The Cowardly Bookseller

Borders is one of the largest booksellers in the world. Their stores are multi-story libraries and reading rooms with nightly performances by authors and social agitators of all stripes. The first time I walked into a Borders it was amazing to be in a bookstore the size of my college library, a bookstore that advertised that it offered 25% of all the books in print. That was an awesome number. To a bibliophile Borders was like crack. To a non-bibliophile Borders was a reason to become one. Every single person who worked at Borders loved books. They were not working there for the money, for the money was not good. They worked at Borders to be among books, the look of the books lined up cover to cover on the shelves, the smell of coffee, the presence of other book lovers, the sound of reverent whispers in the stacks or college students discussing their latest assignments. And of course there were the newspapers stacked up on the shelves and the shelves after shelves of magazines, all the magazines covering feminist literature, and bikers, and videogames, golf, stereo systems, paganism, phrack and 2300, mass-market magazines, magazines about every possible religion or atheism, graphic novels, music, all the all the all the magazines.

Well, all the magazines except Free Inquiry. In its current issue, that magazine carries the cartoons from Jyllands-Posten in Denmark that have served as an excuse for crazed Islamists to kill each other and burn down embassies all over the world. Apparently, this has put the fear of God, or at least the fear of Allah, into Borders, and the chain has bowed its head in obeisance to the honeyed threats of Islamists and refused to carry the magazine. The chain that stands for freedom of the press has taken a stand against publication of innocuous jokes. The chain that believes in carrying books that speak truth to authority has refrained from carrying a magazine that pokes fun at the scare tactics of a society of bullies. The chain that has the largest self-help and pop-psychology sections I've ever seen will not carry a publication that might puncture the fragile ego of those who are immersed within a failed, outmoded society and help them air out their misconceptions and come to a more educated, cosmopolitan, complete understanding of reality.

Many people think this is Borders' actions are wrong. In a response to Roger L. Simon, "ECS" wrote the clearest reason yet why Borders should reverse their decision.

Borders main store in lower Manhattan is on Broadway near Wall Street - it wasn't always there. I work five short blocks away from its original location. I would go in at lunch or on the way home to browze and buy.

I have to wonder now how many customers that morning passing through the mezzanine who stopped at Borders and grabbed a Times, a Post or a coffee and croissant before stepping into the elevator to their deaths that September morning.

Islamofacists literally destroyed our Borders that morning and now they have destroyed their corporate soul.

Doesn't Borders owe something to the customers who made that last purchase?

It's unedited, but could it be any clearer?

Also on the story: Roger L. Simon; Pajamas Media; Michelle Malkin; Samizdata; Little Green Footballs.

Fish Taco Stand

It's like looking into a mirror.

Raking in the Shekels in Pallywood

Which movies have made the most money of all time?

To July, 2005 the following movies have grossed the most money in the USA and Canada.

From Wikipedia...

Rank	Title	Studio	Lifetime Gross	Year
1	Titanic	Paramount	$600,788,188	1997
2	Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope	20th Century Fox	$460,998,007	1977
3	Shrek 2	DreamWorks	$441,226,247	2004
4	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	Universal	$435,110,554	1982
5	Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace	20th Century Fox	$431,088,301	1999
6	Spider-Man	Sony	$403,706,375	2002
7	Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith	20th Century Fox	$379,972,309	2005
8	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	New Line	$377,027,325	2003
9	Spider-Man 2	Sony	$373,585,825	2004
10	The Passion of the Christ	NM	$370,782,930	2004

But Hollywood does not produce the most lucrative movies in the world. Apparently, the most lucrative movies per minute of edited content are produced in Pallywood, by Palestinian directors working with Palestinian cameramen using cameras and film lent to them by European and American news organizations. After movies like this one and this one, "in 2001, the first year of the current intifada, the amount of money officially donated to the PA jumped 80%, from US $555 million to US $1.002 billion."

Let's tally up the gross for these two short advertisements for oppressed Palestinians. As Palestinian finances are notoriously murky, let us calculate their gross as the delta in income. Using this method they would have grossed $448M in a single year, not to mention how much they made the following years. The Pallywood Intifada feature, counting only its 2001 revenues, lands firmly in the list as the #3 highest grossing movie of all time. It's higher than Shrek 2!

Palestinians, you got us. We fell for it.

I never realized that the US and Europe had "sucker" written on our foreheads, but now I think it's time to wash our faces and stop funding Palestinian operations.

EDIT: fix formatting and a spelling error.

EDIT: linked to Mudville Gazette