Welcome to the War On Extremism (WOE), which our leaders, in their best imitations of ostriches, have settled on as an acronym that is suitably supine, attitudinally appeasing and therefore--and this is what is most important to them--non-offensive to the Islamic world.

Jeffrey Imm has a comprehensive overview of this veritable conspiracy of capitulation now underway at the highest levels of our government.

You will notice at the end of this valuable report that Imm advocates calling a spade a spade by, in essence, calling a spade a spadism: namely, calling the threat posed by the anti-liberty doctrines of Islam to be something called "Islamism." This, as I periodically maintain,...

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Another decade, another retrospective--this one to mark the 40th anniversary of the sacking of Columbia. Of course, the New York Times chronicles the events of 1968 rather more sympathetically--namely, from the students' point of view:

The beatings. The arrests. The building takeovers. The heady communal life in the occupied college buildings. And, most vividly, the "bust," the early morning of April 30, 1968, when the police stormed the campus, pounding them bloody with nightsticks and dragging some to police vans by their hair.

How about a little context? As in:

The seizure of five campus buildings. The overnight imprisonment of the acting dean of the college and two assistants. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) manifesto from Mark Rudd threatening...

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Tough-to-follow  interview with our "ally" Hamid Karzai in the New York Times. Seems he doesn't want coalition forces taking on Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

We have to make sure that when a Talib comes to Afghanistan, that he is safe from arrest by the coalition,' Karzai said.

We do?  

Another variation on the same theme of parents who need to be pushed to parent. According to today's Washington Post, the principle of the highly acclaimed Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, has become so concerned about the threats, harassment, baiting and bullying that goes on unchecked and en masse at Facebook, the online social networking site, he has taken "the unusual step of asking parents to monitor their children's postings on the social networking site."

Parents monitor children? What is the post-grown-up world coming to?

Civilization sinks still lower this week with the release of Grand Theft Auto 4--the latest in the multi-billion dollar video game series that  immerses players  in a virtual world of depravity, violence, lawlessness and mayhem. The parent company Rockstar may market and sell the game to "adults," but GTA still tops the list of the most played video games among 12-14 year old boys, and it is the second most played video game among 12-14 year-old girls, according to a poll conducted by a research team hired by the game's "authors" and cited today in a Washington Post business column.

How can that be? How can a game marketed and sold to "adults" be so accessible to middle schoolers?

The problem is parents. (For more, see Chapter 4 in The Death of the Grown-Up:...

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We are constantly told the US is divided between Red States and Blue States. After reading through my mailbag on my Carter/Hamas column of last week, I'm thinking a far better way to assess the divisions that cleave this nation is the Carter Test: Was  Carter's  homage to Arafat (picured above) and obeisance to Hamas A) a Boon to Mankind or B) a Moral and National Disgrace? The two moral worldviews are mutually exclusive. A sampling from the A) people, who, as you will see, discuss only the supposed depredations of Israel--never a word against or even about  Hamas. Jimmy Carter is trying to achieve peace in the region where the Israelis are continuing to sow the  seeds of war by-- Don't tell me: blowing up discos? pizza parlors? shooting at commuters? kidnapping foreign journalists? --continuing to...

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I sat down with The New Individualist's Jack Criss for a wide-ranging Q & A about The Death of the Grown-Up. The interview is available now in the May 2008 issue.

Robert Spencer calls the late Robert O. Collins a "victim of dhimmitude," and he most certainly was. The esteemed scholar of Africa's Upper Nile Valley, particularly Sudan, who died of cancer at 75 in Santa Barbara earlier this month, was the author or co-author of some thirty books on the subject, many of which became required reading for students of the field. But it was his 2006 book, co-written with J. Millard Burr, that turned him into rebel against the jihad. The book was Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. When the egregious Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz (the same Mahfouz whome valiant Rachel Ehrenfeld is so far pummeling in US courts) sued Cambridge University...

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In a cybercafe in Gaza (no kidding), young Arabs randomly dial Americans via free Internet phone service to drum up support for their favorite presidential candidate: Barack Obama.

Watch the bizarre report here.

Hooray for Obama, Gaza's (and Hamas') choice?

UPDATE: There is a pattern here.

 

Congratulations to the Bush administration!!!!

Finally, lo, these many years after 9/11, it has completely eradicated Jihad, the Muhajideen, Jihadis, Jihadists,  Islamic Terrorists, Islamists, Holy Warriors, and even Islamo-fascism (whatever that is)....at least from the government lexicon, that is.

In a NUTshell, the Homeland Security gag order--I mean, report--(entitled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims") put it this way:"We should not concede the terrorists' claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam."

In other words, in Homeland Security's analysis, there is no Jihad (Muhajideen, Jihadis, Jihadists,  Islamic Terrorists, Islamists, etc.) in Islam. Or, as I put it in my book,...

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Happened to find a picture of a better, happier landing than the one described below.

This a link to one of the more distressing if not excruciating pieces of video I've ever seen--the capture, torture and throat-slitting of a rare giant sea turtle who had the misfortune to swim too close to the shores of Gaza and be caught by an Arab fisherman.  It reminded me of  two things: one, the observation from  Isi Liebler, whose column I have linked to below, about what he called  Israel's greatest failure, namely:

...its reluctance to expose to the world the criminal nature of our Palestinian neighbor, the PA no less than Hamas. To this day, we continue understating the barbaric culture of death and the ongoing anti-Semitic incitement which permeates every sector of society under the jurisdiction of our Palestinian neighbor: mothers joyfully dispatching their own children to Paradise as suicide bombers;...

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John McCain has asked state Republicans in North Carolina to pull an ad questioning the judgment of local candidates who have endorsed Barack Obama, given his 20-year close association with Rev. Jeremiah "God D--- KKK America"  Wright. McCain has done so because he says he wants to run a "respectful" campaign.

Respectful? What isn't "respectful" about acknowledging and debating the virulent anti-Americanism of one of Obama's most significant mentors? At some level, presidential elections are always exercises in character judgment, and Obama's character--his attitudes, his beliefs, his influences--is of key interest to the electorate, as is John McCain's. Denying this--or, worse, marginalizing discussion as "disrespectful"--is not to be confused with seizing the moral high ground.  It's a Big Mistake.

In 1992, George Bush the father took essentially the same position and nixed discussion of Bill Clinton's character (womanizing,...

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Read this column by Isi Leibler in The Jerusalem Post and ask yourself whether the Israeli culture of denial and and self-deception he describes sounds at all familiar.

Inspired by the lines of rapper Jay-Z--"If you feelin' like a pimp . . . go and brush your shoulders off. . . . Get that dirt off your shoulder"--Barack Obama, presidential candidate and "self-confessed hip hop head," tried brushing last week's debate with Hillary Clinton off his shoulder. The Washington Post swoons over the "merging" of politics and rap culture here, but if you look here, you'll notice the paper decided to censor all the bad words (one begins with "m" and one begins with "n"). Wonder why?

A Muslim Brotherhood front group with a documented record of support for such jihadist terror groups as Hamas has the gall to tell Sen. John McCain what to say--or, rather, what not to say--on the campaign trail about Islamic terrorism. The Washington Times reports today that the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) "is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of enemy." Specifically, ISNA wants the presumptive GOP presidential nominee to stop calling Islamic terrorists and "Islamic." Through a spokesman, the McCain campaign replied, No Dice. Which is all to the good, of course--although the campaign statement is also a mass of, dare I say, Islamic confusion.

Said McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt:

"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully. But the reality...

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I just took an informal but fairly comprehensive survey of the news stories reporting the roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed two Dutch soldiers, including Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm, the 23-year-old son of General Peter van Uhm, the recently appointed head of the 1,600 Dutch forces there.

I had first seen the AFP wire story while scanning Jihad Watch yesterday, and was most interested in finding fallout from this statement from Taliban spokesman Yousef Ahmadi, who said:

"This [attack] was part of our operation against the Dutch. First, it was because they have occupied our country, and secondly it was in retaliation to the Dutch insult to our greatest prophey Mohammed."

And what Dutch "insult" was he talking about? Fitna, of course, Geert Wilders' short film cinematically linking jihad verses in the Koran to jihad violence in our cities.

Were these two Dutch casualties the first murders that may be linked to...

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..."Lou Dobbs This Week" tonight at 7pm EST on CNN.

From the Associated Press (via Ynet News):

Former US President holds second meeting in as many days with exiled Hamas politburo Khaled Mashaal after four-hour meeting night before. 'Political isolation of Hamas by America has begun to crumble,' says top Hamas official

Some American presidents are remembered for breaking  slavery, Nazism, the Berlin Wall. Jimmy Carter's lasting legacy will be breaking "the political isolation of Hamas," an enemy jihadist organization. Nice going, peanut farmer.  My column on the subject here; more on the meeting below. Former US President Carter defied US and Israeli warnings and met twice this weekend with the exiled leader of Hamas and his deputy, two men the US government has labeled terrorists and Israel accuses of masterminding attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians....

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Rep. Sue Myrick, North Carolina Republican, is really doing things right. First, she calls for Jimmy "Hamas" Carter's passport to be revoked; now, she has unveiled the “Wake Up America” Agenda, the first bold and coherent plan to use means at our disposal to begin toinvestigate, isolate and take appropriate measures against the jihadist threat inside the US.

Below is her agenda, which: 1.    Will call for a government investigation of all US military chaplains who were approved by Abdurahman Alamoudi. 2.    Will call for a government investigation of all US prison chaplains who were approved by Abdurahman Alamoudi. 3.    Will call for the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the selection process of Arabic translators in the FBI and DoD. 4.    Will call for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) 501(c)(3) non-profit status which...

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Yale: Student's Art Project Only 'Creative Fiction' By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the New York Sun | April 17, 2008 A Yale student’s bizarre art project in which she claimed to have repeatedly impregnated and induced abortions in herself is a work of "creative fiction," the university said in a statement this afternoon.                                                       The Yale Daily News reported this morning that Aliza Shvarts’s senior project, set to go on display next week, included video of her bleeding in her bathtub, as well as plastic sheeting layered with a mixture of Vaseline and the post-abortion blood. "Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said. "She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of...

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Sayed Pervez Kambakhsh, the 23-year-old Afghan journalist condemned to death for "blasphemy"--argung that Mohammed ignored women's rights--has been granted an appeal by those marvels of light and truth in the Afghan government. I've written about the case here and here, essentially to wonder how and why the United States government had gotten into the business of making the world safe for sharia law, and when anyone would notice. So far, this shameful fact seems to remain a secret between you and me. (It certainly doesn't seem to have occured to the current president or his potential successors.)

Anyhow, Bloomberg has the story here.

"This case is not an anomaly," [press advocate Jean] MacKenzie said. "It is symptomatic of what is happening in Afghanistan,...

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Drudge certainly found the story that perfectly manifests just about every symptom of decadent amorality exhibited by 21st century elites. It comes from the Yale Daily News (where long ago my first published work appeared) in a report headined: "For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse."

It describes the senior "art" project of one Aliza Shvarts as "a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself as often as possible while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process."

From the YDN story:

Art major Juan Castillo '08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result. "I really loved the...

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At the end of report about arrests and beatings of Christians in the Islamic nation of   Uzbekistan:

Analysts say authorities seem to misuse a public outcry against the recently released anti-Islamic film 'Fitna' of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders to target religious communities viewed as dangerous to the government’s powerbase.

Uzbekistan's President Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov, who has dominated the political landscape since 1989, is seen by critics as taking a ruthlessly authoritarian approach to all forms of opposition.

Officials have declined to comment on the latest reported crackdown on religious groups.

"Don't disturb us with stupid questions about religious liberties," said Begzot Kadyrov, an official of the government's Religious Affairs Committee, in reported remarks. 

...

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From North Carolina GOP Rep. Sue Myrick's office:

Today, Rep. Sue Myrick (NC-9) called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to revoke former President Jimmy Carter’s passport.  This is in response to the former President traveling to Syria to meet with Hamas, an organization officially designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. “Former President Carter has acted in contradiction of international agreements to isolate Hamas.  He has acted in defiance of both United States policy and international policy.  His actions reward terrorists, lend support, and provide legitimacy to their belief that violence will eventually get them what they want,” said Rep. Myrick.  After Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) called on Hamas to renounce terror, recognize Israel and recognize the previous agreements between...

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Brigitte Bardot, movie star turned animal rights activist, is ON TRIAL in France again for exercising free speech--or, as the court puts it, "inciting racial hatred." This time around (she has been similarly charged four times before), the 73-year-old Bardot has been taken to court by an "anti-racism" group for a 2004 letter she wrote to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. (Who leaked the letter, Sarko?) In it, she bemoaned the Muslim ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Kabir and referred to Muslims as "this population that leads us around by the nose, [and] which destroys our country."

Prosecutors are seeking an unusually harsh sentence of $22,000 and a two-month suspended jail term for the act of writing a sentence.

"I'm a bit tired of trying Madame Bardot," admitted assistant prosecutor Anne de Fonette, as she urged the court to impose "the...

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As Jihad Watch today noted, the British government is  planning to import  "moderate" imams from Pakistan--who knew they had sufficient quantities for export?--in an effort to combat "extremism" in British mosques, where congregants are largely of Pakistani descent.

Hmmm. I wonder if the British Home Secretary ever bothered to notice what some imams from Pakistan in Britain are already saying. MEMRI did. Here is a report translated from the London edition of the Urdu-language Pakistani newspaper Roznama Jang--which means Daily War. (Daily War??) The story serves as round-up of sermons, many of which were given by imams "specially invited from Pakistan and India" to mark the holiday of Ashura by preaching the importance of martydom.

From the MEMRI translation:

The Islamic preachers, many of them specially invited from Pakistan...

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...the road Monday and Tuesday. Back later.

...Lou Dobbs This Week  on CNN at 7pm EST.

If you read today's column about Sgt. Evan Vela, the American sniper who has been turned into a PC sacrificial lamb by, I deeply regret to say, the US military, and want to  learn more, here is  additional info on the case. If you want to help, here is what you can do. 

Excellent Fjordman reviews Excellent Ibn Warraq at Excellent Atlas Shrugs. The book is Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Read the review here, and then buy the book here.

(I don't think I ever posted Fjordman's musings on The Death of the Grown-Up, so I'll link to them as well.)

A certain amount of black humor is required to get your average anti-jihadi through this end-period of Western civ, and because of that, I am eternally grateful to Abu Qatada, one of the more murderously villainous jihadists we have  met on the road to ruination. Every time he makes a headline--which as OBL's "spiritual guide,"  "ambassador in Europe," whatever--he periodically does, I bring out my favorite Abu Qatada line, first reported back in 2003. Today, he's in the news again because a British court has ruled that deporting the jihadist "cleric"  from Britain to Jordan posed a threat to the man's "human rights." It's not that Jordan would torture the Islamic holy man--the UK and Jordan have already reached an agreement on this point--but rather that Jordan might torture witnesses in any case against him, therefore imperiling his right to a fair trial. Sniff, sniff.

That's not all. Remaining in the UK means Abu Qatada wil live out his life on the British dole! Read it all here.

...

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From the AP:

Iraq has about $30 billion in surplus funds stored in U.S. banks, according to [Sen. Carl] Levin. Iraq is looking at a potential boon in oil revenue this year, possibly as much as $100 billion in 2007 and 2008. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is having to buy its fuel on the open market, paying on average $3.23 a gallon and spending some $153 million a month in Iraq on fuel alone.

What's wrong with this picture? Shouldn't the U.S. military in Iraq be filling up for ... free? While Iraq pays for fuel for its own troops...

Mighty big of them.

...it has relied heavily on U.S. dollars to provide people with basic services, including more than $45 billion for reconstruction.

"Heavily" isn't the word. Lacking the votes to order troops home by a certain date, Democrats see fencing off reconstruction money as an alternative to challenging the Bush administration's Iraq policies. And several Republicans...

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I've begun reading The Man Who Pushed America to War, a bio of Ahmad Chalabi--former ex-pat-Iraqi star of the "neocon" firmament that shone the alluring light of Jeffersonian possibilities over a post-Saddam Iraq--by Aram Roston. Sixty-some pages into the book, which so far I find quite interesting in part because I (thankfully) missed the whole Chalabi train in the run-up to the Iraq war, I am struck most by the depiction of the Middle Eastern culture of intertwining, polymorphous loyalties in which the Chalabis (Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims) quite naturally manuever. It is a culture that is wholly perplexing to the Occidental Mind.

Already, Roston has ticked off various Chalabi relationships (personal, emotional, business, close and arm's length) with the Shah's Iran (felt loyalty toward), Khomeini's Iran (felt pride in), Saddam Hussein (loathed but did business...

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UPDATE: Having mentioned "Touch of Evil" as a memorable Heston film, I found Heston's remarks on the film of particular interest:

Charlton Heston (R.I.P.) on 'Touch of Evil' From Steven Rea's "On Movies Online" http://go.philly.com/onmovies In an interview nearly 15 years ago (yikes!), Charlton Heston reflected back on his career, on playing such epic figures as Moses, Michelangelo, John the Baptist and Buffalo Bill. But Heston - who passed away Saturday at the age of 83 - said during the 1993 phone chat that "my most important contribution to motion pictures" was off-camera. That is, persuading Universal Pictures to let Orson Welles direct a little noir thriller called Touch of Evil. The 1958 classic, which stars Welles (as a corrupt U.S. cop), Heston (as a dogged Mexican government detective) and Janet Leigh (as his American bride), was without a director when...

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UPDATE: Had to snag this Indonesian snapshot from Jihadwatch tonight.  "Death threats for saying Islam isn't a Religion of Peace."

Not quite two weeks after Geert Wilders' Fitna first appeared on the Internet, an overall pattern of response has emerged: both supremacist Islam and the multicultural Left are united in using feelings of "offense" over the film to advance speech codes that replace Western-style freedom of speech with Islamic curbs on criticizing Islam. This is well underway at the UN. It is also well underway in the bureaucracies of the European Union, where, for example, a Belgian government antidiscrimination body has "warned" Belgian bloggers not to link to...

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When I saw this headline:

"Obama calls for talks with Iran over Iraq"

I thought, forget that idea about voting for Obama (if McCain picks Condi for veep).

Then I remembered this headline (and others like it):

"U.S. Will Join Talks With Iran And Syria
Rice Announces Policy Shift as Iraq Plans Conferences"

So what's the diff?

Cruising the 'net for a Fitna Round-Up (to come), Google turned up the following report from the The Borneo Bulletin--"Your Gateway to Borneo," in case you were wondering. The story, which is headlined with a command, not a title: "Strictly follow halal guidelines"--concerns the ribbon-cutting ceremony that this week opened the very first Chicken King fast food franchise restaurant in Wisma Yakin Kampong Pandan, Kuala Belait. (Anyone who finds it on a map gets free fries with their Chicken Steak Burger, which the article describes as "the signature dish in Malaysia" .... Who knew?)

And what does halal fast food have to do with Fitna?

Belait Chief Religious Officer Pg Hj Yunos bin Pg Hj Mohd Salleh, who was the guest of honour at the opening ... said:  "Restaurant owners encompass business licence holders, operations managers, as well as staff, waiters...

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... Condoleezza Rice becomes John McCain's vice presidential running mate. I honestly don't know for whom I will vote at this point; I am a long way, emotionally at least, from committing to one of these tragically unfortunate choices.

Condi is reported to be actively campaigning for the veep slot, and the thought of a McCain-Rice ticket just might drive me over the top (over the edge?) to vote Obama. (Not Clinton, though--at least I don't think so. A Clinton presidency--the triumphal return of what Mark Levin calls the Clinton Crime Family--would be something along the lines of a national sin. And, as a friend of mine who, as a campaign-trailing news hound, watches these people at a closer focus  than most, has pointed out, the Clintons would very professionally put in place a machine-driven legacy whose impact would be felt for generations--many political cycles, anyhow.) I think an Obama administration would be a disaster,...

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..."Lou Dobbs This Week" tonight. 7pm EST on CNN.

 

Klein Verzet, a Dutch blog I like to read, has translated a "secret speech" by  Dutch prime minister Jan Balkenende as it appears in a conservative Dutch weekly called Opinio. What did he say, according to Opinio? Well, it sounds very much like an April Fool's joke (although I don't  know if the Dutch partake of the holiday), but who knows? UPDATE:  WELL, I STILL DON'T KNOW IF THE DUTCH CELEBRATE APRIL FOOLS, BUT THE SPEECH WAS INDEED A FICTION. SEE END OF POST FOR DETAILS.)

Here goes Klein Verzet's (verbatim, if a little rough) translation of the Opinio report: “We need to change course”, says the Prime Minister. “Last months we have been held hostage by Geert Wilders. We have maneuvered ourselves in a position from which we could not escape”. And describes how Obahama his Philadelphia speech inspired him. Just like Obahama, he wants to become honest and name problems: “what’s the big...

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Taking off from Condoleezza Rice's egregious comment that this nation remains malformed by what she calls its national "birth defect" (the existence of slavery at the time of its founding), I realized in writing today's column why the RIce Doctrine--a vision of the world, in all its historical and cultural variation, through a provincially American prism of race--has been such a failure. Baghdad and Gaza aren't Birmingham.

Meant to link to previous writings on Rice, briefly mentioned in today's column:

Here is a 2005 column on Condi's apparent inabiity to distinguish between the blueprint for freedom that is the 18th-century US Constitution and the blueprint for sharia that is 21st century Iraqi one; and here is a 2007 post that more fully examines her projection of "Bombingham" onto the so-called MIddle...

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I recently received an email from Curtis Carnahan, the father of Sgt. Evan Vela, who, having served his country in Iraq is currently, and wrongly, serving a ten year sentence in prison. Mr. Carnahan asked me to look into his son's case because of the distinct parrallels between his son's wartime dilemma in Iraq and that of the SEAL team in Afghanistan that was immortalized by former SEAL Marcus Luttrell in the best-selling book Lone Survivor.

As Mr. Carnahan noted, I've written about the Luttrell case before in an attempt to call attention to the inverted morality of our military's rules of engagement that forced these SEALS into a situation in which it was against US law to save their own lives when their mission secrecy was compromised by their discovery, deep in Taliban territory, by two Afghan shepherds....

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In the blog below, An American Travesty, I omitted a link to the Evan Vela Defense Fund. Several readers have written to ask how they can help Sgt Vela so here, at the end of this appeal from his parents, is a way.
 

Brussels Journal reports this week that Austrian politician Susanne Winter has actually been indicted on charges of "incitement and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation"--or, as the Austrians so trippingly put it, Verhetzung und Herabwürdigung religiöser Symbole. If convicted, she faces TWO YEARS IN PRISON.

What did she do? The charges stem from THINGS SHE SAID. These include: 

Islam is “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean.”

This is called an opinion. (And it's not a bad idea, at least if you're into fashion, free speech, monogamy, women's rights, homosexuality, dancing, Frank Loesser, free speech, pork rinds,  aetheism, champagne, and assorted non-Muslim religions ....  )

She also warned for “a Muslim immigration tsunami,” saying that “in 20 or 30 years,...

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The Dutch Malaysian dairy company Dutch Lady has taken out full page ads in various newspapers to "strongly condemn this expression against Islam"--namely, "Fitna." It begins:

Dear Valued Malaysians,

Gee, do you think the salutation is unctuous enough?

Like all right-thinking persons, Dutch Lady Milk Industries Berhad wishes to strongly denounce and condemn the opinions and statements made in the film "Fitna" produced by right-wing politician Geert Wilders.

Sheesh. As a result, we at Dutch Lady are planning to distribute to every Valued Malaysian who purchases a pint of cream a Dutch flag and box of matches....OK, they didn't say that but the letter continues:

Our objection to this film is also shared and strongly voiced by the Dutch government...

It goes on from there, but you get the drift (utter self-abasement)...

Two things:

1) If utter self-abasement isn't your...

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**Mark Steyn said it first but it bears repeating.

Madonna is planning, hoping, trying to remake the 1942 World War II classic "Casablana"--starring her 49-year-old self, of course, as Ilsa Lund, the role played by a 24-year-old Ingrid Bergman. (Death of the Grown-Up, anyone?) No word on who might play Rick, the role  immortalized past the point of iconography to spoof (Woody Allen's "Play It Again, Sam") and back again by Humphrey Bogart. 

A Hollywood source tells the Daily Mail:...

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"Lou Dobbs Tonight" tonight. CNN at 7pm EST.

The New York State Legislature has unanimously passed Rachel's Law to protect American authors from foreign lawsuits that infringe on their First Amendment rights. The bill is named for the truly intrepid author Rachel Ehrenfeld, who, single-handedly, has fought for everyone's free speech against a Saudi billionaire who brought suit against her in Britain, where libel laws favor the plaintiff. You can read more about it here. And you can buy Funding Evil, Rachel's book the Saudis don't want you to read (too bad!!), here.

Earlier this afternoon, I asked Rachel whether this legislative victory meant she could start resting on her well-deserved  laurels. Not hardly. She's got plenty of hard work still ahead. And first...

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CNS.com has the whole story, which concerns not only Geert Wilders' freedom of expression, but also yours and mine:

The government of the world's most populous Islamic state says YouTube has two days to take down a Dutch lawmaker's provocative film on the Koran or it will block access to the popular video-sharing Web site....

YouTube--of course, obviously, naturally--should say, Forget you. Go bully someone else. But will it? In Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, Information Minister Mohammad Nuh told a press briefing in Jakarta Tuesday he had sent a letter to YouTube demanding the film, "Fitna," be removed. If it did not comply, he said, the government in cooperation with Internet service providers would block the site...

So, block it, Mr. Censor--I mean, Mr. Information Minister.

In response to queries, a YouTube spokesperson said the site allows people "to express themselves and...

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