Political Commentary, War Commentary

Naming The Enemy

2 Comments

Are we at war with Jihadism?

Of course it is true that Islamic reformers are trying to redefine the very troubling concept of jihad as a positive: viz., an internal struggle for personal betterment. Much as I’d love them to succeed, it is a well-intentioned folly — largely because of modern culture, which puts such a premium on authenticity. If you want to encourage the reformers, then encourage them to drop the concept of jihad altogether. As a matter of history, jihad is a military obligation. As long as it is accorded a central place in Islam, the militants are always going to be deemed more authentic, more true to the faith of Mohammed, than the reformers.

If correct, this makes the latest State Department policy all the more idiotic.

I still prefer the term Hirabis myself.

Political Commentary

Second Amendment Needed

8 Comments

For Zimbabwe:

Everything in Mr. Mugabe’s history suggests he will use whatever force is necessary to maintain his grip on power. As a rebel leader participating in the 1980 election, he promised to continue the country’s civil war if he lost. Not long after taking power, he murdered some 30,000 members of the minority Ndebele tribe in what is known as the Matabeleland Massacre. In 2005, as punishment for voting against his ZANU-PF party, he destroyed the homes of 700,000 poor Zimbabweans. He has killed untold numbers of political opponents in the past and driven even more into exile.

Since so many of the country’s security officials are prime beneficiaries of Mr. Mugabe’s kleptocracy (and might be implicated for human-rights abuses were the regime to fall), it’s doubtful that the military would ever allow a peaceful “velvet revolution” to transpire – as many speculated in the days after the election.

In short, Mr. Mugabe’s opponents need weapons soon. This is not to effect regime change, but for simple self-defense.

Hopefully, though, it would result in regime change as well. Jefferson famously said that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Well, there’s been plenty of patriot blood shed there, but apparently there’s an element lacking in the fertilizer. Monsters like Mugabe were exactly the kind of tyrants he had in mind.

Media Criticism, Space

Dog Bites Man

4 Comments

Mark Whittington has a completely pointless post:

…not much remarked, is the implicit endorsement of NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration by one of the leading new commercial space companies

Is this supposed to be news? Is Mark aware of any commercial space company that is opposed to the VSE, or sending humans to the moon and Mars? I’m not. So what’s the big deal?

Or is he confusing ESAS with VSE again?

Economics, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

A Policy Disaster

5 Comments

Deroy Murdock writes on the ethanol scam, and its global effects on food and fuel prices.

[Update a few minutes later]

If this pans out, ethanol will make a lot more sense, won’t be competing with food, and won’t require any subsidies:

Along with cellulose, the cyanobacteria developed by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. secrete glucose and sucrose. These simple sugars are the major sources used to produce ethanol.

“The cyanobacterium is potentially a very inexpensive source for sugars to use for ethanol and designer fuels,” says Nobles, a research associate in the Section of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Brown and Nobles say their cyanobacteria can be grown in production facilities on non-agricultural lands using salty water unsuitable for human consumption or crops.

Bring it on.

[Evening update]

David Freddoso has an appropriately outraged follow-up to the Murdock piece:

Our government’s negligence and perhaps even malicious misdirection of societal resources toward a worthless, unwanted product — ethanol — will cause millions of people to go hungry tonight.

The way things are going, this could become the worst chapter yet in the sad, ruinous history of our bipartisan agricultural welfare programs. For those who write in and protest that free-market capitalism is an uncompassionate, un-Christian economic system, I submit that you are currently witnessing the alternative.

Indeed. End the tariffs, end the subsidies. Let the market work.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Weird

Illegal Legal Weed

2 Comments

What would we do without federal regulators?

Federal alcohol regulators thought differently. They have ordered Dillmann to stop selling beer bottles with caps that say “Try Legal Weed.”

While reviewing the proposed label for Dillmann’s latest beer, Lemurian Lager, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau said the message on the caps he has been using for his five current beers amounts to a drug reference.

In a letter explaining its decision, the agency, which regulates the brewing industry, said the wording could “mislead consumers about the characteristics of the alcoholic beverage.”

Because, you know, a bottle of beer is so similar to a joint. I wonder how many bottles you’d have to drink before you really couldn’t tell the difference?

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!