If it is it doesn't matter

HAVA Problem?

2006-07-15T12:22:00.000-05:00

HAVA -- the Help America Vote Act -- was a good idea, in theory. And I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest that the people who wrote it or voted for it had any bad intentions. Florida 2000 was a black-eye for America. NOBODY wanted to hear the words 'hanging chads' or 'butterfly ballot' anywhere but in history classes. It made perfect sense to encourage states to get rid of the sort of voting systems that made them possible. (And while, as a New Yorker, I disagree with the idea of replacing the clunky old mechanical systems that I have voted on all my life, which are messy and 'old-fashioned' but which are also safe and checkable, the company that made them is out of business, and when they break down it is hard to fix them or get replacement parts.)

And these days the first thought is always towards doing something electronically. Touch screens, computer counts, these were the obvious way to go, if done right.

Unfortunately, short-sightedness, stupidity, haste, and the idea to 'get it done fast, and we'll fix it in the implimentation,' as usual, created as much chaos as pure malevolence could have.

The important thing was not just that the systems created should BE efficient, honest, and secure, but that they would APPEAR so as well. After the Florida Follies, nobody wanted a system that was vulnerable, where the only guarantee of integrity was to trust election officials.

There would seem to be some simple basics here that should be musts in any electronic voting system.

There has to be a REAL paper trail -- an honest one that would include a copy for the voter and a copy of each individual vote for a possible recount. (To ensure voter confidentiality, each vote should be numbered, but the numbers should be assigned randomly and secretly, so only the voter would know the number he was assigned.)

The machine operating code should be open to a non-partisan group of computer experts before the machine was accepted, and the machine needs some form of device to that would set off bells, whistles, and alarms at any tampering with the code, rendering the machine unusable.

Some sort of barrier should be in place when individual machines link up to a central counting device -- is one is absolutely needed, so that if, despite precautions, some tampering is done with an individual machine, it can't affect the whole system.

Any operation of the machine has to be done on a hands on basis, with no wireless ports, no internal wireless modem, etc.

States and cities should be provided with money not just to purchase such machines, but to store them securely, so they would be locked away until the night before the election, brought out, a final test would be run, and then they would be distributed to the polling places. If this cosy extra money, again it should be provided.

Finally, despite the expense, I think that each precint should have four voting machines that could be rotated, for example, primary, general, primary, general, with perhaps a fifth for special elections. That way, the machines could be inspected at any time up to two years after a given election if there are allegations of fraud.

(I would have to ask someone more familiar with technology and costs to answer this, but since the danger seems to me to be the greatest when a machine is reprogrammed for a new election, it might actually be possible to create a 'one-time use' machine that could be used for a given election, be unreprogrammable, be unopenable without rendering it useless, and which could then be stored indefinitely for the use of historians and social scientists.)

None of these seem to be brilliant ideas, merely obvious ones, They must be the sort of ideas that are implimented in current electronic voting machines, the ones that are being used in more and more states. Right?

Unfortunately...

It Oughta Be Simple

2006-07-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

In a democracy, if you vote for somebody, your vote is counted for that person, right. Oh, sure, there has been a lot of election trickery throughout the years. A lot of cemetery residents have voted more regularly in death than they ever did in life. And a lot of people have been discouraged from voting with long lines, threats, and even legal prohibitions if they were expected to vote the 'wrong way.' And twice a Supreme Court justice has been the decider in a Presidential election -- not just Bush v Gore but in the Hayes-Tilden election where the deciding vote in the Electoral Commission was Justice Davis -- and in both cases most people who have studied it viewed the result as wrong.

But the votes we actually cast have been sacrosanct, if they ever reached the counting table -- ballot boxes have been 'lost'. So, when the DEAD ZONE had its main villain discussing electronic voting machines in June, 2004 as follows:

STILLSON
Let me ask a stupid question.
Does it even matter which one I
pick?
RESUME SCENE
The men laugh.
MAN ONE/TRUAX
Of course it matters. Every vote
counts...
STILLSON
...some just count more than
others.
MAN ONE/TRUAX
In a close election like yours,
it all comes down to margin of
error. The digital equivalent of
a hanging Chad.
STILLSON
And there's no paper trail?
MAN ONE/TRUAX
Only one we generate...
Stillson touches the screen next to his name, registering
a vote for himself. He stares at the screen, transfixed.
MAN TWO
Better than sex isn't it?
Stillson throws a look to Man Two.
STILLSON
You, my friend, need to get out
more.
The men all laugh.

(It's from Finding Rachel, Pt.1. You can find the script here)

I thought they were 'going over the top' again. (I keep on underestimating the show. For example, when Stillson is involved in a corrupt deal with a lobbyist, it involves Indian casinos -- Hello, Jack Abramoff -- and this one was shown long before any of the scandals broke.) There are security measures obvious even to me -- and I've declared myself 'technologically declined' and my lack of a 'blogroll' keeps proving it -- that could be taken to prevent something like this from happening.

Unfortunately...

Here we go again, better (I hope)

2006-07-14T23:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm getting started again. After that last long post on the 'gay gene' -- and my apologies to Kewenay and Mumbo Jumbo for not getting back to them -- I realized I couldn't get through my own posts without falling asleep. Now I'm not the one to judge my own writing, but I KNOW I can write better than that. (I couldn't even write a good cat post.)

So I decided to take a bit of time away from blogging, and see if I wanted to try again -- meanwhile, I've been scattering coments around different blogs.

But I realized that there were a lot of important topics that needed discussion, and maybe if I worked hard and didn't find that my writing skills had left on my 60th Birthday, I might be able to say some things worth saying on them in a way that anyone could listen to.

Most of these are political, as my next few posts will be showing. I think that America is in the greatest danger I've ever seen in my lifetime and my reading of history. The actions of the Bush administration, the reworking of political dialogue by Republican commentators such as Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh, and others -- combined with the Rovicization of politics -- the recurrence of the truly fascist end of the radical right -- and I use the term 'fascist' VERY sparingly -- all need to be watched. But these aren't new dangers, though they are perhaps more prominent than i can remember.

The really scary one though is the growth of electronic voting devices that are hackable and manipulable. The basis of democracy STARTS with 'the vote you cast gets counted for the person you choose.' But, unless action is taken, legal, political, and in the press, that may no longer be true. And that is why i rank the present time as dangerous for democracy and the ideals that America at its best stands for -- and that George W. Bush has no concept of -- as the Civil War, the Depression, the McCarthy Era, and Vietnam.

I'll be posting on all of these things over the next week or so. And yes, I WILL get back to the 'gay gene' controversy, and even talk about baseball, tv, mystery stories and CATS -- one of mine is looking over my shoulder, hence the capitals.

And I'll always be long-winded -- I have been since the third grade -- but if I get too stuffy, pompous, or boring, yell at me, willya?

My apologies, particularly to Katie

2006-05-27T08:38:00.000-05:00

In my post on the 'gay gene' I made a rather flip remark about
"do you turn aside, hope nobody else notices, and write another article on mercury not causing autism..."

I have been somewhat overwhelmed by the number of stories on this, and had been convinced that this was just another altie absurdity that was perhaps being talked to death in the skeptical and medical blogs.

Then I read this on Orac's site, and checking the story, I came across this on Autism Diva's site. I had been unaware of this type of story, and I apologize for the unfeeling tone of my comment.

The 35th Edition of the Skeptical Circle

2006-05-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

Is now up at Skeptico's blog. It's one of the biggest episodes so far, and I am honored that my contribution "Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes" is included.

For those of you who have never come across this bi-weekly collection of the best of the Skeptical Bloggers, you should check this out, and follow the links to previous editions as well. The discussions range from debunking junk science -- like the supposed link between mercury and autism -- to displaying the latest idiocy of the Creationists (in that guise or in the 'modern clothes' of the Intelligent Design movement) to exposes of some delightful weirdness on the fringes -- you have to check out Mark Chu-Carrol's post on one of the weirder sites dealing with gematria on his "Good Math, Bad Math" site

Other subjects touched on include one of the best demolitions of the "9/11 Conspiracy" Myth on the Daylight Atheism site Holocaust denial is another frequent topic that gets exploded. And writers such as Orac of Respectful Insolence
-- an academic and practicing surgeon -- can always be counted on to blast some passing medical quackery.

(I should explain an in-joke for newcomers in this edition. Recently someone, an Intelligent Designer named Kenesaw Williams, has been using Skeptico's name for posts and as the title of his own blog. This has outraged any number of the Skeptical Community, so Skeptico's framing of the edition -- supposedly as being 'guest-hosted' by Williams -- is his own way of getting his own back.)

Anyway, enjoy, and come back here soon, getting included has resparked my blogging engine and I will actually get part 2 up for the next edition.

Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes

2006-05-16T23:01:00.000-05:00

Skepticism can be very satisfying. The targets are usually so deserving, and there's a special pleasure in displaying the stupidity, illogic, and con games of the preachers, creationists, psychics, quacks, and charlatans. (And there can't be many greater intellectual/emotional pleasures than demolishing the arguments of the bigoted scum that are holocaust deniers.)

But sometimes you recognize logical fallacies, bad science, and wishful thinking disguised as reasoning, and realize it is coming from one of the 'good guys,' a group you agree with, support, are even a member of. What do you do then? Do you use the familiar tools on them, even though you know some of your hearers will think you're attacking the position rather than the arguments? What if you give a potential weapon to the ‘other side,’ when the other side are frequently bigots? Do you go ahead, or do you turn aside, hope nobody else notices, and write another article on mercury not causing autism, or that exposes John Edward and James Van Pragh yet again?

Well, if we believe in anything, it is that truth matters. (See my post below on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Truth MATTERS.) So...

I am bisexual, and have been open about this all my adult life. (At one job, when a company VP stopped by and I was being unusually quiet, my boss said "Jim, don't you know everybody in the company knows you’re a pot-smoking bisexual?" I've been a believer in, and in my own small way, a fighter for gay rights since I first heard WBAI reporting on Stonewall. (I haven't been to many marches, but that's mostly been a matter of bad legs, lack of cash, or other commitments.)

And I have another reason for supporting gay rights, and gay pride, and gay love and marriage -- even though I've been in a heterosexual marriage for 15 years now. I was raised in a lesbian household. Yes, they existed even in the 50’s of Ozzie and Harriet, even in suburban New Jersey; and no, this didn't influence my own sexuality. I had realized I was bisexual and had experienced sex with both sexes before I realized what Claire and Billie's actual relationship was. (Precocious and naive, that was me.) Claire died before the marches started and Billie a few years after that. They never had the chance to walk down 5th Avenue, holding hands and celebrating their 30+ years together, never had a chance to consider making their relationship into a marriage. I don't want other couples to be deprived of that chance.

But truth matters, and bad science is bad science even in a good cause. I don't remember the first time I heard talk about 'gay genes' and other 'biological determinants of homosexuality,' when I first heard people saying that being gay is 'something you are born with.' When I heard it, though, I had two immediate responses.

The first was political. "Are they NUTS? We've been marching for years under the banner of Gay PRIDE, and here we have people arguing, no, whining, 'Don't hate us, we CAN'T HELP it.' The argument stinks. It plays right into the bigots' hands. It implies that we are somehow unnatural freaks, genetic abnormalities against the ‘norm’ of heterosexuality. And it plays into all the meek, week, ‘girlish’ -- in the bad and bigoted sense -- stereotypes of gay men." (It was mostly gay men saying it, not lesbians.) I even heard, with disgust, the argument 'With all the persecution we have to suffer, would anybody choose to be gay if he could help it?' (As a bisexual, my answer to that was, “Well, yes.”)

[I have to say that, so far, I seem to have been wrong about this. A lot of people have said publicly that they opposed anti-gay discrimination on the grounds that people who are gay are ‘born that way.’ And it has done wonders in fighting the ‘NARTH-types’ (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, who think of homosexuality as something that can and should be ‘cured.’ -- As I’ll discuss later, I think that this is simply nonsense on both forks of the statement.) But while most of the homophobes are simply arguing -- sadly, correctly -- that the science is weak, some are arguing that if gayness is genetic, then it can be ‘cured’ through some form of genetic ‘therapy.’ Some -- not all homophobes are radically religious -- have even brought up the idea of eliminating it by prenatal ‘gene testing’ and not having a baby that might turn out to be *shudder* gay. And one prime all-purpose bigot who will appear later in an interesting context, Steve Sailer, has suggested that instead of a ‘gay gene’ there might be a ’gay germ.’]

But I had a bigger problem with the argument. It just didn't make sense to me. I'd see the articles about the studies, glance through them, and shake my head. They went against common sense, my own experience, and the lives of the people I knew. Could these possibly be good science?

So far, the answer is no. Admittedly there have been new studies that I don’t have access to including a couple by the Dean Hamer group -- the guy keeps on trying -- as well as a book BORN GAY? which my library didn‘t have yet. My budget doesn’t let me purchase many new books or pay $10 or more for article reprints. So anyone who can email me copies of the studies will be thanked and I’ll do a follow-up on them.

But the studies I have seen are some of the most astoundingly bad science I have seen this side of the worst alties and woo-woos. Too small samples, self-selected participants, no controls, no use of blind testing, and so far, no replications of results. (And an even more important flaw that I will discuss in considerable detail later. No definition or discussion of what the researchers mean by ‘homosexual.’)

Let's look at the famous study by Simon LeVay, showing a 'difference' in the brains of homosexual men. To quote from his report:
"Specifically, I hypothesized that INAH 2 or INAH 3 is large in individuals sexually oriented toward women (heterosexual men and homosexual women) and small in individuals sexually oriented toward men (heterosexual women and homosexual men)."

(You really should read the whole paper, available here)

Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain brain tissue from homosexual women, so he couldn't test that part of the theory. Or that's how he describes it. You see, he got his tissue from routine autopsies, all 41 different samples. And you can't ask a corpse its sexual orientation. So he followed a simple rule. If he knew a man was gay (19 examples), he classified him as gay. (If the man was known to be bisexual, as one man was, what the hell, call him gay too.) But there were 16 men and six women whose sexual orientation he didn't know. (I have no idea what investigation he did on these people, or if he simply took hospital records. All the gay men died of AIDS -- this was 1993. But so did 6 of the other men and one of the women.)

I can only quote him.
"Two of these subjects (both AIDS patients) had denied homosexual activity. The records of the remaining 14 patients contained no information about their sexual orientation; they are assumed to be heterosexual."

So, given the small size of the sample, and the assumptions, the evidence must be pretty strong to get the amount of publicity. He obviously ruled out the possibility that AIDS could affect the brain, right? Well...

"there is the possibility that the small size of INAH 3 in the homosexual men is the result of AIDS or its complications and is not related to the men's sexual orientation. This does not seem to be the case because (i) the size difference in INAH 3 was apparent even when comparing the homosexual men with heterosexual AIDS patients..." Except that the six 'heterosexual' AIDS patients were only 'presumed' heterosexual -- two of them denied being gay, and of course a homosexual will always admit he is gay when he enters a hospital, right, and there was no information on the other four.

But at least the results were all consistent with the theory. Uh-oh! "The existence of "exceptions" in the present sample (that is, presumed heterosexual men with small INAH 3 nuclei, and homosexual men with large ones) hints at the possibility that sexual orientation, although an important variable, may not be the sole determinant of INAH 3 size. It is also possible, however, that these exceptions are due to technical shortcomings or to misassignment of subjects to their subject groups."

But despite these minor shortcomings, his next sentence reads: "The discovery that the nucleus differs in size between heterosexual and homosexual men illustrates that sexual orientation in humans is amenable to study at the biological level, and this discovery opens the door to studies of neurotransmitters or receptors that might be involved in regulating this aspect of personality."

Okay, now that we have some spare scrap paper, let's look at another study. This is the famous "Gay Gene Study" by Dean Hamer. The study that Carl Zimmer described, in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN as follows: "In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in a region of the X chromosome. The report brought a huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer." (This was in a discussion of Hamer's newest 'sensation,' The "God Gene.")

First, let’s look at Dean Hamer. While he’s done other work on several topics, the studies that have brought him into public notice have been his studies on Behavioral Genetics. The ‘Gay Gene’ was the first to make him well-known, later to be followed by the ‘God Gene’ but he has investigated the possible genetic ‘cause’ of such things as optimism, anxiety, and cigarette smoking. (In fact it was while he was studying cigarette smoking that he ‘discovered’ the ‘God Gene.’)

Hamer seems to be someone who, if there is evidence for a genetic cause for a behavior, By God, he’ll find it. And if there isn’t any evidence, By God, he’ll find it anyway. (The “By God’s” are interjections, not a reference to his religious faith, if any.) Unfortunately, no one else seems to be able to find what he finds.

(I have to mention, in that context, that he was the subject of an investigation by the federal Office of Research Integrity for possible scientific misconduct, because one of the study collaborators alleges that Hamer suppressed data that would have reduced the statistical significance of the reported results. I have been unable to find any final resolution of this investigation, and it seems to have been dropped without a finding either way.)

I am expecting any day now that he will release a study showing genetic causes for the differences between Yankee fans and Mets fans. And that’s not that far-fetched. If anxiety, risk-taking, and optimism, not to mention ‘self-transcendence’ are studiable, then why shouldn’t the ‘dimorphism’ between ‘front-runners’ and ‘underdog-supporters’ be? And anyone who follows baseball could match these with Yankee and Mets fans. All he has to do is to find families with more than one fan of a given team, analyze the relatives of these people to see if they skew more to the paternal or maternal side, and then run an analysis on the relevant Y or X gene. Find one gene marker that is ‘over-represented’ in the group he’s studying -- making sure NOT to study the other group for the marker, and bingo! (Ignoring the fact that, especially if the sample is small enough, pure chance will almost guarantee that one or another marker will be over-represented. If you start by looking at a particular gene marker and find it over-represented, then the argument that this is not attributable to chance is valid, but that‘s different from saying that there is one marker that is skewed of the whole universe of possibilities.)

Sound ridiculous? That is the way he ‘discovered’ the gay gene. And he keeps insisting he did discover it, and redoing his studies every time someone finds flaws in his research.

And flaws there are. To quote the Council for Responsible Genetics -- I have asked for information about the organization but have yet to receive any, so I can only judge them by seeing how the article I am quoting “DO GENES DETERMINE WHETHER WE ARE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, OR STRAIGHT?” matches other knowledge I have, and so far I have no reason to question them -- “But even more significant for Hamer’s studies is the definition of who is gay. Hamer uses the extremely conservative estimate of two percent for the prevalence of homosexuality among American men. Increasing this value to the usually accepted values of five to ten percent reduces or even eliminates the statistical significance of his results. The reason Hamer gives for his unusually low estimate is that he wants to work only with "real" gay men, that is, men who have essentially never veered from their preference for men in their sexual fantasies or activities.”

However, in his study, he does not seem to have limited his subjects to those who meet this criterion -- particularly in the relatives he studies. That isn’t that surprising. Many of us might know a relative is ‘gay’ without knowing the details of his sexual -- or fantasy -- life. However, the statistical problems become real if this factor is ignored.

In fact, the entire basis of his insistence on the gene being maternally transmitted seems to have come from the following fact. In his study, he found that 2 of 119 paternal uncles were ‘gay’ (I am not sure how he defined the term) and 7 of 96 maternal uncles. THAT -- and that alone, since there were 6 of 103 maternal cousins and 6 of 140 paternal cousins that were gay -- was what convinced him that the gay gene HAD to be maternally transmitted. (If you are wondering about lesbians, he ignored them. To quote a paper from Eric Wethy that discusses the study: “Hamer mailed out letters to members of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), but ended up with too many families that didn't fit into what was considered the "normal" gay family. For example, one family had both gay brothers and lesbian sisters. From what Hamer knew of homosexuality running in families, he knew that it wasn't common for both males and females to be gay. Any family that wasn't typical wouldn't provide valid information to his research. “) (http://www.msu.edu/user/wethyeri/gaygene.htm)

Hamer and researchers associated with him have produced further research on this. So far I am unaware of any study that confirms any of his work.

And one final comment about Hamer. The following is a quote from the abstract of an article produced by his group on the relationship between sexual orientation and ‘handedness:
“As expected from population-based studies, heterosexual men were, on average, more left-handed than heterosexual women. By contrast, gay men were more right-handed than lesbians or heterosexual men, and lesbians were more left-handed than gay men or heterosexual women. This crossover interaction suggests that a common variable influences sex, sexual orientation, and hand preference.”
(A crossover interaction between sex, sexual orientation, and handedness.Pattatucci AM, Patterson C, Benjamin J, Hamer DH. Laterality. 1998 Oct;3(4):331-42.)

On the other hand (sorry about that) RA Lippa reports:
For men and women combined, homosexual participants had 50% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual participants, a statistically significant difference. Homosexual men had 82% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual men, a statistically significant difference, whereas homosexual women had 22% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual women, a nonsignificant difference. … Rates of non-right-handedness were virtually identical for heterosexual men and women, suggesting that sex differences in handedness may result from higher rates of homosexuality in men.
(Handedness, sexual orientation, and gender-related personality traits in men and women. Arch Sex Behav. 2003 Apr;32(2):103-14.)

I won’t quote the abstract here, but a study of the ‘non-delinquent’ subjects of the Kinsey report showed (with over 6500 subjects) NO significant difference between heterosexual and homosexual men as far as ‘non-right-handedness’ went.

I will discuss the third study, the ‘twin studies’ -- and the unexpected return of Steve Sailer -- my reason for claiming that these studies are all useless because they neither describe, define, nor take a realistic view of homosexuality, and finally give my own ideas -- hopefully testable -- about the whole subject in the second part of this article. I’ll end this already lengthy piece with a suggested -- admittedly expensive and still imperfect -- experiment that might answer some of the questions. At least it would be something that seems like ‘real science’ to me, unlike the LeVay and Hamer ‘discoveries.’

There should be somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 subjects, evenly divided between men and women, and selected in such a way that sexual orientation is irrelevant, or reasonably so. (Not at a Church convention or a gay march, for example.) The subjects should be told they will need to discuss their sex lives, which will skew the sample slightly, but probably increase the honesty of the responses.

Each subject should be given a 16 digit number, in four groups of four digits. Each subject would be given four examinations by four independent groups of examiners. Each group would know only one of the four number groups corresponding to the examination.

I: a complete sexual history would be taken. Probably the subject would be encouraged to narrate it, guided to certain aspects by the examiner rather than answering a series of questions. It would include fantasies, early sexual experiences, early ‘crushes,’ time of learning sexual matters, early masturbation, but would go up to the present. The examiners would have to be specially trained at making the subjects comfortable discussing anything and guarantee confidentiality, even in relation to technically illegal events.

II: a life history, stressing the earliest period, would be taken, including as many influences, personal, educational, familial, including early books, tv, movies, etc, neighbors, religious education, etc. Again, probably in narrative form.

III: a complete physical description would be taken, stressing anatomical features. Possibly full-body MRIs could be included. (I am not sure if a full medical history would be needed or desirable, but certainly there should be a listing of STDs and any other even tangential matters -- for example, to mention a personal experience, I once contracted severe poison ivy on my genitals.)

IV: a full DNA work-up should be done.

Once the information was collected, then it could be collated and statistical correlations could be done. (To insure the elimination of bias, the program to create the correlation should be prepared in advance and -- if this wasn’t over-caution -- the inputting could be by a fifth group. Certainly the people inputting any specific data should know only the four digit number corresponding to that examination, and not have any way of putting the groups together to isolate any specific individual.)

That -- am I naïve -- strikes me as being the scientific way of doing such an investigation.

And one final note. I’ll explain more fully in the next part of this, but my argument here should not be taken to imply any belief in the possibility of changing someone from gay to straight, or vice versa. I have a somewhat different way of seeing the situation, but I’ll lay that out, along with -- as I said -- a discussion of the ‘twin study’ and the inherent problem with all these studies. Hopefully that part will be finished very shortly, certainly within the next few weeks.

And if anyone has any further studies or data I am unaware of, please e-mail it to me. It is at least conceivable that some recent work is less absurd than the ‘classic’ studies.

No Longer a Hero

2006-05-15T19:00:00.000-05:00

Early in my blogging a I wrote a post entitled "A new hero" about a woman named Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose story, and her heroism touched me. She is the woman who wrote the movie that Theo Van Gogh directed that got him killed -- and that achievement remains untarnished. She also had fled to the Netherlands from Somalia, getting off the plane in Germany and seeking asylum as she escaped from her family and an arranged marriage. Except, it now turns out, she didn't. She'd left Somalia years before, had lived in Kenya and then in Germany, and finally chose to move to the Netherlands. And, as she states blithely on her website
"Hirsi Ali repeated on the TV documentary that when she arrived in 1992 she changed her name from Hirsi Magan and her birth date on her asylum application and did not tell the authorities that she had lived in three different countries since leaving Somalia.

"I invented a story that would be consistent with the conditions for asylum," she told The Associated Press."

Apparently she had admitted the change of name and age a long time previously, when she first ran for Parliament. But on the same website she is still being referred to as 'a refugee from an arranged marraige,' also now brought into question.

I condemned, rightfully so, George Deutsch for lying on his White House application -- and he merely claimed he had graduated from college when apparently he had done the course work but got so caught up in political work he never returned to graduate.

I can not forgive her for these lies, not merely because of her casual comments quoted above, but because her dishonesty in this casts a shadow on all her important work for human rights, women's rights, and against the worst problems in Islam. Her continuing to post mentions of the arranged marraige, plus a poll, supposedly of her readership that says that 98% of them 'do not think less of her because of these lies' (I have rarely seen an honest poll of anything that gets a 98% vote on one side) give her enemies ready made ammunition to dismiss anything else she says, and even worse to link other female critics of Islam to her and discount their statements as well.

(It is particularly ironic that she should post a story admitting her lies directly above one that awarded her a 'moral courage award.")

She is no longer a 'hero of mine.' She will be, however, a fellow countryman, since she is coming here, apparently to work at the American Enterprise Institute, an extremely conservative think tank that was willing to accept her. (That she simultaneously attempted to apply to the Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University may be merely an act of desperation, and not hypocrisy, though I wonder how many other people in history have applied to both Brookings and AEI at once.)

I have spoken in her favor on several blogs. I wish to apologize to any reader who read my comments. Truth matters. If it doesn't, what are we fighting for?

UPDATE on the poll:
Apparently it was the readers of LGF that slanted the poll so strongly. Originally the division was about 3 to 1 AGAINST her, 122 saying they thought less of her, only 27 in her favor. LGF published these results and said (do I hear echoes of Limbaugh) 'you know what to do.' The poll wound up 8276 in her favor, 133 against, a fact she doesn't mention when she quotes the results.

Another distraction - like I needed one

2006-04-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I will be trying to get back to this blog as well as "100 Camels" but there's a lot going on. The examination of the Qur'an IS important, doctor trips and the Mets are intervening, and there are a lot of tv shows to watch. (I STILL haven't discussed DR. WHO. I'll get to it, but the difference in the improvement in this and that in the reworked BATTLESTAR is that the original BATTLESTAR was a LOUSY show. DR. WHO was, despite the chessiness of the effects, a very good one. But both are so much better in the new versions that they are major shows on the 'must watch' category.) Then there are all the blogs with discussions so interesting that I have to put my 3 1/2 cents worth in. (Not conceit, inflation.)

So the last thing I needed to do was visit the branch of the Brooklyn Public Library over by my doctor's office on my way to visit him. The BPL has a book sale in every branch, and the prices are usually great, $1.00 for hardbacks, $.50 for paperbacks -- even large sized ones. Every so often, especially at that branch, they have a super-sale, with hardcovers at $.25 and pbs at $.10. And when I stop by the pile has been picked through enough that I frequently leave with nothing but thanks from my wife for not adding to the clutter and chaos that already fills the house. (3,000 books take up a lot of space, and no, I'm not the best at getting things reshelved.)

This time I was early enough. I only spent $2.55, but that meant 5 hardbacks and 13 pbs. Well, it does mean I'll finally be adding mystery reviews to this.

Sleep, what's sleep?

Baseball: No Soda in April

2006-04-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

But the Mets are "7 UP" over both the Braves and the Phillies as of April 30th. Some of my other predictions are, well, needing of revision -- I didn't think the Pirates were still this bad, and it looks like the Reds finally got pitching and may be a factor in the race (but I still think the Giants will collapse of old age and too much investment in crooked Bonds). The real race seems to be in the American League East. All five teams are good ones, none are outstanding, and we'll have to see what happens when they start playing more out of division.

BUT THE METS FINALLY HAVE THE MAGIC AGAIN. AMAZIN' AND I DO BELIEVE. (They may even be better than 86, the only year when their pennant was not more or less a fluke.)

Reprint of Meet the Family 1 -- Poo

2006-04-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

Leilouta, rather than sending you into the archives (or figuring out how to index this -- HAAAALLLPPPP anyone) I'll reprint the bio of my oldest cat, then if I get a chance, complete the series soon.

Meet The Family: 1 (Poo)
The family includes five cats, one wife, and me -- and I assure you Em would want the cats listed first too. Rather than introduce them all at once, -- they can be a bit overwhelming in a group -- I figure I'll let you meet one at a time, hopefully every other day or so.The first one -- I'm going in order of seniority here -- is Poo, our feisty old lady, who actually has been here longer than I have. We aren't sure whether she is 19 or 20. She was an adult cat 18 years ago when Em's then roommate, Roz, found her chained up outside a store on Chambers Street and rescued her, and she's been with Em ever since.She doesn't show her age much. Occasionally she'll have a 'senior moment' when she stands around looking confused, wondering what she was doing, but I've been having those sorts of moments myself for about 50 years. She looks frail and delicate, but she's got the best appetite of any of the group, and when her plate is finished she'll pick the nearest plate and start finishing that.Oh, she loves to eat. She's always been bossy, but she's refined it through the years. Now, if I'm a little late with a meal, she lets the whole house know it. If I'm more than a little late, she lets all of Midwood -- my section of Brooklyn -- know it. I try and tell her that I know she's lying when she insists that she hasn't been fed for three whole days -- it's usually closer to six hours since the five cats get fed three cans a day plus dry food -- but she gets even more insistent.And her 'frailty' doesn't stop her from being part of the 'sparring matches' that our cats have made part of their pre-meal ritual. But it does win her a few special privileges. Our house -- actually we have the bottom floor of the house Em grew up in, we got it when her folks moved permanently to Florida -- can get chilly, so Poo is taken out to the living room couch at night and tucked in with blankets surrounding her. And there are certain 'people foods' that she automatically gets a share of, tuna, other fish, or chicken.She's not as mobile as when we first moved in here four years ago. The move was a very good thing for her. In our old apartment she was a little too crowded and had some trouble with the younger cats -- she's always been a problem in one way. Somehow, even as a young cat, she never got the page in the cat manual about covering up after bathroom trips, and some of our cats are very formal and would get annoyed at her. To the point where she was spending almost all her time on the kitchen table. (Surprisingly enough, the cat that caused the most trouble for her when she was on the floor was the one who would sleep there with her, you'll meet Kittenz in due time.)But here she had more room, eight rooms rather than three, and she was freer to wander around without getting into trouble, and the cat room -- we have turned one room completely over to the cats, for their dining room with a closet for their bathroom -- meant she had less trouble. But she still now limits her excursions to the living room, the radiator in the parlor and her own chair in the hall outside the cat room -- even if Em is stiing on it, when she wants it, she gets it.She no longer comes and sleeps on my ankles, though she's sleep on Em's chest when she's lying on the living room couch, and her purr is a lot weaker. But she's still a loving and much loved member of the family.

(I was going to post pix, but that is another thing I'm still trying to figure out, and hopefully will have newer ones soon.)

My new blog

2006-04-15T15:28:00.000-05:00

People have, rightly, complained that this blog has been too focused on Islam, to the point where too many of the other posts I have made have gotten buried, and to the point where I simply wasn't talking about the things I started blogging to talk about, American politics, baseball, mystery stories, tv, and, most of all, cats. So I have opened a new blog: "100 Camels Times X" http://jrbentn.blogspot.com/ where I will be discussing Islam and its various ramifications, and keeping this blog for general conversations.
(I'm even going to make it more of my business to actually post here on close to a daily basis -- I hope.)

I'll be moving some of the posts I have already made to the new blog, working on blogrolls, and the like. So if you want to argue Islam with me, go there, if you want to talk cats or Dr. WHO or the Mets -- or the idiocies of the current Administration -- come here.

Enough is enough and THIS is too much

2006-04-05T20:06:00.000-05:00

Now it's a Press Secretary for Homeland Security trying (allegedly) to seduce a minor on the Internet.

Let's face it. It was Monica Lewinsky that elected George Bush. Oh, there was Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court, and Al Gore's underwhelming performance that helped to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But none of these would have had a chance if it wasn't for Monica. It gave the Republicans the glorious issue. "Let's bring morality back to the White House." And didn't they play it? Didn't Bush use every opportunity to remind people of his Christianity, of his 'family values,' of his firm opposition anything that his radical Christian support thought of as immoral. And it worked, at least enough to bring him close enough for the rest of the factors to come into play.

And isn't Washington just swimming in morality? Both Republican Majority Leaders under investigation, and one forced to resign. Bush denying he knew Jack Abramoff, and hoping that Abramoff doesn't prove he was lying. Duke Cunningham going from a fairly obscure Congressman to the Guiness Record holder for bribes received by an American. The Vice President's old firm bribing various countries, overcharging the Pentagon, etc. Homeland Security money going to states far removed from threats, while New York is still wondering where all the help Bush promised is coming from. The management of American ports being turned over to a company -- forget the question of the country involved -- whose former executive, David Sanborn, was named to the Maritime Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation, directly before the deal was announced. (And when there was bipartisan opposition, our Moral Leader threatened to veto any bill that would block it.)

But that's just part of the new influx of morality. After all, we have the pictures of Abu Gharaib to look at and admire. We have the President and Vice president explaining how, in the war on terror, these noble ends justify the means of torture and wiretapping. But after all, we already know that the end of removing Saddam Hussein was a justification for leaving Colin Powell hanging as the lies he was fed were exposed. And if the memo of the Bush-Blair meeting is accurate, it would have justified assassination of Saddam Hussein, or painting a US plane to look like a UN plane so it could be shot down. (Even I have a problem believing that one.) Of course, I keep on having these vague memories of Republican speakers insisting on the evil of moral relativism -- and misusing the phrase to apply to an idea that 'the end justifies the means.'

And yet, somehow, the little things are even more annoying. I was around during Watergate, and remember how, during the early days of the exposure of Richard Nixon, suddenly it came out that the Vice President too was crooked and a liar -- and he had made quite a good use of 'moral rhetoric' as well. But it was somehow more shameful that his crimes were simple, cheap 'slip a couple of hundred dollars in an envelope and pass it to me' bribery, made worse because of the pitifully small amounts involved. It was as if he didn't even have a sense enough of his position to at least 'sin big.'

And so we have the little things that add to the overwhelming stench of Bush morality. George Deutsch, the 24 year old put in charge of censoring government scientists, striking a blow for that Old Time Religion by demanding that they declare the Big Bang 'just a theory,' like evolution, and then resigning when it was found that he had been so busy working for the Bush-Cheney campaign that he hadn't bothered to go back to college and go through the formality of graduating, despite his claim on his employment forms.

Then we have Claude Allen, Domestic Policy Advisor in the White House. Claude Allen, who first came to notice in the Jesse Helms campaign for his homophobic remarks, who led the fight for 'abstinence only,' who was the liason to the Religious Right. Such a fine, upstanding, Christian shoplifter. (And not the type that sticks something in his pocket and walks out the door. There are good grounds for believing that type is suffering from some sort of disease. But the deliberate use of the 'return con,' buying something, taking it to the car, then picking up another of the same item from the shelf and taking it to the return desk. That's a LITTLE different.) Of course, even though the White House knew of the investigation, they didn't throw him out the door. The New Morality of George Bush's White House seems to mandate lying, so they insisted that he was 'resigning to spend time with his family,' and, I guess, hoped that no one would check the police blotter.

And now we have Brian J. Doyle, Deputy Press Secretary to Michael Chertoff, apparently and allegedly soliciting someone he thought was a 14-year old girl on line, using as 'chick bait' his status as an employee of DHS. (What is it about that office that gets guys horny? According to the Washington Post:
Another Homeland Security official -- Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa -- faces trial this week on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl last year at a mall. Figueroa, who has been suspended, pleaded not guilty.
I don't know anything about this one, just came across it now when I was writing this.)

(I'll admit, this is one that has no suspicious tracks back to our Moral Leader. Unlike with a major figure like Allen, I'm sure that if the White House had the slightest hint this was going on, they would have thrown Doyle to the wolves or the fishes. It just happened on the watch of the man who was bringing a new sense of morality to the government.)

The White House is awfully big on praying in public buildings, and displaying the 10 Comandments. As a believer in the separation of church and state, I always opposed this. But maybe I was wrong in one or two cases. Maybe the commandements should have been posted in the White House and the Executive Office Building, the Senate and the House. And maybe those of us who do believe in prayer better start praying hard for the country. We've still got two years and 9 months of the moral leadership of George Bush to get through.

Why Feingold?

2006-04-04T20:03:00.000-05:00

As I said way back here
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22177206&postID=113969114783486825
I am a proud liberal who feels the only chance the Democratic Party has to regain its soul and to conquer the cascading falsehoods about what it is and who liberals are is to nominate and elect someone who isn't afraid of his own principles, and who will stand up for them. (And I don't mean people like Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich.) Feingold's willingness to attempt to bring Bush to account, and to force the Senate to take a stand on the unconstitutional and ilegal invasions of privacy was one thing in his favor, as was his fighting for serious campaign reform, even though his bill was far from perfect. And today i have learned he is willing to take a stand in FAVOR of Same-Sex marriage.

I have grown bloody sick and tired of Democrats who run screaming from the idea of being called liberals, who hedge and duck and Clintonize every issue. (The idiots don't seem to realize that the Republican lie machine will still try and accuse them of the very positions they are ducking away from, but because they are so busy ducking, they never have a chance to actually DEFEND these positions. I think I would require every candidate running on the democratic ticket for state or national office to take plenty of anti-nausea pills and spend a couple of hours reading Debbie Schussell. Then they might get the idea that if they are going to be condemned and lied about whatever they do, they might as well take strong stands on what they believe in, because it can't hurt them.)

Meanwhile, the Republicans get the reputation for being 'people who say what they believe' and who take strong positions whether they are popular or not.' (Yeah, RIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT.) And they get votes, plenty of them, from people who disagree with them on important matters. The American people support abortion, support gay rights, oppose the war, oppose theocratic experiments, but they still give lots of votes to Republicans, because Democrats so hedge their positions that they aren't trusted. They don't win support from the uncommitted by hedging, because everybody sees they are, and they lose support from the committed because they imply that they will back off under pressure.

I don't think that Russ Feingold needs to be told any of this. I think he's a popular, charismatic, and honest candidate, one who has been elected repeatedly in a borderline 'Red State" (despite its history of Progressiveism). And so, I say again

RUSS FEINGOLD IN 2008

As usual

2006-04-04T19:48:00.000-05:00

I'm ridiculously behind on this blog. I'm giving up promising to get to various things. Hopefully tomorrow will be easier, but we'll see -- the trouble is still that i get lost in comenting elsewhere then get called away to domestic duties.

But I have one comment to make, that I will discuss in the next post.

RUSS FEINGOLD IN 2008.

I have become convinced he has both the courage and the sense to handle the job, and is head and shoulders above the other people in the race. (I could easily support Wesley Clark, though I'd love a Feingold-Clark ticket, and probably could go for Bayh or even Edwards without holding my nose.) Hilary would be a disaster as a candidate, even if I saw her as a potentially good President -- she's the only candidate who would surrender all the benefits of the Republicans' unpopularity. Gore is almost as bad, people still see him as a clown. And Lieberman is simply unthinkable. (If I wanted to voite for a Republican, I'd vote for Hegel or Giuliani, someone who'd call himself what he was.)

That Other League

2006-04-02T18:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've been a National League fan since I was a kid, and Claire, my 'other mother,' had St. Jude backing up the infield for the Brooklyn Dodgers. (I wasn't a Dodger fan. Loving underdogs, I was a Pirates fan, which was fine until the original Mets came along. People who weren't born then 'remember' the 62 Mets. I remember the 63 as well, when Tim Harkness and Larry Burrright were supposed to anchor the right side of the infield and wound up hitting about .415 combined, and couldn't field either, despite their reps.)

And I STILL hate the Designated Hitter!

But there should be some good races in that league too.

AL East: I've been expecting the Yanks to get old all at once the way they did in the late 60s, but something tells me it won't happen this year. their pitching is fragile, Sheffield is vulnerable to the steroid investigation, and Damon is no Bernie (in his prime) in center. But the Red Sox have also dropped off, and i think it will be a battle between the Yankees and Blue Jays. I'll go Blue Jays, BUT, if it comes down to the last series of the year, with them playing each other, you have to pick the Yanks. That's the type of game they can always win. Boston should be a solid third, though both other teams are likely to be competitive, Tampa Bay on the strength of some very good young talent -- watch out for them next year if they spend money for pitching -- and Baltimore on the strength of Mazzone as pitching coach. I wouldn't be surprised to see either of them slip into 3rd, sorry Boston.

AL Central: The division winner and the Wild Card should come from the White Sox and the Indians. I think Indian hitting will nudge out White Sox pitching, but two great managers will be jockeys spurring their horses on to a close finish. Minnesota is falling off, and unless Mauer and Morneau are even beter than their reviews, they shouldn't be a factor -despite Johan Santana, who may be the best pitcher in baseball, certainly the one I'd want in one important game. Detroit is slowly improving, but shouldn't challenge Minnesota for third. And, at the end of the season, Kansas City should have played close to 162 games (if you can't say anthing nice...).

AL West: Always the hardest division to call. Every year there is one team out of it (the Mariners this year) and the other three are standing around to see which one lighting will strike this year. And it never seems to be a matter of judgement, just pure luck. I think this might be the Rangers year. They don't have enough pitching -- but they never do. Their outfield will shuttle back and forth to the disabled list -- it always does. But with Ian Kinsler (maybe Rookie of the Year) replacing Soriano, this might be one of the greatest infields ever, hitting and fielding. The Athletics have pitching -- they always do, not enough hitting -- as usual, and could explode or implode. Mike Scioscia should keep the Angels from imploding (have you notice I think managers are important?) but might not win this years spin of the roulete wheel.

I'll make some predictions on individual awards sometime during the week, but the game is starting -- or a tornado is, the weather is VERY iffy.

Life Begins on Opening Day

2006-04-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

And since it does, and today is it, I figured I should start spending some time on this discussing a topic I have been following longer than I have Islam, religion, politics, or even sex. I'll try and get at least one post a week here on baseball, and shouold really start with my own predictions. Given me, I could probably fill a long post on each team, even though I haven't paid as much attention as I usually do to the off season. But I'll give you a break and just discuss the divisions.

National League East: After last year, everybody says don't bet against Atlanta winning it's 15th straight division championship. But I think the loss of Rafael Furcal, Julio Franco and most of all, Leo Mazzone as pitching coach means that my Mets have a good chance of taking the division at last. They are a little thin in starting pitching, and I could stand an upgrade at 2nd Base if Anderson Hernandez hits as badly as he has in the minors. The Phillies might move ahead of the Braves as well, but I can't see them challenging the Mets for the division. The Nationals will play better than their talent makes you expect, as usual with Frank Robinson, but the problems of not having an owner and the loss of Ayala and Lawrence will keep them out of the running. Don't be surprised if the Marlins look competitive over the first fifty games, but don't be fooled. They'll have a long way to look up to see the Nationals in 4th by the time the season ends. This time they didn't get much for their fire sale.

NL Central: The Cardinals could run away with the division again, but if Carpenter's Cy Young season proves to be a fluke they could some back to the pack. Then it will be a real dog fight. The Astros have talent, but probably not quite enough. The Pirates have great kid pitching and could sneak away with it. But my pick is the Brewers. Ned Yost is a great manager in the mold of his teacher, Bobby Cox, and gets the best out of his players. Only the most fanatical Cub fan can see them as a factor, and they might not succeed in holding off the Reds.

NL West: Another dog fight, but with real dogs. The Padres almost became the first division winner to have a losing record, and they've gotten worse this year. The Dodgers should have enough talent to take it all, but they might get a strong challenge from the Rockies. The Padres free fall might drop them below the DBacks who aren't really a challenger but might be slowly rebuilding into a good team. And while the Bonds mess might make enough noise to keep the members of baseball's Old Age Home awake -- those guys are so ancient that if I went to the clubhouse half of them would be calling me 'kid' -- but they'll need a different medicine. Lots of aspirin. Cellars are damp and not good for arthritic joints.

Let's put the American league in a separate post so I can get away and feed some very demanding cats. Yes, Poo, Sprout, I'm coming.

Response to Ali and LouLou

2006-04-02T02:44:00.000-05:00

I got several important responses to my questions from both of you. Particularly here http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22177206&postID=114314175910216253

I'd like to look a little closer at what each of you said here, and then maybe take another post to respond to your other comments.

Ali, your comments are interesting and important, but not fully responsive. While I did mention the problem with civil authorities moving against 'barbarous practices' my complaint was far more that Islam has not succeeded, or attempted, to extirpate them in the process of Islamizing a society. Here, i will use a comparison to Christianity. Christianity has shown itself remarkably flexible and able to absorb certain types of local customs and to "Christianize them." (Christmas, for example, local pagan heroes turned into Christian saints, and many other examples.) But I can think of very few places where they would permit a newly Christianized pagan society to retain 'local customs' that were, in Christian eyes, immoral and against the basic principles of Christianity. To take an extreme example, certainly no society would have been permitted to maintain human -- or even animal -- sacrifices. Some people would argue that Christianity was too strict in abolishing pagan customs of dress, of sexuality, the classic picture of the tribe dressing in muumuus instead of, as previous, having little shame about their bodies. Yet Islam, despite a tendency in many places to extirpate a culture's preIslamic history, has never attempted to proclaim such practices as haram. Pork is haram, alcohol is eliminated (supposedly), but honor killings are not, and in fact, as I pointed out, actions like these, like female genital mutilation, like slavery, like forced marriages, like the idea that being raped is shameful, are in fact, protected by the clerics. (Some civil authorities HAVE attempted to wipe them out, but over the stong and usually successful opposition of Islam as expressed by the local clerics.)

Why has Islam, in this and so many ways, simply failed to 'make men better'? Christianity, with all its faults HAS done this in many ways. Few of us would enjoy living in a true pagan or barbarian society -- despite the occasional romantic fictions about such places.

Loulou, you make much the same case, with a number of interesting additions. (Btw, I was under the impression that the 'millet' system referred to groups of 'people of the book' such as Christians and Jews who were allowed to exist as separate societies within Islam -- provided they paid the requisite tax -- and not to tribal or ethnic groupings.)

You make a number of othe rimportant comments, but those will have to wait until (hopefully) tomorrow to discuss, since it is getting late, I lose an hour to daylight savings, and i'm losing coherence as well.

Where are my fellow liberals?

2006-03-25T20:25:00.000-05:00

I have been a liberal my entire life, for good reason. I am an atheist, bisexual, a believer in free speech, a believer in civil rights, a believer in the right to dissent, a believer in due process, etc. I grew up during the McCarthy era, and the later era of the John Birch Society. I was 8 when Brown v. Board of Ed. came down. I opposed the Vietnam War -- and if that was, in a way, the 'liberal's war' it was also the liberals who turned against it. I have watched Conservatives lead the anti-evolution forces, the forces of censorship, the lies from McCarthy to Agnew to Coulter. As a historian, I have seen the actions of Conservatives against progress, against freedom, and have seen the actions of Roosevelt, of the Progressives of the 20s and Thirties, of the great Supreme Court Justices from the first Harlan through Brennan.

I am still proud to call myself a liberal. no a LIBERAL, and I still believe in the same principles. But I am getting worried. There have been two stories recently that have touched my LIBERAL (yes, sometimes bleeding) heart the strongest. The cartoon controversy, and most of all the Abdul Rahman horror. I would have expected it would be my fellow liberals that would be screaming at these violations of the freedoms we love.

Instead it is Michelle Malkin.

MICHELLE MALKIN!

I just went down a list of liberal blogs, certainly not all of them, but a good group of at least twenty. I saw many pieces on Bush -- but none mentioning that it took him five days to respond to the Rahman horror. I saw tons of commentary on a Conservative writer for the Washington POST who has proven to be a plagiarist.

I saw two mentions of Rahman, one in passing, and one by a blogger who was, while admitting that the Rahman story was horrible, debating another blogger who was screaming about the vileness of the Afghani clergymen.

Yes, I am not surprised that the Christians and Conservatives are yelling at the case. Rahman is being punished for becoming a Christian. (I wonder how many would have spoken as loudly if he had announced he was an atheist. After all, several of the sites I saw had ads for a book denouncing the Dover decision.)

But, my fellow liberals, if you do not protest this, if you do not see this as an attack on freedoms you have spent your lives fighting for, if you do not -- while avoiding bigotry, avoiding screams of 'islamofascism' that lump all Muslims together -- demand the release of this man, if you are so entrapped in the misunderstanding of multi-culturalism that would accept any actuion by a group, no matter how vile, as a reflection of their culture to be protected -- would you have accepted anti-Semitism in Germany as a part of the culture, as it was -- if you are so lost as to think that this is not as much an assault on your freedom as it is on one poor man in Afghanistan...

Then I am sorry I cannot believe in a hell, so I can't picture you there, sharing the fiery lake of the "Illustrious Dunderheads" -- in Rex Stout's words -- of the 30s.

But then...

2006-03-25T18:31:00.000-05:00

I keep reading comments like the ones by LouLou and Ali, and I am impressed -- and yes, I will go back to those comments and more questions later. But then, I read something like this (from the AP on the CNN website)

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/23/afghan.christian.ap/index.html

But three Sunni preachers and a Shiite one interviewed by The Associated Press in four of Kabul's most popular mosques said they do not believe Rahman is insane.
"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque. "The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."
Raoulf, who is a member of the country's main Islamic organization, the Afghan Ulama Council, concurred. "The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled."
"Cut off his head!" he exclaimed, sitting in a courtyard outside Herati Mosque. "We will call on the people to pull him into pieces so there's nothing left."
He said the only way for Rahman to survive would be for him to go into exile.
But Said Mirhossain Nasri, the top cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite places of worship in Kabul, said Rahman must not be allowed to leave the country.
"If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can, too," he said. "We must set an example. ... He must be hanged."
The clerics said they were angry with the United States and other countries for pushing for Rahman's freedom.
"We are a small country and we welcome the help the outside world is giving us. But please don't interfere in this issue," Nasri said. "We are Muslims and these are our beliefs. This is much more important to us than all the aid the world has given us."
Afghanistan's constitution is based on Sharia law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death.
Hamidullah warned that the government would lose the support of the people if it frees Rahman, and "there will be an uprising" like the one against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s.

---

"Cut off his head. Pull him to pieces. We must set an example. He must be hanged. There will be an uprising if it frees Rahman." These are not laymen, giving their impression of Islam. They are clerics, Islamic authorities. (True, from a very conservative part of the world.) And it isn't just the claim that he deserves death, but the barbarity of their words.

Words, for once, fail me.

Haditha

2006-03-25T09:57:00.000-05:00

I read it first on Treasure of Iraq's blog:
http://baghdadtreasure.blogspot.com/2006/03/accident-or-cold-blooded-revenge.html#comments
He is a good reporter, but he has -- as he should -- a point of view, and it is not favorable to America. But it isn't a story, i believe, that he covered, He cites TIME Magazine, and i went there.

TIME Magazine may no longer be the automatically pro-American mag it was during the Luce days, but it is still hardly a far-left -- or left at all -- magazine, except in the paranoid eyes of the Ann Coulters. It ran this story, and I hope anyone who can reads it:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174682,00.html

This is the Iraqi My Lai, if it proves to be true. Yes, it was a mistake, yes it was a company of Marines enraged and crazed by the death of one of their own, and yes, Haditha was a 'stronghold of the resistance.' These are not excuses. What we did there was a true atrocity -- and there is evidence it is not an isolated incident.

Yes, I believe that Iraq would be better as a democracy, and the more secular the better.
Yes, I believe that America, despite its blunders, is still the 'light of the world,' pointing the way to the sort of world that we need to have.
Yes, I believe that George W. Bush is a self-deluding, religion-drunk fool rather than an evil man, and that his motives were not either homicidal mania, greed for oil, or a religious crusade.
Yes, I believe that the others involved in this policy were mostly acting out of high motives. (And even those who were acting from mixed ones, from petty greed and corruption, were not basically evil, merely selfishly trying to 'get a cut' of available monies.)
Yes, I believe that if George Bush could truly grasp Haditha, Abu Gharaib and the rest through his blinders and his inability to admit a mistake, he would spend days racked with tears.
Yes, I feel sorry for what will happen in Iraq after we leave, until they settle down into some form of government or governments.

IT DOESN'T MATTER ANY MORE.

The pictures of Haditha are spreading through the blogosphere. It is those, and the Abu Gharaib ones, and Falluja that will define what we were doing there -- never mind that it is our freedom of the press, our ability to self-criticize that brought them to light. Yes, it is true that, as our apologists say -- read the comments on TREASURE OF BAGHDAD -- that the religious fanatics and 'insurgents' have killed more Iraqis than we have, and more innocents. This has been the last straw. We can no longer accomplish our aims. Every day we are there, we are hurting ourselves, and hurting the chances of Iraq ever becoming a democracy instead of a new Iran, or a tortured Lebanon.

We have to do it wisely. We have to take a short time to protect those who we have already helped. But we no longer have a choice.

WE MUST END THE OCCUPATION AND BRING THE TROOPS HOME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Question - transition between 3 and 4

2006-03-23T14:15:00.000-05:00

Many times when certain barbaric practises that occur only or principally in Muslim societies are brought up (honor killing, forced marriage, etc.) the response is that these are 'cultural survivals' in primitive societies. Yet these societies have been Muslim for centuries. Why has Islam not been able to extirpate this type of primitivism? And why, when civil authorities attempt to move against them, are they so frequently criticized by religious authorities? If Islam is an example of higher values, why does it not fight fiercely to change the ideas of believers in societies which accept such things? Instead, it appears to me too often that, if the society is Muslim, any 'local custom' is accepted.

(Does this have anything to do with the Qur'anic insistence on belief rather than on conduct? Both are mentioned -- as they are by other religions -- but it is the statement that 'Unbelievers go to hell' which is repeated hundreds of time in the Qur'an. Some Christians accept this as well, but the stress there is on 'sinners going to hell.')

Even though I have mentioned other religions in these questions, I am specifically asking about Islam, and hope that the responses will be restricted to that, and that i don't get a chorus of 'well, Christians -- or Jews, or Hindus -- do bad things too.' I am an atheist myself, and could criticize other religions strongly, but it is Islam I am trying to understand, not trying to prosecute.

Question 3

2006-03-23T14:12:00.000-05:00

This is a reposting of a series of questions addressed to 'Moderate Muslims and Muslim Reformers." This one question is perhaps the one I am most interested in getting an answer to.

3: What values, ethical or moral principles, philosophical ideas or other concepts in Islam cause you to remain a Muslim, rather than to either join another religion or to become 'a secular good person'?

Question 3a

2006-03-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

3a: In which cases do you consider Islamic values superior to Western ones on similar topics?

Questions 3b

2006-03-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

3b: In which cases do you consider Western values superior?