Instead of stepping up to passionately defend freedoms won through centuries of bloody sacrifice, most have bowed to ayatollahs of sensitivity, rebuking the higher calling of enlightenment and sending the cartoonists into hiding under threat of death.

    Many U.S. newspapers have declined to reproduce the cartoons out of respect for Muslims, setting up the absurd implication that an open airing of the debate’s content constitutes disrespect. Both the U.S. State Department and the Vatican have declared that Muslims were justified in being offended, while former president Bill Clinton, speaking in Qatar last month, called the cartoons “appalling.”

    Read the whole column. I particularly like the following portions:

    Thanks to this heritage of healthy irreverence, today self-deprecation and parody are favorite ingredients in the volatile, spicy stew we call freedom. That’s why we roast our most powerful in tribute — and why politicians collect, frame and display cartoons that lampoon them. The ability to laugh at oneself, or to shrug off insult, is a sign both of a mature ego and a mature society.

    Unfortunately, much of the Arab/Muslim world enjoys no such legacy, much to its cultural impoverishment and to our potential peril. It might help us to win this war of ideas if we properly understand our own.

    … and …

    Two common apologist arguments beg rebuttal. One of them compares printing inflammatory cartoons to crying “fire” in a crowded theater, implying that one shouldn’t express things certain to offend others. Never mind that all political commentary would cease by such a standard, but the reason crying “fire” is forbidden is practical. People panic and stampede when they hear it, and it is false. It is imperative to cry “fire” when there really is a fire. It is also imperative to cry foul when cartoonists face death threats for doodling.

    The other argument, also based on a logical fallacy, is that the Danish cartoons are comparable to racist caricatures of Jews in Nazi Germany and blacks in the segregationist South. The Boston Globe, which saw fit in the past to defend “Piss Christ” (a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine) as well as a depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in feces as worthy of government subsidy, made such a case recently.

    There are at least two reasons why The Globe’s comparison is bogus: gas chambers and lynchings. Both the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan were officially sanctioned enforcers of immoral social orders that used caricature to further degrade and dehumanize beleaguered minorities they ultimately murdered.

    There is no equivalence between organized murder on behalf of a malignant social system and a half-dozen nerdy artists, speaking only for themselves, lampooning a fanatical religious sect whose members, by the way, specifically advance the delightful goal of exterminating millions of “infidels.”

    The correct comparison, in fact, for Nazi and Klan terrorists are their brothers under the hoods — the jihadists who issued a death sentence on writer Salman Rushdie, who beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl and businessman Nick Berg, and who kidnapped an innocent American female journalist and showed videos of her sobbing and terrified among armed men holding guns to her head.

    A ‘dangerous moment’ for Europe and Islam

    As Islamic protests grew against the publication in Europe of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, a small Arab movement active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark responded with a drawing on its Web site of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. “Write this one in your diary, Anne,” Hitler was shown as saying.

    The intent of the cartoon, the Arab European League said, was “to use our right to artistic expression” just as the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten did when it published a group of cartoons showing Muhammad last September. “Europe has its sacred cows, even if they’re not religious sacred cows,” said Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the organization, which claims rights for immigrants aggressively but without violence.

    Such contrasts have produced a worrisome sense that the conflict over the cartoons has pushed both sides across an unexpected threshold, where they view each other with miscomprehension and suspicion.

    “This feels to me like a defining moment,” said Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor of European history. “It is a crunch time for Europe and Islam,” he said, “it is an extremely dangerous moment,” one that could lead to “a downward spiral of mutual perceptions, and not just between extremists.”

    U.S. says Iran and Syria stoking cartoon protests

    America entered the row over the Muhammad cartoons yesterday accusing Syria and Iran of stoking up protests against the caricatures to suit their own ends. In France, the publication of all the offending cartoons by a magazine sparked further protests.

    Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said: “I have no doubt that Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and have used this for their own purposes. The world ought to call them on it.”

    Meanwhile, as all this plays out over a dozen, generally tame cartoons, some of which showed more the cartoonist’s fear of Moslems than an image of Mohammed, realize that today’s tremors are, at least in part, driven by lies and fakes (hat tip to Gateway Pundit).

    Also remember that, while the entire brouhaha is supposedly based upon the employment of images of the prophet Mohammed, such images are certainly nothing new. No, there are other motivations at play here, and they may be a case of radical Islamists showing their hand too early.

  • U.S. Officials Meet Iraq Insurgent Groups

    Perhaps we are looking at the beginning of the end game in Iraq.

    U.S. officials have met figures from some Sunni Arab insurgent groups but have so far not received any commitment for them to lay down their arms, Western diplomats in Baghdad and neighboring Jordan said Wednesday.

    […]

    The meetings, described as being in the initial stage, have not included members of al-Qaida in Iraq or like-minded religious extremists, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

    Contacts have taken place in western Iraq, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, according to two diplomats based in the Jordanian capital, Amman. One of them said talks might shift to Egypt “at some point.”

    U.S. officials have said establishing a dialogue with the insurgents was difficult because of the lack of a unified command structure among the various groups and the absence of a leadership capable of speaking for most of them.

    Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the United States is involved in talks on promoting Iraq’s political process with “all sorts of groups,” but declined to say if any insurgents were among them.

    However, a Western diplomat in Baghdad who is familiar with the dialogue said the U.S. was reaching out to “Sunni Arab nationalists” and “some Islamists from the Shiite and Sunni sides,” many of whom have grievances about jobs and reconstruction money.

    “We hear all the time that they are interested in coming in but we haven’t seen signs,” the diplomat said. “We want to see attacks stopped. The question is, can they help end the violence if they want to join.”

    Please note that I am not saying that success in Iraq is close or even a certainty. That would be quite a statement in the face of political scene where the likes of Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan have their words and deeds selectively reported and the doom-laden calls for retreat by Congressman Murtha (D-Penn.) are trumpeted while the pronouncements of progress by Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) barely register a blip on the radar.

    That said, this may be the first step in seperating the men from the boys … errr … the actual Iraqi insurgents from the radical Islamist terrorist bastards. Realize that the domestic Iraqi holdouts have witnessed large parts of their homeland enthusiastically embracing democracy and have become disgusted with their supposed Islamist terrorist allies’ tactics of murderously targeting innocent Iraqi civilians. Oh yeah, they have also seen a lot of their insurgent brethren getting shredded by Coalition troops they cannot truly engage, as well as improving and growing Iraqi security forces. With a wedge already developing between the insurgent and terrorist facets of our enemies in Iraq, it is only sensible that the U.S. would work to further drive home that wedge in the hopes of reducing our opponents by means other than bullets. While it is at yet uncertain any benefit for the Iraqi people and the Coalition will come from these efforts, certainly there is no foreseeable harm in the maneuver.

    If Iraq can actually come to grips with its domestic insurgents, embracing them and isolating the truly blood-craved Islamist terrorists, then this may indeed by the opening moves of a lengthy end game. After all, as much as the anti-war opponents and large portions of the media have tried to paint the picture of another Viet Nam, one key difference has never been overcome: the war in Nam was, post-Tet, fought primarily against a regular military of an outside force backed, supplied and heavily maintained by a global superpower. That is certainly not the case in Iraq. That has never been close to being the case in Iraq.

  • Hamas Offers Deal if Israel Pulls Out

    A key Hamas figure is talking about a lengthy truce with Israel. Of course, there are a few key catches.

    Hamas yesterday offered a long-term ceasefire if Israel withdraws from all land occupied in 1967.

    The announcement by Khaled Meshaal, one of Hamas’s most senior leaders, was its clearest policy statement since winning the Palestinian general election last month.

    Mr Meshaal was speaking before a crucial Hamas meeting in Cairo on how the Islamist movement will form the new Palestinian government. While he promised a possible “long-term ceasefire” he refused to commit the organisation to a full renunciation of violence, which is demanded of Hamas by the international community and Israel.

    Its charter warns that Israel faces elimination by Islam and calls for holy war or jihad against non-Muslim claimants of Palestine.

    Mr Meshaal said he wanted to send a message to the Israeli government that Hamas would be ready to talk if Israel met conditions that included a withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries. Hamas would then “possibly give a long-term truce with Israel”, he said. Others have suggested a 10- to 15-year truce.

    All the Israelis have to do is completely withdraw to their strategically-disadvantageous borders they held before their success in the 1967 Six-Day War. Oh yeah, in return, Hamas offers nothing that they can be trusted to actually manage. Ummm … I’m thinking no.

    This was the crystallisation of several, often ambiguous, remarks made by Hamas’s senior members since the election and represented a clear bargaining position.

    Hamas will hope the international community puts heavy pressure on Israel to leave the occupied territories.

    Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that international pressure thing — for lo! these many years, that same pressure has failed to force Israel to leave the occupied territories and failed miserably to get Hamas to recognize Israel or swear off violence.

    Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation and has vowed not to deal with any Palestinian government set up by the group after its unexpected election victory.

    As well it should, as Meshaal’s further statements demonstrate.

    Mr Meshaal sounded a more strident note in other remarks that were made public yesterday, refusing to drop Hamas’s call for armed resistance against Israel.

    “We will not stand against the resistance, we will not condemn any operation and will never arrest any mujahed [holy warrior],” he said.

    “Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong.”

    That certainly sounds like a truce offer that can be trusted.

    I’ve a better idea for Israel — withhold funds until Hamas cracks under the financial strain. Then, after Hamas is forced to come to the table with some real acquiescence on recognition and violence, provide them with support until Hamas, like Fatah before them, become rife with corruption while failing to bring peace and prosperity to the Palestinian people. Lather, rinse, repeat until the Palestinians have a leadership ready to move forward. That is, if they ever do.

  • U.S., Russia, Germany Cancel Afghanistan Debt

    Smart move all around.

    Afghanistan on Wednesday hailed decisions to cancel the impoverished country’s debts to the United States, Russia and Germany, but the country likely will remain dependent on foreign aid as it recovers from decades of war.

    Afghanistan owed $108 million to the United States and $44 million to Germany from loans before the 1979 Soviet invasion. Russia claimed it was owed about $10 billion from loans to a puppet communist government in the early 1990s.

    “After 30 years of devastation, we are starting from nothing and any move such as this helps the reconstruction of Afghanistan,” said Khaleeq Ahmed, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

    The Bush administration said Tuesday it will forgive the entire debt, following a similar pledge from Russia on Monday and from Germany at a donors’ conference last week.

    Even with the loans forgiven, Afghanistan looks set to remain reliant on years of foreign aid. More than 90 percent of the government’s $4.75 billion budget in 2005 was financed by international donors, and Karzai has said his government will need propping up for about a decade.

    The International Monetary Fund’s representative in Afghanistan, Joshua Charap, said that even by 2010, Afghan government revenues are expected to cover less than two-thirds of total expenditures.

    Charap said the removal of the foreign debt would allow Kabul to “normalize its credit rating,” paving the way for new loans.

    Nearly a third of government spending this fiscal year has been on its new army and police amid rising crime and the Taliban-led insurgency. The hard-line Islamic militia was ousted from power in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion.

    This poor nation, ravaged and rent by strife since the days of disco, needs all the assistance possible in succeeding, and the three countries forgiving debt are all safer with a peaceful Afghanistan.

  • Bush Gets an Earful at Coretta King’s Funeral

    Unfortunately, a tribute meant to pay worthy honor to a life lost is also utilized as an arena for political gain and attack. Equally unfortunate is the fact that there is little surprise to be found in the development.

    A day of eulogizing Coretta Scott King turned into a rare, in-person rebuke of President Bush, with a succession of civil rights and political leaders assailing White House policies as evidence that the dream of social and racial equality pursued by King and her slain husband is far from reality.

    Bush and his wife, Laura, sat on stage as worshippers cheered the suggestions from several speakers that the civil rights movement — led in the 1960s by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fostered since his assassination by the widowed Coretta — remains alive, its goals not fully realized.

    Tuesday’s service, lasting six hours, much of it carried live nationally on cable television, marked an unusual combination of political pageantry and civil rights history. The spectacle included humor, interpretive dance, gospel and classical music, shouting and testifying, and a list of dignitaries that made room for three former presidents, poet Maya Angelou and crooner Michael Bolton.

    But it also included pointed political commentary, much of it aimed at Bush. The president and his wife watched as the sanctuary at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta filled with raucous cheers for their White House predecessors, Bill and Hillary Clinton — a reminder that five years into his term, Bush and the Republican Party he leads have not found the acceptance across black America that GOP strategists had hoped.

    “This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over,” said former President Carter, a Democrat and former Georgia governor, to rising applause. “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”

    Carter, who has had a strained relationship with Bush, drew cheers when he used the Kings’ struggle as a reminder of the recent debate over whether Bush violated civil liberties protections when he ordered warrantless surveillance of some domestic phone calls and e-mails.

    Noting that the Kings’ work was “not appreciated even at the highest level of the government,” Carter said: “It was difficult for them personally — with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and as you know, harassment from the FBI.” Bush has said his own program of warrantless wiretapping is aimed at stopping terrorists.

    The most overtly partisan remarks came from the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a King protege and longtime Bush critic, who noted Coretta King’s opposition to the war in Iraq and criticized Bush’s commitment to boosting the poor.

    “She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar,” he said. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.”

    Anybody else reminded of the pep rally … err … funeral for Senator Paul Wellstone? Why is it that such affairs cannot be managed with due dignity and that it is one side of the political spectrum that seems to have a problem managing an actual tribute? If I recall correctly, there were no digs in the direction of Jimmy Carter during the ceremonies as Ronald Reagan was laid to rest.

    To his credit, President Bush reportedly carried himself well and in the intended spirit of the occasion.

    As the barbs flew, Bush seemed to take the heat in stride, smiling at times, giving Lowery a standing ovation and even pulling the civil rights leader in for a bear hug.

    The president himself received polite applause before and after his seven-minute eulogy, in which he said he attended the service “to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole.”

    “As a great movement of history took shape, her dignity was a daily rebuke to the pettiness and cruelty of segregation,” the president said.

    Such is the tone and behaviour memorial services deserve. It would be best for our entire nation to remember and embrace this notion.

  • Lost World Found: New Species Found in New Guinea

    Boldly going where no scientist had gone before, an expedition has found a biological treasure trove in a land essentially untouched by the presence of man.

    A lost world teeming with previously unknown or presumed extinct wildlife that has remained untouched by humans and is as close to the Garden of Eden as is possible exists in the jungle-covered mountains of Indonesia’s Papua province, scientists say.

    An international team of 13 experts, which spent a month surveying more than a million hectares in the Foja mountains in the Indonesian half of New Guinea island, said they had identified 40 new species and expected to record many more once they had completed their research.

    Scientists regularly find new species but the team claims it is the unexplored aspect of the area, which rises to 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level, which makes it unique. “It’s an example of what the whole of New Guinea was like 50,000 years ago when there was no hunting, no impact of logging and no environmental desecration,” Stephen Richards, of the South Australian Museum and one of the team, said at the release of the findings in Jakarta. “There’re very few places left on earth where there has been so little human impact.”

    “It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler, one of the team’s leaders.

    Highlights include the first bird species discovered on New Guinea since 1939, a honeyeater with an orange face-patch and a golden-mantled tree kangaroo, thought to have been hunted to near extinction. The scientists took the first known photographs of Berlepsch’s six-wired bird of paradise, described by hunters in New Guinea in the 19th century, and the golden-fronted bowerbird conducting its mating ritual of building a metre-high bower.

    Evidence of the lack of human presence was how many animals showed no fear of the researchers. Two long-beaked echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal, allowed scientists to pick them up and take them back to their camp to be studied.

    National Geographic has some interesting photographs of the discoveries. Sadly, no word of any dinosaurs yet, but they’re probably saving that find for a new theme park.

  • Carnival of Liberty XXXI

    This week’s installment of the Life, Liberty, Property community’s Carnival of Liberty is up over at Louisiana Libertarian. Go read another fine collection of posts from a libertarian slant.

  • Of Mohammed Cartoons and Moslem Carnage

    Apparently, while I was incommunicado this past weekend in an obscure and isolated Oklahoma state park, the story of the reaction by the Islamic global community to a dozen generally-inoffensive cartoon representations of the supposed prophet Mohammed exploded. As I’m still trying to play catch up, here’s a link dump on the brouhaha.

    How cartoons sparked violence

    The violent and now deadly protests rippling through Asia and the Middle East over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad reflects a larger schism and lack of understanding between traditional Western cultures and Islam, experts said Monday.

    In the secular world, the debate is about freedom of the press, but to Muslims worldwide, the images are offensive not only because they depict Muhammad as a promoter of terrorism but also because their very existence violates the Islamic tradition forbidding visual depictions of the Prophet.

    As European diplomats urged calm and restraint, the violence that already led to the burning of Danish and Norwegian embassies over the weekend turned fatal Monday. Afghan troops killed four protesters, including two outside the U.S. military base near Bagram, and a teenage boy was trampled in Somalia.

    […]

    The anger, according to experts, stems from long-held and deep beliefs. The Koran, Islam’s sacred book, does not contain an explicit ban on images of Allah or Muhammad. But visual depictions of Muhammad or other prophets such as Moses or Abraham are traditionally eschewed in order to discourage idolatry, or worship of an object as a god.

    “It’s very offensive on many levels and for many reasons, but mainly because it’s an attack on the sense of what is most sacred and which cannot be ridiculed,” said Inamul Haq, adjunct professor of Islam at Benedictine University in Lisle.

    That the cartoons also portray the prophet as a terrorist only increases that anger, the experts said.

    Unfortunately, such portrayals would seem to be an accurate reflection, according to the objective history I’ve read of the man.

    Cleric calls on Mohammed cartoonist to be executed

    Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical Muslim cleric, has said the cartoonist behind caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that have sparked outrage across the Arab world should be tried and executed under Islamic law.

    The cleric said the cartoonist had insulted Islam and must pay the price, as three people were killed during protests against the cartoons in Afghanistan.

    “The insult has been established now by everybody, Muslim and non-Muslim, and everybody condemns the cartoonist and condemns the cartoon,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

    “However, in Islam, God said, and the messenger Mohammed said, whoever insults a prophet, he must be punished and executed.

    “This man should be put on trial and if it is proven to be executed.”

    The cleric said Muslims in Britain were not allowed to kill people who insulted Islam because it was against the law of the country.

    “We are not saying ourselves to go there and start to look to him and kill him, we are not talking about that. We are talking about Islamic rules. If anybody insults the prophet, he will have to take a punishment.”

    He said if countries refused to put people on trial for insulting Mohammed they must “face the consequences”.

    Sounds rather blackmailish and unpeaceful to me. Yeah, the guy seems like a worthy student of Mohammed (hat tip LGF).

    No let-up in sight for cartoon fury

    After a weekend that saw Denmark’s embassies torched in Lebanon and Syria, fury over the images continued to spread with protests held across Afghanistan as well as in Indian-held Kashmir, Indonesia, Lebanon, Iran and Thailand.

    French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called for calm as the Arab world seethes over the cartoons which first appeared in a Danish daily and have been reprinted by several publications in Europe, Australia and Malaysia.

    “Let us calm things down. We have had enough hate and intolerance,” he said on French radio. “There is not a religion in the world that condones killing, or the burning of flags.” [Editor’s note: well, there does appear to be one on the killing thing, though I’m not certain of any mention of flag-burning in the Koran]

    […]

    In Kabul about 300 people marched on Denmark’s embassy, where they torched a Danish flag and threw stones at the embassy, shouting “Death to Denmark, death to Norway, death to America, death to Bush.” [Editor’s note: Death to Bush? Did some of his doodles get published?]

    Around 1,000 protestors also gathered in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and burnt the flags of France, Denmark and Norway. Hundreds protested in Kandahar, while more than 5,000 marched in Parwan province near Kabul.

    In Lebanon, one person died and almost 50 people were wounded during rioting in the capital Beirut which saw the Danish consulate set ablaze, police said yesterday.

    […]

    In Indonesia’s second-largest city of Surabaya, police fired warning shots outside the US consulate to disperse 200 protesters from the hardline Front of the Defenders of Islam, who earlier smashed windows at the Danish consulate.

    […]

    In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, hundreds of people demonstrated outside the Danish embassy, which was closed, calling for an apology from the Danish government over the offending images.

    Widespread. Radical. Islam. Oh yeah, it’s a threat, folks.

    Danish lawyer shot as fury of Muslims sweeps world

    A Danish lawyer was shot and several Muslim demonstrators died as protests against the publication of cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad continued around the world yesterday.

    The lawyer was wounded in an incident in a Moscow cafe by a man from the Muslim Caucasus region of southern Russia.

    Meanwhile, the prime minister of Chechnya announced that Danish humanitarian organisations would be expelled. [Editor’s note: way to shoot yourself in your foot, idiot]

    Danish troops also came under fire in southern Iraq. Shots were fired at a patrol as it helped children who had been hit by a car near Qurnah. None of the soldiers was injured. [Editor’s note: way to shoot your children in their feet, idiots]

    The worst trouble yesterday came in Afghanistan, where hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police and soldiers. Four people were killed and at least 19 wounded, officials said.

    The worst violence was outside Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, although the US has not been involved in the controversy over the publication of the cartoons. Afghan police fired on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility.

    Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief, said two of the demonstrators were killed and five wounded, while eight police were hurt. The protesters threw stones at the base and smashed a guard post.

    Some of those in the crowd then shot at the base with assault rifles, prompting the police to return fire, he said. [Editor’s note: way to shoot at people who can shoot you in your foot and elsewhere, idiots]

    […]

    Iran said it was cutting all trade ties with Denmark.

    Danish flags, however, remain in demand. An enterprising shopkeeper in Gaza, Ahmed Abu Dayya, said he had ordered 100 Danish and Norwegian flags when he heard that the cartoons were being reprinted.

    “I knew there would be a demand for the flags because of the angry reaction of people over the offence to the Prophet Muhammad,” he said.

    Angry Muslims have been setting the flags ablaze or tearing them to pieces

    I left the last in as an investment tip — flags are a good investment in Islamic lands, as they seem to be lit as often as cigarettes. Inventory management would be difficult, though; obviously a huge chunk would have to be devoted to the U.S. and Israel, but trying to predict the enemy o’ the day for the always-victimized ain’t easy. Trust me, there was some planning behind coming up with all of these Danish flags to torch.

    Iranian paper launches Holocaust cartoon competition

    Iran’s biggest-selling newspaper has waded into the Muhammad controversy by launching a competition to find the 12 “best” cartoons about the Holocaust.

    Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor for Tehran’s Hamshahri newspaper, said that the deliberately inflammatory contest would test out how committed Europeans were to the concept freedom of expression.

    “The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons,” he said.

    Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said that victims of the Holocaust and their families were growing used to insults from Iran. “It’s just very sad,” she told Times Online.

    Iran’s regime is supportive of Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain that the slaughter of Europe’s Jews during the Second World War was invented or exaggerated to justify the creation of Israel on Palestinian territory.

    As usual for the Moslems, it’s got to be the Jews. Hat tip to John Little at Blogs of War, who points out that, while trying to shift blame and anguish down the Jewish route, the Islamists miss the mark.

    And finally, there’s the usually remarkably-astute Victor Davis Hanson:

    A European Awakening Against Islamic Fascism?

    Over the last four years Americans have played a sort of parlor game wondering when—or if—the Europeans might awake to the danger of Islamic fascism and choose a more muscular role in the war on terrorism.

    But after the acrimony over the invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, pessimists scoffed that the Atlantic alliance was essentially over. Only the postmortem was in dispute: did the bad chemistry between the Texan George Bush and the Green European leadership who came of age in the street theater of 1968 explain the falling out?

    Or was the return of the old anti-Americanism natural after the end of the Cold War—once American forces were no longer needed for the security of Europe?

    Or again, was Europe’s third way a realistic consideration of its own unassimilated and growing Muslim population, at a time of creeping pacifism, and radically scaled down defense budgets after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

    Yet suddenly in 2006, the Europeans seem to have collectively resuscitated. The Madrid bombings, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the London subway attacks, and the French rioting in October and November seem to have prompted at least some Europeans at last to question their once hallowed sense of multiculturalism in which Muslim minorities were not asked to assimilate at home and Islamic terrorists abroad were seen as mere militants or extremists rather than enemies bent on destroying the West.

    Please go read it in its entirety, as it is rare I find myself so often in disagreement with the man. His whole piece strikes me as too optimistic, supported by bits and pieces scattered over several years in a hope of showing a European strengthening only anecdotally supported. Hanson does, towards the end, seem to recognize the difficulties I have with his point.

    So is Europe now finally at the front or will they retreat Madrid-like in the face of the inevitable second round of terrorist bombings and threats to come?

    Americans are not confident, but we should remember at least one simple fact: Europe is the embryo of the entire Western military tradition. The new European Union encompasses a population greater than the United States and spans a continent larger than our own territory. It has a greater gross domestic product than that of America and could, in theory, field military forces as disciplined and as well equipped as our own.

    It is not the capability but the will power of the Europeans that has been missing in this war so far.

    Yes, overwhelmingly, I still question whether that will power is present, and even if it can be resurrected before it is too late for the continent.

  • Al Qaeda Jail Escape Seen as Blow to Yemen

    Once again, Islamist terrorists have made use of the shelter of a mosque, this time to rescue a captive with American blood on his hands.

    The escape of 13 al Qaeda inmates, including two convicted for deadly attacks on a U.S. warship and a French supertanker, was a serious blow to Yemen’s fight against the Osama bin Laden network, diplomats said on Monday.

    Yemeni security forces scoured mountainous provinces for the fugitives, who included the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the U.S. warship Cole and the leader of a group that bombed the French oil tanker Limburg two years later.

    The United States said it was disappointed at the jailbreak and vowed to pursue the militants with its allies.

    “It’s a disappointing development that al Qaeda operatives escaped, particularly one who targeted and killed Americans. We will be working with Yemeni officials and our international partners to actively go after these dangerous terrorists,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

    U.S. ally Yemen, bin Laden’s ancestral homeland, has shed its image as a haven for militants by cracking down on al Qaeda. Analysts and opposition politicians said the jailbreak was a serious embarrassment for the government as well as a blow to its security efforts.

    “This unravels all the work that the Yemeni government has done over the past couple of years (against al Qaeda),” said a senior Western diplomat. “It is a very serious error.”

    […]

    Mohamed al-Sabri of the opposition Nasserite Party told Reuters the escape was “a serious setback for Yemen’s security that puts the country in a very embarrassing position”.

    “This has implications not only for Yemen but for all countries in the region,” he added.

    Security sources said the militants were among a group of 23 inmates who escaped through a 140-metre (460-feet) long tunnel that appeared to have been dug from a nearby mosque.

    The entrance of the tunnel was in the less frequented women’s section of the mosque and the inmates probably fled on Thursday night, the sources added.

    […]

    The escapees include prominent al Qaeda members Jamal Badawi and Fawaz al-Rabe’ie.

    Badawi masterminded the October 2000 attack on the Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. His death sentence was commuted last February to 15 years in prison. Rabe’ie was sentenced to death for the Limburg bombing.

    Badawi should have already been dead. Here’s hoping he reaches that destination soon without taking any innocents with him. The memory of seventeen American sailors demands it.

    Yemen should be embarrassed. That these dangerous, murderous swine were able to be let loose is a disgrace to the nation and its security system and an added threat in our efforts against Islamist terror. The question remains: where will that threat surface?

  • Quote of the Week, 6 FEB 06

    The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

    —Sir Edward Grey, on the eve of World War I