Russ Feingold accuses President Bush of using politically incorrect language. The term “Islamic fascists” is offensive to Muslims, so it is to be avoided, Feingold the Scold insists.

“We must avoid using misleading and offensive terms that link Islam with those who subvert this great religion or who distort its teachings to justify terrorist activities,” Feingold said Tuesday in a speech to the Arab American Institute on Capitol Hill.

The Wisconsin senator, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said the label “Islamic fascists” makes no sense and doesn’t help the U.S. effort to combat terrorism.

“Fascist ideology doesn’t have anything to do with the way global terrorist networks think or operate,…”

Feingold is mistaken. They are fascists—motherfucking Islamofascists, to be precise—and no U.S. senator or EU representative will get me to stop saying so.

(via Publius Pundit, who covered the visit of the pestilential liar Khatami to Harvard’s Kennedy School)

The Washington Post attempts to put a gloss on the unity government of Palestinians announced by Abbas, calling it a “power-sharing” arrangement.

Under the plan, Abbas, the authority’s president, is to dissolve the current Hamas-led cabinet within 48 hours. Abbas would then nominate the current Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas officials said, to assemble a coalition cabinet that would include members of his party, Fatah, other factions, and so-called technocrats unaligned with the leading movements.

Details of the agreement mark the first time Hamas has tacitly endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if not explicitly the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Of course, endorsing a two-state solution without acknowledging the right of one of the states to exist means that Haniyeh is, at the very least, a weasel and an insincere phony. It’s manufactured as a way to unfreeze the funds that are being held back because of Hamas’s failure to renounce terrorism and to recognize Israel. I don’t expect this to lead anywhere.

Also, what does Mashaal have to say about it? Last we heard from him, he was pulling the strings on the matter of the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is still being held by the Palestinians, and declaring that the motto of the Palestinians is “I fight, therefore I am.”

UPDATE: Blair has endorsed this move and recommends “On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the Quartet, that is the UN, EU, US and Russia, we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian authority…”

What to do when the paparazzi stop calling on you?

Sue them! That’s what the swank L.A. boutique Kitson is doing.

The owner of Kitson, the Robertson Boulevard clothing store favored by young celebs such as Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Denise Richards, says that Us Weekly magazine is intentionally omitting any mention of the store in its issues because of a nasty legal feud.

Kitson founder Fraser Ross claims the magazine reneged on a settlement in which it agreed not to disrupt the business or disparage the reputation of the store.

The lawsuit alleges the magazine now refuses to name or show the Kitson brand in credits, captions or celebrity photographs. As an example, the suit cited the magazine’s cropping of a picture in such a way that its blue shopping bags, “generally known to readers, did not display the name Kitson on it.”

Not long ago, Us Weekly gushed that Kitson was “L.A.’s hippest hot spot.”

There’s a lesson here for everyone who lives by publicity, such as, for example, Our Lady of Namibia, over whom Jon Fine was gushing the other day:

Angelina Jolie… is the all-purpose action figure of today’s celebrity-industrial complex. Her skills at The Game astonish its harshest judges — the hardened vets of celebrity media. “She really is the new paradigm of how to use your celebrity in ways that benefit everyone involved,” says Larry Hackett, People’s top editor. Not least of which is herself. It would be churlish to imply that Jolie’s extensive charity work is motivated by anything other than sincerity, but it’s a crucial element of her increasing celebrity currency and transformation from blood-obsessed tattooed goth to post-punk Mother Teresa. 

Also, her boyfriend is Brad Pitt.

Yes, Ms. Jolie, who apparently has done all of this without the services of a publicist, has been shrewd and successful. I’ll bet she’s read both Joshua Gamson’s Claims to Fame and Irving Rein’s High Visibility.

The question is: how will she keep it up? Per Rein, she will need ever more dramatic “Dramatic Realities” to keep us interested.

Stay tuned.

On stingrays, after Steve Irwin’s death:

At least ten stingrays have been found dead and mutilated on Australia’s eastern coast in the last week in what conservationists believe could be revenge attacks for the death of Steve Irwin, the popular naturalist and television personality.

There’s even a new term for it [emphasis mine]:

fans’ mourning has taken a new focus: stingray rage.  

Some fans have also turned to technology to work out their feelings:

Meanwhile, Irwin’s admirers appear also to be using technology to avenge the death of the daredevil star.

A website has created a game called Terri Irwin’s Revenge, depicting the naturalist’s wife firing at stingrays underwater. The aim of the game, which is being circulated via e-mail, is to kill as many stingrays as possible without getting hit, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

However, the game has been receiving mixed responses from online visitors. “We should make it clear, this game is intended to be a memorial and NOT a funny parody,” say its creators, who go by the names of Josh Tuttle, -altr- and Onic, on the website mofunzone.com

The question is, on whom are the attackers wreaking their vengeance? Could it be that Germaine Greer, in her attack on Irwin immediately after his death, had something to do with the heightened feelings in Australia?

What Irwin never seemed to understand was that animals need space. The one lesson any conservationist must labour to drive home is that habitat loss is the principal cause of species loss. There was no habitat, no matter how fragile or finely balanced, that Irwin hesitated to barge into, trumpeting his wonder and amazement to the skies. There was not an animal he was not prepared to manhandle. Every creature he brandished at the camera was in distress. Every snake badgered by Irwin was at a huge disadvantage, with only a single possible reaction to its terrifying situation, which was to strike.

She concluded that

The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin.

She thought it was over now that Irwin was dead. But that’s not how vicious partisan battles work. As she should know, because this is not the first time she has joined the international culture war in the name of her illiberal, dangerous politics.

For five years he’s been an indefatigable fighter for the preservation of the values of the West. 

 I debate with the “antiwar” types almost every day, either in print or on the air or on the podium,

Thank you, Christopher Hitchens, and may your energy never flag, and your batteries never run out.

Yesterday in the WSJ, Hitchens laid out what we ought to have learned since 9/11:

that clerical fanaticism means to fight a war which can only have one victor.

And, wincing, he tells us what we need to do:

The second point makes me queasy, but cannot be ducked. “We” — and our allies — simply have to become more ruthless and more experienced. 

Wincing, I agree. Further, I would argue that “we” have already become more ruthless—the cultural signs are there. (I will argue this in another post, sometime soon, I hope.)

The only question is whether we will go from 0 to Mach 5 in our ruthlessness or whether “we,” together, will devise a strategy to forestall mass slaughter.