Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Jihad Watch is a web site by Robert Spencer. It has a lot of information, as well as the typical discussions that occur on a site.

He also maintains the parallel site “Dhimmi Watch.” If you don’t know that word, it is worth your time to take a look. In conjunction with Daniel Pipes’ bibliographic site (linked under International/Military), you can get yourself a pretty good education on Islam.

Americans tend to view religion through Christian spectacles. Islam is not what most of us would consider to be a pure religion. That is, Mohammed put together the Quran as a religious and governmental guide. In fundamentalist Islam, the Church and State are inseparable. In fact, they are a single entity. If they were to be separated, both would die.

Don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at these links.

ScrappleFace: U.S. to Fill Saddam Spider Hole with U.N. Resolutions
ScrappleFace is one of my BlogRoll links to the right. Always humorous, sometimes (as in this case) ourageously so.

One thing I love about blogs…humorists and satirists abound. This is my favorite!

Someone at work passed this along to me. I have no idea where it came from, originally.

I’m not big on believing everything Amnesty International offers. This one, though, is believable.

In a time when topics such as this abound, and seven men are campaigning for the nomination of their party for President, the major news outlets in this country decide to focus on only four candidates, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Kobe Bryant, and Martha Stewart. There are important things being said and done in this country. They are being ignored because they either don’t have the celebrity appeal, don’t fit someone’s ideological outlook, or are just too difficult to explain. Several times I’ve posted about how the proliferation of weblogs has helped me really see what’s happening in the world. Yes, the story is in the Washington Times. But to find it I had to stumble across a link that took me there. It is a buried story.

The first reason is most likely. Our culture adores celebrities and their trevails. We want them to be naughty, but don’t want them caught. When they are, we’re torn between wanting them punished or set free. That’s the hook our media use to keep us on point.

Me? I’d rather have a tooth extraction than listen to one more word about Michael Jackson. In an election year, it would be far better to know more about what’s going on in the world than what’s going on in his bedroom.

Sweden’s ambassador to Israel Robert Rydberg has responded, well, diplomatically: “I understand the action of Ambassador Mazel. The relations between Sweden and Israel are strong enough to get over this crisis.”

I’ve written before about diplomacy. This is simply another example. “Let’s talk nice, but you need to change your opinion. Then we can both get back to sipping champagne.”

* Is it because we don’t help build roads and day-care centers?

No, they hate us because they want to; No other reason necessary.

No matter what the US does to help other people around the world, there are some who are absolutely convinced we mean them harm. We have no record of directly causing harm, although we have done so indirectly through enabling. They don’t see any direct action on our part.

What they see daily is a miserable life. And the people who keep them in that state constantly tell them that we are to blame. And they believe it because nobody feels that their own people, who could help them, wouldn’t. They may realize their own leadership is corrupt, but that only intensifies their suspicion.

We have to remember this every time we hear a report from Iraq, Gaza, or even France.

MSNBC believes strongly in mending fences. Just today they had a report on President Bush meeting with Vincente Fox to do just that.

Of course, the obvious implication is that our President broke the fence, so he must repair it. Is there nobody else ever responsible? Is everyone else in the world right?

Not in an election year. Any leader in any other country can say anything outrageous, or do anything contrary to the best interests of this country, and our President will be held responsible. He is the one who much “reach out.”

The one basic truth is that America does not need to reach out. And everyone in the world knows this. And everyone in the world is envious. We reach out because we want to, not because we have to. And we are the only country that does.