Inhabitants of the island of Lesbos have failed in their campaign to ban the use of the word “lesbian” to refer to female homosexuals, calling the use of the word a “violation of their human rights.”

The BBC is reporting that Serbia has arrested the fugitive Radovan Karadzic, who has been on the run since 1996.

The next time someone complains that we haven’t caught Osama bin Laden yet, just remember that it took 12 years for anyone to catch up to Karadzic and that Ratko Mladic is still on the loose.

In any case, score one for the good guys.

[UPDATE, 07/22]

Okay, this story just got weird. Apparently, Karadzic was working as an “alternative medicine” quack under an assumed name. According to Harry’s Place, this is the company he was working for. As far as I can tell (I don’t know Serbian, but there are enough Russian and English cognates that I can piece a bit of it together), their products are all supposed to focus your bio-energy with vibrations to harmonize your energy and aura and things like that.

Hot on the heels of the Mark Steyn/Maclean’s case in Canada, a British law firm, acting on behalf of Mohammed Sawalha, the President of the British Muslim Initiative and mastermind of “much of Hamas’ political and military strategy”, has filed suit against UK blog Harry’s Place:

Mr Sawalha claims that we have “chosen a malevolent interpretation of a meaningless word”. In fact, we did no more than translate a phrase which appeared in an Al Jazeera report of Mr Sawalha’s speech. When Al Jazeera changed that phrase from “Evil Jew” to “Jewish Lobby”, we reported that fact, along with the statement that it had been a typographical error.

Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase “Evil Jew” to him implies that he is “anti-semitic and hateful”. Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas.

…

A member of Hamas has no reputation to defend.

…

If Mr Sawalha persists in attempting to silence us with this desperate legal suit, we will need your help.

We won’t be able to stand up to them alone.

Reason posts a link to what’s destined to be the next big internet meme.

Over at the always-excellent Harry’s Place, I ran across this thought provoking piece about modern anti-Semitism which I thought was particularly illuminating, given this University’s continuing controversies surrounding the Pacifica Forum and certain of their guest lecturers.

The author, Anthony Julius, makes explicit a crucial distinction that I think has long been missing from the debate over anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism, that of the “fellow traveler”. The out-and-out anti-Semite is usually not difficult to spot. These are the David Irvings and Hassan Nasrallahs of the world. Their distaste for Jews is barely concealed, if at all.

The “fellow travelers”, on the other hand, are like their counterparts who rooted for the Soviet Union (and the author makes clear that the comparison is deliberate) in that they dissemble and downplay actual instances of anti-Semitism, often unconsciously. Sometimes, as in the case of Palestinian terrorism, anti-Semitic acts are explicitly justified as being appropriate (or even automatic) responses to “oppression” at the hands of Zionists (read: Jews). In many cases, however, the very same people would find, say, the vandalizing of a synagogue here in Eugene appalling. As with the Soviet Union’s fellow travelers, a distinction is draw between what is considered normal and acceptable elsewhere and what is intolerable at home.

The article is especially timely, as the Register Guard has, within the last week, published letters like this one today (July 8) by George Beres (you might have to scroll down… the RG’s letter’s page doesn’t allow linking to specific letters) and this one on July 5 by Valdas Anelauskas, who should already be familiar with readers of the Commentator for his comments regarding a piece written by former Oregon Daily Emerald columnist Deborah Bloom:

Even if the author’s name wasn’t Deborah Bloom, after reading your opinion piece in the Emerald (Feb. 7) there is no doubt that it was written by someone who is Jewish. Because only from people of that peculiar tribe can we expect such Talmudic hatred for humanity. There is even a famous saying that wars are the Jews’ harvest.

In any case, the piece is rather long (11 pages + 9 pages of footnotes), so I won’t attempt to summarize it any further; it really does merit reading all the way through. Julius’ recognition of the “fellow traveler” is, I think, an important and useful addition to the lexicon of the debate.

[UPDATE]

Here’s a fine (if somewhat nauseating) example of the “fellow traveler” phenomenon, though it’s not really so much about anti-Semitic themes as an apologia for Islamic fundamentalism from a hardcore Marxian perspective. (Also via Harry’s Place)

Chess boxing:

The match began over a chess board set up on a low table in the middle of a boxing ring.

Stripped to the waist, wearing towels around their shoulders and headphones playing the lulling sound of a moving train to drown out the baying crowd, the men played for four minutes.
Then off came their reading glasses and on went the gloves and the mouthguards.

For three minutes they beat each other and then, when the bell went, the chess board was back in the ring and they picked up the gentlemanly game where they had left off.

Sorry CJ. Rugby is cool, and all, but if chess boxing isn’t the best sport ever, I don’t know what is.

One hopes that this news report from the UK is wildly inaccurate:

The National Children’s Bureau… has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

…

[The report] alerts playgroup leaders that even babies can not be ignored in the drive to root out prejudice as they can “recognise different people in their lives”. 

The world has gone fucking mad.

When reading this article at Foreign Policy, one gets the sense that the author is mostly correct in criticizing the military’s apparent mania for developing absurdly expensive “toys”, but I don’t think she takes it far enough.  Her argument seems to be that many of the technologies that the military chooses to invest in (hypersonic aircraft, for instance) may, in the future, turn out to have been expensive endeavors with no real practical value, while more down-to-earth needs, such as defending against dirty bombs or researching alternative energy sources, fall by the wayside. Her point is probably correct — the history of military R&D (or pretty much any R&D, for that matter) is strewn with examples of failed experiments, research dead-ends, and money-sinks that, in the end, have no useful or tangible product.

The real problem is not that we’re investing in science fiction technology, it’s that we’re spending money on it to the exclusion of more mundane technology that, while less sexy, is nevertheless the backbone of any strong military.

(more…)

 If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you might’ve heard about the controversial case before a Canadian “Human Rights Commission” regarding Mark Steyn’s infamous Maclean’s article, which is an excerpt from his book, “America Alone.” While I’m not necessarily a fan of Steyn or his thesis, which I find to be rather too histrionic, the fact that one of Canada’s most prominent journalists, as well as one of its oldest publications, being marched up in front of some “human rights” troika for the “crime” of essentially hurting some peoples’ feelings discomforts me, to say the very least.

After all, regardless of what one might think of buffoons like Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore — or even outright racist scumbags like David Irving — here in the United States, people are for the most part free to say whatever they please in whatever forum will let them speak.

This article, published in the New York Times, muses upon the idea of whether or not the Canadian model, which effectively prohibits “hate speech” is perhaps, in some ways preferable to the American one, in which “newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.” It cites legal scholars who are quick to put “respect” and avoiding “distress” before freedom, the argument being that some speech is simply “too dangerous” to allow.

Such a position is, I fear, even more dangerous to the values of a democratic society than any “hate speech” ever could be. In a perversion of Voltaire, “hate speech” laws seem to say “I disapprove of what you have to say, so I shall revoke your right to say it.” Opening the door for ever greater government control over what we can and cannot say in order to protect the “right” to not be offended is to test the law of unintended consequences.

There is a George Orwell quote that I am fond of: “Liberty, if it means anything at all, is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Those in favor of “hate speech” laws would do well to take it to heart. Being subjected to a racist tirade, suffering a homophobic rant, or being the target of any of what might be called “hate speech” cannot be anything but degrading, offensive, and hurtful.

It also should not be anything but legal. Otherwise, we’ve cashiered our liberty for the illusion of tolerance.

[EDIT]

Reason has a post up today about the same subject that’s worth reading. I also encourage people to read the links that Olly posted in the comments section.

Henry Allingham, one of the three survivors of World War I still alive in Britain, has just had his 112th birthday. A founding member of the RAF and a veteran of the battles of Jutland, the Somme, and Ypres, Mr. Allingham’s longevity is, by his own admission, the product of years of “cigarettes, whisky and wild women”.

The Commentator salutes Mr. Allingham as an example for us all.

The NASA spacecraft Phoenix landed on Mars today, completing a 9 month journey to the red planet. NASA technicians and scientists were elated at the success of the landing. Historically, only a third of Mars landing missions have been successful, with the other portion failing due to miscalculations, crash landings, or unknown loss of contact. The lander used a powered descent, the first to do so since Viking 1 and 2 in 1976.

Initial pictures show the planet to be in the exact same condition as we last observed it when Opportunity and Spirit landed in 2003. Let me reiterate: Mars is exactly the same as it was 5 years ago. Once again, millions of taxpayers’ dollars were spent towards a mission to Mars that will most likely accomplish a fraction of its initial goals and still manage to excite all the astronomers and scientists at NASA.

Phoenix, designed to look for water and other signs of habitability, is the 5th successful NASA mission to land on Mars. NASA collaborated with the University of Arizona to design and carry the $325 million project. Earlier today, Phoenix landed in the arctic areas of Mars, and will be digging into the ground with a robotic arm to a whopping depth of 0.5 meters below the Martian surface. Pictures are streaming back by the hundreds, and can be viewed here.

Let me start this post by stating that I am a firm believer in the theory of anthopogenic global warming.

I’m a bit more sketchy on the currently prevalent trend of trying to tie everything into global warming and generally trying to frighten the public into supporting certain political movements. We’ve been told repeatedly that there is a strong link between global warming and the intensity (and, depending on who’s doing the talking, the frequency) of hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons worldwide.

A new study, however, disputes that, claiming that there will, in fact, be a decrease in the number of hurricanes though there may be a “modest” increase (~1-2%) in the power of such events. Of course, the devil’s in the details, and climate change models are only that — models. Some models give weight to certain factors and others do not, and they all have their failings. Only the most dishonest scientist would tell you that his model is definitive.

Most people, however, aren’t scientists, and both sides of the global warming debate have a vested interest in supporting whichever model “proves” their side is “right”. So expect to see this study adopted by global warming skeptics as evidence that global warming is rubbish (or at least not anthropogenic) with the same zeal that past studies have been utilized by environmental groups to advance their agenda.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is to distrust anyone in the global warming debate who claims that such-and-such study “proves” a damned thing. Chances are that most partisans on both sides have probably never really looked at any of the science or bothered to learn much further than what Al Gore said in “An Inconvenient Truth”. Sadly, the issue has long since passed into the hands of those who’re just informed enough to use “global warming” and every study that comes out about it as a cudgel with which to batter their political foes rather than treating it as an important scientific question. Much like the results of the anti-nuclear hysteria of decades past, I fear that the current atmosphere of partisanship re: global warming will eventually leave us in a much worse position than we are today.

Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born American writer and speaker, will be on campus Thursday, May 22, 7-9 p.m. in Lillis 282. Darwish is the author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror. She has a rather atypical perspective on the issue, so regardless of one’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, this should an interesting lecture to say the least.

The event will be hosted by the College Republicans. For more information, check the Facebook event.

Okay, so I’m not a big fan of Barack Obama (and his dick of a handler not letting the Commentator through the press line last night didn’t help score any points, but I’ll let CJ post about that…). I don’t think he’s the best choice for President, and I don’t like the messianic everything-to-everyone posturing of his campaign. As far as I’m concerned, there are tons of perfectly legitimate criticisms of the man. Nevertheless, I’m beyond tired of all the drummed-up “controversies” that keep cropping up every couple of weeks or so on right-leaning blogs. Until now, the most idiotic of these was the Case of the Missing Flag Lapel Pin. Heinous!

Alas, after dragging my hung-over self out of bed this morning to check my usual blogs, I see that not one but two silly new stories are making the rounds. First off, evidently Senator Obama mis-spoke during a speech up in Beaverton and said that he’d visited 57 states.The horror! How can he not even know how many states there are in the Union he wants to lead?! How such a dolt could ever be considered qualified for the Presidency is impossible to imagine.

Second, scholars of history are savaging the benighted Senator for suggesting that he would consider meeting with unfriendly heads of state, in the tradition of other American Presidents like FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. Evidently FDR and Truman meeting with Stalin doesn’t count, despite the fact that the United States had been staunchly anti-Soviet from the very start, because we were both fighting Nazi Germany at the time. Citing Kennedy’s meetings with Khruschev is also apparently off-limits because um… Kennedy had more experience in politics than Obama does… or something. And never mind Nixon going to China or Reagan meeting with Gorbachev. None of that matters, you see,  because Senator Obama clearly needs a history lesson, otherwise he’ll end up just like poor old Neville Chamberlain.

Jack Kelly ends his post on Real Clear Politics thusly: “The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling.” I couldn’t agree more, chum.

According to an article in Macworld, a newly released study conducted by Nemertes Research Group indicates that “a flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Internet by 2010.”

This internet slow-down is something the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) has been predicting for several years. Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the IIA agrees, saying the study gives “good, hard, unique data” on the IIA concerns about network capacity. He went on to state, “Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year.”

What does this mean to you, loyal OC readers? Not only will it become painstakingly difficult to read the OC blog, but it’ll also seriously impede your ability to view porn online.

Are videos of Miley Cyrus in concert really worth their bandwidth if it means missing a busty blonde in action?

“Video has unleashed an explosion of Internet content,” Mehlman said.

I guess the question is, what type of “explosion” would you like to unleash in 2010?