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Wizblog has been vacationing here. See you in about another week.
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Wizblog has been vacationing here. See you in about another week.
Along with all the other great writing at Brussels Journal and Gates of Vienna, the consistently interesting posts by Norwegian blogger Fjordman keep me coming back. If you are interested in the history of Islam, you'll want to read The Twin Myths of Eurabia in full. And make these two very good blogs a habit. Here's a taste:
We often hear that “Islamic culture†was superior to Western culture in the Middle Ages, and that Westerners owe much of our technological progress to Muslims. If we say that the “Middle East†and the Eastern Mediterranean were culturally and economically superior to Europe in the Middle Ages, then this is true. However, this had been the case for thousands of years before Islam entered into history. The oldest civilizations know to mankind originated in a belt stretching from today's Egypt via Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq to Pakistan. It is not a coincidence that the first European civilizations began in countries that were geographically close to the Middle East: The island of Crete, later mainland Greece and the Balkans, then Rome. Even in the Roman Empire, the Eastern part of the empire was stronger and more urbanized than its Northern and Western regions, which is one of the reasons why the Eastern half proved much more durable while the Western half collapsed in the 5th century.When the Arab Muslims, a collection of backward, nomadic warrior tribes who did not even have a fully developed script, conquered Egypt, Syria and Iran, they took control over some of the world’s largest centres of accumulated knowledge. To say that “Muslims†or “Islamic culture†created the civilizations of the Middle East can be compared to an illiterate person storming into the planet’s largest library, killing all the librarians and then claiming to have written all the books there. The cultural superiority of the Middle East in relations to Europe did not begin with Islam’s entry into the area. In fact, it ended with it.
Interesting piece in the NYT on the highly sophisticated counterfeiting operation in U.S. $100 bills being conducted by Kim Jong Il's North Korean government. Is it an act of war?
A Corner note by Andy McCarthy hit home...
You may not remember the name Uzair Paracha. He is a Pakistani who tried to help an al Qaeda operative named Majid Kahn enter the United States for the purpose of carrying out a chemical attack.The Justice Department credits the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) with providing the intelligence that helped identify Paracha. As a result, he was convicted of providing material support to al Qaeda.
The TFTP, of course, was exposed by the New York Times and other newspapers last month despite bipartisan pleading that publication would harm national security. Yesterday, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Paracha to 30 years' imprisonment. Let's hope we have other ways of tracking the next Parachas and Kahns.
Some have criticized Israel for not responding proportionately to the attacks, but we'd counsel patience. After all, the Israelis aren't done yet.
The Nation’s current apologetics for the terrorist bloc continue a nearly 100-year tradition of its editor's support for the totalitarian enemies of America and the West. For nearly 100 years, the editors of the Nation explained and justified every Communist tyrant from Stalin to Castro; when terrorists slaughtered the innocent on 9/11, the Nation's editors decried American jingoism and America’s “empire;†they opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and they continue to attack the liberation of Iraq as an imperialist “occupation†and democratic America as a “terrorist state.â€But even in the context of this sordid record, the Nation’s present support for the agents of the second Holocaust marks for it a new moral low. Its role in this war, as in the war in Iraq, is too transparent to be defended. Its editors may not openly embrace the goal of eliminating the Jewish presence in the Middle East, and possibly can’t even admit to themselves that this is the radicals’ goal. But the Nation editors are nonetheless dedicated to justifying the jihadists who are pursuing this goal, and for that they cannot be forgiven.
The people who need to see the evidence that a commercial jetliner really did strike the Pentagon on 9/11/01 probably won't be looking at Charles Johnson's post from Saturday. Who knows what frequency they're on anyway?
LGF has posted a fascinating computer simulation of the Pentagon attack superimposed with photos of the scene afterwards. Maybe some of the doubters will be swayed by the many photographs of pieces of the aircraft wreckage at the scene.
OK then, maybe by the first-person accounts of the dozens of eye-witnesses to the plane crashing into the Pentagon.
How about a point-by point takedown of the conspiracy-cult film Loose Change?
Well, you gave it your best shot, Charles.
I thought I'd try to compile a sampling of what the op-ed pages are saying this weekend on the new-old war in the Middle East. It's a war that doesn't really have a name just yet. It is being called the Israeli-Hezbollah War by some, but since its instigators are generally acknowledged to be directed from Teheran, let's be clear and call it Iran's War on Israel.
(By the way, PJM continues to do a terrific job of posting breaking news, opinion, and blog content on the war. Make it a regular stop.)
And before we get to the weekend pundits and columnists, some words from Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, are appropriate as setup... (from a post at Solomonia)
(on demands for "proportionality") "What exactly is the criterion by which one measures the proportion of more than a thousand missiles shot at innocent civilians against the measures that were taken by the State of Israel in the last few days? Can one measure the anxiety, the fear, the shocks, the lack of security of tens of thousands of people living day-in and day-out for almost a year under the constant threat of missiles shot at them? When was the last time that the European Union condemned this shooting and suggested measures, effective measures to stop it? We were waiting and waiting and waiting and everyone knows that Israel pulled out entirely from Gaza precisely in order to try and establish a new basis of cooperation and understanding with the Palestinians, when there can be no claim for any territory by the Palestinians in the south part of the country. And the response was terror and terror and terror and terror again...."......I think that I don’t know of one democratic government in the world, one, one - those who support us, and those who preach to us - that would have sat and done nothing when a thousand missiles are shot at innocent civilians in the heart of the country. I can imagine that some of those countries that preach to us would have done a lot more in a more brutal and vicious and cruel way against civilian populations than what we did, the minimum that we are doing in order to defend our people...
Robert Satloff - The Rogues Strike Back:
Virtually overnight, an audacious Hamas raid has metastasized into a crisis that holds the greatest potential for regional conflagration in years. On a strategic level, the rogues' goal is almost surely to fuse the disparate crises into one--merging either the Hamas or Hezbollah front with Iran's nuclear standoff with the West, perhaps by the transfer of the captive soldiers to Iranian control, by direct involvement of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the rocket fire against Israel, or by some other means.If that happens, then Hamas and its fellow quartet members may achieve what Yasser Arafat was not able to accomplish with two intifadas--to regionalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thereby radically alter the strategic balance. And if Iran is able to exploit this crisis to show that its nuclear program earns it and its allies special treatment on the terrorism front, Tehran will have proven precisely how beneficial the decision to invest in a nuclear program really was. As the Iranian newspaper Kayhan, close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, editorialized last Thursday, "Nuclear Iran is eradicating the nuclear prestige of Israel." That's the sort of rising star to which Syria would like to be hitched.
In Gaza and Lebanon, a battle between Israel and two of its enemies has now been joined. Its spread to two other enemies--Iran and Syria--is a stark and urgent possibility. Let us not mistake this conflict for a local skirmish, a pesky diversion from more serious business, like stopping Iran's nuclear program or building a free, stable Iraq. On the contrary, it is all of a piece.
If, in the face of repeated threats and provocation by an aggressive dictatorship, you refuse to go to war, the war will eventually come to you.That's the meaning of Iran's de facto declaration of war against Israel--which is, ultimately, a new war Iran is waging against the US. Iran is so desperate for war with the West that it is bringing the war to us, openly and willfully initiating a regional conflict that may soon involve three of Iran's proxies--Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria--fighting against America's proxy, Israel.
The danger for us is that, in seeking to avoid an unavoidable war with Iran, we have allowed Iran to start the conflict on terms that it believes will be most favorable to it.
David Ignatius - Washington Post:
Watching the events of the past few days, you can't help but feel that this is the rerun of an old movie -- one in which the guerrillas and kidnappers end up as the winners. Israel's fledgling prime minister, Ehud Olmert, wants to emulate the toughness of his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, but that shouldn't include a replay of Sharon's 1982 Lebanon invasion, a strategic mistake that spawned Hezbollah in the first place.Hezbollah's action in seizing the Israeli soldiers was utterly reckless. That's the new part of this crisis -- that Iranian-backed radicals deliberately opened another front in a war that, in their minds, stretches from Gaza to Iraq. Watching Nasrallah's cocky performance at a news conference Wednesday, he seemed almost to be inviting an Israeli counterattack -- knowing that it would destabilize the Lebanese government of Fuad Siniora, which is one of the few solid achievements of U.S. policy in the region.
Gaza, Hezbollah, Iraq, Al Qaeda: It is all the same fight. ``No one should have any lingering doubts about what's going on in the Middle East," writes Michael Ledeen, an expert on terrorism and Iran. ``It's war, and it now runs from Gaza into Israel, through Lebanon and thence to Iraq via Syria. There are different instruments, ranging from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon and on to the multifaceted `insurgency' in Iraq. But there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable."Twenty-seven years ago was 1979, the year that Islamist radicals loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini invaded the US embassy in Tehran and held dozens of American diplomats hostage for the next 444 days. Washington's response was weak and feckless, as it would be time and again in the years that followed. Only after 9/11 did the United States finally acknowledge that it was in a war with militant Islam and began fighting back in earnest. But not against Iran, which continues, unscathed and unrepentant, to stoke the terrorist fires. Its goals, unchanged since Khomeini's day, are to become the dominant power in the Middle East, to create Islamist regimes worldwide, to annihilate Israel, and to kill Americans.
Newsweek - The Hand Thjat Feeds the Fire:
According to terrorism analyst Magnus Ranstorp, an expert on Hizbullah who is now at the Swedish National Defence College, Hizbullah's decision-making council normally includes two Iranians. "Hizbullah is not a Lebanese organization, it's a proxy for Iran," says Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli general and Labor Party member of the Knesset. "Nasrallah has never carried out an operation on this scale without his masters."On Friday Nasrallah gleefully announced that his group had hit an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon. The vessel was badly damaged by the radar-guided weapon, identified by the Israelis as a C-802 antiship missile assembled in Iran. "There are very clear fingerprints of Iranian involvement," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told NEWSWEEK.
...the international community—especially the United States and France—has, over the last year, explained quite clearly that Hezbollah is a serious problem. Several U.N. resolutions, as well as almost every Western diplomatic initiative here, have emphasized the urgent need for the Lebanese government to disarm what the U.S. State Department calls a terrorist organization. Instead, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and other national leaders have insisted that Hezbollah is neither a terrorist group nor a militia, but is rather "the resistance" and nothing but "the resistance." In other words, we side with the Party of God and agree that their arms benefit all of Lebanon! And then, this week, the democratically elected government disclaimed responsibility for the actions of Hezbollah, which is part of the government. The Lebanese are not innocent bystanders; they did not tempt their fate, they ignored it.
...Israel has to prove that it is a sovereign state, not to be trifled with or subjected to the bargaining of the Middle East bazaar. In short, it has to reinvigorate its deterrent threat against its enemies that has been vitiated by its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and its weak response to provocations since then. Hezbollah demarcates Iran’s front-line with Israel. Its membership is about 8,000, but probably only a quarter of these are in any sense soldiers. They are already firing Katyusha rockets deep into Israel, causing casualties and sending people into shelters. Security Council Resolution 1559 mandates that Hezbollah stand down its militia, and the Lebanese government backed that resolution. In vain. Hezbollah thumbed its nose. Now is the moment for Israel to try to enforce it and get Iran off the back of everyone within reach.The Hamas leader, Khalid Mashaal, has headquarters in Damascus, protected by the thugocracy of Bashar al-Assad, himself protected by Iran. The overpowering of Hezbollah might lead Hamas’s sponsors around the Middle East to conclude that they can’t engage in a proxy war against Israel with impunity. If not, the targeted killings of Mashaal and his lieutenants in Syria would be appropriate, and other targets there might beckon as well. It is right to eliminate terror masters, and beyond that, the weakening and humiliation of its wretched Syrian stooge would be a suitable reward to Iran for its mischief-making.
William Kristol - Weekly Standard:
Why is this Arab-Israeli war different from all other Arab-Israeli wars? Because it's not an Arab-Israeli war. Most of Israel's traditional Arab enemies have checked out of the current conflict. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are, to say the least, indifferent to the fate of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestine Liberation Organization (Fatah) isn't a player. The prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war is a non-Arab state, Iran, which wasn't involved in any of Israel's previous wars.What's happening in the Middle East, then, isn't just another chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's happening is an Islamist-Israeli war. You might even say this is part of the Islamist war on the West--but is India part of the West? Better to say that what's under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States...
...The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn't going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harborers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders--Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.
For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.
UPDATE 7/16:
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so......He said the reluctance to put those pieces together and see one global conflict is hurting America's interests. He said people, including some in the Bush Administration, who urge a restrained response from Israel are wrong "because they haven't crossed the bridge of realizing this is a war."
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away:
"Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."
Summary of Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian blog posts at The Truth Laid Bear. Wow! The blogosphere at its best.
Jonanthan Last links to this amazing video of Jake Shimabukuro, by affirmation the greatest ukelele player of all time, doing George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" , and somehow making four strings sound like twelve, or more
Tongsun Park is found guilty in a U.S. federal court on charges related to the U.N. Oil-For-Food scandal. Claudia Rosett reports.
Government has more to spend than ever before, thanks to the tax cuts of 2003. From the WSJ: (ellipsis mine)
The real news, and where the policy credit belongs, is with the 2003 tax cuts. They've succeeded even beyond Art Laffer's dreams, if that's possible. In the nine quarters preceding that cut on dividend and capital gains rates and in marginal income-tax rates, economic growth averaged an annual 1.1%. In the 12 quarters--three full years--since the tax cut passed, growth has averaged a remarkable 4%......This growth in turn has produced a record flood of tax revenues, just as the most ebullient supply-siders predicted. In the first nine months of fiscal 2006, tax revenues have climbed by $206 billion, or nearly 13%...
...Remember the folks who said the tax cuts would "blow a hole in the deficit?" Well, revenues as a share of the economy are now expected to rise this year to 18.3%, slightly above the modern historical average of 18.2%. The remaining budget deficit of a little under $300 billion will be about 2.3% of GDP, which is smaller than in 17 of the previous 25 years. Throw in the surpluses rolling into the states, and the overall U.S. "fiscal deficit" is now economically trivial.
This would all seem to be good news, but some folks are never happy. The same crowd that said the tax cuts wouldn't work, and predicted fiscal doom, are now harrumphing that the revenues reflect a windfall for "the rich." We suppose that's right if by rich they mean the millions of Americans moving into higher tax brackets because their paychecks are increasing...
...As for the 2003 tax cuts, the current revenue boom is one more argument for making them permanent. They are now set to expire in 2010, and, even if they are extended, federal revenues will continue to climb as a share of GDP as more taxpayers earn higher incomes and move into higher tax brackets. If liberal Democrats are really determined to soak the rich--and we don't doubt it for a second--they'll also vote to make the tax cuts permanent.
We're finding out more about the Oil-For-Food scandal in a federal courtroom than we ever did from the various self-investigations carried on by the United Nations. Claudia Rosett is there for the trial of Tongsun Park, and she reports at NRO, and also at her blog site for daily updates. It's fascinating stuff...bags of cash, envelopes of cash, bundles of cash.....you get the picture.
Three months ago we linked a Jay Nordlinger column referencing reports in the Epoch Times and other media which claimed that the Chinese regime was harvesting organs from live, imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners at a hospital complex in Sujiatun. A follow-up post is here. The comments at the original Wizblog posts are interesting, to say the least. They include categorical denials from a blogger whose purpose seems to be denial of any and all Chinese atrocities (to include Tiananmen Square, if you can get to that.)
At that time two independent Canadian journalists decided to conduct an investigation into the matter, and their report is now out, and available here. A portion of their concluding statement:
Based on what we now know, we have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true. We believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and 'people's courts', since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.
A CBC news story on the report's release is excerpted below:
OTTAWA (CP) - Calling it a crime against humanity, a new report says China is harvesting vital organs from devotees of the outlawed Falun Gong movement......Winnipeg human rights lawyer David Matas and former Liberal cabinet minister David Kilgour, who undertook a two-month investigation, acknowledged Thursday their findings were almost too astonishing to comprehend.
"The very horror makes us reel back in disbelief," the report says. "But that disbelief does not mean that the allegations are untrue."
...The pair conducted the probe as unpaid volunteers at the request of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a Washington-based organization with a branch in Ottawa.
In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa dismissed the report as a "groundless and biased" Falun Gong smear effort based on "rumours and false allegations."
Kilgour and Matas insist their research was conducted independently of the coalition and any other organization or government.
They were unsuccessful in obtaining visas to visit China to investigate.
Instead, they gathered testimony from witnesses in Canada, the United States, France and Australia, consulted the websites of Chinese transplantation centres, and studied transcripts of Mandarin conversations with doctors and other officials at hospitals and detention centres in China.
"We believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners," the report says.
It calls on the United Nations to determine whether China is in violation of the UN protocol to prevent trafficking in persons, which bans organ removal.
A Canadian blogger named MaKina has kept me updated on this story, which she has followed closely. She is now advocating a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
I am making no representation as to the truth of the original allegations, or of the conclusions of the Matas-Kilgour report, other than to say that I have read the report, and I find it persuasive. Make of it what you will. The investigators take pains to remind the reader that they lack the hard evidence to make their findings conclusive. They also emphasize that they did their work strictly as volunteers, and they have nothing to do with the Falun Gong movement.
Matas and Kilgour found credible and persuasive an interview with the former wife of one of the surgeons at an organ harvesting center, (p. 50 of the pdf document) who had admitted to having removed the corneas of 2000 prisoners who he knew to be Falun Gong, and who were murdered for the corneas as well as their kidneys, livers and skin.
Not only do Matas and Kilgour include transcripts of recorded phone conversations from as recently as June, 2006 with doctors and other Chinese hospital officials admitting that they are using live Falun Gong prisoners for the organ harvesting, there is a great deal of other circumstantial evidence pointing to the likelihood that Falun Gong practitioners are the source of the organs supplying the surge of growth in the Chinese organ transplant industry, which in large part serves a wealthy, foreign clientele. For starters, that boom began in 1999, coinciding with the onset of large scale persecution of the Falun Gong. And then there's the money. According to Kilgour, the organ black market will fetch "$62,000 for a kidney, $98,000 to $130,000 for a liver."
Matas and Kilgour trace the history of the Chinese regime's concerted program to dehumanize and persecute the practitioners of the Falun Gong health and exercise regimen, and note that, while it doesn't in itself constitute evidence, the imprisonment, torture and murder of people it considers to be enemies of the state would in no way be inconsistent with the human rights record of the Chinese government.
Among the other findings, excerpted from the Matas-Kilgour report:
There are many more transplants than identifiable sources. We know that some organs come from executed prisoners. Very few come from willing donor family members. But these sources leave huge gaps in the totals. The number of executed prisoners and willing sources come nowhere close to the number of transplants...We know that Falun Gong practitioners in detention are systematically blood tested...It is unlikely that the testing serves a health purpose. For one, it is unnecessary to blood test people systematically simply as a health precaution. For another, the health of the Falun Gong in detention is disregarded in so many other ways. It is implausible that the authorities would blood test Falun Gong as a precautionary health measure. Blood testing is a pre-requisite for organ transplants. Donors need to be matched with recipients so that the antibodies of the recipients do not reject the organs of the donors...
...A number of family members of Falun Gong practitioners who died in detention reported seeing the corpses of their loved ones with surgical incisions and body parts missing. The authorities gave no coherent explanation for these mutilated corpses. Again the evidence about these mutilated corpses is attached as an appendix to this
report.We have only a few instances of such mutilated corpses. We have no official explanation why they were mutilated. Their mutilation is consistent with organ harvesting. We cannot even guess otherwise why these corpses would have been mutilated and body parts removed.
...Hospital web sites in China advertise short waiting times for organ transplants. Transplants of long dead donors are not viable because of organ deterioration after death. If we take these hospital's self-promotions at face value, they tell us that there are a number of people now alive who are available almost on demand as sources of organs. The wait times for organ transplants for organ recipients in China appear to be much lower than anywhere else...
...Besides Falun Gong, other prime targets of human rights violations are Tibetans, Christians, Uighurs, democracy activists and human rights defenders. Rule of Law mechanisms in place to prevent human rights violations, such as an independent judiciary, access to counsel on detention, habeas corpus, the right to public trial, are glaringly absent in China. China, according to its constitution, is ruled by the Communist Party. It is not ruled by law.
This overall pattern of human rights violations, like many other factors, does not in itself prove the allegations. But it removes an element of disproof. It is impossible to say of these allegations that it is out of step with an overall pattern of respect for human rights in China. While the allegations, in themselves, are surprising, they are less surprising with a country that has the human rights record China than they would be for many other countries...
...The allegations here are so shocking that they are almost impossible to believe. The allegations, if true, would represent a grotesque form of evil which, despite all the depravations humanity has seen, would be new to this planet. The very horror makes us reel back in disbelief. But that disbelief does not mean that the allegations are untrue.
The Chinese government has predictably dismissed the Matas-Kilgour report out of hand, and the investigators' response to the Chinese can be found here.
On the 30th anniversary of the daring raid to free an airliner full of hostages, The Jerusalem Post looks Back to Entebbe.
A Russian website with some amazing high-resolution insect photography.
With the world's powers scrambling to formulate a united diplomatic response to the recent provocations of Kim Jong Il, the WSJ's Brendan Miniter provides some links to informative web resources on North Korea.
Dean Esmay has additional links, including one to hrnk.org, where this report on North Korea's "Hidden Gulag" will chill you to the bone. (via PJM)
For starters, LiNK looks like an organization worthy of support.
Related:
FPM - North Korea's Criminal Empire (Sept. 2005)
Christopher Hitchens - Worse Than 1984 - North Korea: Slave State (May 2005)
Nicholas Kristof - Reviews in the NYRB (Feb. 2005)
Wizblog - Inside Kimland (July 2004)
Sunday Times - Chairman Kim's Dissolving Kingdom (Jan. 2005)
Claudia Rosett - Resist Ballistic Blackmail
Thomas Sowell - Is Patriotism Obsolete?
There's a joke in here somewhere about Sowell pulling no punches, but I'm above that...(ellipsis mine)
Americans may in fact be dying literally now because of what the terrorists have been told -- and ultimately because a jerk inherited the New York Times....
... New York Times has spread the secret of American financial surveillance of terrorists around the world, undermining or destroying this method of tracking them, as well as undermining the cooperation that can be expected in the future from countries fearful of political or terrorist repercussions.Patriotism is not chic in the circles of those who assume the role of citizens of the world, whether they are discussing immigration or giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime.
(via RCP)
Townhall has a new look, and is leading with Bruce Bartlett's piece on why the Times deserves no slack.
Mark Steyn's latest is must reading.