North Korea: The "Greenest" Country on the Planet

Oh, who the hell wants to be a feminist?

Effing ridiculous. And also kind of boring.

Wait

So centralized government decision making is not always the best route?

via Instapundit.com

So Now Can We Secure the Border?

Or is it still racist? (cont.)

Paging Mark Steyn

Christian evangelists arrested for "disorderly conduct" in Michigan for handing out gospel pamphlets to Muslims.

If there is not more to this story, the arresting officers should be terminated from their employ with the state. I believe the first amendment has been incorporated for the states, guys. Sharia law has not been.

Update: What is going on with Michigan cops?

Righteous ridicule

Via

I can almost forgive 'Candle in the Wind'

Even the lachrymose Princess Diana version, thanks to this.

Did Rachel Cover This Site Already?

The Sartorialist.

What Holmes is Listening To

This song while reading this article.

What's going on with NY Times columnists?

First Tom Friedman wants us to be China for a day, now Nicholas Kristof wants us to "anoint a king and queen.

Another fan of collective punishment

Jonah Goldberg:

We’ve been maintaining an embargo against Cuba for half a century. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the supposed voices of peace and sanity argued for “giving the sanctions time to work” and “keeping Iraq in the box” — the “box” being a stiff sanctions regime. What was so great about the sanctions against South Africa if they too were a form of collective punishment?

Only one blockade is deemed indefensibly beyond the pale: Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Why? Because it imposes “collective punishment.” The U.N. Human Rights Council, which rarely finds time to condemn the barbaric practices of its own members, routinely denounces the blockade as a crime against humanity.

Miscellany

MAXIMUM POWER…FROM OUTER SPACE!

Short sighted: Jerusalem memoir.

The alien in the White House.

The world's oldest shoe.

George did it

Every family needs a scapegoat.

Via

Mark Steyn Remembers Rachel

Corrie. Just not the way the playwrites remember her.

So what if Gaza can't import coriander?

I get it, but there's a double standard when it comes to so-called collective punishment. It's OK to impose sanctions on South Africa for apartheid but it's not OK to impose them on Gaza--or for that matter Iraq.

Maybe it's not a good strategy; it certainly doesn't deliver fast results: The UN first voted for sanctions against SA in 1962. Of course, many western nations talked a good game when it came to opposing apartheid, but they continued trading with her. And the whole Iraqi Oil for Food thing undermined the sanctions imposed on Iraq after Gulf War I. And that's before we discovered how corrupt the program was.

I should say that it's not a good strategy if it's not effectively deployed. If the UN imposes sanctions on South Africa and no one follows the sanctions, not much is going to happen. And if the UN imposes sanctions on Iraq and then gives Saddam a loophole you could drive a truck through, Saddam will remain in power.

But the Union blockade of the Confederacy worked very well. Probably because Lincoln didn't make an exception for peace activists from the North to breach the blockade.

Collective punishment--whether it be in the form of blockades, embargoes, boycotts or sieges--is supposed to bleed a population--or a leader or a party--white. So that they cry uncle and agree to stop doing whatever it is you want them to stop doing. Allowing "peace flotillas" to enter and dispense coriander and flower pots sounds great--harmless really--but it undermines the mission. Israel is basically at war with Hamas and the blockade is a form of economic warfare.

Food fetish

Diversity in dining

Krauthammer Nails It

Israel and the world.

This is the Obama administration's biggest crime. And calling it "cowardice" is being too kind.

Miscellany

Let's hope so: Is the daytime talk show dead?

Beautiful minds: Jane Austen's heroines.

The abs have it.

Not getting their just rewards? Medals of valor.