Kuntzel on the Iranian Antisemitic Martyr State

Matthias Küntzel lays out the scary truth about Iranian hopes, particularly those of Mahmoud AhmediNajad.

In his first major speech, in October 2005, the one that gained him notoriety, Ahmadinejad declared that the Zionist regime in Israel “must be eliminated from the pages of history.” Many will recall this quote. But only very few people have read the rest of the speech and so understood the context of the threat. Let me please quote just three more sentences of this famous talk.

In it, Ahmadinejad said: “We are in the process of a historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.”

So as we can see, the roots of this “historical war” have nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East conflict. The speaker views the destruction of Israel as a stage in a war that started long before the foundation of Israel. But what is meant by “World of Arrogance”? I will come back to this point.

He also said: “We have to understand the depth of the disgrace of the enemy, until our holy hatred expands continuously and strikes like a wave.” Here a religiously inspired feeling of superiority is contrasted with the “depth of the disgrace of the enemy”. But the notion of a “holy hatred” is also striking. This hatred is unconditional: it cannot be moderated through any kind of Western or Jewish behavior. It currently expresses itself in the first instance as hatred of a recalcitrant and rather pro-Western Iranian people that has to be silenced through stonings, public executions, mass arrests, torture and censorship. Above and beyond this, the expression of this “holy hatred” is destined to “expand continuously” to a global level and to overwhelm the world like a mighty tsunami.

Third and final quotation from the speech: “In this very grave war, many people are trying to scatter grains of desperation and hopelessness. They ask: ‘Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?’ But you had best know that this goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved.”

Imagine if the leader of a medium-sized Western country, for example Mr Berlusconi, the former Italian head of government, had made a speech in which he talked about a historical war against the Islamic world, denounced the “depth of the Islamic world’s disgrace”, summoned up Christianity’s “holy hatred” of Islam and finally pronounced the goal of erasing Saudi Arabia and Pakistan from the map realizable.

The entire talk is wonderfully argued. Read it all. I will only extract a few more ideas from it for reference, and to convey the four key characteristics of this Iranian Holy War against the world, which should be differentiated from the less dangerous but no-less objectionable Salafist/Al-Qaeda Holy War against the world.

The world beyond is more important than this one

During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at wrote the following:

In the past, we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”[2]

The children who thus rolled to their deaths formed part of the mass Basij movement that was called into being by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. They consisted of short-term volunteer militias and represented about 30 percent of the personnel on the battlefield. Most Basij members were between 12 and 18 years young. They went enthusiastically and by their thousands to their own destruction.

[...]


"The natural world,” Khomeini explained in October 1980, “is the lowest element, the scum of creation.” What is decisive is the beyond: the “divine world – that is eternal.”[4] According to Khomeini’s mindset, the martyrs’ death is nothing but the transition from this world to the world beyond, where they will live on eternally and in splendor.

Before Khomeini, for a Muslim deliberately to be sent to certain death was considered sacrilege within Islam.

[...]

Reason as sin

The second characteristic of the holy war relates to Islamist epistemology. I must admit that it took me a long time to understand this aspect. For us, the employment of reason is the most self-evident thing in the world. For Islamists the use of reason – apart from in the natural sciences – is an expression of arrogance – hence our castigation as the “World of Arrogance” – and an offence against God. Their starting point is that the Koran must be interpreted and applied literally. But evidently, any kind of reason-based doubt undermines such an approach to the Koran. As a result, doubt and conjecture are opposed.

[...]

Revolutionary mission

It is the Iranian leadership’s special sense of mission that propels them along the course toward confrontation with the West. “Our nation’s important mission” Ahmadinejad enthused only some days ago, “is to introduce the Islamic Revolution to the whole of mankind.”

[...]

Liberation through annihilation

The Iranian leaders do not at all regard themselves as antisemites.

“We are friends with the Jewish people”, stated Ahmadinejad in Columbia. Moreover, the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran represent the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country.

Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is steeped in an antisemitism not found in any state leader since World War II.

Ahmadinejad does not say “Jews” are conspiring to rule the world. Instead he says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.” Instead he says, “The Zionists” have for 60 years now blackmailed “all Western governments.” “The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural, and media sectors.” “The Zionists” fabricated the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists thrive on war and hatred,” Ahmadinejad claims. “Everywhere they exist there is war.”[18] The pattern is familiar. He invests the word “Zionist” with exactly the same meaning Hitler poured into “Jew”: the incarnation of evil. Anyone who makes Jews – whether as “Judas” or as “Zionist” – responsible for all the ills of the world is obviously driven by antisemitism. He must want to eliminate Israel, as the “germ of evil”, in order to save the world. He must deny the truth of the Holocaust in order to pave the way for his “truth”. The demonization of Jews, Holocaust denial, and the will to eliminate Israel – these are the three elements of an ideological constellation that collapses as soon as one of the elements is removed.

[...]

“The extermination of Jewry throughout the world”, declared a Nazi directive from 1943, is “the precondition for an enduring peace.”[20] Liberation through annihilation. This is similar to the mission that Islamism has set out upon whose first target is Israel. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it, “The Zionist regime will be wiped out and humanity will be liberated.”[21]

He reiterated this belief in his most recent speech at the United Nations in September 2007: “The age of darkness will end”, he enthused to the General Assembly and “the peoples in Europe and America will be liberated from the burdens the Zionists have inflicted on them”.

So let me now sum up on this final point: There are other dictatorships in the world. But only in Iran are the fantasy-worlds of antisemitism and religious mission linked with technological megalomania and the physics of mass destruction. The specific danger presented by the Iranian nuclear option stems from the unique ideological atmosphere surrounding it – a mixture of holy war and high-tec, of antisemitism and weapons-grade uranium, of death-wish and missile research, of Shiite messianism and plutonium.

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Technorati Tags: Iran, Jihad, Islamism

Today's Vocab Lesson

Israpundit teaches a good vocabulary lesson concerning Israel that I've paraphrased. Read his for more.

The West Bank should more properly be called Judea and Samaria, as those are the traditional names of the areas. The West Bank was a name that was imposed by the King of Jordan after his 1948 seizure of the areas.

The concept that Judea, which even has the word Jew for its
first syllable, doesn't have anything to do with Jews is laughable. And
Samaria, is that named for Philistines or Samarites?



Palestine is a Roman variant for the Philistines, who were an ancient people who were hostile to the Jews who lived in Judea and Samaria in Biblical times. Palestine was the name the Romans imposed when they scattered the Jews out of Judea, leaving only the early Christians. Note there were no Muslims in Israel at this time.

Palestinians was first used in modern times to label the Jewish volunteers in WWI. Yaser Arafat seized it for his collection of eternal refugees in the 1960s and used it to describe an invented continuity between the ancient Canaanites and the modern Arabs who had moved into the area as the Jews bought up and improved the desolate areas of Judea and Samaria at the end of the 19th century.

The so-called Occupied Territory of Judea and Samaria was inhabited by Jews until 1948, when the King of Jordan drove all the Jews out. When Israel took it back at the end of the 1967 war it was actually Liberated.

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Technorati Tags: Vocabulary, Counterjihad, Culture War, Jews

Robert Service: The Other One

Robert Service dedicated this poem to his friends, who will have other children, to help heal their hearts after their child died young.

The Other One
by Robert Service
from Ballads of a Bohemian

"Gather around me, children dear;
The wind is high and the night is cold;
Closer, little ones, snuggle near;
Let's seek a story of ages old;
A magic tale of a bygone day,
Of lovely ladies and dragons dread;
Come, for you're all so tired of play,
We'll read till it's time to go to bed."

So they all are glad, and they nestle in,
And squat on the rough old nursery rug,
And they nudge and hush as I begin,
And the fire leaps up and all's so snug;
And there I sit in the big arm-chair,
And how they are eager and sweet and wise,
And they cup their chins in their hands and stare
At the heart of the flame with thoughtful eyes.

And then, as I read by the ruddy glow
And the little ones sit entranced and still . . .
~He~'s drawing near, ah! I know, I know
He's listening too, as he always will.
He's there -- he's standing beside my knee;
I see him so well, my wee, wee son. . . .
Oh, children dear, don't look at me --
I'm reading now for -- the Other One.

For the firelight glints in his golden hair,
And his wondering eyes are fixed on my face,
And he rests on the arm of my easy-chair,
And the book's a blur and I lose my place:
And I touch my lips to his shining head,
And my voice breaks down and -- the story's done. . . .
Oh, children, kiss me and go to bed:
Leave me to think of the Other One.

Of the One who will never grow up at all,
Who will always be just a child at play,
Tender and trusting and sweet and small,
Who will never leave me and go away;
Who will never hurt me and give me pain;
Who will comfort me when I'm all alone;
A heart of love that's without a stain,
Always and always my own, my own.

Yet a thought shines out from the dark of pain,
And it gives me hope to be reconciled:
~That each of us must be born again,
And live and die as a little child;
So that with souls all shining white,
White as snow and without one sin,
We may come to the Gates of Eternal Light,
Where only children may enter in.~

So, gentle mothers, don't ever grieve
Because you have lost, but kiss the rod;
From the depths of your woe be glad, believe
You've given an angel unto God.
Rejoice! You've a child whose youth endures,
Who comes to you when the day is done,
Wistful for love, oh, yours, just yours,
Dearest of all, the Other One.

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Technorati Tags: Poetry, Robert Service

Soros' Misunderstanding of Financial Markets

I don't have anything to add to what Gerard Jackson wrote about George Soros.

Soros revealed the source of his confusion and ignorance when he admitted that his experience of money markets led him to his present views. (I knew it couldn't have been serious study). This apparent revelation leads him to merely parrot the old cry that financial markets are inherently unstable, leading to breakdowns and depressions. And that this instability led to the evolution of central banks. Yet, according to him, free market "ideologues" (how lefties love that word) argue that it was faulty regulations, not markets, that were really responsible.

Markets are basically stable. What is not stable is monetary policy. And it is faulty monetary policies that destabilise economies. When the gold standard reigned supreme financial markets never witnessed the kind of prolonged financial gyrations that we are now experiencing. These wild fluctuations are basically caused by constant changes, and anticipated changes, in money supplies, price levels and exchange rates.

Read the whole thing to learn a bit about the Austrian School of Economics that Ron Paul began to popularize this Republican primary season.

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Technorati Tags: Economics, Soros, Austrian School

Hedge Fund Liar Makes $2.9 Billion, says economy is in crisis

How can this be? The truth is that every change in the economy is good for someone and bad for someone else. Increased production, however, which Democrats and their Green buddies are against because of their irrational global warming obsession, lifts up everybody at the same time. What is the solution Soros proposes for the troubles he sees? More progressive and socialist agitation validated by the increasingly feckless (ref. meaning 2) Democratic Party, which he has bought and paid for with his billions. The only way to stop the dollar from plummeting is to stop printing so much money. This would require raising government interest rates and cutting government spending. In order for these changes to not plunge the US and world into a new depression, tax rates would also need to be reduced to minimal levels and bad rules and laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and the Americans with Disabilities act need to be repealed or drastically revised.

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Happy 80th Birthday Hosni! April 6 Strikes on May 4

Happy 80th Birthday Hosni!

The first strike was suppressed on April 6 in Egypt. Almost immediately after the first strike, protesters formed as the April 6 group and began to make arrangements on Facebook for a follow-up strike on Hosni Mubarak's birthday, May 4. Plans are to wear black in mourning for freedom and democracy in Egypt. Amira al Hussaini reports on Global Voices that "human rights" and other leftist organizations are leading the strike organization. Some defiant members of the Muslim Brotherhood (which is not participating as an organization) are striking. Kifaya, which was formed in solidarity with the Palestinean Intifada, is playing a will she or won't she game. The most surprising aspect is that Muslim groups are joining with the cruelly oppressed Copts in the planned strike.

It could turn out badly so easily. Say a prayer that it turns out all right for the Egyptians, and especially for the Copts.

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Technorati Tags: Egypt, Liberty, Politics, April 6, General Strike

When is Tag Not Tag?

When it is a game called "Jailbreak."

"This is not the old-fashioned tag, where you could use two fingers and you would be it and move on to someone else," Hooker said. The game, she said, has become much more aggressive. "I call it the nouveau tag."

This tag involves grabbing people who do not necessarily know they are playing and possibly bumping them to the ground. "Then the kids do 'pyramiding' or 'towering.' They pile on each other. [Sometimes] they call it 'jailhouse' or 'jailbreak,' " because the child has to break out, she said.[Michael Alison Chandler at the WaPo]

This doesn't sound like tag at all. It sounds like assault and battery on the playground.

The principal of the school banned these violent variations of tag during recess and convinced the PE teacher(s) to teach the kids how to play basic touch tag without adding assault and battery into the mix. And yet this article presents it as if the principal was in the wrong, and out of his mind for banning an innocent child's game such as tag.

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Technorati Tags: Education, Media Bias, Tag

4GW/xGW: Identifying Tibet Protest Narratives

Clearly, the Tibet protests in America and the rest of the world are unusual. They are not led by professional, ideologically Marxist protesters from International ANSWER, the Revolutionary Communist Party, World Can't Wait, Code Pink, or any of the other communist front-groups that usually play such a significant role in the so-called peace movement. They are actually being led and filled out by people who care for the inhabitants of Tibet.

These protests are led by amateurs! And they are not popular with China or Cuba. This is not a coincidence.

This fact shows that protesters can be convinced to protest against Communist and other anti-American tyrannies if they are presented with a congruent narrative that appeals to them.

The conspiracy-minded hunter-seeker posted a link to a narrative about Tibet that reveals some of the structural and linguistic keys to creating a meme that will prove compelling to leftists. The very interesting "alternative journalist" Larry Chin, who shares the name of a spy who infiltrated the CIA, sold secrets to China, made a million in real estate using money he earned from espionage, and (supposedly) killed himself in prison by suffocating himself with a plastic grocery bag, attempts to shepherd leftists and protesters away from protests against China and back to the protests of which he approves (anything opposed to the US, UK or Israel).

Anti-Imperialism

For Applebaum the events in Tibet represent one manifestation of a wider reaction of “captive nations”, Uighurs, Mongols, Tibetans, rising up against the tyrannical rule of an old imperial and foreign power that has long oppressed smaller countries and societies surrounding it. Applebaum includes even such independent nations as North Korea and Burma in this category, hence, quite accurately, relegating Kim Jong Il and the Burmese military junta to the role of Beijing’s surrogate dictators. [link]

Every morality tale needs a good guy and a bad guy. What bad guy is worse, and by worse I mean better for the purpose of the narrative, than a tool of the evil empire? Nobody cheers for Darth Vader.

Echoes of Revolution

Then under the direction of the Prime Minister Samdhong Rimpoche, the exile cabinet and parliament created a special “Solidarity Committee” to take over the various independent campaigns and activities taking place around the world. It appears that members of the Committee approached the leaders and representative of these campaigns and organizations, and instructed them to terminate their independent activities and operate under the direction of the Committee. [link]

The word "Solidarity" reminds the listener of a revolution. Yes it was the Polish revolution against the USSR occupation, meaning that it will never find favor among ideological communists. But the Solidarity revolution won, and that cannot be discounted. The vocabulary of the revolution is of utmost importance, for the correct vocabulary will allow the narrative to be accepted by protesters.

The Movement Betrayed

Circulars have been sent from Dharamshala to NGO’s and support groups instructing them to stop using the term “FREE TIBET”. Earlier, only the term independence or Rangzen was regarded as taboo, but now even such a broad and inoffensive term as “freedom” is seen as too provocative. Instructions have also apparently been issued to the Tibetan public not to tear, burn or step on the Chinese Communist Flag. A week ago, Tenzin Choeden, a member of the Solidarity Committee spoke before Chinese UN mission in New York where Tibetans have been keeping up a vigorous demonstration since March 10th. The Solidarity Committee representative gave a lengthy and roundabout speech where he called on Tibetans not to shout slogans demanding Independence for Tibet, and a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Much to the annoyance of the crowd he also told protesters not to display a large banner they were carrying which read “China Out of Tibet”. [link]

The official leadership of the Tibetan Solidarity movement have been suborned by the imperialist power. The leadership is working against its own people in an attempt to crush the revolution from both sides, hoping that increasing the pressure does not create an uncontrollably violent reaction.

The test to this theory is in Larry Chin's article, titled "Is the CIA behind the China-bashing Olympics protests?"

The legions of pro-Tibet activists also seem largely unaware of the historical fact that the “holy land of compassion” has been a CIA pawn since the end of World War II. The infamous Tolstoi Mission sent CIA operatives into Tibet, with plans to establish it as a US military base, from which the US could control the entire Asian region. This activity flourished under the US-supported, opium-banked Nationalist Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Notice Chin playing the same themes we found against the Tibetan Solidarity movement. America the real imperialist power: check. Tibet has been betraying China since WW2: check. Just like the Kuomintang counter-revolution: check.

Use these themes when constructing a narrative for why protesters should get together and protest against Saudi Arabian imperialism of the muslim world (and the west). Choose the name of a successful and popular revolution from the past. Identify a villain who has betrayed the revolutionary movement in order to assist the imperial enemy.

Other uses for the narrative should be obvious.

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Technorati Tags: Anti-communism, neocommunism, China, xGW, 4GW, Leftism, Tibet

Tibet

China is claiming attacks from inside and outside and is embarrassed beyond belief by the constant interference by protesters against the Olympic torch procession. China is taking a hard line about things, threatening athletes who express opinions the Chinese government doesn't like with expulsion from the games.

What I'd like to discover is where the radical anti-war groups are in this popular protest against Chinese tyranny in Tibet. This appears to be action by people who are truly concerned with Tibet, as contrasted with the La Raza and Code Pink rallies, which are led by groups like International ANSWER and the Revolutionary Communist Party. Are the usual anti-war groups showing up to protest against China? Or do they only protest against America?

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Technorati Tags: Tibet, China, Olympics, Communism, Neocommunism

Leftism is a Gnostic perversion of Christianity

And that's not good. At all. So says Gagdad Bob in a brilliant essay, via Dissecting Leftism. Here is a taste.

Being that we all live in "Christendom" -- that is, a culture shaped and animated (in the literal sense of "given life") by Judeo-Christian principles -- I guess it shouldn't be surprising that we share its underlying assumptions about the "brokenness" of man and the world. But where the progressive goes off the rails is in supposing there is some secret political formula that can reverse the fall and restore us to wholeness. Thus, the ubiquitous frenzied moral passion that always animates the left. Leftists are always exaggeratedly pessimistic about the present state of the world, but "optimistic" in a crazed and manic way that steamrules over anyone who would dare delay the immediate implementation of paradise.

From Marx on down, the leftist fallacy follows from turning spiritual Truth on its head (or "inside-out"), so that man's spiritual crisis is seen as a material one (e.g. "robber barons," "global warming," "global cooling," "nuclear power," "income disparity," "corporate greed," etc.) instead of a psycho-spiritual one. This is the "fundamental assumption" which adherents of all the variant progressive systems within our epoch unconsciously presuppose.

For example, the progressive would say that Palestinians aren't evil, they're just poor. Which precisely inverts the truism that they are poor because they are evil (except for the few who are extraordinarily wealthy because they are evil, having been enriched by the largesse of Western progressives who give them money because they think it will stop them from being evil, when it always does the opposite, thus ensuring a constant cash flow from backward progressives).

Read the whole darn thing.

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Technorati Tags: Leftism, Progressive, Christianity, Gnostics

Good News from Afghanistan

Via Michelle Malkin, Ray Robinson argues that the biased western media is spinning progress in Afghanistan as failure (for instance by spinning the fact that the Taliban have been kicked out of towns and villages and live in the desert as the Taliban having control of vast swathes of [desert] land) and lists some of the metrics of progress in Afghanistan.

1. The Afghan Army is growing in size, experience, and leadership capabilities.
2. A recent study found that 90% of the Afghan population trusted the country's military force.
3. More than 4,000 km of roads have been built where only 50 km existed in 2001.
4. The rehabilitation of the North-East power system has advanced and access of the rural households to electricity has been significantly increased.
5. In 2007 alone, ISAF nations completed 1,080 civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) projects.
6. 2,000 schools were built or repaired in the last five years and around 6.4 million children (including 1.5 million girls) are now in schools.
7. Since 2001, both infant and under-five mortality has declined by 26% and 22% respectively.
8. In 2001, 8% of Afghans had access to some form of healthcare. Now more than 80% of the population has access to medical care.
9. The non-opium economy has grown at an average of 12% over the past four years; the number of poppy-free provinces has grown from six in 2006 to 13 in 2007.
10. Afghan public support for international involvement in Afghanistan remains high with around 70% of Afghans supporting the presence of international forces.
11. The majority of Afghans believe their country is going in the right direction and 84% support their current government (as opposed to 4% who would support the Taliban).
12. They also maintain a positive view of reconstruction efforts with 63% saying that reconstruction efforts in their area have been effective since 2002.

Apology

I have spread plenty of bad news about Afghanistan and Pakistan here, and some of these posts have been the most popular posts on my blog for a long time. To some extent this is because of fascination with the evil propagated by some of the Afghans who match bin Laden and Zawahiri for evil, such as Hekmatyar and the Dadullah brothers, Mullah and Mansoor. But that is not an excuse for despairing in the face of the relentless media bias. I'm sorry I despaired and doubly sorry if I led any others to despair.

Do not despair, dear reader. Be strong, be faithful, know thyself and that which dwells in thy heart. Be an active consumer of the news. Don't simply fall for what is in the news, especially do not do as I did and lend extra credence to local news from Pakistani and Afghan publications simply because the sources are exotic. News product from dictatorships and monocultures does not come from a free media. It is a different kind of product entirely.

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Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Afghanistan, Good News

Was the Iraq War in 2003 legal?

A Jacksonian covers the bases with his usual thoroughness.

Conclusion: Yes.

Explanation: Desert Storm 1 was a war undertaken to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. After Saddam Hussein asked for a ceasefire the war was in truce, but it was not over. The truce had terms, and Saddam kept on breaking them. Yet nobody did anything about it, until finally, in 2003, the US had enough, plus there was a realization that even distant threats can have terrible effects at home. The definitions of all these terms are defined in the ancient and venerable Law of Nations, which is a extra-Constitutional legal code that preceded the Constitution and paralleled British Common Law.

He covers the entire range of questions from an originalist perspective, from treatment of captured Air Pirates and other illegal enemy combatants (not soldiers, who must by the laws of war have a uniform to distinguish them from civilians) to what it means to seize a country's embassy and kidnap its staff (an act of War).

Read it all.

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Technorati Tags: Military, Law, Iraq

Paglia on Hillary's Girly Men

Hillarious

April 9, 2008 | I would like to get your feedback on the subject of those who end up in Hillary's orbit. Can you conceive of a strong, leader-type male ever working under her? An alpha, if you will. And if the answer is no, then why do you think that is?

The men you always see under her are to a person passive-aggressive, sadistic, mean, little, petty beta-male pieces of work who would not naturally succeed in a common male-type hierarchy. By that I mean an environment that values straightforward achievement rather than the darker political arts.

That statement is in no way meant to exclude women. In fact, I work with many women who succeed just as well in this environment. It is just a shorthand for an environment that values achievement and straight talk. Hillary's persona is simply not compatible with another strong will, male or female -- but definitely male, and that itself is a big red flag.

What kind of person would go to work for a Clinton in the first place? A naive true-believer? Everyone knows what they would be getting into: constant war rooms, personal attacks, spin, daily damage control, a boss prone to temper tantrums, placing your own integrity out on the ledge as a shill for a fundamentally dishonest person. I would argue that nobody who hasn't already sold their soul years ago would ever want to be a part of that mess.

Your thoughts?

Chris Richard
Agoura Hills, Calif.

You have succinctly expressed one of the most unsettling aspects of Hillary Clinton's character and modus operandi.

I would have answered that, "Could you repeat the question?"

And yes, Hillarious was intentionally spelled that way.

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Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Paglia, Politics, Elections, Democrats

Fame Behind Bars

Ever feel trapped? Buried under a world of problems? Conspired against by everyone? Locked behind bars? Separated from the opposite sex? Unable to speak with your family? Was it so bad that Laura Branigan became your lifeline?

Shout it out, man!

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Technorati Tags: Video

Where is Scalia wrong on abortion?

Joseph Farah has an idea. The Preamble to the United States Constitution goes like this.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America"

Note that the blessings of liberty are secured for ourselves and our posterity. Who would our posterity be? The answer is our posterity is our children, both those who are and those who are yet to be.

Add the Fifth Amendment's "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and the Fourteenth Amendment

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Together, Farah argues, these guarantee the child in the womb the right of due process against the deprivation of life. Add in the Sixth Amendment, which defines how due process works.

"Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."

Scalia has not found the subject of abortion in the Constitution. Farah believes he has found it. Not being a lawyer myself, I'm not sure I can tell a sound legal argument from an unsound one.

Anybody else know if from the originalist position Scalia is wrong on this and Farah is right?

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Technorati Tags: Abortion, Constitution, Crime and Punishment

Pity Party: AngryJournalist.com

First, visit angryjournalist.com. Then come back. If you have an emotional feeling, think on it. What is it?

Some call the feeling schadenfreude. Some merely have a tough time wiping the big grin off their faces. Others feel sorry for those poor "journalists" who trained in college to do something that used to be a bottom-of-the-barrel job that guys got after they failed at their first career.

Others may feel inspired to imitate Dana Carvey. Well, at least I for one feel inspired to imitate Dana Carvey. Specifically, the Church Lady and her "superior dance."



Good times...

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Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Humor, Video, Church Lady, Superior Dance

CPUSA supports Clinton or Obama, and Card Check

Joel Wendland writes for the Marxist fishwrapper politicalaffairs.net

With the undiminished role of the labor-led people's movement, Webb [president of the CPUSA] predicted the outcome could bring enormous change that puts people's need before warmaking, sleaze and policies that put profits before peoples need. Such an outcome is possible regardless of whether or not Clinton or Obama wins, he stated.

The Democratic campaigns and the possibility for change have eroded disillusionment and apathy. The main dilemma of the left is to not be left behind in this upsurge, he said. If we are not engaged in this struggle to advance the people's movement, we will be left behind.

This year the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) is powered by big labor and their demand for the Orwellian "Employee Free Choice Act," also called "Card Check," which claims to increase democracy in the workplace by taking away the secret ballot in unionization efforts. You read that right. It claims to increase democracy in the workplace by taking away the secret ballot! Its name is a bald-faced lie. Brian Faughnan notes in the Weekly Standard Blog that both Obama and Clinton are fanatics about the Card Check bill. They love it. And yet normal Americans are 60-80% opposed to Card Check, according to a poll taken by McLaughlin & Associates.

But this poll shows how unpopular Card Check is with ordinary voters. And while 'Card Check' or 'Employee Free Choice Act' may sound too abstract to form the basis of an effective attack ad, those phrases obscure the real issue: the right of a worker to vote on unionization without his boss or coworkers knowing how he voted.

In other words, the bill would encourage union organizers to use peer pressure and threats to force employees in non-union shops into signing up for unions. Without a secret ballot, there is no freedom of choice in voting. This bill would create vote fraud, plain and simple.

Vote fraud, another plank in the Democratic Party platform, along with support for Communist Party causes.

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Technorati Tags: Clinton, Obama, Democrats, Communism, Vote Fraud, Card Check, EFCA, Orwell

Gangbusters in Basra

What in the world has been going on in Basra? Sadr's men didn't have to disarm. And yet they were told not to fight. There was a truce between Sadr's organization and the IA, but the IA continued to pursue attacks against Sadrist bad guys. Sadrists were patrolling the streets/hiding in their lairs. Sadr won/lost. Maliki won/lost. Iran won/lost. The US lost/lost, or maybe pulled off a draw. Is there any surprise that European and American observers are confused?

Only Nibras Kazimi appears to have the facts in hand. His explanation is that the Basra expedition was intended to hunt down the gangsters, some of them who have had unserved arrest warrants them since 2004, who had intertwined their criminal organizations with Sadr's Iraqi Shiite nationalist organization, and that it has succeeded to a great extent. Hundreds of the gangster leaders are dead and their organizations are in tatters and will not recover. The rule of law has taken a great step forward in the south of Iraq. The next step is to crush the gangsters in the rest of Iraq. This explains why the Green Zone was getting mortared. The gangsters know that they will soon be taking the worst of it and they wanted to try to throw a wrench in the gears first.

most western media outlets are declaring Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran as the victors of Operation Cavalry Charge. Nothing could be furthest from the truth.

The United Alliance List delegation comprising Ali al-Adib of the Da’awa Party, Hadi al-Ameri of the Badr Organization and (I think…) Qasim al-Sahlani representing a group that had splintered from the Da’awa Party, evidently made al-Sadr an offer he couldn’t refuse when they sat down for a friendly chat in Tehran two days ago: the Iraqi state was willing to go all the way in smashing the Sadrist movement—arresting all the leaders and shutting down all the offices—if he didn’t play along with Operation Cavalry Charge and hand over those operatives whose names appear on the wanted lists.

See Maliki went to Basra with a long-ish list of names comprising all those involved in oil smuggling, drug dealing and the various other crimes that have wracked Basra. It just so happens that many of them claim to be Mahdi Army commanders.

Gangbusting is a great development for Iraq. Go Maliki! Go!

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Technorati Tags: Crime and Punishment, Iraq, Media Bias