Leathernecks

The New Neo Posted on by

leatherneck

A while back, while watching The Kelly File on Fox, I heard Glenn Beck make a remark about the origin of the term “Leathernecks” to refer to the Marines. I decided to investigate to see if he was correct, and sure enough, it appears he was.

Plus é§a change, plus c’est la méªme chose [emphasis mine]:

The term “leatherneck” was derived from a leather stock once worn around the neck by both American and British marines. Beginning in 1798, “one stock of black leather and clasp” was issued to each marine annually. Its use as a synecdoche for Marines began as a term of ridicule by sailors…. The origin of the leather neck collar has to do with early 19th Century military fashion trends in Europe and North America. Its use among enlisted men supposedly improved their military bearing and appearance by forcing the chin high and to serve as protection for one’s neck from sword blows by Muslim pirates.

The stock was dropped as an article of marine uniform in 1872, after surviving through the uniform changes of 1833, 1839, and 1859.

Maybe it’s time to bring them back.

Marie Harf: on how to fight ISIS

The New Neo Posted on by

The right is having a field day with Marie Harf’s latest pronouncement on the way to fight ISIS (see this, for example). Here’s Harf (speaking to Chris Matthews):

MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it…If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.

HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.

MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?

HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether”¦

MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?

HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people”¦

So, what have we here? Boilerplate claptrap from Harf about root causes that doesn’t address the issue we’re facing today and the question Matthews was asking—are we killing enough ISIS fighters to put a dent into the atrocities they are committing right now? Harf’s answer, “We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them,” doesn’t define “a lot,” and it’s been pretty clear for quite some time that our efforts in that direction have been very, very small.

But the statement of Harf’s that has caused most of the fuss was this one: “…we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.” Harf does not even seem to understand what war is, and how wars are won. But this isn’t about Harf, really. It is about the administration for which she is a spokesperson, and its attitudes and policies towards this war. Her remarks reflect a larger attitude on their part, which is that war is not an activity in which you kill them before they can kill you (or others), it is a metaphor. And that idea ties into the administration’s overemphasis on the power of words.

This war is not a War on Poverty or a War on Drugs. Those were cases in which a war metaphor was used to indicate a vigorous effect. This war is—a war. Where you must kill a lot of people to win.

What Harf is doing here is typical of this administration. It involves glossing over the actual question (have we killed enough?) because the truth would reflect poorly on the administration, and going all meta and academic with the answer, an answer that isn’t even factually correct (we’ll get to that in a moment). But it is an answer that appeals to Obama’s base because it sounds less judgmental and harsh, and fits in with a common liberal solution for nearly everything, whether that solution actually has any chance at all of being delivered or not (in this case, as Matthews—a liberal, by the way—immediately points out, it does not).

In addition, even if Harf’s remedy, job opportunities, could somehow be achieved, it would not necessarily be an answer to the problem. Studies have consistently shown that terrorists do not tend to come disproportionately from the unemployed or the poor in the societies from which they emerge:

There should be little doubt that terrorists are drawn from society’s elites, not the dispossessed.

Yet some stereotypes die hard. In 1958 the political scientist Daniel Lerner argued, “The data obviate the conventional assumption that the extremists are simply the `have-nots.’ “

Die hard, indeed. Funny, too, how we don’t see many terrorists from non-Muslim third-world countries, even nations with worse economic situations than exist in those Muslim countries that supply the bulk of the terrorists in the world.

Actually, ISIS is so new that we have a poor idea who its members are, and from what societal layer they come. We know a bit more about the Westerners who join, such as Canadian Andre Poulin:

In the video message, which ISIS later used in a propaganda video, Poulin explained why he had joined the Sunni militant group. “Before I come here to Syria, I had money, I had a family, I had good friends. It wasn’t like I was some anarchist or somebody who just wants to destroy the world and kill everybody. I was a regular person,” Poulin, who later began calling himself Abu Muslim, said in the message. “We need the engineers, we need doctors, we need professionals. Every person can contribute something to the Islamic State.”

John Horgan, a psychologist who specializes in studying terrorists, says that ISIS seeks its recruits (not just its Western ones) online, particularly on social media, with very sophisticated approaches that tap into a desire for power and meaning in one’s life:

Most radicals don’t act on their beliefs, let alone become involved in terrorism. For the most part ISIS is working very hard on trying to not just provide opportunities for people to go out there, but to say that they’re being honest and upfront about their message. They’re offering an opportunity for people to feel powerful. They’re making disillusioned, disaffected radicals feel like they’re doing something truly meaningful with their lives.

There is no indication that poverty or unemployment have anything to do with this, for ISIS or other terrorist groups. For example, in a 2010 study of al Qaeda members, it was found that:

…[T]he al-Qaeda recruit does not fit easily into an economic profile. Some individuals studied had been unemployed for years and were living in poverty, while others came from privileged backgrounds and relative wealth. Those with the means financed their own travel, and those without means found sponsors willing to pick up the tab. As Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forums notes, radical Islamic ideologies, like other contemporary ideologically based movements, use the rhetoric of economic oppression to enhance their argument; however, their subjects are generally not drawn from the ranks of the desperately poor.

A young Saudi captured while trying to cross into Iraq revealed that he was promoted at work and in line for a substantial pay raise just before he joined a local jihadist group. His is not an isolated case. Among the subjects studied, economic motivations were the least-cited reason for joining a terrorist organization.

If it is true that “radical Islamic ideologies…use the rhetoric of economic oppression to enhance their argument,’ then Harf and the administration are certainly helping them along.

One things needs to be made clear: people do not join ISIS merely because they are Muslims; Islam is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Terrorist groups tend to emphasize a particular interpretation of the Koran, and (as yesterday’s article explains) ISIS has a very special apocalyptic vision about its role in the religion, and is acting on that vision. If it’s anything like al Qaeda (and my guess is that it is at least something like it), this study indicates its ranks would probably be drawn from those with a somewhat spotty and fragmentary schooling in the religion. “As a result, they could become zealous adherents to an unorthodox and distorted version of Islam.” That makes a certain amount of sense.

However, it’s all irrelevant at this point, except that it might assist in the design of counter-propaganda. But Harf’s long-term goals are not only unobtainable, they ignore the problem we face in the here and now: to counter and effectively destroy the enemy, which is not only our enemy, but the enemy of most Muslims, all Christians and Jews, and humankind itself.

Texas federal court issues injunction on Obama’s amnesty

The New Neo Posted on by

But don’t get too excited yet. It’s just one judge in Texas, and it’s sure to be appealed.

However, this illustrates once again how important federal judge appointments are; they can determine the future no matter who a subsequent president may be. The judge in this case was a Bush appointee, and I can almost guarantee that if the decision is later reversed it will be by courts with majority Democratic appointees. Elections matter for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that they determine the makeup of the judiciary that later either upholds or overturns actions of the executive or legislative branches when they are challenged.

The present injunction was granted not on constitutional grounds (on which the judge did not rule one way or the other) but procedural ones:

The basic argument from the states that Hanen favors isn’t one about constitutional improprieties (he doesn’t get to that question, which the states have raised); it’s that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively created a whole new program and procedure without following any of the legally necessary steps. The Obama administration’s use of deferred action amounts to new rulemaking, Hanen suggests, because there’s so little evidence that the system, based on DACA, involves case-by-case discretion, as the feds claim it does.

More here from the decision itself:

The DHS cannot reasonably claim that, under a general delegation to establish enforcement policies, it can establish a blanket policy of non-enforcement that also awards legal presence and benefits to otherwise removable aliens. As a general matter of statutory interpretation, if Congress intended to confer that kind of discretion…to apply to all of its mandates under these statutes, there would have been no need to expressly and specifically confer discretion in only a few provisions…

…This Court finds that DAPA does not simply constitute inadequate enforcement [which would most likely not be reviewable, according to Heckler], it is an announced program of non-enforcement of the law that contradicts Congress’ statutory goals…

…The DHS does have discretion in the manner in which it chooses to fulfill the expressed wish of Congress. It cannot, however, enact a program whereby it not only ignores the dictates of Congress, but actively acts to thwart them.

Actually, if you look at Heckler—the case the Court cited as limiting judicial review of administrative non-enforcement questions, and with which I was previously unfamiliar—you will see that in that ruling, which concerned the use of certain drugs for executions rather than anything nearly as sweeping in scope as the current case, the Court listed some important exceptions: [emphasis mine]:

…the presumption of unreviewability [established by the case] is rebuttable where (1) an agency declines to act based “solely” on its belief that it lacks jurisdiction, or (2) where an agency “consciously and expressly” adopts a policy that is so extreme that it represents an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.

Will this new ruling on amnesty matter to the dilemma the current Republican Congress is facing over blocking amnesty funding by tying the question to the DHS funding bill? Perhaps, although it certainly doesn’t eliminate their problem. William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection explains what Congress might want to do now:

From a political perspective, if Obama is enjoined from enforcing his immigration executive action, how can Congress fund an illegal act? Or if it were funded, thereby relieving the current continuing resolution stalemate, Obama could not enforce it. Either way, this may provide Congress a way out of the jam just days before the funding deadline.

What this allows Republicans to do, is pass a 30 day spending bill without any limitations on the argument that the immigration plan cannot be acted upon anyway, and wait and see how the courts rule. IF the courts refuse to put the injunction on hold, or if the courts uphold the injunction on the merits, then there is no need to worry about defunding the executive action. If an appeals court reverses, then the Republican leadership can say that it has already been upheld as lawful so there is no legal basis for the claim it is unconstitutional. This could be a victory at least to get over the current impasse, although it may not be a long term solution.

Let’s see if Congress listens to that advice.

[ADDENDUM: Oh, and of course the majority of Americans would blame the GOP for any DHS funding block, not Obama, and feel that a DHS shutdown would be a problem or crisis. The MSM and the Democrats appear to have been very effective in their propaganda of glossing over the fact that it is the Democrats who would actually be blocking the DHS funding. I’d like to see how the questions were framed in the poll—this can greatly influence results—but I can’t seem to find a link to the actual questions that were asked.

Here is some initial Republican reaction to the federal ruling. I’ll add that if any Republicans think the Democrats will now relent on any aspect of their stand on this, those Republicans are sadly mistaken.

Of course, the entire issue is clouded by the fact that the Republican Party is itself split on the issue of tying DHS funding to amnesty funding, as well as illegal immigration and what to do about it in general. What a mess.]

[ADDENDUM II: A good legal analysis here.]

Explaining ISIS

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a must-read article in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood, entitled “What ISIS Really Wants.”

What does it want? Oh, not so much. Merely to rule the world, and to have the apocalyptic vision in which it believes fulfilled. The reason its actions don’t appear to make much rational sense (it seems to be bent on outraging everyone) is that ISIS is not operating under the usual premises, it is operating from what it believes to be a divinely-inspired vision of wholesale slaughter and destruction (including, perhaps, that of many ISIS members) that will lead to its ultimate success.

And Wood makes it very, very clear that this vision is in line with a certain fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and the Koran (Wood’s piece is so long and so important that it is hard to excerpt from it and do it justice, so I recommend you read the entire thing):

…Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

Every academic I asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent me to Haykel. Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States, and when he talks through his Mephistophelian goatee, there is a hint of an unplaceable foreign accent.

According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ”˜Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ”˜Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

You might say that ISIS is a Muslim revivalist movement, with the goal of going back to its vision of an original Islam as described in the Koran. It is very, very serious about this, and it is attracting a lot of people:

If al-Qaeda wanted to revive slavery, it never said so. And why would it? Silence on slavery probably reflected strategic thinking, with public sympathies in mind: when the Islamic State began enslaving people, even some of its supporters balked. Nonetheless, the caliphate has continued to embrace slavery and crucifixion without apology. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,” Adnani, the spokesman, promised in one of his periodic valentines to the West. “If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

The vision includes a caliphate and sharia law, which is even worse than you probably already knew. For example:

Before the caliphate, “maybe 85 percent of the Sharia was absent from our lives,” Choudary told me. “These laws are in abeyance until we have khilafa”””a caliphate””“and now we have one.” Without a caliphate, for example, individual vigilantes are not obliged to amputate the hands of thieves they catch in the act. But create a caliphate, and this law, along with a huge body of other jurisprudence, suddenly awakens. In theory, all Muslims are obliged to immigrate to the territory where the caliph is applying these laws.

There was some expression of puzzlement in this thread about what ISIS is referring to when it talks of “Rome.” Wood’s article gives a clue:

The Islamic State has attached great importance to the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo. It named its propaganda magazine after the town, and celebrated madly when (at great cost) it conquered Dabiq’s strategically unimportant plains. It is here, the Prophet reportedly said, that the armies of Rome will set up their camp. The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo or its Antietam…

…Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse. Western media frequently miss references to Dabiq in the Islamic State’s videos, and focus instead on lurid scenes of beheading. “Here we are, burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive,” said a masked executioner in a November video, showing the severed head of Peter (Abdul Rahman) Kassig, the aid worker who’d been held captive for more than a year.

Whether “Rome” is the West itself, or Christianity, or some large segment of Christianity (sometimes referred to as “crusaders”), it is the force predicted to be defeated in the final apocalyptic showdown with Islam that ISIS believes Islam/ISIS will win.

The apocalypse in which ISIS believes is not exactly the same one meant by Christians, although it features at least one of the same cast of characters:

After its battle in Dabiq, Cerantonio said, the caliphate will expand and sack Istanbul. Some believe it will then cover the entire Earth, but Cerantonio suggested its tide may never reach beyond the Bosporus. An anti-Messiah, known in Muslim apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come from the Khorasan region of eastern Iran and kill a vast number of the caliphate’s fighters, until just 5,000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus””the second-most-revered prophet in Islam””will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory…

On this theory, even setbacks dealt to the Islamic State mean nothing, since God has preordained the near-destruction of his people anyway.

Wood goes on to explain other things that might seem puzzling or obscure about ISIS: its demonstrations of cruelty, its refusal to accept any borders, its attitude towards treaties and voting. His suggestion for meeting the ISIS threat rejects ground troops and recommends the slow squeeze to be accomplished by bombing and the assist of other Islamic countries, but he acknowledges it will take a long long time with much suffering along the way.

Wood dismisses the ISIS-inspired jihadis in Western countries who have already killed Westerners as relatively unimportant, and Wood seems to think that ISIS’s concentration will remain on activities in Muslim lands rather than in Europe or America. I’m not at all sure that will continue to be the case; I think their attacks in the West will be stepping up, and that they also would not hesitate to pursue some sort of rogue nuclear assault if they can manage it, a possibility Wood does not even mention.

In summary: you may not be interested in holy war, but holy war is interested in you.

[NOTE: Wood is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. I was surprised to see an article this hard-hitting appear in that publication, but encouraged by the fact that it did. The Atlantic used to be a relatively evenhanded periodical on “war on terror” issues, particularly when Michael Kelly was editor, but in recent years it has veered more to the left.

I don’t pretend to think that one article will matter, and certainly it will not change Obama’s mind (nor does it even argue against his present policies). But it certainly should put to rest the “not Islamic” meme, at least for many of those liberals who are moved to read it.]

We could use a heartwarming story right about now

The New Neo Posted on by

And trust me, it is an encouraging and touching one. That’s true even though it’s about a German woman, born out-of-wedlock to a German mother and a Nigerian father and given up for adoption, coming to terms with learning at the age of 38 that her grandfather was the notorious and sadistic Nazi villain of “Schindler’s List.”

And it ends with puppies.

Some innocent people struggle with guilt for which they have no responsibility whatsoever, while many guilty people have untroubled consciences.

ISIS declares war on Christianity, and Obama can’t even call their victims Christians

The New Neo Posted on by

Extremist Muslim terrorists shout their religion to the skies and cite chapter and verse—but to Obama, they have nothing to do with Islam.

When they target Jews for slaughter in kosher grocery stores, Obama has some difficulty making the connection, referring to the victims as a “bunch of folks” shot “randomly.”

Now, in response to the video of ISIS beheading twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, the administration issues a statement referring to the victims as “Egyptian citizens” and does not mention their religion. And this despite the fact that the Australians, Canadians, and British had no trouble at all making statements that referred specifically to the religion of the men who were murdered.

That’s the latest installment in Obama’s reluctance to discuss modern-day Islamic terrorism in terms of religion at all, either on the part of the perpetrators or in their choice of victim.

If you wonder whether the religion of the twenty-one beheading victims was actually a motive for their murders, ISIS made it very explicit; the video of the beheadings was entitled “A Message Signed With Blood To The Nation Of The Cross” (see this for speculation on what “nation of the cross” might refer to) and contained many anti-Christian threats [emphasis mine]:

Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of Al-Sham and Dabiq’s plain, chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time, and today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message.

All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together. The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden’s body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.”

After the ISIS leader finishes speaking, his fellow terrorists then commence the beheading of the 21 Egyptian Christians. “And we will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission, the promise of our Prophet, peace be upon him.”

Note the “crusader” reference, a popular one with Muslim terrorists, and the same conflict Obama is fond of citing when he catalogues the crimes of which Christians have been guilty.

ISIS’s message could not be more clear: although they target and revile others too, including Muslims who don’t agree with them as well as Jews, they are threatening Christianity all over the world. The video could not be more specific about it. Obama’s refusal to acknowledge this is one of the most ominous signs of a very ominous presidency. Right now ISIS’s reach is mostly in the territories it controls, but it is not limited to them because it is recruiting foreigners, and it has big plans.

[ADDENDUM: John Hinderaker notes the administration’s lack of mention of the religion of the twenty-one ISIS-murdered Coptic Christians, but he adds the fact that although an administration (National Security Council) spokesperson issued a brief statement condemning the free speech attack in Copenhagen, that statement has not been expanded on and no one in the administration has commented at all on the related synagogue shooting that followed.]

[ADDENDUM II: Pope Francis didn’t mince words:

“Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’ They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians,” Francis said in his native Spanish, departing from the Italian he uses at most formal events.

The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, who has said it is “lawful” to stop an unjust aggressor, went on:

“The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians!”

Francis added: “The martyrs belong to all Christians.”

Later on Monday, the Vatican’s spokesman said Francis had telephoned the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, to say he was sharing the pain caused by the “barbaric murder of Christian Copts by Islamic fundamentalists”.

Note that the Pope had no trouble saying “Islamic fundamentalists,” either. Then again, how many divisions does the Pope have?]

[ADDENDUM III: The Anchoress Elizabeth Scalia offers a very moving prayer for these Christian martyrs.]

Now, it’s Denmark’s turn (and a look back at the Rushdie fatwa)

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE 9 PM: The shooter has been identified as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein.]

Danish authorities haven’t been quick to give out the details of yesterday’s dual attack in Copenhagan, but so far it appears that it is mirroring the recent Paris terrorism but with a smaller death total—two dead, plus several police and/or guards wounded—and a single perpetrator. As in Paris, it featured a free speech target that had published cartoons of Mohammed, as well as a Jewish target, and a killer who had been previously known to authorities.

For what was he known? The information released is rather general, but you probably wouldn’t lose a lot of money if you guessed it might have some connection with Islamic extremist terrorist activity, although it’s also possible that he’s a criminal recently recruited to the cause of terrorism:

The suspect was born in Denmark and had a criminal record, including violence and weapons offenses, Copenhagen police said in a statement. They didn’t release his name.

Nor his religious affiliation. But again, signs point quite strongly to jihadi terrorism as the motive, whatever his official religion may have been. The venue of the first attack was a panel discussion on art and free speech. The featured panel member (believed to be the primary target) was Lars Vilks, “a Swedish artist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.” He was not hurt. Instead, the killer—who “used an automatic weapon to shoot through the windows of the Krudttoenden cultural center where the talk was being held”—murdered a documentary filmmaker, Finn Noergaard, who had made innocuous-seeming “documentaries for Danish television, including the 2004 ‘Boomerang boy’ about an Australian boy’s dreams to become a world boomerang champion and the 2008 ‘Le Le’ about Vietnamese immigrants in Denmark.” Vilks, who has been under police protection since the Mohammed cartoon controversy erupted in 2007, was taken away safely yesterday by his guards.

If the gunman’s first venue was somewhat analogous to the Charlie Hebdo killings, his second venue was analogous to the kosher grocery: a synagogue. However, unlike the grocery, the synagogue (like the conference) was under guard. The Jewish man killed at the synagogue was identified as:

…Dan Uzan, 37, a longtime security guard for the 7,000-strong community. He was guarding a building behind the synagogue during a bat mitzvah when he was shot in the head. Two police officers who were there were slightly wounded.

The first shooting occurred at around 4 PM on Saturday, the second at close to 1 AM the next morning, and four hours later the gunman was killed by police when he “returned to an address that they were keeping under surveillance.” We don’t yet know how they identified him.

One interesting detail that did emerge is connected with the firepower involved in the attacks:

[Vilks] said it seemed to him that police were surprised by the firepower wielded by the gunman.

“The gunman, he had an advantage because his strong rifle could easily penetrate these glass doors while the policemen’s handguns didn’t work so well,” Vilks said.

The attacker made it just inside the building but apparently got no farther, said Helle Merete Brix, a journalist and founder of the Lars Vilks Committee. The group supports the cartoonist, whose portrayals of the Prophet Mohammed angered many in the Muslim world.

Bodyguards returned fire, Copenhagen police said, but the gunman managed to flee.

Apparently the sheer number of police and bodyguards as compared to the attacker, rather than the superiority of their weaponry, may have been the factor that hampered his ability to kill more people. It is virtually certain he would have liked to have done so.

Despite the relative paucity of information, it seems crystal clear what’s going on here: an assault on the West’s freedom of speech, perpetrated by a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist (or one hired by or in sympathy with fundamentalist Muslim terrorists) acting to silence what they see as blasphemy against Islam, as well as to exert a chilling effect on anyone who would sympathize with or support such freedom of speech. In addition, it is an attack on Jews and those who would protect them. The goal? Non-Muslims would not be free to criticize Islam in ways that the group deems blasphemous, whereas Jews would not even be free to practice Judaism. The penalty for both? Death.

The moment when the West should have become aware of what was building was the 1989 fatwa against author Salman Rushdie. To refresh your memory:

Many Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy or unbelief [for his novel The Satanic Verses] and in 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings resulted from Muslim anger over the novel.

The Iranian government backed the fatwa against Rushdie until 1998, when the succeeding government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said it no longer supported the killing of Rushdie. However, the fatwa remains in place.

The issue was said to have divided “Muslim from Westerners along the fault line of culture,” and to have pitted a core Western value of freedom of expression””that no one “should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write”””against the view of many Muslims””that no one should be free to “insult and malign Muslims” by disparaging the “honour of the Prophet” Muhammad. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwa “one of the most significant events in postwar literary history.”

Not just literary history, either.

Several things about the Rushdie fatwa were (and still are) of note: it was not issued by rogue terrorists, it was issued by the religious and de facto head of Iran and backed by its government. The date was actually February 14, 1989 (same date as the Copenhagan killings at the free speech conference; it’s possible the date was chosen by the Copenhagen killer as a sort of tribute, or perhaps it’s just a coincidence). And it was very extreme, even by the traditional standards of Islam on such matters [emphasis mine]:

In early 1989, Khomeini issued a fatwā calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, an India-born British author. Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, was alleged to commit blasphemy against Islam and Khomeini’s juristic ruling (fatwā) prescribed Rushdie’s assassination by any Muslim. The fatwā required not only Rushdie’s execution, but also the execution of “all those involved in the publication” of the book….

The fatwā has also been attacked for violating the rules of fiqh by not allowing the accused an opportunity to defend himself, and because “even the most rigorous and extreme of the classical jurist only require a Muslim to kill anyone who insults the Prophet in his hearing and in his presence.”

Though Rushdie publicly regretted “the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam”, the fatwa was not revoked. Khomeini explained,

“Even if Salman Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of all time, it is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has got, his life and wealth, to send him to Hell.”

Rushdie himself was not killed but Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the book The Satanic Verses, was murdered and two other translators of the book survived murder attempts.

The British reaction to the fatwa was to break off diplomatic relations with Iran. There was widespread outrage in the West against the fatwa, but many in the Muslim world appeared to favor it, even those who already lived in the West:

In Britain, the Union of Islamic Students’ Associations in Europe issued a statement offering its services to Khomeini. Despite incitement to murder being illegal in the United Kingdom, one London property developer told reporters, “If I see him, I will kill him straight away. Take my name and address. One day I will kill him”.

Other leaders, while supporting the fatwa, claimed that British Muslims were not allowed to carry out the fatwa themselves. Prominent amongst these were the Muslim Parliament and its leader Kalim Siddiqui, and after his death in 1996, his successor, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui. His support for the fatwa continued, even after the Iranian leadership said it would not pursue the fatwa, and re-iterated his support in 2000.

And leading scholars seemed to think it was well within the traditions of Islam:

Meanwhile in America, the director of the Near East Studies Center at UCLA, George Sabbagh, told an interviewer that Khomeini was “completely within his rights” to call for Rushdie’s death.

It’s not at all difficult to see the roots of now in what happened then. It’s not that Westerners weren’t already alarmed back then, though; they were. They just didn’t see the depth and breadth of what this phenomenon represented, and they didn’t quite know what to do. Nor do they now. And although political correctness was much weaker back then it already very much existed, and probably helped to hamper recognition of the dangers of this strain of Islam to the West itself. Those dangers are still not fully recognized by the governments of the West, in part for the very same reason.

How bad is the snow in the northeast this year?

The New Neo Posted on by

Bad.

Particularly in Boston and environs. It’s not just the totals but the timing:

If you’re wondering what the big deal is about snow in Boston, this is it: 78.5 inches of snow has fallen in Beantown this winter, which is more than 50 inches beyond what they typically see by now. Even so, you may be skeptical of the superlative. They are used to snow, right?

The most peculiar thing about this season is that of those 78.5 inches, 65.6 of them have fallen in the 16 days since Jan. 27.

It’s difficult to convey the significance of how many records Boston has obliterated this season ”” 5-, 7-, 10-, 20-, 30- and 40-day snow records all within a couple of weeks, plus the snowiest February on record.

It’s not just Boston, of course. It looks like this pretty much everywhere:

snow

One of the unusual things about this season is that the snow isn’t melting, as it usually does with some days above 32 degrees in the sun. This year it’s way way too cold for much melt at all. That, along with the storms’ coming in rapid succession, has led to record snow cover.

On the other hand, at least we’re not getting ice. It’s way way too cold for that, too.

The people in charge of plowing the streets are ordinarily very good at their job, but I guess there’s a limit and we’ve come close to reaching it. The piles are too tall already, and trucks have had to siphon off the snow and take it somewhere else. But that’s just too big a task to do very effectively, although the number of what’s called “snow farms” has proliferated.

The reality is that for the past month or so a storm has come every few days. And tonight another blizzard is forecast. Everyone’s adjusting; we just believe we have shifted to someplace in Alaska and that’s where we all live now—although Alaska may have moved somewhere south of here (this article is a month old and therefore may be outdated, but this year Alaska seems to be relatively snowless).

I have a full length down coat that I’ve owned for about fifteen years, and some winters I don’t even wear it. But that sure isn’t true this winter; I’d had it on every day, sometimes plus my heavy fleece helmet/facemask.

And big boots, of course. The trouble with boots is that despite their lining and thickness my feet freeze anyway. I stay inside much more than usual, as does everyone.

But sometimes inside is pretty cold, too (the “inside” part starts at minute 1:03):

Moynihan and the black family

The New Neo Posted on by

Moynihan was right. It stands to reason that if you reward a behavior you tend to get more of it:

“The fundamental problem is that of family structure,” wrote Moynihan, who had a doctorate in sociology. “The evidence””not final but powerfully persuasive””is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling.”

For his troubles, Moynihan was denounced as a victim-blaming racist bent on undermining the civil-rights movement. Even worse, writes Harvard’s Paul Peterson in the current issue of the journal Education Next, Moynihan’s “findings were totally ignored by those who designed public policies at the time.” The Great Society architects would go on to expand old programs or formulate new ones that exacerbated the problems Moynihan identified. Marriage was penalized and single parenting was subsidized. In effect, the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home””and paid them well.

“Economists and policy analysts of the day worried about the negative incentives that had been created,” writes Mr. Peterson. “Analysts estimated that in 1975 a household head would have to earn $20,000”””or an inflation-adjusted $88,000 today””“to have more resources than what could be obtained from Great Society programs.”

The article by Peterson (or something much resembling it) also appeared in the NY Daily News. In it, Peterson wrote:

Growth in single parenthood has many causes including female entry into the labor force, changing social norms and male unemployment. But a close look at when the problem intensified ”” and when it attenuated ”” suggests that the main culprit may well be the government.

The steepest upward jump in single parenthood took place in the late 1960s and early 70s. And since the mid-1990s, the percentage of children living in single-parent families has stabilized ”” especially within the African-American community, where the percentage has in fact declined somewhat from its 1990 high.

Why? Prior to 1965, the welfare state for families with children was largely limited to a meager, restrictive program distributed by state and local governments.

That changed with the arrival of the Great Society…

Please read the whole thing.

Peterson thinks the problem can and should be corrected. He doesn’t think the Great Society needs dismantling; just redesigning. I suppose that’s most practical since entitlements are notoriously difficult to reverse once a population becomes accustomed to them, and anyone who wants to do differently is labeled a mean and racist old fill-in-the-expletive. I wonder whether even tweaking is possible at this point, for that same reason—as well as the fact that, although Peterson seems to assume liberals would like to make these programs more effective and less encouraging of dependent and family-destroying behavior, I’m not at all sure he’s right. The left has reasons to want to purposely encourage these things.

[NOTE: The same trend has occurred in white families, by the way, although the percentage of single-mother households is nowhere near as high, in part because they started out at a lower level of single-mother families:

When the report was released, about 25% of black children and 5% of white children lived in a household headed by a single mother. During the next 20 years the black percentage would double and the racial gap would widen. Today more than 70% of all black births are to unmarried women, twice the white percentage.

Whites are hardly immune to these same political/economic/psychological forces.]

Won’t you be my valentine?

The New Neo Posted on by

It may not have escaped your notice that today is Valentine’s Day. So Happy Valentine’s Day!

But Valentine’s Day can be a problematic holiday. Hmmm, whatever to get? And do you feel guilty if you don’t? Anyone who wants to give me a present is especially challenged because that old standby chocolate won’t suffice, because it gives me migraines.

Yet another thing that gives me migraines—or at the very least, moments of irritation—are those continually-repeated ads designed to help desperate men figure out what to get the woman (or women, as the case may be) in their lives, particularly if said woman has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old. It’s usually one of two things: footed fleece pajamas like the ones small children wear, or an enormous teddy bear.* Either gift makes the young and nubile women in the ads giggle, clap their hands, and jump up and down with glee.

But what caused me to write this post was a Valentine’s Day ad I saw on TV the other day for Vermont Teddy Bears—actually, for a particular type of Vermont Teddy Bear:

greyBear

Why does this cute little guy carry a mask and handcuffs? Why, it’s the Christian Grey Bear, that’s why:

If you want to dominate Valentine’s Day, skip the roses and send the limited-edition Fifty Shades of Grey Bear. Inspired by the best-selling book, the adult gift is specially designed for fans obsessed with Grey, biting their lips with anticipation over the movie. He features smoldering gray eyes…

I haven’t read the book and don’t plan to, but this bear is the strangest amalgam of infantilization and “adult” toy I’ve even seen. And if you think it’s just a good-for-a-laugh throwaway novelty, let me add that its cost is $89.99 plus shipping.

At the bottom of the ad is this disclaimer:

SAFETY WARNING: Contains small parts. Not suitable for children.

Perhaps Vermont Teddy Bears has a sense of humor.

[* NOTE: I did not realize it until I went to the Vermont Teddy Bear website, but they also have a handy PJ and teddy bear combo, for those men who just can’t decide between the two. A double teddy, you might say.]

Why Jon Stewart was bad for liberals

The New Neo Posted on by

I was surprised to read that Jamelle Bouie of Slate will be happy to see Jon Stewart go. As he himself says, Bouie’s a “liberal, college-educated millennial–the almost prototypical viewer” for Stewart’s show, so why’s he so thrilled (his word, not mine) about Stewart’s departure?

According to Bouie, Stewart is too cynical and sneering, and that puts the kibosh on the idea of serious, informed, substantive conversations. I can see his point; I agree that over time Americans (particularly younger ones) have gotten way too knee-jerk cynical, and that put-downs have often become substitutes for argument. That said, I don’t think Stewart has all that much to do with it. In fact, he’s actually got a trifle more substance (and even-handedness, which I value) than some more “serious” pundits, and there are many many other political, societal, and cultural influences that skew younger people towards the ironic and cynical.

But it was this paragraph of Bouie’s that really leaped out at me:

Again, there are times when this basic perspective is vital, when we need someone to bathe our government in light and mockery and challenge the dishonesty, incompetence, and self-seriousness of our leaders and elites. But this approach, which worked wonders during the Bush administration, isn’t always the best one. For liberals in particular, the idea that government is only hypocrisy and dysfunction is self-defeating and nihilistic.

Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Cynicism and mockery are great—in fact, they’re needed—when we’re talking about Republican “leaders and elites” and in particular George W. Bush. When we’re talking the big-government agenda of liberals and the left, it could seriously damage the program to be cynical and mocking. Then it’s time to get all serious and respectful. The cynicism and sneering that Stewart engendered threatened to spill over into mockery of big government itself, and that’s a no-no.

[NOTE: Every now and then—not often, but sometimes—the right was even able to make use of Stewart’s clips because he was occasionally an equal-opportunity mocker. I used video from his show on occasion myself.}