:: PROLEGOMENA ::

:: Monday, March 29 ::

THE MOB AT ROVE HOUSE

I was taken back to the opening scene of the movie The Pelican Brief, to the screaming crowds in front of the Supreme Court, and not really surprised by the illegal mob-scene behavior of illegal immigrants (and especially their advocates) in the front yard at Karl Rove's house.

This is different, by the way, from the protest by Republicans at the Vice Presidential mansion in 2000. They were not on the grounds. They were not beating the windows.

Nor is it like the Republicans who shouted "Let us in!" at the punch-ballot counters who were illegally shutting them out in south Florida in 2000.

The pushing and shoving of dissenters at anti-Israel rallies, the shouting-out of conservative speakers on campus, the destruction of public and private property over globalization, all encourage more of the same, or even more-but-intensified, when no one gets arrested for breaking the law by choosing mob-rule tactics over the legislative process.

Junk Yard Blog puts it in the best words:

The left is becoming more and more thuggish and totalitarian right before our eyes, with the left-wing Bush-hating America-bashing Democrats or their sympathizers undoubtedly pulling the strings from afar. We are going to see political violence this year, probably similar in scale and intent to 1968, and like that awful year it will come from the left. But unlike that year, it will not be confined to Democrat infighting--it will be directed at Republicans and anyone supporting the war. Watch for it: Al Qaeda may not have to attack us, because leftist radicals are already worked into a lather thanks to irresponsible Democrat and leftist lies and are all but ready to strike at us from within.

:: michael parker Monday, March 29, 2004 [+] ::
...

SO HOW IS THIS GOOD NEWS?

State Prosecutor to recommend indicting Sharon on charges of bribery

Wow - a head of state in the Middle East is being investigated for possible criminal behavior. He may have to do the honorable thing and step down, then a peaceful transfer of power would take place.

Elected leaders subject to scrutiny and held accountable if necessary - in facist Israel!

Not in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, not in the hereditary autocracies of Jordan or Syria, or in Egypt where an election has not occurred since...
So Israel may get to serve as a good example for Iraq.

In the meantime, like the NY Times blasting the Washington Post over reporters who lie, won't it be funny to read the hoots and judgments of the state-controlled media of the Muslim world?

:: michael parker Monday, March 29, 2004 [+] ::
...

UP ONE NOTCH

M'god - for a second, Kerry shows some grit, even if he thinks he's pulling Bush into a "politically-motivated-prosecution" trap:

"Kerry challenges Bush to prosecute Clarke if former anti-terrorism advisor lied"

Unless the Dissident Voice is correct:

"Kerry is a Sheep in Wolves' Clothing"

(Since when do liberals think liberals should be scrutinized over perjury?)

:: michael parker Saturday, March 27, 2004 [+] ::
...

Our Lower Class



Two ex-Presidents in one photo, both of whom undermined our national security, and both low-class enough to break with tradition by openly criticizing and even publicly lying about a sitting President. One which allowed the communist Chinese to have our WMD technology, another who enabled Stalinist North Korea to be nuclear as well. Both there to support a would-be President who, as an anti-war activist, suspiciously mingled with the North Vietnamese, and who would work to give a UN of hostile nations a say in American policies.

The most amazing thing in this image is the presence of (I thought) politically dead Al Gore. Life after death? - not really. What is that look on Al's face... is he about to give it to Kerry like he gave it to Tipper? (Would that secure the gay vote... or make gay men go straight?)

Meanwhile at the new DNC HQ:
Entering McAuliffe's new corner office, which is equipped as a TV studio, visitors walk over a doormat bearing a likeness of President Bush and the words, "Give Bush the Boot."

:: michael parker Friday, March 26, 2004 [+] ::
...

LOOK WHO'S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT

By the time Bryan Preston at Junk Yard Blog is done with John Kerry, he makes Pinch Sulzberger look patriotic:

Why did he meet with representatives of the Communist North Vietnamese government, and what was discussed? Did he meet with other left-wing groups while in Europe, and what was discussed?

You really should read this.

:: michael parker Friday, March 26, 2004 [+] ::
...

THINK BEFORE YOU SLAP

"Mr. Simmons took offense and said he had to 'bitch slap' him."

The victim, whose name was not immediately available, was described by police as a burly man known to compete in the spectator sport of cage fighting, otherwise known as mixed martial arts. He told authorities that he wanted to press charges against Simmons.

Fitness Guru Simmons Cited for Slapping Fighter

:: michael parker Friday, March 26, 2004 [+] ::
...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has launched an ad campaign to reach out to Christians, banking, perhaps, on the alleged anti-semitism in Mel Gibson's movie, which to date has resulted in no anti-Semite activity. To clarify, this is the same CAIR which condemns, along with the UN Human Rights Committee, Israel's assassination of the spiritual leader of Hamas.

Under the "spiritual leadership" of the now-late Yassin, Hamas understood itself, and still does:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

"After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."

In the meantime, the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries continues, and Swissair, with its cross on its tail, is still not allowed to fly over Mecca.

Amid discussions of our differences and the trite remarks about Islam being a religion of peace, you may recall what happens when the "prophet" is insulted. A newspaper in Nigeria suggested that Mohammed might have selected a wife from the beauties at the Miss World pageant. Subsequently, churches burned in Africa and Hindus were slaughtered in India. Salmon Rushdie publishes his book, and we learn the word fatwa.

Brazilian cartoonist Osmani Simanca today could be mistaken for a CAIR spokesperson. The Christian and Jewish response to this Brazilian cartoon will be, predictably, one of words:



If the Muslims could get their hands on the Dissident Frogman for insulting the "spiritual leader", their response would be one of two words, Allahu Akhbar!, before the rest of their response.

:: michael parker Thursday, March 25, 2004 [+] ::
...

BROCK... RITTER... CLARK...?

So what do the Democrats have on this Clark guy... has he been doctor shopping, too?

or is it simply book sales?

Former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, a Republican, took up the president's cause inside the commission hearing. "We have your book and we have your press briefing of August 2002. Which is true?" he challenged the witness.

The radio news continues to call White House efforts to refute Clark's claims as ""attacks". We are in for a long, long, very whiney campaign season.

:: michael parker Thursday, March 25, 2004 [+] ::
...

NORTH KOREA ENDORSES KERRY

Venezuela denounces murder of Yassin .


HOWEVER, VENEZUELA DOES NOT ENDORSE KERRY
--- or, it will endorse Kerry, before it doesn't

Venezuela will not take Kerry's criticism seriously: official

:: michael parker Wednesday, March 24, 2004 [+] ::
...

"Carter savages Blair and Bush: 'Their war was based on lies'"

Best ex-President Jimmy Carter, in the new Spanish tradition, gave the Islamists what they want this weekend with this remark, and at the same time continued the fairly new post-Presidency tradition, started by first Black ex-President Bill Clinton, to criticize the current office holder.

And in another "cycle of violence" mentality remark:

"Kerry and Bush urged to tone down election attacks frenzy"

Frenzy? Bush and Cheney have been competing in this debate with Kerry's voting record. Yes, please, President Bush, please refrain from using evidence to support your case, particularly when your opponent was good enough to provide you with that record. You see, if you had the intelligence of Senator Kerry, you would understand the nuances.

The article, with no author named, makes this claim:

With a new poll showing Bush and Kerry neck-and-neck in the race, senior members of the Republican and Democratic parties appealed to the rivals to change tactics.

But the article site Joe Lieberman and John McCain as the seniors. That's balanced reporting... siting a Democrat who just ran for President and an alleged Republican who would consider running as Kerry's running mate.

But further down in the article, I find something encouraging:

McCain said he was hearing from people in his home state of Arizona who are saying: "Look, I'm not even going to vote if this is the way the campaign's going to be conducted."

The emotional voters are a big problem, so that emotional response to a hard campaign is welcome. Elections should be for thinking people, anyway.

In a quote that should be directed to best ex-President Jimmy Carter, Lieberman pontificates:

Lieberman, Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites)'s running mate in the 2000 presidential election, said Bush and Kerry must "make sure that we carry on this debate in a way that doesn't send a mixed message to the Iraqis or our troops there, or to our enemies there. We're together in trying to find a strategy for success and victory and democracy in Iraq."

:: michael parker Monday, March 22, 2004 [+] ::
...

AGAIN - WHO LEARNED FROM WHO?

BBC radio this morning described not only the attempted assassinations of Taiwan's President and Vice President, but added that China had so far expressed no official reaction to the crimes. China's state-controlled media has also not reported the event.

Of course they haven't. This is the same China which in 1995, allowed one of its top military people to threaten the destruction of Los Angeles if the US endeavored to protect democratic Taiwan. Of course, at that time, China's threat was some 20 missiles strong, missiles with a 1960's Russia level of performance.

Along come the Clinton Administration and Madame Albright, who do not believe it is right for there to be a single superpower. Out go the US technologies to vastly improve China's missile arsenal, in comes the money to the bank accounts of the DNC.

Has anyone noticed how many of China's neighbors are nuclear vs. how many US neighbors are nuclear? Stabilization, my ass.


KERRY TO RETURN FOREIGN ENDORSEMENTS?

It was announced, without elaboration or a link, on the Drudge Report. Where is the report now? Perhaps it is too late, now that North Korea has already expressed itself and is playing Kerry speeches on Radio NK.

Fast forward to November... Will John Kerry return the illegitimate votes? Hell, no. He has already indicated the lawyers will be ready in Florida, so of course the homeless absentee voters can keep their smokes.


:: michael parker Friday, March 19, 2004 [+] ::
...

WHO LEARNED FROM WHO?

China flexes missile muscle on eve of Taiwan vote

Is China encouraged by Al-Qaeda's successful Madrid massacre?

Considering the size if China and the obvious impossiblity of a conquest by Taiwan, the message conveyed by 500 missiles across the Taiwan Strait is clear: We are thinking about killing you, and we are ready to should we decide to do it. In that case, China will need to leave enough survivors to vote in a more Chinese-approved manner.

:: michael parker Thursday, March 18, 2004 [+] ::
...

KLERRYFICATION

"More", not "foreign"?

This means Kerry had the chance all along to say, "I didn’t say foreign."
Instead, Kerry has engaged in the discussion as if, even if in a different statement made, used the word foreign to describe the leaders instead of using the word more.

I am thrown back to another attempt to salvage something stupid spoken: Clinton Cabinet member Donna Shalala’s comment, "We did not send our best and our brightest to Vietnam." After predictable uproar, she explained that the spoken words did not reflect the intended punctuation marking possession.

She claimed her intended comment was, "We did not send our best’s and brightest’s to Vietnam"

So instead of insulting the soldiers who answered their calls to duty, she meant to insult their parents. To Shalala’s credit, she didn’t wait for a Boston Globe reporter to provide cover for her, too late, and in the process give the Right more proof of leftist bias in the press.

Never having believed her correction, I now wonder if Shalala was thinking about Kerry when she made her outrageous comment.

A smartass friend e-mailed me:
"In other news Bush said "my mom does crunches for ab reduction" not "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction."

HaHa

I’ll buy that, but it reminds me of my first lesson in the art of cover-up rhyme. No, this was not Richard Gere’s “Pirates of Penzance / Peed in my pants” save at the San Francisco Opera House in Pretty Woman, like it was for many people.
It was Major Vaughn in Up the Academy who clarified, "Tickle your ass with a feather?" with "mighty nice weather."

:: michael parker Tuesday, March 16, 2004 [+] ::
...

CABLE IS OFF

I turned in the cable TV box yesterday and unsubscribed. This election year is nothing I want to see, let alone something I want to pay to see, and I do not even know that I would accept pay to see it.

What little I get to see of John Kerry this year will be embarrassing enough, nor do I want to hear another Presidential speech about steroids. The children, the children, the children. I don't want it in my house.

:: michael parker Tuesday, March 16, 2004 [+] ::
...

SPAIN BECOMES FRANCE or... THE MOORS DRIVE OUT THE SPANISH

On Thursday, Islamists sent a clear message to the people of Spain: change your leadership, or we will commit even more mass murder in your country.

``The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster,'' Zapatero, 43, told Spain's Cadena Ser radio station today. U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair ``will have to work on reflection and self-criticism to ensure that things like this never happen again,'' he said.

Zapatero, whose Socialists ousted the ruling Popular Party in yesterday's elections, had pledged in his campaign to remove the troops in the absence of a UN mandate addressing postwar Iraq. He didn't specify that condition in today's comments, saying only he sees ``no signs of change'' before the coalition's planned handover of power to Iraqis by June 30.

...in the absense of a UN mandate...
That's the UN that made itself absent the day it got hit in Baghdad by a suicide bomber, sending the same message to the terrorists that the Spanish did yesterday: if you hit us hard enough, we will run.

Apparently the Spain that tried to extradite Pinochet is back, and the ghost of Isabella is shreaking.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Condoleeza Rice managed to put the war in some good language when she described the terrorists' situation as one of shrinking territory, no longer having Afghanistan or Iraq as a base of operations. Still, the Spanish election should serve as a wake-up call to President Bush and the campaign. The left does too good of a job appealing to the emotional, self-righteous nature of its constituency. If they believe that closed torture chambers and terrorists on the run constitutes a disaster, then the political right is doing a lousy job of getting its message understood. Repeat it enough times...

Scott at Slantpoint creates his first political cartoon.
(You have to recognize the flower logo as that of the Socialist Party in Spain.)


:: michael parker Monday, March 15, 2004 [+] ::
...

HAGAR-RAMONE 2008

God Bless Johnny Ramone.

:: michael parker Friday, March 12, 2004 [+] ::
...

WRONG

This is absolutely how not to protect the unborn:

Utah Woman Charged With Murdering Fetus

SALT LAKE CITY - As Melissa Ann Rowland's unborn twins got closer to birth, doctors repeatedly told her they would likely die if she did not have a Caesarean section. She refused, and one later was stillborn. Authorities charged 28-year-old Rowland with murder on Thursday, saying she exhibited "depraved indifference to human life," according to court documents. Prosecutors said Rowland didn't want to be scarred, and one nurse told police that Rowland said she would rather "lose one of the babies than be cut like that." The case could affect abortion rights and open the door to the prosecution of mothers who smoke or don't follow their obstetrician's diet, said Marguerite Driessen, a law professor at Brigham Young University. "It's very troubling to have somebody come in and say we're going to charge this mother for murder because we don't like the choices she made," she said.
...
The doctor who performed an autopsy found that the fetus died two days before delivery and would have survived if Rowland had undergone a C-section when urged to do so. It was not immediately clear how far along Rowland was in her pregnancy. She was charged in Salt Lake County with one first-degree felony count of criminal homicide. Rowland was being held on $250,000 bail at the Salt Lake County jail, and was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

Even if her fear proves to be stupid and irrational, the state cannot force someone into surgery. That is clearly different from putting a term limit on abortion. The idea of forcing someone into surgery against their clearly expressed will makes the difference. This is also not the same thing as drug abuse during pregnancy.

While I stereotype this as what I expect from Utah, the prosecution there, and their like-minded, should consider how this case will be sited as a good reason to rally for "choice" in abortion. The late-term lobby will especially spin this and run it into the ground as what's going to happen "all over America".

:: michael parker Friday, March 12, 2004 [+] ::
...

HELL IN CAMP X-RAY - like hell

Only in a British newspaper:

Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.

Amputations? Really? Due to wounds they got on the Afghan battlefield, perhaps? Where did Jamal go to medical school, and what can the Afghan medics on the battlefield teach us to help us improve western medicine?
Someone alert the Kerry Campaign and tell him this can get us closer to national health care!

A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.

Wasn't it foolish of the Marines to leave the dates on the food? They should have known it would cause a fuss, even if the food was fresher than they had on the Afghan battlefield.

But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centered on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees. Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.

What in the world would you go off to war for when you haven't even seen an unveiled woman? Why would you be drawn to a paradise and 70 virgins if you didn't know what you were getting? As they fought for a Taliban that wanted women to be stupid, unproductive, and completely covered, did they not have second thoughts as they viewed an unveiled woman for the first time?

File this story with the massacre at Jenin.



:: michael parker Friday, March 12, 2004 [+] ::
...

COULTER CHRISTIANITY

A while back, atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, writing for Vanity Fair, took on the subject of Jew-hating in his own style, remarking that the emptiest complaint against the Jews was the complaint that they killed Jesus. He remarked that, well, without the death of Jesus there wouldn't even be Christianity, now would there?

fast forward:
Even if you don't like her style, Ann Coulter today makes the point that no anti-Semitic violence has resulted from the vast number of viewings of The Passion of the Christ, and you cannot deny it.

She similarly quips and adds, "If the Jews had somehow managed to block Jesus' crucifixion and He had died in old age of natural causes, there would be no salvation through Christ and no Christianity. Whatever possible responses there may be to that story, this is not one of them: Damn those Jews for being a part of God's plan to save my eternal soul!"

She also finds a way to bring up an old but true very low number in the "Christians' revenge" against the abortion doctors.

Adding to that, a fact about Hitler that is easy to forget in the pressure to be apologetic for one's own Christianity:

Despite repeated suggestions from liberals -- including the in-house "conservative" and Clinton-supporter at the Times -- Hitler is not what happens when you gin up Christians. Like Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine killers and the editorial board of The New York Times, Hitler detested Christians.

Indeed, Hitler denounced Christianity as an "invention of the Jew" and vowed that the "organized lie (of Christianity) must be smashed" so that the state would "remain the absolute master." Interestingly, this was the approach of all the great mass murderers of the last century -- all of whom were atheists: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

The other much-not-talked-about fact was the Nazi point of view that Islam was compatible with the Nazi plan for dominance.

It was Heinrich Himmler who in particular hated Christianity for being soft. Islam was a man's religion, by comparison: blind obedience, lack of mercy, martyrdom. It was Egypt's Nasser who brought in the Wehrmacht to train Egyptian soldiers how to improve their Jew-killing. (Losers embracing losers, Egypt's Third Army made it across the Suez in 1973, but got itself surrounded and damn near annihilated by a Jewish nation who embraced diplomacy and chose instead to spare it.)

Put that in your pro-Palestinian pipe and smoke it.

:: michael parker Thursday, March 11, 2004 [+] ::
...

A MILLION EUROPEANS ENSLAVED

Interesting new history, which will not matter to many. I hadn't really thought about the skin color specifically, but the story does not surprise me that there was significant slavery in North Africa "between 1530 and 1780, a time of vigorous Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal piracy."

This falls back on Islam, its nature then and now, and the "tolerance" we are supposed to exercise toward it. Slavery exists today, in Africa. Africans, particularly Christian Africans are enslaved today by Muslim masters. Yet in America, the activist-minded will renounce Christianity, assume Arab names, and bitch about the slavery that ended in this country almost 150 years ago, and demand reparations. If David Horowitz dares to speak against on a college campus, he needs bodyguards.

In comments which may stoke controversy, he said that white slavery had been minimised or ignored because academics preferred to treat Europeans as evil colonialists rather than as victims.

While Africans laboured on sugar and cotton plantations the European slaves were put to work in quarries, building sites and galleys and endured malnutrition, disease and maltreatment.

Ruling pashas, entitled to an eighth of all captured Christians, housed them in overcrowded baths known as banhos and used them for public works such as building harbours and cutting trees. They were given loaves of black bread and water.

One might also want to remember, for all the false alarm over "colonization", it was colonization that brought piracy under control.

:: michael parker Thursday, March 11, 2004 [+] ::
...

NORTH CAROLINA IN THE NEWS

Anyone who remembers Billy Ray Valentine in a Jacuzzi for the first time will should remember his line, "When I was little and we wanted a Jacuzzi, we had to fart in the tub!"

Two workers at Wendy's in Advance, NC had photos developed of themselves taking a bubble bath in the kitchen sink.

You can answer a survey question at the site - this is where it was interesting to me. It's really a non-story but another reminder of how people do not think. The health department said it posed no health hazard, of course it didn't, but two-thirds surveyed out of 45,000 (Forty-Five Thousand - now that's a big damn poll) still say it's too unsanitary. Clean is clean. They cleaned it. Get over it.

. . .

Also, the FBI caught an eco-terrorist in LA and charged him with buring 125 SUV's and other property. The press sought comments from his father, who lives in Concord, NC - an area I heard referred to yesterday as the Bible Belt. Funny how with this story alone, the Bible Belt has produced 118 more acts of eco-arson than abortion doctor murders.

And how about the harm done to the environment with the burning of the plastic throughout the 125 SUV's, hmmm? Like those animal freaks who release minks to become road kill or cannibals, this eco-terrorist is somehow smart enough to be a grad student in the physics department at the CA Institute of Technology, but dumb enough to grossly pollute in the name of the environment. It's no damn wonder these people will vote for Kerry.

:: michael parker Thursday, March 11, 2004 [+] ::
...

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...

In an event that actually awards dignity to Aston Kutcher's endorsement of the former personal injury lawyer from North Carolina, Senator John Edwards...

North Korea expresses specific fondness for Senator John Kerry. The mind reels back to China's lukewarm congratulations to the winner of the 2000 Presidential election, and the unmistakable disappointment at the loss of Gore and the end of the Clintonian era of missile technology transfers.

Fast forward to nine days ago, when Senator Hillary Clinton, the smartest woman in the world, spoke about women's rights in Saddam's Iraq. "Women had rights, they went to school, they participated in the professions, they participated in government and business. And as long as they stayed out of his way, they had considerable freedom of movement."

Freedom of movement. Unless they were Kurdish and trying to escape the gas weapons, unless they were the wives or daughters of the men who were forced to watch their rapes as punishment and psychological torture in Saddam's official torture chambers.

Timely enough, Oliver North writes today about Democrats and Dictators.

True to the axiom that no despot is too dirty for a liberal to defend, Sen. John Kerry, who called the U.S. military's rescue of 804 medical students off the island of Grenada "a bully's show of force," is now demanding a congressional investigation of Aristide's claims that he was taken against his will, at gunpoint, in the middle of the night and forced to go someplace he didn't want to go.

You really should read all of North's essay.

:: michael parker Friday, March 05, 2004 [+] ::
...

INDECENT PROPOSAL

English newspaper The Guardian reports Pakistan's willingness to help make Nigeria nuclear. For this to be true would be a foreign relations suicide, or it would be a North Korea-style blackmail to force the West to send more money.

The other variable in this equation is Islam. Here we would have one Muslim nation helping another, an obligation for the Muslims, it would seem, except when Sunnis are gassing or blowing up Shi'ites, when teenaged Palestinian suicide bombers take out fellow Muslims along with Israeli Jews, or when Jordan or Kuwait needs to purge several thousand Palestinians for uprising or siding with Saddam Hussein.

Now, Nigeria is Christian in the south, where is the capital city of Lagos and where a Miss World pageant was so stupidly held. In the north, Shariah Muslim law is the norm, hence the infamous capital punishment episode of Amina Lawal, since reversed to an acquittal.

Via the ABC news site, Pakistan strongly denies this.

Still, the race card here is inevitable. Going back to the days when South Africa, under the leadership of F. W. de Klerk, became the first nation in history to become un-nuclear, the eternally dissatisfied dismissed it an effort to prevent blacks from getting the bomb. Flash forward to Nelson Mandela's opposition to the removal of Saddam Hussein as a racism-motivated effort on the part of the US. Before he slips any deeper into his obvious senility, will Mandela claim the same on behalf of Nigeria's totalitarian north?

Will the man who aspires to be our nation's second black President find a way to both support and oppose any sort of transfer of nuclear weapons technology to the western African nation? Will his African-American wife, born and raised in Mozambique, owner of a million dollars worth of Wal-Mart stock, take time off from denouncing Wal-Mart to speak on the need for diversity in nuclear weapons proliferation?

:: michael parker Thursday, March 04, 2004 [+] ::
...

A FASHIONABLE FISKING

The Associated Press reports an imminent photoshoot along that evil fence:

Fashion Shoot Slated for Israeli Barrier By STEVE WEIZMAN

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli fashion house plans to shoot its summer catalog at Israel's West Bank security barrier this week, the company said Monday, less than a week after troops shot dead two Palestinians protesting the network of walls, wire and ditches.

A statement from the fashion house, Comme-il-faut, said the one-day shoot Wednesday would take place at a section of the barrier on the edge of Jerusalem "for the purpose of creating a dialogue around boundaries."

Comme-il-faut, interestingly, means "as it should be" in French, which is a good clue how this "dialogue" will be actually monologue.

The statement said the event would contrast beauty, femininity and fashion with a "concrete wall of insult, ugliness and humiliation."

Israel says it needs the barrier to prevent suicide bombers and other attackers from entering its towns and cities. Last Thursday two Palestinian protesters were shot dead by Israeli forces not far from the site the company picked to send its models and photographers.

Protesters killed? By an Israel dedicated to free speech since its inception? Or were the demonstrations violent. This writer won't say.

Palestinians say the partially built barrier -- which would dip deep into the West Bank in some parts of its planned 400-mile route -- is a land grab meant to prevent them from establishing an independent state.

They prevented their own independent state by launching the second intifada, even after PM Peres' offer of 98% of the West Bank, a capital in East Jerusalem, and 100% of the Gaza.

Under international pressure, Israel has begun making changes in the route of the barrier to minimize hardship on the Palestinians, thousands of whom face being cut off from their farmland, schools and medical facilities elsewhere in the West Bank.

Comme-il-faut got its summer catalog idea from students at a Jerusalem design school doing a course on the use of ideology in advertising. They came up with the concept of fashion on the fence, with the slogan, "women cross boundaries."

Oh, how original. I haven't seen such imagination since Benetton made the AIDS patient look like Jesus.

The fashion firm's CEO, Sybil Goldfiner, said the project reflects Comme-il-faut's feminist agenda. Asked by The Associated Press if she was concerned that Wednesday's front line fashion fest could be seen as trivializing a deadly serious issue, she responded: "You're a man, you wouldn't understand."

"We live in a state of constant trivialization," she added. "Every time there is a terror attack we soon afterward go back to life as normal. We want to emphasize those paradoxes."

No man should understand a feminism that sides with its enemy, unless the babes at "As-It-Should-Be" have actually found a feminist movement in the Islamic world. Will they help any Palestinian gays desperate to escape being murdered, or any Muslim women trying to escape a family honor killing, cross the border into Israel while they put on their sanctimonious, ideological fashion shoot at the fence? - Don't bet on it. Paradox, indeed.

Noam Hofstatter, of human rights group B'Tselem, said that if Comme-il-faut really meant to draw attention to human rights abuses caused by the fence, "then that would be welcome."

Mr. Hofstatter, do you have anything to say about the suicide bombings prevented by the fence, or the independent state prevented by the intifada? Do today's murder of 143 in Iraq by suicide bombers give you the idea that this enemy is your enemy as well, but the people you have such sympathy for are naming their streets after the suicide bombers?

Hello, Mr. Hofstatter? Hello?

:: michael parker Tuesday, March 02, 2004 [+] ::
...