Yet Another Capitulation in Our Ongoing Cultural Suicide

In two days it will have been twenty years since the senile theocratic leader of a foreign state, Ayatollah Khomeini, sentenced to death a British citizen for the crime of writing a novel. It was Salman Rushdie upon whom the fatwa was placed, and the reward for his death, were he have been offed by a Muslim, was to be a monetary prize and a blessed afterlife. Gratefully the sinister plot failed, though he was forced to spend a better part of the subsequent decade constantly hiding and moving, and various booksellers, publishers, and translators associated with the offending text, The Satanic Verses, were disemboweled, stabbed, or blown up.

Now on the eve of this disgraceful anniversary the UK has banned from passing through its otherwise rather porous checkpoints the Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who was to present his short film Fitna in London at the invitation of a member of the House of Lords. The film is apparently a clumsy and ill-mannered diatribe against the Koran, and comparisons are made between that book and Mein Kampf. But the content of speech is never relevant because it is the very act of speech that is protected. Our culture has made freedom to express oneself sacrosanct, and so it should have after the bloody outrages of our past and the undying temptation some have to silence opinions with which they disagree.

Every observer of this fiasco knows why Mr. Wilders has been banned from the UK. The government wants to be seen as sensitive to the concerns of Muslims. Balderdash! No one should spend a second worrying about the sensitivities of anyone else. To do so debases and infantalizes public dialogue. A letter signed by 127 Iranians protesting their government's bounty on Mr. Rushdie is worth quoting here. They wrote, "We insist on the fact that aesthetic criteria are the only proper ones for judging works of art." Let Muslims and their obsequious liberal patrons criticize Mr. Wilders and his film as they please, but don't let a government deprive him of his right to communicate a political idea.

The Israeli Election

The results are in and the centrist Kadima edged the conservative Likud 28 seats to 27. But parties of the right took 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, while the left took 55 (if you count Kadima among the left). The party most associated with the founding of Israel, Labour, sank to fourth place with only 13 seats. The far-right Yisrael Beytenu placed third with 15 seats. In this election the left was eviscerated and the right triumphant. The only thing that might prevent a conservative rejectionist government is if Kadima can cobble together a loose and tenuous alliance of Labour and some smaller right-wing parties. Otherwise Benjamin Netanyahu will likely be prime minister, and the forward movement that might have been available to a peace initiative from President Obama will be squandared.

Hitchens on the Self-Deluding, Playtime Left

At a rancorous debate in Manhattan three and half years ago with fascist stooge and jihad apologist George Galloway, Christopher Hitchens quipped,

There are probably some people among you here who fancy yourselves as having leftist revolutionary credentials, so far as I can tell that you do from the zoo-noises you make--and the scars you can demonstrate from your long underground twilight struggle against Dick Cheney. But while you're masturbating in that manner, the Iraqi secular left, the socialist and communist movements, the workers' movement, the trade unions, are fighting for their lives against the most vicious and indiscriminant form of fascist violence that any country in the region has seen for a very long time.

The imbroglio over the Iraq War, I think, showed the decadence and frivolity of the anti-war left.

Dolly Parton in D.C.!

"Somebody said to me, 'Well, you know what — you've got such a big mouth and you know how to talk to people, did you ever think about running for president?'” the country singer told an audience at the National Press Club. I said, 'I think we've had enough boobs in the White House, but hopefully [President] Obama ain't gonna be one of them.'"

Election Season in Iran Off to Troubling Start

Last week Mohammad Khatami declared he would be a candidate for the presidency of Iran in the June elections, setting up a race against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He served as president from 1997 to 2005 and was known as a pro-Western moderate. Yesterday a wild mob attacked him at the 30th anniversary celebration of the Iranian Revolution, shouting, "Death to Khatami. We do not want American government." This takes negative campaigning to a new level!

Ideological Warfare and Guantanamo Bay

One is increasingly forced to confront the psychotraumatic fact that most of the world loathes and fears rationalism and science, fervently clings to paranoid cults and Jew-hatred, and would delight in the destruction of the open society. People who aren't moved to form mobs or death squads and who aren't inflamed by ethnic or sectarian demagogues are under an evermore lethal threat from people who do these things.

Take the example, mentioned in the previous posting, of the Polish engineer slaughtered in Pakistan by the Taliban. There can be but one response: the verminous rabble that beheaded him should be hunted and exterminated without compunction. And if any rise to replenish the ranks of jihad they too should suffer relentless pursuit and destruction. The message should be unmistakable: we have no objection to making war on beheaders and amputators, oppressors of women, and ethno-religious supremacists.

The time should have long ago ended when the enemies of the Enlightenment could count on the US and its allies to behave squeamishly and allow themselves to be subjected to squalid victimology and moral blackmail by Islamic fascist imams and mullahs and their fellow-traveling associates in the anti-war movement. It should also be clarified that the argument that killing jihadists only creates more of them can be inverted; the jihadists should know that their attacks have the potential to create waves of resistance, recalcitrance, and retribution. After the Gaza war Hamas declared victory despite their utter devastation, yet the Israeli electorate has proven just as obdurate and steadfast. Parties of the Israeli right (those determined to eliminate Hamas rather than tolerate its continued existence) have come out of today's election stronger.

It is essential to note that this civilizational struggle is about the ideology of the combatants, not the tactics used to fight it. For example, the pathetic outcry about Guantanamo Bay represents a disastrous miscontstrual of the terms of the war. I believe the prison camp there should be closed for the same reason President Obama evidently gave to a meeting of the families of victims of 9/11 and the attack on USS Cole: it had become associated in world memory with the horror show at Abu Ghraib and it was being used for the recruitment of jihadists. This is is a shrewd assessment of public opinion, corrupt and hypocritical though it is.

But the reality of Guantanamo Bay is rarely discussed because a loud, insufferable mentality prevails, which insists America has betrayed its core values and shown itself to be no better than the terrorists. It is rarely mentioned only three people have been waterboarded. One of them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was the mastermind of the 9/11 calamity and the man who sawed American journalist Daniel Pearl's head off on web video after forcing him to admit to the crime of being a Jew. Further, Guantanamo Bay is probably more sanitary and safe than any maximum-security prison in the Muslim world, monitors from human rights NGOs are there constantly, and prisoners are allowed their religious practices. It should also be noted the legal framework governing the treatment of non-state, non-uniformed, wartime enemy combatants was unclear when al-Qaeda terrorists commandeered planeloads full of civilians and smashed them into buildings full of civilians.

As I said, this war is about ideology. The combatants' systems of thought should be evaluated to determine which is more ethical and defensible. I claim that the people who prate about Guantanamo Bay do so in order to postpone, evade, or parse the larger issue. By and large they prefer not to deal with serious, complicated questions that at some point might demand criticism of another culture (gasp!). It is to succumb to cultural relativism to idly denounce US policy on Guantanamo Bay when an epochal war over the very notion of human rights is afoot.

All the energy and time that were devoted to campaigning against Guantanamo Bay should have been spent exposing and excoriating gender apartheid in the Muslim world, public floggings and hangings, the disenfranchisement of women, the criminalization of adultery, the censorship of the press, the banning of political parties, the stealing of elections, the looting of public coffers, the endemic corruption, the promotion of suicide-murder and jihad, the intimidation and murder of apostates, freethinkers, and polytheists, primordial delusions about human sexuality, the incitement to genocide against Jews, the demonization of America, mass illiteracy, and religious extremism and bigotry.

Until the public dialectic shifts its crippling focus from the tactics of the war to the content of it, we cannot expect any lucid critique of this world-historical contest.

Thoughts on the News and the Pessimism It Elicits

Something struck me as I was sifting through news articles on various websites today: they all made me disoriented with indignation. These include:

1. The decapitation of a Polish engineer in Pakistan by disgusting, lower-than-low Taliban curs.
2. The planning of the 85th birthday celebration of Robert Mugabe to include thousands of lobsters, prawns, ducks, bottles of champagne, portions of caviar, and boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates (gross) in a country where, according to The Times, "seven million citizens survive on international food aid, 94 per cent are jobless and cholera rampages through a population debilitated by hunger."
3. A poll of respondents in several European countries showing widespread belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
4. The so-called "Joe the Plumber" is still alive.
5. There is a piece in today's Red & Black, "Choose happiness, regardless of situation," by opinions editor and sob-sister Shannon Otto, that enjoins readers to be cheery, banal, and vacuous.

Reports like these make my blood boil (perhaps not the last two). I'm not deliberately pessimistic, but one comes to expect most people are dangerously ignorant. Would it be banal of me to say "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity"?

Immiserated Zimbabwe Rots as Diplomats Fecklessly Negotiate; Parallels Are Drawn to Auschwitz

This article was rejected by the parochial obscurant who controls the opinions page at The Red & Black.

Merely to read the reports coming out of Zimbabwe is to feel helpless, ill, and outraged. Unimaginable destitution and misery prevail. The World Health Organization reports 56,000 cases of cholera and nearly 3,000 deaths; the fatality rate is eight to ten times higher than usual. Abduction, torture, and murder are official tools of the state.

The Times of London quoted a priest who operates a countryside clinic as saying, “People are starving here. The extent of the suffering has reached Auschwitz proportions.” This absolute collapse in Zimbabwean society is attributable to one man: President Robert Mugabe.

Mr. Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since its 1980 transition from white-minority-run Rhodesia. In 2000 he began seizing white-owned farms and handing them over to his political supporters, who pillaged the land and ruined the agriculture. He explained, “Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy.”

This land theft transformed what had been known as Africa’s bread basket into a country ravaged by malnutrition and dependent on emergency food aid. In eight years the cereals harvest has declined from 4.5 million to 800,000 tons, according to the Times. It is one of the many cruel ironies that define Zimbabwe’s recent history.

Nine years ago 92 percent of children attended primary school, but that figure is estimated to have fallen below one in four. Last year there were but 27 days of school; most teachers were on strike or could not afford food or transport. More than 20 were murdered by the state for their political activities. Recently it was announced their monthly salary would be the equivalent of one American dollar.

The economy is predictably in a state of devastation. Hyperinflation has wiped out people’s savings. A paper published by the Cato Institute last November calculated Zimbabwe’s annual inflation at 89.7 sextillion percent. The reserve bank just introduced a ten trillion dollar note and has plans for them in 50 and 100 trillion dollar denominations.

Amidst this debacle an election was held last year. International monitors agree the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won, but Mr. Mugabe has refused to concede and has instead become more deranged and intransigent. Mr. Tsvangirai has sporadically been driven into exile in South Africa and Botswana and once had to seek refuge in the Dutch embassy, government thugs having hunted him down.

A delegation from Physicians for Human Rights recently visited Zimbabwe, and in their report they described “added proof of the commission by the Mugabe regime of crimes against humanity.” They also noted worryingly that due to interrupted and inconsistent antiretroviral treatments for AIDS sufferers, it is possible drug-resistant strands of HIV may develop. The public health crisis emanating from Zimbabwe could quickly become a regional disaster.

Because of the stealing of elections, the jailing and murder of civic leaders and journalists, and the humanitarian catastrophe (famine, epidemic, economic disintegration), a multitude has called for Mr. Mugabe to step down or be removed militarily and brought before an international criminal court. It includes Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Washington Post editorial board, the Primate of the Church of England John Sentamu, and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Mr. Mugabe had the effrontery to respond, “I will never, never, never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine.” A vile statement like that needs to be repudiated in the most forceful and decisive terms, and the way to do so is for an international force to draw to a close this senile kleptocrat’s misrule. The terrorized, beggared people of Zimbabwe deserve better than the world’s dithering and inaction.

The Public Evaluates Obama

According a recent Gallup Poll the American people approve of most of what President Obama has done thus far, with the noteworthy exceptions of closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and repealing the Mexico City Policy, which governs American funding of international family planning groups.

This Needed to be Said. And Repeated. And Repeated.

A Labourite on anti-Semitic violence in Britain. Unsurprisingly, the left demurs and looks away.