Crowd estimate fun

Pamela "Damn, Left My Thorazine at Home Again" Geller claims 40,000 attended her anti-freedom hate rally to dance on the graves of the 9/11 dead in Manhattan today.

Politico put the number at about 1,500.

From the pictures Geller herself provides at the link above, my guess (based on taking some sample counts from various lengths-of-field and multiplying them out across like lengths-of-field sections) is that Politico lowballed the number, maybe by as much as 500-1,000.

By 38,500? Not a chance. The only way that crowd was over 2,500 is if several hundred attendees had midget barber shop quartets in their pockets.

Hundreds of protests against rally agaist the proposed "Ground Zero" Islamic mosque as thousands turned up to show support or opposition to the proposed Islamic mosque and community right on September 11, 2010 in New York City. UPI /Monika Graff

Hundreds of protests against rally agaist the proposed "Ground Zero" Islamic mosque as thousands turned up to show support or opposition to the proposed Islamic mosque and community right on September 11, 2010 in New York City. UPI /Monika Graff

What do you think? This isn't one of those "guess the number of nuts in the jar and win a Volkswagen" deal, just a fun thing to do if, um, you think estimating crowd sizes is a a fun thing to do.

I'm hoping Reuters/Fotoglif will turn up some more photos to make it easier; if so, I'll post one here [update: Got a Reuters/Fotoglif shot up now, but I've seen no "full-crowd" pics other than Geller's yet].

Property Rights and Freedom of Religion, Yes; Taxpayer Financing, No

Per Reuters:

The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.

There's some weasel wording in there, so let's unpack it.

The issue isn't "tax-exempt financing" per se. All financing (and everything else!) should be tax-exempt.

Nor is "tax-exempt financing" by definition a "subsidy." Not taking money from someone isn't the same thing as giving money to someone.

But this actually is a subsidy -- it's one of those "public-private partnership" things, where a quasi-governmental organization (a "local development corporation") is allowed to issue bonds (the interest on which is tax-exempt to the bondholder, hence the "tax-exempt financing" language) to complete the project. If the project goes under, the taxpayer takes the hit for payment on the bonds.

REFILE - CORRECTING STAGE OF TOUR mam Feisal Abdul Rauf (L), executive director of the Cordoba Initiative, shakes hands with worshippers after leading midday prayers inside the Fanar-Qatar Islamic Cultural Center's mosque in Doha 27 August, 2010. Abdul Rauf is currently on the second leg of his funded tour to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as part of an outreach effort by the U.S. State Department to promote religious tolerance, according to a State Department spokesman. Abdul Rauf's Cordoba Initiative is building a Muslim cultural centre in lower Manhattan, which currently faces an emotional campaign to block it by conservative politicians and families of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, claiming that locating it only two blocks north of the site was a provocation. REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad (QATAR - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION)

REFILE - CORRECTING STAGE OF TOUR mam Feisal Abdul Rauf (L), executive director of the Cordoba Initiative, shakes hands with worshippers after leading midday prayers inside the Fanar-Qatar Islamic Cultural Center's mosque in Doha 27 August, 2010. Abdul Rauf is currently on the second leg of his funded tour to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as part of an outreach effort by the U.S. State Department to promote religious tolerance, according to a State Department spokesman. Abdul Rauf's Cordoba Initiative is building a Muslim cultural centre in lower Manhattan, which currently faces an emotional campaign to block it by conservative politicians and families of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, claiming that locating it only two blocks north of the site was a provocation. REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad (QATAR - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION)

Note to Park51/Cordoba House's principals, especially Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf: You shouldn't even be thinking about trying this.

A majority of the populace appears to have already swallowed the "Ground Zero Mosque" demagoguery hook, line and sinker and there's a strong mob mentality movement hell-bent on stopping you from building your cultural center.

Of the minority standing up for your property rights and religious freedoms, a significant portion of us are civil (or uncivil, as the case may be) libertarians who are standing up only for your property rights and religious freedom.

Most of us aren't Muslims or particularly enamored of Islam.

Most of us don't really give a tinker's damn whether the thing gets built or not -- we're just standing up for your right to build it, if you choose to, on your own property and with your own money.

It's a fragile coalition centered around rights versus might, freedom versus compulsion, tolerance versus suppression.

As soon as you start claiming a "right" to stick your hand in taxpayers' wallets for a bailout if your project goes south on you, that coalition disintegrates.

So don't do it.

[see what others are saying about this story at memeorandum]

Well, now that you mention it ...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf attends an iftar, or the break of fast, dinner at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Saar, west of Bahrain's capital Manama August 22, 2010. Rauf, the imam leading plans for an Islamic community right and mosque near "Ground Zero" in New York, is on a U.S. government-funded tour in the Middle East to talk about religious tolerance in America. REUTERS/Hasan Jamali/Pool (BAHRAIN - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION)

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf attends an iftar, or the break of fast, dinner at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Saar, west of Bahrain's capital Manama August 22, 2010. Rauf, the imam leading plans for an Islamic community right and mosque near "Ground Zero" in New York, is on a U.S. government-funded tour in the Middle East to talk about religious tolerance in America. REUTERS/Hasan Jamali/Pool (BAHRAIN - Tags: POLITICS RELIGION)

The aggregator at over at memeorandum is picking up a lot of action on this quote from Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, head of Park51 a/k/a Cordoba House, the Islamic cultural center proposed for construction two blocks from the outer edge of the World Trade Center complex ("Ground Zero"):

We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US lead sanction against Iraq lead to the death of over half a million Iraqi children.

My first reaction is to wonder what in the hell that has to do with the price of tea in China, or with the question of whether or not Muslims are possessed of the same property and religious rights as, and entitled to the same respect for and protection of those rights as, every other type of damn-fool superstitionist (or, as the case may be, non-superstitionist).

My second reaction is to note that the statement is -- especially if the word "government" is inserted after the phrase "United States" for clarity -- undoubtedly factually correct.

Even setting aside the deaths attributable to the US government's murderous sanctions/air war campaign against the civilian population of Iraq from 1991-2003, it remains true.

The bottom end of estimated civilian casualties in Afghanistan specifically attributable to the military operations of the US and its allied occupiers from 2001 to the present is 5,791. That's nearly twice the 2,976 casualties al Qaeda inflicted on 9/11. The top end, including casualties only indirectly caused by the US and its allies (and not casualties inflicted by Taliban or al Qaeda "insurgents") is 28,583.

That's not counting civilian casualties in Iraq, which are apparently many multiples of the Afghanistan figures, but which don't seem to be as well sorted out by who inflicted them.

Nor is it counting all the civilian casualties of both wars, which are attributable to the US government on the same principle as governs criminal justice in the US itself. If you rob a bank and the security guard keels over with a heart attack while you're waving your gun in his face, you're on the hook for murder. If you launch two wars in violation of international law and without even the fig leaf of the constitutionally required declaration ... well, like Colin Powell said, "you break it, you buy it."

It would be downright morally offensive, if we all weren't long desensitized to the Republican Surrealists' penchant for just making up whatever shit they can think of to try and shift blame onto others for the results of their own policies, that Rauf's statement is being portrayed as even mildly controversial.

Yes, this is a litmus test

People who refer to themselves as "libertarians" spend a lot of time arguing over exactly what they mean by "libertarian."

Personally, I try to be fairly "big tent," figuring that people who once self-identify as libertarian tend to get more consistently libertarian after doing so, if they're a) accepted and b) encouraged to explore libertarian ideas, instead of just slapped around for whatever deviations they still cling to.

So, when I disagree on this or that issue with someone who self-identifies as a libertarian, I generally try to frame that disagreement not as a negative verdict on the other person's libertarianism, but rather as a possible error on their part as to how libertarian ideas apply to that particular issue.

But the fact is that there are some people who call themselves libertarians who ... well, just ain't libertarians. And the facts on some issues are so incredibly clear that it's possible to use those issues as litmus tests. If you're on one side of the issue, you may be a libertarian. If you're on the other side, no, you aren't.

One such issue is -- to use the phrase fraudulently coined by its opponents -- is the "Ground Zero Mosque."

We'll get to the fraud in a moment, but it's really a secondary thing, a side effect. The important part in treating it as a litmus test is this:

If you support private property rights and freedom of religion, you may be a libertarian.

If you don't support private property rights and freedom of religion, you aren't a libertarian.

Period.

Cordoba House, the project being fraudulently referred to as a "mosque" by those attempting to prevent its construction, is planned for construction on private property and with private funds.

The opponents of Cordoba House are attempting to stop its construction by persuading a government board to declare the building currenly standing at the project's prospective location "historic" so that the owners can be forced to "preserve" it and forbidden to demolish it and build a structure more to their liking there.

The opponents of Cordoba House oppose private property rights. Their opposition to private property rights stems from their opposition to freedom of religion. They are, therefore, not libertarians.

They're also either liars or idiots, and the evidence points strongly to the former. Here's the skinny:

Cordoba House is not a "mosque." It's an "Islamic cultural center," which is no more a "mosque" than your local YMCA is a "cathedral."

The construction site for Cordoba House is not at "Ground Zero." It's two blocks away, on Park Place between West Broadway and Church Street (and, FWIW, farther away from "Ground Zero" than St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church or St. Paul's Chapel).

The opponents of Cordoba House generally claim to have knowledge of Islam beyond that of us non-Muslims who don't obsess over who's worshiping where. For example, they like to cite chapter and verse on the historical penchant of Muslim conquerors for building mosques on prominent conquered sites.

If they know that much, then presumably they're not idiots -- and if they're not idiots they also know by now that Cordoba House isn't a mosque. From that, it follows that they are just lying about it because lying seems more likely to get them what they want.

If they can use Google Maps (and if they can blog, they can surely use Google Maps) they also know that Cordoba House's construction site isn't at Ground Zero. From that, once again, it follows that they're lying because they know that the facts aren't as emotionally compelling as the fairy tale they're pushing.

The whole "Ground Zero Mosque" meme is fraudulent in the classic sense: It's an attempt at theft by deception. By convincing people that a cultural center is a mosque, and that "Ground Zero" is located two blocks north of where it's actually located, they hope to build popular support for their call on government to steal some things -- a piece of land, a building, and the religious freedom of the land/building's owners -- for them.

And fraud, a/k/a theft by deception, isn't libertarian either.

Update, 6:55pm, 07/27/10: I wasn't thinking of Wayne Allyn Root when I wrote this piece (one reason for ending my involvement with the Libertarian Party was to minimize the amount of time I have to spending thinking of Wayne Allyn Root, period), but along he comes to drive home my point [hat tip: Jill Pyeatt].

Once you get past the "in a fetal position in a corner, laughing at Wayne Allyn Root calling himself a 'leading Libertarian thinker'" phase, note that Root tries to frame a new argument for governernment intervention:

If it turns out that this project is sponsored by a foreign government -- either directly or through a state-sponsored organization that engages in terrorism -- than [sic] the idea of this being an issue of religious freedom is a sham and an argument can be made that our Constitution would actually prohibit this mosque from being built.

The Constitution in Wayne's imagination, perhaps. The real one ... no. And a good thing for the largest Christian denomination, too, considering that every last Holy Roman Catholic church building in the US is "sponsored" by a foreign state (the Vatican).

Root participates in the fraud aspect of the issue, falsely referring to the cultural center as a "mosque" and pretending that it's at Ground Zero in order to obtain valuable considerations ("public pressure on the property owners to sell" the property to someone besides the Cordoba House project, participation in protests, etc.).

Update, 07/29/10: I see that some people are continuing to refer to a "mosque" at "Ground Zero," so I've gone ahead and made a very bad graphic (with a screen capture of satellite photography from Google Maps) to clarify the geography:

Per the legend, "Ground Zero," a/k/a the World Trade Center site, is outlined in red dots. The Cordoba House site is marked with a blue "X."

As you can see, "Ground Zero" and Cordoba House are separated by three streets, two city blocks, a 15-story building (a Post Office which now also houses the New York State Department of Health) and a 21-story building (100 Church Street, a large office complex).

Not only is Cordoba House not at "Ground Zero," it won't be visible from ground level at Ground Zero, nor (at a planned 13 stories) will it be very visible from higher up at Ground Zero since two taller buildings will block much of the diagonal downward view.

I'll leave it to Islamic authorities to explain the difference between a mosque and a cultural center with a prayer area, but where geography is concerned, calling this the "Ground Zero mosque" is 100% hogwash.