Yesterday I went to an event sponsored by the University of California Irvine College Republican. As my ticket said, to hear the confessions of three former terrorists. The three speakers were Walid Shoebat, Zak Anani, and Kamal Saleem. They talked about their experiences growing up as Muslims in the Middle East and the hatred that was engendered in them against Jews and America.

A local newspaper The Daily Pilot covered the event. The article reports a response to the speakers.

Marya Bangee, the spokeswoman of UCI’s Muslim Student Union, didn’t attend the 3 Ex-Terrorists’ appearance but said she was dismayed that the College Republicans had invited them to campus.

“I think it’s a disturbing event,” she said. “The College Republicans should know better. From what I hear, the Ex-Terrorists are against Islam, and they try to equate Islam with terrorism.”

While the speakers did equate their experiences as Muslims to militant hatred toward Jews and often America, I think it would be more disturbing if the event was cancelled due to fear of people getting upset.

It was an interesting event. I hope we can get some similar speakers at Berkeley next year. A debate between the three speakers and opposing people would be even better, but I don’t think that would happen.

In another way I was disappointed. From what I had heard about the happenings at UCI I expected to see some kind of disagreement about the event. I did not see any protesters, only one random guy holding an anti-Bush and Cheney sign. Outside the Bren Center security wanded and patted everyone down before entering.

Yesterday there was an interview (linked here) on Fox News with Walid Shoebat and UCI student Reut Cohen. It lets you see Shoebat in action speaking and talks about other activities at UCI. I would also recommend Reut Cohen’s blog for a firsthand account of the continuing controversies in Irvine.

I will be thinking of some Soldiers, past and present, today. My paternal Grandfather served in the Navy, and my maternal Grandfather in the Army (as was his first wife). My aunt and uncle were both until recently career military Soldiers, and my cousin is in basic right now. My mom’s side has a long line of Soldiers going back to the American Civil War. Also, I have some close friends Brady, Mike, Gordon, and Jeremy, who are serving right now, either becoming officers, preparing to go to Iraq or already stationed there. Thanks guy (and gals) for everything you’ve done and are prepared to do.

Over on the farm they have people who are not students hanging out. On Friday The Stanford Daily reported a person claimed to be a graduate student and had used the physics lab and offices for four years. This comes right after Stanford discovered another person was posing as a student a few days earlier.

The Daily also reports there were signs that the “student” was not what she claimed to be. As reported:

But to the physics doctoral students who work in the lab, Okazaki’s lack of an affiliation with Stanford was not surprising. Dan Green, a doctoral student in theoretical particle physics, said he became suspicious that Okazaki was at the lab under false pretenses more than two years ago. He said that his relationship with Okazaki soured about a year and a half ago when she moved into a visitor’s office in the building and stayed there for more than a month.

However, the administration did not listen to students’ concerns.

“We met significant resistance from the office,” Green said. “When we tried to describe Okazaki’s behavior to them, they gave us the same stories that she had told us. The office was willing to accept every excuse she gave them.”

I can understand people not questioning a person who knows what s/he is doing. I remember hearing about someone (Steven Spielberg I believe) who just took over an unused room on a movie lot and acted like he worked there. However, he was one of the best at what he did. It is reported this person does not even know physics very well.

If I do not get into graduate school I can always go to Stanford. If someone can hide out there for four years I should be able to do at least as well with a real physics degree.

Lower-tier GOP presidentail candidate Ron Paul has support all around, as I saw this week in Berkeley. This gentleman was walking up and down Telegraph with his sign.

I have no comment on Ron Paul, but his supporters seem to be particularly energetic around the net.

I received an interesting email from a friend. It was commentary about the recent Judicial Council case against DAAP that was sent out to the Berkeley BAMN email list. I put the complete version below interspersed with a few comments. If you want an alternative view so you can assess the validity of their statements see Beetle’s posts about DAAP.

This is a satire about the recent ASUC Judicial Council
Shenanigans, written by the Defend Affirmative Action Party.

- Yvette Felarca, BAMN Northern California coordinator
(Title for identification purposes only)

======================================
Court of the Absurd – cancel the “ASUC judicial council
procedures” sock-puppet theater for good.
======================================

Friends, Californians, Enemies – let us not suffer through
sock-puppet theater next election season – let us drag the
name of our school and student body through the fetid morass
of stupid election charges no longer!

We should not forget how DAAP dragged the name of our school and $15,000 of student fees through a “fetid morass” two years ago.

Facing two charges – ostensibly brought for violation of the
election rules – has forced our party to think once again
about the arbitrary and truly stupid character of the post-
election tradition at Cal of “ASUC judicial council
procedures.” It is a simple and universally known fact that
ASUC elections are fair – the candidates who get the votes
win the seats.

Both of the circus-worthy charges that our party faced have
been dismissed – limping out of existence just as
pathetically and honorlessly as they came about. The first
was dropped when the “charging party” was 49 minutes late for
the hearing. Apparently this “charging party” has failed to
appear a number of times this judicial procedures season.

It is really the story of the second charge whose full
telling is deserved. It is our hope that, next, election we
can convince the three branches of student government not to
debase themselves, to set aside the clown suits and cancel
the “judicial procedures” sock-puppet theater for good, out
of embarrassment, self respect, or maybe because one or two
democratic principles survive - starved and outcast though
they may be.

Perhaps the finest example of the Senate debasing itself this past year was the filing of impeachment charges (by DAAP Seantor Dimitri Garcia among others) against Judicial Council Chair Sonya Banerjee. Coverage of this from the Patriot blog in exile here and Beetle here. Canceling out the judicial procedures would make the government run easier, since it would then have two and not three branches.

The second charge against DAAP was for a campaign phone call
into a dorm room. This action was alleged to have violated
the prohibition on “campaigning in the dorm.” The stupidity
of this charge, the fact that the election rule plainly is
intended to prohibit the physical presence of campaigners was
not enough to cancel the sock-puppet theater date. The fact
that the case would be moot - DAAP did not win an ASUC seat -
that was not enough. The fact that if the Judicial Council
upheld the charge it would prohibit the use of all modern
means of communication in ASUC elections was not enough. The
“charging party” did not have a single witness - no matter! -
the sock-puppet theater show must go on!

If anyone bothered to read 12.3 of the elections bylaw, the campaigning in the dorms prohibition applies to more then just a campaigner.

Due Process had a small, tragic part in the sock-puppet play;
it was not a speaking part and died early. During the two
hours of hearing in which pre-oral argument motions were
heard, no standard of the Judicial Rules of Procedure was
above summary elimination by the Judicial Council. The
problems went beyond just trampling the protections enshrined
in the stone tablets of the Judicial Rules of Procedure.
Basic democratic standards that have been in place in more or
less every society in the world for hundreds of years were
casually tossed aside by the Judicial Council in a fog of
blissful ignorance. Just when the unbridled foolishness of
the hearing had lost its novelty and was becoming genuinely
annoying, the sock-puppet theater gods intervened with
redemptive generosity.

The hearing was cut short.

Apparently the stone tablets of judicial procedure that had
been up on the ASUC website for some time were outdated. A
new hearing, “starting again” was set for several days later
(this time on the basis of the “new, improved JRP”) despite
no allowance for this procedure in the Judicial Rules of
Procedure themselves.

DAAP’s lawyer got involved and threatened to sue regardless of the outcome of the case. The word “intimidation” is used in the Daily Cal article.

In the intervening days a pretext was contrived as a face-
saving device to extricate the “charging party” from the
hopeless idiocy of the judicial procedure. It was
“discovered” by the “charging party” that the voice message
left on their dorm phone did not have a date.

Thus the tragic/comic sock-puppet theater one-act came to an
embarrassing, sputtering, pathetic end.

- Defend Affirmative Action Party (DAAP)

The text goes wrong in many places. This is where Beetle can do a great section by section analysis. Again, I will refer everyone to Beetle’s entries that include DAAP. The further back you read, the more you will be enlightened.

I am glad to know we will not be deprived of entertainment next year just because DAAP no longer has a senate seat.

On Tuesday Jerry Falwell died. When a person dies, what would you do? Pray for him, have a moment of silence, talk about his views, or ignore him? The other choice is to make a facebook group. Both fans and critics of Falwell have taken the fight online; I did not know people cared this much.

Some of the groups, like
Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell had a baby and named it Satan were around before his death, while others with names like Burn in Hell, Jerry Falwell
are recent additions. There are many variations in names involving Falwell, hell, and burn. However, there are only a few stock pictures of him from google. There is also a Berkeley based group An Anti-Tribute to Jerry Falwell.

From the profile:

Death is never a nice thing — that’s just one issue on which Falwell and we differ. Still, the world just might be a better place with Jerry in the grave. Here’s hoping that he understands the extent of his depravity after a quick chat with St. Peter in front of the pearly gates.

And — here’s hoping that if he gets into heaven, we don’t.

For whatever level of respect or hatred you have for Falwell, there is a facebook group for you.

I have not followed everything Falwell has said and done, but some of his comments are over the top. I would have hoped the people who disagreed with him would know better then of any us that you don’t change anyone’s mind or get anywhere with negative rhetoric. Lets be better people, even if Falwell was not.

I actually missed it, and I missed most of the second showing, so I won’t have too much to say until I watch it online. But if any of y’all have anything interesting to say, consider the comment section an open thread.

By the way, I like Alan Colmes a lot, but he asked what has to be the single least well thought out question I’ve ever heard asked in a post-debate interview. Talking to Sen. McCain, regarding Iraq, he asked the following question (emphasis mine, slightly paraphrased):

“You know, one big argument people have is that if we leave Iraq, they’ll just follow us over here. They said that during Vietnam, too, and of course that didn’t happen. I mean, what are they going to do? What, are they going to hop on planes and fly over here?“

So, for a Berkeley-related entry, I saw a reference to us and the BP deal on Fox news just a few minutes ago. It was a short clip quoting your average righteously-indignant Berkeley student and a faculty member I believe named Kamman. (How hard do you think they had to look to find a student who wasn’t apathetic on this deal?)

So, Claudia Cowen reported on BP offering Cal $500 M to do fuels research. Birgeneau commented about translating research interests into the marketplace. And of course, the students camped out in the redwoods (that I photographed here) got an interview saying the corporations were benefiting. Professor Patzek said public research is a good, “they have the cash, we have the researchers, let’s put two and two together”.

It’s always nice to see Cal on tv!

The US has lots of religious communities, none of which are exempt from the law. The Mormon communities around the US, predominantly in Utah, obey our laws and are prosecuted when they don’t. Hence the manhunt for Warren Jeffs.

There are Menonite communities around the country who practice their own customs, and it doesn’t interfere with the laws of the country they live in.

Other non-mainstream groups like cults are brought to justice (if we can catch them before they catch the comet) or investigated if we can do so without being big brother.

The Amish are probably one of the most famous religious communities in the US, and even though violence does happen there occasionally (last year’s schoolhouse shooting) they abide by our laws too.

Then how is this ok? I had never heard about it before, nor the fact that there are two in California and one in my homestate of Washington. For those of you too lazy to click the link, there is a Muslim-only compound in upstate New York that runs itself on laws “considered above that of local, state, and federal authority”. The gate is marked by a manned sentry booth: they won’t let visitors or authorities in, even the local undertaker has to leave the bodies at the front gate. Locals (who won’t allow their names to be used for fear of retribution, mind you) regularly hear explosions and gunfire. Before joining the compound, members must take an oath: “that reads: “I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah’s sake”.

But wait, you say, can’t we do what we want on our own property, like hunt? Of course. But with mortars or c4? Places like these exist, as the article states:

In the past, thousands of members of the U.S. branches of Jamaat ul-Fuqra traveled to Pakistan for paramilitary training, but encampments, such as Islamberg, are now capable of providing book-camp training so raw recruits are no longer required to travel abroad amidst the increased scrutiny of post 9/11.

And I respond to that, if there is nothing to hide in this community, why can’t people visit? Even Amish country gives tours.

Today as I was going to a review for my Roman archeology class I saw some people sitting near Wheeler with some signs. They were “fasting for a nuclear free UC.” Their signs directed me to ucnuclearfree.org. As if it is not enough to see their signs and people who looked like they descended from the trees, they have a blog at nonukeshungerstrike.blogspot.com. According to their blog, 41 people statewide are on a hunger strike to stop the UC’s involvement with nuclear weapons. Beetle has some commentary here.

I do not remember seeing a continued hunger strike like this in my time at Berkeley so it will be fun to watch, except I have 5 finals and get to move in the next week.

I don’t understand how the protesters think pushing nuclear research out of the UC will help create a better situation. Nuclear weapons research will occur. If it is not at the public institute of the University of California, then it will be at private corporations that are less open and accessible to the public. There is also the relevance of the issue. The last time a nuclear weapon was used to attack another nation was over sixty years ago.

Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of this. My hard drive died last week and I have not been able to restore internet to my computer or reinstall the photograph downloader yet. I will post some pictures if I get them before the strike is over.

(Not that it really matters what the topic of the post is about, since the comments are likely to be about Israel, but hey.)

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the GOP race, you know that by far the biggest issue to come out of the recent debate was Giuliani’s squishiness on abortion. That issue has only snowballed with the revelation that he donated to Planned Parenthood several times during the 90s. And so on and so forth.

I’ve just been thinking a little about Giuliani and his views on abortion. His whole shtick has been “I hate abortion, but I think it’s not my place to make that decision.” I think the whole “personally pro-life, but legally pro-choice” is a pretty common pro-choice position (I was once that way myself, back in high school). But it really isn’t one that holds water. Because the question becomes (and this is what I asked myself near the end of high school, when I became pro-life) why do I “hate” it? Most people who do - myself included - have an aversion to it because we believe that it is tantamount to murder - that a fetus is a human being and alive from the moment of conception. Otherwise, there’s no real reason to be opposed to abortion. And the question then becomes, well, believing that, can I really say that I think that’s a moral decision each person has to make? The answer I came to was no, because it’s not just a personal moral decision - it’s one that affects two people, one of whom is not a party to the decision. No matter how “live and let live” you may be on moral issues, I think it’s a little difficult to take that view on abortion.

So, obviously, from that, as I said before, if you don’t believe a fetus to be a living human being, there really is no case against abortion. I thought about this for a while, during a review session when I should have been learning poli sci, and I came to the conclusion that Giuliani’s “I hate abortion personally” thing could make sense. I guess it’s still possible to hate abortion, even if you don’t believe a fetus to be alive, if you are the type of person who gets very deeply upset about people not taking responsibility for their actions. But I dunno…even if that is the case, yeah, I guess Giuliani’s position would be coherent morally…but that’s sort of a jerk reason to hate abortion.

Anyway, all that reasoning comes to naught, because it turns out today that Giuliani believes abortion to be morally wrong.

I can respect a lot of pro-choicers who just don’t believe that a fetus is alive. I think they’re wrong on their premises, but given that premise they’re basing their reasoning on, they’re coming to absolutely the correct conclusion.

On the other hand, to actually believe that abortion is the taking of a human life but to still say you think it should be legal is completely incoherent. Giuliani is digging himself into a very, very deep hole here.

So the last post about France really got people commenting! I had no idea y’all were interested in France….er Israel so much. Anyway, this might interest you, being in slightly a similar vein (international things). And don’t worry, I won’t talk about how photogenic anyone is.

In this first article, Japan has opened a “baby hatch” so that parents can drop off unwanted children as an alternative to abortion which the article says has become commonplace. The Prime Minister is opposed to it, but the analysis of the article I rather agree with. Japan has a zero or negative population growth, characteristic of that type of post-industrial society. (The US might have the same problem if not for immigration). Dropping off children for adoption later will grow (if slightly) the population rather than if they children were aborted.

Next up to bat: apparently, the divorce rate is the lowest it’s been since 1970. This was a bit of a suprise to me, considering how the media hypes up these stats in the “culture war” or whatever you want to call it. The article says that more couples live together without marrying, and “other researchers have documented what they call “the divorce divide,” contending that divorce rates are indeed falling substantively among college-educated couples but not among less- affluent, less-educated couples”. So there’s some more incentive to graudate!

This article talks about another episode of religious appeasement, removing hospital crosses in Milan to “please muslims”. The article seems extreme, but later corrections (from people who could read the original italian) said it was one instance of a cross being removed. I picked this article as significant because of the stat: “Some 7,000 women give birth at the Mangiagalli each year. Of these, about 30 per cent are foreign immigrants, many of whom are not Catholic.” Rather than get all outraged and argue about Muslim or Christian sensibilities, consider the growing immigrant demographic in Europe which may save the countries from zero or negative population growth, and what that might mean.

Ok, go! comment!

Sarkozy has won the French presidency (via Drudge) in the race between he and equally-photogenic Segolene Royale. I was interested by this race, both because it happened at a time when lots of women seemed to be running (Merkel had just won, Hillary is on deck, and Segolene was up to bat) and because her first name looked a little like my last (honestly, I lose sleep over this name of mine).

Another reason I’m interested in this is because Royale said there would be riots if she lost. We’ve seen riots in France before, I wrote an article on it for the Patriot a while back. Are the riots a convenient excuse? “Vote for me or else” type thing? I wonder if the riots even have meaning for the majority of French people, since they happen almost constantly. But with over 75% turnout in the election (good job France!) some of those voters must be affected by riots in the urban areas. Perhaps a vote for the more conservative candidate was a statement against that sort of mentality of crime and vandalism if someone doesnt get their way. Imagine if college students ditched to riot in San Fran and LA when Gore didn’t win in 2000 [update: yeah i saw this error, thanks]. Even their responses on the Berkeley campus didn’t match burning cars. And imagine if Gore had threatened riots if he didn’t win. It bothers me when politicos say they speak for the people when the majority shows otherwise, and it seems like a shallow tactic to resort to.

But they deployed the police to the target areas anyway. We’ll see how it goes.

Update: Via LGF, this article states that “270 people were taken into questioning and 367 parked vehicles had been torched. On a typical night in France, 100 cars are burned”. One HUNDRED per night!

Drudge right now is hosting a poll of who won the previous debate! So far, the clear leader is Romney (who i believe won, from what I saw). Go there and share your opinion!

http://drudgereport.com if you aren’t familiar.

Updates with commentary:

OpinionJournal comments on the abundance of Reagan wannabe’s and why the author, Peggy Noonan, thinks it’s “absurd”

Also, referring to the silly question from Walnut Creek that I noted earlier, the question “what do you dislike most about America?” generated this NewsBusters article.

LGF also has a poll, but the servers appear to be swamped.

Michelle Malkin, another of my favorites, has coverage as well with her typically spot-on criticism.

Update: more commentary

Mark Steyn, “collumnist to the world” gives advice to the candidates.