Not Deep Or Broad Enough

Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post, looks at the extraordinary campaign being waged in the West to raise awareness about Darfur. She asks a few very pertinent questions.

"How will history judge us?" Like much of the grass-roots campaign that has sprung up to oppose the genocide in Darfur, this slogan is intended to evoke the genocides of the recent past. Earlier this fall 120 survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia signed an open letter calling for a U.N. peacekeeping force in Sudan. The stunning variety of organizations that have joined the Darfur campaign — they range from Amnesty International to the World Evangelical Alliance to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum– also speaks to the evocative nature of the Sudanese conflict.

And their call upon the witness of history has made an impact. Indeed, it is fair to say that were it not for the Christian, Jewish, human rights, genocide-prevention groups and others that have been talking about Sudan with such dedication, the massacres of Darfur might not be on the international agenda at all. The ads and the rallies got "people in the street talking about something that happens far away," as an activist at Global Day for Darfur told me. Public interest has forced politicians to act.

The result: The United Nations is trying to form a multilateral peacekeeping brigade in Darfur, and the White House and Tony Blair are involved, too. And yet — it is not simple to explain why this particular grass-roots action has been so successful. After all, Darfur is not the only place in the world where there has been mass murder, even ethnic mass murder, on a large, historically familiar scale. The North Korean regime has for years run concentration camps, directly modeled on the camps of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. But though there is excellent documentation of Pyongyang's camps — the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea even has satellite photographs on its Web site — and though some religious and university groups have made an effort, the level of interest, and therefore perhaps of U.N. involvement, is much lower.

The same is true of arbitrary arrests in Iran, some of which have also targeted particular ethnic groups for intimidation or elimination. For that matter, Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons to murder tens of thousands of Kurds never caught the popular imagination, not before the war and not afterward.

Applebaum theorizes that because it feels like there is no Western interest in Darfur that it feels as if it is an altruistic mission to stop the violence. And maybe she is right. But some of the strongest backers of doing something in Darfur have been the harshest critics of the US trying to do something to stop a genocidal madman in Iraq. Some of the loudest voices denouncing Sudan have been even louder in their silence about the workings of Kim Jong Il's murderous regime. Some of the most strident critics of US intervention beg the US to intervene in the Darfur conflict.

Applebaum is correct in her closing statement:

The creation of an international coalition to end genocide is a stunning achievement, but its goals are still not deep or broad enough.

The lofty goals are mired in a twisted worldview. Human freedom and dignity need a champion. The US is not the enemy. But too many treat it that way while ignoring the real evil.

The Rangel Roadshow

Charlie Rangel is making the rounds whining that his brilliant proposal to reinstate the draft should have been considered before Nancy Pelosi publicly kneecapped him. He's also saying (I think) that the troops are only doing this for the money. Let's take a look at that allegation, shall we?

Let's take the case of a US Army soldier with the rank of specialist, pay grade E-4 with two years in service. That person can expect $1748.10 each month. Now, there are various additions to that pay when someone is deployed in a war zone, but I don't have those figures - they are not real huge, though. So assume SPC X gets just the basic amount. Working that out, that comes to 12 X 1,748.10 = $20,977.20 annually. Now let's break that down on an hourly rate and assume that said SPC X is "on the clock" for only 8 hours per day with a 5 day work week - in a war zone. Using 2080 hours (52 X 8 X 5) and doing a straight division we arrive at: $20,977.20 / 2080 = $10.09 per hour. Let's expand that to seven days a week on the clock to get more realistic. The number becomes $20,977.20 / 2912 = $7.20 per hour.

But the fact is that SPC X is not "on the clock" for 8 hours. SPC X is on the clock for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the entire year they are deployed and is subject to sudden violence at any moment. So if we do that calculation, the pay rate becomes $20,977.20 / 8760 (hours) or a whopping $2.39 per hour. So if anyone joined the military to get rich, shame on them. If politicians make charges that money is the incentive, shame on the politician. (Incidentally, add on all the bonuses Charlie says are there - I think he says $40k enlistment and $70k education. I do not know if those numbers are even close to accurate, but you'd have to divide them out over the seven year enlistment so that would come to around $15,700 per year. Add all that in to the above. It is still bupkiss. The men and women who enlist do so for reasons that escape good old Charlie).

What we have proven here is that Charlie Rangel is a) a fool, b) a liar c) not fit to be in the same room as an American soldier or d) all of the above. Multiple choice, have fun.

Would The Last Magic Hat Leaving…..

….The 2008 presidential primaries please turn out the lights? It seems that John "Should Have Got A Helmet" Kerry's support for the 2008 has dropped into low single digits. He's not down as far as some of the other presumed candidates, but he's well below even the dreaming stage.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, remains the frontrunner for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008, with more than twice the support of any of her potential rivals, a new CNN poll shows.

Support for Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, dropped 5 percentage points in the past month from 12 percent to 7 percent, according to the nationwide poll of registered Democrats conducted by Opinion Research Corporation over the weekend. Worse news for Kerry is that a majority of those polled said they do not want to see the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee win the party's nomination in 2008.

Kerry, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, said he would make a decision in early 2007 on whether to run for president again. The Massachusetts senator also insisted that his "botched joke" about President Bush's plan for Iraq right before the midterm elections will not influence his decision on whether to make a second bid for his party's nomination.

"The parlor game of who's up, who's down, today or tomorrow, if I listened to that stuff, I would never have won the nomination," Kerry said.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 33%
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama 15%
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards 14%
Former Vice President Al Gore 14%
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry 7%
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark 4%
Delaware Sen. Joe Biden 3%
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson 3%
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh 2%
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack 1%

Let's face it, nobody really believed he was a viable candidate before he stuck his foot firmly into his mouth in the week before the election. But judging by the precipitous drop in his numbers, Theresa must have jumped behind another candidate.

UPDATE: The Political Pit Bull: Proving that 7% of Democrats are totally nuts. Mac's Mind: Bring (Hillary) On!

Brazil Ready For Action!

The Mayor of a small town in Brazil appears to be all set to support the "global orgasm for peace" by getting the town's senior citizens all ready for the action. To make sure all the towns dirty old men are fully prepared, he handing out free Viagra.

"Since we started the free distribution of sexual stimulants, our elderly population changed. They're much happier," said Joao de Souza Luz, the mayor of Novo Santo Antonio, a small town in the central state of Mato Grosso.

Souza Luz said 68 men over the age of 60 had already signed up for the program, which was approved by the town's legislature and has been dubbed "Happy Penis," or "Pinto Alegre" in Portuguese.

But the program has also had the unforeseen consequence of encouraging some extra-marital affairs, Souza Luz said.

"Some of the old men aren't seeking out their wives. They've got romances on the side," he said.

The mind boggles. Elderly adulterers for peace! (Please note that I refrained from misspelling that).

UPDATE: Others feeling the love: Ace of Spades, Argghhh!, Sweetness & Light, The Sundries Shack, Don Surber, TigerHawk, The Belmont Club, Moonbattery, Hot Air, Blogs for Bush, Riehl World View,

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Even if it's only giving people headaches. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is at it again. He's planning on taking the presidential oath of office even though he lost the election and is a loser all the way around. This is a guy who just will not go away.

Tens of thousands of supporters were expected to cram into Mexico City's vast Zocalo square to see Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador take an oath of office in a ceremony that has no legal weight but could mark the start of new street protests.

Ruling party conservative Felipe Calderon won the July 2 election by a razor-thin margin and Mexico's top election court threw out Lopez Obrador's claims of massive fraud,

The leftist crippled central Mexico City for several weeks after the election by setting up protests camps, but his campaign has since faded.

At his swearing-in ceremony on the anniversary of the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Lopez Obrador will detail his plans to run a parallel government and may call for new protests against Calderon.

Lawmakers from his Party of the Democratic Revolution have vowed to prevent Calderon from taking office in the Chamber of Deputies on December 1, and Lopez Obrador says his rival cannot rest easy.

This is not how things work in a democracy - or a federal republic which is how Mexico is organized. In related news, my 14-year old daughter has proclaimed herself Goddess Empress of the Universe and expects tribute from everyone. She's got you beat there, Ammy old boy. Probably a bit higher degree of legitimacy, too.

The Right Thing

Rupert Murdoch himself announced that the Fox News  Network will not be running a special on OJ Simpson's new book. I have not commented of this up until now, but I think Fox is doing the right thing here. I would not have watched it regardless.

UPDATE: Others: Scared Monkeys, Ace of Spades HQ, Sister Toldjah, Decision '08, Michelle Malkin, Done With Mirrors, Daimnation!, Tammy Bruce, Electric Venom,

UPDATE: Corrected. Fox NEWS was never the one that was showing this. It was supposed to air on the Fox NETWORK. Thanks for pointing that error out in the comments, Icepick.  

Pelosi Cuts Rangel Off At The Knees

Well, Charlie Rangel's plan to try and reinstate the draft was thoroughly hammered by the Democratic leadership today. Both in the House and in the Senate, Charlie got a very cold shoulder. Pelosi publicly slapped him down, telling reporters that his post as chairman of the Ways and Means committee would not give him an effective platform to try and push that agenda. The political equivalent of a kneecapping.

"I don't favor it," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, who is set to chair the Senate Armed Services Committee when Democrats take over both houses of Congress from Republicans in January.

"I don't think we need it," added Levin, whose panel oversees military programs. He spoke to reporters after meeting with Robert Gates, President George W. Bush's choice to replace retiring Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The top two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives also voiced their opposition to a plan being pushed by Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, for drafting soldiers into the army for the first time since 1973. The idea is not supported by Republicans either.

"We did not include that" in legislative plans for early next year, said Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who will be House majority leader when the new Congress convenes in January.

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California noted her opposition to the draft in remarks to reporters. She said Rangel was trying to underscore that the U.S. war effort should be a "shared sacrifice" and his legislation was "a way to make that point."

Rangel, who is in line to chair the House Ways and Means Committee next year, has renewed his call for the draft, saying the war in Iraq is being fought by American soldiers who disproportionately are from low-income families and minorities.

Rangel is, of course, stating a flat lie with that allegation. He knows it but he keeps telling it over and over.

Turkeys Of Terror

Gangs of turkey terrorists are attacking people in Brookline, Massachusetts. Strutting up and down the place like they own it, the guerrilla gobblers chase people off the streets and, we're pretty sure, try to steal lunch money from kids.

Roberta Schnoor, a resident of Brookline, Mass., says she first started seeing the turkeys in her neighborhood outside of Boston a few years ago. Initially, she just noticed one large male turkey — a tom. But then she started seeing more. A flock started roaming backyards or walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic. And, Schnoor says, "They became progressively more aggressive."

The turkeys started chasing kids and joggers down the street. Neighbors would laugh watching the lawyer or pediatrician who lived next door being chased by a gobbling mob of birds.

When it happens to you, it's much less amusing…..

Wildlife experts say that birds who get accustomed to suburban life apparently start to see people as other turkeys, often displaying aggressive social behavior in attempts to establish their "turkey dominance."

Which, when you think about it, describes an awful lot about John Kerry's behavior, doesn't it? You don't suppose he's got some of the bully birds giving him advice, do you?

H/T to Sam via email.

Mistakes

Chez Diva points to a post from Jules Crittenden that really needs to be read. It's about mistakes.

Drug Dealers Use Submarine

A "homemade" submarine was captured off the coast of Costa Rica carrying a crew of four and about three tons of cocaine. The submarine, made of wood and fiberglass, was about 50 feet long.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Authorities have captured a homemade submarine carrying 3 tons of cocaine off Costa Rica's Pacific coast.

The 49-foot craft was found Friday, 330 miles off the coast near the national park of Isla del Coco, Security Minister Fernando Berrocal said. Four people were arrested.

He said it was the first time such a vessel was seized near the coast.

The U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Colombian officials aided Costa Rican authorities in the operation, Berrocal said in the statement released Sunday.

The Yahoo AP story adds these details:

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Tipped off by three plastic pipes mysteriously skimming the ocean's surface, authorities seized a homemade submarine packed with 3 tons of cocaine off Costa Rica's Pacific coast.

Four men traveled inside the 50-foot wood and fiberglass craft, breathing through the pipes. The craft sailed along at about 7 mph, just six feet beneath the surface, Security Minister Fernando Berrocal said Sunday.

The submarine was spotted Friday 103 miles off the coast near Cabo Blanco National Park on the Nicoya peninsula.

There's a little confusion between the two stories as to where this thing was exactly. I'll be trying to find pictures.

UPDATE: From comments, Just Barking Mad has the picture - and a comparison.

A Calm And Rational Warning To Ireland

The vikings are coming for you again! Remember the last time they showed up? That didn't work out so well, did it? You have until next summer to beat those plowshares back into swords, so you'd better get cracking!

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Dozens of volunteer sailors will follow in the wake of the Vikings next summer, crossing the North Sea to Ireland in a 100-foot (30-meter) replica of a Norse warship, museum officials said Friday.

The slender long ship, named Havhingsten, or Stallion of the Sea, is one of the most ambitious Viking ship reconstructions to date, experts said. It has been modeled after a nearly 1,000-year-old vessel that was excavated in the Roskilde fjord, west of Copenhagen, the Danish capital.

On July 2, the vessel will set sail from Roskilde with a crew of 65 who hope to learn more about Viking seamanship on a seven-week, 1,000-mile (1,700-kilometer) journey to Dublin — a city founded by Vikings.

"We will not sail dressed as Vikings, but we will try to understand how the ship and crew coped," said Martin Brandt Djupdraet, curator of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.

The volunteer crew from Britain, Ireland, the United States, Germany, Australia and Scandinavian countries has been testing the ship off Denmark since Queen Margrethe christened it in 2004.

Don't believe that innocent act for a moment. Viking blood runs strong! (Original post here about the Stallion of the Sea. Pictures of it are linked  there.)

Seal Of Disapproval

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard work our little fingers to the bone trying to warn people about the perils of the Animal Uprising™. Our warnings could save people a lot of trouble if folks would just listen to us instead of pointing and laughing. We brought you the story of the seal invasion of North Carolina earlier this year. But nobody listened. We told you about the bad housekeeping seals turning up as far south as the Virgin Islands. People didn't care. So now, after some people finally catch on the the rise in seal violence, maybe you'll start listening!

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — A California sea lion has bitten at least 14 people and chased 10 others out of the water this week at a public park's lagoon, prompting the city to temporarily close the area to swimmers.

No serious injuries have been reported, but officials decided to ban swimming at the Aquatic Park Lagoon on Wednesday until the testy marine mammal has moved on.

Experts say the rogue sea lion could be protecting his harem of mates or might have brain damage from toxic algae.

Celeste McMullin, who was bitten Monday, said she saw the animal lurking nearby but didn't think much of it.

"I was swimming along, and I felt a brush under my feet. And I thought, 'These feel like whiskers.' So I stopped, and the animal popped up. He/she looked at me."

McMullin then tried to swim away, but the sea lion followed, biting and bumping her continuously until she made it back to shore.

She ended up with six bites: two puncture wounds and four cuts.

Marine Mammal Center veterinarian Frances Gulland said the animal may soon leave the area and advised swimmers to avoid the lagoon in the meantime.

We told you that they would use swimmers as beachballs, didn't we? I wonder if they'll take our calls now or send the police around like last time.

Financing The Uprising

Trying to provide financing for the Animal Uprising™ has taken an ugly turn in India. Once they figure out what they're doing wrong, this method may become highly lucrative. Taking a page from the old American West, the animals are trying their hands - er - paws - er - hoofs - at train robbery. So far their strategy has been less than successful.

The trains aren't stopping for the elephants.

A passenger train hit an elephant as it crossed a track in the northern Dooars region of eastern India's West Bengal state Saturday night, said Tapas Bose, a forest officer in the district.

A few days earlier, another elephant died after a freight train knocked it over in a densely forested area also in the Dooars region, Bose said. Trains have killed at least six elephants in the area since January, he said.

The Dooars region, home to many wild animals, is about 400 miles north of the state capital, Calcutta. Animal rights activists have been demanding that train drivers be ordered to slow down while crossing the Dooars.

No, no, no, slowing down is exactly the wrong thing to do. If the train stops, the elephant's accomplices, the monkeys, will swarm over the train robbing the passengers! (And note that we predicted the monkeys would move up to bigger crimes! Damn we're good).

Falling

Victor Davis Hanson writes on the West and the chances it will stumble. Unfortunately, indications are that it just might. Not so much with a bang as with a sickening whimper.

What a stupid question. By any benchmark of economic prosperity, military power, and political stability, Western civilization–in the United States, Europe, and the former British Commonwealth–has never been stronger. Globalization has become a euphemism for Westernization, an apparent unstoppable juggernaut.

So how could the lingua franca of English, uniform international travel, or worldwide commerce ever falter–given that American-style material bounty is spreading among billions the world over?

But the global sale of PlayStation 3 or a world in Levis is only the glitzy veneer of civilization. That shared taste almost unnoticeably hinges on a powerful and liberal United States that keeps the peace and remains the spiritual and intellectual fountainhead of an entire global system–one ultimately dependent on American core ideas like freedom and tolerance. What pressures China to liberalize, protects the creativity of Japan, assures Europeans they can be postmodernists in safety, and guarantees that the world commerce is protected from both old and new piracy is a confident and strong United States.

In contrast, grant a jihadist his 7th-century dream world, and within months even he wouldn't have a cell phone signal to call in an IED explosion.

So just as the central nervous system controls an animal's most powerful muscles, so too capital, politics, and armed forces are all governed by subtle, unseen public opinion, or the people's will to define and defend their civilization. For America soldiers to fight jihadists in Afghanistan or Iraq, Americans back home must grasp whom they are fighting and why. And that's the core problem when we consider the recent news and the West's response to it.

I have made much the same point in the past: we send men to the moon, Islamists invent ways to kill and destroy. Hanson notes that a retreat from Iraq would not only be perceived as a defeat, it would be a defeat, pure and simple. A stumble is not only possible, it grows more likely as the "realists" and the left fall back on old, failed methods.

We now are arguing over the significance of schisms between Shiite and Sunni. Or is the real story the regional grievances of Hamas versus Hezbollah versus Al Qaeda, or again the difference between the autocracies of an Assad, Saddam Hussein, or Iranian mullacracy? Like tiny wildfires can they be put out with buckets here and there, or are they simply embers of a global conflagration? After all, these strains of hatred, or so we are told, are so intricate as to defy generalization–and so leave us so smart Westerners clueless, like Byzantine scholastics bickering over a smudged erasure in an ancient palimpsest.

Next, examine the Western political response to all this Middle Eastern madness. The recent November election made it clear that the American public is tired of Iraq, tired of the televised bombings, tired of the Middle East and just wants to be left alone, to go home or to "redeploy." But if America withdraws before Iraqi reformers can establish a stable society, what illegitimate Arab strongman would wish to host a defeated infidel army with Islam on the rise in his backyard.

A once stalwart Tony Blair now praises Iran and welcomes back terrorist-sponsoring Teheran and Damascus for negotiations. To receive wisdom about Iran, we in America now look to the position papers of those who presided over the 1979 hostage fiasco and the Iran-Contra tragic-comedy. The University of Edinburgh gives the Iranian President emeritus Khatami an honorary degree, after his return from a triumphant American tour. It is understandable to want to talk with the Iranians and avoid unnecessary confrontation, but only on the understanding that the theocracy there is trying to destroy Israel and kill Americans working to protect democracy in Iraq. Thinking Syria or Iran could tolerate a constitutional republic in Iraq on its borders is like imagining that Hitler could have lived with a democratic Poland or Czechoslovakia next door or the old Soviet Union would have tolerated a free Ukraine.

Read the whole thing. But it will depress you.

Shut Up And Tank

Last week, Greg Tinti was ready to call the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing a bomb. AllahPundit took some exception to that assessment. Well, the weekend box offices are out over at Box Office Mojo and it is probably a little clearer now. The graph below shows the box office for the first two weeks of release. Note the declining trend. That was with a total of 11 theaters showing the film. This week they expanded to 71 screens. But the per screen total dropped to just $2,281 for a weekend box office of $162,000. So although the movie was shown on more than six times as many screens, the box office revenue rose by only 122%. Theater owners can read numbers. This one is not bringing people in. I think we can call it a bomb now.