The Dish

Vanity Fair isn’t the only outlet to have somewhat different standards for male and female nudity. Here’s  "Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe", 1863.

Deeyah, an Iranian pop-singer now in Britain and hailed as the Muslim Madonna, has a new video out. It’s a pop screed against the hideous abuse of women sanctioned by unreconstructed Islam. Of course, she’s had death threats and now has to be accompanied by bodyguards. But she’s still expressing herself. Here’s her website. Send her love.

Where’s the solidarity in the West for Muslim journalists who have stood up to Islamist terror and paid for it with their lives or jail sentences? This is an area where we don’t need government action. We need the Western media to defend their Muslim colleagues; we need stories about their sacrifice; we need protests; we need outrage. And yet the MSM is eerily silent. Tim Rutten lets them have it.

"Before entering a mosque visitors are asked to take off their shoes. This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks, don‚Äôt enter the mosque. Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don’t come to Australia," – Australian Treasurer, Peter Costello, proving that it is perfectly possible for Western leaders to defend liberal values.

Some of the earlier reports of destruction may have been exaggerated, according to the latest from Omar. Zeyad reports on the murky identity of some of the "men in black" now patrolling Iraq’s streets. Money quote:

"The Iraqi Rabita website reports an interview with a Mahdi militia leader today, quoted as saying: ‘Strange things are happening these days. It’s true that our guys often act as a bunch of spiteful, criminal thieves going on sprees of sabotage, murder and plundering. But the people who were running the act were clean young men, elegantly dressed, in modern vehicles, carrying the latest weapons, unlike our guys who are usually unkempt ruffians. No one knows where they are now.’"

I’ve been wondering that myself with respect to the Samarra mosque. A blogger remembers a previous Mosque attack with Iranian intelligence connections.

"One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," – William F. Buckley Jr. I’m still not so sure. But I await the denunciation of Bill Buckley as a liberal.

A reader, who has long been a very acute observer of world markets, sees a looming spike in oil prices that make our current troubles seem mild:

"When a successful attack is mounted on Saudi oil fields, there is no telling where the price of oil might end up, but at a minimum, the premium which has been built in to oil prices from the risk of supply interruptions, is likely to rise.

I am sending this to you as I read the newspaper reports are of an attack on the Abaqiq oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. This will not be the last attack. The Eastern province of Saudi Arabia is a Shia hotbed. Given the events in Iraq in recent days which were directed at Shia, the timing of this attack is important. Whether the Saudi security forces were able to foil this attack or not almost does not matter. If we have learned anything from what has happened in Iraq, it is that there is no shortage of suicide bombers, no end to their ingenuity and they are tenacious in achieving their objective. When suicide bombers start targeting Saudi energy infrastructure we assume there will be more attacks. My feeling is this is not in oil’s pricing structure given the immediate jump in oil prices which took place on the news. I also think it is something else to consider when assessing the aftermath of the bombing of the Golden Shrine in Iraq. The price target I have for oil later this year is $85-$95."

We have to consider the possibility that Iraq’s already depressed oil production may be halted by civil war in the near future.

Peter Berkowitz blames the Harvard president’s refusal to stand up resolutely enough for free speech, including his own. He was cashiered because he was too apologetic. Appeasement never works. They get you in the end.