CDR Salamander

In 1906, W.J. McGee, Director of the St. Louis Public museum, published one of the most detailed and graphic descriptions of the ravages of extreme dehydration ever recorded. McGee's account was based on the experiences of Pablo Valencia, a forty-year-old sailor-turned-prospector, who survived almost seven days in the Arizona desert without water....

Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth .... A lump seems to form in the throat ... severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate... [then come] the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as "a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth." Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers have been known to moan and bellow.

Next is the "blood sweats" phase, involving "a progressive mummification of the initially living body." The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying
sense of drowning.

Finally ... there is living death, the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees: "His lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself as black as the gums...; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet ... were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood" (Philbrick, 126-128).

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 08:57

MEMORANDUM FROM YALE LAW SCHOOL

TO: The Law School Community
FROM: Harold Hongju Koh
DATE: February 1, 2005
RE: Military Recruiting and the Spring 2005 Interviewing Program

As you know, the Defense Department has lately interpreted the Solomon Amendment to require denial of federal funds to institutions of higher education that withhold assistance from military recruiters who will not pledge to refrain from discrimination in recruiting.

Last year, groups of Yale Law School faculty and students filed suit in the federal district court in Bridgeport challenging the legality of the Defense Department's interpretation of the Solomon Amendment. On December 9, 2004, Judge Janet C. Hall (D.Conn.) heard argument on motions for summary judgment in these cases. A few weeks earlier, in the FAIR litigation, the Third Circuit directed entry of a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Solomon Amendment, stating that "[t]he Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives, and no compelling governmental interest has been shown to deny this freedom. ... In this context, the Solomon Amendment cannot condition federal funding on law schools' compliance with it."

Yesterday, Judge Hall granted summary judgment in favor of the faculty plaintiffs. Judge Hall's opinion confirmed that the Solomon Amendment has been unconstitutionally applied to Yale Law School and permanently enjoined the Defense Department "from enforcing it against Yale University based upon Yale Law School's Non-Discrimination Policy." Judge Hall's opinion declared: "The Solomon Amendment violates the [faculty] plaintiffs' First Amendment right to freedom of speech.. . . " Yale Law School, "acting through the Faculty, has been unconstitutionally coerced into foregoing its own message [of nondiscrimination] and into assisting DoD in the dissemination of DoD's message of its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy...." "In addition, DoD offers no evidence to support a finding that the Solomon Amendment, and the suspension of the N[on-]D[iscrimination] P[olicy] for the past two years at YLS that it caused, has advanced its goal of raising an army through effective recruiting." ... "[T]he Solomon Amendment is not narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest, and thus unjustifiably burdens the Faculty Members' First Amendment right of expressive association."

I am gratified by Judge Hall's judgment, which seems to me clearly correct. Her ruling brings us closer to the day when all members of our community have an equal opportunity to serve in our Nation's armed forces. This Thursday, February 3, 2005, the Spring 2005 Interviewing Program will begin. In light of the District Court's opinion and injunction, Yale Law School will enforce its nondiscrimination policy during the Spring 2005 Interviewing Program without exception.

Harold Hongju Koh Dean, Yale Law School

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 23:17

"I'm not afraid of dying, and killing doesn't frighten me," Algerian-born Canadian Fateh Kamel said on an Italian counterterrorism intercept. "If I have to press the remote control, vive the jihad!"

Kamel, who jet-setted among Afghanistan, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, was arrested in Jordan on December 15, 1999, and extradited to France. He was convicted of distributing bogus passports and conspiring to blow up Paris Metro stations. He was sentenced April 6, 2001, to eight years in prison.

But after fewer than four years, France sprang Kamel for "good behavior." (What is it about iron bars and German shepherds that mellows people so?) Kamel flew home to Canada January 29.

"When Kamel arrived in Montreal, the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] was not even at the airport to greet him," Canada's National Post reported last month. "As far as they're concerned, he is an ex-convict who has done his time and has committed no crimes in Canada."

Paul Martin, Canada's Liberal premier, attended a May 2000 dinner while finance minister. Its hosts: The Federation of Association of Canadian Tamils, a front for the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan terrorist group. It has killed at least 60 people, including two Americans, and injured more than 1,400 others, the State Department reports. Martin, and international cooperation minister Maria Minna, ignored security officials who urged them to stay away. Wooing Canada's sizable Tamil minority apparently was irresistible

The warm U.S.-Canadian relationship, illustrated by our 3,145-mile unprotected boundary, cooled somewhat when Ottawa recently refused to help Washington develop defenses against incoming nuclear-tipped missiles. But that modest dispute will pale beside the northward-flowing rancor that will erupt if a terrorist attack kills innocent Americans, and U.S. officials discover that the butchers slipped past complacent Canadians.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 11:35

And for the rest of the world, uhhh, for other nations, strengthening the United Nations is vital because contrary to the assumptions made in this debate so far; there is no country in the world that can guarantee its own security..

"Secondly, as far as we're concerned, war always means failure,"

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 17:48

"(Osama bin Laden) sees himself as something of the George Washington of the Arabian peninsular"

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 10:37

Three invited pro-military speakers were shocked last Friday when they arrived for a West Seattle High student assembly to confront a theater stage strewn with figures costumed as Iraqi men, women and children splashed with blood.
It was a warm-up for the "Iraq Awareness Assembly"….

For Nadine Gulit of Operation Support Our Troops, the spectacle was sickening.
She had been asked by student organizers to provide three speakers and she delivered.

"I was told there would be three on each side. No debates. No rebuttal," she said in the e-mail she fired off to members of the Seattle School Board. "At no time was I referred to a teacher nor did a teacher contact me. As I walked into the theater there was a young girl wearing a mask and crawling on the floor. And, over the loud speaker (someone) was denouncing our military, saying 'Americans are killing my family!' "

Not a good thing for "impressionable students who may have family serving Iraq," Gulit told student organizers. "Two of our speakers had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan."

...no teachers or advisers were on hand or evidently even aware of the content although that part is one of several things still under investigation.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:21

At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the "comments" space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, "we will throw out some of the best ... journalism of the 21st century." The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. "It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one." ...
Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem?

Lean over on the book case
If you really want to get straight
Read Dr. Thomas Sowell
Get a new towel

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 17:41

One of the world's most widely read Bibles, the New International Version, has been modernised by a team of 15 American and British scholars and is published today....the term "saints" is deemed to be too "ecclesiastical" and has been banished, to be replaced with "God's chosen people". The Virgin Mary is no longer "with child"; she is "pregnant".

And, to the dismay of traditionalists, who will suspect a feminist agenda, "inclusive" language has been introduced throughout.

Where the original read: "When God created Man, he made him in the likeness of God"; the new version says: "When God created human beings, he made them in the likeness of God."

More than 45,000 changes - about seven per cent of the text - have been made. Even the title has been changed to Today's New International Version.

The new version has already caused a stir in the United States, however. Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that the translators had gone beyond trying to clarify meaning.

"They have an agenda - to attempt to force egalitarian and even feminist perspectives on readers in the name of translation," he said.

But the scholars who worked on the book rejected the charges, saying that their changes were a fair reflection of the original Greek or Hebrew texts or updated colloquial English words.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 10:53

An Associated Press estimate put the number at least 800,000. Either way it was the biggest demonstration ever in this country of 3.5 million.

Cars and buses carrying protesters jammed the main roads into Beirut, forcing some people to leave their vehicles and walk. Druse descended from the Chouf and Aley mountains east and southeast of the capital, Christians came from the heartland in the northeast and many Sunni Muslims came from Tripoli, Dinniyeh and Akkar. Others traveled to Beirut from Hariri's southern hometown, Sidon.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 01:20

Yong Tang: According to the opinion polls, the image of America has been becoming less and less popular in the world today since after the Iraq war. As a top leader of a major American newspaper, how do you think of this growing anti-American sentiment?
Bennett: The world image of US is so clearly linked to its foreign policy and particularly its policy toward Iraq and Middle East, say its support of Israel and its occupation of Iraq.
I was in China once shortly after the missile hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and of course there were demonstrations in Beijing before the US embassy and elsewhere. So I think it is easy to understand in many ways why the US image has decreased.

American movies are remarkably popular all over the world to the extent that you can buy them on the streets of all major Chinese cities.

The ideologues in the Bush administration are very influential in decisions made toward Iraq and other provocative moves by the administration.

Yong Tang: In such sense, do you think America should be the leader of the world?
Bennett: No, I don't think US should be the leader of the world. My job is helping my readers trying to understand what is happening now. What is happening now is very difficult to understand. The world is very complex. There are various complex forces occurring in it. I don't think you can imagine a world where one country or one group of people could lead everybody else. I can't imagine that could happen. I also think it is unhealthy to have one country as the leader of the world. People in other countries don't want to be led by foreign countries. They may want to have good relations with it or they may want to share with what is good in that country.
That is also a sort of colonial question. The world has gone through colonialism and imperialism. We have seen the danger and shortcomings of those systems. If we are heading into another period of imperialism where the US thinks itself as the leader of the area and its interest should prevail over all other interests of its neighbors and others, then I think the world will be in an unhappy period.

No, I don't think US should be the leader of the world.

I also think it is unhealthy to have one country as the leader of the world.

People in other countries don't want to be led by foreign countries.

If we are heading into another period of imperialism where the US thinks itself as the leader of the area and its interest should prevail over all other interests of its neighbors and others, then I think the world will be in an unhappy period.

Yong Tang: So the world order should be democratic?
Bennett: Democracy means many things. How do you define democracy? As a Chinese journalist, you may have your own definition of democracy which corresponds to your history and your way of seeing the world. I may have another definition. Someone else may have their own definitions. Democracy means a lot of different things.

We don't have any political point of view that we are trying to advance.

One of the jobs of our correspondents in Baghdad is to tell our readers what the Bush administration is trying to hide.

… it is a big thing for the Washington Post to be the first major newspaper in America to publish the pictures about the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoners abuse scandal.

Major American newspapers endorse Democratic candidates every time. I think that endorsement means nothing. I don't think people will vote according to that endorsement. It is just an old tradition which really doesn't have lot of meaning any more today.

Furthermore, there is a mood of great suspicion about the media. Every time when we publish a story about Iraq that suggests the war is not going well for America, I get lots of messages from people saying that we the Post are not patriotic and we are reporting negatively on the war only because of our political bias against the Bush administration. I think there is a perception among some of our readers that we are hostile to the Bush administration or representing our own political point of view in our news coverage.

I think there are areas in which the mainstream media has ignored or not been as touch with the development of the society as we could have been. It is not so much about expressing the mainstream views. I think the primary job of the Post is to provide people with information, not views. The primary job of a newspaper is to inform people of what is going on in our community and the world in an impartial and fair way.

Even before readers being our God, credibility is our God.

Yong Tang: The Washington Post often describes China as a dictator communist regime without democracy and freedom. Why is the newspaper so fond of playing with such negative words?
Bennett: I disagree with that. First of all, Neither The Washington Post, nor the New York Times, nor any other big newspapers, refer to China today as a dictatorship regime. We don't use these words on the paper any more. Now we say China is a communist country only because it is a fact. China is ruled by the Communist party.

Yong Tang: But it seems to me that the Washington Post stories about China are still focused on such things like political dissidents?
Bennett: No, it is not true. If You look at all the stories published on the major newspapers about China last year, you would find the widest variety of stories of any time since US journalists were allowed back in China…… We have only three correspondents in China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion. We are trying to do our best.

Yong Tang: Do your correspondents in China have difficulties in getting the access to the information?
Bennett: Yes, but we have difficult in the access to the information here in Washington DC too.

“At 5 o'clock no men have showed up at school to lug the fold-out tables around and set out the baskets of napkins and line up neat rows of cookies, arranged by type.”

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 01:38

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee

'We are going to issue a fatwa (religious decree) against Bin Laden this afternoon,' Mansour Escudero, who leads the Federation of Islamic religious entities (Feeri) and co-secretary general of the Spanish government-created Commission told AFP.

The Commission has also drawn up a document designed to 'thank the Spanish people and the government for their attitude towards Muslims' since last March 11, in particular for not taking 'disproportionate' measures similar to those which the Sept 11 attacks sparked in the US.

In a single night, 334 B-29 "Superfortress" bombers carpeted Tokyo with a half-million incendiary cylinders, sparking fires that spread with deadly speed through the cramped wooden homes and buildings of densely populated downtown quarters.

The official death toll was 83,000, but historians, considering the destruction of records and the chaos following the attack -- generally agree that about 100,000 people died in that one night of fire.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:06

As they headed to their destination a civilian vehicle pulled on from a side alley and attempted to get into the convoy. Apparently, the convoy gunners were too green or some how did not perceive the car to be a threat. They did not wave the car off, throw anything at him, cut him off, or shoot to try and stop him. A nearby IP (Iraqi Police) SUV witnessed the intruding vehicle and immediately intervened. It pulled up to the rear of the convoy and tried to force the intruding vehicle off the road. The IP’s had successfully put themselves between the vehicle and the US convoy. Unable to deter the vehicle from approaching the US convoy or make it pull over, the IP’s fired at the engine of the encroaching vehicle. At this point, the driver detonated the IED inside his vehicle. Yes, this was a classic VBIED.

This suicide bomber killed himself and the four IP’s in the vehicle holding him at bay.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 15:42

Nature

There is a delight in the hardy life of the open.

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

Conservation means development as much as it does protection.

Manhood

A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune-make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

Youth

I want to see you game, boys, I want to see you brave and manly, and I also want to see you gentle and tender.

Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars and keep your feet on the ground.

Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

The State

Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law.

A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

In popular government results worth while can only be achieved by men who combine worthy ideals with practical good sense.

If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness.

The most obvious feature of Theodore Roosevelt’s life and thought is the one least celebrated today, his manliness. Somehow America in the twentieth century went from the explosion of assertive manliness that was TR to the sensitive males of our time who shall be and deserve to be nameless.

TR appeals to some conservatives today for his espousal of big government and national greatness, and all conservatives rather relish his political incorrectness. As a reforming progressive he used to appeal to liberals, but nowadays liberals are put off by the political incorrectness that conservatives rather sneakily enjoy.

His father’s advice had been to lengthen the reach of his mind by strengthening his body, using sheer will-power.

“Life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.”

We have abandoned—not reason for manliness like the pragmatists, nor manliness for reason like their tender-minded opponents—but both reason and manliness. We want progress without a rational justification and without the manliness needed to supply the lack of a justification.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 23:19

Below are the articles on the MilBlogs:

The Blogs Of War (New MilBlogging Article)

A Penny For Their Thoughts (MilBloggers Cash In?)

Learning From Blogs (Editorial)

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 22:26

"Time and again in the last two centuries, France has refused to come to grips with its diminished status as a country whose greatest general was a foreigner, whose greatest warrior was a teenage girl, and whose last great military victory came on the plains of Wagram in 1809."

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 10:36

There were conflicting reports on the extent to which Italian authorities had informed their American counterparts about the operation, in which a reported $6 million was paid for the journalist's release.

Mr. Berlusconi won plaudits last year when Mr. Calipari obtained the release of two young volunteers kidnapped in Iraq known as the two Simonas, also through payment of a multimillion-dollar ransom.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:17

Krystyna Balcer, a 62-year-old retiree whose uncle was killed in Katyn, remained angry about the massacre and the Soviet invasion of Poland prior to World War II, carried out under a secret agreement between Stalin and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"They betrayed us they stuck a knife in our backs," she said of the Soviets invading Poland from the east in 1939, 17 days after Germans entered from the west. The massacre "was unimaginable cruelty, it was genocide."

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 21:35

Ajax Amsterdam is struggling to stamp out the bizarre tradition by which its most devoted fans call themselves "Jews", even tattooing themselves with Stars of David and waving Israeli flags, although they are not Jewish and know little of Judaism.

A burning carcass. That is what remained of the Ajax Supporters' Home when Ruben arrived on the scene, late at night on Sunday January 30th. Even before he gave the ruins a closer look the Ajax supporter had no doubt: fans of ADO Den Haag (the team they had played that afternoon) were the arsonists... Two weeks later the police are still investigating.

The two clubs have an old rivalry. They're not alone in the Netherlands, where the most hardcore supporters - so-called 'siders' - have been engaged in a merciless struggle for a long time. In March 1997 the fight between gangs of supporters from Feyenoord and Ajax led to the death of a young man. But the violence is also verbal. Since a dominant part of the Ajax fans began proudly calling themselves Joden ('Jews') in repetitive chants, they've been bombarded with hissing sounds from their opponents, references to the death camps and anti-semitic yells.....According to Simon Kuper (author of Ajax, the Dutch, the War), Israeli symbols appeared in the early 1980s in the section of the F-Side, the old stand of the club's hard core, soon after the visit by Tottenham, a club known for its connection to the Jewish community of North London. Jewish symbols soon accompanied the 'Jews! Jews!' yells that replaced the 'Boeren! Boeren!' ('Farmers! Farmers!'), which that Amsterdam supporters used to yell at their opponents. Rival fans soon replied with 'ssssssssssss' (the hissing sound of gas) and, more recently, 'Hamas! Hamas! The Jews to the gas!'

Although the large part of the Amsterdam followers have no clue as to what Jewish religion is about, they've had the curious habit of carrying Jewish symbols for some time. Before it burnt down the Supporters Home, built adjecent to the Ajax training pitches, was covered with Israeli flags. Willem, the barman, wears the Star of David on his T-shirt, as do many others on their hats or scarves. On match days these F-Siders, around 5,000 people, shout Joden, Joden ('Jews, Jews') and wave huge Israeli flags. "These chants are part of our culture and they're really important to us," explains Erwin Pieters of the Onafhankelijke Fanclub Ajax (OFA), an independent fan club. "We call ourselves Jews in order to to deprive the opposing supporters of the pleasure of calling us so, as if it were an insult."

There have been debates about the alleged Jewish identity of the club regularly ever since the foundation of the club in 1900. According to historians the Jewish connection was down to simple geographical facts in the first place: Ajax and the Jewish neighborhoods were both in the East of Amsterdam. Nobody would deny the link, though. For the best, but also for the worst. During World War II, according to Simon Kuper, the club followed the orders of the Germans very strictly in the fall of 1941, expelling twelve Jewish players and board members.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 00:57

What would you like to see happen?
I'd like someone to say that unpaid activity over the Internet is not an expenditure or contribution, or at least activity done by regular Internet journals, to cover sites like CNET, Slate and Salon. Otherwise, it's very likely that the Internet is going to be regulated, and the FEC and Congress will be inundated with e-mails saying, "How dare you do this!"

What happens next?
It's going to be a battle, and if nobody in Congress is willing to stand up and say, "Keep your hands off of this, and we'll change the statute to make it clear," then I think grassroots Internet activity is in danger. The impact would affect e-mail lists, especially if there's any sense that they're done in coordination with the campaign. If I forward something from the campaign to my personal list of several hundred people, which is a great grassroots activity, that's what we're talking about having to look at.

Senators McCain and Feingold have argued that we have to regulate the Internet, that we have to regulate e-mail. They sued us in court over this and they won.

If Congress doesn't change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We're talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals. Why should CNET get an exemption but not an informal blog? Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?

Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereases, freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 19:02

There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble. "Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

"Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance."

As British philosopher Anthony Flew, once as hard-nosed a humanist as any, mused when turning his back on his former belief: It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.

For although in every major European city except Paris spirituality is booming, according to Zulehner, this only proves the emergence of a diffuse belief system, Pannenberg said, but not the revitalization of traditional Christian religious faith.

Pannenberg, a Lutheran, praised the Roman Catholic Church for handling this peril more wisely than many of his fellow Protestants. "The Catholics stick to the central message of Christianity without making any concessions in the ethical realm," he said, referring to issues such as same-sex "marriages" and abortion.

In a similar vain, Zulehner, a Catholic, sees Christianity's greatest opportunity when its message addresses two seemingly irreconcilable quests of contemporary humanity - the quest for freedom and truth. "Christianity alone affirms that truth and God's dependability are inseparable properties to which freedom is linked."

"The great world religions are best placed," he said. As a distant second he sees the diffuse forms of spirituality. Atheism, he insisted, will come in at the tail end.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 16:03

"we (Canada) spend a smaller share of our national wealth on military obligations than any NATO nation except tiny Luxembourg and Iceland (which has no military at all)."

While our military neglect is common knowledge, Canadians may also be in need of a reality check when it comes to foreign aid. As UN Millennium Project manager John W. McArthur noted in these pages yesterday, our official development assistance (ODA) did not even amount to 0.3% of GDP in 2004 -- less than half the 0.7% standard wealthy nations have embraced as a goal. Notwithstanding Bono's boosterism and the government's chest-thumping, the truth is that tiny European nations such as Norway are putting us to shame not only in military spending but also in aid.

Our refusal to participate in the U.S. ballistic missile shield, a project that would protect Canadian and American cities alike from immolation, is perhaps the best example yet of how thoroughly fantasy and reality diverge in Ottawa. On Thursday, our government declared it would have nothing to do with the shield -- a foolish gesture meant to placate the pacifists in the Liberal caucus. But the next day, our PM advanced the conceit that the Americans would still have to consult with us before activating the system. One can practically hear the howls of laughter emanating from the few Washington officials who still bother to inform themselves of Ottawa's pronouncements: Can anyone seriously imagine that the President would ask our PM for permission to shoot down a missile heading for a U.S. target?

Canada might well be described as a braggart who is all talk, no action. Consider this past week's grandiose promise by the Prime Minister to do "whatever is required" to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur -- as if Canada had the capacity to do even a small fraction of what is needed in war-torn Sudan. A similar boast from Hungary or Latvia would have been more credible.

We stand at a crossroads. Either we will continue to shrivel into our role as the world's impotent scold. Or we can begin to reclaim our status as a leader on the international stage. We urge the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to use the upcoming foreign-policy and military reviews to restore Canada's place in the world community and put an end to our unconscionable drift.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 10:43

Last fall, DePaul University professor Thomas Klocek was suspended without a hearing for challenging the viewpoints of certain Muslim students on campus at a student activities fair.

Klocek showed up to the news conference bound and gagged, illustrating what he believes the university did to him by censoring his views on the Middle East.

The students claimed professor Klocek's arguments were racist and hurt their feelings.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:11

Progressive secular welfarism is a great life - but only for a generation or two. After that, it’s a death cult.

First, it’s true that the Central and Eastern European nations are markedly more America-friendly than the western ones. However, their long-term prognosis is not significantly different: they face the same deathbed demographics - right now, the only European country breeding at replacement rate is Muslim Albania.

Declining population isn’t necessarily a problem - my own New Hampshire town, for example, survived a 130-year population decline from 1820 to 1950, caused by the opening up of the west, the collapse of the sheep industry and the big mill towns down south. But New Hampshire’s entire social structure wasn’t founded on a welfarist model dependent on continuous population growth to sustain state benefits. For the states of Eastern Europe, one of the consequences of joining the EU, adopting the Euro and ratifying the European Constitution is that they’re also assuming collective responsibility for the cost of the unsustainable welfare burdens of Greece, France, etc.

There are two ways you could deal with this - either reform of the welfare states or massive immigration higher than America at its pre-World War One immigration peak. No European politicians have the courage to address the former (openly), so they’ve signed on to the latter (silently). In the end, the idea of using the Third World as your surrogate mother isn’t a long-term solution either: in 2020, a skilled educated Indian, Chilean, Chinaman, Singaporean will be able to write his own emigration ticket anywhere on the planet. Is it likely he’ll want to choose a part of the world where the basic tax rate will be 60%?

That means Europe will be almost wholly dependent on the Muslim world for immigration - and one of the features of super-tolerant anything-goes post-Christian Europe is that it radicalises hitherto moderate Muslims. Look at the number of Islamist terrorists who are creatures of the Euro-Canadian welfare systems - Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Zac Moussaoui, Ahmed Ressam, even Mohammed Atta’s political character was formed in large part by his time in Germany. A senior Dutch cabinet minister told me in 2003 that what really scared him was that young Dutch Muslims were more Islamist and less assimilated than the grandparents who’d arrived in the early Seventies.

There are two likely longterm outcomes of all this:

a) Europe will simply become Muslim, as is already happening in secondary Scandinavian and Benelux cities;

b) New opportunist political movements will take advantage of the situation and of the silence of the centre-left EU political establishment, as is already happening in France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Germany, Denmark. Europeans will see their declining economic fortunes, increasing crime, unaffordable welfare systems, etc, within the context of their demographic transformation, and some will react in the traditional European way - ie, violence, massive destabilisation, etc. Will this work in the long run? I doubt it. Like the “Take Back Vermont” campaign of five years ago, once you’re talking about taking it back you’ve already lost it.

There may be smart politicians in individual nations - Slovakia, Lithuania - who understand this. But, given that anyone who has the right to live in one EU country has the right to live in all - ie, a Swede is entitled to live in Greece and vice-versa - it’s unlikely that they’ll avoid the destabilising effects of their neighbours.

More to the point, we’re already seeing the start of a continent-wide equivalent of the “white flight” from US cities in the Seventies: the Netherlands is now a net exporter of its own people.

So: you tell me how we get to the happy ending.

Progressive secular welfarism is a great life - but only for a generation or two. After that, it’s a death cult.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 15:05