OPEC is warning that Iran, home of possibly real, as well as most assuredly recycled and photoshopped missile tests, should not be attacked by the US or Israel. Prices would go “unlimited.” IHT:

“We really cannot replace Iran’s production — it’s not feasible to replace it,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, said…Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, produces about 4 million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels. The country has been locked in a lengthy dispute with Western countries over its nuclear ambitions.

In recent weeks, the price of oil has risen higher on speculation that Israel could be preparing to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The saber-rattling intensified this week with missile tests by Iran. That has further shaken oil markets because of concerns that any conflict with Iran could disrupt oil shipments from the Gulf region.

“The prices would go unlimited,” Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. “I can’t give you a number.” Analysts said the timing of Badri’s remarks was noteworthy, given that the idea of an attack on Iran has been around for years.

As is usual these days, oil prices went up $5.60 immediately upon Iran’s announcing that it had launched a few more missiles. So what’s going on? Is this about oil prices and market manipulation by OPEC? Is Iran sabre-rattling because things are going well in Iraq, and it would like to provoke some action that would help it destabilize that country? Is the bluster in service of an attempt to derail the “unavoidable” Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Or is there some obvious rationale that we are just missing?

We note that Mr. Ahmadinejad was helpful as ever in clarifying the situation. His comments seem from outer space lately. On one day he repeats he periodic threats to destroy Israel, which will “disappear off the geographical scene.” The next moment, the whole thing is a joke to him: “very funny show…These type of wars are considered as a funny joke.” And then the Iranian president starts claiming a fan club among US Generals: “Their first request was to have their picture taken with me…This official told me he holds a special place for me in his heart and said he had postponed his holidays in the United States to be able to meet me.”

Of course Mr. Ahmadinejad may be insane (he at least marches to the beat of a very different and bellicose drummer). But the real insanity is that over the last thirty years, the US government and corporations have permitted this nation to become 70% dependent on imports of its most vital economic and warmaking commodity. That is unilateral disarmament. Who is more nuts, him or us?

It is always interesting to watch how the MSM shape their political coverage in ways great and small to the advantage of their chosen candidate. Often the most important aspect of the coverage is what is left out of a news story or an editorial. Here are a couple of examples in which a negative was left out of a piece favorable to Senator Obama and a positive was omitted from one on Senator McCain.

The Washington Post carries a story called “Obama Addresses His Faith — Senator Describes Spiritual Journey.” Guess what name does not appear in that piece.

CNN has a story called “McCain Truth Squad defender was Swift Boat Vet member,” which is about Bud Day. It shows a still from what it calls an “attack ad” in which Day appeared (watch the “attack ad” and judge for yourself). It fails to mention a few of the more important facts about Day. (HT: Powerline)

The same media that so loved the maverick John McCain has found their candidate for November and it is not the Arizona Senator. In 2004 they said their coverage was worth 15 points to the Democratic ticket; no doubt they are aiming higher than that this year.

The Democratic presidential candidate spoke about Osama bin Laden:

“First of all, I think there is an executive order out on Osama bin Laden’s head…And if I’m president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive…What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism”.

So what does this mean? How would it be possible to kill Osama bin Laden without his supporters calling him a martyr? Are we missing something? Or is Obama saying that he wants to capture Osama alive, to put him on trial and give him a jail sentence? Does Obama intend to repeal the existing executive order with the intent of not making Osama a martyr? Or is Obama deliberately trying to sound obscure? Why?

Azadeh Moaveni is a reporter covering Iran for Time magazine. She went back for a visit recently, and found that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is apparently held in low esteem by his countrymen. WaPo:

On a recent afternoon, while riding a rickety bus down Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran’s main thoroughfare, I overheard two women discussing the grim state of Iranian politics. One of them had reached a rather desperate conclusion. “Let the Americans come,” she said loudly. “Let them sort things out for us once and for all.” Everyone in the women’s section of the bus absorbed this casually, and her friend nodded in assent…

I used to hear similarly pro-American sentiments frequently back in 2001, when Iranians’ romance with the United States was at its most ardent. A poll conducted that same year found that 74 percent of Iranians supported restoring ties with the United States (whereupon the pollster was tossed into prison). You couldn’t attend a dinner party without hearing someone, envious of the recently liberated Afghans, ask, “When will the Americans come save us?”…

I lived in Iran until last summer and experienced all the reasons why Ahmadinejad has replaced the United States as Iranians’ top object of vexation. Under his leadership, inflation has spiked at least 20 percent…My old babysitter, for example, says she can no longer afford to feed her family red meat once a week. When I recently picked up some groceries — a sack of potatoes, some green plums, two cantaloupes and a few tomatoes — the bill came to the equivalent of $40.

Inflation has hit the real estate market particularly hard. Housing prices have surged by nearly 150 percent, according to real estate agents. For most Iranians, previously manageable rents have become tremendous burdens. On one of my first evenings back in Iran, I watched Ahmadinejad on television as he addressed Iranians from the holy city of Qom. He blamed everyone — the hostile West, a domestic “cigarette mafia” — for the economic downturn, just as he had previously claimed that a “housing mafia” was driving up real estate prices. Many Iranians who initially believed this kind of conspiracy talk now admit that the president’s policies and obstinacy are actually at fault…

there are the interminable lines that have accompanied the government’s new gas-rationing scheme. During the busy early evening, it takes an hour to fill up on gas, and policemen are required to direct the snarled traffic. Ahmadinejad has insinuated that the unpopular plan was a precaution against possible Western sanctions, but most people I spoke with considered it another instance of his administration’s mismanagement…

Ahmadinejad has also resurrected unpopular invasions into Iranians’ private lives. On the second day of my trip, newspapers announced that police would begin raiding office buildings and businesses to ensure that women were wearing proper Islamic dress. One of my girlfriends, an executive secretary, told me that as a precaution, her office had set up a coded warning message to be broadcast over the intercom. On the third day, police swept our street to confiscate illegal satellite dishes.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the religious-revolutionary, warlike, and self-destructive side of Iran in its current identity crisis with the modern world. Exactly what would be accomplished by the remarkably foolish idea of meeting with the man and regime that are pushing that country to a precipice?

Mark Steyn’s column on the gender bias against Senator Clinton starts out pretty funny, but moves on to very serious matters. Here are some of the funny bits:

Democratic women are feeling metaphorically battered by the Obama campaign. “Healing The Wounds Of Democrats’ Sexism,” as the Boston Globe headline put it, will not be easy. Geraldine Ferraro is among many prominent Democrat ladies putting up their own money for a study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard to determine whether Sen. Clinton’s presidential hopes fell victim to party and media sexism.

How else to explain why their gal got clobbered by a pretty boy with a resume you could print on the back of his driver’s license, a Rolodex apparently limited to neosegregationist race-baiters, campus Marxist terrorists and indicted fraudsters, and a rhetorical surefootedness that makes Dan Quayle look like Socrates.

“On this Memorial Day,” said Barack Obama last Monday, “as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes – and I see many of them in the audience here today.” Hey, why not? In Obama’s Cook County, Ill., many fallen heroes from the Spanish-American War still show up in the voting booths come November.

However, the column doesn’t stay light and breezy. It makes the serious point that the value many societies in the world place on the lives and status of women seems to be on a downward arc. “Enlightened progressives take it for granted that social progress is like technological progress – that women’s rights are like the internal combustion engine or the jet airplane: once invented they can’t be uninvented. But that’s a careless assumption.” Steyn’s demographic statistics to back up his claim are food for thought.

The US, European, and certain Middle Eastern countries have for years tried to sit down with Iran and come to agreements of various sorts, mostly without any success. Amir Taheri provides some very interesting historical context in a piece in the WSJ that should be read in its entirety:

Iran is gripped by a typical crisis of identity that afflicts most nations that pass through a revolutionary experience. The Islamic Republic does not know how to behave: as a nation-state, or as the embodiment of a revolution with universal messianic pretensions. Is it a country or a cause?

A nation-state wants concrete things such as demarcated borders, markets, access to natural resources, security, influence, and, of course, stability – all things that could be negotiated with other nation-states. A revolution, on the other hand, doesn’t want anything in particular because it wants everything.

In 1802, when Bonaparte embarked on his campaign of world conquest, the threat did not come from France as a nation-state but from the French Revolution in its Napoleonic reincarnation. In 1933, it was Germany as a cause, the Nazi cause, that threatened the world. Under communism, the Soviet Union was a cause and thus a threat. Having ceased to be a cause and re-emerged a nation-state, Russia no longer poses an existential threat to others.

The problem that the world, including the U.S., has today is not with Iran as a nation-state but with the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary cause bent on world conquest under the guidance of the “Hidden Imam.” The following statement by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme leader” of the Islamic Republic – who Mr. Obama admits has ultimate power in Iran — exposes the futility of the very talks Mr. Obama proposes: “You have nothing to say to us. We object. We do not agree to a relationship with you! We are not prepared to establish relations with powerful world devourers like you! The Iranian nation has no need of the United States, nor is the Iranian nation afraid of the United States. We . . . do not accept your behavior, your oppression and intervention in various parts of the world.”

So, how should one deal with a regime of this nature? The challenge for the U.S. and the world is finding a way to help Iran absorb its revolutionary experience, stop being a cause, and re-emerge as a nation-state.

Whenever Iran has appeared as a nation-state, others have been able to negotiate with it, occasionally with good results. In Iraq, for example, Iran has successfully negotiated a range of issues with both the Iraqi government and the U.S. Agreement has been reached on conditions under which millions of Iranians visit Iraq each year for pilgrimage. An accord has been worked out to dredge the Shatt al-Arab waterway of three decades of war debris, thus enabling both neighbors to reopen their biggest ports. Again acting as a nation-state, Iran has secured permission for its citizens to invest in Iraq.

When it comes to Iran behaving as the embodiment of a revolutionary cause, however, no agreement is possible. There will be no compromise on Iranian smuggling of weapons into Iraq. Nor will the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps agree to stop training Hezbollah-style terrorists in Shiite parts of Iraq. Iraq and its allies should not allow the mullahs of Tehran to export their sick ideology to the newly liberated country through violence and terror.

As a nation-state, Iran is not concerned with the Palestinian issue and has no reason to be Israel’s enemy. As a revolutionary cause, however, Iran must pose as Israel’s arch-foe to sell the Khomeinist regime’s claim of leadership to the Arabs.

As a nation, Iranians are among the few in the world that still like the U.S. As a revolution, however, Iran is the principal bastion of anti-Americanism. Last month, Tehran hosted an international conference titled “A World Without America.” Indeed, since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, Iran has returned to a more acute state of revolutionary hysteria. Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to truly believe the “Hidden Imam” is coming to conquer the world for his brand of Islam.

Yet another set of reasons that Senator Obama’s proposal to sit down with Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a terrible idea. Question: does Senator Obama really understand the history of the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting he refers to all the time, and does he understand the terrible consequences it led to, up to and perhaps including the origins of the Vietnam War?

Edward Luttwak in the NYT raises an interesting issue about Senator Obama, which, by and large, the media have chosen to ignore or deny. We note that this is not the only story in the NYT to address the question of Senator Obama and his family’s religious background:

it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith. As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him. His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.) It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states)…

another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing. At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House.

This matter would appear to be non-trivial. We have witnessed great intensity of feeling as to what constitutes justice in the situations of other apostates, and the situation of the President would appear to be a special and highly visible case. Criminalizing apostasy ought itself to be a crime, but that, unfortunately, lies far in the future.

UPDATE: Melanie Phillips has quite a bit more to say on this and related topics.

Lawyer and Powerline member Scott Johnson makes Minnesota Representative and former teacher Mindy Greiling look like a nitwit in her effort to get Star Tribune metro columnist Katherine Kersten fired. It’s a very enjoyable read, and ultimately it’s about a very serious matter.

Senator Obama criticized Senator Clinton’s position on attacking Iran in the wake of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. He did so on on MTP, according to AP:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said April 22 in an interview with ABC. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”…On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Obama said: “It’s not the language we need right now, and I think it’s language reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber rattling and tough talk and in the meantime have made a series strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran.”

No wonder Hamas endorsed this fellow.

It’s hard to say anything particularly new about the Obama / Wright controversy. For the Senator’s opponents, it looks at this point like a gift that will keep on giving, perhaps all the way to November. First the Senator refused to disown Wright, then all of a sudden he discovered that he really, really dislikes the man, and so on. Despite the claims of Senator Obama and his wife that people are tired of hearing about this strange preacher and his strange opinions, the topic continues to fascinate many in America (and if Americans were able to tire of Reverend Wright in 45 days, how come it took the Obama family 20 years to do so?). Charles Krauthammer has a good summary of where things stand:

“I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother.” — Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18. Guess it’s time to disown Granny, if Obama’s famous Philadelphia “race” speech is to be believed.

Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it “should be required reading in classrooms across the country.” College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews. Apparently there’s been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative…

Wright’s latest comments — Obama cited three in particular — were so shockingly “divisive and destructive” that he had to renounce the man, not just the words. What were Obama’s three citations? Wright’s claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American “terrorism.” But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago…

Obama’s turning surprise about Wright into something to be counted against whites — one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia — now stands discredited by Obama’s own admission of surprise. But Obama’s liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation…

This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a “new politics,” rising above the old Washington ways of expediency. It’s hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be “contextualized”…

For the reasons stated in Krauthammer’s last paragraph and others, it is awfully hard to imagine Senator Obama winning in the general election. Of course there will be forceful condemnation from the elite media any time the Senator’s opponents mention Reverend Wright as the fall rolls along, but Jeremiah Wright just might have some new things to say later this year. As has been reported, Reverend Wright may have an agenda of his own (repaying Obama for his “nonsense and betrayal“) — and he has forcefully shown that, at least so far, he will not silenced.

Will the media be able to ignore the Reverend if he has some further interesting things to say about himself and the Senator in September or October, or are we possibly watching a slow motion train wreck?

It used to be that the rain in Spain stayed mainly in the plain. But that’s all different now thanks to America’s favorite wacky reverend. Gerard Van der Leun explains the enigmatic title above. Also, Michelle Malkin asks a variant of the question: what is the sound of one hand clapping? Ace has more.

For an academic deconstruction of the rantings of Jeremiah Wright, see this article by Heather MacDonald.

The Washington Post has an op-ed from Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founder of Hamas. It contains the following clarifying statement, just in case you harbored any doubt about the group’s objectives:

A “peace process” with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees.

The op-ed is unusual for a number of reasons. One of these is that it is the subject of a denunciation in an editorial in the Post the same day. The Post says, referring to Jimmy Carter, but in a way, also to itself: “it is one thing to communicate pragmatically, and quite another to publicly and unconditionally grant recognition and political sanction to a leader or a group that advocates terrorism, mass murder or the extinction of another state. That is what Mr. Carter is doing by lending what is left of his prestige to an avowed terrorist such as Khaled Meshal — or Mahmoud al-Zahar.” But isn’t that what the Post just did too? HT: LGF

The AP reports on some of the interchanges between the Democratic contenders for President during the debate yesterday:

In a 90-minute debate, both rivals pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000, and said they would respond forcefully if Iran obtains nuclear weapons and uses them against Israel. “An attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation by the United States,” said Clinton. Obama said, “The U.S. would take appropriate action.”

Senator Clinton’s answer seems clear enough. But what about Senator Obama? What would constitute “appropriate action”? Food for thought, perhaps, given some of Senator Obama’s support from Hamas.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whom we’ve noted with great approval in the past, has spoken out again:

Sistani spoke through Jalal el Din al Saghier, a senior leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a rival political party to the Sadrist movement. Saghier was clear that Sistani did not sanction the Mahdi Army and called for it to disarm. “Sistani has a clear opinion in this regard; the law is the only authority in the country,” Saghier told Voices of Iraq, indicating Sistani supports Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and the government in the effort to sideline the Mahdi Army. “Sistani asked the Mahdi army to give in weapons to the government.”

Wretchard has more.

Juan Williams has a poignant tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and contrasts him with Senator Obama:

Martin Luther King Jr. died at age 39; today, the 40th anniversary of his death, is the first time he has been gone longer than he lived. Figures such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have tried to claim his place on the American stage. But at most they have achieved fame and wealth. What separated King from any would-be successor was his moral authority. He towered above the high walls of racial suspicion by speaking truth to all sides…

Mr. Obama’s major speech on race last month was forced from him only after a political crisis erupted: It became widely known that he’d sat for 20 years in the pews of a church where Rev. Jeremiah Wright lashed out at white people. The minister cursed America as worthy of damnation, made lewd suggestions about the nature of President Clinton’s relationship with black voters, and embraced the paranoid idea that the white government was spreading AIDS among black people.

Here is where the racial tension at the heart of Mr. Obama’s campaign flared into view. He either shared these beliefs or, lacking good judgment, decided it politically expedient for an ambitious young black politician trying to prove his solidarity with all things black, to be associated with these rants. His judgment and leadership on the critical issue of race is in question.

While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.

When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming “ourselves with dignity and self-respect.” He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from “assuming primary responsibility” for achieving “first class citizenship.”…

as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to transcend racial arguments and transform the world.

He has stopped all mention of government’s inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America. And he chooses not to confront the poisonous “thug life” culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.

At the end of the piece Williams says this about Obama’s remaining in the church of Jeremiah Wright: “What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church.”

Steven Erlanger has a rather remarkable piece in the NYT that illustrates well the intractability and multi-generational nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict:

In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew. “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.” At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the “Crusaders,” or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war…

“If you take a sample on Friday, you’re bound to hear incitement against the Jews in the prayers and the imam’s sermon,” said Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University here. “He uses verses from the Koran to say how the Jews were the enemies of the prophet and didn’t keep their promises to the prophet 1,400 years ago.” Mr. Abusada is a Muslim and political independent. “You have young people, and everyone has to listen to the imam whether you believe him or not,” he said. “By saying the same thing over and over, you find a lot of people believing it, especially when he cites the Koran or hadith,” the sayings of the prophet…

in a column in the weekly Al Risalah, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” “The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting retribution for what they have done,” Mr. Astal wrote on March 13. “But the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of burning in this world, before the great punishment” of hell? Many religious leaders believe so, he said, adding, “Therefore we are sure that the holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.” At the end, Mr. Marcus points out, Mr. Astal switches from “harik,” the ordinary word for burning, to “mahraka,” normally used to connote the Holocaust…

children’s program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” has become infamous for its puppet characters — a kind of Mickey Mouse, a bee and a rabbit — who speak, like Assud the rabbit, of conquering the Jews to the young hostess, Saraa Barhoum, 11. “We will liberate Al Aksa mosque from the Zionists’ filth,” Assud said recently. “We will liberate Jaffa and Acre,” cities now in Israel proper. “We will liberate the whole homeland.”

The mouse, Farfour, was murdered by an Israeli interrogator and replaced by Nahoul, the bee, who died “a martyr’s death” from lack of health care because of Gaza’s closed borders. He has been supplanted by Assud, the rabbit, who vows “to get rid of the Jews, God willing, and I will eat them up, God willing.”

When Assud first made his appearance, he said to Saraa: “We are all martyrdom-seekers, are we not, Saraa?” She responded: “Of course we are. We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland. We will sacrifice our souls and everything we own for the homeland.”…

The Prophet Muhammad made a temporary hudna, or truce, with the Jews about 1,400 years ago, so Hamas allows the idea. But no one in Hamas says he would make a peace treaty with Israel or permanently give up any part of British Mandate Palestine. “They talk of hudna, not of peace or reconciliation with Israel,” said Mr. Abusada, the political scientist. “They believe over time they will be strong enough to liberate all historic Palestine.”…

The chairman of the Palestinian Scholars League, and a Hamas legislator, Mr. Abu Ras is popularly called “Hamas’s mufti,” because he is ready to give religious sanction to Hamas political structures. Last month, he criticized Egypt for closing the Gaza border at Israel’s request. He complained, “We are besieged by the sons of Arabism and Islam, as well as by the brothers of apes and pigs.”…

“This is an open war with Israel, with each side trying to press the other,” he said. A war? “If it’s not a war, what is it?” he asked. Then he spoke of his son, who tried to volunteer to fight the Israelis at 17. “I convinced him to wait, he had no weapon, until 20,” Mr. Abu Ras said. “Now he’s a member of Qassam,” the Hamas military wing, “and an example for young people.”

Erlanger notes that “incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 ‘road map’ peace plan.” Doesn’t seem to be working out that way. (More on the debate regarding the road map here.)

Finally, we were surprised to learn — perhaps we shouldn’t have been — that Erlanger’s article appeared four months after his transfer from Jerusalem to Paris. It’s hard not to be reminded of Eason Jordan.

J. Scott Carpenter of Harvard has some thoughtful comments on the Fitna controversy and the related topics of apostasy and its punishments:

in an unprecedented ruling by Egypt’s highest administrative court, the court determined that a group of Coptic Christians who had converted to Islam could have their re-conversion officially recognized. This was proclaimed by the New York Times as something of a triumph to be celebrated: “Egyptian Court Allows Return to Christianity,” it trumpeted.

Although a fairly radical step for Egypt, it was not a blossoming of religious freedom. Agreeing with the lower court that Islam does not envision conversion from Islam to “a less complete religion,” the court required an asterisk of sorts be placed on the returning Christians’ national ID cards. The cards will have added to them the brief phrase: “adopted Islam for a brief period” — marking their bearers as apostates and possibly for death.

In May of last year, Habib al-Adly, Egypt’s Minister of Interior, wrote a memo urging the blanket rejection of all re-conversions to Christianity. Al-Adly insisted that Islam is the state religion, meaning that any Muslim man who abandons his faith should be killed. Happily this was not the case for women. A Muslim woman, he wrote, “should only be imprisoned and beaten every three days until she returns to Islam.”

What is ironic about this is that al-Adly is also charged with protecting the Egyptian state from the purported scourge of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Punishing apostasy is a form of psychological torture that forces an unbeliever to live a hidden intellectual and spiritual life. It should be a crime itself to impose any penalties for apostasy, let alone death or beatings. However, achieving consensus on this would appear to lie a number of generations in the future.

We noted the other day the grotesque rantings of the “uncle” of one of the leading Presidential candidates during their close relationship of two decades. Today we were reminded by Mona Charen of another, more casual, relationship of Senator Obama, a certain William Ayers. Though this is old news, we looked in on an article in the NYT about this fellow that appeared on September 11, 2001:

No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives…”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970’s as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago…

In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ”Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach.”…

Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight — antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ”conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.” Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara’s picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century…

Even today, he finds ”a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,” he writes.

Swell fellow, this Ayers. Of passing interest perhaps is that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted a critical introductory event in 1995 for the current Senator from Illinois, and that Ayers and Obama served on a board together after that for a few years. Ayers also is a contributor to Obama. Hmmm. Upon further reflection, we’re pretty sure that this relationship of Senator Obama means nothing at all. After all, his relationship with Tony Rezko meant nothing. Obama only received an unsolicited job offer from Rezko in 1990. Indeed, they only had lunch “once or twice a year,” Obama only got $168,000 from Rezko and his circle, and Obama’s accepting of the essentially free backyard from Rezko was a “mistake” that was nonetheless “handled ethically.” So we’re pretty sure that neither the Ayers nor Rezko situations require any further scrutiny. (Nor does the strange case of the earmarks and the raise — nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen.)

The ultimate proof that these relationships obviously meant nothing at all is that Senator Obama apparently pays little or no attention to what his associates think or say. After all, though Pastor Wright was Obama’s “spiritual mentor” of 20 years who provided not only the title of one of his books but some of the content of his 2004 DNC speech, Senator Obama never heard of the outrageous things he was saying over the course of their long relationship and the hundreds of sermons he attended. As Obama wrote: “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.”

Evidently, Senator Obama hasn’t gone to his church’s bookstore to see the readily available DVD’s, or even read the autobiography that Obama himself wrote or the article in last April’s NYT for which the Senator himself was interviewed. (Apparently, a sermon full of profanity and references to “Bush administration bullshit” does not count as sufficiently offensive, since Senator Obama was seen at one of those.) NYT:

Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy…He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views…[Wright added: “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”]…

Mr. Wright issued a “War on Iraq I.Q. Test,” with questions like, “Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.?”…Mr. Wright’s political statements may be more controversial than his theological ones. He has said that Zionism has an element of “white racism.”…On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later he wrote that the attacks had proved that “people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns.”…

Mr. Obama says…He was not at Trinity the day Mr. Wright delivered his remarks shortly after the attacks…

Curious. Many Americans, even those who don’t go to church regularly, attended services on September 16, 2001, and in the weeks thereafter. Apparently Senator Obama is just never around when his supporters are doing or saying outrageous things.

We learned a lot today about the “US of KKK A“. And about how America invented AIDS. And about how the song should not be God Bless America but God Damn America. And about how FDR knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor but let it happen. And about certain nasty words that Senator Clinton has never been called. And far worse as well. Yes, it really is that bad. And we learned it all in church! Hmmm.

We never heard such things in church before. We must have gone to the wrong Sunday School. Speaking of that, would it be considered child abuse to put the kids through sermons of this sort? Does such a church deserve a $22,500 donation from a presidential candidate? What does it say that he attended sermons by this fellow since 1988 or 1990? VDH also has some very pertinent comments on Reverend Wright and Senator Obama.

Question: if this chap were your “uncle“, would you sit next to him at dinner or lock him in the attic?

UPDATE

Spengler explains elements of the strange theology at work in this case. Excerpt:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

This seems as weird as the idea of President Tom Cruise.

This is the 50th anniversary of the hula hoop fad that swept America in 1958. We seem to have a new version of the same phenomenon today in the Obama craze that has gripped the media and a good chunk of the populace. John Dickerson, Mark Steyn, and Tom Maguire contribute a few more stories and quips in the Ehrenreich genre of ethereal unreality about America’s current instant messiah, King of Kings, and Man of Steel who will save the planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men:

Barack Obama just seems to get cooler and cooler. He’s the most popular topic on the New York Times topics page…Internet widgets allow you to see what great thing Barack Obama has done for you…on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors…heard one woman joke to another: “Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?” To which the other replied: “Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?”…

Many spiritually advanced people I know…identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul…

John Lewis, the venerable civil rights hero and congressman, put words to this feeling recently. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” he said, suggesting that he might switch his superdelegate vote from Hillary Clinton to Obama. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”…On Facebook, people write about dreams featuring Obama. There is only one correct reaction to the will.i.am “Yes We Can” video and that is to start chanting along…

There was the woman in New Hampshire who compared him with Christ. There was Maria Shriver’s comparison of the candidate with the state of California, with the rhetorical fervor usually seen only after a preacher shouts, “You are healed!”…

“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”…

“Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat.”

Questions: (a) the 1958 hula hoop craze lasted two years — how long will this one last? (b) if today’s fad politician is the hula hoop, who will be the frisbee (the second fad invented by Wham-O in the late fifties)? (c) and finally, what’s the deal with all the women who faint at the Senator’s rallies and rather disturbing revival meetings — is it real or is it something else entirely? (The list of these suspicious fainting spells seems to be getting longer and longer.)