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I blog @ FRIENDLY FIRE read my LATEST COLUMN FRIENDS' BLOGS CATHOLIC LINKS  mater dei, ora pro nobis contact: @ weinkopf.com (C) 2001, - 2007. All rights are reserved. 
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Thursday, July 11, 2002
SHORT ON TIME... But a few interesting stories have come my way: Bergen: Quayle Was Right About Murphy -- after 10 years, the former Veep finally gets some respect. Protestants questioning contraception -- Until the 1930s, all Christian churches opposed contraception, but then, influenced by the likes of Margaret Sanger, most Protestant denominations altered their morality. Now, the WT reports, some Evangicals are beginning to embrace the Gospel of Life. Study finds couples who stick it out are happier than those who divorce -- good riddance to the divorce ethos of the last 30 years ... Davis lead is down to 7 -- Iron Gray is sinking fast. Al-Qa'eda 'aimed to massacre Vatican pilgrims' -- so much for the argument that the terorists' only objection is America's Middle East policies. Forest Service says activists played role in fires -- eco-radicals contributed to destruction. Panel Finds No 'Smoking Gun' in Probe of 9/11 Intelligence Failures -- Bad news for the McKinneycrats. Bush Panel Has 2 Views on Embryonic Cloning -- no surprise, but unfortunate nonetheless. Religious Club Wins Ruling on School Fee -- more progress on the church v. state front. Analyst Warns of Cultural Trend Toward Pedophilia -- after all, as far as the left is concerned, it's only wrong when priests do it. Wednesday, July 10, 2002
TODAY'S READS: Weinkopf gets ripped off! -- CalNews.com recycles my comparison of Gray Davis to Richard Nixon. Leftists come to the defense of pro-lifers -- realizing that RICO laws can be uses to harass them, too. House OKs Arming Pilots -- but Administration ninnies (read: Norman Mineta) are opposed. John McCain: Hypocrite -- It cannot be said enough. Palestinian Media Glorify Homicide Bombers to Children -- More proof that Arafat is guilty, guilty, guilty. NPR: We're sorry we slandered Christians -- this time, anyway. CALLING A TERRORIST A TERRORIST Heham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian Muslim said to despise Americans and Israelis, chooses America’s national holiday to slaughter civilians at an airport ticket counter for Israel’s national airline. There are two possible explanations for this attack. The first is the one that makes sense: Hadayet, like no small number of other radical Muslims, sought to murder and terrorize American and Israeli innocents. Ergo, he is a terrorist. The second explanation is that of the Grand Coincidence: Hadayet, beset with family problems and low self-esteem, inexplicably snapped on this particular day, and in a fit of rage, randomly decided to shoot up members of an ethnic group that, in a bizarre twist of fate, he just so happened to despise. By chance, all of this took place at a site that’s long been the target of Middle Eastern fanatics, Los Angeles International Airport, at a time when America was fighting a war against Islamic terrorists. Chalk it all up to happenstance. Guess which interpretation is favored by the United States government? In the immediate wake of the LAX shooting, government officials glommed onto every conceivable explanation except for the one that squared with the available facts. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer insisted that, “There is no evidence, no indication at this time, that this is terrorists.” FBI Special Agent Richard Garcia, the bureau’s point man at the scene of the crime, tried his best to come up with alternative theories, telling reporters that “whether or not it was related to a family issue or just neighborly issues, we don’t know.” Neighborly issues? Overly zealous airport-security workers must have seized Ockham’s Razor at the boarding gate. So far, Garcia has played the role of the War on Terrorism’s Inspector Clouseau. “It appears (Hadayet) went there with the intention of killing,” Garcia reasons. “Why he did that is what we are still trying to determine.” Um, here are some clues: Abdul Zahav, Hadayet’s disgruntled former employee, told the Associated Press that his old boss hated Israelis. A neighbor, Emma La Mer, said Hadayet “had a lot of anger at Americans. He said there were a lot of crazy people in America.” Fellow tenants in Hadayet’s Orange County apartment complex report that he got angry when, shortly after Sept. 11, an upstairs neighbor hung American and Marine Corps flags from a balcony above his front door. Before leaving for LAX last Thursday morning, he affixed a “Read the Koran” sticker to his front door. And according to one account, Hadayet chose one of his victims, Yaakov Aminov, because the father of nine was the only man in the terminal wearing a yarmulke. Yet federal agents absurdly pretend that there’s only a distant possibility that there were ethnic and/or political motivations behind Hadayet’s Independence Day shooting spree. “We are not ruling out hate crime,” Garcia says, as though hatred were merely a possible but unlikely explanation. “We are not ruling out terrorism completely,” he continues (emphasis added), suggesting, that well, if he were to receive a signed letter from Osama bin Laden testifying to Hadayet’s good-standing as a dues-paying al Qaeda member, he might be willing to believe that the LAX shooter was acting in the spirit of 9/11. (The rumor mill already reports of such a link.) And, “We are not ruling out other types of issues that it may be a random act of violence itself,” Garcia concludes, confirming that the Grand Coincidence theory remains alive and well. If radical Islamists have any hope of winning their jihad against the U.S., this is it—the inability of American government officials to recognize the obvious. If there’s one theory Garcia can safely “rule out,” it’s the preposterous notion that there’s anything random about an Egyptian bringing two guns and a knife to an El Al check-in counter with the intention of killing as many people as possible. In their dogged determination to avoid labeling all Arabs terrorists, federal officials have failed to rightly apply the designation in an instance where it’s richly deserved. Garcia’s insinuation that that the 7/4 attack, motivated by hate and intended to terrorize, is anything but a hate crime and an act of terrorism, indicates that once again Washington is more concerned with political correctness than with honestly addressing real threats to national security. By the FBI’s own definition, terrorism is the “unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political and social objectives.” That has been the design of Muslim jihadists world over, whether it’s homicide bombers, the Sept. 11 hijackers, or Hadayet. It’s of little relevance that Hadayet appears to have been working alone, without the backing or support of any recognized terrorist groups or states. The war on terrorism is less about defeating a few specific regimes and militant outfits than about quashing an entire ideology, one that is premised on hate and manifests itself in murder, whether perpetuated by rogue states or lone gunmen. That ideology is radical Islam, and its adherents dwell just as surely in Orange County apartment complexes as in Afghan caves. While they no doubt make up only a small portion of American Arabs, that portion is surely larger than the government seems willing to admit. Tuesday, July 09, 2002
READING MATERIAL I'll be the first to admit that I do far too little to keep this site updated, due in large part to my busy schedule of writing editorials and columns. But it's occurred to me that there is one simple way I could make this site more interesting, and that's by passing along the interesting stories I come upon during my frequent searches for column fodder. I might not have time for accomanying editorials, but the link and a witty or insightful one-liner may alone be worth it. So with no further ado, here goes: Islam through the eyes of Southern Baptists -- Good LAT piece about two Muslim-turned-Christians and their thoughts on their former faith. The Divorce Debate -- ABC News compares the arguments of those who think divorce is seriously harmful to children and those who claim it is essentially meaningless (and who, btw, must not have divorced parents) Um, ever heard of a pet store? Wacky Angelenos who want to do away with the notion of animal ownership. Special ed to be eyed for inequity -- Boston Globe story suggests that many "special needs'" students only have one real "learning disability" -- they're boys. For-profit schools get mixed grades -- Ever notice how the establishment media spend far more time worrying about the alleged shortcomings of private and charter schools, while accepting the failures of public education as a happy fact of life? Farrakahn is a traitor -- Radical racist reportedly prays for Iraqi victory in impending war with U.S. Jesse goes bananas, again -- Jackson denounces Bush and Aschroft. New Teachers' Union President Vows To Fight Vouchers -- The education lobby continues to fight quality education with all of its might. College Seniors Taught Right and Wrong Is Relative -- It turns out I wasn't the only one who got a lousy college education. |