Useful piece in today’s New York Times, detailing the abundant supply of many anti-biotics to treat anthrax other than Cipro. It exposes the agenda of Chuck Schumer, the Canadian government, the Consumer Project on Technology, et al. as having nothing whatsoever to do with combating anthrax infection today and everything to do with the attempt to cripple pharmaceutical profits (and therefore research) for the foreseeable future.
LETTERS: You weigh in on Talbot, Pollitt, and me; and some former liberals have epiphanies.
ANTHRAX AND THE CULTURE WAR: Apparently, some envelopes with white powder have been turning up at abortion clinics. I have no idea who has been sending them, whether they are hoaxes or what their provenance is. Alas, it hasn’t stopped some pro-choicers beating the drums against their opponents, and some pro-lifers taking a page out of the paranoid Muslim book and claiming that the abortion clinics could have mailed the packages to themselves! Focus on the Family reports that “Mark Crutcher, with Life Dynamics, … speculates that there are probably a few misguided persons out there who claim to be pro-life who might engage in such terrorism. He was quick to add that those people do not, however, represent the pro-life movement? Yet, Crutcher also does not discount the possibility that the mailings, which Planned Parenthood claims were very professional, might have come from within the pro-abortion community. ‘It could be that, since they’re the ones that have the most to gain from these reports, they’re the ones who are doing it,’ Crutcher said.” Oy. Can someone please stop spinning and just call the cops?
MEMO TO FORTE III: An astute reader of the Doug Jehl piece I linked to yesterday notices the opening paragraph:” Since the September attacks, Al Azhar – the revered mosque, the distinguished university, the leading voice of the Sunni Muslim establishment – has renewed with accustomed grace the roles it has played in the world of Islam for more than 1,000 years. It has sought to advise Muslims around the world that those who kill in the name of Islam are nothing more than heretics. It has sought to guide, to reassure Westerners against any clash of civilizations.” This same moderate, Western-leaning mosque and university had as its representative in New York, the Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center, the man who argued that the Jews were behind the September 11 massacre. That moderate sphere of Islam keeps getting smaller and smaller.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Before quitting the subject of freedom of expression, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.” – John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty.”
CHRISTIANITY AS A CANCER: “Like a cancerous growth, we are seeing Christians gain a foothold in the lands of the believers. The first time these crusading forces came with swords and suits of armor, this time they arrive with credit cards and million-dollar aid cheques. Employing Faustian machinations, these human shayateen are converting many Muslims to their false religion and serving to inject a virulent poison into the stream of the Ummah. The Muslim world is under attack.” – Nida’Ul Islam, a magazine published by the Islamic Youth Movement in Australia.
GIBBON ON MOHAMMED: A reader sends in the following passage from Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The facts of Mohammed’s life are subject to dispute, but his animosity to Jews and unbelievers is not in any doubt. Gibbon is actually something of a fan of Mohammed, preferring his energy to the corrupt dynasties of his time. But the portrait here doesn’t exactly underscore the Oprah view of Islam as a religion dedicated to peace and love. Make of it what you will. (The Kainoka, the Nadhirites, and the ‘children of Koraidha” were three Jewish tribes unlucky enough to live in Medina at the time):
“Happy would it have been for [the Jews’] temporal interest, had they recognized, in the Arabian prophet, the hope of Israel and the promised Messiah. Their obstinacy converted his friendship into implacable hatred, with which he pursued that unfortunate people to the last moment of his life; and in the double character of an apostle and a conqueror, his persecution was extended to both worlds. The Kainoka dwelt at Medina under the protection of the city; he seized the occasion of an accidental tumult, and summoned them to embrace his religion, or contend with him in battle. ‘Alas!’ replied the trembling Jews, ‘we are ignorant of the use of arms, but we persevere in the faith and worship of our fathers; why wilt thou reduce us to the necessity of a just defence?’ The unequal conflict was terminated in fifteen days; and it was with extreme reluctance that Mahomet yielded to the importunity of his allies, and consented to spare the lives of the captives. But their riches were confiscated, their arms became more effectual in the hands of the Mussulmans; and a wretched colony of seven hundred exiles was driven, with their wives and children, to implore a refuge on the confines of Syria … The Jews had excited and joined the war of the [pagan] Koreish: no sooner had the nations retired from the ditch, than Mahomet, without laying aside his armor, marched on the same day to extirpate the hostile race of the children of Koraidha. After a resistance of twenty-five days, they surrendered at discretion. They trusted to the intercession of their old allies of Medina; they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity. A venerable elder, to whose judgment they appealed, pronounced the sentence of their death; seven hundred Jews were dragged in chains to the market-place of the city; they descended alive into the grave prepared for their execution and burial; and the apostle beheld with an inflexible eye the slaughter of his helpless enemies.” Not exactly turning the other cheek, huh?
The Dish 