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ostile, America-hating jihadists captured in battles in Afghanistan were shown U.S. hospitality in Guantanamo – given Qur’ans and a proper Muslim diet, offered exercise and prayer time.  Each individual’s case was carefully researched and heard, a lawyer by the jihadist’s side to represent his interests.  Many were simply freed after this process, others ascertained judiciously to be too dangerous and returned to their cells.

And for this process, Leftists in America and anti-Americans around the world howled and spat and said vile things about our country and our president.  Even our new president joined in the condemning chorus, staking out the most left-wing of all candidates’ position on the matter.

Now, with the capture of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, we have a sad and tragic opportunity to measure the behavior of America against the behavior of those who fight us on the battlefield, betray us on our shores, and denigrate us from the comfort of their protected European easy chairs.

We certainly can’t expect anything approaching equal treatment and respect from those jihadist thugs who captured the soldier. Here’s what WaPo reports on them:

“Our leaders have not decided on the fate of this soldier.” the AFP quoted the Haqqani commander, identified only as Bahram, as saying. “They will decide on his fate and soon we will present video tapes of the coalition soldier and our demand to media.”

So Haqqani leaders, not a tribunal, will decide his fate.  And he will be videotaped and used as a propaganda tool, a violation of the Geneva accords.  And they will use the soldier to make demands of us, rather than treat him as a prisoner of war.  Anyone who has followed these sorts of cases has to fear for the life of this soldier; I hope that is not the case, but he has suffered the great misfortune of being captured by people who are not Americans.

Check out the several stories posted on Memeorandum about this breaking event, and you will find no Leftist outlets or blogs listed; you will not be able to link over to any stories or posts from the Left, calling for justice and demanding compliance with Geneva. They are uninterested, just as they are suddenly uninterested in civilian deaths in Iraq or military operations in Afghanistan.  Hypocrites.

Don’t count on this story even breaking through the Michael Jackson storm in the European press, obsessed as it is with deviant behaviors – especially by Americans.

Those who demanded full rights don’t even much care about this soldier’s right to life.  Guantanamo was all about serving a purpose other than protecting jihadists; it was about destroying a presidency and denigrating America, nothing more – and the Left’s disinterest in the fate of this soldier is all the proof we need.

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I

t’s really incredible how blogging has gone from nowhere to everywhere in a blink of the cultural/historical eye.  How pervasive have blogs become?  This pervasive:

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T

his news today from one of McClatchy’s premier rags, The Sacramento Bee:

The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well.

The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago.

But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of the newspaper industry, continues to struggle with the migration of business to the Internet and other media.

Some cheer the demise of the MSM; I am not one of them, especially regarding papers like the SacBee, which are the newspapers of record for the states they serve. I hope that most of those offered buyouts are useless hacks, no longer needed ad sales people and the like, but when you’re talking about a full-time employee at the Bee, you just might be talking about reporters with years of experience and tough savvy who cover state government like no one else.

Who is going to replace the MSM, for all its faults? What bloggers are ready to step up and cover the governor, the legislature and dozens of state bureaucracies? Exactly none. I don’t care how noble the bloggers are in their intentions, they won’t receive the deference provided to journalists, they don’t have the same protections, and they definitely lack the resources the MSM had in their prime.

Of course, I’m part of the problem. I subscribe to nothing now except the on-line WSJ. I read the SacBee just about every day, but I give them nothing for their efforts to report the news and make it available to me. And I don’t look at their on-line ads, either.

With the newspapers in trouble and the blogs not yet ready to pick up the ball, do we really face the prospect of having to rely on broadcast news for coverage of state government? If so, we’re doomed.

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Update: Bloomberg reports:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hasn’t endorsed any specific plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a government spokesman said, a day after a magazine report that he backed Barack Obama’s proposal.

Al-Maliki supports a “general vision” of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and has not backed a plan by Obama, the presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, for a 16- month withdrawal window, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an e-mailed statement in Baghdad today.

This has certainly set off a swirl of controversy, but it hasn’t changed the core of this post.

T

he blogosphere is a very, very prejudiced place because we surround ourselves with like-minded sorts and shun those who hold another view. The stories we bloggers select to write about suffer the same way; we ignore stories that trouble us, and pounce on those that confirm our beliefs, either that we’re right or others are wrong.

Case in point: Spiegel’s interview with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in which Maliki says that Barack Obama’s 16-month timeframe for a withdrawal from Iraq is the right one, and appeared to encourage people not to vote for candidate with an Iraq plan like … oh … John McCain’s:

“Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

The irony of this, of course, is that everything that Obama opposed – foremost the surge – is what’s made it possible. Without the policies endorsed by Bush and McCain, Maliki would not have so optimistic a view of his country’s future. But all that matters politically is that now he does have that view, and Obama will be able to strut about looking brilliant, as if his view on Iraq was always the right view on Iraq.

That makes this story bad, bad news for anyone who feels McCain is better (even marginally) for America’s future than Obama. Maliki’s comments could effectively end the war debate, with Obama’s “See, I told you so” much more resonant than McCain’s “Wait! It was me!” And that makes this story one the leftybloggers love and we conservatives have largely ignored.

Just check out memeorandum. It headlines about a half dozen different news articles and blog posts on the story, including the Spiegel story and a Reuters story that seems to have scooped Spiegel internationally, then links to about 40 news and blog posts on the story. Yes, there are some posts from the conservative side making points similar to those I’ve made above, like this, from The American Mind:

First, realize Maliki sees Obama as the Presidential front runner. It’s rational not to rock the boat. Second, Iraq and the U.S. wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for the surge that quelled violence.

But many many more leftyblogs are listed, making comments like this:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki found a pony and it’s name is Obama. While John McSame was busy questioning Obama’s foreign policy credentials the Iraqi Prime Minster was endorsing them.

Or this one from Polimom that cues off the post from The American Mind above:

That is absolutely the McCain campaign’s narrative on Iraq. It has to be, since it’s all they’ve got now. And you can bet your bottom dollar that many millions of Americans will recall — with or without the reminders that are surely coming — that the dire situation that led to the surge was predicated by an incredibly stupid invasion.

Hmmm. How is it that she’s forgotten that Maliki would not be speaking at all about the progress towards a secure democracy in Iraq, were it not for the invasion she still calls “incredibly stupid?” How is it that she’s conveniently dropped the Butcher of Baghdad from her memory? Here’s why: Because, like most of us, she primarily reads the posts and news items she wants to read and ignores the ones she doesn’t.

The blogosphere is not the great equalizer, in which we all graze widely on the field of ideas (oh wait – look, even the grazing sheep are bunched together); rather it is a cafeteria, where we’re free to move about, selecting only the items that appeal to us, and never tasting the ones that don’t. (There are also those strange beings who actively scout out opposing views and leave aggressive, obnoxious comments to irritate the inmates of that particular asylum. That’s a bizarre human dynamic since they are forever assigning themselves losing battles.)

I, too, am guilty of treating the blogosphere as a cafeteria, and it’s easy to understand, since opposing points of view irritate the gut, chafe the senses … and even, occasionally, challenge opinions that are too hard-set. That’s why I do spend a bit of time perusing the opposition, but I confess, I don’t do it often enough.

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Funny the stuff you find link-jumping through the blogosphere … like Stuff White People Like, a funny and fascinating blog soon to be a book …

… which I found out about while enjoying Hooah Wife and Friends. You know what that Hooah is, right? So you know she’s got her head screwed on right.

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Fred Thompson did not resign after tying for third in Iowa, as The Politico said he would. Still, that couldn’t keep the Web-rag from coming up with this misleading headline this morning: Resignation greets Thompson’s third place.

Not that kind of resignation, dummy — the “oh, well … sheesh” kind of resignation. Never mind that it was Politico that started the whole resignation speculation bit anyway.

Politico needs to decide whether it’s going to be a good news outlet or a goofball news outlet, and sophomoric headline tricks like this point it in the goofball direction.

The article itself makes it clear that Thompson, while worried about finances, isn’t finished yet:

He asked the crowd where he needs to go next. At their shouts of “South Carolina!” Thompson nodded approvingly. Thompson’s last best shot will be in the south, where he polls significantly better than New Hampshire.

Thompson implied he might soon drop out of the race, saying, “We’ll have to look at our finance numbers.”

But there’s nothing like playing to a crowd with low expectations.

“It looks like someone’s gonna have to carry a strong conservative message, and it looks like it’s gonna be me.” The crowd went wild as if Thompson had just sworn up and down that he was sure to win.

Not in the article is any mention of the pub’s Tuesday evening article predicting that Thompson would resign if he did not finish in second place. Not any inside scoop — or confession — detailing on how they got duped by a few opportunistic political operatives, missing the oldest political trick in the book.

How very old school of this new media outlet. My trust factor in Politico just dropped down, waaay down.

hat-tip: memeorandum; art: The Ward View

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The weird world of the whacked out Left … reading the Yearly Kos Convention home page is even odd …

Noooo!!! It’s the last day of the Convention! But we’re ending on a higher-than-all-heck note with the Presidential Leadership Forum.

Can I get a wooo-hoooo??

Don’t forget your lanyards today! That would be very bad. And why not put on little bits of ritz while you’re at it? No pressure–just the whole world watching…

The Kos-sacks dressing up for the media with “ritz?” I thought they’d be dressing up in their best F*** Bush T-shirts.

Hillary’s speaking now, apparently. Here’s a lead-in from aging left-organ Mother Jones:

The secret service cars are out front and the mainstream media has shown up in force, so you know it’s time for the big boys. Hillary Clinton, who is up first, provides the most compelling story lines here at YearlyKos. As Kos himself admitted in a press conference a few moments ago, “Her negatives in this community are fairly high.” She isn’t seen as a true progressive, nor as someone willing to stand strong for her principles when it is politically inexpedient. But as Kos admitted, Clinton has moved strongly in the last year to engage the netroots and bring down those negatives.

Will she get hit for being the most moderate of all the candidates, or will she get kudos for trending in the right direction? Or, as has the case been throughout this convention, will the crowd be polite, respectful, and almost bland? Stay tuned…

Polite, respectful and bland? From the Kos-mopolitans? That would be newsworthy!

Meanwhile the big highlight of the day, the DC “Meet the Leaders” session, bombed out entirely:

I know, I know–what could possibly be more important than our annual gathering of the Netroots? That’s what I said!

We are officially listing Senator Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Rahm Emanuel as cancelled ….

The reason? No way they’d want to associate with this Kos-tic sorts. Just kidding. A vote on the energy bill is going on today … far too much pork at state to risk a trip to the Kos-modome.

Meanwhile, I was interested to see that right there on the very top tier of sponsors was a division of mainstream corporate Hollywood, Warner Independent Films. Why would Warner Bros have one of its divisions so visible among the rebels with a Kos? Two reasons that I can see:

• The 11th Hour, Leo’s follow-up to Al’s global warming fearfest, which we understand is even scarier than the first. Due out from Warner Independent on Aug. 17.
• In the Valley of Elah, starring Tommy Lee Jones and the nuttier and nuttier Susan Sarandon as parents searching for their boy, who just returned from duty in Iraq but has gone missing.

Warner Bros. current mainstream offerings are Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, License to Wed, No Reservations and Oceans 13 — all films going after mainstream audiences that probably aren’t too keen to sit next to the smelly guys in the F*** Bush T-shirts.

Should we protest? Yawn.

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There’s a spirited cosmic debate going on over at Bookworm Room, where Book’s on vacation and Don Quixote stepped in to ask a provocative question:

What do you think God thinks about the holy war declared on His people by the Islamist extremists and His people’s reactions to it?

Here’s my response; you’ll find over 20 other responses there from a variety of religious viewpoints, and it’s fascinating reading so be sure to click here and go there.

As usual, some of the most intelligent “comment-ary” on the Web is in Bookworm’s room.

I’m a solid and firm Christian believer raised in a very multicultural environment — Dad’s overseas postings, including an Islamic country (Turkey) and a Buddhist one (Japan). Buddhism sucked in my mom and brother, but after a lot of wandering, I came back to Christianity.

Back to Don Q’s original question, since there’s been a lot of meandering above: What do you think He thinks about the holy war declared on His people by the Islamist extremists and His people’s reactions to it? So, with the usual “we’ll never know His will” disclaimers:

“His people” are, as far as we know, only the Jews. Christians may be His people, but if they are, He hasn’t said so in so many words. This conflict is no different from earlier conflicts between the Jews and the Egyptians, the Jews and the Babylonians, the Jews and the worshippers of Baal, so we have a pretty good biblical record of what God’s view would be: He would expect and want Jews to stand up for the faith of their fathers, for the land God promised them and gave them, and fight with holy fervor to protect Israel and Judaism from Islam.

He would likely have been pleased with the early results of this battle, but like the Israelites in the wilderness, the Israelites of today have forgotten the miracles the Father performed, the promises he made, the faith of their fathers, and it showed in the languid, inept war of the summer of 2006. Did that make God unhappy? Probably not, because he saw it coming, right? Did it make him happy? Probably not. His mode is to let us follow our free will, get weak, have to fight, and get strong. He’s taking the long view.

I pray often and hard about the war with Islam. It is something I see no end to, a perfect storm that will blow and blow and blow some more. God obviously doesn’t see it as we do, and we need someone to lead us who understands what God means by all this, and leads accordingly.

Christianity has understood its Jewish roots well over the years and has risen up to defend the Holy Land and Judeo-Christian values many times in the past. Colonial America saw America as a biblical allegory: Europe was Egypt, America was the Holy Land, we were God’s new children with a weighty moral responsibility. God certainly blessed that vision of what America was, but now we have weakened with time, and so has (or will) His blessing.

If the raise of Islamism and its declaration of jihad against us is meant by God to be our wilderness, our testing to make us strong, it is a savage wilderness and a good test. We will not prevail by multiculturalism, which God refers to as “putting other gods before Me.” We will not prevail by weakness or concession. In times like this, God asks us to prevail by thoroughly and completely whupping the butts of our opponents.

So, if that’s the case, God’s probably not smiling about where we are at this point in time … but since He doesn’t live in time, He may be smiling anyway.

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The illegal Shanxi brick kilns in Northern China were that — illegal. But they were also flourishing under the eyes of local Commie leaders, as part of centuries-old Chinese tradition of slavery and thuggery that continues to this day.

Here’s a description of Shanxi from the blog RFA (Radio Free Asia) Unplugged, which has a panel discussion on Shanxi:

In these illegal brick kilns, abducted child laborers and peasant workers are in living hell. They are forced to work as long as 19 hours everyday. They live in shanties that stink up to high heaven. They have not been allowed to wash themselves for a long time, and all appear unkempt and unwashed. They are frequently beaten by the labor contractors and are buried alive when they become more dead than alive from the beating. The First Financial Daily reported that the local government has long known about the situation in these black brick kilns. The problems that it reflects are worth pondering.

Hundreds of laborers were kept as slaves in Shanxi, with the knowledge, cooperation and even participation of local Chinese Commie bosses. Children, hundreds of children, were kidnapped and forced into slave labor at the kilns. Parents searched desperately for their children, and government officials found nothing wrong, found no children.

Of course, now that it’s been brought into the light, the Commies are calling it horrible and are prosecuting those involved … but they weren’t involved in bringing the Shanxi slave labor camps to light.

A reporter for a TV station, Fu Zhenzhong, did some investigative reporting first, but the hero of this story goes to a 32-year-old mother named Xin Yanhua, who broke the story on the internet, according to East South West North:

Compared to those parents who are at a loss and have no documentary material about their missing children, Xin Yanhua (辛艳华) had received an excellent education and she writes wonderfully. More importantly, she was familiar with the Internet as her husband had started a website with others.

On June 5, 2007, Xin Yanhua wrote The blood-and-tears appeal from 400 fathers: Who will save our children? and published it at Dahe Net. Afterwards, she vanished from view. “I made a post as a family member of a victim. I did not participation in the liberation, and I did not conduct any investigation at the scene. I should not be the principal player,” she said.

But there came a day when she could no longer hide herself.

Without her, the Shanxi illegal brick kilns affair may never be uncovered.

On the evening of June 6, 2007, The blood-and-tears appeal from 400 fathers: Who will save our children? appeared at Dahe net. The author of this post which gathered several hundred thousand page views signed as “Central Plain Old Pi.”

Fourteen days later, “Central Plain Old Pi” posted again with the second public letter of appeal, Failing to find their children, 400 parents petition again. The post asked: The rescue work has almost reached an end, but where are the children?

Xin Yanhua got into the story because a nephew had been kidnapped. Imagine this happening in America:

In early April 2007, the nephew of Xin Yanhua — a sixteen-year-old boy — walked out of his home in Zhoukou in Henan and then disappeared in the vicinity of the Zhengzhou train station. It would turn out that he was sold by a slave trader to an illegal brick kiln in Yongji county, Shanxi province.

In early May, Xin Yanhua’s elder brother had no luck in finding his son and therefore sought the help of his sister, because she was more experienced with the ways of the world and may be able to help. …

On May 26, Xin’s nephew and two other kiln workers were rescued and taken back to Zhengzhou by the parents with missing children. Xin Yanhua could barely recognize her nephew: he had long hair and glazed eyes, and his body was covered with bruises and wounds oozing with pus. That night, Xin heard the shocking details of what happened at the illegal brick kiln from the narration of her nephew.

She offered to pay those parents, but they turned her down. They said, “This is not about the money. This is about the wretched children.” In her gratitude, she dragged her nephew over and told him, “Please make a bow to these parents to show your gratitude.” The child broke out in tears instead, and all the parents were crying as well.

“I did this out of gratitude, and also because of the conscience of a mother.” Xin Yanhua felt that she should contribute her meager efforts to help those parents.

Initial efforts to help failed. Bureaucrats excused themselves from the issue because they had no authority to cross provincial lines to save children. The media interest failed to spark a fire. So Xin Yanhua turned to the Internet.

Her first couple efforts to post as a comment failed because on-line editors thought it too controversial, but the editors at Dahe played it prominently, resulting in 580,000 page views.

The raging storm of Internet opinion directly triggered the follow-up by the traditional media. The Southern Weekend reporter rushed to the scene immediately as a result of the Internet forum post. Afterwards, the state leaders issued directives, and the Shanxi and Henan provincial government reacted in a timely manner to initiate an unprecedented campaign against the illegal brick kilns.

This is exactly what I wrote about Saturday, saying “This is why blogs give us hope,” about the story of Lian Yue, the Chinese blogger who alerted his community to the health risks of a paraxylene (PX) chemical factory planned for their town.

The Internet is putting pressure on a Chinese government that is not used to being pressured. They have responded with a “Great Firewall” that’s designed to keep the Internet purged of criticism, but the wall is no more effective than the Great Wall was at keeping out Mongols.

Xin Yanhua’s stories led to raids on the kiln and 12 children were among those liberated. It’s alleged that labor bosses moved hundreds of other children to other slave labor camps in advance of the raides, so Xin Yanhua is keeping the pressure up.

When only 12 children (“only?!”) were found in the camps, she was criticized for inflating the problem with her stories of 400 children, so she did what bloggers do: She published the truth, working with parents of missing children to compile a list … a list that ended up including nearly 400 names.

China today. Iran tomorrow. The Internet has given those who pursue justice from unjust governments and freedom in unfree societies a tool of magnificent power and persuasiveness. That it can work against the entrenched power of the Chinese Commies is a sign of its ability to weaken the facades of power the corrupt megalomaniacs of the world build as Great Walls to protect their regimes.

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We have Tunku Varadarajan at the WSJ to thank for the best weekend reading in the Blogosphere this weekend, as he notes that this place we increasingly call home is now a decade old:

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger — regarded by many to be Jorn Barger — began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis,” and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word “weblog.”

The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And before them there were “proto-blogs,” embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life-form.

It’s fitting that blogs have an uncertain birthdate because blogs are nothing if not unanchored. Critics who question the viability of blogs because of their uncertifiability ignore two things: Blogs self correct rather viciously, and certifiability only goes so far in opinion and news; we’re not building bridges and levees here, so the margin for error is somewhat greater.

Varadarajan solicited brief essays from a number of bloggers and viewers/critics of bloggers. They’re mostly quite interesting and worth a jaunt over to read their stuff. I thought I would quote from Tom Wolfe or Newt Gingrich, but of all the commentators, it was Xiao Qiang,right, founder of China Digital Times, who homered. Here, in full, is his piece, and why blogs have changed the world:

Lian Yue started his blog in the spring of 2005. A free-lance columnist, Lian lives in Xiamen, one of China’s most wealthy cities on the southeast coast. His liberal-style social commentary and humorous writing quickly won him thousands of readers.

Starting this March, Lian posted a series of articles warning the people in his hometown that a paraxylene (PX) chemical factory being built in his city could have a disastrous environmental impact. He called on residents to speak out against the construction. “Don’t be afraid,” Lian wrote on his blog on March 29. “Please just talk to your friends, family and colleagues about this event. They might still be in the dark.”

Lian is one of 16 million (and growing) active bloggers in China. While most posts are personal, an increasing number of bloggers writing about public affairs have become opinion leaders in their local communities. Despite the government’s “Great Firewall” to filter out “undesirable information,” and the tens of thousands of personnel hired to police the Internet, the sheer number of bloggers writing about public affairs is having a transformative impact on Chinese politics.

Xiamen authorities have vigorously deleted anti-PX factory messages on any servers within their governing territory. However, word still got out to local residents via email, IM and SMS on mobile phones. One of Lian Yue’s articles on this topic was published in a newspaper in a neighboring province and spread “like wildfire” throughout the blogosphere. By the end of May, SMS messages and cellphone photos of protesting slogans such as “Boycott PX, Protect Xiamen” were sent out to millions of Xiamen residents. On June 1 and 2, against the local authorities’ warning, several thousand citizens spontaneously showed up “to walk” in front of the city government with anti-PX message boards. Participants reported the protest live with their cellphones, which directly transmitted photos and text to their blogs.

The government was forced to announce a “re-evaluation” of the factory construction.

In China, blogs enable millions of citizens to express their opinions with reduced political risk simply because of the sheer number of like-minded opinions online. Facing these independent voices, the old ideological machine starts to crumble. Within society, bloggers like Lian Yue are seen as more credible voices than propaganda officials. The Chinese blogosphere is a dynamically contested terrain. What will the long-term implications be? I think the writing is already on the Great Firewall.

Against that, Tom Wolfe’s’ effete discounting of blogs for being inaccurate and Chris Cox’s piece on their effect on investing are merely interesting. Xiao reaffirmed why blogs give us hope.

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