Tonight’s poem is a masterpiece of wordplay in two languages by Robert Graves. The great poet lived on Mallorca for many years, and long familiarity with the Spaniards and their language merged with his native poetic gifts to produce this spoof. It is not widely known; for some reason it has been excluded from his Collected Poems. I found it via Google, but am unable to provide a date for it.

Mr. Graves based his poem on the bizarre English used in some of Spain’s travel brochures. With fractured forms of English now widespread on the internet, the language so ably mimicked by him in this verse seems quite familiar.

“¡Wellcome, to the Caves of Arta!”
by Robert Graves

‘They are hollowed out in the see-coast at the muncipal terminal of Capdepera at nine kilometer from the town of Arta in the Island of Mallorca, with a stuporizing infinity of graceful colums of 21 meter and by downward, which prives the spectator of all animacion and plunges in dumbness. The way going is very picturesque, serpentine between style mountains, til the arrival at the esplanade of the vallee called “The Spiders”. There are good enlacements of the railroad with autobuses of excursion, many days of the week, today actually Wednesday and Satturday. Since many centuries renown foreing visitors have explored them and wrote their elegy about, included Nort-American geoglogues.’ [From a tourist guide]

Such subtile filigranity and nobless of construccion
    Here fraternise in harmony, that respiracion stops.
While all admit thier impotence (though autors most formidable)
    To sing in words the excellence of Nature’s underprops,
Yet stalactite and stalagmite together with dumb language
    Make hymnes to God wich celebrate the stregnth of water drops.

¿You, also, are you capable to make precise in idiom
    Consideracions magic of ilusions very wide?
Already in the Vestibule of these Grand Caves of Arta
    The spirit of the human verb is darked and stupefied;
So humildy you trespass trough the forest of the colums
    And listen to the grandess explicated by the guide.

From darkness into darkness, but at measure, now descending
    You remark with what esxactitude he designates each bent;
“The Saloon of Thousand Banners”, or “The Tumba of Napoleon”,
     “The Grotto of the Rosary”, “The Club”, “The Camping Tent”,
And at “Cavern of the Organs” there are knocking strange formacions
    Wich give a nois particular pervoking wonderment.

Too far do not adventure, sir! For, further as you wander,
    The every of the stalactites will make you stop and stay.
Grand peril amenaces now, your nostrills aprehending
    An odour least delicious of lamentable decay.
It is poor touristers, in the depth of obscure cristal,
    Wich deceased of thier emocion on a past excursion day.

And now for an update on the Muslim gender war….

Where to start???

Here’s one: on December 7th in Riadyh, an announcement by the Philippine Embassy to its domestic workers in Saudi Arabia will probably take the prize for 2005’s Fatuous Double Speak Award.

	Philippine Embassy officials have reminded Filipino women in the Kingdom to avoid going out of their residence at night so as not to get into trouble.
	They also urged compatriots not to encourage workers who have complaints against their employers to run away because doing so would only complicate matters.

Want to know why this particular piece of advice — fabricated so as to cover the maximum amount of Embassy gluteus maximus — was issued?

For the same reason all of their pronouncements to their domestic workers are extruded from the wind-up doll they use to make these assinine statements: another domestic worker attempted to escape her Saudi employer and ran from the frying pan into the fire. When her story became public knowledge, they were forced to haul out the robot and push the right words through his mouth tube. Here’s what the tin man said:

Filipino women: Do-not-go-out-of-residence-at-night-in-Kingdom-You-will-get-into-trouble-Do-not-encourage-other-workers-to- run-away-Running-away-complicates-matters.

	The victim told embassy officials that she ran away at about 8 p.m. one night last month to avoid the alleged sexual advances of her employer.
	“I was walking hurriedly when five young men pulled me into a pickup and drove me to a house just a few blocks away from my employer’s residence,” she said.
	She said seven young men took turns on her and gave her away later to another group of five young men, who also gang-raped her inside a tinted van as they cruised along the streets.
	The rapists were reportedly playing full-volume music and her cry for help were apparently unheard.
	She said her attackers also took her gold earrings and necklace plus SR1,000 cash.
	Embassy personnel found her on a street seven hours later, almost naked. She was placed under the custody of Bahay Kalinga (shelter house) and given medical treatment.

She stayed at the shelter about a month and declined to file any charges. Her former employer returned her visa to her and paid her plane fare back to Manila. Wasn’t that nice of him? Maybe it was a birthday present: she turned twenty while staying at the refuge for battered domestics.

That’s one story. Wash, rinse, repeat endlessly in the Kingdom of Evil Saud. I’d have harsher words for the Philippine Embassy except that they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. These domestic slaves pump a lot of money back into the home economy. At least when they’re paid they do.

For the next Muslim gender war story, we fly on to Sweden, where Muslim immigrant men make no excuses for their treatment of Swedish infidel women:

“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid [link is in Swedish]. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably fucked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was gang raped in Rissne – this becomes obvious from the discussion with Ali, Hamid, Abdallah and Richard. All four have disparaging views on Swedish girls, and think this attitude is common among young men with immigrant background. “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get fucked to pieces.”

The rate of rape and other violent crimes by Muslim immigrants in Sweden is difficult to ascertain. Sweden’s suicidal multi-cultural choke on freedom of the press makes it hard to know exactly how many young women are being victimized. The most basic of freedoms, the inviolability of the person, has been tied to a rock, put in a burlap bag, and dropped into the sea in Sweden. The ugly sister, P.C.-Speak, has taken Liberty’s place.

But the numbers of victims are not nearly so important nor as lethal as the motive behind the systematic degradation of women by Muslim men. As Fjordman says:

The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as “their women,” the women who “belong” to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hands. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men — his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us — our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.

What Fjordman says makes sense in one context, but not in all of them. Many of the Indonesian victims of gang rape in Saudi Arabia are Muslim girls, not infidel whores. This is just another example of taqiyya at work.

Islam practices misogyny of a most muderous kind. All women — not just infidel women — are potential booty. Objects. Disposable containers. One has only to observe how women are treated in Muslim countries to know you wouldn’t want to be a Muslim woman if you had any say about it.

But Swedish girls want to fight back so they’ve invented something to protect themselves:

	A group of Swedish teenage girls has designed a belt that requires two hands to remove and which they hope will deter would-be rapists…
	“It’s like a reverse chastity belt,” one of the creators, 19-year-old Nadja Björk, [said]… meaning that the wearer is in control, instead of being controlled.
	The military-style buckle has a latch that the wearer has to move through a labyrinth into the correct position in order to unlock the belt.
	“You need two hands to open it, so the rapist can’t hold you down and open it at the same time. It takes a while to figure it out if you don’t know what you’re doing,” she said.
	The product was designed as part of a high school project in entrepreneurship and the girls have already sold 300 of the belts in Sweden, priced at 150 kronor.
	Björk and one of her partners now plan to start a business to mass produce the belts and are currently in negotiations with potential partners.
	“But I’m not doing this for the money,” she said. “I’m really passionate about stopping rape…

Her youth and passion are endearing. However, wait till one of those young women run into a group of Muslim men who don’t find their protection of themselves amusing. Nadja, how many times do you have to get punched before you’ll gladly undo that belt buckle you invented?It’s not just rape, my dear, it’s systematic degradation. If you don’t understand this, ask your fellow countrywoman,who made the mistake of going out to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a friend. Here’s how her year ended at the hands of five Somali Muslims. Do you think, Nadja, that your belt would have helped her? I don’t. I think it would have enraged her attackers even more. They don’t let you have guns over there, do they, my girl? Lacking armament, I suggest you consider the oldest weapon women have: men. Belt or no belt, don’t leave home without several testosterone-filled humans for back-up.

Otherwise, until your country can make some provision for protection of its women, move here and join the NRA. We’d love to have an entrepreneurial soul like you.

Representative John Murtha’s (D-Pa) contention that the war is unwinnable and we should leave Vietnam Iraq as soon as possible is so well-known that even I, sans TV or newspapers or radio news, had heard of the man and his “tired,” worn-out” et ceteras. But since I’d avoided hearing his anti-war rant, I didn’t stick around for the outcome.

I should have.

What I hadn’t heard, and which gave me great pleasure, was the real story, the actual outcome of Rep. Murtha’s “heroic” stance before the MSM, slathering on the words they love to hear. What actually happened is that when Murtha growled, the Republicans turned around and bit him. The House Republicans showed the real grit: they called for an up-or-down vote on Murtha’s musings, and Murtha lost so bad you couldn’t have found him under the pile: 403-3 said the House. We’re not abandoning the Iraqis. In other words, we’re not going to make this another Vietnam, no matter how many boomers and their groupies in the MSM long for it.

Can you imagine the headlines the next day? I’ll bet you can. Instead of reporting Murtha’s drubbing, the old Grey Whore led the pack with “Uproar in House as Parties Clash on Iraq Pullout.” 403-3 is an “uproar”? A “clash”?

The whole thing makes obvious that the nation is not losing hope in the war. 403 Congressmen know which side their bread is buttered on. While the Dems may have cheered Murtha on, they weren’t going there with him. Do you think he knew that? Does he get some kind of pay-off for being their canary in the coal mine?

Much has been made of Murtha the Warrior by the MSM. For a different perspective The Buffalo News ran this essay as its lede on the op-ed page today. Reading this soldier’s response provided the incentive to go back and find out what happened to Murtha. And by the way, finding the final outcome on google wasn’t easy. I had to drill down through three pages of hits before I found out what happened.

The writer of the piece is David Bellavia. He is from Batavia, New York and earned the Silver Star in Iraq. He has also been recommended for the Medal of Honor. Obviously, Representative Murtha’s words, and their repetitive drumming by the MSM, have their effect.

As the debris continues to settle from the explosion detonated by the defeatist comments by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., I wonder how he expected his statements to be perceived. As an infantryman whose boots are still caked with blood and dust from Iraq, I am beyond confused by the insistence by Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter that he preserve his title as a combat visionary.

As rancor and hyperbole peak, we continue to be fed bastardized statistics and a complete denial that Iraq, according to al-Qaida intercepts, is indeed the front line in the war on terror.

[…]

Iraqi veterans are without apologies for not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Former administrations ignored the danger present in this region for years, and we in the trenches now pay the price for our past inability to confront our enemies. Each day, the enemy hopes that one more 10-plus death toll inflicted against the coalition via a roadside bomb will be the last straw of the American collective will.

Make no mistake. This is a middle- to lower-class war, fought by volunteers of the greatest generation of American warriors ever born. I have written more than 47 recommendations for Bronze Star valor awards for the members of my 34-man infantry platoon. That award, alarmingly, is growing more and more common during this fight. And yet my peers cannot use their awards as a platform to defend their noble struggle, because they are still deep in the fight.

Neither Murtha, who wears his Bronze Star as his badge of authority, nor any other congressional representative has held a position in a skirmish line under fire in Iraq, yet they pontificate to the masses from “their war” experience. Not one has borne witness to the extreme close-quarter nature of this fight or commented on the tearful thanks from a deserving and proud people who need us to stay the course.

Yet Murtha has the extreme audacity to call my peers “broken.” Funny how a man like Murtha, who made his career on detailing his heroism under fire, is the first to chip away at my generation’s valor.

Each day, the Iraqi war veteran grows closer to the embarrassing disrespect of the Vietnam warrior. Each day, legislators like Murtha move us closer to losing a winnable war and abandoning a worthy ally. Staying the course isn’t a campaign slogan; it is a life support message to my peers. Like Vietnam, the American soldier cannot be defeated on the field of battle, only by the failure of the political class to stomach the hardships of combat.

Remember that last sentence:

The American soldier cannot be defeated on the field of battle, only by the failure of the political class to stomach the hardships of combat.

These guys are the grandsons of the “Greatest Generation.” Obviously the gene pool is in good shape. And it was in Vietnam, too, until the MSM smashed our efforts and led millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians to slaughter. As Bellavia says so well, “Staying the course isn’t a campaign slogan; it is a life support message…”

It is the cowards in the MSM we have to be afraid of. Their fear will do us in again if we listen to them. For those of you who read The New York Times, I have a suggestion for your New Year’s resolution. Think of it as what you can do for your country when you help this “newspaper” disappear from the horizon just a little sooner. Don’t renew.

And Thomas Sowell agrees with the soldier from Batavia, New York. In an essay today, entitled Only Irresponsible Politicians, Media Want Iraq Pullout, Mr. Sowell lays it out:

	…No matter how many towns are wrested from the control of the terrorists by American or Iraqi troops, it just isn’t front-page news like the casualty reports or even the doom-saying of some politicians.
	The fact that these doom-saying politicians have been proved wrong, again and again, does not keep their latest outcries from overshadowing the hard-won victories of American troops on the ground in Iraq.
	The doom-sayers claimed that terrorist attacks would make it impossible to hold the elections last January because so many Iraqis would be afraid to go vote. The doom-sayers urged that the elections be postponed.
	But a higher percentage of Iraqis voted in that election — and in a subsequent election — than the percentage of Americans who voted in last year’s Presidential elections.
	Utter ignorance of history enables any war with any casualties to be depicted in the media as an unmitigated disaster.

I think one of the requirements for “J” school is an absence of the history gene. That way you can just go with whatever feels right at the moment. Or, less radically, you can ignore the facts in the name of larger Truths to which only you and your kind are privy.

 
I hate to lose a heroine. There are so few of them, these larger-than-life leaders who dedicate themselves to the common good. “Public servants” we used to call them, though most who collect government salaries have long since ceased to practice anything but self-service.

Hirsi Ali is different. She is dedicated to the public good and has laid her life on the line for her beliefs. But now, it is precisely those beliefs that call her work into question.

As everyone knows, Ali Hirsi and Theo van Gogh made a ten-minute documentary film, Submission that ended up getting van Gogh killed. He was actually executed because the killer couldn’t get access to Hirsi Ali, who was his real target. He had to be satisfied to append a message to her by a knife stuck to the chest of his dying victim.

Ali’s contention has always been that Islam is harmful to those who practice it. As the victim of an horrific clitorectomy — sans anesthesia — when she was five, Ali is living proof of that claim. She has gone from that contention to include all religions in her indictment against harmful beliefs that must be eradicated if people are to be free.

Just how fervent is her atheism is coming to light in proposed legislation to do away with Article 23 of the Dutch constitution. At the heart of her dissent are the clauses from three to seven:

3) Education provided by public authorities shall be regulated by Act of Parliament, paying due respect to everyone’s religion or belief.
(4) The authorities shall ensure that primary education is provided in a sufficient number of public-authority schools in every municipality. Deviations from this provision may be permitted under rules to be established by Act of Parliament on condition that there is opportunity to receive the said form of education.
(5) The standards required of schools financed either in part or in full from public funds shall be regulated by Act of Parliament, with due regard, in the case of private schools, to the freedom to provide education according to religious or other belief.
(6) The requirements for primary education shall be such that the standards both of private schools fully financed from public funds and of public-authority schools are fully guaranteed. The relevant provisions shall respect in particular the freedom of private schools to choose their teaching aids and to appoint teachers as they see fit.
(7) Private primary schools that satisfy the conditions laid down by Act of Parliament shall be financed from public funds according to the same standards as public-authority schools. The conditions under which private secondary education and pre-university education shall receive contributions from public funds shall be laid down by Act of Parliament.

One can understand Ms. Hirsi’s concern, if not her conclusions. Private religious schools of the Muslim variety teach values and a way of life that is not conducive to the integration of its students into Dutch life. On the other hand, the Netherlands form, historically, part of Western Europe’s long association with Judaeo-Christian culture. It is these values, formed in a Dutch sensibility about the world, that private and public schools in the Netherlands are designed to inculcate. Ali would lump all these schools together, and it is this stance which may cause her fall from grace.

Unraveling Ms. Ali’s beliefs to find their core is difficult. As does any politician of merit, her views have changed as she has gained experience and perspective. Thus, her initial allegiance to the Dutch Labour Party changed when the Socialists drew back from her ideas about forbidding further Muslim immigration into the Netherlands. Subsequently, she found refuge in the Liberal Party. Now, with her demand that the 23rd amendment of the Dutch constitution be abolished, her place there is threatened.

Alexandra Colen makes several points about Ali in an essay in Brussels Journal. She begins by questioning Ms. Hirsi’s understanding of the culture in which she has made her home:

Hirsi Ali became known worldwide as a paragon of the successful immigrant: bright, loquacious, a modern woman readily assimilated into Western society, and aware of the necessity to adopt the values of the nation that she has made home. But how Dutch is she really? This seems to depend on whether or not secularism is seen as the core value of Western society, or rather the Judeao-Christian heritage.

That is a very large question, one which Europe has been grappling with for some time.

In addition, Hirsi Ali appears blind to the Dutch world view:

Her recent clash… revealed an appalling insensitivity to issues relating to religion but also to classical liberalism, where parents, rather than the state, have always been allowed to decide about the education of their children. Though Hirsi Ali exercises her freedom of speech to the full (and rightly so – it is an indication of the intolerance of certain Muslims that she needs constant surveillance at the expense of the taxpayers), she seems never to have heard of freedom of religion and freedom of education – basic freedoms which have always been as central to the concept of the free society as the freedom of the late Theo Van Gogh to shout abuse at people he did not like.

Ms. Ali may not have understood the radical differences between the culture in which she was raised and that which she adopted. Her demand to abolish all non-state schools is similar in spirit to Shari’ a law: it is one of absolutes rather than respect for pluralism.

As Ms. Colin points out:

One may also wonder how much Hirsi Ali really knows about the history of the Dutch. Like other European peoples, they have waged fierce political battles over education and the right to organise independent schools where children could be educated in accordance with the religious values of their parents. Without this system, all traces of Christianity would have long since been eradicated from Dutch society by the secular, anti-religious, “enlightened” establishment. As it is, Dutch society has become largely secular and anti-religious. In all its “enlightenment” it has refused to procreate and, in the name of tolerance, it has accepted alternative lifestyles and multiculturalism. To compensate for the demographic void it created, it has opened its doors to millions of immigrants from an entirely different cultural background, thereby creating the problems that some, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali now hope[s] to fight by restricting the existing freedoms of the West even further for the small band of remaining Christians. Their children will be forcefully secularized by the state, because the latter is frantically searching for a means to forcefully secularize the children of Islam. [emphasis added].

So far, the United States has avoided this clash — but barely. The government-run schools are a hodgepodge of p.c. reflexivity and large doses of irrelevant diversity. These institutions continue to churn out poorly educated, historically ignorant graduates. Attempts to move toward school vouchers which would permit some children to attend private or public schools of their choice have been met with furious attacks by the powerful and entrenched system of spoils that represent American education from kindergarten through graduate school.

Given the experience of the Dutch in having won some freedom of choice in this regard, perhaps we are better off searching for an alternative in which our public schools can be encouraged to atrophy as we find alternative methods of real education. Homeschooling is not increasing in a vacuum, after all. It exists because those parents who can find a way to make the sacrifice in order to avoid public schools are doing so in increasing numbers. This continuing growth of schooling at home represents a push against the dhimmification of public education. So far efforts to ban homeschoolers have failed.

The Islamic schools in our midst are a concern. They have been found to teach anti-American sentiments. But then, so do our public schools, if not so blatantly. Thus, banning religious education would not solve our problem.

Part of the problem is the locus of power. If the provenance of schools were returned to the states and localities, many issues parents have with schools as they are would die a natural death. Parents would return in droves to an institution which they helped devise and run; children would be educated in the values and history of their surrounding community and their families. “National” “education” is a hybrid of the worst elements of each.

Meanwhile, Ali Hirsi is an object lesson: it is difficult indeed to truly move away from one’s origins without bringing along some of the trappings, however unwittingly. Ms. Ali’s one-size-fits-all forcing of secularization on Dutch education in order to avoid Muslim education for any child is not distinguishable in kind from the orthodoxy in which she was raised. It’s merely the substitution of one orthodoxy for another.

Ms. Ali has not learned or experienced true pluralism so she cannot see past the limits of orthodoxy, she can only move the chairs around.

 
Jihad Watch has announced the winners for Dhimmi of the Year. The American prize went to Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General and all-around public servant and idiot savant.

Clark’s curriculum vitae is well-enough known, but not having the particulars nailed down, I went a-googling to see what I could find. There were lots of lists and articles, including the usual Wikipedia allotment for a man of, shall we say, his stature. But no particular hit stood out until I tried using the “search within results” function. Another blogger once suggested that should one desire to find the flaws in a particular item (I do believe he was speaking of electronic gadgets) that searching within results using the word “sucks” would bring forth interesting items.

My word, was he ever right! Here is Sandmonkey’s post from December 6th: Ramsey Clark Sucks. To the point, no? This is his blistered opening pass:

The New York Times has done it’s best to make Ramsey Clark- ex-US attorney general and Saddam’s Lawyer- look a little better than the douche bag that he is in their piece on him. But thankfully, the truth shines clearly through the cracks of their B.S

Now, already, I know this is my kind of thinker. He has the same take on the Old Grey Whore that I do — though I rather think his appellation for Mr. Clark — douche bag? — as one more appropriate for The New York Times rather than its subject.

But that’s a small quibble, for Sandmonkey is following the story closely, and he sees the truth shining through (Truth often does that if the clods aren’t too thick). Here, from the very mouth of Herself:

It is a remarkable roll call, the men who have had him at their side at times of confrontation with America and its government: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, Slobodan Milosevic of the former Yugoslavia, Charles Taylor of Liberia; and, at home, fringe figures like the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh, the right-wing gadfly Lyndon LaRouche, and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life term in an American jail for his role in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

A “remarkable roll call”? Is that what they term it? How about an allusion to the fact that those who lie down with dogs wake up with fleas?

Ramsey Clark must indeed be the scratchingest man in the Western hemisphere.

There will be few who won’t concur with Jihad Watch’s conclusions about this man. There may not be sufficient words to convey the opprobrium in which he is held by many of his fellow Americans. Still, it’s nice to see that an Egyptian has the same ideas about what justice means for Saddam Hussein. I mean, if you can use those two things — justice and Hussein — in the same sentence.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

On a related subject — since we are speaking of dhimmi attorneys — the essay on the phenomenon of top-drawer trial lawyers flocking to Gitmo to represent (pro bono, of course) the terrorists who want to kill all of us (including said attorneys), see The National Review for an essay by Deroy Murdock, “Gitmo Legal: Why are top-notch law firms aiding Gitmo detainees?”

What is most fascinating about these folks — forget their “progressive” claptrap agit prop about injustices that break down along gender, class, and racial lines. Just figure this one out: the attorneys from these firms who fly down to hold hands with the terrorists are from the very same firms which represent the companies that built the planes which terrorists flew into the Twin Towers, and the airlines which owned the planes, just to name two creepy connections.

We already know that law firms, even more than mere lawyers, are responsible for much of the mischief in this country. Their reach into all sections of our culture has become a cancer, but with this move into terrorist country, they represent a metastasis. Originally, I’d planned to extract just my favorite firm (in Richmond) from Mr. Murdock’s list as an example of the perfidy of “the Guantanamo Bay Bar Association” (to use Mr. Murdock’s term). But perhaps you ought to see the whole ugly truth of Mr. Murdock’s research for yourself:

	*Covington & Burling (520 lawyers; $337.5 million in expected 2005 earnings). Clients: Coca-Cola, Deere & Co., Emory University, Goodyear, IBM, Merck, Microsoft, the NFL, UBS, and 13 Yemeni enemy combatants at Guantanamo.
	*Dorsey & Whitney, Minneapolis (640 lawyers; estimated 2005 gross: $330 million). Clients: 3M, Cargill, ConocoPhillips, General Mills, Northwest Airlines, and six Bahrainians at Guantanamo.
	*Holland & Hart, Denver (300 attorneys in twelve offices). Clients: Safeway, Sears, the Williams Company, and five Algerian terror suspects, including Dr. Abu Muhammed, Abbar Sufian al Hawary, and Motai Saib.
	*Hunton & Williams, Richmond, Virginia (“850 attorneys. 16 offices. Since 1901”). Clients: Bank of America, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Eli Lilly, General Dynamics, General Electric, and six Yemeni suspected terrorists, including Issam Hamid Ali Bin Ali Al Jayfi.
	*Paul, Weiss ($504 million estimated 2005 revenues). Clients: Chubb, DirecTV Group, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Philip Morris, Time Warner, Viacom, and eleven Saudi Guantanamites.

As one U. S. attorney put it, these people could be helping the survivors of Hurricane Katrina:

“Why our best law firms would dedicate their pro bono resources to suspected terrorists rather than, say, people rendered homeless by Katrina, is beyond me,” marvels one former high-level federal attorney who has been involved with these issues. “By definition, these representations only serve to expand the rights of alien enemy combatants during wartime.”

Their treason is beyond me, too. Perhaps Mr. Spencer at Jihad Watch could keep them in mind for next year’s Dhimmi Awards.

Can you think of a more deserving group?

N.B. Deroy Murdock is a syndicated writer and an advisory board member of Project 21. Check it out.

 
Remember Karen Hughes’ speech to the Saudi women, when the latter harumped to Ms. Hughes that the Saudi law preventing them from driving cars was no problem? No problem for them, anyway, living as they are in professional, pampered lives in Riadyh.

But what about the rest of the women in Saudi Arabia? The ones who have to make a living for real? Well, here’s a tale of ingenuity:

According to al-Reuters, four teachers in a rural school in the south-west province of Al-Baha have gotten together with their driver — literally “gotten together,” as in all four of them marrying him and settling down in the village where they teach.

Now why would they do this, you ask? Because it’s a damn long commute and marrying the person who drives you solves the problem of driving while female, a crime punishable by beatings in the Kingdom of Saud. On the other hand, it’s perfectly permissible in the Alice-in Wonderland form of Wahhabi sharia law for a man to marry four women. Evidently marrying this chauffeur seemed less tiresome than having him drive them home everyday.

The lucky groom will be paid a share of each teacher’s salary, which no doubt obviates the need to find other work.

This is a story made for the movies. Please, someone, call Roger Simon and see if he can get someone onto the screen play. The high farce inherent in this situation should be captured on film. Especially the part where the husband/driver tries to get along with four women with PMS. Good luck to him; he’s going to need it.

Of course, some spoilsport will no doubt issue a fatwa against the writer, actors, director, etc., but what the hey… they can all convert to Hinduism and look forward to reincarnation — one would hope in a more honorable role than the cinematic life.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, here’s a picture of the Queen of Jordan. Kind of makes all those protesting women at Karen Hughes’ speech in Riadyh look silly. And that’s putting it kindly.

 

Hat Tip: American Ex-Pat

 
Well, CP is at it again. He must have at least one Deep Throat among his contacts, because in his latest post he has turned up an original document about a City of New York Department of Investigation internal enquiry into a previous investigation of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound near Hancock, NY, back in 1988.

It seems that some officers of the Bureau of Water Supply Police were a little over-zealous and conducted an investigation of Jamaat ul-Fuqra on the flimsy pretext that a lot of ammunition had exploded in a trailer on their compound.

Naturally, when the investigation came to light, the officers were accused of racist motivations. So the higher-ups looked into the situation. What do you think they did?

A. Commended the officers for their diligence beyond the call of duty.
B. Followed up the officer’s findings with an investigation of their own, co-ordinated with the State Police and the FBI.
C. Buried the report in a pile of paperwork and never looked at it again.
D. Expressed outrage at the insensitivity of the officers to the multicultural and inclusive nature of New York’s rural community, and then reprimanded and/or fired their asses.

Tough call, eh?

Go over to CP’s place to learn the answer.

This week’s winners, the council and the non-council posts, happen to converge. I’ve noticed the phenomenon before, but until now it didn’t seem important to order the way in which they were read. However, in this case, reversing the order of their presentation allows one post to give a broad perspective of the problem while the other winner gets up close and personal about the same issue.

They are the micro and the macro aspects of a particular point of view regarding war, peace, and the unintended consequences of appeasement. Given the way they seem to be looking through a telescopic sight from different ends, the non-council winner comes first, its broad overview placing the huge travesty of the council winner’s story about one individual into its proper and crucial perspective.

In Murderous Peaceniks, Seraphic Secret uses two books, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and A World at Arms by Gerhard L. Weinberg to make his point: pacifists and peace movements bring in their wake a “murderous aftermath.”

At first such a conclusion seems to go against reason. Peace movements cause war?

It would seem so. Tuchman, writing of World War I, saw plainly the effects of those who call for peace:

Tuchman points out that the peace movements in France and England that preceded WWI practically immobilized both countries’ heavy industries to such an extent that when war finally did break out, France and England were at least sixteen months behind the Germans in heavy production. You see, the peace movements advocated a policy of–surprise–appeasement. Give the Germans what they want and they won’t go to war.

What is it in the human soul that uses appeasement to avoid looking at evil in the intentions of the other? Whatever it is, the culture of the West suffers a dreadful case of it.

Weinberg covers the same perspective from World War II:

	The peace movements that preceded WWII were an almost carbon copy of the nonsense spewed before WWI — except that communications had improved greatly. Newspapers like the NY Times wielded immense power. And of course, The NY Times, then as now, astonishingly dim, saw no reason to get involved in foreign conflicts. The peace movements in America, France and England were utterly penetrated by Hitler’s and Stalin’s ruthless agents. And Hitler in a replay of the Kaiser’s attitude, well, Hitler absolutely adored the peace movements. He kept a close eye on them, and smiled the whole time. They were, he understood, his best allies. As long as these fools kept up their blather Hitler would be able to swallow whole countries.
	Once again, the pacifists and peaceniks advocated appeasement. Just give Herr Hitler what he wants and surely he won’t go to war.
	[…]
	Weinberg points out that by the time Great Britain declared war on Germany, England (and America) were two full years behind Germany in armament production. Once again, the peace camps made sure that the great Democracies were at their weakest at a time when they were literally fighting for their very existence.

Mr. Avrech makes the case for Vietnam’s peace movement here and what it cost the Vietnamese and eventually the Cambodian people. Slaughter in the name of peace.

What’s wrong with this picture? Three generations with three wars and three “peace” movements (think bowel movements) filled with people who want to interfere with their nation’s ability to wage war in order to win security for itself and the greater world at large. Those who inhabit the pacifists’ world do not learn from history, they merely repeat it tunelessly and at high volume. Peace at any price, as long as it’s not my hide.

Seraphic Secret lists the three components of all Peace Movements:

Rule # 1 They cannot imagine nor confront evil. To which I might add, this lack of imagination is actually a refusal to accept that evil is part of the human condition. These are the same folks who want Gismo closed in the name of human decency. None of them are offering to take a terrorist home; they just want to set them free.

Rule # 2 They do not care about history. Again, this is a failure of imagination. Have you ever noticed that many of the military are “amateur” historians? They recognize instinctively that in order to understand the terrain, you must understand what others, who were here before you, thought of it.

Rule # 3 They are always secretly financed and penetrated by the enemy. This is harder for pacifists to see. The enemy, of whatever stripe, is at heart a utopian. The enemy believes without reservation that their way will bring about a superior order and rule. Pacifists, being utopians themselves, hold the same illusion — though their variety of utopia may differ radically from the one held by those who infiltrate their ranks.

That brings us to the present and to the fourth generation of useful idiots pacifists. Seraphic Secrets says:

	And now the Peace Movement is on the march again.
	About Iraq.
	About The War on Terror.
	God protect us.

Somehow, I feel an overwhelming need to pick up again The Screwtape Letters. Perhaps if more of us studied the strategies of evil, as laid down so cunningly — and so wittily — by C. S. Lewis, there would be fewer useful idiots. More than sixty years ago, Lewis described hell thusly: “[where] everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

God protect us.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Meanwhile, from the other end of the telescope, Sundries Shack won the council vote for his story “…have a great time dieing in the war. From, Miguel.”

It makes sense that this incident would pull such attention in the blogosphere. If you follow the links in Sundries Shack’s post, you see how it branches out in indignation and raw anger.

This is a story the corruption of a child. As such, it brings us face-to-face with the horror of evil perpetrated on one little boy and it renders fresh all the evils —all the slings and arrows — that came our way before we were old enough to defend against them. We read Miguel’s little note to a soldier and our soul shudders. Again.

The surrounding circumstances aren’t what matter. What is important is that someone urged or helped a child write a poisonous note to a wounded soldier, wishing him not good health, but death. Here is what he wrote:

	Dear Soldier,
	Have a great time in the war.
	And have a great time dieing in the war.
	From,
	Miguel Gallier
	P.S. Die (with bullet holes drawn carefully around the word “Die”)

That may be the most succinct expression of evil I’ve ever seen and it was written by someone not old enough to bear the moral responsibility for his actions —but obviously written at the behest of someone who carries a weight of evil difficult to fathom. As Sundries’ Shack puts it:

	I’m the oldest of nine kids. I’ve been around children all my life. Let me tell you that unless an adult administers careful control, almost daily doctrination, and herding away from natural instincts, a five year-old boy is going to think a soldier is about one of the coolest things in the world. Toy stores are filled to the brim with toy M-16s, green helmets, binoculars, and bags of little green army men and their tanks and jeeps for that very reason. GI Joe has been popular for longer than I’ve been alive because of that.
	Soldiers are heroes to little boys almost universally unless someone purposefully and deliberately tells them otherwise. To turn the mind of a little boy from thinking a soldier is a hero and someone to be emulated to getting him to sit down and write hate mail to a soldier takes more than just casual talks around the dinner table.
	It takes intent. It takes effort. Someone deliberately coaxed that child into writing that note…

And so he did write it and thus it ended up on the hospital bed of a soldier at Walter Reid.

Think about this: little Miguel will celebrate Christmas. He will wait in great, impatient expectation for his presents. He will have no idea what has been done in his name.

God protect him.

As usual, there’s lots more to read at the Watcher’s place. Stop by and give him a holler. No beer, but he’s got protein shakes to share. ’Tis the season and all…

And by the way, welcome New Sisyphus, the latest council member. I’m looking forward to his entries. And bid fond farewell to Wallo World. I loved his posts on the disenfranchisement of former felons. Wallo has great gravitas and I will miss him on the Council. On the other hand, I understand his decision to give up blogging. For me, it fills a hole in my soul — which is probably one reason I’m so erratic a blogger…and so greedy that I have two blogs in order to be able to ignore one and feel guilty about it.

 
There’s trouble brewing in Pakistan — big trouble, the kind that comes when state religion begins to scuffle for power with secular government. And to scuffle more adroitly.

President Musharraf has his hands full; many consider his ability to survive so far quite remarkable. Despite his maneuvers against MMA, the large and powerful Islamist party (these were the people who raised such a brouhaha about women running in marathons, even women in burqas were suspect) seems to be winning the war for hearts and minds. According to Adnkronos International,

Pakistan’s federal government has decided to conduct a major operation against religious leaders who last year asked people not to say the funeral prayers of any soldier who died in fighting rebels in South Waziristan, along the Afghan border. However, there is tension in the capital Islamabad, where law enforcement agencies are on high alert to clamp down on influential clerics, but the fear of fierce retaliation has to date prevented them from proceeding.

Don’t forget that Pakistan is the same place where there were riots over the alleged desecration of the Koran at Gitmo; it’s the same country that raised money for a bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist(s) who’d dared to draw a picture of Mohammed; and this is the cultural sink which practices an interesting form of Islamic divorce: throwing acid in the face of one’s wife and then waiting for her to die of the burns. Costs about fifty cents.

In Pakistan, abuse of women has been estimated at 80% or more. In the rural areas, honor horrors like the gang rape doled out to Mukhtar Mai are common. That’s why the fact that she is still alive even though she fought back against an entrenched system makes her survival seem so miraculous. We cannot help but admire those who manage to transcend brutal limits and even improve the lives of those around them in the process.

Many Pakistanis admire the Taliban. The “rebels” on the Afghan border are largely composed of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. How they might feel about these people when the fundamentalists took over and the music died could be another matter. For the moment, influential clerics have the stage and they’re using it to good effect:

In an attempt to clamp down on this campaign against the army, the two leading clerics at the Lal Masjid, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, are already under siege. Last week, Pakistan’s interior ministry issued a notification in which it termed the two brothers Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Ghazi Abdul Rasheed as “Badmash Basta Alif” or high-level hoodlums. However, security agencies have not conducted any raids to arrest them.

These two brothers run two schools, one for girls and one for boys. When the police tried to take on the girls’ school many of the students were hurt and the public outcry forced Musharraf to back off.

Pakistan has made some strides in moving toward the 16th century but it has a long row to hoe. After all, this is the country of the madrassas that the Saudis funded, this is the black hole American Islamists come to learn their terror training, this is the country of origin for the families of the “British” men who bombed the London trains. It is the land of the treacherous atomic scientist, A. Q. Khan, and it is the source of much of the trouble for India, its sworn enemy.

Maybe that’s the problem. A country which divides itself because one group thinks itself better than the other may not ever be at peace with itself. It must move toward ever more rigid interpretations of the deeply-imbedded sense of superiority which led to partition in the first place. Consider where the American South might have gone culturally had it won its attempt to sunder The Union. A pyrrhic victory, indeed.

Afghanistan has its problems and sorrows. A country which depends on opium as a large part of its GDP is on shaky ground. But Afghanistan got a full taste of the Taliban flavor of Islam and they’re not going back there any time soon. Their elections and the stance they have taken on education for girls, on alliances with the West — just to name a few good decisions since the American invasion – place their feet firmly on the road to modernity.

Poor Pakistan has not had the room to make that decision. And this crowded, easily-led-to-hysterics populace has no space in which to think about the consequences of its reactive stance on trivia. Those who cannot distinguish between the frivolity of a cartoon and the seriousness of radioactive weapons are in real trouble.

Considering the global reach of what would, in an earlier time, simply have been a small, far-away country, we’d best pay attention to what they’re doing. The Danish government takes their reactive lunacy seriously. So should we.

Hat tip: Counterterrorism Blog.

 
My previous post about jihad and heroin caused such an unexpectedly vigorous response in the comments that a clarification is required.

Point One: Heroin will not be legalized in the United States for the foreseeable future. But a conversation about the damage done by its proscription — both socially and to our national security — is in order.

Point Two: If heroin were legalized without any concomitant changes in our current degraded narcissistic entitlement culture, the results would be disastrous.

The Nanny State encroaches on us more and more every year, making sure we stay warm, eat our vegetables, and generally behave like good little children. As our benevolent and all-seeing parental substitute, Nanny supplies us with all good things and takes care of our every need.

But the government giveth, and the government taketh away. The flip side of Nanny is that she keeps the liquor cabinet locked to make sure that her charges don’t do irresponsible things.

Until the federal government is reformed according to its original constitutional mandate, which means that it would of necessity cease interfering (“for your own good”) in every aspect of its citizens’ lives, the legalization of heroin and other narcotics would be disastrous.

In the behavioral sink we have unintentionally created, heroin users would have a “right” to their drug at taxpayers’ expense. They would have a “right” to be supplied with clean needles, to be given treatment and counseling at public expense, and to be housed and cared for when their habit rendered them unable to do so for themselves.

We need to view drug users in a different light. As commenter Jesse Clark said in the previous thread, “Call me cold and heartless, but I’ve always believed that everybody is responsible for their own actions.”

Until the entitlement culture changes, legalization is neither feasible nor desirable. But that does not mean that we shouldn’t keep talking about it.

For that matter, it is imperative that we continue a dialogue about the manifold pernicious consequences of Nanny’s interference in people’s lives.

 
The war against the Great Islamic Jihad is not a static one. Our armed forces and intelligence agencies learn from experience and design new techniques and technologies to meet the requirements of 21st century asymmetrical warfare.

Our enemies are adapting at the same time. The Islamic zealots behind the current war are developing new strategies to counter the efforts of the Western powers. As Middle Eastern governments crack down on the Islamic “charities” under pressure from the United States and its allies, the mujahideen in various Islamofascist terrorist groups find themselves suffering from a lack of funds.

To compensate, the jihadis are adopting creative alternatives. One of the most lucrative examples is the heroin smuggling business.

An article by David E. Kaplan in last week’s U.S. News and World Report, Paying For Terror, outlines the extensive Islamist smuggling enterprise that has grown up around the Afghan heroin trade:

	And if al Qaeda itself is staying out of drugs, its allies certainly are not. The booming drug trade has given a strong second wind to the stubborn insurgency being waged by the Taliban and Islamist warlords like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Both the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami army control key smuggling routes out of the country, giving them the ability to levy taxes and protection fees on drug caravans. Crime and terrorism experts are also alarmed over the corrosive, long-term effects of all the drug money, not just within Afghanistan but across the region. The ballooning dope trade is rapidly creating narco-states in central Asia, destroying what little border control exists and making it easier for terrorist groups to operate. Ancient smuggling routes from the Silk Road to the Arabian Sea are being supercharged with tons of heroin and billions of narcodollars. Within Afghanistan, drug-fueled corruption is pervasive; governors, mayors, police, and military are all on the take. A raid this year in strategically located Helmand province came up with a whopping 9 1/2 tons of heroin–stashed inside the governor’s own office.
	The smuggling routes lead from landlocked Afghanistan to the south and east through Pakistan, to the west through Iraq, and to the north through central Asia. Throughout the region the amounts of drugs seized are jumping, along with rates of crime, drug addiction, and HIV infection. Particularly hard hit are Afghanistan’s impoverished northern neighbors, the former Soviet republics of Kirgizstan and Tajikistan. Widely praised demonstrations in Kirgizstan this year, which overthrew the regime of strongman Askar Akayev, have brought to power an array of questionable figures. “Entire branches of government are being directed by individuals tied to organized crime,” warns Svante Cornell of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. “The whole revolution smells of opium.”
	Neighboring republics are little better off. Central Asia’s major terrorist threat, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, has largely degenerated into a drug mafia, officials say. In Kazakhstan the interior minister tried to investigate corruption by going undercover in a truck packed with 9 tons of watermelons, motoring 1,200 miles from the Kirgiz Republic to the Kazakh capital. His team had to pay bribes to 36 different police and customs officials en route–some as little as $1.50. (Others merely accepted their bribe in melons.) The cargo was never inspected. What is happening in Iran, meanwhile, is “a national tragedy,” according to the U.N.’s Costa. So much Afghan dope is being shipped into the country that it now has the world’s highest per capita rate of addiction. The ruling mullahs in Tehran have taken it seriously; Iranian security forces have fought deadly battles with drug traffickers along their border, losing some 3,600 lives in the past 16 years. But even as their troops fight, the corruption has reached high officials of the Iranian government, who are using drug profits as political patronage, sources tell U.S. News. “There are indications,” says Cornell, “that hard-line conservatives [i.e. the mullahs] are up to their ears in the Afghan opium trade.”

Step back a couple of paces and look at this situation:

• Our enemies are funding their struggle against us by trafficking in heroin and other illegal drugs.
• The trade in heroin is so lucrative that corruption is inevitable.
• After four years of occupation by American troops, the heroin trade in Afghanistan has not been curbed; it has ballooned.
• The customer base for the heroin trade lies principally in the United States and other affluent Western countries.

The obvious question is: If four years of occupation by the American military cannot interdict the supply of illegal drugs, what possibly could?

This failure refutes the current wisdom that drug use can be controlled by:
1. making drugs illegal, and
2. attempting to cut off the supply.

Neither solution has ever worked.

Consider this: if heroin (and other drugs) were no longer illegal, but were simply regulated by the government as are alcohol and tobacco, if an addict’s fix were $2 instead of $40, how would that affect the funding of terrorist enterprises?

Before the comments and emails come down on me like a ton of bricks, let me hasten to say that an initial increase in the addiction rate is a certainty, if drugs were legalized — look at what happened when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. But the increase in heroin addiction would not lead to an increase in the crime rate. At present, heroin users commit crimes — muggings, burglaries, etc. — to pay for their fix.

As heroin consumption stabilized — much like alcohol before it — its use would confined to those who employ mind-altering substances to self-medicate.

But would that human toll be worse than the consequences of our current policies?

• We imprison thousands upon thousands of users and low-level dealers, thereby turning them into hardened criminals.
• We enrich the kingpins of crime as our users pay the inflated prices created by keeping drugs illegal.
• We turn addicts into muggers and burglars and murderers in order to feed their habit.
• We enable cynicism and corruption as the drugs continue to flow and police forces, officials, and whole governments are bribed and bought off and extorted by the drug barons.

On the other hand, how many 7-11 clerks have been shot by cigarette addicts cleaning out the cash register to pay for their fix? How many governments are corrupted by the trade in illicit alcohol?

It’s time to reconsider the havoc we wreaked with our “War on Drugs.” It is a war every bit as successful as the one we waged on poverty, and both “wars” have done more harm than good.

This is not to excuse or promote drug addiction. We must recognize the limits of what can reasonably be done by mere human beings. Attempting to stifle the addictive aspects of human nature is an exercise in futility. We simply cannot do it.

Go ahead and flame me. But remember this: when Johnny Dopefiend pays for his latest fix, his money eventually works its way into the pockets of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his comrades in jihad.

Is this what we want?

 
Today is the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. Shrinkwrapped – surprise of surprises – was on duty on the night of December 8th, 1980, when Lennon’s killer was brought in. He has posted an account of his evaluation of Mark David Chapman:

…I spoke briefly with Chapman, did a cursory physical (part of the admissions process), wrote some orders and left. He was, in a word, remarkably unremarkable. He expression was vacant and his eyes were dull. He spoke softly in a near monotone and answered my questions without any elaboration. Perhaps in retrospect I am adding to my memory but I recall telling my wife when I came home the next day that he had struck me as a deeply empty person.

Read the whole thing.

W.W., a commenter, took the time to send a link he thought Gates of Vienna readers might enjoy.

This coin was listed on a forum for coin collectors and included a link to American Numismatic Rarities, LLC, which gives the specifics of the item listing.

This 1841 Webster copper one cent piece (“millions for defence” hard times token) sold for $437.00. Since the starting bid was $165.00, one wonders if the newest depredations of the Barbary Pirates engendered interest in the coin.

As the poster on the coin forum remarked:

The “tribute” referred to was the millions paid in the 18th century, shortly after independence, to ransom American hostages – now lacking the protection of the British Navy – from the Barbary pirates of the Ottoman Empire.

This tribute was a substantial proportion of federal revenues at the time. President Jefferson didn’t want to pay it and sent the little U.S. fleet and its Marines into action. Together with Arab allies and foreign mercenaries, U.S. forces reached “the shores of Tripoli” and subdued its pasha into peace. This task was repeated under President Monroe a decade later, and this time piracy was ended permanently.

What he refers to, of course, is President Monroe’s response (sometimes attributed also to Pickney when he was dealing with the traitorous French demands for “gifts” in exchange for help from them) to the Berber pashas’ demands for money in exchange for being left alone on the high seas. To which Monroe is supposed to have replied: “millions for defence and not one penny for tribute.”

Now there’s a good negotiating baseline that the State Department might consider adopting. Instead, they seem to go by the “don’t-rock-the-boat, we-don’t-know-how-to-swim” routine.

What do you suppose a coin struck for the State Department might look like?

 
Another Christmas-free “Winter Holiday Season” seems to be shaping up nicely. Even the non-denominational Jolly White-Bearded Fat Man in a Red Suit has to watch his speech carefully lest he inadvertently let slip the dread C-word. Employees who greet the public with “Happy Holidays” do so using that brittle smile that says they’re wary of the PC Sensitivity Police concealed behind the nearby potted poinsettias.

But not here at Gates of Vienna.

Last year during the Kwanzaa and Hanukkah season I was suffering from a dearth of Christmas. After completing a transaction in the post office I forgot myself for a moment and wished the clerk a merry Christmas. Her eyes lit up, she smiled broadly, and wished me a vigorous merry Christmas in return.

It made me realize that there are plenty of people out there who are hungry for the old ways. So live dangerously: go out on a limb and say the forbidden word. Who but the truly Grinchy could take offense?

In aid of this endeavor I made the little logo shown above. Borrow it if you want to put on your own blog.

Merry Christmas, y’all!