Ditto.

Snopes Gets RSS Feed

"Tell one, tell all, the invaluable Snopes.com has finally gotten an RSS feed!

Snopes is required reading for people on the Internet. If it sounds too good to be true, if it's a little too conveniently in favor (or against) your favorite ideological position, or if it's a little too horrifying to be true, check it on Snopes before you get upset, or worse, spread the claims further. Because you'll meet someone who has nearly the entire site indexed in their head, and there's little that's more damaging to your point then to have it conclusive rebutted on Snopes.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank Barbara and David Mikkelson (FAQ link substantiating the names) for providing such a fine resource to the Internet.

And it's darn fun stuff, too.

Pass it along." [iRi]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Snopes is the best sight. Now I can keep up with urban legends.  10:55:58 PM    

Sharia in Iraq?. Robert Waldmann reports: There is one danger to Iraq that Ayatollah Sistani sure won't do anything about -- the imposition of Islamic law. I am amazed to read (and amazed I missed) that the US-established Iraqi Governing Council suddenly passed an "order decreeing abolition of Iraq's uniform civil codes in favor of religious law" -- meaning Sharia for moslems. Iraqi women protest. Western newspapers except for the lefty Financial Times (not joking about lefty) ignore the news. Al Qaeda attacks us so we go to war to replace a gender-neutral civil code with Sharia ??? The [IGC's] decree does not have legal force because Bremer has not co-signed it... UPDATE: Juan Cole writes: as-Zaman reports a "storm" of street protests again on Thursday against the Interim Governing Council's abolition of the 1958 civil personal status laws in favor of religious law. Az-Zaman, a modernist Arab nationalist newspaper close to Adnan Pachachi, ran several essays Thursday by Iraqi intellectuals denouncing the move as harmful to Iraq. The Financial Times, to its credit, picked up the story for Thursday (most of the Western press had ignored it initially). It looks to me as though IGC members tried to deceive Nicolas Pelham and... [Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]

We will never leave if the possibility of Sharia becoming true law is still possible. Let me rephrase that. We SHOULD never leave. Doesn't mean we won't.  10:33:33 PM    

Making an example out of them.

Slate has a round-table entitled Liberal Hawks Reconsider the War with Jacob Weisberg, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, and Fareed Zakaria. It is definitely worth a look, though some of them are clearly smarter or more honest than others. Some of the reasons they advance for war are also better than others (with the human rights argument the strongest of all — whether conclusive or not). Thomas Friedman’s reasons, though, are indefensible, indeed criminal:

The real reason for this war—which was never stated—was to burst what I would call the “terrorism bubble,” which had built up during the 1990s. This bubble was a dangerous fantasy, believed by way too many people in the Middle East. This bubble said that it was OK to plow airplanes into the World Trade Center, commit suicide in Israeli pizza parlors, praise people who do these things as “martyrs,” and donate money to them through religious charities. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something—to let everyone know that we, too, are ready to fight and die to preserve our open society. Yes, I know, it’s not very diplomatic—it’s not in the rule book—but everyone in the neighborhood got the message: Henceforth, you will be held accountable. Why Iraq, not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Because we could—period. Sorry to be so blunt, but, as I also wrote before the war: Some things are true even if George Bush believes them.

If I read that paragraph correctly, Friedman is advocating that a state kill people (including innocent people) for demonstrative purposes. He thereby shows complete disregard for the humanity and individuality of those who have died. It is a peculiar way to demonstrate the impermissibility of the very acts he deplores.

[Crooked Timber]

Hey, I'm sure he would say you have to rack a few eggs to make an omlette. Or something else as inane.   12:23:26 AM    

Perle and Frum.

The Christian Science Monitor has a helpful summary of the main propositions advanced by Richard Perle and David Frum in a new book:

1. France is really more an enemy than an ally of the US and that European nations must be forced to choose between Paris and Washington
2. Muslims living in the US must be given special scrutiny by US law enforcement and other Americans
3. The US must overthrow the regimes in Iran and Syria, and impose a blockade on North Korea
4. Palestinians must not be allowed to have a state
5. All Americans must carry a government issued identity card
6. The US must explicitly reject the jurisdiction of the United Nations Charter.

It is reassuring to know that such lunatics could never achieve positions of power and influence.

[Crooked Timber]

Some of the reasons that Perle and his ilk are anti-America. I fully expect to hear sometime soon that the freeway system is an open raod for terrorists to drive large amounts of explosives across the country. So we need to have entry points and search stations, like the have in California for fruit. An identity card will be next (although the need for a government issued identity card is already needed for air travel), along with getting 'permission' to travel. All in the name of security. But, of course, none of this willreally catch many terrorists as it will be used to harrass and intimiate people. first those at the margins, then those nearer the center. That is one way tyrants aggregate power.  12:10:41 AM