Category: The Dish

This one actually had actionable weaponry, actual explosive substances, the full shebang:

The 22 chemical components recovered by police are believed to be the largest haul ever found at a house in this country. Cottage is an ex-BNP member who stood as a candidate in the Pendle Council elections in May. Mrs Christiana Buchanan, who appeared for the prosecution in Jackson’s case, alleged the pair had ‘some kind of masterplan’. She said a search of Jackson’s home had uncovered rocket launchers, chemicals, BNP literature and a nuclear biological suit.

This is far more substantial than the alleged Islamist plot to allegedly blow up several airplanes that the Bush and Blair governments hyped this summer. But this plot was by British far-rightists, the UK equivalent of Timothy McVeigh. And that’s why you haven’t heard of it. It doesn’t serve the interests of the two governments to hype it.

This is either very shrewd advance spin, or, er, true. It’s from a Gibson associate who told Nikki Finke about the looming ABC interview with the crazed anti-Semite:

"We needed someone who’d hit him hard. But she was f****** harder on him than I could imagine. I was cringing."

He thinks the Democrats are getting way too cocky this far away from the election.

"House leaders permitted homosexuals to infiltrate and manipulate the party apparatus while they publicly postured as friends of family values and traditional marriage. The facade is now in ruins," – Cliff Kincaid, of Accuracy in Media.

It’s deepening as the Christianist Family Research Council suspects a gay Republican cabal is secretly blocking the religious right agenda on Capitol Hill. (That’s when the gays take time out from molesting children and poisoning the water supply.)

Camden, London, 9 am.

A reader writes:

I have to thank you for showing me a rational conservatism. As a 24-year-old idealistic liberal, my only experience with conservatism has been today’s bigoted, overspending, corrupt bunch of cronies. While I know there’s a deep tradition behind it all – personified in the politicians of yesteryear who would today be considered wacko liberals – it is yet to be apparent to me. That conservatism seems to be dead, or at least in a long, deep slumber, and it is completely foreign to those of us just entering the political realm. We know only vitriol, from both sides. It leads one to apathy.

Second: your religion essay in last week’s Time. I became an atheist early and have yet to really question it. As an atheist, seeing the incredible hypocrisy surrounding today’s evangelicals can cause some serious feelings of disdain for the entire world of religion. But your essay reminds me of the moderate Christians, such as my own mother, who are courageous enough to question the dogma and realize that actions and inner spirituality are what matter to God. I am proud to share the responsibility of transforming this country with those individuals. A strong, guiding faith — rather than a blind, unquestioning one — is something I appreciate and even envy, and for those of you who can reconcile reason with religion, I say more power to you.

Anyone who reads my book will see, I hope, that my intent is not to criticize Christianity, but to redescribe it for people who have only known of it through the extremism of the religious right.

A young Baghdad blogger witnesses yet another sectarian murder of a family friend:

When my father returned from his work today and heard the news, he immediately went to the balcony and sat all by himself, saying nothing, looking at the sky, I was afraid to look at him, and I experienced a cold shudder of sadness and molten anger.

I do not know Tariq al-Hashimi personally or his family relatives, but I know my father, and I know the sort of people he hangs out with. In the place where I come from, a religious person meant a guy who knew his rights from his wrongs, a person you could trust, a person who could never lie or steal; my father never scolded me for my guitar-playing or forced me to wear certain things ever, and he has the sign of praying (a patch of changed skin on the forehead that results of much praying when the forehead touches the ground) on his face. The people who he hung out with were good, honest people, people you could really love, people of virtue. NOT the extremist, life-hating, vengeful caricatures Muslims have been cornered into, nor are they the pro-Baathist dictator scum Sunnis in Iraq have often been shoe-horned as.

Whenever I would go into a mosque and sit down after prayer I would feel the peace engulfing me, a calamity and understanding that becalms one outside the cyclone of life outside, the constant searching for meaning and answers … the tough-guy posturing and the struggle for bread.

But now these people are exterminated, exploited and destoryed in this meaningless Wahabi vs Rafidhi war.

Iraq was not hopeless threee years ago. It is edging toward collapse today.

I’ll be grilled on my book on the Michael Medved radio show this afternoon between 4 and 5 pm EST. Tomorrow, I’ll be on NPR’s "All Things Considered" and the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. This coming Thursday, I’ll be reading and signing books at the Barnes and Noble at 82d Street and Broadway at 7 pm. You buy one, I’ll sign it. I’ll keep posting media appearances and book signings as they come along. It’s always great to meet readers of the blog.

"If Iraq’s leaders stop squabbling and lead, and if Iraq’s soldiers and police fight resolutely for their constitutional state, we should be willing to stay "as long as it takes." But if they continue to wallow in ethnic and religious partisanship while doing as little as possible for their own country, we need to leave and let them face the consequences. Give them one more year. And that’s it," – Ralph Peters, one of the most vociferous original backers of the war in Iraq.