From Sensitivity To Pandering to Surrender

Two terrifying tales of political correctness from the mother country might act as warning signposts...if they got much play.

Via the Volokh Conspiracy comes a report that teachers in the UK are refraining from teaching about "controversial" subjects including the Holocaust....lest they offend their Muslim students.

....."Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes.

"In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

The researchers gave the example of one history department in a secondary school in a northern city which decided not to teach the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework....

The implications are nothing short of horrific, not only are the educators submitting to browbeating from their students but they now take away any competition of ideas. The term "dhimmitude" gets carelessly bandied about a lot these days and is occasionally carelessly invoked in response to what is simply tolerance. This story however, is most certainly a good and proper use of the word.
In today's partisan environment, a few things are still agreed upon, that the Holocaust must never be forgotten or repeated is certainly one, but when that history is never taught, acceptance of the hate of the holocaust deniers and NAZI-apologists is but a generation or 2 away, especially when their lies are actively pushed in the very communities these spineless educators are pandering to.
More on this from the Times.

In a related story, the BBC has refused to air a show on the youngest surviving recipient of the Victoria Cross....lest it alienate the hate-the-west-left. The story is too positive you see.

Wretchard the Cat has thoughts and points to the recent Moonbat protests against a memorial honoring a fallen soldier in this country....this time ostensibly on anti-gun grounds.


Both stories reflect and astounding combination of myopia, cowardice and ethical turpitude. Sadly both stories are completely unsurprising and have US antecedents, in particular the New York Times decision to not publish an account from one of their imbeds because the story was "too heroic"

A disturbing anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates why. His 3rd ACR broke the insurgents' hold of the city of Tal Afar last September in an operation which generated these effusive words of praise from the town's mayor:

"To the lion hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets...(you are) not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism."

Time magazine had a reporter and a photographer embedded with the 3rd ACR. When the battle was over, they filed a lengthy story and nearly 100 photographs.

"When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of the reporter's story and none of the photographs he submitted were used," said the admiral, quoting Col. McMaster. "When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors...responded that the story and pictures were 'too heroic.'"

As Michael Yon points out we are losing the info war, which is the critical point of this long war, and while he is certainly right about the cluelessness of the military's PR liaisons, the trepidation about dealing with the press stems not only from clumsiness, but from a realization that many if not most in the press are not merely hostile to our troops, but actively rooting for the other side.

It is no wonder that so many people have given up...there seems to be no good news at all, for it is all too often suppressed.

Update: Thanks to Gates of Vienna for the first macro :)

Reasons to Avoid San Fransisco...

Via Jerry Pournelle.

Seems that the Critical Mass asshats are not content with blocking traffic...

Confusion, however, quickly turned to terror, she said, when the swarming cyclists began wildly circling around and then running into the sides of her Toyota van.

Filled with panic, Ferrando said, she started inching forward until coming to a stop at Post and Gough streets, where she was surrounded by bikers on all sides.

A biker in front blocked her as another biker began pounding on the windshield. Another was pounding on her window. Another pounded the other side.

"It seemed like they were using their bikes as weapons,'' Ferrando said. One of the bikers then threw his bike -- shattering the rear window and terrifying the young girls inside.

Given this is San Fransisco, the fact that it was a minivan and had children in it may have caused the violence. There is a history of intense hostility to those with kids in that city, and anything so intolerably domestic as a minivan will give some "progressives" the vapors.

Murdoc Hits one Out of the Park

Read the whole thing.

Trust in America....Ye Gullible Fools

Murdoc posts on his tipping point.

This unspeakable sleaze is repulsive to be sure, but it should not really be in any way surprising. Given that the Dems pretty much told everyone they were going to do this, this should not be at all shocking, but in fairness to Murdoc, it still stings.

That many of us (including myself) strongly advocated (and still do) things like Porkbusters , which fed the Dems "culture of corruption" slogans, makes it all the more painful. Pointing out the failings of our own who failed to live up to their promises and ideals is one of the things that I actually like about the Republicans...we are much better at policing our own assholes. We do have standards beyond blind lust for power and given that the Republicans were elected in '94 specifically to deal with pork, sleaze and corruption, the shenanigans of a pork happy Republican Congress bloating the budget with their pet projects and nepotism quite rightly pissed off a lot of us and disillusioned the base.

We demanded that those that carry our standard live up to our standards regards smaller and cleaner government.
We did not stand in lock step with Cunningham, Abramoff, and on a far less sinister noteTubemeister Ted, the Seller of Bridges, we said " this must not stand...this is what the Dems do and we are not them and will not be represented by those who have only power as their goal".

Now, despite what my friend Bob says, this is not perfidy, this is good and proper. It is honest debate and open governance. It is what many of us on the right aspire to. It is also necessary to keep our team relatively clean and relevant...to the extent that is possible in politics. I think that keeping our own teams feat to the fire is an important thing for our side to do and if we cease to do it, then there really won't be much difference between us and the Democrats.

But, there is no doubt we got played this time.

Many of us, even those like me who gave little more than lip service and the occasional signature to the Porkbusters cause, were filled with pride when the media noticed us and began to rail against this. NZ Bear and the rest made a difference! Yay!

Of course it was a ploy.

Thanks to quite justified disgust with a Republican led congress that was presiding over discretionary spending that was swelling like a dead pig in the August sun, the base stayed home. Just enough....the '06 elections were a close run thing...just enough to tip the scales.

Actually, the sheer cynicism and arrogance of the Democrats and their media gophers is astonishing.

In 2006 the NYT was all about the evils of Republican Pork. Now of course, with a majority of congress-critters having "D" behind their name...what was pork is just "pet projects", part of the way good government works.
...earmarks, when dispensed fairly and openly, are an important way of addressing local needs...

Well...that's nice to know....

Porkbusters was able to track pork and embarrass people in part because of the Congressional research office, which for 12 years has been tracking congressional spending and making it available to the public. 12 years...yeah, that sounds like one of those Republican contract with America thingies....well, anyway, they are discontinuing the service now...no need to...the Dems are in charge.

The Democrats have bought congressional bills that are intended to undermine our troops and bring about our defeat. They've done so with with bribes that, as a result of their fiat, are now much harder to track. Of course, like wars and nation building the difference between good and bad or newsworthieness is the presence of a "D" or "R" behind ones name. Yes, Feinstein is in as deep or deeper than Cunningham was....yet hardly a peep about the culture of corruption.

So what the hell does the title of this post have to do with this rant?

Well it's not griping about being held to higher standards than the Dems, for that is as it always is and frankly is as it should be.

It's about the repercussions of what they want to do...this time in the north, where we made and broke promises before and through that realpolitick meddling and fecklessness caused terrible death and suffering.

Wretchard explains.....
If the U.S. leaves early and does not protect the Kurds, it will be the third time in a little more than three decades the ethnic group will have been betrayed by the United States, Qubad Jalal Talabany said during an afternoon sit-down interview with the Herald/Review. Earlier Thursday morning, Talabany spoke to nearly 350 people during the last day of a three-day Training and Doctrine Command Cultural Awareness Summit.

Not much to add to his pithiness...

...except these pictures from another part of the world that we broke promises to left to the tender mercies of our enemies the last time people like this got their way.



Keep in mind that for a lefty of a certain social strata and age....the protests and activism that led both directly and indirectly to the above pictures are hands down their proudest moments. Perhaps because of self image preservation they can make no connection between cause and effect...

Damned harsh, but true.

Narcissism Disguised as Contrition...

A fantastic and thought provoking post over at Colleen Doran's Blog,
(which deserves to be checked out periodically anyway).

Real Life Science Babe Under Attack !

Louise Riofrio, a cosmologist, has been asked to speak at the Imperial College in London on March 29th at the Outstanding Questions for the Standard Cosmological Model conference. She has some interesting and controversial theories. Her most controversial idea seems to be the GM=tc^3 equation which...well it's way beyond my paygrade...but seems to indicate that the speed of light is slowing. Physicists are unsure of what it means but she seems to be onto something. It is at least sparking some discussion and she is rated enough to get invited to the aforementioned conference. So far so good....but wait...there is a campaign to get her uninvited.
From Miss Riofrio's Blog:

From: Don Barry [mailto:don@isc.astro.cornell.edu]
Sent: 19 March 2007 00:51
To: De Nadai-Sowrey, Graziela C
Cc: Simeon Warner
Subject: A crackpot has slipped through your screens..

Dear organizers,

I notice that you have given a slot to Louise Riofrio in one of your
oral
sessions in your upcoming conference.. She's listed in your
"Participants"
section as affiliated with James Cook University, Queensland. A simple
search
will reveal that JCU/Queensland does not list her in any capacity.

She's been a frequent crackpot pest trying to post papers on the
Cornell
Arxiv
server. If you take a look at her blog,
http://riofriospacetime.blogspot.com/,
all should become clear. It's actually rather hilarious in spots.

In any event, you may get some comic relief as people become somewhat
glass-eyed on the last day of a conference.

Cheers,

Don Barry,
Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Spectrograph Team,
Cornell University

Oookay. I'm not a physicist, I'm an undergraduate oceanography major so for all I know, she might be a crackpot, but she has some interesting ideas and was invited to give her viewpoint. In the above E-mail Mr. Barry indicates that she is not affiliated a JCU Queensland at all, but according to her blog her records got hacked. She is listed as affiliated with James Cook U in this lecture program and here as well as in these two abstracts from the Harvard Website. It would seem that Mr. Barry is wrong.

Indeed, Mr. Barry, it seems is quite a piece of work, according to his astronomy dept bio...he is a Chomskyite Marxist Leninist
OTOH he does use a slide rule which is way cool.....but can't really compensate for his moonbattery.

I'm still wondering what his bio has to do with astronomy.
More on the mad on Louise Riofrio gives certain scientists here. She may well be wrong, science, especially very hard to observe things like these is a LEARNING and EXPLORING experiment but she seems to at least be asking the right questions, not trying to ignore or silence the questions of others.

*********************************************************
OK bear with me as I have a tangentially related political digression for a moment. Feel free to scroll past...

Given the observable, objective failures of large scale Leftism in bringing about prosperity since people really began experimenting with it during and after the French Revolution, why do many scientists, who are, in theory, all about observing cause and effect, still adhere to this.

In spite of all the evidence of history, the above mentioned moonbat scientist at Cornell is an adherent to a philosophy that killed a comparable number of people in the last 80 years to those that were killed by all the religious wars in Europe and the Levant in the last thousand. He extols an economic plan that has never worked absent US subsidies or huge infusions of cash from local resources (see Norway) , one that really doesn't work well at its best and is absolutely catastrophic at its worst.

He is not an aberration.
Whiskey tango foxtrot?

I dunno, I have 3 theories.
1: A university by necessity, is essentially a socialist, bureaucratic structure with a big implicitly Malthusian component (research monies). Thus to operate in that system one must understand and apreciate the system. Being totally in the system at all times doesn't help.

2:To get to the highest levels of academia often requires that one spends ones entire careerer in a university environment so there is, ironically for such learned people, a certain amount of provincialism that informs their viewpoint.

3:Peer pressure. The left is very good about punishing heretics, if one does not extol politically correct viewpoints one does not get invited to the cool parties. More importantly, one might not get tenure, so there may be an subtle but active weeding of more dynamic viewpoints.

I don't think that things are quite as bad as some suggest, but I think it it does influence scientific debate. Global warming is a case study...
Global warming is happening
There likely IS an anthropogenic component.
But given that the whole solar system is also warming should we go whole hog into Kyoto, despite the fact that it gives a pass to non western polluters (some of the worst in fact).
Kyoto is an egalitarian socialist dream, it punishes the evil west and in particular the hated USA, It uses bureaucratic machinations to put the sort of centralized planning in place that has pretty much been a bust previously, but now is presented as an emergency earth saving measure.

Now I don't want to continue the transcendentally stupid experiment of deffacating in the atmosphere with tons of pollution every year and see what new wretched things happen, but the sort of dynamic "boing boingy:)" solutions, that are more likely to generate long term solutions than a top down statist approach. In the near term, nuclear power, small scale solar where practical and biofuels to the extent they don't egregiously displace food crops perhaps assisted with gene modified crops are a good bet.

Of course the first and last of my near term items are double-plus-ungood to the left...and therein lies the rub.

The semi-religious nature of leftism is not in any way conducive to open debate and inquiry the attempt to shut up L. Rofinio is symptomatic of this. *

*********************************************************
Anyway, my own wingnuttery aside, Those of us at Brickmuppet Blog (and, of course, the Brickmuppet's Crack team of Science Babes) wish the Babe in the Universe a successful speech received in the spirit of open mindedness and intelligent discourse. In the unlikely event she is a crank utterly without merit then she will make an ass of herself as certain IDiots did and her theories can be put to rest. If upon careful analysis her theories do not quite pan out, then eliminating them or perhaps modifying them will narrow down our search for the truth in this area and thereby expand our body of knowledge. If she's right then she certainly deserves not to be silenced, not just for her career but the good of mankind.
There are no real arguments for not hearing such an august individual, save the jealous rantings and cybermischief of an angry passive aggressive quidnunc.

*I don't mean to suggest in any way that Leftism is a religion:
Religion is the belief in that which cannot be proven or disproven...Leftism is the belief in the demonstrably false.

In Defense of Catgirls

A message to Francis Fukyama....


When you oppose genetic research, chimeric investigations and human cloning you are trying to prevent catgirls from even being born.


Dude...you suck!

ahem....
Catgirls aside, this luddism is terribly counterproductive and antihumanistic...and I say this as someone who has reservations about utterly unfettered abortions. The reason those leave me uneasy is a concern for the life involved.....I have equal concern for those suffering from debilitating diseases, some of whom are friends of mine. Opposing this sort of research seriously stymies attempts to improve the quality and length of peoples lives. It is utterly incompatible with a concern for human rights and defining human life broadly and valuing it as much as possible. It is also not in keeping with a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, which is, in theory, is one of the 3 raison d'etres of the conservative movement...though many of the confused Johnny come latelies to our side of the aisle seem to be quite unclear on this point.

On a tangentially related note, this article in National Geographic reinforces the utter wrongness of Fukyama's argument, but something about it is bothering me. It postulates that interspecies trysts are more important to evolution than previously thought. I don't recommend actively testing this hypothesis though there are certainly furverts and Washingtonians who are trying...in vain I might add....as no amount of doing it with a horse is going to produce a centaur.

The article is interesting but I'm not sure about it's nomenclature...
If two "species" interbreed and produce a true breeding offspring (as opposed to a mule) then, as I understand it, they aren't actually separate species. For example, the Red Wolf is apparently a true breeding hybrid of the Grey Wolf and Coyote...but dogs are...DOGS and can pretty much interbreed with all dogs (mechanical difficulties between mastiffs and chihuahuas notwithstanding). The recent discovery of the Pizzly Bear is another case in point....though it's unclear if that animal was a mule or not.

This seems to be talking about combining genes from divergent points on the bell curve of a species genetic drift...or am I missing some secret thing that is kept from us lowly undergraduates?

Note:Here at Brickmuppet Blog we have nothing at all against miscegenation and indeed heartily endorse it.

Deceivingly cute .gif is from the ethically dubious UFO Princess Valkyrie which is seriously not my cup of tea...but which you can purchase here if you so desire.

Don is Officially Cooler Than Me.

Here is the proof.

No, really, I checked.

This is galling!

His sidekick loli is just...just.. gloating and insufferable!

I must do something about this.

NO SLAVE LABOR!!!
FREE TIBET!!!
TAIWAN IS SOVEREIGN!!!
FAULUN GONG!!!

Update:
Drat!!!
Ubu is cooler too!
Satharn has me beat!
PulpJunkie is secure in his coolness!
Gorilla Daze is cooler than me!

This is unforgivable!

I mean I actually have linked to stories on Organ Jacking at least once.

I just give up...

I Would've Asked for Florence King....but Noooooo...

Well, while I was vegging and spaceblogging watching anime and sleeping there was a bimbo eruption at CPAC as Twiggy the Terrible had yet another moment of shock jock assininity.

Thanks for that Ann...

...and the idiot college kids of course ate it up. (Though there were a few boos.)

Fortunately most of the blogging righties were swift to denounce this asshattery for what it was, as were all the Presidential canidates including the one she so thoughtfully endorsed.

Michelle Malkin has a prescient reading recommendation.

I'm happy to see that she is being thoroughly denounced pretty much across the board on the right.

And that is all I'm going to say on that.

Damn Them To Hell....

A US soldier has been dishonorably discharged and sentenced to a century in a military prison for war crimes.


Michelle Malkin posts on the waste of skin who just plea bargained himself out of the gallows.

Others may yet get the death penalty, one can hope.

Regards this case, I typed some quite unkind things to The Major, whom I disagree with on a number of issues, and who I'm convinced is utterly wrong about a few things.

I'm sorry Major.

It should also be pointed out that Malkin is correct, this is in NO way normal for any of our services. We all are humiliated by these actions. And they do not reflect on the reality of our military.

Perceptions, however, are a big part of how this war is fought.

The actions of these four evil men have badly hurt us.
The town in question turned to the terrorists because they promised to hand out justice to those who had committed this abominable act. They did so, brutally killing thee members of the squad these men belonged to....Barker then confessed during a debriefing.
These men have handed the terrorists an actual moral victory.
This reinforces the view too many have of our troops, it elevates AlQuaeda in the eyes of a very honor conscious society.

All of which seem to fade in importance in contrast to the unspeakable horrors that little girl felt in her last moments.

I feel ill....

One Reason I Got my Back All Bowed up....

....over the NAZI chic thing in the update to this post is that there are still people out there who are upset Hitler didn't finish the job... and not just loons in the closet either.


Witness this bizarre talk by an Iranian scholar regards the subtle Jewish propoganda that is Tom and Jerry...

Laugh at the fact that Tom and Jerry was not made by Walt Disney. Chuckle over the weird notion that the predatory cat is the true victim of the cruel mouse...(yes Tom can be sympathetic I suppose but COME ON).

And just scratch your head over the fact that this asshat is using Schindler's List as a reference for this holocaust denying, Tom and Jerry maligning, lecture.

But while you smirk at this idiot, remember, this guy is quite representative of people who run several countries and in this particular country those people want to get and are close to getting nukes to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. And remember that periodically their Hezbollah proxies are trying to(and all too often often succeeding to) kill Jews via rocket, bomb or gun.

Anyway, I stand by the devil-worship comment, no matter how ironically cute the fanart may be.

HT: Instapundit

Justice!

Comeuppance even....

Nancy Grace....

Heh....




I'll be surprised if this vid stays up long.

Unspeakable Evil....

Meryl Yourish on the use of organs from prisoners in China.

The atrocity that hitherto was a fodder for science fiction stories and movies and, according to some sporadic rumors, a side line of business for some criminals*, became now an established procedure in a country that is practically unassailable for any transgression of basic human rights....


Read the whole thing....

On Crazy Astronaut Lady....

Rand Simberg has one of the best takes on the deranged and dangerous damsel of diapers.

And that's about all I intend to post on that.

I've been hacked!! (update: I've been a doofus)

I have NOT been discharged from the Coast Guard.

I do NOT consider me fellow coasties or US servicemen of any service to be mercenaries.

More to follow.

But I am mad.

UPDATE: It seems that the site is secure. I was not a hack as such. It was a failed attempt at humor that was able to be attempted because, I, (for some reason I can't fathom) hit "remember password" on a publicly accessible computer at the comic store last night.

Well I'm feeling dumb.

I only got alerted to this when a friend E-mailed to ask why I'd left the CGR....followed quickly by an inquiry from a shipmate. THAT could have gotten complicated quickly.

I'm just glad I happened to be online for school and caught it when I did....

Keith Henson is Jailed

Keith Henson, who had to seek asylum in Canada to seek refuge from Scientologists has been arrested on a charge of....offending the Scientology religion.

He was initially charged with attempting to use a long range Tom Cruise missile to commit terrorism....no really.

He bucked that charge...but then...
Though Henson was found innocent of long-range missile terrorism, for his activities he was convicted of interfering with a church — a California hate crime for which he received a six-month misdemeanor prison sentence. But Henson said he feared his life would be in danger from Scientologists if he were imprisoned - and he fled to Canada in 2001.

He was already bankrupt from an earlier ruling that he’d infringed on Scientology copyrights. But Henson continued picketing Scientologists in Toronto, and they apparently retaliated by informing Canadian police of his presence. (Henson believes the Scientologists told police he was a terrorist and bomb maker.) L.A. Weekly reported two unmarked vans pulled up and “a handful of emergency-services task-force officers — Canada’s version of a police SWAT team — spilled out, wearing body armor and carrying submachine guns.” Describing the event, the EFF reported Henson was “arrested in a shopping mall parking lot, by a heavily armed paramilitary unit.”

He ultimately applied for asylum in Canada...the first American they've agreed to hear the case of on such terms, but he fled when he feared he'd get extradited to Califonia where he fears for his life in prison.

He was recently arrested in Arizona and faces extradition to California to face charges of exercising his first amendment rights...by criticizing scientology.

Details here, and here. The Free Keith Hanson blog is here.

Hat Tip to Instapundit.

Prayers to XENU

TANSTAAFTTS

Well, thought you won a free trip to space did you sonny?

We've got a system that can keep you from being troubled with things like that!


Asshats...

Space Station Dodges Chicom ASAT Debris

The ISS maneuvered out of the path of a debris cloud generated by the recent Chinese ASAT test.

The test was in a higher orbit (less prone to atmospheric drag) than the Russian and US tests of decades past and hit a much larger satellite resulting in a ridiculously large series of debris fields. A decent overview of the debris field is here. Note that Kessler effects will make this problem worse.

I do wonder, given the apparent needlessness of the large debris field (at the least, the test could have been done in a lower orbit where drag would have mitigated the debris...) if this was not a space denial test as much as a ASAT test.

The US space assets, such as GPS satellites and recon birds give the US a big advantage. If things went south the Chinese might be willing to shut space off completely for a few decades with a big debris field. This could be seen as giving them an effective tactical advantage by gutting several US (and NATO and Japanese...and Taiwanese) capabilities.
This would be an extreme option, but it would force other nations to fight against China's strengths rather than use photo recon and GPS to shoot silver bullets at vulnerable points.

Ick...

That's disturbing

A Message for Mr. Arkin....

Background here, here, here and here...

...and Murdoc notes that Arkin is the same weasel that released a book with over 3,000 military and intel codewords. A rather telling bit of info that is getting virtually no play anywhere else.

Note: Despite my disgust with Arkin's reprehensible comments, I am in complete agreement with Don Subers "update 2" linked in the "ping-pong post" above.

A few “conservatives” apparently want Arkin fired for expressing an opinion they do not agree with. AJ Strata is organizing a boycott of the Post’s advertisers until Arkin is fired.

Fired for what? That is one of the dumbest things I have heard of in years. I put this on par with the liberal “hate speech” crapola.

You do not win a debate by closing it off — by chasing those who disagree with you away.

I like AJ but he is plain wrongheaded on this. Believe it or not, other people are entitled to their beliefs. Free speech and freedom of the press go well beyond our constitution.

Here, here...

UPDATE: The image has vanished just like all the images in the below post....will be fixed tomorrow or the next day..