Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Welcome, MSN Searchers

The posts dealing with Jessica Cutler (AKA Washingtonienne) are here, here, here, and here. Enjoy.

10:20:37 AM

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Frosted MiniTownhalls

Okay, my computer crashed and I lost this week's Townhall recap. Here's a reconstruction of part of it -- more later.

Dennis Prager

People don't dress up anymore. Secularism is to blame.

Last week, the producer of my radio show, Allen Estrin, attended his niece's graduation at a public high school in St. Louis. At a certain point in the proceedings, he noticed that he was the only man in the audience wearing a jacket and tie; and only three other men wore a tie without a jacket.

This story exemplifies yet another aspect of the age in which we live, the Age of Stupidity.

Yes, an age where men don't wear ties to summer graduations IS the "Age of Stupidity."

Kathleen Parker

That "Who is the more regular guy?" poll proves people aren't thrilled with Bush's performance and that nobody likes Kerry. But wouldn't it be cool if Colin Powell ran?

One name keeps bubbling up and we've heard it before. These days it's back on the streets, not so much in Washington perhaps, but scattered around at America's lunch counters, dinner parties and latte lines. Colin Powell.

Loyal, perhaps to a fault, honest and dependable - and reputedly no slouch in the regular-guy department - Powell is a dream president. Too bad it's just a dream.

Yes, it's just a beautiful vision that can never be, Kathleen. But maybe someday you will happen to save Colin's life, and he'll take you out for a chocolate malted to thank you, and while you're talking he'll look into your eyes and fall deeply in love with you, and then you'll get married and live happily ever after in a big castle!

Hey, a girl can always dream.

Brent Bozell

Arianna Huffington and David Brock recently wrote books in which they said stuff that was pretty much true about Brent. This proves that they are big liars.

Huffington adds that she "listened with mounting horror to the speaker who preceded me, Brent Bozell ... As Bozell's hard-right homilies were paraded in front of ... an adoring crowd, I asked myself ... 'Where is the nearest exit?'"

I'm sure many in the audience felt the same way.

Anyway, Brent claims that Arianna's story isn't true because the audience didn't give him (or her) a standing oviation like she said.

Brent also says that Brock lied when he wrote that Brent said that the media couldn't be objective, so they should just give both sides equal time, regardless of their veracity -- Brent says that he really said that the media couldn't be objective, so they should strive for "balanced journalism."

Proof that both Brock and Huffington have fiery pants.

Matt Towery

Matt cites a survey that finds that Kerry is more likable than Bush. But he points out that the GOP could exploit that, and show voters that Kerry is also better looking and smarter. Then we'll see who wins the election!

Q. Who is more likeable?

George W. Bush 44 percent
John Kerry 48 percent
Undecided/Don't Know 8 percent

Both questions were part of a national survey conducted May 22-24 with our research associates at The Marketing Workshop. The poll sampled 500 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

We had asked the same likeability question last month, and Kerry was on top then too. While at first glance this should seem to give the Kerry camp cause for celebration and the Bush side great disappointment, there may be more to this seemingly frivolous question of likeability than some might guess. Indeed, it might offer some critical hints of how the race ultimately will shake out.

[...]

Kerry's "Dukakis-like" lack of warmth could easily be exploited by the GOP. They could gear future television ads more toward "introducing" America to John Kerry -- the seemingly cold and aristocratic politician -- rather than focusing on the Democrat's policy positions, a strategy that so far has yielded few gains for the Bush campaign.

Matt, did you ever consider the possability that maybe it's Kerry's "lack of warmth" that makes him so darned likable?

Mike Adams

Mike has anecdotal evidence about how liberal college administrators are persecuting conservative job applicants by making cryptic comments about them.

I usually get angry when people call my house during dinner. But the other night I was delighted when I got a call from David Horowitz. David has been doing a lot of research recently on the issue of political affiliation among college professors and administrators. Most of his research has come from surveys and archival data. Because he has little access to anecdotal evidence, he asked me to write an article describing the hiring (and promotion) process from an insider�s perspective. As soon as he asked, I threw my TV dinner in the garbage and started writing this column. You are reading the finished product right now.

Mike should have thrown the article in the garbage and given us the TV dinner. Anyway, here's one of his bias anecdotes:

*In 1996, the label �too much of a family man� was attached to an applicant who was married and had several children before the age of 30. This is an indirect example of religious discrimination.

Well, it would depend on where they attached that label. If it was on his penis, it was probably sexual harassment, not religious discrimination. However, if somebody just said it in a hiring committee meeting, maybe it meant that the speaker felt that this applicant might not be suitable for a job that involved lots of overseas travel or something. Or, it could have been a direct example of family-man discrimination. This is kind of a flimsy reed upon which to build an "Ivory Tower of Babel" (yes, Mike has also written a book about the crushing of conservatives on American campuses, but since he isn't as cute as Ben Shapiro, his tome isn't selling nearly as many copies.)

Later in the column, Mike sarcastically calls one of his colleagues an "intellectual giant" and "Professor Einstein." Mike says that he no longer gets invited to serve on hiring committees. He attributes it to his conservate views. My guess is that his being a big jerk has more to do with it.

David Limbaugh

The liberal newspaper said that Bush is negative, but Bush is rubber and they're glue, and all the negative stuff they say bounces off of Bush and sticks to them.

As another example, Milbank took Mr. Bush on for saying that some people believe we should "lay down our arms" and "negotiate" with our enemies. Again, Milbank implies that no one advocates these "absurd" positions and that Bush is misleading the public by setting up another such "straw man." "Kerry," says Milbank, "certainly has not proposed opening talks with Osama bin Laden or putting him on the couch."

Well, Mr. Milbank, President Bush didn't accuse Kerry of doing that. But since you brought it up, no less a Democrat insider than Bill Clinton -- who reportedly has been drafted to take an increasingly active role in the Kerry campaign -- told Cornell graduates that we should seek to find solutions to problems through cooperation, not conflict.

So, nyah, nyah, Dana Milbank. If somebody somewhere said something about not killing all our enemies, it proves that Bush was right to accuse Kerry of wanting to negotiate with al Qaeda.

Anyway, that's a Townhall sampler for today. Later I'll try to get to Ben "the U.N. is letting terrorists use its ambulances to kill Israelis" Shapiro; Michelle "the U.N. is letting Muslims use its ambulances to kill Americans" Malkin; Thomas "Who Cares About Young, Lazy, Stupid Poor People?" Sowell; Joel "I hate the State Dept" Mowbray; and Terrence "Stem Cell Research is Clone Murder" Jeffery. Or not, depending on how sick everyone is of Townhall.

6:52:36 AM

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Family Circle Prediction

First of all, we'd like to thank "preznit giv me turkee" for explaining yesterday's panel, which portrayed a smirking Billy presenting his report card to a scowling Daddy and saying, "But the GOOD news is I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance"

Here's Preznit's explication, in case you missed it:

Obviously this is another critique of the aWol administration, showing the entire world has now been privatised and all communication is now done in the form of advertising taglines. Since this tagline has been lifted from Gecko, the younger, but smarter brother of "BoBo" Brooks, this refers to the "report card" of aWol's economic policy. The father, representing the American Public, is obviously, and justifiably, upset. Since Biffy has absolutely no need for car insurance, his "savings" are entirely fictional, much like the "benefits" of the aWol tax cuts and economic policy. digging deeper, though, the root cause of Biffy's poor school performance is his falling in with a group of shakedown artists, now selling a wide range of "protection" hence his ability to lower the rates on his "car insurance" since they've diversified into "general business and home insurance"

I think this is exactly what Keane was trying to express.

Now, for today's cartoon (go here to see it in color):

A blank-eyed Grandma is walking slowly down the stairs, gripping the rail with one hand and holding a chunky P.J. with the other. P.J. is holding onto Grandma's wattle. P.J. says:
"Careful, Grandma. I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

Explication:

P.J. wants to be Tommy Udo when he grows up.

Prediction:

In Kiss of Death, Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) was a homicidal maniac who giggled as he threw old ladies down the stairs.

Keane is predicting that the Bush Administration's "Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003," which threw some old ladies down the stairs (metaphorically) but cost zillions of dollars in future taxpayer money, will be the kiss of death for his re-election hopes.

Hey, I wouldn't have believed it either, but today I got an email from Ed Gillespie entitled "Don't Let The Democrats Discredit The President's Prescription Drug Coverage," in which he urged me to write letters to my local and state papers and tell them . . . something (that part is kind of unclear). So, the New, Improved, Modernized Prescription Drug Act must be a critical issue in the upcoming election or I'm sure Ed wouldn't have bothered me about it.

4:42:29 AM

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International Gang Killing Kids and Stealing Their Organs for Transplants and/or Magic Charms

From the World Magazine blog, we learn this shocking news:

Murder for spare parts

Pastoral sub-blogger Tim Bayly gives disturbing information about the phenomenon of global organ trafficking. People in Africa and other countries are being kidnapped and murdered so that their organs can be sold for medical transplants. Tim tells about missionaries in Mozambique who are speaking out against the practice in that country, only to be threatened by the government unless they shut up.

Posted by Veith at CST 10:16 AM |

And when we read pastoral blogger Tim's entry, we learn that the story is even worse than what Ed Veith (World Mag's cultural editor) indicated: the victims are most often children!

Lutheran and Roman Catholic missionaries in Mozambique report finding bodies abandoned in public places, "emptied of their organs." In February, the Handmaids of Mary issued a written statement reporting that an airport and farm adjoining their convent are the scenes of the crimes. The victims' bodies are processed at the farm, after which boxes of organs are loaded into planes at night.

Sister Maria Elilda dos Santos spent the past nine years serving the poor in Christ's name. Now, because of her work publicizing these crimes, the governor of Nampula has written her a letter asking that she leave Mozambique.

[...]

The sisters' statement revealed "kidnappings and killings of many people, often children, victims of a network of organ trafficking."

The Vatican news agency, ZENIT, reports: "Threatened with death, the Handmaids of Mary in Nampula said they have escaped from at least four ambush attacks. Last February, Doraci Edinger, a 53-year-old Lutheran missionary, who also reported the traffic in children's organs, was found dead in front of her house in Nampula."

Okay, color me skeptical, but would there really be a big demand on the transplant market for kids' organs? Especially kids' organs removed by nonmedical personnel in the wilds of Mozambique?

To "document" his story, Tim links to a press account about the organs of executed Chinese prisoners being removed after death, and a story about a third-world man who voluntarily sold his kidney to an American woman who needed a transplant (the Thomas Sowell model for successful international trade). However, other than the story from Zenit, he has no other evidence that there is really a gang of international organ harvesters preying on Mozambique's children. Or even that the nuns are being threatened for speaking out. But that doesn't matter, because the moral of the story is, per Tim, that not only do Americans not care about innocent African children being kidnapped and killed for their organs, they don't even care about abortion.

It's my guess American Christians are no more likely to be moved to action by children found dead with their organs scooped out in countries like Mozambique than we have been moved to action by babies scooped out of their mothers' wombs, discarded in dumpsters behind the abortuaries ten minutes from our homes.

The comments on the World blog link the two items even more closely, claiming that aborted babies in America are probably being used for transplants:

High tech canibalism seems to be alive and well. Is anyone checking to see if this is happening with aborted children?

Posted by Dan

This post and the one above it on abortion could easily be linked together.
Is anyone checking to see if this is happening with aborted children?

Dan: I don't know about in Africa, but it sure is here. Why do you think there was so much oppostition to eliminating partial birth abortion?
Lots of whole baby body parts of course.

Posted by Mike

gregg, I share your scepticism, but I would not put it past Planned Parenthood (or its ilk) and certainly would not expect them to allow any publicity (Planned Parenthood's governance regarding information makes the old Soviet block countires look transparent).
Posted by KR

Poster "Michelle" tops them all with a story about her husband's cousin who had some urological trouple while visiting in Florida. He consulted a local doctor who told him that he had cancer on one of his kidneys, and needed immediate surgery. The cousin returned home and consulted his regular doctor, who informed him that his kidney was just fine . . .

His family physician went on to say it's an increasingly common scam--because the cousin was afraid and had just been told surgery to remove the kidney was the only way to save his life, he would have done so. The cousin would have thought the doctor a hero for removing the "cancerous" kidney and never questioned. The doctor then would have turned around and sold that same, healthy, kidney to someone in Florida needing it. He probably already had the patient lined up. Here. In the United States of America. In 2003.

Oh, and along those lines, somebody I knew at work heard about somebody who was on vacation somewhere (maybe Florida). A beautiful woman invited him up to her room for a drink. And when he woke up the next morning, his kidney was missing!

Anyway, back to the story about the nun vs the organ trafficers. Here's part of a Mail and Guardian article where the accused trafficers tell their story:

Organ trafficking story 'created out of nothing'

16 March 2004 09:39
A Danish woman and her Zimbabwean husband accused of trafficking human organs in Mozambique say they have been persecuted for eight months most probably in a bid to grab land.

Tania Skytte (34) said that the charges -- brought on by two nuns who live in the northern town of Nampula -- were baseless. "Some people played on the ignorance of locals and this unbelievable story was created out of nothing," she said.

Skytte and her husband 36-year-old Gary O'Connor have been living in Nampula for three years raising chickens at a farm near the airport, aided by Mozambican authorities who assured them that they would have no problems with the locals.

There was a pre-existing agreement chalked out by community leaders that some locals could lease parts of the land. But the governor of the province Abdul Razak ruled that such arrangements were illegal and despite several meetings between local authorities and the population, the problem still persisted.

The cause of the locals' rights to lease parts of the farm was quickly taken up by nuns belonging to the order of the Servants of Mary congregation, who had set up a convent nearby.

The couple says the origin of the charges could be land-related, fuelled by local or church politics.

The first accusations surfaced in July last year, shortly after the arrival of Maria Elilda dos Santos, a 45-year-old Brazilian nun.

[...]

Meanwhile, the allegations took a more sinister turn with the Brazilian nun now speaking to the international press about the horrible situation and "mutilated bodies found on public roads".

In six months, meantime, there were three probes which failed to come up with any evidence regarding the allegations.

The last enquiry conducted by the deputy Attorney General and a forensic expert examined the cases of 14 children who had disappeared and conducted tests on three exhumed corpses but failed to come up with anything.

"We studied the case of little Sarima, who was found dead in September 2002. The first findings indicated that she was the victim of sexual abuse," Carlos Manuens, the police officer in charge of the probe, said.

The nuns drew up a list of some 50 children who had disappeared between September and November last year.

Police official Manuens was dismissive, saying: "More than 50 children disappeared and nobody came to us?"

A foreigner who lives in Nampula said: "I regularly give food to street urchins in my locality and not one of them has disappeared."

The couple at the heart of the scandal meanwhile say they have had enough.

"We do not understand the motives which spurred the nuns to do all this," Tanya Skytte said, adding that they now intended to leave Mozambique.

"What is certain is that we intend to start a libel suit against the nuns."

And the story got more lurid. A priest said that over 100 children in the district have gone missing. The nuns indicated that the children could have been killed in ritual murders and their sexual organs removed and shipped to South African and Zimbabwean witchdoctors for use in "magic charms". (Apparently there are no poor children in South Africa and Zimbabwe suitable for the purpose.)

Upon arriving in Lisbon a couple of weeks ago, Sister Maria Elilda dos Santos had even more shocking allegations. She claimed that the local authories are involved in intimidating the victims' families (which is why there are no family members coming forward about all those missing kids, I suppose), that organ trafficing is a nationwide problem in Mozambique, and that the nun who was killed in February was murdered by the gang because "she knew too much."

Local authorities in northern Mozambique are silencing family members of the alleged victims of a human organ trafficking ring that is operating in the southeast African country, a Brazilian missionary said on Thursday.

Maria Elilda dos Santos, who says she was pressured to leave Mozambique because of her denouncement of the network, added although organ trafficking was first reported in the northern province of Nampula, it is, in fact, going on nationwide.

"There is no cooperation on the part of government organisations. On the contrary there is a huge effort to cover up what is going on," she told reporters on her arrival in Lisbon.

[...]

In February a Protestant Brazilian missionary, Doraci Edinger, who also charged organ trafficking involving children was taking place, was found dead in front of her home in Nampula.

Local authorities in Nampula, Mozambique's third-largest city, said her death was related to a financial scandal at her church but Dos Santos has said it is linked to the organ trafficking allegations.

"Sister Doraci knew too much and this is why they silenced her," she told Portugal's national news agency Lusa on Tuesday.

Per the AFP article, Mozambican officials claimed that they have investigated and there is no evidence of a trade in human organs. But hey, if they're all part of the conspiracy, that's just what they would say!

Understandably, the Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique is not thrilled with the publicity.

The Brazilian lay missionary Maria Elilda dos Santos is continuing to spread her gory tales of trafficking in human body parts in northern Mozambique, this time from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, where she can be sure of a sympathetic hearing from right-wing forces who have always been hostile to Mozambique.

Although dos Santos has been exposed as a fraud in Mozambique, notably by an extensive investigation undertaken by the weekly paper "Savana", gullible Portuguese journalists are prepared to swallow her fantastic stories.

Elilda dos Santos gave a Lisbon press conference on Thursday at which she repeated her attacks on the Mozambican authorities and libellous claims against "the South African couple" (investors Gary O'Connor and Tanja Skytte) whom she accused of "heading a mafia-like gang".

This gang, she claimed, "is continuing to traffic in children and in body parts in Nampula and throughout the country".

She offered no evidence for these claims, and falsely stated that exhumations of bodies had shown that organs were missing. In fact, work carried out by a team from the Attorney-General's Office, and including Mozambique's top forensic doctor, in February reached exactly the opposite conclusion - that there were no signs that any parts had been cut out of the bodies exhumed.

Elilda dos Santos continues to insist that body parts are being trafficked for medical purposes. "The traffic could have various causes including scientific ones and transplants", she said. "I don't know whether the organs are destined for withcraft in South Africa".

[...]

Elilda dos Santos accused the Mozambican authorities, particularly the Nampula provincial government, of inertia and unwillingess to act. She claimed that she had been "pressured to leave Mozambique", and that an attempt had been made on her life.

In the real world, there has been no expulsion order against Elilda dos Santos, and the main victims of her paranoid plotting, O'Connor and Skytte, wanted her to stay so that she could be sued for libel.

Dos Santos is now planning to take her stories to the European parliament in Brussels, where she has the backing of certain Portuguese euro-deputies.

This story reminds me of a few things (besides Thomas Sowell):

1. A few years ago there were rumors floating around Central America about how Americans were adopting local children only to kill them and harvest their organs. A (fair, blonde) friend of mine visited Guatemala on government business back then, and saw locals snatch their children away when they saw her on the street. She had somebody tell her that it was despicable that the United States thought they could make use of the Guatemalan children to prolong their own lives just because they were rich. Of course, no Americans have ever adopted Guatemalan children just to steal their organs.

2. Fifteen or twenty years ago, thousands of children were being kidnapped and killed in satanic rituals every year. Women were having babies just for use in these ceremonies -- some of these "breeders" came forward to evangelical groups and told their horrific (yet fascinating) tales of life within a satanic cult. And worst of all, the satanists would eat the bodies of the young victims (and that's why no evidence was ever found)!

While all of this was effectively debunked in the United States, it's apparently still happening in England (the ever reliable David Ickes has the whole story).

3. Last spring one of my neighbors wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper claiming that somebody had killed one of her cats and removed its organs, probably for a satanic ritual. Over the course of the summer, the papers reported that statewide a half dozen more cats had been killed and their organs removed. A local policeman was quoted as saying that that the removal required some medical knowledge. The paper speculated that it was either the work of somebody involved in satanic rituals or somebody who would soon escalate to killing humans. Anyway, one of the carcasses was finally examined by veterinary surgeon. He indicated that the organs had been removed by a fox. He said that predators commonly eat only some of the organs of their prey, making it look like the animal has been mutilated. That's apparently how the UFOs got away with mutilating all those cattle in the '70s.

So, with the above in mind, I'm not going to be all that concerned about a gang of international organ thieves (or worry about Planned Parenthood being involved in selling the organs of aborted babies for transplants). However, it is true that poor children in poor countries can easily become victims of various crimes, and I do admire those who work to help them. Unfortunately, it sounds like this urban legend is going to hurt their efforts, just like the one from a decade ago hurt adoption efforts in Central America, and others have hurt organ donations. I think it's very irresponsible of World Magazine to be relaying this new one without any caveats. Maybe in his next chat with World Mag editor Marvin Olasky, President Bush could mention that to him.

2:15:26 AM

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