Fitna. The film made by Dutch MP Geert Wilders.
Make of it what you will.
WARNING: May not be worksafe.
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Michael Totten’s latest from Iraq is up and as usual highly recommended:
In less dissembling mealy-mouthed times, that would simply be described as saying it the ways he sees it. March 24th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 …rather a lot actually. Michael Totten continued to climb in my estimation after a very good article called The Israel of the Balkans on the interesting parallels between Kosova and Israel. Strongly recommended. March 20th, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
According to Jane’s:
Who’d a thunk it? March 19th, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Iran is also the theatre of very optimistic developments. Hashem Aghajari is an Islamic revolutionary-turned-history-professor. He was one of the student activists of 1979 who later fully participated in the brutal repression after Khomeini’s coming to power. He is now challenging the infallibility of the ruling mullahs and calls upon Iranians to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting whatever is preached in Friday sermons, a piece of advice for which he has been sentenced to death. But he is now supported by the students and professors at most of the country’s universities and thousands of ordinary citizens, workers, and cultural leaders. Where Aghajari wants to reform Islam; the students want a total separation between mosque and state. He wants an Islamic Reformation, but the demonstrators are interested in the creation of a secular civil society. He is a reformer, but they are revolutionaries. – Ibn Warraq who is both optimistic (as in the above quote) and pessimistic (as elsewhere in the same piece) about whether the Muslim world can become civilised March 10th, 2008 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Totten’s latest bloggage from Iraq is as informative as ever, but the thing that fascinated me most was a brief but interesting discursion into the use of the English word ‘Supermarket’ on a sign in a small town in Iraq.
I disagree with Michael’s use of the word ‘imperialism’ and I think he answers that point himself in the very next sentence. An even more demotic variation on the inexplicable prevalence of English puzzled me many years ago BB (Before Blogging). I spent some time in a few fairly rough parts of Croatia and one can hardly miss the prevalence of racist and sexist graffiti on the communist-era concrete tower blocks. The odd thing is that mixed in with the usually ‘Jebi Se’ varient epithets in Croatian, you will find floridly racist threats or extravagant anatomical references in more or less grammatically correct English. And this in an area that was not exactly a magnet for English speaking tourists, particularly in the middle of the then on-going war. The huge number of people who speak English in Croatia can be easily explained by the ubiquity of satellite dishes, which is why I often referred to the local Croatian English dialect as MTV English. But that does not answer the question of why in a linguistically and ethnically homogeneous area (such as unlovely New Zagreb in Croatia or Saqlawiya in Iraq), people use written English when there is no commercial or political pressures to do so. Interesting. March 10th, 2008 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you do not regularly read Michael Totten’s Middle East Journal, you really are missing out on something you just do not see in the MSM. He delivers straightforward reportage not just of The Big Issues when they happen but of the mundane realities of what it is to be in the Slums of Fallujah with the USMC.
Very revealing. If you like his stuff as much as I do, consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal button and support truly independent journalism. March 4th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Marion Cotillard, Oscar-winning actress and qualified electronic engineer:
Of course, working in the entertainment industry does not disqualify Ms. Cottilard from having opinions, nor (heaven forbid) should she ever be restrained from expressing them. However, and equally, I am not disqualified from calling her an ignorant jackass. I hope she spends the rest of her career in French dinner-theatre emoting pointlessly before an audience of coughing, hawking, shouting, farting, senile old-age pensioners who are slupring down a mediocre bowl of bouillabaisse before shuffling home to die alone in a heatwave. How do you like them pommes, Ms. Cotillard? March 4th, 2008 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Totten has a superb article up that compares the approach to counter-insurgency followed by Israel under the dismal Ehud Olmert, and that of the US in Iraq under General David Petraeus. What Totten points out is that the policies promised by Barack Obama for Iraq (in essence remove the army and drop bombs on anyone who seems to be the Bad Guys) is essential the same as the demonstrably failed approach used by Ehud Olmert in Lebanon. Israel blew the crap out of Lebanon from the air and achieved precisely zero of its war aims. Read the whole article. February 17th, 2008 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
We get emails! Some people still entertain the idea that it is possible for sharia law and its adherents to operate cosily alongside a code such as the English Common Law. I have already described why I think sharia and a liberal legal tradition on matters of marriage and treatment of women are like oil and water; it is also remiss for the Archbishop not to spell out what criteria he would use to judge which bits of sharia are okay in England and which are not; he is far too vague on the latter point. Rod Liddle, writing in this week’s Spectator, points out that is rather presumptious for the Archbishop to lecture Muslims about which bits of sharia are legit and which bits are not in England. As Liddle says, it might be a more productive use of this man’s time to focus on preaching the message of the Gospels, although I accept that talking about the love of Jesus, sin, redemption and all that boring stuff is so, well, Bible-Belt, dahling. Anyhow, a gentleman wrote the following email to Samizdata HQ:
Alas for this correspondent, I have read the speech all the way through – all the way through its tortured logic, non-sequiturs, question-begging expressions and the rest. A second reading or a third does not improve one’s experience. Dr Williams’ feeble grasp of the subject means a second or third read is like the experience of drinking another glass of an indifferent red wine; it only tastes good if you are already slightly pissed. Matthew Parris, a libertarian to the core, has also read the speech. In his civilised, gentle way, Parris states what is painfully obvious: the Archbishop of Canterbury is not a particularly intelligent man. Having a white beard does not make one smart or benign. February 15th, 2008 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
You have heard about the captured ‘Diary of a Despondent Al Qaeda’ but have you had a chance to actually read the whole thing? I also recommend you download this DOD Blogger Press Conference Audio which includes well known war bloggers such as Austin Bey talking to USAF Col. Donald Bacon, live from Iraq. Enjoy! February 13th, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
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