LIght Blogging

No, I have not been blogging much lately. A crushing work schedule combined with a very time consuming rehabilitation from a knee injury has limited my computer time. I hope to be back to normal in a few weeks though.

Controversial Professor Fired By Colorado University

No, not Ward Churchill, but Phil Mitchell. What did he say to get himself fired?

Mitchell had the audacity to use a book on liberal Protestantism in the late 19th century. So repulsed by the word "god" was one student, she complained, and the department chair fired him without a meeting.

Read here.

Ever Heard Of Paul Wolfowicz, or Richard Pearle?

Alexander Cockburn laments the decline in Jewish influence over US policy. What he really laments is that nobody listens to left wing Jews anymore.

Are Republicans Worse Than Nazis?

Senator Robert Byrd thinks so.

Regarding Republican entirely legal and constitutional plans to limit fillibustering of judicial nominees, Byrd says: "But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it. Bullock writes that “Hitler was prepared to promise anything to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality preserved intact.” And he succeeded.

Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

Eyes Wide Shut

Gabriel Schoenfeld, in today's Wall Street Journal, makes an exellent case for our recent intelligence failures being a consequence of attitude rather than resources or management structure.

The CIA's hierarchy apparently developed a Vietnam era "blame America first" philosophy that, difficult as this is to believe, is sympathetic to Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists.

In addition, during the Clinton years, "promoting diversity" became a higher priority than intelligence gathering.

By 1995, under John Deutch, Mr. Clinton's second director, the effort to remake the agency in the name of "diversity" had intensified markedly. Mr. Deutch began his tenure by advancing a "strategic diversity plan" and installing a 40-year-old Pentagon official, Nora Slatkin, in the agency's executive-director slot to carry it out. Ms. Slatkin soon formed a Human Resources Oversight Council aimed "at improving the agency's efforts to hire and provide career development for women, minorities, the deaf, and people with disabilities." The need for such measures, according to HROC, was clear from its own study of shortfalls in "recruiting, hiring, and advancement":

Minorities in the agency's workforce--particularly Hispanics and Asian-Pacific employees--remain underrepresented when compared with Civilian Labor Force (CLF) guidelines determined by the 1990 census. Hispanic employees in FY 1995 accounted for 2.3 percent of the agency workforce; CLF guidelines indicate Hispanics nationwide account for 8.1 percent of the nation's workforce. Asian-Pacific employees comprised only 1.7 percent of the agency's workforce; CLF guidelines indicate Asian-Pacific minorities comprise 2.8 percent of the nation's workforce.

To reduce these statistical discrepancies, Ms. Slatkin declared "a goal that one out of every three officers hired in fiscal years 1995-97 be of Hispanic or Asian-Pacific origin." She moved no less aggressively to alter the ethnic and sexual complexion of the CIA's higher levels. In just six months, she was able to report, "42 percent of officers selected for senior assignments ha[d] been women or minorities."

Inevitably, working relationships were affected by these shifts. According to Ms. Mahle, some male officers became "very supportive of the diversity program and ma[d]e a point of mentoring female officers under their command." But there was also "a perception among some male officers that the CIA now use[d] a quota system for assignments and promotions." And this perception, she adds, was "probably true."

Read the whole thing. I cannot do it justice with snippets and summaries. I will only say that this makes even more comfortable with Porter Goss's purge at the CIA.

The Arab's Berlin Wall Has Crumbled

Everyone should read Mark Steyn. Liberals who refuse should be tied to a chair and have his words read to them by their therapist.

In his latest column, he starts out by reminding of one of his three year old predictions, that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would start the dominoes falling in the Middle East.

"The stability junkies in the EU, UN and elsewhere have, as usual, missed the point. The Middle East is too stable. So, if you had to pick only one regime to topple, why not Iraq? Once you've got rid of the ruling gang, it's the West's best shot at incubating a reasonably non-insane polity. That's why the unravelling of the Middle East has to start not in the West Bank but in Baghdad."

Next he chronicles how the world changed on January 30 of this year.

Read it all. It's more than worth your time. Then, read it to your liberal friends.

Religion of Peace Update

Kamal Nawash had better watch his back. He looks into the heart of his faith and doesn't like what he sees.

"Since 9/11, the world has watched in horror as hundreds of schoolchildren were murdered in Russia by Chechen Muslim terrorists. Scores of civilians were murdered by Islamic terrorists in the Madrid train bombings. Many others have been murdered in suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and other public places, dozens have been beheaded on camera, two Russian passenger planes were blown out of the sky, and many, many atrocities that are too long to mention. All carried out by Muslims."

Facilitating Genocide

Once again, we have stark evidence that the repairing the United Nations will require much more than bookkeeping reforms.

Joel Mowbray reviews a book that places the blame for the Rwanda genocide right on Kofi Annan's doorstep. Annan actually obstructed efforts to stop the genocide before it started.

"[A]larm bells didn’t necessarily have to go off, as Gen. Dallaire offered a silver lining: He knew the location of the Hutus’ weapons cache, and he was planning to seize it and stop the slaughter before it started. But his plan to save hundreds of thousands of lives was short-circuited by Kofi Annan, who didn’t want to upset the sitting Hutu government or in any way appear to be taking sides.

Not only did Kofi not do anything to prevent genocide, but his actions almost assured that the Security Council wouldn’t either. According to various accounts cited by Gold, including the UN’s own post-debacle report, Security Council members complained that Kofi’s department kept them in the dark, not revealing the true nature and full extent of the genocide.

Kofi’s caution could not be chalked up to doubts about the accuracy of the warning. The UN secretary general’s personal representative investigated the matter. Despite his well-documented pro-Hutu leanings, he wrote back to the UN that he had “total, repeat total confidence in the veracity and true ambitions of the informant.”

In other words, not only did Kofi and the UN have a Hutu informant who gave them advance notice of the genocide, but they were able to verify the veracity of that informant. Still Kofi insisted on doing nothing."