Off With His Head

Arthur Scopenhauer observed that, "All truth passes through three stages; First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Intelligent Design has moved from stage one to deep into stage two. An illustration can be found in the strange tale of the scientific establishment's reaction to Richard Sternberg. First a little background.

One of the criticisms levelled at ID theorists is that they don't publish in peer-reviewed journals. ID theorists respond to the charge by pointing out how hard it is to get journals to accept anything critical of Darwinian orthodoxy. Darwinians typically scoff at the implausibility of this reply.

Well, about a year ago Cambridge-educated philosopher of science Stephen Meyer managed to get a paper published in an obscure little journal that called into question the ability of purely Darwinian processes to account for the Cambrian explosion of phyla 530 million years ago. The roof then quickly caved in on the publisher for having the temerity to carry a paper skeptical of the received wisdom of the Darwinians. It was as if one of the Vatican's minions had permitted an article on Satan worship into an official publication of the Church.

The Inquisition of the scientific establishment was thrown into high gear and the editor, a man named Richard Sternberg who possesses not just one, but two PH.Ds in evolutionary biology, was all but burned at the stake for the crime of open-mindedness. His critics argued at the time that he was not in any way mistreated, evidently thinking that professional persecution is appropriate punishment for facilitating free and open debate, but a subsequent investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel has shown that, as ID advocates and Creationists have been saying for years, there are no people less tolerant of contrary opinion than the talibanic members of the church of Darwin. The OSC's findings are reprised in a letter to Sternberg which can be read here. It's a disillusioning eye-opener for anyone who thinks scientists are fair-minded and tolerant folk willing to allow a diversity of hypotheses to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

The Washington Post has a summary of the most recent developments. Here are some excerpts:

Within hours of publication, senior scientists at the Smithsonian Institution -- which has helped fund and run the journal -- lashed out at Sternberg as a shoddy scientist and a closet Bible thumper. "They were saying I accepted money under the table, that I was a crypto-priest, that I was a sleeper cell operative for the creationists," said Steinberg, 42 , who is a Smithsonian research associate. "I was basically run out of there." An independent agency has come to the same conclusion, accusing top scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History of retaliating against Sternberg by investigating his religion and smearing him as a "creationist."

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which was established to protect federal employees from reprisals, examined e-mail traffic from these scientists and noted that "retaliation came in many forms . . . misinformation was disseminated through the Smithsonian Institution and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false."

"The rumor mill became so infected," James McVay, the principal legal adviser in the Office of Special Counsel, wrote to Sternberg, "that one of your colleagues had to circulate [your resume] simply to dispel the rumor that you were not a scientist."

Sternberg's case has sent ripples far beyond the Beltway. The special counsel accused the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that defends the teaching of evolution, of orchestrating attacks on Sternberg. "The NCSE worked closely with" the Smithsonian "in outlining a strategy to have you investigated and discredited," McVay wrote to Sternberg.

A senior Smithsonian scientist wrote in an e-mail: "We are evolutionary biologists and I am sorry to see us made into the laughing stock of the world, even if this kind of rubbish sells well in backwoods USA." An e-mail stated, falsely, that Sternberg had "training as an orthodox priest." Another labeled him a "Young Earth Creationist," meaning a person who believes God created the world in the past 10,000 years.

Eugenie Scott, of the NCSE, insisted that Smithsonian scientists had no choice but to explore Sternberg's religious beliefs. "They don't care if you are religious, but they do care a lot if you are a creationist," Scott said. "Sternberg denies it, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it argues for zealotry."

Sternberg has seen stress piled upon stress in the past year. His marriage has dissolved, and he no longer comes into the Smithsonian. When the biological society issued a statement disavowing Meyer's article, Sternberg was advised not to attend. "I was told that feelings were running so high, they could not guarantee me that they could keep order," Sternberg said.

We particularly like Eugenie Scott's claim. In her world if you're sympathetic to the notion that other points of view deserve a hearing then you're a "zealot." That pretty much says everything that needs to be said about the modern scientific mindset.

Why Did They Shoot?

The shooting of an innocent Brazilian by British police was tragic enough. Now it seems that nothing about their story is true. He didn't run from the police, he wasn't wearing a bulky coat, he didn't jump the turnstile to board the tube train, and he may not even have left the house which was under surveillance as a terrorist hide-out.

The Brazilian electrician shot dead by police on the London Underground last month was being restrained when he was killed by officers from Scotland Yard's firearms unit, according to documents leaked last night.

Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by two plainclothes policemen who had followed him on to the train at Stockwell station in the mistaken belief that he was a potential suicide bomber. Documents and photographs leaked to ITV News also confirmed that Mr de Menezes did not run from the police, as had been reported, had used his Tube pass to enter the station, rather than vault the barrier, and had taken a seat on the train before being grabbed by an officer. He was wearing a light denim jacket and not as previously reported a padded coat which could have concealed explosives.

The documents, which contain witness statements made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, also suggest that the intelligence operation may have been botched because an officer watching a flat believed to be the hideout of one of the suspects in the abortive July 21 attack was "relieving himself".

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has apologised for the death of Mr de Menezes and a senior officer has visited Brazil to talk to his family. However, the latest disclosures will cast fresh light on Sir Ian's insistence that the death was the tragic consequence of a legitimate operation.

Shortly after the shooting, Sir Ian said: "Whatever else they were doing, they clearly thought they were faced with a suicide bomber and they were running towards him. Had that person been a suicide bomber and had the officers not fired and 25 yards up the track the bomb had exploded, the officers would be in a worse situation than they are now."

He insisted that lethal force was the only option available to his officers once they had satisfied themselves Mr de Menezes was a suicide bomber. Yet a few days later, West Midlands police used a Taser stun weapon to arrest Yasin Hassan Omar, one of the July 21 suspects. Mr de Menezes was killed the day after the failed attacks on Tube trains and a bus.

Guidelines issued since the September 11 attacks emphasise that police must not challenge suicide bombers or identify themselves for fear of prompting the bomber to detonate his device. Instead, they may fire a "critical head shot ... prior to challenge".

The complaints commission has taken statements from officers in the operation. Among the questions being asked is why the intelligence on the occupants of the flats suspected of harbouring the terror suspects failed to identify Mr de Menezes as an innocent party. It will also seek to establish why he was allowed to board a bus when buses had been targets in the two previous attacks. His family cannot reconcile the police assertion that he had to be stopped once he had boarded a Tube train with the fact that he got on to a bus.

Questions will also be asked over why the impression that he was wearing a padded fleece was given continued credence when the photographs broadcast last night show him dressed differently. Wearing bulky clothing not in keeping with the weather is considered a sign of a potential suicide bomber. Scotland Yard said last night that it was unable to comment on any reports about the incident while it was being investigated.

If all of this is true then the British police have hindered anti-terror efforts everywhere human and civil rights are observed. In the wake of their overly hasty reaction more restraints will inevitably be placed on police to ensure that such a terrible thing doesn't happen again. Those restraints may save an innocent life, like that of de Menezes, or they may, because of a moment's indecision, cost more lives. The mystery is why they shot at all.

Risky Business

Being a big cheese in al Qaida is risky business anywhere but especially in Saudi Arabia. The third jihadi to head up the Saudi chapter of al Qaida in the last year or so has bitten the bullet, so to speak.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Security forces killed the leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia in a gun battle in the holy city of Medina just hours before a visit by newly crowned King Abdullah. An Interior Ministry statement said security forces had also killed three other militants and arrested at least 10 in a series of raids in the capital Riyadh and in Medina.

Saleh al-Awfi, believed to have taken over leadership of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia last year, was one of a few fugitives remaining on a list of most wanted militants in the world's top oil producer. His death would deal a further blow to militants loyal to Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who analysts say have been weakened by a two-year government campaign against the al Qaeda network in Saudi Arabia.

State television said Awfi and another militant had been hiding in a residential area near the venerated Mosque of the Prophet, site of the tomb of Mohammad which King Abdullah visited for prayers. Earlier, security forces killed two wanted gunmen and captured another during a raid on a house in a northern district of Riyadh.

Saudi analyst Fares Houzam said militants in the kingdom had been dealt a big blow. "Awfi was al Qaeda's main leader in the west of the country," he told Reuters. "The speed at which the militants have been captured and killed of late shows how poorly trained they are."

As crown prince, King Abdullah had spearheaded the battle against al Qaeda which since May 2003 has staged suicide bombings and attacks against foreigners with the aim of toppling the pro-U.S. monarchy and expelling Westerners from the birthplace of Islam. Analysts said the accession of Abdullah, a pious figure popular with his conservative Muslim subjects, could increase public support for the battle against al Qaeda which depends on the sympathy of ordinary Saudis as much as weapons.

Militants have so far killed 91 foreign nationals and Saudi civilians. Security forces have in turn killed 112 militants and analysts say they have eroded al Qaeda's network in the kingdom. Saudi authorities believe Awfi took over the leadership of al Qaeda in the kingdom after security forces killed Abdulaziz al-Muqrin in June last year.

Kudos to the Saudi security forces. Let's hope they soon run out of targets.

Journalistic Twister

We have to wonder whether AP reporters Tom Coyne and Ashley Heher actually got paid for this sophomoric piece of guilt by very distant association:

LONG BEACH, Ind. - Like many towns across America, the exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews.

Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era.

It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade - as well as the rest of his life - is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.

Some of the attention focuses on Roberts' civil rights record as Bush replaces retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the key swing voter on affirmative action issues.

Roberts' criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his work as a White House lawyer has alarmed civil rights groups and some Democrats, who say he may be a partisan for conservative causes. Other memos from his time in the Reagan Justice Department portray an attorney who urged his bosses to restrict affirmative action and Title IX sex discrimination lawsuits.

It is hard to know how much Roberts' upbringing in this northern Indiana community on the shores of Lake Michigan influenced his views. Some say the fact that there were riots and restrictions on home ownership is not relevant at all. "I don't think that would have had any bearing on John Roberts' life," said Micky Gallas, a local real estate agent who attended grade school with Roberts, referring to the racial covenants.

Roberts' father, a manager at a Bethlehem Steel mill in nearby Burns Harbor, moved the family to Long Beach in the early 1960s. The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.

Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants. Deeds on file from the 1940s in Long Beach ban the sale or lease of houses to "any person who is not a Caucasian gentile." The covenants date to the community's early days in the 1920s as a summer getaway for Chicagoans.

"Every time you would go to an area you would find there were restrictions against a certain type," said Phyllis Waters, who moved to Long Beach in 1958 and bought Century 21 Long Beach Real Estate in 1967. "What they didn't like, they'd restrict."

Fern Eddy Schultz, the county historian, said the covenants were common for property near Lake Michigan. "They didn't want particular people to have homes around the lake areas," Schultz said. Covenants have gotten attention in the past. President Bush purchased a house in 1988 in Dallas with a covenant restricting blacks from buying the property. His staff said Bush was unaware of the deed restriction, which was void under Texas law, when he purchased the home.

In Long Beach, nearly all residents were white when Roberts was growing up, a makeup that has changed little in four decades. Today, nearly 98 percent of the town's 1,500 residents are white. The median income in 1970 topped $18,000, nearly twice that of neighboring communities; today it is more than $71,000, nearly double the state median.

That environment may have sheltered residents from the events of July 1970, when the arrests of three black men over a parking violation outside a bar in Michigan City set off two days of looting, vandalism and fires.

The Associated Press reported in a July 13, 1970, story that a police officer addressed one of those arrested as "boy" and that the man vowed to get some of his friends and "take this town apart." The mayor declared a state of emergency, and Indiana National Guard troops were called in to restore order.

The News-Dispatch of Michigan City reported more than a dozen people were arrested for violating a curfew imposed to quell the violence. Those detained included several who worked in a job-training program for Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor plant, where the younger Roberts worked summers to help pay for Harvard.

David Myers, a University of Notre Dame sociology professor who studies race riots, said the uprising was typical of an industrial area that had seen an influx of blacks from the South. "There were a lot of labor market tension and lots of unemployment issues that were driving unrest," he said.

Waters said many Long Beach residents were unaware of the disturbances until they picked up the Michigan City newspaper. "We didn't even know it happened," she said.

That insulation extended to the all-boys Catholic boarding school Roberts attended in nearby LaPorte. Bob MacLaverty, a longtime friend and Roberts' roommate at La Lumiere School, said students rarely discussed race and the civil rights movement. The school admitted its first black students in 1970. By Roberts' graduation in 1973, about 7 percent of its roughly 100 students were minorities, he said.

Richard Freer, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta who has studied the Senate confirmation process, says Roberts' life experiences are relevant if they speak to his character and ability to be impartial. But he said there should be limits.

"I think it's legitimate to look at the past if it tells you anything about the person. But so what if there were race riots? Did he cause them? No. He was a 15-year-old kid. We don't shape the events that take place in our hometown."

This has to be one of the most stupidly silly pieces of reporting in the national media in the last twenty years. How is anything that Coyne and Heher write here relevant to John Roberts' fitness to serve on the Supreme Court? Why is any of it even newsworthy? The only plausible reason is that the writers are trying to show that John Roberts may have been tangentially exposed to racist influences in his youth, but even if he had been, so what? Who hasn't? What does that have to do with his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court?

As our two cerebrally-challenged correspondents play a desperate game of journalistic Twister, stretching and contorting to come up with something, anything with which to diminish Mr. Roberts' reputation, the rest of us can only shake our heads in astonishment at how low the AP's standards have sunk.

Why Morale is High

Matt Lauer probably wasn't expecting this:

...Lauer interviewed a group of soldiers at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, and at one point asked about the state of morale. After getting two responses to the effect that morale was good, Lauer had this to say:

"Don't get me wrong, I think you're probably telling the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you're facing and with the insurgent attacks you're facing. What would you say to people who are doubtful that morale could be that high?"

To which Capt. Sherman Powell replied: "Well sir, I'd tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers also I'd be pretty depressed as well!"

Powell went on to say, no doubt to Lauer's discomfiture, that "For those of us who have actually had the chance to get out and meet the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here, and we are confident that if we are allowed to finish the job we started we'll be very proud of it and our country will be proud of us for doing it."

I hope Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the lefty anti-war protestors who think our G.I.s must surely be on the verge of mutiny read this soldier's statement. Unfortunately, it'll probably be unable to penetrate the ideological haze that obscures their ability to think clearly.

Stein v. Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan shouts that George Bush is the world's biggest terrorist. Ben Stein says he's the world's greatest asset. Whether Stein is correct or not (I think he is), Sheehan is certainly not. After all, who would you rather meet on a deserted street, a jihadi from Fallujah, if there are any left, or George Bush?

Anyway, Stein's case for claiming Bush to be a great leader is here:

A few humble theses:

There is such a thing as evil in this world and such a thing as good. It is simply not true that all is relative and similar. Beheading Iraqi civilians with a saw on the Internet is absolutely evil. Helping children in Mosul get pure water is absolute good. Sending homicide bombers to blow up elementary schools at a kibbutz is evil. Treating the children of your enemies in the finest hospitals in Israel is good.

In Europe and Asia and South America and in much of North America, this idea is unknown. All is relative and the only point is to get away another day without having the evil ones attack you. Appeasing the terrorists, ignoring them and their instigators, pretending that the good guys are the bad guys -- all of these are now standard practice in the capitals of the world, and in the academies of America and in the Democratic Party at high levels.

There is one great man standing between us and this capitulation to evil: that man is George Bush, and he has two great allies, Tony Blair and John Howard. If we did not have George Bush at the helm, if we had a moral relativist like Kerry or Gore, we would even now be playing the same appeasing games as Chamberlain played with Hitler, and which France and Germany, Spain and Italy, Norway and Belgium, tragically, even Canada, play with the enemies of the human spirit.

By a great providence, we were sent George Bush. In his mind, there is such a thing as evil. Terrorism is evil. Racism is evil. The murder of unborn babies is evil. Torturing a totally innocent Terri Schiavo to death is evil. He sees it, acts on it, actively works not just to get along day by day, but to keep evil at bay and to overcome it where it can be overcome. As time goes by, I come to realize that George Bush, with all of his faults, is the spiritual heir to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Winston Churchill, to the late Pope John Paul II. How unbelievably lucky we are to have him, and how grateful we should be.

The terrifying part is that he will be gone from power in less than three years. Then what? The evil will remain in men's souls, and who will be there to fight it? We have to start thinking right now of who sees and recognizes the difference between good and evil and start energizing ourselves to make that man or woman President. George Bush's shoes will be terrifyingly difficult to fill.

Stein has a point. In order to defend Western civilization one has to recognize that evil exists. Any politician who sees evil as purely the subjective revulsion of individual or collective taste is completely unsuited for leadership in these difficult times. Above all else we need men and women at the helm who possess a sense of moral clarity and who have not succumbed to the post-modern relativism which afflicts and paralyzes the judgment of so many of our educated elites. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were/are such men. Who will follow in their train? Surely not anyone endorsed by Ms Sheehan.

Egging Cindy On

I remember once seeing a group of children surrounding a mentally retarded boy who was shouting obscenities. The group of children, instead of calming the boy down, coaxed him to continue his behavior because they found it amusing. They laughingly egged him on as he made himself offensive and foolish to anyone passing by who didn't realize what was happening. The whole episode was a sickening insight into the cruelty of which children are capable. I thought of this in thinking about how the media is encouraging Cindy Sheehan and making her protest possible.

Grant that Ms Sheehan is a bereaved mother. Of course, there are many mothers who've lost children in Iraq and Afghanistan. About two thousand of them, but they're not saying the sorts of things Sheehan is. What they are saying is that Sheehan doesn't speak for them, and no wonder.

Cindy Sheehan has, aided and abetted by the MSM, converted her status as a Gold Star mom into a platform from which to make the most absurd allegations about George Bush with total impunity. She had a right to her bitterness for a while, and we should still be loath to question her motives, but her immunity to criticism for the words she's uttering is lapsing and if she wishes to be taken seriously it's time people spoke up and told her that her statements are not only false, they're stupid. They are little more than invective and name-calling. Consider, for example, what she says in this story at The Drudge Report:

"We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We're waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!"

So declared Cindy Sheehan earlier this year during a rally at San Francisco State University.

Sheehan, who is demanding a second meeting with Bush, stated: "We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

Sheehan unleashed a foul-mouth tirade on April 27, 2005:

"They're a bunch of f*****g hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up..." Sheehan said of the Bush administration.

"If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bulls**t, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free?"

"The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it's so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go to this war."

"We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog s**t in Washington, we will impeach all those people."

This is such incoherent nonsense that it's not worth the time to construct a reply. Let it suffice to say that the MSM is delighted that someone with some (rapidly fading) moral standing can be found who's willing to trash Bush in such a way that it doesn't look like partisan politics. They give her the megaphone to do it with and coax her to shout louder.

Yet the only reason anyone at all listens to her is that her son was killed in Iraq after having volunteered for the military, re-enlisting, and then volunteering to go on a dangerous rescue mission that his status as a vehicle mechanic did not require of him. He was not drafted, he did not have to fight. He freely chose his path. The young man is a hero, but his mother's screeds and wild allegations do his courage and sacrifice great dishonor.

If the media had any decency they would simply avert their eyes from this woman's unfortunate tantrums rather than egging her on. But they are desperate to discredit Bush, and desperate people resort to whatever means lay at hand, regardless of how contemptible those means may be.

Letter to the Editor

Forgive me if I mentioned this before, but our local paper ran an editorial two weeks ago on the president's opinion on having Intelligent Design in public school classrooms. The editorial can be found here. Here's my response, only part of which was printed by the paper yesterday:

The Dispatch ran an editorial last Wednesday critical of the president's recent comments on teaching Intelligent Design about which I'd like to pose some questions. The editor wrote:

"Yet here's the president of the United States, saying schools should teach both "theories" on the creation and development of life. And global warming has no scientific basis, mercury pollution is not the threat most scientists say it is, drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge will have no effect on one of the world's last great wildernesses -- and are there really such things as endangered species?"

If sarcasm were a reason to accept an implied conclusion then the paper would have a strong case against the Bush administration's attitude toward science-related issues, but it's not, and they don't. Each of these issues is framed by the writer in a highly tendentious way. The controversy surrounding global warming, for instance, is not about whether it's happening but about its cause. No one claims that drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will have no effect. The debate is over whether the effect will be significant and permanent. Part of informing one's readers is accurately presenting the facts, but this the editorial fails to do, preferring the rhetorical appeal of snarkiness to the difficult work of thinking.

The writer then gets to the real point:

"Intelligent design is not a 'theory,' but strictly a religious concept that may have its place in Sunday school and in the home -- not in high school biology class."

Not a theory? Does the editor mean that ID is not a proposed explanation for a set of observations? Does the editor know what a theory is? Has the editor ever actually read anything written on ID by a prominent advocate?

And what about ID makes it a "strictly religious concept"? Is it religious because some wish to use it to promote a religious agenda? If so, is Darwinism fascist because some have employed Darwinian principles like survival of the fittest to justify the extermination of the less fit? Is ID religious simply because it posits a Designer? How, exactly, would that make it religious?

The Dispatch goes on to say that:

"The president's view on intelligent design would, no doubt, warm the heart of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and anti-evolution champion in the Scopes trial who saw Darwin's theory as heralding the end of western civilization. But for a man who presides over the most powerful and most scientifically advanced nation on earth to be spouting such a fundamentalist mantra in the name of 'improving' education is more than unseemly, it's irresponsible and embarrassing."

Why is it irresponsible for the president to state his personal views on this issue when asked to do so? He didn't say that ID should be legislatively mandated. He merely opined that it would be a good thing to stimulate students to think about a very important question. Why should it be embarrassing to hold a view consonant with the opinion of the majority of people one leads? Is it that the editor is embarrassed that the president lacks the same level of scientific enlightenment possessed by his/her fellow sophisticates in the news media?

Moreover, what does the Dispatch mean by calling the president's words a "fundamentalist mantra"? Does the paper intend to suggest that only creepy fundamentalists believe that it's appropriate to mention the possibility that intelligence is necessary to explain the apparent biocentricity of the cosmos and the complexity of the biosphere in a science class?

What is really "unseemly, irresponsible and embarrassing" is lazy, otiose rhetoric masquerading as informed argument. The editor of the Dispatch knows nothing of what he/she is talking about so, like a middle schooler caught in an argument over matters he does not understand, the writer just sputters insults. It may make the writer feel good, but it's not very persuasive.

Another Top Jihadi Sent to Paradise

The BBC reports that yet another top aide to Abu al Zarqawi has been dispatched to frolic with his 72 virgins:

United States officials say Iraqi forces have killed a senior aide to the militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Officials said Abu Zubair was shot dead in the northern city of Mosul, in an ambush set by Iraqi forces.

He had been wanted for his alleged role in several attacks, including a attack on a police station in Mosul last month, which killed five policemen.

No other details of the operation were provided, and there is no independent confirmation of the US statement.

Maybe next time it will be the psychopath-in-chief himself who gets sent off to his reward.

The Seven Phases

Al Qaida has a twenty year plan for establishing a worldwide caliphate and The Fourth Rail has the details and commentary:

Al Qaeda's purported strategy can be broken down into seven "phases" which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will acheive "definitive victory." Here are the phases, which are followed by commentary when appropriate.

The First Phase: Known as "the awakening" -- this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby "awakening" Muslims. "The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful," writes Hussein. "The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target." The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard "everywhere."

Al Qaeda can claim some success in the First Phase, as the organization is now the preeminent terrorist organization on the planet. The attacks of September 11 were cheered throughout the Islamic world. The global media disseminates Al Qaeda commander's speeches. Each and every terrorist attack is followed by suspicious of al Qaeda involvement. And the US did indeed bring the war to the Islamic world in Afghanistan and Iraq, however not against Islam itself. But this came at a price, as Islamist Afghanistan and friendly Saddam-governed Iraq were lost.

The Second Phase: "Opening Eyes" is, according to Hussein's definition, the period we are now in and should last until 2006. Hussein says the terrorists hope to make the western conspiracy aware of the "Islamic community." Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an "army" set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.

So far, the Second Phase has been a failure. The Arab and greater Islamic Street has been essentially silent in its support of al Qaeda. The perception that al Qaeda's cause is popular as hundreds of Islamists enter Iraq monthly is overshadowed by the tens of thousands of Islamic fighters who enter Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. al Qaeda has generated new recruits, but not nearly enough to replace the experienced operators and managers that have been lost under the American onslaught in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Winning the Second Phase is important from an ideological standpoint. Defeat in Iraq would seriously harm the credibility of al Qaeda and weaken their mystique. They would possess a losing ideology that could not stand up to the Great Satan. Allah would have abandoned them to the privations of the infidel.

The rest of the plan can be read at the link. Roggio finishes with this:

Phases Five, Six and Seven are merely the dreams of al Qaeda, as the prospects for al Qaeda's success in phases One thru Fourth are looking grim at the moment. Despite media portrayal of defeat in Iraq, the Iraqi people are fighting the insurgency and the Anbar region is set to be reduced as an al Qaeda rear area. The jewel of al Qaeda, Afghanistan, fell almost four years ago, and al Qaeda and its Taliban allies have not come even close to retaining control. There are rumors of a serious rift between al Qaeda and the Taliban, as the Taliban believes its woes were created by closely allying themselves with Osama's cause.

However, in the event of the United State loses its political will and pursues a policy of isolation from the Muslim world, an inevitable showdown with al Qaeda would ensue. Open confrontation with the West, as well as the possibility of a nuclear armed Caliphate, would bring the full military might of the Western World (those who value their freedom). The current operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Southeast and Central Asia and within the borders of Western nations would be tame in comparison to what would come. The Japanese, Germans and Italians discovered in World War II the price of wakening the American military psyche.

The West would basically have two options: (1) blitzkrieg 21st Century style - the full mobilization of its military and an accompanying sweep of the Islamic crescent, without regards for Politically Correct warfare; (2) nuclear war. Both campaigns would be designed to fully eliminate the Islamist threat, and the Muslim infrastructure, which allowed for the rise of al Qaeda's ideology.

Whatever happens, the American people have to be prepared for a long, drawn out conflict. One of the Bush administration's real failings in the current war has been, in our opinion, its failure to keep the eye of the American people focussed on the task of defeating terrorism. They've given us the perception that they're disengaged, that the war is just a side-show to our everyday lives rather than an all-out struggle for the survival of Western civilization. As a result, they've pretty much ceded the battle for people's hearts and minds to the Cindy Sheehans and Chris Matthews of the world.

The war has to be fought not only abroad but also here at home. The administration must repeatedly remind us why we are fighting, what our soldiers are dying for, what the stakes are, and what sort of progress is being made. If they expect the American people to be patient they have to show us the goal and continually update us on our progress toward that goal, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but everywhere the war is being fought. To do less is to risk conveying the impression that what our military is doing is not all that crucial or important and that its time to disengage from a conflict which, for all the White House is telling us, we're not really winning.

Stemming the Tide

Michelle Malkin has a lot of links and other worthwhile stuff on what is probably conservatives' biggest disappointment with the Bush administration, its failure to control our borders.

If the Democrats want a winning issue in '06 and '08 there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives who would vote for anyone who campaigns on stopping the flood of illegal aliens pouring into this country every day. The GOP, which has been absolutely delinquent on this issue, would find any credible candidate who promised to put a stop to it tough to beat.

Bias Against Roberts

Laer has 32 examples of media bias in their reporting on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court at Cheat-Seeking Missiles. It's an imposing list.

The Origin of Life

This is an interesting development in the debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained.

"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

Maybe Liu is correct, but one difficulty his team is going to have to overcome, if they're going to show that no intelligent designer was necessary for biogenesis, is designing experiments that show how life could have originated without introducing into those experiments any trace of human intelligence. It'll be a nifty trick if they can pull it off.

The attempt, though, is quite a gamble. If they succeed, their work would be a severe and possibly fatal blow to Intelligent Design theory. If, on the other hand, they fail, their inability to explain how life could have evolved naturalistically will greatly strengthen the argument of those who say that however life came to be, it could not have happened through purely mechanistic processes.

Canaries in the Coal Mine

Dennis Prager made the claim on the Hugh Hewitt show today that throughout history those nations or institutions which hated the Jews most intensely were also the nations which were responsible for inflicting the greatest evil upon the world.

I don't know enough history to judge the accuracy of this statement before the twentieth century, but it certainly would seem to be true of the last seventy five years. Beginning with the Nazis in the 1930s and early forties, the Stalinists from the forties to the seventies, and the Islamists for the past thirty years, most of the world's most evil regimes seem to have been rabidly anti-semitic. The exceptions would be, perhaps, those regimes which had little contact with Jews either geographically as neighbors or as citizens within their boundaries.

But for those nations which have had Jewish populations in their midst or resided in proximity to Israel, the degree of evil they perpetrate does indeed seem roughly proportional to the degree of their hatred of the Jews. It is such a bizarre nexus, in fact, that one wonders if there is not some supernatural, some demonic, reason for it based on God's election of the Jews as His chosen people.

Dafydd, who is a secularist balks at this conclusion, but is nevertheless struck by the connection.

Dafydd paraphrases Prager as saying that "The curse of the Jews is to be hated by the most evil men of every generation. The Jews are a barometer of hatred, canaries in a coal mine: to find the greatest evil, find the greatest haters of Jews."

This seems to be a very important insight. As Dafydd suggests, it would be interesting to have some historian check to see if it is borne out in centuries before the twentieth.

Plan? What Plan?

Howard Dean on Face the Nation gives us a fine lesson in how to say nothing with a lot of words:

Bob Scheiffer, host: Governor Dean, polls are showing that people are losing confidence in the president's handling of the war in Iraq. A majority now believe it's left us more vulnerable, rather than less vulnerable, to the terrorists. But what do Democrats propose to do about it?

Dr. Howard Dean (Democrat, Former Governor, Vermont; Chairman, Democratic National Committee): Well, I think, first of all, we need a plan. The saddest article, in a series of very sad articles about people losing their lives--the saddest article I saw was in The Washington Post this morning, talking about the insiders of the administration saying, `Well, now we misjudged. We really can't achieve any of the things--or many of the things we said that we were going to achieve when we went.' Eighteen hundred and fifty Americans lose their lives because the president can't figure out what he's going to do, had no plan when we got there and has not plan when we get out.

Note that Dr. Dean has stated that we need a plan to get out of Iraq and that the president is responsible for the deaths of 1,850 Americans. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of the transcript.

Dr. Dean: First thing we need to do have a plan for leaving. And the second thing we need to do is to make sure that to the best of our ability we can influence the writing of the constitution. It looks like today, and this could change--as of today, it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq. That's a pretty sad commentary on this administration's ability to do anything right.

Schieffer: Well, when you say, `We need to have a plan,' you mean a plan to leave?

Dr. Dean: We do.

Schieffer: A plan to get out?

Dr. Dean: We need to have a plan to leave.

Schieffer: Should we leave now?

Dr. Dean: I think that's going to be very problematic. I mean, I think we've gotten in there, we've made a huge mess in there, we've created a terrorist danger for the United States where one did not exist before. But to pull out before they even have a chance to write their constitution I think is wrong. But I do think that time is coming very quickly. And if it turns out that this constitution really does take away the rights that women have enjoyed in Iraq before, then I can't imagine why we're there.

Schieffer: Well, I'll go back and ask you about that in a minute, but I know the president said, and I think it was just this week, giving a timetable for leaving Iraq would be the worst thing we could do because it would just tell the people who oppose us there, `Look, all we have to do is hang in till they leave, and then we're OK.'

Dr. Dean: We need to leave. We're not going to be there forever, I hope. We're not going to be there forever. So the question is: What is a reasonable way to get out? And that's--we have no answers from the president on that at all. He keeps saying--well, his administration appears to be divided. Some of the generals have said, `Well, we can withdraw some of the troops, perhaps as many as 30,000, after the elections.' We have others saying, `Well, we're not going to leave.' These people do not know what they're doing. They didn't know what they were doing when we got in, they had no plan then. They have no plan now. They do not know what they're doing.

Mr. John Harris (The Washington Post): Governor, you're the political leader of the Democratic Party. As you well know, many of your people in Congress, Democrats in Congress, voted for the war in 2002. Next year, 2006, do you expect this will be a good political issue for Democrats to run on, what you consider the president's failures on Iraq?

Dr. Dean: Well, we don't--I can't imagine using 1,850 lost American soldiers, who have died in defense of their country, using that as a political issue. I think there's a lot of--I think this is certainly going to be an issue of disagreement and it's going to question the president's credibility, the president's competence. But I--you know, using it as a political issue, I think is--I don't think the Democrats are going to do that.

Obviously, Dr. Dean wouldn't dream of using the tragic deaths of 1,850 Americans who died because Bush is an incompetent, whose deaths were unnecessary, as a political issue.

What did he say the number of dead Americans that Bush is responsible for was again?

Schieffer: Why do you suppose it is, though, Governor, that while people are losing confidence in the president's handling of the war that--and every poll suggests that--why do you suppose that people are not buying what Democrats are saying? They don't seem to be taking too much to the Democrats on that.

Dr. Dean: I think they are buying what Democrats are saying. I think people believe that we need a plan to get our troops to come home. I think that people do understand now...

People are convinced we need a plan. Bush doesn't have one. Surely the Democrats do because they're going to lead us out of Iraq. Eventually. When it's safe. When it's prudent. Sometime.

Schieffer: But if I may say so...

Dr. Dean: Sure.

Schieffer: ...I mean, saying we need a plan. I mean, sure, you need a plan, but do you have a plan? Is anybody working on a plan? What would you propose?

Dr. Dean: Well, Bob, the president of the United States is commander in chief. It is up to him to come up for a plan. You can't expect a congressman and senators who don't have the same access to intelligence as the president does to come up with a plan to withdraw our troops from Iraq. We look--the president got us into Iraq 'cause people were willing to trust the president, even some Democrats were willing to trust the president in assuming he knew what he was doing. The problem is now that there's ample evidence to say that they didn't understand what they were getting into and they still don't know what we're doing there. They changed their goals. The troops are still not properly equipped. The constitution looks like it may take away freedom from the Iraq people, at least half of them, instead of added to them. What we need is a plan from the president of the United States. You can't expect a particular senator or particular congressman to have a plan. Only the president can do that.

So. Having run us around several laps of the track, Dr. Dean finally concludes, apparently, that the President doesn't have a plan so we should vote the Republicans out. Of course, the Democrats don't have a plan either, but we should vote them in. The Republicans should come up with a plan if they want our vote, but the Democrats should not be held to same expectation.

It must be a wild, whacky place inside Howard Dean's mind.

ELCA Disses Israel

One of the troubling results of the recently concluded ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Churchwide Assembly was a resolution voted upon and approved Saturday which contained rather harsh language against Israel for having constructed a wall to keep terrorists out of their communities along the West Bank. The wall has been very effective in reducing terror attacks, but it has also worked severe hardships on Palestinians who have in some cases been cut off from their farms, orchards, and health care by the barrier. Moreover, the wall in some places intrudes into land that until the 1967 Arab/Israeli war had been understood to belong to the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the language used in the supporting materials for the ELCA resolution is unclear as to whether it is criticizing Israel for building the wall or criticizing the manner in which it is built. There is a significant difference between the two criticisms. The ELCA, in wanting to take a stand for the Palestinians who are suffering because of the barrier, comes across as completely unsympathetic to the right of the Israelis to protect their children from being blown to smithereens by terrorist bombers.

Many of those who rose to support the resolution made it sound as if the wall were erected just to be cruel to the Palestinians. Rarely was there mention of the reasons or need for its existence. Indeed, the most frequent argument heard from the floor was that the speaker had been to Israel and seen the wall and it's really quite awful.

The resolution passed 71% to 29%. A motion Sunday morning to reconsider the action based on its anti-Israeli tenor was defeated. The Assembly would have done well to work toward a more precise expression of its concern, but it chose not to do so.

There was throughout the week a palpable feeling that many of the matters voted upon by the Assembly were little more than opportunities to give many in the hall a frisson of self-affirmation and a sense of their own moral goodness. They seemed to have very little additional purpose.

In the final analysis, there was little actual good accomplished by the Assembly, but it did manage to avoid doing some actual harm. It avoided passing a by-laws change that would have made the ordination of non-celibate homosexual candidates church policy and another that would have made blessing same-sex unions an accepted policy of the church.

How long the Lutheran church will hold out against the cultural tide which favors these changes and which is sweeping through mainline denominations all across the country, is an interesting, and disturbing, question.

Lost Liberty Project Moving Ahead

Here are some highlights from the most recent newsletter of the Lost Liberty Hotel Project. These people certainly appear to be serious. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what Justice Souter is thinking right now?

Logan Clements who is heading the Lost Liberty Hotel project will visit Weare, New Hampshire from August 20th to the 23rd. He will talk to local supporters who are planning to use ballot initiatives to seize the land at 34 Cilley Hill Road (Justice Souter's property) and clear away other local laws that may hinder the project. It appears that an initiative can be placed on the March 2006 Weare N.H. ballot with only 25 signatures and can win with between 1,020 and 2,777 votes. Whoever said this project "will never happen" might find themself sitting in the Just Deserts Cafe eating crow pie next to David Souter.

Freestar Media will hold an open meeting to discuss the Lost Liberty Hotel project on Monday August 22nd at the Radisson Hotel at 700 Elm Street, Manchester NH 03101. Mention "The Lost Liberty Hotel project" for $1 parking. The meeting will go from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in salon D. Logan will discuss the purpose of the project and why it is an important step in the struggle against statism. Free copies of Ayn Rand's revolutionary capitalist manifesto ATLAS SHRUGGED will be provided to the first 25 people who attend.

Over the last several weeks we have spoken with many experienced real estate developers who are considering taking over the project and leading it to completion. We invite these developers, and any others who are interested, to visit Weare, N.H. this weekend to meet with local residents and consider leading the project.

The advantages are extensive: thousands of people want to finance it, nearly every type of sub-contractor has offered free services during construction, millions of people know about it and thousands more want to support it as customers. You build it, we'll film it, and the 93% of America that was opposed to the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo vs. City of New London will thank you.

If this project is successful it will send a message to politicians and judges everywhere that the people will not endure their abuses of power forever and that they will not be exempt from the laws they impose on the rest of us. To subscribe to their newsletter go here: newsletter@freestarmedia.com.

Awash in Oil

Here's some good economic news from Iraq:

BAGHDAD (MENAFN) - Iraq's Oil Minister said that his country posted the highest level of crude sales in the country's petroleum history last July, KUNA reported. Returns of the July oil sales were the largest on record, reaching $2.5 billion, adding that the Iraqi oil production, last July, rose to 1.6 million barrels per day, from 1.440 million bpd in June and 1.380 million bpd in May.

Hike of the crude production was in line with a plan, devised by the ministry to enhance the country's exportation capacities, the minister added.

On production of oil derivatives, he said the output of liquefied gas and fuel rose by 7-10 percent, adding that the output of gasoline last May reached 9.6 million liters per day, and climbed in June to 10.25 million liters pd in June before reaching 11 million liters per day in July.

He expressed hope to hike the fuel output to 12 million liters per day in August and 14 million per day in the end of October.

Is it too much to hope that this gushing increase in output might make a teensy difference in the price Americans are paying at the pump, or is it all being sold to the Chinese?

Cindy Sheehan

The anger of any mother who has lost a son or daughter in war should be indulged, and no one wishes to criticize someone who bears that pain. Yet there is reason to believe that Cindy Sheehan, the mother who, much to the delight of the MSM, has been holding a vigil outside President Bush's Crawford ranch, is not just a grief-stricken parent. It turns out that there's more to her than meets the eye. In an article in Front Page on the terrorist advocate and legal defender Lynne Stewart, we find this item about Cindy Sheehan toward the end:

Cindy Sheehan followed this act. Wearing a sweatshirt advertising the website for United for Peace and Justice, Sheehan was interviewed outside just before the meeting by an ABC-TV news reporter. Sheehan said then that military recruiters should not be allowed on college campuses, maintaining they trick na�ve 18-year-olds with offers of money and scholarships. Tragically, Cindy Sheehan lost her son Casey who was in the Army and was killed two weeks after arriving in Iraq. She claimed he was promised a job as a chaplain's assistant although once in the service was placed in a combat role and killed, certainly a moving story - one she exploits to promote venomous anti-Americanism. "George Bush and his neo-conservatives killed my son," she said tearing up a bit. "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for."

Sheehan said she considered Lynne Stewart her Atticus Finch, the lawyer who defended an innocent Black man accused of rape in the book and film "To Kill A Mockingbird."

"They're not waging a War on Terror but a War of Terror," she said. "The biggest terrorist is George W. Bush." She claimed "it costs $66,000 to recruit one soldier, not including training, and $49,000 a year to house a prisoner, yet only $6,000 per year is spent to educate a child in California. (Recruiting costs are actually $15,000 per soldier, the cost of housing a prisoner in California for one year is $26,000.)

Sheehan continued, "9/11 was Pearl Harbor for the neo-conservatives' agenda" and declared the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system." Then she raged:

We have no Constitution. We're the only country with no checks and balances. We want our country back if we have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog sh-t in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq. It's OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It's not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? Stop the slaughter!

While one might dismiss some of Sheehan's hyperbole due to grief over her son's death, a little research about Casey Sheehan revealed that contrary to being tricked by military recruiters, Casey Sheehan had re-enlisted in the U.S. Army voluntarily when he was 24-years-old, after serving his first hitch successfully. Casey Sheehan was in fact a hero who received a Bronze Star. He was attached as a mechanic to the artillery division of the 1st U.S. Cavalry in Iraq. When a convoy of soldiers from Casey's unit was attacked in Sadr City by insurgents, Casey volunteered to join a rapid rescue force to get them out. His commanding sergeant told him he did not have to go into combat, because he was a mechanic and not an infantryman. Casey was quoted telling his officer, "I go where my chief goes." He was tragically killed during the rescue attempt. The source for this story? Cindy Sheehan herself.

I also visited an army recruiting office on my way home and asked about Casey being promised a job as a chaplain's assistant only to be thrust into harm's way. The recruiter explained to me that on re-enlistment, the Army's B.E.A.R. program (Bonus Extension and Retaining) guarantees everything in writing. If Casey was a mechanic during his first hitch, that was the only thing he would have been guaranteed per his re-enlistment contract. Further research showed that a chaplain's assistant is a combat infantry position, whereas Casey was deployed in a non-combat job as a mechanic. Casey Sheehan sought combat duty for his country and should be honored for it, not used as a symbol of how evil the United States is.

Ms Sheehan's son was a hero who volunteered to serve, and then to reenlist, and then to go on a rescue mission even though he was a non-combat mechanic. No one forced him to make any of those decisions. Now Ms Sheehan is blaming President Bush for the fact that her son is dead and making pronouncements about Israel's policy vis a vis the Palestinians. She seems, unfortunately, to be trying to exploit her status as a bereaved mother in order to achieve political aims quite unrelated to the war in Iraq. No one would have listened to her if her son had not been killed, but because he has she is being deferred to as someone who has gained valuable insight into world affairs and whose opinions merit public notice.

That her story has changed and that she has gotten her facts so completely wrong is worrisome but not nearly so much as the company she is now keeping.

IEDs and Asymmetrical Warfare

Wretchard at Belmont Club has an interesting discussion of the technology race we find ourselves in against the Islamists in Iraq.

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are more than physical objects, they are symbols of asymmetrical warfare, along with the suicide bomb and the sniper. They are exemplars of 'insoluble' threats against which resistance is supposedly futile and to which surrender is the only viable response. In times past, the submarine and bombing aircraft occupied the same psychological space. In the late 19th century, Alfred Thayer Mahan theorized that sea control, exercised through battlefleets, would be the arbiters of maritime power. But rival theorists believed weaker nations using motor torpedo boats and above all, the submarine, could neutralize battlefleets. The way to checkmate global superpower Britain, so the theory went, was through asymmetrical naval warfare.

In the early days of World War 1, three British armored cruisers HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy were patrolling the North Sea making no attempt to zigzag. The German U-9 fired a single torpedo into the Aboukir which promptly sank. HMS Hogue gallantly raced up to rescue survivors, believing the Aboukir was mined, and came right into the U-9's sights. She was sunk in turn. The HMS Cressy, believing both were mined, sped like a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery into another one of the U-9s torpedoes. In under an hour the asymmetrical weapon had killed 1,459 British sailors and sunk three cruisers.

In the 1930s the bomber airplane took the place of the U-boat as the unstoppable weapon in the public's imagination. Fired by the concepts of Italian airpower theorist Giulio Douhet, many interwar policymakers believed that bomber aircraft alone could bring a nation to its knees. The destructive capacity ascribed to the biplane bombers of the day approached that later attributed to nuclear weapons during the Cold War and so terrified politicians that it fueled the policy of appeasement.

Wretchard goes on to examine how the Improvised Explosive Device is being used by the jihadis in Iraq, how it is evolving, and the ongoing and increasingly successful efforts to render it relatively ineffective. It's worth a read.