The Anger of Compassion

Ciao, bella...

Just had to wonder who I really, truly was across the pond...

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

Who's Your Inner European?

Hmmm...so my inner European is an Italian, eh? Well, it sure could be worse. And I've been doing the Pimsleur Italian thing, anyway...looking forward to the El Paso Opera's La Boheme.

Yeah, okay. Italian it is!

Who gives a damn?

Nobody gives a damn.

Really. You don't need me to tell you this.

Nobody gives a damn about the Karen rebels in Burma, fighting against a military dictatorship since 1962, which I guess is why said military figures it can get away with using chemical weapons against the Karenni.

Nobody gives a damn that the right to self-defense has been abrogated in Britain, and in fact said right is now routinely and thoroughly regarded as a crime.

And you read that correctly: not Iran, not North Korea, not Burma.

Not Sudan, not Cuba, not Saudi Arabia.

Great Britain.

Nobody gives a damn that self-contradictory witch doctors have a large, willing audience in the United States. Think I'm going too far with that statement? Consider Hal Lindsey, who is once again predicting the imminent doom of the planet. This time, he's suggesting that, really, this time, we're just about done:

If any of this is true, then I suspect that the 111th pope will not live very long. We are just too close to the final events before Christ's return for him to reign for a long period.

Ladies and gentlemen, just to remind you, the recently-elected Pope is 78 years old. I submit that a prediction on the order of "will not live very long" isn't much of a stretch. It sure as hell isn't much of a prediction.

And according to the texts Lindsey himself allegedly venerates, he's not supposed to be looking into such things as prediction and whatnot in the first place: Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 18 told him not to, but Hal doesn't give a damn, not when he's got a point to make. Nor do those who read and consider him, nor those who publish him.

But who cares? China persecutes Christians just because they're Christians, and threatens Taiwan because it's Taiwan; Sudan enslaves and massacres people wholesale; Burma/Myanmar gasses its Karen freedom fighters; physical self-defense is illegal in Britain, where a man's home once was said to be his castle; and even in the United States, legislators and jurists can't read any meaning into "Congress shall make no law" abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right to bear arms.

Who gives a damn?

"The biggest, brainiest, blockbuster interview on the planet!"

My long-promised interview with Prodos is now up, over at The Atlasphere.

An excerpt, discussing his own former communist convictions:

The consequence of that personal struggle — that led me in and then out of communism — is that I have great patience with people who believe things that are different from me. Provided someone is honest and believes in ideas, facts, and reality, I can be friends with them.

On the other hand, it also means that I have utter contempt for the modern anti-capitalist movement. But they’re not the idealists of old. The modern “leftie” is just nihilist trash. And you can quote me on that, buddy.

A few nice surprises, too. Highly recommended reading!

Everybody's waiting for the weekend...

Jeff Jarvis makes a good point:

: There's something very wrong with your life when you start looking on Saturday as blog catch-up day.

Received Pronunciation? Not in America

Had to try this quiz, not only for its own sake but because it relates to another, longer, post I'm preparing, as well as a new set of links to go up shortly:

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

(Hat tip to Martin Lindeskog)

New Mona Lisa Home Unveiled; Globalists Object

The Mona Lisa's new home in the Louvre has been unveiled, and anti-globalization activists are reacting with dismay.

"What we're seeing is the McDonaldization of the world of fine art," said Justin H.W. Holcombe IV of Connecticut, speaking from his office in London. The spokesperson for International Disdain at Intense Overconsumption = Terrorism (IDIOT) went on, "When they charge admission at the Louvre they may as well be asking, 'You want fries with that?'"

It's globalization gone amok. A Tuscan artist paints a portrait of a Florentine woman. The painting now sits in a French museum frequented by American, Korean, and Chinese tourists. The exhibit itself is designed by a Peruvian architect, and it was paid for by a Japanese TV network. It's insane.

And don't forget: TV is an American invention.

Holcombe sniffs at the argument that these efforts result in greater access to great art for more people. "Yes, that's true, but at what cost? We're seeing the insanity of corporate globalization taking over fine culture. The Louvre is in effect a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart."

We need to pay more attention to "Think Globally, Act Locally," you know? I mean, what chance does a local artist have against McDonald's? What chance does a locally-owned museum stand against the Louvres or the Wal-Marts of the world? It's tragic. It's insane.

An example of a guy who gets paid to do this...

I know, I know, I've said it before, but...ugh.

David Brooks, on the who knows what the fuck he's really talking about, 'cause he sure as hell doesn't "success" of conservatives over liberals, in the marketplace of ideas:

In the early days of National Review, many of the senior editors didn't even speak to one another. Whittaker Chambers declared that the writings of Ayn Rand, a hero of the more libertarian right, reeked of fascism and the gas chambers. Rand called National Review "the worst and most dangerous magazine in America."

Gentle reader, from those words, would you not walk away with the idea that Whittaker Chambers and Ayn Rand were senior editors of National Review who "didn't even speak to one another?" If you did, then you are a victim of David Brooks and his lack of professionalism, as well as that of his editor at the New York Times, who did not catch that mistake and force Brooks to rewrite that paragraph. It's too bad there's no such thing as journalistic malpractice, 'cause if there were, David Brooks couldn't afford the malpractice insurance.

Oh, you may ask, and why am I so confidently attacking Brooks here? After all, who am I? I do not write for the Times, after all, nor, I'll admit, have I ever been asked. Well, I'll tell you why: because it is a simple matter of fact -- fact, not ideology -- that Ayn Rand never had anything to do with National Review, ever, let alone having been a "senior editor," or any other flavor of editor. Chambers's vitriol was expended in his notorious "review" of Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Not only that, but Rand never regarded herself as a "conservative," or as being part of any sort of conservative "movement."

So what's the value of the examples Brooks brings to bear, or of the argument he is trying to present, or of his competence in presenting either one? Why is he paid to opine as the house conservative for the New York Times? Why should anyone bother to read him?

Why indeed? You tell me.

"Suffer the little children..." -- and suffer they did

Christopher Hitchens appears to be about as much a fan of the late Pope John Paul II as I am:

But there is one detail that sticks with me. A few years ago, it seemed quite probable that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston would have to face trial for his appalling collusion in the child-rape racket that his diocese had been running. The man had knowingly reassigned dangerous and sadistic criminals to positions where they would be able to exploit the defenseless. He had withheld evidence and made himself an accomplice, before and after the fact, in the one offense that people of all faiths and of none have most united in condemning. (Since I have more than once criticized Maureen Dowd in this space, I should say now that I think she put it best of all. A church that has allowed no latitude in its teachings on masturbation, premarital sex, birth control, and divorce suddenly asks for understanding and "wiggle room" for the most revolting crime on the books.)

Anyway, Cardinal Law isn't going to face a court, now. He has fled the jurisdiction and lives in Rome, where a sinecure at the Vatican has been found for him. (Actually not that much of a sinecure: As archpriest of the Rome Basilica of St. Mary Major, he also sits on two boards supervising priestly discipline—yes!—and the appointment of diocesan bishops.) Even before this, he visited Rome on at least one occasion to discuss whether or not the church should obey American law. And it has been conclusively established that the Vatican itself—including his holiness—was a part of the coverup and obstruction of justice that allowed the child-rape scandal to continue for so long.

Read his conclusion, too, the truth of which will be ignored.

Political speech vs. commercial speech? What's to be free?

Prodos interviews Nicholas Provenzo, Chairman and CEO of The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism.

Should commercial speech be segregated into a ghetto of its own, or is the right to free speech indivisible? Think about it, and give a listen to the conversation between Prodos and Nick.

Oh, and yes, I realize that The Anger of Compassion is actually the center for the advancement of capitalism, or one of them, at least...but Nick beat me to the name, so he gets to keep it! Plus, he's providing a moral defense, and doing a damn good job of it. Check 'em both out.

Sudan, Zimbabwe Defend Human Rights

Along with Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and China.

This post from Publius, found courtesy of Glenn Reynolds, may enlighten a few...though I doubt it:

Freedom House does an annual list of the world’s most oppressive regimes. To some of us, it doesn’t come as a surprise that six of the 18 nations on the list are members of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Significantly, six of the eighteen most repressive governments–those of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe–are members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representing nearly 11 percent of the 53-member body.

Follow the links. Check out which regimes serve on the UN Commission for Human Rights, and ask yourself what Saudi Arabia or Cuba can contribute to that endeavor. Trust me, reading the list will sicken you.

It's time to wake up: the United Nations is an evil institution, and has been evil since its founding at the San Francisco meeting. Consider that Josef Stalin was an enthusiastic founding member, and his American agent, Alger Hiss, chaired that meeting, and ask yourself how it could ever have been any different.

Posted by Craig Ceely at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

We can all breathe easier now....

Sure we can:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi authorities executed three Saudi militants convicted of assassinating several officials two years ago, Saudi authorities said as this Gulf state continued its campaign to stamp out terrorism.

The three men were beheaded in public Friday in the northern Saudi city of al-Jawf where they carried out their crimes, the Interior Ministry said. After the executions, authorities displayed the executed militants in a public square outside a mosque, tying their bodies to poles on top of which were placed their heads.

Their execution marked the first time Saudi authorities announced penalties against convicted terrorists since 1996. The Saudi monarch had announced an amnesty last year promising that repenting militants will not be sentenced to death.

Yes, and the Saudi authorities themselves are known to be so...so civilized. Good to count them as alliesh, yes?

They really do die in threes, don't they...

(In that celebrities are said by today's folk wisdom to die in threes: the three, in this case, perhaps being Terri Schiavo, chicken magnate Frank Perdue, and the Pope).

Diana Hsieh is horrified by some of what she's read about John Paul II's recent suffering and death, as well she should be.

As a (just barely) recovering Catholic, I'm not an admirer of suffering and death for its own sake, nor of this pope (or of any of 'em). Nor of Mother Teresa, either. In all of this, at least Frank Perdue created value and Diana Hsieh recognizes value (to the extent that, in this post, she recognizes evil when she sees it, and she does).

And as for whether celebrities die in threes or not...well, any of the above is someone you won't accept as a celebrity, then maybe you'll accept Paul Hester, former drummer for Split Enz and Crowded House. He died this weekend, too, hanging himself in a park in Melbourne, Australia. And he left daughters behind, too. Ouch.

Don't Diss Islam...until after this next General Election

Is Great Britain likely to become the land of free speech any time soon?

I think not. But it's encouraging to note that political opportunism seems to have met the ideals of political philosophy -- at least to some extent -- as the Brits prepare for their next general election. The two won't be going to the prom together, but they may at least agree to a dance:

Controversial plans to introduce ID cards and new laws on making incitement to religious hatred a criminal offence are expected to be sacrificed to force through other key pieces of legislation before Parliament is dissolved.

"Incitement to religious hatred," of course, was widely seen throughout Britain as "don't you dare diss Islam" -- which of course it was, and was always intended to be. That's it, to use writer Ron Liddle's words: stop dissing Islam, full stop. Don't say anything against Islam, damn you. And that's what it was.

(Disclaimer: I diss Islam. Full stop. Always will. I have lived in Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, and I have read the Koran and many hadith, and I've no respect for it. I love Lebanese food and Egyptian desserts and Saudi dates, and Allah knows I've met plenty of worthy people in all three countries, but for Islam I have absolutely no respect, and I won't pretend to any.)

The battle for the Muslim vote is also expected to be thrust centre stage this week with a showdown over the provision to outlaw incitement to religious hatred, designed to protect Muslims from covert racist attacks on grounds of their faith.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, signalled it was likely to be shelved in order to avoid jeopardising the Serious and Organised Crime Bill to which it is attached, in a furious round of horsetrading to get key planks of legislation on to the statute books before Parliament rises for the election. Blaming the opposition parties for torpedoing it, he added: 'We think [the bill] should include the incitement of racial hated - we can't understand the Tories and Liberal Democrats blocking it, but if they continue to block it they can obviously prevent it going in.'

Well, cheers to the Liberal Democrats and the Tories (oh, all right, Conservative and Nationalist Party, if they prefer) for opposing this. Really: I wouldn't defend anyone who violently assaulted Muslims in the US or the UK on religious or ethnic grounds, and why would I? Why would anyone? But why single them out for protection, when then they are not generally subject to such attacks in either country? And, as I think we all know, and as public records suggest, they are not. But, gentle readers, Muslims are attacking, and fomenting attacks, on those in both countries who are viewed as enemies of Islam. Twin Towers, anyone? DC sniper case?

No, I don't think we'll see Great Britain moving from an aggressive pursuit of political correctness in favor of a free speech environment such as would be sanctioned by The Anger of Compassion. Not any time soon. But just the fact that Labour had to drop this offensive provision in order to move to an advantageous position crafted to win votes...ah well, that's good enough for an early salvo in the war for free speech.

(And on this one, last December I awarded Rowan Atkinson the title of "Free Speech Hero." He earned it.)

"The entrepreneur is basically an advocate for the future"

Prodos.com interview with Dr. Andrew Bernstein on The Swashbuckling Spirit of the Entrepreneur." The audio quality strikes me as being a bit lower than on most Prodos interviews, but the content is, as you'd expect from a Prodos interview, illuminating and exciting and satisfying.

Steps toward appreciation?

Just fun, for fans of one of the greatest thrillers of all time, on its 90th anniversary:

The Thirty-Nine Steps was written in Broadstairs, Kent, while Buchan was recuperating from a serious illness.

Members of the John Buchan Society, including two of his granddaughters, will visit the actual steps featured in his spy thriller on Sunday.

The steps are located at North Forshaw Cliffs, about a mile away from the seaside town.

The Thirty-Nine Steps was written in 1915, and became Buchan's most popular novel, introducing his famous hero, Richard Hannay.

The book has been continuously in print since its first publication and has been filmed three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935.

You can read it here, online, or buy a hardcopy version here, of The Thirty-Nine Steps and three other John Buchan novels.

PortaLinux, or UNIXPod?

Caught my eye:

Imagine recording studio-quality audio using your iPod and a regular-old microphone. Or sitting on the commuter train, playing Othello, Pong, Tetris or Asteroids. All this and more is possible when you install Linux on your 3rd generation or earlier iPod. Best of all, one soft-reset and you’re back in Apple’s iPod operating system, listening to your tunes.

It's an interesting story on using Linux -- yes, Linux -- on your iPod. Can't do it on mine, 'cause it's an iPod Mini, and what Cyrus Farivar is talking about can't be done on the 'Mini just yet. But it's a cool idea nonetheless, and it already works on older iPods.

The iPod Linux project is open source, which means new features are always in the pipe and anyone with sufficient programming background can help. For details, go to www.ipodlinux.org. The developers also maintain a blog (www.ipodlinux.org/blog) with news and updates.

Gotta go for that, admire that creativity and energy. By the way, I read Playlist, the iPod-oriented magazine in which the Farivar article appears, but I don't subscribe to it.

I'm still thinking: Wow.

Browser Notes and News

O'Reilly has released Firefox Hacks: Tips & Tools for Next-Generation Web Browsing, by Nigel McFarlane.

From Brian Burnham's review:

Firefox Hacks covers topics from basic installation of themes and extensions to cross-platform issues and even the creation of themes, extensions and other mods. Firefox Hacks isn't a user's guide. It is the most thorough and best organized collection of Firefox how-to's available.

For example, in just the first hundred pages you'll learn how to migrate profiles between platforms and versions, tear web pages apart with the DOM Inspector, detail security limitations and deploy Firefox on a network. In the next couple hundred pages you'll get into advanced topics like working with XML-RPC, SOAP and other XML technologies, developing applications in Mozilla's XUL and hacking into the core of Firefox itself modifying menus and behavior.

Sounds good to me: I'm using Firefox with Windows XP on my corporate-persona laptop, and on my iMac at Anger of Compassion World Headquarters. A MacMerc.com story on the book's release here. They point out that "[w]hile much if this book appears to be targeted at Windows users escaping the bonds of Internet Explorer, Firefox's key features are cross-platform." They also have a link to a sample chapter.

Meanwhile, we read via MacMinute News that Camino version 0.8.3 has been released.

That, I have to say, is great: I love Camino and I use it on this here iMac. In fact, I'm using Camino to post this entry right now.

Not Just What is Seen, but What is Not Seen

Henry Hazlitt's classic Economics in One Lesson is now available online. Wow!

It's available courtesy of the Foundation for Economic Education, and it's their own 1952 edition, so Hazlitt's own 1961 and 1978 updates aren't in it. That's too bad.

But so what? The lesson is timeless, as is Hazlitt's treatment of it, and FEE's generosity should be appreciated by all freedom lovers. Did I say generosity? The .pdf file is available for viewing and for download. Very cool.

In the February, 1962 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter, Robert Hessen wrote:

It is the extraordinary merit of Henry Hazlitt to have detected the central fallacy involved in most of the popular errors and to have patiently presented and refuted scores of the standard arguments against free enterprise. In Economics in One Lesson, he has written the finest primer available for students of capitalism. Clear, vigorous, logical and thoroughly engrossing, the book has richly earned its status as a classic in the literature of freedom.

Okay...The Objectivist Newsletter, now that's high praise, don't you think? Here's higher: Hazlitt and his book earn the highest marks from the entire staff at The Anger of Compassion, for explication and for refuting fallacies, and I strongly you, all four three of my readers (and everyone else), to give it a read. Quite an eye-opener, and an enjoyable read to boot.