by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 1:11 P.M. EDT

We Get Results--II
All five of the Microsoft Network hate "communities" we noted yesterday are now gone. MSN dragged its feet on killing one of them, Dump Israel Now, which, a Microsoft representative wrote to an OpinionJournal reader, "does not encourage violence or racism [and] at this time it appears to be purely political debate about the US support of Israel, [so] we can not close it down at this time."

We wrote the Microsoft rep and asked her if it really is the company's position that a reference to "the JEWnited States of America" is permissible under MSN's Terms of Service. Within three hours we had a response: "Per your questions . . ., this site has been disabled and is no longer accessible."

Still accessible, though, are Aryan Skinheads United, Gathering place For white Nationalists and skins and at least five other white-supremacist "communities." We're tired of doing Microsoft's work for it, so we're not going to list the others just yet. We'll let you know in due course whether Microsoft seeks out and deletes the offending sites.

Yahoo's Racist Yahoos
Like MSN, Yahoo has terms of service that stipulate that users may not "upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is . . . hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable." (See section 6a.) Also like MSN, Yahoo plays host to what appears to be a thriving white-supremacist subculture.

Among the subcategories Yahoo lists under "Culture & Community Groups" in Yahoo's member directory are "Skinheads" and "White Pride and Racialism." There's also an "Anti-Zionism" subcategory, which is listed under "Judaism," even though most of its members, bearing screen names like "arabic_fighter" and "aryan_queen88," do not sound like anti-Zionist Jews.

Under "Yahoo Groups"--which, like MSN's "communities," are user-created, we find such examples as these:

• WHITEISRIGHT, "a group for white people who want to promote the white race." It promises "METAL RACIAL MUSIC EMPOWERING THE ARYAN LEGIONS."

• NSM_Comrades, "a restricted list for members of the NSM and fellow NS Comrades," which "promotes Aryan Unity within the movement." The group's page links to nsm88.com, a swastika-laden site where we learn that NSM stands for National Socialist Movement.

• East Coast White Pride, a group "specifically for WP, NS, NA, WCOTC, KKK, skinheads and all other racialists and White nationalists in the eastern US and Canada," which stipulates that "no 'minorities', jews, homosexuals or SHARP/ARA/commie b.s. will be tolerated."

A quick survey of Yahoo user profiles yields plenty of shockingly racist material. Here's a sample:

• The aforementioned aryan_queen88 lists "lynching" among her hobbies and declares (quoting verbatim): "All niggers,spics,jews,gooks and any other subhuman viewing this,,take the gun~ put under chin at 45 degree angle~ pull trigger~ ~ DIE!!~"

• Weissmacht_8814_skin lists his age as 88, his location as "timber nigger hell," his occupation as "nigger exterminator" and among his hobbies "smashing niggers."

• Whiteprideworldwide_14_88's profile brings us the "latest news" that "our government has been hi-jacked by Jews and Blacks."

• peaches17_88_4_u declares that "i am very racist and am looking for others who are the same." Her "favorite quote" is an obscenity-laden threat of violence against black people.

Finding this stuff is absurdly easy; all you need to do is use the Google search engine to search Yahoo for keywords like white pride, Aryan and nigger. Not every page that contains these words is necessarily in violation of Yahoo's terms of service, but you'd think they'd serve as a red flag for administrators to have a look. What's the point of having antihate terms of service when Yahoo's efforts to enforce them are desultory at best?

One other question: Does anyone know what it is that racist yahoos think is special about the number 88?

Look Who's Talking
This editorial on France's election is unexceptionable, until you consider the source:

The swing to the far right represents a triumph of a sinister France, a France that does not want foreigners in its midst. This is not some internal matter, of concern only in France itself, or in the EU, which Le Pen vehemently opposes. His racism and xenophobia, with which one in six French men and women evidently identify, is a matter of the gravest concern for the rest of the world.

Where did this appear? In the Arab News, a Saudi paper. Saudi Arabia prohibits Christians from practicing their religion and Jews from living in the country at all. Xenophobia indeed.

Exporting Radical Islam
Toronto Star columnist Stephen Handelman offers an intriguing explanation of Europe's recent upsurge in anti-Jewish violence:

Muslim fundamentalism has already proved incapable of translating . . . discontent into long-term political power. It has failed most embarrassingly in two states where radical Islamic theology once posed a serious political alternative--in Egypt and Algeria. And its popular support is eroding in Iran, the one nation where it reached power as the result of a popular revolution. . . .

Unable to win political traction at home, radical Islam has found its most passionate new adherents in Muslim communities abroad.

At least 12 million Muslims--perhaps as many as 22 million--live in Europe today. The targets of economic discrimination and prejudice themselves, many can be easily swayed to violence in the pursuit of a political agenda set elsewhere.

That governments in the Muslim world are aware of this is indisputable. Also indisputable is the fact that the money and logistics support channelled to these overseas groups by some of those governments deflects the still-genuine threat posed by Islamic alternatives at home.

Here's a datum to support Handelman's hypothesis: The New York Times reports from Frankfurt that "one of the five men on trial here for plotting to blow up buildings in Strasbourg, France, admitted his role in the plot today and said he received his military and ideological training in Afghanistan."

The Truth Helps
Remember all the nervous Nellies who insisted that by identifying Iran as part of the "axis of evil" President Bush was setting back efforts at rapprochement between Washington and Tehran? The Financial Times reports that "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, has quietly authorised the Supreme National Security Council to assess the merits of starting talks with the US and the threat posed to Iran in the light of President George W. Bush's denunciation of the Islamic republic as forming an 'axis of evil' with Iraq and North Korea."

The Massacre That Wasn't--IV
Amnesty International says it stands for human rights, presumably including the right to due process. And yet here's what passes for "evidence" when Amnesty is trying to convict Jews of war crimes:

Professor Derrick Pounder, a forensic pathologist at Dundee University, visited Jenin hospital on behalf of Amnesty to examine some of the bodies that had been recovered. But what surprised him most was the absence of severely injured patients, since the hospital is less than a kilometre from the camp.

"In a conflict of this type in a densely populated are, where the Israeli army lost a substantial number of men, it is inconceivable that there were not also large numbers of severely injured," he said.

Normally, he would have expected to find three people severely injured for every one killed. Even if one accepts the Israeli claim that "only" 40 Palestinians died, there ought to be another 120 lying badly wounded, in hospital. But they are nowhere to be found.

"We draw the conclusion that they were allowed to die where they were," Professor Pounder said.

Back in Jenin, the Jerusalem Post reports on a Palestinian effort to fabricate evidence:

One camp resident wanted me to stage a photograph. He pulled me into a home on the perimeter of the destruction. The front of the house was peeled away like a thin veneer. The floor was buckled, and the few pictures that remained on the walls were tilted at a distressing angle. But then the man lay face down on a mattress, splayed out his arms, and closed his eyes. When I didn't take his picture he looked up at me and said, "You take picture now." I declined.

The guys at Reuters even attempt to use Palestinian atrocities against the Jews. A dispatch titled "Israel Rejects U.N. Jenin Probe" is accompanied by a photo showing a body being dragged through the street. There's no caption, so readers would naturally assume the photo is from Jenin, but in fact it is from Hebron, and it depicts an Arab "collaborator" who was lynched by his fellow Arabs.

'Our Expertise Lies in Slogans'
A revealing article in Ha'aretz has a revealing quote on Arab efforts to boycott America:

"The boycott is the way the Arab public can let off steam," says a Jordanian official. "It has to be viewed for now as a slogan that is also exploited by anti-government forces. We are now living in a global age in which no single Arab country can refrain from buying products from a high-quality and inexpensive source, even if that source is Israel or America. We, perhaps more than others, have to know that economic sanctions do not work. Has Iraq changed its policies because of the economic sanctions? How many years was Libya under such sanctions? And Iran? If we had products to sell to Israel, that would be another story. But as a slogan, boycott is excellent. And that after all is where our expertise lies--in slogans."

Poor Berkeley, Calif., can't even agree on slogans anymore. The Associated Press reports that the Berkeley City Council voted against a measure to boycott Israel.

Rioting for Attention
San Francisco Chronicle ombudsman Dick Rogers faults his paper for failing to cover a pro-Israel rally:

Last Sunday [April 14], thousands of pro-Israel demonstrators from San Francisco to the Salinas Valley gathered at Justin Herman Plaza here to rally peacefully. The event was news (just a week before we carried a report on a pro- Palestinian demonstration with far fewer people). Yet last Monday, the paper didn't have a word on the pro-Israel rally. This wasn't fair and balanced coverage.

There isn't a good explanation for the decision. The event was judged by the usual standards in a city where demonstrations are as common as coffeehouses. The city desk mistakenly decided that it wasn't all that big. And there was no violence. Those may be valid criteria in some cases, but not this one.

Rogers's criticism is welcome, but Chronicle reader Scott Abramson (fourth letter) makes an excellent point:

One reason for [the lack of coverage], Chronicle readers' representative Dick Rogers suggests, is that the pro-Israel rally was not violent. I guess that was our mistake: Perhaps we should have attacked police or tried to burn some buildings. Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for such illuminating insight into Chronicle reporting policy.

Anthems of Evil
A site called thenationalanthems.com features lyrics and sound files for 193 different national anthems. Here are some of the more interesting lyrics:

Palestine:

My country, my country, the nation of eternity
With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the guns
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire,
Palestine is my revenge and the land of eternal

My country, my country, the nation of eternity
I swear under the shade of the flag
To my land and nation, and the fire of pain
I will live as a guerrilla, I will go on as guerrilla,
I will expire as guerrilla until I will be back

Iraq:

Babylon is inherent in us and Assyria is ours,
And because of the glory of our background
History itself radiates with light,
And it is we alone who possess the anger of the sword
And the patience of the prophets . . .

Oh expanse of glory, we have returned anew
To a nation that we build with unyielding determination
And each martyr follows in the footsteps of a former martyr

Iran:

O Martyrs! The time of your cries of pain rings in our ears.
Enduring, continuing, eternal,
The Islamic Republic of Iran

North Korea's anthem, at least, is peaceful.

Renewable Resource?
Remember when we were going to run out of oil? Not only have new oil discoveries outpaced increases in demand, but now, Newsday reports, "scientists see surprising hints that gas and oil deposits can be replenished, filling up again, sometimes rapidly":

Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum surging up from deep below, scientists report. That may mean that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low.

You Don't Say
"Violence is not unusual within groups of primates, including modern humans," CNN reports.

'The Nude Bomb'
Yesterday we said the phrase dirty bomb reminded us of "The Naked Gun." Several readers noted that what we really were thinking of was "The Nude Bomb," an eminently forgettable 1980s film based on the old "Get Smart" TV series. The Internet Movie Database summarizes the plot: "Maxwell Smart is recalled to duty to help fight a villian [sic] who threatens to detonate a weapon that destroys clothing." We saw the movie 22 years ago, but we can't remember if the bomb worked on burkhas.

Puerto Rican Mob Attacks Marines
"A mob armed with bats and pipes attacked 10 U.S. Marines, leaving one with a cranial fracture and others with injuries from broken bones to minor scrapes," the Associated Press reports from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Marines were in civilian dress and had just completed work at the disputed Vieques bombing range. It's not clear if the fight had anything to do with the Vieques controversy.

Patently Silly
In 1995 the delightfully named Kevin T. Amiss was granted U.S. Patent No. 5,443,036 for "a method for inducing cats to exercise [that] consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct."

Great minds think alike; we've actually done the same thing with our cats, albeit with an ordinary flashlight rather than a "laser apparatus." Do we have to pay royalties to Amiss?

Lightweight Yahoos
Apparently the folks at Yahoo are as careless in placing banner ads as they are in policing the site for hate speech. Click on the link atop this item and it'll take you to a Yahoo information page on anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder whose sufferers starve themselves. Running on this page are two banner ads for . . . weight loss! (Other ads also appear on this page, so you may have to refresh a few times before you see these.) One, for eDiets, reads "LOSE 10lbs by May 28th" and shows a thin, headless, scantily clad woman holding a measuring tape near her hips. The other, from Miavita, has the words "BURN FAT; Here's how" over a pepper.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: The Judiciary Committee brings the Senate to its Neas.
• Pete du Pont: An interview with the Czech Republic's Vaclav Klaus.
• John Fund: Le Pen will lose, but will France learn its lesson?