Month: April 2006

How the Bikini Liberated Spain

How world capital of tourism was built on a bikini – World – Times Online
The excommunication process was dropped. The bikini stayed. Some see this, at least symbolically, as a defining moment in recent Spanish history. It marked the beginning of a timid sexual revolution and helped to take the Catholicism out of national Catholicism. The tourists, more importantly, had the power to outface the Church. They brought not just money, but the seeds of change. They also brought the fresh air of democracy. There was no turning back.

Teenager killed his sister for living a Western life

Teenager killed his sister for living a Western life – World – Times Online
AYHAN SURUCU was so angry when his sister started to wear make-up and date German men that he put a gun to her head at a bus stop and killed her. Kids at a nearby school, attended mainly by the children of immigrant Muslim families, cheered and applauded when news of the murder reached them

South Park Censored

This is what viewers saw last night, when World-wide Muslim riots over cartoons in a Danish newspaper scared Comedy Central to censor last nights South Park TV show, even though they did show Mohammed prominently, as a flame-wielding superhero in the "Super Best Friends" episode in 2003 (see picture below). and in this show Jesus defecated on George W. Bush and the American flag. It's the second run-in over religion in a few months for the satirists. Comedy Central pulled a March rerun of a "South Park" episode that mocked Scientologists. Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist who voiced the Chef character on the show, resigned in protest over the episode. Only last week, "South Park" won broadcasting's prestigious Peabody. Awards director Horace Newcomb said at the time that by its offensiveness, the show "reminds us of the need for being tolerant." View the video of the climactic ending.

And a link back to an earlier entry on this blog by the Danish Editor about why he published the now infamous cartoons.

And if you want to see the offending cartoons that were commisioned in response to the creeping undermining of Free Speech by Political Correctness & fear of intolerance.

With Big Boost From Sugar Cane, Brazil Is Satisfying Its Fuel Needs

Brazil Is Satisfying Its Fuel Needs – New York Times
At the dawn of the automobile age, Henry Ford predicted that "ethyl alcohol is the fuel of the future." With petroleum about $65 a barrel, President Bush has now embraced that view, too. But Brazil is already there.

This country expects to become energy self-sufficient this year, meeting its growing demand for fuel by increasing production from petroleum and ethanol. Already the use of ethanol, derived in Brazil from sugar cane, is so widespread that some gas stations have two sets of pumps, marked A for alcohol and G for gas.

Ethanol can be made through the fermentation of many natural substances, but sugar cane offers advantages over others, like corn. For each unit of energy expended to turn cane into ethanol, 8.3 times as much energy is created, compared with a maximum of 1.3 times for corn, according to scientists at the Center for Sugarcane Technology here and other Brazilian research institutes.

Globalizing Good Government

Globalizing Good Government – New York Times
Globalization's critics argue that a more open world economy sets off a race to the bottom by encouraging countries to jettison protections for consumers, workers and the environment. In reality, the opposite is true. If our data demonstrate anything, it is that globalization prompts a race to the top by pushing countries to abandon policies that burden their economies in favor of those that fuel growth and economic opportunity

Make Mexico Rich

Jonah Goldberg on Mexico on National Review Online
You want to solve the illegal-immigration problem? Well, here's the answer: Make Mexico rich.

For all the talk about coming up with "comprehensive" immigration reform, the root causes of the supply are left out of the debate about immigrant supply and demand. If we're going to be "comprehensive," why not tie a fixed but significant level of legal Mexican immigration to greater free-market and anti-corruption reforms at home. Mexico's government feels increasingly free to lecture us about our domestic and economic priorities; it seems only fitting for us to take a more active interest in theirs as well.

America’s Real Assimilation Problem

What we really ought to be worried about is a group of 75 million people who desperately need to be assimilated into America's culture of individualism, taught the essential facts about America's history, and encouraged to appreciate the virtues of our political system.I am talking about 75 million people who are, you might say, on an automatic track to citizenship, and all of whom will become newly eligible to vote in the next two decades.

I am speaking of the 75 million Americans under the age of 18.

Robert Tracinski is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIA Daily.