I listened to a good part of Mr. Kerry’s statement in Cincinnati on television yesterday. Why aren’t either of the candidates saying anything serious about the serious issues before us? Kim du Toit, in his inimitable manner, calls them “Great Big Elephants” in his post today.
In what had been touted as a major foreign policy speech, Mr. Kerry spoke primarily about the cost of waging war and how much nicer it would be if the money could be spent on health care. Well, I agree with this. I’m sure our parents and grandparents would have preferred spending their money on houses and cars rather than on sending troops to the Pacific, and North Africa, and Europe during World War II. And I’m even more sure that the parents of Beslan would rather have spent their money on new clothes and books for their children rather than on burying them.
But these are choices and a discussion for after the war has been won. [continue reading…]
Guess who, while making a tasty bowl of frog broth for his wife, discovered that the leg of a dead frog will twitch when an electric current is applied to it? You’re right! Luigi Galvani was born this day in Bologna, Italy in 1737. Galvanism, a direct current of electricity produced by chemical action, was named for him. And he inspired a vast number of quack medical devices.
The Glittering Eye will be hosting the Carnival of the Recipes! Submissions this time around include recipes for real chili, fry bread, sloppy joes, and lots of others from some of the greatest cooks in the blogosphere.
Please send the recipes you want included in this week’s Carnival to
Happy Birthday, Elizabeth I. On September 7, 1533 Elizabeth was born much to the disappointment of her parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. They wanted a boy. But Elizabeth went on to be one of England’s most successful and beloved monarchs.
Elizabeth wrote verse. She wrote this in her psalter:
No crooked leg, no bleared eye,
No part deformed out of kind,
Nor yet so ugly half can be
As is the inward suspicious mind.
In the comments section of a post over on Winds of Change one of the commenters asked for commentary for Russian-readers on this article, West Unleashes Shahids on Russia. I quickly scanned the article and responded that it appeared to me that the writer was complaining about the soft treatment being given to Chechen terrorists in the Western press, particularly in the British press. This would seem to me to be fair comment.
Examples of this softness include a variety of codewords to describe Chechen terrorists including “freedom fighters”, “insurgents”, etc. in describing the terrorists. This failure of the Western press is, of course, not limited to Chechen terrorists.
Now Captain’s Quarters draws our attention to two articles here and here in which Putin takes European and American governments to task for meeting with Chechen separatists:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that mid-level officials in the U.S. government were undermining his country’s war on terrorism by supporting Chechen separatists, whom he compared to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. … But Putin said each time Russia complained to the Bush administration about meetings held between U.S. officials and Chechen separatist representatives, the U.S. response has been “we’ll get back to you” or “we reserve the right to talk with anyone we want.”
Putin blamed what he called a “Cold War mentality” on the part of some U.S. officials, but likened their demands that Russia negotiate with the Chechen separatists to the U.S. talking to al Qaeda.
These are not “freedom fighters,” Putin said. “Would you talk with Osama Bin Laden?” he asked.
It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. …
We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.
We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.
This is unbearable. As I am watching the horror pictures from Russia, I watch our little one, for we have a lovely young one in the house too. This is unbearable. Nothing and no cause can justify this, no way. And what is more unbearable is that these zombies carry out all these atrocities in the name of my own religion, in the name of my own God. What can one say?
I strongly recommend you read all of these links in their entirety.
Mr. Pipes concludes his post:
Only when the sentiments of this powerful and moving statement become commonplace will there be real progress in the war against Islamism.
Not quite. Only when the sentiments expressed by good and compassionate Muslims are made real by actions will there be real progress in the war against Islamism.
On September 6, 1620 the Mayflower set out from Plymouth, England with 102 passengers including 44 men, 19 women, 29 young men and boys, and 10 young women and girls.
Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices of women
Consecrated with hymns the common cares of the household.
Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows rejoiced at his coming;
Beautiful were his feet on the purple tops of the mountains;
Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower riding at anchor,
Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms of the winter.
Loosely against her masts was hanging and flapping her canvas,
Rent by so many gales, and patched by the hands of the sailors.
Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the ocean,
Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon rang
Loud over field and forest the cannon’s roar, and the echoes
Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of departure!
Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of the people!
Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read from the Bible,
Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in fervent entreaty!
Then from their houses in haste came forth the Pilgrims of Plymouth,
Men and women and children, all hurrying down to the sea-shore,
Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the Mayflower,
Homeward bound o’er the sea, and leaving them here in the desert.
The Sailing of the Mayflower from The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Samoyeds are like potato chips. You can’t get just one. So when Qila was about two and we knew we weren’t going to show him we talked to our breeders about getting another puppy. Not long after we got our girl, Tally.
That’s her up there. Ch. Kendara’s Notorious WSX, OA, AXJ. The “Ch.” in front of her name stands for “Champion”. It means that she’s been recognized by AKC certified judges in conformation shows as a fine example of her breed. WSX stands for “Working Samoyed Excellent”. It means that she has accumulated 2,000 points in various working activities, in Tally’s case pack hiking, excursion sledding, and therapy dog work. The OA stands for Open Agility and means she has qualified in three different standard agility competitions at the open level. The AXJ stands stands for Agility Excellent Jumpers with Weaves and means that she has qualified in three different jumpers with weaves agility competitions at the Excellent level.
Tally’s sire was Ben (Ch. Kendara’s Obiwan Kenobi) and her dam was Jenny (Kendara’s Spellbound). We gave Tally her registered name (Notorious) because Notorious was Hitchcock’s movie that he made after Spellbound. [continue reading…]
THE mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.
Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by “martyrs.”
It isn’t politically correct to say this, of course. We’re supposed to pretend that Islam is a “religion of peace.” All right, then: It’s time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan.
If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter — if those “men of faith” will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats — then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral.
CAIRO — Expressions of shame and self-reproach swept the Arab world Saturday as Muslims mourned the deaths of Russian schoolchildren — and voiced unusually critical condemnations of the social ills widely blamed here for breeding terrorism.
The Arab world has watched with mounting disgust in recent weeks as a wave of civilian hostages — some of them Arabs and Muslims — were slaughtered by masked insurgents in Iraq. Last week, newspapers and satellite channels were dominated by pictures of bloodied, naked children in southern Russia fleeing armed guerrillas suspected to be Islamic rebels. Many Arabs found themselves in an ever-more-common dilemma: struggling to reconcile their sympathy for a political cause with growing revulsion at the wrath leveled by self-described “holy warriors” against the innocent.
“What is the guilt of those children? Why should they be responsible for your conflict with the government?” Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt’s highest-ranking cleric, railed during Friday prayers in the Egyptian town of Benha. “You are taking Islam as a cover and it is a deceptive cover; those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims.”
