Month: August 2005

Discovery to land tomorrow

Discovery is waved off[*1] in two landing attempts Monday morning. Four landing opportunities on Tuesday, two in Florida, two in California.

Unstable weather—pop-up rain showers and a broken cloud deck at approximately 1,000 feet above the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility—forced flight controllers to wave-off both of today’s two landing opportunities for the space shuttle Discovery. The landing was originally scheduled for 4:47 a.m. EDT (0847 GMT).

The new NASA safety culture emerges again? Maybe . . .

UN Oil-for-food scandal chugs along

Former oil-For-Food chief Benon Sevan resigns from his position[*1] at the UN.

Benon Sevan announced his decision Sunday in a scathing letter that lambasted UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN Security Council, the United Nations’ critics, and the Independent Inquiry Committee investigating the allegations of corruption against him.

“As I predicted, a high-profile investigative body invested with absolute power would feel compelled to target someone and that someone turned out to be me,” Mr. Sevan wrote in the letter. “The charges are false, and you, who have known me for all these years, should know that they are false.”

This could get even more interesting as events unfold. It looks like Sevan will go down fighting.

Iran, Syria look to ally against U.S.

Syrian President Bashir Assad arrives in Tehran[*1] for a state visit.

“Common threats deserve the formation of a united front by Iran and Syria more than ever,” Aljazeera quoted Ahmadinejad as saying at a joint press conference with Assad.

“Boosting relations could protect the region from the threats,” he added.

The Iranian leader did not identify the source of the threats but in a commentary on the visit, Iranian state television commented: “Cooperation between the two countries is important, because the United States and Israel have invaded the region.”

Considering that these two nations are primarily responsible for the current carnage in Iraq, further cooperation between them is deeply troubling.

North Korea nuke talks break down

Multilateral talks sponsored by China to resume August 29th[*1] .

The chief North Korean delegate, Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, insisted that his country retain the right to operate nuclear reactors for electricity production as part of any agreement.

The United States has maintained North Korea should not even be allowed to maintain nuclear reactors for civilian use because it had turned a research facility at Yongbyon, near the capital, into a production center for weapons-grade plutonium after the collapse of a 1994 agreement restricting nuclear activity. Going a step further, the North Korean government announced in February that it has used the material to make nuclear weapons.

North Korea continues to blackmail the world for economic and humanitarian aid with their nuclear weapons program.

Job hiring up

Job hiring, a notoriously lagging economic indicator, is finally picking up[*1] .

The improvement in the labor market is not a surprise to Roy Krause, president of Spherion, an employment agency based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “We have more jobs and orders than people,” he says, including a surge in permanent hiring. Finding quality candidates is proving difficult, he says.

A’s 11, Royals 0

Royals put up no fight[*1] against the Oakland Athletics.

Kansas City needs to go 43-8 to finish .500, 25-26 to avoid 100 losses, 1-50 to avoid losing all of their remaining games.

On the other hand, Filbert was on the Big Screen and correctly answered the Midwest Airlines trivia question, winning cookies for the entire row, three DVD’s, and a CD, so the afternoon did have an upside.

Islam and Liberty: The elephant in the room

On Victor Davis Hanson’s web site[*1] , Bruce Thornton discusses Robert Spencer’s latest book, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims[*2] :

As for those fantasies of intercultural harmony entertained by many Western multiculturalists, consider this verse from the Qur’an: “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turn to them (for friendship) is of them.” As Spencer reminds us, “This is the Qur’an that pious Muslims cherish and memorize in its entirety; it is for them their primary guide to understanding how they should make their way in the world and deal with other people. It is nothing short of staggering that the myth of Islamic tolerance could have gained such currency in the teeth of the Qur’an’s open contempt and hatred for Jews and Christians and incitements to violence against them.” Spencer’s survey of the Hadith, the words and deeds attributed to Muhammed and second in authority to the Qur’an; the interpretations of the Hadith and Qur’an by centuries of Islamic jurisprudence; and the writings of modern Islamic radicals like Sayyid Qutb, the premier theorist of modern jihad, testifies to a consistent tradition of intolerance towards non-Muslims and the divine sanction to subdue them to Islam.

In the final analysis, either Islam will need to reform itself away from its intolerance of other cultures and its unity of religion and state, or we will need to surrender (literally “submit”) to Islam. It is not a question of “tolerance,” it is a question of survival.

Western liberalism (i.e. freedom and liberty) and Islam as currently interpreted are polar opposites, and there can be no compromise. One will triumph, and the other will either change drastically or perish from the Earth.

That’s the elephant in the living room that precious few people are talking about. Victor Hanson and Bruce Thornton are two of those who are beginning to address the issue.