As usual a great piece by Hitch on the latest al Qaeda bombings in Turkey:
I have not yet read any article explaining how the frustrations of the oppressed Muslims of the world are alleviated by this deed, or how the wickedness of American foreign policy has brought these chickens home to roost, or how such slaughters are symptoms of “despair.” Perhaps somebody is at work on such an article and hasn’t quite finished it yet. (I have noticed, though, a slight tendency on the part of this school to shut up, at least for the time being.)
There is a vulgar reason for this reticence. In recent attacks from those gangs who have been busily fusing Saddamism with Bin Ladenism-and who didn’t start this synthesis yesterday-it has been noticeable that Saudi citizens (the week before last), or Iraqi citizens (every day, but most conspicuously in the blasting of the Red Cross compound in Baghdad), or Indonesian citizens (in the bombing of the Marriott in Jakarta in August), or Moroccan citizens have been the chief or most numerous casualties. To this, one could add the Christian Arabs whose famous restaurant in Haifa was blown up, along with its owners, on Yom Kippur. I sometimes detect a strained note in the coverage of this. Why would the jihadists be so careless, so to speak? Have they no discrimination, no tact?
I know. Any day now, the hand-wringers may even be forced to concede that there’s a teensy bit of anti-Semitism in the violent brigades now murdering people across the globe. Just not yet.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations. We had that in communist times. But now if you look at all the new rules and regulations of EU membership, layered bureaucracy is staging a comeback.” – Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, on the corruption and inanity of the European Union.
FISKING THE AMENDMENT: Well, someone had to do it.
The Dish 