joyfulchristian

More good news

Nato has agreed to send a training mission to Iraq:

Nato agreed on Friday night to send a training mission to Iraq, following a request by the interim government of Iyad Allawi and a concerted diplomatic push by the US.

The decision comes after Nato diplomats in Brussels defused a dispute between Washington and Paris over the relationship between the mission, which will initially be about 40 strong, and the US-led multinational force.

The compromise will put a training mission in Iraq during August - despite earlier French reservations. But it also accedes to French calls not to "prejudge" the relationship with the US-led coalition by blurring the Nato mission with the multinational force.

NATO's been slow to move in helping Iraq, but slow is better than not at all.

The war goes on

Just a reminder that we're still at war, in many places.

TASHKENT (Reuters) - Simultaneous bomb attacks struck the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan as well as the state prosecutor's office in the capital Tashkent Friday, killing at least two people and wounding five.

The action appeared clearly coordinated, days after the start of a trial in Tashkent of 15 suspected Islamist extremists on charges of trying to overthrow the ex-Soviet state in connection with attacks in March that killed nearly 50 people.

This appears to have been a well coordinated attack using suicide bombers. I understand the attack, in this instance, on the Uzbek and US targets, but bombing the Israeli embassy appears to have just been a target of opportunity. After all, they can never find too many opportunities to kill Jews.

We need more fire and brimstone

It's for the economy!

Researchers at the regional Federal Reserve bank acknowledged the importance of productivity and investment in the economic process but looked at some recent unconventional efforts to explain differences in national prosperity.

The St Louis Fed drew on work by outside economists who studied 35 countries, including the United States, European nations, Japan, India and Turkey and found that religion shed some useful light.

"In countries where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seems to be less corruption and a higher standard of living," the St. Louis Fed said in its July quarterly review.

Make of it what you will.

David Frum asks

..., in relation to Kerry, "Doesn’t anyone in his party have something nice to say about this guy?"

And that question comes directly after he talks about Theresa's speech.

Woops

In addition to general politcal burnout, part of the reason blogging has been light is that I've become addicted to playing Dark Age of Camelot.

I made the mistake of telling a friend that. Then I made the mistake of telling her I was having trouble sleeping. She put two and two together and decided that I wasn't sleeping because I was playing my game too much. (Which is at least partially right.) Now she's taken it upon herself to start e-mailing me and telling me to go to bed!

Which is fine, actually. She does generally know what's good for me better than I do. Aren't friends one of God's greatest gifts to us! (And in case you're wondering, despite my usual use of sarcasm, I really do mean that.)

Today I get to go to a probate hearing and explain to the judge why no one's getting as much money as they thought they were. It involves EXTREMELY complicated complications. (For a will at least.) Somebody should write into the the Bar Associations ethics requirements a rule that lawyers are forbidden to put anything into wills which they themselves do not understand. I've already had to prepare an amended tax return for this estate because the lawyer who wrote the will filed the original return and had NO CLUE how to work the calculation he himself had constructed.

Oh well! If not for stuff like this I wouldn't have a job.

Hope everyone has a truly WONDERFUL day. I have a feeling that I will.

God bless.

Hmm ...

Clinto calls Kerry "visionary". The only problem is that Kerry can't seem to stick with any one vision for long.

Well, that and the fact that his visions are mostly idiotic.

You know what's annoying?

Friends that know you way too well.

It can, however, be enormously funny too!

Now that's comedy

Rightwing Duck has a flyer you just have to read. (Link via the lovely SarahK)

Which brings me to my point ...

Randy Barnett has a fascinating post in which he posits that libertarianism, as a political belief, has nothing to say on what proper foreign policy ought to be. Instead, he argues, libertarianism only tells us how foreign policy, or any policy, should be carried out.

In doing so he makes an important point which I think should be expanded on:

Even if, as many Libertarians believe, governments themselves inherently violate rights, it does not follow (as some Libertarians appear to assume) that everything such an unjust institution does is a rights violation. Consider mail delivery. The post office may be an unjust monopoly (and unconstitutional to boot), but the letter carrier who coincidentally is walking up my driveway as I type this) is not violating my rights by delivering my mail. Likewise, even if the government of the United States is an unjust institution, this does not make everything (or anything) done by the U.S. Army a rights violation. This is why I found my friend Rod Long's comment on David's post unhelpful. One of the biggest errors made by Libertarian anarchists is assuming that because an institution is an unjust monopoly (because it confiscates its income by force and puts its competitors out of business by force), this makes everything such institutions do also unjust. The latter proposition simply does not follow from the former.

I believe that this intellectual mistake is fairly prevalent. In the public sphere, almost every day, you can hear people making arguments which are essentially different variants of guilt by association. For some reason, people have trouble distinguishing events from people (or institutions), or vice versa.

Barnett complains that many libertarians seem to condemn this or that portion of foreign policy as unjust on the grounds that government itself is unjust. (If I'm understanding him correctly.) But as he points out, not every thing an unjust institution does is itself unjust.

People do this with people as well as institutions. Many opponents of the Iraq war on both sides of the aisles had well reasoned objections. Some on the left who opposed the war appeared to do so solely because President Bush was leading it. ¹ Indeed, some people's entire argument against the war essentially boiled down to, "Bush = Hitler."

What these people failed to realize is that your opinion about the morality, ethics, geneology, or character when it comes to the President has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the war is just. Even if I accepted as a given that Bush really is the new Hitler that doesn't say anything about whether or not Saddam Hussein needed to be disposed of. Even if I accepted as a given that Bush's sole motivation was to steal Iraqi oil, that wouldn't mean the war was wrong. It is entirely possible for a just war to be fought by an evil person with evil motives.

Now I'm not saying that if these things were true that they should be ignored. What I am saying is that they are only a piece of the puzzle.

For instance, if you believed that a foreign nation was led by a genocidal maniac who is contemplating attacking your country and has a history of invading his neighbors, then you may need to do something about it. If you also believe that your own country is being run by a despicable tyrant who threatens the very liberties that make your country great, that would not change the fact that the foreign leader still needs to be stopped. It might mean that you should overthrow your own leader first, but it would not change the fact that the foreign war would be necessary and just.

¹ Yes, there were people on both sides of the aisle who made stupid arguments both for and against. I'm singling out this example purely because of the type of fallacy involve.

It's amazing what the world will ignore

Jerry Scharf is another voice asking why nothing is being done about the slaughter in Sudan. Remember when we said, "Never Again"? Our leaders don't seem to remember.

OK, OK

I know I said I wasn't going to talk about this any more, but I just couldn't pass up Martin Devon's advice to Democrats on the Berger fiasco:

Democrats: When composing talking points on this matter please write them as if the NSA in question were Condi Rice. Once your remarks are complete do a "search and replace" with Sandy Berger. Repeat this excercise until what you've written does not change whether you are talking about Rice or Berger.

This will stop you from sounding like a partisan hack. Thank you.

Of course, there are people on both sides of the aisle who could benefit from advice like this, but the defenders of Berger are really outdoing themselves.

Last word

... I hope.

The absurd defenses of Sandy Berger's pilfering of classified documents in his pants are truly shocking. If I reacted to every outrageous thing I've heard on this subject, I'd never stop talking. So I think I'm just going to let John Cole say it for me and be done with it.

Well, I should hope so

This isn't really a surprise:

WASHINGTON — Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger (search) announced Tuesday that he would no longer serve as an informal adviser to John Kerry (search) in his race for the White House, after reports revealed Berger is the subject of a criminal investigation over the disappearance of terrorism documents.

Of course, I'd be more impressed if Kerry had told him to hit the road. Honestly though, there's only so much you can expect of politicians.

I have another issue that's been bothering me.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in a statement.

So let me get this straight, he was stuffing documents and notes into his pants and socks, yet we're supposed to believe that the whole thing was an accident?

Yeah, whatever.

Update: Smash puts this in perspective.

Update the second: Black Five corrects the headlines.

Counting the costs

Dale Amon speculates on some of the possible implications of Manilla's decision to withdraw their troops from Iraq. As he points out, this decision may well lead to tactical changes in the Phillipines' home grown Islamist band.

Conservatism for a new generation

Jonah Goldberg has a fascinating (and funny) look at what the apparent rightward shift of young people does and doesn't mean. At the same time I think he does a good job at reminding us what conservatism really is:

In fact, most of the things conservatives say have been said before. It's simply baked into the cake of conservatism to say the same things over and over again. After all, you cannot take it as an axiom of conservative thought that human nature has no history and then presume that you have that many new insights into human nature. You cannot believe in the "wisdom of the ancients" and then freelance a grand new theory of the universe.

I think that far too often conservatives forget that one of the fundamental concepts of conservatism is that those who came before us had very good points that must be considered before we change things. Far too many people call themselves conservative without actually thinking about why conservatism is such a good thing in the first place.

OK, I definitely need to find

... some clients like this:

AccountingWEB.com - July 19, 2004 - In a move that stunned her surviving family members, one of India’s richest women left her entire estate to her accountant, who was also in the possession of the will at the time of her death last week, the British Broadcasting Company reported.

The Birla family presides over one of India’s richest corporate empires, thought to be worth in total around $8.8 billion. Priyamvada Birla, the widow of a cousin of family patriarch BK Birla, left company assets worth about 50bn rupees (or $1.1 billion) to accountant Rajendra Lodha.

I'm sure you're shocked to learn that the family intends to challenge the will.

I'm not really back yet

... but today is International Link to Imao Day. I was afraid if I didn't honor it the t-shirt babe would quit talking to me. Since that would be fate worse than death¹ I figured I better do something about it.

¹ Actually, for the Christian pretty much everything is a fate worse than death, huh? Something to think about.

Blurnout

Yeah, I haven't posted in a few days and I probably won't for a few days. Just thought I'd put this up since a friend of mine has already e-mailed to ask what was up. Well, I'm just kind of burnt out on being caught up. I'm going to do my best to have no idea what's going on in the world for a few days.

Back later.

I can't express my feelings on this

... because I don't know what they are yet. They're not good though.

US officials say they are checking reports that a marine, kidnapped in Iraq, has been beheaded by a group believed to have links to al-Qaeda. The announcement of the alleged death of Cpl Wassef Ali Hassoun, who is of Lebanese descent, was posted on an Islamic website on Saturday.

The group, Ansar al-Sunna, said there would be a video showing the beheading.

Cpl Hassoun's captors had threatened to kill him unless all Iraqi prisoners held by the Coalition were released.

The threat was made in a videotape broadcast last Sunday by the Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera, which showed Cpl Hassoun blindfolded.

The phrase "glass parking lot" keeps come to mind. I now that's a totally unworthy thought, but I just can't seem to help it at this point.

I'm sure you're all shocked to hear this

China is going to start censoring and monitoring text messaging:

SHANGHAI, China - Chinese authorities plan to use new technology to improve surveillance of mobile phone messages amid efforts to intensify policing of private communications, reports said Friday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the campaign was aimed at cleaning up "pornographic, obscene and fraudulent" phone messages that have "infiltrated short messaging content."

According to the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders, the campaign also aims to widen surveillance of political dissent.

China? Target political dissent? Say it ain't so!

Reporters Without Borders issued a statement protesting news that a Chinese company, Venus Info Tech Ltd., was authorized by Beijing to sell a "realtime surveillance system" for SMS messages.

The technology uses filtering algorithms created by the government-run Chinese Academy of Sciences to identify key words and combinations of words that might be associated with political rumors and "reactionary remarks," the group said.

The new surveillance systems can automatically alert police and keep records of suspect messages, it said.

The Xinhua report did not directly mention politically unacceptable messages but noted that violent text messages or those that could "harm economic interests" were also cause for concern.

"Harm economic interest"? I'm sure economics is all they're interested in. Surlely.

Nothing to see hear, move along

Nope, no WMDs around here. None at all.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Polish troops recently discovered more than a dozen warheads containing mustard or sarin gas in Iraq (news - web sites), US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a radio interview released.

Rumsfeld said Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told him about the find when they met earlier this week at a NATO (news - web sites) summit in Istanbul.

[...]

In Warsaw, Szmajdzinski confirmed the report,

"Military intelligence officers obtained information from their sources resulting in the discovery of more than 10 missiles," he told Trojka public radio.

"They were equipped with warheads containing substances which were subjected to analysis.

"We didn't want to talk about this before the Americans determined what chemical weapon they were," the Polish defense minister added.

The head of the US-led hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, had reported in a June 24 interview with Fox television that 10 to 12 rounds containing sarin or mustard gas had been found.

So remind me again. What exactly was it that, "BUSH LIED!!!!!!!!!!" about again?

(Link via Moe Freedman.)

The Jooooos done done it!

Melanie Phillips tears into the idiotic idea that the war in Iraq was cooked up by the "Jewish lobby":

Note also the sneer by Jenkins at the idea that there is antisemitism at work here. What else are we supposed to call an attitude which irrationally singles out a tiny group of Jews for exercising superhuman powers they patently do not possess, to influence people with real power who did not need to be influenced, to support a country which did not seek this kind of support but thought it might be a distraction from more urgent considerations, and in a way that makes them deeply disloyal and traitorous to their own country because they actually display a higher loyalty to another?

Actually, I wouldn't call this antisemitism, a word invented by an antisemite. I'd call this straightforward Jew-hatred. Alas, its open expression is now a commonplace. Only this week, I was told by a prominent and distinguished opponent of the war in Iraq that he had been stopped from writing about it in sections of the British press by 'the Jewish lobby in America', and that Bush had gone to war in Iraq because 'he had Ariel Sharon's hand up his back'.

Now you best be clicking on that link and reading the rest.

On Carter

I have no meaningful memory, in fact only vague impressions, of Jimmy Carter's presidency. I was therefore rather astounded while watching Miracle to hear some of Carter's speeches superimposed over some of the scenes. Those were probably the most depressing things I've ever heard. It's no wonder Jimmy Carter couldn't convince people that things weren't as bad as they thought. He clearly believed they were much worse.

It's hardly surprising that Reagan could wipe the floor with him.

Wow!

... and like, Wow!

From Western media, you'd never know that there are Iraqis that feel this way about Paul Bremer.

Sir, Iraq loved you just like you confirmed your love in your farewell speech. We were touched just as you were. You have taken a place in our hearts just as you said we’ve taken our places in your heart. We will be waiting for you to return with your grandchild Sophya (as you promised in your speech) and we’ll share your will to teach her the history of Iraq and I’m sure that she’ll love Iraq as you do.

Yes, we’d like you to come back to your country, Iraq. And we’d love to have you share the moments of joy with us as you shared the moments of sadness.
We would like you to live the moment of victory with us as you lived the moment of hardships.

I was never surprised when none of the western media broadcasted your impressive speech because I doubt their interest in showing the world the nature of the relation between you and the people of Iraq. But I’d like to tell you this:
Iraq loves you just as you love her.

(I've kept the original line spacing and breaks.)

Do I even need to tell you that you should read the rest?

Heartless and brainless

Will Colier describes the time that he cracked up WFB.

The running of the idiots

Get one for me.

Random observations

I hate time zones.

It's apparently easy to say "draw jopper" when you're trying to say "jaw dropper".

Ingrown toe nails can be EXTREMELY painful.

I knew that the last time. I really didn't need a reminder.

Spammers are a nuisance. Comment spammer doubly so.