Crow Violation

A very Mullah Christmas

2006-12-25T13:05:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of the season, I'll be writing about a couple of things the come naturally to mind at Christmas: uranium enrichment and the strategic petroleum reserve. In response the the laughably weak UN Sanctions, Iran has announced that it will accelerate work on its uranium enrichment program:

TEHERAN - Iran will on Sunday start putting in place 3,000 uranium enriching centrifuges at a key nuclear plant in an immediate response to a UN sanctions resolution, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told the hardline Kayhan newspaper.

“Our immediate response to the UN Security Council is that, as of today, we will start the activities at the site of the 3,000 centrifuge machines in Natanz and we will go ahead with full speed,” Larijani told the paper.

Natanz is the plant where Iran carries out uranium enrichment, a process the West fears could be diverted to make a nuclear bomb, a charge vehemently denied by Iran.

“We will accelerate our programme to install the 3,000 centrifuges” in response to the resolution, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the influential head of parliament’s security commission, told state radio.

Installing 3,000 centrifuges would be an important step for Iran towards enriching uranium on an industrial scale. So far it has two cascades of 164 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in the central city of Natanz.

Iran has maintained that it wants to have the new centrifuges installed by March and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the Islamic republic will be able to celebrate its “nuclearisation” around that time.

The exact meaning of this can vary tremendously depending on assumptions, as I showed earlier. The article does not mention whether these 3000 centrifuges are to be the old P-1's, or the faster P-2 centrifuges that Iran claims to possess. Nor does it speculate on how quickly the whole cascade can be brought online (the Iranians themselves probably aren't sure). If we assume that they will add 3000 P-2 centrifuges over a three year period, then the Uranium Enrichment Calculator says that they would have enough material for a bomb in less than two years. Even that may be a bit optimistic. The Calculator assumes that Iran will be making a gun-type bomb, which would require 50kg of Uranium. An implosion-type bomb (the design for which may have been passed from Pakistan) would take only about 1/3 as much. In other words, under reasonable assumptions, Iran could have enough material for an atomic bomb before the end of 2007. Once the 3000 centrifuges are all operational, the mullahs could crank out another atomic bomb every three months.

It is beyond obvious that Iran needs to be bombed flat before this can happen. Destroying the known facilities will set the mullahs back only a few months or years. The bombing campaign must also target Iran's ability to rebuild, by cratering its economy, wiping out its electrical and transportation systems, and targetting the scientists and engineers who are the most important part of the infrastructure.

None of this will happen. In a world where the UN spends months wrangling over some truly meaningless sanctions, we can't expect anyone to go Old Testament on Iran's ass. The fallback might be sanctions, or a naval "quarantine". The mullahs like to flex their muscles over the cutoff of oil, but the fact is that the Iran is in a very weak position in that regard. First, it has very little refining capacity. Without foreign imports, Iran would run out of gasoline in short order, causing some regime-threatening unrest. Heck, the Iranians get grumpy when the price of gas hits 50 cents a gallon.

Even with respect to oil exports, Iran's strength is overrated. It is estimated that 50% of Iran's national budget comes from oil exports. How long could the regime survive without any exports? Probably not more than a few months. The counter argument has always been that such a cutoff would affect dramatically affect the world economy. It just isn't so. In 2004, Iran exported 2.55 million barrels of oil per day. This amount could easily be covered by our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is currently near its full capacity of 700 million barrels of oil. If the Reserve replaced half of Iran's exports, the United States could endure an 18-months showdown with Iran.

The mullahs would be swinging from the lampposts long before our reserves ran dry.

The Yom Kippur Imams

2006-12-05T20:23:00.000-06:00

A little history lesson

In early 1973, Egypt held large and provocative maneuvers near the Israeli defense lines in the Sinai peninsula. These were sufficiently threatening that Israel partially mobilized its reserves. But this was a false alarm; no attack was coming that spring. A few months later, Egypt did the same thing. By the time Yom Kippur was near, the Israelis had grown complacent about large Egyptian forces near its lines. And it was exactly then that the large Egyptian maneuvers turned out to be a real attack. All of the previous feints had set the stage for the strategic surprise that Egypt achieved at the start of the Yom Kippur war.

I was reminded of Egypt's successful deception when I read this editorial from Investor's Business Daily:

The police report detailing the US Airways flap gives us serious pause. The imams acted more like provocateurs than victims. At the gate before boarding, they angrily cursed the U.S. Then they bowed to Mecca and prayed "very loud," chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah," according to the gate agent and another witness.

On the plane, they didn't take their assigned seats and instead fanned out to the front, middle and rear of the plane. One even "pretended to be blind" to gain access to another passenger's seat, according to a flight attendant.

Some ran back and forth speaking to each other in Arabic. Adding to suspicions, most of them asked for seat belt extensions even though they didn't need them — or even use them.

Shahin himself has ties to terrorism. He served (unknowingly, he now says) as an agent and fundraiser for a Hamas front. He ran a mosque in Tucson, Ariz., attended by several al-Qaida operatives including the hijacker who flew the plane into the Pentagon. And he now runs an imam federation that counts an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing among its trustees.

Shahin also teaches at an Islamic school fully accredited by an Egyptian university tied to the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood. The school's founder preaches sharia law. One of the imams kicked off the US Airways flight, an Egyptian native, praised sharia law, according to a passenger who sat next to him.

The actions of these imams have the same goal as Egypt's feints back in 1973. They want to raise a furor, only to have it die away. And raise another furor that turns out to be nothing, and then another. They want us to become complacent about Muslims doing outrageous things on flights, or at least to become so timid about being labeled bigots that we don't dare question them.

There are many many ways to participate in the global jihad, and these imams have found one of them.

Iraqi Civil War: Making it work for you

2006-11-11T13:44:00.000-06:00

It now seems inevitable that we will shortly withdraw from Iraq. When we do, the country will collapse into civil war. (You think that it's a civil war now? Ha! You ain't seen nothin' yet.) The question now is how we can minimize the damage and maximize the benefit from that event.

The most obvious fact is this war involves Sunni vs. Shiite. (There's also an ethnic dimension, but I have no suggestions there.) Both Islamic traditions are producing hoards of radicals bent on conquering the infidel. But in Iraq, these radicals mostly want to kill each other. We should help them do it. That way Iraq can continue to be the dumping ground (it was never actually the breeding ground) for terrorists. If we don't, then Afghanistan will become the new dumping ground.

The main concern here is that one group or the other might win before they succeed in blowing each other to bits. Then we would have either the new Taliban or Iran West. So we need to figure out who is more likely to win, and impede them. The Arab Sunnis have traditionally run Iraq, and are more experienced in such things, but there are two or three times as many Shiites, and they have Iran's backing. My money would be on the Shiites. One way to offset this strength would be to encourage the Saudis to back the Sunnis (the Saudis are probably horrified by the thought of a Shiite-run Iraq, especially a militant Shiite theocracy allied to Iran.) With any luck, we might even induce the two biggest state sponsors of radical Islam to go to war against each other.

Ok, there a couple of downsides to this. I would feel sorry for the few percent of Iraqis who actually wanted to build a free secular society. But after we leave, they're screwed anyway. The Kurdish region has been the most successful in Iraq, and might even be worth saving. We could still deploy some troops there to protect them, and have bases from which we could attack Iran as necessary. The biggest risk is that a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia would definitely send oil over $100/barrel. That would be unpleasant, but it's better to face the problem now than to go through it in a few years, when half a dozen Islamic countries have nuclear weapons.

Iranian Nuclear Countdown

2006-04-17T12:49:00.000-05:00

The debate over Iran's nuclear program has narrowed significantly. Once you leave the fever swamps of DailyKos, it's hard to find even a determined leftist who will argue that Iran's programs are just civilian. The question now is how much time we have before Iran has a nuclear weapon.

According to the Washington Post, a National Intelligence Estimate has given the time of about ten years. This is now a very popular figure being circulated among those who oppose striking Iran. We can take it as an upper bounds, the most optimistic estimate available.

If we go by history, then it might be useful to examine the case of Pakistan. Armed Liberal at Winds of Change notes that it took Pakistan about 7-8 years to go from start of enrichment (about where Iran is now) to a working bomb. Of course, Iran probably has the benefit of Pakistan's experience, being one of the beneficiaries of the A.Q. Khan network.

A more technical estimate can be found from the Federation of American Scientists, which has a Uranium Enrichment Calculator. This allows you to enter various assumptions and get an estimate of time required to get enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb. While interesting, this excersize is also nearly useless; reasonable estimates can vary from less than one year, up to five years. After having the bomb-grade uranium, Iran might require more time to put it into a working bomb. For the US during WWII, that took a few months - for Pakistan, a couple of years.

The bottom line is that we really have no idea how long it will take Iran to get the bomb. Long before the mullahs have a workable weapon, it may be too late to stop them with airstrikes. Recall that the Israel strike on Iraq's Osirak facility was timed to hit just before fuel was loaded into the reactor. If Iran has centrifuges full of nearly-bomb-grade uranium, some will no doubt argue that it would be an atrocity to bomb the uranium plants. Most likely, these will be the same people who had previously argued that we must not attack Iran because the diplomats still have years to sort out the problem.

In the end, it really doesn't matter. We know that Iran is a mortal enemy and is determined to obtain a nuclear bomb. That's all we need to know. We have no moral obligation to wait until the last possible instant. Bomb now.

Cartoon Dhimmitude at NYU

2006-03-30T11:58:00.000-06:00

Those who disparage the publication of the Mohammed cartoons usually do so on two grounds. These two points directly contradict each other, but that is apparently an objection from another age.

1) The cartoons unfairly tar Islam itself as violent; most Muslims are peaceful.
2) The cartoons incite widespread Muslim violence.

The dhimmi administration at New York University chose to highlight the second argument yesterday. The NYU objectivist club held a panel discussion at which the cartoons were supposed to be unveiled. Two days before the event, the university informed the NYU objectivists that they must either close the event to outsiders or refrain from unveiling the cartoons. Vague references to security were made. I suppose that sounds better than "We collaborated with radical Muslims to squelch criticism of Islam."

But what were the security concerns? Even the most delusional leftist would be hard pressed to argue that people were going to see these cartoons and then go trash the local mosque. Clearly the concern was for violence against the event itself; the metal detectors at the doors should attest to that. So NYU is implicitly admitting that the religion of peace has a violence problem. Of course the first administrator to say that out loud would be fired within days, if not hours.

It only shows how important it is for every American to see and understand these cartoons.

Diana at Noodle Food has the best coverage of this whole sorry episode.

Update: A spokesman for NYU discussed the school's reasoning with Professor Volokh. It's astounding to see such weak-assed excuses:

(1) "NYU has to be concerned with its students' safety and well-being, which are among the factors that drove our decision in this matter."

(2) The decision was also based partly on NYU's "larger obligation as a university to the sensibilities of its students," many of whom are offended by the cartoons.

(3) As to the policy, "No-one's speech was curtailed." "If you read the policy, it talks about speakers' speech being curtailed, and to the best of my knowledge none of the speakers were the cartoons' authors."

As Volokh points out, by those standards NYU could ban the Koran.

Jailhouse Jihad

2006-03-15T11:27:00.000-06:00

Palestinian terrorist Ahmed Saadat was in a Jericho prison until yesterday. He is believed to be the mastermind of the 2001 assassination of Rehavam Zeevi, Israel's Minister of Tourism.

I use the term "prison" extremely loosely. It seems that he had several TVs and telephones in his "cell". And a kitchen. And a reception area for visitors. There were also three British monitors at the prison, but they set up their command post on the roof, because it was too dangerous for them to be inside.

None of this was good enough for the Palestinians. The new Hamas government threatened to let Saadat go. That shows the main difference between Hamas and Fateh. Both are terrorist groups bent on destroying Israel, but Fateh was willing to dissemble, to pretend to negotiate, to "arrest" known terrorists. Hamas is more honest; it wears its genocidal hatred on its sleeve.

So the Israelis raided the prison, capturing Saadat. (The British monitors had left minutes earlier.) So let's check on the world reaction to the raid.

There's been no outrage over the phony detention of a terrorist, or the fact that he was probably being allowed to plan more attacks from his "cell". No hint of criticism for the intimidation of the monitors, or for Hamas's threat to release the terrorist.

But the world is pissed that the Israelis wouldn't just let the terrorist walk free.

The Palestinian President called the raid "an ugly crime which cannot be forgiven".

In the West Bank and Gaza strip, Palestinians went on the usual rampages.

Islamic Foreign Ministers called the raid an act of terrorism.

Several members of the EU parliament condemned the attack, on the grounds that this capture of a terrorist would be a blow to the peace process. Some peace process.

Simpons Jihad

2006-02-23T14:35:00.000-06:00

Fark.com recently ran one of the usual photoshop threads. This photoshopping is much more dangerous than the usual, because the theme was "Sitcom situations for Mohammed". Here at Crow Violation, our distinguished judging panel (consisting of... me) has given awards for the two best photoshops. The lucky winners will receive a free subscription to Crow Violation.

And without further ado, the winners are:

Please address all fatwas to carterweb@emory.edu

A Month of Jihad: Day 9

2006-02-09T07:55:00.000-06:00

Pakistan: A mob burned two movie theaters after some Korans were found in a sewer.

A suicide bomber killed at least 10 Shiites who were celebrating Ashura, the holiest day in their calender. Shiite mobs later destroyed cars and shops in retaliation.

Israel: Members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) were forced to leave the city due to continuing violence over the Danish cartoons.

Afghanistan: Cartoon riots continue here as well, with 3 killed and 27 wounded in the last few days.

A Month of Jihad: Day 7

2006-02-07T12:34:00.000-06:00

Thailand: At least six suspected Muslim terrorists shot dead two policemen at a market in Yala province, then gunned down a paramilitary officer who opened fire in retaliation, officials said.

Iran: The cartoon jihad continues. Hundreds of angry protesters hurled stones and fire bombs at the Danish Embassy in the Iranian capital Monday to protest publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The Austrian Embassy was also attacked, just for good measure.

Afghanistan: Suicide Bomber kill 13

Israel: Hezbollah has repeatedly attacked border posts near Shabaa farms in the last few days. The terrorists claim that Israeli soldiers killed a shepherd just inside Lebanon.

A Month of Jihad - Day 2

2006-02-02T08:17:00.000-06:00

Thailand: Three bomb attacks kill three in Thai Muslim south

India: Police have arrested a suspect in an attack on Bangalore's Science Institute. He is linked to Islamic terrorists in Kashmir.

Israel: Hamas leader: We will not sell our people or principles for foreign aid. The main principle being its determination to destroy Israel.

More violent threats over cartoons. Armed men in Gaza surrounded EU offices and threatened to kidnap foreigners unless European governments cracked down on newspapers that printed the Mohammed cartins.

The Netherlands: Theo van Gogh's killer was in court on more terrorism charges. He said that he felt "honored" that prosecutors would compare his philosophy to Osama bin Laden's.

A Month of Jihad

2006-02-01T07:26:00.000-06:00

This post is a daily chronicle of jihad for the month of February, 2006. Too many Westerners focus just on Islam's violent campaign in Iraq, and of course they blame even that on the United States. I want this to serve as a reminder that radical Islam is at war with all infidels, that the war is worldwide, and that the attacks happen just about every day. To that end, I will collect daily news about Islam's war - everywhere except Iraq.

February 1
Israel: Six Kassam rockets were launch toward Israel from the Gaza strip. They damaged several cars.

A border policeman was seriously wounded and Islamic Jihad fugitives killed on Tuesday afternoon in a gun battle that erupted in Arabe south of Jenin. Members of the border police's elite anti-terror unit were carrying out an operation to nab fugitives planning suicide bomb attacks in Israel.

Lebanon: Lebanese Police have uncovered attempts by al Qaeda to move into Lebanon. Several terror recruits were arrested, and admitted that they were planning attacks on Lebanese infrastructure.

Iran: In the ongoing furor over Danish cartoons, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that the Muslim nations will deal heavy blow to those who ventured into blaspheming Prophet Mohammad. The article notes that under Islamic law, the penalty for blaspheming the Pedophilic Prophet is death.

To the Non-Virgins, to Make Much of Time

2006-01-23T07:55:00.000-06:00

Sorry about that egregious Googlebait. Perhaps a better title would be:

To the Parents, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye laundry while ye may
Young Time is still a-flying
And these same children who smile and play
In a minute will be crying.

And this round goes to... Satan

2006-01-12T07:36:00.000-06:00

It's the hajj season again, and that means that the Muslim faithful perform a ritual in which they symbolically stone the devil. The only problem is that Satan wins this confrontation on a fairly regular basis. In 1990, there were 1426 people killed in a stampede during this ritual; another 244 died two years ago. This year the results were once again decisively in Satan's favor:

Muslim pilgrims rushing to complete a symbolic stoning ritual on the last day of the hajj tripped over luggage Thursday, and an unknown number of people were killed in the ensuing stampede, the Interior Ministry said. State-run television said dozens died or were injured.

The stampede occurred as tens of thousands of pilgrims headed toward al-Jamarat, a series of three pillars representing the devil that the faithful pelt with stones to purge themselves of sin.

Dozens Reported Killed in Hajj Stampede

Guys, I know this must be important training for dealing with adultresses back home, but you've got to realize that you're overmatched here. Do what all brave Muslim warriors do when faced with a determined enemy: retreat.

For Outstanding Service to Terrorist States...

2005-10-07T07:51:00.000-05:00

Mohammed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. The IAEA was the organization that was supposed to make sure that countries like North Korea and Iran didn't get nuclear weapons. It didn't quite work out that way. In fact, the organization had pretty much the opposite effect. Tyrants learned long ago that if they offered minimal cooperation to the IAEA, they could continue their weapons programs for as long as necessary. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea all had secret programs for years, while the international experts certified compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In 2003, it was discovered that inspectors had be duped for two decades. Back then Charles at LGF commented:

Mohamed El Baradei, director-general of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, says the IAEA didn’t miss a thing about Iran’s nuclear program. Oh sure, Iran has had an active program for almost 20 years now, but the IAEA didn’t miss a thing.

Two years later, Iran is no closer to genuine cooperation. The only thing that inspections have done is to put off meaningful action. So why is ElBaradei receiving this award?

Oops, I think I just answered my own question. When Jimmy Carter got the 2002 Peace Prize, several members of the prize committee openly stated that the award was meant as a poke in the eye to American hawks. This year, the world watches as the mullahs issue weekly threats: they're going to stop cooperating if the IAEA keeps insisting that they cooperate. And after another stern warning, ElBaradei lets the Iranians get back to their bomb-building. Any military strike against the weapons programs would bring worldwide condemnation - not of the Iranian cheaters, but of any world leader who put an end to the cheating. After all, the diplomatic process hadn't "failed" yet.

By providing dictators with a fig leaf of international cooperation, the IAEA guarantees that these butchers can continue to build as many nuclear weapons as they want. But after the Nobel Prize was given to Jimmy Carter, Kim Dae Jung, and Shimon Peres, no one can accuse the prize committee of inconsistency.

For a long, depressing list of ElBaradei's inaction, see this LGF search.

Galloway's Historical Fiction

2005-09-21T14:29:00.000-05:00

Madison blogger Uncle Jimbo was just about the only media personality who got to ask George Galloway a serious question during Galloway's recent visit to the Mad City. You can read (some of?) the transcript of the interview here.

The striking thing about the interview is how Galloway morphs to fit his audience. When speaking in the Arab world, he can compare the liberation of Iraq to a rape, but in the US, he tries to tell us that he's so very concerned about the possibility of creating new terrorists with our invasion. Likewise, after his long career of supporting communist dictatorships, he tries to hide it from his American audience:

UJ: (prior to clip was asking if his words to Mrs. Thatcher were related to his sadness that his team lost in Afghanistan, and how our support for the mujahideen was global chess against the Soviets, due to the policy of Realpolitik) ...and us playing Realpolitik. We supported them

GG: I've never loved the Soviet Union. You're believing all the..

UJ: Really, because I thought there was a quote that you were sad when the Soviet Union died, I mean I do fact check a little

GG: Everything that's written is a quote (laughter) so it's true, for goodness sakes,

Ebo: Must be true

GG: No what I said was, the collapse of the Soviet Union leaving a single superpower in the world, with no equilibrium in the world is the reason that the world is in the chaotic state that it is in today. That when there were more than one, there were limits to what people could do.

Leave aside Galloway's horrible fear that the collapse of the Soviet Union has given the good an unfair advantage over the evil. Leave aside Galloway's slimy attempt to throw doubt on his pro-Soviet quotes, without having to issue a solid denial. The point here is that Galloway is trying to rewrite history, replacing his earlier stated admiration for communist dictatorships with a distraction about the balance of power. Uncle Jimbo gives him a pass on that, but I don't. Let's take a look at the original quotation that Galloway is now trying to rewrite:

"I am on the anti-imperialist left." The Stalinist left? "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."

Remember the relevant question here: Is Galloway anti-war and anti-imperialist, or his he just anti-American and pro-dictator? Here, he clearly stated that he supported the Soviet Union. After that, he threw in some guff about opposing American military adventures. But it's obviously not "rampaging" per se that Galloway opposes. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, he refused to condemn Brezhnev. When Saddam was slaughtering the shiites, Galloway condemned the shiites. When it comes to Fidel Castro:

Galloway regards Fidel Castro's Cuba as "a remarkable society" and "a model for the world." He has said Castro is "not a dictator, not at all", and described him as "the greatest man I have met."

So when Galloway claims that he was just concerned about balance of power, I say, "bullshit".

Blair: Worse than bin Laden?

With so many egregious distortions coming out of Galloway, it's hard to choose only a few. But this one is noteworthy:

I'm not speaking for Bin Laden, I'm not asking us to negotiate with Bin Laden.

What Galloway has actually done is much worse than asking us to negotiate. He tried to explain away the 9/11 attacks as being not nearly as bad as the sanctions on Saddam (sanctions that were in place to prevent Saddam from getting WMD.) After 9/11, he has condemned our attempts to drive bin Laden's Taliban buddies from power. He now condemns Canada for having peacekeepers in Afghanistan, complaining that Canada's soldiers and not "neutral" between the Taliban terrorists and the victims of terrorism.

Galloway can toss out an occasional pro forma denunciation of bin Laden, but the words he utters and the policies he demands are of invaluable aid to the world's most famous terrorist.

More Treasonous George Quotes

2005-09-14T07:43:00.000-05:00

Tonight Christopher Hitchens will be debating George Galloway. In preparation, Hitchens has collected even more awful quotes from Galloway.

Galloway In His Own words

I had posted several of these before, but a few are worth extra commentary.

"Your Excellency, Mr President. I greet you in the
name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the
tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to
oppose the war by economic means which is [sic] aimed to strangle the
life out of the great people of Iraq... I greet you too, in the name of the
Palestinian people... I thought the President would appreciate to know that even today, three years
after the war, I still meet families who are calling their newborn sons Saddam. I salute your
courage, your strength your indefatigability. And if I want you to know that we are with you until
victory, until victory until Jerusalem!"

Remember, Galloway claims that he was only saluting the Iraqi people, not Saddam himself. With this more extensive quote, that fiction cannot be maintained. The sentence prior to the salute is addressed directly at Saddam. Galloway clearly was saluting Saddam personally.

Galloway's peacenik backers might also want to check out the last sentence of that quote. Do they share Galloway's determination to wipe Israel off the map?

Yes,
I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet
Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life

Actually, that one doesn't require any commentary...

Galloway on the London bus bombings:

Now just because I have to say we utterly
condemn the attacks on innocent people in
London both of the 7th of July and two weeks
later. These were attacks on ordinary working
people. They were not punishing the guilty. They
were punishing the innocent for the crimes of the
guilty. And there were no guilty on the London buses. They don't travel on buses.

Haw Haw Galloway has repeated said that "the guilty ones" are the leaders of the countries that liberated Iraq. In other words, if the London bombers had blown up Tony Blair, Galloway would have had no problem with it.

Galloway on On a recent TV adaptation of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses:

You have to be aware if you
do [offend people's beliefs] you will get blowback. You should do it very carefully, especially if
you are a public service broadcaster.

That one is noteworthy because Galloway's Madison speech is sponsored in part by the Havens Center at the University of Wisconsin. Havens has deflected all criticism by insisting that it just loves freedom of speech so much. For Havens, that means collecting the looniest leftwing academics in sight. And speech for anyone else? Not so much, apparently. Galloway suggests that if you get death threats from Muslims, it's just blowback for the offense you've given. That's the kind of "freedom of speech" that Havens is supporting when they sponsor Galloway.

Whitewashing a Red Traitor

2005-09-01T12:21:00.000-05:00

On September 18th, Madison will host not one, but two, apostles of treason. Hanoi Jane Fonda will be the warmup act for George Galloway, who has become a darling of the "anti-war" movement. At least one Wisconsin legislator has detected Galloway's unsavory scent, and so a campaign of sanitization must commence immediately. John Nichols offers his cleaning services in the Capital Times

To be sure, Fonda and Galloway have been critics of the Bush administration's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, and no doubt they will express their views when they appear on campus.

But is voicing a difference of opinion with George Bush "hate speech"?

Is mentioning the fact that the excuses Bush made for going to war have been discredited "hate speech"?

Is noting that polls show a majority of Iraqis want the occupation of their country to end "hate speech"?

Is suggesting that the best way to "support the troops" might be to bring them home really "hate speech"?

Hate speech? What hate speech? For anyone who has been paying attention to Galloway, that is a silly question. Galloway has shown over and over that he doesn't just have a "difference of opinion" over Iraq. In fact, he hates the US and Britain, and glorifies our genocidal enemies.

Take the Battle of Fallujah, for instance. In that city several civilian contractors, who were in Iraq to help rebuild the country, were killed, mutilated, and hung from a bridge. The creatures who committed this atrocity were at the same time terrorizing the citizens of Fallujah, sometimes threatening to murder women who failed to wear headscarfs. Several months(!) later American soldiers attacked cleaned out Fallujah. Galloway was murderously angry - not at the holy headchoppers, of course, but at the Americans and their allies:

Fallujah is a Guernica, Falluaja is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals. Not the resistance, not anybody else but these criminals who invaded and fell like wolves upon the people of Iraq.

Galloway has this poetic description of the people trying to kill his country's soldiers:

These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable.

We don't know who they are, we don't know their names, we never saw their faces, they don't put up photographs of their martyrs, we don't know the names of their leaders.

Galloway's love for the Iraqi people is so great that he can't stand the thought that American and British "criminals" would eliminate Saddam's killing fields, hand out billions in aid, allow the greatest freedom of press in Iraqi history, and establish the country's first democratic institutions. But if he loves the Iraqi people, then he must hate the dictator who kept them under his boot, right? Well, not so much. Galloway was at the very least a buddy of Saddam's, and heaped praise on the old butcher:

Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.

Galloway has since tried to claim that he was talking about about the Iraqi people. If so, he is certainly treating Saddam as the personification of the Iraqi people. In fairness, Galloway says he has criticized Saddam. What could Saddam have done to earn Galloway's wrath? Why, he helped contain a threat to American security, of course. Nothing could excuse that!

...I was condemning Saddam Hussein when he was backed by the anti-communist West in his homicidal war against Iran.

Lately, this new Lord Haw Haw has been even more explicit in his attempts to incite jihad against the Western world. Recently on Syrian TV, he compared the liberation of Baghdad with a rape:

Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters.

What hate speech? wonders John Nichols.

Galloway does not just have a "difference of opinion". His country is at war, and he is doing his damndest to make sure that the other side wins. No matter how bloodthirsty our enemies, Galloway can excuse them - just because they are killing his countrymen.

it can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs, and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony.

[...]

It's not the Muslims who are the terrorists. The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar, but it is definitely not a clash of civilizations. George Bush doesn't have any civilization, he doesn't represent any civilization. We believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them. He believes in the profits, and how to get a piece of them.

George Galloway is coming to Madison, and his sure to get a warm welcome from the "anti-war" crowd. They will claim that he is merely a humanitarian who wants peace, that he really does support the troops in his own way. But they can't make those claims honestly.

Fry Karl

2005-08-26T11:22:00.000-05:00

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the Sterling Hall bombing. On August 24th, 1970, members of the Madison peace movement detonated a truck bomb that heavily damaged UW-Madison's physics building. The blast also killed Robert Fassnacht, who was a physics postdoc and the father of three young children.

To commemorate the bombing, the Capital Times hands the mic to apologists for Karl Armstrong, who planned the bombing. One of the interviewees was caught while trying to spaypaint the following slogan on a Madison wall: "One side's right. One side's wrong. We're on the side of Karl Armstrong." But that is very moderate compared to another Armstrong supporter:

To others, such as writer James Rowen, more appalling was that the UW's military assistance indirectly killed thousands of Vietnamese. When Sterling Hall was bombed, its Army Mathematics Research Center was the nation's only Army-funded think tank, working to hike enemy casualties.

Imagine that! Trying to inflict casualties on the enemy. You might thing we were at war or something.

When Fassnacht is mentioned, it is in the context of pointing out that his death had a negative effect on the "anti-war" movement. The article makes no mention of Fassnacht's family, or the millions of dollars in damage inflicted, or the massive loss of scientific research in several departments. Physics deparment lore has it that Fassnacht's advisor, Heinz Barschall (who had worked on the Manhatten Project), basically gave up on research after the bombing. In later years, he was known for some rather fluffy papers on the cost effectiveness of physics journals.

Armstrong was eventually captured, and served a laughably short sentence for his crime. With the help of Madison's congressman, he was paroled in 1980. This being Madison, a protest movement sprang up in support of the murderer, complete with "free Karl" tee-shirts.

In all the discussion about the bombing one crucial point is never discussed. In 1970, we were at war. The Army Math Research Center (then housed in Sterling) was the target of the bombing. So Armstrong launched a violent attack on a military installation in a time of war. If that isn't treason, then nothing is.

Even if the bombers hadn't killed anyone, they should have been sentenced to death.

More information on the bombing

Update: Since creating this post I read the book Rads, which covers the events leading up the the Sterlin Hall bombing. There's one important correction: Fassnacht was not in nuclear physics, but in solid state - superconductivity, to be exact. His advisor was John Dillinger, not Heinz Barschall. Barschall did lose years of research and have two graduate students injured in the attack.

I'll post a review of this book, if my legions of readers demand it.

Guess that economic policy

2005-08-18T11:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a picture of cars in China, all lined up for the filling station:

Question: What economic policy is obvious from this picture?

Answer: China has price controls on gasoline.

See the story at Gateway Pundit, along with some good comments.

One thing we cannot conclude from this picture is that China's leaders are Carter-like economic illiterates. Their reasons for price controls are more likely to be political rather than economic. Even if they realize that gas lines can be treated by free-market gas prices, the risks of social unrest could trump any economic consideration. The Chinese economy is strewn with these kinds of roadblocks.

The conventional wisdom says that China will shortly be America's main superpower rival. That's possible, but another strong possibility is that China will simply implode because its leaders cannot resolve their contradictory desires: they want to maintain dictatorial control over the country, while also riding China to greater prosperity. They won't always be able to have it both ways, because prosperity requires freedom.

Critique them until they glow

2005-08-16T15:28:00.000-05:00

The editorial board of the Badger Herald likes to keep its collective mind open - wide open. How open? Well, last year the Herald regularly handed the microphone over to Fayyad Sbaihat of al-Awda. Al-Awda, which means "the return", is dedicated to wiping out Israel through demographics. Oh, and Sbaihat may also be linked to the terrorist group PFLP. But open-minded folk shouldn't hold a little mass murder against a fellow.

The Herald continues the tradition this summer, publishing an opinion piece by Mohammed Abed, another "Right to Return" luminary. Abed is peddling the standard line that the problem is not with Islamofascism, but with Western imperialism.

Any casual observer of the region will notice that the phenomenon of suicide bombing invariably occurs in or is exported from countries under foreign military occupation, either by the U.S. or by one of its close allies, Israel being in the latter category.

Iran has no shortage of radical Islamic fundamentalists who engage in critiques of the West’s “culture of decadence and moral degeneracy,” and yet no Iranians took up box cutters and turned Manhattan into a living hell.

Whoa! I just learned something. When the Iranian mullahs sent bombers to blow up our Marines in Beirut, they weren't engaging in terrorism. They were offering a critique. That puts a whole new spin on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Of course, Iran has be waging a terrorist war against the US for over a generation now, all without any Western occupation whatsoever. But Abed needs to conflate terrorism with suicide bombing, or otherwise someone might notice that the Islamic world has generated all sorts of terrorism without any occupation to excuse it.

Here someone might ask whether Iran's terror war against the US explained by our support for the Shah. That just goes to show that if you're determined to justify terrorism, anything will do. Occupation is just one of many excuses, and if that doesn't work, then it's because of the Shah. Or because we support Israel. Or because we desecrated the sacred ground of Saudi Arabia (by not allowing Saddam's troops to tromp all over it). Or because we protect Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If you hope to achieve peace through retreat, you simply haven't been paying attention.

Since they were expelled en masse from their homeland in 1948, the Palestinians have been engaged in acts of violent resistance to Israel.

So here the "occupation" does not refer to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It means every last bit of soil on which Israel sits. In other words, as long as Israel continues to exist, Abed can blame all Palestinian terrorism on Western imperialism. Perhaps Ariel Sharon should have consulted with Abed before withdrawing from the Gaza Strip; then he wouldn't be so surprised when Israel gives up the land, and gets no peace in return.

Similarly, the leadership of Al Qaeda is unlikely to persuade well-educated, upper middle-class, successful and socially integrated people like the London bombers to end their lives for the sake of re-establishing the Islamic Caliphate.

Yet, inexplicably, Al Qaeda convinced 19 men (most of them educated and upper-middle class) to commit the 9/11 attacks, all in order to re-establish the Caliphate. To state the blindingly obvious: there was no occupation of Iraq back then. But! But! The US deserved it because... Well, I don't know how we deserved it, but I'm sure that Abed and his friends can come up with something. They always do.

To end terror, the Western powers must reevaluate their policies towards the Islamic and Arab world. The most important change would be to remove any impediments to genuine self-determination, independence and democratization for the region.

I seem to recall that one country in the Middle East was just given its best chance at self-determination ever. Now which one was it? Surely, it couldn't be Iraq. Otherwise Abed wouldn't be using Iraq as an excuse for terrorism, would he?

A greater capacity for inflicting harm carries with it greater moral responsibility. Part of being morally responsible is to realize that the use of means that obliterate the concept of humanity itself renders your ends, even if they are just and good, meaningless.

Translation: Waaa! It's no fair that you have bigger bombs than we do! The terror shills must realize that for all their triumphalism, they wouldn't have a prayer if the West decided to use its full firepower against them. Therefore, people like Abed perform a critical service for the terrorists. They are struggling to prevent the West from developing a righteous fury, which would be fatal to Islamofascist cause. We shouldn't be so open minded as to help.

Update: Remember how I said that someone can always find an excuse for terrorism? Well, I hope you remember; I did sort of pound that point into the ground. Let's pound some more. An Islamofascist has just proclaimed that terrorism would be justified against another famous imperial power: Ireland.

Anjem Choudary, who has close links to the infamous hate preacher, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said the use of Shannon Airport as a stop-off for US warplanes justifies Ireland being attacked.

The solicitor (38) said: "If your government wants to support the atrocities in Afghanistan they can expect some repercussions," and added that Ireland had "opened itself" to attacks from radical Muslims linked to al-Qa'ida.

It's not a scandal if the New York Times doesn't know about it

2005-08-16T14:56:00.000-05:00

Mark Steyn has an update on the oil-for-food scandal. Along the way, he repeats some old news that I had missed:

The actual head of the Oil-for-Food racket, Kofi sidekick Benon Sevan, has resigned, having hitherto insisted that a mysterious six-figure sum in his bank account was a gift from his elderly aunt, a lady of modest means who lived in a two-room flat back in Cyprus. Paul Volcker’s investigators had planned to confirm with auntie her nephew’s version of events, but unfortunately she fell down an elevator shaft and died. It now seems likely that the windfall had less to do with Mr Sevan’s late aunt and more to do with his soliciting of oil allocations for another company.

Now maybe, just maybe, Auntie's death was an unfortunate accident. But imagine a slightly different "unfortunate accident". Suppose that Ken Lay claimed that some of Enron's books were kept by his aunt, who just happened to have mysteriously died recently. How long would that story be screaming front page headlines for the New York Times? A month? Three months?

By way of comparison, I went to the Times archives and searched for +sevan +aunt +elevator.

Zero hits. You lazy, biased, leftwing hacks.

Who's afraid of John Bolton?

2005-08-01T13:33:00.000-05:00

Today John Bolton received a recess appointment as ambassador to the United Nations. Democrats and the media (if you'll pardon the redundancy) have loudly condemned the move, and have thrown out just about anything they can think of to discredit the man. Republicans, also true to form, have offered nothing but vague generalities in support.

After all the silly objections are dismissed, opposition to the Bolton nomination boils down to one thing: John Bolton doesn't revere the United Nations. Reverence for the UN is such a bedrock principle for the Western Left, that any deviation seems like an endorsement of war and poverty. After all, the UN was supposed to serve the cause of peace, justice, and humanitarian goodness, so how could any oppose it?

The answer, of course, is anyone who notices that the UN acts in direct contradiction to its stated ideals. Where the UN was supposed to stop aggressive dictators, it coddles them. When given the opportunity to "feed the children", the UN has consistently skimmed off the cash, and shared the loot with the same corrupt regimes that keep their countries in poverty.

The UN's problems are not superficial. They cannot be solved by changing leaders or implementing a few bureaucratic reforms. They are fundamental to the conception of the UN. You can't bring freedom by sharing power with dictators; dictators are by definition people who hate freedom. Yet the Soviet Union and Communist China both had permanent seats in the most powerful UN body. You cannot possibly achieve world prosperity while treating socialism as just another choice in economic systems. But the UN seems agnostic in the matter. (OK, maybe I'm being too generous to the UN on that score. The world body is far more likely to promote poverty-inducing socialism than anything vaguely capitalistic.)

These should have been the main issues in the Bolton nomination. Bolton's previous contemptuous statements gave an opportunity to make it into a debate about the nature of the UN. Why, then, did this become a debate about whether John Bolton was sufficiently nice to his subordinates? At a time when the top leadership of the United Nations was clumsily covering the oil-for-food scandal, would it have been so hard to highlight UN corruption?

The blame lies squarely with the Bush Administration. It's not just that the Administration is half-hearted about publicly defending itself - although that is often true. Fundamentally, George Bush can't end our suicidal association with the UN because he agrees with the Democrats. He agrees that the UN is an unquestionable force for moral good. So even when he defies UN opinion, he feels the need to consult and beg and offer protestations of his love.

The UN is not good. It is a force for evil. And American foreign policy can never really serve American interests until we have a President who is willing to say so.

Test

2005-07-26T07:25:00.000-05:00

Really, what were you expecting for a first post?