Late Night Laugh: When The Food Comes To You
June 16, 2008
Via Vanderleun, the source of much good in the blogoshere:
Bobby Jindal- GOP’s Kucinich?
June 16, 2008
The Dems have Kucinich. It looks like the GOP has their own contender for party nut job.
Can either side field a normal candidate?
Bobby Jindal, the 36-year old governor of Louisiana, is being taken seriously by the national press as a candidate on the shortlist to be John McCain’s Vice President. No one doubts that he’s a political prodigy — his impressive resume includes stints as president of the state university system, a Congressman and now governor.
But one of Jindal’s job titles hasn’t gotten much attention — and it just might prompt a few questions if his Veep candidacy gains steam: Exorcist.
As others noted during his 2003 and 2007 gubernatorial campaigns (see update), in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.
Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal — who graduated from Brown University in 1991, was a Rhodes Scholar, and had been accepted at Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay — was completely serious about the encounter. He even said the experience “reaffirmed” his faith.
…Daily Kingfish and DailyKos discussed Jindal’s exorcism experience during his gubernatorial campaigns in 2003 and 2007, and Jezebel parodied it as recently as last month. The topic has renewed relevance now that Jindal is being discussed as a possible vice presidential candidate. But credit where credit is due for these earlier reports.
The McCain campaign might want to look elsewhere for a VP candidate- and use Google as an investigative tool.
Just a thought.
Program To Improve The French Economy: Import Poles
June 16, 2008
How do the French improve an economy at the mercy of unions, socialists and a 35 hour work week with 30 days of mandated paid vacation? Import Polish workers who actually want to work.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced during a one-day visit to Warsaw that the French labor market would open up to Poles July 1. Sarkozy met with President Lech Kaczyński and Prime Minister Donald Tusk May 28 and delivered a speech in the parliament.
Until recently, French policy had been to maintain employment limits for citizens from Poland and other new EU member states until May 2009.
“This decision has a political and symbolic significance for us,” Tusk said. “Thanks to it we know that the European Union, as a common home of all member nations, is a fact, not just a slogan.”
During the visit, Kaczyński and Sarkozy signed a declaration on Polish-French strategic partnership that promotes close political, economic, social and cultural cooperation in bilateral relations, and in the European Union and NATO.
Sarkozy said he believed Poland would contribute to the success of the French EU presidency that starts July 1. He said that France would carry out that role “shoulder to shoulder” with Poland and that Poland and France had “many mutual interests, including common agricultural policy.”
Sarkozy also thanked Kaczyński for his “compromise” concerning the Lisbon Treaty. The Polish head of state noted that in the treaty negotiations in Brussels, the French president played a key role since he “undertook to break the ice, which had seemed unbreakable.”
At a news conference held jointly with Tusk, Sarkozy said that the issues discussed by the pair included NATO, the Polish initiative for the EU’s eastern energy policy and defending the EU common agricultural policy. The two leaders also signed four ministerial agreements concerning recognition of academic titles and diplomas, cooperation in science, debt reduction, and protection of confidential information.
In a speech to the Polish parliament, Sarkozy stressed the closeness of Paris and Warsaw on many key international issues. He also made several references to shared history and the tradition of friendly mutual relations.
Needless to say, the French are a bit late to the party.
“Polish workers are well-known for their reliability, strong work and high motivation…It is envisaged that Polish workers could help address shortages in factories, offices, hospitals, shops, agriculture and IT industries.”
Expect coffee house ‘intellectuals’ dressed in black and chain smoking Gauloises to wring their hands and write about the upcoming French national suicide.
Frenchmen, working? SACRE BLEU!!
From Jail To Jihad
June 16, 2008
‘Today’s prisoners, tomorrows terrorists?‘
Reporter Amil Khan uncovers the radicalisation and recruitment of young prisoners to jihadist Islam. He hears from former prisoners who claim they were taught behind bars that Islam justifies crimes against non-Muslims. Khan hears how those prisoners, on release, are directed to mosques and contacts who further their extremist beliefs.
Former gang members tell Khan that when young prisoners return to the streets and a life of crime they do so with a renewed sense of justification from their new-found religious ideology, an ideology they then spread to their gang members.
Khan meets current prison officers who say they are unable to cope with the problem and examines the prison service’s attempts to tackle the problem by employing religious experts to bring prisoners back from the brink. And he follows a team in South London who are trying to ‘de-radicalise’ youngsters who have been seduced by extremism.
Natan Sharansky in The Wall Street Journal
As the American president embarked on his farewell tour of Europe last week, Der Spiegel, echoing the sentiments of a number of leading newspapers on the Continent, pronounced “Europe happy to see the back of Bush.” Virtually everyone seems to believe that George W. Bush’s tenure has undermined trans-Atlantic ties.
There is also a palpable sense in Europe that America will move closer to Europe in the years ahead, especially if Barack Obama wins the presidential election.
But while Mr. Bush is widely seen by Europeans as a religious cowboy with a Manichean view on the world, Europe’s growing rift with America predates the current occupant of the White House. When a French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, declared that his country “cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyper power,” President Clinton was in the seventh year of his presidency and Mr. Bush was still governor of Texas.
The trans-Atlantic rift is not the function of one president, but the product of deep ideological forces that for generations have worked to shape the divergent views of Americans and Europeans. Foremost among these are different attitudes toward identity in general, and the relationship between identity and democracy in particular.
To Europeans, identity and democracy are locked in a zero-sum struggle. Strong identities, especially religious or national identities, are seen as a threat to democratic life. This is what Dominique Moisi, a special adviser at the French Institute of International Relations, meant when he said in 2006 that “the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare.”
This attitude can be traced back to the French Revolution, when the forces fighting under a universal banner of “liberty, equality and fraternity” were pitted against the Church.
In contrast, the America to which pilgrims flocked in search of religious freedom, and whose revolution amounted to an assertion of national identity, has been able to reconcile identity and freedom in a way no country has been able to match. That acute observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, long ago noted the “intimate union of the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty” that was pervasive in America and made it so different than his native France.
The idea that strong identities are an inherent threat to democracy and peace became further entrenched in Europe in the wake of World War II. Exponents of what I call postidentity theories – postnationalism, postmodernism and multiculturalism – argued that only by shedding the particular identities that divide us could we build a peaceful world. Supranational institutions such as the EU, the International Court of Justice and the United Nations were supposed to help overcome the prejudices of the past and forge a harmonious world based on universal values and human rights.
While these ideas have penetrated academia and elite thinking in the U.S., they remain at odds with the views of most Americans, who see no inherent contradiction between maintaining strong identities and the demands of democratic life. On the contrary, the right to express one’s identity is seen as fundamental. Exercising such a right is regarded as acting in the best American tradition.
The controversy over whether Muslims should be able to wear a veil in public schools underscores the profound difference in attitudes between America and Europe. In Europe, large majorities support a law banning the veil in public schools. In the U.S., students wear the veil in public schools or state colleges largely without controversy.
At the same time severe limits are placed on the harmless expression of identity in the public square, some European governments refuse to insist that Muslim minorities abide by basic democratic norms. They turn a blind eye toward underage marriage, genital mutilation and honor killings.
The reality is that Muslim identity has grown stronger, has become more fundamentalist, and is increasingly contemptuous of a vapid “European” identity that has little vitality. All this may help explain why studies consistently show that efforts to integrate Muslims into society are much less effective in Europe than in America, where identity is much stronger.
Regardless of who wins in November, the attitudes of Americans toward the role of identity in democratic life are unlikely to change much. Relative to Europe, Americans will surely remain deeply patriotic and much more committed to their faiths.
Europeans, meanwhile, may move closer to the Americans in their views. The recent shift to the right in Europe – from the victory of conservative leaders like Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi to the surprise defeat of the leftist mayor of London, Ken Livingston – might partially reflect a belated awareness there that a unique heritage is under assault by a growing Muslim fundamentalism.
The logic of the struggle against this fundamentalist threat will inevitably demand the reassertion of the European national and religious identities that are now threatened.
Europeans are now saying goodbye to Mr. Bush, and hoping for the election of an American president who they believe shares their sophisticated postnational, postmodern and multicultural attitudes. But don’t be surprised if, in the years ahead, European leaders, in order to protect freedom and democracy at home, start sounding more and more like the straight-shooting cowboy from abroad they now love to hate.
Fissionable Material
June 16, 2008
Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s most vicious and vile rulers has few friends in the civilized world. Who does a tyrant turn to when he gets lonely?
South African Muslim extremists, that’s who. Mugabe has cozied up to PAGAD, the South African militant Muslim group with ties to Hamas and Al Qaeda. From In The National Interest:
In 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported growing concern among security analysts that “Islamist extremists, including Al-Qaeda, are using South Africa’s open society as a safe haven and a base to raise funds, launder money and plan terror operations.” One U.S. counterterrorism official told The Journal, “[w]e are detecting so much smoke lately that something’s got to be burning down there somewhere.” In July 2003, the Israeli Security Services declared that there is “recognizable [Hamas] activity in South Africa…”
One of the most well-established Islamist organizations in South Africa is Qibla, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Formed in 1980 by radical Imam Achmed Cassiem to promote the establishment of an Islamic state in South Africa, Qibla uses the Iranian revolution as its model…
While hosting a number of indigenous terror groups, South Africa has also been a haven for international terrorist organizations. According to a variety of media reports, Israel lodged a formal complaint with the South African government in 1996 regarding the existence of five Hezbollah training camps. In 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported growing concern among security analysts that “Islamist extremists, including Al-Qaeda, are using South Africa’s open society as a safe haven and a base to raise funds, launder money and plan terror operations.”
South Africa has developed close ties with Iran, arguably the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism. Speaking on July 21, 2003 at the 7th South Africa-Iran Joint Bilateral Commission (established to expand political, economic and trade links between the two countries), Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamani Zuma touted “the shared values between South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran, namely the promotion of democracy, justice, peace and prosperity.”
Four members of the military junta now ruling Zimbabwe in Mugabe’s name are holding secret meetings with representatives of PAGAD, the notorious Islamic terrorist organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa.
The first meeting was held last week in a Government safe house in Kumalo, Bulawayo, when seven members of PAGAD met with General Constantine Chiwenga, Police Chief Augustine Chihuri, prison boss General Paradzai Zimondi, and Air Marshall Perence Shiri.
The meeting was designed to establish a flow of arms into Zimbabwe via PAGAD now the Chinese source has dried up. The South Africans also advised the Zimbabwe strong men on various terror tactics. A further meeting was scheduled for June 20.
PAGAD stands, ironically, for People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, and was first established in 1996 as an off-shoot of the Islamic Qibla movement. Initially it acted as a vigilante group, but its later activities, including the bombings of synagogues, gay night clubs, and similar targets led to it being designated a terrorist organisation by the South African government.
Also seen as ironic is the fact that Mugabe, far from being an Islam sympathiser, is a loudly-proclaimed Roman Catholic.
The development comes at a time when Jewish agencies are said to be planning an emergency airlift of the 350-strong Jewish community currently living in Zimbabwe. However, some of the older members of the community are said to be still reluctant to leave.
According to a Zanu-PF source, the terrorism advice given by PAGAD to the junta members last week included the deliberate murder on one’s own supporters, then blaming the crime on the opposition and taking suitably repressive measures. Some observers believe this has already been tried out with the recent murder of two Zanu-PD members in Shamva.
The South Africans are also understood to have promised to supply experts to train inexperienced Zanu-PF militia in terrorist tactics.
The meetings come at a time when President Mugabe is saying openly that Zanu-PF will never allow the opposition MDC to take over the country, and hinting that the current situation could lead to civil war.
The harassment of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has continued, with his arrest, along with 11 party members, on Saturday. He was held for three hours, then released. No charges were brought.
MDC General Secretary Tendai Biti, arrested last week, appeared in court at the weekend, after a judge ordered that the police produce him. Today, Monday, a decision on whether to charge him with treason is expected to be made.
Meanwhile 40 African leaders have published an open letter calling for the Zimbabwe presidential election on June 27 to be free and fair. Signatories include former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Archbishop Tutu of South Africa, and Jerry Rawlings, the former leader of Ghana. Observers believe this is a sign that Mugabe’s previously blanket African support may be starting to slip.
For more on PAGAD, see pages 10-11 of Allah’s Bomb, The Islamic Quest For Nuclear Weapons.
The War on Terror is no bumper sticker.
