LunaBrits

Breaking News! British Leftists have uncovered the identity of the London terrorists. It was obviously the work, as this article explains, of ... THE JEWS! How did we not see it?

Perhaps most incredible was the speed with which left-wing fascists and conspiracy nuts discovered "evidence" that the bombs were placed by Jews and not by Arab terrorists. Within hours of the bombings nearly every anarcho-fascist, communist, Palestinian, and neonazi web site on the planet was publishing a new conspiracy "theory" of the bombings. Most of these had long been promoting a similar conspiracy "theory" about the 9-11 bombings, which held that either the Bush Republicans or the Israeli Mossad had really knocked down the WTC towers while blaming the poor al-Qaeda Arabs for the crime.

Under their new "theory", Israeli former Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received "advanced warning" of the bombings, and had been advised to remain in his hotel. These "advanced warnings" prove that it was actually Israeli or Jewish agents who had planted the bombs in London in order to get the Brits angry at poor innocent Moslems.

Now as a matter of fact, Netanyahu did in fact receive a "warning", but it was from the British police and it was AFTER the bombs went off but before the full picture was clear, and the cops suggested to him that it would be prudent to stay in his hotel. Conspiracy nuts turned that into "evidence" that Israel was responsible for the bombings. There were in fact some reports that Israel had tipped off British Intelligence before the bombings that an al-Qaeda attack against London might be imminent, but that is not exactly the "proof" of nefarious conspiracy that the conspiracy nuts were seeking.

One interesting place to look for reactions to the atrocities in London is the British version of the "Indymedia" flagship web site of the anarcho-fascist movement. It was crawling with articles that insist that al-Qaeda is innocent of the bombings and being blamed for them because the conservatives need a patsy. Some postings claimed they were placed there by the CIA. Others went to lengths to clear al-Qaeda. Then there are the postings claiming that the bombings simply serve Blair's interest in silencing the Left and their Islamist allies, and insisting that Blair's people placed the bombs. And of course the postings blaming the bombings on the Jews or Israelis. John Pilger showed up on the site to blame Blair for the bombs: "They are 'Blair's bombs', and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about 'our way of life', which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled."

The UK Indymedia site even ran the raving article by San Francisco Dennis "Justin" Raimondo, editor of the neofascist pro-terror "antiwar.com" web site and columnist for Pravda. Raimondo had invented a "theory", crayoned into a self-published "book," claiming that Jews, and not al-Qaeda, knocked down the WTC on 9-11, this all on the basis of the fact that some Israeli moving men were picked up that day for visa violations and were found to have some dollar cash in a dirty sock.

Raimondo's UK Indymedia piece (also published on his own antiwar.com site) claims that the Israelis planted the London bombs. Raimondo's evidence? The same fraudulent claims about how Netanyahu supposedly got "advance warnings of the bombs". But one of the most bizarre developments was that no sooner did Raimondo's lunatic "theory" appear across the web than a vicious attack against Raimondo was launched on some of those same web pages by Swedish neonazi "Israel Shamir." It seems that Raimondo, who is an anti-Semite, published a piece calling "Shamir" an anti-Semite, which he is. Raimondo wrote, "Shamir caters to his deranged constituency of Jew-haters," and - somewhat mysteriously - Raimondo did not mean that as a compliment. Keeping these people apart is becoming such a burden!

In contrast, a nice critique of the Indymedia anarcho-fascists was published by the Freedom Institute of the Republic of Ireland, denouncing the Indymedia pro-terrorists. These Irish freedom fighters denounce the "anarchists" for violent rioting in Scotland against the G8 leaders meeting there, forcing police to divert manpower from London area just when they were needed there: "The regulars at the Institute for Autonomy, where most of the Indymedia UK inner circle hang out, are almost certainly unharmed, as they were engaging in recreational public disorder hundreds of miles away in Scotland and successfully diverting police resources from the capital. Well done compadres!"

The conspiracy "theory" about the Jews having placed the bombs spread through the internet, appears by now on every "Indymedia" web site, and has been repeated on such lunatic web sites as "The Simon", which wrote: "Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for the Mossad, you'd think the perpetrators could at least come up with a clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is startling."

Meanwhile, George Galloway, Saddam Hussein's paid agent in British politics, issued a statement about the bombs this week. You will not be surprised to learn that the lesson he insists that Britain draw from the mass murders is that the "occupation" of Iraq must be ended and of course that Israel must be destroyed:

"We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East. Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence."

Tariq Ali, a British Moslem leftist and pro-terror militant, wrote an article blaming the bombings on the West's mistreatment of Moslems. Reprinted widely, including on Counterpunch, it stated, "The principal cause of this violence is the violence that is being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. The bombing of innocent people is equally barbaric in Baghdad, Jenin, Kabul as it is in New York, Madrid or London. And unless this is recognized the horrors will continue.... The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. "

Counterpunch, always to be relied upon to support anti-Western terrorists even when they target Alexander Cockburn's own homeland, has already come out with at least one article that supports the terrorist bombers. It ran a piece by notorious British neonazi Gilad Atzmon, famous for his justifying the burning down of synagogues, and so openly anti-Semitic that large numbers of British leftists have been urging the Socialist Workers Party in the UK to cut all ties with him. Atzmon writes about the London bombings that the real lesson should be:

"It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals. More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders in a criminal company.... It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals."

This is interesting. The government is responsible for the crime because of its involvement in the war against Islamo-terrorism, but the Jews, who benefit from that war, actually carried out the attack. No wonder these folk are often referred to as LunaBrits.

Read the whole piece. You'll be amazed.

Lost Liberty

Logan Clements is evidently quite serious about his proposal to have the Selectmen of Weare, NH seize the home of Justice David Souter and award it to him for the construction of the Lost Liberty Hotel. We think this is a fine idea, but Clements needs help. Below is an excerpt from his newsletter:

Thank you for contacting me about the Lost Liberty Hotel project whereby we plan to build a hotel on the property currently owned by Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Some of your comments inspired me and others made me laugh so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. I regret that I'm not able to respond to each of you individually, but please understand that with about 6,000 inbound e-mail and voicemail messages, I'm overwhelmed. To help me hire some staff please click the "YES, I want to help button" to the right".

Toward freedom, Logan Darrow Clements

P.S. I highly recommend you read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, as the characters in the book devise a creative way to regain their lost liberty (and it is also a great mystery novel).

SEEKING HOTEL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

To increase the chance that The Lost Liberty Hotel is actually built, we intend to hand over the development and construction of it to an experienced hotel development company. We are already talking with several companies but would like to hear from others. If your company fits the bill (or you know one that does) please contact me using the link below. Please put "Hotel Builder" in the subject line.

MORE WAYS WE CAN WIN

If the Board of Selectmen in the Town of Weare doesn't vote in favor of our proposal, we have received word that several citizens are drafting ballot initiatives, that would bypass the Board and accomplish the same end.

However, before we officially make a proposal to the Board, we want to have a hotel development company leading the project with all the necessary documentation in hand (architectural drawings, statistics to show economic viability, proof of financial means, etc). Several journalists have incorrectly implied that I have already made this proposal. Not true. I simply sent a fax asking the Town what the proper procedure is for making such a proposal.

TV APPEARANCE ON TUESDAY 7/12

I am scheduled to appear on a national cable television channel on Tuesday, July 12 in the afternoon. Since these appearances are sometimes cancelled at the last minute I'm withholding the specific details for now. Please visit the link below on Tuesday 7/12 after 1pm Pacific Time to find out the channel, show and time of my appearance.

A MOVIE AND A WEEKLY TV SHOW !

The reason I started Freestar Media is to make a "pilot movie" and produce a weekly TV newsmagazine (like "20/20" or "60 Minutes") for national syndication. The TV show will expose outrageous government abuses around the world and highlight individuals taking a stand against them.

Unfortunately current laws may prohibit me from telling you that we are seeking financing for stage two of our business plan (making a movie). I wish I could tell you that Freestar Media seeks four $75K accredited investors, but that might be illegal so I'll have to keep it a secret for now. It's too bad that raising start-up capital is almost illegal in a nation that is supposed to be capitalist. Perhaps I should do a show on that!

Go here for Clements' web page and links to how you can help see the project come to fruition.

An Interesting Conversion

This is an interesting conversion story:

Jewish parody rap star 50 Shekel, who was once billed as "The World's Most Kosher MC," has shocked the Jewish world with an announcement on his Web site: he's accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

50 Shekel, whose real name is Aviad Cohen, 30, made a name for himself with his hit "In da Shul," his spoof on gangster rapper 50 Cent's single "In da Club." Cohen gained popularity with gigs around New York in 2003. At the time, he said he wanted to rap about Judaism.

Raised an observant Jew in Israel and Brooklyn, Cohen told Beliefnet in 2003 that he was in the process of becoming closer to the Torah and orthodoxy. "Judaism is what made me -- all the values and ethics that the Torah teaches," he said. "That's something that's been evident in my life." But he has now chosen to lead a Messianic Jewish lifestyle.

Messianic Jews, like Christians, believe that Jesus (or as they refer to him, Y'Shua) was the expected Messiah. Though they claim to be following the true Judaism, mainstream Jews are nearly unanimous in rejecting the idea that Messianic Jews are Jewish, and many believe them to be Christians intentionally targeting Jews for conversion.

Cohen says his change of heart was divinely inspired. "This random morning I woke up to pastors speaking on the radio, and they were speaking about Old Testament stuff," Cohen says. "I didn't set my alarm, I didn't set it to that station." This experience, Cohen says, was a sign from God that he should have enough "matzoh balls" to explore Christianity.

After that, Cohen watched Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," and immediately became fascinated with Jesus. It was then, he says, that he "came to faith."

"After seeing 'The Passion,' my mouth was wide open for about 20 minutes straight," Cohen says on his Web site. "I was shocked. ... Jesus was the messiah! Messiah is moshiach The Anointed One that we've all been waiting for. This movie is not anti-Semitic. I have just fallen in love with God."

Cohen, who has been practicing Messianic Judaism for about 10 months but just let fans know about his new faith several weeks ago, believes accepting "Jesus into his heart" makes him a "true Jew."

"A lot of people are stuck in (Microsoft) Windows 98," he says. "The New Testament is Windows XP. It's 2005. I have no interest in Windows 98. I upgraded. This is where we're supposed to be right now. I am a true Jew on course."

Cohen maintains he is still Jewish and says that people who disagree are not following what God wants from them. He says Jews tend to be more biased against Jews becoming Christians than against Jews who explore other religions.

"If I became a Buddhist, Jews wouldn't care. They would probably think I'm spiritual and edgy," he says. "If I became a palm-reading-astrologer-Kabbalist, they would cheer and think I'm hip. But now that I have come into the arms of God, they are freaking like crazy, 'cause they know I'm sold out to God and His Anointed Son and no longer sold on 'Judaism.' "

Regardless of the stir Cohen has caused in the hip-hop-loving Jewish world, he still likes to use the Jewish jargon that made him a success. "I just want to Jew the right thing," he says. "And walking with Jesus is definitely Jewing the right thing."

We've never heard of Mr. Shekel, but he sounds like a funny guy. We wish him well.

Cardinal Carifies Catholic Position on Darwinism

Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna takes strides toward clarifying the Catholic Church's position on evolution, a position which has been rather murky in the public mind since John Paul's remarks on the relation of science and religion in 1996. Schonborn's entire editorial in the New York Times is important and shouldn't be missed by anyone interested in this issue, but the key passage, in our view, is this:

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

This is indeed the heart of the matter, the crux that so many who comment on this controversy simply overlook or ignore. Intelligent Design theory, regardless of what some of its supporters and opponents may think, does not require that we reject evolution. There very well may have been descent through modification in the history of organisms, but the key point is that however life came to be here, as Cardinal Schonborn insists, it did not arise through blind impersonal chance. To the extent that physical processes were involved in bringing about the complexities of living things they did not act solely by themselves. They served at the pleasure of a transcendent mind. This is the position of many, if not most, ID theorists. One can deny these assertions but doing so takes one out of the realm of scientific competence and into the realm of metaphysics. In other words, no scientist qua scientist has any business denying that intelligence played a role in the development of life.

It is surprising that some Catholic scientists appear to be upset by the Cardinal's essay. What reason is there, after all, for being a theist, let alone a Catholic theist, if one believes that God plays no role in creation? What is the difference between this kind of Catholicism and a Jeffersonian deism?

Cardinal Schonborn points out while discussing a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission that:

Commenting on the widespread abuse of John Paul's 1996 letter on evolution, the commission cautions that "the letter cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe."

Furthermore, according to the commission, "An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist."

Yet this is exactly what the Neo-Darwinians believe. They are willing to allow that there is a god out there somewhere, but he's a god who has never done anything and in fact has nothing to do. We might ask of such evolutionary theists, however, what exactly the difference is between this sort of god and no god at all.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip on the Cardinal's essay.

Sandra Day O'Connor

Charles Krauthammer argues eloquently that the encomiums being thrown in Sandra Day O'Connor's direction are largely undeserved. Lacking any underlying judicial philosophy she was more of a legislator and mediator than an accomplished jurist.

Ann Coulter arrives at the same conclusion in typically more pungent prose.

Perky Economic Numbers

We don't hear much anymore about the terrible economy for which Bush is responsible. That might be because it's hard to argue that people are suffering when the job numbers are better than they've been since before 9/11. Things may not be great but they're good and getting better.

Sort of like Iraq.

Read all about it here.

Disturbed Souls

This level of looniness has to be seen in order to be believed:

The bombings in London seem to make little sense for Al Queda [sic] so instead we ask the question: Who really benefitted [sic] from today's attack? Bin Laden? "The Hook?" or George Bush?

The above was followed by this comment:

Al-Qaeda is the wet-dream brainchild of the CIA/Mossad/MI6. The Perfect Enemy. Cui Bono? The lying, mass-murdering THUG, BLAIR. A very, very sick THUG - a psychopath.

I know that anybody can write anything on the internet, but that there are people so dimly lit that they would write something as moronic as this is as pathetic as the sentiments they express are disgusting.

Nor is this all. Check out the rantings of one Brent Herbert, an apparent escapee from a London asylum.

There are evidently lots of disturbed souls who walk among us. We should do more to help them.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.

Annie Besant's Unbelief

"If my interlocutor desires to convince me that Jupiter has inhabitants, and that his description of them is accurate, it is for him to bring forward evidence in support of his contention. The burden of proof evidently lies on him; it is not for me to prove that no such beings exist before my non-belief is justified, but for him to prove that they do exist before my belief can be fairly claimed. Similarly, it is for the affirmer of God's existence to bring evidence in support of his affirmation; the burden of proof lies on him."

Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933), social reformer, atheist, theosophist in Why I Do Not Believe in God

Assuming Ms Besant is correct that the burden of proof is on the one who affirms the existence of God, one might ask what sort of evidence she would accept as sufficient to convince her that God exists. The request for evidence sounds reasonable but is in fact often disingenuous. What the atheist often insists upon is not evidence but proof, and nothing short of a visual appearance by God would be sufficient to satisfy this demand. Indeed, Jesus Himself says that even were a man to rise from the dead skeptics would still not be persuaded (Luke 16:31).

Most people who disbelieve do not do so for want of evidence. Indeed, evidence is all around us: The information-rich biosphere, the astonishingly precise values of the basic parameters of the universe, the irreducible complexity of structures and processes found in living things, the extraordinary uniqueness of planet earth, the existence of human consciousness, the fact that the universe seems to have had a beginning, the origin of life from non-living matter, all of these point to an intelligent architect behind the cosmos we live in. Moreover, theism explains the human longing for meaning, morality, and justice better than does atheism and explains our existential experience better as well (e.g. our sense of guilt, freedom, self, and personal continuity are all more difficult to explain given a materialistic view of man).

Each of these may turn out to have a plausible non-theistic explanation, but until one is forthcoming, they must count as strong evidence that the universe is not simply an accident or the product of blind random processes. Richard Dawkins, the atheist biologist, is famous for having acknowledged the power of the temptation to ascribe the design of living things to an intelligent provenience. Unwilling to accept that conclusion, however, he wrote that scientists must constantly remind themselves that the design they see in living things is only apparent, not real.

If disbelief is not a matter of insufficient evidence then to what should it be attributed? For many, their disbelief is simply due to the fact that they find the possibility of a God in some way philosophically distressing and prefer not to accept a belief which makes them uncomfortable.

Numerous writers have noted, for example, that much of the impetus for the refusal to accept the Big Bang explanation for the origin of the universe until the evidence became so overwhelming that it could no longer be denied was due to the discomfort many materialist physicists experienced at the thought that the universe actually had a beginning rather than being eternal. A beginning suggests a cause, and a cause of something like a universe strongly suggests something akin to the God of traditional theism. For many this was philosophically and psychologically unacceptable.

The demand for evidence is a smoke screen often employed to mask the fact that the individual simply doesn't want there to be a God. As Pascal observed, there is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition (Pensees #430). That belief is a matter of one's disposition toward or away from the object of belief is apparent in that even materialists often believe many things in the absence of evidence or in cases where evidence isn't even possible.

For example, Annie Besant maintained that one shouldn't believe anything for which there is insufficient evidence, yet she believed that this maxim itself is true. Where is the evidence for it? Doubtless she believed that love is better than hate and kindness is better than cruelty. Did she have evidence beyond her own subjective preferences for these beliefs? Presumably she believed that the world has a past, a present and a future, and that the world is more than five minutes old, but it's hard to imagine what would count as "proof" for any of this. Perhaps she believed she and others have minds, but if so, how would she have convinced a skeptic? How would one prove a logical axiom like If A then not ~A? What evidence could one adduce in support of the claim that there is a world external to ourselves and that it's not just all in our minds? Perhaps each of these things can be demonstrated by a sufficiently clever philosopher, but the point is that one is justified in believing them even if one cannot think of any compelling evidence for the belief. We believe them essentially because it helps us to make sense out of our experience not because there is an abundance of objective evidence for them. Why, then, is belief in God different?

Perhaps it's different because in all the other cases we are either indifferent to, or anxious to accept, the belief in question, but in the case of God there is an antipathy toward the belief that impels us to erect what we think are insuperable barriers to it. As long as no one can prove God exists the atheist feels rationally justified in believing that he doesn't.

Yet, belief in God is not irrational. Many scientists believe that there are other universes besides our own, many believe that matter is comprised of infinitesimally tiny "strings," some believe there are living beings in the universe. They believe these things even though there's not a single substantial piece of evidence for any of them. They devote their lives to the study of string theory or astrobiology, the latter being a scientific discipline, a wit once observed, without any subject matter. Yet belief in the existence of a superintending mind behind the cosmos, for which there is enormous circumstantial evidence, is dismissed as superstition.

One sometimes wonders if the greatest sin, the unforgivable sin, is to just not want God to exist and to resist believing he does with all one's might.

Not a Fair Fight

Reading the transcript of the exchange between Ron Reagan, Jr. and Christopher Hitchens at Radio Blogger reminded me of watching Muhammad Ali pummeling some hopelessly inept opponent who had no business being in the ring with Ali in the first place. If he has any instinct for self-preservation, Reagan will avoid sparring with the likes of Hitchens again.

From MSNBC's Connected: Coast to Coast

RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?

CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?

RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...

CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?

RR: No, actually, I didn't say that, Christopher.

CH: At this stage, after what happened in London yesterday?

RR: What I did say, though, was that Iraq was not a center of terrorism before we went in there, but it might be now.

CH: How can you know so little about...

RR: You can make the claim that you just made about any other country in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.

CH: Absolutely nonsense.

RR: So do you think we ought to invade Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers from 9/11 came from, following your logic, Christopher?

CH: Uh, no. Excuse me. The hijackers may have been Saudi and Yemeni, but they were not envoys of the Saudi Arabian government, even when you said the worst...

RR: Zarqawi is not an envoy of Saddam Hussein, either.

CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?

RR: I guess because I listen to the 9/11 Commission, and read their report, and they said that Saddam Hussein was not exporting terror. I suppose that's how, Christopher.

CH: Well, then they were wrong, weren't they?

RR: No, maybe they just needed to listen to you, Christopher.

CH: Well, I'm not sure that they actually did say that. What they did say was they didn't know of any actual operational connection...

RR: That's right. No substantive operational connection.

CH: ...which was the Iraqi Baath Party and...excuse me...and Al Qaeda. A direct operational connection. Now, that's because they don't know. They don't say there isn't one. They say they couldn't find one. But I just gave you a number, I would have thought, of rather suggestive examples.

We don't agree with Hitchens on much, but on the WOT he's right on the mark. He makes a dilettante like Reagan look like a high school freshman in his first forensics tournament.

Blaming Blair

TruthOut.Org posts Robert Fisk's recent column blaming Tony Blair for the London bombings:

The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing By Robert Fisk

"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.

And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.

This is the classical language of appeasers. Let evil people alone, show them you mean them no harm, and maybe you'll escape their notice. It is the spirit of Neville Chamberlain who sought to mollify Hitler by groveling, and it's the antithesis of Edmund Burke who famously wrote that "All that's necessary for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to do nothing." It's obvious that Fisk prefers Chamberlain to Burke.

It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays [sic] bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".

This again is classic Leftist rhetoric, and it is intellectually vacuous. Fisk wants to draw a moral equivalency between the loss of life due to accident and inadvertence, despite strenuous attempts to prevent it, in the campaign to liberate Iraq from Hussein, and the deliberate murders perpetrated by people who thank God that they were able to kill civilians. Fisk's logic would force him to conclude that the loss of life of German, Italian, or Japanese civilians in WWII was unjustified by the attempt to defeat Hitler and his allies and morally equivalent to what Hitler did to Jews in his extermination camps and the Japanese did to the Chinese in Nanking.

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid.

The British aren't fighting an insurgency in Iraq. They're fighting terrorists. The attempt to somehow ennoble the enemy by calling them insurgents is disingenuous. They are in large part thugs, former Saddamites, proxies for foreign terrorists or foreigners themselves.

Moreover, why does Fisk suggest that anyone believed that terrorism wouldn't come to English shores? Everyone knew it would just as we know they will strike again in the U.S. The tacit assumption of Fisk's question that some people thought they were secure from attack because terrorists are being fought in the Middle East is absurd.

To time these bombs with the G8 summit, when the world was concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don't need a PhD to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital city with explosives and massacre more than 30 of its citizens. The G8 summit was announced so far in advance as to give the bombers all the time they needed to prepare. A co-ordinated system of attacks of the kind we saw yesterday would have taken months to plan - to choose safe houses, prepare explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are giveaways). Co-ordination and sophisticated planning - and the usual utter ruthlessness with regard to the lives of the innocent - are characteristic of al-Qa'ida. And let us not use - as our television colleagues did yesterday - "hallmarks", a word identified with quality silver rather than base metal.

And now let us reflect on the fact that yesterday, the opening of the G8, so critical a day, so bloody a day, represented a total failure of our security services - the same intelligence "experts" who claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none, but who utterly failed to uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.

This is a cheap shot at people who work under a terrific stress and do the best job humanly possible to protect individuals like Robert Fisk from harm. Because they're not perfect, because they're not omniscient, because the WOT is not a real life James Bond movie, Fisk holds them in contempt and piles them high with guilt for their failure and alleged incompetence. Nice guy.

Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros. Transportation appears to be the science of al-Qa'ida's dark arts. No one can search three million London commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist. Some thought the Eurostar might have been an al-Qa'ida target - be sure they have studied it - but why go for prestige when your common or garden bus and Tube train are there for the taking.

Having just faulted the British security forces for their "utter failure" he admits they have an impossible job. Mr. Fisk's essay is taking on the aspect of incoherence.

And then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the "usual suspect", the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says she's been racially abused. I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with "hostility". And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.

And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.

What the point of these sentences is is very hard to divine, although Fisk does seem to wish to cast doubt on Tony Blair's sincerity in opposing racism. He offers no evidence that Blair is insincere, but then evidence for someone like Mr. Fisk is not important. When you're spraying aspersions like machine gun fire you just try to hit as many targets as you can.

But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism;

It does? Again we have an unsupported assertion that we're just supposed to accept on Mr. Fisk's authority. We wonder, though, whether it encouraged racism when Mr. Fisk's parents' generation was told the truth about the Nazis. It would seem to more rational minds that telling the truth about one's enemies encourages a resolve to defeat them, as well it should. Only a liberal would fret that the truth might cause someone somewhere to entertain an ill thought about Muslims everywhere.

[W]hat we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into.

So, the fact that there are murderous savages in London who will kill commuters when given the chance is Blair's fault. If only Blair had stayed out of Iraq he might have been able to buy a few years of peace from the Islamists who don't really despise everything the crusader infidel British stand for, despite what they say. Fisk doesn't seem to have learned anything from English history. People like him were making the same argument in 1939 about Adolf Hitler. They argued vehemently against preparing for war because it would only provoke Herr Hitler who promised to be reasonable so long as he just didn't feel threatened. It wasn't the Fisk avatar Neville Chamberlain who understood the nature of German fascism and the intent of the Nazis, it was Winston Churchill, who would doubtless have done in Iraq what Tony Blair is doing.

Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?" Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair.

Yes, Sweden is lucky. They're lucky because historically England and the United States have stood against tyranny and protected nations like Sweden whose military could scarcely quell a pub brawl. Sweden is lucky today because Tony Blair is in England and George Bush is in the U.S. or else Osama Bin Laden might very well be in Stockholm lopping off Swedish heads. If he were such as Mr. Fisk would find some way to blame the Swedes for it.

A New Holiday

It's not hard to understand why secular leftists don't feel at home in America today. Consider the major holidays we celebrate: New Years' Day, President's Day, Good Friday and Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Out of all of these there are only two in which a Leftist can feel comfortable: New Years' Day, a secular holiday, and Labor Day, a time to honor the nation's workers.

All the rest must be a source of irritation and alienation for someone who despises the successes of capitalism and who disdains Christian belief. Surely, socialists and materialists will not care to join in honoring dead white males like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on Presidents' Day. Washington was a slave owner and Lincoln forced the nation to fight a war that took half a million lives. Nor do people of the secular left care to observe Memorial Day which honors American soldiers, a species many on the Left regard with barely concealed contempt. Fourth of July is especially unpleasant, full as it is of the detestable trappings of patriotism and "My country right or wrong" sentimentality.

The remaining holidays are celebrations for those lobotimized, uneducated "Christers" who seek to force their silly superstitions on the rest of the country. In the ideal secular society they would not even exist. Thanksgiving could be a decent enough holiday from a socialist perspective if the idea were to give thanks to the government for its manifold blessings, but it's a little inane to be giving our thanks to Someone who's not out there to receive them.

All in all, the calendar must be a source of dismay and annoyance for those who see nothing much worth celebrating, either in the history or the religion of this country. They would be far happier, presumably, if instead of honoring Washington, Lincoln, and God incarnate we instead celebrated the birthdays of Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud.

They could, perhaps, lump them all into a single observance and call it "Screw Up the World" Day.

Compare and Contrast

Let's do a compare and contrast between how Taliban prisoners are treated by their captors at Gitmo and how American soldiers are treated by their captors in Afghanistan:

At Gitmo the Muslims are given prayer rugs, Korans, good food, exercise, and no physical suffering (as long as they don't get violent or abusive). Their religious requirements are catered to (To paraphrase Ann Coulter, finally there is a place where people are free to express their religion with American taxpayer support without the ACLU getting hysterical. Unfortunately, it's at Gitmo.). Many of the detainees have been released from their imprisonment and have turned up back on the battlefield (about a dozen have been killed there.)

Now what about how Muslims treat American prisoners:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (July 9) - A purported Taliban spokesman said Saturday that the group has beheaded a missing American commando....

"This morning in Shagal district in Kunar province, the Taliban killed the American soldier and cut his head off," Mullah Latif Hakimi, the purported spokesman, told The Associated Press in a telephone call. "We left the body on a mountainside in this area so Afghan or U.S. soldiers there can find it."

The difference between Americans and Michael Moore's "Minutemen" is the difference between civilization and barbarism, between human and sub-human. To use Tolkienian imagery these people are brainwashed Orcs in the service of a demonic theology. And Muslims who remain silent about such horrors done in the name of their blessed religion robotically recite the chant that it's America who is the Great Satan.

Maybe Darwin was right.

Doing Something

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost pokes a little fun at the LIVE 8 festivities:

Last weekend hundreds of thousands of people gathered in ten spots around the globe for a series of free concerts meant to persuade world leaders to give more money to fight poverty in Africa. The idea for the concerts was conceived in May and hastily organized by Bob Geldof. Within two months the former Boomtown Rat was able to convince dozens of actors, musicians, and politicians to join in forming LIVE8, "the largest mandate for action in history."

Unlike most benefit concerts, though, Live8 won't be raising a dime to actually end poverty. As the web site notes, "LIVE 8 is calling for people across the world to unite in one call - in 2005 it is your voice we are after, not your money." Geldolf says the event is intended to raise consciousness and exert political pressure on the G8 summiteers.

According to the New York Times, the concerts included more than 200 musical acts scheduled to play more than 69 hours of music. Organizers said 5.5 billion people would be able to watch or listen on the Internet and more than 182 television stations and 2,000 radio networks and stations. Coldplay's Chris Martin called the concerts "the greatest thing that's ever been organized, probably, in the history of the world."

The greatest thing that's ever been organized (probably) in the history of the world?

Hmm, sounds like a challenge. Well, ... the blogosphere accepts.

The greatest thing that has ever been organized - probably - in the history of the world will occur in the blogosphere. By linking blogs we shall create a revolution in consciousness raising. We shall raise our consciousness higher than has ever been attempted before. And once our collective consciousnesses have reached stratospheric levels, the G8 will have no choice but to consent to our demands.

Here is how you can participate in the greatest thing that has ever been organized - probably - in the history of the world:

1. Raise your consciousness.

2. Show others that you have raised your consciousness by linking to this post and displaying the Official Logo of LotR (at Carter's post) on your blog.

3. Tell the world exactly what it is you are raising your consciousness about (it can be anything you want).

4. Use your raised consciousness to exert political pressure on the G8 summiteers.

5. Feel good about having participated in an action that, while not having actually affected anything, has allowed you to be part of the greatest thing that ever been organized - probably -- in the history of the world.

As Geldolf said, "Something must be done, even if it doesn't work." By participating in the Linkers of the Revolution event, you can do something. It won't work, of course, but that doesn't matter. Something must be done. And this is, technically speaking, something.

Viva la Revolution!

Maybe Carter's being a little hard on the LIVE 8 folks. They mean well, after all, and isn't that all that matters?

A Friend's Admonition

A friend reproves us for being both unfair and guilty of the same fault we imputed to others in a couple of our posts of 7/7. His argument is in our Feedback section. Check it out and see if you agree.

Life in Hell

A South Korean newspaper sheds a little light on life in the socialist workers' paradise of North Korea:

Citing interviews with North Korean defectors, a Seoul-based research institute said yesterday that the regime in Pyongyang is continuing an aggressive campaign to suppress underground churches in the country.

The 2005 North Korea Human Rights White Paper published by the Korea Institute of National Unification reported a number of executions of religious figures operating underground Protestant churches in the North. In 2001, five people found guilty of conducting missionary work were executed by firing squad in Nampo.

North Korean defectors are quoted in the report as saying that Pyongyang is doing everything it can to stop the spread of Protestantism in the communist country. According to the report, 86 members of underground churches were rounded up in the early 1990s in Anak, South Hanghae province, some of whom were executed while the rest were sent to political prisons.

A North Korean defector said he had once participated in a three-year long operation to uproot an underground church in 1996. Since 1997, North Korea has been instructing its people to report any kind of proselytizing to the authorities. As a pretense that religious freedom exists in the North, Pyongyang has built a number of churches, but underground churches have been vigorously suppressed.

According to the report, economic crimes in particular continue to be punished through public executions. Disclosures were also made detailing executions of people who had been selling human flesh at the height of the country's food crisis in the late 1990s. The research institute said a number of defectors had given testimony about the sale of human flesh.

They're so hungry for food that they'll eat human flesh. They're so hungry for God that they'll risk imprisonment or death in order to find Him. The poor masses of North Korea find themselves languishing in a state-imposed hell. They're starving both physically and spiritually, but their leaders are determined to manufacture nuclear weapons which will neither fill their bellies nor nourish their souls. For what?

A Simplistic View

If anyone would like insight into the thinking of true-blue lefties and why the Democratic Party is doomed to utter irrelevance short of a miraculous turn-about, they ought to read today's discussion thread at Democratic Underground.

General Theme: The London atrocities were all the fault of Bush/Blair.

The belief seems to be that if we hadn't invaded Afghanistan and Iraq London wouldn't have happened. Never mind that 9/11 predated the invasion of Afghanistan and that Islamic terrorism has been striking western targets at least since the 1970s. What the DU contributers don't seem to accept is that Islamo-terrorists are only proximally concerned with Iraq. The real reason for their hatred of the west is that our values are antithetical to Islam.

Moreover, we, the infidels, have produced a steadily advancing civilization while they, the faithful, have failed in every measure to move beyond the middle ages. This is a maddeningly difficult fact to accept and it fuels their rage against us. Their only accomplishment in the last five hundred years has been to devise more ingenious ways of killing people. Finally, as long as the west, or at least the U.S., stands behind Israel's right to exist the Islamists will hate us.

To blame the London horror on Bush and Blair is to hold a very simplistic view of the struggle we're in.

George Galloway: Political Groin Puncher

MP George Galloway says this today: "We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings."

This really is low. Galloway is trying to turn this atrocity to his political advantage and the tactic is as tawdry as it can be. First, it's easy to say that attacking terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq makes an attack on the homeland more likely. If it happens the person who said it can say he told us so. If it doesn't everyone forgets that he said it.

Second, if Galloway truly believes that England would not have been a target had they not allied themselves with the U.S. he's very naive. Islamists are at war with western civilization and they will eventually attack it anywhere they can. Allies of the U.S. are primary targets because of the urgency of isolating the United States. If and when that is accomplished all western nations will be leisurely intimidated until they are reduced to abject dhimmitude (subservience to the will of the Islamic caliphate).

The proximate goal of the Islamists (and tacitly approved by many other Muslims throughout the world) is to cripple the U.S. and its allies. The mid-term goal is to translate that weakness into the destruction of Israel, and the long-term goal is the spread of Taliban-like rule across the globe. If Galloway can't see this he's burying his head in the sand.

Third, it is reprehensible of him to assert that the government ignored the threat of Islamic terrorism. He has no way to know this to be true. He's simply trying to use this horrific event to discredit the very people who are doing the most to defeat the savages who carried it out. This is the worst kind of opportunism, and Galloway should be held up to public opprobrium for engaging in it.

Why Liberals Smear

Chuck Schumer says that the Dems are gearing up to "go to war" over Bush's SCOTUS nominee. Apparently they see the prospect of a conservative Justice as a greater threat to the United States than Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies. At any rate Dennis Prager sums up the Democrats' rules of engagement for the political battlefield:

We don't know who President George W. Bush will nominate to succeed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But this is certain: Democrats will smear the nominee. It will not matter how personally honorable, how intellectually honest, how legally profound this nominee is. Indeed, the greater the individual, the greater the personal attacks will be.

Why? There are three reasons.

First, Democrats believe that conservatives by definition are bad people. As Howard Dean, the head of the Democratic National Committee recently said, "in contradistinction" to Republicans, Democrats care if children go to bed hungry at night. In most Democrats' minds, conservatives/Republicans do not care if children go to bed hungry, and they are racist, intolerant, regard women as inferior, are stingy and mean spirited, and prefer war to peace.

The reason they see conservatives this way is that most people on the Left are certain that they mean well; therefore their opponents do not mean well. Moreover, liberals tend to assess policy positions on that basis -- are the motives good? -- rather than on the basis of what actually does good.

For example, liberals advocate bilingual education for immigrant children despite the fact that bilingual education hurts immigrant children. It slows learning the language of the adopted country and integrating into it, and thereby hurts their chances for success. Nevertheless liberal educators and politicians prefer bilingual education -- out of compassion for immigrant children (and antipathy to American assimilation). Therefore liberals believe that since compassion leads them to favor bilingual education, only a lack of compassion can explain conservative preference for English immersion.

Likewise in liberal eyes, the Republican/conservative preference for lowering taxes can only emanate from selfishness and apathy toward the poor. And conservative support for the war in Iraq cannot emanate from love of liberty and a moral desire to destroy Islamic totalitarians, but rather from love of oil, commitment to American imperialism and macho adoration of military might.

On issue after issue, Democrats perceive Republicans as not merely wrong, but bad. And when fighting the bad, almost any weapon may be used. The tactic of choice has been the smearing of conservatives. There are few major conservative political figures whose names have not been sullied by liberals. It began with Judge Robert Bork, reached its nadir with Clarence Thomas and continues to this day.

Republicans have come nowhere near making the number of personal attacks on the private lives of public individuals. One reason, ironically, is that people expect more decent personal conduct from conservatives. Nor is it intellectually honest to counter that Republicans did the same thing to President Clinton. Had President Clinton said, "I am sorry for my lapse in judgment. I am sorry to my family and to my country," Republicans would have dropped the Monica Lewinsky affair. It was his lying -- to the country and under oath -- that kept the issue alive.

A second reason Democrats and others on the Left use smear as a political weapon is to avoid challenging ideas and intellectual argument. Liberals have been able to do so in all the areas they dominate -- academia, news media and unions. Instead, they have learned to rely on personal attacks, such as routinely labeling opponents "racist," "sexist," "homophobic" and "intolerant."

Third, having been unable to persuade the American public to adopt most of its policies, the Left has increasingly relied on the courts to do what the political process will not do. As Democrat William A. Galston, former aide to President Bill Clinton, admitted this past weekend, "Beginning in the 1950s, the Democratic Party convinced itself that, especially on social issues, the principal vehicle of advance would be the court."

Therefore, nearly all the Left's eggs are in the judicial basket. It knows: no liberal courts, no liberal agenda. When combined with moral contempt for conservatives and an inability to persuade the public, the Left must retain the Supreme Court at any price. And that price is the good name of good people. As you will see.

This is what makes liberals so loveable. They're just such fair-minded, decent, and honest folk.

I remember back in the late sixties there was a massive protest in the streets of Washington against the Vietnam war. A car containing an elderly couple who just happened to be driving through town was unable to move because of the crowd in the streets. One of the young gentlemen threw himself onto the hood of the car and vomited all across the windshield right in the faces, as it were, of the occupants. The tactics of the Left have apparently changed little over the years.

When you're bereft of ideas, when your solutions to the world's problems defy common sense and historical experience, when an honest debate works only to your detriment, the only way you can hope to win is to spew vomit and slime on good and decent people.

Limit Tenure?

Bruce Bartlett offers what seems on the surface, at least, to be a fine idea in the Washington Times:

Lately, something of a consensus has developed around a constitutional amendment to limit justices' terms of 18 years, staggered so there would in theory be an opening every two years. This means every president serving a full term would likely make two appointments to the Supreme Court.

I believe elimination of life tenure, through this scheme or another, would greatly reduce the intensity of Supreme Court appointment battles because the stakes would not be so high. Both sides would know if they failed this time around, they would probably have another chance within two years.

Eighteen years is longer than the historical average tenure for a sitting Justice. Bartlett notes that:

Historically, people were appointed to the Supreme Court relatively late in life -- as a capstone to long careers in law or public service. Today, there is a much greater effort to appoint relatively young justices so they will spend as much time there as possible. There is also greater pressure for justices to avoid retiring until severe physical infirmity demands it.

For these reasons, tenure on the court has increased over time and turnover has fallen. According to Northwestern University law professors Steven Calabresi and James Lindgren, since 1971 the average justice's tenure has increased from 12.2 years (1941-1970) to 25.6 years. The average age of a justice leaving office has risen from 67.6 years to 78.8 years between the same periods. And the average number of years between court appointments has almost doubled from one every 1.67 years to one every 3.27 years. The current makeup of the court is one of the longest in history, lasting more than 10 years, since Justice Stephen Breyer's 1994 appointment.

Good article, good idea. Bartlett offers a couple of other advantages of this proposal in his essay. Unlike other suggested constitutional amendments this one would be easy for both conservatives and liberals to vote for. We doubt, though, that anyone in Congress would expend the energy to really push it unless there are some really ugly nomination fights over the next couple of vacancies.

Is Syria Getting Tough on Terrorists?

Maybe Syria intends to avert an American incursion of its territory after all:

A Syrian policeman was killed and two militants captured during fighting on a mountain overlooking Damascus yesterday in a second day of battles between Syrian security forces and rebels connected with the war in Iraq. The gunbattle, which allegedly involved former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein, came amid indications that the Syrian Government is increasing its efforts to capture militants who use Syria as a staging ground for attacks in Iraq.

Sana, the official Syrian news agency, reported: "The clash took place on Mount Qassioun with a group of people wanted for terrorist crimes, some of whom were former bodyguards. The gunbattle claimed the life of Ahmad Hijazi, a security forces officer, Sana said, which added that two police officers and two other security force officers were wounded.

The agency said that the two people arrested were Sharif Aied Saif Smadi, a Jordanian, and the wife of his brother, Mohammed, who is on the run.

The incident came a day after fighting between Syrian troops and suspected Islamist militants returning from Iraq who were trying to cross into northern Lebanon, near Homs. Two soldiers and a militant were killed in the fighting, the first incident of its kind along the Lebanon-Syria frontier. Syrian troops arrested at least 34 militants staying at a nearby safe house, Sana said.

Lebanese media reports said that among those arrested were Lebanese and Algerians. The al-Jazeera satellite channel named the dead militant as Majdi bin Mohammed bin Said al-Zreibi, a Tunisian. Syria faces pressure from the US to stop militants crossing into Iraq.

Let us hope that Syria will be consistent in applying pressure on those who are using its territory as a safe haven from which to launch assaults on Iraq.

Debka File says that the gun battle broke out as a result of a massacre of Syrian tourists by the terrorists although why they would have done this was not made clear.

Sagan on Skepticism

"But the tools of skepticism are generally unavailable to the citizens of our society. They're hardly ever mentioned in the schools, even in the presentation of science, its most ardent practitioner, although skepticism repeatedly sprouts spontaneously out of the disappointments of everyday life. Our politics, economics, advertising, and religions (New Age and Old) are awash in credulity. Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those in power, a skeptic might suggest, have a vested interest in discouraging skepticism."

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Sagan is exactly right. He has put his finger on one reason why there is so much opposition from the Neo-Darwinian priesthood to those skeptics who dissent from the true religion.

Moral Equivalency Watch

Apparently Brian Williams' blow dryer has singed his common sense. That's as good an explanation as any for why the NBC anchor would have made this blockheaded statement to Andrea Mitchell the other night. In a story on the newly elected Iranian president, a man who appears to some of the Americans who were held hostage in Tehran in the late seventies to be one of their abductors, Williams said:

"What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called 'terrorists' by the British crown, after all."

Evidently, at some point in Mr. Williams' educational journey he was taught that George Washington kidnapped and held foreign diplomats against their will for over a year, had them beaten and mistreated and in fear of their lives, which were repeatedly threatened, not because they had committed any crimes against the colonies but simply because they were British. Ah, you say Washington never did that? Maybe it was Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, or Jefferson. Maybe John Adams. It must have been one of those guys because Brian Williams said so on NBC.

For sophisticates like Williams terrorism is relative. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, don't you know. The fact is that the word terrorist denotes something pretty specific in today's parlance. It refers to one who deliberately undertakes to kill large numbers of innocent civilians in order to weaken opposition to whatever goals the murderer might have in mind. At the very minimum a terrorist is a murderer.

Since the word terrorist did not exist in the 1770s, when Williams says that the British might have regarded the founders as terrorists the only meaning he can be ascribing to the word is the meaning it has today. As such, his statement makes him look like a dunce.

Williams, like so many liberals, can't seem to escape the desire to draw a moral equivalence between Americans and America's foes. In their view, if our enemies are evil they're no more so than the very best men this country has produced. Evil, after all, has no objective definition. In the Orwellian Newspeak of the times evil is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, the liberation of fifty million people is a great atrocity, terrorists who deliberately murder women and children are compared by Michael Moore to the Minutemen of colonial America, Bush is Hitler.

It's as pathetic as it is stupid.

The Dems' Dilemma

A couple of Washington Post writers think that the bipartisan filibuster deal struck six weeks ago will make it difficult for the Democrats to stop a conservative Bush nominee for the seat vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor:

The pact, signed by seven Democrats and seven Republicans, says a judicial nominee will be filibustered only under "extraordinary circumstances." Key members of the group said yesterday that a nominee's philosophical views cannot amount to "extraordinary circumstances" and that therefore a filibuster can be justified only on questions of personal ethics or character.

The distinction is crucial because Democrats want to force Bush to pick a centrist, not a staunch conservative as many activist groups on the political right desire. Holding only 44 of the Senate's 100 seats, Democrats have no way to block a Republican-backed nominee without employing a filibuster, which takes 60 votes to stop.

GOP leaders, sensing the Democrats' bind, expressed confidence yesterday that the Senate will confirm Bush's eventual nominee, no matter how ideologically rigid. "I think there is every expectation, every reason to believe that there will be no successful filibuster," Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on "Fox News Sunday."

Under the "Gang of 14" accord, the seven Republican signers agreed to deny Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) the votes he needed to carry out his threat to bar judicial filibusters by changing Senate rules. The seven are implicitly released from the deal if the Democratic signers renege on their end. Yesterday, key players suggested the seven Democrats will automatically be in default if they contend a nominee's ideological views constitute "extraordinary circumstances" that would justify a filibuster.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the 14 signers, noted that the accord allowed the confirmation of three Bush appellate court nominees so conservative that Democrats had successfully filibustered them for years: Janice Rogers Brown, William H. Pryor Jr. and Priscilla R. Owen. Because Democrats accepted them under the deal, Graham said on the Fox program, it is clear that ideological differences will not justify a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.

"Based on what we've done in the past with Brown, Pryor and Owen," Graham said, "ideological attacks are not an 'extraordinary circumstance.' To me, it would have to be a character problem, an ethics problem, some allegation about the qualifications of the person, not an ideological bent."

Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), a leader of the seven Democratic signers, largely concurred. Nelson "would agree that ideology is not an 'extraordinary circumstance' unless you get to the extreme of either side," his spokesman, David DiMartino, said in an interview.

Of course, this all assumes that Democrats can be trusted to keep their word. Even if they violate the spirit of the deal, however, and seek to filibuster a nominee on ideological grounds, it still works to their disadvantage inasmuch as their betrayal would anger perhaps all Republicans and enough Democrats a cloture vote to end the filibuster would succeed.

So if the Democrats refuse to filibuster over ideological differences, Bush wins. If they do try to filibuster, either cloture will be invoked (if the Republicans can get 60 votes), or the rules will be changed to disallow filibusters (if the Republicans can muster 50 votes). Either way, it looks like any reasonably well-qualified nominee will be confirmed.

The wild-card in all this would be the nomination by Bush of his buddy Alberto Gonzalez. There are enough conservative Republicans who will settle for nothing less than a staunch "original intent" Justice on the Court and who are sufficiently skeptical of Gonzalez that the necessary votes to confirm him may not be there. The word among conservatives is that Gonzalez is Spanish for Souter. Another Souter is the last thing the Court, or the nation, needs.

Tough Words

Iraqi blogger Omar at Iraq The Model has some tough but wise words for the cut and runners:

Yesterday [the] interior ministry in Saudi Arabia uncovered a new list of wanted Al-Qaeda members with 36 names on it, 21 of who are believed to be residing in Iraq right now.

Can anyone tell me how can these terrorists be stopped from moving their zone of action to other countries if they weren't intercepted right here and right now? There's no doubt that once Iraq falls in their hands they will start looking for other battle grounds and they will search for the "greatest Satan" in other places. It is the American existence in Iraq that attracted them to a great extent and when there are no Americans in Iraq Al-Qaeda will not simply drop their weapons and start a normal life, they will seek other places where they can find, and kill Americans.

What I want to say here is that it is our fate to fight terrorism on our own land and we (the majority) have accepted to challenge this fate the day we abandoned Saddam and welcomed our freedom but that's not the case for you in America. Actually we've got no other choice but to fight and keep fighting until we win over the terrorists because otherwise we'll have to submit to their will and the damage would be irreversible.

Fighting terrorism for us in Iraq is a matter of life or death so we have no choice but to keep fighting until we kill or lock in jail every one of them and we're doing this whether the world supported us or not but in case we failed, the consequences will not be confined by Iraq's borders. You (the west) can step back and wait for the terrorists to knock on your doors at any minute or you can put your s*** together and fight them while they're thousands of miles away.

This is war, it's not a picnic and don't think that we're enjoying it and we're not expecting you to enjoy it either. By quitting now some might think that needless losses are going to be avoided but that's-in my opinion-is a very shortsighted way of thinking because quitting now will only expose America and the rest of the world to a much greater threat.

I was talking about this to one of my friends and he described this war in an interesting way, he said "this war is much like a fierce boxing match; you punch and you get punched but even if you're stronger than your opponent you should not allow him to catch his breath at any round because he might then give you a surprising punch when the next round begins and knocks you down".

So my advice to the American politicians on both sides but especially those on the left side is: grow up, this is not the time to seek political wins and it's not the time to use other's mistakes to get some publicity. We're facing very tough times so use your skills to find solutions. Bottom line is, talk less, think more and do more.

Unfortunately, Omar is laboring under the illusion that the Left in this country gives a damn about Iraq. They don't. What they care about is abortion on demand, gay marriage, and getting the political power to see that these remain, or become, legal. That means denying George Bush and the Republicans any successes they might otherwise achieve, and that means undercutting our effort in Iraq in any way they can without jeopardizing their own political prospects.

If the U.S. is going to succeed in establishing a stable and free Iraq (and, as an eventual consequence, a stable and free Syria and Iran)it will have to be done without the cooperation of the Left, at least the hard Left of Move On.org, etc.

The Next SCOTUS Retirement?

We don't like to spread rumors, especially internet rumors, but, well, this was too good to keep to ourselves. A blog which specializes in legal and judicial matters says this:

Here's a wildcard for you: I have it on reasonably good authority that an unlikely retirement might be on the way, too. A Supreme Court insider told me several weeks ago that Souter may well retire. He apparently told friends and family that he has always planned to step down upon turning 65, and that he'd rather return to New Hampshire year-round than continue to spend time in D.C. He's 65 now.

If that happens, remember where you read it first. If it doesn't happen, just pretend I never wrote it.

And that we never repeated it. Unfortunately, we don't really think Souter will retire, although he should have done so about twenty years ago. He's going to need some income to buy himself a new house when his current domicile gets converted into the Lost Liberty Hotel.

Thank You, America

The Middle East Media Research Institute has the translation of a column written by a Saudi named Muhammed al-Sheikh. The essay appeared June 18th in the Saudi daily al-Jazirah and was titled Thank You America:

"What have the Arabs given us Saudis in comparison to what we have gained from our relations with America? I know very well that this is an extremely sensitive issue that many would hesitate to address; they are restrained by a culture of fear that prevents them from confronting controversial and sensitive issues head-on.

"The late King Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, was a resourceful and far-sighted statesman when he chose the Americans rather than the British to come and search for oil in the Kingdom. He did so despite Britain at the time being an important force in the region, with its colonies and dependencies surrounding the infant kingdom. The politics of the time plus the colonial legacies of both Britain and France made King Abdul Aziz distance himself from them and look to the New World.

"Not long after the Americans and their expertise arrived, oil was gushing from beneath the desert sands and the development of the modern Saudi state began.

"Following World War II, the Arab countries had to choose between the two different world systems - communism or capitalism. King Abdul Aziz chose capitalism, the West, and America in particular. Thanks to this relationship that has lasted for more than six decades, we Saudis were able to invest oil revenues in building our country. King Abdul Aziz laid the foundations for a consistent Saudi foreign policy that held the Kingdom's interests above other considerations.

"These are the reasons why the Kingdom flourished while other countries went down or teetered on the verge of collapsing. Those countries bet on the wrong horse and did not realize that survival lies in economic development and modernization. They chose to confine themselves in a cocoon and remain isolated from the rest of the world, blinded by the illusions of nationalism and other false ideologies. It was indeed very strange to hear those fragile regimes labeling themselves progressive while calling us reactionary.

"We must admit that our relations with America were the cornerstone for our development and progress. In return, we must ask what we have gained from our relations with the Arab world. Speaking frankly and unequivocally, all we got from them was trouble. Our brothers, as they call themselves, conspired against us, attacked us, and used all the means at their disposal to derail our plans for unity.

"History has proven that Arab nationalism is a destructive ideology. We, the Saudis, must set our priorities and carefully read history to extract its lessons while at the same time endeavoring to build something new that does not take anything for granted - as has been the case in the past - but that thoroughly debates and analyzes everything. We must rely on an ideology that treats the national interests of this country as the top priority."

A few more columns like this and the Democrats are going to have to find themselves another myth to substitute for the one about how Americans are despised throughout the Middle East because of our interference in Muslim lands.

Red and Blue Litmus

For years the Democrats insisted that any so-called "litmus test" for Supreme Court nominees was unfair and inappropriate. That was then, this is now:

Democrats called for a deliberate review of any nominee and pledged to press the eventual candidate on issues including abortion and same-sex marriage, while Republicans declared that such specific inquiries were out of line. "All questions are legitimate," Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. "What is your view on Roe v. Wade? What is your view on gay marriage? They are going to try to get away with the idea that we're not going to know their views. But that's not going to work this time."

Senator Ted Kennedy threatened that if the President abuses his power and nominates someone out of the mainstream of American opinion he will oppose the nominee. Sen. Kennedy is not known for his sagacity or clarity of thought, but this is remarkable even for him.

How is it an abuse of power for the President to exercise his constitutional prerogative to nominate anyone he wishes to the Supreme Court? If the candidate is unqualified the Senate can refuse to confirm him or her, but it's just goofy to call a nomination an "abuse" of power. And what constitutes being "out of the mainstream," anyway? Is anyone to Mr. Kennedy's right out of the mainstream? Would Justices Thomas, Scalia, or Rehnquist be out of the American mainstream? Why would a conservative of their stripe be regarded as extreme but former ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg be acceptable?

But then such questions are idle. Senators Kennedy and Schumer are not interested in rational discussion nor argument. They are interested in imposing their ideological will on the nation through the decisions of the Supreme Court. So, we hope, is Bush. The difference is that Bush has the constitutional right to do it, and the Senators have no right to stop him unless they can muster a majority who feel as they do. All their talk of abuses and mainstreams is so much smoke designed to obscure the fact that their opposition to the president's choices is not at all about qualifications, it's about ideology.

The Big Lie

The Left hyperventilates every time President Bush connects 9/11 to the War on Terror and the WOT to Iraq. They just can't bring themselves to believe that Islamic terrorists like al Qaida and more secular terrorists like Saddam Hussein might actually cooperate. Any claim that they do is regarded by them as another one of Bush's multitudinous lies. They point animatedly at the 9/11 Commission report's finding that no link has been found between Saddam and 9/11 as if that were all the proof they needed that no linkage exists between Saddam and al Qaida.

Melanie Phillips has collated the evidence, however, and as happens with clock-like regularity, it turns out that the President's critics have to simply ignore a mountain of fact in order to maintain that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaida. Here's one significant example of the many she discusses:

The Sunday Telegraph's Con Coughlin, Saddam's biographer, got hold of a top secret memo made available by Iraq's interim government which explicitly linked Saddam's regime to Mohammed Atta, the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11, and the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. Written to Saddam by the former head of Iraq's intelligence service, it contained the following incendiary passage:

'Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national, came with Abu Ammer (an Arabic nom-de-guerre - his real identity is unknown) and we hosted him in Abu Nidal's house at al-Dora under our direct supervision. We arranged a work programme for him for three days with a team dedicated to working with him . . . He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy'.

Note the date: July 1 2001. Note the phrases 'the targets that we have agreed to destroy' and 'under our direct supervision'.

There's much more information like this at her site. Of course, it's not proof, but then nothing would constitute proof for the Left. Even if Hussein admitted that he personally financed the 9/11 operation the Left would protest that he was tortured by Alberto Gonzalez in order to extract the confession from him. These folk are in deep denial. Phillips closes her piece with this:

As I have noted on innumerable occasions, none of this evidence is cast-iron. But there is so much of it, it is simply not credible that Saddam had no links with al Qaeda, even if he was not personally involved in 9/11. And as for his links with other terror outfits, this is indisputable. Saddam's Iraq was the principal training ground for Islamic terrorism.

The anti-western left has, over the course of history, fallen time after time for the propaganda of murderous tyrants who offered a handy platform for bashing the home society by providing the alibi of conscience. The investment of personal, political and moral identity that this represents is so immense that after a short while such gullible dupes are simply incapable of recognizing reality even when it stares them in the face. Hence their stupefaction when confronted with the enormities of Robespierre, Stalin or Mao. To that list must now be added the Islamic jihad and Saddam Hussein. The difference is that this time these useful idiots have taken the middling people of Britain and Europe - and increasingly, it seems, of America - with them into the land of deluded wishful thinking. The result could be that this war against the jihadi terror could be lost -- at home.

Read the whole thing.

Our Amazing Soldiers and Marines

Blackfive has a fascinating account of combat in Fallujah shortly after several American contractors had been killed, their corpses abused and hung from the trestle of a bridge. It's a great read for the Fourth of July and once you start it you won't be able to stop. The courage and toughness of our troops is simply incredible.

Have a great Independence Day.

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

The debate over Intelligent Design usually focuses on the biological component of Design theory and thus many lay-people may be unaware that there is also another, even more powerful design argument based on physics. Some writers have written on this topic for the general public, Hugh Ross, for one, but perhaps the best book I've found that deals with this issue is a work by University of Delaware physicist Stephen Barr. Barr's effort is entitled Modern Physics and Ancient Faith and is an erudite and very comprehensive treatment of the support that contemporary physics gives to belief in a cosmic Designer.

The scope of Barr's study encompasses not only physics but also mathematics, philosophy, and theology. His scholarship and learning are impressive yet the book does not swamp the reader with math or recondite technical concepts. Barr explains the concepts of physics which bear upon the matter of design lucidly and cogently.

The framework upon which the arguments of the book are hung is a comparison of the worldviews of materialism, the belief that matter is all there is and that all phenomena are ultimately explicable in terms of material processes, and theism, the belief that behind the phenomena of the world there lies an intelligent mind which has created and ordered the cosmos.

For at least two centuries materialism waxed strong among philosophers and scientists. Materialism was based upon the evidence of our senses, it was the philosophical foundation for science and thus of knowledge. If we couldn't test a hypothesis empirically without invoking immaterial entities and explanations it was dismissed as literal nonsense. Theism was based upon speculation and putative revelation. It was not knowledge, it was faith. Theism began to diminish among educated people during the Enlightenment, and its complete demise was prophesied repeatedly throughout the twentieth century.

Gradually, however, it began to dawn on philosophers and scientists throughout the last century that advances in physics were reversing the momentum that materialism had achieved. It was beginning to become clear that theism was more compatible with the phenomena being discovered by scientists than was materialism and that materialists were having to resort to the most bizarre, untestable hypotheses in order to save their worldview from utter loss.

There were five developments in particular, Barr calls them plot twists, which support the theistic view and which are difficult to explain in terms of materialistic atheism:

1. Big Bang cosmology entails that the universe had a beginning. This is a vindication of the theistic view and a shock to the materialists who were convinced that the universe was eternal.

2. The deep mathematical structure of the universe possesses a beauty, elegance, and complexity that seems incompatible with the materialist notion that the universe just is, that its existence is simply a brute fact that needs no explanation.

3. The physical parameters that govern the universe are so precisely set that deviations of the most exquisitely minute amounts in any one of dozens of these would have made the existence of a universe in which life could emerge and thrive impossible.

4. Increasing evidence from physics, mathematics, cognitive philosophy and neuroscience is leading people who think about these things to the conclusion that there's more to human understanding than just a physical brain. There is increasing evidence that there's something more than matter which comprises our cognitive apparatus.

5. The unfolding of the implications of quantum mechanics has undermined one of the major materialist arguments against free-will, i.e. the idea that in a closed universe there is no opening for freedom. Quantum theory has also raised a powerful argument against materialism in that "a careful analysis of the theory suggests that observers lie, at least in part, outside of the description provided by physics." In other words, one of the entailments of quantum physics, some are arguing, is that there must be something about observers of physical systems that is itself non-physical.

There are, Barr argues, only three ways to explain these phenomena naturalistically: They are the product either of the laws of nature, natural selection, or chance. He argues that only the last of these avoids logical difficulties which beset the other two. Even so, for the universe and life to have arisen in the form it has by chance requires that the materialist resort to "infinities of unobservables." They have to posit an infinitely existing universe or an infinite number of disparate universes, or an infinite number of discrete domains in the present universe, or a near infinite number of planets (to account for the emergence of life), or they have to posit an infinite number of worlds constantly splitting as observations and choices occur. As Barr says, "It seems that to abolish one unobservable God, it takes an infinite number of unobservable substitutes."

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith goes into a great deal of detail about each of these developments or plot twists, and although some of it may seem a little arcane, particularly the discussion of symmetries in physics, almost all of it is quite accessible to the interested layman.

As mentioned above, this is one of the best books available on the contemporary argument for the existence of a transcendent intelligence based on the physical facts of the cosmos. We recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of science, religion, and philosophy. A published review of it can be found here and the book can be ordered here.

Helping Africa

Amidst all the talk about yesterday's Live 8 concerts and the G8 summit talks Herb London suggests a few pointed questions. Recalling that twenty years ago similar concerts (called Live Aid) were held which raised a couple of billion dollars for African relief he wonders what ever became of that money? Who received it? What was it used for?Who is accountable for it?

"Moreover," he notes, "over the last decade government and private charities have poured over $25 billion into Africa for seemingly little effect. In fact, Africa has had an aggregate g.d.p. reduction of about 25 percent since the Live Aid concerts two decades ago."

Live Aid was derisively called Band Aid by some who argued that unless the corruption which causes poverty on that continent is removed, financial aid is little more than putting a band aid on a gangrenous limb. Throwing money at poverty salves the conscience and makes us feel like we're doing something noble, but if, as Peter Baur, the father of development economics noted, "foreign aid is little more than poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries," then are we really doing anything other than wasting precious resources?

As Hudson says:

Without question the issue at hand is poverty in Africa, but overlooked by well meaning rockers is that as long as tyrannical governments control the distribution of funds those targeted for relief never get it. Starvation is indeed a problem in many parts of Africa, most especially in the Sudan. But in this nation emergency food relief sent by the U.S. and others is used as a weapon to subjugate designated enemies of the government. This has been a pattern observed earlier in Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

"Eliminating poverty anywhere in the world," he goes on to say, "is a worthwhile, if utopian, goal. But, money alone won't do it when those funds aren't used to address the problem. All the serenades of 'We Are The World' and 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' won't amount to a hill of beans unless there is accountability for the billions of dollars that will be contributed."

It is ironic that the people who are most concerned about the terrible level of poverty in Africa are relatively mute about demanding the ouster of the tyrannies which are responsible for it. Perhaps the attention currently being focused on the suffering of the African people will cause a few of those whose hearts sincerely break over the deprivation and misery of these people to realize that in order to bring relief and justice to those in need one must sometimes employ force. Throwing money at the poor just empowers their oppressors and makes their problems even more severe.

Condign Punishment

Brother Bill opines re the BTK killer that:

Personally, I think we should be reading in the news that he "tried to escape" whereby he grabbed a gun from a guard, saw no way out, and shot himself in the head...five or six times.

Bill is showing his compassionate side. What he suggests would actually be kinder than what Rader deserves.

PC "Journalism"

How's this for an amazing piece of media America-bashing? In an article on an elderly woman's birthday in Amsterdam, Reuters seizes the opportunity to shoehorn into the story a ludicrously irrelevant swipe at the U.S., from the 19th century, no less:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch woman who swears by a daily helping of herring for a healthy life celebrated her 115th birthday on Wednesday as the oldest living person on record.

Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, a former needlework teacher, was born in 1890, the year Sioux Indians were massacred by the U.S. military at the Battle of Wounded Knee.

The passionate soccer fan celebrated her birthday in a nursing home in the northern Dutch town of Hoogeveen.

It's a classic specimen of a PC social announcement, one which will be taught at journalism schools to future generations of journalistic novices eager to learn how it's done. Thanks for the tip to Jonah at The Corner.

Despite the utter dopiness exhibited by the writer of the piece, it does inspire one to consider a possible career as a composer of such announcements for Reuters. It seems like easy money. Here are a few of our practice efforts in case they ask to see a resumè of our work:

Joe and Flora Dillone will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on July 6th. They were married exactly one month before American planes, without warning, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan incinerating 150,000 people in seconds. The Dillones have six children and twenty grand and great-grandchildren.

Frank Standish will be retiring this month from New Tool and Die works of Smithville, PA. Mr. Standish has been with the company for thirty seven years starting as an apprentice in 1968 shortly after U.S. troops under Lt. William Calley massacred 128 civilian Vietnamese at a village named My Lai in a typical act of American savagery during that war.

The Upper River High School class of 2000 will be holding their fifth year class reunion next week to celebrate the anniversary of their graduation in a year fraught with historical significance. It was in that year Republican George Bush, guided by the shadowy, Rasputin-like figure of Karl Rove, stole a national presidential election from Democrat Al Gore who actually had more votes than did Bush.

You get the idea. I bet we'd win the job if we applied.

Here's One To Watch

China's CNOOC, the third largest petroleum company in China (and state owned) wants to buy UNOCAL, a petroleum company in California, in an effort, no doubt, to secure oil reserves to fuel their burgeoning economy. Chevron Corp. has offered $16 billion for UNOCAL and CNOOC has offered $18 billion.

Some congressmen see this as a threat to our national security (sadly, only 40 of them.).

This is creating a dilemma that I knew would occur eventually and the implications could be huge. What we have here is a nation that has accepted US dollars in transactions for goods and services. The US dollar is a promise to pay and lawful tender for all debts public and private. In other words, as declared by the issuing country, these dollars cannot be refused.

In a capitalist economy, the shareholders of UNOCAL are entitled to receive the best offer for the company maximizing the value of their shares.

If it is the case that CNOOC (China) is not allowed to buy UNOCAL, China will undoubtedly question the benefit of holding so many US dollars as the purchasing power of this "money" appears to be limited.

A case can be made that there appears to be double standard regarding the true convertibility of US dollars into wealth. If China comes to this conclusion, it could have a major impact on all things economic in this country as the inflow of dollars from China are largely responsible for keeping our economy afloat.

Read more at the link.