Thursday, June 01, 2006
EYES PREDICT UNIVERSAL DEATH
According to the New York Times:
Azhar Usman, a burly American-born Muslim with a heavy black beard, says he elicits an almost universal reaction when he boards an airplane at any United States airport: conversations stop in midsentence and the look in the eyes of his fellow passengers says, “We’re all going to die!”
I get the same reaction whenever I visit the ABC.
Getting through United States airports and border crossings has grown more difficult for everyone since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But Muslim Americans say they are having a harder time than most, sometimes facing an intimidating maze of barriers, if not outright discrimination.
English and Australian journalists know the feeling. Get used to living in wartime.
The delays, humiliation and periodic roughing up have prompted some American Muslims to avoid traveling as much as possible.
Same is true—minus the alleged periodic roughing up, which is lamentable—of many non-Muslim Americans.
Many Muslim Americans fault the Department of Homeland Security and its various agencies, chiefly the Transportation Security Administration, as failing to develop an efficient system to screen travelers. In particular, they deplore the lack of a workable means for those on the federal watch list by mistake — or those whose names match that of someone on the list — to get themselves off.
The most efficient system to screen travelers would involve racial profiling. Ain’t gonna happen. By the way, “to get themselves off” shouldn’t have made it past copy editors.
A number of American Muslims similarly upset by how federal agents treated them and their families are seeking relief through the courts. About eight men with Muslim or Arab roots are joining a suit already filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union ...
Eight men. Coming up on five years since 9/11, only eight men are pursuing legal action over travel issues.
The problem has become such a part of being a Muslim American that some comedians have built routines around it.
That’s how the NYT decides when something qualifies as a problem: comedians build a routine around it. Prepare for a 15-part NYT series on airline food.
LIBERATED NATIONS COMPARED
East Timor is being forgiven like Iraq never is, writes Andrew Bolt:
Even as our soldiers guard refugees cowering in church yards, still no commentator sneers that it all shows we were crazy to liberate East Timor in 1999.
No one is saying these 900,000 East Timorese just aren’t cut out for democracy. Nor is anyone saying the toppled dictator—Indonesia’s old president Suharto in this case—at least kept the killers under control.
No, East Timor is allowed to make mistakes without having its new freedom questioned the way it is so gleefully with Iraq.
That’s because leftists supported East Timor’s liberation, about which they’ve since dodged and weaved and made up whatever story supports their lunatic world view.
(Via Don Surber and Instapundit.)
APPY DAYS
The BBC reports:
Fifty-five million years ago the North Pole was an ice-free zone with tropical temperatures, according to research.
Polar bears didn’t exist 55 million years ago. Presumably because they’d all been drowned.
An international team has been able to pin-point the changes that occurred as the Arctic transformed from green house to ice house.
Let me guess: did proto-primates sign the Kyoto Treaty?
“This time period is associated with a very enhanced green house effect,” explained Appy Sluijs, a palaeoecologist from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and the lead author on one of the papers.
“Basically, it looks like the Earth released a gigantic fart of green house gases into the atmosphere - and globally the Earth warmed by about 5C (9F).”
Big old farty earth is the ecological enemy! The enemy of itself!
Appy Sluijs points out that the data reveals that some of the climate models used to detail the Arctic’s history got things wrong, and as they are the same models that predict our future climate they may need adjusting.
Let the adjustments commence!
ENVIRO UPDATE. Al Gore has a fear of steam.
ENVIRO UPDATE II. Dave S.: “NOOOOOOOOOOO! Not the climate models! They’re infallible!”
(Via Larry T. and J.F. Beck)
TOFANGSAZAN FANGED
Amir Massoud Tofangsazan, eBay seller of a faulty laptop, possibly should have removed images of a personal nature before offloading the computer on its unhappy new owner—whose not-work-safe response is a masterpiece of internet vengeance.
(Via Andrea Harris)
MILK, COOKIES, ORGANIC YOGURT
Quote of the week:
We have lived so long with our industrially improved lives we do not remember the true face of Mother Nature. We do not understand this Mother is far from a pleasant faced Grandmother of milk and cookies and a kind word. This Mother is a bitch!
In other major environews, this global warming fantasy contains the phrase “world’s leading organic yogurt company”.
HAPPY MEAL
Mine survivors Todd Russell and Brant Webb are now in New York, where Russell—speaking on Nine news—made a point of his intention to visit Ground Zero. That’s probably two marks against the pair, whose embrace of the Great Satan and solemn desire to witness terrorism’s destructiveness will likely annoy local commentators. And this could seal the deal:
The newly-made millionaires were picked up in chauffeur-driven black BMWs and ate their meal of choice - lunch at McDonald’s.
Stand by for the backlash. Traceeee will not be impressed.
UPDATE. Among comments:
* Retread: “These guys keep getting more and more likeable: first McDonald’s, then I see they’re American Chopper and Alan Jackson fans. Can we keep them for a while?”
* mark from monroe: “God bless those gentlemen. Big Macs are on me.”
* bc: “I hope they get to see more of the U.S. than just LAX and New York City. I’m sure plenty of people would like to host the couples for an evening.”