Best of the Web Today - June 5, 2006
By JAMES TARANTO
Selectively Excitable
"A reader captures what has been in my mind and gut for the last few days: 'The BBC just released a video alleging yet another covered-up massacre of civilians by American personel [sic] in Iraq. 5 women, 4 children, and 2 men in Ishaqi in March. Just when I think I'm totally numb, I find out a fellow American may have executed a 6 month-old baby in the name of protecting me, and I can't hold back tears. What country are we in?' The same country that now practices torture. Cheney country."--Time magazine's Andrew Sullivan, June 2, 2:55 p.m.
"Raw Story has now posted some photos of the corpses of children murdered in Ishaqi. Don't go there if you are squeamish, or believe that possible war crimes should not be covered by the media. Investigations continue, and exactly what happened has not been established. But the omens are grim. And these pictures of infants with bullet holes in their skulls simply defy my comprehension of what has happened to this country."--Time magazine's Andrew Sullivan, June 2, 3:49 p.m.
"The conclusions about Ishaqi also seem to me to be provisional. More evidence may yet emerge. We should be cautious about drawing any firm conclusions yet."--Time magazine's Andrew Sullivan, June 2, 7:54 p.m., responding to the news that an investigation has cleared U.S. troops of wrongdoing at Ishaqi
Pals No More?
"New public opinion surveys conducted among 'opinion elites' in Europe show that support for the Palestinians has fallen precipitously," according to a fascinating report in the Jerusalem Post. The surveys, conducted by Stanley Greenberg, an American Democrat who has also worked for Israel's former prime minister Ehud Barak, found that attitudes had changed most dramatically in France:
Three years ago, 60 percent of French respondents said they took a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of that 60%, four out of five backed the Palestinians. Today, by contrast, 60% of French respondents did not take a side in the conflict, and support for the Palestinians had dropped by half among those who did express a preference.
If we read this correctly, French support for the Palestinians has declined to 16% from 48%, while support for Israel has increased to 24% from 12%. Here's the pollster's explanation:
At the root of the change, said Greenberg, was a fundamental remaking in Europe of the "framework" through which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is viewed.
Three years ago, he said, the conflict was perceived "in a post-colonial framework."
There was a sense "that Europe could cancel out its own colonial history by taking the 'right' side"--the Palestinian side. Yasser Arafat was viewed as "an anti-colonial, liberation leader." The US was seen as a global imperial power, added Greenberg, and the fact that it was backing Israel only added to the "instinctive" sense of the Palestinians as victims.
France, with the largest Muslim population--moreover an entirely Arab Muslim population--with the direct experience of Algeria and the most anti-US positions, was most prey to this mindset.
Today, by contrast, the Europeans "are focused on fundamentalist Islam and its impact on them," he said. The Europeans were now asking themselves "who is the moderate in this conflict, and who is the extremist? And suddenly it is the Palestinians who may be the extremists, or who are allied with extremists who threaten Europe's own society."
An increasing proportion of Europeans are concluding that "maybe the Palestinians are not the colonialist victims" after all.
If Greenberg's analysis is right, it underscores a crucial contrast between America and Europe. Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, in substantial part because it reminds us of ourselves: Like America, Israel is a nation of immigrants, many of whom fled persecution or discrimination in their native lands, and who beat the odds to build a thriving, dynamic, democratic country. Americans also wish the Palestinian Arabs well, and we believe that if they behave like civilized human beings--granted, a big "if" based on evidence to this point--they can also build a thriving, dynamic, democratic country.
Europeans, by contrast, have long scorned Israel because it reminds them of themselves: of their own guilt over colonialism, as Greenberg says (and, one might add, over their abhorrent treatment of European Jews). But increasingly they are scorning the Palestinians because guilt is giving way to fear: Israel's adversaries remind Europeans of their own unassimilated Muslim populations.
To put this more pithily, America's approach to the Middle East is based on self-confidence, while Europe's is based on self-loathing. America not only is a true friend of Israel but a truer friend of the Palestinians than are the Europeans.
'Broad Strata'
"Seventeen Canadian residents were arrested and charged with plotting to attack targets in southern Ontario with crude but powerful fertilizer bombs, the Canadian authorities said Saturday," reports the New York Times:
At a news conference in Toronto, police and intelligence officials said they had been monitoring the group for some time and moved in to make the arrests on Friday after the group arranged to take delivery of three tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be made into an explosive when combined with fuel oil.
"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," said Mike McDonell, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner. He said that by comparison the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, was carried out "with only one ton of ammonium nitrate."
The 17 men were mainly of South Asian descent and most were in their teens or early 20's. One of the men was 30 years old and the oldest was 43 years old, police officials said. None of them had any known affiliation with Al Qaeda.
"They represent the broad strata of our society," Mr. McDonell said. "Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed."
The Times story includes a list of the adult suspects (five juveniles are unnamed):
o Shareef Abdelhaleen
o Fahim Ahmad
o Zakaria Amara
o Asad Ansari
o Steven Vikash Chand, alias Abdul Shakur
o Mohammed Dirie
o Amin Mohamed Durrani
o Ahmad Mustafa Ghany
o Qayyum Abdul Jamal
o Jahmaal James
o Saad Khalid
o Yasim Abdi Mohamed
What might draw such a diverse group together? We got a hunch when we read the follow-up story in today's Times:
While many Canadians expressed relief upon hearing the news that a potentially devastating attack had been averted, some in the Muslim community were skeptical about the lack of specific charges. The 12 adults were charged with offenses under the Criminal Code of Canada. Authorities did not identify the potential targets.
Since Sept. 11, several police investigations against Muslims here have unraveled after arrests were made, which has left a bitter legacy within the Muslim community.
"People are suspicious and there's anger," said Aly Hindy, imam at the Salaheddin Islamic Center in Scarborough, an eastern suburb of Toronto with a sizable Muslim community. "We are being targeted not because of what we've done, but because of who we are and what we believe in."
Come to think of it, most of the names in that list do have a vaguely Muslim sound, don't they? The Times also reports that at least six of the suspects "regularly attended the same storefront mosque" in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. The Mounties may want to look into whether there is an element of religious extremism at work here. It may even be that the suspects do not represent as broad a strata of Canadian society as it appears on the surface. Of course, we should be cautious about drawing any firm conclusions yet.
As a New York Sun editorial points out, the plot against Canada is hard to square with claims that America could appease terrorists merely by selling out Israel and Iraq:
Canada sent no troops to liberate Iraq. Our neighbor to the North so opposed the Iraq War that at least one American deserter fled there for safe harbor, as draft-dodgers did during the Vietnam War. And while Canada is mildly pro-Israel, and more so under its new conservative government, its arms sales to the Jewish state are peanuts compared to America's, and at the United Nations on key votes it's likely to abstain rather than join the America, Micronesia, and Palau in voting with Israel.
What the Islamic extremists oppose in Canada is neither its support for Israel nor its behavior in Iraq but the mere fact that it is not a country governed by Islamic law.
One might say we are being targeted not because of what we've done, but because of who we are and what we believe in.
Every Breath You Take, He'll Be Watching You
"Sting Led to Canada Terrorism Arrests"--headline, MSNBC.com, June 5
Gruttering Out?
"The Supreme Court, reentering the long-running debate over affirmative action in public education, agreed today to consider whether race can be a factor in deciding among applicants for a limited number of places in public high schools," the Washington Post reports:
The issue comes to the court in two cases, one from Seattle and the other from Louisville, Ky. In both places, school systems attempted to achieve racial balance as they allocated slots in "open-choice" public schools.
In each case, race was one of a number of factors, rather than the sole factor, in allocating the slots. . . . So far, three appeals courts have upheld such preferences.
In both Seattle and Louisville, the school systems allow parents some choice among schools as long as minority enrollment does not fall below acceptable levels.
When such an imbalance is a possibility, the schools can prefer a minority over a non-minority applicant as a "tie-breaker" in order to preserve some balance.
In the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, the court ruled 5-4 that colleges and universities could (at least until 2028) use race as a factor in admissions in order to achieve "diversity" in the student body. As Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in dissent, this made a mockery of the "strict scrutiny" standard that is supposed to apply to race-discrimination cases:
The Court, in a review that is nothing short of perfunctory, accepts the University of Michigan Law School's assurances that its admissions process meets with constitutional requirements. The majority fails to confront the reality of how the Law School's admissions policy is implemented. The dissenting opinion by The Chief Justice, which I join in full, demonstrates beyond question why the concept of critical mass is a delusion used by the Law School to mask its attempt to make race an automatic factor in most instances and to achieve numerical goals indistinguishable from quotas. An effort to achieve racial balance among the minorities the school seeks to attract is, by the Court's own admission, "patently unconstitutional."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote the majority opinion in Grutter, has now ridden off into the sunset. One suspects the man who took her place, Justice Samuel Alito, will be a little stricter in his scrutiny--which may help move up that 2028 deadline.
Off the Record
John Kerry* gave a speech in Los Angeles the other day, and a blogger who calls himself "Hollywood Liberal" was in attendance. HL was part of a group of bloggers that got a private meeting with the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, after the speech, and he files this report (quoting verbatim):
The meeting was off the record so no one took any notes or recorded what was said. The first question went straight to the point, about how pissed off so many Democratic voters, are about what happened with the election, and also that it seemed like most Democrats in Congress had no idea how bad the situation was. Kerry responded by dropping the whole political routine and speaking like he was off the record to a bunch of people that already know what's going on anyway. "Look I know how bad things are, I know that people are pissed off, I know we screwed up." . . .
Kerry agreed completely with someone's assessment that everything that Bush does is solely for the purpose of looting the country. He basically said that Bush and his cohorts are criminals and that history will judge them so. He said that he believes that the pendulum will swing back and that is why after 35 years in politics he is still involved, otherwise he wouldn't waste his time. He also said that he never stopped fighting after the election, and that he still hasn't, but I didn't get to ask why he conceded the next morning, though I wish I had. At some other point he referred to Supreme Court Justices Alito, Scalia, and Roberts as Idiots
OK, first of all, we actually know the answer to the question HL wishes he had asked: Kerry conceded because he lost the election!
Second, how come Kerry left Clarence Thomas off the list of conservative Supreme Court justices he complimented? For racial reasons perhaps?
Third, we always thought "off the record" meant you were supposed to keep it confidential. Maybe the rules are different in Hollywood.
* At least he served in Vietnam, unlike Russ Feingold!
Zero-Tolerance Watch
A kerfuffle erupted when Maquisha Cosey, vice president of her senior class at Thornton Fractional North High in Calumet City, Ill., showed up for graduation, the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Cosey, who was listed on Friday's graduation program as the leader of the pledge to the flag, was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct after trying to participate in the ceremony despite being denied entry for being late. . . .
Instead of celebrating her big day, she spent the evening at the Calumet City police station being fingerprinted and photographed because Principal Dwayne E. Evans, the Cosey family claims, was angry someone had let her into the ceremony after the doors were locked.
In Glen Allen, Va., eighth-grade Jeremy Maitland "was suspended from school for a day and tossed off the baseball team" for grand theft cookie, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Jeremy Maitland was in the school kitchen at the end of the day May 17 to fill a water cooler for a baseball game. There, he and other students spotted a container of cookies and decided to eat a sweet, according to his mother, Caryl Maitland.
Henrico school officials approached the eight-grader the next morning and asked him to make a statement, in which he said he ate a cookie after someone knocked over the container and he tried to pick them up, she said. The cookies were a staff member's personal food, according to a letter the school's assistant principal sent to the Maitlands.
Caryl Maitland believes her son knew the cookies were not for him and that some discipline was in order. But the discipline fell under the school's theft code, and that's the part his mother finds most crummy.
Meanwhile, New York's WINS-AM reports there's good news for Courtney Rupert, the 12-year-old Lower Burrell, Pa., girl, suspended for giving a friend caffeine-laced Jolt gum:
GumRunners LLC of Hackensack, N.J., which makes Jolt gum, created a scholarship program and awarded the first one to Courtney. . . .
"Basically we're going to try to reverse the karma of the universe. She got a bad deal. We decided to give her a good deal,'' company co-founder Kevin Gass said Friday at a news conference to announce the "Chew More Do More'' scholarships.
We noted the story Tuesday and are delighted to know the karma of the universe will be reversed.
Homer Nods
Simple arithmetic continues to vex your humble columnist. If President Bush had received 39% of the black vote, John Kerry** had received 60%, and all else had been equal, Bush's nationwide popular-vote margin would have been 8.6%, not 5.5% as we wrote Friday (since corrected). That's because a shift of 3.1% of the total electorate from Kerry to Bush amounts to a 6.2% swing in the margin of victory.
** Fop cit.
Sen. Clinton Says It Only Takes a Village
"Islamic Militia Says It Takes Somalia's Capital"--headline, MSNBC.com, June 5
'The Old Ones Suit Us Just Fine'
"Sellers of Fake Immigration Documents Dismiss Calls for New IDs"--headline, Associated Press, June 2
GOP Nativists Make Aliens Walk It
"State Democrats Work on Immigration Plank"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 3
Anyone Here Know the Heimlich Maneuver?
"Our citizens are literally choking on the lack of alternative fuel."--Sen. Harry Reid, statement on the Marriage Protection Amendment, June 5
Please Don't Tell PETA
"The Suns needed seven games to win their first two series. They were already without their star center, Amare Stoudemire, and played much of this series with their best defender, Raja Bell, dragging an injured calf."--New York Times, June 4
That Must've Been Some Party!
"Networking: Y2K Hangover Finally Ending?"--headline, United Press International, June 5
Though Sex Just Before Pregnancy Does
"Sex Late in Pregnancy Doesn't Hasten Birth"--headline, United Press International, June 2
Thanks for the Tip!--LXXVIII
"Health Tip: Prevent Mosquito Bites"--headline, HealthDayNews, June 2
Bottom Stories of the Day
o "Protesters Fail to Show at Marine Funeral"--headline, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), June 4
o "Pitt's Parents Arrive in Africa"--headline, Hollywood.com, June 3
o "Prestigious Canadian Poetry Prizes Awarded"--headline, Houston Chronicle, June 3
'Nothing but Followers'
We received a follow-up email from Thomas Sutton, whose earlier Media Mutters-motivated missive we published Thursday (quoting verbatim, except inserting paragraph mark):
James, James, James you did exactly what I thought you'd do, shoot the messenger and change the subject. Your little rant over my illiterate piece didn't address the fact that you were caught by media matters in another lie about the "Liberal Press." Right wing hacks like yourself throw out the lies because no one that reads your stuff ever challenges you on your facts. Your readers don't want to hear the truth, because the truth only exposes the lies that the right wing noise machine peddles. Thank God for Media Matters!
Your little rant caused your readers to post reviews about one of my four books. Again your readers are nothing but followers. If you don't believe me read all thirteen reviews on 2199. They didn't even read my book yet they posted reviews. Who are the hypocrites? Jesus blasted people just like you, they were called Pharisees. The Pharisees couldn't see beyond their own self-righteousness. Sounds real familiar doesn't it? Tom, author of 2199, Jesus the Christ, Themes from the Scriptures of the New Testament, and Zoomer II. Thanks for the feedback you made my case!
Indeed, the reviews are pretty funny. The best news for Sutton is that "2199" has zoomed up the charts, from No. 3,968,783 when we wrote to No. 288,490 today. That can only mean that someone ordered a copy. |
