A lot of the fuss about gay marriage is neither about gays nor marriage.

It is about progressive ideas.

One only has to read the progressivism of the turn of the LAST century to see the ideal was free love, children raised by the state, and freedom from family ties.

Mary Ann Glendon, in her books Rights Talk, has a section where she traces the US progressive activism in the courts on promoting individual rights to it's core idea, of the free primitive man.

The idea of the noble savage goes back to the ancient Greeks, but Rousseau promoted the idea that civilization was restrictive, and that the true, pure primitive man had none of societal strictures on him, and that this was an ideal state.

Glendon then goes to ask sardonically: So we had philosophers who waxed about how primitive man lived, but none bothered to ask what did primitive women or primitive children do in those days.

Anyone who has worked with people who still live traditional lives (or more accurately, whose lifestyle is still guided by their traditions despite globalization) knows that men cannot live alone.

In primitive societies, you don't have supermarkets, food stamps, social security, hospitals or ready made clothing...A solitary man had to work all day hunting or in the fields. It is the wife who keeps the home fires burning, with food on the fire and at the end of the day, a warm bed to remind the men why life is worth living.

She was the one who ground the olives (or rendered the lard) for oil, who cared for the hens, who cleaned the vegetables, who ground the grain, and who skinned and made jerky or sausage from the meat.

Even the archtype "solitary" men, the mountain men, had Indian wives...as all those French names among western Indians show, so did the "voyageurs" from Canada.

The Family supplied not only what we think of as home, but the extended family did other things. There was often an unmarried sister who spent her life caring for mama when she was old, or who raised nephews and neices. If you were sick, they cared for you...and people forget that without modern medicine, there were many illnesses and chronically ill people to care for: fractures, childbirth fistulas, mental retardation, ricketts, etc.

My husband once scolded me for saying I was poor by telling me that no one was ever poor as long as he or she had rice to eat.

And in primitive societies, there were times the crops failed, or you lost your crop, and had to go to family members to get food. It might mean sending your son to Egypt like Jacob did to get grain in a famine, or it might mean sending your oldest daughter to work as a maid  or (in more primitive societies) to marry a rich man to support the family,--things that many women in the Philippines still do.

Marriage was more about supporting the family and making sure the daughter and her children were safe. What's love got to do with it?

Love, yes it existed, but most families tried their best to arrange a marriage with the daughter's welfare in mind, and most fathers recognized the need to find compatibility in marriage rather than just money. If the girl didn't like it, she ran away or killed herself...because in very primitive societies, there was no place to run...

My point is that there was essentially no state. The "state" was often just the head of the clan, who organized defense and judged between feuding parties. But there was no welfare state.

You married because men needed wives to care for them and so they could have children. Women married because they had no choice. Single women either married or ended up as permenant servants to the family or to the richer families, which was often a misearable existence. Sex outside of marriage resulted in children, who needed to be raised, and children ate food, in societies where food shortages were a common problem. So you get laws about who you can marry and how you marry in all sorts of combinations in different societies.

What is NOT in many of these societies is anything approaching Gay marriage.

Gays have always been 1 to 2 percent of the population, and people with bisexual tendencies are higher. But what does this have to do with families?
So gays married, and most "gay" men are actually bisexual, and so it caused no problem.
Gay women, well, women always had close friends and in societies where marriage was not always associated with love, women often found romantic friendships and probably lesbian relationships within the circle of women friends, but again since no children, no problem.

The one or two percent who were effeminate usually had designated places in society. Yes, not in Biblical society, but most societies had "bachelors" or fools or entertainers or soldiers and no body cared...yes, their wives suffered, but many societies "allowed" the women to seek pregnancy elsewhere, and again marriage was about children, not love. So if male or female friendship degenerated into a love affair, it did not threaten the marriage, and everyone winked at it...as long as the family could make it economically.

But in modern times, you don't need the family to help out.

The Red states still have the remnants of family...Barbara Ehrenlich couldn't figure how poor people could make it in her book...what she didn't see was the families still help each other out with things like childcare, borrowing cars, living with mom when you can't pay rent etc.

But the elites in society don't need any of this. Pregnant out of wedlock? Go on welfare or have an abortion. Sick? Hospitals and home health and nursing homes. Husband get drunk and beat you up? In primitive societies, your dad or brother would stop it by beating him up, or you would just grin and bear it. Now there is divorce. Ditto for if he finds a young bimbo...you don't have to put up with a second wife, just go out and get a job and divorce him. And of course, you have the pill: Don't worry about having to raise a slew of kids and feed them. Have one poster child and stop.

There are alternatives for everything the family used to do, most of them are either not needed or are done by the state. Our wealth has made marriage an option, where living together is no big deal and men are rarely shown on TV taking responsibility for their promiscuity.

With easy divorce, and living together, marriage is meaninless paper anyway. No fault divorce means marriage is a contract that can be broken by the guilty party with no punishment by law or society.

If we want to defend marriage from becoming meaningless, we're about 50 years too late.
So now, since marriage is merely a paper to get tax advantages, gays want this right to marriage, so why not?

Until we remember what marriage and love and sexuality is about, we're going to have a hard time saying it's wrong.

There has been a lot of terrible ridicule of Mel Gibson's drunken anti Semetic remarks. He was drunk at the time, and has since apologized. As a Catholic, he will undoubtably do penance to make up for this remark, which may have been only a joke with a cop who he knew from past work with that police station.

One does not defend any anti semetic remark, however, one suspects Gibson will do penance yet never be forgiven by the politically correct.

Nevertheless, one remembers it was liberal Catholic intellectuals who represented the Bishop's office of "inter religious dialogue" who made the first "strike" claiming Gibson was anti Semetic because he sought to make a story about Christ's passion. (a subject that does not have anti Semetic connotations in the US, Scotland,Ireland or Australia).

Yet where is the outcry when Georgetown takes a bribe from a Saudi prince for a center who openly is trying to change US support of the state of Israel?

LittleGreenFootballsBlog
reports that Georgetown just accepted 20 million dollars from a Saudi prince as funding of their Islamic center, to "promote Islam"...well, we all know LGF likes to point out what Islamicists really say, so let's go to the source of the news:

Whoops, that turns out to be the right wing site World net Daily
who blows the lid on the center's cooperation with CAIR and promotion of Anti Israeli policies that are despised by "a million muslims".

That pesky right wing site also has the nerve to point out how Geogetown has kicked out Protestant Evangelical groups for being too zealous...and had many faculty members openly protest and walk out of a speech by Cardinal Arinze...

But one of the advantages of the internet is that one can go to the horse's mouth, so to speak...

HERE
  is the link to the "Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding"

Hmmm....
Article one:

A Welcome Note from Director John L. Esposito

"The Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding is concerned with Islam and the West and Islam in the West. The Center, since its creation in 1993, has built bridges of understanding between the Muslim world and the West, addressing stereotypes of Islam and Muslims and issues and questions such as the clash of civilizations, and the compatibility of Islam and modern life - from democratization and pluralism to the status of women, minorities and human rights - and American foreign policy in the Muslim world."

Oh goody. They discuss women, minorities, and human rights...whoops they also discuss "American policy in the Muslim world"...

Hmmm...the Largest Muslim country is Indonesia...will they discuss human rights there?
The country with the second largest Muslim population is India. I'm sure they have a long discussion on how India integrates their Muslim populaiton.

Oh, excuse me. Those two countries are not mentioned at all...
But they have TWO "Opinion pieces" on line.

Persumably these "opinion pieces" echo the opinions of those who run the center.

FIRST OPINION PIECE:The future of Muslim Catholic Relations

"...Concerned about references in a recent papal lecture, which were widely seen as derogatory to Islam, these scholars gathered to reaffirm both the importance and the vitality of Muslim-Catholic relations. They strove to ratify by their presence and their shared insights the continuing significance of a mutually-supported dialogue of religions and cultures..."

Wonderful...but aren't you concerned even a tincy wincy little bit about "references" by numerous Islamic leaders about murdering Jews? Hell, it's not only Jews. Now the ones needing to be punished are unveiled women...in Australia.

Why is it only Americans who need to "understand" Islam? Why is there no "Catholic Islamic center" in Mecca? Ah, but there are no Christians in Saudi Arabia, aside from the many foreign workers one million Pinoys and Indian and other Christians who are forbidden to import bibles and rosaries or have churches...persecution of Hindu Indians is even worse, and even Shiia and other non Sunni Muslims have to fear persecution.

Freedom House's 2006 report ^[4],

The Saudi Ministry of Education Islamic studies textbooks ... continue to promote an ideology of hatred that teaches bigotry and deplores tolerance. These texts continue to instruct students to hold a dualistic worldview in which there exist two incompatible realms – one consisting of true believers in Islam ... and the other the unbelievers – realms that can never coexist in peace. Students are being taught that Christians and Jews and other Muslims are "enemies" of the true believer... The textbooks condemn and denigrate Shiite and Sufi Muslims' beliefs and practices as heretical and call them "polytheists", command Muslims to hate Christians, Jews, polytheists and other "unbelievers", and teach that the Crusades never ended, and identify Western social service providers, media outlets, centers for academic studies, and campaigns for women's rights as part of the modern phase of the Crusades.

In other words, Georgetown is promoting kumbaya by teaching Christians to love Islam, but they are taking money from a leader of a country that persecutes Christians.

But it's worse, because the money from this foreign government is being used to interfere with American public policy.

Let's look at the Second opinion article, written by the Center's director.

It's The Policy Stupid: Political Islam and US Foreign Policy

You can read the whole thing but to summarize it, it claims the US doesn't see the difference between "moderate" Islam and radical Islam...and then goes on to cite opinion polls to cite how Muslim countries hate the US policies.

Not mentioned, of course, is that the opinions are formed by a government controlled media that uses the US and Israel as a scapegoat, and also by Saudi funded radical Sunni mosques that routinely preach hatred of others and the superiority of pure Islam (aka 8th century Islam as interpreted by these immans).

"they" hate us because "we" failed to support "democratic" regiemes in the Middle East, but then "they" hate "us" because we intervened in Iraq to get rid of a dictator who claimed to have WMDs, and then we tried to start a democratic regieme.

Can't win for trying, I guess...but the REAL problem is the JEWS...

America’s unconditional support of Israel cast it in the eyes of many as a partner, not simply in military action against HAMAS or Hizbollah militants, but in a war against the democratically elected Palestinian government in Gaza and the government of Lebanon, a long-time US ally. The primary victims in Gaza and Lebanon were hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, not terrorists.

Yup. the dead included at least two Filipinas locked up by their compassionate employers in Beruit, who died trying to escape their prison...and, of course, the Israelis who fled and whose land is bombed daily don't count...and the little fact that Hamas and Hizbollah both kidnapped soldiers, an act of war, is ignored...

But then it criticizes "autocratic" regiemes that kill Islamicists too...

In the early 1990s, the Algerian military intervened to deny the Islamic Salvation Front its victory in parliamentary elections. Both the Algerian and Tunisian governments arrested and tried the Islamic party militarily, and were denounced by the international community.

Oh, you mean those peace loving kumbaya singing Islamicists who killed 150 000 people?
Ahhh...hear the silence of the international community on THOSE deaths...

A more recent and complex challenge is dealing with resistance movements like HAMAS and Hizbollah. Both are elected political parties with a popular base. At the same time they are resistance movements whose militias have fought Israeli occupation and whom Israel, the United States, and Europe have labeled as terrorist organizations.

Yup...all those nice "resistance" movements that aim at Israeli civilians..but of course, heaven help if Israel strikes back at "resisters" who boast about their desire for genocide and who order massacres at pizza parlors, because they deliberatly hide among civilians so that when Israel retaliates they can stage funerals for the innocent...
The press manipulation has been documented by the blogosphere, so we have an alternative explanation of what is going on. But of course, the "islamic" countries never hear the other side of the story. Convenient having both one own's state controlled press, and Lord HawHaw's in the Western press organizations, isn't it?

."...The United States and others need to deal with the democratically elected officials, while also strongly condemning any acts of terrorism by their militias.

Excuse me, but if a government sponsors terrorism, itsn't that an act of war?

"... Diplomacy, economic incentives, and sanctions should be emphasized, with military action taken as a last resort. However, overuse of economic sanctions by the Clinton and Bush administrations has reduced US negotiating leverage with countries like Iran and Sudan.

Translation: Let the genocide in Dafur continue...it makes them mad if you protest.
But aren't the people in Dafur Muslims? Hello? Hello?
Why is "Israel" the problem, when more Muslims have been killed in Dafur than in Gaza etc.?

"...the United States, while affirming its enduring support for Israel’s existence and security, must clearly demonstrate that this support has clear limits. The United States should condemn Israel’s disproportionate use of force, collective punishment, and other violations of international law. Finally, most fundamental and important is the recognition that widespread anti-Americanism among mainstream Muslims and Islamists results from what the United States does..."

International law...this is meaningless. Most of these organizations spend more time and energy condemning the US and Israel than the genocides of third world countries.

So the translation of "what the United States does" that makes us hated is...the defense of Israel.

If we would only sacrifice Israel, everything would be hunky dorey...

After all, aren't the Jews the cause of all the wars in the world?

Oops. that was Mel. He's sobered up and apologized...and like a good Catholic is trying to do penance...

Now, the real question is when will Georgetown do penance for promoting anti Semitism?

I have a great idea:

Maybe Mel can do penance by giving 20 million dollars to Georgetown to start a "Christian Islamic Cultural center" at the Islamic University of Medhina...

Calling Mr. Gibson...calling Mr. Gibson...

Is there something wrong with mankind?
Genocides of the twentieth century

Years ago, I visited Yugoslavia.
We talked with a priest there, commenting how beautiful and peaceful that country was, and he sighed and explained how Tito had killed hundreds of thousands of opponants when he took the country over, and his government kept a close eye on people, so that even a stray remark that was misinterpreted against the government or in favour of your ethnic group (as opposed to the entire country) was harshly punished.
And he also warned that, after 40 years of abnormal censorship of normal resentments and expressions of anger, he feared that the result of removing the strict repression of the communist government would be civil war and massacres.

Ah, but Europe was beyond that, wasn't it? We ignored his warnings (not that we could have done anything about it anyway)...and a few years later, the Yugoslavian civil war commences despite European and UN peacekeepers, only settling down when Bill Clinton pressured with arms and bombing a war weary Serbia to remove their government who had preached and supported ethnic cleansing.

This civil war was not popular at first: Hundreds of thousands demonstrated for peace in various cities of Yugoslavia to no avail. You see, the problem was that a dictator, with the backing of an ally (Russia) and with an extremist agenda (communism) that allowed killing. And it also had a long memory of wrongs done: The Serbs remembered the Musilm Turks who massacred and fought them and the Catholic Croats who had their own fascist government under the Nazis. The Catholic Croats remembered the Serbs killing them prior to World war II and remembered the Muslim persections. And the Muslims, many of whom were descendents of the Bogomils, remembered why they chose the Turban over the cross..

And when we visited island city of Dubrovnik, our tour guide explained how half the island was settled by Roman refugees from the slavs, and the other half later grew from a Slavic village...the two villages merged, but "our rulers still only come from the Roman settlers"...

My heavens. I can only trace my line back 100 years...resenting someone who opposed your tribe's incursion 1500 years earlier? Get a life, lady.

But we all know what happened when the strong hand of Tito and communism was lifted: A civil war that probably killed a quarter million people.

But no body back then marched in the streets insisting the UN or the European peacekeeping forces were the cause of the genocide. They did try to keep the peace (although sometimes they tended to look the other way) . They were like the doctor trying to treat a patient with a severe diasease, not the disease of ethnic hatred that was behind the war.

(and I should note, Yugoslavia had few religious believers--only an estimated 10 percent of the population actually believed and practiced religion, so religion was NOT the cause of this, but ethnic differences).

By the time of Clinton's intervention, the war weary people were finally willing to accept the alternative, which was peace.

It was similar to a patient who reached the "crisis" of an illness, and then turned to recovery. The medicine helped, but the cure would probably have occured anyway.

So now, I am aghast that Bush is being blamed on the ethnic problems in Iraq.

You see, like Yugoslavia, these ethnic differences were kept down by ruthlessly by Saddam Hussein. When the Americans "released" the pressure, the hatred kept inside was kept down mainly because Sistani and others worked to keep it down by using religon: Islam the religion of peace.

Alas, just like Milosevec preferred to reinstate the ruthless ideology and diccatorship of communism, so too the Baathists and AlQaeda preferred to reinstate their ideological power.

What is amazing is that the Shiites kept quiet so long in the face of murder, kidnapping, and suicide bombing.

No more.

And the troublemaker of course is Iran backing Shiite militias who were coopted by the government to keep the peace, and then excited into hatred and released to kill.

So Bush, who "broke" it, is blamed.

But no one wants to say: No, one is only responsible for one own's deeds.

Bush is like the doctor who gives an antibiotic to kill an infection, but the patient suffers an allergy reaction. He is not the "cause" because the "result" was NOT his intention.

It's the terrorism, stupid.
It is the choice of thousands of people who decide to kill rather than to help.

And it ignores the millions who visited the Shiite mosques last week without going out on pogroms to kill their Sunni neighbors.

Civil war? Perhaps.

But by blaming Bush, people are ignoring history: this outburst of resentment and murder would probably have happened when Saddam died. And perhaps the deaths would have been a lot worse.

Diane Sawyer
visits a beauty parlor in North Korea....

"...At another point in the day, we head off to one of the few beauty parlors in the country. We notice the wording under the sign is in English, which means a lot of this is for foreigners.

Inside, the smell of a permanent wave. The straight hair of the Koreans is becoming curly. Pictures of the dear leader and of possible hairstyles are on the wall.

Again, we show North Koreans a magazine with American clothes. We're told that Korean women prefer dark clothes, prefer simple modest clothes..."

Right. The Beauty parlor just happens to have English on their signs...for foreigners? Ah, but few foreigners visit North Korea, so why English signs, and not Russian?

As for the "Korean women prefer simple modest clothes"...
well, then they are the first women in the history of womankind who do so.

Potempkin village anyone?

In another blog, I ran across the story of the North Korean tourist industry. Yes, there is one. About 400 000 South Koreans visit every year as part of the "sunshine" policy.
But they don't visit ordinary North Koreans, but go to a resort built by South Korean money.

When reporters visit and don't put things into context, they should be ashamed.
Diane Sawyer is part of the problem, not the solution.

Anyone can make sure heavily guarded sympathetic visitors see the right things and give glowing reports.

Too bad she didn't bother to try to visit a real village.

Political activist masquerading as journalist Stephanopolus tricked Bush into saying that there might be a similarity between tet and Iraq...well, not actually tricked him, but Bush said maybe there was a similarity between the increased level of violence in Iraq and the tet offensive.

This allowed the MSM to lable Bush saying that Iraq was Vietnam, which of course is not what he said.

But to those who know history, Tet has another connotation: It was where the MSM rewrote an American victory into a defeat.

Even Tom Friedman notes that the motive behind the increase in terror is to influence the election by manipulating the American media:

The jihadists follow our politics much more closely than people realize. A friend at the Pentagon just sent me a post by the “Global Islamic Media Front” carried by the jihadist Web site Ana al-Muslim on Aug. 11. It begins: “The people of jihad need to carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war and exert all possible efforts to wage it successfully. This is because we can observe the effect that the media have on nations to make them either support or reject an issue.”....

Finally, the Web site suggests that jihadists flood e-mail and video of their operations to “chat rooms,” “television channels,” and to “famous U.S. authors who have public e-mail addresses … such as Friedman, Chomsky, Fukuyama, Huntington and others.” This is the first time I’ve ever been on the same mailing list with Noam Chomsky.

And I would add there is a third similarity: Barbarism on the part of the terrorists.

One of my friends was with those who retook Hue from the VietCong, and when I knew him he was still having nightmares, not about the battles, but about the hundreds of civilian bodies that they dug up...the Viet Cong, so well loved by American students and leftists of the world, had take out between three and five thousand  civilians --men women and children---and executed them. (some sources claim 20,000 were killed).

Time Magazinei reported:
What triggered the Communist slaughter? Many Hue citizens believe that the execution orders came directly from Ho Chi Minh. More likely, however, the Communists simply lost their nerve. They had been led to expect that many South Vietnamese would rally to their cause during the Tet onslaught. That did not happen, and when the battle for Hue began turning in the allies' favor, the Communists apparently panicked and killed off their prisoners.

And don't miss this link at lgf

Let's see...4% unemployment, the Dow is up, oil is down, and CNN is reporting that Americans favour the Democrats because of a poor economy.
Did I miss something?

67 die in a car bomb in SriLanka, but the reports are only the usual Baghdad body count.
And the reports about the J.I. leader's wife captured in Mindinao who spilled the beans on the  AlQaeda link with the MILF hasn't even been mentioned...the result is now we are seeing our festivals bombed.
But the left in Europe is only complaining about left wing "activists" being killed.
Did I miss something?

The Foley case is all over CNN, yet when the "first openly gay congressman" dies, the press
mentions he sodomized an underaged page-- and didn't resign but only got a "reprimand"...
Gee, and all Foley did was send dirty Instant Messages.
I hate to say this, and maybe I missed it being mentioned, but the "dirty stuff" was NOT email but Instant messages, which can be saved to your email if you wish.
However, just like you can throw out junk mail, you can ignore and even block email and Instant messages....it's easy, and anyone under the age of 30 knows this.
Is the press biased or clueless? Are there no reporters under age 30?
Did I miss something?

No links.
The news is that Air America has gone bankrupt.
Well, that should be no news at all.
You see, they started with lots of publicity, and a few talkers, and lots of their own radio stations. And guess what??
No one listened.
Ah, with NPR why listen?
That misses the point.

First problem: upscale people don't listen to talk radio.
I only listened in my car during drives...upscale people have MP3 players in their BMW's and listen to what they want...or they have satellite radio.
The "hoi polloi" get only what is heard locally...and often listen to the Am stations because the FM is probably canned music from a big conglomorate.
The alternative is the small, locally owned stations, and Christian radio. And NPR is subsidized, but boring...

Two: They chose large urban areas. Too much competition.

Three: They did not start slow, with several different people all offering different talk formats, but they did their own radio station..so that meant you had to dial on and off that station for music, news, and weather...
In some areas, there is "only talk" radio, but most areas mix talk radio with music and local news and sports, so you don't have to move the dial. (yes, I know: there are buttons that do it...but like most technically impaired grandmothers, I never figured out how to program my car radio).

Four: They didn't have any "radio" guys.
Al Franken is supposed to be funny, but he's a tv personality. Gandolfo was an actor...
But a person doesn't always "translate" from one media to another.
So, Rush was a sports analyst/announcer, not an actor. He knew the media, and how to talk on the radio.
The trick is what Art Godfrey discovered: You talk as if the person is sitting right in front of you, in a friendly way.
Garrison Keillor plays well in this way. Maybe they should have gotten him.
Franken is sharp edged and neurotic. Doesn't play well. Yes, there are right wing people who similarly are sharp and harsh, but the bitter ones don't last long or have a large market. The Michael Savages get fired.

Five, they started big, not small...
Rush started slow, and built by word of mouth. I first heard about him by word of mouth, and listened to him not because I agreed with him, but because he was funny. It took years to build up the "right wing" counter media.

Six: Johnny one note.
The Democrats seem to be hitting one note :Hate Bush...
Now, I can joke about Bush, but it's now old hat. What is your alternative?
Rush can discuss alternatives and several different points of view on issues, but could you ever hear a Democrat bother to discuss the alternatives for anything?
Not since Clinton, who did things outside of the Democratic religion (eg welfare reform, Bosnia).

So by not knowing the media, and not knowing who their potential listeners would be, and by overhyping, and by playing on a station that had only talk, and one point of view at that (most small stations have Rush, a right alternative, a middle of the roader, and Art Bell) they went bankrupt.

The politically correct reviewers on RottenTomatoes absolutely love the upcoming film on Iwo Jima "Flags of our Fathers"....guess why?

Here's a typical review:

"...As of today, the most significant American film of the year. Effective as epic reconstruction of Iwo Jima's brutal combat and as timely deconsecration of the flag raising iconic image and the myth of war heroes as fabricated and sold by the power elite."

And the other reviews aren't much better...they praise the movie not for being a good or bad movie, but because it is politically correct: It denies that soldiers can be heroic...or that war can be necessary.

So, I'm sure the movie will get oodles of awards, but will people go to see it?

Perhaps a better, more in depth review about the movie as an action movie can be found on Ain't It Cool News...and Vern disliked it for being confusing...so the good news is that it could be a bust at the box office.

Vern also points out that there will be a JAPANESE version of the film...

Figures.

And I suspect that it will not be a nihilistic dismissal of the importance of heroism, like the US version, especially now, when Japan is faced with an ever timid US presence and North Korea is openly threatening attack...

Oh yes, I know there are a lot of "anti war" and nihilistic Japanese films.

I once saw a classic Japanese film about the Japanese soldiers who were abandoned by their commanders in Luzon, leaving them to face starvation or being killed by locals who had suffered atrocities and sought revenge/justice for their family members.

Americans seeing the film lauded it as an "anti war" statement

But Japanese see in the extreme suffering of the men as a shining example of Japanese stoicism in the face of suffering...

You see, heroism exists. Too bad that Hollywood is loathe to celebrate it...
Yes, I know. United 93...where it was played down...World Trade Center...emphasis on victimhood...

Oh well,

A couple of years ago, while CSpan was on, a man gave a talk about the Pentagon's new map...a lot of it was interesting (like the EU one world types were mad at Bush for not signing Kyoto so would screw his wars against Terrorists by not providing requested peacekeepers, which is what of course happened).

One thing he mentioned was about countries that would supply labor to other lands.
The best one of these would be the Philippines, since our OFW (Overseas foreign workers) speak English...others would be of course India Pakistan Bengalidesh and Indonesia.

So the dirty little secret is that a lot of the work in Saudi is done by Pinoys and Indians...leading to unemployment by locals who would never stoop to getting their hands dirty.

And Pinoys are maids and nannys for women in the "asian tiger" countries...and often the "invisible man" (or maid)...so that one recently published book on HongKong about foreigners working there had no Philippino interviewed, even though they are the largest overseas workers in that city.

Another place Pinoys work is the entertainment industry.

You know the saying :"White men can't jump"?
Well, Asians don't have rhythm, except for the Pinoys.
Watching MTV Asia and V channel videos is fine as long as they are ballads, but once they are rock songs, forget about it...painful to hear.

So Pinoys are all over the place.

When Lebanon blew up, it was discovered 50 000 Pinoys were stuck there...and had to be evacuated.

And now, Korea might blow up, so the Government here is making plans to evacuate 50 000 Philippinos from South Korea, and 18 from the North.

This in itself shows the economic desparity of the two countries.
The South has to import workers for their factories. The north doesn't.

But then the article said that 8 of the Philippinos worked at a resort in North Korea as musician and singers....

RESORT?

It comes down to Kim's sunshine policy...
The owner of Hyundai privately funded a resort in North Korea, and many (400 000 last year) South Koreans go there to visit...of course, they don't meet locals and they aren't really allowed to "visit" but it does open the doors a crack.

Looking furthur into it, I found that a lot of SouthKorean businesses had made an industrial park north of Seoul just north of the DMZ.

And this doesn't include Chinese investments, since China is their largest trade partner, and has also invested in local factories.

There are not many North Korean refugees in the South, thanks to the DMZ, but there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, in China, many of whom have been forcibly deported.

Like the North Korean Gulag, and like the refugee problem in China, these problems get little publicity in the US press, which is so engrossed in shouting the Democratic talking points that they don't seem to notice that the story is not North Korea vs the USA, but a Nuclear North Korea upsetting the delicate status of China's burgeoning economy by an influx of refugees, threatening South Korea's status quo, and resulting in Japan's re arming for the first time since World War II...

Oh yes, and then there is Russia...Siberia trades not with the slowly depopulating sluggish Moscow, but with China...

So Bush is right is saying that multilateral talks are needed.

And all the Democratic talking points ignore that the really powerful player in all this is not the US but China...and that China has long term plans in extending their economic influence into all of SE Asia...if not furthur....

For example, China's friendship with Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria and Sudan is all about oil for their economy, and it's not so much that they see the US as a military rival as they see long term that the US influence will withdraw from many areas, leaving them to take up the slack of trade and military influence.

North Korea in all of this is merely a fly in the ointment, unless of course they drop a bomb on someone.

You see, no one with an ounce of military experience (i.e. most republicans, and a very few Democrats) thinks that the US will risk even a conventional war with North Korea...Seoul is just too close and too populated to risk it.

Just something to remember when you hear discussions on CNN...
My other blog
has a bunch of links to a lot of this information...I'm just too lazy to copy the posts right now.

The NYTimes
NYTimes is Catholic bashing again.
The sob story is a "middle aged lady" who was a "novice" and developed breast cancer and a few months later was dismissed so "lost her insurance".

Item one: Novices aren't employees. Its like being betrothed or engaged to be married, or joining a family as an adopted child. There is a "trial" period where the relationship can be terminated at any time.

Two: Under the law, a person in training is not the same as an employee, and a person with a temporary job can be dismissed without explanation or at the end of the trial period. Usually novices can be dismissed at the end of the year, but if they are not able to meet the standards, they can be dismissed early.
A comparable "job" would be somoene training to be a pilot or a nurse who has just started working as part of their training. If they are too sick or develop a illness that interferes with their ability to do the work they are training for, they can be dismissed. However, since there are many cases of novices being allowed to stay despite illnesses, I suspect that it was not just the illness that made them let her go. She probably didn't fit in, or was not fitted to the life she was seeking. Over half of women who "join" a convent are dismissed. Again, think of it as pilot training, where half don't make the cut.

Third: She was not left "without insurance". Most insurance companies allow you a grace period to pick up the cost of your premiums (I believe there is a law that insurance companies are not allowed to "drop" you if you get sick and quit or get fired, but am not sure of the law in this case), and most convents require that the girl bring a dowry to support her in case she leaves the order for any reason.

But the NYTimes sees only "rights" against "religious organizations" which of course if the law follows their lead will make it impossible for any religious group to discriminate against non believers and people causing scandal.

Yet this is not an editorial.

They go on to protest firing the elderly who could not do their jobs, (again, think of doctors) and then go on to hospitals...those bad hospitals with religious affiliations.

Hint: They don't say so in the article, but there is an ongoing protest by pro abortion activists because Catholic hospitals that merge with other hospitals won't allow abortions to be performed.

So as usual it comes down to abortion.

Touchstone Magazine
editors have a discussion about "theocracy" and the tendency of Catholics to be more dedicated to the Democratic party than the Catholic church.
MP3 is here

In a lot of this it is the failure of the elites to 1) bother to investigate the emotional basis of their rejection of God (i.e. the religion of Me-ism)
2)the failure of the elite to bother to visit outside their little click.
3) the politics of religion becomes more important than theology.

I don't have links to this, but there seems to be a confusion about Foley's emails and sexual abuse of male pages.

Well, I'm a doctor and have treated many (mainly female) children and teenagers who have been abused, so let's give a short history.

In Freud's day, he had so many women claim sexual relations in their family that he realized a lot of their accusations were fantasy.

So when I went to medical school 40 years ago, when we heard about "abuse", usually we would take it with skepticism unless there was obvious physical damage.
Was there abuse? Probably and we missed it. But I suspect there was less abuse back then too.

Then came the sexual revolution.
Then came the gay pride.

Sex is normal, every kid should do it...
I remember a Newsweek story on a boy who had been cruising and had just discovered he was HIV positive: "and it was his 15th birthday"...
No outrage in the story that a 15 year old was exploited sexually by his "dates"...heck,
twenty years ago, we were told that it was "normal" for teenagers to have sex, and even Clinton's Surgeon General advised us to send our 15 year old daughters out on dates with condoms...never mind that sex at 15 is statuatory rape...

Then abuse became "evil"...the revenge of the feminists for all those who seduced and abandoned them. Women were victims.

And then came the "pedophile" crisis in the Catholic church, where teenaged boys were seduced by gay priests...also by gay doctors, scout masters, teachers, and coaches, but the scandal was made out to (rightly) punish a church who still was back in the stone age ideas of abuse (or rather, following the advice of Johns Hopkins sexual clinic advisors who were stuck in the 1970's era of sexual promiscuity as normal and the advice of their lawyers to stone wall any lawsuit).


Now, abuse, like sexual assault, or even regular assault, is not a "black white" thing.
It is a continuum, and what is "abuse" depends on the society.

There is a lot of touching child to child and a lot of seduction of teen to teen that is not abuse.
If we got a 14 year old pregnant from her boyfriend, then we rarely told the police. But if the father was 30, we reported them to be prosecuted.

But I have also seen other variations.
The next step up is date rape.
Often the girl is seduced while intoxicated or when she says no and he doesn't.
Well, in this I'm in the Camille Paglia school: Teach the girls some street smarts so they don't "misread" the situation.
Or as Father Foster told us in Catholic high school: Girls, my boys are not made of steel...they can't always stop. It's up to you not to provoke them.

Ah, the Burkha school of seduction...however, like most customs, there are reasons behind these things, and often it is the safety of the woman rather than religion. Just because a custom is exaggerated doesn't mean it didn't start out with some folk wisdom behind it.

But then what about "consensual" activity between a pupil and a teacher, or a doctor and a patient? Or a Congressman and a page?

This gets murkier.

Back in the 1960's thru the 1980's the trend was to consider a lot of this "normal"...so I have high school friends who were seduced by their teachers, and also a lot of friends who slept with their teachers at the college level.
As for doctors, about ten percent admit to having sex with patients...and it's even higher with psychiatrists.It wasn't too long ago when a boss sleeping with a secretary was no big deal.

Then the wheel turned, and what had once been a "sin" and then "normal" was now "abuse" and a crime.

But is sending dirty instant messages via text in the same category as "abuse"?
And did Foley actually have power (i.e. of hiring and firing) over the pages? Would they have come to harm (i.e. bad report, lose their job) if they had told him to "F...Off"?

The amusing part of the Foley accusations is that one suspects he didn't know that Instant messanger texts can be automatically shunted to email, so there is a smoking gun. The second amusing part is that it seems a lot of people, including the FBI, reporters, collegues, and quite a few fellow pages, knew about it, but the story didn't leak...until right before an election...

And what about the victim?
I have treated girls who WERE sexually abused at various ages (from 8 to 14 years) and they told me the abuse was bad- but the trial and the shame of the incident being known among their friends was worse.

So, in all the feeding frenzy, will someone please say a prayer for the kid involved?

Finally, we see two "get out of jail free" cards being played by Foley:
ONE: I WAS A VICTIM  (therefore it is okay for me to do this)
TWO: Check into rehab.

Right.

This is probably the worst part of the story...
What ever happened to saying "I am sorry, I have sinned, and I will take my just punishment and try to make it up to the person I harmed".

Nah. That would take a grown up, and alas there are few of them in Congress.

Gitmo residents are getting fat

It's Bush's fault

Today I am mulling about two items I found on the internet about the latest bill that passed the US Congress concerning the treatment of prisoners who are suspected terrorists.

One is a condemnation of torture on the Western Confucian

The other is a condemnation of torture in a speech given by Nathan Sharansky.

He starts his speech by saying:

after nine years in the Soviet Gulag, and 400 days in punishment cells, I know that sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, and enforced hunger are forms of torture.

Yes, but one slight difference between Sharansky and the terrorist suspects we are talking about.

Sharansky was an ordinary civilian.

Ordinary criminals probably endured all those things in stride, being less imaginative, less sensitive, and more "macho" and willing to prove their bravery by enduring such things.

But trained terrorists, like trained soldiers, are even more macho: They are trained on how to respond to various coercive methods and defeat them.

A lot of weak people, including the innocent, will only tell the interrogater what they think the interrogator WANTS to hear, not the truth...and a macho sociopath might indeed be able to withstand the interrogation using these mild methods...especially if he has been thru a course preparing him on how to act during interrogation, such as is given to both soldiers and in many Alquada training camps.


If you know a reason, if you are prepared for bad things, and if you lack the imagination that leads to anticipatory dread, the techniquest used by Americans are far down on the criteria for real torture.

So coercive questioning is indeed low grade torture to innocent civilians like Sharansky or the Fox reporters, since fear, isolation and anticipation  of suffering add to the psychological breakdown of the one imprisoned...
In other words, these coercive methods would mainly work on those least likely to be terrorists.

Ironically, more imaginative interrogation, such as good cop bad cop, (or the female variation seductress/mother) might be more successful in deprogramming those involved in the woman loathing cult of terror. Yet is this "torture"? Psychological anguish yes. Indeed, to a macho terrorist, a nubile sargent in a miniskirt probably caused more distress than actual physical pain.

The third step would be hunger, drugs, and sleep deprivation.
All these things break down the "superego" or self control. They can lead to mental breakdown or a psychotic break. And a person might do anything or say anything if you let him sleep. Do they work? Yes, but you might only get confused answers. A person will not have lasting damage but during the sleep deprivation will say anything to please the interrogator.
Again, a terrorist with training may have been given a "cover" story to stick to, and might stick to it despite these methods.
So again the paradox: Wrong information from the guilty and  information made up by the innocent.

The advantage of all of these coercive methods is that those who administer the coercion probably become numb but not to the point of having their consciences destroyed.

The "waterboarding" mentioned by the Western Confucian, however, is a form of torture.
It is "low grade" torture, similar to bamboo shoots under the fingernails or being slapped around. It won't kill, but induces severe anguish and a physical reaction even in the hardened criminal.

Then there is real torture.

As an American, I don't especially mind female interrogators in thongs and playing music from the Black eyed peas. But I do know that a person given the power to harm another is himself harmed.

We doctors treat too many abused women and children to think that some people who have absolute power over another person will be corrupted.

And a country that requires soldiers to harm not in the heat of battle but in a coldhearted calculated way is destroying the soul of that soldier and desensitizing the country to violence in many ways.

So yes, I am against torture. For our own sake.

And there is a final reason to be skeptical about torture: It may not work.
Or it may give evidence that is so confusing that it is ignored.

Most people know that the FBI could not get a search warrant to explore Moussaoui's computer. And many people know that information about the terrorists was not allowed by law to be given from one part of the government to another, so the CIA could not tell the FBI and immigration that some had met with terrorists in Malaysia the year before 9-11. But do you know that the Philippine police in the mid 1990's picked up an AlQuada operative, and through torture found out about a plan to bomb numerous airplanes at once, and that another tentative plan was to fly airplanes into buildings?

And NO ONE believed the story, since it was too outlandish, and the higher ups in the US figured it was just the suspect trying to please his interrogators...so no one took it seriously, and like other dots, they were lost in confusion of bureaucratic legalities.

So there is not only a moral reason to avoid excessive interrogation, let alone torture, there is a practical one too...

But that doesn't make me join the holier than thous who have never been shot at and could never imagine a world of evil people, who fly airplanes into buildings and kill the innocent.

So how do we protect the innocent? To paraphrase Tolkien: Do we use the Ring to destroy Sauron, and become another Sauron ourselves, or do we carefully make moral judgements on each individual situation?

One thing I would not do is pretend evil is good, and condemn those trying to fight it. And I am glad an ex Russian dissadent has the moral clarity to reject this holier than thou course of action:

To quote Sharansky:
Still, I am deeply concerned that some of those who insist that America not cede the moral high ground do not recognize that America stands on the moral high ground.

Those who would use abuses at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay to accuse America of being no different than the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or Sadaam's regime have lost all sense of moral clarity.

America is different because your citizens can protest without going to prison. America is different because your courts can defend rights and your press can expose injustice. America is different because your Congress can hold hearings and because your people can hold your leaders accountable. America is different because America is free.

In standing up against torture, I hope that all Americans will remember the profound moral divide that separates the free world from the world of fear and work to advance abroad the very principles you so rightly cherish at home.

There is an interesting article by an American professor on the London Telgraph, saying that the US should treat terrorists the same as ordinary uniformed soldiers who are POW's, because to treat them so is good for the safety of our soldiers.

Right.

Quick: When was the last war when American POW's were treated humanely?
Hint: World War I...ten years before the Geneva conventions were signed.

Mr. Fergueson is probably a very nice man.
He believes in rule of law, and the strict implementation of that law.

What he doesn't see is the reality around him.

There are two major problems with his arguments:

One: He assumes that the Germans in World War II treated Russian POW's badly because the USSR didn't sign the Geneva conventions.
Actually, the atrocities were probably because the Russians were Slavs, and like Jews, considered untermensch.

The second mistake he makes is that notes Japan, who DID sign the Geneva accord, mistreated "thousands of American soldiers during the Bataan death march." and mistreated UK POW's in Malaysia...it's not clear what his argument is here, since Japan signed the Geneva accords, but didn't follow them.

Now, I hate to tell him, but his argument is also racist.

You see, not only Americans died during the death march, but many many more patriotic Philipinos: those who served in the Philippine Scouts , those who, like my husband, joined with American sponsored guerilla groups, civilians who helped these groups, and also many, many innocent civilians.

None of these groups were covered by the Geneva convention.
  
Thanks to a book, most people have heard of the Rape of Nanking,   and have a vague idea that the Japanese killed a lot of Chinese (a fact that still has present day geopolitical influence, as I note in an earlier post). But how many have heard of the rape of Manila  or that an estimated one million Philipino civilians were killed during the war?

My point is that in World War II, the Geneva convention was a meaninless piece of paper. To state:"Such were the consequences of spurning or flouting the Geneva Conventions."  as Mr. Fergueson does is a non sequitor at best, and a lie at worse.

For Japan signed the treaty, remember? They did not mistreat Americans (and Philippino and British and Anzac and Chinese) POWS because those countries didn't bother to sign the Geneva convention, but because the philosophy behind the Japanese war machine was terroristic toward inferiors, and terror was encouraged.

And for POW's, mistreatment of American soldiers seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

American soldiers in later wars against murderous dictatorships similarly had no Geneva protections.

Did the Geneva convention prevent atrocities against UN troops during the Korean conflict?
How about those captured in Viet Nam? Somalia?
Did the Geneva convention prevent the rape of female POW's in both Desert Storm and the present day Iraq war?
Did it prevent the beheading of innocent civilians byAlquada in Iraq, or the torture deaths of two of our soldiers who were captured?

Except for the last atrocity, all these deaths were "official", or at least these atrocities were done in the course of a war, often in the heat of battle or  by soldiers in uniforms acting for an official government who had seen their fellow soldiers or families hurt or killed.

These atrocities had some logic behind them, and some authority, and those commiting them were subject to discipline.

This is not true for people who live in Berlin or London or Saudi Arabia and read about Palestinian atrocities, then travel 8,000 miles to train at an AlQuada training camp with the express purpose, not to fight a conventional war (such as Osama Ben Laden did when he joined to help Afghans to defeat Russia) but against civilians.

Terrorists are not ex Bathists who plant IED's to kill Americans in a convoy.

Terrorists are those who blow up civilians praying at a mosque, church or temple in order to sow terror among civilians, or punish those they consider as infidels.
Terrorists bomb civilians on subway trains in Spain, India, or Britain. Or sink planes and ferries and restaurants full of people whose only crime was to have a holiday. Or shoot teachers and bomb schools because they dare to teach girls.

Do such killers deserve to be treated as soldiers?

Or shall we treat them under civilian law, where they are innocent until proven guilty, and where if the evidence cannot "prove" they are guilty, they go free...but what if the "evidence" is their decision to travel and train to learn how to kill? Do we argue that fact is not a crime? Are they to be treated the same as soldiers who have uniforms and officers? If so, then where are their uniforms? Why are their targets civilians?

The War on Terror is new to the USA, but Terror is not a new tactic.

Here in the Philippines, the NPA communists are still around, and like the Mafia, kill an occassional politician who someone didn't like, or kidnap someone for money. But they don't try to bomb the lSM mall or kill pastors...but Alquada does. That is because, like the communists and fascist terrorists in the past, they see those they kill as unimportant, as merely a means to an end, and the end is to remove opposition to themselves so they can take over.

Nor are the tactics against political groups that use terror new.
And most are not as benign as being interrogated by a nubile female interrogator wearing a thong.

There are several ways ways to stop a terrorist.

One is the Ann Coulter answer: Kill their leaders and convert them to be Christians...well, converting them to be good Muslims would work too.

This is the story of Chiara Barilla and the conversion of many of the Red Brigade terrorists who killed Prime Minister Moro in Italy.
There was also a report in The Atlantic Monthly of a simlar tactic that was used by Syrian intelligence, who "defanged" terrorist young men by arranging jobs and getting them wives.

Two: Isolate them, find who they know, and then break up the cells and training camps. That is what Bush is doing. If you keep them incarcarated long enough, most will "wear out" their desire for terror, and in the meanwhile, they can't kill anyone.

Three: Containment. Just kill them all. Or enough of them that the rest keep quiet.
This is the tactic in many countries.
A low llevel of political violence can be tolorated (think Mafia or the war on drugs) but there is always a danger that things will get worse, especially when justice is delayed or uncertain.
That is why you get government amnesties, followed by revenge killings, and hit squads, something I have seen both here and in Colombia. 

Yet quite a few countries put up with the low grade killings and get on with their business, and the low number of innocents killed by both sides is an acceptable alternative to allowing these groups to grow.

Because there is another answer on how to treat a terrorist.

Four: Let him win.
And you end up with a million dead in Cambodia, or the destruction of Zimbabwe, or the genocides of Maoist China.

Ironically, although true pacifists work for and pray for solution number one, alas, too often the results of their labours is solution number four.

Cut and run indeed.