In an article about today’s protests, by Dana Hull of the San Jose Mercury News, he describes the Workers World Party, one of the groups behind today’s protests,

Some of the WWP’s more controversial positions are its support for the governments of Iraq and North Korea; its backing of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic; its claims that reports of Serbian atrocities against Muslims and Croats were overblown; and its defense as recently as 2000 of the Chinese government’s deadly crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Looking at the web site, they also support the Palestinians over Israel, and Hugo Chavez. Oh, and of course, they want to Free Mumia!

The mind boggles. What heuristic would one use to predict what or who this group is going to support? You could say they promote socialist causes, but that doesn’t really tell one how to square their positions on Palestinians versus Israel and Milosevic versus the Muslims. After all, Israel tends to be socialist itself, while the Palestinians don’t really have an economic system to speak of.

Is it a White Male European against Islam thing? Hmmmm…that would explain opposition to Israel, but then it’s hard to reconcile with support for Milosevic, who’s also white, and male, and European and was murdering Muslims.

Oh, wait! The light goes on above the head. Now I get it.

It’s a very simple algorithm. If the US government is for it, they’re a’gin it, and vicey versey. Very reliable predictive technique.

And it tells you all you need to know about this group, and their fellow travelers.

Now here’s a question to ponder. Can a group whose basic premise seems to be that the US government under its constitution is the source of all evil in the world, and that all of its initiatives are to be opposed, in a knee-jerk fashion, be said to be in any way patriotic?

Hey, I’m just asking…

Lacking the intestinal fortitude for such things that I had in my younger days, I’ve spared myself the dreary punishment (though possibly combined with inadvertent hilarity) of viewing the lunacy on display in the nation’s capital today. There are threads running on Free Republic for those who want to sample it without being overwhelmed by it in all its CSPANish videofied glory.

As an antidote to the idiocy, here are a couple of articles by leftists who haven’t utterly lost their minds–Christopher Hitchens, and Johann Hari.

An Israeli and Palestinian student are collaborating on a space science experiment.

It’s sad that this is news.

Mr. Fisk self loathingly informs us that it’s all about Oooooiiiiillll.

Jews are fleeing France for Israel.

“In Israel, at least we know the government is on our side,” said Stephanie Ohana, a 34-year-old Parisian Jew, at a prayer service for her rabbi, who was stabbed. “It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? But we have the feeling we’d be safer in Israel.”

The Simpsons has been renewed for at least two more years.

China has announced that it will launch its own astronaut this year.

As I’ve said previously, I don’t find this either threatening, or meaningful. Until they do something innovative, rather than derivative, it’s pointless to me.

You know, I said that today’s Fox column was an exclusive, and that you hadn’t read it here, but a lot of it was regurgitated posts. Here’s one bit for my readers, who never made it to the Fox site, that wasn’t.

Today’s scheduled Shuttle launch carried, for the first time, an Israeli astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon. Israel has long had their own launch capability, but they are constrained by their geography to only launch into retrograde orbits (that is, east to west orbits, against the earth’s rotation), and they don’t have a manned launch capability. So in many ways, this is a significant milestone for them.

It’s a poignant one as well.

Col. Ramon’s mother is a survivor of Auschwitz, and many of his other relatives died there. In commemoration of all of the victims of that grim chapter of the last century, he’s going to take some space art along with him. It’s a haunting picture, a moonscape, prescient of the pictures that the Apollo astronauts would take with cameras a couple decades later. It was drawn by a 14-year old boy, Petr Ginz, who died in the camp, never to see man walk on the moon, or even launch a satellite. It’s a tribute to the unquenchable imagination of a child, who could escape the unimaginable horror of daily existence with dreams of other, perhaps happier worlds.

And of course, as a reminder of the current times, as the article points out, some who are unhappy with Israel’s present actions in the Middle East (and perhaps unhappy with the very existence of Israel as a state, or who may even regret that Hitler didn’t finish the job), are equally unhappy with NASA’s decision (made several years ago) to take an Israeli into space. While no specific threats have been received, security for the launch remained high. Sadly, the demons in humanity that finally did quench young Petr’s dreams of space, permanently, continue to follow us into the 21st Century.

[And thanks to Mark Whittington for the tip]

“Prince” Ahmed says that the Saudi “Kingdom” will never fight Islamic trends.

If “Islamic trends” include continued funding of Wahabbism and terrorism, it sounds like a declaration of war to me.

And note the scare quotes. Following the honorable tradition of Reuters, I say that one man’s monarchy is another man’s organized crime syndicate.

Virginia (who still doesn’t have permalinks that non-geeks can figure out how to link with) has lots of good stuff up.