Law And Order

One is almost at a loss as to how to take this particular article from the German newspaper der Spiegel. Quite obviously, Hamas is trying to curry favor with the Western press - like that's hard. But the reporter also takes a clear swipe at the story that Hamas is telling - you know, the usual: "we're just poor religious people who are restoring law and order".

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have long voiced criticism of systematic human rights violations in the security force's prisons, both in Gaza and the West Bank. In this respect, the fact that Hamas captured the Fatah headquarters in Gaza last week was more than just strategically significant — it was also a highly symbolic act.

"This building is a symbol of injustice in stone," says Abu Mohammed, an officer in Hamas's militant al-Qassam Brigades, who led the attack on the complex. He and his unit have occupied the compound since the building was captured, and Abu Mohammed is using the gatehouse as his office. "We came because we wanted to see the place where our brothers were killed," he says.

Three days ago, his soldiers exhumed four bodies that had been hastily buried in one of the prison basements, he says wearily. They were able to identify a fellow al-Qassam Brigades member, Nasser al-Juju. They believe he was killed shortly before he was discovered: "The others have been lying in this basement for a long time."

In the room next to the guard booth, large puddles of blood are drying out, surrounded by swarms of flies. "Fatah used this room to shoot people," says the al-Qassam militiaman.

But why the security force would have performed executions in a room with two windows, directly adjacent to the gate of the complex, remains unclear. One can't help but suspect that Abu Mohammed's men may have used the room to shoot Fatah men who wanted to surrender.

Eyewitnesses last Thursday reported that the Fatah members who were defending the building were shot in the head, one after another, when, with their shirts removed and their hands held above their heads, they had attempted to surrender. "We didn't kill a single one of them," counters Abu Mohammed. "That would be un-Islamic."

One assumes it is also "un-Islamic" to provide flying lessons - without an airplane - to captured Fatah fighters. Yet the reports say that is precisely what was done. One can't help but believe that Abu Mohammed is lying through his teeth about what happened. Secret executions are not carried out next to the road. "Summary justice" by conquering "insurgents" are. Yep, these are the folks Jimmy Carter respects and admires.

The Latest In Fashionable Smoking Accessories

Well, the anti-smoking zealots will have to come up with a whole new campaign after news of this hits the circuit! The very latest in ultra-fashionable smoking accessories. No, not a humidor full of smuggled Cuban cigars. A pipe made of a human thigh bone and an ashtray made from a human skull.

FITCHBURG, Mass. - Police say a gravedigger stole body parts including a skull and a thigh bone from a broken casket at a church cemetery and took them home as smoking accessories.

"While he was digging a grave, a casket was broken open, so (investigators) believe he took the body parts to make an ashtray and a pipe," Police Lt. Kevin O'Brien told the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg. He said a police report didn't identify the grave, which was at St. Bernard's Cemetery.

Keith Chartrand, 30, of Fitchburg, also is accused of killing his wife's dog. Police charged him with removing a body from a grave and cruelty to animals.

Officers went to his apartment on Wednesday after Chartrand's wife complained that her husband had killed her dog, then told them she had found the body parts among his belongings.

Fitchburg District Court Judge Arthur Haley III ordered Chartrand held on $50,000 bail at a court hearing on Wednesday where Chartrand told the judge the charge against him was "bogus."

Personally, we use the skulls for candy dishes. (That isn't a joke, incidentally, but the skull is plastic, not real. It's kind of a Halloween thing that simply carried over year-round. And it's in the office as a gag. Although people do look at us oddly when we fish a jellybean out).

Shipwreck

At 1:30 in the morning of April 27, 1850, the sidewheel steamboat General Anthony Wayne suffered a boiler explosion and sank in Lake Erie. 38 people lost their lives. Now an amateur underwater detective, Thomas Kowalczk, has located the wreck in 50 feet of water about 8 miles North of Vermilion, Ohio.

Thomas Kowalczk, an amateur shipwreck prospector, used sonar on his boat to discover the General Anthony Wayne in 50 feet of water, about eight miles north of this northeast Ohio city, the Great Lakes Historical Society announced Wednesday.

The side-wheel steamship, named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, sank in April 1850 while en route from the Toledo area to Buffalo, N.Y. Thirty-eight of the 93 passengers and crew on board died.

"I researched everything I could about it and knew the general area where the ship went down," Kowalczk said. "I laid out a grid search pattern and starting hunting."

Kowalczk saw an image of the wreckage on his sonar screen in September. He dived down in May and photographed the wreckage, which is in two sections.

Kowalczk, along with members of the Cleveland Underwater Explorers or CLUE, plan to survey the site as soon as water visibility improves. The CLUE website plans to have pictures of the find posted sometime tomorrow (Friday). Here is local television coverage of the announcement. For a good discussion of steamboat explosions and the laws that were enacted to address them (and how that legislation is still impacting us today because of the precedent it set) here's an article from American Heritage.

The Drunks Of Cardiff

Yesterday we reported on the drunks in Patna, India and their besotted revelry. The police there are quite sick of drunken rats. Well, it isn't just India that has a problem with inebriated rats. Wales has its own population of pub-crawling rodents. Literally.

A BIRTHDAY celebration was ruined after an uninvited guest – a rat – was spotted scurrying across the floor of a pub.

Horrified Kerry-Lynne Doyle is tee-total so knew she had not imagined the rodent at The Gatekeeper on Westgate Street in Cardiff.

The 22-year-old, who had been celebrating her fiance Chris Pyke’s 24th birthday by enjoying a meal with a group of friends on Tuesday evening, said: “It was disgusting.

“Chris’s friend Ali spotted it first, just as last orders were called. She said she thought she saw something moving on the floor and pointed to the table next to us.

“We turned and saw this grey baby rat scurrying away.

Roaring drunk rats ravage reception! Now, this is actually even worse in Wales than in India. Because the rats in Cardiff are given to loud, drunken singing of show tunes at their parties.

(</humor> Ok, seriously, Britain has got a serious problem with rats at the moment. Seeing these things in the open in a presumably noisy pub means there are a lot of them - a real lot. I've posted about this before. They have got to start paying attention to this or they are going to have a massive problem in the very near future.)

“He’s Already Got One, You See.”

King Arthur: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.
French Soldier: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he will be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, you see.
King Arthur: What?
Sir Galahad: He said they've already got one!
King Arthur: Are you sure he's got one?
French Soldier: Oh yes, it's very nice!

Ah, the classics. Those words from Monty Python and the Holy Grail seem especially on point with today's news. It seems that one Alfredo Barbagallo, an Italian archaeologist (not a pasta dish) claims he knows with complete certainty where the Holy Grail is right this moment. And it practically amounts to a Purloined Letter scenario - hidden in plain sight, so to speak.

The cup - said to have been used by Christ at the Last Supper - is the focus of countless legends and has been sought for centuries.

Alfredo Barbagallo, an Italian archaeologist, claims that it is buried in a chapel-like room underneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches which Christian pilgrims used to visit when they came to Rome.

Mr Barbagallo based his claim on two years spent studying mediaeval iconography inside the basilica and a description of a particular chamber, in a guide to the catacombs written in 1938 by a Capuchin friar named Giuseppe Da Bra.

The friar describes a room of about 20 square metres with a vaulted roof ceiling. "In the corner of a wall-seat there can be seen a terracotta funnel whose lower part opens out over the face of a skeleton," he wrote.

Da Bra then explains that giving liquid refreshment (refrigerium) to the dead was part of ancient funeral rites.

According to Mr Barbagallo, who heads an association called Arte e Mistero [Art and Mystery], this funnel is the Grail.

He also points out to several beautiful mosaics and frescos in the basilica which feature images of the sacred cup.

Mr Barbagallo added that its presence in the church fits the sketchy accounts of its early guardians.

In 258 AD, during a phase of Christian persecution, Pope Sixtus V reportedly entrusted the treasures of the early Church to a deacon called Lawrence, Lorenzo in Italian. This deacon was martyred four days later and since then no one has ever seen the Grail.

And Barbagallo believes the grail was simply buried with Lorenzo in the church that now bears his name. The Vatican is investigating the catacombs in question.

About Those Problems

Irshad Manji, writing about the same subject as Victor Davis Hanson in the last post names the problem with Islam right now. That problem is Islam - or rather, the extremist, fundamentalist version of Islam that threatens, bullies and terrorizes its was to power.

On Monday, Pakistan's religious affairs minister said that because Rushdie had blasphemed Islam with provocative literature, it was understandable that angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood.

Members of parliament, as well as the Pakistani Government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offence to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.

As a Muslim, you better believe I'm offended - by these absurd reactions.

I'm offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. In 1979, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam became the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in science. He began his acceptance speech with a verse from the Koran.

Salam's country ought to have celebrated him. Instead, rioters tried to prevent him from re-entering the country. Parliament even declared him a non-Muslim because he belonged to a religious minority. His name continues to be controversial, invoked by state authorities in hushed tones.

I'm offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family's honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Muslims have rightly denounced the mistreatment of Gitmo prisoners. But where's our outrage over the murder of many more Muslims at the hands of our own?

I'm offended that in April, mullahs at an extreme mosque in Pakistan issued a fatwa against hugging.

The country's female tourism minister had embraced - or, depending on the account you follow, accepted a congratulatory pat from - her skydiving instructor after she successfully jumped in a French fundraiser for the victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. Clerics announced her act of touching another man to be "a great sin" and demanded she be fired.

I'm offended by their fatwa proclaiming that women should stay at home and remain covered at all times.

I'm offended that they've bullied music store owners and video vendors into closing up shop.

I'm offended that the Government tiptoes around their craziness because these clerics threaten suicide attacks if confronted.

I'm offended that on Sunday, at least 35 Muslims in Kabul were blown to bits by other Muslims and on Tuesday, 80 more in Baghdad by Islamic "insurgents", with no official statement from Pakistan to deplore these assaults on fellow believers.

Please read the whole thing. She is a brave woman who dares defy the screaming crazies who the Western media simply accept as the voice of the "Muslim street". Here in the US, people like Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser and Ayaan Hirsi Ali also raise their voices against the extremists. Those few voices are being drowned out because the Western media refuses to apply the same standards in an even-handed manner. They report as straight news the extremist rage and do not even question the assault on free speech.

Temper Tantrums And Thin Veneers

As a follow-up to his column about the thin veneer of civilization, (and if you have not read that one, now is a good time) Victor Davis Hanson writes today about what is going on in the Middle East. And he calls it a long-running temper tantrum, not brought about by American or Western policies but by internal, collective failures in hopelessly corrupt governments.

First, thanks to Western inventions and Chinese manufactured goods, Middle Easterners can now access the non-Muslim world cheaply and vicariously. To millions of Muslims, the planet appears - on the Internet, DVDs and satellite television - to be growing rich as most of their world stays poor.

Second, the Middle East either will not or cannot make the changes necessary to catch up with what they see in the rest of the world. Tribalism - loyalty only to kin rather than to society at large - impedes merit and thus progress. So does gender apartheid. Who knows how many would-be Margaret Thatchers or Sandra Day O'Connors remain veiled in the kitchen?

Religious fundamentalism translates into rote prayers in madrassas while those outside the Middle East master science and engineering. Without a transparent capitalist system - antithetical to both sharia (Muslim law) and state-run economies - initiative is never rewarded. Corruption is.

Meanwhile, mere discussion in much of the region of what is wrong can mean execution by a militia, government thug or religious vigilante.

So, Middle Easterners are left with the old frustration of wanting the good life of Western society but lacking either the ability or willingness to change the status quo to get it.

Instead, we get monotonous scapegoating. Blaming America or Israel - "Those sneaky Jews did it!" - has become a regional pastime.

And after the multifarious failures of Yasser Arafat, the Assads in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and other corrupt autocrats, many have, predictably, retreated to fundamentalist extremism. Almost daily, some fundamentalist claims that the killing of Westerners is justified - because of a cartoon, a Papal paragraph or, most recently, British knighthood awarded to novelist Salman Rushdie. The terrorism of Osama bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban is as much about nihilist rage as it is about blackmailing Western governments to grant concessions.

Literally the only thing the Middle East - excepting Israel - is good at manufacturing is rage. Scripted, choreographed rage where the flags and effigies for burning appear like magic on the street. (Though those flags are doubtless manufactured in another country. Which is why it takes a few days to get the "spontaneous" demonstrations up to speed for the Western photographers.) Look at the cultural failures. And look also at the enabling behaviors by some in the West who refuse to apply the same standards of civilized behavior to the cultural failures as the do to the West.