Squeamishness Is Our Weakness

In pondering the current situation in the Middle East, I came upon the realization that it would very easy for the Iraqis to drive the Americans out of Iraq and the Palestinians to drive the Israelis out of Palestine, because of a weakness that most Westerners seem to share, one that seems linked to the Judeo-Christian tradition. That weakness is squeamishness. Most Westerners see violence and carnage and either become afraid, or disgusted. This does not seem as common outside of the West.

Westerners generally don't like violence and will only condone its use if they believe it is necessary to prevent more severe violence or protect their safety. The US got away with horrible violence against countries that were very peaceful largely because the American people were convinced that it was necessary to protect them from the Soviet Union. When the American people stopped believing this during the Vietnam War, they stopped supporting it.

This isn't just true of Americans. The British pulled out of India because they saw what their own military were doing to these people that posed no threat to them. The British lost in India and the Americans lost in Vietnam because they saw and read the things that were going on and were grossed out. Eventually they were convinced it wasn't worth having to see all that nasty blood and gave up.

Trying to fight the West with violence is doomed to fail as long as the West is better armed. A far more effective strategy is to fight the West by exploiting their weak stomachs. If Arabs want to defeat their aggressors, they need to do two things: they have to show the people of the West the brutality of their treatment, and, more importantly, they need to convince Westerners that they are no danger to their physical safety.

Incrementalism Is Often the Only Way

The NDP has single handedly propped up the Harper government by voting against the Liberals' Afghanistan withdrawal bill. Layton says that he has another date in mind that would get the troops even sooner. He's awfully ballsy to think that he can get this passed before 2009. Ballsy or stupid.

It would have been much safer for Layton to take an incrementalist approach to vote in favour of the 2009 withdrawal and then pushed for an earlier withdrawal date. In fact, this seems pretty obvious. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but to put who knows how many more Canadian lives at stake to gamble on getting a sooner withdrawal date is careless and irresponsible.

Why Didn't They Think of This Before Hand?

The Democrats should have seen it as obvious that Bush would veto their war funding bill if it contained any kind of stipulation requiring the troops to come home any time soon, but it seems like it's just now that they're getting together to come up with some kind of strategy that would allow them to show that they are taking a stand against the war (which is what they were elected to do) without denying the troops of funds.

So what are they gonna do? I don't think they have the balls to send another bill to Bush that would require a pull-out, but they can't just say, "ok, here's the money" with no strings attached. Are they gonna pass another useless non-binding resolution? The Democrats have never struck me as a particularly imaginative or creative bunch, so I can't wait to see how they'll deal with this.

Those Pesky Liberals

Overblown much?

Why is it that American conservatives, who for 13 years controlled Congress, still control the White House, and who have appointed 7 of the 9 justices of the Supreme Court are always whining about how powerful "liberals" are, and how they "control everything." How can liberals, who have such little actual power control so much?

It reminds me of that joke about the two Jews in the Weimar Republic. One of them is reading a Jewish run paper and the other is reading the Volkischer Beobachter. The guy reading the Jewish paper says to the other, "How can you read that right-wing garbage?" The second guy says, "Well, if I read the Jewish papers all they talk about is how many Jews have been killed in the progroms, all the synagogues that have been burned down, and all the Jewish businesses that have been vandalized. But according to the right-wing papers we all rule the world!"

Even the Soldiers Know the Military Is full of Shit

During the early part of the Iraq War, there was a girl named Jessica Lynch who we were told was taken as a POW by the Iraqis and rescued by US troops. We heard all of these heroic stories about how she valiantly fought off her captors.

Not long after the story came out, everyone not in a delusional state of denial could see it wasn't true. She was rescued, but not by the Americans. Not long after the Iraqi military picked her up, she was left at a hospital in Nasiriya where the staff protected her from the Iraqi military and even tried to return her to the Americans, but couldn't because the US troops kept firing on her ambulance. Some Iraqis told the Americans that she was being tortured, but even Lynch herself says that was all horseshit. In fact she was treated quite well, and the "daring rescue" that was conducted when the Americans finally got her out of the Iraqi hospital was an overblown fabrication.

Today there was a hearing in front of Congress in which Jessica Lynch herself told us that the military is full of shit and just wanted to use her as a propaganda tool.

Of course, the The Crazy People are pretty silent about the whole story.

The French Election

As predicted it has been narrowed down to a runoff election between Royal and Sarkozy. As much as I think the Gaullists are potentially a danger to France in the long run, I think that given the violence that has become almost routine in France's poorer neighbourhoods, a new approach to immigration must be taken.

It is interesting to note the the American "guest worker program" is remarkably similar to the program that brought so many poor people into France to be exploited and alienated by French society.

Limiting immigration should not be solely a right-wing issue, especially considering most of the poorer people brought into Western countries are brought there to do shit jobs and not only have to put up with the racism of the West, but also their contempt for the poor. Obviously these are problems that need to be addressed as well, but given the immediate danger that mixing poor people of colour with class contemptuous racists necessitates a more radical approach. Allowing poor, unskilled immigrants into the West is as bad for them as it is for us.

Someone Takes Auster to Task

Someone at Vanity Fair has discovered Lawrence Auster and wrote an article about him that sounds about right.

The Vanity Fair Article quotes a passage from Auster's website about an exchange between Auster and a reader named Mark E. about how black homophobes are the only homophobes not afraid to express their views, and should be embraced by prejudiced whites because they share a hatred of gays:

"I want to add [writes Auster to Mark] that if you are implying that blacks in general can be our ally against the left in saving the west, I think that is folly. The tiny number of blacks who are Western patriots--that is, blacks who love the West and who, as part of that love of the West, at least implicitly accept the West's historic white majority character--will join us without our having to make some special appeal to them of the type that 'conservatives' are always making to 'conservative' blacks and 'conservative' Hispanics, making that appeal to nonwhites the cornerstone of their politics."

That's pretty indicative of Auster's hilariously pig-headed rantings, but my favourite quote from that passage comes from Mark E. himself:

Most blacks I meet are "normal" people (I live in the "inner city") with normal views about things; but the white middle- and upper-middle class suburban educated types are really whacked, especially the women.

White women are the most destructive force in America. The feminizing of America, not what you miscall "liberalism," is the root of all rot.

Even the Righties Know Wolfowitz Is Indefensible

I hardly ever agree with Lawrence Auster as he is a lunatic, but even he sees how corrupt Wolfowitz is.

He quotes Alex Spillius from the New York Sun:
"It has often been said that Mr. Wolfowitz is a brilliant thinker and a terrible manager. His defenders say the current crisis smacks not of nepotism but poor administration and trying too hard to ensure someone he cared for was properly compensated."

To which Auster responds:

"Got that? That’s like saying that John Dillinger’s behavior did not smack of bank robbery but of trying too hard to get his hands on some cash."

Mo' guns, Mo' Problems

Like clockwork, The Crazy People™ are blaming the Viriginia massacre on anti-gun legislation. Virginia has a ban on concealed carried weapons on school campuses which is where all the righties are pointing their fingers. "If the kids at Virginia Tech had been armed and able to defend themselves, this never would have happened!" they say.

And of course, they have a point. Never mind that Virginia has no required waiting period, no required safety course, and not even a requirement that you even have to be a US citizen to buy a gun (which would have prevented this particular incident), the real problem is that all the other students were unarmed.

Think about it, this guy would have been stopped after only the first few killings if someone had been able to shoot back at him. And hey, the September 11th hijackers would have been stopped pretty quick if the airlines didn't have those stupid, commie anti-gun rules that keep you from taking your Glock on the plane with you. If the other passengers had been armed, those guys wouldn't have even made it to the cockpit before someone took them out. Sure you'd have a lot more planes crashing do to all the gun fights that would break out, but at least all the national monuments would be safe. The same is true in the general population. If you just let more people carry guns everywhere, sure there would be a lot more frequent gun use in disputes where fists would otherwise be used, but the enormous increase in small scale shootings would be worth it to prevent the occasional mass murder.

A McLuhanian Tyranny

The Don Imus fiasco is further evidence that what Marshall McLuhan said was right. Who says something coveys a stronger message than what is actually being said.

It is a factual, but still horribly tyrannical phenomenon that who you are, what you look like, etc. will influence how people interpret what you say. The only way to get your message out in way that best allows the message to be the message, is through anonymity, and even then, people will try to read into what you are saying things that aren't really there.

The Trap

I much enjoyed Adam Curtis's documentary The Power of Nightmares, and his newest film, The Trap is even better. The premise is that since the Cold War, the idea of what Isaiah Berlin called "positive freedom," that is, freedom to things, like freedom to housing, food and shelter, things that were supplied by the government in communist countries, has proven to lead to tyranny, because it inevitably undermines "negative freedom", freedom from government interference in a person's life. The goal of the West was guarantee negative freedom by eliminating as much positive freedom as they could, giving things over to market forces and reducing the role of the state in providing for the welfare of the people.

This approach grew out of and fed into a very cynical idea that everybody is out to serve their own interests only and that anybody who says they want power so they can use it for "the public good" is lying and not to be trusted. Game theory, the mathematical system that calculates what strategy any two or more competing forces should adopt to maximize their own advantage, became the new model of how society really behaves. The predictability of society then depended on the assumption that people actually acted only in their own rational self-interest.

There's an interview with the economist James M. Buchanan, who believes that anybody who truly does believe that they should be serving the public good is a "zealot" who must be gotten rid of, because these "zealots" will not act in the predictable way that strictly self-interested people will act. They only system that can be trusted is one that plays off of people's greed and selfishness, and uses those assumed patterns of behavior to establish a predictable order, i.e. market capitalism.

So in the West's current concept of "freedom," we are free to act selfishly, but any deviation from that and any organization or government that asks you to put your energy into something bigger than yourself or your immediate interests is strongly discouraged. Curtis points out that this "is a strange concept of freedom."

I have a few criticisms of this movie. One is that Curtis says that the paranoid, cynical idea that people always act in their own interest is something that came out of the rejection of Soviet Communism. This idea, however, has been around for lot longer. The American system of checks and balances was based on that assumption when it was designed in the 16th century. The other problem I have with this documentary is how he completely leaves out the influence of the religious right. This is a part of society that is asking people to sacrifice themselves for their concept of a greater good (although they too curiously subscribe to the cynical system of market capitalism.)

Overall, though, it was quite good. The conclusion Adam Curtis comes to at the end is that "we have to learn that not all attempts to do what is in the interest of the public good lead to tyranny." Interesting idea.

You can watch it here on YouTube. But be warned, it comes in 23 parts and is three hours long in total.

Morality Above Common Sense

A frequent argument I hear against the legalization of drugs is that "we don't want to endorse that kind of behaviour." This objection to legalization is often raised when all the practical and pragmatic objections have been debunked. You may be able to convince a moralist that drug legalization would allow drugs to be regulated, reducing the money that criminals get from it, and that treating drug addiction like a health problem would reduce drug addiction and save the tax-payers' money by keeping people out of prison who don't need to be there, but they'll still object to it because, "we don't want to endorse drug use, because it is immoral."

For these kinds of moralists, vague principals are more important than a society's actual welfare. They may even know that the War on Drugs is expensive, does little to deter people, bolsters the pockets of criminals and results in more severely drug addicted people, but they don't care. They would rather exacerbate the problems drugs cause than allow people to use them without punishment. Thus is the idiocy of moralism.

Goin' Green

Looks like Canada will get some Green Party MPs soon.

The Liberals have decided not to run any candidates in ridings where Green Party members are running and vice versa.

Jack Layton is predictably pissy about the whole deal.

*Update*

Looks like this is only for one riding, namely Elizabeth May's (the leader of the Green Party) riding.

Does Russia Want to See Iran Get Bombed?

I read in an editorial by Andrei Piontkovsky in the Globe & Mail the other day that the reason Russia is selling nuclear equipment to Iran and helped them build their reactor in Bushehr is not because they at all want Iran to have nuclear weapons or a nuclear program, but rather because they want Iran to take it as far as they can, inevitably provoking Israel to strike at their nuclear facilities. That way, heat from the Islamic world could be taken off of Moscow, and Iran would retaliate by attacking Saudi oil facilities, forcing people to buy a lot more oil from Russia.

Russia, however, has been aiding Iran and its nuclear program since 1995. Yelstin was in charge back then, did he have the same designs? This would have happened right in the middle of the first Chechen War, so I guess it's possible.

Another thing bugs me about this suspicion, though. According to Russia, Iran hasn't enriched nearly as much uranium as they say they have. If Russia's goal is to get Israel and the States paranoid and trigger happy, wouldn't they be saying the opposite?

Can Anybody from This Administration Do Anything Ethically?

I've trained myself never to stop being surprised by the new allegations I hear about members or former members of the Bush administration. They seem to be embroiled in some new scandal practically every week or two. Now it turns out that Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank and Rumsfeld's former deputy, is in trouble for helping his girlfriend, also an employee of the World Bank, get a raise and a transfer.

According to the MSM, Wolfowitz sent a memo to the World Bank VP telling him to give her basically whatever job she liked, then said that "bank ethics officials had been kept informed about the new post for his companion." Turns out there was a lot he didn't tell them.

Why do these guys keep exposing themselves like this? They should know by now that if they so much as pick their noses someone will be there to put it on the cover of the New York Times. Why do they still think they can get away with shit like this?

Imus Is a Douche and I Support That

I don't really care that Don Imus was fired, he has plenty of other options. I'm sure he'll find another venue.

Personally I think don Imus is a douchebag, and I wouldn't listen to him myself, but the world needs to let douchebags express themselves. If the douchebags are silenced, then they go underground, and it becomes all too easy for the rest of us to pretend they don't exist. And we'll all be worse off if the douchebags lurk among us unidentified.

Oh and Another Thing

Leave Elizabeth Edwards the fuck alone. She has maybe five years to live, let her do whatever the fuck she wants.

American Idol Blows

There are too many bloggers wasting to much time and energy watching and blogging about this show. I don't care how good a singer you are if all the songs you sing are shit. Pop music and R&B is arsenic to my ears no matter how well it is sung.

This show has been a scourge to modern music for too long and it's time we brought it down.

Common Arguments Against Global Warming pt.1

#1 "Of course the climate is changing. The climate has changed several times over the course of the existence of the world. This time is no different."

Yes, this time is different. Of all of the temperature changes we know about this is unique in scale and speed.

#2 "Global warming is caused by increases in solar radiation."

Solar radiation contributes, but the increases are not large enough to account for the amount of climate change that has occurred.

#3 "More CO2 is emitted from Volcanoes and other natural sources than by humans."

CO2 samples taken from ice cores show that the carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are greater than they have ever been. There have always been volcanoes and other natural sources of CO2, yet there has never been as much CO2 as there is now.

#4 "Global warming is caused by water vapor."

Yes, and there is more water vapor in the atmosphere due to increased temperatures. Water vapor is a green house gas that accelerates global warming, but since water vapor didn't increase in the atmosphere until the temperature increased in the first place, it is not the ultimate cause.

#5 "A few decades ago, all the scientists were saying that the Earth was heading toward a new ice age. They were wrong then, why should we believe them now?"

Scientists were actually right. Global temperatures were declining. What global warming critics don't mention is that scientists knew that man-made sulfate aerosols were what caused the decrease in temperatures and that eliminating the aerosols would ameliorate the effects on the climate. They were right. Sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere have deacreased significantly over the past thirty years and so have their effects. I expect that if we ever do reduce green house gases and stop global warming, the critics will refuse to acknowledge it as a result of those reductions. Instead, they'll continue to deny that there was ever a problem in the first place like they have regarding the effects of sulfate.

Even former critics of global warming are starting to realize their position was bullshit. Ronald Bailey, author of Global Warming and other Eco Myths now says, "Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.... as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable." (Quote lifted from Wikipedia)

Thelema

Although Aleister Crowley still has some infamy, the religion he founded, Thelema, has few followers. I'm not a Thelemite myself, but I've long been interested in it. Unfortunately, there are few communities out there that really give it the in-depth examination necessary to understand it.

A quick search of Technorati brings up blogs like this that are kind of meandering and platitudinous about life as a Thelemite.

www.lashtal.com is the best website I've been able to find so far.

I'll post some more links to decent websites on the subject as soon as I find some.

New Nails

I don't usually post about music, but I see that Technorati's number 1 linked album is Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails. I've been listening to NIN since 1997 and seen them in concert twice. This is the best album they've done in probably ten years, but still given the taste of most bloggers on that site (Daughtry? Come on.) I'm surprised that the album is doing that well.

You can stream the whole album before it even comes out here.

Objectively Hilarious

If you waste as much time looking for political videos on YouTube as I do, you've probably come across this guy, Brandon Cropper. He's an objectivist who makes these really pompous pro-Ayn Rand videos.

His self-importance is indicative of the attitude of most objectivists.

No Motive

Something that global warming critics like to say is that it is "politically motivated." What motivation could a person possibly have to convince people of global warming if they didn't really believe in it? The idea that most of the world's scientists and politicians are just in the hands of the big enviro-dollar and that their job security is threatened if they don't tow the line is just silly.

Hmmm, if I were some shrewd scientist just looking to say whatever will get me the most money and job security, whom would I rather please? Exxon or Greenpeace?
Yeah, that's a tough one.

Iraq and Vietnam

What have both of these wars proven? In most previous wars, you had militaries fighting militaries. In WWII, when the militaries of Germany and Japan surrendered, so did the people. The people weren't committed to continue fighting. In Vietnam and Iraq you have a military fighting an entire country, military, civilians and all. These countries have people willing to keep fighting even after their militaries have been destroyed. Therefore I don't see how a victory in either of these places that would look anything like the neat and tidy victories of WWII is possible.

The War on Terror Helps Terrorists

Accoring to this article in The Guardian, a British study has concluded what should be obvious to everybody with a mind by now, that using violence and violence alone to fight terrorists is helping terrorists. The American's seem to think that everybody can be intimidated and frightened into doing what they say, but now that threat of invasion is much more real to Arab countries since the Iraq War, of course they're going to build up their militaries and pursue nuclear weapons with more fervor than ever before.

Those on the right like to say that these people hate us and would have developed these weapons to kill us anyway. If that's the case, why isn't Saudi Arabia doing that? That country is full of people that hate us, yet they aren't preparing their forces to fight the Americans. Why? Maybe because they know that Americans have no designs on that country? If these people can't be pacified through diplomacy and economic development, how do you explain the American alliance with Saudi Arabia? Why was Saddam Hussein not seen as threat during the Iran-Iraq War? The idea that these countries need to be democratized in order to have a peaceful relationship with the rest is clearly contradicted by this.

The righties also like to say that anybody who dares to speculate that maybe military solutions aren't the best solutions to the problem of terrorism are "traitors" who hate America, hate the West and want the terrorists to win. They seem too simple minded to get their heads around the idea that someone could sincerely believe that non-military solutions could be effective. They refuse to even entertain the notion that diplomacy could work, because I don't think they want it to work. They just want to see Muslims punished. They don't want peace, they don't even really want security. They want revenge, and they are willing to sacrifice their safety and the lives of thousands of their children in order to get it. These people are as big a threat to the West as the terrorists themselves.

Freaky Jesus

I just watched the documentary Jesus Camp, and I expected it to be off-putting, but I didn't expect to be as disturbed as I was. For those who don't know, Jesus camp is about a summer camp hosted by Evangelical Pentecostal Christians. They preach to the kids, get them to speak in tongues and teach them about how sinful the world is and how it's their job to fix it. The people who run this camp believe they are training an soldiers for God, so the approach they take to preaching to these kids uses a lot of military oriented language. The reasoning they give for the military theme of her preaching style is that "our enemies" are giving military religious training to their kids, so Christians have to out-fanaticize them.

When I think of a summer camp, I think of swimming and sports and archery and stuff, but nothing like that was shown in this documentary. The only scene that made this look anything like any summer camp I've ever seen is when some of the boys, (most of them were aged 10 to 12) were telling ghost stories in their cabin, until one of the couselors walked in and put a stop to it, because ghost stories are not "godly."

The main activity at this camp seemed to be the sermons, and the speaking in tongues. This documentary claims to be neutral, but it certainly does not put forth a flattering image of the Evangelical movement. There are a lot of scenes of young children spacing out, their eyes glazed over and faces quivering while they prayed. Many Christian groups and leaders, like Ted "I'm Straight Now, Honest" Haggard, who is featured in the movie, condemn the movie as anti-evangelical. However, the leader of this camp, and main focus of the movie, is Becky Fischer says she never felt exploited and has no problem with the movie. To any sane person of course, these people look like freaks. That the people who agreed to be in the documentary feel that this is the image they want to put out to the world is almost as disturbing as the image itself.

Becky Fischer is the kind of middle-aged trailer parkish kind of woman you'd see in the checkout line at Wal-Mart with a cart full of tubes of Pringles. She has a stupid haircut, (most of the people in this movie have really stupid looking haircuts) is hard to look at, and constantly has this bug-eyed look on her face like a lion eying a gazelle. Watching her spherical, turgid body sway around, ranting to a bunch of healthy looking kids like she's some kind of model of virtue for them to follow is especially off-putting and disturbing.

What disturbed me the most about how the parents in this film are bringing up their kids is the home-schooling. They teach them from creationist textbooks and emphasize to their kids that "science doesn't prove anything," and that evolution and global warming are all lies. At one point one of the kids says, "I think Galileo made the right choice to give up science for Christ." What the fuck!? Galileo? They never explicitly show these kids being taught that the sun revolves around the earth, but that's a disturbing implication that this might be the case.

The movie is framed with scenes of a liberal talk show host talking about the Evangelical movement and how dangerous is could become. At the end he interviews Becky Fischer and asks her what he thinks are the implications this kind of movement has for democracy. While paying lip-service to how she thinks democracy is the best system on earth, she says that since it allows everyone an equal voice "it will eventually destroy us."

The goals of the Evangelical movement are clear.

Global Warming Questions

Given the quantity and quality of scientists who say global warming is happening, and the shrinking voices of those who say it is not, I tend to believe that global warming is in fact happening. There is some contention, however, as to whether it is caused by human activity. There is a strong correlation between the rise in the levels of man-made CO2, and the rise in temperatures which heavily implicates human activity, but a correlation is not proof. This is where the global warming deniers step in. they say that the increase in solar radiation over the past few years is responsible for the warming, and that the rise in temperature is causing the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere rather than the other way around, or that there is some other reason for the correlation. I personally find this to be far fetched, because if the rise in CO2 is a result of higher temperatures, then you have to have to believe that the majority of the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is not the result of human activity. If that's the case what else could have caused this? The deniers like to point out that more CO2 comes from volcano explosions than from industry, but have there really been that many more volcanic activity in the last 150 years that would explain why the levels of CO2 are so much higher than they were over the previous centuries?

We know that more greenhouse gases theoretically causes an increase in temperature. We know that human being have been producing a lot of greenhouse gases.

Is it really all that far fetched to believe that humans are causing this increase in temperature?

That being said, I think some of the things that environmentalists are saying are a little far fetched. Some would like you to think that this spells the end of life on Earth, or for the more restrained ones, the end of civilization. Now, come on. Sure, with all of the areas that would be flooded it would create a huge refuge problem that would cause severe worldwide economic problems, but would that really result in the collapse of civilization? And would the effects of global warming accumulate so quickly that we couldn't adjust to the changes in time?

I Think I've Found My Calling

Which Is the Real Culture of Death?

Christians like to say that those who support abortion, euthanasia, and physician assisted suicide are celebrating a "Culture of Death." They conveniently leave out people who are in favor of the death penalty, of course (with the exception of Pope JPII, at least he was consistent.)

But given that Christians believe that we should all sacrifice the pleasures of this life for access to heaven in the hereafter, are they really pro-life? They tell us to forgo the pleasures of the flesh, and that we have to do in this life what some deity tells us to, so we will be rewarded when we die. The whole idea that there is any form of existence superior to life, necessarily devalues life. Those in favor of abortion, euthanasia and suicide, however, hold life to such a high value that they won't allow it to be tarnished and desecrated by unwanted pregnancy and terminal illness. They revel in all the pleasures that this life offers and hold them far higher, than the promise of any reward that may be granted in death.

It is those who fantasize about an afterlife superior to real life that are truly celebrating a culture of death.

Media Puppets

Looks like the "confessions" that he sailors gave were more conditional statements edited to look like confessions.

According to the Daily Mail,

"Lt Carman said: 'At no time did we apologise.' He said that they always qualified their statements when interviewed, saying things like 'according to the information you have presented to us'. It appears these qualifiers were edited out of the versions broadcast."

Still, even qualified statements like that came far too easily from these guys.

Finally, a Rational Strategy

Any competent analyst can see that violence against Muslims, even against terrorists is the best way to help them recruit more terrorists. In too many cases, using violence against terrorists has proven to be like trying to kill weeds with fertilizer. It worked against Al Qaida in Afghanistan, although not so well against the Taliban, but in Iraq Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a more effective Al Qaida recruiting tool than anything they could come up with themselves.

So what should be done against terrorists? A story in today's New York Times tells us about Dutch soldiers taking a much smarter approach. A lot of the Taliban's power comes from the fact that many people are still dependant upon them, so the Dutch are focusing on building infrastructure and giving people an alternative.

In their own words, “We’re not here to fight the Taliban... We’re here to make the Taliban irrelevant.”

Also from the NYT article,

"Dutch officers also say the approach has yielded promising results here. Sometimes villagers have warned them of ambushes or roadside bombs, and in several villages the Dutch are rarely attacked. Since the task force began operations last August, it has not suffered a combat fatality."

A Recant at Last

The freed British sailors are now saying that they were well inside Iraqi waters and that they only confessed because they were told that if they didn't they would face seven years in Iranian prison.

Maybe the guys on the right about the behaviour of these sailors. They confessed when threatened merely with seven years in prison. No torture, not even a death threat. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and kept my mind open that they were telling the truth when they confessed, but now it's clear that these guys are clearly just a bunch of pussies.

They're Home and No Recant Yet

According to this article the hostages, although now home and safe from Iranian intimidation and torture, are not recanting their confessions.

They're practically saying that they had a great time.

"I would not say anything different to here and I will be completely truthful. I will definitely promote Iran actually, there is a lot of ignorance in the UK about Iran and the people."

"We had had a very pleasant stay under the conditions we were in. Obviously we were not tourists. All the treatment has been fantastic towards us and there is no bad feeling at all towards Iran."

Still waiting for a response from Tony.

A Very Pragmatic Religion

People who criticize environmentalism like to say that it is a "religion." They think it's based on faith, a concept of doomsday, and that we believe that driving cars and building factories and polluting the sacred air and water is a "sin" for which we will eventually be punished.

That's funny, I thought I wanted clean air because I have this strange aversion to breathing poison. I didn't know that the air was so holy.

Ahmadinewhatthefuckinejad?

So Iran is letting the hostages go. No negotiations, no daring MI5 rescue operation, just "*yawn* whatever, here are your guys back."

Ahmadinejad says, "When we think of Islamic kindness, we are not expecting anything in return." This makes me think there are one of two things going on here: either this whole thing was a stunt to allow Ahmadinejad to make himself look like the good guy by "pardoning" the Brittish hostages, which is quite contrived seeing as international law says that if someone illegally enters your waters, you intercept them and turn them back rather than capture them, or there was some kind of back door deal made that convinced Mahmoud of the wisdom of releasing these guys.

Given that Ahmadinejad really wants people to believe that, "really guys, I did this out of the kindness of my heart. No one is coercing me to release these people in any way," the latter situation seems somewhat more likely.

What I can't wait to see is whether the confessions that the captives gave will be recanted, and what the right-wing crazies are going to do/say if they aren't.