Inside the Asylum

Instapundit links to a story with one of his usual short comments: "Tough on Fiji, Soft on Iran" The point that both Reynolds and The Weekly Standard are trying to make is that the Obama regime is being a hypocrite in treating the military dictatorship in Fiji in a tough manner while they soft pedal in the other case. I only wish this were true. I posted on this matter earlier about the real Democrat stance on Fiji. It could be described as positively supportive of the military regime in Fiji. Here's what Democrat Eni Faleomavaega (member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Vice Chair of the Congressional Asia Pacific American Caucus, member of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and member of the Congressional Oceans Caucus) had to say on the matter:

Australia and New Zealand were engaging in "nasty accusations" against Fiji and were "acting with a heavy hand" in trying to force elections... "I totally disagree with the nasty accusations that the leaders of New Zealand and Australia have made against Fiji … it makes no sense."

When Clinton was asked what she thought of his comments, she declined to agree or disagree. So let's give the Obama regime credit for a thoroughly consistent pathetically soft stance on oppressive regimes. Tough on Fiji? I wish.

Raymond Ibrahim takes up the question of whether Judaism and Christianity are as violent as Islam. He argues that the Qur'an endorses violence in a way that is quite different from that of the Old Testament (and that the New Testament does not endorse violence at all).

When the Qur'an's violent verses are juxtaposed with their Old Testament counterparts, they are especially distinct for using language that transcends time and space, inciting believers to attack and slay nonbelievers today no less than yesterday. God commanded the Hebrews to kill Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—all specific peoples rooted to a specific time and place. At no time did God give an open-ended command for the Hebrews, and by extension their Jewish descendants, to fight and kill gentiles. On the other hand, though Islam's original enemies were, like Judaism's, historical (e.g., Christian Byzantines and Zoroastrian Persians), the Qur'an rarely singles them out by their proper names. Instead, Muslims were (and are) commanded to fight the people of the book—"until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled"[13] and to "slay the idolaters wherever you find them."

The two Arabic conjunctions "until" (hata) and "wherever" (haythu) demonstrate the perpetual and ubiquitous nature of these commandments: There are still "people of the book" who have yet to be "utterly humbled" (especially in the Americas, Europe, and Israel) and "idolaters" to be slain "wherever" one looks (especially Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). In fact, the salient feature of almost all of the violent commandments in Islamic scriptures is their open-ended and generic nature: "Fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no persecution and the religion is God's entirely.

The example of Muhammad's life and the early history of Islam do nothing to moderate this call to perpetual war.

Aside from the divine words of the Qur'an, Muhammad's pattern of behavior—his sunna or "example"—is an extremely important source of legislation in Islam. Muslims are exhorted to emulate Muhammad in all walks of life: "You have had a good example in God's Messenger." And Muhammad's pattern of conduct toward non-Muslims is quite explicit.

Sarcastically arguing against the concept of moderate Islam, for example, terrorist Osama bin Laden, who enjoys half the Arab-Islamic world's support per an Al-Jazeera poll,[19] portrays the Prophet's sunna thusly:

"Moderation" is demonstrated by our prophet who did not remain more than three months in Medina without raiding or sending a raiding party into the lands of the infidels to beat down their strongholds and seize their possessions, their lives, and their women.

In fact, based on both the Qur'an and Muhammad's sunna, pillaging and plundering infidels, enslaving their children, and placing their women in concubinage is well founded. And the concept of sunna—which is what 90 percent of the billion-plus Muslims, the Sunnis, are named after—essentially asserts that anything performed or approved by Muhammad, humanity's most perfect example, is applicable for Muslims today no less than yesterday.

In all religions there are core texts, ideas, and examples that act as centers of gravitational attraction, continually pulling religious thought in particular directions even as it changes over time. In Islam the tide is always going to run towards violence because that is the direction in which the text of the Qur'an and the example of Muhammad's life will always pull.

This is kind of interesting. Previous experiments had seemed to confirm that hyper-aggressive males got more sex, cutting out the less aggressive ones, but this was only because experiments were conducted under conditions where the females couldn't move away from the area.

However, when the researchers opened gates between the chambers so they were all connected and the insects could range more freely, things changed. Females left areas where they were harassed and congregated in regions of the tank that had only non-aggressive males. As a group, those males had significantly more successful matings than did the hyperaggressive males...

"The naive view of Darwinian evolution is that it always favors the most savage, brutal and selfish behaviors. It doesn't -- and this is one example of that. In nature, groups of cooperative individuals are more successful than groups of selfish individuals."

OK, we're talking about water striders, but it certainly sounds like it might have broader significance. It would be interesting to see a study of human female mating choices comparing situations where the women felt like they had little chance to leave an area, compared to females who could easily relocate. Would the ease of female relocation have an impact on male behavior as well?

We've already had the stink about the tire tax Obama imposed on Chinese imports, which seriously annoyed the Chinese. So what can he do for an encore? I know ... another tariff on Chinese goods at the request of his union backers.

The US Commerce Department has imposed anti-dumping tariffs of up to 99 percent on imports of Chinese tubular goods."

As could be expected, the Chinese are less than impressed.

The Chinese commerce ministry said that China "firmly opposes the abuse of protectionism and will take measures to seriously protect the interests of the domestic industry." It called the US tariffs "discriminatory" steps that would "have a serious impact on the Chinese steel industry's exports."

So who is happy about it?

United Steelworkers (USW) union hailed the move as "an overdue message for thousands of American laid off workers that trade laws are being enforced."

There's a surprise.

Seriously ... the Obama Regime are a pack of moronic amateurs. Obama is going to China in less than two weeks. Couldn't they have at least waited? I guess they think the Chinese will be overwhelmed by Obama's sparkling personality? Good luck with that.

[Update] But wait: there's more! It's even worse than I thought.

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Tuesday it would impose punitive tariffs ranging from 2.02 percent to 437.73 percent on imports of steel wire decking from China.

And the Chinese come right out and say it: The United States is acting the part of the hypocrite.

It is hardly a week after Washington pledged actions against trade and investment protectionism at the 20th China-U.S. Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) talks in China's eastern city of Hangzhou. The United States vowed to refrain from any new trade protectionism measures at the event...
Trade protectionism is a poison, which, if not properly handled, will reverse the first signs of world economic recovery. The United States, as the world's major economy, should take the lead in advocating responsible trade policies. Recent protectionist moves in the United States are closely linked to its sluggish economic growth and domestic political tussles, but a strong leader should have the guts to be more far-sighted and deliver the pledge he or she has made.

So to summarize: the Chinese government controlled Xinhua news agency has just said that Barack Obama is irresponsible, weak, gutless, short-sighted, a liar, doesn't understand economics, and is putting the recovery at risk. Those inscrutable orientals. It's so hard to figure out what they're thinking.

Further to Egyptian action against Lebanese hottie Wehbe, now they're getting worked up about Beyonce.

"Why are you encouraging this insolent sex party?" lawmaker Hamdi Hassan from the opposition Muslim Brotherhood wrote in a letter to the government. "You are accused of disturbing social peace and stability, encouraging vice and debauchery."
Another Islamic lawmaker, Ali Laban, called for banning the "nudity concert."
A Facebook campaign against Beyonce's concert collected nearly 10,000 supporters.
But the war of words has not derailed the glitzy concert, due hundreds of miles south of Cairo in the luxury Red Sea resort of Port Ghalib.

They're certainly doing a good job of promoting the event. Event organiser Ahmed Beltagi said

"We should salute her instead of criticising her," he said of the diva.

It seems he's in favor of insolent nude sex party concerts.

Those filthy disease ridden primates (homo sapiens) having been spreading pestilence left right and center. First they infect poor innocent pigs, and now a cat has caught swine flu. In Egypt they slaughtered the entire pig population because they were afraid they'd spread swine flu (with a bunch of unforeseen consequences which shows they didn't listen to Heinlein's warning about the dangers of indiscriminately killing hogs (and dragons)). When everyone was worried about Chicken Flu, they slaughtered two million chickens in Holland at least 1.4 million in Hong Kong, plus at least 80,000 in India, another 35,000 in England and who knows how many world-wide? Well, now those dirty primates have started spreading a flu virus across species, what are we going to do about it? Filthy creatures.

Israel intercepted a ship in the Mediterranean carrying weapons and ammunition, and mysteriously, the cargo from Iran doesn't seem to belong to anyone. Israel says it was bound for Hezbollah, but they deny it. I guess Israel can now claim it as salvage.
[Update] In fact, it's even easier for Israel. Iran says the weapons on the ship don't exist, so I guess Israel can take them without having to claim anything, since the people who sent them deny they exist, and the people they were being sent to deny they own them. I guess it's just a cargo of ownerless non-existent weapons. Apparently there were 40 shipping containers. That's a lot of firepower to send on a Mediterranean cruise with no destination.

One of the "holy grails" of the space program is to successfully built a space elevator. Basically, you get a cable (a very strong cable) that extends from the surface of the earth far enough out into space so that natural forces allow it to just hang there on its own. Then you run an elevator up and down it. Hey presto, you've solved the problem of having to use rockets to get into orbit. Naturally enough, there are a heck of a lot of engineering problems that will need to be solved before anything like it can be built. That's why it's encouraging to see that people are working on it, and even making a little progress.

LaserMotive of Seattle qualified for at least $900,000 in the $2 million NASA-backed Space Elevator Games, which began Wednesday at the Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. LaserMotive's vehicle climbed 2,953 feet (nearly 1 kilometer) in just over four minutes and then repeated the feat.

Now wouldn't that be something to see a space elevator within my life time. Judging from NASA's progress in the last 40 years, I doubt there'll be anything like it until ... well, my grandkids time, even if we're lucky.

Hey, those are his words.

Iran's Supreme Leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from US President Barack Obama, has warned that negotiating with the US was ''naive and perverted'' and said Iranian politicians should not be ''deceived'' into starting such talks.

I wonder what he thinks they would talk about? Really, it's quite hard to be both naive and perverted at the same time.

OK, I admit that this is partly an excuse to post another clip of hot Lebanese singer Haife Wehbe, but that doesn't make it any less amazing. While filming this music video, a plane was supposed to fly low over the top of the car she was driving. It flew a bit too low, and actually hit her vehicle. They mixed the real collision into the video, as viewed from an in-car camera. Stunning!

It's nice to have KCNA back. They didn't go away, so much, as just get remarkably tame and (astoundingly) even sometimes a bit conciliatory. Today, we got to see a bit of vintage North Korean weirdness. The North Koreans warned

The U.S. and its “allies” had better cogitate, mindful of the grave consequences to be entailed by their reckless military actions.

It's good to have old friends back, even if they are grumpy old friends stuck in the 1950s.

The U.S. is hell bent on reinforcing the military alliance with Japan and south Korea, labeling the DPRK "an unstable factor," but this is nothing but sophism to cover up the criminal nature of its Asia strategy for domination. The U.S. revealed its scenario to militarily stifle the DPRK by putting forward Japan and south Korea as its shock brigade.

Thank goodness. I was starting to worry that this sea of weirdness for my blog posts had stopped being funny.

Of course Democrats who knew they were going to lose, were already trying their best to spin the defeats as "nothing to do with Obama." But come on ... you can't have it both ways. Obama went to both states to personally campaign for the two Democrat contenders. Either he was part of the race or he wasn't. So, let's see what foreign media is saying on the issue.

Obama suffers setback. Gulf News (Dubai)
Obama, Democrats tested in 2009 elections. Xinhua (China)
In blow to Barack Obama, Republicans win 2 US state races. Times of India (India)
Obama suffers major setback Guardian (Britain)
test of Obama's clout. Buenos Aires Herald (Argentina)

Hmmm... seems to be all about Obama, doesn't it?

Yes, that's right, humans recently infected a number of pigs.

The U.S. Agriculture Department announced last week that six pigs from the Minnesota State Fair contracted the new H1N1 virus over the summer, the first report of pigs catching the virus in the United States. The hogs likely got it from fairgoers, officials said.

Damn humans, spreading pestilence to innocent pigs. It should be called Human Flu, not Swine Flu.
[Update] There's hope yet that we may be able to protect innocent pigs from those disease ridden primates.

An international group of scientists has decoded the DNA of the domestic pig, research that may one day prove useful in finding new treatments for both pigs and people, and perhaps aid in efforts for a new swine flu vaccine for pigs.

Hmmm. This seems like an excuse for another Muppets clip.

Tune in next week ... "NOOO!!!!" ... OK then don't. See if I care.

The Chinese believe that militarization of space would be a bad thing. The People's Liberation Army Air Force Commander Xu Qiliang says that it is "a threat to the mankind." So how does this influence China's position on militarization?

"Only power could protect peace... As the air force of a peace-loving country, we must forge our swords and shields in order to protect peace." [He pledged that] China will develop an air force with integrated capabilities for both offensive and defensive operations in space as well as in air.

Hmmm. Well, it's kind of interesting that he should make reference to swords and shields, as there is a Chinese expression "mao(2nd tone) dun (4th tone)" which literally translates and "spear and shield", but which actually means "contradictory." Is this a maodun? Perhaps, perhaps not. It certainly reminds me of Tacitus' "let those who wish for peace first prepare for war."

The reason "spear and shield" means "contradictory" is because of an ancient Chinese story. There was an arms merchant touting his wares in a market-place, and he loudly proclaimed that his spears were so sharp that they could penetrate any armor, and as he promoted his shields he declared that they were so strong they could withstand any weapon. This caused a local wit to ask, "so what would happen if I used one of your spears against one of your shields? Huh?"

The PLA Daily website doesn't allow you to link directly to a story. If you want to read the whole thing, follow the link and look for the story called "China's PLA eyes future in space, air: air force commander." It was posted on November 2nd.

The director of the Senegalese News Agency, Mamadou Koume, is in Beijing at the moment. He had some interesting things to say. In particular, this really struck me:

"In Africa, we have always cooperated with the West. We have not progressed much. We have received aid from the West and donations from International financial institutions, which was always accompanied by many conditionality and diktats, whereas China has decided to take her own route," Koume told Xinhua.

There's this too:

The West-controlled media "say bad things about China. I think some of them are driven by jealousy. This is because China has taken the first position and is very dynamic in her relations particularly with the African continent. The West is feeling jealousy because China has come to compete with them in Africa. And we, the African, feel like the forms of cooperation that is being done by the Chinese, will give us a lot of autonomy," Koume said.

The first thing to note is that there's no exaggeration in the statement that China is competing with the West for influence in Africa, and the sentiment expressed here that China is winning is entirely accurate. China now has more influence across the continent than any other nation or international organization. As Koume points out, many African countries love Chinese "aid" because it comes without preconditions. You want to spend it on a palace for the king (I mean "president") then you just go right ahead. A few crates of AK-47s? Heck, we'll sell 'em to you at a discount. That's the cynical western perspective (which has some validity).

Now let's look at it from another point of view. Koume is absolutely correct when he says that African cooperation with the West has done little for Africa. The West has poured billions of dollars into Africa with little to show for it. Doesn't that tend to suggest that the Western model of aid is fundamentally flawed? Western paternalism hasn't always been very useful either ... just consider malaria and the West's reluctance to let them use bucket-loads of DDT, even with the full knowledge that it would save far more lives and prevent far more suffering than any side-effects of the DDT itself. No, you can't use DDT because that would be a Bad Thing, and we can't let you do that! Of course it doesn't mean that Chinese aid is going to do any better, but it does mean that China is going to do a lot better in the new Great Game that's shaping up in Africa.

The website failed for about a day when Blogsome had some issues. Since then, reader statistics haven't been working properly. As a result, I have no idea how many people are actually reading this. I find myself surprisingly less motivated to write without the knowledge that someone is actually reading. Well, thanks for reading, if anyone is out there!

Conspiracy theorists' have been trying to disprove the moon landings for years. Now NASA responds (sort of) by releasing a whole bunch of cool satellite images that show the landers, tracks, flags, instruments etc. that they left behind.

Of course this wouldn't be necessary if NASA had actually done anything decent by now. Trips to the moon should be old-hat by now, not ancient history. I remember when I was young, maybe about 13, I looked out my window at the moon. I had a yearning sadness as I stared at it, knowing that I'd probably never get to go there (or anywhere else in space.) I can't tell you how much more sad I would have felt if you'd told me that in the next three decades, no human would have done so much as leave Earth orbit. I mean, what the heck have we been mucking around at? Where is the moon base? Where are the mining stations in the asteroid belt? Where are the orbital solar power stations? Where is the 2001: A Space Odyssey space station? All we've got is an almost finished rather pathetic little international space station that they're already talking about abandoning. We've landed a few feeble things on Mars. Oh yes, and a few probes to different parts of the Solar System. Probes ... hmmm. I think a few properly applied probes to politicians and NASA bureaucrats might have led to a little more of where we should be, and a little less of, "have we accomplished so little in so many years?"

Who, in a recent article, described the model of the centralized economy as "flawed"? He also said the following:

The real achievement we can celebrate is the fact that the 20th century marked the end of totalitarian ideologies, in particular those that were based on utopian beliefs.

Well, judging by a lot of people in the Obama administration, I think he's being a bit optimistic there. There seem to be entirely too many people who think that there's a utopia to be achieved, if only the government can take over enough aspects of society.

So as not to misrepresent his views, I should point out that he's also not a fan of capitalism.

So, who is he? I'll put the answer in the comments, or you can follow the link to read the whole essay.