On Tragedy

So, whose fault was Katrina? Some people want to blame homosexuals; others say it's the fault of President Bush. The deaths in the recent stampede in Baghdad could be put down to the terrorists or to Islamic fundamentalism, or if you prefer you could blame the Iraqi and US authorities.

I think this is all pretty stupid. There's a time and a place to look for answers. Do you want to talk about hurricanes and global warming? Well, I think there are sensible, well-informed people on both sides of the issue, but let us suppose that industry-related global warming does exist, and that there is a causal link between global warming and hurricanes, and that the Bush Administration has not done all it could to prevent global warming. If you want to argue this case, fine!!! But even if you can prove that all of these things are true, it does not entitle you to say that "Bush caused the hurricane." That's just insane. Weather patterns - like the movements of crowds - are complex and unpredictable. It makes no sense to point to one thing, after the fact, and say, "this is what caused that to happen."

The period immediately following a tragedy should be treated with a little bit of respect. Out of respect for the lives lost, and out of respect for the first task at hand, which is to save the lives and property that can be saved. (Oh, by the way, have you made your donation to the Red Cross yet?) We need to keep our priorities in order. It's human nature to want to find an explanation - or a scapegoat - for any great tragedy. And there is a place for looking for answers, and, if need be, for assigning blame. But this should wait.

New Orleans is still under water, for God's sake. Can't you at least wait until they've finished burying the dead before you start the political finger-pointing?

Last January, I posted an abstract of Rabbi Leonard Oppenheimer's remarks on the tsunami tragedy. Rabbi Oppenheimer's words are worth reading again now; please visit the post if you have a moment.

Oh, and for those who can't make up their mind whether to blame the evil Republicans or the evil homosexuals for the hurricane in New Orleans, I think I've found the answer:

Who to Blame for Katrina

Morning Report: September 1, 2005

Hurricane Katrina devastates Gulf Coast. As many as 60,000 people are fleeing New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 'Police and National Guard troops struggled to restore order Thursday in New Orleans, where looters and armed gangs were roaming the streets of the flooded city. As thousands of people slept on streets, interstate access ramps and bridges. Outside the New Orleans Convention Center, a huge crowd waited on the sidewalks for aid that could be a long time coming. Authorities worked to evacuate the 25,000 people who had taken shelter from Hurricane Katrina in the Superdome, but the number of people seeking to get out of the city grew. "It's no longer just evacuees from the Superdome, as citizens who were holed up in high-rise office buildings and hotels saw buses moving into the dome, they realized this is an evacuation point," Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said. He estimated between 50,000 and 60,000 people were seeking evacuation.' Looting and lawlessness have been problems in Mississippi and Louisiana: '“There’s so many people there. It’s a desperate situation with no air conditioning and no water,” Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider said of the Superdome. Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. However, the airborne evacuation was disrupted after at least one shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. An air ambulance service official said helicopter transfers of the sick and injured were suspended as a result. ... The Superdome helicopter operation was suspended “until they gain control of the Superdome,” said Richard Zuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people. He said the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control. “That’s not enough,” Zuschlag. “We need a thousand.” ... Looting has also been a problem in Mississippi. “The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people,” said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday. “We’re trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.” ' What can you do to help? Go to Instapundit to find out. (various)

Hundreds die in Baghdad pilgrim stampede. In another recent tragedy, hundreds of people were killed in a pilgrim stampede in Baghdad when 'huge crowds of pilgrims heading to the shrine of Imam Kadhom caused the fence of the A'imma bridge to collapse pushing people to fall into the Tigris river.' Neo-Neocon posts some thoughts on the dynamics of stampedes: 'On analysis, it turns out there are three main categories of venues that would appear to favor stampedes: the soccer stadium (or other large sporting event); the crowded nightclub in which a fire breaks out; and the religious pilgrimage. They all share the characteristics of having very large and moving groups of people packed into a restricted space. But panic, such as apparently occurred on the Iraqi bridge, is, surprisingly, not a required element to start such stampedes, although it inevitably happens as the stampede begins to take shape, and makes them that much worse. Stampedes can sometimes be sparked in the absence of any panic, when chance events block the flow of traffic in an overcrowded and spacially restricted situation. The situation, as far as I can determine, is a bit analogous to the elements that go into a tsunami, strangely enough. That is, a huge and extremely powerful force (in the case of crowds, the moving people; in the case of tsunamis, the moving water) is initially spread out horizontally. Then, some sort of blockage impedes that horizontal movement and converts it, at least partially, into a vertical one.' (ITM, Neo-Neocon)

"Pakistan has decided to engage Israel." Via Roger Simon, encouraging news about potential Israel-Pakistan relations: 'Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said that ''Pakistan attaches great importance to Israel ending its occupation of Gaza. Pakistan has therefore decided to engage Israel.''" The announcement comes at a meeting of foreign ministers in Istanbul; Turkey is one of four Muslim countries (with Jordan, Egypt, and Mauritania) enjoying diplomatic relations with Israel. (IHT via Roger L. Simon)

"There is no button on a typewriter which will lose your document."

Typewriters. Even if they won't do a superscript "th" for you, there's lots to love about them. Thanks to Barney's Bendblog for passing this on. Go visit Blue Moon Camera and Machine and leave your digital angst behind.

Morning Report: August 28, 2005

Gunman shoots, wounds judge in Iran. A gunman shot and wounded Iranian judge Mohammad Reza Aghazadeh, according to a Reuters article posted at Regime Change Iran: ' A gunman has shot an Iranian judge in the eye and hand outside his Tehran home, seriously wounding him, the justice minister said on Sunday. The official IRNA news agency said Mohammad Reza Aghazadeh had been handling cases involving large land transactions near Karaj, an industrial satellite city to the west of Tehran. "He is now in surgery," Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad told reporters. "I hope God helps us keep him alive". Aghazadeh is the second judge to be shot this month. Hassan Moghaddas, a judge who sentenced several reformist dissidents to jail, was shot dead in his car on August 2.' (Reuters via RCI)

Drone crashes in Iran. Also via Regime Change Iran, a drone aircraft has crashed in Iran: 'An unmanned single-engined plane has crashed in a mountainous area of western Iran and the wreckage has been recovered by the Iranian armed forces. It was not clear if the plane was Iranian or foreign, although the influential Kayhan newspaper pointed out that "usually these sort of planes are used for spying on other countries". The reports quoted Ali Asgar Ahmadi, deputy head of security in the interior ministry, as saying the plane went down on Thursday in the Alashtar mountains near the city of Khorramabad, the capital of Lorestan province, 350 kilometres (220 miles) southwest of Tehran. The hardline Kayhan newspaper said that as soon as the plane crashed, police sealed off the area -- just 150 kilometres from the border with Iraq -- and "a group of experts from Kermanshahr airbase went to examine the fuselage". (AFP via RCI)

Iraq constitution update. CNN reports that the Iraqi Constitutional Committee has signed Iraq's draft constitution: 'The Iraqi constitutional committee signed off on a draft of a constitution Sunday after making some minor amendments, a committee spokesman said. The draft was signed by the committee and submitted to the Transitional National Assembly on Sunday. It was not put to a vote in the assembly in which the Shiite-Kurdish bloc has an overwhelming majority.' Iraq the model has a running commentary on Iraq's constitution: 'Montasir Al-Imara (Assembly member) confirmed that voting on the draft will take place in the coming few hours but also said "There are 153 clauses in the draft and naturally these clauses won't satisfy all Sunnis as Sunnis or all Kurds as Kurds but it's a project for a nation that looks at everyone's interests. The draft concentrated on equality among all Iraqis and there will be no 2nd degree citizens". ... Hussein Falluji (Sunni CDC member) told Al-Arabiya TV that the committee of the "marginalized" (in reference to the Sunni politicians) is holding a separate meeting right now for the purpose of preparing an announcemnet to clarify the "challenges and pressures" they were subjected to:

We did not have sectarian or partisan demands; all we care about is the unity of Iraq...we're arranging for a large campaign now to tell the people the truth about what happened. After all, it's all up to the people to decide since the people are the source of authority and sovereignty. All we asked for was to be given more time because we were expected to deal with all of Iraq's chronic problems in a matter of only two months!

We've got nothing to do now but to look forward to the next step; that is the referendum.
Humam Hammodi made a short introductory speech where he pointed out that this constittution is "not a holy text" and that amendmendts can follow in the future.

A representatives of each political, ethnic, religious faction will be reading a part of the draft in front of the National Assembly. ...' (ITM)

"A Moving Testament"

"I’m sure that all of you are by now familiar with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey, her son who was killed in Iraq last year, and her vigil outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. Her story has moved the hearts of millions just as it has angered the neocon spinmeisters who pushed for this war. Though she has hesitated and backpedaled more than once, she has brought out into public view the one flaming truth that the Jewish-controlled left and Jewish-controlled right are desperate to conceal: that her son, and all the other Americans being brought back home in body bags, died for Israel, not America.

Whatever mistakes Cindy Sheehan has made or will make, and whatever defects in her understanding, her story is a moving testament to the horrible injustice and irreparable harm done to our people by the Jewish supremacists."
- The National Vanguard; link at Little Green Footballs

Not Pioneers but Pawns

Michael Totten has some reflections on the Israeli settlers evacuated from Gaza, and he quotes Leon Wieseltier's TNR article at length. Michael compares and contrasts the twin irredentisms of Greater Palestine and Greater Israel. Money quote from Totten:

In a perfect world, both “greater” movement would be defeated simultaneously. But the world is far from perfect, as it always has been, and Palestinian society is more dysfunctional and corrupt than Israeli society. So the Greater Israel movement is being defeated before the Greater Palestine movement, if only because the intifada has been largely walled off from Israel proper.

Money quote from Wieseltier:

These settlers were not pioneers, they were pawns--the eager and fervid pawns of various Israeli governments acting on a grandiose geopolitical scheme whose futility has finally become apparent to a majority of the citizens of Israel. For a few decades the settlers seemed to be winning, and now, at least in Gaza, they have lost. That is all.

Unfortunately, Judaism is not devoid of the kind of "magical" thinking Wieseltier describes: If only enough Jews would keep the Sabbath, or live in the Land of Israel, or recite the right scriptural verses, then the Almighty would be compelled to bring in the Messianic Era - so the thinking goes. But there are also many devoutly religious Jews who reject these notions, and who do not believe that the mundane laws of cause and effect will be so lightly set aside. History seems to favor the Muggles.

Go read Michael's post at the link.

Basrawis Rock!

So says Queen Amidela, and Fayrouz concurs, in this post on clashes between Badr brigades and Sadr militia. A pox on both their houses, says Fay. On the darker side, QA reports on power outages in Basra. This is no joke, especially in the summer.

During the previous regime, we accused the government of deliberately wasting the electricity or not providing it to us. Why? Well, we knew that Saddam hated us. He called the three governorates -- Basrah, Nassriyah and Ammara -- "the black governorates" because of the 1991 incidents. Saddam is gone. What's happening now? The answer is it's worse, much more worse.

For the last 12 months, we've had electricity for 12 hours per day. For the last three weeks, we haven't had electricity at all. Is the government deliberately doing this? I say they are because there is a lot of aid coming from the coalition countries. God knows where this aid is going.

Read the full post to find out how Allawi lost the Basra vote.

Rebuilding the Spirit

Mino 19 at Friends of Democracy has some thoughts about rebuilding the Iraqi individual:

... Administrative and financial corruption is probably the most dangerous. It is obvious that corruption was the natural result of a devilish seed planted by the former regime. It was cleverly and deliberately watered later under the rule of civil administrator Paul Bremer, and it finally gave its fruits under Allawi's interim government. New thieves from abroad were imposed on the government, many of whom were experts not only in robbery but in creating an atmosphere of corruption to encourage others from inside and from abroad to plunder the country's riches.
Many of those expatriates became prominent leaders and officials as if Iraq were devoid of qualified honorable individuals from inside. This begs the question: when will the right person ever fill the right place in Iraq? One who will truly serve the people instead of those who seek power and positions for their own personal gain?
I have to say here that the reconstruction of the Iraqi psyche is far more important and urgent than the reconstruction of our infrastructure. What use is a prosperous country when it is governed by sick, greedy individuals looking for their own interests?
You can treat this as a call to return to our timeless, noble values and morals such as altruism, sacrifice for the sake of others, and other sacred values which have disappeared and are almost extinct in the new Iraq which is full of empty slogans such as transparency, accountability and democracy. ...

Read the full post at the link.

I hate being right ...

... about stuff like this. The other day I compared the anti-war moonbats to Fred Phelps. Well, take a look at this:

Fred Phelps gang protests at soldiers' funerals:

Members of a church say God is punishing American soldiers for defending a country that harbors gays, and they brought their anti-gay message to the funerals Saturday of two Tennessee soldiers killed in Iraq.

The church members were met with scorn from local residents. They chased the church members cars’ down a highway, waving flags and screaming “God bless America.”

“My husband is over there, so I’m here to show my support,” 41-year-old Connie Ditmore said as she waved and American flag and as tears came to her eyes. “To do this at a funeral is disrespectful of a family, no matter what your beliefs are.”

They're right in step with these left-wing creeps protesting at the Walter Reed military hospital:

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton."

The anti-war demonstrators, who obtain their protest permits from the Washington, D.C., police department, position themselves directly in front of the main entrance to the Army Medical Center, which is located in northwest D.C., about five miles from the White House.

Among the props used by the protesters are mock caskets, lined up on the sidewalk to represent the death toll in Iraq.

Code Pink Women for Peace, one of the groups backing anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas, organizes the protests at Walter Reed as well.

Gay Patriot weighs in on Fred Phelps and Cindy Sheehan:

They are now inextricably linked together as radical nutcases masquerading as anti-war protestors but instead spouting similar deceitful, misleading, anti-American statements that will probably be used in an upcoming al-Qaeda recruiting video.

Read GP's whole post at the link.

New to Blogroll: Chantel

A fiery red-head [or fill in your own favorite redhead sterotype] talks about the life and times of Chantel. She's an amazing woman with incredible tales to tell. (Oh, and she's also an old pal from work.) Go check out her blog. (Hat tip: OrBlogs.)

Morning Report: August 26, 2005

Norway rated best place to live. According to news sources, the UN Development program (UNDP) rates Norway the best place to live for the fifth year in a row. 'Rich from North Sea oil and with a generous welfare state, Norway has led the world ranking since it ousted Canada from top spot in 2001. The annual list ranks countries by an index combining wealth, education and life expectancy.' (MSNBC)

Iran news roundup. An Iran Focus item posted at Free Iran highlights a ban on "Music Day", the brothers Mohsen and Parviz Esmaeili, street children in Tehran, and other issues: 'Iran’s Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, banned newspapers from declaring any day of the year as “Music Day”. Hard-liners consider music as un-Islamic. ... President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen two ultra-Islamist brothers for two key government posts. Mohsen Esmaeili, a young jurist on the powerful Guardian Council, has been earmarked to become cabinet secretary and government spokesman. His brother, Parviz Esmaeili, will be the new head of Iran’s official news agency, IRNA. ... Tehran’s chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi announced that a new wave of crackdown would commence to root out “troublemakers”. The hard-line daily Kayhan earlier quoted Mortazavi as saying, “There are various methods to ensure public security and peace. Combating troublemakers is an important such method”. ... The semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami earlier quoted the director of the Social Ailments branch of the Tehran Mayor’s Office as saying that his organisation had rounded up 14,205 homeless children from the streets of Tehran over the past year. Oil-rich Iran has an estimated 100,000 street children.' (Iran Focus via Free Iran)

Equal rights, equal responsibilities. An AP item at the Washington Blade explores a California Supreme Court ruling on lesbian and gay couples: 'Same-sex couples who raise children are lawful parents and must provide for them if they break up, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The precedent-setting decision puts former gay and lesbian couples on equal ground with unmarried heterosexual couples who break up and marks the latest decision by the court recognizing rights of same-sex couples.' (Washington Blade)

In brief. Kat at The Middle Ground reflects on the quiet majority; Sam at Hammorabi has an analysis of the silent war between Syria and America; Jane at Armies of Liberation blasts the Yemen regime's campaign of intimidation against Jamal Amer; and Imshin has a moving piece on the family of an innocent man named Osama who was murdered by a terrorist named ... well, just go read the article. (various)

Michael Yon: Gates of Fire

If you haven't already, please go read this extraordinary post from Michael Yon. After Ruiz is killed, Lieutenant Colonel Kurilla gets up close and personal with the terrorists (at the expense of his watch), and journalist Yon gets in some amazing shots ... not all of them with a camera. Read it all at the link.