Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

EU observers flee Pali checkpoint to IDF base

This is rich.

Michael Crichton's "Complexity" speech

A must-read. I can't do it justice by selective quoting.

"Creativity" in popular musi

A custodial employee in our organization had his PC loudly playing a local radio station's internet feed. He was clearly quite excited by the track playing "They" by some gal named Jem. I pointed out that the "innovative" pop song was actually a (rather lovely) vocal arrangement of Bach's prelude in F minor from WTC book 2 (BWV 881). That would have been cool, but... of course it turns out that it was actually a digital sample from a 40-year old Swingle Singers record.

(Sigh.)

Here and there

Don't miss these two posts of Dr. Horsefeathers: NYT "discovers" war is hell; and a long and detailed review of Spielberg's latest exercise in dubious moral equivalency.

Lots of good stuff at Dr. Sanity, but also some great hat tips, such as Gender warfare without glass ceilings and Victor Davis Hanson's advice to Bush on how to deal with opponents: stroke their c*cks egos.

And InsureBlog reviews a recent Oxford University Press book "One nation, uninsured" advocating a universal healthcare system, and explains taht the US already has some government-based healthcare plans (group specific, such as Medicare for senior citizens and the Veterans Administration) that look much like what national health insurance would be in a US context. And neither is something to brag about.

Universal health insurance is one of the few old liberal-left causes that I am still somewhat partial to. But frankly, the more I read about what effectively amounts to healthcare rationing in the British NHS, or about the surprising (?) coincidence between inverted population pyramids and euthanasia pressures in the Netherlands and Belgium, or the more I see of the sorry shape Israel's universal healthcare system is on --- the more willing I grow to at least listen to opponents of allegedly "universal" insurance. My own experience here is that no healthcare system is truly "universal", but that in some connections it's money that buys you preferential care, and in others it's "connections".

Finally (for now) ShrinkWrapped blogs the latest disturbing example of how immoral moral relativism can truly get: a musical that's sure to attract the NAMBLA crowd. (The position of this blog on pedophilia is well known: that the condition is nothing that cannot be permanently cured by medical treatment. Supersonic lead injections to the head or vital organs, to be specific.)

Outrage of the day

Abbas paying pensions to families of islamikaze bombers.

Academic fraud on the "right"

We have covered "left" academic frauds like Chief Shitting Bull Ward "Winston sues me for defaming his family name" Churchill at some length. Now here appears to be a "right" counterpart.

And again

Splodeydope kills five in Netanya.

Alain Finkielkraut: latest victim of the Thought Police

TechCentralStation has a piece by Nidra Poller, explaining how French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut is becoming the latest victim of the French Thought Police, for the crime of having suggested in an interview with Haaretz that just maybe the rioting youth are not just 'victims of oppression'.

Says Poller:

Here in France, where no accusation against America or Israel is too scurrilous for official dissemination and mass consumption, Finkielkraut was beaten almost senseless for developing, with utmost precaution, a thoughtful analysis of the riots. Going beyond the simplistic sociological description of ghettoized youths bursting out in frustration against discrimination and unemployment, Finkielkraut analyzes the violence as a nihilistic attack against the French Republic. He points out the dangers inherent in romanticizing the riots as the justified revolt of the wretched of the earth. And he has the courage to mention that the perpetrators of the street violence are, for the most part, black and/or Muslim…born in France but anchored to an ethno-religious identity that makes their integration well nigh impossible. He cautions against a misguided anti-racism that may become the totalitarian menace of the 21st century, as was Communism in the latter half of the 20th.

Look, everybody who's read espionage thrillers knows the expression: [to recruit a spy] "under false flag". Suppose you are an operative for country [or entity] X operating in country Y, want to recruit a resident of Y as a spy or informant, and 'inducements' such as money or threats to reveal embarrassing pictures with goats are not applicable. But you happen to know that said person is passionate about some cause for which country Z is the standard bearer, or feels some special bond with country Z. So you pass yourself off as an agent of country Z, recruit him that way, and never reveal to him that he is actually working for country X "under false flag".

Many of the so-called "anti-racists" and "pacifists" of today are actually working for causes that they would sincerely abhor working for (such as Islamist totalitarianism). But they have, as it were, been recruited under a number of "false flags" --- generally less blatantly objectionable causes that they happen to sincerely believe in.