American Hero

This photo at Release the Hounds and the accompanying explanation are worth seeing and reading. Why doesn't the MSM run stuff like this?

A Picture of Evil, A Portrait of Heroism

This account from Omar at Iraq the Model shows how despicable are the savages our troops are working to extirpate in Iraq:

I strongly believe that terrorists are cowards but the cowardice you're going to see in this story is just exceptional. The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped "Down Syndrome" patient. Eye witnesses said that (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) "the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response, the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".

I couldn't believe the news until I met another guy from that neighborhood who knows the family of the victim. The guy was reported missing 5 days prior to elections' day and the family were distributing posters that specified his descriptions and asking anyone who finds him to contact them.

When a relative of mine (who has a mental handicap due to an Rh conflict at birth) told me a month ago that a group of men in a car tried to kidnap him as he was standing in front of the institution he periodically visits to get medicine and support waiting for his brother; I thought that he was imagining the whole story. He said that they tried to force him into the car telling him not to be afraid and that they're from the "mujahideen and not going to hurt him". My relative, despite his handicap was moved by his survival instinct and managed to run away.

After I heard the other story, I began to connect between the two stories and to consider my cousin's story as a true one that uncovered a new miserable war technique that can come only from the sickest minds.

What a huge difference there is between those who kidnap and use the mentally handicapped to perform their murders in cold blood and between the brave Iraqis who sacrificed their lives to protect their brethren. One story that is famous now in Iraq is about one brave Iraqi (A'adel Nasir) who saw a suspicious looking guy walking around a polling center in (Al- Hurriyah) district and soon the brave man realized that the suspicious guy was trying to commit a suicide attack; he ran towards him, wrestled with him and knocked him down causing the bomb carried by the terrorist to explode, sacrificing his own life and saving the lives of the people standing in line at the gate of the voting center. It turned out later that the terrorist carried a Sudanese identification. Now, the school that hosted the voting center on the 30th carries the name of A'adel Nasir, as the Iraqi minister of education announced today.

The pathetic terrorists are breaking one world record after another in cowardice and insanity and this tells how bankrupt they're getting.

The story of A'adel Nasir (I've seen his name rendered differently in different reports) is especially significant. Everyone knows that Americans and Brits have acted with extraordinary courage in Iraq, but the MSM seems to be convinced that Iraqi troops and police have been less than audacious in risking their own lives in the fight for their own freedom. Not only does the behavior of millions of Iraqis who braved death threats in order to vote explode this myth but so does the heroism of A'adel Nasir whose courage will be a model for young Iraqis to emulate for generations.

More Gators in the Moat

The talented Tom Graffagnino posts this clever piece of verse at Without Excuse Creations:

"More Gators in the Moat!"

or

("Piltdown! Man the Iv'ry Towers!")

The Supernaturalists are coming!

Egad! By land!...

....By sea and boat!

Piltdown! Man the Iv'ry Towers!

Quick! .....

More 'gators in the moat!

Don't they know our Theory's Fittest!?

How dare they challenge you and me!?

O my Gawd! Can you imagine!?

We shan't allow this Heresy!

Call the Bio-Bishop Council!

Convene the Cardinals from their perch!

Yo! Onward Evo-Soldiers!

We must defend Pope Darwin's Church!

Kids today know how we got here....

It took a while....

But they believe!

Magik Microbe straight to Shakespeare!

What more could "Lucky Mud" achieve!?

No! We mustn't give them access,

To our children made so bright.

Darwinistas! Man your stations!

No Debate!

Comrades, Unite!

Battle Cry: "From Scales to Feathers!"

Battle Hymn: "From Mud to Man!"

And the drumbeat in the background?....

Censorship!

Impose the Ban!

Rowdy Red-State Rabble-Rousers,

Knuckle-dragging Retro-Brains....

Keep your thinking in the Ghetto.

Hey, monkey!....

Mother Nature Reigns!

So, Battle Stations, Nature's Chosen!

Priests of Darwin, clean their clocks!

This ain't no monkey business....

Stand your ground, Ye Orthodox!

There!

The hoi-poloi's advancing!

Raise the drawbridge right away!

Sir, defending "Fortress Darwin",

Is the order of the day!

Sister "Lucy"! Man the Ramparts!

From high above, look down your nose,

On those attacking our assumptions.....

Who claim the case just isn't closed!

Don your helmet and your breastplate....

Our metaphysics they dislike.

The Naked Apes just keep-a-comin'...

Quick!.....

More fingers in the Dike!

Gird your loins, Ye Missing Linkers!

The Great Unwashed we shall defeat!

My! Their Wedge of Doubt grows sharper....

I'm not so sure that they'll retreat!

Yes! Defending Darwin's Castle's

Our Crusade.....and Sacred Cow.

Clarence Darrow wouldn't like it...

But some debates we can't allow!

We're entrenched in Naturalism...

We're locked in...Unbending, too.

"Liberal" Thought's not always healthy,

When we're beseiged like me and you!

So, ever "Onward Evo-Soldier"!

Fight the Fight!

And spread The Word!

Naturalism's Fundamental!

Keep the Faith, Ye Undeterred!

Very witty, and it makes an important point: Darwinism is a indeed a religion. It offers its votaries a creation myth (Life arose by chance in a primordial sea), an answer to the question of life's meaning (to perpetuate the species or at least one's genes), a ground for morality ("Right" is whatever conduces to survival), and an answer to the question of where we are going (When we die we return to the earth so that our matter may continue on as part of the great cycle of life).

Darwinism, by offering us an opportunity to "liberate the human spirit" from superstition and clerical oppression, affords us a vehicle for "salvation". It moreover maintains a priestly class of scientists and philosophers who pontificate on matters of doctrine, faith, and practice, and it proudly boasts a pantheon of saints who have gone on before. It embodies a worldview that encompasses every aspect of life. It cherishes its dogmas and orthodoxies, defending them assiduously against challenge from heretics, and traces its beginnings to the holy scriptures recorded by its founder in the Origin of Species.

Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, quotes philosopher and Darwinian Michael Ruse, who says that "I must admit that....the [critics of evolution] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning and it is true of evolution still today."

She also quotes from historian Jacques Barzun who writes that the so-called warfare between science and religion should really be seen as the "warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths." It's a dispute, he writes, "between believers in consciousness and believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance."

Precisely. The fundamental difference between Darwinism and Christianity is that Christianity traces the origin of the world and of life back to an intelligence whereas Darwinism traces it back to random, purposeless forces. Both Darwinism and Christianity are thus grounded in metaphysical faith commitments, and from those commitments flow all of their differences.

New ID Blog

The Discovery Institute has a new blog that focuses on media reporting and misreporting of the Darwinism/Intelligent Design debate. The news media in the U.S. seem to have rediscovered the controversy, but unfortunately, much of their coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in several cases, overtly biased. Evolution News and Views aims to offer a corrective, and anyone interested in the issue should check it out.

Conservative Inconsistency

Andrew Sullivan, who, by the way, is largely shutting down his blog for a couple of months, relays to conservatives this question from a friend:

WHY NOT AN ANTI-ABORTION AMENDMENT? Here's an interesting question, posed by my friend Jon Rauch. The Senate Republicans have vowed to push their anti-gay marriage amendment, even though it won't stand a chance of getting the necessary 67 votes. The point is political and rhetorical. They are trying to build momentum, raise money, and keep the cause of banning same-sex unions alive. So why not push an anti-abortion amendment instead? They have one such amendment on hand. Both proposed amendments are allegedly against judicial meddling. Both will fail. But one deals with a much graver issue, by the religious right's reckoning - an immense loss of human life, rather than the grave evil of two human beings committing to one another for life. So why this priority? Surely, abortion is a more important matter than same-sex marriage - even for the religious right. Or is it?

Good question. In fact, Viewpoint will go one better. Why should this be a matter of one or the other? Why shouldn't conservatives be arguing for both amendments? If the marriage amendment is necessary to protect marriage, and it may well be, surely an anti-abortion amendment is necessary to protect the lives of unborn children and is long overdue. It doubtless would not have been possible to get such an amendment through congress before now and may not be possible to get one passed even now, but shouldn't the arguments for it at least be raised?

That some conservatives have gone on record calling for the marriage amendment, but none appear to be interested in a constitutional corrective for Roe v. Wade, a decision many believe to be a clear case of judicial overreach that has resulted in the sacrifice of millions of lives, seems at best a little inconsistent.

The Democratic Definition of Freedom

The Democrats have vowed to fight President Bush's Social Security reform proposals with every weapon at their disposal. The President wishes to give people control over a portion of their retirement, and the Democrats are opposed. A number of commentators have noted the irony of liberals insisting that people have a constitutional right to choose whether their unborn children live or die while at the same time refusing them the right to choose how to invest for their retirement (or, for that matter, where to send their children to school if indeed they should choose to have them).

For the freedom-loving folks in the Democratic party freedom to choose extends little further than whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. For them, freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose.

Free At Last

After the Civil War there was a massive migration of blacks from the south to the cities of the north. They came looking for opportunities and a better life. There are signs that another African-American migration is taking place in our own day only this one is political, not geographical, and it is causing alarm in liberal precincts. Apparently, the Republican party is beginning to make serious inroads into a demographic group that Democrats have had locked up for sixty years, and if they are successful it would have serious consequences for the future of the party.

An article in the Los Angeles Times sounds the tocsin. Here are a few excerpts:

Black conservatives who supported President Bush in 2004 and gained new prominence within the Republican Party are launching a loosely knit movement that they hope will transform the role African Americans play in national politics.

The effort will be visible today at the Crenshaw Christian Center, one of Los Angeles' biggest black churches, headed by televangelist Frederick K.C. Price. More than 100 African American ministers are to gather in the first of several regional summits to build support for banning same-sex marriage - a signature issue that drew socially conservative blacks to the Republican column last year.

Before the meeting, one prominent minister plans to unveil a "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," a call for Bible-based action by government and churches to promote conservative priorities. It is patterned loosely on the "Contract With America" that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used 10 years ago to inaugurate an era of GOP dominance in Congress.

A separate group with ties to Gingrich will announce a similar "Mayflower Compact for Black America" later this month in Washington, which includes plans to organize in key states ahead of the 2006 and 2008 elections. And at the end of the month, the Heritage Foundation will cosponsor a gathering of black conservatives in Washington designed to counter dominance of the "America-hating black liberal leadership" and to focus African American voters on moral issues.

"I am frightened by what is happening," said Rep. Major R. Owens, an 11-term Democratic congressman from New York who has been conferring with colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. "Our party is in grave danger. This Republican movement is going to expand exponentially unless we do something."

Failure to respond to the GOP investment in black communities, he said, could allow Republicans to add five percentage points to the 11% they received among African American voters nationwide in 2004.

Republican officials, such as outgoing party chairman Ed Gillespie, have said they think the percentage could rise to 30 in the next presidential election - a prediction that even some GOP strategists called overly optimistic.

Even if it rises 5 percentage points, Owens said, "the Democratic Party will be paralyzed."

Owens said the GOP strategy of courting church leadership was on target. "The churches are the last institutions alive and breathing in some of these neighborhoods, and people look to them for leadership," he said.

African-Americans are evidently tired of being snookered by Democratic leaders, both black and white. They are at last beginning to realize that liberal policies since the 1960s have often been counterproductive at best and dysgenic at worst.

Now comes a Republican president who may have done more for black racial esteem than all the liberal multicultural/diversity/ethnic/racial pride celebrations of the last three decades put together. He has actually elevated blacks to some of the most prominent positions of his administration, something no Democrat ever did. He also understands that what is good for America is good for African-Americans, and has steadily worked to improve the economy, create jobs, and set a positive moral tone for the country. Moreover, he has steadfastly refused to do what is standard practice for many Democrat politicians - he has refused to pander to blacks, or to treat them as if they just can't be expected to manage their own lives.

To many liberals blacks are the white man's burden, and African-Americans may finally be growing resentful of the implicit racism of this patronizing attitude. Perhaps they are tired of their indenture to the Democratic bosses and have become a field ripe for a conservative harvest. If so, a significant African-American defection would quite likely signal the demise of the Democratic party.

The Litmus Test

John Podhoretz asks an intriguing question:

When you heard about the stunning success of the Iraqi elections, were you thrilled? Did you see it as a triumph for democracy and for the armed forces of the United States that have sacrificed and suffered and fought so valiantly over the past 18 months to get Iraq to this moment? Or did you momentarily feel an onrush of disappointment because you knew, you just knew, that this was going to redound to the credit of George W. Bush?

There are literally millions of Americans who are unhappy today because millions of Iraqis went to the polls yesterday. And why? Because this isn't just a success for Bush. It's a huge win. It's a colossal vindication. And [the Left] knows it. And it's killing them.

This really is a kind of litmus test for the quality of our character, isn't it? Were we genuinely glad for the Iraqi people, or at least relieved, that things went well for them and their country on Sunday, or did we feel indifference or even somewhat of a letdown that there wasn't more chaos and carnage? If it was the latter then we need to have a serious conversation with ourselves about the state of our soul.

For an example of someone who stands in urgent need of just such self-examination read the piece at Good News From Iraq is up, and, as usual, it's packed.

Those who were surprised at the enthusiastic turn out at the polls last Sunday could not have been following Chrenkoff's fortnightly posts. If they had been, January 30th would have been no surprise at all.

Re-Vote

In the wake of November 2nd our inbox was clogged with e-mails from TruthOut.org updating us every hour on the "crisis" in Ohio and the "evidence" that Republicans had been up to election day hanky-panky. About Washington state, however, where there are genuine indications of fraud in the gubernatorial balloting, TruthOut has had almost nothing to say. Doubtless that's because the tentative winner in that election was a Democrat and because the evidence of voter fraud points directly at Democrats as the culprits.

National Review Online notes that:

[I]n King County alone, there are 3,700 unaccounted-for ballots or voters. Some precincts have more ballots than voters, for a total of 2,900 "extra" ballots. Other precincts have more voters than ballots, for a total of 800 "extra" voters. These mystery voter-less ballots and ballot-less votes obviously are enough in themselves to put [Democrat Christine] Gregoire's 129-vote margin in serious doubt.

Other irregularities abound. The Seattle Times has reported that 129 felons voted in King and Pierce counties. At least 348 provisional ballots - which are supposed to be closely inspected to see if they are legitimate - were directly fed into machines and counted in King County. Some 55,000 optical-scan ballots (ballots on which the voter marks a bubble) in King County were "enhanced" so that the voters' supposed intent could be determined, with no uniform standard governing the process. Roughly 500 voters used the address of the King County Administration building as their home address.

We're convinced that TruthOut and its friends in the MSM, like Keith Olberman at MSNBC, who were so sure that there was perfidy afoot in Ohio on November 2nd, will join with the editors of National Review in calling for a re-vote in Washington. It is the Left, after all, which was incensed in 2000 because they had incorrectly persuaded themselves that the winner in Florida had stolen that states' election, and it was the Left which was outraged in 2004 at what they had mistakenly assumed were voting irregularities in Ohio which favored the winner.

We're confident that their tardiness in joining the ranks of those demanding a re-vote in Washington has nothing to do with ideological hypocrisy, as some have alleged, and is, on the contrary, due merely to their getting their legal teams together to insure that justice will be done. Or something like that. At any rate, they'll be out there demanding a re-vote soon, you can count on it.

A Disintegrating Tyranny

There is a remarkable article in the U.K. Times Online concerning the political and social disintegration currently underway in North Korea. Not every member of the axis of evil needs to be confronted militarily. Some of them, evidently, are rotting from within and will, with luck, topple at the first strong wind.

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the tip.

The Continuing ID Conflict

The culture wars continue. We were reminded by this article in the Wall Street Journal of a quote from Darwinian biologist Richard Lewontin:

It's not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The WSJ article says this:

The question of whether Intelligent Design (ID) may be presented to public-school students alongside neo-Darwinian evolution has roiled parents and teachers in various communities lately. Whether ID may be presented to adult scientific professionals is another question altogether but also controversial. It is now roiling the government-supported Smithsonian Institution, where one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it.

The scientist is Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics--e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.

The offending review-essay was written by Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology. In the article, he cites biologists and paleontologists critical of certain aspects of Darwinism--mainstream scientists at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. Mr. Meyer gathers the threads of their comments to make his own case. He points, for example, to the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, when between 19 and 34 animal phyla (body plans) sprang into existence. He argues that, relying on only the Darwinian mechanism, there was not enough time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated. ID, he believes, offers a better explanation.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Mr. Sternberg's supervisor. According to Mr. Sternberg's OSC complaint: "First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization. . . . He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; . . . he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?' " The supervisor (who did not return my phone messages) recounted the conversation to Mr. Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs. Mr. Sternberg was also assigned to the close oversight of a curator with whom he had professional disagreements unrelated to evolution. "I'm going to be straightforward with you," said Mr. Coddington, according to the complaint. "Yes, you are being singled out." Neither Mr. Coddington nor Mr. Sues returned repeated phone messages asking for their version of events.

Mr. Sternberg begged a friendly curator for alternative research space, and he still works at the museum. But many colleagues now ignore him when he greets them in the hall, and his office sits empty as "unclaimed space." Old colleagues at other institutions now refuse to work with him on publication projects, citing the Meyer episode. The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.

It may or may not be, but surely the matter can be debated on scientific grounds, responded to with argument instead of invective and stigma. Note the circularity: Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Now that it has, they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific. They banish certain ideas from certain venues as if by holy writ, and brand heretics too.

Materialists certainly take Lewontin's words seriously. Any scientist in the church of naturalism who gives succor to the opposition is henceforth anathema. Like a gaggle of middle-school girls shunning one of their number who has transgressed some social protocol, Sternberg's co-workers studiously avoid acknowledging him when they pass in the halls. Is there anything more childish? They probably giggle among themselves in the break-room at how cleverly they execute their indignant snubs.

The alleged complaint against Sternberg is that he used his position as editor of a journal that deals primarily with taxonomy to permit an article on a subject that was not related to taxonomy. This, however, is ludicrous. Science journals like Science and Scientific American, though their mission is to address matters of science, sometimes run articles on foreign, social, or economic policy and no editors are ostracized from the community and have their careers threatened for it.

Another charge against Dr. Sternberg was that Meyer's paper was not original and simply re-worked some of his earlier published material and that featuring it damaged the reputation of the journal. This is an odd reason to punish the editor, though. How can you damage the reputation of a publication that no one ever heard of prior to this incident? Indeed, if anything, Sternberg should be rewarded for garnering publicity for the journal that it never would have gotten otherwise no matter how many papers it published on wildly popular topics like the discovery of a new subspecies of midge in New Jersey marshlands.

Sternberg's real crime, of course, was that the article he ran was critical of Darwinism as an explanatory model for how novel morphological patterns arise in nature. If the paper had been favorable to Darwinism it would have passed completely unremarked by the inquisitors at the Smithsonian no matter how modest its scientific quality might have been. As it was, Sternberg allowed a paper into his journal that dared to question the adequacy of Darwinian theory, so he must be cast out like the academic leper he so obviously must be.

Darwinism is a religion which brooks no challenges, and heretics need be punished severely. Maybe their bodies are no longer burned at the stake, but their careers are. It's unfortunate that middle-schoolers in adult bodies have that kind of authority.

Dispatches From the Democrat Left

California Senator Barbara Boxer, according to this article, is being touted on liberal blogs as the Democrats' best hope for the presidency in 2008. We don't know whether this is simply evidence of the woeful state of the Democratic party, or evidence that God looks out for Republicans, or a premonition that God has decided to punish America, or all three.

Meanwhile, George Soros, 74 year-old billionaire money bags of the Democratic party, who spent $26 million in last year's campaign against George Bush, said his effort was undermined by the candidate he supported.

"Kerry did not, actually, offer a credible and coherent alternative,'' Soros, said yesterday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``That had a lot to do with Bush being re-elected.''

The Kerry campaign "tried to emphasize his role as a Vietnam War hero and downplay his role as an anti-Vietnam War hero, which he was,'' said Soros. "Had he admitted, owned up to it, I think actually the outcome could have been different.''

In other words, in Mr. Soros' opinion, Kerry lost because he wasn't far enough to the Left. He should've portrayed himself as more of a radical anti-war protestor. He should've hugged Michael Moore more often. That would've swung those red state voters into his column, yessiree.

Maybe in 2008 Mr. Soros can persuade George McGovern to run, or Barbara Boxer.

Actually, rank and file Democrats probably would like to tell Mr. Soros to just shut up, but unfortunately for them you can't easily shut up a $26 million dollar sugar daddy.

Mice Brains

The following is excerpted from a National Geographic article which discusses research being done to blend human traits with those of other animals:

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras-a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Well, why not. They've evidently already put mouse brains in humans. At least that seems to be the most plausible explanation for the demands (see here and here) emanating from the political Left that we pull out now from Iraq.

Historic Day for Both Iraq and U.S.

Expressions of joy from a sampling of Iraqi bloggers: See here, here, here, here, and here.

Today has been a historic day not only for Iraq but also for the United States. No one knows what the future holds, of course, and things could certainly turn bad, but days like this make one awfully proud to be an American. What our country has done in Iraq is the sort of thing many Americans grew up believing was typical of the American people. This might be the grandest day in our history since the Marshall Plan era c.1950. If someone can think of a day that beats it, let us know because we can't think of one.

UPDATE: Ok. Maybe the day the Berlin wall was torn down has to be pretty high up on the list as well.

Winners and Losers

Today's WINNERS:

1) The Iraqi people

2) All who desire peace and freedom in the Middle East

3) George W. Bush

4) Neo-Conservatives

Today's LOSERS:

1) Islamo-fascist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere

2) Tyrants in Syria and Iran

3) The Michael Moore/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democratic party

More on the Shroud

FoxNews.com has a story about the Shroud of Turin, which many believe to be the actual burial cloth of Christ. Radiocarbon dating tests run in the 1980s seemed to place the cloth in the medieval period, but more recently that analysis has been questioned. Now a chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new tests on the fiber indicates the cloth could be as much as 3,000 years old:

The analysis, by a scientist who was on [a] 1978 team that was allowed to study tiny pieces of the cloth, indicates the shroud is far older than the initial findings suggesting it was probably from medieval times, and will likely be seized on by those who believe it wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

"I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus," Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home.

"The chemistry says it was a real shroud, the blood spots on it are real blood, and the technology that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported for his time," about 70 A.D., Rogers said, referring to the naturalist of ancient Roman times.

The American chemist said he decided to analyze the amount of vanillin, a chemical compound that is present in linen from the flax fibers used to weave it. Vanillin slowly disappears from the fiber over time at a calculated rate, he said.

Judging by those calculations, a medieval-age cloth should have had some 37 percent of its vanillin left by 1978, the year the threads were taken from the shroud, Rogers said. But there was virtually no vanillin left in the shroud, leading the chemist to calculate it could be far older than the radiocarbon testing indicated, possibly some 3,000 years old.

Asked why carbon-dating might have been off, Rogers contended that "the people who cut the sample didn't do a very good job of characterizing the samples," that is, taking samples from many areas of the cloth.

Apparently, however there's no chance of resolving the age discrepancy since secret alterations were made to the shroud which make it unsuitable for further analysis. You can read all about it at the link to FoxNews.com.

Pure Genius

Quick: Who is the man most responsible for having developed the World Wide Web? If you said Al Gore you get demerits.

Captain Ed Morrisey at Captain's Quarters has this very interesting piece of modern computer history. Ed writes:

The inventor of the World Wide Web received an award for outstanding achievement in science and technology for Britons, the London Telegraph reports this morning....Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who first engineered the architecture of HTML and created the first browser that launched the commercial Internet, received the first annual honor that promotes British achievement.

Morrisey quotes from the Telegraph article:

"Sir Tim, 49, who now lives and works in America, where he heads the World Wide Web Consortium, accepted his accolade by video link."

"In an interview with The Telegraph, he said he was "chuffed to bits" to win the first of what is intended to be an annual award."

"The internet had already been in existence for 20 years when Sir Tim, a physicist then working in Geneva, developed the web in 1991 as a way of enabling people to share information. Despite its huge impact, he was for many years largely unknown in his own country before he was knighted last year."

Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Important People Of The Century and tells us this about him, according to Captain Ed:

[H]e cobbled together a relatively easy-to-learn coding system - HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) - that has come to be the lingua franca of the Web; it's the way Web-content creators put those little colored, underlined links in their text, add images and so on. He designed an addressing scheme that gave each Web page a unique location, or url (universal resource locator). And he hacked a set of rules that permitted these documents to be linked together on computers across the Internet. He called that set of rules HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).

And on the seventh day, Berners-Lee cobbled together the World Wide Web's first (but not the last) browser, which allowed users anywhere to view his creation on their computer screen. In 1991 the World Wide Web debuted, instantly bringing order and clarity to the chaos that was cyberspace. From that moment on, the Web and the Internet grew as one, often at exponential rates. Within five years, the number of Internet users jumped from 600,000 to 40 million. At one point, it was doubling every 53 days.

According to Morrisey:

Berners-Lee heads the W3 Consortium, a non-profit that keeps the Internet open-source rather than allow software developers to Balkanize it with competing, exclusive standards. Berners-Lee never cashed in on his invention, either; he works at MIT, preferring academia for his contribution. No wonder he's "chuffed" at getting 28,000 pounds Sterling, although of course it's the honor that thrills him most."

The part that we found most intriguing, although it's commonplace in the history of science, especially in the computer field, is that Berners-Lee realized this world-changing achievement while still in his mid-thirties, and that he accomplished it essentially by himself. Amazing.

Euro-Weenies

Bill came across this withering attack on Euro-appeasers by Matthias Döpfner, Chief Executive of German publisher Axel Springer AG. The article was posted by Tom Heard at Heard Here. The post is a translation and so the style may in places seem just a bit uneven. The sentiments, however, translate with pellucid clarity:

Europe - Thy Name is Cowardice. Commentary by Mathias Döpfner

A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.

Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush.

A particularly grotesque form of appeasement is reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by suggesting that we should really have a Muslim holiday in Germany.What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians and directed against our free, open Western societies. It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than the great military conflicts of the last century, a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation but only spurred on by such gestures, which will be mistaken for signs of weakness.

Two recent American presidents had the courage needed for anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. Reagan ended the Cold War and Bush, supported only by the social democrat Blair acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic fight against democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed. In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner instead of defending liberal society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China.

On the contrary, we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to the intolerant, as world champions of tolerance, which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic. For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy, because everything is at stake. While the alleged capitalistic robber barons in American know their priorities, we timidly defend our social welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive. We'd rather discuss the 35-hour workweek or our dental health plan coverage. Or listen to TV pastors preach about "reaching out to murderers."

These days, Europe reminds me of an elderly aunt who hides her last pieces of jewelry with shaking hands when she notices a robber has broken into a neighbor's house. Europe, thy name is cowardice.

It's nice to know that not all the opinion-makers in Europe are waving the white flag of surrender to the Islamo-fascists with one hand while giving Bush the finger with the other.

Pray For Iraq and the Iraqis

This article suggests that things are not going well for the orcs, Urukai and other minions of Sauron in Iraq:

To try to bolster public confidence, Iraqi officials Friday announced the arrests of three more purported lieutenants of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, including his military adviser and chief of operations in Baghdad.

The arrested al-Zarqawi associates included Salah Suleiman al-Loheibi, the head of his group's Baghdad operation, who met with al-Zarqawi more than 40 times over three months, said Qassim Dawoud, a top security adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

Dawoud said Ali Hamad Yassin al-Issawi, another associate, also was captured. Dawoud said the two arrests took place within the past several weeks.

Al-Zarqawi's military adviser, a 31-year-old Iraqi named Anad Mohammed Qais, 31, also was captured, said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.

"We are getting close to finishing off al-Zarqawi and we will get rid of him," Saleh said.

Despite Saleh's assurances, al-Zarqawi's group posted a new Web message Friday warning Iraqis they could get hit by shelling or other attacks if they approach polling stations, which it called "the centers of atheism and of vice."

"We have warned you, so don't blame us. You have only yourselves to blame," it said.

This is typical thug logic. If we kill you for exercising your right to vote then you can only blame yourself. You placed yourself in the spot where we just innocently happened to have a bomb. Very careless of you.

Despite their fears, millions of Iraqis will take to the polls in a few hours in what will be a historic election. Nothing like this has ever happened in the Arab world before. The terrorists among the Sunnis are doing everything they can to suppress the vote, knowing that a successful election will demonstrate the utter illegitimacy of their cause, and be a crucial nail in their coffin.

In what should be a lesson to the nay-sayers and Chicken Littles of the effete Euro-Left and the Michael Moore/Ted Kennedy wing of the Democrat party, many Sunnis are so hopeful and so trustful of American determination to persevere that they are prepared to brave threats to their lives in order to vote. It is only because they trust us to see things through until they can defend themselves that they are willing to risk everything to install democracy and freedom in this most uncongenial soil.

This is why demands to establish timetables for withdrawal or to start pulling out immediately are so nefarious. The Iraqi people are placing their lives and those of their children in our hands and saying that they are counting on us to continue the fight against the murderous butchers who would kill them all if we left. To betray them now as The Nation and Ted Kennedy and others on the Left have insisted we do would be a crime against humanity that would earn us the world's eternal opprobrium and contempt.

There are many brave people in Iraq. They need our prayers this weekend, and they need our resolve in the months and years ahead.

<i>Un</i>-Churchillian

According to an article in the Rocky Mountain News, Colorado University professor Ward Churchill displays an intellectual and moral obtuseness remarkable even by Left-wing professorial standards:

A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims.

Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department.

Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.

The essay contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists.

It states: "The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course."

The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were "military targets."

"As for those in the World Trade Center," the essay said, "well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break."

The essay goes on to describe the victims as "little Eichmanns," referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II.

"When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other countries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind," Churchill said.

"If it's not comfortable, that's the point. It's not comfortable for the people on the other side, either."

The attacks on Sept. 11, he said, were "a natural and inevitable consequence of what happens as a result of business as usual in the United States. Wake up."

This essay is so sophomoric that we're reluctant to take it seriously. Surely, one suspects, the professor is baiting us, enticing us to think him a complete imbecile at which point he'll startle us with some surprising turnabout. Or, maybe, he just really is a complete imbecile.

In defiance of appearances, however, let's assume that he intends to be taken seriously. Where does he get the figure of 500,000 children killed in a U.S. bombing raid against Iraq in 1991? That's almost five times the total number of people killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Perhaps he's including in this figure the number of children who died during sanctions imposed by the United Nations. But if so, these were deaths caused by Saddam Hussein who used the money with which he was supposed to feed and care for his people to build palaces and to buy off the French and Kojo Anan. Why does Professor Churchill lay these tragic victims at America's feet? Churchill seems to think that it is America's fault that Hussein abused his people. This is typical of the Left to blame America for whatever evil there is in the world. It is also positively goofy.

We also wonder why the victims of the 9/11 attack deserve the epithet "little Eichmanns"? What was their crime? Being Americans? Being capitalist business men and women? Many of the victims, of course, were neither, but even if they all were American capitalists how does that make them legitimate targets of terrorism? This sort of slander against perfectly innocent and decent people is the toxic effluent of a mind that's been too often marinated in hallucinogenic cocktails at campus colloquies.

Maybe the looniest part of Professor Churchill's essay is his claim that 9/11 was a retaliation for American offenses against Iraq. We have been told ever since we began preparations for war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 that there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq. We had been told that al Qaida despised the secular regime Hussein had established and didn't want anything to do with it. Now Professor Churchill wants us to believe that there is a direct link between U.S. (actually U.N.) policy in Iraq and the Saudis and other Arabs who made up the al Qaida hijacking teams.

We would be interested to see the evidence he has for this allegation, but we don't expect him to offer any. It is the Left's modus operandi to fervently assert whatever fits their view of how things are and not worry about whether there is actually any support for the assertion. In Leftist epistemology any claim that serves to dishonor the United States and its people is self-validating.

For more on Professor Churchill, including a charming photo, go here.