• Cartoon Wars,  Cheney,  Media

    Conspiracy thoughts

    February 16, 2006 /

    If I were partial to the intentional fallacy, I would think this:

    1. Dick Cheney does his interview with the MSM/Fox the same day that more Abu Ghraib photos come out. The photos don’t actually add anything to the case mind you, but they are more fuel on the fire. The Cheney story seems to have trumped the photo story.
    2. The whole cartoon controversy is ginned up by the establishment regimes in the middle east as a way to shut out Western influence. By making a mountain out of a molehill via artful use of rent-a-mobs they can freak out the West by seeming totally crazy by Western standards and only a little crazy by Middle Eastern standards. This puts pressure on economic and cultural ties between the two regions, and will do a lot to pressure European governments to limit immigration from the Muslim countries. This keeps Western thought out and lets the weird combination of monarchies and theocracies in power.
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  • Media,  Quotes

    Quick round up

    February 12, 2006 /
    • An excellent article on Muslim immigrants in Sweden. Maybe we didn’t win the cold war. Combine cultural separation with the welfare state and you get some ghastly results. It would be interesting for someone to do an article comparing American Muslims with Europe’s. Everything I’ve seen states rather convincingly that American Muslims are slightly better on all of the social metrics (income, higher education, etc) than native born Americans, whereas Europe’s trend very poorly.
    • Senator Reid (D-Nevada) linked to Abramoff. We all knew that was coming I suppose. What is it going to take for term limits to make their come back? Maybe after more gains by the Republicans in November (my current prediction). If not, nothing will.
    • I am reflexively against anyone who declares that politician x is “playing the —– card”.
    • Quote of the moment – Mickey Kaus with “McCain is to pundit shows what lesbians are to Howard Stern.”
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  • Cartoon Wars,  Islam,  South Park

    I forgot about that one

    February 12, 2006 /

    Andrew Sullivan remembers that South Park portrayed Mohammed in an episode a few years ago. And no on cared. What a scam this all is.

    And Kudos to the Weekly Standard for publishing the photos. The gutlessness of the American press on this one has been quite sad. The article is well worth reading as well. Quick quote:

    None of these anguished reactions actually occurred, of course–no pogroms, no renunciation of U.S. and E.U. aid, no hiccup in the Iranian nuclear program. Because there was no real “anguish.” In truth, by December nothing much had happened because of the cartoons.

    So a group of Danish imams took off for the Middle East to try to cause trouble. To do this, they added three cartoons to their roadshow that they seem to have ginned up–crude propaganda pieces that would be guaranteed to stir a mob, just in case the original illustrations didn’t produce the effect they were after.

    The militants’ trip was a success. Various extremist groups and terror-connected Islamists decided to use the cartoons as yet another weapon in the radical Islamist attempt to intimidate the West, and various Arab dictatorships saw a political opportunity in starting some anti-European riots.

    And you can understand their calculation. Since 9/11, the West has gone on offense against radical Islamists and Middle Eastern dictatorships. That assault has apparently been more threatening to them than many of us realized. From Iraq to Palestine to Iran, from Islamist enemies of liberty to dictatorial opponents of democracy, those who are threatened by our effort to help liberalize and civilize the Middle East are fighting back with whatever weapons are at hand, and with whatever invented excuses and propaganda ploys they can discover.

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