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Perhaps on the back of the Cindy Sheehan farce, perhaps by coincidence (cue Twighlight Zone music), it has come to this blogger's attention that crackpot World Trade Center conspiracy theorists still roam the Net and the world at large in demented droves.

Here's a useful essay which might help put paid to the theories, but for the fact that bigotry and/or emotional instability is very often a driving force behind the purveyors:

Fahrenheit 2777
9/11 has generated the mother of all conspiracy theories
By Michael Shermer

The full versions of this and other articles from the print edition--including all graphics and sidebars--are available for purchase at Scientific American Digital.

Noted French left-wing activist Thierry Meyssan's 9/11 conspiracy book, L'Effroyable Imposture, became a best-seller in 2002. But I never imagined such an "appalling deception" would ever find a voice in America. At a recent public lecture I was buttonholed by a Michael Moore–wannabe filmmaker who breathlessly explained that 9/11 was orchestrated by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Central Intelligence Agency as part of their plan for global domination and a New World Order. That goal was to be financed by G.O.D. (Gold, Oil, Drugs) and launched by a Pearl Harbor–like attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, thereby providing the justification for war. The evidence was there in the details, he explained, handing me a faux dollar bill (with "9-11" replacing the "1," a picture of Bush supplanting that of Washington) chockablock with Web sites.

In fact, if you type "World Trade Center" and "conspiracy" into Google, you'll get more than 250,000 hits. From these sites, you will discover that some people think the Pentagon was hit by a missile; that U.S. Air Force jets were ordered to "stand down" and not intercept Flights 11 and 175, the ones that struck the twin towers; that the towers themselves were razed by demolition explosives timed to go off soon after the impact of the planes; that a mysterious white jet shot down Flight 93 over Pennsylvania; and that New York Jews were ordered to stay home that day (Zionists and other pro-Israeli factions, of course, were involved). Books also abound, including Inside Job, by Jim Marrs; The New Pearl Harbor, by David Ray Griffin; and 9/11: The Great Illusion, by George Humphrey. The single best debunking of this conspiratorial codswallop is in the March issue of Popular Mechanics, which provides an exhaustive point-by-point analysis of the most prevalent claims.

The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking (as well as creationism, Holocaust denial and the various crank theories of physics). All the "evidence" for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the rubric of this fallacy. Such notions are easily refuted by noting that scientific theories are not built on single facts alone but on a convergence of evidence assembled from multiple lines of inquiry.

No melted steel, no collapsed towers.

For example, according to www.911research.wtc7.net, steel melts at a temperature of 2,777 degrees Fahrenheit, but jet fuel burns at only 1,517 degrees F. No melted steel, no collapsed towers. "The planes did not bring those towers down; bombs did," says www.abovetopsecret.com. Wrong. In an article in the Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society and in subsequent interviews, Thomas Eagar, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explains why: steel loses 50 percent of its strength at 1,200 degrees F; 90,000 liters of jet fuel ignited other combustible materials such as rugs, curtains, furniture and paper, which continued burning after the jet fuel was exhausted, raising temperatures above 1,400 degrees F and spreading the inferno throughout each building. Temperature differentials of hundreds of degrees across single steel horizontal trusses caused them to sag--straining and then breaking the angle clips that held the beams to the vertical columns. Once one truss failed, others followed. When one floor collapsed onto the next floor below, that floor subsequently gave way, creating a pancaking effect that triggered each 500,000-ton structure to crumble. Conspiricists argue that the buildings should have fallen over on their sides, but with 95 percent of each building consisting of air, they could only have collapsed straight down.

All the 9/11 conspiracy claims are this easily refuted. On the Pentagon "missile strike," for example, I queried the would-be filmmaker about what happened to Flight 77, which disappeared at the same time. "The plane was destroyed, and the passengers were murdered by Bush operatives," he solemnly revealed. "Do you mean to tell me that not one of the thousands of conspirators needed to pull all this off," I retorted, "is a whistle-blower who would go on TV or write a tell-all book?" My rejoinder was met with the same grim response I get from UFOlogists when I ask them for concrete evidence: Men in Black silence witnesses, and dead men tell no tales.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com). His latest book is Science Friction.

Ha'aretz reports that the Palestinian group that delivered the ugly ambush and execution of pregnant Gush Katif resident Tali Hatuel and her four daughters (pictured), claims it has developed a rocket capable of striking targets 15 kilometers away.

There are no prizes for guessing how and how soon the deadly new toy, which they're calling the "Sajil", will be deployed.

Noone should be surprised if Palestinians unashamedly celebrate, on television and in public, "successful" strikes that splatter Israeli school buildings and the children within.

Hundreds of rocket launches from Gaza preceded the recent Israeli withdrawal. Not that there were many headlines about this in the Guardian or on CNN, nor about the Palestinian chants heard as Israeli soldiers wrested fellow Jews from their Gaza homes:

"We will continue with the rest of Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, until we control all of Israel."

MEMRI, but not many mainstream news outlets, did record the chilling comments of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar (to Asharq Al-Awsat on August 18) regarding the Gaza pull-out:

"The resistance must move to the West Bank. I stress that the resistance was what drove the occupation out of the Gaza Strip....

"We do not and will not recognize a state called Israel. Israel has no right to any inch of Palestinian land....

"This land is the property of all Muslims in all parts of the world....

"Let Israel die...."

The Hamas leader is no political fringe dweller. He is a powerful rival to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Thus there is no surprise that the above seems in synch with sickening events post-Gaza: Iranian-built rockets hitting Israel from Lebanon, a Jewish youth stabbed to death on his way home from prayers, professional Jew-killing "engineer" - and Hamas hero - Mohammed Deif releasing a hate-Israel video tape that was eagerly picked up all over the Arabic media.

So much for Palestinian appreciation of Sharon's withdrawal gambit. Not that any was expected, or that bloodthirsty triumphalism was unexpected.

Foreknowledge of Salafist intentions to launch hostility from the West Bank must have influenced the Israeli move to annex Palestinian land around the large Jewish settlement of Ma'ale Adumim.

No doubt other factors impacted upon this decision as well.

Ma'ale Adumim is thought to be one of those "facts on the ground" that US President Bush said might be ceded to Israel within any broad West Bank territorial settlement.

And the angry majority in Israeli PM Sharon's Likud Party, ready as they are to dump a softening octogenarian leader who they accuse of giving away the farm, must have been pushing for a political trade-off on Gaza.

(to be continued)

The New York Times' all-star squadron of left-wing columnists took a hammering following their recent spate of "Yay, the war is over and we lost" offerings.

Now we are entertained by appalling responses from comrades Rich & Dowd.

From Ms. Dowd (August 20) come hints, barely disguised, at yet another kindergarten-concocted conspiracy theory targetting her mythological nemeses.

Following the prescription of the devil incarnate Richard Nixon, Dowd intimates, the Texan bubble-boy on a bicycle may now aim to extend the Iraq campaign. For the purpose, she whispers, of securing Republican victory in the next election.

We can deduct that Islamissile suicide-murderers in Iraq may therefore be complicit in this new conspiracy, just as Taliban-trained Saudis sacrificed themselves for secret leader W in the last big conspiracy on 2001/9/11.

We can also deduct, of course, that a formation of pigs flies in permanent salute to journalistic license outside Pulitzer Dowd's office window in the Grayladystan tower building.

Rich also remains in drugged thrall to that formation.

The funniest part of his Aug 21 rant may be the unintended irony of the claim that "(c)haracter assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates".

This in the middle of yet another viscious Bush character assassination, even while shamelessly and repeatedly echoing the language of assaults on the President by other liberal "media surrogates".

Yet the most revealing part in the piece is the flailing crescendo at its end:

"The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan...But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq."

Insurgency indeed.

Here Rich admits, as if the admission is needed, to empathy and unity of purpose between the American-killers in Iraq and the anti-Bush machine at home. Or to treason, as interpreted in many parts of the world throughout much of recorded history.

Rich also concedes that his own and his comrades' effectiveness in floating the latest anti-Bush balloon - this one grandly and hypocritically sub-titled "The Dead American Soldier", with a Cindy Sheehan icon stamped upon it - is being blunted and beaten all over the information superhighway.

Perhaps he has finally had a surf beyond MoveOn and TheOnion.

Last week he seemed to be gloating about Sheehan domination of the blogosphere. This week he may have finally started to smell the coffee.

To Rich's ultimate employers, the businessmen-owners, the media realities are only too well-known.

More and more people surf the net for news, as you and I know too well. Newspaper circulations in traditional markets everywhere are down. Network news reach diminishes faster than oil supplies.

Fox rules US cable, and CNN continues to play the angry dog yapping at the ever-more-distant heels of its competitor.

There was a time, not long ago, that when the Gray Lady said jump, sister media said how high. That seems to be the world Frank Rich imagines he still lives in.

However, these days NYT biases and inanities may be publicly torn to shreds within minutes. The paper's leanings are widely assumed and derided.

Look at the tone of an otherwise quite innocuous Internet offering - on a completely different subject - from James Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute 2 days ago:

The New York Times could barely contain its delight. The economy is slowing down because of soaring energy costs!

"The pain that now seems imminent might have been avoided," said a Times sermonette (sic). "Conservation could have reduced energy demand and prices ... "

Glassman proceeded to rip that notion apart.

No doubt he always had the ability to write this kind of opinion, but in previous days few may have had the chance to read it.

Now he can publish on the AEI site itself and be syndicated all over the Net. Softly-softly crawling and begging to the NYT is no longer one of the sine qua nons of broad public access.

Big media still controls the pumps that can launch the really big balloons, but once those balloons are floated they become targets liable to death by a million pricks.

As we are, or may be, seeing with Cindy Sheehan.

Sure, the Sheehan float has been stuffed lots of Hollywood bells and whistles, but what does it say when Joan Baez is wheeled out for oomph, The Stones and Streisand for message, and the usual suspects for backing and promotion?

Do you nod in agreement or roll your eyes when Frank and Mo complain about the "sliming" neo-con opposition? Do you laugh at or accept their word that your loafing elected leader is icily sacrificing troops at the altar of a "re-election" that won't involve him?

The responses to such questions are more nuanced these days than they might have been previously. Sheehan is hardly the political steamroller she might have been when the New York Times ruled the fourth estate.

For a blink of an eyelid after the London bombings, a popular goal was to form a realistic picture of Islamofascist incubation.

Many heard that the whackjob assembly line is often fed by extremist interpretations of Islam lumped generically - by other Muslims - under the banner of "Salafism".

Salafists perceive themselves, above all else, as part of a global Muslim community, the "ummah". They are enabled by global telecommunications. They direct their ire and "revenge" wheresoever on the planet against whomseoever has "attacked" the ummah.

A very large number of Iraqi civilians, as well as American soldiers, have been murdered by non-Iraqi "mujahideen".

These mujahideen may be born in London, trained in Pakistan, financed from Riyadh, equipped in Bosnia, organised from Tehran , and then murderously dispatched to Iraq or New York or Bali - before being finally swamped by grateful virgins in heaven.

Oil money pumps in to support the cause, secured by charismatic fundraisers like Osama Bin Laden and the Hezbollah and Hamas honchos.

Arabic television carries children's programs in which cute kiddies loudly welcome death as martyrs. While standing next to a Big Bird or perhaps a Mickey Mouse.

When they're old enough, the kids are shipped off to summer camps where they can march in formations wearing suicide bomb belts, or burn effigies of Israeli buses.

All the while dreaming of the day when they themselves may carry out some such Allah-sanctioned "operation". After which they might be similarly lionized as "avenging" heros at summer camps, in the history books, from minarets and in commercials on Arab TV.

Salafist definitions of "revenge" and "attack" are key elements in this construction and, of course, appear to be somewhat embellished.

In the Salaf imagination the world is dominated by "crusaders" and a "world Jewish government" hell-bent - secretly and openly - on wiping out Islam. And on humiliating Muslims, continuously and sadistically.

Therefore those enemies must be destroyed. It is the will of Allah.

Further, says Middle East Forum's Daniel Pipes, Salafists ultimately want "the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth and restoring the caliphate" (sic: that quote being attributed to Abdullah Azzam, a guiding intellectual light for Osama Bin Laden).

In that overall context, as London's Daily Telegraph puts it, problems in Iraq and Afghanistan each added but "a new pebble to the mountain of grievances that militant fanatics have erected."

This argument, and the preceding description of international Salafism, runs akimbo to the to-ing and froing in western public affairs about legitimate grievances, economic hardships, American imperialism, evil Israel and so forth.

Navel-gazers ignore the fact that terrorist attacks since 9/11 haven't been followed up with demands.

We - and most notably the bellyaching leftists in the media and "the international community" - have speculatively thrown out tags and explanations, without making a fist of understanding the perpetrators on their own terms.

Witness, recently:

- Van Gogh's murderer declaring (to an Gogh's mother and to the world) that he acted out of belief, and not in reprisal to insult;

- Israel bombarded with, within a matter of weeks, over a hundred missile attacks aimed from Gaza as it prepared to cede that very territory. This while the leader of Hamas declared that his followers won't rest until the whole of Israel is destroyed.

Nobody even blinked - and the Pope forgot to mention it in his blanket condemnation of recent terrorism - when two 16-year old girls were immolated by a human Islamissile at an Israeli shopping mall just after the London bombings.

That post-London moment of an enlightened search for understanding seemed to pass so quickly.



(Photo found at RHOG)

From behind the iron skirt of Grayladystan, a squadron of brats have now been screeching for years.

Ever since the despised "Texan" ascended to the White House in place of a tarnished golden child (rarely mocked as an "Arkansan"), Maureen Dowd and Bob Herbert and Frank Rich and the gang have taken:

- Turns in stroking each other's leftist pain;
- Glee in watching their anti-Bush jihad echoed in mosques of the like-minded; and
- Umbrage at suggestions that they themselves are both prized assets and foolish pawns to self-exploders and America-haters the world and Qaeda over.

And they won't let up. See the latest ho-hum instalments in the never-ending Bush-bash.

Frank Rich quotes his President as long ago expressing fear that the Iraq campaign might turn out to be "fought politically" (instead of militarily), but doesn't associate that reference to, say, the maxims of Sun Tsu, or to the strategy of the Vietcong in their war with the United States.

Not for him the deduction that that "Texan" may have had in mind an enemy that murders Americans and their protectees day after day for the express purpose of gleaning depressing headlines and consequent howls for American withdrawal, knowing that a battlefield victory is out of the question.

Instead we hear Mr Rich howling ad nauseum for American withdrawal painted as defeat. We watch him metaphorically dancing with joy over recent news polls showing low support for the Iraq campaign.

That is, Rich crassly acquiesces with enemy tactics.

The war has only been fought politically, he says, to the extent that Mr Bush has dropped the ball politically. The war is already over, in fact, and we lost. So Frank tells us, and Mo tells us, and Bob tells us and, above all: the newspaper polls told us.

It only remains, they say, for the ("Texan") "boy in the bubble" to be made aware of the fact.

The lag in the President's knowledge is apparently because the idiot-cum-Bushhitler is too busy playing holiday golf or riding bicycles while American troops are dying.

Behold the Republican president as seen through smug hallucinating eyes in the Willywonka chocolateworld that is modern Grayladystan.

These are the same people who loudly and endlessly opposed Bush's election, then his tax deductions, his Kyoto perception, his interventions, his road map, his re-election and all that was and is germane to his foreign policy and very governance.

Who poked fun at his intellect, and knives at his motives, his backers, his every move. All the while failing to raise anything like the same level of hyperbolic malice against random baby- and mother-slaying, atavistic religious tyranny, neanderthal female subjugation, and rank bigotry and chauvinism (except to the extent that it is Bush's fault that such threats hover over Iraq).

They are of the same genus that American enemies just happen to - contemptuously - tolerate as "crusader" fellow travelers, who (like Reuters) are loathe to breathe the word "terrorist" for fear of getting punched, or who (like CNN) won't criticise tyrants so as to ensure "access".

They are barb-tongued chicken-hawks when it comes to soft democratic targets like American troop morale and that ("Texan") "boy-king" W. Bush and, and silent chickens in the face of the fear-merchandising Salaf.

Today's cherry-picked Grayladystan talking points include the Bush bicycle holiday - never mind the Congressional summer recess, never mind the outrageously obvious attempt to muddy the authority of a commander-in-chief of active, at-risk soldiers.

Then there is the left-lionized everlasting blogstopper Cindy Sheehan, she a mere "grieving mom of a dead soldier" who Bush is "refusing to see" (and who only happens to have Moveon.org and Micky Moore in her conspiracy theory-rich, "Bush-is-the-terrorist" corner).

Mrs Sheehan's late son, intimates Bob Dowd - or was it Frank Herbert or Mo Rich? - was one of many American "sitting ducks" left high and dry by Pentagon incompetence - and class discrimination - in this unwinnable war for imperialism.

As usual, every key aspect of the war and Bush's policies - which "inflame ... ever more Muslim hearts" - are venomously attacked by the graylady chicken-hawks and portrayed as things they simply are not. Osama, whose good ol' boys "come right back every time U.S. troops beat them up", couldn't hope for better propaganda results if he controlled the New York Times outright.

Propaganda and symbolism being the heart and soul of terror campaigners who offer zero other than literalist Sharia and hateful envy on the ground.

Millions and millions of Iraqis are evidently revelling in newfound democratic freedoms - not only the enormous election turn-out, but untrammeled, skyrocketing growth in newspapers and the Internet, telephone lines and mobile phones, automobiles and education access. Meanwhile oil is pumping out of Iraq at near maximum levels, and 175,000 Iraqis have joined their new government's security forces.

If such things don't signal a big thumbs-up from many in the Iraqi populace for the trappings of American-style freedom, what does?

If American soldiers haven't covered themselves in heroic glory by dying daily to deliver such progress in the face of merciless ambushers, how is the present situation explained?

Moreover, if:

- Bush is and has for the longest time been absolutely itching to leave Iraq to the devices of its own people; and if
- Many of the street murderers are non-Iraqis supplied by Iran and Qaeda;

What dreamworld does the implication that Bush is some oil-mad imperialist fighting against a righteous and popular Iraqi movement fall out of?

And if Bush is as evil as all that, why shouldn't Iran get itself a bunch of nukes to protect itself against him? Why should Bushhitler have the bomb and not Iran?

Such discussion doesn't fit comfortably within a relentless, anger-stoking left-narrative that shrieks about "Abu Ghraib", "Guantanamo" and "Koran harm". But these same symbols are trumped up through much of the Muslim world, and cited to motivate and justify "holy" murder.

Not that anyone in their right minds imagines terrorism to be a Bush-bubble phenomenon.

Most accept, despite a paucity of media disussion, the fact of Clinton bungling and exacerbation of terrorist issues, and agree with Europe's tightening the anti-terrorist belt in the wake of the London bombings.

The likes of these bombings are not expected to cease upon the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Just as Salafist insanity is expected to merely evolve to a different stage following the "triumph" of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and just as Spain continued to be terror-caned after their "defeated" soldiers withdrew from Iraq, and just as 9/11 "revenge for Lebanon" took place 20 years after said event.

But our dangerous NYT all-stars continue to lecture us day in and day out that the root of all evil is Bush invasion of Iraq, and that face-slapping withdrawal of troops from that place is the answer to everybody's problems.

One couldn't even begin to guess what fraudulence or stupidity drives such thinking.

Perhaps they delude themselves with the arrogant silly-gist perception that everything and all events are in American control; therefore the only sensible objective is to achieve - at whatever cost - righteous amd enlightened (northern-based) Democrat (but not necessarily democratic) control of the United States - and consequently the world and all its events.

If that means maligning the country's President, damaging the country's world standing, and enhancing the prospects of death for young soldiers, so be it.

Alternatively perhaps these partisan motormouths are committed to either hi-jack the media so as to make Republican rule nigh impossible, or to manoeuvre US subjugation to a socialistic internationalist / United Nations set-up and/or inferior red staters to blue state domination, or to simply stoke the fires of conflict so as to manufacture headlines, or ...

Who knows? Whatever motivates these people seems more than a little suspicious and unhealthy. They are clearly not overly concerned with the delivery of objectivity and truth.

Thank goodness, I say, for Fox News, Drudge, Real Clear Politics, the blogosphere - and the precedent set by Mel Gibson ("I want to kill Frank Rich") in hounding a loud-mouthed coward back into his shell.

Feel free to pass it on:

Please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple choice test. The events are actual Events from history. They actually happened!



Do you remember?



1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by



a. Superman

b. Jay Leno

c. Harry Potter

d. a Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40



2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by



a. Olga Corbett

b. Sitting Bull

c. Arnold Schwarzenegger

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:



a. Lost Norwegians

b. Elvis

c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



4. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:



a. John Dillinger

b. The King of Sweden

c. The Boy Scouts

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:



a. A pizza delivery boy

b. Pee Wee Herman

c. Geraldo Rivera

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:



a. The Smurfs

b. Davy Jones

c. The Little Mermaid

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:



a. Captain Kidd

b. Charles Lindberg

c. Mother Teresa

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:



a. Scooby Doo

b. The Tooth Fairy

c. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:



a. Richard Simmons

b. Grandma Moses

c. Michael Jordan

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:



a. Mr. Rogers

b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill's women problems

c. The World Wrestling Federation

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by:



a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd

b. The Supreme Court of Florida

c. Mr. Bean

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:



a. Enron

b. The Lutheran Church

c. The NFL

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:



a. Bonnie and Clyde

b. Captain Kangaroo

c. Billy Graham

d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40



Nope, .I really don't see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winning and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males between the ages 17 and 40 alone lest they be guilty of profiling.



Let's send this to as many people as we can so that the Gloria Aldreds and other dunder-headed attorneys along with Federal Justices that want to thwart common sense, feel doubly ashamed of themselves -- if they have any such sense. As the writer of the award winning story "Forrest Gump" so aptly put it, "Stupid is as stupid does."



Come on people wake up!!! Keep this going. Pass it on to everyone in your address book. Our Country and our troops need our support.



And guess who just bombed London?

Per Mark Steyn:

Abd Al-Sabour Shahin ... head of the Sharia faculty at Al-Azhar university, the Harvard of Sunni Islam ... (o)n Monday on Saudi Channel One ... told viewers:

‘Our enemies weave many lies about us ... we awoke to the crime of 9/11, which hit ... the Empire State Building (sic). There is no doubt that not a single Arab or Muslim had anything to do with these events. The incident was fabricated as a pretext to attack Islam and Muslims. ... I believe a dirty Zionist hand carried out this act.

...(T)he Sunday Age in Melbourne (reporting on 31 July on Werribee Islamic College):

'The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them.'

I wonder if and to what extent oil money from Saudi Arabia facilitates these kinds of views.

Japanese who are old enough to remember sometimes refer, with disquiet, to the "oil shock" of the '70s. The impact of that event there may have been much more profound than it was in other first world countries.

The flowering in Japan of nuclear power stations, it's go-lightly approach in diplomatic relations with OPEC, the fortune spent on obtaining coal, the societal attention to energy conservation - all these things have a range of possible explanations. The residual oil shock mentality in a country of limited mineral resources can be argued to be a pervasive driver.

Are we in the west currently going through another oil shock? Can we learn from Japan in dealing with it?

2005 crude oil prices ascend daily, while wells are burned sabotaged in Iraq. Meanwhile Osama, estranged he of the Saudi elite, promises to bleed the United States to economic death (see, for example, his anti-Bush 2004 "election speech").

It takes no Einstein to imagine what avenues might be exploited to do just that, or to imagine what Osama-trodden avenues finance terrorism.

Oil and energy are the Achilles heel of the modern energy-driven world. The Salafists aim to kick it.

We can cheaply deride "greedy" oil companies and US "imperialism", but the safeguarding of oil resources is fundamental to basic elements of our lifestyle.

At the same time the suspect emotions and ambitions - not to mention the methods - of those who seek to assault said Achilles heel warrant a good deal more attention than they have been getting.

A Salafist aim seems to be to hold you and I - not just the corporate establishment that supplies and enables us - to ransom and blackmail.

The functioning of your car, your electric light, your TV and your fridge, and the availability of basic foods and supplies is potentially at risk. All, apparently, in the name of envy and hatred of US hegemony and what it represents.

Just as the '70s oil tremors led to less dependence in western countries on petroleum and improved oil conservation methods, we can reasonably hope for similar results from the present challenge.

In one sense, the heightened awareness of the fragility in oil supply lines wrought by the terrorist onslaught is a gift.

Kyoto didn't achieve such awareness.

It also failed to account for the huge increase in world oil demand fueled by economic growth in China, India and other places. Kyoto stifled new technologies in signatory countries and saddled minimal environmental offenders like New Zealand with billion dollar debt.

So the environmental initiative now being foreshadowed by Asia-Pacific nations is potentially of huge import. The mere fact that China, India, the US and Japan may be joint signatories signals seriousness. And in the background hovers the terrorist war, Kyoto misgivings ... and the potential nuclear threat posed by the likes of Iran and North Korea.

Said last-mentioned threat symbolises how much greater the stakes are now vis-a-vis the '70s. There is a hegemonic challenge now, like then, but it is a graver and more mortal one. That a part of the - effective - hegemonic response may potentially involve said Asia-Pacific nations symbolises the relative shift in economic power on this planet, a shift that has tellingly left in the cold countries where Salafist allies may principally be found.

Is the real weight of world economic power to be held successfully to ransom? Will Sharia, socialism and/or pure nuclear might tame democracy, technology and the free market?

The challenge posed by the Irans, North Koreas and Salafists of this world is a fearful one. We may regard them as blind or blinkered, but it is also true that throughout history blinkered men with a true aim have attained the heights. We have seen the success they have wrought politically, through "internationalist" avenues allied with the UN, and militarily and economically through terrorism and energy blackmail respectively.

But the real weight of world economic and political power doesn't belong with them. The future has for some time been shifting east, but futher east than the western Asian rim. Their threat poses a challenge, predicated on brutality and with a chance of success. But not if there is desire in the response to stand up for what is deserved.

Good luck to the people at this link, trying to raise money for their song:

http://www.freedomfolks.com/listen

The American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Kagan notes in the LA Times:

the insurgents have designed a war they can sustain for a long time. Obtaining explosives, making bombs and setting them off does not require much skill, money or even courage. ... It is thus unwise to measure progress in Iraq by the number of deaths or bombs in a given period

But American and allied bodycounting is now being been cynically carried out day in and day out by the same people that have caterwauled in opposition to Bush's war from the day it was conceived. As Thomas Sowell puts it:

If you judged by the front page of ... many ... newspapers, our troops in Iraq don't do anything except get killed....

Even a young lady interviewer on Fox News Channel - of all places - recently asked a guest how long the American people will be able to continue supporting the war in Iraq with all the casualties.

A political victory like the one foreshadowed by said Fox interviewer is all the insurgents can hope for, and the anti-Bush maniacs are doing all they can to help them out.

Have been doing so ever since 9/11. You'd think they might have learned from this, or from what Sowell describes as the Vietnam experience:

American victories on the battlefield were turned into defeat on the home front by the filtering and spin of the media.

Even the current Communist rulers of Vietnam have admitted that they lost militarily in Vietnam but hung on because they expected to win politically in the United States

Militarily, the "Iraqi" insurgents are in a whole lot worse shape than they were in Vietnam. Politically, the north Vietnamese stood for something more than fear, and were more than simply a collective of enviers with attitudes where their rudders ought to be.

Yeah, Amazon!

I just linked Google adsense to my sidebar, and regret it almost immediately. Within minutes of setting it up, ads re "alleged Guantanamo torture" and "Osama bin Lotto" (mentioning Bush) popped up.

Hence the ad and search box placement has been relegated to the bottom of my sidebar. I'm on the look out for alternatives and hope to dump Google shortly.


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


In the meantime I've followed up with correspondence and attempted corrective action, details as follows:


> Original Message Follows:
> ------------------------

> Subject: Feedback: Ads By Google
> Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 19:23:05 -0700
>
>
> Client:
> Language: en
> Original URL: http://spinbad.blogspot.com/
> Ads:

> Comments:
> I've just signed up for adsense, (blogname: "spinbadz own") and
> immediately there are unwanted anti-Bush and anti-Iraq war ads appearing
> on my blog, as well as something to the effect of "sexy Saudi
> singles".
>
> I don't want content contra to my rightish views appearing on the site.
>
>
***************************


----- Original Message -----
From: "Google AdSense"

Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 3:22 AM
Subject: Re: [#31464379] Feedback: Ads By Google



>
> Thank you for your email and feedback. The ads that you are referring to
> are displayed through the Google AdSense program, which delivers relevant
> Google ads to content pages. Google accepts advertising from a wide range
> of advertisers, and matches advertisements to content pages using our
> contextual targeting technology.
>
> You can prevent Google ads from specific sites from showing on your site
> by using the Competitive Ad Filter in your Google AdSense account. You can
> filter ads from up to 200 sites. For detailed instructions on adding sites
> to your filter list, please visit our Competitive Ad Filter Guide at
> https://www.google.com/adsense/urlfilter .
>
> For additional questions, please visit our AdSense Support site at
> https://www.google.com/support/adsense or feel free to reply to this
> email.
>
> We'd also like to encourage you to let us know how we can improve our
> customer support. Please take a few minutes to fill out our brief survey
> at http://www.insightexpress.com/s/Google.asp?uid=0&resetposition=true.
>
> Your input is greatly appreciated.
>
> Sincerely,
>

> The Google AdSense Team


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


Dear ,

Thanks for confirming that I must proactively act to block Google ads for
web sites with messages antithetical to that which I am conveying on my own
site.

After reading your email I saw one such objectionable ad (out of 4 shown),
clicked on it to get the URL, and found another one when I returned to my
site. This cycle was repreated 3 times in the space of a few minutes.
According to your information I may now have to wait 12 hours before these
get blocked from my site.And goodness knows how many more times I'll have to
repeat the painstaking process, or even whether I'll be able to contain the
stream of such web sites within the limit of 200 sites I can so block under
your guidelines.

That doesn't seem like tremendous customer service to me. Some might even
go so far as saying, especially in the light of Google's noted capacity to
manufacture wizardry of supreme convenience in other areas, that a strong
element of bias and even smug alecry might be suspected.

What do you think? Am I way off the mark? Please feel free to reply to
this email.

// posted by spinbad @ 9.8.05

Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote the linked item about the Saudi succession and the kingdom's famous brothers-in-law Turki bin Faisal (recently appointed Saudi ambassador to the US and, incidentally, a former colleague of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University in the 1960s) and Prince Bandar a month or so before the death of King Fahd, a coincidence akin to the one described near the end of the piece:

One of Turki's assets (when he was Saudi intelligence chief) was Osama bin Laden, one of the 56 children of a Yemeni-born construction tycoon who had a monopoly on the building of all royal palaces in the kingdom.

Osama collected tens of millions from wealthy Saudis for the Afghan campaign. He also took under his wing Arab and other Muslim volunteers funded to fight in Afghanistan by Turki and wealthy princes and private sector entrepreneurs.

By the time the defeated Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden had been elevated to hero status in Saudi Arabia. So when bin Laden asked to see Turki Aug. 2, 1990, the day Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq (sic), he was not kept waiting.

What followed was described by Turki as one of history's most expensive laughs. Bin Laden told Turki the royals must not invite the U.S. Army to the kingdom to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. His "Afghan Arab" fighters could do the job. Turki laughed and a furious bin Laden stormed out.

That was a crucial turning point in history. Bin Laden became convinced the royal family was conspiring with Washington to facilitate the occupation of Saudi Arabia and control of its oil production facilities and that Saddam had been entrapped into invading Kuwait to provide a pretext for U.S. occupation. That was when he decided to take on the royal family - a career path that led him to become the world's most wanted terrorist.

A yet unsolved mystery was when Turki resigned as intelligence chief after a quarter-century at the helm - just three weeks before September 11, 2001. He says it was merely coincidence. Conspiracy theorists believe Turki knew something very big was in the works and that some Saudis were involved. Again, Turki laughs. He simply needed a break to smell the desert. That didn't last long before he accepted the post of ambassador to the Court of St. James.

The hour is a non-business one. The New York Times and Tweedles CNN and BBC still have time to catch up on the story being splashed now on Fox News:

(UN Oil-for-food head honcho) Benon Sevan ... resigned from the United Nations Sunday — just hours before the results of a probe ... in a letter to Kofi Annan, blasting the U.N. secretary-general and accusing him of "sacrificing" him for his own political gain.

Sevan's lawyer said on Thursday that investigators have concluded that Sevan took kickbacks while he was overseeing the humanitarian operation ...

In an interim report ... the committee concluded that Sevan solicited oil allocations from Saddam's regime ... between 1998 and 2001. It ... accused Sevan of a "grave conflict of interest."

... Volcker's team mentioned $160,000 in "unexplained funds" .... Sevan ... saying it was from an aunt in Cyprus.

(I)nvestigators accused him of lying or changing his testimony when he didn't remember meetings or phone calls

It would be presumptuous, at this early stage, to conclude that the people at the NYT, have not been outscooped.

The current lead item in their Internet edition - yet another story about "Abu Ghraib" - was at last glance on a front page bereft of any reference to the latest UN oil-for--food shambolics.

Naturally, a story about hideous levels of venality and incompetence amongst people charged with running the UN's affairs, in the very act of administering a catastrophic program precursing a momentous event in the history of nations, must outrank - as a news story - hiccoughs on the road to US streamlining it's treatment of internationalist prisoners linked to attacks in a new, unsought and undeclared war.

Particularly where the enemy represented by said prisoners is guilty of flagrant prisoner and civilian abuse and respects no international laws, and where US culpability (but not enemy culpability) has already been fried to death in news stories.

Naturally. Give 'em a chance to catch up with Fox.

Salman Rushdie makes the case for Islamic reformation in the Washington Post:

Muhammad ... was ... a successful merchant and heard, on his travels, the Nestorian Christians' desert versions of Bible stories that the Koran mirrors closely ... It ought to be fascinating to Muslims everywhere to see how deeply their beloved book is a product of its place and time, and in how many ways it reflects the Prophet's own experiences.

However, ... (t)he insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly discourse all but impossible ...

If, however, the Koran were seen as a historical document, then it would be legitimate to reinterpret it to suit the new conditions of successive new ages. Laws made in the seventh century could finally give way to the needs of the 21st. ... all ideas, even sacred ones, must adapt to altered realities.

From Paul Sheehan's item in today's SMH:

... January 30, ... Elections were being held in Iraq. ... Almost 12,000 people registered to vote in Australia ... A polling booth was set up in Auburn ...

... About two dozen men ... gathered near the polling booth to intimidate voters. They took photographs, used video cameras, made threats and unfurled a banner which read "IF YOU VOTE, YOU DIE", ...

(They) walked along Auburn Road barging into Iraqi-owned businesses. They were armed and aggressive.

By the end of Sunday night, two people had been treated for gunshot wounds, at least two dozen people had been assaulted, ... Hundreds of people were intimidated. All ... (t)en thousand kilometres from Baghdad. No arrests were made.

... Last Saturday night, 300 people crammed into Auburn Town Hall to hear a visiting firebrand, Soadad Doureihi, exhort the crowd to jihad ...

... As the eminent historian and Arabist Professor Bernard Lewis told The Atlantic Monthly last year:

"Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism."

Imagine being a British soldier in Iraq, and tuning in to Al-Jazeera to see poison like this from George Galloway, an elected member of your home parliament:

" ... The foreigners are ...rap(ing) .. these two beautiful Arab daughters (Baghdad and Jerusalem) ... and the Arab world is silent."

"These poor Iraqis ... are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it. ... They are the base of this society ...

"(T)hey decided, when the foreign invaders came, to defend their ... families, their religion, their way of life ... And they are winning ... America is losing ... , and even the Americans now admit it ... the Iraqi resistance is ... defending all the Arabs, and ... all the people of the world.

"The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar ... George Bush worships money.

"Most of the children ... were bombed by the United States . Most of the children who died in Iraq were killed by George Bush

"Most of the schools that were wrecked, buses that were bombed, hospitals that were destroyed, lives that were taken, were taken by George Bush,

"Most of the resistance in Iraq is ... not foreign, ... Most of their resistance are Iraqis"

Rodents like London mayor Livingstone and Galloway, he more so than Livingstone, are carriers of the decay that incubates British-born and based terrorists, and of the malady that forces London subway commuters to question the capacity of their own protectorate to simply tide them to work and play without being slaughtered in and on their own tracks.

Galloway has offered himself as a symbol, and must burn as such. The 9/11 carnage was symbolism via television, as are the threatening video tapes by angry men in black turbans, the turban colour itself symbolising a man at war.

The British commuter of August, 2005, she with her cane, he with his toddler and Harry Potter story book, are only too aware that life-snuffing immolation at the altar of Salafist symbolism may be an instant away.

So when a representative of one's own troops and people stands before them and the enemy cheering on the latter and denigrating the former, let's not pretend this not to be a dangerous symbol, maliciously crafted in a time of war.

Galloway's utterances do not fall within the bounds of reasonable free speech: they are at least equivalent to crying "fire" in a crowded theatre.

His is language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state, and therefore sedition within the commonly understood definition of that term.

His is is betrayal of one's country by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies, and therefore treason within the generally accepted parameters of that term.

Worse, the mere fact of his unimpeded capacity to take such actions undermines street-level confidence that the country he represents is worth fighting for, and confirms to detractors that the enemy's rulers are ill.

So let him burn, publicly and symbolically, before the plague of his breed of carrion begs the burning of the society he infests.

"The Kyoto Protocol ... is backfiring on some of the well-meaning countries such as New Zealand, which signed up.

"(NZers) ... face a cost blow-out from the treaty exceeding $NZ1 billion ($900 million).

"Worse ... Business New Zealand last year calculated a future liability of as much as $NZ14 billion under the protocol over the next 20 years.

"A 2002 study ... of three similar pollution trading schemes ... found they ... did not produce environmental benefits, stifled innovation in pollution controls, and led to delays and secrecy.

"... John Howard ... has set Australia's sights on a new climate change pact with the US, Japan, China, India and South Korea ... The aim of the new group is to cut emissions by encouraging new technologies rather than curtailing economic growth.

"But green groups have already claimed the new pact is a "convention of polluters" ... Greenpeace doesn't see New Zealand's billion-dollar Kyoto blow-out as a problem ... "

Brilliantly written piece by Mark Steyn in today's London Telegraph and linked to Real Clear Politics.

create your own visited country map

Two insights of Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigly had a lasting impact on student Bill Clinton, says the former President in his memoirs.

Firstly, that the key to the greatness - and renewal capacity - of western civilisation lay in a unique set of religious and philosophical convictions, that:

- man is basically good;
- there is truth, but no finite mortal has it;
- we can only get closer to the truth by working together;
- through faith and good works we can have a better life in this world and the next.

Quigley called this set of values "future preference", the belief that the future can be better than the past, and each individual has a personal, moral obligation to make it so."

The other insight was that societies have to develop organised instruments to achieve their objectives, but that all such instruments eventually become "institutionalised" - that is, they become vested interests more committed to preserving their own prerogatives than to meeting the needs for which they were created. Once this happens, says the former President, "change can only come through reform or circumvention of the institutions. If these fail, reaction and decline set in."

Can't help but wonder how the writer exercised such circumvention.


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

In contrast, perhaps:

...Radical Islam is just the most recent brand of many successive pathologies, not necessarily any more embraced by a billion people than Hitler's Nazism was characteristic of the entire West.

In the 1940s the raging -ism in the Middle East was anti-Semitic secular fascism, copycatting Hitler and Mussolini — who seemed by 1942 ascendant and victorious.

Between the 1950s and 1970s Soviet-style atheistic Baathism and tribal Pan-Arabism were deemed the waves of the future and unstoppable.

By the 1980s Islamism was the new antidote for the old bacillus of failure and inadequacy.

Each time an -ism was defeated, it was only to be followed by another ...

Saddam started out as a pro-Soviet Communist puppet, then fancied himself a fascistic dictator and pan-Arabist nationalist, and ended up building mosques, ...

Arafat was once a left-wing atheistic thug. When the Soviet Union waned, he dropped the boutique socialism, and became a South-American-style caudillo. At the end of his days, he too got religion as ... Hamas threatened to eat away his support.

The common theme is ... the constant pathology of the Middle East ...that lends itself to the next cult to explain away failure and blame the West, which always looms as both whore and Madonna to the Arab Street

(From: Reformation or Civil War?, Victor Hanson)