Islamic Terrorism: On the Run or On the March?

Our dear leader assured us last year that “al Qaeda is on the run.” For all I know, he still believes it.

Obama notwithstanding, Islamic terrorism is on the march. Last weekend it burst into the news with two especially violent actions.

From Nairobi, Kenya to Peshawar, Pakistan, Islamic terrorists continued their business of slaughtering infidels and murdering their fellow Muslims. And that doesn’t even count the suicide bombings in Iraq and the war in Syria.

Another president called Islam a “religion of peace.” Apparently, Muslims were so offended to see their faith called a “religion of peace” that they have set out to do everything in their power to prove Bush wrong.

Yesterday, we were assured by no less than the Prime Minister of Pakistan that true Islam rejects all forms of such violence.

If the message did not ring hollow before, it feels utterly empty now. John Hinderaker comments:

Based on bitter experience, I would say that the mass murder of random innocents is the essence of the “teachings of Islam.” We have seen such mass murder over and over, more times than we can count. Does Islam have something to offer other than crazed, sadistic violence, committed to perpetuate the crudest forms of ignorance? If so, I haven’t seen it. Whether we talk about Africa (Nairobi), Asia (Peshawar) or any place else, the fruit of Islam appears to be the same.

Meanwhile, Americans are agog over the fact that Pope Francis looks to be more liberal than his two predecessors. Hinderaker sees it as a nice way to distract ourselves from the fact that Christians are being persecuted and murdered by Muslims in Pakistan, Egypt, Syria and any Islamic countries that still have Christians.

It is almost self-evident, but there are no longer any Jews in predominantly Muslim countries. These countries have been rendered Judenrein. Now, whose idea was that?

Hinderaker raises this issue:

Over the last week there has been much discussion of an interview that Pope Francis gave to a magazine. Some are asking breathlessly whether Francis might be a “liberal.” I am much more interested to know what he thinks about the extermination of ancient Christian communities across the Middle East and Asia, and whether he intends to lead a strong response to Islam’s effort to eradicate Christianity from much (ultimately all) of the globe.

Roger Simon recommends that we rouse ourselves from our torpor and recognize that Islam is at war against West. Sooner or later, we will have to get a lot more serious about fighting back… not merely in the military sense but in the cultural sense.

People who are happily fighting a culture war against Republicans will need to become equally fired up over Islamic misogyny. If they were not terrified of offending Muslims they would be.

Simon explains that the weekend attacks are only a small part of the world’s Islamic terrorism:

…  these killings are just the latest in a long and sadly predictable history of such events, Sunni and Shiite, during which, according to one website, a staggering 21269 deadly attacks have been undertaken by Islamic terrorists since  September 11, 2001.

21,269… that’s a lot of terrorism. After a while, you get the picture.

Eventually, you have to start thinking that perhaps the West has been overly solicitous, overly sensitive, overly understanding of the sensibilities of Muslims.

And that what we think is tolerance is being seen by our enemies as weakness borne of fear. The more the terrorists believe that we are afraid of them, the more they will think that they are winning.

It’s time, Simon says, to change course. First, by recognizing that the problem is not incidental to Islam; it is endemic:

To say that something is decidedly wrong in the Islamic world is a monumental understatement. And Muslim societies make almost no serious effort to correct themselves, ricocheting back and forth between military totalitarianism and religious totalitarianism while — like that family heroin addict — blaming everyone but themselves for their fate.

They are indeed in deep need of an intervention. The question is how to do it.

We need, Simon says, to start calling for Islam to have a Reformation:

Say that Islam itself is the cause of all this atrocious violence and must be corrected, must have a fundamental reformation of the religion. Keep talking about the reformation — keep demanding it of them — all the time.  Why have you not joined the modern world?  Why do you oppress women? Urge them to reform and never stop.

Next, he proposes that Sharia law be banned in America:

Make clear that Sharia law is absolutely incompatible with democratic U.S. values. We will not have it here because it is fundamentally misogynistic and intolerant of other religions, against many of the principles of our Constitution. Ban it in the USA.  If you want Sharia law, stay in an Islamic country. Do not come here.  In other words, force Islamic law to change if they want entry to this country.

Then, he recommends that we stop with all the multicultural nonsense about how all cultures are created equal:

Speak publicly against multiculturalism. All cultures are clearly not the same.  Some are repressive.  Islam is repressive and intolerant of others.

And then, speak the truth about the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently, the Obama administration and its apologists were wrong when they declared that the Muslim Brotherhood was a force for democratic change.

Simon says:

Treat the Muslim Brotherhood as what they are — an Islamofascist organization, not an incipient democratic one. Organizations like that will never change if you believe, or play along with, their lies.

On this point, at least, someone is listening. The Egyptian government has just banned the Muslim Brotherhood and confiscated its assets.

One small step for Egypt....

You Get What You Vote For

It’s fair. It’s just. People should get what they voted for.

It feels right that most of those who are suffering from the Obama administration’s policies should be those who voted for their Savior.

Minority Americans turned out in very large numbers to elect one of their own to the White House. Symbolism is fine; self-esteem can be fine. But, members of these groups have been lining up in very large numbers to collect unemployment compensation and food stamps.

You get what you vote for.

Remember the Community Reinvestment Act, the Clintonian horror designed to make home ownership more affordable for members of minority communities? When the proverbial excrement hit the fan in 2008 and the property market cratered, guess which groups were the most likely to lose their homes to foreclosure?

You guessed it: members of the same minority groups that voted so enthusiastically for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

How can we forget the millennial women who also came out in large numbers to vote for their hero, Barack Obama. Spurred on by agitprop about the Republican war on women, fearful of losing their free birth control, they voted for Julia’s favorite candidate: Barack Obama.

(In case you forgot the Obama campaign’s Life of Julia, here’s a link to my post.)

How are they doing now?

Glad you asked?

This generation of college-education women is, for the most part waiting on tables. You see, the Obamafied economy can’t do better than to create part-time jobs, jobs that pay immiseration wages and do not offer health insurance or any other benefits. Thanks to Obamacare more and more companies will be hiring more and more part time workers.

Some would counter that women have been doing pretty well under the Obama recovery.

In this and in many other cases appearances are deceiving.

Bloomberg reports the truth behind the statistics:

Unemployment data appear to reflect big advances for women. The jobless rate in August for females 20 years and older was 6.3 percent, the lowest since December 2008, compared with 7.1 percent for men. As recently as January, the rate was 7.3 percent for both genders, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The downside is that the gains have been largely in lower-paying industries such as waitresses, in-home health care, food preparation and housekeeping. About 60 percent of the increase in employment for women from 2009 to 2012 was in jobs that pay less than $10.10 an hour, compared with 20 percent for men, according to a study by the National Women’s Law Center using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women have monopolized low-wage jobs. College educated millennial women voted for the pro-women’s lib candidate and proudly proclaim their independence. Funnily enough, Obamanomics has relegated them to jobs that closely resemble a role that they have been taught to dread: housewife.

Except, they aren’t housewives. They get to do what traditional housewives got to do, without the home, without the husband, without the family.

You’ve come a long way, baby!

They may not have known that that was what they were voting for, but, hey, you get what you vote for!

Of course, we want to be fair and balanced here. We do not want to traffic in caricatures.

So, we will recognize that one group of Obama supporters has been doing very well, indeed. That would be the people Obama used to call fat-cat Wall Street bankers.

People fail to recognize that most fat-cat Wall Street bankers, accompanied by other wanna-be or actual billionaires, are liberal Democrats. Some of them went over to the dark side during the last election and supported Mitt Romney, but most of them, in 2008 and even in 2012 lined up behind Barack Obama.

Trust me, Wall Street bankers are not Tea Party Republicans.

You will be happy to note that they are doing very well, indeed. 

Another great success for Occupy Wall Street.

Veggie Day

Germany is having an election today and the environmentally correct Green Party has been losing support.

It’s not just that other parties have co-opted the Green Party’s call to go back to nature, but it is suffering because it called for a national Veggie Day.

Michelle Obama, eat your heart out!

Forget free choice, Politico reports that on a national Veggie day all cafeterias—by which I assume that they mean restaurants-- would be prohibited from serving meat. No sausages, no bacon, no hamburgers, no frankfurters….  Brussel sprouts for everyone!

It’s all intended to save the animals and to help the environment.

Now that the German people see the dark side of Greenism, they are rebelling. Polls show Green Party candidates being rejected by the voters.

Angela Merkel has happily capitalized on the issue. She said:

I grew up in a Christian house. We didn't eat meat on Fridays. I think every restaurant should have a vegetarian dish, but we [as] a party [are] confident people can manage their own lives. We are confident people will live a reasonable life and we don't want to deprive them of this opportunity.

You will be thinking to yourself that it could not happen in America. Imposing such a rule on everyone would constitute an establishment of religion and thus would be unconstitutional.

Think again. Politico reports:

And last summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture came under fire from cattle producers and farm-state senators for a newsletter urging employees to observe "Meatless Mondays." The administration quickly withdrew the publication, declared it was unauthorized, and stated that the USDA—which is supposed to build the market for American meat products—does not endorse meat-free days.

In my humble opinion if you really want people to eat more vegetables, a good start would be to stop using the idiot-word “veggies.” Why would anyone want to eat something called: veggies?

As if that were not enough, it turns out that the leading Green Party candidate, Jurgen Tritten once called for legalizing pedophilia.

He didn’t just make an offhand remark. He and a few of his cohorts put it in their political platform three decades ago.

Der Spiegel reports:

The platform belonged to the Göttingen branch of the Alternative Green Initiative List (AGIL), a forerunner of the current Green Party, and was uncovered by political scientists Franz Walter and Stephan Klecha of the Göttingen Institute for the Study of Democracy. The organization was hired by the Green Party in May to investigate the party's affiliations with pedophile activists in the 1980s.

In an essay for the left-leaning Die Tageszeitung newspaper on Monday, Walter wrote that Trittin, at the time a student who was running for city council, was one of five members of an editorial board that signed off on the election manifesto. The document called for sex between minors and adults to be made exempt from punishment, so long as it involved neither violence nor the threat of violence.

As Walter explains, it was not uncommon for the AGIL to take over the platforms of minority interest groups.

Jürgen Trittin told Die Tageszeitung that the researchers' findings were correct. "It was simply taken for granted that we adopted one-to-one the demands of various fringe initiatives, such as those of the 'Homosexual Action Göttingen,'" Trittin said. "The responsibility was mine and it's a mistake I regret."

They’re sorry now, but three decades ago they were cozying up to oppressed minorities, like pedophile activists.

Moral compass, anyone?

The Greening of Germany

It’s nice enough to engage in spirited debate over climate change and the need for renewable energy. But, the proof is in the practice. In this case we should examine what happens when a nation decides to shift its energy production from fossil fuels and nuclear to more environmentally friendly and primitive means like solar and wind power. 

As we speak, Germany is engaged in leading the world toward renewable energy. Proposed by Chancellor Angela Merkel the policy enjoys support from all political groups.

Thus, it is not easy to affix blame for the new wave of what Germans are calling “energy poverty.” There's plenty to go around.

The New York Times opens its story about the fallout of the green energy initiative:

It is an audacious undertaking with wide and deep support in Germany: shut down the nation’s nuclear power plants, wean the country from coal and promote a wholesale shift to renewable energy sources.

But the plan, backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel and opposition parties alike, is running into problems in execution that are forcing Germans to come face to face with the costs and complexities of sticking to their principles.

German families are being hit by rapidly increasing electricity rates, to the point where growing numbers of them can no longer afford to pay the bill. Businesses are more and more worried that their energy costs will put them at a disadvantage to competitors in nations with lower energy costs, and some energy-intensive industries have begun to shun the country because they fear steeper costs ahead.

Newly constructed offshore wind farms churn unconnected to an energy grid still in need of expansion. And despite all the costs, carbon emissions actually rose last year as reserve coal-burning plants were fired up to close gaps in energy supplies.

A new phrase, “energy poverty,” has entered the lexicon.

No one seems to have thought out all the potential obstacles, because, in all fairness, no one could have done so. Yet, it feels like a perfectly reactionary policy, designed to make enlightened people feel like they are doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences.

The Times continues:

One of the first obstacles encountered involves the vagaries of electrical power generation that is dependent on sources as inconsistent and unpredictable as the wind and the sun.

And no one has invented a means of storing that energy for very long, which means overwhelming gluts on some days and crippling shortages on others that require firing up old oil- and coal-burning power plants. That, in turn, undercuts the goal of reducing fossil-fuel emissions that have been linked to climate change.

Last year, wind, solar and other nonfossil-fuel sources provided 22 percent of the power for Germany, but the country increased its carbon emissions over 2011 as oil- and coal-burning power plants had to close gaps in the evolving system, according to the German electricity association BDEW.

The best part of the story is that the new policy has effectively increased carbon emissions.

Hats off to the new greener Germany. Will the last person leaving the room blow out the candle.

Charles Krauthammer on Aaron Alexis

A former psychiatrist himself Charles Krauthammer is well qualified to take the full measure of the dereliction that allowed Aaron Alexis to go untreated.

His column about the Washington shooter is brilliant. It opens:

In the liberal remake of “Casablanca,” the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to “round up the usual weapons.”

The “system,” such as it is, failed Aaron Alexis. By extension it failed his victims.

Krauthammer explains what happened:

On Aug. 7, that same Alexis had called police from a Newport, R.I., Marriott. He was hearing voices. Three people were following him, he told the cops. They were sending microwaves through walls, making his skin vibrate and preventing him from sleeping. He had already twice changed hotels to escape the men, the radiation, the voices.

Delusions, paranoid ideation, auditory (and somatic) hallucinations: the classic symptoms of schizophrenia.

So here is this panic-stricken soul, psychotic and in terrible distress. And what does modern policing do for him? The cops tell him to “stay away from the individuals that are following him.” Then they leave.

Such is the modern “enlightened” approach to mental illness. In the bad old days, before zealous civil libertarians set out to liberate paranoid schizophrenics from medical treatment, here’s what would have happened:

Had this happened 35 years ago in Boston, Alexis would have been brought to me as the psychiatrist on duty at the emergency room of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Were he as agitated and distressed as in the police report, I probably would have administered an immediate dose of Haldol, the most powerful fast-acting antipsychotic of the time.

This would generally have relieved the hallucinations and delusions, a blessing not only in itself, but also for the lucidity brought on that would have allowed him to give us important diagnostic details — psychiatric history, family history, social history, medical history, etc. If I had thought he could be sufficiently cared for by family or friends to receive regular oral medication, therapy and follow-up, I would have discharged him. Otherwise, I’d have admitted him. And if he refused, I’d have ordered a 14-day involuntary commitment.

Sounds cruel? On the contrary. For many people living on park benches, commitment means a warm bed, shelter and three hot meals a day. For Alexis, it would have meant the beginning of a treatment regimen designed to bring him back to himself before discharging him to a world heretofore madly radioactive.

Would Dr. Krauthammer have deprived Alexis of his constitutionally guaranteed freedoms? Not at all.

He explains:

That’s what a compassionate society does. It would no more abandon this man to fend for himself than it would a man suffering a stroke. And as a side effect, that compassion might even extend to potential victims of his psychosis — in the event, remote but real, that he might someday burst into some place of work and kill 12 innocent people.

You might be thinking that it’s all about the availability of treatment. It’s not:

True, psychiatric care is underfunded and often scarce. But Alexis had full access to the VA system. The problem here was not fiscal but political and, yes, even moral.

I know the civil libertarian arguments. I know that involuntary commitment is outright paternalism. But paternalism is essential for children because they don’t have a fully developed rational will. Do you think Alexis was in command of his will that night in Newport?

Q. E. D.

Failing Successfully

Liza Mundy is rightly perplexed. As America grinds its way through what feels like a decline, more and more people are feeling like they have failed.

In her words:

It seems no accident that after a punishing half decade in which failure descended upon millions in the forms of foreclosure, job loss, factory shutdowns, workplace realignment, growing economic inequality, and dwindling options, we delight in hearing that NASA, according to Dweck, prefers to hire aspiring astronauts who have failed and bounced back, rather than those who have enjoyed easy successes.

The self-help industry has noticed and is offering its own snake oil. It is telling people not to feel ashamed of failure because failure is just another step toward success. It’s gotten to the point where some people are wearing their failures as badges of pride.

It is very peculiar indeed. Mundy expresses it well:

Now is the time for all good men to fail. Good women, too. Fail early and often, and don’t be shy about admitting it. Failing isn’t shameful; it’s not even failure. Such is the message of a growing body of self-help and leadership literature. “Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?” asks the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, in which she argues that a willingness to court failure can be a precursor to growth. Dweck holds, persuasively, that successful people are not the ones who cultivate a veneer of perfection, but rather those who understand that failing is part of getting smarter and better.

Clearly there are a few kernels of truth here. Many people have succeeded after having failed. And many unsuccessful people have become so demoralized by their failures that they cannot move forward.

It makes sense to believe that success involves knowing how to deal with failure.

Mundy is right to find it bizarre that self-helpists are encouraging people to advertise their failures.

This is clearly an error. If you have failed, other people are likely to see you as a failure. The best way to change the perception is to accumulate a series of successes.

If you show off your failure the image will become more ingrained in the minds of other people. They will soon believe that you are making a shameless plea for sympathy and even charity.

Evidently, the self-help crowd has made misread a common custom. In many cultures people who fail make public apologies. If an executive fails at his job he apologizes in public. His apology takes the onus off of his staff.

Yet, public apology, accompanied by anguish, does not advertise failure. Executives who fail and apologize usually retire from public life, at least for a decent period of time.

In some, but not all cases, people who have failed do come back, but it depends on the nature of the failure.

Mundy explains:

When is a public figure’s failure a sign of abiding character flaws, and when is it a harbinger of growth? When is an attempted comeback a marker of tenacity, and when is it a red flag signifying a delusional lack of self-awareness?

Mundy believes that our celebrity and scandal laden culture no longer sees indiscretions as failures. As long as the failure does not concern job performance we are willing to overlook it. The example of Bill Clinton immediately comes to mind.

Yet, even the American public has its limits. The public might have ignored Anthony Weiner’s indiscretions if he had not, even after he apologized, continued to do what he swore he would never again do.

The self-help industry would like us to see failure as part of a good life story. Yet, as Mundy points out correctly, this industry is really treating human beings as literary characters living out narratives.

In her words:

Other people’s failures, served up with the right ratio of struggle to eventual redemption, are interesting to watch. Failure and recovery make for a grand narrative, transforming an ordinary person or politician into something more like a literary character. Like odysseys and coming-of-age stories and parables of exile, failure gives a life or a career a pleasing dramatic arc. Bill Clinton’s failures and flaws, along with his political genius, are part of what make him one of the most compelling public figures of our time.

Mundy is implying that we value entertainment over good character. She also implies that we do not understand that successful public figures set the standard for behavior. The more we idolize Bill Clinton the more we are going to find people emulating his example.

One appreciates that the self-help gurus want us to see failure as a life lesson. They want to encourage us not to feel defeated.

Unfortunately, diminishing or numbing the pain of failure does not necessarily impel people toward success. It might suggest that failure is not really so bad, so why bother to work hard to succeed. Placing failure within a grand narrative might also suggest that people do not need to work very hard to succeed… because success will inevitably be theirs.

If we make failure a fetish, in Mundy’s language, we might slack off and take it easy. If failure is a prelude to success why would two or three or many failures not be preludes to even greater success?

The cure for failure is repeated success. Yet, the solution does not lie in making ourselves into fictional characters. The solution lies in hard work, extra effort that is based on an awareness that we are responsible for our failures and that we must move forward.

And then there’s the strange case of Barack Obama. Upon assuming the mantle of presidential leadership, Mundy explains, Obama had never really known failure. There is some question of whether he earned his many successes, but apparently he had never failed.

Munch continues that even when Obama fails as president, he refuses to admit it. He just plows ahead, oblivious.

In Mundy’s words:

Which may be why Barack Obama, circa 2013, seems such a surprisingly flat and uncompelling figure. Though his childhood did impose adversity, Obama experienced little failure in adulthood; his campaign record includes just one electoral loss—to Bobby Rush in a 2000 congressional run—which was superseded by victory in his 2004 race for the U.S. Senate. It’s as if he was fast-forwarded into the White House, without being tested or tempered. It’s not clear that his recent clashes with implacable opponents or difficult foreign leaders or the sluggish U.S. economy have provoked a spate of post-traumatic growth. He seems untransformed by his setbacks in office. It’s almost as if he has gotten the story backwards, flipped the narrative. Success is supposed to come after failure, not before. When the reverse happens—when spectacular success is followed by failure or even just fumbling—the central character seems diminished rather than enlarged, optimism feels harder to come by, and the story just doesn’t have that stirring sense of downfall and digging-out that we seem, irresistibly, to want.

A nation that elects someone who has never failed and that refuses to hold him to account does not understand failure. It has diminished the pain of failure by placing it within a narrative where it inevitably leads to success.

To Mundy’s point, self-help gurus who fetishize failure are not showing people how to overcome it. They are telling people to see failure as yet another success story.

"Eating Dirt"

If you care about living a long, healthy life you should be thankful for the Industrial Revolution.

Writing in Scientific American Kevin Bonham (h/t Maggie's Farm) reminds us that innovations like soap and sanitation have been crucial in extending the length and quality of life:

Two of the most monumental developments in the history of human civilization, likely the innovations that have saved more human lives than any other, are soap and sanitation. When large numbers of people congregate in a single location for prolonged periods of time, excrement and waste quickly rise to unimaginable levels and are capable of spreading disease incredibly quickly. As I mentioned in my first post here at Food Matters, many pathogens utilize the fecal-oral transmission route, in which poop from an infected individual makes its way into the water supply or onto food by serial contact (touching a contaminated surface then touching food). Lack of hygiene dramatically increases the likelihood of this sort of infection, as many infectious microbes can grow unchecked on filth outside the body, and many viruses can linger on unwashed surfaces for long periods of time.

As always, we humans have a tendency to take things just a bit too far. Limiting our exposure to harmful pathogens is one thing; eliminating our exposure to them is quite another.

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but no one is seriously suggesting that we should all live in a perfectly sterile environment.

Bonham explains:

Yet while there’s no doubt that sanitation and hygiene are critical in reducing the spread of infectious disease, it’s possible that we’ve gone too far in trying to live a sterile life.

In 1989, British physician David Strachan proposed the “Hygiene Hypothesis,” which sought to explain a puzzling series of observations: Children in cities in developed countries and had fewer siblings, those that lived more sanitary lives and presumably had less exposure to infectious diseases, were more likely to develop allergies, asthma and other atopic diseases than those that lived on farms or in developing countries, or that had many siblings. In the nearly 25 years since this was first proposed, a great deal of research has shown that exposure to diverse bacteria or even parasitic worms helps to train and regulate the immune system, preventing it from becoming over-active.

If your immune system is never exposed to dirt it will not develop effectively. If it is exposed to the wrong pathogens it will be overwhelmed.

Does this mean that the Japanese are wrong to prefer bowing to hugging? Does it mean that good manners are an evolutionary deficit? Not at all. Some exposure to germs is good for your immune system, but overexposure is certainly not. Why take unnecessary risks? 

[Addendum: Princeton University has advised students not to share drinking cups, the better to avoid transmitting meningitis to their friends: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/53059616/ns/local_news-new_york_ny/#.UjxfPsakrWg]