sisu

"Whatever happens, we are winning"

"Foot binding was a custom practiced in some parts of medieval China on young females for many centuries and finally discontinued in the early 20th century," according to WIkipedia: "Young girls' feet, usually at age 6 but often earlier, were wrapped in tight bandages so they could not grow normally, would break and become deformed as they reached adulthood. The feet would remain small and dysfunctional, prone to infection, paralysis, and muscular atrophy." Islamist fascist childrearing practices come to mind.*

"We take them when they are young kids and raise them to become Hizbullah fighters. Every fighter we have believes that the ultimate form of being is martyrdom," Ali, the commander of Hizbullah/Hezbollah in his Lebanese village told a Guardian reporter. TigerHawk found the article and pulled out the telling paragraphs. A sampling (be sure to read the whole thing):

On patience, which a Hez cleric correctly identifies as their "main virtue":

"Patience is our main virtue, we can wait for days, weeks, months before we attack. The Israelis are always impatient in battle and in strategy," says the cleric, Sayed Ali, who claims to be a descendant of the prophet. "I know them very well."

On the futility of a diplomatic solution:

He says that even if the international community calls on Hizbullah to disarm as part of a peace deal, he and his men will not lay down their arms. "This war is episode two in disarming Hizbullah. First they tried to do it through the Lebanese government and the UN. When they failed, the Americans asked the Israelis to do the job."

On fighting to the last Lebanese civilian:

"Things are going very well now, whatever happens we are winning. If they keep bombing us we will stay in the shelters, and with each bomb more people support the resistance. If they invade they will repeat the miserable fate they had in 1982, and if they hold one square foot they will give the Islamic resistance all the legitimacy. If they want to kill Hizbullah they have to kill every Shia in the south of Lebanon."

*As we wrote in TigerHawk's comments:

Like the ancient Chinese practice of binding women's feet, their child-rearing practices stilt the growing mind and turn it into a grotesque version of the real thing. The Wikipedia description resonates:

"The feet would remain small and dysfunctional, prone to infection, paralysis, and muscular atrophy."

Blogson ScottSA at Crusader has the Goebbels angle, and Dr. Sanity, as always, covers the psychotherapeutic flank:

Historically, the Jews have been the offical scapegoat (object of displacement) for many societies. If only the Jews were gone, then all would be well. The world would be perfect.

Echoes of Phyllis Chesler's FrontPage review of The Sheik's New Clothes: the Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Suicide Terrorism, blogged here and here.  As we blogged then, Chesler asked the question "From a psychological and anthropological point of view, what kind of culture produces human bombs, glorifies mass murderers, and supports humiliation-based revenge?" and answered that the authors found a likely source in childrearing practices of the Arab cultures they studied.

"Small and dysfunctional, prone to infection, paralysis and muscular atrophy." That shoe fits the mindset of the enemies of freedom to a T.

"The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this stupid habit"

With sweet echoes in all our minds of the golden days of their kittenhood with Mom, Pop and Uncle Bertie in the peaceable kingdom on the terrace, Baby (foreground) and Tiny -- unlike mad dogs and Englishmen -- stay out of the midday sun.

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun. The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this stupid habit," goes Noel Coward's classic homage to the British stiff upper lip -- or is it, more likely, as our friends of the left would no doubt characterize it, a "tongue-in-cheek lampoon of the British colonial mentality"? We project, you decide. Baby (above illustrating #3 on the Catfort Scale) is with the smallest Malay rabbit on this one.

Look to the animals.

Update: Maximum Leader, K T Cat of The Scratching Post looks to the animals with the 123rd Carnival of the Cats, "Perhaps the greatest blog carnival of them all." Perhaps?

Why were there no men of fighting age in the rubble?

"The massacre of Qana, on this first anniversary, seems already to have become the single event which most profoundly represents the grief for the past and fear for the future that continues to haunt Lebanon, and which should occupy, trouble and, indeed, haunt the conscience of the entire world," commented the anti-Israel Al Jadid Magazine re the1996 shelling of Qana, the same Southern Lebanese village that dominates the news this morning. Then, as now, Hezbollah seemed to be winning the propaganda wars on the Arab "street" and in the salons of elite opinion in the West by using civilians and the UN as human shields. It is an ancient wound. Above, memorial of "the infamous Israeli 'Grapes of Wrath' offensive against South Lebanon" (© Børre Ludvigsen photo 1997-1998)

Waking up early morning to CNN International live coverage of breaking events in Lebanon, we were dismayed to find ourselves witness to the spinning -- LIVE -- of  anti-Israeli/anti-American propaganda out of whole cloth:

Lebanese seething over civilians killed in airstrike.

That was the banner across the bottom of the screen. The facts: Israelis had targeted a four-story building in the southern Lebanese village of Qana because they had determined that rockets had been repeatedly launched from the area into Israel. The rocketeers having apparently fled, all of the estimated 50-plus casualties were said to be civilians, including 20 or more children. Where were the fighting-aged men, we wanted to know, but CNN wasn't interested. The spin, encapsulated in the words of CNN International's chipper and cheery anchor Richard Quest, referring to Condoleeza Rice's diplomatic mission in the area:

She may be talking logic and sense, but you wanted to shake her and say Mrs. Rice, while you're talking, people are dying.

"There is no room on this sad morning for any other movement than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire," offered Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, announcing cancellation of a scheduled meeting with "Mrs." Rice, who told reporters it was in fact she who had initiated postponement of the meeting under the circumstances.

Meanwhile heartthrob CNN International anchor Shihab Rattansi was browbeating an Israeli military spokesman, seemingly bent on getting him to "admit" the Israelis, with their precision-guided weaponry, had in fact deliberately targeted civilians. Unlike the tendentious Rattansi, on-the-scene Fox News reporter Greg Palkot, calling it "a very complicated, ugly scene, the deadliest of the conflict so far," had more questions than answers: Why were the victims there? Had they not gotten the warning fliers dropped by Israeli planes prior to the bombing? Were they too destitute or otherwise too helpless to leave? Had they thought they would be safer staying inside the building rather than risking escape? Were they members of Hezbollah families being used as human shields, and where were the men of fighting age? At that point, no one knew, but the propaganda mill was in full cry:

Hezbollah's al-Manar TV was reportedly whipping up a frenzy with wall-to-wall airing of images of -- in the words of a CNN International man in the field -- the "horrendous casualties," and a hired "Arab Street" mob was storming the UN building in Beirut, apparently unaware of the irony as they chanted anti-American slogans. War is hell, but why is today's bombing being cast -- again in Richard Quest's words -- as a possible "turning point" of "world" opinion against Israel and the United States? Listen to the words of CNN White House Press Corpsman John King for a clue:

[Secretary Rice's] diplomatic efforts aren't likely to get much attention today because of the drama of this bombing.

Ah, yes, "the drama of this bombing." A propagandist's dream. The probable goal is to deflect attention from Secretary Rice's mission or even, as one of the CNN International anchors suggested, to show that

She just does not have the stature to broker a cease-fire . . .

Or "that she does not have the will," chimed in a hopeful John King. Our imail correspondent this morning catches the gist:

She: No person of sane mind can believe that Americans or Israelis deliberately target civilians. How did that twisted spin grow legs?

We: Repetition.

She: Yes . . . pants not yet on . . . THEY are the ones who want to "talk things out," and now they twist it and blame HER for "talking."

Heads I win, tails you lose. So tell us again -- since CNN isn't asking -- why were there no men of fighting age in the rubble?

With sweet irony

To a Darwinian libertarian such as ourselves, so many things that elude hysterical religious and secular totalitarians seem wicked obvious, as Tiny would agree, no doubt. Above, she stares at things we don't see.

"The Iranians are no doubt confident that no one would be so depraved as to disregard the sanctity of an embassy," writes the Professor with sweet irony at rumors of the possible hiding place of him who must be obeyed:

THIS WOULD SEEM TO ARGUE AGAINST THE THEORY THAT HEZBOLLAH IS WINNING: "Hezbollah leader said to be hiding in Iranian Embassy."

Our blogfriend Greta of Hooah Wife said very much the same thing earlier:

If this is proved true, spare them no mercy. Not like I had a lot of warm fuzzies for them before.

Revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.

"To stop apologizing for our positions"

Across the bay due north from Haifa in northern Israel, the ancient port city of Akka/Acre "changed hands many times between Christians and Muslims" during the Crusades. It "was ceded to the Arabs in the United Nations partition of Palestine in 1948 but was captured by Israel shortly thereafter." Above, eastern walls at dawn (left) and prison, part of Crusaders' underground city. Normally a tourist spot, the underground city is "now open 24 hours a day as a makeshift bomb shelter," reports the Boston Globe. (Antonio Vasquez photos)

"This song is relevant today, because Nasrallah is a naked king who is dragging an entire nation into war, and the ones who pay the price are innocent civilians," says a member of the Arab Israeli rock band "Khalas," quoted in a ynet news story linked by Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman of On the Face:

In contrast to what one may think, Khalas is not using their songs to criticize Israelis or Jews. Their criticism is directed toward Arab society.

“We think that we have to fix our own house and criticize the Arab sector before we complain about the state and the government”, said Beromi. “In the song ‘The King Is Naked’ we are protesting the behavior of Arab leaders who do not listen to their people." The band is based in Akka.

"Nasrallah's great achievement," headlines Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman of On the Face, providing an English translation of this Time Out Tel Aviv cartoon: "I just got into the Guinness Book of World Records for holding the biggest number of hostages ever: The entire nation of Lebanon!"

Blogger Goldman herself is featured in a Wall Street Journal story (subscription only) today on the strange blogfellows of the Israel-Hezbollah war, a group of mostly Western-educated Lebanese and Israeli bloggers who comment and imail across the frontline. A taste of the tangled threads of their correspondence:

The Internet has made it possible "to have a Beirut-Tel Aviv online IM chat in real time," Ms. Goldman wrote . . . "That's what happened to me and this blogger a few nights ago. We chatted while he was sitting on the roof of his apartment building in Beirut watching missiles from Israeli planes fall on his city and describing it to me. He was carrying on an online conversation with another Israeli at the same time."

The Lebanese blogger, who runs the Lebanese Political Journal blog, won't disclose his identity because he believes his online chats with Israelis could be considered an act of disloyalty. He says in an email: "Chatting with Israelis from Lebanon during war is very awkward." But, he says, "One remembers that we are still humans regardless of where the borders lie."

One of Goldman's dearest Lebanese blogfriends "made a 180-degree turn since the beginning of the war and has become an Israeli hater":

"It was really tragic for me," says Ms. Goldman. "That was one of the things that was the hardest thing about this fighting, because we had this really fragile new community, and we were slowly peeling back the layers of prejudice." 

"Arabs and Jews all live together in Acre [Akka]. We are like a model of co-existence for the rest of Israel," the mayor of the ancient Haifa Bay town told a Boston Globe reporter recently. "All the people here support the government campaign against Hezbollah. We hope they can solve the problem quickly because if there is peace there will be lots of tourists and lots of money to help all the people whose businesses have been closed for the past week."

to Nasrallah, one man's "naked king" is another man's holy warrior. One of the bloggers at Lebanese Political Journal thinks the man in the black turban and his sponsors in Iran and Syria are winning the propaganda war:

Nasrallah is becoming an absolute Shia idol. He is the hero of the Syrians and Iranians . . .  His charisma is still there and his followers are ready to do anything to please him.

More insight from a July 16 International Tribune analysis:

Sheik Nasrallah is shrewdly rallying the faithful by evoking his party's claim to a holy mandate. "You are fighting the sons of Muhammad and Ali and Hassan and Hussein and all the prophet's household," he told the Israelis in a recorded message broadcast on the group's satellite television station, Al Manar, and on several Arab satellite news stations. The sheik's black turban in his picture onscreen signaled his own descent from the Prophet Muhammad. "You are fighting people who have faith," he said.

"Nasrallah led Hezbollah into a disastrous contest with Israel, to establish himself as the champion of Lebanese Shias, as that constituency seeks a revision of the country's politics," Steven Schwartz adds in the latest TCS Daily:

Nobody can say whether his destructive adventure will reinforce or undermine the political power of Hezbollah. Worldwide Shia opinion, even in Iran, is divided. More Shia Muslims around the world may see Nasrallah as a terrorist than as a hero.

He does look rather dashing in his prophetic [PBUH] finery, but we prefer a man in a white hat. Ten gallon, preferably. Two were on display this afternoon in a joint press conference of Number One and Number Two of the Anglosphere at the White House. The ever eloquent Tony Blair's rhetoric invoking the good guys' faith in freedom was rousing. A couple of tidbits:

The bond between Britain and the US is stronger than ever. We share the same goals, and we share the same values, and we share the same determination to defeat the terrorists.

I think the American leadership is indispensable. We shall prevail.

One of the things we have to do is to stop apologizing for our positions.

That last bit is key to winning the propaganda war.

The cats that lunch

Having dragged the chair to which she was tethered halfway across the side yard, Tiny appears, all eyes and ears, on the other side of the fence checking out the lay of the land.

Back in the yard on the terrace, she blends in with the local color of Tuck-laid bricks. Note funny mouth look that happens every so often, given the fact that through the years she has lost both her upper canines. And yet it's not a problem.

Meanwhile, inside, the Babe balances on all fours as he goes for the jugular of after-breakfast treats.

Back outside, Tiny gets heavily into meeping the privet. Every morning is a bright new day for the cats that lunch.

Update: More things bright and beautiful at Modulator's 97th Friday Ark.

"You need to pray behind me"

"When I was 10 or 11, my grandmother had a scarf. It was black, but a long one. I used to wrap it around my head and say to them that I'm a cleric, you need to pray behind me," Hezbollah head honcho Hasan Nasrallah (in wall poster above left) told the WaPo's Robin Wright recently. What's not to love about the guy? Dr. Sanity's "malignant narcissism" comes to mind. In our culture -- at least amongst us red-state types -- the black hats are still the bad guys. In theirs, they're the heroes. Both Lebanese glamour boy Nasrallah and Iraqi wannabe Moqtada al-Sadr (above right) are counting on the blue-staters of this world, both here and abroad, to let them off the hook.

"Putting more U.S. soldiers in the streets of Baghdad risks a new showdown with a radical anti-American cleric who has modeled his movement after Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas," according to an AP report:

Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has re-emerged as a key force in the majority Shiite community after suffering substantial losses during two uprisings against the U.S. military in 2004. Sunni Arabs believe the militia is responsible for kidnapping and killing thousands of Sunnis since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine.

As bad as the iconic men of the mysogynist side of the aisle may be (see black-turbaned bullies above, whom we totally despise), it's even worse when you get to the politically correct icons of the distaff side, yet another point on the same spectrum. Above, a horrifying bust of Hillary (left) revealed this week at something called the Museum of Sex, and artist Alison Lapper, whose sculptural likeness is mounted atop Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square. What is it with these women without arms?

Oh, yes, that bombing of a Shiite shrine way back when resonates:

Apart from an estimated 10,000 militiamen, al-Sadr's movement controls 30 of the 275 seats in parliament and holds five Cabinet posts, including health, transportation and agriculture. Al-Sadr's followers are part of the Shiite coalition that includes al-Maliki's Dawa party. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the al-Sadr movement runs social services ranging from caring for widows and orphans to burying unclaimed bodies in Baghdad and other cities.

The parallels with Hezbollah reflect the network of clerical-led Shiite groups throughout the Middle East, which have been gaining strength due to the rise of both Iran and the Shiite community in Iraq.

The nexus of that network is the Shiite holy city of Najaf, the traditional educational and cultural center of Shiite Islam. Both Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and Lebanon's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, studied in Najaf.

Nejaf is where it's at. How much do you love folks who take advantage of the most disadvantaged among us, killing them with kindness?

Calling for "a UN resolution to disband the UN"

New Zealand Bear's interactive map that takes you to where the action is is (is is? It's one of the few times that is is is) now up and running. Click on the various icons to get the latest news and blog opinions about and from the theater of operations.  We're wicked proud to have assisted in gathering URLs and such to help put it all together. Please note that you must have the latest Firefox or Internet Explorer software -- easy to download -- to get it up on your screen. Apple's Safari need not apply. Can you say annoying?

"High readings at doctors office are called 'white coat hypertension,'" emails Trif, our totally awesome primary-care doc at Beth Israel Chelsea re high BP readings -- 170/90 -- at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary in our pre-cataract-op examination this morning:

As long as you continue home monitoring with successful readings, no further medication is needed. You can explain this to other caregivers when you see them.

His bedside/emailboxside manner is to die for (bad choice of words for a man of healing?). Thinking back to this morning, we realized that beyond "white coat hypertension," our BP was driven sky high by having to sit in the MEEI waiting room with an overhead TV tuned in to "Live with Regis and Kelly." We've never been able to tolerate canned laughter, but that's not the worst of it. Can you say fiddling while Rome burns? No wonder there's a health crisis in this country. Once back home in the soothing aura of our computer's glow, with the TV tuned mostly to Fox News in the background and Tuck, Tiny and Baby going about their daily activities, the readings returned to wicked low -- 132/72 -- until we started getting up to speed on Kofi Annan's latest disproportionate spoutings, when our "numbers" shot up again. Cybermaster of the Universe Roger L. Simon got it just right:

Kofi Annan, the man who oversaw possibly the greatest heist in human history, has rushed to judgment of Israel, saying the Israelis "deliberately targeted" the UN outpost in South Lebanon where a couple of UN observers were killed. Needless to say, Kofi provided no evidence that the Israelis did this or even any reason why they would want to do such a thing. Facts were never of particular interest to the Secretary General. Why should he start now? Thank whatever deity, we only have a few more months to endure of this dreadful man.

As we told our imail correspondent this afternoon:

We: As I wrote in Roger L. Simon's comments, I am calling for a UN Resolution for unilateral withdrawal of Kofi Annan from the international stage.

She: I like it, but would kick it up a notch . . . a UN resolution to disband the UN.

The thought of it soothes our soul. Can't wait till that cataract-clouded eye can trust what it sees again.

So's your old man

Like President Bush at his best, Tiny is not afraid to express her feelings. Above in a post-catnip stupor at the base of Goomp's scratching post over the weekend, she let it all hang out.

"What we ought to have learned from the terror attacks of September 11th and subsequent events is that multiculturalism has sapped our will to fight back and thus to survive," said James Bowman -- American editor of The Times Literary Supplement and author of Honor: A History -- in a recent NRO interview with Christina Hoff Sommers, putting his finger on exactly what's wrong with our "nuanced" fellow citizens of the left who've lost their nerve and dare not call a spade a spade:

If American patriotism has to be expressed at the expense of non-Americans, even non-Americans who want to kill us simply for being Americans, we are ashamed to express it.

Of course not ALL of us are ashamed to express it. "If you want to impress an honor culture, try a touch of Texas 'swagger,'" wrote Bowman -- who blogs here -- in the Washington Times the other day. Listen to a bit of what he has to say about the President's toe-curling p.c. "admission" last May that he had been wrong to use "cowboy" expressions like "bring it on" to taunt the enemy:

The offending remarks that the president now professes to regret were calculated for their effect on the enemy, but their collateral effect was deeply to offend the media.

Now he says that "I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted." What he doesn't say is that the main parts of the world where it was misinterpreted were New York and Washington and London [Don't you LOVE it?], where the educated elites think such remarks encouraged the insurgency in Iraq.

But in the Arab honor culture, they were much likelier to have been interpreted, correctly, as a warning and an assurance of U.S. resolve. Mr. Bush's kind of masculine vaunting behavior had to have been well understood as part of the age-old rituals of fighting. Like a boxer making the "come here" gesture in the ring, Mr. Bush was saying in effect: "I'm not afraid of you. Hit me with your best shot and I'll still defeat you."

Honor-code dynamics -- the Darwinially driven dynamics of bonding within groups through honor codes among one's chosen peers, as explicated in Peter Rowbotham's "The Importance of Being Noticed" -- are, of course, the great unifying theme of this blog. Educated elites' honor codes are "mostly useless in terms of their survival value," Bowman elucidates:

When an honor culture breaks down, honor itself doesn’t simply cease to exist. Rather it is transmuted into other forms, though forms which are mostly useless in terms of their survival value. One such alternative to traditional honor culture is to be found in the exaltation of victimhood . . . the decline of traditional honor proceeds pari passu with the loss of national identity and finally even the will to survive as an identifiable people distinct from those who would destroy that identity.

Eurabia's creeping dhimmitude -- itself on many levels an honor challenge to American hegemony -- comes to mind and reverberates as "world opinion" weeps and moans about Israel's "disproportionate" military response to existential threats from certified victim groups:

To deflate American power and assure themselves a steady supply of oil, European leaders accepted "the traditional cultural baggage of Arab societies, with its anti-Christian and anti-Jewish prejudices and its hostility against Israel and the West." In exchange for markets in the Islamic world, Europe turned its back on its Judeo-Christian heritage and set the stage for its own Islamization.

"The jihadists who fight us today belong to a primitive honor culture and hold us in contempt, partly because we have abandoned our own [honor culture]," summarizes the Bowman blurb at AEI, where you can listen online to that book forum. Adds Bowman himself in a recent FrontPage interview with Jamie Glazov:

The point remains, however, that Saddam was unquestionably weaker than U.S. and Western intelligence thought he was and, I believe, that the reason for this misapprehension [about the status of his WMDs] was our failure to understand the imperative of the Arab honor culture, like other honor cultures, to hide weaknesses and wear the mask both of fearlessness and of fearsomeness.

But not all Westerners are held in contempt by jihadists. Dr. Sanity explains:

Isn't it interesting that Hezbollah is suddenly willing to talk? After all their huffing and puffing of the last week? Isn't it interesting that Hamas is ready to talk, after all their posturing and certainty of victory? What's happening? I suspect that the leadership of both terrorist organizations are really confused right now.

Every time they behaved this way before, it led to simultaneously enhancing their eternal victimhood, and that, in turn inevitably led -- not to a victory; but it certainly never led to defeat, and it always improved both their status in the world as well as their fortunes.

Doesn't look like that's gonna happen this time. Enough momentum has been generated by the Bush policies in the Middle East to preclude yet another award for victimhood.

Bush's fault!

Update: A gorgeous head shot of the Babe is the show stopper over at the 122nd Carnival of the Cats at Creatures of the Earth.

"Being offended is sometimes purely a form of aggression"

Tiny and Baby out on their tethers this afternoon understand exactly what Mohamed Raseol was talking about when he said back in the 90's that  "Being offended is sometimes purely a form of aggression." If only our own species were so perspicacious.

“Being offended is sometimes purely a form of aggression,” wrote Mohamed Rasoel, a prescient Pakistani/Dutch immigrant charged with racism way back in1992 for his book The Downfall of the Netherlands, Land of the Naive Fools, quoted by Fjordman in a tour de force recap of creeping Eurabianism, with a dash of USArabianism thrown in for good measure -- Salman Rushdie, Bat Ye’or, Ayan Hirsi-Ali, Ahmed Mansour and South Park's "Cartoon Wars" episode are all there -- at The Brussels Journal that afforded us a "staggering" Eureka Moment. First a few excerpts from the article:

Mohamed Rasoel had warned in his book that the Dutch were mistaken to tolerate the mushrooming growth of their Muslim population. He predicted that this would lead to a civil war and, at best, the country’s partition. This was during the heat of the Rushdie controversy. The book was taken from the shelves in most bookstores throughout the Netherlands, and quickly forgotten about.

Mohamed Rasoel himself stated that: “It proves that the general thrust of my book is correct, that Dutch society is changing and becoming less tolerant. Freedom of opinion is already being sacrificed . . . Muslims are allowed to shout: kill Rushdie . . . When Muslims say on TV that all Dutch women are whores, it is allowed . . . It is ridiculous and scandalous that I have to justify myself in court for discrimination of Muslims.”

For the ecstatic life-flashing-before-your-eyes experience of drowning in the sheer awfulness of it all, be sure to read the whole thing. Here's the gist:

Gerard Alexander warns against what he calls “illiberal Europe,” by which he means the dramatic expansion of laws to sanction speech that “incites hatred” against groups based on their religion, race or ethnicity. Such laws have been passed in Western European nations since the 1970s. “The real danger posed by Europe’s speech laws is not so much guilty verdicts as an insidious chilling of political debate, as people censor themselves in order to avoid legal charges and the stigma and expense they bring.”

We're talking fear society here, somewhere on the spectrum between heavy and lite:

This “swirl of speech-law charges, lawsuits, and investigations” is now sustained by an “antiracism” industry. “Europe’s speech laws are written and applied in ways that leave activists on the political left free to whitewash crimes of leftist regimes, incite hatred against their domestic bogeymen of the well-to-do, and luridly stereotype their international bogeymen, often with history-distorting falsehoods such as fictitious claims of genocide said to be committed by the United States and Israel. It may be no coincidence that Socialist and extreme-left parties have played central roles in the design of speech laws.”

"It may be no coincidence," indeed. We've often blogged about the unholy alliance between all too many of our fellow citizens on the left side of the aisle -- in the media and on campus, especially -- and strange bedfellows from the heart of darkness that is Islamic fascism. Which brings us up to that "Eureka Moment" of which we spoke above. Mohamed Rasoel's "Being offended is sometimes purely a form of aggression" is precisely what was going on when Harvard President Larry Summers was hounded out of office by hysterical Marxist feminist mullettes. The Founding Fathers are spinning you know where.

Update:  "What are mullettes?" asks Goomp. "Female mullahs," we reply. "Hillary fits the description . . . The usual type that knows better than you do what's best for you."

Update II:  If you know what's best for you, head on over to Friday Ark #96 at Modulator.