Wolf Pangloss's Fish Taco Stand

I was Spartacus; I am Joe the Plumber

2008-10-16T18:39:00.002-05:00

Joe the Plumber asked The One, The Messiah, Lord Barack Obama the Most Merciful, about his tax plans and how it would affect someone who was looking to buy a small plumbing business from its current owner. Now the modern Spartacus has been subjected to the Media's and the Democrat Party's, but I repeat myself, politics of personal destruction. They have started a hostile investigation of Joe. They are at war with Joe, just like they were at war with Bork, Thomas, Alito, Lieberman, and Sarah Palin before him. They chased down his voter registration, his apprenticeship papers, his back taxes, his plumber license, etc etc etc. Toledo is cracking down on him in the intent to prevent him from practicing his craft.

The left intends to threaten and frighten anyone who would speak against them into silence. They are truly the inheritors of the tactics of oppression used by the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and Bolsheviks.

Everyone who speaks truth to Obama's power is in danger of being attacked by Democrats and the Media. The perversely-named Fairness Doctrine is only one example of the Left's deep hatred of free speech except for speech they agree with. They intend to crush everybody's rights to speak freely, not just the rights of radio employees and college students.

I am Joe the Plumber!

Try saying it yourself. Throw in some Howard Beall.

I am Joe the Plumber! I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

I mean it. Try it.

Watch Joe's offense against The One

that has caused him to be attacked by the mad dogs of liberalism.

Technorati Tags: Tyranny, Fascism, Culture War, Democrats

Gwen Ifill Oughtta be Fired!

2008-10-01T21:11:00.001-05:00

Gwen Ifill's profile at PBS begins:

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" and senior correspondent for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is also frequently asked to moderate debates in national elections, including the Vice Presidential debate during the 2004 election and the upcoming Vice Presidential debate scheduled for October. Ifill is also the author of the forthcoming book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

Notice that she is both the moderator for the Oct 2 VP debate and the author of an upcoming hagiography of Barack Obama. I choose the word hagiography with care. She argues that Obama is imbued with such numinous power, importance, and charisma that he is the Hero-Saint of the Age who lends the Age his name. This book is scheduled to be released on January 20, 2009. This is Inauguration Day. If Obama is elected president she stands to earn a lot of money. If he loses, not so much. This is like the person who shoes all the horses at the racetrack placing big-money, long-shot bets and hitting winners. In other words, it is fundamentally dishonest.

I have no idea whether Ifill intends to be unfair, but she certainly was perceived as unfair to Dick Cheney when he debated the adulterous John Edwards in the 2004 VP Debate. Even Democrats thought so, and they cheered for her because of it.

Ifill drew some criticism when Edwards attacked Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, and the vice president said: "I can respond, Gwen, but it's going to take more than 30 seconds."

"Well, that's all you've got," she replied.

Ifill says now that Democratic partisans were delighted because they "thought I was being snippy to Cheney." That, she says, was not her intent. Still, the consensus was that she acquitted herself well. [Wash Post]

Ifill was partisan once previously, when she moderated the 2004 VP debate. Democrats and Republicans both thought so. It's not a party line opinion, but a considered judgment. Now she is publishing a book that will make her more money if one of the debaters she moderates wins than if the other prevails. This is a conflict of interest that should disqualify her from moderating the debate. Yet she carries on.

Both Gwen Ifill and the Debate Commission are responsible for this embarrassment. This will be a black mark on their reputations forever.

At the debate, Sarah Palin should hold up a copy of The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama and ask Ifill to sign it, and then ask her if she can put her obvious political predilection aside and treat both debaters without partiality.

And then Ifill ought to be fired!

You're fired

Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Corruption, Politics, Gwen Ifill

Barack Obama Sex-Ed for Kindergartners Open Trackbacks

2008-09-30T00:06:00.001-05:00

The Mouth Peach really, really, really wants to know what the evidence shows. Watch and find out.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Media Bias, Neocommunism, Video

Wile E. Coyote: New York Times reporter

2008-09-16T00:02:00.000-05:00

Iowahawk is, as usual, brilliant.

Doo-dee-doo-dee-doo... now where did I put that protractor? Ahh, here it is! Let me see... if the hypotenuse the parabola of a pregnant teenager... is inversely proportional to the approval ratings of the religious Right... then if I set the azimuth of the baby scandal catapult to 72.415 degrees, she'll be crushed as flat as her barren Alaskan tundra. Muwahahaha!

...Egads! I must say, sometimes I astonish even myself with my own genius!

And now, to bait the hook. Simply load in this explosive charge into the cup... unghhhh... pull the lever and...

SPROING

FLIPPFF

KROONFFFFCH

ow.

KERSPLOOOOWWWM

Wfwell, Backh to tphe oldl drawbling bloard.

Technorati Tags: Satire, Funny, Media Bias, Sarah Palin

Bravo! Bravissimo!

2008-09-15T23:39:00.001-05:00

Al Qaeda's ballyhooed plans to release a fancy-pants video on the intertubes on 9/11 came to naught, apparently because of free-lance hackers!

Sources close to US intelligence said, “Hackers knocked out Al Qaeda’s online means of communication, thus preventing them from posting anything to commemorate the anniversary.”
Western intelligence suspects two hackers who have targeted Islamicist sites before were responsible: Aaron Weisburd from Internet Haganah and Rusty Shackleford from the web group My Pet Jawa.

Thus the title of this post. The pseudonymous Rusty Shackleford of the Jawa Report (the old name is soooo 2005) denies it and denies being a hacker at all. Not that he's against whoever did the business. In fact, he's in favor and would buy that person or persons a beer or three to celebrate.

p.s. Do you want to read 10 years of old Osama bin Laden whinging on the topic of killing infidels, the caliphate, killing infidels, collecting jizya, killing infidels, overthrowing the Saudi royals, killing infidels, and numerous details of personal hygeine, all translated into English?

Technorati Tags: Counterjihad, Cyberjihad, al Qaeda

Vegetarian Brain Shrinkage

2008-09-15T20:28:00.001-05:00

Boy oh boy, isn't this funny?

MELBOURNE: Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.
Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin.

This is sure to be as popular a topic with vegetarians and meatitarians (for want of a sillier coinage) alike as the venerable tofu brain shrinkage issue. To add to the irony, note where the article was found (hint, vegan central).

Technorati Tags: Eco-Paganism, Hoaxes, Vegetarian, Vegan, Shrinkage

Bully Obama?

2008-09-12T20:51:00.001-05:00

Nedra Pickler reports for the AP on Obama's new disco ball and leisure suit ad against McCain that includes this text:

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail..."

She goes on to cheerlead for the Obama campaign in the rest of the article because, like most of the media and the AP drones in particular, she is a cheerleader for Barry and operation "hopechange." [Breitbart]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ2I0t_Twk0]

But she left out something. Jonah Goldberg writes in NRO:

The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. From the Boston Globe (March 4, 2000):
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.
In a similar vein I guess it's an outrage that the blind governor of New York David Patterson doesn't know how to drive a car.

Not only that, but as Goldberg also notes, McCain is surprisingly web-savvy. So the ad is false on its face, making Obama a flat-out liar. Again.

Hey Obama. Kick the cripple and tell lies about him.

If it doesn't make your blood boil you don't have a heart.

Maybe next he will mock Trig Palin for having an extra chromosome. That'd be about the speed of this ad.

Technorati Tags: Politics, McCain, Obama, Degeneracy

9/11: The Jihad says Hello World

2008-09-11T08:21:00.001-05:00

Seven years ago the world learned what Jihad means. The words of S. K. Malik were illuminated by the facts on the ground, and in the streets of New York City. The cultural weakness inherent in the West's attempt, following the examples of the Jacobins, the Russian communists, and the German national socialists, to drive religion out of the public square became apparent, for we who had become totally secular in our thoughts and beliefs had no defenses against this vicious attempt to destroy our Faith in what we believed in. Here is what Malik wrote when defining the accepted philosophy of warfare for Pakistan (and for all Jihadists).

Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. Its is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him. [...]

Terror [...] is basically related to the strength or weakness of the human soul. It can be instilled only if the opponent's Faith is destroyed. Psychological dislocation is temporary; spiritual dislocation is permanent. Psychological dislocation can be produced by a physical act but this does not hold good of the spiritual dislocation. To instil terror into the hearts of the enemy, it is essential, in the ultimate analysis, to dislocate his Faith. An invincible Faith is immune to terror. A weak Faith offers inroads to terror.
S. K. Malik, The Qu'ranic Concept of War, p 59-60.

The bolding is mine. The targets of 9/11 were symbolic of American capitalism and international commerce. The World Trade Center was no longer the world's tallest building, but it was a powerful (and easy to hit) symbol of international trade and the material prosperity produced by capitalism and commerce. The Pentagon is the center of the American military, which protects the sea-lanes of the world from pirates and supports the advance of international commerce and finance. And the last plane that crashed into a pasture in Shanksville, Pennsylvania was destined to strike the US Capitol Building, the seat of the Senate and House of Representatives, the source of laws regulating commerce for the United States, which is so abhorrent to Jihadists who believe only in the law of Sharia.

If commerce is the civic religion of the United States then this was a strike right at the American soul. But if the soul of the United States is more properly stated in the Declaration of Independence then it was a miss. And that is where the Jihadists miscalculated. America rose up and demanded vengeance against those who launched nineteen assassins against innocent American civilians. If it took war to get vengeance and to secure America against the Jihad, then so be it.

On the other hand, Hollywood, secular Democrats, the media, academia, and the east and west coast secular elites could not understand what had happened. After the initial terror shivered them to their core they blocked the memory of it out of their minds and sealed their minds apart from the fact of what was opposed to them. Then they fiercely opposed any attempt to remind them, or to carry out military action to counter the Jihad.

Never forget the WTC, Pentagon, Shanksville.

Never forget the falling man.

Never forget who celebrated.

Never forget that if you are not a Jihadist, then the Jihad is coming for you, your family, your loved ones.

By the way, anyone who argues that 9/11 was not the work of Jihadists and Muslims and was the work of Mossad/US/Bush/Cheney/CIA/Hollywood should put their heads on straight. 9/11 "Truthers" are soul-less fools and useful idiots for the Jihad.

Technorati Tags: Jihad, 9/11

How bad could Obama be?

2008-09-09T23:07:00.001-05:00

This bad. Maybe worse.

Investor's Business Daily has a must-read series on Obama's stealth socialism titled The Audacity of Socialism.

Barack Obama has styled himself a centrist, but does his record support that claim?

In this series, we examine Senator Obama's past, his voting record and the people who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years. We'll show how the facts of Obama's actions and associations reveal a far more left-leaning tilt to his background and to his politics.

I mean it. At 14 parts so far, the series is a must-read.

And if you haven't heard of it yet, the soberest examination of Obama's actual record yet is Freddoso's book. Here is a pretty good interview of Freddoso.

I just want to cite for you one of the things that Alinsky says in Rules for Radicals. I’m not going to read it or quote, I’m just going to summarize it. What he says is that, he’s talking about the middle classes, and he says that they are sort of hopeless and lost. They become bitter. They cling to illusory fixed points which are nonetheless very real to them. They hold irrational religious beliefs that you shouldn’t try to disabuse them of because then they’ll react violently. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

DELLINGER: Yes, it sounds like that speech in Pennsylvania that caused so much controversy.

FREDDOSO: Yes, it was in San Francisco. He talked about the people back in Pennsylvania as bitter people who cling to guns and religion and patriotism. That’s exactly the way Alinsky talked about it, so Obama sort of takes this Alinsky’s entire philosophy condescends upon the human person. It condescends on the poor basically thinking that I know what they need better than they do. It condescends on the middle classes saying that we need to help them because they’re confused and everything but really they’re just a bunch of delusional people who think that patriotism and stuff like that is important. That’s the kind of influence you see in Obama’s life that you see from Saul Alinsky.

Condescending. Mean. Lawyer. Not trustworthy. Not Change we can believe in. Not the Change we need.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Socialism, Hurricane

World can have Obama

2008-09-09T22:09:00.001-05:00

A BBC Poll indicates that socialist tools all over the world would rather have Obama as US President than McCain. Bully for them! How about we give Obama to the countries that want him? He can be president of the European Union or the Organization of the Islamic Conference (there's your 57 states, Barry).

Heck, he could even be the Secretary General of the UN. Even an American socialist from the corrupt Chicago political machine is better than the anti-American, terror-enabling, Jew-hating corruptocrats the UN usually elects.

Technorati Tags: Obama, One World Government

Sexist Pig Obama "Cleverly" Insults a Woman

2008-09-09T21:48:00.001-05:00

Stay classy, Obama.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Video, Pig, Lipstick

Infanticide: The Video

2008-08-21T22:59:00.001-05:00

Jill Stanek tells the story of her experiences as a nurse in an Illinois hospital with a baby who was delivered alive at 21-22 weeks and left without any treatment to die. The baby had Down's syndrome and had other problems, and the doctor delivered the baby instead of aborting it. This was legal in Illinois at the time, and two Born Alive Infant Protection Acts were introduced into the Illinois legislature. As far as I know, it is still legal in Illinois. Obama voted against the first act three times. The second one, which was identical in wording to the federal act, died in Obama's committee when he refused to send it to the legislature for a vote. How apropos, to kill a bill with willful neglect in the same way that delivered, living babies were left to die in Illinois hospitals.

Watch it. I dare you. I double-dare you.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Human Rights, Abortion, Culture War, Infanticide

Who Speaks for Abortion Victims?

2008-08-08T00:32:00.000-05:00

Every abortion has two victims, one of whom dies a horrible, cruel death and one who lives and endeavors to forget.

Christina Dunigan tells soul searing true stories about botched "safe and legal" abortions.

How about the shock 15-year-old Tamiia Russell's mom got when her daughter confessed that she had been brought for an abortion by her abuser's girlfriend? Tamiia had been so far advanced in her pregnancy that several other Detroit abortion clinics had turned her away -- one even offering prenatal vitamins. But the abuser's sister persisted, the abortion was arranged. And Tamiia hemorrhaged and died. Another dead teenager beneath your notice.

When will it become acceptable to mourn the dead, miracles of God destroyed as a result of Margaret Sanger's eugenicist project? Abortion is no good for anyone. Real Choice makes that clear to anyone who reads with an open heart and mind. But the psychic and death toll of abortion falls disproportionately on the poor and on city dwellers, especially on blacks.

As I've written before, one of three black children is killed in the womb by the abortionist's blade. The death toll of abortion mills such as Planned Parenthood has decimated the black population in America for forty-five years. When will it become acceptable to state this in public?

I've recommended other websites before. I also highly recommend reading as much of Real Choice as you can stand.

Technorati Tags: Blog Reviews, Abortion, Blogspotting

It's not easy being green

2008-08-07T19:20:00.001-05:00

Ever since it became uncool.

Technorati Tags: Eco-paganism, pop culture

Ralph Nader...Unsane at any speed!

2008-08-06T19:55:00.001-05:00

Ralph Nader has a two-minute hate on for Obama.

Nader made his comments at a breakfast with reporters in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. It was not the first time that the perennial presidential candidate has been critical of the Democrat who would be the nation's first African-American president. Back in June, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Nader accused Obama of downplaying poverty issues, trying to "talk white" and appealing to "white guilt" during his run for the White House.

The fratricide between the different factions on the left is no surprise, because the left does not have a coherent philosophy that unites it, only the tacked-together, failed ideologies of socialism and progressivism, leavened with populism and a paralyzing devotion to political correctness and multiculturalism. So, when Nader the nemesis of the Corvair discovers that the Messiah, Lord Obama the Most Merciful doesn't live up to the hype, he loses what's left of his composure.

Thanks to commenter Liberty or Death at Hot Air for the post title.

Technorati Tags: Ralph Nader, Leftism, Obama

Appreciating Solzhenitsyn: The 1978 Harvard Graduation Speech

2008-08-04T22:35:00.001-05:00

Solzhenitsyn turned his formidable skills as a prophet of doom first upon the Soviet Gulag terror system, and then when invited to Harvard to address the graduating class of 1978, on the American society of "despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness," "TV stupor," and "intolerable music." In a post-9/11 world his criticisms of the loss of courage of Western elites, of the incorrigible mendacity and self-loathing of the Western press, and of the Soviet-style legalistic crusade against religion appear newly relevant. But his assignment of blame to the free market and humanism itself for these failings strikes a wrong note for (at least) two reasons.

First, the claim that the humanistic Renaissance inevitably led to classical liberalism, which inevitably led to Jacobin-style radicalism, which led to Prussian-style socialism, and finally, inevitably to communism, is a Marxist analysis of history. Those who reject Marxism do not have to accept such an analysis. They certainly need not accept the claim that a society cannot stop at classical liberalism or turn back from socialism to a less-intrusive, classically liberal government of, by, and for the people.

Second, Solzhenitsyn's claims that corporations are at fault for Western failings such as excessive legalism, the welfare state, and the war against the soul are obvious nonsense. How exactly can corporations be responsible for legalism, the welfare state, or the government and legal repression of public religion? All three are expressions of state power. The common law is not determined by corporations but by the judiciary's interpretation of traditional rights, while legislative law is determined by the sovereign government. The welfare state speaks for itself. And the legal repression of public religion is not the sort of thing any company seeking to please the mass of its customers would endeavor upon.

So while I cannot agree with Solzhenitsyn's prescription of a traditional, religiously anointed monarchy for what ails Russia and the West alike, I agree with his observations about the increasingly dangerous moral weakness of the West. And I suspect others will too.

Without any further ado let's get into the speech.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises
Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today's graduates.

Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.

There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said...

A World Split Apart
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand.

Contemporary Worlds

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as compact units. For one thousand years Russia has belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its autonomous character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in communist captivity. It may be that in the past years Japan has increasingly become a distant part of the West, I am no judge here; but as to Israel, for instance, it seems to me that it stands apart from the Western world in that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered peoples' approach to life. On the face of it, it was an overwhelming success, there were no geographic frontiers to it. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the twentieth century came the discovery of its fragility and friability. We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious, and this in turn points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests. Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill.

Convergence

But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development is quite different.

Anguish about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity; neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world's rifts I would have concentrated on the East's calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West in our days, such as I see them.

A Decline in Courage [. . .]

may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Well-Being

When the modern Western States were created, the following principle was proclaimed: governments are meant to serve man, and man lives to be free to pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration). Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the morally inferior sense which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment. So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?

Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.

Legalistic Life

Western society has given itself the organization best suited to its purposes, based, I would say, on the letter of the law. The limits of human rights and righteousness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law, even though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert. Any conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the supreme solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice and selfless risk: it would sound simply absurd. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames. An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.

I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

The Direction of Freedom

In today's Western society, the inequality has been revealed of freedom for good deeds and freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and, in fact, it has been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. (There is a huge number of prisoners in our camps which are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state resorting to means outside of a legal framework).

The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

A Fashion in Thinking

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few trends of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a review, to look into the influence of these Western characteristics on important aspects on [the] nation's life, such as elementary education, advanced education in [?...]

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the United States.

Not a Model

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being. Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Shortsightedness

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events.

In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is. There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Moscow Old Square [1] officials laugh at your political wizards! As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

I have had occasion already to say that in the 20th century democracy has not won any major war without help and protection from a powerful continental ally whose philosophy and ideology it did not question. In World War II against Hitler, instead of winning that war with its own forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western democracy grew and cultivated another enemy who would prove worse and more powerful yet, as Hitler never had so many resources and so many people, nor did he offer any attractive ideas, or have such a large number of supporters in the West -- a potential fifth column -- as the Soviet Union. At present, some Western voices already have spoken of obtaining protection from a third power against aggression in the next world conflict, if there is one; in this case the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with Evil; also, it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia in our days.

Loss of Willpower

And yet -- no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.

Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

Humanism and Its Consequences

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

An Unexpected Kinship

As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation at first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say in 1844 that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless. One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorship; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. (This is typical of the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century and of Marxism). Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism. The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

Before the Turn

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward.

Notes

[1] The Old Square in Moscow (Staraya Ploshchad') is the place where the [headquarters] of the Central Committee of the CPSU are located; it is the real name of what in the West is conventionally referred to as "the Kremlin."

Technorati Tags: Solzhenitsyn, Culture War, The West

Obama runs for President of the World

2008-07-30T21:09:00.001-05:00

McCain hits Obama pretty hard with the Celeb ad. What was Obama thinking when he went to Germany and held a campaign rally in the middle of Berlin in front of a triumphal pillar that celebrates three historic victories of Germany plus the Nazi victory over Europe that didn't pan out?

Obviously I think this commercial should have Fabio in it somewhere. To underline the point, check out this American Presidential campaign poster in Berlin.

Technorati Tags: McCain, Obama, Politics, Video

Ludacris B-rocks the Obama campaign

2008-07-30T20:41:00.001-05:00

I don't think this helps Obama's kids.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Obama, Video, Ludacris

Bobby Kennedy in British Palestine

2008-07-24T21:45:00.001-05:00

Lenny Ben-David found several articles the 22-year-old Bobby Kennedy wrote when he visited the British mandate of Palestine in March 1948, two months before Israel's May 14 declaration of independence. They are well worth reading.

Technorati Tags: Palestine, Israel, RFK, Bobby Kennedy

Conversion, Death or Taxes: A Jihadist Jizya threat in the Philipines

2008-07-24T10:06:00.001-05:00

Isabela is the capital of Basilan island in the Philipines. The rest of the Island "belongs to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao." [catholic explorer] On July 21, five Catholic parishioners of St. Vincent Ferrer Parish in Sumisip were kidnapped. On July 23, Martin Jumoad, the Bishop of Isabela received a letter threatening to kill him if he did not pay a protection tax to two mujahedin of al-Harakutul Islamiyya, a name associated with the Abu Sayyaf jihad terrorist gang.

Bishop Martin Jumoad of Isabela also told the Asian church news agency UCA News that he got text messages from Catholics saying they, too, had received threatening letters.

[...] The bishop sent a copy of the letter July 19 to church-run Radio Veritas in Quezon City, northeast of Manila.

The letter had the names "Puruji Indama" and "Nur Hassan J. Kallitut" printed at the bottom and "mujahedin" under each name. The purported senders introduced themselves as "Muslim warriors" who "don't follow any laws other than the Quran," Islam's holy book.

They said Bishop Jumoad should choose to convert to Islam or give "jizya," Islamic tax, to their group in exchange for protecting him in the "place of Muslims."

If he refuses to convert or pay, the letter threatened "force, weapons or war may be used" against him. It warned him not to feel safe even if he is "surrounded by soldiers" and cited bombings in various cities.

Bishop Jumoad was given 15 days to respond, with two mobile phone numbers to contact.

"If we do not receive response from you, it means you will oppose," the letter added. [link]

Unfortunately this is all too typical of the persecution of Christians in lands under the shadow of Islam.

In the meantime, 180 Jihad-enabling US Congress critters (all Democrats) voted to prevent US government agencies from using the word Jihad to describe the vile, foul teachings of Jihad, Mujahedin or Jihadist for those who idolize Jihad, and even caliphate for the totalitarian, murderous, one-world Muslim government those evildoers wish to establish. Read the names of the Jihadist enablers here. Luckily for truth and reason, their side lost the vote.

Technorati Tags: Jihad, Jizya, Philipines, Basilan

The Obama Hype Movie

2008-07-23T19:45:00.001-05:00

Interesting...

h/t: commenter Doug at Belmont Club

Technorati Tags: Obama, Video, Hype

Le Rangel: J'accuse Moi!

2008-07-23T19:16:00.002-05:00

Charlie Rangel has been accused of misusing his congressional office by himself. Well, that's a first, a Dem being investigated by a Dem congress. I believe this came out right after John Edwards was caught in the Beverly Hills Hilton with Rielle Hunter. I'm still waiting for pictures from that mess.

Am I saying it's an intentional distraction?

Oui!

Technorati Tags: Politics, Democrats, Rangel, Edwards, Distraction

Cuban Nuclear Missile Crisis Part II

2008-07-23T07:20:00.001-05:00

Nobody expected a flashback to 46 years ago. But here it is from Breitbart.

Russia would cross "a red line for the United States of America" if it were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba, a top US air force officer warned on Tuesday.
"If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America," said General Norton Schwartz, nominated to be the air force's chief of staff.
He was referring to a Russian news report that said the military is thinking of flying long-range bombers to Cuba on a regular basis.

Everything old is new again.

Technorati Tags: Communism, Military, Russia, Cuba

Redford: "you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye"

2008-07-13T09:55:00.001-05:00

RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC writes in the Irish Times:

IF BARACK Obama doesn't win November's presidential election in the United States, "you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye", the actor and director Robert Redford told an audience in Dublin last night.

Yet another reason to vote for McCain, and to keep an eye out for Democrat vote fraud.

Technorati Tags: Democrats, Vote Fraud, Culture War, Obama, Elections

History Erasers in the Middle East

2008-07-13T08:45:00.001-05:00

Rachel Neuwirth writes of matters having to do with a new documentary, The Exodus Conspiracy.

Filmmaker Tim Mahoney's The Exodus Conspiracy, due to be released within a few months, seeks to demonstrate the historical accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt on the basis of recent archaeological discoveries and geographic explorations. A secondary thesis of the film is that the "Red Sea" crossed by the Israelites was the Gulf of Aquaba (called the Gulf of Eilat by modern-day Israelis), rather than "Sea of Reeds" in Egypt, as most Biblical scholars have always assumed, and that the true "Mount Sinai" or "Mount Horeb" of the Exodus narrative is in northern Saudi Arabia, and is not the Mt. Sinai shown to pilgrims and tourists over the centuries in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
At the same time, the film also documents the efforts of Arab governments, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to suppress, or at least to seriously impede, the discovery and publication of archaeological data that would confirm the historicity of the Biblical narrative.

The Jihad against the Jews and Christians has many facets, including the rewriting of history and anthropology. As they say, read it all.

Technorati Tags: Jihad, Islam, Jews

Nozzle Rage

2008-07-13T08:37:00.001-05:00

Now that's funny! Check out the Nozzle Rage video below.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Video, Humor

America's accidental energy policy

2008-07-11T19:28:00.001-05:00

J. R. Dunn has a terrific article over at American Thinker about how America's energy policy has come about, literally, in response to accidents.

One thing consistently overlooked is that American energy policy is literally the result of a series of accidents. Each of these incidents set off a blizzard of activity intended to "rationalize" the energy industry and its practices, prevent further mishaps, increase government control, and not the least, usher in the new Green Age. Each thrust American energy policy deeper into stagnation.

The accidents Dunn lists are:

The Santa Barbara Union Oil oil spill of 1969, caused by a USGS-approved deviation from standard procedure for piping in 1969. The aftereffect was to ban drilling for oil off the East and West coasts of the US.
The Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of 1979, which caused a minor release of radiation but nothing major since the safety systems at the plant functioned according to plan, happened a couple of weeks before The China Syndrome came out, and not a single nuclear plant has been built in the US since then.
In 1986, technicians at Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Ukraine experimented with shutting off the plant safeguards and running the reactor at its most unstable point, at which point the roof blew off and dozens of people were killed. This was a major nuclear accident that irradiated a large area of the Ukraine.
In 1989, the captain of Exxon Valdez was drunk when he piloted his supertanker onto a reef off the Alaska coast and dumped 11 million gallons of crude into the Arctic Ocean.

Rather than addressing the obvious management failures in these accidents and filling the gaps in official policy, the US legislature and judiciary have passed or reinterpreted statutes to cripple the US energy industry. The result is what we have today, with US gas at $4 and going to $5 and the US sending $700 billion to terror sponsoring states for their oil every year. Corn ethanol is a boondoggle that has doubled the price of raw food ingredients such as grains, meat, and dairy. This is a Potemkin kind of environmentalism, with the location of the mines shifted to another part of the world and inferior technology and work habits used to extract the oil from the Earth. CO2 production is higher from Iranian or Venezuelan operated mines than it would be from US mines. By shifting production from the US to other countries, the ManBearPig environmentalist movement has actually increased world-wide CO2 levels. (Not that CO2 levels drive global warming, they actually trail global warming trends by some number of years [if I recall correctly, 500 years], showing they are a result of global warming rather than a cause.)

Read the whole thing. It's worth it.

Technorati Tags: Eco-paganism, Energy, United States, America

Obama we can Obama in

2008-07-11T19:27:00.001-05:00

What a hoot!

h/t: Liberal Fascism

Technorati Tags: Obama, Satire

Reply to Stephen Kinzer on RFK's assassination

2008-06-15T08:59:00.001-05:00

Stephen Kinzer writes in the Guardian.

Sirhan was not simply a "Jordanian citizen", as he was called at the time. He was an embittered Palestinian who had been born in 1944 to a Christian family in Jerusalem. During the war that broke out when he was four years old, Jewish insurgents seized his house, and his family was forced to flee. He was nearly killed in an Irgun bombing at the Damascus Gate, and witnessed other violent attacks that deeply traumatised him.
As a young refugee, Sirhan attended a school where teachers exhorted students to struggle for Palestinian rights. Later his family moved to California, and he was there when Israel seized East Jerusalem and other Arab territories in the Six-Day War of 1967. He told at a friend that he believed Fatah was justified in using terror to oppose Israeli rule.
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Sirhan came to identify Robert Kennedy, who he had originally supported, as a friend of Israel. Three weeks before committing his crime, he watched a documentary about Kennedy's involvement with Israel on CBS television. Soon afterward he heard a radio tape of Kennedy telling an audience at a Los Angeles synagogue that he would maintain "clear and compelling" support for Israel. After hearing it, a relative later testified, Sirhan ran from the room with "his hands on his ears, and almost weeping".
Sirhan timed his attack on Kennedy to coincide with the first anniversary of the opening of the Six-Day War. At his trial, he sought several times to place his crime in the Palestinian context. "When you move a whole country, a whole people, bodily from their own homes, from their land, from their business," he said, "that is completely wrong … . That burned the hell out of me." Few Americans had any idea what he was talking about.

Kinzer concludes that Sirhan Sirhan's murder of Bobby Kennedy was the first blowback against America from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He places the cause of the murder directly at the feet of America's and RFK's support for Israel. But what he mentions, yet ignores in his conclusion, is the part that Palestian propaganda had to play in it.

Review this.

When news of Sirhan's background was flashed back to the Arab world after he killed Kennedy, many people there instinctively understood what had happened. They recognised the crime as a horrific expression of the violent frustration that young Palestinians were beginning to feel. [...]

and this.

As a young refugee, Sirhan attended a school where teachers exhorted students to struggle for Palestinian rights.

Though Kinzer doesn't say it, the English word "struggle" is often substituted for the Arabic word "jihad." Even though a Sirhan Sirhan was raised a Maronite christian definitely taught to wage jihad Palestinians have been teaching their children to hate and desire to kill Jews for 50 years now. Is it any wonder that the first generation of Palestinians in exile should have been infected by the Judenhass? They were affected by the war, and all wars are overwhelming, shattering, horrible experiences. Civilians caught up in war are understandably traumatized by them and their resulting prejudices and hatreds are understandable. But the hatred of Palestinians for Jews and Americans is something else. It is a sore spot intentionally rubbed raw and self-infected with poison. Because of that, it cannot be blamed on anyone other than the Palestinians themselves.

Related: We shouted out, who killed the Kennedys

Technorati Tags: Jews, Jihad, Crime and Punishment, Sirhan Sirhan, Kennedy

Algerian Government Persecutes Christians and ex-Muslims

2008-06-05T00:06:00.002-05:00

Habiba Kouider used to be a Muslim. Then she converted to Christianity and was baptized. Recently she was pulled off a bus by police who interrogated her in public, rifled through her purse, examining her bibles and other literature, and even performed a body search on her, all while firing hostile questions at her.

After examining the contents of the Christian woman’s handbag, police officers body-searched her and then proceeded to interrogate her.

“Why did you convert to Christianity, why did you forsake Islam?” the officers asked, according to comments by Mustapha Krim, published on the website collectifalgerie.free.fr.

Kouider has been charged with “practicing a non-Muslim religion” and is facing a three-year prison sentence requested by prosecutors.

Meanwhile, six Christians who had been worshiping in a private house in Tiaret, Algeria were arrested by non-uniformed secret police after they completed a worship service. They now face two years in prison for worshiping in a house and have released an open letter for help to the Christians of the world.

My dear brothers in faith all over the world, here is the tale of humiliation, injustice and persecution that your brothers in Algeria are subjected to daily, by society but in particular by the security services and the state. The latest event took place on May 9th, 2008 after leaving the Friday worship service, which we held in secret, in fear, in a brother’s house in Tiaret. We were taken by surprise when we were arrested openly in the street by security forces in plain clothes. These persons took us one by one, just like criminals, but our only crime was our faith in Jesus Christ, which has become a dangerous crime in Algeria.

My brothers, I will not describe the humiliation that we had to endure at the hands of these agents, as they were taking us to the central police station. When we had arrived they searched us one by one while insulting us, calling us renegades: those who have denied their faith in order to follow that of the west. They said we were accomplices and Isreali spies, and that we deserve to have our throats cut without any pity: a violent and inhuman aggression. Is it normal to arrest someone just because of his faith, in a country which pretends to be democratic and which says it respects human rights and personal freedom? On top of all that, we were kept there by the agents all night on Friday, in a prison cell in deplorable and undescribable conditions, without allowing us to phone our families or those dear to us. The next day we were taken before the Prosecutor of the Republic at the court in Tiaret, to ask us humiliating and embarassing questions, such as : « Why have you forsaken your ancestors’ religion? For money? » and « at what price have you been bought? » Finally we were free to go, with the order to appear in court on May 27th 2008 on an absurd charge : « Distribution of documents and books in order to destabilise the faith of muslims ». Hereunder is a copy of the order to be present at the trial. Brothers, I have written this so that you could be informed of the situation. We need your support in these difficult times, by all possible means (written, protestations…).

The 2006 Law in Algeria concerning Christianity and other non-Muslim religion is horrible. If you would like to complain, and you really should, the Algerian Embassy in Washington DC can be reached at the following addresses (try both).

Embassy of The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria
2118 Kalorama Rd, NW
Washington , D.C 20008
Tel: (202) 265-2800
Fax: (202) 667-2174
Email: ambassadoroffice@yahoo.com

Embassy of The Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria
2137 Wyoming Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008
tel: (202) 265-2800
fax: (202) 667-2174
E-mail: embalgus@cais.com

We do not regret things we have done so much as we regret things we have not done. Do not give yourself a reason to regret your silence about the persecuted Christians in Algeria. Speak up, even if just with an email.

Technorati Tags: Freedom of Religion, Algeria, Christianity, Ex-Muslim, Sharia, Tyranny

Kerry, Obama, KO: Second Verse, Same as the First

2008-06-04T22:55:00.001-05:00

See-Dubya has a terrific video comparison between John Kerry and Barack Obama with a great Shirley Bassey sound-track behind it. Not as dynamite as the Goldfinger theme, but better than any Bond theme since Diamonds are Forever. The combo is reeeeeal niiiice. Two thrills up Chris Matthews' leg. About a zillion Obama posters. Arugula. One unrepentant terrorist stomping on a US flag. One harridan actually proud of her country for the first time ever. Another harridan saying that Obama has no experience. A flip. A flip flop. A flopping flip. A flop. Rappers, Obama Girls, winter soldier testimony, and Robot Chicken uber-dork Seth Green giving a black power salute. Wolf Pangloss says, "check it out!"

Technorati Tags: Obama, Video, Democrats

The Grasping Tentacles of Obama's Church

2008-05-31T11:08:00.001-05:00

Faultline USA has an important article updating the story of what's going on at Obama's church, the Black Liberation Theology espousing Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He found a video of a sermon that Otis P. Moss III, the new preacher at TUCC, and his father, Otis P. Moss, Jr., gave together.

As luck would have it, I found a very enlightening, and very troubling, sermon given in tandem by Dr. Otis Moss Jr. and Rev. Otis Moss, III. Can Moses Generation Meet the Joshua Generation? Now you would have to go to the BLT African American Pulpit to find this hour long sermon. It isn’t on YouTube. But like anything of great value, a little time well invested is worth its weight in gold!
Gold? Yes, the kind of gold we need to expose the depths of BLT Heresy, and its Revolutionary form of anti-Americanism.
The sermon starts out with Biblical readings and then . . .
Rev. Otis Moss Jr. reads to his son, Rev. Otis Moss III, a letter written by Afro-centric Moses to Joshua in the 21^st Century. Afro-centric Moses says that "my Afro-centric heritage has served me well . . .I survived genocide because my mother and my father practiced civil disobedience . . .in spite of the Euro-centric distortions of my African-ness . . .”
The entire gist of the sermon is the creation of a new mythos based on the connection of Africans to Moses and the Israelites who were "kept under of the heavy hand of genocide and slavery 400+ years of bondage.”
The constant refrain throughout the sermon is to never forget the past, and the obvious implication is to never forget that Africans are the oppressed – and, most of all, to never forget who the oppressors are!

If you mix the Exodus with a pagan Igbo legend and let the pagan legend supply the meaning, you will not end up with the Christian message. That Moss sermon is thoroughly pagan. How can it be preached at a Christian church, and the church not be realized to be heretical?

When the old preacher said Kulay-Ba (cooley ba? kuleba? koo-lay-ba?) in the ear of the flying Africans the word entered into them and could not be taken out. That is a sorcerous, pagan word. The sermon is about permanently changing the Africans into pagans. It is not about Christianity, but something else that must not be confused with Jesus' message. It is about "liberation" in the form of permanent revolution, by means of a magic word passed down from pagan times. In other words, it carries a black-nationalist Marxist message that appeals to a revived paganism and casts white people as the reviled other.

The Black Liberation Theologists also forget, in their emphasis on the Egyptians as the eternal oppressors of the Israelites, that Jesus fled the Romans to take refuge in Egypt. The world changes. The face of the oppressors changes. The place of refuge changes. Just as it is with the dark-skinned American descendants of slaves. Their oppressors are not the same people who used to oppress them, but an oppressive belief system known as bureaucratic big government that holds them as slaves on the new plantations known as "the projects."

In these new plantations they lack privacy and safety. There is no effective law. They are left to the depredations of predatory drug dealers and other criminals. There is no community around them as employers cannot stay in business in the shadow of a project, as the coddled criminals continually test and rob every business nearby. The Law was scrubbed and racist remnants were removed during the 1960s and 70s. But the plantations have been denied the protection of the Law because of understandable black fears of the formerly racist legal system. These fears are understandable but they are wrong. When the Law fails to pursue criminals and punish them, or treats criminals as children who deserve their hand slapped for major crimes, then criminals take heart in the chaos and they grow more powerful and more dangerous. The prevalence of welfare in the new plantations is another sign of slavery. Rather than paying a poverty wage for hard work as slavery did, welfare pays a poverty wage for not working, or working off the books, and rewards the breakup of families. Neither slavery nor welfare allows people to rise above it, unless they reject it utterly. And rejection of the new plantations is also needed, not only by those who live within them, but by everyone who really cares about allowing people to raise themselves up out of financial, moral, and mental poverty.

Based on my comment at Faultline USA.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Christianity, Heresy, Trinity, Otis P. Moss III, Religion

Harvey Korman, R.I.P.

2008-05-30T23:51:00.001-05:00

Godspeed to a very funny man, here in an old fashioned but still funny musical comedy sketch with Tim Conway from the Carol Burnett Show.

Harvey, may you find the shortest trip possible to Heaven's all-star team of sketch comedy.

Also see Ace for the riotously funny Dentist sketch.

Technorati Tags: pop culture, RIP, Harvey Korman

It is not enough these days to "Question Authority," you gotta speak with it too

2008-05-28T22:43:00.002-05:00

Taylor Mali at a Def Poetry Jam talking about talking, about talking like you mean it, like you know what you're talking about, like you are not making a joke or asking a question.

Money quote:

"As society just becomes so filled with these conflicting feelings of ngggggh, that we've just gotten to the point where we're the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along, since, you know, a long time ago."

Technorati Tags: Poetry, Video, Taylor Mali

Fitna Remade and Others

2008-05-28T22:20:00.001-05:00

With Fitna Remade, Reza Moradi recuts Geert Wilder's movie Fitna to speak for the Muslims who are victimized by the Takfirism, Sharia and Jihad of political Islam.

What follows is an edited version of Fitna with my commentary about the realities of Islam and political Islam. It is an attempt to disgrace political Islam and its apologists and side with the masses of people resisting it in the Middle East.

Moradi indulges in some moral relativism, comparing Muslim Terrorism to US Military "Terrorism." She favors the banning of religion from society at large (not sure how this could work without an omnipotent dictator in charge). And she also favors increased asylum in western countries of Muslims claiming persecution. But the majority of her argument is still interesting and worth watching.

At FaithFreedom.org, Amitabh Tripathi explores the message sent by a new Jihadist group called Indian Mujahidin claiming responsibility for the bombings against Jaipur, and describes why India has been unable to mount an effective counter to its own Jihadist threats.

When Mujahideeens in Afghanistan were fighting against Soviet Union it was very much evident that after defeat of Soviet Union in Afghanistan they are not going to stop. America very tactfully used mujahideens against their arch rival of cold war but experts of Islamism in America never took these mujaheedeens as their ally and some of them had apprehensions that these Islamist forces in near future could target America as well. It is the reason why America was able to take on these Islamists just after 9/11. On Contrary we were unprepared to this surge of Islamist movement.

After 1991 when Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan and those Mujahideens of Pakistan took the cause to liberate J&K from India. It was prime time to nip in the bud and crush the Islamist aspirations in India but at that stage our political system and intelligentsia tried to divert the attention of people from the debate of Islamist aspiration and Islamist terrorism in J&K was defined as an insurgency and it was said that this is done by some misguided youths due to unemployment. But these misguided unemployed youths were very much guided with religious appeal that ethnic cleansing took place in valley and all Hindus were forced to evacuate their homeland to become refugees in their own country. This was the first chance when we were in position to curb the Islamic terrorism and stop it before spreading its tentacles in other parts of our nation. But we missed the bus.

Amil Imani, Europe Shall Bleed, Once Again

Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the other. This is an old Muslim saying and Muslims live by this motto. To be sure the people of the-religion of peace- find the world full of “other,” to oppress and kill, both within as well as without the Islamic Ummeh.

Civilized peoples’ idea of the “other” is the exact opposite of that of Muslims. All over Europe, for one, people have been singing the praises of multiculturalism; the idea that everybody should bend over backwards to accommodate the different in society. [...]

To Muslims, anyone who doesn’t toe the line of Islam, as each sect defines it, is the “other” and fair game as kafir (blasphemous; unbeliever in Allah).

Douglas Farah, Good News on the Terror Funding Libel Front

The cases seem to indicate that careful, fair and accurate reporting on terrorism financing can withstand legal challenge even in Europe, where plaintiffs are heavily advantaged in libel proceedings. The catch: You have to be willing and financially able to defend yourself. To all our benefit, the WSJ had the will.

Gilbert T. Sewall, Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us

Flexibility of taste and, on matters of content, an element of nihilism are essentials for textbook publishing executives and editors. Top editors - who in the case of social studies publishing are indistinguishable from marketing executives - make a business of appeasing pressure groups. Islamic activists, some with no academic credentials or background, are listed as academic reviewers in major textbooks from several companies and imprints. The Council on Islamic Education and other Islamic education organizations are secretive and easily agitated. Their links and consulting activities with publishers raise unanswered questions and merit further scrutiny.

Ibn Kammuna, Qur'anic Shari'a Law

In this article I talk about some aspects of Shari'a law as founded in the Qur’an. A Muslim, regardless of school of thought will have to accept such laws. After all, they are founded in the Qur’an, Allah’s final word. After introducing the crime, I provide the Qur’anic evidence followed by some critical analysis that sheds light on possible alternatives. I end the article with a substantive conclusion.

Basharee Murtadd, Fight Islam because it’s Intolerant, Not because it’s False

Religion is like a placebo. Those who believe in it can do a lot of good for themselves and mankind. Who are we to say that anything that’s false is bad for us? Is Santa Claus bad for our children?

The problem with Islam is not in its inaccuracies, but rather in its intolerance. Belief is a personal choice made by an individual. I have no problem with people believing in Jesus, Buddha, or Mother Goose for that matter. But when a ‘religion’ preaches hatred and intolerance for all those who differ from its adherents, then this ‘religion’ should be declared as a banned political ideology no different from Nazism.

Jahanshah Rashidian, Minorities in Allah’s Country

The Islamic Republic of Iran places the Shiite sect of Islam at the heart of the state apparatus. The Islamisation of all life, based on Khomeini’s own interpretation of Islam, is the central policy of the Islamic ruling elite.

Religious minorities, which include the Sunnite sect of Islam, Christian, Jews, Zoroastrians and Baha’is compromised about 10 % of the population after the Iranian revolution, most of them Sunnite Muslims who also suffer from discrimination as national minorities. In addition, increasing numbers of Shiites, especially after the inception of the IRI, are non-believers.

Laina Farhat-Holzman, Western Media Stooges of Islamist Propaganda: The Case of al-Dura

Our founding fathers regarded a press free from government interference as an essential institution for the protection of democracy. The press was to inform voters through a diversity of viewpoints and to prevent the abuse of power that thrives in the absence of scrutiny.

In the real world, however, media often serves as a mouthpiece of the government in power or a distraction of scandal and gossip as we often find in the American and European popular tabloids.

In some dictatorships there is only one view permitted, the dictator's and foreign journalists are not permitted. In Burma and North Korea, we have seen in the necessity to clandestinely cover Burma's flood-storm disaster or North Korea's recurring starvation.

But in sophisticated dictatorships (Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein's Iraq), foreign journalists were permitted but were under constraint. Uncooperative journalists were expelled. Journalists couldn't cover the country at all if they were expelled, so they had to wait until the end of their tour of duty to tell the truth.

One area of the world that needs to be covered honestly is the Arab Middle East - an area that plays a major role in American foreign policy. Israel has a rambunctiously free press, but the Arab world, particularly the Palestinian Territories and Gaza, is a different case. Local journalists foolish enough to expose graft or corruption will not live long. Foreign journalists must be pro-Palestinian or they are expelled. And some foreign journalists let themselves be used for political propaganda.

Kanchan Gupta, Islam's enemy within

A lie repeated again and again, as Paul Joseph Goebbels proved through word and deed, tends to be believed by the masses. Islamofascists, both at home and abroad, who peddle the myth that 'Islam is the solution' and thus see nothing wrong with the ghastly crimes committed in the name of Islam, would naturally take to Goebbelsian propaganda tactics like a duck takes to water. Fiction propagated slyly at conferences and seminars, mentioned between the lines in newspaper articles, and slipped into Friday sermons by mullahs after the jumma namaaz, acquires a certain legitimacy and is soon perceived as fact.

We have seen this happen in India on more than one occasion. When Hindus were forced to flee their ancestral homes in the Kashmir Valley by killer squads of Islamists who indulged in rapacious depredations and reveled in the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, an insidious campaign was launched, pinning the blame on Mr Jagmohan, then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir: He was accused of telling the Hindus to flee the Valley. Strangely, this fiction was believed by the secular intelligentsia which, in any event, is desperate to clutch at straws to absolve Islamic fanatics of their crimes and eager to paint Islamist marauders in the most glowing of colours.

Similar tactics were used in the wake of commuter train bombing in Mumbai, which killed 187 people. It was blatantly suggested by our homegrown Islamists that the massacre was the handiwork of either "Government agencies" or "Hindu organisations."

The Apostate, Muslims and my intellectual loneliness

I haven’t “engaged” with Muslims about Islam — online or off — for quite a while now. I simply have nothing to say to them about their persistent belief that fairy-tales are real. What can you say? You blink and nod and move on. [...]

Ugh — I feel dirty, tainted. Muslim men do that to me — unfailingly condescending and deeply sexist Muslim men. Unfortunately, I haven’t run into a single specimen that doesn’t conform. Should remember just always to steer clear.

Tahir's Journey, from Muslims for Christ

Soon after arriving in the United States from Palestine 14 years ago, I married a nice Christian girl. She tried to become a Muslim to please me, but the more she did, the more I turned away from her. We had a child together, but the marriage didn’t last because it is hard to love when your heart is filled with hate. Hate is what I was taught growing up in Palestine; hate towards the Jews, the Christians and hate against the world. As a Palestinian, you are taught from day number 1 that the whole world is responsible for our misfortune especially Jews and Christians.

Ahmed Paul, Create in me a clean heart, O God

My name is Ahmed; I was the first born in 1969 in Alexandria Egypt to a religious poor family. My father is a very Devout Muslim who keeps all the pillars of Islam and then some, being raised in such a family made it a very important requirement to be as religious as my father who is also an open minded Man, loved by everyone.

Technorati Tags: Ex-Muslim, Roundup

For Memorial Day: John McCain III's Address to the Naval Academy

2008-05-26T19:18:00.001-05:00

April 2, 2008

Thank you. I am very happy to be here. Annapolis holds a special place in my life, and in the years that have passed since my father drove me to the gates of the Naval Academy to begin my plebe year, memories of my experiences here are often bathed in the welcome haze of nostalgia for the time when I was brave and true and better looking than I am at present. But witnesses to my behavior here, a few of whom are present today, as well as a nagging conscience, have a tendency to interrupt my reverie for a misspent youth, and urge a more honest appraisal of my record and character here. In truth, my four years at the Naval Academy were not notable for exemplary virtue or academic achievement but, rather, for the impressive catalogue of demerits I managed to accumulate. By my reckoning, at the end of my second class year, I had marched enough extra duty to take me to Baltimore and back seventeen times -- which, if not a record, certainly ranks somewhere very near the top.

Never in my wildest flights of youthful fancy did I imagine I would one day be honored to give the commencement address at the Academy as I was some years ago. And, certainly, no matter how inflated was my self-regard as a midshipman, it could never have admitted the prospect that I would someday return to the banks of the Severn as a candidate for President of the United States. My old company officer, who for four years devoted himself to tracking my nocturnal sojourns outside the walls of the Academy and my other petty acts of insubordination, would have certainly shared my skepticism. But in the intervening years and experiences, I have learned what a young man seldom appreciates: that life is rich with irony and unexpected twists of fate, and is all the more fascinating for them. And I learned this, too: that my accomplishments are more a testament to my country, the land of opportunity, than they are to me. In America, everything is possible.

I had a difficult time my plebe year adjusting to the discipline imposed on me, which included, of course, deference to officers and instructors, but to other midshipmen, whose only accomplishment entitling them to my obedience, I thought at the time, was to have been born a year or more before me. I was something of a discipline problem to begin with. The problem being, I didn't like discipline. And that childish impulse that seemed then so important to my self-respect; to protecting the individualism I had been at pains to assert throughout my itinerant childhood, encouraged my irreverence to some of the customs of this place.

It's funny, now, how less self-assured I feel later in life than I did when I lived in the perpetual springtime of youth. Some of my critics allege that age hasn't entirely cost me my earlier conceits. All I can say to them is they should have known me then. But as the great poet, Yeats, wrote, "All that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters." I've lost some of the attributes that were the object of a young man's vanity. But there have been compensations, which I have come to hold dear.

If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy, I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country's trust.

Appearances to the contrary, it was never my intention to mock a revered culture that expected better of me. Like any other midshipman, I wanted to prove my mettle to my contemporaries and to the institution that figured so prominently in my family history. My idiosyncratic methods amounted to little more than the continued expressions of the truculence I had used at other schools to fend off what I had wrongly identified as attacks on my dignity.

The Naval Academy was not interested in degrading my dignity. On the contrary, it had a more expansive conception of human dignity than I possessed when I arrived at its gates. The most important lesson I learned here was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime it would be necessary for me to have the honor of serving something greater than my self-interest.

When I left the Academy, I was not even aware I had learned that lesson. In a later crisis, I would suffer a genuine attack on my dignity, an attack, unlike the affronts I had exaggerated as a boy, that left me desperate and uncertain. It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Academy in its venerable and enduring way had labored to impress upon me. It changed my life forever. I had found my cause: citizenship in the greatest nation on earth.

Like most people, when I reflect back on the adventures and joys of youth, I feel a longing for what is lost and cannot be restored. But though such happy pursuits prove ephemeral, something better can endure, and endure until our last moment on earth. And that is the honor you earn and the love you give when you sacrifice with others for a cause greater than yourself.

Our civilization's progress is accelerated by the information-technology revolution that ranks with the industrial revolution as a great pivot point in history. All around the world, the dynamics of the new economy: the internet, the communications revolution and globalization are transforming the way we work and create value; the way we govern ourselves -- or others presume to govern us; the way we live.

But even as we stand today, at the threshold of an age in which the genius of America will, I am confident, again be proven -- the genius that historian Frederick Turner called "that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism ... that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom" -- many Americans are indifferent to or cynical about the virtues that our country claims. In part, it is attributable to the dislocations economic change causes; to the experience of Americans who have, through no fault of their own, been left behind as others profit as they never have before. In part, it is in reaction to government's mistakes and incompetence, and to the selfishness of some public figures who seek to shine the luster of their public reputations at the expense of the public good. But for others, cynicism about our country, government, social and religious institutions seems not a reaction to occasions when they have been let down by these institutions, but because the ease which wealth and opportunity have given their lives led them to the mistaken conclusion that America, and the liberties its system of government is intended to protect, just aren't important to the quality of their lives.

I'm a conservative, and I believe it is a very healthy thing for Americans to be skeptical about the purposes and practices of public officials. We shouldn't expect too much from government -- nor should it expect too much from us. Self-reliance -- not foisting our responsibilities off on others -- is the ethic that made America great.

But when healthy skepticism sours into corrosive cynicism our expectations of our government become reduced to the delivery of services. And to some people the expectations of liberty are reduced to the right to choose among competing brands of designer coffee.

What is lost is, in a word, citizenship. For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever. And too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government.

But citizenship properly understood is what Ronald Reagan was talking about when he said that Americans "are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around." Citizenship is not just the imposition of the mundane duties of democracy. Nor is it the unqualified entitlement to the protections and services of the state.

Citizenship thrives in the communal spaces where government is absent. Anywhere Americans come together to govern their lives and their communities -- in families, churches, synagogues, museums, symphonies, the Little League, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army or the VFW -- they are exercising their citizenship.

Citizenship is defined by countless acts of love, kindness and courage that have no witness or heraldry and are especially commendable because they are unrecorded.

Although it exists apart from government, citizenship is the habits and institutions that preserve democracy. It is the ways, small and large, we come together to govern ourselves. Citizenship is the responsible exercise of freedom, and is indispensable to the proper functioning of a democracy.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote that America is a "nation with the soul of a church." What he meant is that America is not a race or a people but an idea -- a place where the only requirement for membership is a belief in the principles of liberty, opportunity and equality under the law on which this nation was founded.

Citizenship is our acceptance of -- and our protection of -- these principles. It is the duties, the loyalties, the inspirations and the habits of mind that bind us together as Americans.

We are the heirs and caretakers of freedom; a blessing preserved with the blood of heroes down through the ages. One cannot go to Arlington Cemetery and see name upon name, grave upon grave, row upon row, without being deeply moved by the sacrifice made by those young men and women.

And those of us who live in this time, who are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, dare not forget what they did and why they did it, lest we lose our own love of liberty.

Love of country, my friends, is another way of saying love of your fellow countrymen -- a truth I learned a long time ago in a country very different from ours.

That is the good cause that summons every American to service. If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you are disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. I hope more Americans would consider enlisting in our Armed Forces. I hope more would consider running for public office or working in federal, state and local governments. But there are many public causes where your service can make our country a stronger, better one than we inherited. Wherever there is a hungry child, a great cause exists. Where there is an illiterate adult, a great cause exists. Wherever there are people who are denied the basic rights of Man, a great cause exists. Wherever there is suffering, a great cause exists.

The good citizen and wise person pursues happiness that is greater than comfort, more sublime than pleasure. The cynical and indifferent know not what they miss. For their mistake is an impediment not only to our progress as a civilization but to their happiness as individuals.

As blessed as we are, no nation complacent in its greatness can long sustain it. We, too, must prove, as those who came before us proved, that a people free to act in their own interests, will perceive those interests in an enlightened way, will live as one nation, in a kinship of ideals, and make of our power and wealth a civilization for the ages, a civilization in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of freedom.

Should we claim our rights and leave to others the duty to the ideals that protect them, whatever we gain for ourselves will be of little lasting value. It will build no monuments to virtue, claim no honored place in the memory of posterity, offer no worthy summons to the world. Success, wealth and celebrity gained and kept for private interest is a small thing. It makes us comfortable, eases the material hardships our children will bear, purchases a fleeting regard for our lives, yet not the self-respect that, in the end, matters most. But sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause, your self-respect assured.

All lives are a struggle against selfishness. All my life I've stood a little apart from institutions that I had willingly joined. It just felt natural to me. But if my life had shared no common purpose, it would not have amounted to much more than eccentric. There is no honor or happiness in just being strong enough to be left alone. As one of my potential opponents often observes, I've spent fifty years in the service of this country and its ideals. I have made many mistakes, and I have my share of regrets. But I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I wasn't grateful for the privilege. That's the benefit of service to a country that is an idea and a cause, a righteous idea and cause. America and her ideals helped spare me the worst consequences of the deficiencies in my character. And I cannot forget it.

When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest attainment, and all glory was self-glory. My parents had tried to teach me otherwise, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life, when I confronted challenges I never expected to face.

In that confrontation, I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, they gave me a larger sense of myself than I had ever had before. And I am a better man for it. I discovered that nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the differences in the world. Thank you.

Technorati Tags: United States, McCain, Military, Memorial Day

I Praise Thee, Fallen Hero: Repost

2008-05-26T17:17:00.001-05:00

I first posted this a year ago, on Memorial Day. I think it still stands.

I had to work today, on Memorial Day. The Titanium mines of Titan are a cruel taskmaster indeed. And yet I took a moment to remember those who have given all their tomorrows for my tomorrows and the tomorrows of those who are close to me. Thank you brave men and women. Thank you for caring enough to risk it all. I don't deserve your deaths, but then none of us do. We don't believe in human sacrifice, not our country, but in men doing what is necessary and putting themselves at risk in order to do what must be done against those who do believe in human sacrifice, the burning bull of Moloch, the suicide bombers and headchoppers and torture-murderers of the global jihad death-cult.

Read some of the stories of those who have earned the Medal of Honor, both those who died and those who lived. Here is one who has an important lesson for those who feel a conflict between their desire for peace and the realization that war has been declared against our country, and that like it or not our choice is not whether to be at war but whether to fight back against those who would slaughter us.

Sgt. Alvin Cullium York, US Army

Alvin York did not want to go to war. He freely admits that and tells why. He says, "There were two reasons why I didn't want to go to war. My own experience told me it wasn't right, and the Bible was against it too.....but Uncle Sam said he wanted me, and I had been brought up to believe in my country."

If there is anything one can say about Alvin York without fear of contradiction, it is that he was patriotic. He loved his country, and what is more, he came from a long line of patriots who had fought for their country all the way from King's Mountain to New Orleans, Chapultepec and Shiloh. In addition to York's direct family ancestors who had fought for their country since the Revolution, he also felt a close kinship with such frontier greats as Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston. The influence of all these patriotic ancestors, both by blood and by culture, weighed heavily on the mind of Alvin York as the day of his induction into the army moved closer and even after he got to Camp Gordon. He describes his dilemma in these words:

"So you see my religion and my experience...told me not to go to war, and the memory of my ancestors...told me to get my gun and go fight. I didn't know what to do. I'm telling you there was a war going on inside me, and I didn't know which side to lean to. I was a heap bothered. It is a most awful thing when the wishes of your God and your country...get mixed up and go against each other. One moment I would make up my mind to follow God, and the next I would hesitate and almost make up my mind to follow Uncle Sam. Then I wouldn't know which to follow or what to do. I wanted to follow both but I couldn't. They were opposite. I wanted to be a good Christian and a good American too."

Up to this point in the sheltered life of the isolated valley in which Alvin York had lived, he had never come face to face with and had to choose between two great principles or courses of action. He had always just assumed that being a good Christian and being a good, patriotic American were one and the same thing. At least they were so closely connected that a man dedicated to one would automatically be dedicated to the other. Now he was learning it was not so in the light of what he had always been taught about Christianity and about patriotism. The complexities of theology and its application to living in a world far more complex than he had imagined, drove him to cry out, "I am a soul in doubt."

The records in the War Department in Washington will always make it appear that Alvin York was a conscientious objector. He was not. He was a "soul in doubt" as he said. He was torn between what he thought was his duty to his country and his God. When this conflict was resolved in his mind, he never again voiced objection to fighting, killing if necessary, for his country. The petitions filed asking exemption from military duty were initiated by Pastor Pile and his mother. "My little old mother and Pastor Pile wanted me to get out," he wrote in his diary.

"Pastor Pile put in a plea to the government that it was against the religion of our church to fight, and that he wanted to get me out on these grounds. And he sent his papers to the War Department, and they filled them out and sent them to me at the camp and asked me to sign them.

"They told me all I had to do was to sign them. And I refused to sign them, as I couldn't see it the way Pastor Pile did. My mother, too, put in a plea to get me out as her sole support. My father was dead and I was keeping my mother and brothers and sisters. And the papers were fixed up and sent to Camp Gordon and I was asked to sign them. I knew I had plenty of brothers back there who could look after my mother, that I was not the sole support, and I didn't feel I ought to do it. And so I never asked for exemption on any grounds at all. I never was a conscientious objector. I am not today. I didn't want to go and fight and kill. But I had to answer the call of my country and I did. I believed it was right. I have got no hatred toward the Germans and I never had."

Here we have a direct statement from Alvin York denying categorically that he ever was a conscientious objector. But we have another direct quotation from another book stating that "....so long as the records remain I will be officially known as a conscientious objector. I was. I joined the church. I had taken its creed, and I had taken it without what you might call reservations. I was not a Sunday Christian. I believed in the Bible, and I tried in my own way to live up to it."

Here we have two direct statements which appear to be flatly contradictory: "I never was a conscientious objector," and "So long as the records remain I will be officially known as a conscientious objector. I was."

How do we reconcile these statements? Or can we reconcile them? I think we can.

Those who knew Alvin York personally knew how confused he was at that time. In that confused state of mind he interpreted the term "conscientious objector" in two different ways, as it was used by the War Department and as he saw it in the light of his church creed and the Bible. By the former interpretation he was not a conscientious objector; by the latter he was. His lack of education made it impossible for him to comprehend entirely the two horns of the dilemma upon which he was impaled. In his own writing he gives us a basis for this explanation: "Only the boy who is uneducated can understand what an awful thing ignorance is . . . . I know what I want to say, but I don't always know just how to put it down on paper. I just don't know how to get it out of me and put it in words."

The conflict raged on in his mind. He was still the "soul in doubt knowing that he really wanted to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors and fight for his country, but finding no way to reconcile war and killing with his own conscience and the creed of his church.

What did this conscientious objector do to earn himself the Medal of Honor?

"The part which Corporal York individually played in the attack (the capture of the Decauville Railroad) is difficult to estimate. Practically unassisted he captured 132 Germans (three of whom were officers), took about thirty-five machine guns, and killed no less than twenty-five of the enemy, later found by others on the scene of York's extraordinary exploit. The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from headquarters of this division and is entirely substantiated. Although York's statement tends to underestimate the desperate odds which he overcame, it has been decided to forward to higher authorities the account given in his own name. The success of this assault had a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest."

The official history of the 82nd Division states that York's exploit in the Argonne Forest "will always be retold in the military tradition of our country. It is entitled to a place among the famous deeds in arms in legendary or modern warfare." Following this exploit which made him famous, York stayed on in the front lines in the Argonne from October 8 until November 1. It was during this time that he had his closest call. "The nearest I came to getting killed in France," he wrote, "was in an apple orchard in Sommerance in the Argonne." They were digging in during a German artillery barrage when a big shell hit immediately in front of them. York describes the experience: "I have dug on farms and in gardens and in road work and on the railroad, but it takes big shells dropping close by to make you really dig. And I'm telling you the dirt was flying. And then Bang!....one of the big shells struck the ground right in front of us and we all went up in the air. But we all came down again. Nobody was hurt, but it sure was close."

After retiring, York became a tireless campaigner for education for mountain children, and eventually was harassed until his death by the IRS. It is one hell of a story. Read the whole thing.

Thank God for men like Sgt. York and all the other brave fighting men and women that have honored America with their service.

Technorati Tags: United States, Military, Memorial Day, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Repost

SUVs, Backyard Grills, Snowmobiles found on Jupiter, causing Global Warming

2008-05-24T14:35:00.001-05:00

Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been a feature of its surface for about 300 years. But since 2006 there have been two. Now a third has appeared. NASA explains that Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to global warming, as the gas giant is warming near its equator.

Sunflower McGee, of the Jupiter Liberation Front, explains. "Darth Cheney and Halliburton are responsible for sending cheap Chinese manufactured SUVs, snowmobiles, Ginsu knife sets, and backyard grills to Jupiter. This encourages the formerly vegetarian tribal natives of Jupiter to cut down their rain forests and burn the wood in their new grills, all in order to murder and cook the same Jovian animals they used to esteem as their brothers and sisters. I am ashamed to be a human, for we are not only a plague on our own planet but also one to Jupiter."

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Eco-Paganism

200+ Billion Barrels of Oil underneath North Dakota - The Sequel

2008-05-22T23:00:00.001-05:00

On March 28, I wrote:

According to Next Energy News, maybe as many as 500 Billion Barrels of Oil are sitting in the Bakken Formation underneath North Dakota. Even if the deposit is only 200 Billion Barrels it is still the biggest known deposit in the world. If it is 500 Billion, it gives the US the largest deposits in the world by a big margin.

The preliminary report of 200-500 billion barrels has faded into invisibility as the USGS released a revised study stating that 3.5 billion barrels were available. How can this be? Never fear, I will explain it. Piccolo analyzes the data at the Oil Drum. He explains that the Bakken range has 200-500 billion barrels of oil in place. It is an oil shale deposit. The porosity and permeability of the rock average around 5% and 0.04 millidarcies. I'm not going to explain what a darcie or millidarcie is, because unlike Piccolo I am no petroleum engineer. Stay with me though. In the sweet spots of the Bakken, the recovery rate may range between 5% and 15%. There won't be many of these. Wells drilled in other locations will have a recovery rate between 1% and 5%, or even lower than 1%. Overall, the USGS estimate of 3.5 billion barrels assumes the total recovery rate is 2.1%. Piccolo is skeptical that the recovery rate will really be this high.

The only way that more oil could be recovered would be if there was a breakthrough invention for recovering oil from low porosity, low permeability oil reservoirs such as the Bakken. And such an invention would vastly increase the amount of recoverable in all the played out oil wells of the world, not just in the new wells in the Bakken Range and the Williston Basin. Any inventors with a good idea out there?

Technorati Tags: Energy, Good News, Science, Bakken

Obama's Barack and Roll crowd in Portland

2008-05-22T00:09:00.001-05:00

I have no idea whether the 75,000 people who attended Obama's rally in Portland, on the first warm Sunday after an unusually long and cold winter, were there to see him, to have fun on a nice day and flirt with all the other promiscuous liberals, or to see the free rock band. It was probably a combination of reasons. Someone who was there wrote:

I saw the crowd in my city. It was the single largest number of people I've ever seen. No doubt a few thousand came to see the 45 min rock band, but the other 70,000 came to see Obama. You ask anyone in the crowd why they came. It was free, the weather was perfect, and Obama was in town. Portland showed up for Obama when it counts in the end. May that never be forgotten. Portland is progressive--we don't want to recycle old presidents, Clintons, and Bushes, for another 20 years!! Revolving dynasties turn rotten after a while.

I sympathize with the sentiment concerning the revolving dynasties in the Presidency. However there are more important things in the world than the last name of the candidates. Platform is one of them. The personal history and character of the candidate is another. Their skill at drawing rock-show sized crowds is secondary at best.

Anyway, before BO spoke there was a free concert by the Decemberists, an up-and-coming crypto-communist rock band from Portland. Rolling Stone loves them. Watch "O Valencia" for a taste of Tarantino-style paranoia from the band.

The juxtaposition of BO with Portland's own Decemberists, who play the National Anthem of the Soviet Union before their concerts, is interesting enough, and also interesting in what it says about progressive Portland.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Portland, Progressive, Neocommunism

Wordpress Trackbacks Broken - UPDATE: Fixed

2008-05-20T18:17:00.001-05:00

As is currently being discussed on this forum, WordPress.com trackbacks are broken. The WordPress trackbacks option hides and comes out like it's supposed to but there is no trackback box to put trackbacks into. If you need to do trackbacks you can use haloscan's manual trackback page. You will have to create a haloscan account to use it.

Update: As of 8:45PM CDT on 5/20/08 it's fixed.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, Blogging, Trackbacks

HizbAllah Symbology

2008-05-19T23:17:00.001-05:00

I believe this to be an important analysis of the symbolism and meaning of HizbAllah. Alexis brings up some interesting points [1, 2, 3] about the symbology of HizbAllah / Hezbollah / Hizbullah at the Belmont Club. His or her points have not, as far as I know, been raised anywhere else.

The images of the HizbAllah flag appear to the right on the yellow field of the Hizb flag. Wikipedia lists the obvious features of the symbol.

Flag of Hezbollah. The bottom text means "The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon". The upper text means "Then surely the party of Allah are they that shall be triumphant". (Quran 5:56) The green text is the name of the group — with the first letter of "Allah" reaching up to grasp a Soviet AK-47.

Here is the first bombshell that Alexis launched concerning the Hizb flag.

Another part of Islam is post-apocalyptic. In this scenario, the reign of Mohammed and the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs was the golden age of Islam; Islam has declined ever since. This is a common view in Shi’ism. Sunnis have their own variant; Sayyid Qutb claimed that Islam hasn’t existed for several centuries; al-Qaeda laments the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Restorationism comes from a post-apocalyptic view of time, which regards one’s religion as ruined, finished, gone. The Restorationist seeks to turn back the clock to a previous golden age and appeals to a keen sense of desperation, a sense that evil has almost entirely triumphed except for a small band of courageous revolutionaries who seek to restore an earthly paradise that actually never was.

Islamic Restorationism can be considered to be a religious form of Viagra; it’s intended for men who lack confidence in their own potency. I urge you to look carefully at the Hezbollah flag. On first glance, that assault rifle could be considered to be an expression of a man’s potency. The hand holding the assault rifle could be seen as an abstract head of a penis. But look to the left part of the “globe”; there is a break. This would appear to be reference to castration, to having one’s penis cut off. So, far from the Hezbollah assault rifle being an expression of a man’s potency, it is a substitute for a man’s potency; it essentially says that without an assault rifle, a man in Hezbollah is nothing. So of course Hezbollah will not disarm; it will not because it cannot. Its flag tells you that.

To those who know Middle Eastern history, Hezbollah’s apparent reference to phallic worship should not come as any surprise. It’s really sad. For a terrorist organization to appeal so blatantly to fears of castration illustrates just how frail supporters of terrorists can perceive themselves to be. Moreover, Hezbollah’s apparent phallic reference suggests that, far from being an Islamic organization at all, Hezbollah is attempting to pass off its counterfeit religion as the real thing.

Well that was a Freudian shock. The severed fist of HizbAllah resistance holds an AK-47 over a globe which may represent Earth or may represent the Moon. It looms over a branch with several leaves. The leafy branch resembles an olive branch to my eye. The AK-47 is also suspended over a book, shown in profile, which for any Muslim must mean the Koran. There is more on the Koran and the leafy branch later in this post. The AK-47 also looms above the green stylized words "Hizb Allah." The first letter of "Allah" forms the base of the phallic symbol and raised fist holding the AK-47, thus showing that Allah is subservient to HizbAllah's Jihad.

Alexis expounds on this point (I have deleted a sentence that Alexis admitted was in error).

Look at the gap. Why was the gap so necessary? One could argue that Hezbollah does not wish to sully the word “Allah” with a direct connection to an assault rifle. Yet, why would the rifle be above the word “Allah” and not below it? When one sees a shahada flag, once expects the sword to be underneath the shahada, not above it. There is a difference between a sword underlining the power of a sacred word and a sacred word underlining the power of a sword. [...] The hand on the rifle is on top of the word “Allah”, not below it; this shows God to be in service of the rifle, not the other way around.

The question of whether anything is on top of the word of God is a major issue among devout Muslims. (If you don’t believe me, you haven’t met any.) This issue is very important to many Muslims. It is regarded as disrespectful to place any other book on top of the Koran. If there is a copy of illuminated Koranic manuscripts at the bottom of a bookcase, a devout Muslim will feel uneasy about it and will try to get it placed at the top of the bookcase. To a devout Muslim, the word “Allah” is more important than any other word and the Koran is more important than any other book. There are reasons why rumors of flushed Korans get Muslims upset. So, given such a cultural circumstance, it is logical to question why Hezbollah puts the rifle above the word “Allah”, as if there were anything more important than the word "Allah".

Alexis also expounds on some of the other symbology in the device.

I also do not understand the reference to a branch with leaves; I’m not sure which plant it refers to. (For example, a palm reference in Semitic literature would have a very different meaning from an olive reference.) I also don’t understand the “accordion” reference either, although I strongly suspect this also has an important meaning attached to it. I confess that there is much to the symbolism of the “hezbollah” insignia that I do not understand. Wretchard may write about psychological warfare, yet I greatly doubt there has been any systematic analysis of the symbolic language used in Middle Eastern politics. I think the symbolic terrain of Arab culture is largely Terra Incognita for western academe.

I very much doubt that my analysis is written anywhere else. Symbolic communication, particularly cryptic symbolism, does not seem to be generally talked about outside of academic settings. Cryptic symbolism is central to any study of WWII resistance propaganda, though. For example, one popular favorite piece of Dutch wall propaganda was the number six and a quarter with a slash through it. In Dutch, this was “seis en kwart” (six and a quarter), a reference to the local Reichskommissar, Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Dutch people also wore orange flowers, symbolizing the exiled House of Orange. Likewise, the letter “Z” was used to protest the assassination of Gregoris Lambrakis and repression by the Greek junta. Cryptic language is difficult for repressive regimes to control.

I believe the "accordion" is actually the Koran. The leafy branch (olive leaves?) arising from the Koran combines the peace symbolism of the olive branch with a visual pun on the "suras," or verses of the Koran. "Suras" means "leaves" in Arabic. The leafy branch arising from the Koran is a representation of the verses or leaves of the Koran branching out and reaching out into the world. The leaves also reach toward the AK-47, underlining the Koranic justification for Hizb's idolatry of Jihad.

I hope this analysis of HizbAllah's symbolism has been useful and of interest to others besides myself.

Technorati Tags: HizbAllah, Jihad, Counterjihad

Obama in the Hood

2008-05-06T23:57:00.001-05:00

Ti$a's viral campaign video for Obama seems like the kind of polarizing appeal that Barack Obama's campaign is dreading having to explain to the squares. By the squares I mean anyone who isn't already in the tank for Obama.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Video

Hillary's Good Luck Charm Finishes Second, Dies

2008-05-05T17:13:00.001-05:00

Hillary Clinton picked the filly Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby. She bet on her to win, place, and show. Eight Belles was running a clean race with no bumping, but both front ankles broke shortly after crossing the finish line. She (the horse) had to be euthanized by injection on the track, in front of the spectators of the race, before Big Brown, the favorite and winner, was presented with his trophy.

Barack Obama picked Colonel John (not Admiral John) to win. His horse was not in the money.

PETA blamed the jockey, Gabriel Saez, for the tragedy.

Technorati Tags: Clinton, Obama, Sports, Eight Belles

Egypt May 4 Strike Fizzles, "inshallah"

2008-05-05T07:24:00.001-05:00

The May 4 strike that the April 6 group planned seems to have fizzled. Whether it was the security preparations, the Muslim Brotherhood calls for protesters to stay home in a peaceful (non) protest, or the fact that Mubarak promised a 30% raise to the civil service, something appears to have taken the wind out of the strikers' sails.

I guess that the Egyptian economy and government will be improved "inshallah," if God wills it. But I don't expect Egyptians to do anything about it.

Technorati Tags: Egypt, May 4, Mubarak, Strike

Reach for the Star and you might just reach the Moon

2008-05-01T23:47:00.001-05:00

This is a comment I made on the Spyglass, in response to a post about witnessing to and proselytizing to Muslims that focused on Father Zakaria Botros and Pope Benedict XVI.

As Skarbutts points out in Faith Against Faith, there is no belief system that lacks faith.

A belief system based solely upon the science of reason is more limited than a system based upon faith in a Creator, in that, man as the exclusive source of knowledge is limited. Since a materialistic system of thought seeks to exclude things that cannot be verified, gaps in knowledge are created which must be bridged in order to be logical. This creates a paradox, for to fill these gaps in knowledge, the materialist must resort to faith. The faith of the materialist, however, is an antifaith. His thought process is not in the spiritual but the in the physical. He is, therefore, forced to manufacture knowledge based on circumstantial evidence, or create and rely upon theories and assumptions in order to connect pieces of knowledge and arrive at any explanations. These explanations often tend to create even more questions which in turn demand an even greater faith from the materialist. Thus, in many cases, the materialist is no less believing, no less devoted, no less fanatical, nor any less evangelical than his religious counterpart. When an idea gains enough traction in intellectual circles it becomes widely accepted as a reality; therefore, many things that are treated as fact are unknown to man.

In other words, there is no practical reason to choose the secular outreach over the religious one. A religious belief system is complete where a secular one is not (as Skarbutts proves), and the fundamentalist Islamic belief system is nothing if not complete. You cannot replace a complete belief system with an incomplete one. The incomplete belief system will not hold if challenged.

To add to the previous paragraph, a secular belief system ends up being as complete as a religious one because faith becomes incorporated in it. However, the nature of that faith can change based on circumstance. So the real danger of a secular belief system is that it is unstable, and therefore it might not last. The faith basis of a religious belief system comes from the core beliefs and moral structure of religion and is not susceptible to casual changes. Therefore it is stable. Stability increases happiness and satisfaction. Instability leads to flailing for answers and to a change in beliefs.

If we make our strategy one of conversion or moral neutralization, and our target either all Muslims or only the Idolaters of Jihad, there is no good reason to choose either the lesser target or strategy. Failed neutralization does not reduce the number of Jihad-worshippers in the world. But a failed conversion might still neutralize. Likewise, reaching out to all Muslims will necessarily include Jihad-worshippers as well as those who do not idolize Jihad, and will reduce the human ocean in which the Jihad terrorists travel.

Imagine the winking five-pointed star perched above the crescent moon. Reach for the star and even if you fail you might reach the moon.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Counterjihad

Mayday Poem - The Ballad of Lenin's Tomb

2008-05-01T22:03:00.001-05:00

The stealth communist holiday of Mayday deserves a poem that exposes the rotten, hollow heart of Russian Communism and the mass murder and tyranny that beat at the heart of the Mayday celebration.

Here is a good poem. "The Ballad of Lenin's Tomb" by Robert W. Service.

: This is the yarn he told me
As we sat in Casey's Bar,
That Rooshun mug who scrammed from the jug
In the Land of the Crimson Star;
That Soveet guy with the single eye,
And the face like a flaming scar.

Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb, where the Comrade lies in state.
With lagging pace they scan his face, so weary yet so firm;
For years a score they've laboured sore to save him from the worm.
The Kremlin walls are grimly grey, but Lenin's Tomb is red,
And pilgrims from the Sour Lands say: "He sleeps and is not dead."
Before their eyes in peace he lies, a symbol and a sign,
And as they pass that dome of glass they see - a God Divine.
So Doctors plug him full of dope, for if he drops to dust,
So will collapse their faith and hope, the whole combine will bust.
But say, Tovarich; hark to me . . . a secret I'll disclose,
For I did see what none did see; I know what no one knows.

I was a Cheka terrorist - Oh I served the Soviets well,
Till they put me down on the bone-yard list, for the fear that I might tell;
That I might tell the thing I saw, and that only I did see,
They held me in quod with a firing squad to make a corpse of me.
But I got away, and here to-day I'm telling my tale to you;
Though it may sound weird, by Lenin's beard, so help me God it's true.
I slouched across that great Red Square, and watched the waiting line.
The mongrel sons of Marx were there, convened to Lenin's shrine;
Ten thousand men of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,
Black-bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.
Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,
Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin's map.
Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,
As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,
For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.
I stared, my eyes were hypnotized by that saturnine host,
When with a start that shook my heart I saw - I saw a ghost.
As in foggèd glass I saw him pass, and peer at me and grin -
A man I knew, a man I slew, Prince Boris Mazarin.

Now do not think because I drink I love the flowing bowl;
But liquor kills remorse and stills the anguish of the soul.
And there's so much I would forget, stark horrors I have seen,
Faces and forms that haunt me yet, like shadows on a screen.
And of theses sights that mar my nights the ghastliest by far
Is the death of Boris Mazarin, that soldier of the Czar.

A mighty nobleman was he; we took him by surprise;
His mother, son and daughters three we slew before his eyes.
We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,
Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.
But he defied us to the last, crying: "O carrion crew!
I'd die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you."
I thrust my sword into his throat; the blade was gay with blood;
We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.
That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race....
And now I saw him coming on, dire vengeance in his face.
(Or was it some fantastic dream of my besotted brain?)
He looked at me with eyes a-gleam, the man whom I had slain.
He looked and bade me follow him; I could not help but go;
I joined the throng that passed along, so sorrowful and slow.
I followed with a sense of doom that shadow gaunt and grim;
Into the bowels of the Tomb I followed, followed him.

The light within was weird and dim, and icy cold the air;
My brow was wet with bitter sweat, I stumbled on the stair.
I tried to cry; my throat was dry; I sought to grip his arm;
For well I knew this man I slew was there to do us harm.
Lo! he was walking by my side, his fingers clutched my own,
This man I knew so well had died, his hand was naked bone.
His face was like a skull, his eyes were caverns of decay . . .
And so we came to the crystal frame where lonely Lenin lay.

Without a sound we shuffled round. I sought to make a sign,
But like a vice his hand of ice was biting into mine.
With leaden pace around the place where Lenin lies at rest,
We slouched, I saw his bony claw go fumbling to his breast.
With ghastly grin he groped within, and tore his robe apart,
And from the hollow of his ribs he drew his blackened heart. . . .
Ah no! Oh God! A bomb, a BOMB! And as I shrieked with dread,
With fiendish cry he raised it high, and . . . swung at Lenin's head.
Oh I was blinded by the flash and deafened by the roar,
And in a mess of bloody mash I wallowed on the floor.
Then Alps of darkness on me fell, and when I saw again
The leprous light 'twas in a cell, and I was racked with pain;
And ringèd around by shapes of gloom, who hoped that I would die;
For of the crowd that crammed the Tomb the sole to live was I.
They told me I had dreamed a dream that must not be revealed,
But by their eyes of evil gleam I knew my doom was sealed.

I need not tell how from my cell in Lubianka gaol,
I broke away, but listen, here's the point of all my tale. . . .
Outside the "Gay Pay Oo" none knew of that grim scene of gore;
They closed the Tomb, and they they threw it open as before.
And there was Lenin, stiff and still, a symbol and a sign,
And rancid races come to thrill and wonder at his Shrine;
And hold the thought: if Lenin rot the Soviets will decay;
And there he sleeps and calm he keeps his watch and ward for aye.
Yet if you pass that fram of glass, peer closly at his phiz,
So stern and firm it mocks the worm, it looks like wax . . . and is.
They tell you he's a mummy - don't you make that bright mistake:
I tell you - he's a dummy; aye, a fiction and a fake.
This eye beheld the bloody bomb that bashed him on the bean.
I heard the crash, I saw the flash, yet . . . there he lies serene.
And by the roar that rocked the Tomb I ask: how could that be?
But if you doubt that deed of doom, just go yourself and see.
You think I'm mad, or drunk, or both . . . Well, I don't care a damn:
I tell you this: their Lenin is a waxen, show-case SHAM.

: Such was the yarn he handed me,
Down there in Casey's Bar,
That Rooshun bug with the scrambled mug
From the land of the Commissar.
It may be true, I leave it you
To figger out how far.

Technorati Tags: Open Trackbacks, Communism, Poetry, Tyrrany, Crime and Punishment

Kuntzel on the Iranian Antisemitic Martyr State

2008-04-29T07:31:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Iran, Jihad, Islamism

Today's Vocab Lesson

2008-04-26T20:11:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Vocabulary, Counterjihad, Culture War, Jews

Robert Service: The Other One

2008-04-26T19:48:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Poetry, Robert Service

Soros' Misunderstanding of Financial Markets

2008-04-23T22:28:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Economics, Soros, Austrian School

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

2008-04-23T09:09:00.001-05:00

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.

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

2008-04-22T22:44:00.001-05:00

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.

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

When is Tag Not Tag?

2008-04-16T23:32:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Education, Media Bias, Tag

4GW/xGW: Identifying Tibet Protest Narratives

2008-04-16T01:14:00.002-05:00

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.

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

Tibet

2008-04-11T00:42:00.001-05:00

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?

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

Leftism is a Gnostic perversion of Christianity

2008-04-10T23:49:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Leftism, Progressive, Christianity, Gnostics

Good News from Afghanistan

2008-04-10T23:39:00.001-05:00

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.

The Afghan Army is growing in size, experience, and leadership capabilities.
A recent study found that 90% of the Afghan population trusted the country's military force.
More than 4,000 km of roads have been built where only 50 km existed in 2001.
The rehabilitation of the North-East power system has advanced and access of the rural households to electricity has been significantly increased.
In 2007 alone, ISAF nations completed 1,080 civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) projects.
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.
Since 2001, both infant and under-five mortality has declined by 26% and 22% respectively.
In 2001, 8% of Afghans had access to some form of healthcare. Now more than 80% of the population has access to medical care.
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.
Afghan public support for international involvement in Afghanistan remains high with around 70% of Afghans supporting the presence of international forces.
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).
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.

Technorati Tags: Media Bias, Afghanistan, Good News

Was the Iraq War in 2003 legal?

2008-04-10T00:39:00.001-05:00

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.

Technorati Tags: Military, Law, Iraq

Paglia on Hillary's Girly Men

2008-04-10T00:04:00.001-05:00

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.

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

Fame Behind Bars

2008-04-03T22:30:00.003-05:00

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!

Technorati Tags: Video

Where is Scalia wrong on abortion?

2008-04-03T22:11:00.001-05:00

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?

Technorati Tags: Abortion, Constitution, Crime and Punishment

Pity Party: AngryJournalist.com

2008-04-03T07:08:00.002-05:00

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...

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

CPUSA supports Clinton or Obama, and Card Check

2008-04-03T00:58:00.001-05:00

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

2008-04-01T23:58:00.001-05:00

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

LiveLeak, Fitna, and the Base

2008-03-31T21:20:00.001-05:00

This is an open letter to LiveLeak.

In these days of the globalized Jihad everyone must choose their allies, their customers, their base with care. Choices not made still have consequences.

A few days ago, Fitna hit the Internet. LiveLeak, which hosted it, became the target of threats and rage. About 12 hours after posting the movie, LiveLeak took it down.

This is quite ironic because LiveLeak, hosted in both the UK and USA, has long been one of the most reliable places to find jihad terrorist propaganda videos. For the past couple of years, YouTube and LiveLeak have hosted hundreds, thousands of terrorist propaganda videos featuring such horrors as Juba's sniper attacks on American and British soldiers, IED and VBIED explosions, torture murders of captives, etc. YouTube initially resisted requests to take the videos down, but eventually began to comply. On the other hand, when requested by American and British citizens to remove the terrorist propaganda movies, LiveLeak always used free speech as a defense for letting the movies stay.

For several years, against the opprobrium of patriots from the English speaking countries, LiveLeak stood firm in its stand for the free speech rights of those who were profoundly opposed to free speech for those who were not as them. Its reputation grew among the terrorists and the terrorists' fans, both from idolaters of Jihad and those with a nihilist, post-modern, Gramscian hatred of ordinary British and American culture. LiveLeak's developed these haters of Britain, America, Christianity, Jews, and capitalism into its base.

So when Geert Wilders came along with his well-publicized project to face Islam with the idolatry of Jihad within it, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for LiveLeak to poke a stick in the eye of a new target. LiveLeak exists to stir things up like this. But this time it backfired. LiveLeak was threatened, not with scorn and indignation, but with bloodcurdling threats of violence against employer, employees, and their families. The threats were believable because the evidence that violent Muslims would carry them out was in color on LiveLeak's very own site. Worse yet, the base of haters that LiveLeak had built up with great care was the heart of the revolt against it. Now LiveLeak felt the hatred and threat of violence that it had gleefully helped its own base aim at others for years.

It spooked LiveLeak. The company threw in its cards. It banished Fitna with the cynical excuse that the price of free speech was too great.

Now it was apparent to everyone what LiveLeak was. Its ethical stance was revealed as a rotting corpse. LiveLeak turned out to be a cowardly organization that cheered on murderers against its employees, their neighbors, and the countries in which they lived. Were any LiveLeak employees killed in the 7/7 bombings? Were the brothers of any LiveLeak employees killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan? Perhaps not, but they very well could have been. But when LiveLeak itself faced a few threats it quickly gave up and censored one, carefully chosen video that it hosted.

A few days later, LiveLeak restored Fitna. But it does not help LiveLeak, which now stands exposed as a cowardly, rabble-rousing, self-loathing organization without even the courage of its convictions. LiveLeak's way forward will either be to self-destruct, or to take sides. Will it recruit its base from the peoples of the countries that nurtured it, that provided the environment in which the technology that allows it to exist was developed, countries that send brave young, all-too-young, men to dangerous places to protect LiveLeak from morally retrograde murderers and slave-takers, or will it recruit its base among those who would overthrow free speech, democracy, women's and gay rights, scientific discovery, secular law, who would reinstate slavery and impose the burka, honor killings, second class citizenship, and clitorodectomies on women? That is the choice before it. The result of no choice will be a slow death of nihilism and irrelevance.

LiveLeak, it is time to choose. This is the moment that will make or break you. Take your stand or slowly wither away.

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Fitna

2008-03-30T12:52:00.001-05:00

Geert Wilders was able to get Liveleak to release Fitna today, on a Friday. But about 12 hours after it was released, due to the British media irresponsibly publishing details about the owners of and workers at Liveleak the company was scared into taking Fitna down. The video is mild stuff, by the standards of the Jihadist snuff films that are available on Liveleak every day (that Liveleak will not take down no matter how many people complain about their hosting propaganda for murderers in a death cult). Yet let the complaints turn into death threats and Liveleak folds.

The prospect of imminent death does tend to focus the mind.

This is the message of Fitna, underlined by the pre-emptive, instant rage. The movie's message, heard directly from the mouths of Moslem imams and sheikhs, is that the idolaters of Jihad intend to murder and kill all the non-Moslems they can, then to impose humiliating taxes and oppressions on everyone left until all other religions fall away and only Islam is left. That this would reverse two thousand years of history and lead to world-wide economic collapse, increased desertification everywhere, and world-wide famine and plagues does not concern the idolaters of Jihad.

The idolaters, the Jihadists, the Assassins, the new Barbary Pirates, worship not God but the Devil. They venture out under the black pirate flag of Jihad to terrorize the world. They prove the existence of Hell, because the extent of their Evil demands eternal punishment and there must be a place in which they will suffer.

If you haven't been able to see the movie you haven't missed too much. You have seen the tragic theater around it that proves its point. If you'd like to see it anyway, try Jawa, Hot Air, Pat Dollard, or Jihad Watch. Or search on Bit Torrent for "fitna". I'm sure it will show up every once in a while, be taken down, and then pop up again.
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Technorati Tags: Video, Assassins, Jihad, Fitna, Geert Wilders, Muslim Rage

200+ Billion Barrels of Oil underneath North Dakota

2008-03-28T21:53:00.001-05:00

According to Next Energy News, maybe as many as 500 Billion Barrels of Oil are sitting in the Bakken Formation underneath North Dakota. Even if the deposit is only 200 Billion Barrels it is still the biggest known deposit in the world. If it is 500 Billion, it gives the US the largest deposits in the world by a big margin.

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Technorati Tags: Good News, Energy, United States, Bakken Formation

A Billion Cheers for Father Zakaria Botros

2008-03-27T01:36:00.001-05:00

I am a great fan and supporter of ex-Muslims. In order for there to be ever greater numbers of ex-Muslims someone must reveal to Muslims the truth about Islam and Christianity that has been deliberately obscured by the ulema. Raymond Ibrahim writes about Father Zakaria Botros (alternate spelling, Boutros), who is doing what needs to be done.
Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.
Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

Boutros speaks to Muslims on satellite and Internet television stations in Arabic. The reader may recall a few months back an embarrassing breastfeeding appeared in the media.
Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

For that alone I salute Father Botros. Can you think without laughing about the situation of a man being breastfed by a woman in order for him to become less sexually attracted to her? I cannot.

In related news, Magdi Allam, who converted from Islam to Catholicism this week on Easter Sunday, and was baptized on television by Pope Benedict XVI, writes about it in Italian on FreeCopts.com. English translation (by freecopts.com) follows.
To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.
On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason.

Read the rest!

Nonie Darwish wrote about a threat against Father Botros' life back in February 2006. Some background in the comments here. CWN also profiles Father Botros. YOUvideos has disabled a video by Father Botros. Islameyat is mining the same vein as Father Botros. Father Zakaria Botros has a website here (Arabic)

So let us all cheer a billion times, once for just about every Muslim in the world who isn't already a secret Christian, for Father Zakaria Botros and all those who help him do the work he does.

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Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Ex-Muslim, Zakaria Botros, Boutros

What's the problem?

2008-03-26T01:39:00.002-05:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the United States mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them.
The error is particularly disturbing, officials said, because of its indirect link to nuclear weaponry and because of the sensitivity of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which China regularly denounces as provocative. The Defense Department said an investigation of the incident is under way.

OK, call me dense, but what's the problem with sending fuses to Taiwan? Is the US at war with Taiwan? Is Taiwan an enemy of America, or one of America's most valued and established trading partners? Is Taiwan threatening to attack its neighbors, or is it constantly being threatened by a huge neighbor that would like nothing more than to crush Taiwan under its boot?

What's at risk? Olympic gold metals? Medals even?

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Technorati Tags: China, Media Bias

Obey Obama

2008-03-24T13:39:00.003-05:00

OBEY-MA for short. A satire of an awfully fascist looking poster. From here and before it from here.

h/t: third world county
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Technorati tags: Satire, Obama

Eau Governeur! Oh Governor!

2008-03-24T08:18:00.002-05:00
A little old, I know. But still an absolutely hilarious photoshop from the NY Daily News.

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Trackposted to third world county, Right Truth, DragonLady's World, The World According to Carl, Miss Beth's Victory Dance, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao's Blog, InvestorBlogger, Leaning Straight Up, , Stageleft, and Adeline and Hazel, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Satire, Democrats, Crime and Punishment, Elliot Spitzer, Photoshop

Obama, Wright, and now Emil Jones

2008-03-23T23:32:00.001-05:00

Obama's shady Chicago connections are coming out of the woodwork like a swarm of termites. The latest one to appear on the scene is Emil Jones, Jr. Rick Moran writes:
Jones helped Obama prior to his run for the US senate by assigning high profile legislation to the candidate thus filling out his fairly pathetic record as a state senator. Most of Obama's "accomplshments" in Springfield were the result of Jones allowing Obama a prominent role in getting legislation through the senate - legislation that in many cases had been introduced and championed over the years by other lawmakers.

Again, no one is accusing Obama of doing anything illegal. But as the evidence grows that he is just another politician and someone whose mentors are anything but paragons of virtue and probity, whatever otherworldly sheen that surrounded him begins to fall off and we can see him for what he truly is; a shrewd, politically gifted, far left politician.

Jones tried to unify black Chicago behind Obama a year ago, in Feb 2007. Lynn Sweet writes:
ASHINGTON -- Seeking to solidify African-American backing for Barack Obama's presidential bid, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. told black Democrats meeting here last week they don't "owe" anyone, alluding to, but not mentioning by name, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Obama, said Jones, "is our son."
In a Monday telephone interview, Jones, Obama's political godfather, told me, "How long do we have to owe before we have an opportunity to support our son?

W. Thomas Payne writes about Emil Jones in Associated Content:
A porky job was handed out to Lorrie Rickman Jones PhD back in March 2007. Ms Jones is a psychologist with a standing practice. There's no reason to believe she isn't qualified to do the job as a psychologist.

However, getting your hands on how much her practice may have received over the years from government contracts is like pulling teeth from a grizzly bear. I wonder if this information could even be obtained with a Freedom of Information Act request to the Governor, without a costly legal battle.

And what do you know, by some act of fate, Ms. Jones is coincidentally the wife of Senate President Emil Jones!

Also see the Times (UK) Online.
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Technorati Tags: Obama, Democrats, Corruption

Minneapolis-St. Paul Radicals plan to have tasers just in time for Republican National Convention

2008-03-23T21:10:00.001-05:00

In its own words:
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL - The RNC Welcoming Committee (RNC-WC), an anarchist and anti-authoritarian organizing body based in the Twin Cities, announced today that it has ordered tasers for each of its members and friends. The announcement comes on the heels of last month’s St. Paul City Council approval of a St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) request for 234 tasers. Due to a unique corporate-anarchist confidentiality agreement, the exact number of tasers or documentable evidence of this new order will not be disclosed.

Both the SPPD and RNC-WC taser orders are scheduled to arrive before the September 1 so-called Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul.

Of course they claim the timing is coincidental. Wink wink. Right... To add to the winking, jocular tone of the press announcement, the RNC-WC adds:
Once the RNC-WC order is finalized, the St. Paul Police Department will no longer have a monopoly on the weapons that have been implicated in hundreds of deaths nationwide, including the killing of a Fridley man by Minnesota State Troopers in January.

The Welcoming Committee has no plans to purchase machine guns, rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, concussion grenades, batons, water cannons or helicopters, all of which will be at the disposal of local police and federal agents in September.

Aren't violent anarchists tres amusing?

h/t: Pat Dollard

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Technorati Tags: Leftism, Neocommunism, Culture War, Anarchy, Politics

26% of teen girls have a sexually transmitted disease: digging into the numbers

2008-03-23T09:00:00.001-05:00

Lindsey Tanner of the AP reports
The study size is 838 teenage American girls, an analysis of girls aged 14-19 from a 2003-4 government health survey
Projected population of teenage girls in the USA is 12.3 million, with 3.2 million infected
Teens in the study were tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and genital herpes. These are the 4 most common sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
They were not tested for more dangerous STDs: gonorrhea (the clap), syphilis (pox), hepatitis B, or HIV/AIDS. They didn't test for pubic lice (crabs) or mononucleosis either.
26% of girls in the study have a STD
18% have HPV
4% have chlamydia
2.5% have trichomoniasis
2% have genital herpes
About half the girls in the study acknowledged having sex
Some girls define sex as coitus only, not oral-genital activity, much like Bill Clinton
Among girls who admit having sex, 40% have a STD
Nearly 50% of black girls had at least one STD
About 20% of white and girls of Mexican descent had at least one STD

The startling statistic for black girls (50% infected) shows a population in peril. Something is very, very wrong in their world. I suspect it is the destruction of the black family and the popularity of gang-bangers, drugs and thugs in youth culture. Gramsci and the sixties hippies have a lot to answer for.

The incompleteness of the report also raises questions. What is the prevalence of gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS? These are dangerous diseases, far more dangerous than trichomoniasis or genital herpes, and they were not addressed at all.
According to Wikipedia, between 3 and 18% of sexually active girls have gonorrhea, and 0-3% have syphilis. If we use a 50% rate of sexual activity for teenage girls, as they have self-reported in the CDC study, this works out to an additional 1.5%-9% with gonorrhea, and 0-1.5% with syphilis, for a total infection rate of 27%-36%.
According to AVERT, 3% (1,434) of HIV infections in the USA were among teens up to age 19. This works out to an infection rate under 0.02%, or 1/50th of 1%.
Thus we discover that the actual, overall infection rate could very well pass 1 in 3 teenage girls. More and better research needs to be done to determine the actual infection rates.

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Technorati Tags: Family, Demographics, Culture War, STD

A strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments

2008-03-22T19:31:00.001-05:00

Back in November 2007, Ed Katz responded to an AP report that concludes that "there is a strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments."
Children living in homes with unrelated adults (these children are "50 times more likely to die inflicted injuries as children living with biological parents"); and
Single parent homes or children living with stepfamiles (these children "have a higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents").

Lastly, the studies found that "girls whose parents divorce are at a significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father."

The studies seem to show that even children in adoptive environments seem to be ok with two parents. The report goes on to tell in painful detail however the brief life stories of little toddlers who were beaten, drowned, thrown across rooms, and buried under cement - all victims of what Plato called "democracy's insatiable desire for what it defines as the good": freedom. In this case, it is our freedom to choose "alternative" family environments and be "affirmed" every step of the way.

Yet more evidence that a functioning marriage is the best environment in which to raise children, which is the obvious purpose of marriage, which is the obvious reason why marriage should take the traditional form, maximized for reproducing the species.

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Technorati Tags: Culture War, Marriage

The 2nd Amendment is an Individual Right, no doubt about it

2008-03-21T23:36:00.001-05:00

The question under consideration is what does it mean? Is the right under question an individual right that cannot be generally voided by the government or is it a corporate right only for members of a militia such as the National Guard?
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. [link]

First we notice there are more commas than Strunk & White would recommend. Obviously, the commas were inserted by someone with a different set of rules for commas, perhaps the writer believed in inserting commas whenever the reader might take a breath. Given that the commas are in weird places, we will have to discount comma placement somewhat when we analyze the text. I make this argument up-front, even though it will not have anything to do with the way I parse the language, because there are those who make a big deal of the commas in the argument. Consider this a prophylactic measure against obsessive comma-parsing.

Then we notice from the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights that they are all amendments that apply to individual rights, not corporate rights.

Then we ask ourselves, why was the amendment written? Let us assume for a moment that the amendment was meant to apply to corporate rights. It only applies to militias: Armed militias. Given that armed militias are bands of armed men established by the government, would there be any doubt that a militia would be allowed by the government to bear arms? Why would the Constitution need to be amended in order to allow members of an armed militia established by the government to bear arms? The government under question would guarantee this right as a matter of course. Even the tyrannies in China and Myanmar allow their militias to be armed. Wouldn't this be a nonsensical amendment, written by idiots, passed by fools, only challenged by the likes of Humpty Dumpty intent on redefining the meaning of an armed militia, or armed, or militia?

Or perhaps the amendment was written by a poor speller with a petty focus, and the amendment guarantees the right of people to bare their arms in short sleeves? I apologize for the joke, but it's almost impossible to stay earnest when surrounded by so much silliness.

We could presume that the founders of the USA were not fools and idiots and petty-minded jokers, and that they wrote this Amendment because it protected a controversial right (to be armed) that was granted to all free men (and women) which future governments might wish to void through legal action? In fact, that is what the government of Washington DC has done with its gun ban. Mr. Heller, who filed the lawsuit challenging the ban, is allowed to carry his gun when he is at work to protect the local nobility in Congress. But he is not allowed to carry it when he is at home with his own non-privileged family. The Washington DC ban is a profoundly anti-democratic law that discriminates against people who don't have all the juice of a standing Senator or Representative.

That's why there can be no doubt whatsoever among the serious minded that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right.

The WSJ lists some things the Supreme Court said in DC v. Heller.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked why the Framers included the word "people" if the Amendment only applied to militias. Justice Antonin Scalia discussed the importance the Framers attached to providing citizens the means to protect against tyrannical government. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the Court's swing vote, informed all in attendance that "In my view, there's a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia either way."

Counterarguments are welcome. Please, give it your best shot!

Heh heh.
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Technorati Tags: United States, Bill of Rights, Second Amendment, Gun Rights

Whitey talks back

2008-03-21T22:09:00.001-05:00

Patrick Buchanan has a sharply worded retort here to Barack Obama's non-apology concerning his 20 years of supporting Jeremiah Wright's racist anti-white, anti-American hate speech with his presence and acquiescence.
What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

Another thing that must be taken into account is that white America is not homogeneous, like homogenized white milk, but consists of many ethnicities, religions, trends, and ways, who all agree on living and let live so that everyone can do what he or she has to, as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. Plus Property, which was in the original drafts of the Declaration of Independence before TPoH replaced it. America fought a Revolutionary War for these principles, but that wasn't the last time Americans fought for them. Within thirty years of its founding, white America fought a war in Tripoli against the pirate sultans of the Mediterranean coast of Africa in order to free its merchant sailors who had been captured, enslaved, and held for ransom by these tyrants. Around the same time, White America fought a war against Britain over the British habit of kidnapping American merchant sailors and pressing them into the British navy.

Four score years after the Revolutionary War, white America fought a Civil War in order to overthrow the great evil of slavery in America. It was the bloodiest war of brother against brother that had yet been fought in the world at the time. After the Republicans won that war against the Democrats of the south, the Democrats eventually undermined the victory with Jim Crow laws that kept southern Blacks in pseudo-slavery. One hundred years of Jim Crow was finally overthrown for good with Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 civil rights law and the other civil rights laws that followed.

So don't tell American whites that they haven't done their share. They have fought. They have bled. No whites now living have profited from slavery. Few now alive profited from Jim Crow. Most whites now living have been discriminated against in education, housing, and employment because of the color of their skin. Whites are not griping about it. But if whites did gripe, it would be legitimate.

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Technorati Tags: Obama, Racism, Jeremiah Wright

House Democratic Caucus discusses death penalty for converts who leave the Democratic Party

2008-03-19T22:52:00.002-05:00

Washington, DC, 19 March - In its first session since the Saint Patrick’s Day holiday, the House Democratic Caucus is expected to discuss a law that will condemn to death anyone who decides to leave the left wing of the Democratic Party and take up another viewpoint.

Under the proposed law, anyone who is born to Democrat parents, or who registers as Democrat for two elections in a row, and decides to convert to a more conservative political party will face the death penalty.

Currently, converts, known as neo-cons for their newly discovered conservatism, particularly those who have decided to leave the Democratic Party for the Republican Party, are thrown off George Soros' payroll, shunned by the jet set, dis-invited from all the big hooker parties at Elliot Spitzer's place in the Hamptons, and blacklisted from jobs in Hollywood, and in the entertainment industry, which includes failing newspapers such as the New York and Los Angeles Times and television news on failing stations such as NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, CBS, PBS, and the incredibly boring radio network NPR.

The new legislation, which has caused concern in Washington DC and elsewhere, was proposed mainly because of fears of proselytizing activities by conservative activists, particularly through the use of blogs such as Michelle Malkin's eponymous blog, Townhall.com, Jihad Watch, Ace of Spades HQ, the Weekly Standard, Blog Row at National Review Online, and an obscure pro-military site with a name that is so cool it would seem unrealistic in a science fiction movie.

There has also been concern over the fact that many young Democrats have abandoned the party because they are tired of the dominance of leftover Marxist class and race warfare in the Democratic Party, to the detriment of intellectual engagement with ideas that matter, such as the imminent collapse of the welfare state and what to do about it.

The legislation, which bears the curious name of the Fairness Doctrine v.2, will also impose the death penalty for hosts of conservative radio talk shows, whose shows and ill-gotten wealth will be transferred to NPR for more episodes of An American Life about lesbian drum circles in a renovated crack house in Seattle formerly owned by the late Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, who luckily died of a heroin overdose before he could become a neo-con himself.

h/t: Adnkronos International.

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Technorati Tags: Satire, Democrats, Death Penalty

Saudi 4th Grader marries 5th Grade cousin

2008-03-19T02:09:00.001-05:00

Kids and cousins. Everyone should oppose consanguineous marriage. Banning first-cousin-marriage would be a good first step.

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Technorati Tags: consanguineous marriage, Saudi Arabia, degeneracy, Sharia

Vatican talking with Saudis about churches in Arabia

2008-03-19T01:55:00.001-05:00

Unbelievable.

No, I mean really unbelievable. There is some kind of trickery going on here. The Saudis will never allow Christian churches on their territory!

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Technorati Tags: Saudi Arabia, Christianity, Islam

How can the USA discourage Jihad terrorism?

2008-03-19T01:47:00.001-05:00

Other than by giving in and holding a mass conversion to Islam, which isn't happening because most Americans don't want to become monotheistic pagans, how can America cause a reduction in Jihad terrorism against Americans, and hopefully a reduction in Jihad terrorism overall?

If we follow the usual formula for determining the number of extremists, capable of unusual levels of violence, within any society, we come up with about one percent. The Hells Angels and other motorcycle gangs have long called themselves one percenters because they agree with this number. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. One percent of that is 12 million. So without any special training or propaganda in the Muslim world there would be 12 million Jihad terrorists ready to launch themselves against anyone who pops his head up. These are the hardest of the hardcore. But there are more than just hardcore bad-guys involved.

In addition to these hardened criminals, the madrassas and masjids of Pakistan are churning out thousands of newly trained Jihadists every month to go to war in Afghanistan and India against infidels, and a certain number of American and European traitors prepared to unleash Jihad terror against their home countries. Would kindness slow them down as effectively as killing them would slow their deployment and the recruitment of replacements?

The 2007 Pew world-wide poll taken among Muslims reveal that between 20% and 30% of Muslims have a lot of confidence that Bin Laden is doing the right thing. These numbers have gone down from over 50% five years ago. Is that an increase or decrease in support for Jihad terrorism? That works out to 240-360 million Muslims who contribute either money or sons or both in support of Jihad terrorism. That's a lot of Jihad terrorism supporters worldwide, and a big problem! But it's less than 600+ million, like it used to be!

Who says that the battle of Iraq is increasing the number of terrorists?

Are you sure?

This post was inspired by the comments in the responses to this post at Winds of Change.

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Technorati Tags: Jihad, Counterjihad, Iraq

The Speech Obama Didn't Give

2008-03-19T00:12:00.001-05:00

A Jacksonian writes the speech that Obama didn't give, a speech that I agree with him would have broken through the partisan lines in a way that McCain's bipartisanship has never done.
"Thus, I have come to realize by listening to the problems of blacks and whites together that the solutions that have been put in place by the intervening generations have not worked and need to be abolished as they are causing more divisiveness than Unity in Our Nation.

I pledge to you here, today, before all of the members of the American Community that for the rest of my life in public service I will work to end all enforcement of all racial, ethnic or any other quota that divides America. Two Generations is enough and more than enough for us to join together and examine the problems of the poor, black and white, and address them together as one Nation. While I am young in this world, I promise you that I will work unstintingly to confront demagogues and repudiate any who would divide America by race, class, ethnicity, gender or mere skin color.

That has no place in America today.

For all these things that were seen as 'good', in the way of handouts and set-asides, have caused tremendous harm to America and must end, along with a culture that has come to depend on our government for mere cash while it is their bodies and souls that we must come together on saving as good Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and people of all religious faith and background. That is what we are enjoined to do by our Forefathers by that great document created so long ago and yet is as fresh as yesterday.

If elected President I will not enforce any law that divides this Nation in that way and will take any that wish to dispute this to the Supreme Court and I will work hard, with Congress, to end these things forevermore in America so that we are One People striving to perform the perfection of ourselves with our fellow man. I will also have investigated and prosecuted any and all discrimination suits that have founding and that go against the basic civil rights of the citizenry without respect to the race, class, religion, ethnicity or gender of those bringing the suit. Congress can impeach me on this, if they dare, but I will never bow down to those wishing to divide America."

Read the whole thing!
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Technorati Tags: Obama, Racism, Democrats, Jeremiah Wright

Dick the Butcher on Democrats

2008-03-17T23:29:00.001-05:00

As Seth Finkelstein explains, when Dick the Butcher says in Shakespeare's Henry VI, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," he is making fun of Jack Cade's promises to create an earthly paradise with what Dick imagines to be the most positive first step towards heaven on earth.

Now what would Dick, what should we, make of the fact that the Democratic Party in America hasn't nominated a non-lawyer for the Presidency since 1984? Not only are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lawyers, so are their spouses. So is Edwards, and his wife! Kerry was a lawyer. Even genius and oracle Gore went to law school, though he dropped out.

Can the Democrats be the party of the people when they are actually the party of the ambulance-chasing, divorce promoting, class-action-tort-filing, multi-millionaire trial lawyers?

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Technorati Tags: Democrats, Lawyers

'68 Flashbacks

2008-03-17T22:54:00.003-05:00

The Recreate 68 organization is an alliance of local to Denver anti-Globalization protestors and "anti-racist," "anti-war," "direct action" types (this means they are neo-communists, the evil shadow to neo-conservatives) who admit they are sick and tired of being pandered to by the Democratic National Committee. They are so over the whole two party system they want to tear down the ramparts and storm the Bastille, behead the King and all that.
We are committed to resisting and overturning a system of violence inflicted daily on people of this country and the world, and against the natural environment, by political and corporate power, in the pursuit of profit. We are resolved that our group will not instigate violence against human beings as a means to end this system of violence and injustice. However, we recognize the right of the people to self-defense and community defense.

10 Mutual Assurances Between Groups And Organizations Planning DNC Related Activities:

To publicly support rights of free speech, the right to organize, and the right to dissent for all.
To maintain solidarity with and respect the guidelines of all permitted activities, recognizing that there are many individuals who seek a safe and peaceful protest.
To support and participate in efforts to assure civil liberties for everyone in Denver, including the right to organize civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action without that organizing being criminalized or disrupted.
To speak out against any pre-emptive arrests, raids on activists spaces, or attacks on independent journalists and other media.
To be conscious of and speak out against police targeting and differential treatment of people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, accent, or appearance.
Not to turn people over to the police, or share information with the police about other groups.
Not to publicly criticize the tactics used by other parts of our movement or cooperate with media efforts to be divisive or portray good protester/bad protester.
To publicly condemn police repression and brutality.
To be conscious that if violence or property destruction does occur, we will do what we can to help prevent it from being blown out of proportion and dominating the media coverage.
To remember that, when all is said and done, our greatest victory will be an activist community with a renewed sense of strength and unity.

How do you like #6 and 7 basically agreeing to non-cooperation with the police in the case of any crimes committed by violent allies of this "non-violent" movement? Seems like malice aforethought to make these preparations. Maybe they claim to be non-violent as a form of camouflage.

In a second irruption of '68 nostalgia, the Black Liberation Theology of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ church has risen to a considerable measure of infamy. Barack Obama has been shaken by the recent publicity about the preacher who converted him to Christianity, married him to his wife, and baptized his daughter. Though Sean Hannity had been on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story for over a year, it didn't get going in the media until Obama's church started selling Wright's sermons on DVD. A producer from ABC bought it and it became a story. Note, this is important. This was a collection of Wright's speeches put out by his own church. These were the speeches that his own church agreed were the most important and presumably they were typical. So any claims that Obama didn't know Wright was saying this are disingenuous. These are Wright's greatest hits. It's like being a Chicago Bears fan faced with a Greatest Plays by the Chicago Bears DVD and not recognizing any of the games. Where were you all these years? Apparently not watching football. Either Obama wasn't paying attention in church or he is lying about it. Neither is good for his credibility.

Perhaps this summer's Olympic games will feature American sprinters raising black-gloved hands in protest of American policy, allowing China to make excuses for its totalitarian repression of Tibet and internal groups such as the Falun Gong. I hope not.

And in third place we have the Manson Family. Taking a back seat to none in his Helter Skelter days Manson and his gang of murderers now live in obscurity, some still jailed. But years of jail-house braggadocio have given the authorities enough evidence to search the desert for the decomposed bodies of people who disappeared in the late 60s after being seen at or near the Manson Family compound. The have used advanced technology to identify several possible graves. (h/t: Jammie Wearing Fool)
The machine detects fluorinated hydrocarbon compounds, one of the approximately 400 types of volatile organic compounds emitted by human bodies during decomposition. Focusing on these compounds is important because Vass believes they're formed as the fluoride added to urban drinking water is released after death.

Their presence helps differentiate a human bone from bones from wild animals, explained Vass, who has spent years developing a decomposition odor database using bodies donated to the Oak Ridge lab.

The instrument beeped at regular intervals. As it approached the ground, the beeping accelerated until it was a steady stream of sound.

"That's impressive," said Wise, a senior researcher at Oak Ridge specializing in environmental analytical chemistry. Vass agreed.

Using a thin, 3-foot long probe, Vass tested the soil in the area. It slid into the ground without much effort.

"Undisturbed soil isn't this easy to probe," he said.

"The loose soil area is roughly like this," he said, using the tip of the instrument to draw a long oval on the ground. "It's about three feet deep."

A reminder of what Manson was all about. His intention was to use the murders to ignite a race war of white against black in the USA. He thought that racism was hotter and more violent than it really was back in those days. It's too bad that those who think like him, the "anti-racists" in Recreate '68 and their neocommie friends, haven't yet figured that out. America is not a racist country the same way it was before the civil rights movement finally buried the last shreds of the Democratic Party's Jim Crow laws in the South. And that was 50 years ago. Many Americans have grown up to middle age without being taught racism by their parents and feel bewildered when they are accused of being racist, all because of the color of their skin.

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Technorati Tags: Obama, neocommunism, leftism, crime and punishment

Drug Warriors

2008-03-14T07:20:00.001-05:00

Not anti-drug warriors, but warriors who are blitzed on barbituates, high on hash, strung out on smack, crazed on cocaine. According to Dr. Paul Rexton Kan:
From marijuana, khat, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine to looted pharmaceuticals, irregular fighters have found a ready supply of narcotics to consume for a variety of combat purposes. Such consumption has led to unpredictable fighting, the commission of atrocities, and to the prolongation of internal violence. The presence of intoxicated combatants will continue to be a feature of armed conflict and requires a fuller accounting to adequately prepare policymakers and military planners for future conflicts...

h/t: Small Wars Journal Blog
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Technorati Tags: Drug Smiggling, Terrorism, Jihad, Globalization

David Mamet: the ideological journey of a former "brain-dead liberal"

2008-03-12T21:27:00.001-05:00

But for the fact that I am not a famous and wealthy writer-director for stage and screen, who mostly works in iambic-pentameter, David Mamet's story of his ideological awakening could be my own. This is how he describes his initial realization of where his long-established assumptions had been wrong.
I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it?

Read all about it at the Village Voice, David Mamet, Why I am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

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Technorati Tags: Leftism, Conservatism, Moral Clarity

McCain's Character

2008-03-10T20:55:00.001-05:00

Tigerhawk quotes Robert Kaplan on John McCain:
This prisoner's legs were atrophied and he weighed under 100 pounds. Day helped scrub his face and nurse him back from the brink of death. The fellow American was Navy Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain III of the Panama Canal Zone. As his health improved, McCain's rants against his captors were sometimes as ferocious as Day's. The North Vietnamese tried and failed, through torture, to get McCain to accept a release for their own propaganda purposes: The lieutenant commander was the son of Admiral John McCain Jr., the commander of all American forces in the Pacific. "Character," writes the younger McCain, quoting the 19th century evangelist Dwight Moody, "is what you are in the dark," when nobody's looking and you silently make decisions about how you will act the next day.

McCain expanded on this thought another time:
No one of good character leaves behind a wasted life — whether they die in obscurity or renown. "Character," wrote the 19th Century evangelist, Dwight Moody, "is what you are in the dark." Your character is not tested on occasions of public scrutiny or acclaim. It is not tested in moments when the object of your actions is the regard of another. Your character is what you are to yourself, not what you pretend to be to yourself or others. Although human beings often attempt self-delusion, we cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves. It will make itself known to us by means of our conscience despite our most strenuous effort to suppress it.

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Technorati Tags: John McCain, Republican, Character

Cycles on cycles to explain the Human-centric Theory of Global Warming

2008-03-10T20:40:00.001-05:00

James Lewis compares global warming true believers to those who believed man and the Earth were at the center of the Universe.
When traditional astronomy began to collapse in the years before Copernicus, True Believers reacted by adding lots of little cycles on top of the great cycles of the planetary orbits, to protect their faith. Trouble is, they had to add so many cycles on top of cycles that eventually, the whole system became a laughingstock. Ultimately you could explain anything you wanted -- after the fact.

The Polish astronomer Nicholas Koepernick -- called Copernicus -- pointed out that a sun-centered planetary model could get rid of all those epicycles with elegant simplicity. You only had to assume that the planets are going around the sun, not the earth. Suddenly all those cycle-on-cycle orbits simplified into near-circular ellipses. But he only saw the page proofs of his book De Revolutionibus on his death bed. He didn't want to share the fate of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake, or Galileo Galilei, who was put under house arrest by Pope Urban VIII and forbidden to publish in the last years of his life. Because mobs of True Believers can get pretty nasty before they give up.

He draws a parallel between the ridiculous clockwork complexity of the human-centric theory of the Solar System and the increasingly complex theory of human-centric global warming that causes both unusually warm and unusually cold temperatures, both hurricanes and unusually calm weather, and any change in the climate or weather.

It's quite good.

And then Selwyn Duke writes to agree with the substance of his article but also to correct Lewis on his history. Also quite good.
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Technorati Tags: Global Cooling, Global Warming, Eco-Paganism

Tyrant Dreams

2008-03-10T20:22:00.001-05:00

A Jacksonian rhapsodizes:
Here is the land of dream escaped into the waking world, and each one carries different names but they are the but aspects of a single, deadly dream. That is the dream of controlling one's fellow man so as to make a better world or to stand with a homeland forever, just so long as one does not say 'nay'. Also is the great dream of Empire holding sway and impoverishing the life of humanity yet again as the great dream brooks no opposition and has final power with those that hold it closely.

Within such worlds as these there is also the dream of accommodating the beast of control, giving it more and more and more until there is nothing left to give save life... which had been its aim all along.

Some of these lands come through valor and victory and find themselves in the ashes of dream fulfilled. By chaining will to others they had not foreseen that they would have no will left nor say in their final outcomes as all was taken from them and crushing power ground the meaning of their lives into the ashes of victory.

Read it all!

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Technorati Tags: Dreams, Tyranny

New Pro/Anti Obama Video

2008-03-07T07:10:00.003-06:00

When watching will.i.am's newest video documentary of the personality cult around Obama I wonder if this will be seen as a pro-Obama video or an anti-Obama video in the long run. Watch it and see for yourself.

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Technorati Tags: Video, Obama, Obamania, Obama cult

Obama Man Can! the Video

2008-03-06T20:28:00.002-06:00

So-so video but great song!

"He's mesmerizing and he makes manure taste good."

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Technorati Tags: Video, Satire, Obama, Humor

Distraction

2008-03-05T22:46:00.002-06:00

A tinnitus treatment group reminds us what it is like to be distracted.

I do not envy those with ringing in their ears. Nor do I envy those who feel plagued by the failing systems of their bodies, those with ADHD and ADD, obsessive-compulsives or teenage boys, which may be a way of saying the same thing. Teenage boys do not have a violinist on their back; it's a porn movie instead.

Technorati Tags: Video, Distraction, Tinnitus

Blogspotting: Stuff White People Like

2008-03-03T19:26:00.002-06:00

I probably don't need to tell you about it. But just take a gander at this article about Difficult Breakups.
Prior to engaging in divorce, most white people train for it by engaging in a series of long term relationships that end very poorly. At some point, you will likely encounter a white person who is in the middle of a difficult breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend. [...]

Once breakup proceedings have been initiated, a white person is immediately thrust into the center of attention in their circle of friends. During this time, they are permitted to talk at great lengths about themselves, listen to The Smiths, and get free dinners from friends who think “they shouldn’t be alone right now.”

It is imperative that you do not attempt to kick them out of their misery by saying things like “get over it,” “there are other people out there,” or “I don’t want to read your poem.”

SWPL is a very funny satirical site about yuppies, buppies, professors, artistic types, musicians, urban hipsters and all their ridiculous obsessions. Some other amusing topics include: Coffee; Barack Obama; Bottled Water; Asian Girls; and Multilingual Children.

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Technorati Tags: Blogspotting, Blog Reviews, Humor, Satire

I had a dream about Barack Obama

2008-02-28T21:49:00.002-06:00
I had a dream about Barack Obama. I was watching Obama give a speech. It felt so good, so hypnotic. He was so beautiful and he spoke like an angel. I remember wondering if I was actually floating in the middle of the air. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are having a conversation of such surpassing brilliance and insight that you want to remember every single speck of memory from the dream so you can write it down when you do actually wake up? This was one of those dreams. Every idea, every word, every phrase, every syllable that came out of his mouth was so perfect, so absolutely appropriate and energizing, that I knew I was giggling and couldn't help it. I was surrounded by thousands who were, like me, giggling, half-floating, transfixed by the wise one, Obama. When the speech was over everyone in the dream clapped and we all tossed our shouts of approval at the great man, like so much confetti at a ticker-tape-parade for returning war heroes. Obama smiled his wide smile and waved his kindly hand at us in a gesture of heart-felt affection, then left the stage. In my dream as I tried to write down the gist of his speech I couldn't remember what he said. It was something like "Change, blah blah blah," and "Yes we can, blah blah blah," and "Not red states and blue states, but United States, blah blah blah." Everything kind of floated away, all airy and insubstantial as is the way of all dreams. Then I dreamed that I had to use the restroom. I woke up.

When I woke up, I was sitting in my armchair watching the end of an Obama speech on TV. I wasn't asleep. And I hadn't been dreaming.

As I went to the restroom I still couldn't remember what Obama had said. The rhetorical brilliance and insight, blah blah blah, disappeared with the last shreds of the dream that wasn't a dream and then the hypnotic afterglow was flushed away to be gone forever.

That's how it is with Obama. The Obama Girl sang about Obama in a bid to win fame for herself, but couldn't be bothered to show up and vote on primary day in New York. What was she, hungover, stoned, or did she not really care about it when it came time to vote?

The hypnotic afterglow faded for her.

And what of the hypnotic afterglow that comes from will.i.am's Canto for Obama? Does it illuminate anything about Obama's intentions: About what he will do if he gains the presidency? And what of the chanting at 2:20, 3:02, and 3:45 in the song? What kind of political rally does that bring to mind for those who have watched the old, black and white German newsreels from the 1930s?

And if you think that's something, how about this final example of the psychedelic and paranoid themes that appear to be at the lava-glob-shaped center of the viral campaign that has coalesced around Obama?

Hypnotic, psychedelic, paranoid, what is this leading to?

Obama says, "I inhaled, frequently. That was the point."

This presidential campaign is turning into a strange trip. Stop the electric kool-aid acid bus. I want to get out!
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Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, dream, hypnotic, psychedelic, drugs, Politics, Democrats, Video

Turkish theologians are updating the ahadith and their commentaries

2008-02-28T20:52:00.002-06:00

Robert Pigott writes in BBC News about the Turkish project to update the Ahadith (the collected and, to some degree or other, vetted deeds and words of Mohammed as distinct from the words of the Koran):
The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted. [...]

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.

Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.
Whether it works out this time or not, it is a necessary piece of progress. Some day it will work out. Say a little prayer for the reformers' success.

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Technorati Tags: Islam, hadith, Turkey, reformation, enlightenment, ijtihad

Obama versus the Military

2008-02-28T01:23:00.002-06:00

Quite the unusual campaign advertisement from Obama.

In favor of immediately cutting and running from Iraq and presumably from Afghanistan. Going to drastically cut military spending. Going to appoint a civilian review board over the quadrennial military review board. Going to stop anti-missile defense programs, leaving Americans defenseless and terrorized by nuclear weapons. Going to try for a world without fissile materials, meaning an abandonment of nuclear power. Going to disarm American nuclear weapons that are aimed at Russia.

Wow!

h/t: Ace

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Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Democrats, Campaign

God Bless and Keep William F. Buckley

2008-02-28T01:08:00.002-06:00

Rest in peace.
Rush Limbaugh on Buckley:
It's a shame to even attach the term conservatism to this because it's too narrow. It's just right. These are principles by which people live and order their lives, and they have been shown over the course of human history to work and to be infallible in governing people, in governing one's own affairs, leading one's own life, establishing mechanisms by which people, nations, can manage their affairs to the best of society's purposes and intents.

Kevin D. Williamson quoted Buckley:
"I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and liberals at bay. And the nation free." William F. Buckley Jr., in Up From Liberalism
James S. Robbins writes of encountering Buckley's writing in the 70s.
I've often thought about, growing up in the 70s, the sense of anticipation reading WFB's column in my local paper. In those dark days his was the only voice of optimism I remembered. While the culture and many of my peers were trying to tell me that America was in decline, that the good times (aka "the 60s, man") were over, that we had to get used to second class status as a nation and a people, I could always count on WFB to either argue that things were better than we thought, or if there was something wrong, we could do something about it. We did not have to be passive and accept the negative judgement or flawed reasoning of others; we could fight back. I discovered Firing Line by accident — it came on TV after something else I had been watching and I paused to listen to the theme music — then after an embarrassingly long time I figured out the  the man on TV and the man writing those great columns were the same guy! I found out about National Review like many people my age, from Annie Hall ("Why don'tcha get William F. Buckley to kill the spider?"). I loved getting the magazine in the mail, seeing what was in store that issue, especially in the pre-wired days when there was no way of knowing the contents in advance. It was a pre-packaged set of intellectual adventures with a wonderful puzzle in the back. I thought then that if I could ever write for William F. Buckley's magazine, I would be as happy and proud as I could be. And in time I did, and I was, and I am.
John O'Sullivan describes what Buckley's work meant when translated into the real world.
When news of Bill's death reached me, I was in Prague. It was [a] suitable and perhaps comforting place to hear such sad news since Prague is one of the great European cities Bill helped to liberate from communism. Eighteen years ago he and I were here on a National Review Institute political tour of Eastern Europe. This was only a year after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the "velvet revolutions." Because of Bill's leadership in the anti-Communist and conservative movements, everyone wanted to meet him. New ministers, heads of new political parties, and editors of old national newspapers (with new editorial lines) told him of how they had read smuggled copies of NR during the years that the Communist regime condemned them to work as stokers and quarry-men.

He took it all very humbly and even a little quizzically. It was as if he didn't quite believe that he had blown a trumpet and, lo, the walls of Communism had tumbled down — "literally," to use a word whose misuse he occasionally denounced. He was a great man and a figure of great historical significance. He founded the American conservative movement that, among many other achievements, won the Cold War. But he wanted to slip quietly away to avoid the presidents and prime ministers rushing up to ask for his autograph.

Jonah Goldberg finished an ode to Buckley upon his 80th Birthday as follows:
William F. Buckley understood that conservatism can only be a partial philosophy of life, because any calling which claims to be a whole philosophy of life is not one at all. It is a religion, and in all likelihood a false one. Armed with this conviction, he changed the world by arguing with those who could not comprehend that a man could be joyful, charming, generous, and passionate about hobbies and people far outside politics while walking against what all the right people insisted was the tide of All Good Things. In this he remains the archetype for conservatism, properly understood.

Conservatives believe in dreams but we don’t believe they can ever be made reality in this life.

Watch Buckley debate Chomsky, from 1969. Part 1.

Part 2:

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Technorati Tags: William F. Buckley, Conservatism

All Your Celltowers are Belong to Us

2008-02-26T22:53:00.001-06:00

The Taliban in Afghanistan don't like the way that NATO forces can track them at night by their cellphone signals. Rather than simply turning their phones off at night, the Taliban are threatening to murder and terrorize the Afghan cellphone companies.

This is not going to be popular with the locals who have decent telephone service for the first time in their lives.

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Technorati Tags: Taliban, Afghanistan, Cell Phones, Terrorism

Must Read the Global Counterinsurgency

2008-02-26T21:28:00.001-06:00

Jonathan Morgenstein & Eric Vickland have written a must-read article at Small Wars Journal. They propose a way to recast the GWOT as a Global Insurgency that must be countered.
We have distilled the keys to a successful counterinsurgency down to five equally vital pillars: 1) targeted military force and security, 2) intelligence, 3) law enforcement and the rule of law, 4) information operations, and 5) civil affairs and development. Taken together, these five pillars constitute the essential framework needed to guide America’s post 9-11 national security policy. It must be understood that this is distinctly not a military policy, nor a policy to guide the Department of Defense (DoD). This is a National Security Policy, for which we must re-focus the entire national security and foreign policy apparatus. This is a doctrine that must provoke reforms not only in the DoD, but also the Department of State (DoS), USAID, a re-established US Information Agency (USIA), and across the intelligence community. [...]
Current national security policy puts America at risk by minimizing individual components of this doctrine and overemphasizing only the first pillar, targeted military force.
Read it all.

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Technorati Tags: Global Counterinsurgency, Counterjihad, Military