John Kerry Won
I will not analyze the content of the first debate. I don't think debates of this nature are as much about content as they are about which candidate plays the strings of the broader consensi (sic?) better than the other.
Kerry, even when he veered into what I would call Michael Mooresque lunacy (Halliburton, soldiers without proper uniforms, etc.), still played those issues well. He did not look wild-eyed. He presented only plausible sounding ideas. He didn't say Bush went to war for Halliburton. Instead, he intimated that Halliburton has been a motivating factor in the Bush's decisions surrounding the War and it's aftermath. That sounds plausible and, really, how could Bush argue against the idea? It would be like
arguing against the accusation that one is gay. The more one protests the more one digs ones own hole, so to speak.
Similarly, with regards to the insufficient uniform assertion. It is not possible to deny Kerry's assertion that some parents of soldiers have come to him on the campaign trail and told him that they bought extra protection for their sons and daughters to wear while in Iraq. That sounds perfectly plausible. In fact, it sounds like something I would do if my kid was in Iraq. It doesn't mean that the uniform that the U.S. Armed forces provides is insufficient. It just means that there could be more that an individual could wear, if they choose, and if they are capable of carrying the extra weight.
Anyway, Bush was his usual self, seeming sometimes steadfast and self-assured, and sometimes in the grip of a petit mal seizure as he hunts for the words in the vast Texan deserts of his mind.
Kerry looked as Presidential as Bush tonight, if not more. Bush really only has his track record to prove he's more Presidential. But, a debate is won by the calm and concise articulation of one's track records and ideas, not by the track record itself. Kerry articulated well, and Bush articulated, uh, well, uh ... only half well.
Democracy Vs. Islamofascist Dictatorship
International Herald Tribune Has Trouble With The Distinction
From
HonestReporting.com:
Jonathan Power in the International Herald Tribune (9/22) compared the Iranian nuclear program to Israel's and concluded that 'It is the Arabs who should be worried by Israel's might, rather than the other way around.' Power, a foreign affairs columnist syndicated in dozens of papers worldwide, makes three main points:
1) The West applies a 'hypocritical' double standard by insisting that Iran stop its nuclear program while allowing Israel to have the bomb.
2) Power blames Israel for Iran's emerging nuclear program, asking: '[W]here is the source of the threat that makes Iran... feel so nervous that it must now take the nuclear road? If Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with its nuclear ambitions, used to be one reason, the other is certainly Israel.'
3) Power claims that Israeli nukes never had deterrence value, and certainly don't today, as Israel faces no 'catastrophic' threat.
Power errs on each of his points:
1) RESPONSIBLE VS. IRRESPONSIBLE NUCLEAR PROGRAMS
Indeed, there is a double standard applied to Israeli vs. Iranian nuclear programs -- an entirely justified double standard.
Israel is a thriving democracy, where all citizens participate in government and have a voice, where even the most disenfranchised can climb the social ladder, and where injustice can be righted. Democratic nations are characterized by accountability, checks and balances, and recognition of fundamental human rights -- essential elements for responsible nuclear programs.
Iran, on the other hand, is a pure theocracy that institutionalizes dhimmitude (subjugation of non-Muslim peoples), engages in modern anti-Jewish witch hunts under the pretext of stopping 'Zionist conspiracies,' and hangs 'promiscuous' teenage girls in public squares with impunity.
Iran does not just happen to live in 'one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods,' as Power claims. Iran, along with Syria (see HR Special Report), has created this danger. The U.S. State Department recognizes that Iran has provided financial aid, arms, training camps, and safe haven to the deadliest terror groups -- Hezbollah (Iran's proxy in Lebanon), Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
And while the free world increasingly fears WMDs and 'dirty bombs' falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists (half of those surveyed in a recent AP-Ipsos poll say they 'have concerns that terrorists may be winning'), Iran maintains strong, supportive ties with those terrorists.
As a theocracy with a fundamental lack of accountability, Iran's nuclear program brings the free world's great nightmare -- WMDs falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists closer to reality.
2) ISRAEL - TO BLAME FOR IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM?
While Power cites an Israeli 'threat' as the motivation for Iran's nuclear program, in fact Israeli leaders had never challenged Tehran before that program advanced, nor did Israel ever contribute to an armed attack on Iran.
By contrast, the Iranian Mullahs have been clamoring for Israel's demise since the day they seized power in 1979. Witness the Iranians' more recent calls for the extermination of 'the Zionist Entity':
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenai explained in Jan. 2001 that 'the foundation of the Islamic regime is opposition to Israel, and the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region.'
Khamenai said in a recent sermon that 'the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region.'
In Dec. 2001, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani called the establishment of the Jewish state 'the worst event in history,' and declared his intention to decimate Israel, clarifying that 'one [nuclear] bomb is enough to destroy all Israel,' and that 'in due time, the Islamic world will have a military nuclear device.'
Unfortunately, it's not just talk. Iran actively supports anti-Israel terror through Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. And recall that in January 2002, Iran attempted to smuggle 50 tons of ammunition to Palestinians aboard the ship Karin A. Iran's nuclear program is clearly an extension of that aggression.
To claim, as Power does, that Iran is developing its nuclear program in response to an Israeli 'threat' is simply a fabrication of the historical record.
3) DETERRENCE AND ONGOING MORTAL THREATPower claims 'there is no evidence that Israel's nuclear weapons have deterred the Arabs from more limited wars or prevented Palestinian intifadas and suicide bombers. Nor have Israel's nuclear weapons influenced Arab attitudes toward making peace.' Power cites the 1973 Arab war against Israel and the 1991 Gulf War as cases in point.
But Gerald M. Steinberg, director of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University, indicates that over three decades
Israel's nuclear deterrent is widely credited with offsetting the asymmetries that encouraged major attacks, creating a degree of stability, and convincing some Arab leaders, including Sadat, of the need for peace.
Steinberg also credits the policy with forcing Egypt and Syria to limit their attacks in the 1973 war, and with deterring Saddam Hussein from using chemical warheads in the 1991 missile attacks against Israel (when 39 of Iraq's conventional Scud missiles actually landed in Israel).
Regarding today's threats, Power brushes them off, stating 'there is no evidence that Arab states have invested the financial and human resources necessary to fight the kind of war that would be catastrophic for Israel.'
But as any student of the Mideast knows, the one issue that unites the Arab states -- the illegitimacy of 'the Zionist Entity' -- could at any time erupt. That eventuality must remain a cornerstone of responsible Israeli defense policy.
Praise Be To Allah, Creator of Worlds
For Showing Us How The Media Lies To Us
From
AllahPundit.com:
Here's a tip from the creator of worlds to the many new bloggers Rathergate hath wrought. Lean in close because this is important:
Whenever you see the mainstream media referring to someone as "Sheikh", you're duty bound to do a search for that person on MEMRI and LGF.
I'll show you why. Tonight in Loseweek, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball warn that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is radicalizing moderate Muslims. Moderate Muslims like "Sheik" Yusuf al-Qaradawi. To be sure, say M&M, Qaradawi isn't a moderate on every issue. For instance, he doesn't have a big problem with blowing up Jews. He's also suspected of having ties to terrorist financing networks. And yes, sure, he happens to be the "spiritual leader" of Egypt's most prominent fundamentalist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. But that doesn't mean he's not a moderate at heart:
In the days after September 11, for example, Qaradawi denounced the murders of innocent civilians and encouraged Muslims to donate blood to the victims. "Our hearts bleed" for those who died in the attacks, Qaradawi said at the time.
But in recent months, Qaradawi has become one of a growing number of Muslim clerics outside Iraq who have sided ever more forcefully with resistance fighters the Bush administration has presented as indistinguishable from the terrorists of Al Qaeda. Just last month, Qaradawi was among more than 90 leading Islamic clerics who issued a proclamation—released by the offices of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood—calling on Muslims to opposed [sic] American forces in Iraq as well as the U.S.-appointed government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group, says he's not surprised by the radicalization of moderates such as Qaradawi.
Now let's see what turns up when we do our mandatory MEMRI/LGF search.
July 27, 2004: Muslim journalist Abdel Rahman al-Rashed: "When it comes to political matters, Al-Qaradhawi represents the utmost degree of extremism."
March 9, 2004: "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!"
June 27, 2003: Condemned the Al Qaeda bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca because "[n]ot everyone who was killed in Riyadh was American and not everyone who was killed in Casablanca was American or foreign."
Hmmm. Doesn't sound so moderate. On the other hand, these quotes all date from after the invasion of Iraq. Maybe, as Loseweek suggests, the occupation had him feeling grumpy.
Let's go back a bit further to those halcyon days before the crusade and see if his views of Americans were any rosier.
November 3, 2002: From a sermon at the Umar Bin-al-Khattab Mosque in Doha, Qatar. "O God, give us victory over your enemies, the enemies of Islam. O God, protect us from their evils, weaken them, wipe them out, destroy their power, and prevent them from committing aggression against your servants. O God, destroy the aggressor, treacherous Jews. O God, destroy the aggressor Americans. O God, destroy the fanatic pagans. O God, destroy the tyrannical Crusaders."
There's more. You can go read it for yourself at
AllahPundit.com.
Multilateralism
Now America Is Getting The Hang Of It
David Brooks wrote a scathing and satirical critique of U.N. multilateralism for the
New York Times. Here's an excerpt:
Another Triumph For the U.N.
By DAVID BROOKS Published: September 25, 2004
And so we went the multilateral route.
Confronted with the murder of 50,000 in Sudan, we eschewed all that nasty old unilateralism, all that hegemonic, imperialist, go-it-alone, neocon, empire, coalition-of-the-coerced stuff. Our response to this crisis would be so exquisitely multilateral, meticulously consultative, collegially cooperative and ally-friendly that it would make John Kerry swoon and a million editorialists nod in sage approval.
And so we Americans mustered our outrage at the massacres in Darfur and went to the United Nations. And calls were issued and exhortations were made and platitudes spread like béarnaise. The great hum of diplomacy signaled that the global community was whirring into action.
Meanwhile helicopter gunships were strafing children in Darfur.
We did everything basically right. The president was involved, the secretary of state was bold and clearheaded, the U.N. ambassador was eloquent, and the Congress was united. And, following the strictures of international law, we had the debate that, of course, is going to be the top priority while planes are bombing villages.
We had a discussion over whether the extermination of human beings in this instance is sufficiently concentrated to meet the technical definition of genocide. For if it is, then the "competent organs of the United Nations" may be called in to take appropriate action, and you know how fearsome the competent organs may be when they may indeed be called.
The United States said the killing in Darfur was indeed genocide, the Europeans weren't so sure, and the Arab League said definitely not, and hairs were split and legalisms were parsed, and the debate over how many corpses you can fit on the head of a pin proceeded in stentorian tones while the mass extermination of human beings continued at a pace that may or may not rise to the level of genocide.
For people are still starving and perishing in Darfur.
Thanks to the dudes over in France (No Pasaran) for making me aware of this article, by the way.
Reason No. 2 To Vote For George W. Bush For President of the United States
From the
Persian Journal, all praises be to Allah:
Bush: Iran will not get nuclear weapon Sep 26, 2004, 17:06AFP
US President George W. Bush says "all options are on the table" for making sure Iran dismantles its nuclear program, and that Washington will never let Tehran acquire atomic weapons. "My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically," Bush said in a three-part interview with Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor" program ...
The Bush administration has charged that oil-rich Iran does not need a civilian nuclear program for energy and that Tehran is actually seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Asked whether the United States would let Iran develop that capability, Bush replied: "No, we've made it clear, our position is that they won't have a nuclear weapon."
I know. I know. You're wondering to yourself, "If that's Reason No. 2 then what's Reason No. 1?Reason No. 1 to vote for George W. Bush for President of the United States is
Kerry's ideas.
Christian Anti-Semitism?
Thanks to Jack Of Clubs for making me aware of
this report from the Institute for Religion and Democracy:
We analyzed human rights criticisms made by four mainline Protestant denominations (the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) and two ecumenical bodies (the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches) over a period of four years (2000-2003) to determine which nations were criticized for human rights violations and why. We used the 2004 human rights assessments published by Freedom House as a benchmark for human rights in nations analyzed. A given church statement or document was considered to have criticized human rights in country X when, in the context of a discussion of human rights in country X, it passed negative judgment on specific current policies or actions of the government of X.
Results
Overall, criticisms of Israel amounted to 37 percent of the 197 human rights criticisms offered by the churches during those years, only slightly higher than the 32 percent of criticisms leveled at the United States. The remaining 31 percent of criticisms were shared by twenty other nations. For every one criticism of any other foreign nation, one criticism was made of the United States and one of Israel. Nearly all churches demonstrated this focus on the United States and Israel in their legislative actions, their statements, their news sources, or all three.
As a result, nearly three out of four human rights criticisms were made of nations designated as free (mostly the United States and Israel) by the Freedom House assessments. Those rated not free totaled 19 percent of criticisms, while partly free nations totalled only 8 percent of criticisms. Of the fifteen worst human rights offenders in the world, only five were criticized by the churches during the four year period studied.
Regions like the Middle East (apart from Israel) and Central Asia (former Soviet republics) were the most notable areas ignored by the churches in their human rights advocacy. Partly free nations, where church influence might be most effective in widening the limited civic space already open to indigenous Christians and other citizens, received the least attention.
Conclusions
The mainline churches are not adequately addressing the wide range of human rights abuses taking place in the world. Denominations are focusing on the United States and Israel as the primary perpetrators of human rights violations. Great attention to the United States may be expected from churches that find their homes there. But the dramatic focus on Israel as opposed to many more repressive regimes, including other U.S. allies known for human rights abuses (such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt), must be challenged.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the churches made the mistake of supporting oppressive Soviet-sponsored liberation movements around the world. They largely ignored human rights abuses in the Soviet Union and its satellite states, instead focusing on U.S. policy as the primary source of abuse. It appears that mainline denominations may be making the same mistake today with the Arab and Muslim worlds, ignoring many of the most serious abuses while apparently laying heavy blame upon the United States and Israel not only for their own lesser abuses, but also for the abuses of others. . . .
Dare I call this anti-Semitism? Well, yeah, what the heck.
I have to acknowledge that the mainline churches are merely following, like sheep, behind the rest of the world. I mean I don't think they would come up with this all on their own. I wouldn't accuse them of that. No, they follow the lead of the U.N., and Europe, and the Islamofascists, just like all the other anti-Semites. It's just the tide of world opinion.
Far be it from me to accuse mainline church organizations of thinking for themselves.
What Would Jesus Do?
Clear out the temple? Hmm.
Saudi TV Does Man-On-The-Street Interviews
What Do You Think Of The Jews?
Praise be to Allah for making me aware of
this, from Memri.org:
Interviewer: "Would you refuse to shake hands with a Jew?"
"Allah's wrath is upon them, as the Koran says. Allah's wrath is upon them and they all stray from the path of righteousness. They are the filthiest people on the face of this earth because they care only about themselves - not the Christians, not the Muslims, nor any other religion.
"The solution is clear, not only to me but to everyone. If only [the Muslims] declared Jihad, we would see who stays home. We have a few countries… There is one country with a population of over 60-70 million people. If we let them only march, with no weapons even, they would completely trample the Jews, they would turn them into rotten carcasses under their feet.
Uh, wow. The guy came up with that right off this top of his head. I mean the dude was ready.
Go, read the rest. There is much venomous quoting of the Koran and absolute dogmatic self-assuredness. It's a stunning display of hateful pyrotechnics.
There's Something Strange And "Suttle" Going On Over At
The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog
You know, I ask IraqWarWrong a simple question; "Am I a Neo-con", and he goes off on some ridiculous rant, accusing me of Freudian slips, and any other hippy-dippy effluvia that burbles to top of his psilocybin-laden brain.
And then he decides he has to go and pseudo-analize me. Whoops, I meant psychoanalyze. Jeez, that's disgusting, what a mess. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, well.
Listen, the only reason I asked IraqWarWrong if he thought I was a Neocon is because I've noticed an ever so "suttle" trend developing over there at
his blog. It seems that he sometimes uses the word Neocon as a synonym for Jew. Like when he wished a happy Rosh Hashanah to all his Neocon friends. Hmm.
I'd just like to know what exactly he means by that.
Does he mean that all Jews are Neocons, and all Neocons are Jews? And if that's what he means, then what's up with this recent
Clash Blogging post :
I think the [NeoCons] got a weather machine
I think they're planning a takeover scheme
Doin' a good job on our countryside
They want to be our friends, but it's an obvious lie
They buried [Fallujah] and they drowned [Najaf]
Sometimes I wonder if I'll see the next day
I know the [NeoCons] are behind this shit
No ones goin' to know it until it's too late
Takeover they're taking over
How long till they get everyone?
Takeover they're taking over
How can we be so dumb?
They asked us for our help to rip [Saddam's Iraq] down
They want to rule every city want to rule every town
Do I detect a brand new form of anti-Semitism here? A kind of parabolic prejudice.
Very dangerous. Very dangerous indeed.
Hitler 2004
It's fashionable to call President Bush "Hitler" and to imply that the U.S. and Israel are like Nazi Germany. But, do you want to see what Hitler Circa 2004 really looks like?
Click
here, then scroll down about a third of the page and click on the word "Sheikh".
That's from official Palestinian State TV.
Cat Stevens Ride On The Peace Train
From
The National Post:
TORONTO - Yusuf Islam, the British singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was the guest of honour at a Toronto fundraising dinner hosted by an organization that has since been identified by the Canadian government as a "front" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In a videotape of the 1998 event obtained by the National Post, Mr. Islam describes Israel as a "so-called new society" created by a "so-called religion" and urges the audience to donate to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services to "lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land."
Another peaceful Jihadi.
Islamic Writers Acknowledge What The Western Media Seems Incapable Of Acknowledging
From
Front Page Magazine:
... while Islamic terrorists intimidate Western Press agencies into not using the T-word and Arab and Muslim lobbies in North America agitate racism accusations at those journalists and media enterprises objective enough to call a cat a cat, a growing number of Arab journalists and intellectuals are not only calling Islamic terrorism by its name, but are courageously assessing its “root causes.” And far from shying away from the use of the T-word in connection with Islam, they go as far as explaining that Islamist terrorism is a result of the Islamic culture’s failures in the modern age.
Here are a few telling examples of the honesty which these leading Arab journalists use in taking a long, hard look at their societies without tip-toeing around semantics:
* In the aftermath of the Beslan tragedy, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, wrote under the headline “The Painful Truth is that All of the Terrorists are Muslims” that “Islam has suffered an injustice at the hands of the new Muslims. We will only be able to clear our reputation once we have admitted the clear and shameful fact that most of the terrorist acts in the world today are carried out by Muslims.” (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, September 4, 2004)
* Under the title “Butchers in the Name of Allah,” Khaled Hamad Al-Suleiman wrote in the Saudi government daily Okaz: “The propagandists of Jihad succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam, while the enemies of Islam did not succeed in doing this [even] in the course of hundreds of years. They turned today's Islam into something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians and exploding people.” (Okaz, September 5, 2004)
* More recently yet, Syrian scholar Mundir Badr Haloum wrote in the Lebanese daily Al-Safir: “Islam is in the names of all of the organizations that decapitate using knives, all the while saying the Fatiha [the first chapter of the Koran, said as a prayer] before the slaughter (...) Indeed, we as Muslims produce terrorism, succor it, and praise it. We condemn it only when forced to. Motivated by considerations of power, interests, and diplomacy, we wear a pained expression on our faces but in our hearts we rejoice at the brilliant success - a large number of casualties.”
* Journalist and former Kuwaiti communications minister Dr. Sa'ad bin Tefla said on Jordanian television: “Slaughter, destructive abuse, anarchy, and bloodshed in no way resemble Jihad according to Shari'a and resistance. These are anarchy and terrorism [and not Jihad ], and they are indications of frustration and of a culture of collective suicide reminiscent of whales (...) I maintain that we are all responsible for this culture, and that Zionism and imperialism have nothing to do with it (...) I maintain that there is, unfortunately, a culture of violence that existed before the Americans came to Iraq and the Gulf, even before the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and before the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.”
* Columnist Bater Wardam, wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour that “It is always easy to flee to illusions and to place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists, and on American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case and that those who murder innocent civilians in Iraq after having kidnapped them, those who turned civilian airplanes into destructive bombs, those who exploded trains crowded with innocent civilians and those who fired on children in a school in Ossetia - they came from our midst. They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils, and call for the defense of Islamic causes.” (Al-Dustour, September 5, 2004)
It's nice to see an Arab writer, living and writing in the Arab world, to acknowledge what our Western has been incapable of acknowledging; that the Beslan Massacre was perpetrated by Arab Muslims.
A Must-Read Little Green Footballs Post On French Idiocy
I don't have anything to add to Charles' points on this one, so I will merely say,
Please click
here.
Islamic Terrorism? "It's The Jew's Fault," Say the Saudi's
Thanks to Little Green Footballs for making me aware of this, from the
Jerusalem Post:
Saudi Arabia on Monday announced it would host an international conference on combating terrorism, but warned that peace and security in the Middle East will fail if Israel holds on to policies "totally incompatible with the fundamental principles of the peace process."
Saudi Arabia's "strategy of pre-emptive actions to forestal criminal acts has been successful in the fight against this vile epidemic," Nizar Obaid Madani, Saudi Arabia's deputy foreign minister told world leaders and diplomats at the U.N. General Assembly's ministerial meeting.
While denouncing terrorism, Madani said terrorists' actions should not be used as a pretext for linking Islam with terror. (Editorial comment: Okey doke Nizar)
Madani said that the Saudi government will host the international conference to combat terrorism, from Feb. 5-8. It was unclear exactly which countries were invited or if any had said they would attend.
The aim of the conference is to "exchange information and experience in the field of combating terrorism" and to foster cooperation in the fight against "this universal threat."
But Madani, in language echoed by Arab countries and many others, said that mounting violence and extremism in the Middle East "are largely due to the Israel government's pursuit of policies that are totally incompatible with the fundamental principles of the peace process."
George Bush - Standup Guy
From
Reuter's:
The first presidential debate on Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla. will focus on foreign affairs and may be pivotal to the outcome of the Nov. 2 election.
At an Ohio campaign event, Bush referred to his practice sessions for the debate, which he has been holding at his Texas ranch over the weekend.
"It's been a little tough to prepare because (Kerry) keeps changing positions on the war on the terror," he joked.
"He voted for the use of force in Iraq and then didn't vote to fund the troops," Bush said. "He complained that we're not spending enough money to help in reconstruction in Iraq and now he's saying we're spending too much. He said it was the right decision to go into Iraq and now he calls it the wrong war."
"He could probably spend 90 minutes debating himself."
Boy, I'll tell ya, George Bush don't get no respect.
John Kerry Channeling Jim Morrison
For months now John Kerry's elevated public-speaking voice has been ringing in my head, and I keep thinking, "I know that voice."
Well, here it is.
Video from John Kerry's convention speech. Listen to just a bit of it, and then go
here and click on the audio for the poem
American Night.
John Kerry is channeling Jim Morrison. It's really magical and mystical, isn't it?
It shouldn't surprise considering his
Apocalypse Now fixation.
Can God Use Madonna?
Thanks to Jack, over at Jack of Clubs for making me aware of
this Madonna story:
Madonna's Flight to Egypt Cancelled
From al Bawaba:
Egyptian Parliament members have submitted an order to Government demanding that American singer Madonna be prohibited from entering Egyptian soil. Parliament members also included a number of other international singers on their list of people forbidden from entering Egypt and called on all their embassies abroad to not grant any of them visas into Egypt or be allowed to shoot any of their music videos on Egyptian soil.
The demand came after Madonna announced that she will celebrate the Jewish New Years in Israel and that she had converted to Judaism....
Then, Jack comments:
Nothing terribly new here. We already knew that you couldn't enter Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE or Yemen with an Israeli-stamped passport. Now Egypt jumps on the band wagon (at least for high-profile jews). Big surprise.
It might not be a big surprise to many of us, but it should come as a moral shock to our souls that there are entire countries, here in the 21st century, who are hanging a sign on their front door that says,
NO JEWS ALLOWED
I've always disliked Madonna's courting of controversial subject matter for the sake of publicity. It seems to me that Madonna has never really cared about the issues on which she speaks, but instead merely uses them like pawns in her game of world media domination.
Finally now, I can see a use for Madonna. I would imagine she's angry and disgusted by this situation. I'm guessing that maybe, even though Jack isn't surprised by the reality on the ground in the Arab world, Madonna might be almost wholly unaware of what's going on. Madonna probably thinks the Burkhas is a marvellous fashion statement.
Now that Madonna is a Jew, or whatever ever she is, she might recognize that this puts her in a real line of fire for the first time in her blessed life. All these years Madonna has ground her hips in protest against the oppression of women and minorities here in the United States, she's done so in complete freedom, with fabulous wealth and accolades for her efforts. In other parts of the world, Madonna would be showered with stones for her behavior, not riches.
Maybe this Jew thing will finally bring it home to her and her fame and fortune can be used by God to do what a thousand screaming blogger and the ADL, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Holocaust Museum, etc. have not been able to do. That is, make people aware of the plain fact that the Arab world is possesed by the terrible evil of anti-Semitism and the situation is frightening.
Why Bill Clinton Was A Great President
A friend of mine, who reads my blog, wrote to me to take issue with my assertion that Bill Clinton was the greatest Peace-time President in the history of the United States. First off, let me say, I'm happy I have a friend who has read my blog and remained a friend. That would not be the case with most of my friends. Since 9/11, I have a new way of looking at world events and, unfortunatley, I've lost friends because of it.
Besides that, I can't say I blame my friend for taking issue with the assertion that Clinton was "the best Peace-time President ever." Let me clarify. It's actually absurd for me to make such an assertion considering my understanding of American history really only goes back to World War I with a little Civil War and American Revolution thown in. So, if there was a better Peace-time President before World War I, I wouldn't have any idea. Besides that, as my friend points out here, the idea seems absurd on it's face anyway:
I gotta say, I don't know if I would say Clinton was
the best peace time president ever. I would have to
go back to my history books to find a better one, but
what I think of Clinton is this...I can't really think
of anything he DID. He HAPPENED to be sitting pres.
when the internet, telecom, and, well, the stock market in
general, went skyrocketing upward, creating a vast
amount of wealth for the country. But, as in pool,
you gotta call your shot.
He needs to thank the Bill
Gates' of the country for that. I will give him
credit for reappointing Greenspan when he became
pres., but that's about it for that. Also, if Clinton
is going to take credit for such prosperity, why is he
not taking credit for the crash? That too happened on
his watch.
I just wish the record would show that he
was either responsible for both, or neither.
Especially since with an economy of our size, you
really won't see the affect of your policies until
late in your first term, or early second term.
Well, my friend, I believe you are correct. Bill Clinton was responsible for the Stock Market crash as well as the expanding economy. They both happened well into his Presidency and were the results of his policies. In addition, the Budget surplus was the result of his policies, as well as the fact that that Budget surplus has gone the other way under Bush. That it
has gone the other post-Clinton is the result of Clinton's policies themselves, as well as 9/11 and George Bush's policy of Tax Cuts during Wartime.
But, while I believe the economy is a positive part of Clinton's legacy (overall the Economy, including jobs, stock market, GDP, and budget, were in a much better place, even post stock market crash and post 9/11) I do not make the assertion that Clinton was a great Peacetime President because of the economy.
Here is a portion of a post from June, wherein I explain my reasons for why I believe Clinton was a great President.
Charles Krauthammer has written:
What appalled me then (about Clinton as well as his auto-biography), is the smallness of a man who granted equal valence to his own indulgences on the one hand and to the fate of nations on the other. It is the smallness that disturbs. It is that smallness that history will remember.
I partially agree with Krauthammer. However, the smallness is not the moral failing many of his critics claim. Clinton's vision was as large as the time required.
George Bush, whom I also like as a President came into office with a small vision. I recall the Presidential Debates of 2000 and the endless tedium about Prescription Drugs. I recall George Bush stating repeatedly that he was not into "nation-building." George Bush's vision grew because of Sept. 11th. In my opinion, George Bush has grown into a possibly great President on the order of magnitude of Reagan and Roosevelt. However, it remains to be seen.
I will not claim that Clinton would have grown as Bush did when challenged. We just don't know. Truthfully, I doubt it. However, I will claim this. Clinton just might be the greatest President we've ever had who was not challenged by a major event or set of events.
His legacy will lie in NAFTA, and the economy, for which Krauthammer rightly gives him the credit he deserves. However, there are two other larger, but subtle, things for which Clinton commonly does not get the credit he deserves. One Krauthammer mentions, but does not truly acknowledge. That is welfare reform.
Krauthammer comments that Clinton "signed" the welfare reform bill. You will often hear conservatives make the claim that Clinton did not want to sign the bill. In fact, if I am not mistaken, he did not sign it the first two times it was presented to him.
Now, I, obviously, am not a historian. In fact, I am a bit of a goofball. But, I do have a pretty decent memory. And, one thing I remember (but am unable to find on Google) is that, in 1992, Clinton gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine wherein he outlined his plans for Welfare Reform, including an idea he called "workfare" which meant that people would be exected to contribute something in return for the "hand-up" they were being given. The bill that Clinton eventually signed was almost identical to what he outlined in the interview.
It is my opinion, based upon my recollection of the Rolling Stone Interview, that, when Clinton did not initially sign the Welfare bill, he was playing the fox with Congress. Clinton knew that Congress would want to pass something even more stringent than what he wanted so he negotiated by offering something less stringent than he wanted. In the end, he got what he wanted.That's a pretty darn good President, even if it isn't huge vision.
I believe it is true that only under a Clinton Presidency could such a Welfare Reform bill been enacted. And that is because of the other, more important, legacy of the Bill Clinton Presidency. And this part of his legacy will probably not be recognized for some years to come, because it had nothing to do with policy, but instead it had to do with his personality, and his vision, and how they fit, and shaped, the zeitgeist of our nation.
Bill Clinton was the first American President who truly believed that all people who are citizens of America were truly equal human beings, whether they were black, brown, yellow, or white.
Clinton did have an unspoken equality intiative. His appointments to his cabinent included blacks, Hispanic, Jews, etc. However, that would have appeared to be bowing to the politically-correct era if it had not been for the fact that Clinton clearly looked comfortable with all these different people (Oops, I said "these people"). He actually liked them (oops, there I go again), not because of the color of their skin, but because of the content of their character.
While Clinton's equality initiative did not have a direct effect on public policy, the power of his initiative can not be overstated. However rarely it is acknowledged.
Similarly, Ronald Reagan had a powerful impact on the attitude of the country. Reagan gave us hope, where there had been malaise. Reagan got people believing in the American Dream again. Just as with Clinton, this was not a matter of policy, but a matter of his personality and his vision.
Why is it that commentaries on Reagan always acknowledge this aspect of his Presidency, yet Clinton's impact of racial equality is not acknoledged?
I think there are several reasons. One, is that the preponderence of people, who are white, believed that they, as a people, had already left racism behind. However, feeling "uncomfortable" with whole groups of people because of their skin color effects the way one treats those groups of people. It effects decisions of employment and marriage and friendship. That amounts to racism in effect, if not intention.
Another reason Clinton's Equality Initiative is not acknowledged is, I believe, a residual momentum of the trivialization and hatred of Clinton which was fomented during his Presidency. To put it mildly, Clinton got a lot of bad press. Almost as if there had been a vast right-wing conspiracy to bring down his Presidency. I recall Rush Limbaugh running commercials for a video explaining Clinton's closeness to the mysterious deaths of dozens of people. I recall Rush Limbaugh giving lip service to such ideas. That's some mainstream hatred.
I think it needs to be acknowledged that George Bush is getting similar treatment now, with all the "Bush is Hitler" propoganda. Almost as if there is a vast left-wing conspiracy to bring down his Presidency.
Bill Clinton actually moved two mountains during his Presidency. The Welfare Reform Act, with it's stipulation that one could only collect welfare for two years, reversed the momentum of increasing benefits and changed the way Americans view welfare. Welfare is a "handup, not a handout." In addition, Clinton, with his openess and yes, "feeling", helped Americans redefine the way we view and treat people of color.
America is a much better place because of Bill Clinton's Presidency.
The French Retreat
Thanks to No Pasaran for making me aware of this
article from the International Herald Tribune:
In the latest sign that France, the most vocal opponent of the American-led campaign in Iraq, is not immune to the wrath of Islamic extremists in the war-torn country, two major French television networks pulled their crews out of Baghdad this week for fear of seeing them taken hostage.
Within two days of each other, TF1, France's main commercial TV network, and the state-financed rival France 3 announced that teams returning from Iraq would not be replaced until the security situation improved.
More than 100 foreigners have been abducted since April in what appears to be a deepening campaign aimed at civilians. Most hostages have been released, but about 30 have been killed.
French news media companies are not the only ones to flee Iraq.
Germany's biggest television network, ARD, said Friday it also planned to bring home its two correspondents in Iraq after the Foreign Ministry warned that German journalists could be at risk. Like France, Germany opposed the war in Iraq.
Separately, the Spanish government has urged television stations and newspapers to pull out their correspondents, the newspaper El Mundo said on its Web site. The EFE news agency of Spain has withdrawn its only Spanish correspondent from Baghdad.
According to Catherine Nayl, deputy news editor at TF1, being French no longer protects journalists, who have increasingly become "pawns" in a conflict devoid of any rules.
"Until three or four months ago, our journalists still felt relatively safe, being French," Nayl said. "But a French passport doesn't protect you anymore."
At France 3, Ulysee Gosset, news director, agreed.
"French nationals are not out of harm's way," Gosset told the French radio station Europe 1 on Friday. "France is not an enemy state for the Iraqis, but it's a Western country, and all Westerners, including journalists, are now potential targets."
Welcome to our world France. I know it's hard for you understand, but America did nothing to acquire an enemy like Bin Laden. He's mad at us because our troops were in Saudi Arabia. Is that rational?
And, of course, the Germans and the Spanish are retreating as well.
I have to admit, I am laughing
Musings On A Great William Faulkner Quote
Thanks to No Pasaran for making me aware of this great quote from William Faulkner:
A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.
Obviously, Faulkner's perspective does not lie within the traditional Christian context. As Christians we would hardly call our moral conscience a curse. However, it is true that our moral conscience, and the feelings of elation and shame which emanate from our conscience, are inextricably linked to our ability to dream, and ultimately, to turn our dreams into reality.
God gave us a free will which, while limited by the dimensions of space and time, is not unlike his own. We can dream of something one day and set out on the path of turning that dream into a reality. History has proven one thing very clearly and profoundly; man can do almost anything he sets his mind to.
That being said, if I may be allowed to go off on a tangent, there are two things I can think of which humans have not been able to do:
1) Get something for nothing (no alchemy or perpetual motion machines)
2) Impede on others free will to choose where they will find meaning. One person can not make another love another person, and one can't make another person become a good person. Those are decisions that the individual can only make for himself.
Interestingly enough, God seems to have placed that second limitation on himself with regards to his dealings with us. He does not force us to love Him, nor does he try to force us to be good.
BBC Ambivalent Over The Destruction Of The West
Thanks to Little Green Footballs for making me aware of this
article, entitled "Arabs Are Ambivalent Over Hostage Crisis":
The Arab media has presented the latest hostage crisis in Iraq as just another element in the bloody and chaotic pattern of violence in the country.
The issue of foreign hostages in Iraq was examined this week on the most heated discussion programme on the Middle East's most-watched television station, al-Jazeera.
In the programme The Opposite Direction a fiercely anti-American political analyst, Talat Rumayh, faced off against an Iraqi politician, Karim Badr.
In the Arab media the plight of Iraqis and Palestinians overshadows that of the hostages Mr. Rumayh claimed that the kidnappers were Iraqi resistance fighters and compared the number of their victims to the thousands of Iraqis, who had been killed:
"Two thousand people have been killed since the beginning of the attack on Falluja, which was dismissed in one report, one line or just a couple of words... while we keep hearing about the hostages. It's the hostages and the terrorists, always the terrorists," he said.
Karim Badr responded by saying all Iraq was disgraced by the beheadings.
"We have to prove our humanity. I am addressing my brethren in Iraq: These are masked creatures that resemble humans, who I am certain are uglier than their deeds," he said.
"Is the killing of people and exploding cars in the streets an act of resistance? Is the kidnapping and murder of people in this manner an act of resistance? I am certain they do not represent the Iraqi conscience in any way at all."
Viewers were unmoved. In a phone poll 93% supported the kidnappings.
It seems to be hard for BBC to keep perspective on the situation. Those 2000 people who died in Fallujah were Islamists bent on creating a government by and for Sharia, not by and for the people.
But, the most disgraceful thing about this BBC article is that it's headline says "Arabs are ambivalent," but then it's actual contents show that 93% support the taking of hostages.
That doesn't sound like
ambivalence to me.
The BBC is ambivalent about facing facts. The BBC is ambivalent about who should the war, apparently.
Ex-Presidents Weigh In On Iraq War
Well, now all the ex-Presidents have weighed in with their opinion on the Iraq War. George H.W. Bush , yes. Bill Clinton, yes.
Jimmy Carter:
As former President Jimmy Carter walked into the Woodruff P.E. Center Wednesday evening, Emory students and faculty gave him a standing ovation.
During his speech, Carter called the war in Iraq one of the most “gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made.”
Carter said that if he could change one thing about America’s current foreign policy, “it would be to have someone in charge of it instead of George W. Bush.”
In my opinion, George H.W. Bush was a fair to weak President. Bill Clinton was the best peace-time President in the history of the United States, not counting the first twenty years of America history. And Jimmy Carter? Well, he was perhaps the worst President in the History of Presidents. If Liberace was somehow clone-crossed with Caesar Nero and was born a schmaltzy violinist, that would be Jimmy Carter fiddling while America was burning. Do you get me?
When you consider that the takeover of Iran by fundamentalist Muslims happened under Jimmy Carter's watch, I would say that a case can be made for the idea that it was Jimmy Carter who singlehandedly got us into our current predicament.
So, to sum up: the average President, G.H.W. Bush, says, good idea. The great President, Clinton, says, good idea. The worst President ever says, bad idea.
And John Kerry says all of the above and more. Does that tell you anything?
Oh wait, you say I forgot about Gerald Ford? He's still alive. Yeah, I know. But, really, can you blame me for forgetting about him? Was he really a President?
By the way, Praise be to
Allah.
More Anti-Semitism On The BBC
Melanie Phillips
notes yet another example of anti-Semitism on BBC Television:
For the second week running, BBC Radio Four's Any Questions last weekend reinforced the sense that decency in this country is simply dying. Dr David Starkey, the noted historian, wit and larger-than-life personality who made his name and his fortune as 'the rudest man in Britain', suddenly came out with a piece of the ripest and most ancient prejudice. Musing about the war in Iraq, he said:
'The action in Iraq was driven by one thing, and it was a very understandable desire for vengeance. Americans again are a little bit like Jews (murmur from audience)...no, let me please, I'm being really serious, I'm not calling names but calling for us to understand a different mindset. Here (presumably, he means in England) the notion of vengeance is on the whole regarded as deplorable... In Judaism, Islam and American Protestantism vengeance is a wholly acceptable notion (audience murmur) ... that's the truth, and after 9/11 they wanted to strike back. And that is it. End of story'.
Well I don't know enough about the theology of Islam or American Protestantism, but I doubt whether either regards vengeance as 'wholly acceptable'. What I do know is that in Judaism this is the very opposite of the truth. It is an ancient prejudice that the Jews 'do vengeance', based on an ignorant misunderstanding of the Biblical injunction to take 'an eye for an eye'. In fact, for Jews this doctrine is a limitation on any action that is taken after an offence is committed to ensure that any response is no more than proportionate. In other words, it is all about fairness and justice, not vengeance at all. The claim that for Jews 'vengeance is wholly acceptable' is totally untrue and a racial smear.
This idea that the Jews are vengeful is, in fact, one of the most deeply entrenched, vicious prejudices about the Jews -- and one that currently surfaces again and again in the language used to describe Israel's defence against terror. In other words, whenever the Jews try to prevent themselves from being murdered, this is presented not as self defence but vengeance. When the Americans tried to prevent another 9/11, this was not self-defence but vengeance. (Starkey's inclusion of Islam appeared to be a lame attempt to camouflage the outrageous prejudice of his opinion).
Clearly, in his world view there are certain categories of people who are not entitled to defend themselves against mass murder by removing from the scene those who would perpetrate it. They are instead, it seems, people apart, incapable of the instinct that Starkey himself would presumably have if threatened with annihilation to try to prevent it happening. And note also how subliminally he implied that the Americans were only doing the Jews' bidding in this display of primitive and uncivilised instinct.
So let us not call names but try to understand a different mindset -- the dynamics of ugly prejudice, which reveal that in the most educated of company barbarism may be masked by the thinnest of polished veneers.
American Protestantism
is like Judaism in one sense; that is, neither have a central clearinghouse for ideas. The Catholic Church has the Vatican. But, neither American Protestantism, nor Judaism, have such an institution. Instead both have a group of individual denominations with little agreement between them.
I know of not a single denomination that has come out with a statement supporting the War. On the other hand, I know of one denomination who, as an institution, disagrees with the war; the Quakers. In addition, the Presbyterian Church has come out with an official statement against Israel's wall, which to my mind is a statement regarding the War, in that Israel is dealing with the same enemy (Islamofascism) as is the U.S.
On behalf of "American Protestantism" I will say that the war is never discussed in the church I attend. There has never been an attempt by the leaders of my church to justify the war on Biblical grounds. I am affiliated with three other churches, with whom I do business, and whose services I therefore attend on a semi-regular basis. The most that has ever been said about the "War" at any one of those three churches was to pose the vague question,
"How can we have War when the Kingdom of God is supposed to be peaceful?"
There was no attempt to justify the War in the ensuing message. Instead there was merely an attempt to reconcile the fractured emotional/psychological reality of living simultaneously "in the Kingdom" (meaning having the Holy Spirit within so that one is part of God's peaceful Kingdom) and living in a world at War. The message dealt with emotions, not political justification.
One of the four churches I attend is clearly Pacifisit in philosophy. What's more, the missionaries whose work in China I support, are against the War in Iraq, and I believe are against war in general.
George Bush, contrary to popular opinion, has never cited God or scripture to justify the War on Terror.
The closest George Bush did come to citing scripture as a principle in the War on Terror was when he made the statement shortly after 9/11 that, "Those who are not for us are against us." It is my opinion, that it is this statement which is the real "stone in the shoe" for Europeans and others who are in disagreement with American policy.
The statement, to be sure, somewhat vague and threatening. However, it is my opinion that Europeans have focused on this statement as a reason to hate America and demonize George Bush. This is childish behavior on the part of Europeans. Adults judge people by their actions. Children get deluded and entranced by words.
What did George Bush mean by that statement? If you want to understand the meaning, look at America's behavior.
Certainly, the statement has not turned into policy in any extreme sense. France, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, to name but a few are clearly not "for us." Yet, America continues to work with all these coutries in much the same way as pre-9/11.
There is another lesser known statement by Jesus, that goes like this:
"He that is not against us, is for us."
Luke 9:50
If one looks at Geore Bush's/American behavior since 9/11 this seems to be a more accurate description of our policy.
The only area in which American policy has strictly conformed to the "not for us, is against us" maxim is in our dealings with "the terrorists and those who harbor them."
Back to the original point of this post, I do agree with Melanie Phillips that there is anti-Semitism in David Starkey's statement that "vengeance is a wholly acceptable" notion to "Jews." However, I think we've got to give the guy a little credit for at least trying to think.
It would be better is David Starkey actually broke down the different denominations of Judaism and learned what they have to say about War and vengeance. Even better, would be if Starkey understood that "Jews", as a group, actually intend to vote for Kerry by a 73-27% margin. It would also be instructive for David Starkey to know that just as there are many "Jews" who are neo-conservative, there are also a large number of Jews involved in anti-War organizations.
If Starkey would really break down his statement that "In Judaism ... vengeance is a wholly acceptable notion", I believe he would necessarily fall into a Clintonian sputter and begin questioning what the meaning of "is" is.
It is truly impossible to look at any one issue and say, "here is the Jewish position on this issue." If anything, Jews tend to be more liberal, and therefore more on the side of people who dislike Bush.
But what fun would anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism be without conflation?
Bushitler Vs. Kofi Annan
Victor David Hanson has become one of my heroes in the past few years. Here, is
this article from Opinion Journal, he uses his gifts to sum up our current situation in the world:
These are surreal times. Americans in Iraq are beheaded on videotape. Russian children are machine-gunned in their schools. The elderly in Israel continue to be blown apart on buses. No one--whether in Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh, Bali, Tel Aviv or New York--is safe from the Islamic fascist, whose real enemy is modernism and Western-inspired freedom of the individual.
Despite the seemingly disparate geography of these continued attacks, we are always familiar with the similar spooky signature: civilians dismembered by the suicide belt, car bomb, improvised explosive device and executioner's blade. Then follows the characteristically pathetic communiqué or loopy fatwa aired on al-Jazeera, evoking everything from the injustice of the Reconquista to some mythical grievance about Crusaders in the holy shrines. Gender equity in the radical Islamic world is now defined by the expendable female suicide bomber's slaughter of Westerners.
After setting up the situation he then lists six points with which President should have stunned the world with his liberalism over the past three years (Numbering system is mine):
1) In response to such international lawlessness, our global watchdog, the United Nations, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor such mass murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice. And yet under this apparent state of siege, President Bush in his recent address to the U.N. offered not blood and iron--other than an obligatory "the proper response is not to retreat but to prevail"--but Wilsonian idealism, concrete help for the dispossessed, and candor about past sins. The president wished to convey a new multilateralist creed that would have made a John Kerry or Madeleine Albright proud, without the Churchillian "victory at any cost" rhetoric. Good luck.
2) For years, gay-rights activists and relief workers in Africa have complained that the U.S. did not take the lead in combating the world-wide spread of AIDS. President Bush now offers to spearhead the rescue of the world's infected, with $15 billion in American help in hopes that the world's financial powers--perhaps Japan, China and the European Union--might match or trump that commitment.
3) Nongovernmental organizations clamor about the unfairness of world trade that left the former Third World with massive debts run up by crooked dictators and complicit Western profiteers. President Bush now talks not of extending further loans to service their spiraling interest payments, but rather of outright grants to clean the slate and thus offer the impoverished a new start.
4) International women's rights groups vie for the world's attention to stop the shameful international trafficking in women and children, whether as chattel or sexual slaves. The president now pledges to organize enforcement to stop both the smugglers and the predators on the innocent.
5) For a half century, liberals rightly deplored the old realpolitik in the Middle East, as America and Europe supported autocratic right-wing governments on the cynical premises that they at least promised to keep pumping oil and kept out communists. Now President Bush not only renounces such past opportunism, but also confesses that "for too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability." He promises not complacency that ensures continual oppression, but radical changes that lead to freedom.
6) The Taliban and Saddam Hussein were once the United Nations' twin embarrassments, rogue regimes that thumbed their noses at weak U.N. protestations, slaughtered their own, invaded their neighbors, and turned their outlands into terrorist sanctuaries. Now they are gone, despite either U.N. indifference or veritable opposition to their removal. The United States sought not dictators in their place, but consensual government where it had never existed.
But, these six points have not helped Bush on the current world stage:
What was the response to Mr. Bush's new multifaceted vision? He was met with stony silence, followed by about seven seconds of embarrassed applause, capped off by smug sneers in the global media. Why so?
First, the U.N. is not the idealistic postwar organization of our collective Unicef and Unesco nostalgia, the old perpetual force for good that we once associated with hunger relief and peacekeeping. Its membership is instead rife with tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes. Many of them, like Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, have served on the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. The Libyan lunocracy--infamous for its dirty war with Chad and cash bounties to mass murderers--chaired the 2003 session. For Mr. Bush to talk to such folk about the need to spread liberty means removing from power, or indeed jailing, many of the oppressors sitting in his audience.
Second, urging democratic reforms in Palestine, as Mr. Bush also outlined, is antithetical to the very stuff of the U.N., an embarrassing reminder that nearly half of its resolutions in the past half-century have been aimed at punishing tiny democratic Israel at the behest of its larger,more populous--and dictatorial--Arab neighbors. The contemporary U.N., then, has become not only hypocritical, but also a bully that hectors Israel about the West Bank while it gives a pass to a nuclear, billion-person China after swallowing Tibet; wants nothing to do with the two present dangers to world peace, a nuclear North Korea and soon to follow theocratic Iran; and idles while thousands die in the Sudan.
Third, the present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himself a symbol of all that is wrong with the U.N. A multibillion dollar oil-for-food fraud, replete with kickbacks (perhaps involving a company that his own son worked for), grew unchecked on his watch, as a sordid array of Baathist killers, international hustlers and even terrorists milked the national petroleum treasure of Iraq while its own people went hungry. In response, Mr. Annan stonewalls, counting on exemption from the New York press on grounds of his unimpeachable liberal credentials. Meanwhile, he prefers to denigrate the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "illegal," but neither advocates reinstitution of a "legal" Saddam nor offers any concrete help to Iraqis crafting consensual society. Like the U.N. membership itself, he enjoys the freedom, affluence and security of a New York, but never stops to ask why that is so or how it might be extended to others less fortunate.
Bush has become a man of great liberal vision. The world and half of America do not agree. I wonder how it is that they can not see what is right in front of their eyes.
If Bush accomplishes what he has set out to do, then History will side with him. If Bush fails, it will be disastrous for America and, as a result, it will be disastrous for the rest of the world, who are all lined up at the feeding trough of American money, ideas, and inspiration.
Yet, it is clear, that the world is rooting against George Bush and America. And it is clear that half of America is reeling and tottering, as if they had been hit in the head, from the negativity of the rest of the world. This is a very sad state of affairs.'
The only thing that will save us now is, for the half of America who believes in Bush's vision, to shore up their attitude with a good dose of American "rugged individualism". Because it looks like we, for the most part, are going to have to complete the tasks which lie ahead of us alone.
Reuter's Bravely Fights For Freedom Of Speech In The Muslim World
Yes, the headline is sarcastic.
Thanks to Little Green Footballs for making me aware of this article from HonestReporting.com. Apparently, Reuter's Global Managing Editor has admitted that Arab intimidation influences the way his news agency presents stories:
HonestReporting has repeatedly denounced media outlets' categorical refusal to call terrorists 'terrorists' in news reports (see our special report on this topic).
As Islamic terror continues to spread worldwide, one major news outlet decided that enough is enough ― it's time to call terrorism by its name. CanWest, owners of Canada's largest newspaper chain, recently implemented a new editorial policy to use the 'T-word' in reports on brutal terrorist acts and groups.
So when CanWest's National Post published a Reuters report on Sept. 14, they exercised their right to change this Reuters line that whitewashes Palestinian terror:
... the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. (Jeffrey Heller, 9/13 'Sharon Faces Netanyahu Challenge')
to this, more accurate line:
... the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel.
Reuters didn't like the adjustment, and took the unusual step of officially informing CanWest that if it intended to continue this practice, CanWest should remove Reuters' name from the byline. Why? The New York Times reported (emphasis added):
"Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline."
Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations.
"My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he said.
Schlesinger (right) with Reuters' news exec Stephen Jukes, who instructed editors not to call 9/11 'terror,' since 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' [Schlesinger repeated this statement in a recent radio interview with CBC, when he described the 'serious consequences' if certain 'people in the Mideast' were to believe Reuters called such men 'terrorists.']
This is a stunning admission.
In every other news arena, western journalists pride themselves on bravely 'telling it as is,' regardless of their subjects' (potentially hostile) reactions.
Scott Anderson, editor-in-chief of CanWest Publications, said that Reuters' policy 'undermine[s] journalistic principles,' and raised the key question: 'If you're couching language to protect people, are you telling the truth?'
An editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, one of CanWest's newspapers, spells out the issue in black and white:
Terrorism is a technical term. It describes a modus operandi, a tactic. We side with security professionals who define terrorism as the deliberate targeting of civilians in pursuit of a political goal. Those who bombed the nightclub in Bali were terrorists. Suicide bombers who strap explosives to their bodies and blow up people eating in a pizza parlour are terrorists. The men and women who took a school full of hostages in Beslan, Russia, and shot some of the children in the back as they tried to flee to safety were terrorists. We as journalists do not violate our impartiality by describing them as such.
Ironically, it is supposedly neutral terms like 'militant' that betray a bias, insofar as they have a sanitizing effect. Activists for various political causes can be 'militant,' but they don't take children hostage.
* * *
The CanWest/Reuters affair is remarkably similar to CNN's Iraqi cover-up from last year, when CNN's top news executive admitted that CNN's knowledge of murder, torture, and planned assassinations in Saddam's Iraq was suppressed in order to maintain CNN's Baghdad bureau.
I Always Thought Jimmy Swaggart Was Kind Of Cute
From SFGate.com:
09-22) 12:45 PDT BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) --
Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart apologized Wednesday for saying in a televised worship service that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically.
A complaint was filed with a Canadian broadcasting group, and Swaggart said his Baton Rouge-based Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has received complaints from gay groups over the remarks made on the Sept. 12 telecast.
In the broadcast, Swaggart was discussing his opposition to gay marriage when he said "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry."
"And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died," Swaggart said to laughter and applause from the congregation.
On Wednesday, Swaggart said he has jokingly used the expression "killing someone and telling God he died" thousands of times, about all sorts of people. He said the expression is figurative and not meant to harm.
"It's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything. You can't lie to God -- it's ridiculous," Swaggart told The Associated Press. "If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology."
I actually kind of believe Swaggart's explanation. However, I must say I'm getting really tired of this stuff.
We Christians have got to stop tolerating this kind of "humor" from our brothers and sisters.
Israel Must Be Wiped Off The Map
We Will Crush America Under Our Feet
One thing that has come to amaze me about the world's media is how often they run a story which is important in some sense, but which contains an even more important point which they mention, but do not at all highlight. In
this story, about how Israel might deal with Iran's emerging nuclear capability (500 pound bunker buster bombs anybody?), we have this little gem:
Western diplomats believe that America, or Israel, could resort to air strikes against nuclear facilities. Israel's bombing of Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Iraq's nuclear programme, is held up as a model of "pre-emptive action".
Iran has placed some of its facilities, such as the large Natanz enrichment plant, in protected underground sites. Teheran has vowed to retaliate against any attack, and at one point said it might launch pre-emptive strikes if it felt threatened.
Seeking to underline the point, Iran showed off its ballistic missiles at an annual military parade in Teheran near the mausoleum of Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. A banner proclaiming "Israel must be wiped off the map" was draped on the side of a 450-mile Shahab-2 missile. Another saying "We will crush America under our feet" graced a trailer carrying a 930-mile Shahab-3 missile.
Note the lack of of a qualifying "if" in these proclamations. Iran does not say they will "crush America" if we do something particularly egregious to Iran. Apparently, we have already passed the point of no return.
This is called a death threat, my friends.
One of the lessons of World War II is we need to listen to our enemies when they tell us they are going to kill us. Hitler made his intentions very clear years before he set out to turn them into reality.
I have heard it said, on numerous occasions, that we should not take such threats seriously because they are simply examples of Arab bombast. I believe this to be an objection which is, simultaneously, naiive and racist. Naiive because, clearly in the case of Iran, the leaders of the country have been standing in front of crowds shouting "death to America" for 25 years now.
However, it is the racism, inherent in refusing to take the words of entire people seriously, that is particularly offensive.
If you do not take a person's words seriously it means that you do not truly believe in their validity or volitional ability as a human being. In other words, you do not truly believe they are capable of representing their beliefs and feelings, and you do not believe that they have the will to turn their beliefs into reality. In the micro-world, we only take children and insane people with so little seriousness.
Now clearly, Iran, at this point, does not have the ability to "crush America" under it's feet. Such a feat would require weapons of Mass Destruction. But, that's what this Telegraph article is about, isn't it?
1) Iran is in the process of setting up systems which are capable of producing nuclear weapons.
2) Iran is parading missiles which are capable of delivering those weapons to American and Israeli targets.
3) Iran is proclaiming that they will destroy Israel and America.
What else do we need to understand?
We need to cease this racist notion that Arabs are incapable of articulating and accomplishing their goals. We need to take their words and deeds very seriously.
The Accidental Metaphorist
IraqWarWrong, over at The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog, gives an accurate, if
metaphorical, description of the Kerry campaign thus far:
So I sit down as I do every nite to watch my TIVO of Letterman and Kilborn(the BEST). Turns out Letterman had JON KERRY(yes, that Jon Kerry) on tonight.
And what! My TV picks tonite of all tonites to have the sound crap out! So I'm stuck watching with no sounds.
But relly it's still pretty good(I can tell).It looks like Kerry is talking about serious Policy. (Policy issues). I like what he's doing with his Hands. They are parallel (to eadch other), perpendicular (to the ground), move up and down slightly (like he's grasping a small tree trunk(young spruce, something like that) ready to shinny up). Both thumbs up extended(slightly). They (the hands) move up and down (in unison - coordinated) to punctuate some Point he wants to Emphasize (I assume.)
Good, serious statesmanship there.
It's literal demonstration of how he has a good Grasp of the Issues.Wait now he's started counting something off. Left hand counting something off (bullet points?) on fingers of right hand. I wonder what that is (Probably all the ways in which the W of W. stands for wrong i.e. enumerating Wrongnesses (at least, the top 5).
His fingers look very long Anyone else notice this?
I know IraqWarWrong is a
serious Kerry supporter and all,
and I know IraqWarWrong appears to be of too pure a heart to create anything as duplicitous and conspiratorial as a metaphor,
but dang, that's some funny stuff.
Center For Freedom In The Middle East
Thanks to Jihad Watch for making me aware of this announcement from the
Center For Freedom In The Middle East. Jihad Watch posts this as a "important announcement from Walid Phares." I've read Walid Phare and this does not sound like his writing. Maybe they meant to say that Walid Phares referrered the announcement over to them.
Whatever the case, this is very good news:
Why a Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy?
Writing to the President of the United States and the US Congress, we relayed a common position reached by a number of Mideast-American leaders and organizations about a historic event to be organized by the largest and most diversed coalition of Mideast Americans ever formed in America.
Over the past few months, intense discussions and many meetings were held by a large number of Mideast-Americans from all religious, ethnic, cultural and social background to assess US position in the Middle East and towards Americans from Mideast descent at home.
American organizations and groups from Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian, Sudanese, Iranian and other Arab and Mideast backgrounds, met and evaluated the War on Terrorism, the liberation of Afghanistan, the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein, as well as important actions towards the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the genocide in Sudan, Iran's democracy movement as well as the issues of women, freedoms and education in the broader Middle East.
It is becoming a reality in the United States that most Mideastern-Americans believe in the following facts:
1) Numbers: There are about 4 million Americans from Mideast ancestry. They encompass many ethnicities such as: Arab, ChaldoAssyrians, Lebanese, Persian, Kurds, Sudanese Africans, Copts, Berbers, Turkic, Aramaic, and others. They also belong to many religions and faiths including: Sunnis, Shiites, Maronites, Nestorian, Druze, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Melkite, Bahais, Zoroaistrans, Jews, etc.
2) Issues: The overwhelming majority of this diverse Mideast-American community loves its country, the United States and stands firmly in support of National Security, Democracy and Pluralism. It is true that Wahabism and other anti-American ideologies are prevalent among a number of immigrants and visiting students from Mideast descent. But the majority, mostly silent, of all Mideast and Arab Americans, not only is opposed to these radical doctrines, but strongly supports the US Government policies on the Middle East and on Terrorism:
a. War on Terror: Overwhelmingly Mideast and Arab Americans are against al Qaida and support the US against Terrorism.
b. War in Iraq: Most Mideast and Arab Americans opposed Saddam and endorsed his removal.
c. Homeland Security: Most Mideast and Arab Americans stand by their Government, nation and support the principles of the Patriot Act. d. Human Rights: A very large manjority of Mideast Americans endorses the promotion of Democracy and the rule of Law in their mother countries. They support freedom for civil societies and increasing rights to women, minorities as well as religious and political tolerance.
Therefore, and after they've noticed how the critics have been trying to undermine the Mideast initiatives triggered by the United States, both overseas and at home, the leaders of most Mideast organizations in America have decided to express their support to the vision and the actions by the US Government in public. They have organized a major national event in Washington, DC to tell the world and the American people, on whose side they are. They want to express their gratitude to the President of the United States, to his Administration and to the US Congress for standing by Freedom in the Middle East.
The leaders of the organizations have formed a coalition and are now working on a Mideast American Convention to be held in Washington on Friday, October 1, 2004 at the Wardman Park Marriott. Speakers will express these views at a forum as well as during the dinner.
If you click on
this link you can see who is involved in the event. And George Bush is the Guest Of Honor.
Yes, this is great news. Possibly some of the best news to have come out since the beginning of the War On Terror.
How Deep Is Your Love?
Down, down the rabbit hole. Thanks to Roger Simon for making me aware of
this, from Fox News:
NEW YORK — It began as a U.N. humanitarian aid program called "Oil-for-Food," but it ended up with Saddam Hussein (search) pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating machine ever and enriching some of America's most forceful opponents at the United Nations (search).
Plus, some evidence suggests that some of the money ended up in the hands of potential terrorists who are opposed to the United States.
The roots of the scandal date back to 1991, when a U.N.-backed and U.S.-led coalition expelled Saddam from Kuwait following his hostile takeover of the neighboring country. Although Saddam lost the war, he walked away with one important victory -- he got to stay in power in Iraq.
Thirteen years later, a second U.S.-led coalition made of a smaller group of nations than the first effort finally knocked Saddam out of business. And it did so without the help of the United Nations, which failed to pass a resolution backing the U.S. effort.
As the death toll rises in Iraq -- the number of U.S. military casualties is now above 1,000 and Iraqi citizens continue to die daily from insurgent attacks -- the question arises: Can the United Nations help now?
A new FOX News poll finds that 54 percent of the U.S. public believes the United Nations does not reflect the values of average Americans. Only 29 percent say that U.N. policies reflect said values.
“I believe the U.N., parts of it, have been corrupt for years. But this went to a whole new level,” said Rep. Christopher Shays (search), R-Conn., chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.
But why did these countries really object to a second U.S.-led war against Iraq?
Some evidence suggests that those countries that said they were opposing the Bush administration on principle were actually making billions from Oil-for-Food.
“I think clearly, American blood is in the hands of a number of European countries, who could have put pressure on Saddam, who could've looked him in the eye and said, ‘the United States is coming in,'" Shays said. “And to me, some of the explanation clearly has to be the Oil-for-Food program.”
Shays added that there is a chance some of the insurgents now operating against the United States and the new Iraqi government are using Oil-for-Food money in their terror campaign.
“I think it's not only possible that insurgents are using Oil-for-Food money -- I think it's very likely,” Shays said.
One casualty was Ihasan Karim (search), the Iraqi official heading an inquiry into the Oil-for-Food program. On July 1, a bomb placed under his car exploded in Baghdad, killing him, and U.S. officials in Iraq told FOX News that they believe Oil-for-Food was the motive in the assassination. That wouldn't surprise Shays.
“I don’t know who murdered him. But I can tell you this: There are a lot of people who don't want this story to come out,” Shays said.
Shays places part of the blame on people inside the United Nations, even though U.N. officials authorized an independent investigation into the scandal.
“They’re doing this investigation, but only after they were outed by an Iraqi free press, and a government leak from the Iraqi governing council,” Shays said.
Shays said the man heading up the probe, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker (search), has a tough job ahead.
Dumb 'murikin here again. So wait a minute here now, yur sayin' that them Frenchies, and the Krauts, and that gosh durn Osama bin Whatsapaloozi, and that Sodom Hussane, and the damn UN was all colludin' against us?
Boy, I'll tell you, who woulda thunk it?
Repeat With Me
France Is Our Friend - France Is Our Friend - France Is Our Friend
From
The London Telegraph:
The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.
The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo".
His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.
Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.
See, the problem with them Frenchies being so full of nuance and all is that we 'murikins just ain't smart enough to keep up with them and their fancypantsin'.
Dad gurnit, who woulda thunk of that one; an Eyetalian distributin' fony Nigerian documents? Jesus H. Christ!
Besides, I thought we wasn't supposed to use that Nigerian word anymore.
Hell? Yes! But War? Hell No!
John Kerry was out displaying his fine gift for nuance again today:
NEW YORK (AP) - Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush of “stubborn incompetence,” dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment.
“Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell,” he added. “But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war.
So, John Kerry would send the man to hell, but he would not make war on him. He would rather the Iraqi people continue to live in Saddam's earthly hell before old age dispatches Saddam to "his own special place in hell."
Or something like that.
The Fourth Branch Of Government And The New Media War
Roger Simon
makes a good point:
According to the NYT, CBS is about to announce they were "misled" on the National Guard memos. It's worth noting that CBS is not even sure they want to acknowledge their mistake:
But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night.
... the Times calls it sources CBS News "officials," as if they were some governmental agency, not business "executives," which they are. Doesn't that say it all?
Yeah, I think that does say it all. It has become increasingly obvious since the leadup to the Iraq War that much of the American Media is attempting to enforce a totalitarian state wherein they
1) write the laws dictating the parameters of words and ideas,
2) control the borders of information and the transportation of information across those borders, and
3) act as judge and jury in addition to carrying out the executions of the character of people who transgress against their unwritten laws.
This is why the rise of bloggers is such an important victory for Democracy. The Media has attempted to hijack our governmental system by controlling the flow of ideas and information. Bloggers, thanks to the miracle of the internet, have been able to subvert this coup by attacking the Media in much the same way the terrorists attack the United States; that is through the priniciples of asymetrical warfare. The Media have the money and the guided weapons systems, hell they may even be hiding some weapons of mass destruction, but they can not stop the lone pajama-clad blogger tapping away in the middle of the night.
However, I must make it clear, that while we bloggers are on the diminutive side of this asymmetrical war it is the media the Media who are clearly on the terrorist side. They are the ones who are taking over schools and stringing their explosives up behind lecterns and onto basketball hoops. All you have to do is look at Dan Rather to know that he is wearing a suicide bomb belt. And it's about to go off any minute now.
No, bloggers can not be the terrorists because we exist in a capitalist democractic system, not by choice but by virtue of the very medium of blogging. That is to say, no blogger exists for himself. He exists for the blogosphere at large. Bloggers live to get their ideas out into the blogosphere so they can prompt a discussion. There is no greater thrill for a blogger than to have one of his posts linked to in the post of another blogger. This carrot trumps all. When a bloggers ideas are linked to, that means they are being discussed. And if they are being discussed, that means they are being dissected. And if they are being dissected, they, by virtue (once again) of the nature of the medium of blogger, will be refined.
Bad ideas do not have a long shelf life on the grander scale of the blogosphere. Just as in the free market system the more efficient and less expensive products will ultimately win out, in the free market of the blogosphere it is the more efficient and less costly idea which will triumph.
This is not to say that there are not a lot of bad ideas running through the blogosphere. There are plenty. Infact, I think most bloggers would declare, right along with me, the portion of the unwritten motto of blogging which says,
"There are probably a lot of bad ideas of my very own blog."
But this Media war is a Darwinian war. Natural selection will win in the end.
Uh, What Did You Say Khomeini Did To His Leftist Revolutionary Allies?
Very interesting
analysis from Nelson Ascher at Europundits:
The Jewish and Christians Gnostics, the Bogomils, Cathars, the Middle Age millenarians in general etc. were all deeply dualistic.
According to Norman Cohn, in his brilliant “Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come”, the root of all this is to be found in Zoroastrian Persia. Probably the early, pre-exilic Judaism was neither dualistic nor apocalyptic. It was during their Mesopotamian exile, when the Babylonians were defeated by the Persians, that the Jews came under the influence of those ideas and incorporated part of them in some of their sects from where they were passed on to Christianity and Islam.
The influence of dualism on both of the Western World’s greatest and most widespread religions (Christianity and Islam) was enhanced by their contacts with other, independent or semi-independent, religious movements, such as Manichaeism whose founder, by the way, was also a Persian.Thus, Western religions came to be marked in a more important way than those of the rest of the world by the notion of this cosmic fight between two opposite principles, whatever we call them. And so, it wouldn’t altogether be an exaggeration to state that Christianity and Islam are religions composed of two, not necessarily identical, halves: a theology and a demonology.
This may help us explain how two so apparently opposite groups as the most secularized people in the West and the most religious people in the Middle East have been able to find so much common ground. In principle, an alliance between the Western Left and Muslim fundamentalism would seem absurd or, at best, a tactical move, wouldn’t it? But it is not only tactical: they actually agree in many important ways.
To understand this, first we have to try and see through the image the Western secularists make of themselves. They think they have outgrown and discarded religion. They don’t think of themselves as religious, but rather as post-religious people. But they are not. And I’m not talking here about their attachment to what are sometimes called “secular religions” (communism, Nazism etc.).
What I’m saying is that they, though unaware of this, are still, in a certain way, conventionally religious. Actually, they’ve discarded only half of religion, its theology, but kept more or less intact the other half, its demonology. The demonology of the secular Left and that of radical Islam, despite many terminological differences, coincide, if just for the time being. The leftists do not believe in God, but they doubtlessly believe in the Devil or Devils and their Devils happen to be Khomeini’s Satans, both the big and the little one.
What makes the secular western Left so naïve is the fact that its members truly believe that a common demonology is more than enough to cement a long term alliance. It is not. To be wholly accepted by the fundamentalist (and, likely, the other) Muslims, you have to share both their demonology and their theology. If you don’t accept the latter, you’ll eventually become part of the first. Or, to translate it into more political terms, while the leftists have allied themselves strategically with the radical Islamists, these have only allied themselves tactically with them. Interestingly, the results of such an incongruent alliance could have already been clearly seen (where else?) in Iran, that is, Persia, when Khomeini himself, after being helped in his revolution by secular leftists, turned against them and exterminated them as soon as he got hold of power.
In short, there has been a pact made with the devil, but it wasn’t the secular Left that made it, but the radical Islamists. When the secular leftists discover that, in the eyes of their soon-to-be former allies, they are devils too, I wouldn’t like to be in their skins.
Uh, we don't believe in demons.
Sometimes You Just Gotta Love Your Enemies
Thanks to WorldNetDaily for making me aware of this:
Twice in three days, Palestinian television has shown religious leaders calling for the mass killing of Jews.
Both clerics said such a slaughter is a necessary stage in history and must be carried out quickly, reported PalestinianMediaWatch. Each cited the same Hadith, Islamic tradition attributed to Muhammad.
Palestinian leaders traditionally have taught that the following Hadith applies today:
The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. And the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!
Says Palestinian Media Watch: "This teaching may well be a dominant motivating factor that drives terror against Israeli civilians, because it presents the killing of Jews as a religious obligation, not related to the conflict over borders, but as something inherent to Allah's world."
Sheik Ibrahim Madiras' sermon of last Friday was broadcast the same day on PA TV.
Madiras declared, "The Prophet said: The Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews, rejoice [in it], rejoice in Allah's Victory. The Muslims will kill the Jews, and he will hide.
"The Prophet said: The Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him! Why is there this malice? Because there are none who love the Jews on the face of the earth: not man, not rock and not tree; everything hates them. They destroy everything – they destroy the trees and destroy the houses. Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth, and the day of our victory, Allah willing, will come."
Two days later, on Sept. 12, Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Maadi made the following comment on his weekly television show:
"We are waging this cruel war with the brothers of the monkeys and pigs, the Jews and the sons of Zion. The Jews will fight you and you will subjugate them. Until the Jew will stand behind the tree and rock. And the tree and rock will say: oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!"
The reference to monkeys and pigs is from a story in the Quran that claims Jews were cursed by Allah and turned into monkeys and pigs.
You just gotta love you enemies when they tell the truth. So, I want to express my deep sense of gratitude to both Ibrahim and Muhammed for letting us in on your plans.
Bushitler
Click
here to view the Bushitler commercial.
Sure Farenheit 9/11 Was A Hit In America
But Will It Play In Persia?
Answer?
No:
TEHRAN (AFP) - Cinemagoers in the Iranian capital were given their first glimpse of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' this week, but appeared to enjoy more the rare chance to watch an American movie than its assault on their regime's arch foe George W. Bush.
Michael Moore's Bush-bashing polemic may have cruised through Iran's unforgiving censors thanks to its indictment of US policy, but the premiere of the film also had the side effect of making some viewers relate the same questioning to their own state of affairs.
"The authorities obviously gave the film the green light for political reasons, in that anything against the United States must be good," quipped one of the hundreds of mainly young people who flocked to Tuesday night's opening screening.
The prize-winning documentary has been allowed out on release here to coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States -- which kicked off a chain of events that has seen Iran surrounded by US troops and lumped into an "axis of evil".
"They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour," said Hirad Harandian, another cinemagoer at the uptown Farhang cinema.
The hall is one of only two cinemas in the country to be screening 'Fahrenheit 9/11'.
On Tuesday night the film was sold out and the theatre packed with close to 380 people, most of them young. Many admitted they were just out to watch an American film, and not that one in particular.
"I love to see foreign films on the big screen, and I never miss Farhang cinema shows no matter what is on," said Sima Gharavi, a 24-year-old dressed in a short bright blue coat rather than the more conservative all-black attire.
But she hastened to complain that "out of all the films people would love to see, the authorities had to go for this one -- just because this film is in line with the view of the Islamic regime."
And despite sporadic laughs here and there, most of Moore's sardonic humour appeared to fall flat. The end of the film was also greeted with some half-hearted clapping.
"It was just too political. I was bored from the middle, and I wished we had gone to see "Kill Bill" instead," said one young man, referring to the trendy Quentin Tarantino flick also being shown.
But those of the older generation appeared to relate well to the film, which succeeded in sparking some vigorous after-show chatter.
"I saw it as an Iranian who has also lived in America," said Kourosh Amini, a man in his 50s.
"It perfectly depicted the realities of American life, and they have to learn what war really looks like."
And even though his twenty-something son quipped in to say he was "disappointed" by the film and asserted "politics is not as important" for Iran's younger generation, he did envy Moore's position.
"It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it -- and makes so much money!" he laughed.
That kid hit the nail right on the head and I couldn't agree with him more. I'm glad a guy like Michael Moore can become fabulously wealthy in our country.
And, by the way, think about this: The Iranian government cleared the movie for an opening coinciding with the third anniversary of September 11th. Do you think that means the government of Iran supports September 11th?
We Gather From Rather's Blather That
They Can't Recant?
Back on Sept. 9th I wrote a couple of postings about the success of bloggers in uncovering the hoaxed memos CBS used in it's story about Bush's preferential treatment while in the National Guard. Today is Sept. 18th and CBS has yet to recant their story. That the documents are faked is not a matter of opinion. It is empirical reality. The memos were typed with a modern day word processing program, in Times New Roman, with proportionally-spaced fonts.
So the question is, why does CBS refuse to recant?
Thanks to LittleGreenFootballs for making me aware of
this possible explanation, proposed by Mark Steyn:
... Dan (Rather) keeps demanding Bush respond to the ''serious questions'' raised by his fake memos. ''With respect, Mr. President,'' he droned the other day, ''answer the questions.'' The president would love to, but he's doubled up with laughter.
I was prepared to cut the poor old buffoon some slack a week ago. But Dan's performance has grown progressively more outrageous, to the point where it's hard not to conclude he's colluding in the perpetuation of a massive if ludicrous fraud.
So the question now is why won't Dan and Co. just admit their docs are crocks and let it go? On Wednesday, CBS News head honcho Andrew Heyward, in a slippery statement, announced that ''we established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate.'' Note that word: not ''genuine'' but ''accurate''. Rather and Heyward are adopting the rogue-cop defense: The evidence is planted, but the guy's still guilty. Or as the New York Times' headline put it: ''Memos On Bush Are Fake But Accurate.''
Why has CBS News decided it would rather debauch its brand and treat its audience like morons than simply admit their hoax? For Dan Rather? I doubt it. Hurricane Dan looks like he's been hit by one. He's still standing, just about, but, like a battered double-wide, more and more panels are falling off every day. No one would destroy three-quarters of a century of audience trust and goodwill for one shattered anachronism of an anchorman, would they?
As the network put it last week, ''In accordance with longstanding journalistic ethics, CBS News is not prepared to reveal its confidential sources or the method by which '60 Minutes' Wednesday received the documents.'' But, once they admit the documents are fake, they can no longer claim ''journalistic ethics'' as an excuse to protect their source. There's no legal or First Amendment protection afforded to a man who peddles a fraud. You'd think CBS would be mad as hell to find whoever it was who stitched them up and made them look idiots.
So why aren't they? The only reasonable conclusion is that the source -- or trail of sources -- is even more incriminating than the fake documents.
For Some Reason The Jihadi Monsters Are Not Cooperating With France
Thanks to Eursoc and No Pasaran for making me aware of
this:
The group allegedly behind the kidnap of two French journalists has released a statement describing France as an "enemy of Muslims."
The Islamic Army of Iraq (whatever) says that France's role in Algeria, its controversial headscarf ban, its insistence on locking up Muslim terrorists and, most bizarrely, its support for Israel were just part of a litany of complaints against Paris.
The list also criticised France for not supporting the war in Iraq because its opposition was not based on the welfare of Iraqis but on French interests.
"France's history with Muslims is a black one, blemished by hatred and malice and blood. Its modern history is no less so that in the past," it concluded, urging all Muslims to rise up against enemies like France.
The IAI has been holding two kidnapped French journalists for almost a month. The group initially demanded that France reverse its law banning Islamic headscarves in school and forced the journalists to plead with Paris to change the law to save their lives. France pressed ahead with the law but its diplomatic missions in the Middle East went into overdrive to secure the pair's release.
Earlier this month their release was thought to be imminent. However, nothing has been heard from the journalists or the kidnappers up to yesterday's statement.
France's foreign ministry is said to be examining the report.
Jeez, France can't buy a break. I don't understand it, those Jihadi's seem like such reasonable people. Surely, they would want to negotiate.
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Pays Money For Jewish Blood
Thanks to Michelle Malkin for making me aware of
this from Arutz Sheve:
Confirmed: Arafat Paid Father of Dolphinarium Terrorist 18:18 Sep 14, '04 / 28 Elul 5764
(IsraelNN.com) Recently released documents captured during Operation Defensive Shield confirm that the family of the suicide bomber who attacked the beach front Dolphinarium dance club in Tel Aviv was awarded $2000 by Yasser Arafat. Arafat also sent the terrorist’s father a letter in which he praised his son’s murderous act.
The attack on the Dolphinarium was one of the most brutal massacres of the entire Oslo War, killing 21 people, mostly teens, on a Friday night in August 2001.
As Michelle notes, Arafat is a Nobel Peace Prize Winner.
The world has turned upside down.
"My Father's House is a House of Prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves."
- Yeshua
Scummy Right-Wingers
Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters sniffs out a right-wing hoax. Here's
the original AP news report:
Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father after having her Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio.
But that's not what really happened. Here's the real scoop from Captain's Quarters:
Bandit sent this over to me, rightfully disgusted about anyone who would attack a three-year-old over a political sign she held. I completely agree. I also think that her father is an idiot for putting his daughter in that situation.
UPDATE: Did I say her father was an idiot? Make that a serially dishonest idiot. Rising Hegemon calls Shenanigans and has the proof:
Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, August 27, 1996, Page 3C
Phil Parlock's experience was less calm.
The Huntington man said he was knocked to the ground by a Clinton supporter when he tried to display a sign that read "Remember Vince Foster," the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in a Washington, D.C., park. His death has become the subject of much debate among Clinton opponents.
Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, October 28, 2000, pg. 1A:
Phil Parlock didn't expect to need all 12 of the Bush-Cheney signs he and his son Louis smuggled in their socks and pockets into the rally for Vice President Al Gore.
But each time they raised a sign, someone would grab it out of their hands, the two Huntington residents said. And sometimes it got physical.
"I expected some people to take our signs," said Louis, 12. "But I did not expect people to practically attack us."
Maybe the Parlocks just have a lot of bad luck, or perhaps all Democrats become rabid when the Purlocks come into view. The problem, as Attaturk notes, is determining who's a Democrat and who's a Purlock.
Go
here to view the photos. You will see that the guy who ripped the Bush/Cheney sticker from the hands of the three year old is one of Parlock's sons.
The Parlocks are scummy people. I believe I can safely say, they are what we Christian people would call "a-holes."
But I'll bet ya James Carville admires them.
Mr. Parlock, we don't need you, or your scummy families' help, thank you very much.
Shame On You President Bush - Shame - Shame
Vladimir Putin is
angry with the West, and with good reason:
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) accused the West of indulging terrorists on Friday, just hours after a Chechen warlord claimed responsibility for a wave of deadly attacks in Russia and threatened more.
"A patronising and indulgent attitude to the murderers amounts to complicity in terror," Putin said, widening a rift between Russia and the West over how to deal with Chechen rebel violence.
Shortly before, Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev said he had ordered the Beslan school siege in southern Russia in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, and threatened more attacks by any means he saw fit.
"We have long warned about the threat of terrorist attacks, but our voice has not been heard," Putin told an international meeting of city mayors.
"Moreover, we faced double standards in the attitude toward terrorism," he said, repeating charges the West has been two-faced by giving asylum to top Chechens and urging Moscow to negotiate with rebel leaders but rejecting the possibility of dialogue with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
He said calls to deal with Chechen separatists recalled the failed appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War II.
"I urge you to remember the lessons of history, the amicable deal (with Adolf Hitler) in Munich in 1938 ... Of course, the scale of consequences is different ... But the situation is very similar. Any surrender leads to them widening their demands and makes losses worse."
His comments are certain to fuel the mounting tension with a West critical of Putin's policy on Chechnya (news - web sites) and which has warned that his recent response to terror attacks -- by handing more power to the Kremlin -- threatens Russia's brittle democracy.
Putin said Russia was also preparing to carry out its threat to launch pre-emptive strikes on "terrorist bases" anywhere in the world.
"Now in Russia we are seriously preparing to take preventative measures against terrorists," he said without giving any further details.
It is truly a shame that Europe and America have not recognized the fact that Russia is dealing with the same Jihadi monsters with whom we are dealing. What happened to Russia with the Beslan Massacre is, in some ways, worse than 911. Vladimir Putin has to be allowed, and even encouraged, to fight the Jihadi Monsters with whatever he has at his disposal ...
short of WMD's.
Aha, you thought you had me there.
Churchill On Islam
Winston Churchill almost singlehandedly woke Europe out of it's Hitler-appeasing slumber in the leadup to World War II. Therefore we should take the words of Winston Churchill very seriously. Here's what Churchill had to say about Islam:
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men."
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
I would qualify this by noting that Islam is one of the World's Great Religions and is the faith of millions of peaceful people around the world. As such, Islam deserves respect. However, Islamism (radical Islamists, the supporters of violent Jihad) is evil. It is regretful that Churchill did not make this distinction. However, I believe it is valuable to know what Churchill thought of Islam relative to the Nazi menace. Note his statement, "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."
Churchill, who foresaw the Nazi menace, also believed that Islam, as an ideology, paralyzed civilizations.
A Wake Up Call To Jews
From FrontPageMag.com, Aisha Suddiqa Qureshi writes:
Dear Jews, everywhere, I would like to point out the time bomb likely to explode in your faces. It has already been detonated in France. When it happens in the country you call home, you may be shocked and unprepared, so I present this letter to you as a warning. In it, I will inform you of some basic facts – facts that can never be changed.
1. You are a Jew, whether you like it or not.
It doesn't matter if you change your name. It doesn't matter if you convert. You say you don't think of yourself as Jewish? Perhaps Judaism is just too far beneath your enlightened consciousness. Well tough luck – it's still a part of who you are. I know, I know, this is the modern world.
In America, Jews are first class citizens. But it really is "only in America" where Jews enjoy equal status. Perhaps you have forgotten that with the exception of the United States and Israel, Jews in all other countries suffer the stigma of the outsider. Granted that your personal future looks bright since you overcame your ancestry, however, you mistakenly believe that you are a member of the elite club of secular society.
But, have you ever heard of the Holocaust? A little over 60 years ago, the discovery of one Jewish grandparent in one's family tree was enough to mark that person for the slaughter. That means that Jews living the high life in denial were plucked from their exalted status and plunged into the concentration camps and worse. And in the centuries and decades prior to the Holocaust, was life more secure? At certain periods, indeed it was – or so it seemed – and then, the inevitable fall from grace.
You have become used to being accepted. But, if you forget the stories of your ancestors, you are sure to see them come true in your own lives. Please believe me. Being a Muslim, living under the dark shadows of Islamism, I see, watch and experience every day the reach and depth of anti-Semitism that has taken hostage a whole people. There cannot be a better person than a Muslim to warn you of your misguided sense of liberalism; I live in an environment that is so carefully and skillfully prepared to annihilate Jews.
Note the rising anti-Semitism in Europe and in certain sectors of American society (college campuses, the media, the Presbyterian Church etc.) Just a few weeks ago, 200 French Jews immigrated to Israel, fed up with the rampant persecution by "Muslim toughs," as former New York City Mayor, Edward I. Koch puts it. The country which has pledged "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" since the 1800s once again turned its back on the Jews. "Never again" is the oath the Jewish people have collectively sworn since the horrors of World War II. All freedom loving peoples of the world must actively participate in securing Jewish future to guarantee that this oath holds true. Jews truly are the chosen people – when things in the world go sour, Jews are chosen to pay the penalty.
2. The world has hated and will always hate Jews for one reason.
Over the summer a friend of mine attended a lecture in Israel given by Rabbi Eric Coopersmith of Aish Ha Torah, entitled "Why the Jews?" He told me that Rabbi Eric disproved the common misconceptions of why the Jews are always picked on and got to the truth of the matter. It isn't because the Jews supposedly control the world and all the money in it (you don't), or because you killed Jesus (you didn't), or because you just happen to always be the scapegoat. I agree with Rabbi Coopersmith who pointed out that you can only scapegoat a group of people you were already willing to hate. His humorous example was that the Nazis couldn't scapegoat midgets and it's true – it would never work. Whether they realize it or not, people are and have always been willing to hate the Jews for one simple reason: they gave the world the concept of an objective right and wrong.
When the first seeds of Judaism were planted in Abraham, his descendents were required to teach humanity about conscience and morality. In a time of universal barbarism and cruelty, the ancient Hebrews were the first to adopt for themselves the six values essential for civilized existence: the sanctity of life, education, family, social responsibility, equality before the law, and peace (Source: WorldPerfect by Ken Spiro). In my view, the ancient world couldn't forgive you for it and neither could Hitler. In his writings, Hitler clearly said that he is a barbarian who wants to express his primal instincts and Judaism says he can't. For him, not only is the concept of conscience "a Jewish invention; it is a blemish, like circumcision." The infamous Hitler Youth even sang a song with these lyrics:
_We are the joyous Hitler Youth; _We have no need for Christian virtue._Our leader is our savior;_The pope and rabbi shall be gone._We shall be pagans once again.
Hitler also told his people that Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a false vision known as conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and personal independence which only a very few can bear.(Visit http://www.aish.com/seminars/whythejews/wtj01000.htm for the full seminar.)
I know, from having read way too much Nietzche in my lifetime, that this is true of Hitler. The German Romanticism that was developed in the 19th century, by people like Nietzche and Richard Wagner, was the inspiration behind Hitlers philosophy.
Many people think that Germany is a "Christian nation" and I have often heard people say things like, "look what the Christians did to the Jews in Germany." To this day, many Jews assert the same idea. As you can see, that is simply not the case.
There's more. Go read the whole article.
Holocaust Denial On Egyptian Television
Politicians and journalists shed their grace while discussing the merits of an article denying the Holocaust on Egyptian television. Thanks to FrontPageMag for making me aware of
this translation from Memri.org:
Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, president of Jaffa Research Center in Cairo: "This article was scientific research, which relied on many European and American sources concerning this lie, one of the lies upon which the State of Israel was establish - the lie about the burning of the Jews in the Nazis' ovens. The original intention of the article, its main aim and philosophy, was not to go into this issue in depth, but rather to use it in order to highlight the current Holocaust that we are experiencing in Palestine and which does not cause the West the same pain that it feels about an event that was, at the very least, falsified or exaggerated."
Sayyd Ali, host: "Or whose truth is in doubt…"
Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad: "Or whose truth has been in doubt for sixty years, while today a true Holocaust is occurring from Rafah to Jenin, Nablus, Baghdad, and Nafaj. This is the Holocaust that our nation and our region is experiencing today, and the West does not pay attention to it and doesn't feel the same level of pain that it feels concerning the old Holocaust. When this article was published, the Zionist MEMRI organization in America and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is also Zionist, translated the article and then disseminated it and sent letters to the American Congress, to the American Embassy in Cairo and to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, and other places."
On the Phone - Muhammad Al-Zurqani, former editor-in-chief of Al-Liwaa Al-Islami: "I agree with what Dr. Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad wrote and I accept full responsibility. I think, Dr. Sayyed, that you and I are of the same generation, colleagues who worked together. We were educated from childhood that the Holocaust is a big lie."
Sayyd Ali:"Of course."
Abd Al-Qader Yassin, Palestinian politician: "The 'Chosen People'… The Jews borrowed from Nazism all of its concepts - that they are exceptional and that they are the best among the nations, exactly as Hitler thought of the Aryan people.
Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad: "In WWII, 18 million Germans were killed. Out of those 18 million, the million and a half Jews they keep talking about - if they were killed, and I am only saying for the sake of argument that one and a half million were killed in this Holocaust - they were killed as a result of the war, and were not killed by the…
Abd Al-Qader Yassin: "The Holocaust was carried out with the agreement of the Zionist and the German leaderships. There was a very well-known agreement between the leadership of the World Zionist Organization and Hitler. But there is doubt as to the truth of this story. The Transfer [Agreement]. There is also a book by Farris Glubb, the son of the Irishman John Bagot Glubb, ' The Star of David and the Swastika.' Also, our brother Mahmoud Abbas, 'Abu Mazen,' published a book for which he received a doctorate from the former USSR, about the ties… Let's read the title so as not to make a mistake… ' The Other Face – The Secret Ties Between Nazism and Zionism,' published by Ibn Rushd publications in Amman.
Two things to note:
1) This scary "
Zionism" of which they speak is simply the idea that the Jews should have a homeland. This idea began to have prominence in the 1880's and was given credibility and expediency by the reality of the Holocaust.
2) "Our brother Mahmoud Abbas, 'Abu Mazen" is the former Palestinian President appointed by Arafat
who was praised by the world's media as a moderate force, someone capable of initiating the Road Map to Peace.
Gee, do you think there's reason to believe that sometimes the media lies to us?
Kerry Is A Transcendentalist Mystic
One should never misunderestimate the multiduplicity of John Kerry. Go watch this video presentation of John Kerry's kaleidoscopic vision:
Kerry On Iraq
A stunning display of nuance.
As Walt Whitman, the great poet of Americna Transcendentalism, said:
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large
I contain multitudes.
The question is, do we want a
Transcendalist as a President?
No Really, My Dear Andalusia, Don't Worry,
Amerigo Will Pay For This One
America will just have to be gallant as Andalusia, er, I mean, Spain acts like frightened little tramp that she is. Go
here to see the advertisement for one of Spain's major newspapers.
The ad, which features before and after photos of the Sept. 11th Manhattan skyline, declares,
"You can do a lot in one single day; just imagine what can happen in three months"
Uh, wow. You hate us. You really do hate us.
Well, that's ok Andalusia. We will pay for World War IV so you can continue to live in your little fantasy world.
Why do I keep calling Spain "Andalusia"? Read
this, from a Slate article circa Oct. 2001:
What's it (Sept. 11th) have to do with Spain? Virginia Postrel proposes a "Bin Laden Doctrine": "that no Muslim territory should ever become non-Muslim." Bin Laden opened his videotaped statement with this sentence: "Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia would be repeated in Palestine. We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish." The "tragedy of Andalusia" refers to the conquering in 1492 of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. It was a central moment in the Islamic empire's quest for political and military power: Muslim expansion was not just checked; it was reversed. If Bin Laden truly wants to restore the original geographic dimensions of the caliphate, he may eventually look toward Spain.
Gee, do you think? Eventually?
But, like I said, don't worry, we'll pay for it.
Prager's Thoughts On Rosh Hashanah
My family will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah this year as only a Christian family would; we will have a birthday cake with candles and we will sing "Happy Birthday" to God's Creation. Then we will say a prayer of gratitude to God for all that He gave us when He created the Universe. (By the way, to my Jewish friends; I can hear you laughing, so take it easy. Heh heh.)
My wife and I want to teach our children to be thankful for the immense blessing of creation. And we believe this is a good way to start when they are young.
Anyway, Dennis Prager's article this week deals with Rosh Hashanah. Dennis has some ideas on what his fellow Jews should be thinking about on this Holiday of gratitude and contemplation. He also shares some ideas for non-Jews:
... because Judaism believes that Rosh Hashanah is the world's New Year, not the Jews' alone, a word to the non-Jewish world.
However many Jews may live lives alienated from their God and Bible, it should be obvious to anyone that Jews have a special role to play in the world. Whether non-Jews like it or not, and whether Jews are aware of it or not, Jews carry the burden of God-based universal morality in the world. That is why the most evil of any generation direct their venom first at the Jews.
Our generation is no different.
Therefore, non-Jews who dismiss the enemies of the Jews as only the Jews' problem are deceiving themselves terribly. Jew-haters come after the Jews first, but never the Jews only. Had the world taken Hitler's anti-Semitism seriously earlier, and therefore confronted him earlier, tens of millions of lives would have been saved. Had the world taken the Arab and Muslim terror unleashed on Israel seriously – and not dismissed it as Israel's problem or even more absurdly, as Israel's fault – and confronted that terror immediately, much human suffering would probably have been avoided.
I agree, and that's why we at CUANAS created this blog.
Reuters Hints That Israel Pulls Puppet Strings
The Reuter's
headline this morning (one of the top nine headlines on Yahoo) is
"Is Israel 'Swing State' That Could Tip U.S. Election?"
Wow, good question Reuters. Here's my question to you:
"Is Reuter's Headline a Dark Hint That Israel Pulls The Puppet Strings Of America?"
Gee, do you think? Have all of you, over at Reuters, been reading your copies of
The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion again?
Now, let me tell you something; I have relatives in England who plan on voting in the U.S. election. There are American expatriates living in all four corners of the globe. The votes of these expatriates come flooding into the United States, via absentee ballot, in every election.
So, why the question about Israel, Reuters?
The facts are in
the Reuters article:
... American expatriates -- estimated to number between five million and 10 million -- are being courted like never before by Democrats and Republicans.
Israel, sometimes referred to as the "51st state" for its embrace of all things American, has become a key battleground.
It is home to an estimated 250,000 U.S. citizens, America's fifth-largest community abroad, many hailing from swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Got that? There are five to ten million expatriates, 250,000 of them being in Israel. That means
Israel is home to between three to five percent of total expatriates. Israel is home to the fifth largest population of Americans living abroad. So why not do an article on the number one population of expatriates, which is probably Mexico, by the way.
Why isn't Mexico referred to as America's 51st state?
Why does Reuter's not darkly hint that Vincente Fox pulls Bush's puppet strings?
These questions need to be answered.
Hard Right Party Poised to Win Parliamentary Seats In Germany
David's Medienkritik posted
this article this morning about how the neo-Nazi movement is gaining steam in Germany:
Polls: Hard Right Nationalists Projected to Win Representation in Two German States
The German NPD (German Nationalist Party) is about the closest legal equivalent to the Nazis to be found on the German political scene today. The party consists of neo-Nazis, calls for the restoration of German lands lost in World War II and has referred to the United States as "the world's arsonist."
Germany's Extreme-Rightist NPD is on the verge of victory in Saxony
Polls now indicate that after a strong showing in last weekend's Saarland elections, the NPD is set to win 9% of the vote in next week's elections in Saxony, which would easily give the party official representation in the state parliament. The President of Saxony, a part of the former East Germany, Georg Milbradt, warned that a strong showing for the NPD could damage his state's, and ultimately Germany's image. Mr. Milbradt stated: "With the NPD in the state parliament I can spare myself future visits to the USA to try to attract jobs to Saxony."
Indeed. Perhaps it is the US media that should be looking at Germany's elections with a sense of deep concern and foreboding...
Photo 2003: Skinheads with a banner that reads: "No blood for oil: NPD." Note the Iraqi flag on the far left.
A Troubling Trend: Brandenburg also on the Edge
The eastern German state of Brandenburg will also be holding elections next week and yet another hard-right party, the DVU, looks as if it may achieve the 5% of the vote needed to gain representation in the state parliament. Polls currently give the DVU 5 to 6 percent of the vote.
Root Causes: The SPD's Cycle of Hopelessness
One of the key reasons for the extremists' strong showings in the two East German states is the disproportionately high level of unemployment found there. Most of eastern Germany has a much higher unemployment rate than the rest of the country. In Brandenburg, for example, the unemployment rate is close to 20%. The sense of hopelessness in these states and the German government's inability to significantly improve conditions have led in part to the dramatic voter backlash. The former ruling Communist party of East Germany, the PDS, has also been making major election gains of late and will likely also continue to profit from the backlash.
Chancellor Schroeder and his Socialist-Green government are under increasing political pressure with each passing day. The SPD has faced election debacle after election debacle over the past two years with no end in sight. Now the big question is: Will extremists on both the right and left successfully capitalize on Schroeder's failure to govern and make sustainable long-term gains and inroads into German politics? Let's hope not...
Go to the
link to see the photos.
Delinking Andrew
Very few people read my blog, so my opinions mean very little in this world. But, I want to announce that I am delinking Andrew Sullivan. I'm hoping this will become a "they told two friends and they told two friends" thing.
I like Andrew,
but,
In my opinion, Andrew has become a one-issue guy. Andrew is mad at Bush about the gay marriage issue, specifically Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Admendment. I think that is fair. In fact, I tend to agree with Andrew on most issues relating to being Gay in America.
But, Andrew knows how important the War Against the Islamofascists, Infanticidal Maniacs is. Andrew knows Bush is taking the war to the terrorists. And he knows that Kerry will "respond" if we are attacked.
Andrew knows the difference.
But, his blog has increasingly centered on Bush-bashing.
In short, I think Andrew has become dishonest. He knows that the War On Terror is the most important issue of the day, but he is throwing the considerable power his blog behind all sorts of peripheral issues. In addition, when he does write about the War, he focuses only on the negative.
Add to this the fact that, as best as I can tell, Andrew does not include a blogroll of links to other bloggers. Hey man, there's no reciprocity. Why would you link to him when he will never return the favor.
Bye bye Andrew.
Those Swedes Are Just So Damned Funny
Funny as
hell.
With a sense of humor like that you have to wonder if they think
this is funny too.
I thought Sweden was a peace-loveing
neutral country.
Protestors In San Francisco Rally For Less Womens Rights,
Less Gay Rights
Oh Yes, And For Peace Too
Click
here to see photos.
From
Freedom House:
Palestinian women are underrepresented in most professions and encounter discrimination in employment. Under Sharia (Islamic law), women are disadvantaged in marriage, divorce, and inheritance matters. Rape, domestic abuse, and “honor killings,” in which unmarried women thought not to be virgins are murdered by male relatives, continue. Since societal pressures prevent reporting of such incidents, the exact frequency of attacks is unknown.
From the
Independant Gay Forum:
What seems less well known, however, is the appalling treatment of gays under Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza. At least it was less known until Yossi Klein Halevi wrote about it in the August 19th New Republic. Palestine makes rural Texas look like San Francisco.
According to Halevi, one young man discovered to be gay was forced by Palestinian Authority police "to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects." During one interrogation Palestinian police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle.
When he was released he fled to Israel. If he were forced to return to Gaza, he said, "The police would kill me."
An American who foolishly moved into the West Bank to live with his Palestinian lover said they told everyone they were just friends, but one day they "found a letter under our door from the Islamic court. It listed the five forms of death prescribed by Islam for homosexuality, including stoning and burning. We fled to Israel that same day," he said.
The head of a Tel Aviv gay organization told Halevi, "The persecution of gays in the Palestinian Authority doesn't just come from the families or the Islamic groups, but from the P.A. itself."
Palestinian police have increasingly enforced Islamic religion law, he said: "It's now impossible to be an open gay in the P.A." He recalled that one gay man in the Palestinian police went to Israel for a short time. When he returned to the West Bank, Palestinian Authority police confined him to a pit without food or water until he died.
You have to wonder why protestors in San Francisco would rally for such a society and against Israel.
Do you think it has anything to do with the Swastikas?
Academic Bias In American Universities
Check out this new short movie about Adademic Bias. You can watch it for free. Click
here.
I love it when Professor Geoffrey Schneider questions the idea of having an American Studies major, saying it is a ruse for saying positive things about the United States.
Well gee, we wouldn't want to say anything positive America now, would we?
I remember a Professor of mine announcing to the class that he was a Communist. I don't really care much if someone is a Communist. This is a free country. Your freedom includes the right to be a Communist. So fine.
But, the funny thing was when he said the Capitalist system was evil and inhumane. I challenged him, in class, by asking to name one civilization or even uncivilized group of people, in all of history, where the people themselves did not employ capitalism and, of course, he couldn't do it.
Come on, my friend. Name one.
I pointed out that Capitalism is a force of human nature the way the weather is a force of nature. One caveman would pick roots and the other would chase down a chicken and then, they would trade. That's Capitalism.
The question is not whether we can overthrow Capitalism. We can't. It will only go underground, as it did with the Soviet black market.
The question is, what legal and constitutional limits should we put on Capitalism. I think that is a fair question. I think reasonable people can differ on this issue. But, I also believe that Democracy needs to reign over these decisions. Societies need to be able to vote on the checks and balances placed on Capitalism.
But, many, and I mean many, University Professors in the U.S. believe, and teach, that Capitalism is evil.
Hah ha hah hah hah hah hah.
That is such an unrealistic idea that only a person who is profoundly ignorant of the ways of world could actually believe such a notion.
Or as Dennis Prager sarcastically notes, "One has to be very,
very highly educated to believe such an idea to be true."
Black People Thank George Bush For His Leadership
Why are black people marching in the streets of New York City with signs thanking George Bush?
Click
here.
Because the Arab Islamofascist government of Sudan is gradually killing, raping and enslaving all the black people of Sudan, and George Bush is the only leader in the world who pushing to call it genocide.
Islamofascists Are Nazis
Many people say it is simplistic to say Islamofascists are Nazis.
They say we must be careful about taking a trend from history and simply overlaying it on current situation in order to try to comprehend what is going on.
They say history does not repeat itself.
While it may be true history does not repeat as a digital file of past events, that doesn't mean that trends in history do not repeat.
Sometimes the color of the skin is different but
the flag and the salute are exactly the same.
This may be surprising, but it is not at all shocking if you know history because
Islamofascists studied at the feet of Hitler.
In The Name Of Allah
Michelle Malkin
weighs in:
The third anniversary of Sept. 11 is upon us. We remain at war -- and the media remain in denial.
How many times have you picked up a newspaper and read about terrorist attacks perpetrated not by Muslim terrorists, but by generic "militants" or "guerrillas" or "rebels" or, as Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes noted the Pakistan Times called them, "activists"?
Contrast the media whitewashing of our Islamofascist enemies with the press coverage of the Waco, Texas, siege in 1993 -- which constantly reminded us that David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers were members of a "peculiar religious sect" (New York Times, March 3, 1993) and "a group of religious zealots with a known propensity for violence" (Washington Post, March 2, 1993) who were steeped in a "culture of Christian extremism" (San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 1993).
A Nexis search of the terms "Branch Davidian" and "religious" and "cult" in The New York Times for the year 1993 yielded 151 hits. The vast majority of these references were in headlines and news articles, as opposed to editorials, letters or book reviews. A Nexis search of the terms "al Qaeda" and "religious" and "cult" in The New York Times for the year 2004 yielded just one article -- a magazine piece in March.
The mainstream media pounded President Bush for trying to explain that the War on Terror is unwinnable in a conventional sense. The mainstream press itself proves the president's point every time its reporters disguise the deadly fanatical nature of our opponents in this global war. How are we to win a war against blood-spattered enemies whom our own free press continues to protect through politically correct sanitization?
It wasn't no-name militants or wayward guerrillas who have butchered, beheaded and slaughtered thousands of innocents over the last three years alone. Anniversary reality check:
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Russia stabbed babies to death, shot toddlers in the back, forced children to eat rose petals and drink their own urine, raped teenage girls, executed their teachers and blew themselves up in a crowded school gymnasium. Death toll: 338.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Spain detonated bombs on four commuter trains during Madrid's rush hour. Death toll: 190.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Bali blew up a beach resort with an electronically triggered bomb at one bar and a car bomb hidden in a van at another nightclub filled with young Western tourists on holiday. Death toll: 202.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Pakistan kidnapped and beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Saudi Arabia kidnapped and beheaded American engineer Paul Johnson.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Iraq kidnapped and beheaded American independent contractor Nick Berg.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Iraq kidnapped and executed Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in the Philippines kidnapped and killed American missionary Martin Burnham.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Israel engineered near-simultaneous suicide attacks on two buses, killing at least 15 people.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Morocco waged suicide bombing attacks in Casablanca.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in Turkey bombed synagogues and the British consulate.
In the name of Allah, Muslim terrorists in America hijacked and incinerated three planes full of men, women and children, trapped pregnant women and firefighters in smoke-filled stairways, and forced office workers to leap 99 stories to their deaths after saying final prayers from the ledges of the World Trade Center on a peaceful September morning. Death toll: 3,000.
They tell us to "never forget." First, let's stop misremembering.
One can't remember to mention everything the Islamofascists have done, but I need to point out that Michelle did forget a very big example:
In the name of Allah, the Arab Muslim government of Sudan is supporting the Janjaweed campaign, of rape, slavery and death agains the Black African natives of Sudan. Two million people have been killed in the past twenty years. Countless women, boys and girls have been brutally raped. Countless men, women and children have been sold into slavery.
Never Again
Charles Johnson at LittleGreenFootballs weighs in with
his thoughts on September 11th:
Three years ago America was attacked by teams of Islamic terrorists in a well-organized plan to murder thousands of people. They lived among us for years, taking full advantage of our free society to gain the knowledge, experience, and access they needed to kill us, hiding their virulent hatred behind masks of indifference.
If their diabolical scheme had gone off the way they envisioned, the World Trade Center towers would have fallen over onto the surrounding buildings and into the morning rush hour streets, killing many more than the three thousand who died in the buildings when they collapsed. They flew those planes into the towers from opposite directions, so that when they toppled the destruction and death would be maximized.
Throughout the Arab world, and in some places in America, our enemies danced and celebrated the carnage.
On the third year after September 11, at LGF we haven’t forgotten the promise we made on that day:
Never again.
At LGF our mission is to expose the ideologies, plans, and allies of our enemies, so that as citizens we have the information we need to defend ourselves—and to demand that our government defend us.
Some of the spoiled, self-hating sons and daughters of our rich society tell themselves that by mocking the events of that day, they’re showing intelligence and sophistication.
But the war has barely begun.
It is important to note something about Charles. Previous to 911 his blog was about software and goofy internet gossip and jokes. Sometimes the jokes were of the Bush or Chimp? variety. He did not seem to be a fan of George Bush, to put it mildly.
Here are his first two posts on the morning of September 11th, 2001:
1)
2)
Here's a post from two days later:
I preface this by saying that I may be the least patriotic person I know.
But I am going to refrain from posting any more criticism of our President for the duration of whatever is about to happen. (Unless he does something really dumb.)
Some visitors have apparently been seeing my criticism of President Bush as an invitation to post comments implying... no, saying outright that America deserves what happened on September 11th.
I've had to ban a couple of those people, something I really hate to do. But this is our house. If you're going to come in here, show some decency. Don't tell me the children in those planes deserved what happened to them. Don't tell me America deserved this. If you're able to say that with such disgusting and self-important glibness, you are putting yourself on the same moral level with the monsters who did this crime, and we don't want you here.
Make no mistake. I never thought I would say this, but the President has my full support now, in whatever he chooses to do. I pray he somehow finds the correct course through this labyrinth of hate and darkness.
His journey was close to mine. 911 snapped me awake with a whiplash shake. I have never been the same since.
When I saw the world turning on the Jews, my resolve doubled.
We can not allow the fascists get away with their evil again. Whether you are an Islamofascist or a European, or American, or other, who wants to see America come down, (even if you hide your desires behind "nuance"); I want your belief system to be destroyed.
America's system feeds the world in so many ways. Our economy raises the economy of the entire world. Our ideas and patents give the world comfort and health and fun. Our country makes your lives livable in a way that people would never have dreamed possible two centuries ago, three centuries, five ...
Don't bite the hand that feeds.
I want to give a profound expression of gratitude to Charles Johnson and all the other blogger who are doing similar work.
The Islamic Cult Of Death
From the New York Times:
We've been forced to witness the massacre of innocents. In New York, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Bali, we have seen thousands of people destroyed while going about the daily activities of life.
We've been forced to endure the massacre of children. Whether it's teenagers outside an Israeli disco or students in Beslan, Russia, we've seen kids singled out as special targets.
This is the cult of people who are proud to declare, "You love life, but we love death." This is the cult that sent waves of defenseless children to be mowed down on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, that trains kindergartners to become bombs, that fetishizes death, that sends people off joyfully to commit mass murder.
This cult attaches itself to a political cause but parasitically strangles it. The death cult has strangled the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide bombers have not brought peace to Palestine; they've brought reprisals. The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of Iraq; they're forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is now strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not independence but blood.
But that's the idea. Because the death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.
It's about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism - freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of sadism and suicide.
We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.
Three years after Sept. 11, too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage.
The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the American journalistic response, made two quick references to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors.
The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on behalf of the European Union, declared: "All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this. But we also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened."
It wasn't a tragedy. It was a carefully planned mass murder operation. And it wasn't Russian authorities who stuffed basketball nets with explosives and shot children in the back as they tried to run away.
Whatever horrors the Russians have perpetrated upon the Chechens, whatever their ineptitude in responding to the attack, the essential nature of this act was in the act itself. It was the fact that a team of human beings could go into a school, live with hundreds of children for a few days, look them in the eyes and hear their cries, and then blow them up.
Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms the media used to describe these murderers. They were called "separatists" and "hostage-takers." Three years after Sept. 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about this evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What drives the terrorists to do this? What are they trying to achieve?
They're still victims of the delusion that Paul Berman diagnosed after Sept. 11: "It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."
This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.
Islamofascists Kill Children And Rape Teenage Girls And Make Snuff Videos
Remember
Beslan.
They raped teenage girls and videotaped it. They stabbed babies. They shot children. They wired themselves and the entire building with explosives because they intended to kill everybody.
Thank God Russian forces stepped in and did not allow every last person to be murdered.
Islamofascists Use Children As Human Shields
Photograph, from AP, of Islamofascist wiring bomb in the midst of a street full of children.
We will put an end to this.
Where Is The Muslim Outrage?
Jeff Jacoby from TownHall.com:
They are still burying the victims of the latest atrocity committed by evildoers professing Islam -- the slaughter of hundreds of children, teachers, and parents in an elementary school in Beslan, Russia. And from Muslims the world over, as usual, has come mostly silence.
There have been no public demonstrations by Muslims anxious to make it clear how outraged and sickened they are that anyone could commit such unspeakable deeds as an act of Islamic faith. There has been no anguished outcry by Islam's leading imams and sheiks. Prominent Muslim organizations in the West have not called press conferences to express their disgust and anger. Once again the world has witnessed a savage episode of Islamist terror, and once again it strains to hear a convincing rejection of the terrorists from those who should care most about Islam's reputation.
That is not to say there has been no criticism at all. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to assure him that "this terrorist act . . . goes against religious teachings and violates human and moral values." Syria's official news agency decried the massacre as "a terrorist, cowardly action." Sheik Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi of Al-Azhar University in Cairo lambasted the murderers for "taking Islam as cover" and said that "those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims."
But these are boilerplate denunciations, practically meaningless -- particularly when they come from sources that sustain Islamist fanaticism (Saudi Arabia), shelter and support terrorists (Syria), or defend suicide bombers as praiseworthy "martyrs" (Tantawi). They condemn no terrorists or terror organizations by name. They offer no help in destroying the infrastructure that recruits, funds, and trains them. And they contain no hint that the global scourge of Islamofascist jihad is a cancer eating away at the Muslim world.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which issues dozens of press releases every month, had nothing to say about the bloodbath in Russia until I requested a comment on Tuesday -- four days after the mass-murder occurred and nearly a week after the terrorists, shouting "Allahu akbar," first seized the school. The statement CAIR then issued doesn't even acknowledge that the killers were Muslim:
No words can describe the horror and grief generated by the deaths of so many innocent people at the hands of those who dishonor the cause they espouse. We offer sincere condolences to the families of the victims and call for a swift resolution to the conflict in that troubled region that will let all people live in peace and freedom.
At least CAIR went through the motions of condemning the butchery. Other voices preached a different message altogether.
Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain, announced that the bloodshed in Beslan "is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims." In London, Islamist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed said he would support hostage-taking at British schools if it were done for a good reason. "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain," he told the Daily Telegraph, "it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq." Fortunately, a few Muslim commentators have denounced the evil being done in the name of Islam, and have done so courageously and unambiguously. (The Middle East Media Research Institute has compiled their reactions at
http://www.memri.org/.) One in particular stands out: an extraordinary column in the pan-Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the Al-Arabiya news channel. (An English translation was published in the Telegraph.)
"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists," he begins, "but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
"The hostage-takers of the children in Beslan were Muslims. The hostage-takers and murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. . . . The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses, and buildings all over the world were Muslim. . . . "What a pathetic record. What an abominable `achievement.' Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies, and our culture?. . .
"We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us. . . . They are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image. We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly implemented by Muslim men and women.
"We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the sheiks who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges."
When it is no longer astonishing to encounter such sentiments in the Muslim world, we will we know that the corner has been turned in the war against Islamist terror.
Steven Spielberg And The French Ought To Be Ashamed Of Themselves
Heads In The Sand by Diana West:
If there was something tragi-farcical about Steven Spielberg receiving a knighthood from French President Jacques Chirac last weekend for "Schindler's List," there was also something tragi-farcically apt. Here we be, facing not World War III (the Cold War), but World War IV, "the war on terror." We see the gymnasium massacre in the Caucasus and the bus bloodbath in Beersheba. We hear of the ongoing extermination of black Africans in Sudan, and the murders of twelve Nepalese cooks and cleaners in Iraq, where Iran and Al Qaeda support terrorist cadres in their efforts to suicide-bomb their way over nascent Iraqi society. The Western mind reels and tries to come to terms with the global bloodletting -- of the week.
Alas, there are no "terms" to come to. Literally. We are experiencing a civilization-wide failure, even three years after September 11, to define the terrorism born of Islam's core medieval precepts: violent jihad and dehumanizing dhimmitude. We see the same kind of terrorism in Russia that we see in Israel, Sudan and Iraq. We've seen it in Spain and we've seen it in Bali, and we've certainly seen it in the United States. We see it, but maybe we don't believe it -- a failure that could ultimately be our undoing. Too many of us prefer to overlook the evils of World War IV and watch Chevalier Spielberg get a kiss on both cheeks from Jacques Chirac for dramatizing the evils of World War II.
"In this difficult time," Mr. Chirac told his new Hollywood knight, "it is essential that cinema" blah, blah "recalls the horror of what is unutterable." Unutterable is right. But no "cinema" -- not by Spielberg, not by anyone -- is recalling anything utterable about the colossal struggle of our age. There is no cultural echo chamber in which this conflict finds resonance. Indeed, Mr. Spielberg's next picture is a remake of H.G. Wells' 1898 martian-invasion story, "The War of the Worlds." This is a far cry from the scores of movies Hollywood made to depict World War II, including "Mrs. Miniver," "The Mortal Storm" and "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo." These days, Hollywood just hates President Bush and sticks a sock on its lens.
This is just one more reason why we haven't come to terms with the battle we've joined. I've written about this failure before. The war we wage, the United States and its coalition of friends, is not a war on generic "terrorism," but on Islamic jihad -- the spread of Islam by violent means. We wage it not against generic "terrorists," but against Islamic jihadists who dream of death and destruction, not to mention a caliphate, in their religion's name.
In our religion's name -- the postmodern "religion" of tolerance the pluralistic West publicly enforces and enshrines -- we torture ourselves over whether jihadists are just a minuscule minority of "extremists." We nudge along a lagging conviction that terrorists who maim and kill in the name of Allah constitute some far-out sect that will some day be denounced, ostracized and neutralized by a robust Muslim mainstream.
Meanwhile, when the New York Times' David Brooks identifies the source of global terrorism as a "death cult ... at the fringes of the Islamic world," I suppose we give two cheers for a real mouthful in a newspaper that routinely mumbles over the Muslim identity of jihadists the world over. (In reporting on the Beslan horror, the newspaper changed the surviving terrorist's widely quoted words, "By Allah, I didn't shoot," to "By God, I didn't shoot" -- as noted by blogger Dawn Patrol). But we must also wonder how fringy the Islamic "death cult" can be given the doctrinal primacy of jihad and dhimmitude in the Muslim world.
Writing in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the general manager of Al-Arabiya News Channel offers a genuinely fringe view: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed writes. "We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise -- an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women." Mr. Al-Rashed doesn't explain the basis of this "monopoly" -- which includes the central precepts of jihad and dhimmitude -- and he glosses over Islam's bloody centuries of conquest and subjugation. But he does call for "an end to a history of denial," which is a promising start. "Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession," he writes. "We should then run after our terrorist sons, the sour grapes of a deformed culture."
How to support this mission? By coming to terms with the foe we face. This won't win anyone a suit of armor from the French. But it just might help save the world.
Remember The People
Always Remember.
September 11, 2001
Never Forget.
The Shot Heard Round The World
(With Thanks To Belmont Club)
Wretchard at Belmont Club calls the Blogospheric Triumph over the MSM (Main Stream Media)
The Shot Heard Round The World:
Blogs, including this one, are often wrong. But there is no reason why bloggers should ipso facto be dismissed as amateur analysts when compared to the Mainstream Media (MSM).
The traditional news model is collapsing. It suffers from two defects. The "news object" can no longer be given sealed attributes in newspaper backrooms. The days when the press was the news object foundry are dying. Second, the news industry is suffering from its lack of analytic cells, which are standard equipment in intellgence shops. Editors do some analysis but their focus is diluted by their attention to style and the craft of writing.
The blogosphere and other actors, now connected over the Internet, are filling in for the missing analytic function. And although the news networks still generate, via their reporters, the bulk of primary news, they generate a pitiful amount of competent analysis. Put another way, the classic media outlet generates data and entertainment but they don't generate much information. Because of this, the MSM will stumble into these pitfalls time and again.
The Andrew Gilligan and Jayson Blair fiascos were indicators that something was really wrong, but no one was listening then. Maybe there is no point to listening now.
I don't think Wretchard really believes there is no point in listening. Clearly, the MSM will always be with us (That's the nature of capitalism, which is a force of human nature not a political system). Two things will probably happen after of few of these huge scandals:
1) The MSM will get scared and as a result will start fact-checking everything to the nth degree.
2) The MSM will continue to devise ever more diabolical ways to create their virtual reality (sorry for the Nineties phrase).
Overall, I think things will get better. And that's why this is The Shot Heard Round The World.
In the Advertising/Media world there is a thing called "Share of Voice." An advertiser who throws a lot of money a TV, radio, inernet and Outdoor will gain larger Share of Voice, meaning their message will be a larger percentage of x amount of commercial spots heard in a given market.
Up until now, the MSM, the chattering classes, and the politicians have dominated Share of Voice.
Democracy, theoretically, is the dividing up of Share of Voice equally among all players.
I know I have already used this quote from John Podhoretz, but I will repeat it to make the point about Share of Voice:
... the credit really goes to the incredible power of the internet. We knew nothing; all of our information came from our readers.
Many thousands of smart, well-informed people who only a few years ago would have had no recourse but perhaps to write a letter to their local newspaper, now can communicate and share their expertise in real time, through sites like this one.
Yes, now many thousands of people can share their voice; Tomorrow many hundreds of thousands, the next day, many millions, etc. etc. etc, until one day everyone, even Afghani's, Iraqi's, Saudi Arabians, Middle Eastern women,
EVERYONE
will be heard.
The powerful people of the Earth are shaking in their turbans, and business suits.
PowerLine Gives Credit Where Credit Is Due
Regarding the blog destruction of 60 Minutes lies:
As Stephen Hayes reported earlier today, Power Line "led the charge" against the 60 Minutes hoax today. But the credit really goes to the incredible power of the internet. We knew nothing; all of our information came from our readers. Many thousands of smart, well-informed people who only a few years ago would have had no recourse but perhaps to write a letter to their local newspaper, now can communicate and share their expertise in real time, through sites like this one. The power of the medium is incredible, as we've seen over the last fourteen hours.
Thanks to our readers; we were able to publish only a small fraction of the information we got on the fake documents. But it was more than enough.
This accomplishment will go down in the History Books used to teach your children about America and it's Democracy.
I am so proud of our country and of the accomplishment of the blogosphere that I literally have tears in my eyes.
LittleGreenFootballs and Powerline Bring Down The Main Stream Media
I want to say congratulations on the accomplishment and thank you for the beautiful work.
Yesterday,
Powerline and
LittleGreenFootballs pointed out that the documents displayed on the previous evenings 60 Minutes program (which purported to show that Bush had skipped out on service in the Air National Guard) were clear forgeries.
The documents, which were supposed to have been from the year 1973, were clearly created by a 21st century Microsoft Word program.
As John Podhoretz puts it in this mornings
New York Post:
September 10, 2004 -- THE populist revolu tion against the so- called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists who produce blogs on the Internet — and their engaged readers — engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush.
What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.
These were "previously unseen documents . . . obtained by '60 Minutes,' " the network bragged Wednesday night on its Web site. Their author, supposedly, was Bush's squadron commander, Jerry Killian, who died 20 years ago.
They "include a memorandum from May 1972," CBS reports, "where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.' " A document dated "18 August 1973" complains that Killian is being asked to "sugar coat" Bush's record. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," the document says.
I did not follow the days events because my internet service was not working. However, from what I know of the blogosphere I can surmise what happened. LittleGreenFootballs has about 40,000 readers a day and PowerLine also has significant readership (possibly more the LGF) ,including the blog monstrosity Instapundit.
I'm guessing Instapundit picked up the story. Instapundit is the Time Magazine of the blogosphere. Both Instapundit and PowerLine (as well as LGF to a lesser extent) are big with talk radio. So I'm guessing it was a big story on Hugh Hewitt and others yesterday. All three also have legions of rabid fans who are willing to write scads of email to the Main Stream Press.
Oh man, what a horrid day it must have been over at CBS yesterday.
You just know those guys consider blogs to be the Creature From The Black Lagoon (with all the cheese and stupidity, yet all the horror included). I'm sure they think to themselves,
"This can't be happening to us. Those people aren't reporters. They're just lonely guys with keyboards and mousepads. They just cut and paste and rant about our stories."
Ah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah.
Now, for the most meanspirited, unChristian, disgusting, but apt analogy of the day:
The Main Stream Media is about to collapse on itself like the Twin Towers did three years ago.
Imagine There Is No Jihad
The other night Madonna
lifted her finger for World Peace:
Pop star Madonna drew massive applause from a sold-out crowd in Paris when she dedicated her version of John Lennon’s peace ode Imagine to the Russian hostage crisis.
Addressing the audience midway through her show last night, Madonna spoke briefly about the tragedy at a Russian school that left at least 350 dead, including pupils, teachers and mothers.
As video images of war and children were broadcast behind her on giant screens, the pop diva urged her fans at Paris’ Bercy stadium to think about what happened in Russia and to think about Lennon’s lyrics.
I suggest that in the future Madonna ought to perform that song wearing a Burkha.
Ain't That A Kick In The Head
I sent an email to IraqWarWrong over at TheIraqWarWasWrongBlog yesterday asking him if a Russian war against Chechneya would be wrong.
Well, thankfully, he responded to me today. I say thankfully because, sadly, I need clarification on such issues, as Mr. IraqWarWrong has made me aware of the factoid that I am a Bad Person. Just remember though that, while Christians may be Bad People, it doesn't matter because we are forgiven, or something like that.
Anyway,
here's what IraqWarWrong had to say:
Noted jazz bassist and TIWWWB reader Jaco Pastorius inquiries as to my position re:vis-a-vis the coming 3rd Russian War On Chechens:
I was just wondering, if Russia were to declare war on the Islamic Chechneyan regime (which would be strange because, of course, Chechneya theoretically is state within Russia), would that War Be Wrong?
Would you start a new blog called ChechneyaWarWrong? What if the United States joined forces and helped the Russian Army fight against the Islamic regime in Chechneya?
For the record:
Although such a war would almost certainly be Wrong (as I explained here, Putin is an other-bad-man and the Chechens (btw what happened in that school is bad and all) just want their own free democratic republic), I would probably mostly leave it onto others's shoulder's to name that wrongness(except insofar as wrongness of such War On Chechenyan's would bear on wrongness of The Iraq War).
As for question about US involvement in such a war - well I doubt it would happen at all (Russian's/Putin VERY suspicious of meddling/scheming mercantile US/Westerners-that's the one area where I agree/approve are Russianic friends), but as we do know Bush "looked into Putin's soul" which probably means Bush would be at Putin's beck and call /obey Putin's every command so you never know. (US troops under Russian command)? (For religious reasons)? Hard to say.
However, it is true that a Chechnya War Wrong blog of some type would certainly be wellcome in the blogosphere ...
Thanks for teh inquiry,
with much ,
Now, I must say, for the record that I don't agree with IraqWarWrong. Not one bit. In fact, I think his blog is the
Wrong blog on
The wrong blog host at
The wrong time and
about the wrong suject
(by the way, that was a Haiku, well actually it was a very ancient and obscure form of traditional Japanese poetry called the Yu Kuku which was seminal in the development of the respected art of Haiku)
To put it bluntly, I think he is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong
Oh God, my head is really starting to hurt. I feel like someone fractured my skull or something. This can't be happening to me. I am the great Jaco Pastorius - the Greatest Bass Player in the world. How could that mean man have done this to me? My head. My head.
I ... can't ... feel ...my ... hands ...
..
.
The Abomination of Desolation
Roger Simon, like me, approached 9/11 as a liberal Democrat and came away from 9/11 wondering what was wrong with his libDem friends. Like me, he now does what he never thought he we would do; that is he supports the big W.
Here is his
comment on the aftermath of Beslan:
When I first "came out" on this blog as an apostate from the liberal church, I heard a number of old friends and acquaintances whispering, sometimes in front of me and sometimes behind my back, "Poor Roger, he's scared. He got mugged by 9/11." Well, no. I don't scare that easily. I have my share of problems, but unbridled fear isn't one of them. I was angry.
But now I am scared. 9/11 didn't scare me. The Atocha railroad station didn't scare me. The horrors of the Russian schoolhouse didn't even scare me. It was the reaction by many in Europe and in our media to what happened in that school that has me terrified. Sure the Russians have historically brutalized and mistreated the Chechens, but this barbarism was far beyond a reaction to that. It goes to the core of our common humanity. It was a gauntlet thrown down at Western civilization and yet some still choose to look the other way. But if the sight of children being stripped and shot in the back after having had their gymnasium pre-wired with explosives doesn't wake them up, I don't know what will.
Yet sleep they do. Andrew McCarthy slogged all the way down to paragraph twenty-four of the NYT's coverage this morning to find this strange and forlorn statement: "While the extent of international support may be debated, the attacks bear some trappings of Islamic militancy. Officials here in Beslan said they had found notebooks with Arabic writing, and witnesses reported hearing Arabic exhortations, though the attackers mostly spoke Russian." (Emphasis added.)
I wonder what the paper would say if those same people took over Dalton. Scratch that - I don't want to know. Years ago, it was "the love that dares not speak its name." Now it is "the religion that dares not speak its name." But as McCarthy wrote in his post, "What is the good reason to be hesitant about noting that this latest barbarity, like its numerous predecessors, is the work of militant Islam? An enemy that doesn't get identified, doesn't get wiped out -- and lives to fight another day, resulting in more Beslans, more Madrids, more 9/11s, etc."
Roger doesn't really define what he is afraid of, so I'm going to make a couple of guesses:
1) he realizes the West is hard at work writing our collective suicide note
2) he realizes the world is going so crazy that anything is liable to happen, including Europe really physically turning on America, itself, and possibly the Jews.
There really is something wrong when people can't seem to get up any outrage over child sacrifice. But, the world has been ignoring, and even justifying Palestinian child sacrifice for years now.
Dick Cheney Threatens The United States
Dick Cheney has, apparently, moved into the land of Looneyville today. He seems to be uttering threats against the United States.
This from AP:
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.
The Kerry-Edwards campaign immediately rejected those comments as "scare tactics" that crossed the line.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.
If Kerry were elected, Cheney said the nation risks falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush's offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.
Cheney pointed to Afghanistan as a success story in pursuing terrorists although the Sept. 11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden, remains at large. In Iraq, the vice president said, the United States has taken out a leader who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and harbored other terrorists.
"Saddam Hussein today is in jail, which is exactly where he belongs," Cheney said.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards issued a statement, saying, "Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that."
I'm afraid I have to agree with John Edwards this time. Cheney's statement reminds me of Maxine Waters (another resident of Looneyville) and her "No Justice, No Peace" mantra.
Let me get this straight, Cheney is warning Americans that if Kerry is elected we stand the chance of being moved back into "a pre-9/11 minset" where terrorists acts would be treated as crimes, and then he cites the fact that Saddam Hussein is in jail awaiting a criminal trial as an example of Bush's success??!?
Speaking of mis-speaking.
I think the Bush-haters have been getting it wrong all these years. Apparently, Cheney is the idiot, not Bush.
Anyway, to be honest, I do think that Kerry would, as a President, be likely to treat terrorism as a crime, rather than as an act of war. I do agree with Cheney that that is the wrong tactic, and that the Jihadi mindset percieves such a tactic as a sign of weakness. I do agree that showing weakness will likely lead to more terror attacks in the long run. However, I also believe showing strength will likely lead to more terrorist attacks in the short run.
And, truthfully, none of us really know. It's not really a question of terrorist operations, it's a war against an enemy; Islamofascism.
I agree that we have to treat terrorism as an act of war, and I believe we have to take the war to the Islamofascists and beat them, and then we have to beat them some more, until they, like the Germans and Japanese before them, are afraid to even lift a finger anymore.
That is the way wars are won.
That being said, I think Cheney is going down a dangerous path when he tries to make the case that a vote for Kerry is a vote for more terrorism.
He comes off sounding a lot like a mafia shakedown artist working the protection rackets; "You can trust the police to protect you, or you can come to me as a friend and ask that I help. But, if you trust the police for your protection it is likely that something bad will happen to you."
Is that the image the Bush Administration wants to project. Maybe they should take the mic away from Cheney's mouth.
Thesaurus Rex
Thanks to DhimmiWatch for making me aware of this
article from Daniel Pipes:
I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.
The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms for terrorists:
Assailants - National Public Radio.
Attackers – the Economist.
Bombers – the Guardian.
Captors – the Associated Press.
Commandos – Agence France-Presse refers to the terrorists both as "membres du commando" and "commando."
Criminals - the Times (London).
Extremists – United Press International.
Fighters – the Washington Post.
Group – the Australian.
Guerrillas: in a New York Post editorial.
Gunmen – Reuters.
Hostage-takers - the Los Angeles Times.
Insurgents – in a New York Times headline.
Kidnappers – the Observer (London).
Militants – the Chicago Tribune.
Perpetrators – the New York Times.
Radicals – the BBC.
Rebels – in a Sydney Morning Herald headline.
Separatists – the Christian Science Monitor.
And my favorite:
Activists – the Pakistan Times.
The origins of this unwillingness to name terrorists seems to lie in the Arab-Israeli conflict, prompted by an odd combination of sympathy in the press for the Palestinian Arabs and intimidation by them. The sympathy is well known; the intimidation less so.
Reuters' Nidal al-Mughrabi made the latter explicit in advice for fellow reporters in Gaza to avoid trouble on the Web site www.newssafety.com, where one tip reads:
"Never use the word terrorist or terrorism in describing Palestinian gunmen and militants; people consider them heroes of the conflict."
The reluctance to call terrorists by their rightful name can reach absurd lengths of inaccuracy and apologetics. For example, National Public Radio's Morning Edition announced on April 1, 2004, that "Israeli troops have arrested 12 men they say were wanted militants."
But CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out the inaccuracy here and NPR issued an on-air correction on April 26: "Israeli military officials were quoted as saying they had arrested 12 men who were ‘wanted militants.' But the actual phrase used by the Israeli military was ‘wanted terrorists.'"
(At least NPR corrected itself. When the Los Angeles Times made the same error, writing that "Israel staged a series of raids in the West Bank that the army described as hunts for wanted Palestinian militants," its editors refused CAMERA's request for a correction on the grounds that its change in terminology did not occur in a direct quotation.)
Metro, a Dutch paper, ran a picture on May 3, 2004, of two gloved hands belonging to a person taking fingerprints off a dead terrorist. The caption read: "An Israeli police officer takes fingerprints of a dead Palestinian. He is one of the victims (slachtoffers) who fell in the Gaza strip yesterday."
One of the victims!
Euphemistic usage then spread from the Arab-Israeli conflict to other theaters. As terrorism picked up in Saudi Arabia such press outlets as The Times (London) and the Associated Press began routinely using militants in reference to Saudi terrorists. Reuters uses it with reference to Kashmir and Algeria.
Thus has militants become the press's default term for terrorists.
These self-imposed language limitations sometimes cause journalists to tie themselves into knots. In reporting the murder of one of its own cameraman, the BBC, which normally avoids the word terrorist, found itself using that term. In another instance, the search engine on the BBC website includes the word terrorist but the page linked to has had that word expurgated.
Politically-correct news organizations undermine their credibility with such subterfuges. How can one trust what one reads, hears, or sees when the self-evident fact of terrorism is being semi-denied?
Worse, the multiple euphemisms for terrorist obstruct a clear understanding of the violent threats confronting the civilized world. It is bad enough that only one of five articles discussing the Beslan atrocity mentions its Islamist origins; worse is the miasma of words that insulates the public from the evil of terrorism.
Thank you for that Mr. Pipes. Someone ought to nominate you for a government post of some sort. Oh wait...
The Jews Must Be Losing Their Grip On American Power
Thanks to No Pasaran for making me aware of this article from the International Herald Tribune. In a discussion about how the people's of different countries around the world feel about George Bush, there is this revealing fact:
When asked whether they prefer Bush or Kerry, Israelis prefer Bush by about 55 percent to 45 percent, in sharp contrast to American Jews, who seem to favor Kerry by about 75 percent to 25 percent.
Now, if the Jews control America shouldn't Kerry be doing better?
By the way, you can bet the numbers were the same for the Bush-Gore election in 2000. That's just the way it is here in America; the Jewish vote, like the African-American vote, goes primarily to the Democrats.
Maybe we should infer from that that the Jews have about as much control as Black people.
George Bush Is Exporting Our Jobs and Destroying Our Economy
Thanks to the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler (what a name, and what a blog, filled with much more unleashed anger than CUANAS) for making me aware of these numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and for
August, 2004. When Bush took office in Jan, 2001 employment was at 135,999,000.
Somehow Kerry claims we lost a million jobs, but instead of ending up with 135,999,000 – 1,000,000 = 134,999,000, we have 139,681,000, a gain of 3.682 million instead of a loss of one million, and a difference of 4.682 million from Kerry's constant fictions.
All this after a virtual crash in the stock market just eight months before Bush took office, and then 9/11 just eight months after Bush took office.
The Surreal World Of Manhattanites
The Liberal World Of New Yorkers Is A Windowless Monad
Art Spiegelman, author of the criticially acclaimed graphic novel
Maus, and the new In The Shadow Of No Towers, was interviewed by U.S. News And World Report where he made a statement reveals the level of his isolation from the real world:
U.S. News: You covered the Republican convention for the New Yorker.
Spiegelman: It's very disconcerting to find out that Republicans actually exist. Up to now, Republicans only existed in my mind and the electronic media. A lot of what has happened in the last few years feels like that Orson Welles War of the Worlds thing. It's presented as authoritative, but I have the suspicion that it's fiction.
I've read similar quotes from other Manhattanites and college professors over the years. Always, I am just as shocked by their ignorance as they are by the reality of the world around them.
Well, welcome to the real world Mr. Spiegelman, where there isn't complete lockstep agreement 100% percent of the time.
By the way, just because Republicans exist doesn't mean you have to be friends with them, ok?
Fool.
"Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."
Salih Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57
Thanks to DhimmiWatch.org for making me aware of this
post from the Washington Times:
Christians from across the country traveled to Falls Church this weekend to attend the first Muslim Background Believers Convention, a cross-cultural conference aimed at improving understanding and relations between born-again Christians from Muslim backgrounds and born-again Christians from Protestant or Catholic backgrounds. They speak only under fictitious names assumed for the occasion.
Sponsored in part by the Baptist General Association of Virginia, the convention kept the registration and entrance process under tight security to protect the participants, many of whom say they face death threats or ostracism from their families for leaving the Islamic faith....
"We need to bridge that gap and love one another," says Mr. Noble, who, like other Christian converts at the conference, was concerned about anonymity because, he says, the Koran dictates that those who leave Islam be considered apostates and can be killed.
"For a Muslim to convert to Christianity is a very risky undertaking," Mr. Noble says. "If he does not go back to Islam, he could face death."
Although it is rare for converts to be killed in America because of their faith, many face ostracism from their families or denial of entrance to their former countries, he says.
"I was called by my embassy and told I'd better repent or I could not go back home with my family," says the conference organizer, a former member of the government in his native country.
To avoid punishment, many converts don't tell their families that they have left Islam. However, the Christian faith teaches its followers to obey the command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," as set out in the Gospel of St. Mark (16:15). Not being able to share their new faith can be distressing, says "Dania Smith," who converted from Islam in April.
"I think I'm going to have to tell them eventually because I want them to be Christians, too," she says.
Until then, however, she fears discovery and ostracism from her family, who live near her Virginia home.
"I know they're going to disown me if they don't kill me," she says.
"Leana Copeland," another convert, has been a Christian since March. Her Muslim family, who migrated from Jordan, does not know of her conversion. Already ostracized by her brothers because of her marriage to an American, she keeps contact only with her mother and sister.
"My brothers haven't spoken to me in the last couple years, and that was only because I married an American," she says. "Can you imagine what they would do if they found out I was a Christian?"
I very much agree with Robert Spencer's conclusion:
This is not a solely Christian issue. Freedom of conscience should be a concern of everyone who professes concern for human rights. The human rights organizations should be the first to defend these people. But they have yet even to notice that they exist.
Now, let me be clear, I do not consider ostracism a human rights issue. I consider ostracism a healthy control within society. Actually, ostracism is one of the main purposes of this blog. A repeated mantra of mine is that certain people should be "castigated and laughed out of normal society."
As a person who believes in "freedom of speech" and "freedom of conscience" I do not believe it is in society's interest to make laws concerning forms of speech or matters of conscience, such as religious preference.
But I stop at death threats. I'm sure most of you would agree with me on this.
I'm guessing that some of the people quoted in the above article are resorting to hyperbole when they say their family members would "kill them." However, having read of this very thing happening quite often in the Islamic world, and a few times here in the U.S., I think it is wise for us to take them seriously.
Wahabbi Jihad In Chechneya
Thanks to Roger Simon for making me aware of this
post over at WindsOfChange, wherein Dan Darling writes a relatively comprehensive article about the political structure of the Jihad in Chechneya. One significant thing to note; the native Chechneyans practice Sufi Islam. Sufi Islam is a particularly
peaceful branch of Islam:
... the essence of Sufi practice is quite simple. It is that the Sufi surrenders to God, in love, over and over; which involves embracing with love at each moment the content of one's consciousness (one's perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, as well as one's sense of self) as gifts of God or, more precisely, as manifestations of God.
Jeez, man, Christianity could do with a little more of that.
So, you might ask, how is it that the separatist movement of a country which is predominantly Sufi came to a place where they considered Infanticidal Terror an option?
Read on and discover for yourselves the truth about
The Invasion Of The Killer Wahabbi Monsters. Excerpted below:
First of all, claims that this has to do with the Russian military presence in Chechnya completely misunderstand the situation. The problem with Chechnya, more or less, is that the Russians tried to surrender after their failure to bring the rebellious republic back into the fold in the first Chechen war and it didn't work. The country was taken over by a mixture of international terrorist organizations, Wahhabi theocrats, drug cartels, and other criminal organizations that subsided more or less on generous funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
This funding helped the Wahhabis to finalize control over the institutional infrastructure of the de facto independent state and led for calls for the imposition of sha'riah even though most Chechens (and Caucasus Muslims in general) are Sufis. The al-Qaeda presence in Chechnya was headed up by bin Laden's protege Amir ibn al-Khattab,
since the fall of Grozny in 2002 the Chechen Wahhabi fighters under Basayev have increasingly been in ascendance and are set up along the following lines:
United Forces of the Caucasian Mujahideen: The Russians refer to this group as the Supreme Military Majlis ul-Shura of the Mujahideen Forces of Caucasus, but this is the coordinating organization under which all of the Chechen Wahhabi groups operate that is headed up by Shamil Basayev. It also includes the Chechen sha'riah court, which provides theological rationales for activities such as that which we witnessed in Beslan.
Islamic International Brigade (IIB): Commanded first by Khattab and then his late successor Abu Walid al-Ghamdi (a relative of 3 of the 9/11 hijackers), the IIB is also known as the "Arab brigade" or the al-Ansar Mujahideen due to the high percentage of Arab al-Qaeda fighters in its ranks. While other Chechen groups contain al-Qaeda members serving either as "officers" or in some kind of a military advisor capacity, the IIB is unquestionably the hub of the al-Qaeda presence in Chechnya.
Riyadus Salikhin: This is a Romanization of the Russified form of Riyadh al-Saliheen or Garden of the Righteous, which I believe comes from Islamic descriptions of Paradise. This is basically the Chechen equivalent to the Tamil Tigers' Black Tigers suicide bombing squad and essentially performs the same duties for the Chechen Wahhabis.
Basayev's terror offensive ...
Since August 21, Russia has been subject to a wave of Chechen terrorist attacks masterminded by Basayev and bankrolled by al-Qaeda through the personage of an Arab national named Abu Omar al-Saif who serves as the network's paymaster in the Caucasus.
Here's a basic chronology of Chechen attacks prior to Beslan:
From August 21-22, upwards of 60 Russian and Chechen-backed troops were slaughtered in and around the Russian-controlled Chechen capital of Grozny.
On August 24, we had the twin plane bombings apparently carried out by members of Riyadus Salikhin that killed 89.
On August 31, a double suicide bombing in Moscow killed 10, also perpetrated by members of Riyadus Salikhin.
Basayev's reasons for selecting North Ossetia in general and Beslan in particular are obvious to one familiar with the warped nature of al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. Unlike most of the North Caucasus, most North Ossetians are Eastern Orthodox Christians, so it "makes sense" to target them rather than say Russian Muslim schoolchildren in Ingushetia or Dagestan if you're a Wahhabi who subscribes to bin Laden's belief in a Huntingtonian-esque clash of civilizations.
I should point out that regardless of what one thinks about Russian involvement in Chechnya, the people of Beslan had no power whatsoever to effect Russian policy in region.
However, I should point out that Basayev's ambitions extend far beyond just Chechen independence, so everybody saying that a political solution to the Chechen war or Russian withdrawl from the region is going to solve the issue is going to be sorely disappointed.
Here's Amir Ramzan, one of Basayev's flunkies, in an interview with the Chechen propaganda website Kavkaz Center from last year:
Q: From your words I can assume that you operate not only in Chechnya but all over the North Caucasus.
R: Yes, very much so. Not only we carry out raids to various areas in the Caucasus, but we also form local Jama’ats, militant sabotage groups locally. We are joined by a lot of Kabardinians, Dagestanis, Karachaevans, Ingushetians and even Ossetians (Muslims).
Q: That means that those in Russia who say that you want to create a caliphate in the Caucasus from sea to sea, are right?
R: Yes, it is so. Since they are unwilling to negotiate with us, then we’ll be doing what we can. And there is a lot we can do. Next year the war will seize the entire Caucasus from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. I swear by Allah, this is only the beginning.
Note that his reference to negotiations refers to the establishment of a caliphate from the Black Sea to the Caspian, not to Russian withdrawl from Chechnya. So unless one wants Putin to consider placing millions of people in the hands of these madmen, there is really very little for him to negotiate with Basayev about.
Wow, it's almost as if there were a World War going on.
Putin Gets It
Thanks to
PowerLine for making me aware of these quotes from Vladimir Putin's speech in response to the Islamofascist Beslan Massacre:
What happened was a terrorist act that was inhuman and unprecedented in its cruelty. It is a challenge not to the president, the parliament and the government but a challenge to all of Russia, to all of our people. It is an attack on our nation.
We showed weakness and weak people are beaten.
Terrorists think that they are stronger, that they will be able to intimidate us, to paralyze our will, to erode our society. It seems that we have a choice: to resist or to cave in and agree with their claims; to give up and allow them to destroy and to take Russia apart, in hope that eventually they would leave us alone.
As president, as the head of the Russian state, as a man who gave an oath to protect the country and its integrity, as a citizen of Russia, I am convinced that in fact we do not have any choice, because as soon as we allow ourselves to be blackmailed and to panic, we shall immerse millions of people in a series of bloody conflicts, similar to Karabakh, Trans-Dnestria and other well known tragedies.
We cannot but see the evident: we are dealing not with separate acts of intimidation, not with individual forays of terrorists. We are dealing with the direct intervention of international terror against Russia, with total and full-scale war, which again and again is taking away the lives of our compatriots.
The Islamofascists ought to ask Germany what happens when you have the combined forces of America, Britain and Russia fighting against you at the same time.
Can Europe Be Expected To Understand America
When They Could Never Afford To Behave As America Does?
Belmont Club has an important
post today on the subject of Russia's options in repsonse to Islamofascist Terrorism vs. the United States options:
Little public analysis has been devoted to options realistically available to Vladimir Putin in response to the massacre of schoolchildren in Ossetia. The fact is that the world has been spoiled by looking at the world through the prism of the American media. When President Bush stopped to consider his response to September 11, he had a range of options available only to a nation as unimaginably powerful as the United States of America. Japanese newspapers reported that President Bush was offered the nuclear option immediately after the attack, probably as an extreme in a range that included filing a diplomatic protest on the opposite end of the spectrum, which he rejected, choosing instead to do what no other country could do: take down the state sponsors of terrorism and pursue the terrorists to the four corners of the earth. America's unmatched power allowed President Bush to select the most humane course of war available. No European power, nor all of them put together, could have embarked on such a precise campaign for lack of means. It was a rich man's strategy, a guerre de luxe.
But no one who has seen the rags and hodgepodge of equipment issued to the Russian Special Forces can entertain any illusion that Vladimir Putin can go around launching raids with hi-tech helicopters, or follow around perps with robotic drones before firing, or use satellite-guided bombs to wipe out enemy safe houses that have been seeded with RFID chips. Nor will those detained by Russia gain weight the way detainees have done at the "inhuman" Gitmo prison. That's an American way of war which even Europeans can only regard with envy. The poor must respond with less. When the Nepalese saw the video of their 12 compatriots executed by terrorists in Iraq, they did what you could do with a box of matches: they burned the mosque in Kathmandu.
While Russia can do better than a box of matches, the reality is that its poverty and low-tech force structure will make any response that Putin may choose a brutal and largely indiscriminate affair unless it is subsumed into the larger American-led Global War on Terror. The real price of the European vacation from history is its abandonment of the first principle of civilization. Unless there is common justice, there will be vigilante justice.
In this post, Wretchard points to something that never occurred to me previously, but which might go a long way towards explaining Europe's, and the Left's, hysterical reaction to the War on Islamofascist Terrorism. Europe's experience, and therefore their knowledge, of war is the history of European wars. European wars, right up to the time of Ceaucescu's Romania and the recent conflict in Bosnia, have been brutal and bloody, inhumane on an almost incomprehensible scale. The lefts' knowledge of war is limited by their enforced pacifism, which causes them to turn away from the study of military technique and to file the footage (which they might happen upon on the TV news) of military actions under the heading of propoganda.
I, Pastorius, have tended towards pacifism in my life, so I understand the mindset. The Gulf War was a revelation to me. Back in the 80's the big media line was that America was losing the tech battle to Japan. Japan was building more stylish cars at a better price, cheaper and more reliable gadgets, etc. What was generally being lost in the hysteria was that America innovated and Japan refined. But, to be truthful, there was somewhat of a silence on the innovation front in the 80's, or at least that appeared to be true. The Gulf War (as well as the 90's tech boom - which does not matter to this discussion) proved those concerns to be unfounded.
Where had American innovation gone? It had gone into the military innovation of the Reagan era. Until the Gulf War, we were not aware of the amazing innovations in American military tecnology. I recall the Evening News bringing us footage of a guided missile, with a mounted camera, being fired from a fighter jet, and finding it's way down the air-shaft of it's targeted building before exploding. Shortly thereafter, the media attacked the credibility of this footage. They seriously informed us that less than half of these so-called smart bombs found their way to their target, but instead were liable to explode in the midst of civilians.
But, I Pastorius, gung-ho American (Chomsky reader) that I was, got the point; America was trying to develop more accurate weaponry, which gradually would mean less civilian casualties.
In fact, the Iraq War, itself, even though it has been largely fought in cities, has apparently produced surprisingly few civilian deaths. The media, which spent weeks and weeks on Abu Ghraib, several months back reported something in the range of 10,000 deaths caused by the Iraq War. There was no attempt made to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. But, the point is, given media hysteria at a lesser American misdeed (yes, I am assuming that torture, when it is not official policy, is less evil than civilian death), I would imagine that, if civilian deaths numbers were to suddenly drastically increase, we would be hearing about it.
As Belmont Club points out, this is a very expensive type of War.
Jihadist's Show Their Real Face - The Face Of Evil
I sit here today and find myself seething. What the Jihadist Islamofascists did yesterday in Russia is, to my mind, as bad, if not worse, than September 11th. The magnitude of 9/11 was clearly worse, but the fact that this time they specifically targeted children fills me with revulsion and disgust.
Yesterday, I saw cries of sympathy and compassion from around the world, coming out for the Russians. Today there is this,
the European Union demands an explanation.
This echoes what happened to the U.S., post 9/11. On September 12th LeMonde ran the famous headline "We Are All Americans." I bought it hook, line, and sinker. By the very next day the tidal wave of America-had-it-comingisms were in full effect.
Here, from AP, is all you need to know in order to understand that the Russians did the right thing by storming the siege:
A police explosives expert told NTV television that the commandos stormed the building after bombs wired to basketball hoops exploded in the gymnasium, where many of the children were being held. A captive who escaped told NTV that a suicide bomber blew herself up in the gym.
A hostage who escaped told the AP that the militants numbered 28, including women wearing camouflage uniforms. The hostage, who identified himself only as Teimuraz, said the militants began wiring the school with explosives as soon as they took control. He, too, said they had placed bombs on both basketball hoops in the gym.
The bomb expert said the gym had been rigged with explosives packed in plastic bottles strung up around the room on a cord and stuffed with metal objects.
The militants, some with explosives strapped to their bodies, stormed the school in Beslan on Wednesday morning
The geniuses at the E.U. who are "demanding" an explanation of Russia are not stupid. They can read and process information. They just refuse to acknowledge the truth before their eyes.
Why would the Islamofascist infanticidal serial-killers wear bomb belts and plant bombs in a building they were occupying?
Even though that was a rhetorical question, I will answer for the fancypants over in the E.U. The answer is, the Islamofascist Infanticidal Serial-Killers clearly, from the very beginning of the siege, intended to kill themselves, and everyone else, if they did not get their way.
And what is their way?
From Reuters:
MOSCOW - Rebels linked to the school hostage-taking seek independence from Russia and most want to make Chechnya (news - web sites) a sovereign Muslim nation.
They want to instate Sharia.
And what's more, the work of the Chechen Islamofascist Infanticidal Serial-Murderers is supported and masterminded by Al Qaeda.
From Bloomberg:
Al-Qaeda Statement
A group loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri, second-in-command to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the assault in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site, Islamic Minbar.
Really, enough said.
Democratic National Committee Says Bush Has Assumed Dictatorial Powers
Here's a
link to a page on Reuter's which features an ad, paid for by the Democratic National Committe, which depicts George Bush wearing a King's crown, with the headline, "Dethrone Bush."
They are implying that George Bush has subverted the Constitution, and assumed dictatorial powers.
You will not hear Bush respond to this.
Meanwhile, Kerry will whine and cry and threaten to sue over every Swift Boat Vet ad.
Tell me, which would be the worse crime of which to be accused, being a Dictator, or filing false papers with the military to win medals of honor?
The Democratic National Committee represents John Kerry officially. The Swift Boat Vets do not represent Bush.
My Road To Damascus
Anti-Chomsky posted a long, but important testimony entitled My Road To Damascus, which I will not attempt to excerpt here. However, I do highly reccomend reading it. One of his points is that Liberalism in it's "universalism" was destined to come to a place where it would reject Jewish "particularism". Thus, Liberalism was destined to fight against Israel, and, by extension, any Jew who supports Israel.
If this is true, and I believe it is, then Liberalism is also destined to fight against American "individualism", or Liberty.
Included in his testimony (that's the best name I can think of for his post) is his description of his ideological odyssey from "progressivism" to "conservative" (which is what he terms his current philosophical leaning).
His post echoes and elucidates so many of my feelings and so many of the steps in my own odyssey.
I, unlike Mr. Anti-Chomsky, was not raised Jewish. I was raised a Christian. I accepted Christ as my Savior, and as the Lord of my life, when I was 13 years old. I was baptised two weeks later. For the next five years I read the Bible and Biblical commentaries for probably 1 to 2 hours a day. Thus the Bible, and the Christian tradition, became my first intellectual training ground.
Then I went to college and lost faith in almost all that I had studied. The only two things I never lost faith in were
1) that God loved me, and everyone with an unaccountable and awesome love, and
2) that the "Christ story" (as I came to mystify it) - of God loving us all so much that he was willing to take on flesh, become a human and suffer great indignity so that his blood could enter the human continuum and inoculate our lives against death - was true in some Platonic lands of forms, or Jungian collective unconcious, even if it, perhaps, wasn't a real occurence of history.
I felt that I had to explain my Christian history in order to explain the following to you. When I was 27 or so, I began my long climb out of the intellectual and spiritual depression which into which I had fallen. It gradually became clear to me that what I believed in did matter. That the "Christ story" did make sense as a historical fact and in truth, it actually can be used as one way of explaining the changes in human society which have occurred during the last 2000 years.
I began to notice that all my hip friends who so rejected Christianity as being superstitious and intellectually barbaric were willing to fall for all sorts of pseudo-mystical b.s. (Astrology, Self-healing with crystals, Wicca, Paganism, Native American lore babbled by white americans who didn't make it out of their mid-life crisis intact, etc. etc. etc.). In short, they would fall for all the thousand gods of history but they would not get on their knees for the one faith which had clearly inseminated Western Civilization.
However, when I began to seek out fellow believers once again, I found an intellectual oppression almost the equal of the intellectual idiocy of my "hip" friends. Most Christians sit in such egotistical assurance of their understanding of the "truth" that they never feel the need to question, they frown on arguing and analysis. I find that sick and weak-minded.
My Jewish friends, on the other hand, who were also (as so many people do) returning to their faith in their late 20's and early 30's, did not refrain from questioning their faith, or analyzing the Bible.
For a couple of years, my wife and I seriously discussed converting to Judaism.
However, there was one small problem. I still believed in Christ, and, realizing there really is nothing more offensive to many Jews than a "Jew for Jesus", I decided that we would join a Church and do the best we could within the Christian structure. It has worked out better than I would ever have imagined.
One of the things that has helped us is that my wife and I have made a study of the Judaic roots of Christianity. Some of the stories in the "New Testament" only really come to life when one understands Jewish traditions and literature. I do not claim any expertise on this subject, I 'm just saying it helps.
Another thing we have started to do is celebrate Shabbat (that's why I often do not post on Saturdays. We are not very good at keeping the Sabbath (my wife and I are pretty undisciplined people, both of us being artsy types), but we are slowly integrating it into our lives.
Anyway, I go into all this so you might understand how I Pastorius, a former Chomsky-ite myself, came to spend hours everyday obsessing over CUANAS, this Christian blog which attempts to fight against anti-Semitism.
Because I have studied the Bible I know that the Jews gave us our entire faith. The Bible was written by Jews. Jesus was addressed as Rabbi. Paul was a Rabbi. His thought was Judaic, although he sometimes sold his ideas with a Greek spin.
Judaic thought is the foundation and life of Christianity. There is no separating the branches from the vines, nor the vines from the root. Read Romans. Anyone who would discount this idea stands to be pruned from the vine himself.
Now, a Christian can look at that literally (going to hell) or figuratively, but it remains true that the "New Testament" makes this point and makes it in some of the strongest language used in those letters which are so filled with love language.
I came to realize that, because Judaism is the foundation of Christianity, and Christianity is the foundation of Western Civilization, therefore, Judaic thought is the foundation of Western Civilization. The Christian Church gave Judaic thought it's worldly power to spread across continents into the lives of a large portion of the world's population. Jews not being evangelicals by nature, never tried to sell their ideas to the world at large.
Thank God for us Christian imperialists, huh?
I relate to Mr. Anti-Chomsky's odyssey. Mine, obviously is not the same on the outside. However, the feelings and the ideological progression were very close to being the same.
After 9/11, as I have mentioned here before, I began to spend hours reading the news everyday. At first, I was simply trying to figure out why there were so many people in Europe and America who thought we had it coming.
Then I started to see that the same people who thought we deserved 9/11 hated the Jews even more.
I will leave you with this, from the Comments section to the Anti-Chomsky "Road To Damascus" post:
Anonymous said...
My road to Damascus took place while I attended college at an "elite" northeastern University. I entered as a Naderite at age 18, but became quickly disillusioned with the sort of narrow-mindedness, groupthink, and ignorance displayed by the leftist on campus. I started to drift away during my first three years.
Then early my senior year, I discovered one sunny morning that a group of religious fanatics had murdered close to 3,000 people in an attempt to murder 50,000. The vast majority were civilians, and the vast majority were in my hometown of New York.
And sure enough, within days, before any U.S. action to defend itself had taken place, these "progressives" were out on campus denouncing the U.S. There weren't many of them, but they were there, and it occurred to me at this point that these people were not driven by an ideology, even an extreme one, but some sort of a reflexive, nihilistic hatred.
These people claimed they hated war, yet they wanted to do nothing to stop a war that had claimed millions of lives in Afghanistan, and was beginning to spill over into the U.S.
These people claimed that the rich were oppressors, yet they wanted to do nothing to stop a multi-millionaire and his army of wealthy bourgeois fanatics.
These people claimed they were for women’s rights, gay rights, and religious tolerance, and yet wanted to do nothing to stop a force that, in Afghanistan, had turned women into less than beasts of burden, murdered homosexuals, and had massacred thousands of "heretical" Shi'ite Muslims.
These people claimed they were against imperialism, yet they wanted to do nothing to stop the Pakistani/Saudi colonial domination of Afghanistan.
So that was the end of my self-identification as a “progressive”. I would rather be a thinking man than a mindless automaton, and if thinking led me to “incorrect” conclusions, so be it.
And no, I haven’t been to church since 9/11, either.-Nietzsche-quoting anonymous guy
France Threatens Pre-emptive Use Of Nuclear Weapons Against "Rogue States"
World Ignores and Snores
From
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, with commentary from JoshuaClaybourne.com:
In the fall of 2003, the French media reported that a major shift in the country's nuclear policy was under way. On October 27, the headline of the daily Libération screamed, "Chirac's Small Bombshell: France Will Soon Revise its Deterrence Strategy in Order to Be Able to Strike 'Rogue States,' Even Preventively." The newspaper reported that France would announce a new nuclear doctrine that would take into account "rogue states" with weapons of mass destruction, and that new weapons were being considered to deal with such threats.
In the fall of 2003, the French media reported that a major shift in the country's nuclear policy was under way. On October 27, the headline of the daily Libération screamed, "Chirac's Small Bombshell: France Will Soon Revise its Deterrence Strategy in Order to Be Able to Strike 'Rogue States,' Even Preventively." The newspaper reported that France would announce a new nuclear doctrine that would take into account "rogue states" with weapons of mass destruction, and that new weapons were being considered to deal with such threats.
It has always surprised me that the media has let France get away with claiming to be a spokescountry for a "multipolar" world, when in fact France's policy for three hundred years has been remarkably consistent: Let France be France. Paris has never worried about entangling alliances, because it will simply enter or leave them as it sees fit. That its military is not always able to cash the checks its diplomats write is simply a consequence of France's domestic political problems and its rather poor (but beautiful!) geographic endowment.
The announcement that France also takes rogue states seriously never really entered into the American debate on multilateralism, especially partnership with France and Schroeder's Germany. Nor, somehow, did France's last round of nuclear testing manage to make a dent in its reputation as a bunch of brie-consuming appeasement chimps. And, of course, France's actions in Algiers and at home signify that the residents of the Elysée Palace (good photo here are far more anti-Islam than anyone has ever seriously accused those living in the Maison Blanche.
The rest of the article confirms that France, far from being weak of word, is indeed sharpening its saber. The same countries that concern us, concern them. As the French defense minister said in November 2003, "At the time when we see countries with non-democratic and sometimes uncontrollable governments--one could mention North Korea, Iran, Pakistan--at the time when we see a whole bunch of countries acquiring nuclear weapons, should we let our guard down?" And official French sources can sound downright Bushian at times:
Gen. Henri Bentegeat, France's chief of defense, expounded, "Each dictator possessing [weapons of mass destruction] must realize that, should he choose to strike France's vital interests, he would be immediately exposed to the destruction of all his centers of power and of all his military centers with sufficiently accurate weapons with an adequately limited yield." Such a "more targeted" nuclear deterrence is judged necessary to "threaten dictators for whom human life does not count and who would be ready to sacrifice their countries."
France is tough, man. How is it that they say these things and they don't get reported in the American Media? I've heard endless criticism that the Bush Administration is stupid and unaware of the basic facts and issues that concern to the people of the U.S., it's allies, and the world in general. But, this is the first hard evidence I've seen that maybe they really are unaware. The fact that the Bush Administration sits quietly and takes French criticism for U.S. "unilateralism", while France's goes around the world making pronouncements like this, tells me that one of two thihgs is true about the Bush White House; either
1) they are unaware of French policy,
or
2) they absolutely don't care what France thinks.
Now, I doubt George W. Bush himself reads
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, but I have a hard time believing that, as a group, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, could be unaware of these French policy pronouncements. This leads me to the reluctant, and bewildering, conclusion that the Bush Administration not only doesn't much care what France thinks, but they don't have much concern (even here in Election Year 2004) about making their case to the American people. But it's almost impossible to believe the latter when you watch the Convention. This just doesn't make sense to me.
Am I crazy here? Don't you think the Americans would be shocked to know that while Old Europe castigates American unilateralism, they are actually instituting the same policy, on a grander scale (considering they are threatening Nuclear Retaliation against vaguely defined "rogue states", which the U.S. has not done) than the United States.
Don't you think that Americans in general (I mean in the 70-80% range) would see the blatant, historical hypocrisy of the European criticism of America? Wouldn't this effectively castrate the Kerry campaign considering he has been clearly arguing for following Old Europe's lead towards a kind of ill-defined pacifism?
This is one more example of Europe sitting around and acting self-righteous while they have us carry out their dirty work, all the while holding the trump card that (in theory) they would go even further than we would, if they had to.
They don't have to spend money on defense. We do their defense for them. And they criticize us for doing it. And all the while they are saying they wouldn't bother with the precision weapons and actual troops on the ground, they would just wipe "rogue states" off the map entirely.
And we let them get away with this hypocrisy.
Oh well, the convention isn't over yet. Maybe this will be brought up.
Al Jazeera Will Broadcast More Of The Republican Convnetion
Than CBS, ABC and NBC Combined
SF Gate
reports on Al Jazeera's coverage of the Republican National Convention:
For 40 million viewers in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite television channel, provides a window into the intricate world of American politics. This week, its 16 reporters and staff will air 13 hours of broadcasts from the convention -- more time than the combined coverage of America's major television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC.
That is a travesty and ABCCBSNBC should be ashamed of themselves. I'm sure Dan Rather is turning over in his grave at this very minute. Al Jazeera's focus on the issues at hand is a clearly the result of the fact that the Arab world is not yet dominated by
American Hegemony.
Back to SF Gate:
For many of Al-Jazeera's viewers in the Middle East, these insights into the American political system are more than an excursion into foreign politics, said Hafez al-Mirazi, the Al-Jazeera Washington bureau chief.
"American politics for them is almost domestic politics," said al-Mirazi. "The Arabic society wants to know how serious are the statements they hear about America's commitment to democracy."
Al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S. political process may be equally important for Washington, analysts say. The success of the U.S.-led war against international terrorism and the course of its occupation of Iraq -- two issues that dominate the presidential campaign -- ultimately will be affected by the Arab world's perception of America's intentions.
"We failed to conduct our diplomacy with the Middle East, which led to resentment toward U.S. policies" there, said Najib Ghadbian, a professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas.
"If a credible channel such as Al-Jazeera covers the U.S. extensively, I think the educated and more sophisticated audiences may see that, yes, there is something to what the U.S. is saying, and maybe they are really interested in bringing democracy to the region," Ghadbian said.
Al-Mirazi agreed.
Al-Jazeera, which airs news and public affairs programs round-the-clock, also struggles to shake the image of a channel biased against America and Israel. Its broadcasts of unedited videos of Osama bin Laden, its often provocative talk shows and its gruesome coverage of the war in Iraq have earned it nicknames such as "Taliban TV."
A U.S. bomb hit Al-Jazeera's Baghdad headquarters last year, killing one reporter and contributing to the channel's strained relationship with the White House. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has called Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war "violently anti-coalition," and last month Iraq's pro-American interim government shut down the network's Baghdad offices for "inciting violence."
"It's important to change our image from 'Al-Jazeera, comma, Osama bin Laden's mouthpiece, comma,' " said Stephanie Thomas, the Washington bureau manager for the channel. "We have no agenda, no spin. We want senior American policy-makers to go on the air and talk to our viewers."
This seems like great news. I do wonder what they choose to edit out and how their commentators spin the content.
Thanks to Instapundit for making me aware of this.
Let's All Put A Moratorium On The Sam Harris Mentions Please
My friends out there in blog land. Please, stop giving Sam Harris attention. Every time you mention his book he probably sells another 100-500 copies, at least. His ideas are anachronisms posing as secular prophecy.
Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about his book:
In this sometimes simplistic and misguided book, Harris calls for the end of religious faith in the modern world. Not only does such faith lack a rational base, he argues, but even the urge for religious toleration allows a too-easy acceptance of the motives of religious fundamentalists. Religious faith, according to Harris, requires its adherents to cling irrationally to mythic stories of ideal paradisiacal worlds (heaven and hell) that provide alternatives to their own everyday worlds. Moreover, innumerable acts of violence, he argues, can be attributed to a religious faith that clings uncritically to one set of dogmas or another.
Very simply, religion is a form of terrorism for Harris.
Predictably, he argues that a rational and scientific view—one that relies on the power of empirical evidence to support knowledge and understanding—should replace religious faith. We no longer need gods to make laws for us when we can sensibly make them for ourselves. But Harris overstates his case by misunderstanding religious faith, as when he makes the audaciously naïve statement that "mysticism is a rational enterprise; religion is not." As William James ably demonstrated, mysticism is far from a rational enterprise, while religion might often require rationality in order to function properly. On balance, Harris's book generalizes so much about both religion and reason that it is ineffectual.
Now, I am not as well-educated as Sam Harris. All I have is a B.A. from a lame State University. I am mostly self-educated. If I recall correctly, Harris is in the Doctoral Program at USC. Very impressive. But, tell me, with such a high-powered education, how is it that he missed the fact that these ideas, which he propounds as if he were the first to pluck them from the Tree of Knowledge, have actually been argued on a Western culture-wide level for several hundred years already.
These ideas reached their culmination and finally aquired their lethal power from, most notably, Nietzche and Marx, among other nineteenth century philosophers and social theorists.
These are the ideas that spawned the 20th century. These are the ideas that led to Stalinism, Nazism, the two World Wars, the Holocaust, Pol Pot, etc. All of those twentieth century catastrophes were the logical extension of the the ideas that Harris now puts forth as if they were original.
These ideas have already been thoroughly discredited.
So, why give him any credence? Each mention increases the sense of legitimacy he enjoys in society. With legitimacy comes power and influence. Do you want to contribute to the proliferation of discredited and dangerous ideas?
Ideas are capable of breeding terrible monsters.
America Is Optimistic - Britain Is Sour And Negative
Shout for joy, Melanie Phillips is
back from vacation:
Optimists and reactionaries
Having just spent three weeks in the US, I was struck once again by how similar and yet how very different that country is from Britain. The thing that really hits you between the eyes is the optimism. You meet it again and again in everyday situations, particularly in the cheerfulness with which Americans deliver any services that are required. Instead of the surly jobsworths of Britain who are always doing you an enormous and onerous favour, American waitresses, counter staff, car park attendants and the rest all convey the impression that they are actually delighted to share the human race with you.
This sunny attitude is surely rooted in America's belief in itself as a force for good in the world, the certainty that American values can make the world a better place. This, of course, is precisely what gets up the nostrils of the cynical, sour, negative Brits.
I want to cut in here and say that when I visited England I found the people to be very pleasant. I did not have the typical American experience of rude waiters, shopowners, or people who would not help with directions. The English people were very helpful and polite. But, of course I, Pastorius, am one of the most charming people you will ever meet (see the rest of this blog for proof - that's a joke, ha ha).
However, I also found the English people, in general to be dour and almost ominously quiet. Same thing in France. There was an almost palpable, but inexplicable feeling of oppression. By oppression, I do not mean governmental oppression, in the classic sense. Instead, I mean a kind of spiritual oppression; the grief and despair of a people who see no hope.
It was a very strange feeling.
That's all completely subjective, of course. But, I'll bet Melanie would agree with my description.
Back to Melanie:
And maybe this helps account for the astonishing and irrational hatred of President Bush. For the dominant force in British society is the opposite belief, that this country's values are rotten and have to be replaced -- and indeed that the whole edifice of western culture is oppressive and coercive and has brought only misery to the rest of the planet. It is a profoundly reactionary viewpoint, anti-progress, which is increasingly having the effect of returning us to a pre-modern state of social anarchy -- despite the fact that it is espoused by people who call themselves 'liberal' or 'progressive'.
There was a time, of course, when liberal progessives believed they had a mission to improve the world by promoting values such as truth, law, justice, morality and freedom. That, of course, is precisely what Bush believes he must do (and, for that matter. so does Tony Blair). For that, he is denounced and vilified as a war-mongering imperialist. Democratic nation-building is now regarded as the new fascism. But the fact is that Bush has stolen the clothes from off the progressives' backs. Ironically, it is now Bush, the man of the right, who is the optimist who believes in building a better world. It is the left, by contrast, who now believe in preserving the tyrannical and murderous status-quo. In this respect, indeed, Bush is not conservative at all but an old-fashioned liberal radical (which is why truly reactionary conservatives such as Pat Buchanan hate him too, and have ended up singing from the same hymn-sheet as the progressives.)
And by golly, do they hate him. For although Britain has far more comprehensively lost its nerve and moral fibre, the culture of irrational hatred, lies and sheer unadulterated spite is raging in the US too like a forest fire. In a Borders bookshop in New York, I leafed through the following new titles: 'The I Hate (Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice) Reader -- Behind the Bush Cabal's War on Terror'; 'The Book on Bush: How George W (Mis)leads America'; 'All the President's Spin: George W Bush, the Media and the Truth' (sic); 'Billionaires for Bush: How to Rule the World for Fun and Profit'; 'Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq'; and the number one New York Times bestseller (natch): 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right' (yes, really).
I see these books on display all the time, as well, but I have my own little way of dealing with the situation. I simply go around the store and pick out stuff like Pam Anderson's book, Mad Magazine, Romance novels with lurid covers, and, last but not least, Mein Kampf. And then I bring to Bushitler display and simply intersperse my collection of silliness and idiocy with all the hate-Bush books.
Sudanese Government Supports Killing and Raping Black Men, Women and Children
Thanks to JihadWatch.org for making me aware of this
article from the Khaleej Times Online:
Janjaweed shares camps with Sudan govt army: Human Rights Watch(DPA)27 August 2004
WASHINGTON - With a UN sanctions deadline looming, an international human rights group on Thursday charged that the Sudanese government army was sharing at least five camps with Janjaweed militia blamed for massive ethnic cleansing in western Sudan.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the five camps were among 16 Janjaweed miilitia camps identified through its investigators in West and North Darfur.
Smoking gun; the Arab Muslim government of
Sudan is sponsoring the genocide and enslavement of the black male population, the enslavement, torture and rape of black women, and the enslavement and rape of black children.
