Paxety Pages

No blogging for a while. I've upgraded the software, and I'm redesigning the site. It will be easier to navigate, easier to find stories, and it will have more photos.

May 3

If this guy is talking, Arafat is in deep trouble. Marwan Barghouti was captured last week. He's reputed to be the number 2 man behind Arafat. If he's talking, and giving evidence against Arafat, I suspect a deal has been made - or is in the making - to retire the ailing Arafat, and to put Barghouti in charge of the Palestinian Authority. With the blessing of the U.S. and Israel.

May 2

I put up the story on the Jenin "massacre" at 9:30AM yesterday. Did it air last night on CBS? No. NBC? No. CNNRadio? No. The News Slug with Jim Leher? No. Why not? Is 56 dead no longer a high enough body count?

James Lileks is writing about the middle east again, as only he can:

Who is the greater threat to this child pictured below? It’s either the nation that withdrew from the Sinai, withdrew from Lebanon, admits Islamic Movement politicians to its deliberative body and would gladly make peace with any nation not sworn to destroy it - or it’s the culture that hangs the grenade around the necks of its children.

Go read it.

May 1

The thousands killed in the Jenin "massacre" turned out to be 56. So say the Palestinians. The Israelis say 33 of their own soldiers died. It will be interesting to watch to see what the UN commission claims to find.

Here's who has seized the Church of the Holy Nativity.

Don't plan to watch your soaps September 11, 2002. ABC has already made other plans.

April 30

If you want to know why it's taking so long to attack Iraq, it's because we have to make more bombs - and because we have to get the idiotic idea of non-lethal warfare out of the heads of our troops. Don't know about non-lethal warfare? Read this and note the publication date (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader). Summer of 2001.

Non-lethal warfare was pushed forward in the 1990s. It contended that future conflicts would be fought against demonstrators and terrorists hiding among civilian populations. With everyone now able to view images of warfare around the world, the non-lethal warfare advocates thought that world opinion would turn against states that practiced violent, deadly warfare.

Since 9/11, we've seen that terrorists are not glorified demonstrators. They are killers. As we've seen from our fight in Afghanistan and the Israeli incursion into the occupied territories, the way to get rid of terrorists is with lethal, but accurate warfare. Spraying a potential suicide bomber with pepper spray won't change his ideas. Only destruction of his culture will do that.

Later - Victor Davis Hanson must read my blog. Read his article today:

Safety for London was not obtained by asking Mr. Hitler to curb his use of V-1s; Pearl Harbor was not left unconquered on account of Mr. Yamamato's leniency; nor did the Communist Koreans leave the South through negotiations. Instead dour men like Bomber Harris, Curtis LeMay, and Matthew Ridgeway were unleashed to ensure that their enemies were no longer able to inflict the mayhem they desired.

Force, then, has a way of making people change. Even the most militant citizenries can be disabused of their rather dangerous ideas — but only after they understand that the logical consequences of their extremism are impoverishment, ruin, and humiliation. Currently in the Middle East we are shown glimpses of small boys with plastic replicas of bomb-belts, and then told that "an entire generation will grow up to despair and anger." CNN reporters stick microphones into the faces of angry residents of Jenin, and logically get the response they hoped for — pledges of undying hatred for Israel "and the Jews." Pundits wrinkle their brows and then pontificate that "violence breeds violence," and that hatred has become so deeply embedded that real peace is impossible. In fact, peace in the region has never been more likely than it is at the present moment.

As we say in blogdom - read it all. And as for me, I believe that non-lethal warfare will lead to rage and more violence, not to peace.

I've written frequently that the Islamists are not crazy and evil, just as Hitler was not crazy and evil, at least not in the conventional sense of being irrational. They see themselves fighting for ideas - the Islamist ideal, just as Hitler fought for the ideal of European modernism. Both the Islamists and Hitler fought against the same thing - the American concepts of freedom, and these concepts are evolutionary. Stephen den Beste has a four part series on the topic. Go read it beginning here.

I've just stumbled onto the blog of John "Akatsukami" Braue. Interesting insights. Go take a look.

Everyone was wrong about McCain-Feingold. The New York Times was wrong, E.J. Dionne was wrong, David Broder was wrong, and Mickey Kaus was wrong. Mickey Kaus reveals why. You'll see that you were probably wrong, too.

Sgt. Stryker has a first-hand account of last night's tornadoes in Maryland - and wonderful comments on the TV coverage - and the lack thereof.

April 29

It's Hollywood. The one in Florida but still Hollywood - where you can go to jail for memorializing  your friends who died 9/11.

Cross training of terrorists? A bomb expert working with the Red Cross in Jenin says bombs made by the Palestinians are identical to those used in Northern Ireland by the IRA.

All's Noisy on the Western Front. There's a new Monday column devoted to explaining why Western Civilization is better than others - and why we should be exporting it.

As the American founders understood, a government that oppresses its people and extends violence to other nations lacks the consent of the governed and therefore the insulation of sovereignty, a point Sen. Jesse Helms made to the United Nations in a thunderclap of a speech a few years ago. It is morally justifiable and sometimes imperative for sovereign nations to stand up to rogue states, and in some cases even dismantle them and liberate their people. That is not equivalent to rogues attacking anyone.

Go read it all.

Megan McArdle shows how increased gun ownership decreases crime. Reminds me of the Lafer curve, which sounded absurd at first but seems to be true.

April 28

Yes, yes, yes.  I said it at least six years ago. Hahahahahahahahaha