Vox Popoli

I’m not usually a big fan of police brutality, but occasionally one must make an exception:

ITALIAN riot police showed no mercy last night as they battered Manchester United fans in Rome. Officers used truncheons and tear gas on the Brits — in some of the most shocking football riot scenes in recent years. Cops wearing helmets and protective armour rained down blow after blow on fallen fans.

Of course, this was partially payback for the deaths at Heysel during the 1985 European Cup championships. The Italian police are not exactly what you’d call big fans of English football supporters at the best of times, and they’re definitely not inclined to genteel relations after the death of that policeman at the Catania-Palermo match earlier this year.

I suppose I should be appalled, really, but there’s something so inherently compelling about the notion of Manchester United thugs being violently beaten by all and sundry. It’s just too bad the police couldn’t beat on Cristiano Ronaldo while they were at it. That would be real value for your pay-per-view money.

I wasn’t watching, however, as I was at an important soccer match last night. Unfortunately, our prima squadra got knocked out of the quarterfinals of the cup competition on a very late goal that featured some very careless goaltending by our keeper. It was a respectable showing against a team two leagues up, however, so the guys did very well. We even had our own ultras beating drums and setting off flares, but they aren’t quite as intimidating as the Roman ultras since the oldest one is only ten years old.

I had to give my Dutch friend a hard time, as it was his son who was leading the kids in all the various cheers, chants and songs. “Did you teach him that one?” I asked him after one particularly rabble-rousing chant. “I don’t even understand what he is shouting,” he answered.

From ProFootballTalk:

Which current NFL player is telling pals he is seriously considering coming out of the closet while he’s still on his NFC team?

I imagine that rumor has spurred more than a few Jeff Garcia jokes around the league of late. My money is on it being some second-stringer that practically no one has ever heard of, although for pure entertainment’s sake, I hope it’s Eli Manning.

One often finds it hard to decide if one should pity the Sports Guy or consider him lucky. Needless to say, I don’t think she’s likely to join my fan club anytime soon:

Of course, Bill (my husband) was suspicious as soon as we learned Andy’s alma mater was Duke — he kept saying, “You watch, you watch, he’s going to end up being a [bad word].”

Not even 30 seconds later, we watched Andy get into his fancy sports car, which looked like a DeLorean (do they still make those?) and had those dorky doors that open straight up. I hate when Bill’s right. You should know that my friend Terera and I have a list of things that instantly bother us about guys — like guys who wear man sandals (those leather ones that look like the ones girls would wear, only they’re for guys, I call them “mandals”); guys who wear black jeans check or black tennis shoes check; guys who wear Speedos at the beach; guys who drink daiquiris or frozen mudslides check, assuming Blue Hawaiians count; guys who tuck their sweaters into their pants; and especially, guys who drive weird sports cars (like Miatas or Corvettes).check, although the new Porsche is arguably less weird than the Lamborghini

A strong debut, all told. This sort of column on ESPN doesn’t bother me one one-hundredth as much as women pretending, and failing, to be interested in men’s sports.

Flicka Spumoni reviews The Wrath of Angels at her blog:

In, The Wrath of Angels, the third novel in a series of angelic adventures written from a Christian world view, Theodore Beale has given us a fine piece of fiction.

At the core of this story is the spirit-realm throne of Albion, the ancient name for Britain, and those Fallen who would rule from it. The over-arching, pressing danger is that Diavelina, the treacherous daughter of Moloch, would come to reign upon that coveted throne. Moloch or Baal, as he is also known, is a Cannanite god who is always associated with fire and child sacrifice as he was worshiped by followers who passed their children through fire to appease him. According to Wrath mythology, it was Moloch who orchestrated Hitler’s rise to power and then stoked his passion for incinerating Jews. Diavelina desires another such fiery winnowing across Europe.

My only comment is that what is not explained can be deduced, but it requires grasping the subtext. There’s a hint in the Italian…. In any event, it’s nice to know that a fellow writer enjoyed the story.

For those of you in the queue, I intend to place the order for the second printing this weekend. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to resizing the back cover text as I intended, but some of the previous typos have been corrected.

Beth muses on the question:

Wow! You are going to get bombarded with hate mail from angry women, but I suspect you already know that. This column provokes alot of discussion & cannot be commented on in a brief manner. Women get really angry for different reasons. Are you talking about a new phenomenon or one that’s been around forever? While I can, of course, speak only for myself, I have experienced that wrath in myself, and it’s not pretty. I am 50 & my husband & I have been married for 24 years. I always heard growing up that marriage is difficult & couples have to work at it. That simplistic description in no way prepared me for the realities of marriage. I can honestly say that it is not necessarily the things my husband does that piss me off so badly, rather it is the things that he doesn’t do. Men disappoint women ALOT. Men today fall short of being real men & perhaps this is part of the problem. And how did men get that way? Angry radical feminists? Perhaps. I agree with you that the anger is not a result of male oppression, although I believe many women imagine that they are oppressed by men. I have not experienced male oppression myself, however, I have experienced female oppression. I find it interesting that people actually believe that males are the only ones capable or willing to oppress others. I have never been a supporter of the radical (angry?) feminists, & I believe they have done untold damage to our society. I am a stay at home mom who never favored “day care kennels” & felt that my job at home was as important as any career woman’s job. Why have children if you’re just going to turn them over to someone else to raise? But back to the anger. On one hand I think that some women imagine they are victims of atrocities, but on the other, men do contribute to the anger by having relinquished their manhood. I think the big question may be what kind of men do we women want? There is a demand for too many varieties of men. We have a very confused society. Yes, men can make us angry, but would I be a traitor to also suggest that hormones contribute to the anger? I know I’m all over the place on this one, but obviously this is a very complicated issue. Interesting!!!!

It is a complicated issue. But the basic focus must always be placed on one’s responsibility for one’s own actions. Perhaps some of this simmering female anger has a reasonable basis, or perhaps it does not, but in any case, its basis doesn’t excuse the typical behavior inspired by it nor does its legitimacy make the persistent state of anger any healthier for the individual or those around them.

Which is why we don’t “kidnap” people and “hold them hostage”, we prevent dangerous terrorists from harming freedom:

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil – and the angry Iranian response to it – should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials….

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were “suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces”. This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

This may go a long way towards explaining the Coalition of the Willing’s strangely muted response to the Iranian capture of their sailors. Downing Street likely realizes that the rest of the world isn’t likely to be overly sympathetic to the plight of the “hostages” once it’s realized that this is simply a tit-for-tat situation.

Pajamas Media makes the predicted conclusion:

OUR EDITORS’ TAKE: What does the ascendancy of Fred Thompson and Ron Paul mean? Is this an Internet (early adopter) harbinger of things to come? In the case of Thompson, we think this is indeed a possibility. The former Tennessee senator / prosecutor / movie and television star has… despite being undeclared … fared quite well on other polls. On the latest Fox News Poll he is ahead of the declared Romney and the undeclared Gingrich, ditto on the Gallup Poll.

Ron Paul is a different matter. The paleo-libertarian seems to be a purely Internet Phenomenon. He has yet to score significantly on any national poll, his best being a mere 3% on Zogby. Of course this could change. Pajamas Media would like to note, however, that the vast majority of his votes in our poll (1331 of 1725) were placed right here on the portal site, suggesting a determined effort by his supporters to “bomb” this poll

Of course, another 270 of those votes, or 15.7 percent of them, were placed right here on this arch-libertarian site. Was that an attempt to “bomb” this polling precinct? Or is it simply the strong preference for a man who is so foolish as to actually believe in individual freedom and the Constitution among readers of this site?

The truth is that those who follow politics on the Internet are a very, very small elite. Remember that from the national perspective, practically no one – around half of one percent of the population – even watches Bill O’Reilly on a given evening nor knows who Kos or Instapundit are. Among that elite, there are a disproportional number of libertarians. Thus, any Internet poll is going to favor libertarians just as any poll taken at a PETA meeting is going to favor vegetarians. There’s nothing shady about that, as Pajamas Media appears to imply, it’s merely a function of the environment.

My take on Thompson is that his appeal is primarily an indication of Republican malaise; he is the living, breathing None of the Above. And as I’ve written many times before, it doesn’t matter who the Republicans nominate, as the Lizard Queen’s ascension is ordained.

On a related matter, I note that the candidate nearly every other right-wing commentator pronounced unelectable – and whose 2008 victory I predicted in 2005 – seems to have gotten off to a good start:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign today announced it will report $36 million in total receipts for the first fundraising quarter, which ended March 31, 2007. The staggering number reflects the strength of support for Clinton from every walk of life and every part of America.

Record money, a favorable media, a failed Republican war and millions of Republican women voting for her because she’s a woman… she’s more likely to win in a landslide than lose.

Now that I’ve received my spiffy new Encylopedia of Wars, a rather handsome three-volume set, it appears that my first estimate of 10.8 percent of wars being religious in nature was too high.

I haven’t gone through it in detail yet, but since the authors were helpful enough to list religious wars in the index, a quick comparison reveals that the true figure is more likely to be around seven percent. And this seven percent includes 14 iterations of the Byzantine-Muslim war as well as categorizing every Crusade as being religious in nature, even though most historians have concluded that a few of them, such as the Fourth, had nothing to do with religion in any way, shape or form.*

It’s interesting to note that despite the results of their own research, the authors of this seminal work nevertheless appear to blame pre-seventeenth century war on religion. On a closer reading, however, it may be more of a nod to the common prejudice of the historically ignorant than a reflection of their own conclusions. I think I shall have to ask them about this.

*The Fourth Crusade was the Venetian conquest of Constantinople, the Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire.

A lot of you emailed me this, but I think most of you are missing the more important point. It isn’t that women are prone to lie about rape. It’s that they are, from a legal perspective, children:

Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway. Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson – thinking quickly, if not clearly – cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.

I’m sort of curious what feminists will make of this, if anything, since on the one hand, they like to criticize all men as potential rapists, and on the other, they very much dislike the notion of men leaving women to their own defense. But the more important part of the story was in the last paragraph:

His wife also was charged with making a false report to a police officer – for allegedly saying she was raped – and could get up to six months behind bars on that offense. It was not immediately clear whether she had a lawyer. She had not been arrested as of Friday afternoon.

Of course not. Because, after all, she is a woman, and therefore a legal child, and therefore cannot be held responsible for her actions even when those actions have lead directly to someone’s death. I’d be surprised if she ever sees trial, in the unlikely event that she does, I’d expect her to get probation.