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BOOK RECOMMENDATION

Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman. I have to warn those of a conservative bent that Berman, a self-described social-democrat, is no fan of the Bush administration but his book is a lucid explanation of the twentieth century totalitarian roots of Islamist terror and the intellectual cowardice of much of the Left in facing up to the challenge of Islamism.

My primary criticism is that while Berman has correctly identified the centrality of nihilism in Islamism and traced the antiwar Left back to the antiwar segment of the Old Left of the 1930’s who opposed getting tough with Hitler and Mussolini, Berman fails to identify the inherent nihilism that drives the antiwar position to fight anti-Terror measures and policies.

A concise argument worth reading.

WHAT’S URDU FOR “WE’RE SCREWED” ?

Is the title of a story by the Chicago Reader based primarily upon interviews with Dr. Steven Poulos of the American Institute of Bangladeshi Studies reveal that two years after 9/11 American military and intelligence agencies face critical bottlenecks in language training. According to Poulos, Pashto, the language of the Taliban, is barely taught in North America. Likewise languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Farsi, Punjabi represent about ” one percent ” of foreign languages taught in the United States according to Alex Dunkel of the Critical Languages Program of the University of Arizona.

For want of a nail, a horseshoe was lost…..

THE NOBEL COMMITTEE STRIKES A BLOW AGAINST TYRANNY

Returning to the tradition of naming fighters against totalitarian oppression like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa as winners of their prestigious prizes, the Nobel Committee has awarded the Peace Prize to a female Iranian jurist, Shirin Ebadi.

Ayatollah Khomeini must be rolling over in his grave. Increasingly it is the Iranian hardliners against the judgement of the world.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Russian President Vladmir Putin

Iraq did change some things after all it seems.

WHAT ARNOLD SHOULD DO NOW

After a richly deserved victory cigar my advice would be to revise the California Constitution so that the state can function fiscally in the event of a downturn. This might mean putting some restrictions on the power of voter initiatives (like…the one Arnold sponsored) to send the budget spiralling out of wack. It’s really the only direction that offers hope of compromise with the Democrats by appealing to their political self-interest without conceding too much on taxes