A reader has asked us to publicize the 10th Carnival of Homeschooling. I was not previously aware of this Carnival, and I’m happy to bring it to everyone’s attention.

As our correspondent said, “Children are not being taught any real history in the public schools. To understand the crossroads our country is at, their best chance is to be homeschooled.”

Amen to that!

This week’s carnival is at the Palm Tree Pundit. Drop by and have a look. Of particular interest to an old mathematician are Barbara Frank at The Imperfect Homeschooler, who discusses algebra, and Maria Miller at the Homeschool Math Blog.

You might also want to look in on The Common Room, the blog of the Headmistress and her home-schooled family. It’s a frequently-visited site of intelligent and well-educated news and commentary.

I home-schooled the future Baron until he was twelve, for mostly secular reasons. I’m very glad we decided to make the sacrifice to do it, and I advise everyone with children to consider it. If you want your child to be spared the cant that passes for learning in today’s schools, and become truly educated, home-schooling is the way to go.

Norm Geras has a story up today of the International Woman’s Day rally held in Tehran. You can imagine the outcome of such a convocation.

According to Norm’s report, they carried placards calling for equality, peace and freedom. It doesn’t take much imagination to see their reception: Electric batons, applied judiciously by the police, and by Big Brother’s little helpers, Hezbollah.

Norm says he received an email from Iran—

the police beat both men and women, including foreign and local journalists and an old Iranian woman poet, Simin Behbahani. They also made arrests.

He also linked to The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance to Iran. They have a detailed response to the behavior of the regime:

On International Women’s Day, the misogynist ruling regime in Iran has initiated a crackdown on Iranian women in streets and public areas around the country.

In Tehran, women took to the streets in different areas of the city such as University Park, Revolution Square, and Park-e-Lale chanting “Down with the dictator, long live freedom.” They gathered while the suppressive State Security Forces (SSF) surrounded the area in a bid to disperse them. At 17:00 local time, the SSF began lobbing teargas into the crowds.

A curfew was declared around Tehran University and Park-e-Lale, according to eyewitnesses. SSF and vigilantes attacked and arrested women demonstrators in the Park-e-Daneshjoo who were singing anti-regime songs. The protestors, however, continued their demonstration…

Tehran residents joined the women protestors in solidarity and confronted the regime’s forces, reports indicated. Special Guard units of the SSF joined regular and paramilitary vigilantes in the attack on the protestors.

Another gathering to commemorate Women’s day was held in the western city of Sanandaj. The large gathering in front of a city theater called for liberty and an end to inequality and discrimination against women. “Stop executions and stoning,” the large gathering of women chanted.

Sometimes, living in our safe little world, it’s hard to imagine the courage and intelligence — and, in the final analysis, faith — it takes to survive and surmount the environment in Iran.

Any minute now, those American dilettantes — the ones who wear pink and swan around — are going to mount a humungous demonstration to protest the electric batons used on women in Iran, even on aged and venerable poets.

But just in case they’re delayed, don’t stay up to see the crowd on the late news.

 
There’s a lot of coverage (see Junkyard Blog, here, for “Dubai Yields”) of the United Emirate’s decision to divest itself of its American holdings. What no one seems to be paying attention to is that the deal violates our agreement with Israel not to do business with companies that are owned by states which embargo trade with Israel.

The UAE has been doing just that for a long time: Israel is not on their list of trade buddies.

So, here we have just one more oversight of that Committee in charge of vetting foreign investments in this country.

What is wrong with Washington? Never mind — that list is too long. Better question: what is it doing right lately?

As for DPW’s decision to get out of Dodge: while late is better than never, they lost some advantage in waiting so long. It must have been a lucrative deal for them to try to wait it out…wouldn’t you love to know the real story?

Hey, somebody, call Claudia Rosett; put her on this sorry mess.

 
Back in November, 2005,The Jerusalem Post had a big headline: Saudi Arabia lifts Israel embargo, announcing Saudi Arabia’s decision to give up its embargo against Israel in exchange for inclusion in the World Trade Organization. As the article so hopefully pointed out, in order to gain entrance into the WTO, and maintain membership, NO member nation may impose an economic embargo on another member state. And Israel is a member of the WTO…therefore, no more embargo, right? Finally, one of the fifty seven states involved in this decades-long embargo was breaking from the pack. The Post had reason for its elation.

That was then. This is now, and now includes Saudi Arabia’s hosting of a meeting in Jidda, from March 13-15th . This “summit” has been called specifically to focus on strengthening the Islamic economic boycott of Israel. You see, Saudi Arabia is not only a member of the WTO. It is also a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC. This dreary group has been in existence since forever. First founded as the Arab League — in 1949 when it was frightened by the appearance of Jews on its doorstep — and then later, in 1969 after its military humiliation at the hands of said Jews, it morphed into an organization to include all Islamic states, not just those in Arabia. Here’s what their official website has to say:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is an inter-governmental organization grouping fifty-seven States. These States decided to pool their resources together, combine their efforts and speak with one voice to safeguard the interest and ensure the progress and well-being of their peoples and those of other Muslims in the world over.

The Organization was established in Rabat, Kingdom of Morocco, on 12 Rajab 1389H (25 September 1969) when the First meeting of the leaders of the Islamic world was held in this city in the wake of the criminal arson perpetrated on 21 August 1969 by Zionist elements against Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem. It was indeed in order to defend the honour, dignity and faith of the Muslims, to face this bitter challenge launched in the holy city of Al-Quds so dear to them and against the Mosque of Al-Aqsa, the first Qibla and third holiest Shrine of Islam, that the leaders of the Muslim world, at their Summit in Rabat, seized that event – which brought about unanimous worldwide condemnation and reprobation – to think together of their common cause and muster the force required to overcome their differences, unite and lay the foundations of this large grouping of States, that is, the Organization of the Islamic Conference which they entrusted, in absolute priority, with liberating Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa from Zionist occupation.

Any organization created as a reaction to an “enemy” state has a certain negative orientation. Thus, despite the florid prose of the rest of their website, this is a group founded to eradicate Israel. Period. Well, actually not period. More accurately, it is an organization devoted to the demise of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic state, namely Palestine.

Today, The Washington Times, in a byline from Geneva, noted the flim-flam:

U.S. and Israeli officials are concerned that Saudi Arabia may be breaking the promise it made when it entered the World Trade Organization last year by hosting a meeting next week on the Arab economic boycott of Israel.

“I think this is a bit too much,” said Itzhak Levanon, Israel’s ambassador to the WTO, noting it has been only three months since Saudi Arabia was admitted to the organization on terms that require it to treat Israel like any other WTO member.

The promise was that the Saudis would not seek an exemption for Israel from WTO requirements to treat all members equally. The exemption would have preserved its participation, along with other Arab states, in a boycott of Israel.

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said officials from the Department of Commerce and other agencies have been in contact with the Saudis over the issue.

The reality is that the boycott has softened over the years. However, with the emerging hard-line Islamist approach, that may be changing:

The boycott, imposed by the Arab League in 1945, seeks to isolate Israel by barring trade with the Jewish state and in some cases companies that do business in Israel. The OIC monitors compliance through its own Israeli Boycott Office…

Adherence to the boycott has softened over the years even among Arab states as countries like Egypt and Jordan established diplomatic and economic links with Israel.

Participation in the boycott by the United Arab Emirates has emerged as an issue during the debate in Washington over a deal giving a Dubai company control over six American seaports.

Push has come to shove. If the OIC, including Saudi Arabia, gets hard-nosed about the boycott of Israel, this will send a clear signal about its intransigence re: any moderation of Islamist utopian visions.

So, what will it be, Muslims? Moderation or eventual obliteration? Your call.

For the full flavor of the OIC, go here to their resolutions on the cause of Palestine.

 
In the United States, the institutions most similar to those of the Soviet Union are the DMV and the local Department of Social Services. I’ve been in both of them, and, believe me, it’s a toss-up as to which is more Soviet-like.

The dirty utility carpet… interminable waits on hard chairs… bored, indifferent, and condescending bottom-level bureaucrats… the return to the end of the line after a slight error in the paperwork.

We’ve all been there, and we all do the best we can to keep from going back.

So it was with some trepidation that I opened the website of the National Association of Social Workers in order to read the national study of the social work labor force that was released today. When the slickly-designed page finally loaded, I felt a special twitch of revulsion at the graphic on top: “NASW…the power of social work.” It was enough to make me want to close the window and forget it, but duty calls. Neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night, nor Socialism, can stay the blogger from his appointed rounds.

So I started to read the report.

Well, surprise, surprise! The NASW study had concluded that Americans are doing so well that social workers are scarcely necessary any longer, and the organization’s task from now on would be to help its members find gainful employment in other professions.

Just kidding. Here’s how the report opened:

Landmark Study Warns of Impending Labor Force Shortages For Social Work Profession

Services to Millions Threatened

[Washington, DC] [March 8, 2006] – At a news conference today, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) released the results of a national study of licensed social workers. The findings warn of an impending shortage of social workers that threaten future services for all Americans, especially the most vulnerable among us, children and older adults.

“From adoption to geriatrics, hundreds of thousands of social workers in the United States play a critical role in the lives of millions of Americans,” says Tracy Whitaker, director of the NASW Center for Workforce Studies. “The findings of this study emphasize the need to assure a qualified social work labor force for the future. Predicted changes in the country’s demographics over the next years are expected to increase the demand for social work services.”

Didn’t expect that, did you? An organization dedicated to advancing the interests of social workers concludes that… (drum roll)… we need more social workers!

And we baby boomers are the main reason for the coming crunch:

The number of new social workers providing services to older adults is decreasing, despite projected increases in the number of older adults who will need social work services. Social workers provide valuable services to older adults and their families. They help clients to negotiate the healthcare and social welfare systems, to provide resources essential to living and to address the challenges that come with aging. With the aging of the baby boom generation and breakthroughs in medicine contributing to longer life spans, the number and percentage of Americans 60 years of age and older will surge. The need and demand for social work services for the aging will increase dramatically.

The report doesn’t mention that the morphing of the boomer baby into the boomer geezer is accompanied by a singular lack of children in the next generation. Come to think of it, social workers have played a part in that, too – over the last couple of generations they have been busy handing out condoms, counseling abortion, and providing incentives for people to depend on the state instead of their families. Europe is much worse off in that regard than we are, but we’ve got the same disease.

Do you think a social worker ever advised young people to marry and have children in order to guarantee their social welfare in old age?

I’m cynical, but it seems that the recommendations of social workers tend to lead to outcomes that require more social workers.

Oh, I know there are dedicated people in social work, in addition to the time-servers, the squabbling bureaucrats, the meddlers, and the little Stalins. But the social work racket is a system, and, regardless of the intentions of any of the people who act as its components, its only function is to protect its position and grow larger.

And that means that all of us will end up needing more social workers.

The NASW certainly highlights that theme:

Agencies struggle to fill social work vacancies. In all areas of social work practice, unfilled vacancies were an issue. Agencies have resorted to outsourcing and hiring non-professional staff to fill empty slots, an indicator of current labor market supply deficits. Because more than half of health care social workers work in hospitals in metropolitan areas, an additional challenge is to provide comprehensive services to people living in rural areas.

“Social workers are one of the largest and most diverse health professions in the United States,” says Dr. Elizabeth Clark, executive director of NASW. “They have the education and training to look at how all factors in a person’s life – family, work, health and mental health – work together. This study highlights the need to find new and innovative ways for the social work profession to retain the current workforce and recruit new social workers to accommodate the impending demand.”

It’s a good thing they’re there to take care of our children and old people, isn’t it? We certainly can’t do it without their help.

But there was a time when Americans got along without social workers. They somehow managed to give birth, raise their children, make a living, and take care of their elderly, all without help from Social Services. How was that possible?

Maybe that’s why we live longer these days, though I ascribe that more to penicillin, better nutrition, and blood-pressure medication than the actions of the good people down at the Jefferson Area Board for the Aging.

All of this made me wonder how much the social service industry has grown since FDR started the ball rolling back in the ’30s. I started googling, and ran into an alphabet soup of social workers’ professional organizations – local chapters of the NASW, the state organizations, groups fighting for the interests of LCSWs or MSWs. The census had current figures for the field, but I could find no historical data to speak of.

I did, however, run into this interesting little tidbit, “Social Security, Social Workers, and the Care of Dependent Children”, at a University of California at Irvine website:

Thus, since the early 1930s the number of social workers in the United States increased rapidly, climbing from 30,500 in 1930 to 60,000 in 1938 to 125,000 in 1965 to 263,000 in 1972. In addition, the amount of public funding available to support social services, and social workers also increased. At the same time, the number of orphans in the U.S. fell. Some orphaned and many needy children remained, however, and these were increasingly placed with foster-care families rather than in institutions. Social workers had, from the beginning of this century, expressed a strong preference for foster care over institutional care – a preference that we suggest was at least as much a product of social-workers’ concerns for their own professional status (and income) as it was of their concern for children’s welfare.

My emphasis.

So all of these myriad organizations of social workers – all those armies of the righteous dedicated to the cause of making you a better, more well-rounded, more culturally aware and diverse genetic entity – all of them owe their livelihoods to your tax dollars, either directly, through the appropriations for Social Services departments, or indirectly through the semi-governmental health care organizations and hospitals.

And what are they pooling their dollars to do, when they pay dues to the NASW? Raise their pay and protect their perks, right?

Well, there’s a little bit more than that. On the sidebar of the NASW site you’ll notice a menu. When your mouse pointer hovers over an choice called “Advocacy”, a little sub-menu pops up with these choices:

• ANSWER
• Government Relations Updates
• Grassroots Advocacy
• Legislative Issues
• Political Action for Candidate Election
• Register to Vote

That’s an interesting list, isn’t it? Don’t worry, ANSWER isn’t what you think; it’s “The Action Network for Social Work Education and Research.” But “grassroots advocacy”… Hmm. And “legislative issues” means “lobbying”, I presume.

And “candidate election” – how many of those candidates do you think are Republicans?

This is what your tax dollars buy: a group that advocates for left-wing issues, lobbies to protect itself and expand its turf, and helps elect candidates who further these ends.

Definitely a Soviet style of doing business.

So as we boomers age, and more and more social workers have to be inducted, where’s the additional funding going to come from? I’ll give you three guesses.

Or you can read this manifesto from the Massachusetts chapter of the NASW, Social Workers for Peace and Justice (SWPJ):

The Massachusetts Chapter’s commitment to social and economic justice is carried out in part by its very active Social Workers for Peace and Justice committee (SWPJ) which is located in the Pioneer Valley-Northampton-Amherst area. The Committee was begun in 1982, then as Social Workes [sic] for Peace and Nuclear Disarmamentm [sic] and has since played a key role in the Massachusetts peace and justice movement.

The ongoing mission of SWPJ has been towork [sic] for world peace, advocate for a smaller, more realistic defense budget and using these funds to meet human needs, and educate social workers and the public about the connections between the excessive military budget and the economic and social conditions in Massachusetts.

From the defense budget. Of course!

We’re going beat our swords into wheelchairs and turn our spears into nursing homes, that’s what we’re going to do.

One way or another, you’ll learn to love Big Sister.

Update: A reader sent us this link to (*** WARNING *** R-rated material at the other end of this link!) a post by a social worker who finally snapped.

 
Some things are not meant to be forgiven. One of them is the murder of your child. We are hard-wired to protect our offspring and when they die at the hands of murderous thugs our overwhelming sorrow and loss learns to move in tandem with an implacable hatred for those who love death so much that they would randomly and enthusiastically kill your child.

Now comes an Anglican vicar, the Rev. Julie Nicholson, whose daughter was one of the fifty people whose lives were snatched away by a group of indoctrinated thugs. The vicar is stepping down from her position as priest in charge of a church in Bristol. She says she finds it—

…very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself.

Well, of course it’s difficult. In fact, if you’re a sentient being, it’s damned nigh impossible. That’s why we have the death penalty in the U.S., and why they would have it in Europe if the elitists hadn’t rammed through its abolition. The polls are very clear: most Europeans are in favor of death as the only solution for those who spread death in their wake.

The Rev. Nicholson is a priest. As such she is a mediator, a witness. She is not an über-Christian whose ordination somehow lifts her above her flock. “The priesthood of the baptized” is a bit of tarnished theology by now, but it served its purpose: to bring the priest back down to eye level.

The Rev. Nicholson says she has struggled greatly with her inability to forgive her daughter’s killer and has read many books in these last months on forgiveness. They don’t help; she remains in awe of those who can say “I forgive…”

Her awe is misplaced and her spiritual director ought to be saying as much. Wisely, she has reflected on the scene of Mary at the foot of the cross, watching her Son’s agonizing death. She has noticed that “forgiveness doesn’t come into it at all.” She’s absolutely right: Jesus asked His Father to forgive his killers, but He never asked for the strength to forgive them Himself. Even Jesus had, so to speak, a Higher Power at that point, One to Whom He could surrender his suffering. We are never told that Mary forgave anything, including perhaps even her Son’s choice to do what He did.

Part of the problem of liberal Christianity, and of the thoughtlessly liberal secular bastard it spawned, is that everything is supposed to be forgivable.

No, it’s not.

The human brain is hardwired in such a way that we will kill those who threaten to harm us or ours. Sadly, pacifists have been selectively bred so that condescending compassion trumps all, even predatory killers. Even horrific murders fall before the all-powerful rubrics of politically correct thinking… or rather, feeling. None of these people actually think anymore.

Ms. Nicholson will remain a priest, working with a group of young people associated with music. Her work will serve to embody her daughter’s love of music. When Jenny died, she was in the midst of her musical studies and now her mother will continue them in a different way.

We can only hope for Jenny’s mother that she continue to hate these killers with the full, white-hot hatred they deserve. It is the fire of such hatred against evil that ensures the survival of good in the world.

If you are not willing to hate those who kill your children, what would you be willing to live for?

Hat tip: The Corner.

 
As mentioned in the Bloody Borders Project, and further discussed in the comments of a subsequent post, India has been one of the primary and ongoing battlefronts in the Great Jihad since the beginning of Islam.

As Alain Danielou wrote in his book Histoire de l’Inde (thanks to Atanu Dey for the quote):

“From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.” Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, “was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.” Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, concludes Danielou, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined.

In recent years Pakistan, either directly or through its terrorist surrogates, has fomented Islamist violence in the neighboring Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Bloody Borders maps show that the vast bulk of Islamic terrorism in India occurs in Kashmir. There has been a de facto ethnic cleansing of Hindus in whole districts of the state.

But no part of India is immune to Islamofascist violence. Today we have a report from the New Kerala:

At least 12 people are feared to have died and about 25 injured when a series of powerful bomb explosions rocked Varanasi on Tuesday evening.

According to informed sources, the bomb blasts occurred between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m. (IST) in the famous Sankat Mochan Temple complex, near the Benaras Hindu University and Varanasi cantonment railway station here, killing at least seven on the spot and injuring several other devotees.

At the time of explosion, the Shivganga Express was on the platform to leave for Delhi.

The injured have been admitted to the SS Hospital in the Benaras Hindu University campus.

Soon after the blast, panic gripped the city as people here were seen talking on phones to know about their relatives and friends.

The reports in the Western press have refrained so far from using the dreaded I-word when describing the attack, but the New Kerala is not so shy:

Giving a political colour to the incident, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Kalyan Singh demanded the dismissal of the Mulayam Singh-led government.

He further went on to say that Islamist fundamentalist were responsible for the blasts and appealed the people to come forward to help the victims.

Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh, in northeast India, halfway across the country from Kashmir. It is also separated from Muslim Bangladesh by the state of Bihar, yet Islamic violence managed to find its way to the city.

And note the modern instance of the time-honored Muslim practice: the target was a Hindu temple.

Back in the 14th century, the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane said:

My principal object in coming to Hindustan… has been to accomplish two things. The first was to war with the infidels, the enemies of the Mohammadan religion; and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was… that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels: plunder in war is as lawful as their mothers’ milk to Musalmans who war for their faith.

Since its inception Islam has enriched its adherents by plundering the infidel. The relative wealth enjoyed by some Islamic countries today comes from petroleum, and is not dependent on any inherent industry or productivity among the faithful.

When the last stronghold of the infidels has been overrun, and the dream of the worldwide Caliphate has been realized, from whom will Islam gain its wealth? Sitting in the ruins of the civilized world, living their Utopian dream under the Shari’ah, what can be plundered to keep the emirs in the style to which they have become accustomed? Whose fat will they batten on then?

 
The Journal of Ongoing Litigation reports:

In the last few months there has been a groundswell of class-action litigation filed from all over the country against ‘Big Sleep’ – the mattress and bed industry. The plaintiffs are citing hospital and funeral home statistics, which indicate that at least 93% of Americans die in bed, up from 77% in 1968.

A spokesman for one plaintiffs’ group in Oregon says, “Why isn’t there any outrage about this? ‘Big Sleep’ is causing mortality at twenty times the rate of drunk driving, but you don’t hear about MASP – Mothers Against Sealy Posturepedic!”

The American Society Supporting Less Inherently Comfortable Environments (ASSLICE) recommends that the following steps be taken by the US sleep industry:

1. Make mattresses harder and more lumpy. People will thus spend less time in bed, increasing their chances of survival.
2. Increase normal working hours to 12 daily, and extend the work week to include Saturday, thus removing some of the opportunities to encouch oneself.
3. Persuade the President to spearhead an advertising campaign in the national media, ridiculing those who spend large amounts of time in bed, and also linking sleep-related behavior to various disorders.
4. Initiate a study (perhaps supported by a grant from the NIH) to find and test alternative methods of sleeping, e.g. standing in a line at the bank, hanging upside down from tree limbs, etc.

It remains to be seen whether juries will find the arguments compelling enough to order the kind of cash awards that will make Big Sleep sit up and take notice. But I’d keep my eye on this one.

As a4g says: Yes, it’s satire.

Make of this what you want. Bobby Wheelock, of Muhammad and Me: On The Road to Mecca There are Many Stops has some entertaining ’toons. Go see Bobby and Muhammad as they plant a tree, or buy grapefruits, or fly kites.

Then, by all means, read some of the entertaining comments. If your mind isn’t fried after that, just visit one of the sidebar links. I especially recommend…nah, you go visit. See what you think.

One thing’s for sure: you’ll remember this site. Kind of like a young Mr. Bean on an adventure. Or Harold, without his purple crayon but with more purpose.

 
Several commenters have suggested that it would be a good idea, and perhaps a more forceful presentation, to have actual images of those dying in these terrorist attacks superimposed on the bloody borders project, to make the reality more vivid.

One argument, a good one, is that we tend to experience only sanitized versions of the ugliness of terror and war. Another says that an accumulation of data — including images — makes us more knowledgeable and objective.

I disagree. Such images either traumatize us or they inure us to the awful reality. There is already so much “imaged” violence in our culture already. To add to it seems a muchness.

No doubt this kind of presentation would draw more people in to view it. There is something about seeing horror vicariously that can ease some people, and make voyeurs of others.

This doesn’t mean there are no occasions on which images are not appropriate. Every September 11th, we need to re-visit those scenes, to commemorate the victims and to honor their memory. But to see them all the time? What does that do to the survivors or their families? How do they dare to turn on their televisions, or even their PCs, and not be afraid of being hit with their loss all over again? Nothing would ever have a chance to heal.

There is a brisk trade in Islamic countries in videos of the beheadings and the burned bodies on the bridge. Do we want to be like them, marketing horror for others’ enjoyment? Put one of your children, or your brother, or your father in those scenes and they suddenly become the violation and obscenity that they truly are.

No, please, no pictures. They are burned in my memory from that first day. I don’t want to see them again. I remember only too well what happened. For future generations, it is important to save them, so they can experience the horror for themselves. But we know. We have the hollow place in our chest, in our stomach, whenever we even mentally gaze at those falling bodies. They are someone’s parents, children, brothers and sisters. If six degrees of separation is true, some of these people belong to us in ways we cannot yet fathom.

Let the dead lie in peace under the tons of rubble which fell on them. Let them lie in whatever dignity and courage they found in making that terrible, endless fall.

Okay, here we are in the winners’ circle for February 24, 2006.

First place went to a supremely gifted essayist. Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse took it away with his paean toHubert Humphrey, “The Happy Warrior is Weeping In His Grave.” For those of us who remember Mr. Humphrey, it is shocking to realize how much politics has changed. No doubt they molded the Energizer Bunny on Mr. Humphrey. As Rick says, “his energy, humor, quick wit, and sunny disposition made him seem larger than life.”

The 1964 Democratic Convention was my first real introduction to politics as I came to know and love it. At the age of 10, I was already reading the great political columnist Mike Royko whose hilarious insights into the less than honest workings of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago political machine was the stuff of legend. But the convention that year would be my first lesson in politics as theater, a drama played out on a national stage with heroes, villains, and colorful personalities galore. Without a doubt, the most outsized personality on display during the convention was that of the Senator from Minnesota and putative Vice Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey.

Read his elegy to an era so totally and terribly gone.

Callimachus was second at Done With Mirrors with some prefatory remarks about Doris Kearns Goodwin’s’ book Team of Rivals. But this essay takes a sharp turn in direction to address an issue in the book that she touches on but never really addresses. It is one dear to my heart and was important to me long before I experienced the aftermath of my daughter’s death. There is so much unmetabolized pain in the death of a child that resonates down through the generations. It’s like a black hole through which people seemed to get sucked and the survivors are left to wonder why.

For example (though Callimachus doesn’t mention it) there are the 625,000 people who died in the U.S. in a few short months during the flu epidemic in 1918. No one knows how many it really took world wide. Twelve million? Twenty million? It left untold orphans, more than any deliberate man-made genocide could have done.

And so how did we deal with that catastrophe? Think about what followed 1918…the Roaring Twenties. The decade of delirious denial, one so manic and driven to distraction that it brought upon itself the Depression and Prohibition.

But Callimachus goes back further than that to deal with the effect of individual deaths in the 19th century:

Researchers into early nineteenth century families quickly come to accept the high death rates among children as a fact of life in those days. Families were large, medicine was crude, disease ran rampant, and it seems no family was untouched by the tragedy of a child lost.

We tend to think of death as a country for the old. It was not so then. People of all ages were vulnerable, the cold calculus of contagation meant that often if a disease got into a household parents would lose some or all of their children in a matter of days.

Parental bereavement came not only by the sudden stroke of a gunshot or accident; with tragic frequency they had to watch, deperate and powerless as death took its agonizing time with their children, who writhed as parasites dissolved their bowels or languished delirious in parching fevers. Nowadays, parents who lose a child have to go in search of support. No one, it seems, really knows how to talk to them. Parental bereavement is alien to most of us. But 150 years ago, death of a child was a common denominator among American families.

Today, just from my own observation, it is the sudden, smashing death of kids in cars that seems to be a “common denominator.” In our small rural area, the deaths mount every year. I’ve been to too many teenagers’ funerals in the last few years. One father, whose beloved and only son was killed a few years ago, came to the Baron and asked him to sketch some of his son’s favorite things so they could be engraved on the back of his son’s headstone. The Baron met with the mother and dad and then went to the scenes the boy loved and drew them for the engravers to work on… this was before my own child died, and now I understand what the boy’s mother experienced when her husband told me that some days all she can do is go outside and scream… we are fortunate to live in the country, to have the trees and fields to absorb our the ringing echoes of our ceaselessly sounding sorrow.

Here’s one thing your child’s death brings in its wake: you are no longer so concerned about your own mortality. It has taken second place.

The first place winner in the non-council posts was
Dinocrat. In a post about the suppression of creativity and free thought in Islam, Dinocrat examines its recent history of patent applications:

The Saudi Patent Regulations of 1989 established a patent registration system, covering any new article, methods of manufacture (including improvements in either of them) and product patents. In 1996, the Saudi Patent Office granted its first patents since its establishment in 1990.

By contrast, the US granted 157,000 patents in 2005, and is up to about 7,000,000 patents overall…

No culture that so totally represses the curiosity in children, or suppresses the maturing of its women, could possibly produce anything the modern world values. And Islam knows this, in its heart of hearts. It causes a homicidal despair.

Before this became a nominated post, I linked to it and to Planck’s Constant in a post entitled So What’s This About Muslims and Patents? You can pick up links to some great images from Planck’s Constant and read an amusing tongue-in-cheek argument.

The second place post must be seen to be understood. “Bring on the Fatwah” is very amusing, and it may send you off to try your hand at this new way to incite cartoon rage. By the way, “Cartoon Rage” is like Road Rage, except you jump up and down on flags and burn embassies rather than simply trying to cream that stupid driver who just cut you off.

The Watcher is behind this whole thing, counting score and breaking ties. The rest of the story is over at his place.

Vital Perspectives has a new service: a round-up of timely articles on the Middle East from major news outlets:

Vital Perspective Introduces “The Reading Room”

We are pleased to offer on a weekly basis all of the major articles and analysis on the Middle East from the most influential periodicals in America. This time, we will cover the period from February 17 to March 3. The articles are available in a PDF format by clicking here and we will be maintaining a “Reading Room” under a category by the same name. We hope you will find this to be a valuable resource.

We need all the resources we can get. Some of the offerings I’d seen but there are others which are welcome analyses.

So thanks to VP for this service.

 
Athena, who blogs at Terrorism Unveiled, sent her fellow anti-jihad bloggers a note this morning:

I went to Chapel Hill this weekend (for the UNC-Duke game – which was spectacular by the way) and I found out information that’s not in the mainstream media about the attack by Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar on my campus.

[…]

Not mentioned in the media is that he was a frequent pot smoker and heavy drinker, that he tried to pledge a fraternity and was kicked out, and the financial status of his family. My significant other is Iranian and lives in Chapel Hill (graduated the same year as Mohammed) and doesn’t know this guy, which is odd because most Persians know each other – indicating this guy is a real recluse, which corroborates statements from fraternity brothers I spoke with.

She has a lot more information on last Friday’s SUV-For-Allah attack. I don’t want to give all her goodies away; you’ll have go over to her post to get all the background on the alleged perp.

It looks like the guy was genuinely a lone and silent Allah-maddened weirdo, but we shall see.

Also, The Daily Tar Heel website has a lot of details on the story.

 
Joe N. at ¡No Pasaran! put up a post on the Bloody Borders Project. Noting how long it had taken us, he suggested we take a break. This was the link he sent us to, and what a nice surprise! A chance to relax, buy Danish, and ramble on about the etymology of the word Aquavit (it seems to be Akvavit in Denmark). If we natter on long enough, you won’t notice how fast the level in the bottle in dropping.

Here’s the etymology of the word, which will end us up in Gaelic, as well it should.

Of course everyone knows that “aqua” and “vit” are Latin for “water of life.” But did you know that “uisge” (Scots-Gaelic) which Old English formed to make “usque” are also cognate with water? Or that “beatha” (Scots-Gaelic) or “baugh”(Old English borrowing) were cognate with “vita”?

So we go from aquavit to uisgebeatha to usquebaugh to…ta da: whiskey. It helps if you’re an etymologist to be slightly squiffed when making these connections.

Oh, and by the way, you know “vodka”? That’s just a diminutive for water: “little water” is the favorite Russian drink.

In other words, when it comes to booze, it’s all essentially the same word.

If you follow Joe’s link you will arrive at a page full of Danish goodies. At least if you haven’t given up alcohol for Lent…which I haven’t, but some of us have.

Hic.