CUANAS

The United Nations and Anti-Semitism


From Anne Bayefsky, at National Review:


Last June, the United Nations held its first-ever conference on anti-Semitism. Though the organization's very raison d'etre rises from the ruins of Auschwitz and Belsen, it has never produced a single resolution dedicated to combating anti-Semitism or a report devoted to this devastating global phenomenon. For those who saw light at the end of the tunnel, this week the prospect of enlightenment at the General Assembly came to an inglorious conclusion. One mention of "anti-Semitism" made it into one paragraph of a general resolution on religious intolerance. Fifty-four U.N. states — of the 153 members that cast votes — refused to support even that.

What's going on? Let's connect the dots. Immediately before voting against concern for anti-Semitism, the same countries refused to support a call for governments "to ensure effective protection of the right to life...and to investigate...all killings committed for any discriminatory reason, including sexual orientation." Anti-Semitism and killing people because of their sexual orientation are acceptable to almost every one of the 56 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

The resolution involving killing homosexuals is only one of many U.N. human-rights resolutions in which the OIC stands with the violator, not the victim. The real question is: How do they get away with it, let alone pass themselves off as seriously interested in human rights, including those of Palestinians?

Arab and Muslim states unabashedly take the offensive, hijacking the medium of human rights to serve a political agenda aimed at denying Jewish self-determination and destroying the Jewish state — the ultimate form of anti-Semitism. The willing vehicle for such a heist is the United Nations. The U.N.'s June anti-Semitism conference served to invigorate their well-versed two-track approach: Put the Jews on one side, Israel on the other, and divide and conquer.

Uh, Germany…

Track One works this way. Over the last three months the possibility of a U.N. resolution dedicated to anti-Semitism has been under discussion. A full-fledged resolution offers the potential of serious examination of the phenomenon, including new forms of anti-Semitism with the Jewish state as its victim. The battle associated with presenting a new and substantive stand-alone anti-Semitism resolution, however, scared off every democratic U.N. member state. The next idea was to have the European Union (EU) sponsor a resolution on anti-Semitism modeled on the Berlin Declaration, which was adopted in April by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE had eked out: "...international developments or political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism." Europeans could not quite bring themselves to say that terrorism aimed at ethnically cleansing Israel of Jews was also a form of anti-Semitism. But the Berlin Declaration's mention of the word "Israel" in the context of "anti-Semitism" put Arab and Islamic states at the U.N. on the warpath (yet another one).

Some hoped the Germans would take a leadership role in campaigning for a specific anti-Semitism resolution at the General Assembly. In true gangland style, Germany was soon given to understand that such a role would jeopardize its hoped-for permanent seat on the Security Council, and any sense of historical responsibility vanished. Nor was any other EU member prepared to confront Arab and Muslim opposition. More sympathetic EU-wannabe states were afraid to annoy the EU gatekeepers. The U.S. State Department was content to leave the matter to European initiative (or lack thereof). And given that an Israeli-sponsored resolution has virtually no chance of being passed at the General Assembly, Israel chose not to go it alone.

Climbing way down the ladder, efforts turned to a general resolution on religious intolerance.
One proposal would have included in the preamble the words "welcoming the Berlin Declaration" of the OSCE. But Berlin contained the dreaded reference to "Israel." Hence, despite the declaration's European parentage, the proposal was rejected by the European Union on the grounds that Arab and Islamic states said no. Then began EU-OIC negotiations, which weaken and debilitate so many U.N. outcomes. References to Islamophobia and Christianophobia and language accommodating all other religions were added. Islamophobia was taken out of alphabetical order and put first before anti-Semitism. And there the EU finally made its stand.

The OIC still balked, but their efforts to defeat the reference failed. They had, however, successfully managed to reduce it to a single mention, and to exclude the Berlin reference and any other detail that might have connected anti-Semitism with Israel.

In the meantime, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights will soon receive another annual report on Islamophobia and the "situation of Muslim and Arab peoples in various parts of the world." It continues to adopt annual resolutions expressing "deep concern at...intolerance and discrimination in matters of religion or belief" that mention only Islam.

Now for Track Two and the demonization of Israel. In the intervening five months since the one-day U.N. conference on anti-Semitism ended, the U.N. anti-Israel campaign was ramped up. The U.N.'s judicial organ, the International Court of Justice, decided in July that Israel's security fence violated its version of international law. The contortions necessary to arrive at this conclusion resulted in a decision that there is no right of self-defense under the U.N. Charter when terrorists are not state actors. But just in case anyone missed the point, Judge Tanaka spoke of "the so-called terrorist attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers against the Israeli civilian population" (emphasis added) and Judge Elaraby (Egyptian ambassador to the U.N. until 1999) affirmed a "right of resistance" on the grounds, judicially speaking of course, that "violence breeds violence."

The U.N. General Assembly held another emergency session in July to condemn Israel for building a wall to prevent terrorism, but not to name and condemn Palestinian terrorists, their Palestinian Authority patrons, or their state sponsors. This fall, another 20 anti-Israel resolutions are in the process of adoption at the regular session of the General Assembly. Another of the annual U.N.-sponsored NGO conferences "in support of the Palestinian people" was held at U.N. Headquarters in September. Participants studied "such sterile paradigms as ‘Israel's self-defence,'" how to "promote a sporting, cultural and economic boycott" of Israel, and "to challenge Christian Zionism in moderate Christian communities."

Three more reports of U.N. "experts" were produced for the General Assembly taking direct aim at Israel. One expert has a mandate only to address human-rights violations by Israel in the territories and not Palestinian human-rights violations in Israel. He started this year's report by analogizing Israel to apartheid South Africa, despite the fact that Arab states have virtually purged themselves of Jews, while in Israel the 20 percent Arab population enjoys more democratic rights than anywhere in the Arab world. And then there was the expert report on racism and xenophobia that blamed Israel for the rise of anti-Semitism, but that was still studying whether "alleged" ethnic motivations had anything to do with the genocide and displacement of more than a million people in the Darfur region of Sudan.

"You are talking anti-Semitism."

The inequality and injustice of the treatment of Israel becomes most obvious in comparison with the U.N.'s treatment of human-rights violations elsewhere in the world. A U.N. General Assembly resolution on Iran could only be adopted last week after any notion of creating a single investigator into human-rights abuse in that country was eliminated. No resolution was even attempted on countries like China, where 1.3 billion people are without basic civil and political rights, or Saudi Arabia, where gross discrimination against women is endemic and more than a million female migrant workers are essentially slaves.

Resolutions put forward on Sudan and Zimbabwe were prevented this week from even coming to a vote. The grand total of the GA's 2004 country-specific criticism of human-rights violations around the globe in the 190 U.N. members, excluding Israel: One resolution for each of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan. It was on November 24 that the U.N. General Assembly defeated action on Sudan and Zimbabwe. Simultaneously, U.N. delegates in the adjoining room adopted nine resolutions condemning Israel.

In the latest effort to rend Jews from the state of Israel a new formula has emerged. Taking objection to anti-Semitism in the form of egregious discrimination against the Jewish state is said to be motivated by a desire to eliminate any criticism of Israel. As Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the Jerusalem Post on November 4, "There is a cottage industry of people out there who try to accuse of bias those who criticize Israel's human-rights record not because the criticisms are unwarranted but as a way of simply defending Israel from any criticism." Reading from the same script, Mary Robinson, the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, in a lecture at Brown University on November 7, worried about "blur[ing] the line between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel...[S]ome...regard any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic." But "Israel's supporters" should not, said Robinson, "use the charge of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate discussion." Similarly, Esther Benbassa, an invitee to a November 11-13 U.N. meeting in Barcelona that was convened to advise the U.N.'s expert on racism and xenophobia, complained of "the dangerous phase of intimidation" that "eagerly sees behind each word, each gesture, and each criticism of Israeli policy, an anti-Semite."

What an incredible outrage. A cursory glance at the newspapers in the democratic state of Israel, or the decisions of its vibrant judiciary, or the myriad discussions, conferences, and writings of Jews across the globe reveal a cacophony of public and self-driven criticism. The failure to acknowledge the deep connection between discrimination and demonization of individual Jews and discrimination and demonization of the Jewish state is not just ignorant — it is lethal. This failure also answers the original question of how Arab and Muslim states, and all those who have jumped on the Arafat bandwagon, pass themselves off as interested in human rights rather than the defeat of Jewish self-determination.

In a 1968 appearance at Harvard, Martin Luther King said, "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism." But Martin Luther King would not find a home at the United Nations or its allied nongovernmental human-rights organizations.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:55 AM Comments: 4

Killing A Little Girl For No Apparent Reason
And Then
Killing His Country To Save His Ass


From the Washington Post:


JERUSALEM -- On the morning of Oct. 5, Iman Hams, a slight girl of 13 wearing a school uniform and toting a backpack crammed with books, wandered past an Israeli military outpost on the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt.

The Israeli captain on duty alerted his troops to reports of a suspicious figure about 100 yards from the outpost. Soldiers fired into the air, according to radio transmissions, military court documents and witnesses.

"It's a little girl," a soldier watching from a nearby Israeli observation post cautioned over the military radio. "She's running defensively eastward. . . . A girl of about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death."

Four minutes later, Israeli troops opened fire on the girl with machine guns and rifles, the radio transmissions indicated. The captain walked to the spot where the girl "was lying down" and fired two bullets from his M-16 assault rifle into her head, according to an indictment against the officer. He started to walk away, but pivoted, set his rifle on automatic and emptied his magazine into the girl's prone body, the indictment alleged.

"This is Commander," the captain said into the radio when he was finished. "Whoever dares to move in the area, even if it's a 3-year-old -- you have to kill him. Over."

The girl's body was peppered with at least 20 bullets, including seven in her head, said Ali Mousa, a physician who is director of the Rafah hospital where her corpse was examined.
An investigation was undertaken, and the military's top commanders -- including the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon -- said repeatedly that the captain had acted properly under the circumstances. But Israeli newspapers published graphic accounts by soldiers who said they witnessed the incident, and Israel's Channel 2 television aired recordings of the radio transmissions.

As a result, the company commander -- identified by the army only as Capt. R -- was indicted this past week on charges of misuse of a firearm, ordering subordinates to lie about the shooting and violation of military regulations. In addition, the military moved to reexamine the investigation, which Yaalon conceded had been "a grave failure" and which the indictment alleged was the subject of an attempted coverup.

The shooting of the schoolgirl added to a growing number of incidents that have spurred Israeli soldiers to speak out about abuses of Palestinians, despite pressure from superiors in the field and statements by senior military officials playing down such cases. Last week, after troops provided photographic evidence to an Israeli newspaper, the military opened an investigation into allegations that soldiers desecrated the bodies of Palestinians killed during army operations.

"There is no logical reason for what he did," a soldier, who declined to be identified, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth a few days after the incident. "Not for shooting the two bullets at her, and certainly not the burst afterward. This is the most sickening thing I have ever seen during my army service. It was desecration of a body. That is not what we are taught to do in the army. . . . The 13-year-old girl was already dead. Why did he fire that burst into her?"

Shmuel Shenfeld, one of the indicted officer's attorneys, said the captain opened fire because of "suspicion of a penetration by a terrorist" near the outpost. He added, "I believe he will be acquitted because he acted the way one has to act in order to neutralize a threat on his soldiers."
Shenfeld denied that the captain pumped bullets into the dead girl, saying he was firing in response to shooting from the direction of the nearby refugee camp.

The indictment issued against the captain alleged that he called several of his subordinate officers and soldiers into his office a week after the incident and "tried to convince" them that they "noticed shooting near the body of the deceased only," rather than shooting at the body. The indictment also accused the captain of asking his men to testify that he hit the body with the burst of fire "by mistake" as he was withdrawing from the area.

Shenfeld said that some soldiers in the unit were trying to frame his client.


The reality is that Hamas, and al-Fatah, and Islamic Jihad, and all their respective soldiers, are heroes in the land of Palestine. They are not arrested by Palestinian security forces. They are not brought up on trial by any Palestinian system of justice. So, the contrast between the two societies is huge. Israeli courts will indict a man for such behavior. Members of the Israeli press will work overtime to bring such behavior to light. Members of Israeli Parliament will publicly condemn such behavior. This demonstrates that Israeli society has a foundational conscience.

However, Shmuel Shenfeld and his client "Capt. R", are, apparently, both willing to be traitorous to that Israeli conscience. They are both willing to lie, and thus damage the entire citzenry of Israel in the eyes of the world, in order to get Capt. R's ass off the hook.

Unless it shown beyond a doubt that some extenuating circumstance prompted Capt. R to such horrific behavior, I hope he is convicted, and that he spends the rest of his life in jail. Oh, and if only attorneys like Shmuel Shenfeld could be held accountable for the damage they do to society with their disgusting lies.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:45 AM Comments: 0

War Is The Moral Choice


From the British columnist Mark Steyn:


After September 11, I wondered rhetorically (in The Spectator) what are we prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren't prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia - a Europe it would not be necessary to die for. Or as Robert Kagan's recent thesis puts it: these days Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.

Can't see it working myself. A couple of months back, I found myself in the company of a recently retired Continental prime minister and mentioned what a chap in the Pentagon had said to me about how the Europeans really needed to invest in new technology or they'd no longer be able to share the same battlefield with the Americans.

I thought I was making a boring, technocratic, Nato-expenditure sort of point, but he took it morally and visibly recoiled. "But why would we want to have such horrible weapons?" he said, aghast. "In Europe today, it is just inconceivable to possess such things."

You can't help noticing that it's the low-tech weapons that are really horrible. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and the Congo, millions get hacked to death by machetes. Even on the very borders of EUtopia, hundreds of thousands died in the Balkans in mostly non-state-of-the-art ways until the Americans intervened.

According to the latest estimates, the mass graves in Iraq contain the remains of at least 300,000 people, but we're still arguing about whether the war was "justified". The pacifism - or, more accurately, passivism - of Europe does not seem especially moral.

The UK is one of the few credible military powers left in the developed world, yet it can't sustain a proportionate share of the burden of even a small war.

When you say as much to Euro-grandees, they say, ah, but you wouldn't understand, here on the Continent we have seen the horrors of war close up, the slaughter of the Somme casts long shadows. I'll say. In the New Statesman last week, Philip Kerr managed to yoke All Quiet On The Western Front with Joan Baez and John Lennon, and unintentionally underlined just how obsolescent the Sixties folk-protest canon is. Where Have All The Flowers Gone? would have made a great song for the First World War, but not for Afghanistan or Iraq or anything we're likely to fight in the future.

In our time, mass slaughter occurs only in places where the West refuses to act - in the Sudan or North Korea - or acts only under the contemptible and corrupting rules of UN "peacekeeping", as at Srebrenica. In Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, technological advantage changes the moral calculus: it makes war the least worst option, the moral choice. At the 11th hour of the 11th day, we should remember those who died in the Great War, but recognise that it could never be "the war to end all wars" and never should.


Why do we never hear apologies from all those who said going into Afghanistan and Iraq that the wars would not work, and that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would be killed?

Answer: because people who say such things are being treated as if they are children, and therefore are not held to be accountable for their actions.

It is not healthy for our civilization to allow such people to continue on in their irresponsibility. They are sustained by our civilization, they need to start participating in it. They need to recognize that their freedom was established and preserved through war. It's ok to be a pacifist, or to be against the Iraq War while not being entirely a pacifist. However, it is not ok to lie and exaggerate to make one's case, and then not apologize even when that case is shown not only to be groundless, but, through hard evidence, to have been immoral as well.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:19 PM Comments: 3

A Separate Peace


Omar, from Iraq The Model, tells a story (via No Pasaran) which is anecdotal but maddening, if true:


It's been usual for foreigners (diplomats, workers, journalists... etc) in Iraq to take lots of security precautions when they move around in Baghdad or some other Iraqi cities; they try to hide anything that might reveal their identities and I even noticed that they began to choose ordinary cars-from the kinds that many Iraqis own instead of fancy new cars- for use in their rides to avoid attracting attention.

This is of course as a result of the kidnappings and various attacks that targeted foreigners in Iraq regardless of the nature of their presence here. This created the feeling that every foreigner walking on the streets is an easy target for direct gunfire or for kidnapping (for money or to be beheaded later). This even included Arabs and Arab firms and even Iraqis working in Arab firms. In short, anyone who is here to do something that might be good for Iraq.

One group of foreigners really caught my attention by ignoring all the dangers and moving in the streets of Baghdad showing their identity so clearly.

One might think that this group of people did so because they are very bold but actually I don't think this is true for this case. Why? Because simply they were French.

Yesterday, I saw a single car with the words "FRENCH EMBASSY" written in Arabic on the windshield moving in Karrada crowded neighborhood in broad daylight. They didn't seem to be in a hurry and were driving slowly unlike other foreigners who try to drive as fast as possible to avoid being tracked and chased.

It seems that the French are not afraid of the terrorists. Were they excluded from the terrorists' targets list for some reason? Is there a peace truce between them? Did we miss something here? Because the French are moving freely and saying for the terrorists:

"Hey, it's us, so don't mistake us for your enemies, the other foreigners! And we are not just ordinary French. We are the French government! And we are certainly not doing something good for Iraq, so relax!"

This may explain why no one is anymore worried about the two French journalists; they're in friendly hands!


He who is not for us is against us. He who is not against us is for us. Where do the French fall in there, if this story is true?

posted by Pastorius @ 5:57 PM Comments: 0

Israel Shocked By Image Of Soldiers Forcing Violinist
To Play At Roadblock


I must admit, I just don't get this newstory from The Guardian:


Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin.

The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he would have shot her even if she had been three years old.

Nor was it as nauseating as the pictures in an Israeli newspaper of ultra-orthodox soldiers mocking Palestinian corpses by impaling a man's head on a pole and sticking a cigarette in his mouth.

But the matter of the violin touched on something deeper about the way Israelis see themselves, and their conflict with the Palestinians.

The violinist, Wissam Tayem, was on his way to a music lesson near Nablus when he said an Israeli officer ordered him to "play something sad" while soldiers made fun of him. After several minutes, he was told he could pass.

It may be that the soldiers wanted Mr Tayem to prove he was indeed a musician walking to a lesson because, as a man under 30, he would not normally have been permitted through the checkpoint.

But after the incident was videotaped by Jewish women peace activists, it prompted revulsion among Israelis not normally perturbed about the treatment of Arabs.

The rightwing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach found the incident disturbingly reminiscent of Jewish musicians forced to provide background music to mass murder. "What about Majdanek?" he asked, referring to the Nazi extermination camp.


What the hell, really? What the hell is the point? If anybody can clue me in, I'd appreciate it.

Also, if anybody can send me to links to news stories or video of the two violent incidents that are mentioned in this article, I appreciate that as well.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:43 PM Comments: 3

A Black Alert


Could this:


WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Iraq warned Iran and others in comments published on Monday to think twice before trying to take advantage of the U.S. military at a time when it is fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Why the Iranians would want to move against us in an overt manner that would cause us to use our air or naval power against them would be beyond me,” Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with USA Today.

Abizaid, speaking in Qatar, was asked about concerns in Congress that a shortage of U.S. troops might tempt nations such as Iran or North Korea, both accused by Washington of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

“We can generate more military power per square inch than anybody else on Earth, and everybody knows it,” Abizaid said. “If you ever even contemplate our nuclear capability, it should give everybody the clear understanding that there is no power that can match the United States militarily.”


Have anything to do with this:


An al-Qaida attack on the US with non-conventional weapons is virtually "inevitable," and the organization is likely "tying up the knots" for such an attack, Yossef Bodansky, former director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

"All of the warnings we have today indicate that a major strike – something more horrible than anything we've seen before – is all but inevitable," he said.

Bodansky, here for the second annual Jerusalem Summit, an international gathering of conservative thinkers, added that "the primary option" for the next al-Qaida attack on US soil would be one that would use weapons of mass destruction.

"I do not have a crystal ball, but this is what all the available evidence tells us, we will have a bang," Bodansky said.

He said that al-Qaida has not carried out a second major attack on the US until now for internal psychological and ideological reasons, but after the reelection of President George W. Bush, it has gotten "the green light" to do so from leading Islamic religious luminaries, as well as from "the elites of the Arab world."


Here's what Bodansky means by "Al Qaida ... has gotten the green light."



Even if bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably wouldn’t have used it for a lack of proper religious authority - authority he has now. “[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik...a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans,” says Scheuer. “[The treatise] found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans,” Scheuer tells Kroft.

Scheuer says bin Laden was criticized by some Muslims for the 9/11 attack because he killed so many people without enough warning and before offering to help convert them to Islam. But now bin Laden has addressed the American people and given fair warning. “They’re intention is to end the war as soon as they can and to ratchet up the pain for the Americans until we get out of their region....If they acquire the weapon, they will use it, whether it’s chemical, biological or some sort of nuclear weapon,” says Scheuer.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:44 PM Comments: 0

Blog Burst For Israel


Joseph Norland, a writer whom I admire, has organized what he calls the "Blog Burst for Israel," on this the anniversary of UN Resolution 181. Because I believe that the Jews deserve a state of their own, and because I believe that the establishment of the state of Israel by the UN in 1948 was fair, and because I agree with the entirety of the statement prepared by Joseph Norland, I am happy to participate in the Blog Burst:


Today is the anniversary of the UN vote on resolution 181, which approved the partition of the western part Palestine into a predominately Jewish state and a predominately Arab state. (It is vital to recall that the UN partition plan referred to western Palestine, to underscore that in 1921 the eastern part was ripped off the Jewish National Home by the British Government and handed over to the then Emir Abdullah.)

The partition plan was approved by 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions.

The 33 countries that cast the “Yes” vote were: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Union of South Africa, USSR, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela. (Among other countries, the list includes the US, the three British Dominions, all the European countries except for Greece and the UK, but including all the Soviet-block countries.)

The 13 countries that chose the Hall of Shame and voted “No” were: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen. (Ten of these are Moslem countries; Greece has the special distinction of being the only European country to have joined the Hall of Shame.)

The ten countries that abstained are: Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.

On November 30, 1947, the day following the vote, the Palestinian Arabs murdered six Jews in a bus making its way to Jerusalem, and proceeded to murder another Jew in the Tel-Aviv - Jaffa area. This was a prelude to a war that claimed the lives of 6,000 Jews, or 1% of the total Jewish population in 1948. This toll is the per capita equivalent of today’s Canada losing 300,000 lives, or the US losing 3,000,000.

The object of the war, launched by the Arabs in the former Palestine and the armies of Egypt, Tansjordan, Syria and Lebanon (with help from other Arab countries), was to "throw the Jews into the sea". As the partition map indicates, however, rather than annihilate the Jewish population, the Arabs ended up with less territory than they would have gained by peaceful means.

In addition to the bloodshed in nascent Israel, immediately after the UN vote, Arabs attacks their Jewish neighbours in a number of Arab countries, the murders in Syria’s Aleppo being the best known.

Bruised and bleeding, Israel prevailed nonetheless. May our sister-democracy thrive and flourish.

List of participating sites, in alphabetical order of site name

Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler
Arkansas Bushwacker
Armies Of Liberation
Bama Pachyderm
Biurchametz
Blimpish
Blithered
Blog Willy
Blue Rev
Canadian Comment
Cao's Blog
Catholic Friends of Israel
Christian PatriotChristian Action for Israel
Clarity and Resolve
Crusader War College
Cuanas
Danegerus
Daniel Davis
Flig
God Pigeon
Harald Tribune
Hatshepsut
Heretics Almanac
Hidden Nook
History Nerd
IceViking
I Love America
Instant Knowledge News
Israpundit
Israel Commentary
JPundit
Jersusalem Posts
Leaning Right News
LindaSOG
Live Journal
MCNS
Martinipundit
Mererhetoric
Motnews
Mugged By Reality
Mystery Achievement
Mystical Paths
Naebunny
NetWMD
Nice Jewish Boy
Peaktalk
Protect Our Heritage
Reaganesque
Red Tigress
Riteturnonly
Shimshon9
Solomonia
Spitball Defense
Supernatural
Tampa Bay Primer
Techie Vampire
Texasbug
Tex The Pontificator
The Conservative
The Homeland
The Seal Club
Wackingday
Who's Your Rabbi
Voxfelisi
Yoan Hermida
Weblog of a Wondering Jew


There is also a map provided (at Israpundit) which explains what UN Resolution 181 was trying to accomplish.

I want to say thank you to the participating weblogs.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:42 AM Comments: 0

The Jews Control The Media, Banking, Liquor, and Gambling
Oh Yeah, And They Invented Jazz Too


Thanks to DhimmiWatch for making me aware of this book review, from the Islamic City website, which appears to be an Amazon for Muslims:


Detail Description:

In an interview published in the New York World February 17, 1921, Mr. Henry Ford put the case for the "Protocols of Zion" tersely and convincingly. He said: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it NOW."

1920 marked the beginning of the publication of this research series, in the Dearborn Independent, the Ford Motor Company's weekly magazine. These articles were eventually collected in book form under the title, The International Jew. The book became a wide success. It is estimated that more than 10 million copies of the book were sold in the United States alone!
Yet today this book is almost impossible to find. You will not be able to buy it in your local bookstore, nor check it out at your local library. The truth is that in the so called "democratic, pluralist" America this book has been systematically suppressed.

The International Jew is a magnifying glass applied to the hidden sources of immorality, vide, degeneracy, and subversion. It is a threat - a threat to the international financiers who would prefer to keep information selective and geared towards a world oligarchy of self-interest. The lack of awareness of this insidious encroachment into lives of ordinary people increases by the day. By reopening this debate this book exposes the inherent danger of unchecked Zionism.

Contents
Jewish History in the United States
Angles of Jewish Influence
Victims, or Persecutors
Are the Jews a Nation?
The Jewish Political Program
An Introduction to the Jewish Protocols
How the Jews Use Power
Jewish Influence in American Politics
Bolshevism and Zionism
Jewish Supremacy in the Theater and Cinema
Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music
Liquor, Gambling, Vice and Corruption
The World's Foremost Problem
The High and Low of Jewish Money-Power
The Battle for Press Control
The State of All-Judaan
The Protocols of the Meetings of the Elders of Zion


I am aware that the book The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is popular in the Arab/Islamic world. IslamiCity.com is apparently based in Culver City, CA, so I guess the Islamofascists are importing their vile racism into the U.S. now. No surprise, I guess.

And really, it shouldn't shock us that anyone would believe this kind of nonesense. Many mainstream journalists and politicians, here in the U.S. and abroad, espouse the "Neocon" theory that the Bush Administration is under the influence of a nefarious group of political thinkers whose names just happen to be Wolfowitz, Kristol, and Perle.

As disgusting as this book is, it is pretty funny that it posits the idea that Jazz is Jewish music. Hee hee. I wonder how our Black Muslim friends feel about that.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:19 AM Comments: 0

George Bush's Commitment to Democracy


Captain Ed over at the Captain's Quarters says George Bush has brought classic liberalism back to American foreign policy:


CQ reader Peter Ingemi points out an important perspective on the American reaction to the Ukrainian political crisis. In their election, the Kuchma government candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, actually represents the closest partner we would have in the war on terror. Yanukovych has pledged to increase troop strength in Iraq and mirrors Putin's resolve to conduct a forward strategy in the fight against Islamist terror. Viktor Yuschenko speaks of pulling Ukrainian troops from Iraq, where they comprise the sixth-largest segment of the Coalition.

One would expect the Bush Administration, therefore, to have sat quietly and hoped for Yanukovych to come to power regardless of the means. That focus on expediency has been an unfortunate hallmark of American foreign policy for decades, a leftover of our Cold War-style binary approach to the world. Instead, both Colin Powell and George Bush spoke strongly about their rejection of the election's results and the need to hold a credible election in Ukraine.

The reaction demonstrates the Bush Administration's commitment to democratization as the guiding principle of his term, a transforming and radically liberalizing foreign policy in the traditional sense of the term. Prior to the 1960s, American liberalism championed the march of democracy as the primary American mission to the world. Only after the defeatism of the 1960s baby boomers infected the political process did classical liberalism give way to the moral relativity and rank isolationism of the Democratic Party and the American left (not to mention a significant, but rapidly shrinking, segment of the GOP).

George Bush has resurrected classic liberalism in foreign policy as a key part of our national-security strategy. His moves in the Ukrainian crisis shows that he strongly believes in the transformative power of democracy, and his commitment to the process regardless of the policy shifts it brings internationally.


What Captain Ed says is true. I wonder when Bush will finally get the credit he deserves for his noble efforts.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:50 PM Comments: 0

Europe's Final Solution


This is from an article called Europe's Final Solution, by Melanie Phillips:


An article by David Frankfurter in The Sprout magazine (subscription required) offers an acute, if chilling, analaysis of the role Europe is really playing in the Israel/Palestinian impasse. Its ostensible position is to push for its own plan (excuse me, what about the Road Map?) which would confirm a two-state solution, supported by elections and overseas policing in the Palestinian territories. But Frankfurter suggests its real agenda has to be deduced from the game the Palestinians are now playing. The EU regards the Palestinian Authority as the instrument to lead the Palestinians into statehood. But the PA, he suggests, is simply the old PLO, still intending to terrorise or otherwise dispatch Israel into oblivion. And it's the otherwise that we should note, as much as the terror. Frankfurter observes:

'In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Michael Tarazi, who draws his salary from the PLO Negotiation Support Unit, explained that the Palestinians are discarding the public acceptance of the European vision of a two-state solution. He ingeniously calls on Europeans to work towards equal citizenship, a euphemism for a one-state solution and the annihilation of Israel. And here's the catch: Taraziâ's Unit is funded by Britain, Sweden and others. Seemingly, they are innocently financing a group working in contradiction to their own policy of a two-state solution.

Innocently? Given these contradictions and financial fiascos, should Israel trust the EU? It is easy to see why not. European complacency to the public statements by UNRWA Commissioner General, Peter Hansen, that his organisation employs members of Hamas did not surprise the Israeli public. While Hamas is catgorised as a terror group by Europe, the EU and member states are UNRWA's leading donors. And then compare the public outrage by senior Europeans, like Swedish Prime Minister Persson and Dutch Foreign Minister Bot, at the senseless slaughter of women and children at Beslan with the relative equanimity of the daily targeting of innocents by Palestinian terrorists. And the EU is starting to wave the weapon of economic sanctions in the direction of Israel. Put bluntly, if Israel does not play ball, the EU will pull the plug on trade concessions. This matches recent assessments by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Leaks of a confidential report showed fears that Europe is willing to sacrifice Israel and turn it into a pariah state, if she does not capitulate to European demands.

'Rewarding the proponents of terror at the expense of a democracy is consistent with the EU's new commercial policy, having signed a new trade deal with Syria last month, on the very same day the UN endorsed a French led demand that Syria cease its occupation of Lebanon, where it is supporting Hizbollah terrorists. In the summer of 2000, Chairman Arafat realised that the heavy compromises of Prime Minister at Barak at Camp David demanded a full recognition of Israel. The Palestinian leadership could not accept this. It ran to Europe, specifically President Chirac, for a soothing cuddle. Europe obliged its charge. Two months later, war was declared on Israel and terrorists, arrested under the Oslo accords, were released from their cells in Ramallah and Gaza.'

In other words, Europe is trapping Israel in a pincer movement, between Palestinian terror on one side and the opporobrium of the EU, with escalating economic pressure, on the other. And just what is it that it is pressuring Israel to do? Why, nothing other than sign its own death warrant. One way or another, Europe wants Israel gone. it would prefer not to have its own fingerprints on the corpse, and so it is placing the gun in Israel's own hand while pointing another at its head.


Europe has found someone who will do the dirty work for them this time. Ultimate plausible deniability. It's frightening to watch the nations of the world step away from Israel. Earlier today, I posted an article calling for the U.S. to get out of the UN. It is becoming clear that the question of what to do about Israel will likely be the end of the UN. I don't believe the United States is going to join all the other nations in betraying Israel.

Of course, I could be wrong.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:26 PM Comments: 0

I'll Trade You Two Jews
For One Terror-Supporting French Journalist


Little Green Footballs noted today that Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar Television recently ran a program featuring the mothers of suicide bombers:


Umm Said: "In the name of Allah the Compassionate and Merciful, Allah be praised for granting my son to me, on this blessed day. I can not begin to explain what this day means to me, how great and significant it is for me and for all martyrs’ mothers. I am talking about the martyrs’ mothers and all mothers in Lebanon. Whatever I could say about them would not be enough, especially since they paid the price in blood, liberated southern Lebanon, and brought us closer to victory. They granted us a great reward.

"It is enough that they granted us paradise, the greatest thing in this world. I wish a good year to all the martyrs’ mothers and our children, may Allah honor them. Allah be praised for having granted us our sons. Allah be praised."

Interviewer: "Do you feel that as a martyr’s mother you have a special status that is different from that of mothers who don’t have martyred sons?"

Umm Said: "Definitely, Definitely..."

Interviewer: "How do you cope with this?"

Umm Said: "If I’m in the company of others, I can sense the respect and the pride. They say, ‘She’s a martyr’s mother.’ What does this name mean? For me, it’s very meaningful. I walk about with my head high. Allah be praised, Allah be praised, every hour and every minute."


This is, clearly, propaganda designed to motivate more young boys to strap on the belt and blow themselves to bits in the interest of killing Jews. France recently lifted it's ban on Al-Manar and reapproved Hezbollah TV for broadcast within it's borders. Melanie Phillips writes:


'The spike in Moslem attacks on Jews in France last year paralleled Al-Manar's transmission of the horrific Syrian miniseries "Al-Shatat" ("The Diaspora"), based upon The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that depicts rabbis ritually slaughtering children to mix their blood into matzah for Passover! The Center's initial protest galvanized broad public support leading the Broadcasting Authority to ban these broadcasts, which were in clear violation of French laws against spreading antisemitism.'

So why has France suddenly revoked the ban? I am told this was being demanded as the quid pro quo for the release of the French hostages in Iraq (remember them?) who I am also told have been moved to Iran. This deal has been on the cards for weeks. Thus the French barter the lives of some of their citizens for many others; thus they display gross cynicism and absence of principle, decency or indeed a sense of self-preservation; thus they once again show that in the fight against terror, they are on absolutely the wrong side.


I love you Melanie. You are absolutely fearless. Yes, France is willing to trade away the lives of it's Jewish citizenry in exchange for a few journalists. It is disgusting, but really, should it surprise us anymore?

posted by Pastorius @ 5:58 PM Comments: 0

The Elusive Moderate Muslim


Thanks for Little Green Footballs for making me aware of this article by Robert Spencer, from Human Events Online:


Imam Siraj Wahaj is in great demand. Last week he was a featured speaker at the Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury, Massachusetts. A few days before that, he addressed four hundred people at a Muslim Students Association gathering at Western Michigan University. His star has shone for years: in 1991, he even became the first Muslim to give an invocation to the U.S. Congress. And why not? Not long after 9/11, he said just what jittery Americans wanted to hear from Muslims: "I now feel responsible to preach, actually to go on a jihad against extremism."

But what he thinks actually constitutes extremism is somewhat unclear; after all, he has also warned that the United States will fall unless it "accepts the Islamic agenda." He has lamented that "if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." In the early 1990s he sponsored talks by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in mosques in New York City and New Jersey; Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and Wahaj was designated a "potential unindicted co-conspirator."

The fact that someone who would like to see the Constitution replaced has led a prayer for those sworn to uphold it is just a symptom a larger, ongoing problem: the government and media are avid to find moderate Muslims -- and as their desperation has increased, their standards have lowered. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find Muslim leaders who have genuinely renounced violent jihad and any intention, now or in the future, to impose Sharia on non-Muslim countries.


The other day I heard Michael Medved saying on the radio that he had interviewed Ibrahim Hooper (head of the supposedly moderate Council on American-Islamice Relations, otherwise known as CAIR) once, and Hooper had told flat out that his goal would be to have the American Constitution replaced by Islamic Sharia Law.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:45 PM Comments: 0

UN Out Of The United State, Now


Thanks for Michelle Malkin for making me aware of this, from Move America Forward:


Americans must demand our government remove the United Nations from our borders and cease serving as the major financial supporter of an organization that has veered from its original purpose.

The United Nations was originally founded according to its charter “to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security.” However, it has become apparent that leading voices in the United Nations have positioned the organization so that it is increasingly a body that sides with those who find the use of terrorism against unarmed and innocent civilians tolerable.

Instead of serving as a rallying point for free nations and free people to unite to combat terrorism, the United Nations has become a safe harbor, apologist and defender of terrorist organizations and their agents...

Watch the ad and join the campaign here.


I'm not necessarily in agreement with the idea of doing away with the United Nations. However, I do believe that it has proven itself to be a sick and largely irrelevant organization in light of,

1) The Oil-for-Food Scandal

2) The Nigerian Sex Scandal

3) It's overwhelming anti-Semitism (Durban Racism Conference, 1/2 UN resolutions in any given year are condemnations of Israel)

4) It's history of support for Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, whose charter calls for the elimination of the state of Isreal. By the way, that charter is posted at the UN website.

So, why do I not fully support the elimination of the UN. Well, I can't really coherently explain myself, to tell you the truth. I can say this, I am a former liberal Democrat and I still have a soft spot in my heart for the notion that keeping lines of communication open (even with your enemies) is almost always necessary. I'm having a very had time letting go of that idea.

However, the very fact of the UN's existence seems to lend credibility to it's member states. How credible a state is Iran really? Or Saudi Arabia? Or North Korea? To my mind production of goods and services, and the economic power that goes with it, do not make a state credible. Certainly the pre-Civil War Southern states were not credible. Neither was Nazi Germany. And we would never think of conferring credibility on the Drug Cartels of South America. So, then why include states like North Korea, Iran, or Saudi Arabia in the United Nations? Why give them the idea that they have a right to their opinion on the world stage?

posted by Pastorius @ 11:53 AM Comments: 2

Arafat Condemned Terror In English - Urged It In Arabic
On Palestinian TV


From Canadian columnist Licia Corbella:


On Nov. 1, while Yasser Arafat was slowly dying in a Paris hospital, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy accomplished what Arafat had been encouraging him and all Palestinian children to do for years.

He became a "Shahid," a martyr, committing Shahada -- death for Allah -- amongst the Jews.
Eli Amer Alfar, laden with explosives, walked into a crowded outdoor Tel Aviv market and blew himself up, killing three and wounding 32 Israelis who were engaged in the highly risky and provocative business of buying vegetables.

Palestinian leaders -- including Arafat, who was on his death bed -- immediately condemned the attack for the ears of Europeans and North Americans.

"(Arafat) appealed to all Palestinian factions to commit to avoid harming all Israeli civilians and he appealed to (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon to take similar initiatives to avoid harming Palestinian civilians," Arafat's spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said in France.

That quote which got worldwide play did not get any play on the Palestinian Authority television.

Even if it did, however, his followers would know he was only stating this lie to fool the world.
They would know it's a lie because they have watched the pro-suicide bombing music videos on PA Television, as well as heard the speeches Arafat has made urging children to blow themselves up and seek death for Allah.

These messages are played around the clock to Palestinians -- particularly children -- to seek Shahada amongst the Jews.

Those of you who have believed the lies told about Arafat -- the ones the Nobel Peace Prize committee swallowed whole and those who get their news on the Middle East only by watching the 10-second clips of Israeli tanks being greeted by children with rocks -- will think I'm lying.

Well, this week I played a CD on my computer for a bunch of colleagues.

Many were amazed when they saw Arafat -- who died on Nov. 11 -- urging children in schools to follow the example of other children who became martyrs for Allah.

The 25-minute video called Ask for Death! can be downloaded from the website of Palestinian Media Watch (www.pmw.org.il)

It would be great if our own Prime Minister Paul Martin and his inept speech writers could watch it.

If they did, they would be ashamed at their effusive and complimentary words delivered upon the death of Arafat -- who for 40 years has kept his people from peace and has stolen an estimated $1 billion from them, if not more.

The PMW video shows how the Palestinian Authority -- ruled by Arafat -- indoctrinates its entire population to become martyrs for Allah through various media including: Short propaganda films and music videos for children, school events and textbooks, cultural programming, Arafat's own speeches, and interviews with the parents of suicide bombers as well as religious leaders.

These music videos -- and many of them can be watched and listened to in the film -- very often have lines such as this: How sweet is Shahada ... Be joyous over my blood and do not cry for me ... My beloved Mother."

These lines are important because they are very often repeated -- verbatim -- in the suicide notes left by youngsters prior to embarking on their suicide missions.

Similar lines were written by 14-year-old Faris Ouda who left his home with a slingshot after making himself a wreath decorated with photos of himself and having written on it: "The Brave Shahid Faris Ouda."

He also wrote: "Don't worry, mother, Shahada is sweet," as reported in the Palestinian Authority official daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al Jadida, Nov. 30, 2000.

On Aug. 4, 2003 on PA television, Arafat is seen speaking to what appears to be a school assembly.

"We are proud of this growing generation that is representing the steadfast and the sacrifice," says Arafat.

"And self-sacrifice that was represented by your colleague, the hero Shahid, Faris Ouda."

Nothing appeared on the Palestinian Authority television station or in the newspapers that wasn't in keeping with the views of its president, Yasser Arafat.

Arafat was a two-faced terrorist who said one thing in English to a gullible media and world -- and quite another to his own people.

Despite their adoration for him, Arafat was the worst thing that could have happened to the Palestinian people.

Now, there is a real chance for change, but the programming on television and radio and the messages in the mosques and in the texbooks will have to change before change happens.
Only then is peace even remotely possible.


Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is laying a wreath at the grave of this evil Arafat. I find it impossible to believe that Jack Straw does not know about Arafat's anti-Semitic machinations. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that Jack Straw doesn't care that Arafat's life's goal was killing Jews, instead of the stated goal that he was working to gain of a homeland for his people.

I have a hard time believing that Jack Straw thinks this is an admirable goal, so I'm guessing that Jack Straw is a desolate human being who tenaciously adheres to the logic of power; that powerful men deserve respect (even in death) merely because they are powerful, no matter from what, or where, they derive their power.

Simply put, Arafat's power derived from his visceral hatred of Jews, and from the fact that his hatred resonated with the Palestinian people.

Sadly, the possibility of peace does not look promising in the near term either, because Mahmoud Abbas (the supposed moderate) is also a virulent anti-Semite, who was awarded his Doctorate (from Moscow Occidental College) for a dissertation which engaged in Holocaust Minimization and posited that the Jews worked with Hitler to create the Holocaust in order to gain sympathy which would end up in their being awarded the land of Israel by the U.N.

posted by Pastorius @ 10:33 AM Comments: 1

The Wages Of Appeasement Are Death


From Medienkritik:


Europe – Thy Name is Cowardice Commentary by Mathias Döpfner

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.

Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam’s torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush. A particularly grotesque form of appeasement is reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere by suggesting that we should really have a Muslim holiday in Germany.What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it?

Two recent American presidents had the courage needed for anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. Reagan ended the Cold War and Bush, supported only by the social democrat Blair acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic fight against democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.

In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner instead of defending liberal society’s values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China. On the contrary—we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to the intolerant, as world champions in tolerance, which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we’re so moral? I fear it’s more because we’re so materialistic.

For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy—because everything is at stake. While the alleged capitalistic robber barons in American know their priorities, we timidly defend our social welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive. We’d rather discuss the 35-hour workweek or our dental health plan coverage. Or listen to TV pastors preach about "reaching out to murderers." These days, Europe reminds me of an elderly aunt who hides her last pieces of jewelry with shaking hands when she notices a robber has broken into a neighbor’s house.


A longtime reader of CUANAS (and there aren't many) would know that I have consistently characterized Europe as Grandma Europa (a poor doddering old lady, shut in her house, senile, a danger to herself and her neighbors). I love Dopfner's description here . Sounds like the behaviour of Grandma Europa to me.

posted by Pastorius @ 9:41 AM Comments: 0

Finally, Something That Will Make Hollywood Shut Up


Bridget Johnson laments the appalling silence of the artistic community in the face of the murder of Theo Van Gogh:


Since Nov. 2, I've had an icky feeling in the pit of my stomach. As an ardent Bush backer, my queasiness has nothing to do with the glorious election results, but is prompted by a murder that occurred the same day in Amsterdam.

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh's short film "Submission," about the treatment of women in Islam, written by female Dutch parliamentarian and former Muslim Aayan Hirsi Ali, had aired in August on Dutch TV. Van Gogh was riding his bike near his home when a Muslim terrorist shot him, slashed his throat, and pinned to his body a note threatening Ms. Ali. This appears to be an organized effort, not the act of a lone nut; Dutch authorities are holding 13 suspects in the case.

After the slaying, I watched "Submission" (available online at ifilm.com) and my mind is still boggled that 11 minutes decrying violence against women incites such violence. There've been many films over the years that have taken potshots at Catholics, but I don't remember any of us slaughtering filmmakers over the offense. You didn't see the National Rifle Association order a hit on Michael Moore over "Bowling for Columbine."

One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding à la Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we've heard nary a peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.


Roger Simon has also noted this cowardice, from a community of people who have no trouble speaking out against George Bush, calling him "Hitler," "evil," "anti-Christ."

The shameful silence of the artistic community shows an immense lack of self-respect. Pathetic.

posted by Pastorius @ 9:26 AM Comments: 0

Thanksgiving


A Thanksgiving column from Michelle Malkin:


My 4-year-old daughter recently learned to say grace at mealtimes. I taught her the same little prayer my mom taught me in childhood:

God is great
God is good
Let us thank him for our food
By his hands we all are fed
Give us Lord our daily bread

Amen.

At first, my daughter questioned the need for reciting this strange passage. "Why do we have to thank God?" she wondered. "To show that we are grateful for our daily bread," I explained.

"What is 'grateful'?" she asked.

"Being appreciative for what we have," I answered.

"But I'm not eating daily bread," she argued in between bites of macaroni and cheese.
"It means whatever fills your tummy each day," I clarified.

"Oh."

In typical toddler fashion, my daughter is now absolutely fanatical about her new routine. Not only must we say grace before every meal, but also before each snack. And anytime we have a drink. And anytime her baby brother gobbles Cheerios in his car seat. Failure to give thanks to God is met with swift retribution. Our daughter has no qualms about chastising us in public -- at restaurants, airports or Starbucks:

"Hey, stop eating! You forgot to say grace!"

Despite the embarrassment it sometimes causes, I love her unrepentant zeal. It reminds us not to take for granted our too-infrequent gestures of daily thanksgiving. It reminds us to be humble. Following her lead, we must all bow our heads and fold our hands and shut our eyes and shout a full-throated "Amen!"

The snobs of secularism will no doubt disparage such simple-minded expressions of piety. They call us "Jesus freaks," "Bible-thumpers" and "fundies." They accuse us of being "weak" and of suffering from a "neurological disorder." They consider us such a threat that they have sought to expunge even the most innocuous references to thanking God in the public schools.

When Garwood, N.J., student Kaeley Hay wrote a Thanksgiving poem mentioning the Pilgrims' gratitude to the Lord, according to the Newark Star-Ledger, skittish administrators initially removed the word "God" from her piece:

Leaves are falling out of the air,
Piles of leaves everywhere.
Scarecrows standing high up with the corn,
Farmers harvest in the early morn.
Pilgrims thank [blank] for what they were given,
Everybody say . . . happy Thanksgiving!

Here in my home state of Maryland, according to the Annapolis Capital, "Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving -- as long as it's not God."

True to the religio-phobic conception of educational "diversity," Maryland public school officials have turned Thanksgiving into a multicultural harvest devoid of its spiritual essence. Students are taught that Pilgrims had a "belief system," but nothing further. Not to worry, though. "The Pilgrim Story is read in Spanish and English," Alfreda Adams, principal at Mills-Parole Elementary School in Anne Arundel County where 70 Hispanic students attend, told the Capital. "We make sure that we celebrate all cultures."

Such politically correct muddle-headedness explains why Maryland students can't learn Pilgrim prayers in public schools while the town of Hamtramck, Mich., feels free to blast Islamic prayers over public loudspeakers five times a day.

Once an unabashedly pious land, we have been transformed into a nation of historically clueless ingrates -- embarrassed about our heritage, afraid of offending all newcomers, and more committed to inculcating a sense of entitlement over a culture of gratitude. Abe Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation of 1863 rings truer than ever:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us!

Amen.

posted by Pastorius @ 7:22 AM Comments: 0

Christians Rise Up In Europe


More than a million people from all over Europe are to deliver a petition to Tony Blair and fellow EU leaders calling for changes to the constitution recognising Europe's Christian heritage.

Refusing to accept a secular "fait accompli" from Brussels, a Christian coalition is demanding that each EU state publish its version of the constitution's preamble, with references to God if desired.

Already armed with 1,149,000 signatures and with thousands more pouring in from Holland since the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh, the group claims that most states want some reference to Christianity but were blocked by France.

The move is keenly backed by Pope John Paul II, who has repeatedly condemned the "moral drift" of Brussels. "One does not cut the roots to one's birthright," he told pilgrims this summer.
Euro-MPs voted this week to back the calls for a change in the text. Petitioners, led by Italy's International Mission Centre, will now take their case to EU governments. The current version of the preamble eschews Christianity, talking vaguely of "the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe".

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president, deliberately left the issue open when he wrote the document, inviting a petition.

"I have chosen not to insert the reference to the Christian heritage in the constitution,"he said. "Rather I appeal to you to persuade me of its necessity."

A British official said it was too late to change the preamble, although national parliaments could add a "rider" stressing their country's Christian roots.

An EU official said: "These Christians could at least have the good grace to accept that they lost the argument."


Shut up and sit on your hands you dumb Christians. Only speak when you are spoken to.

posted by Pastorius @ 7:05 AM Comments: 1

Romance With God


Yesterday, I posted the lyrics to one of my favorite love songs, Please Forgive Me by David Gray, along with the following comment:


Whenever I hear this song, I think of two people in my life. One of those people is my wife. I wonder if my wife would know who the other person is.

Ok, the answer is (drum roll) ...

It's a guy ...

Am I gay? ...

Well, no, but I certainly am not the kind of Christian who dislikes gay people, so you can think I am if you want to, and it wouldn't bother me one bit ...

Ok, it's ...

Yeshua. Meshiach (Messiah). Immanuel. Jesus Christ. Prince of Peace. Creator of the heavens and the earth. My Savior, the man/God who died for my sins, and the sins of all mankind.

Also, unfortunately, the person I've been the most cruel, disrespectful and arrogant to in my lifetime. But that's just me, huh?

Anyway, why would I say I think about God when I listen to the lyrics of a romantic song? Because, I have a romantic relationship with God. We are the Bride Of Christ, after all.

Think about what romantic feelings are. Say you're out on a date with someone who you really like, and you're wondering do they like you? Your senses are all lit up, the air smells sweet, colors are more nuanced, yet more intense, the cold weather makes you feel even more alive.

Well, who created the colors, the fragrances and the cold? God did, of course. So, what you are in love with, what you are celebrating is His creation. Falling in love is a time of pure and deep praise and worship. It's true that we can separate our romantic feelings, and our life itself, from God. If you do this in a relationship, all you are left with is sex. If you do it in your life, all you are left with is desolation.

If you connect your romantic feelings to God, you can feel like you are falling in love everyday, and your relationship with your partner will be more alive and deep.

Now, I'm not saying that I feel like this all the time. No, I'm a loser in love just like everyone else. But, I have been feeling like this lately. Thank God.

But, of course, it's not all about our feelings. It's about what we do. We have to set aside thought time to allow these beautiful moments to happen. And when we are going through hard times, it is, of course, even harder to have romance. But it says in Psalm 23 that God will prepare a table for us in the midst of our enemies, and I believe that that table contains the tableware of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:06 PM Comments: 1

Columbia University Supports It's Anti-Semitic, Racist Faculty


Thanks to Little Green Footballs for making me aware of this from NY Daily News:


In the world of Hamid Dabashi, supporters of Israel are "warmongers" and "Gestapo apparatchiks." The Jewish homeland is "nothing more than a military base for the rising predatory empire of the United States." It's a capital of "thuggery" - a "ghastly state of racism and apartheid" - and it "must be dismantled."

A voice from America's crackpot fringe? Actually, Dabashi is a tenured professor and department chairman at Columbia University. And his views have resonated and been echoed in other areas of the university.

In three weeks of interviews, numerous students told the Daily News they face harassment, threats and ridicule merely for defending the right of Israel to survive. And the university itself is holding investigations into the alleged intimidation.

The 53-year-old, Iranian-born scholar has said CNN should be held accountable for "war crimes" for one-sided coverage of Sept. 11, 2001. He doubts the existence of Al Qaeda and questions the role of Osama Bin Laden in the attacks.

Dabashi did not return calls.

After the showing of a student-made documentary about faculty bias and bullying that targets Jewish students, six or seven swastikas were found carved in a Butler Library bathroom last month.

Said Brinkley: If a professor taught the "Earth was flat or there was no Holocaust," Columbia might intervene in the classroom. "But we don't tell faculty they can't express strong, or even offensive opinions." Yet even some faculty members say they fear social ostracism and career consequences if they're viewed as too pro-Israel, and that many have been cowed or shamed into silence.

One apparently unafraid is Dan Miron, a professor of Hebrew literature and holder of a prestigious endowed chair. He said scores of Jewish students - about one a week - have trooped into his office to complain about bias in the classroom. "Students tell me they've been browbeaten, humiliated and treated disrespectfully for daring to challenge the idea that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish nation," he said.

"They say they've been told Israeli soldiers routinely rape Palestinian women and commit other atrocities, and that Zionism is racism and the root of all evil."

To identify the Columbia faculty with the most strongly anti-Israel views, The News spoke to numerous teachers and students, including some who took their courses; reviewed interviews and published works, and examined Web sites that report their public speeches and statements, including the online archives of the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper.

Their views could be dismissed as academic fodder if they weren't so incendiary.

Columbia's firebrands

Nicholas De Genova, who teaches anthropology and Latino studies. The Chronicle of Higher Education calls him "the most hated professor in America." At an anti-war teach-in last year, he said he wished for a "million Mogadishus," referring to the slaughter of U.S. troops in Somalia in 1993.

"U.S. patriotism is inseparable from imperial warfare and white supremacy," he added. De Genova has also said, "The heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. ... Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust."

De Genova didn't return calls.

Bruce Robbins, a professor of English and comparative literature. In a speech backing divestment, he said, "The Israeli government has no right to the sufferings of the Holocaust."

Joseph Massad, who is a tenure-track professor of Arab politics. Students and faculty interviewed by The News consistently claimed that the Jordanian-born Palestinian is the most controversial, and vitriolic, professor on campus. "How many Palestinians have you killed?" he allegedly asked one student, Tomy Schoenfeld, an Israeli military veteran, and then refused to answer his questions.

Rashid Khalidi, who is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies. When Palestinians in a Ramallah police station lynched two Israeli reservists in 2000 - throwing one body out a window and proudly displaying bloodstained hands - the professor attacked the media, not the killers. He complained about "inflammatory headlines" in a Chicago Sun-Times story and called the paper's then-owner, Conrad Black, who also owned the Jerusalem Post, "the most extreme Zionist in public life."

Reached at Columbia, Khalidi declined to comment on specifics.


Imagine a white Professor telling a classroom full of African-Americans that they have no right to the sufferings of slavery. Imagine what would happen if American soldiers killed two "Iraqi insurgents" and threw one of their bodies out a window and proudly displayed their bloodstained hands. Imagine if a white Professor wished a million Sabra's and Shatilla's on the Arab people.

Racism and incitement to violence is never ok, no matter the color of the skin around the mouth that utters it's vile phrases. We are a nation of fools to let Professors at one of our best universities get away with these things.

Our top news networks, daily papers, and news magazines should be shouting out the news of this filthy racism from every rooftop in the nation. We cannot allow such racism and anti-Semitism to continue to gain momentum.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:34 PM Comments: 1

Peace And Justice Action Network For Suicide Bombings


Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs makes the point that.


... in the sick political world of the left wing: if a group proclaims they’re for “Peace and Justice,” it means they support violence and terrorism.

Case in point: WESPAC, a “Peace and Justice Action Network” in White Plains, New York, is trying to raise money to display an “art exhibition” titled Made in Palestine—featuring works like this vile painting depicting Ariel Sharon collecting and boiling blood from a Palestinian child, and this vile exhibit, glorifying Palestinian mass murderers.


Here's a quote from the Official Introduction on the website for the "art exhibit":


To several of the artists, the subject of the martyrs is an all-important topic. A true martyr is anyone who gives his life in service of his people, including the rock-throwing children and suicide bombers that attack Israeli civilians.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:08 PM Comments: 0

Please Forgive Me


Lyrics to Please Forgive Me, a song by David Gray:


Please forgive me
If I act alittle strange
For I know not what I do.
Feels like lightning running through my veins
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you

Help me out here
All my words are falling short
And there's so much I want to say
Want to tell you just how good it feels
When you look at me that way
When you look at me that way

Throw a stone and watch the ripples flow
Moving out across the bay
Like a stone I fall into your eyes
Deep into some mystery
Deep into that mystery

I got half a mind to scream out loud
I got half a mind to die
So I won't ever have to lose you
Won't ever have to say goodbye
I won't ever have to lie
Won't ever have to say goodbye

Please forgive me
If I act alittle strange
For I know not what I do
It's like my head is filled with lightning girl
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you
Everytime I look at you


Whenever I hear this song, I think of two people in my life. One of those people is my wife. I wonder if my wife would know who the other person is.

Answer tomorrow.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:41 PM Comments: 1

The Larger Plan of The War Against Islamofascism


An article by Victor David Hanson, from the National Review:


In September and early October 2001 we were warned that an invasion of Afghanistan was impossible — peaks too high, winter and Ramadan on the way, weak and perfidious allies as bad as the Islamists — and thus that the invasion would result in tens of thousands killed and millions of refugees. Where have all these subversive ankle-biters gone? Apparently into thin air — or to the same refuge of silence as all the Reagan-haters of the 1980s who swore that a nuclear freeze was the only humane policy of dealing with Soviet expansionism.

After the seven-week defeat of the Taliban, these deer-in-the-headlights critics paused, and then declared the victory hollow. They said the country had descended into rule by warlords, and called the very idea of scheduled voting a laughable notion. We endured them for almost two years. Yet after the recent and mostly smooth elections, Afghanistan has slowly disappeared from the maelstrom of domestic politics, as all those who felt our efforts were not merely impossible but absurd retreated to the shadows to gnash their teeth that Kabul is not yet Carmel. Western feminists, homosexual-rights advocates, and liberal reformists have never in any definitive way expressed appreciation for the Afghan revolution now ongoing in the lives of 26 million formerly captive people. They never will. Instead, Westerners simply now assume that there was never any controversy, but rather a general consensus that Afghanistan is a "good thing" — as if the Taliban went into voluntarily exile due to occasional censure from The New York Review of Books.

The more ambitious effort to achieve similar results in Iraq is following the same script, despite even more daunting challenges. Fascistic neighbors rightly see elections in Iraq as near fatal to their own bankrupt regimes. Some have oil; others have terrorists; still more, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have both. Unlike Afghanistan, there is no neutral India or Russia nearby to keep Islamists wary, only the provinces of the ancient caliphate to supply plenty of jihadists to continue the work of September 11. Our mistakes in the reconstruction of Iraq were never properly critiqued as naïve and too magnanimous, but rather they were decried by the Left as cruel and punitive — as if being too lax was proof of being harsh.

Yet, thanks to the brilliance of the U.S. military and despite the rocky reconstruction and our own election hysteria, there is a good chance that the January elections can begin a cycle similar to what we see in Afghanistan. And at that point things should get very, very interesting.

Just as the breakdown of a few Communist Eastern European states led to a general collapse of Marxism in the east, or the military humiliation in colonial Africa and the Falklands led to democratic renaissance in Iberia and Argentina, or American military efforts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama City brought consensual government to Central America, a reformed Afghanistan and Iraq may prompt what decades of billions of dollars in wasted aid to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians, the 1991 Gulf War, and 60 years of appeasement of Gulf petrol-sheiks could not: the end of the old sick calculus of Middle East tyrannies blackmailing the United States through past intrigue with the Soviet Union, then threats of oil embargos and rigged prices, and, most recently, both overt and stealthy support for fundamentalist killers.

The similar effort to isolate Arafat, encourage the withdrawal from Gaza, and allow the Israelis to proceed with the fence have brought more opportunity to the Middle East than all of Dennis Ross's shuttles put together, noble and well-meant though his futile efforts were. The onus is on the Palestinians now either to turn Gaza into their own republic or give birth to another Lebanon — their call before a globalized audience. They can hold elections and shame the Arab League by being the embryo of consensual government in the Middle East, or coronate yet another thug and terrorist in hopes that again the United States will play a Chamberlain to their once-elected Hitler.


The divide between left and right over the War On Islamofascism breaks at our respective understandings of who, exactly, the enemy is and what constitutes his support network. The left seems to believe (and it really is kind of a sweet-hearted belief, bless their souls) that there are just a few bad guys out there, hanging out in apartments in Marseilles, and Arizona, or in caves in Afghanistan. All we need to do then is send some policemen out to knock on their doors and handcuff them. Yes, the policemen might need to draw their guns occasionally, but this war really can be, pretty much, an enlightened pursuit executed between peace rallies. And, as for the terrorists support network, why that's simple, it's all about the money, so we need to seize their bank accounts, and donate the money to daycare services for single moms.

Of course, we will need to monitor and arrest terrorists, and seize bank accounts. Oh, but wait, the left even has trouble with what is meant by "monitoring."

Oh, for God's sake.

The laughable part of all this is that the Bush Administration clearly delineated the goals of the War On Terror from the very beginning. And yet, every new move seems to shock the left into ever-worsening spasms of horror at the ever-descending evil mind of George Bush.

Here's what Bush told us, from the very beginning. The War on Terror (Islamofascism) is a war against the terrorist networks and the states who fund them. In some cases there will need to be regime change in order to put a stop to the support and funding of these Islamofascist terrorists. Afghangistan would be first because it's Taliban government supported the Al Qaeda network by encouraging them to set up training camps within Afghanistan. After that, it will be on the the "Axis of Evil;" which George Bush also clearly delineated. First Iraq, then Iran, then North Korea.

Along the way (just to make sure that the left is fully informed), it is possible that other monsters will rear their frightening heads. Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, any of these coutries may decide to lend support to the terrorists, or they might, as in the case of Libya, decide they want to make it very clear that they want to work with the United States, and it's goal of ending Islamofascist Terror. Either way, the United States, under the Bush Administration, will move forward in the pursuit of these goals.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:07 AM Comments: 0

Human Rights Or Realpolitik?


From Belmont Club:


Two different visions of the future of the world were separately articulated over the last few days. The first was delivered by Jacques Chirac, the President of France at a gathering sponsored by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He said the West could not impose its values on the world and confuse democratisation and Westernisation. "Granted, it is still possible to organise the world based on a logic of power yet experience has taught us that this type of organisation is, by its very definition, unstable and sooner or later leads to crisis or conflict. ... It is by recognising the new reality of a multi-polar and interdependent world that we will succeed in building a sounder and fairer international order. This is why we must work together to revive multilateralism, a multilateralism based on a reformed and strengthened United Nations."

In Chirac's view the United States had tried to impose this "logic of power" on the world and stood condemned. The New York Times reported on remarks the French President had delivered earlier.

Most prominently, Mr. Chirac reiterated his view that the war in Iraq had led to an "expansion" of terrorism in the world. Though he said that France was willing to put its differences with Britain and the United States aside and look to the future by helping to rebuild a stable, democratic and sovereign Iraq, Mr. Chirac indicated that he thought the judgment of history would go against the Iraq war and vindicate those who opposed it. ...

"We have another choice," Mr. Chirac told an audience at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (remarks delivered later). "That of an order based on respect for international law and the empowerment of the world's new poles by fully and wholly involving them in the decision-making mechanisms. "Only this path," he added, "is likely to establish a stable, legitimate and accepted order in the long run." The new "poles" he spoke of are the emerging regional powers of the new century, including Europe, China, India and Brazil.

A fortnight earlier, an American Undersecretary of Defense gave a quiet interview to Radek Sikorski, at one time a deputy minister of defense himself in Poland, on the future as he saw it. Paul Wolfowitz. The full article is in the Prospect Magazine.

Export of democracy isn't really a good phrase. We're trying to remove the shackles on democracy. What you would hope is that governments can be encouraged on a path of gradual reform because that's the best way to avoid the sort of cataclysm that will come otherwise. ... We're not trying to graft our system of government on to people who are different from us. We're trying to remove shackles that keep them from having what they want. And it's astonishing how many of them want something that's similar to what we in the west have.

Sikorski put a rhetorical question to Wolfowitz: "The US president used to be seen as the leader of the free world rather than just president of one country and America used to be seen as a benign global empire. Now, after 9/11, understandably, this is a more patriotic, perhaps even a more nationalistic country. But won't the price of running a nationalistic American empire be much higher than managing a co-operative one?" Wolfowitz responded with the most astonishing assertion of the interview, the idea that a cooperative "empire" -- if empire it could be called -- could only consist of free nations.

"The premise of your question is that we're out to run an empire, but there is no American empire. Look at Japan and Korea. They were part of this so-called empire in the cold war. After the second world war and the Korean war, we invested heavily in the defence and economic systems of countries like Japan and Korea - hardly an imperial undertaking. I would submit that we have benefited enormously from their strength and their ability to stand on their own feet. They're now contributing to the rest of the world. We're so much better off with a Japan as a strong trading partner than a Japan as a basket case. If people want to redefine the word "empire" to mean this as an empire, then it's just semantics. We are not trying to control these countries so we can exploit their resources. We're trying to enable these countries to stand on their own feet and our experience says that when they do so, we're better off.

It's back to the absurdity of saying we're trying to impose our ideas on other people when we want to help them become democracies. There's more legitimacy to the question of whether we are really prepared to live with what they produce when they become democratic. There's an uncertainty about the democratic process and there's always a danger that bad people will get elected. But it's a funny empire that relies on releasing basic human desires to be free and prosperous and live in peace. One of the things about this moment in history is that nobody really thinks they can produce an army, a navy or an air force that can take on the US. That should channel human competitiveness into more productive and peaceful pursuits. "

History may remember Jacques Chirac as one of the most prolific institution builders of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The European Union and the United Nations are but some of the multilateral projects he sought to strengthen in the belief they would serve as a prototype for the future ordering of the world. Wolfowitz's vision seems altogether more complex. He seems unwilling to speak of institutions outside the context of empowerment, as if to speak of instruments of governance without freedoms was tantamount to prescribing tyranny. Their difference of opinion may be rooted, not so much in an argument over bureaucratic arrangements, but in their view of the nature of man himself.


I have been astonished over the past three years to have watch as the evidence of a polar shift between left and right continues to reveal itself. The left used to harangue the right for it's reliance on Realpolitik in international affairs. And they were right to do so. The right used to rely on the "practical" approach, saying, in effect, of certain governments, "Yes, he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard."

The right preferred a stable trading and negotiating partner, while the left worked towards, or at least said they believed in working towards, human rights for the peoples of the world.

Now, it is the complete opposite. George Bush ran, in the 2000 Presidential Elections as a candidate opposed to "Nation Building." But here in 2004, he gives speeches proclaiming that "Freedom beats in the heart of all people, everywhere," and making the extraordinary claim that we as Americans should fight and die to see that the momentum of history moves in that direction. And, the majotiy of the American people have supported him in this noble idea.

Meanwhile, the Left has become the party of Realpolitik. Those opposed to the War in Iraq can often be heard scolding the Bush Administration, saying that the people of Iraq might not want a democracy, that maybe they prefer to live under an Islamic dictatorship. This notion is antithetical to the idea of Human Rights.

Back in the days when I traveled with the liberal musican/artist set, I did some work with Amnesty International. I recall being told by their people that Freedom of Expression was the first, and most important, Human Right, because free speech gives birth to all the other rights we inherit as Humans.

I agreed with that idea then, and I agree with it now.

And what is a Democracy other than a large body of people who share Freedom of Expression? And why has the left given up on this Human Right first? And, if they are no longer willing to fight for Freedom of Expression where and when do they think the chaos and oppression will end?

posted by Pastorius @ 2:50 PM Comments: 0

Former Muslim Says,
"The Main Theme Of Jihad Is Murdering Christians and Jews."


From Jihad Watch:


A former Muslim spoke at the Ridge Southern Baptist Church on Sunday evening to explain the "True Under-standing of Islam."

Pastor Mujahid el-Masih had been Muslim for 14 years before he converted to Christianity in his native country of Pakistan.

Armed with a power-point presentation and a slew of quotes, he now travels around the United States as a part of The Voices of Martyrs."I came from a country where there is no freedom of speech and no freedom of religion," el-Masih said.

Very little was said about el-Masih's conversion to Christianity.

Instead, el-Masih focused on the teachings of the Quran and how they relate to the political climate today.

"The best source of the truth of Islam is the Quran," el-Masih said.The speech was peppered with anecdotes and references were cited from the Quran through out the lecture, as well as the resounding "Amen" when the energy of the congregation seemed to lull.

He also asked that his picture not be taken due to the fact that he still had Christian family members in Pakistan, which is predominately Muslim.

First and foremost, el-Masih refuted any claims that Islam was a peaceful religion.
"The main theme of jihad is the murdering of Christians and Jews," el-Masih said.

According to el-Masih, Allah, the Muslim God, told Muslims to go forth and spread the religion through out the whole world by any means. Therefore, Muslims justify warfare as a means to spread the religion.

Any arguments such as passages in the Quran of tolerance for other religions were also quickly dismissed by el-Masih. He claimed that Mohammad had said the passages of tolerance before Muslims started having any clout. Once the Muslims gained some power, they rejected the idea of tolerance for other religions in favor of conquering a nation and telling them to either convert to Islam, pay a tax or be put to death.


Honestly, I have a hard time believing that most Muslims would want to kill Christians and Jews. And I have a hard time believing that most Muslims would think that it is their duty to kill Christians and Jews. But, if even a small percentage believe that it is their duty, or the duty of a subset of Muslims to do so, then we have a very big problem on our hands. And, I suspect we do.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:42 PM Comments: 0

Chris Matthews and Michael Scherer
Recommend Not Negotiating With Terrorists
And More Military Force


Here's a transcript of Rush Limbaugh discussing and rolling tape of an interview Christ Matthew did with Michael Scheuer:


Let's move on to Chris Matthews last night. He outdid himself last night over Monday night. Last night he was talking to the former chief of the CIA bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer. Now, this is a man who wrote a book while still working for the CIA and went on television anonymously sitting in shadows to explain how the Bush administration was totally botching the war in Iraq, the war on terror, and everything was going wrong.

He shows up with Chris Matthews. His ID is blown now and he's out there actually speaking under the bright lights. He quit the CIA last Friday. By the way, his new book is called "Imperial Hubris," and Chris Matthews says, "What is bin Laden's motive? Why does he want to kill us?"

SCHEUER: His motive is, uh, to change our policies, sir. Uhhh, notwithstanding what the president or Mr. Kerry said during the campaign, he really doesn't give a darn about our democracy or our society --

MATTHEWS (Interrupts): Right.

SCHEUER: He's after a change in policies which he views as lethal to Muslims --

MATTHEWS (Interrupts): Does he think, for example, let me try this -- and I don't want to sound like an apologist -- but suppose we had truly an evenhanded policy in the Middle East. Suppose there was a Palestinian entity of some kind, and it had reasonable borders, and it was contiguous enough to be a working state, and we didn't back dictators like the Saudi Royal Family and people like that who are simply selling the oil to keep their fingers filled with rings and girlfriends in London, all right? Suppose we were a good country and an evenhanded country, all right? Would that make it any less hostile to us?

SCHEUER: We are a good country, sir.

RUSH: Uh (sigh) do I need to amplify this? I don't think I need to amplify this: "Suppose we were a good country and an evenhanded country," Chris Matthews asks a renegade CIA agent -- and this continued. Matthews says, "Well, what are the problems beside the Middle East and the oil kingdoms?"

SCHEUER: With bin Laden --

MATTHEWS (Interrupts): Yeah.

SCHEUER: -- his opposition was based on support for Israel, uhhh support for the tyrannize --

MATTHEWS (interrupts): Does he want to eliminate Israel?

SCHEUER: I think he does. I think that's --

MATTHEWS (interrupts): Okay, well, that makes it simple.

SCHEUER: -- clearly his goal.

MATTHEWS: So there's no policy negotiation we could ever have with this guy?

SCHEUER: It has to be a change of policies and a, and a more assertive use of military force.


This is a perplexing conversation, isn't it? Here, you have Michael Sheuer (who dislikes the Bush Administration and it's War On Terror policy so much that he wrote and book called "Imperial Hubris") and Chris Matthews who night after night (on CNBC) criticizes the Bush Administration for it's arrogance and lack of nuance) discussing the Middle East. And what conclusion do they come to?

That we can't negotiate with the terrorist, Bin Laden, and that we need a more assertive use of military force.

So, really, what the heck are they so angry with the Bush Administration about?

posted by Pastorius @ 1:17 PM Comments: 0

An American Islamic Women Explains Why Our Marines Are Fighting


From PowerLine Blog:


I thought this comment, by a woman named Monir Kazemi, is worth repeating. She is responding to a comment from another woman who ridiculed her criticisms of the Islamofascists:

Jana says: "Monir you dont know anything about Iraq or Islam or the Koran ...."

Dear Jana, I was born in the Middle East and went to Islamic school and at one time I memorized parts of the Koran. I am from a neighboring country to Iraq.

The Koran says Sureh 4, Verse 35: Men have authority over women (not just the wife but sisters, daughters, maids, etc.). If they disobey, "first admonish them, then refuse to sleep with them, and then beat them". You can read it for yourself at http://www.light-of-life.com/eng/reveal/ or other sites. Also try

http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/index.html

to see the 2nd class citizenship of women in Islam (for example they are counted as half of one witness, or receive inheritence half of a man).

Now Jana you are wrong that this is a matter of interpretation. When the Koran says women receive half the inheritence of a man, then this is not an issue of interpretation. It says Sureh 4:11 - "A male shall inherit twice as much as a female". Now how can you interpret mathematics in multiple ways?

You say that I am "not allowed" (by whom may I ask?) - that I am not allowed to say that the Koran has recommended to beat women or to disinherit women because of their gender. And why can't I say this? What stops me and other open minded people to say that the Koran contains nonsense of this sort?

If it offends you that I say this, well then take a cold shower, and if you are a moslem (by the sound of it) then change your religion instead of being so embarrased about it, as I am just repeating what is in there complete with verse numbers and am exercizing my right to free speech, and I can say all I wish about Islam, including facts about the Koran - and this is exactly why the Marines are in Fallujah beating the hell out of these Islamofascists - because they want to stop me from saying the facts, and no Jana, you cannot stop me as those Marines are protecting me, the Iraqis, and ultimately America, and neither can you stop the good Marines who are risking their lives, to bring out the truth about this decrepit religion. You should be ashamed of yourself to undermine our men and women in danger in the battlezone who are fighting tyranny, while people like you suck up to it.


Well put, Monir. Thanks

posted by Pastorius @ 1:03 PM Comments: 0

A New Look


One of my favorite writers, The Anchoress, was kind enough to compliment my other my other blog, "Screming Memes," and to provide a link to it in one of her posts the other day. So, I fired off an email to thank her and to ask her if she had ever read CUANAS. She replied that she had, but that she was surprised that I was the author of both.

Well, I can't say that I blame her. I'm surprised too. I'm also surprised about this.

Anyway, Anchoress also commented that CUANAS was "hard on the eyes." I had actually just started to realize the same thing myself, so I promised her that I would change it. So, here you go Anchoress, this one's for you ... and, uh, well let's face it, for me too.

As for now, I can not figure out how to post links in my blogroll. I will try to make that happen quickly. But, the good news is, now you won't have to wear sunglasses when you're reading my blog anymore. Knowing all you glamorous people who come here to read about anti-Semitism and the situations revolving around the Was on Islamofascism, you will probably still choose to keep the glasses on, just to keep your pose going.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:46 PM Comments: 0

Fatherhood


A friend of mine is a new father. He was talking about how he's been up late at night quite a bit lately, and how this has led him to having a skewed slant on life. I remember those days quite well.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about my early fatherhood and how intimidating and frustrating it was for me. I just thought I'd share a couple of things that I experienced as a new father. I know some men do experience these things, although many may not. So, here it is, for what it's worth:

I Was Not Immediately In Love With My Child

I did not think our newborn baby was cute. In fact, I thought it was a bit horrifying. Babies movements are spasmodic (I think the brain fires off signals to make the muscles move so that they will develop, you will notice that a newborn baby is soft as down, no muscles) and their faces are doughy and unformed. In addition, our baby cried all the damned time.

I remember noting to myself (for posterity) that one day it literally screamed for more than eight hours. In other words pretty much every waking hour the baby was screaming. And this was common. It's hard to be bonded to that. This might be evidence that there's something wrong with me, but I found that I didn't start to think the baby was cute until it was about six months old, and I didn't really bond with my baby (outright love) until it started to make real effort to communicate.

Men Do Not Have Breasts

When we had our first child, I expected to be able to meet it's needs as well as my wife. I found, instead, that it was almost impossible for me to meet the baby's needs. It had been inside my wife for 9 months. The baby knew it's mother, it did not know me. I think babies get to know the world through their mother first, and then gradually through other people, hopefully, their fathers. So we, as fathers, have to be there, but I found, after many frustrating months, that I could not expect to provide much physical or emotional sustenance for my baby. This was sad to me.

You Can Only Be As Good A Father A You Are A Person

Kids learn more from the way you behave, then they do from what you say. A friend clued me in to this right before we had our first. This idea actually took a lot of pressure off for me, because I knew that there was no magic pill.

Fatherhood has caused me to reassess my whole life. When our child was born, my wife and I talked about all the things we wanted for it to be and experience. We wanted our child to grow to be a free-thinker, a good person, and a person who is able to have a strong positive effect on the world.

We realized that while we were decent people, we were not modeling any of the strong traits we wanted for our child. We both worked jobs we didn't like. My wife had ceased painting. I had ceased being a musician. We never did anything to help in the community. So, we changed all that. Now, my wife paints again. I play music at various churches. We both run our own ship in business now. And we have made it a point to give back to our community in various way.

Fatherhood forced me to get serious about life. I spent many years worrying about all kinds of unimportant stuff, from how "cool" I was (I don't even know what I thought that meant now) to how I had been wronged by life. I sometimes wish I had become a father at a younger age, so that I would have grown up earlier, but I might not have been capable. And, many days I still doubt that I am.

posted by Pastorius @ 10:14 AM Comments: 2

The Dao Of Wallace Stevens


I'm linking to a new site, called The Dao Of Wallace Stevens, (I haven't seen that spelling of the word "Tao" before) because I was happy to see that someone is writing, on a semi-regular basis, about my favorite poet. It helps, of course, that she's also a good writer, and a woman who seems to consider things deeply, and with reason.

I don't wholly agree with her analysis, but I do see her opinions as wholly valid. My opinion, not nearly as deeply considered as hers so I'm treading on loose gravel here, is that Wallace Stevens is not a Gnostic. His poetry, in my opinion, does not refer to "occult knowledge," and is not transcendental, in the sense of referring to a higher reality which is separate from the world around us.

Instead, I believe that Wallace Stevens intense depiction of the particulars of real physical life is an expression of the Judeo-Christian idea that, "All creation cries out the glory of God." In the Judeo-Christian tradition we are to learn of God through this world with which we are blessed. We are not to curse our life, or to think that it is unimportant, or less preferable to dying., and therefore "going to meet our Maker." We are supposed to "meet our Maker" right here where we are. Right here in the particulars of his beautiful creation. There is a mystical aspect to Christianity, (and it comes from the idea that Christ's blood cleanses our souls white as snow so that the Holy Spirits can take up residence within and we would be one in God (John 17:20-23) so "that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst Love them, even as Thou didst love Me.") however, the mystery all happens right here through direct experience with the particulars of life. Those particulars are the physical world, the Word of God, and prayer, which is done with our minds and our spirits. However, in the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the cosmos there is no break between the physical and spiritual world.

I want to be clear that I am not saying that Wallace Stevens was a "Christian." Nor, do I claim that he thought of himself as adhering to a Judeo-Christian set of ideas, or even that he thought of himself as being within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Furthermore, I am not making an attempt at literary imperialism by attempting to claim Wallace Stevens for the Judeo-Christian world. His work can be understood by anyone who has experience with the particulars of the real world.

I am aware that the common interpretation of Stevens poem, Sunday Morning, is that it is anti-Christian/religious in nature. It does seem that Wallace Stevens wrote the poem as a protest against the "Christian" interpretation of the world. But, I think Mr. Stevens disagreement with Christianity is similar to Nietzche's antipathy, that is that they both saw Christianity as "other-world" focused.

It's almost as if their disagreement with Christianity is the same as my disagreement with Gnosticism. Hmm, interesting, isn't it?

I think I better not go into this much further because I'm guessing that I'm in over my head, at this point. I think I'll discuss these ideas with my friend Jack, over at Jack Of Clubs, and several other people. I'm only going on feeling at this point, and that is dangerous, of course. But, the point of this post was more just to explain the link, and to begin a discussion.

This could be fun. We'll see.

posted by Pastorius @ 9:41 AM Comments: 0

Black People Are Jovial By Nature


So says, Jacques Chirac.

Via No Pasaran

posted by Pastorius @ 1:44 PM Comments: 0

The Diplomats Are The Murderers


Mystery Achievement posts (with quotes from various writers) about the murderous effects of the UN's Oil-for-Food Program:


Money from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program helped pay the families of Palestinian homicide bombers, the House Committee on International Relations is expected to reveal Wednesday during a hearing on corruption in the Iraqi relief program.

It has long been established that Saddam paid bounties of $15,000 to $25,000 to the Palestinian families of the murderers. Hyde's committee will reveal at the hearing that some of the reward money was deposited from illegal profits Saddam made by demanding 10 percent kickbacks on all the contracts of companies that did business with the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program.

Those funds were then deposited with other Iraqi money, such as Jordanian Oil-for-Food oil payments, into the Central Bank of Iraq account in the Rafidain Bank in Amman, Jordan. The funds were then transferred to another account in the bank controlled by Iraq's ambassador to Jordan Sabah Yaseen. It was from Yaseen's account that Saddam's officials would cut and hand out checks to the homicide bombers' families, Hyde's investigators are expected to say.

Think that Israelis were/are the only ones being murdered by this "peace, justice, and reconciliation" program? Take a look at this, from the blog "Pull On Superman's Cape":

Ultimately, the central value of this story is not that it was a monetary scam (though it looks to be one of the largest in history).

The logical end of this story is that it is the quid pro quo for global subversion of the war on terror.

The root of the lack of support by the UN for removing Saddam from power in Iraq is in the corruption present in this program. The corruption in this program is in ideology as well as economic interest. International treachery was practiced by our so called 'allies': France and Germany along with Russia and China - by supplying Saddam with arms right up until we attacked Iraq. Our soldiers have been killed in this conflict by French, German, Russian, and Chinese supplied weapons. The UN - by participating in the corruption themselves, looked the other way while Saddam was armed to the teeth by funds that were supposed to feed starving children in his country...


The UN, France, Germany, and Russia have accused the United States of carrying out an immoral war. We are the evil, Nazi-like regime, and it is our leader who is accused of being a new Hitler. But, the truth is they are complicit in the murder of Israeli and Iraqi citizents. They are part of the war efforts of Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein, both of whose policies are still being carries out (by "militants, "insurgents," and "rebels") although they no longer hold power.

The UN, France, Germany, and Russia have been willing to not only look the other way for murderers, but to stand up for their right to murder, and, indeed, speak of the moral superioty of the murderers positions? What should we think of such people? In another post on the same subject (with regards to Jimmy Carter), Mystery Achievment suggests that such people are worse than the murderers themselves:


You know, it's easy to identify as evildoers those who wear black masks and carry Korans and AK-47s among the sorry rabble staggering down the street of some hell-hole in Gaza or the West Bank. Those masks hide identity--not intent. But it's the mask of sanctimonious hypocrisy that (Jimmy) Carter and his ilk wear that is both harder to penetrate and deliberately donned to hide the true intentions of its wearers.

People like Carter deserve an even worse fate than ones like Arafat who blew up those innocent children. They provide cover for the Arafats of the world, and seek to convince people who hate such evil that the cause of those evildoers is just.


I think it's a hard call to say who is worse. However, Mystery Achievment's point of view is valid.

The fictional character, Don Vito Corleone, said something to the effect that one can get far with kind words, but, to really win one needs a kind word, backed up by a gun. This is a central truth of life. Ultimately, both the good and evil do and, indeed, must wield both the kind word and the gun. Consider our friends the French and their recent "adventure" in the Ivory Coast. They were pushed too far, so they wielded the gun. Viewed in this way, diplomacy can be seen as part of the machinery of war itself. If one accepts my point, then there is no difference between the murderer and the diplomat who actively enables the murder.

The question then becomes, in the cases of Arafat and Hussein, which was the more potent weapon? Was it the kind word or the gun? I think it is clear that the gun could not have fired without the efforts of the kind word.

That would mean it was the diplomats who pulled the trigger. That makes them the murderers.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:28 AM Comments: 1

Evil Empire Invades Country Unilaterally and Without UN Approval



From Victor David Hanson:


Europe offers a ... paradox. Our Western cousins have chosen a path far different from our own, on almost every social, economic, and military issue. Throughout this war Europeans have snickered that over-the-top Americans blast their way across the globe, leaving needless wreckage in their wake, in their Team America-like search for mythical jihadists. But ask the Dutch, who, as thanks for crafting the most liberal society in Europe, are now living in fear of a jihadist assassination campaign. Or talk to the Spanish — whose appeasement after the Madrid bombing earned them an Islamist plot to obliterate their Supreme Court judges. France — in its old blow-up-Greenpeace mood — claims that it only supports the use of force in extremis, but then almost immediately exploded the tiny air force of the Ivory Coast on news that nine of its soldiers were killed, prompting thousands of Africans to hit the streets in anti-Gallic rage.

The only difference in the American use of force has been one of magnitude: We lose 3,000 — not 9 — and send out 1,000 planes — not 3 — when attacked. Why does France get a pass in its postcolonial interventions? Simply because there are no French to criticize them. For all the European hysteria over the reelection of George Bush, I would wager that privately, leaders there are sighing with relief that a resolute U.S. is fighting the Islamists, taking the heat, and supplying them with both emotional and material cover at no cost. How can you buy off the Iranians to drop their bomb plans without fear by the mullahs that a cowboy George Bush is the dreaded alternative?

George Bush thus will get no credit for elections replacing the Taliban or for the liberation of women in Afghanistan, much less for democracy in Iraq. Instead he will be the target of constant venom for the human costs of war, with the silent proviso that he is not to cease, lest a Holland, France, or Spain become even more besieged by anti-Western jihadists emboldened by American appeasement. Indeed, Bush must endure elite European hatred, even as the majority there silently expects the United States to maintain the alliance and protect the West.


Essentially, European nations like France and Germany, with their anti-American rhetoric, have triangulated themselves the moral niche in the geopolitical events of our time. Even though we didn't invite them in, they play the good cop to our bad cop. And somehow, they have come to believe that they are not just "playing" the part. They believe they really are the good cop. What a joke. If the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal wasn't enough to prove it, France's imperialistic "adventures" in the Ivory Coast are final evidence of their duplicity.

Don't worry though, Europe. We'll keep picking up the tab.

Would you like to borrow the keys to Daddy's car to while you're at it, sweetheart?

posted by Pastorius @ 7:07 PM Comments: 0

What Year Is It? 1939? 2004?


From the Jerusalem Post, via Little Green Footballs:


Along with the local time and temperature, venomous slogans against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel appear on the municipal information board in the northern Spanish town of Oleiros.

"Let's stop the animal, Sharon the assassin, stop the neo-Nazis," reads the bright-red illuminated sign in the town of a few thousand people located in the Galicia region.
Israel's ambassador to Spain, Victor Harel, protested the message in a letter he sent to the Spanish Foreign Ministry on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Harel called the mayor of Oleiros, Angel Garcia Seoane, who said he stands 100 percent behind the message.

According to Harel, Seoane said that he doesn't have anything against Jews, but feels completely differently about the Israeli government, its head, and those who represent it in Spain.
Harel cut short the conversation with the mayor.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem expressed its displeasure to the Spanish Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Bustam Mante, the deputy head of the Spanish Embassy, said, "If it is true that a public official publicly insulted the prime minister then it is totally unacceptable."

Mante said he passed the information he received from Jerusalem on to his ministry in Madrid.
The Israeli Embassy in Madrid received word of the sign from residents of the town who sent the embassy an e-mail and pictures of the sign.

In addition to the sign, the Oleiros municipality is selling on its Web site, for 6, T-shirts with anti-Sharon slogans.


The Israeli government are Nazi's? Considering that the Israeli's voted their government into power that would make the Israeli's Nazi's as well.

This is the inversion that has gained so much popularity with anti-war protestors over the past few years. The Jews are the Nazi's. The display of the Israeli flag emblazoned with a swastika, the Arab propoganda slogan about how the Israeli's learned well at the feet of Hitler and are implementing the techniques of their lessons on the Palestinian people, Sharon portrayed in political cartoons as a child devouring monster, all of these ideas are horrid inversions of the truth.

The truth is, the Arabs, including the Palestinians, call for the elimination of the Jews in their major newspapers, television networks, universities, high government offices, and school textbooks. It is Saudi Arabia's official state policy that No Jews Are Allowed. The Palestinian Authority Official government Charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

I could go on, but that's enough for now. I just wanted to put it in perspective.

It's ok to disagree with Israeli government policy, but until they start rounding up the Palestinians by the millions and gassing them, they are not like the Nazi's.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:15 PM Comments: 0

A Disagreement With Dennis Prager


I want to register my disagreement with something Dennis Prager said on his radio show today. The topic was the Kevin Sites video of the marine who shot the wounded Iraqi in the head as he lay on the floor of the Mosque in Fallujah. A caller said, "We need to get those embedded reporters out of there because they are working against the United States."

Dennis Prager agreed.

I am guessing that there are probably a lot of pundits on the right saying the same thing right about now.

I strongly disagree.

One of the things that I have been most happy about regarding the way we have handled this war is our policy of allowing embedded reporters to travel (cameras in hand) with troops into battle. That is true transparency, and it is the way Democracy must work if it is to be a real Democracy. Even in war time.

I am proud of our country for handling the war the way we have thus far.

I have watched the video and I must say, I don't know what to make of it. Go to this Little Green Footballs link to see it for yourself.

I did not see the wounded man make any sudden movements. On the other hand, I know that

1) I was not there. Violent situations (which, of course, includes War) turn on subtelty of perception, fear, and animal instinct.

2) There were extenuating circumstances. The soldier, who did the shooting, had been shot in the face the day before, and did not milk his wound for time off, but instead, returned to the battlefield. Two days prior to this incident, one of the soldiers fellow platoon-men had been killed in battle. How's that for a couple of days of life experience? Imagine your state of mind if this happened to you. The surrounding circumstances do not absolve him of responsibility, but I think it is appropriate that the man's emotional state be taken into account before calling for his lynching.

3) When you watch the entire video you will see that there is another wounded insurgent, lying 10-15 feet away from the one who is shot, who begins the move and speak after the soldier kills the first insurgent. If the soldier was merely a bloodthirsty maniac he would have also killed the second insurgent. He did not. Instead he and his comrades eventually turn their backs on the man and walk away.

posted by Pastorius @ 11:20 AM Comments: 3

"The Islamic Bomb"
Ten Months Closer With Europeans Help


Once again, from Melanie Phillips:


As the crisis intensifies over Iran's race to develop nuclear weapons, the EU seems determined to repeat the credulous mistakes of the past. France Germany and Britain are studying a letter delivered by Tehran yesterday in which it pledged to suspend temporarily 'nearly all' uranium enrichment activities. They certainly need to study the fine print, because we've been here before. It's not just that Iran has strung the international community along on this matter for the past 18 years, but as the New York Times reports, Iran has promised something very similar before -- and it turned out to be bogus:'

The foreign ministers of the three countries brokered a deal, announced with much fanfare in Tehran 13 months ago. In it, Iran agreed to suspend its production of enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear energy or nuclear weapons programs, and to submit to more intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities. After Iran violated the agreement, officials from the three countries acknowledged that the deal had been made too hastily and that the language of the final accord was too vague and open to misinterpretation.'

It is of course no coincidence that Iran has made this promise ten days before the IAEA is due to decide whether to refer Iran to thew UN Security council for possible sanctions. Iran's good faith on this matter therefore seems highly unlikely. But as this piece on US News points out, even if it was referred to the Security Council sanctions would probaly be blocked by China and Russia, which is helping Iran huild its nuclear reactor. There is also a suggestion, made by Henry Sokolski, Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre, that the EU deal is worse than useless because it would actually accelerate the making of a nuclear bomb because of its guarantee of a supply of fresh light-water-reactor fuel:'

Fresh, lightly enriched light-water-reactor fuel is far closer to being bomb grade than is natural uranium. If Iran were to seize the fuel and divert it--as it probably could without IAEA inspectors' immediate knowledge--Iran could reduce five-fold the level of effort it would need to make bomb-grade material: With the centrifuges Iran admits having, it could make a bomb's worth of fuel in roughly nine weeks as opposed to a year.


Let me get this straight. Iran is offering to suspend "nearly all" uranium enrichment activities in exchange for fuel, supplied by the Europeans, which will bring them ten months closer to having nuclear weapons.

Damn, thems Europeens sure is top-notch at a-talkin' and a-nuancin'. That's what we 'murikans call some real fancy-pants negotiatin' skills.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:45 PM Comments: 0

Israeli Deaths And The Archbishop


From Melanie Phillips:


Truly warped and disgusting comments by the leading Christian churchman in Wales, Archbishop Dr Barry Morgan, about the death of Arafat, whom he eulogises thus:

'Yasser Arafat has given his life to the cause of the Palestinian people and will be remembered for his perseverance and resolve in the face of so many challenges and set-backs. When I heard the news of his death this morning, my initial reaction was to pray that in death Yasser Arafat will find that peace which only God can give and which was denied him in life. I pray also that his death will not lead to bloodshed and conflict within the Palestinian community, or confrontation with the forces of the Israeli state. I call on the Israeli state to do all it can to avoid inflaming an already tense situation and condemn its deliberately provocative act today in sending armed police officers into St George's Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem to arrest Mordechai Vanunu who has enjoyed sanctuary there since his release from prison in April of this year following 18 years of incarceration.'

So a mass murderer is all but canonised for his 'perseverance and resolve' in the face of 'set-backs' -- presumably the tiresome desire of those damned Jews to try to prevent him from exterminating them -- while Israel, the target of his terror, is the party that has to be restrained from 'inflaming the situation'. But then, of course, as far as church leaders like this are concerned, the Israelis wilfully 'inflame the situation' because they have no sense of self-preservation but merely seek to trample Palestinians underfoot.

American church leaders would do humanity a great service if they started to highlight the moral bankruptcy displayed over Israel by their fellow churchmen in the UK; and started also to teach them a few facts of life about the obscene lies, libels and incitement to murder with which the Palestinian and wider Arab and Muslim religious and civil leadership have been 'inflaming the situation' against the Jews for the past hundred years.


Well Melanie, it would be nice if American church leaders would do something, but they won't, because many of them harbor the same kind of bias against Israel. The Presbyterian Church condemned Israel's security wall, and voted to divest the money in it's investment fund from Israeli companies altogether.

I've reported here and here, that the mainline churches in the United States tend to be almost, if not completely, as anti-Semitic as European churches, the UN, and (well, maybe not) France itself.

One thing that really struck me about the above-mentioned prayer by his Highness the Archbishop is his comment about Israel going into the St. George's Anglican Cathedral to arrest Mordechai Vanunu. Why the hell is the Anglican church harboring criminals? Doesn't that make them a criminal organization themselves?

I guess that shouldn't surprise me. There's a long tradition of that isn't there.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:57 PM Comments: 0

War Or Debate In The Netherlands?


From CNN, via Drudge


Selami Aydin's words will comfort many Dutch people if opinion polls are to be believed. "I'm thinking of going back to Turkey. Seriously," the 39-year-old Muslim said just a few hundred meters (yards) from the apartment police stormed last Wednesday after a 14-hour siege with suspected Islamic militants. "We're all frightened."

The Netherlands' image as the land of tolerance has been shattered in the two weeks since outspoken filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered and a Muslim suspect arrested in the crime. Since Van Gogh's death on Nov. 2 there have been at least 20 arson attacks on mosques and churches in tit for tat violence.

A Muslim school was damaged by a bomb on Monday, another set ablaze on Tuesday. There have been a number of minor arson attacks on churches and a classroom at a Catholic school in Eindhoven was destroyed by fire on Wednesday.

In the latest suspected arson attack on Saturday, a small mosque in the south was destroyed by fire.

Opinion polls show the majority of Dutch people are uncomfortable with or feel threatened by the presence of foreigners, while support is surging for Geert Wilders, seen as heir to murdered anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn.

Aydin's comments are not typical of all Muslims in the working class Laakkwartier district of the Hague, but most are dismayed by the reaction to Van Gogh's death.

Some say racism has been on the rise since Fortuyn's party surged to second in a 2002 election shortly after he was killed by an animal rights activist and has ratcheted up a notch in the past two weeks.

"I think it's got worse," said 18-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Adbelmounir el Idrissi. "I was in a shop the other day and a man butted in the queue. I told him to go to the end. He said: 'Are you going to shoot me if I don't?"'

Others are annoyed that the arrest of Mohammed B., the man accused of killing Van Gogh, and other suspected Islamic radicals has stirred a debate they say is critical of all Muslims, who make up about 6 percent of the Dutch population and are mostly concentrated in cities.

No one interviewed said they condoned the killing of Van Gogh, but many believe his short film "Submission," about violence against women in Islamic society, simply fuelled anti-Muslim sentiment, although few people in the Netherlands actually appear to have seen it.

"If we have an opinion, we might share it with our friends, but putting all this on television does nothing to help. Besides, it's about something that supposedly happens outside the Netherlands," said Dutch-Moroccan Kassim Douiri, 18.


Ok, I'll cut in here to comment. First, it's sad that the murder of Van Gogh is sparking a minor religious war in the Netherlands. The burning down of mosques and churches is no solution to any of the problems that exist. But, of course, that would seem to go without saying.

The beginning of a solution would be to have a national debate on the real issues. Are people who come from Islamic countries less likely to assimilate? Or, are they slower to assimilate? If Islamic people are less likely to assimilate, then what can be done about it? Limit immigration? Stop immigration? Do the Dutch people have reason to feel threatened by the presence of foreigners? Or is this an example of a very old heterogeneous society suddenly bumping up against the reality of multiculturalism?

The likely truth is that the answer to all of these questions is "Yes, to some extent."

As to Kassim Douiri's comment about he and his Muslim friends keeping their opinions to themselves: Well, Kassim, that doesn't seem like a good idea to me. But then, I'm from America. In America we arrive at solutions to our problems (eventually) by first talking about them. Well, that is, unless one is from Massachusetts, in which case one just sweeps the problem under the rug, and proceeds to promise everyone else that one has a "plan" for a solution.

But, I digress.

The reality is the Muslim community needs to tell us how they feel, even if they feel that they disagree with some of their fellow Muslims. The truth is, Muslim people have marched in the streets here in the United States to protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but to this day (correct me if I'm wrong) there has only been one major organized protest, by Muslims, against terrorism. It was in Phoenix about a year ago, and, unfortunately, only a few dozen people showed up. That was disappointing, to say the least.

It is not healthy for a community to become so insular. Progress, in any group or body, is dependent on the introduction of outside forces into the mix.

But wait, look what comes next:

SEARCH FOR HEALING

In the El Mohsinin mosque's large prayer room, a sermon urges those gathered not to take the law into their own hands.

"The Koran means living together," says 60-year-old Achmed Akasar who arrived from Morocco 36 years ago.

Some Muslims believe the community itself can help to build bridges. One of Germany's largest Muslim groups plans to hold an unprecedented protest against militancy later this month with up to 30,000 demonstrators.

"The Dutch government should organize something like this, but maybe we can do it ourselves. I would join in," said Douiri.

A mosque in the southern town of Den Bosch is encouraging non-Muslims to attend its Eid al-Fitr festival, ending the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, on Sunday. For most Muslims the festival started on Saturday.

"We'll be offering food and drink and hope people will come to talk and to celebrate," said Deniz Ozkanli, chairman of the Orhan Gazi mosque.

"It's been open in previous years, but this year we really want to reach everyone, so we'll be out with flyers and placards. A lot of people are afraid, but a lot of people also want to talk."


Now, that's what I'm talking about. At the risk of being an endless fount of criticism, I have to wonder why Douiri thinks the government should organize the protest. And how would they do it? Would they drop leaflets? Would they drive down the streets of The Hague in government vehicles, with bullhorns announcing, "Calling all Muslims. Report immediately to Town Center Park, in order to protest against terrorism and violence."

But, Douiri is only 18 years old. I should give him a break. You've got to wonder, though, why the writer of this CNN article thought Douiri's words were the most cogent and worth quoting.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:47 PM Comments: 1

Norway Bans Jews From Kristallnacht Observations


From the New York Sun, via Little Green Footballs:


The Norwegian diplomat Terje Roed-Larsen, who serves as the United Nation's Middle East envoy, heaped praise on Arafat yesterday with an enthusiasm that would make a Gaullist blush. "He was like a surrealistic painting, full of contradictions, full of mystery, full of inconsistencies," Mr. Roed-Larsen told Norwegian state radio NRK. "He was complex, deep, superficial, rational, irrational, cold, warm. He may be the most fascinating person I have ever met, and without comparison the most fascinating leader I have ever met."

This came at the end of a week in which Norway managed to forbid Jews from marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a step the French haven't yet taken. The local TV2 News reported that no Norwegian Jews participated in Oslo's commemoration of Kristallnacht."TV2 also reported that the authorities, saying they didn't want trouble, forbade any Jewish symbols, including Stars of David and Israeli flags," according to Israel's Arutz-7 radio station.

"On the TV2 evening news, a group of Jews and their friends who wanted to take part in the commemoration were shown being firmly told by a policeman to 'please leave the area,'" according to a dispatch from an American journalist living in Norway, Bruce Bawer, on AndrewSullivan.com. "This in a city where Muslim demonstrations take place on a regular basis, and include signs and banners bearing hateful, barbaric slogans." The ban prompted a protest from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the government of Norway.


Terje Roed-Larsen has shown himself to be a fomenter of anti-Semitism, and a coddler of the enemies of Jews in the past. Mr. Roed-Larsen, along with his pal Cornelio Summaruga (former head of International Red Cross, who contemptuously compared the Star of David to the Nazi Swastika) were two of the men who shocked me into starting this blog.

Roed-Larsen's (I guess he kept his maiden name) comparison of Arafat to a surrealist painting is perhaps apt. I am reminded of Hiernoymous Bosch's Hell.

Let me think on this for a moment. If Arafat can be compared to a surrealist painting, to what shall we then compare Roed-Larsen?

Norway's banning of Jews from Kristallnacht observations is more evidence that Europe has lost it's mind. I seriously doubt the ban was established out of a malice for the Jews. A malignant apathy, yes, but malice, no. Instead, they apparently did it out of fear of Muslims.

But, the war is a figment of our imagination, right Europe?

posted by Pastorius @ 5:43 AM Comments: 0

Take That Gun Out Of Your Mouth
There Is Meaning To Life


Societies can go insane for periods of time. Germany did in the 1930's and continued on in it's insanity for some time after. I believe that the elevation of a man like Michael Moore to hero status, and of a vacuous man like John Kerry to being a, supposedly, viable Presidential candidate indicates that there are insane forces at work within American society.

But, I am not nearly as concerned for America's sanity as I am for the sanity of Europe. Europe's propagation of the Bush = Hitler trope, it's refusal to acknowledge the threat of it's swelling Islamic population, and it's inability to deal with the murder of Theo Van Gogh (as evidenced by the sandblasting of the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" mural because a local Imam called it racist), is evidence of a society who have put their own gun into their own mouth.

Here, from the American Thinker, is an important question, seriously posed:


Hi. Are you nuts?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of President Bush has been so outrageous that I'm wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds. One of Britain's largest newspapers ran a headline asking, "How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?", and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word -- bizarre -- to explain the election's outcome to their readers. In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that "Bush belongs at a war tribunal - not in the White House." And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as "stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists."

Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren't like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you're likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.) But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso - and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world's finest universities and five or six of the world's best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world's most vibrant economy, are the world's only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars - may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?

We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient. We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses - and thus create jobs - with a minimum of government interference. We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we've got.

If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn't. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe -- you -- from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western civilization and - not coincidentally - ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes.

Europe is Dying

It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap between Europe and the United States. You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian culture, and have become instead a secular culture. And a secular culture quickly goes from being "un-religious" to anti-religious. Indeed, your hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope's heroic efforts to the contrary.

Your rate of marriage is at an all-time low, and the number of abortions in Europe is at an all-time high. Indeed, your birth rates are so far below replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today. Europe is literally dying. And of the children you do manage to produce, all too few will be raised in stable, two-parent households.

Your economy is stagnant because your government regulators make it just about impossible for your entrepreneurs to succeed - except by fleeing to the United States, where we welcome them and celebrate their success.

And your armed forces are a joke. With the notable exception of Great Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves. Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.

What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness. You refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western Civilization. It's worrisome because, to tell you the truth, we need each other. Western Civilization today is under siege, from radical Islam on the outside and from our own selfish hedonism within. It's going to take all of our effort, our talent, our creativity and, above all, our will to pull through. So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own future will be if you don't change course. And please, stop sneering at America long enough to understand it. After all, Western Civilization was your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made of it.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:56 AM Comments: 0

Somebody Give Charles Johnson
At Little Green Footballs
A Book Deal, Please


Since my readership is spiking today because Screaming Memes got a mention from Andrew Sullivan, and then linked to me, I want to throw out a meme myself.

Someone give Charles Johnson a book deal soon.

The guys story is fascinating. As far as I can tell, he's one of the earliest bloggers. He was pretty much a liberal Bush-hater until 9/11, at which point he quickly reassessed his beliefs, and I'm guessing, his entire life.

Since that day he has made it his mission to get out as much information as he can about why we need to support Western Civilization in our struggle against Islamofascism. And he does this in a funny and entertaining way.

Over the years he has built up a huge and devoted readership. In addition, he had the inside track (along with Allah, PowerLine, etc.) in breaking the CBS Rathergate scandal, which, of course, was a national story with international implications.

All this from a freakin' Jazz Musician.

One of the things I admire most about Charles is his enormous brass cojones. He uses his real name and has not been shy about having his photo posted/published, or his whereabouts known.

I want to extend a huge "Thank You" to Charles. His work has helped me on my journey. My whole life has changed since 9/11, and Little Green Footballs has a lot to do with the change.

Pastorius

posted by Pastorius @ 1:04 PM Comments: 0

Arafat's Legacy


From Roger Simon:


If Arafat had wanted a Palestinian state, he could have had one many times over. He wanted no such thing. He wanted hundreds of millions in the bank and the perks of a Mafia chieftain - and he got what he wanted. Looked at objectively, he had more contempt for the Palestinian people that anybody alive.


One need only read Dennis Ross' (chief Middle-East negotiator under President Bill Clinton) book The Missing Peace to see that Roger Simon is absolutely correct.

Check out this short video on Arafat's legacy.

Let's hope that the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, really wants to settle this problem.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:43 AM Comments: 0

The Evil Neocons Are Lying To Us


From Melanie Phillips:


The head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, is reported in the Times as warning against complacency over the prospects of an Islamist terrorist attack on Britain. She said:

‘ “There is a serious and sustained threat of terrorist attacks against UK interests at home and abroad. The terrorists are inventive, adaptable and patient; their planning includes a wide range of methods to attack us”. She suspected that there might be people in the CBI “who doubt this description of the threat or perhaps question the language used to describe its scale… But I would urge you to consider the events of 9-11 (when nearly 3,000 people were killed), in Bali (where 202 died), in Istanbul (31 dead), and in Madrid (191 killed),” she said. She added: “Be under no illusion. The threat is real and here and affects us all.” '

Her warning and observations are timely. For there is a strong current of opinion, gaining ground by the day, that not only was Saddam no threat to this country but there is no Islamist terrorist threat at all. This myth has been sedulously put about as part of the deranged conspiracy theories which are circulating through the media and have now gained serious traction, demonising President Bush and Tony Blair for having produced a massive fabrication of a danger that does not exist.

The seriousness of this great tide of irrationality was illustrated by the BBC2 series by Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares. Having now seen all three episodes, I can only say that the alarm that has been sounded in some quarters about this production grossly understates the case. It is hard to exaggerate the mendacity and malevolence of its argument. Episode three told us there was no such thing as al Qaeda, merely an idea — no international conspiracy, no sleeper cells across the world. Just a few disparate terrorists who have run out of steam and hardly present any great threat to anyone. 9/11 was, er, just one of those things. Nothing to get too excited about. Yet you only have to glance at Rohan Gunaratna’s scholarly book, Inside al Qaeda, to realise that while it is undoubtedly true that this is an inchoate grouping which constantly mutates and reforms itself, it is indeed a global conspiracy with cells across the world.

You only have to look at the pattern of terror attacks from country to country. You only have to read what the perpetrators say about their aims in destroying western culture and restoring the medieval Muslim caliphate.

But according to Curtis, the threat of Islamist terror was instead deliberately and artificially confected by a sinister group of people, the American neo-conservatives, who have spent the past thirty years confecting one phantom enemy after another for their own power-crazed ends. Almost everything in this thesis is bogus, distorted, mendacious or wrong.
We are told that the neo-cons dominate Washington. Wrong. They are a tiny group whose opinions came to dovetail after 9/11 with those of the old-style Republicans.

We are told that they do the bidding of their teacher, Leo Strauss, who is presented as a more sinister figure and of more global impact than the leaders of al Qaeda. But Strauss was an obscure political scientist, who taught only a few of the neo-cons. We are told that he not only believed that liberal society in America was decadent, but taught that the American people had to be fed ‘noble myths’ to bring them together, even if what they were being told was a lie. I have never heard any neo-con say anything like this about expedient myths. As for Strauss himself, there have been plenty of people on the left who have tried to assassinate his character because it is undoubtedly the case that what he taught blew a hole through the moral and intellectual basis of the left’s political programmes — so much so that his daughter has protested that the diabolical picture being painted of her father bore no relation to reality.

Be that as it may, the fantasies Curtis accuses the neo-cons of inventing are indeed fantastic. He claims they wanted to create myths of good versus evil, in order to create an artificial threat so they could pose as defenders of the world. The first phantom threat they created was communism. Yup, you read it right. Communism, according to Curtis, was no big deal. By the time President Reagan (another neo-con puppet, as everyone in this story seems to be) started inveighing against the evil empire, it was already crumbling. Well, there’s something in that; but the fact that the west hadn’t realised how near to collapse the Soviet Union was does not negate the threat that it posed, nor the damage it was doing. Curtis tells us that the neo-cons persisted in seeing a threat that the CIA told them didn’t exist. Professor Richard Pipes, the distinguished Russian expert who knows infinitely more about the Soviet Union than Curtis, is made to look a fool for maintaining that the absence of visible weapons programmes indicated they had been hidden (guess where that particular thread was leading). But what Pipes said made sense — that since the Soviet Union had exactly the same know-how and wherewithal as the west, it was just not credible that it had not developed these weapons.

Next, Curtis sneers at the neo-cons’ certainty that apparently disparate terrorist groups, such as the IRA, Baader-Meinhof or the Palestinians were all supported by the Soviet Union. But the release of the Stasi files has shown that this was indeed the case; indeed, it revealed that much of what was feared about the intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union and dismissed as paranoid red-baiting had been true all along.

The next ‘myth’ invented by the neo-cons was — wait for it — Bill Clinton’s bad character. Forget Monica Lewinsky, Jennifer Flowers and the lies Clinton told about such events. His character was destroyed by the vast neo-con conspiracy — not even the right generally, but the neo-cons — who decided to create a fantasy enemy to make the American people realise the decadent truth about liberal America. Even if some claims made about Clinton were invented by his political opponents, one hardly needs to invent this baroque ideological conspiracy to explain ordinary dirty politics. But the purpose of this risible twisting of history is to make the neo-cons seem worse than Clinton.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, Curtis draws explicit parallels between the neo-cons and the radical Islamists. He claims that their ideologies and political trajectories are so similar they are equal partners in the vast and mendacious conspiracy to terrify the world. This grotesque analysis is based from the start on a glaringly obvious false premise. He equates Leo Strauss, who concluded that liberal society had descended into morally relativistic decadence, with a principal theorist behind radical Islamism, Sayed Qutb, who, he says, similarly concluded that the west was decadent and returned to Egypt to spread the word against western influence through the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the main inspirations of the Islamist jihad in general and Ayman al Zawahiri, the principal theorist of al Qaeda, in particular. But this is a mind-blowingly absurd comparison. Strauss inspired a return to the moral values of western civilisation which he thought had been undermined, and warned against tyrannies which threatened the freedom that characterised liberal society. Qutb’s whole purpose was to fight against such freedom, destroy such western values, and inspire instead religious tyranny.

Offensively and incredibly, Curtis draws parallel after parallel between the neo-cons and the Islamofascists. Thus he tells us that William Bennett, who served in both the Reagan and (first) Bush administrations, blamed the American public’s moral decline for not rising in revulsion against Clinton, just as al Zawahiri blamed the Arab masses for failing to rise against their corrupt rulers —which failing Zawahiri used as the pretext for slaughtering them. Neat comparison, huh? Thus the neo-cons are as bad as homicidal zealots.

Having made this odious comparison throughout, Curtis brings his anti-history to a conclusion by stating that the neo-cons deliberately invented the non-existent threat of Islamist terror in order to realise their mission to spread their ideas about good and evil. Accordingly, they invented contacts between Saddam and al Qaeda that never existed. But there is considerable evidence of these contacts (see many previous posts) — and evidence that, as with the Soviet backing of terror in the past, the CIA screwed up by never acknowledging this. As Richard Perle says on the programme, it is astonishing that people can deny this evidence — a statement of documented reality which merely elicited from Curtis gasps of incredulity.

The conclusion of this vile series, repeated at the beginning of each episode, is that the neo-cons have transformed global politics through a dark fantasy, used to terrify people and thus provide a sense of purpose for politicians who are no longer trusted to deliver the good society.

This is simply deranged conspiracy theory. There is no other adequate description. But the terrifying thing is that in Britain, this is being taken seriously and believed. It was, after all, transmitted by the BBC, our supposed guardians of journalistic standards. There are senior editors in the BBC who took the decision to transmit this garbage because they presumably thought it had a serious contribution to make — rather like the senior executives of Egyptian TV decided to transmit the multi-part TV version of the infamous anti-Jewish conspiracy libel, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Disturbingly, I keep meeting people who tell me how impressed they were by the Curtis series. It has undoubtedly done much to further inflame the current climate of hysterical irrationality.

Someone should be talking very seriously about this to the BBC chairman Michael Grade and to the governors. Such a travesty of journalism, public service broadcasting and truth must not go unchallenged.


If idiotic Brits really believe that the evil Neocons (read Jews) invented the Al Qaeda, well then if we must, here are some examples of a real threat from Al Qaeda right in your neigborhood, from Kenneth Timmerman:


The French police struck just in time, penetrating deep into a housing project in the Paris suburbs on Dec. 16 where for years Islamic radicals have made their nest, hiding among the predominantly Muslim immigrant population. More than 100 police and a 30-member SWAT team stormed the "Cité des 4000" in La Courneuve, carrying assault rifles with laser sights.

When they picked up Marwan Ben-Ahmed, 29, a French-Algerian dual national, he had collected all the ingredients for a large bomb and was planning to strike during the Christmas holidays, possibly against the U.S. or Russian embassies in Paris. In his apartment, police found packages of iron perchlorate and other chemicals which, when mixed together, can make a powerful explosive. They also seized two empty propane canisters, $5,000 in cash, fake passports and a computer with coded instructions.

During a second search two days later, they found timers and detonators hidden in a washing machine. Police also arrested Ben-Ahmed's wife and two accomplices, identified as Mohamed Merbah and Ahmed Belhoud.But it was the discovery of a military-issue nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) protection suit and bottles of toxic chemicals that most alarmed investigators, leading to speculation that Ben-Ahmed and his network were planning a chemical attack or had gained access to nuclear waste and were hoping to make a "dirty bomb" that would irradiate the greater-Paris area.

Fears that al-Qaeda terrorists were planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the Washington area kept NEST (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) busy for months, as Insight revealed last year [see "A State of High Alert," Nov. 26, 2001], a problem that remains current [see "Searching for 'Dirty Bombs'" in this issue]. Although most experts agree that a single "dirty nuke" would cause little actual damage beyond that of the conventional explosive used to detonate it, the psychological impact of a radioactive cloud rising above a major city could create panic, making it a terrorist's weapon of choice.

Osama bin Laden has spoken repeatedly of his desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction and to use them against the West. Two years before Sept. 11, 2001, the Arab press was ripe with speculation that he had gained access to 20 nuclear "suitcase bombs" that were feared to have gone missing from the stockpiles of the former Soviet Union. Bin Laden's intentions never have been in doubt -- only his capabilities. So when the French discovered the NBC suit in Ben-Ahmed's tiny apartment in La Courneuve, they feared the worst and immediately ordered a thorough chemical analysis of every ingredient seized at the site.

In testimony the day after the arrests, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told members of parliament that Ben-Ahmed and his cell were in contact with another al-Qaeda operative named Rabah Kadri, arrested in London on Nov. 5 "on suspicion of planning a chemical attack" on the London subway system. Kadri eventually led them to Ben-Ahmed and his network in France.

The French counterterrorist police arrested "19 persons in November alone who were working with terrorist services," Sarkozy revealed. Because of the risk of a chemical attack, "it was better to arrest them sooner rather than later," he added.

On Christmas Eve, the French suspicions were confirmed when police raided the Minguettes housing project outside the central French city of Lyons, where they found four more alleged al-Qaeda operatives along with lists of chemicals needed to make cyanide, the same chemical agent al-Qaeda networks were planning to use in London. They now believe Ben-Ahmed was planning to fill the propane canisters with a deadly poison gas in hopes of killing hundreds if not thousands of people and was coordinating his efforts with al-Qaeda cells in Britain and elsewhere.


Really, anyone who is still having trouble believing that there really is an Al Qaeda, you should start reading Screaming Memes because their are totally wierd things going on in Amerika right now (after Bush stoled the election, ) and that blog is for you.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:08 AM Comments: 0

George Bush - The Champion Of Secularism


From Christopher Hitchens, via Little Green Footballs:


It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week's New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.

I step lightly over the ancient history of Wills' church as well as over its more recent and local history (as the patron, protector, and financier of child-rape in the United States). As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.

But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.

So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).

One probably should not rest too much on the similarity between Bin Laden's last video and the newly available DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11. I would only say that, if Bin Laden had issued a tape that with equal fealty followed the playbook of Karl Rove (and do please by all means cross yourself at the mention of this unholy name), it might have garnered some more attention. The Bearded One moved pedantically through Moore's bill of indictment, checking off the Florida vote-count in 2000, the "Pet Goat" episode on the day of hell, the violent intrusion into hitherto peaceful and Muslim Iraq, and the division between Bush and the much nicer Europeans. (For some reason, unknown to me at any rate, he did not attack the President for allowing the Bin Laden family to fly out of American airspace.)

George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?

posted by Pastorius @ 6:21 AM Comments: 0

Muslim School Bombed In The Netherlands
Some Thoughts On The Progress of European History


From Eursoc:


More bad news from the Netherlands. It seems right-wing nutters have planted a bomb in a Muslim school in the town of Eindhoven.

While the bomb damaged only the entrance to the school (it exploded at 3.30am) it follows a series of arson attacks on mosques and immigrant community centres. Tension in the Netherlands remains high since an Islamic fanatic murdered film-maker Theo van Gogh last Tuesday.

Thousands attended peaceful demonstrations following the murder, though sadly it appears that some refused to listen to appeals for calm. EURSOC tends to believe that when people set bombs in schools, they fully intend to maim and kill children: The fact that the bomb went off in the early hours of the morning is neither here nor there.

The bombers and arsonists may well have been members of extremist right wing groups, of which there are not a few in Europe. But by carrying out this shameful attack they have tainted the widespread outrage against van Gogh's assassination. Many in Europe's elites appear to fear the native backlash against Muslims more than they fear Islamist terrorists themselves. Bombings like this one confirm their prejudice.

As the Zacht Ei blog , which has been covering events in Holland brilliantly, notes: "If we start taking bombs to the streets, what will distinguish us from the butchers that slit throats? After this is all over, and it will be one day, I'd like there to be a bit left of the civilization and the ideals we claim to be defending."


I agree with Zacht.

I'm well-aware that there are some strange people in the Netherlands. The fact that my blog has the words "anti-Semitic" and "Christian" in it's title ensures that I get hits from wierdos quite often. I get hits from people with "Satanic" blogs, racist sites, etc. And more often than not they are from Northern Europe, many in the Dutch language. Interesting, isn't it?

By the way, I am also aware that, in Europe, many times there is a link between such "Satanism" and the white power movement.

Now, let's put two and two together. Heck, let's maybe even throw a three or four into the mix.

If Muslim Jihad enrages these "right-wing" groups to the point where they decide to kill Muslim children, will that not jack up the Jihad? Could we see an accelerating cycle of violence?

Now, let's move to another idea. I supported George Bush's decision to remove American troops from Germany, but doesn't this leave Germany more vulnerable to threats from inside and outside it's soil? How will the Germans respond? Possibly by increasing it's military spending?

As Germany's economy is inevitably crushed under the weight of it's Socialist system, and it's aging population, and it's flood of unassimilatable immigrants from Islamic countries, will not such a situation, combined with an ongoing two-sided Jihad between Muslims and "right-wingers," lead to a situation where Germany might once again feel the need for a strongman?

You see where I am going with this?

The next forty years of European history are going to be interesting, to say the least.

I believe Europe has much more to fear from itself, than from American hegemony.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:36 AM Comments: 0

Children Telling Ghost Stories Around The Campfire Update


The day after the election I posted about my conversation with my friend, who works in the entertainment industry, wherein he posited a whole list of conspiracy theories to prove that George Bush was all but the anti-Christ.

Well, I have to say that I was amazed when, on Saturday, my friend called me to tell me that, prompted by our discussion, he had looked up the facts of the Patriot Act and the arrests of citizens and what he called "legal immigrants" to the U.S.

He said he now agrees with me that the Patriot Act is not an evil conspiracy against the citizenry of the United States. However, he does not think it's right that the government should be able to access people's emails and library records, even with a warrant. He says we need to fight back against this kind of overstepping of bounds.

Well, that's fine. I don't agree with him, but now at least he and I are living in the same world.

He said, he also found that there has only been one U.S. citizen arrested under the designation of "Enemy Combatant." That would be Jose Padilla. He agreed that Jose Padilla should be in jail, but not as an "Enemy Combatant." He thought Padilla should go through the normal legal process, or that "George Bush should go through the normal process of enacting legislation to designate what an "Enemy Combatant" is.

In that case, I actally kind of do agree with my friend and told him. I also pointed out to him, though, that Bush was following the rules of the Geneva Convention in his definition of what it is to be an "Enemy Combatant."

In addition, I also pointed out to him that in every war the U.S. has fought there has been areas in which our Presidents have stepped over the line of the rights of our citizenry. I pointed out Roosevelt's internment of citizens of Japanese heritage or Nixon's outright lying about his doings in Viet Nam.

I made the point that what Bush is doing is minor in comparison. He agreed, but said that we must fight back against our government when it is overstepping the bounds.

Well, he's right about that. And, luckily for us, there are many good people in the United States who are doing that work. Jose Padilla and the real "Legal Immigrants" who are currently being held in custody here in the U.S. do have a cadre of lawyers working in their interests.

I do not choose to fight that fight for several reasons, foremost being that I am not a lawyer. But, even if I were, I probably would not feel that calling. My purpose is to provide a weight on the other side of our divided country right now. I see too much irrational anger at the George Bush and America. I see too much irrational hatred of the Jews. So, my purpose is to try to provide an antidote to this irrationality.

Anyway, it sure was nice to talk to my friend on Saturday and find that, even though we still don't fully agree, at least we are now both living in the same world.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:47 AM Comments: 0

Yay For Me


The other day, Medienkritik noted that Europeans are upset and perplexed that we Americans would vote for George Bush. So, they asked American readers to write in and please explain why they voted in such a manner. I am happy to see that my comment was at the top of their post today. Too bad they did not provide my link.

Oh well.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:06 AM Comments: 0

"Thou Shalt Not Kill" Is Racist?


This actually happened a few days ago, so I am very late to the game in posting about it. Oh well. Thanks to Roger Simon for this:


... this extraodinary report from the blog Live From Brussels. In the continuing reaction to the Theo Van Gogh murder, an Amsterdam artist put up a street mural featuring a dove under the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill!" The imam from the local mosque called to complain that the mural was "racist" and the police sandblasted it. You can see all on a remarkable video at the link.

Unfortunately, the Dutch is not translated. Perhaps Pieter Dorsman could get into it.

If you think things are bad in this country, Europe is an incredible bind, relying on cheap labor (for the survival of its system) that refuses to be assimilated. Beware the 1930s. (via lgf)

UPDATE: Pieter Dorsman has now provided partial translations of the video as well as insight into the police instructions in Amsterdam following the murder. Isn't the blogosphere interesting? We have more resources than we know and we're only just learning how to use them.


If it is racist to intone the Sixth Commandment, we might as well pack it all in and call it a day as a civilization.

Goodbye history. I hope you treat us well. Say nice stuff about us. If you find graven images of Ronald McDonald everywhere, please understand that they were not actually our God's.

Oh well, maybe they were.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:44 AM Comments: 0

Doesn't The Netherlands Realize They Had It Coming To Them?


From AP:


THE HAGUE -- The Dutch government yesterday vowed tough measures against what a leading politician called "the arrival of jihad in the Netherlands" after a death threat to a Dutch lawmaker was found spiked with a knife to the body of a slain filmmaker by his radical Muslim attacker.

A five-page letter released Thursday night by the justice minister forced political leaders -- including Amsterdam's Jewish mayor and members of parliament -- to take on bodyguards.

The document, attached to the body of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was titled "An Open Letter to [Aayan] Hirsi Ali," referring to a Somali-born member of parliament. She had scripted Mr. van Gogh's latest film, "Submission," which criticized the treatment of women under Islam.

Miss Hirsi Ali, who calls herself an ex-Muslim, has gone into hiding.

"Death, Ms. Hirsi Ali, is the common theme of all that exists. You and the rest of the cosmos cannot escape this truth," the letter said.

"I know definitely that you, Oh America, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Netherlands, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go down," it said.

Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm agreed with comments by other politicians who called Mr. van Gogh's slaying a declaration of Islamic jihad, or "holy war."

"We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up the fight against this sort of terrorism," he said. "The increase in radicalization is worse than we had thought."

Among measures under consideration is an emergency law to enable authorities to revoke the Dutch nationality of dual citizens suspected of terrorist activity so that they can be deported.

Mr. Zalm said the intelligence service, which already has expanded since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, would receive more funding to help it monitor potential terrorist recruits.

The suspected killer in the van Gogh case, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan national, was arraigned on six terrorism-related charges.

Jozias van Aartsen, parliamentary speaker for the nationalist People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the second-largest party in the government of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, issued a statement that called Mr. van Gogh's slaying tantamount to a declaration of war.

"The jihad has come to the Netherlands and a small group of jihadist terrorists is attacking the principles of our country," he said. "I hope the Netherlands will now move beyond denial and do what is fitting in a democracy -- take action.

"These people don't want to change our society, they want to destroy it," he said.


My headline is, of course, a sick joke. Any regular reader of this blog knows that I had family members who called me, from Europe, on 9/11 and explained to me why America had it coming to us. I just couldn't help myself with the joke.

I'm glad to see that these Dutch politicians seem to get it. They seem to understand what is coming at them and are determined to respond strongly. Too bad they aren't a massive hyperpower like us. We need some serious help.

posted by Pastorius @ 7:45 PM Comments: 0

My Party Left Me


PowerLine points out that Seymour Hersh, the noted liberal author and writer for the New Yorker, has let loose with some pretty bizarre email rants recently. Here an brief excerpt:


Germantown, Md.: Do you believe the president will strive for unity? Or will he skew more hard right?

Seymour Hersh: in my view, he's got his mandate and he's going to carry on with his mantra -- bringing democracy to the middle east. pretty scary.


Go look at them all. Amazing. What an enlightened individual.

As I said in my post below, my party left me.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:44 PM Comments: 0

Some Thoughts For The Party That Left Me


I voted for no one but Democrats all my life, until I voted for Schwazeneggar in the California Recall Election. And, of course, I voted for George Bush in this most recent election. I do not believe I left my party. They left me. Some important thoughts from the Backseat Philosopher, thanks to Instapundit:


We Democrats are supposedly the party of the therapists, the teachers, and the 'relationship experts.' If anybody would be proud of the title, 'active listener', it would be a Democrat. We're the soft ones who understand where the other side is coming from and negotiate.

Many Democrats think that our patience and understanding are our weakness. "We don't know how to fight like the Republicans," we all told ourselves after Florida 2000. "We have to be more like them: tougher, meaner." "We have to energize our base more."

Actually, no. Our error is that we Democrats are far less understanding than we think we are. Our version of understanding the other side is to look at them from a psychological point of view while being completely unwilling to take their arguments seriously. "Well, he can't help himself, he's a right-wing religious zealot, so of course he's going to think like that." "Republicans who never served in war are hypocrites to send young men to die. " "Republicans are homophobes, probably because they can't deal with their secret desires." Anything but actually listening and responding to the arguments being made.

And when I say 'responding,' I don't just mean 'coming up with the best counterargument and pushing it.' Sometimes responding to an argument means finding the merit in it and possibly changing one's position. That is part of growth, right?

Here are some arguments that are being made that the Democratic party has simply not responded to, in the larger sense of the word "response":

Whatever the UN was, might have been, or should be, it now isn't. Genocidal tyrannies are on the Human Rights commision. Saddam Hussein funneled over 1.7 billion dollars to various decision makers and world leaders to weaken his sanctions program. One out of every three votes is about Israel. Until the UN is significantly reformed, you shouldn't take its decisions seriously.

If we view 1000 or even 10,000 dead soldiers as unacceptable, we will never be able to fight a real war again.

Proportional response with no preemption allows the other side to set the pace of the battle.

Throughout history, governments have had a strong interest in promoting long-term child-rearing heterosexual relationships. That is why governments create a legal definition of Marriage and provide lots of benefits to heterosexual couples who enter into it. This has been true for States throughout history independent of the religious beliefs of the populace. Worrying about changing that definition, even to the point of deciding against a change, is not automatically sexism or bigotry.

If you never are willing to draw a line where human life starts, there will be no line.
Just because it says something in the Bible doesn't mean there are no ancillary arguments supporting it. And just because someone uses the Bible as a source of their morality doesn't mean that any particular view of theirs is wrong. Actually, stuff that's lasted for thousands of years is more likely to be useful than stuff that was dreamed up in a French philosophy book.

I am not saying that all these arguments should win. But I do not hear enough Democrats elucidating reasoned counterarguments to these positions. "Bush insulted our allies and the UN," "Bush lied, people died," "We have become the aggressor," "Homophobia," "Religious nut."

These are not responses, these are dismissals. When Democrats start actively responding, we will succeed. Until then, we will be increasingly ignored as irrelevent.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:31 PM Comments: 0

The General In His Labyrinth


Thanks to LittleGreenFootballs for making me aware of this, from AP:


PARIS - Yasser Arafat is in a coma and is “between life and death,” though he is not brain dead, his spokeswoman said Friday. Doctors still had no diagnosis, but anxious Palestinian officials were already looking for ways to prevent unrest if their 75-year-old leader dies.

Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to France, strongly denied French and Israeli media reports that Arafat was being kept alive on life support amid conflicting reports over his condition after a sharp decline a day earlier.

“I can assure you that there is no brain death,” Shahid told French RTL radio. “He is in a coma. We don’t know the type, but it’s a reversible coma. ... Today we can say that, given his condition and age, he is at a critical point between life and death.”


As LittleGreenFootballs points out, the type of coma Arafat is in is "unknown."

I would say, the condition of his health is multitudinous and labyrinthine. His coma is mysterious, and probably somewhat multifarious. Never have we seen such a suspension on the bridge between life and a sort of uncharted, and manifold, mosaic of, shall we say, not life.

Here, let's try this euphemism you frenchies:

Arafat is perched indeterminately in the simulacrum of life/death.

Hmm.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:48 PM Comments: 0

Old Terrorists Never Die
They Just Get More Complex


In what has got to be the greatest euphemism for death that the world has ever heard, Yasser Arafat has been transferred out of ICU because his condition has gotten more "complex."


Sources at the French military hospital where Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has been receiving treatment on Thursday denied reports that the 75-year-old Arafat has died, but described his medical state as “complex.”

“Mr. Arafat is not dead,” Christian Estripeau, a spokesman for the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart outside Paris, told a news conference in a brief statement.

“The clinical situation following the first days after [Arafat’s] admission has become more complicated. The state of health of the patient requires appropriate treatment which necessitated his transfer during the afternoon of Wednesday, November 3, to a unit suitable for his condition,” Estripeau said.


I wonder what kind of unit that is. The morgue, maybe?

Here, let me try another euphemism out for the Frenchies. How about:

The condition of his health has become more "nuanced."

Or. how about,

We are coming to appreciate the "subtelty" of his condition.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:02 PM Comments: 0

Children Telling Ghost Stories Around The Campfire


I called a friend yesterday to see get some information I needed. I asked the usual, "How it going?" His response was a very depleted sounding, "As good as can be considering the circumstances." He sounded very depressed. I was truly concerned. This is a very upbeat guy. "What's wrong?"

"Well Bush is going to be in the f*$%in White House for another four years and he's going to destroy our world."

My friend said he had been in one of the major studios pitching a script that morning and it was like a morgue. Everybody's depressed and angry.

For the next hour I listened as he ran off a list of wild statements and conspiracy theories, which I will try to summarize:

1) Bush is going to stack the Supreme Court with Conservative Christians who will take away our freedom. I asked him "what freedoms?" Turns out he's talking about abortion. I told him I understood that concern (didn't bother discussing sanctity of life issues revolving around assisted suicide, late-term abortion, cloning, etc. although I do feel that as a society we have to draw the line somewhere eventually).

2) The Patriot Act: Bush can lock up anyone at any time. And he does. Thousands of people in fact. (I have read about the Patriot Act, and I have read the Patriot Act itself. It does not give Bush the right to lock people up. It extends already existing laws dealing with how the government can do surveillance, stipulating that they can now access internet records and library records with a warrant.)

3) Bush has never done anything good for anybody. I asked "what about Afghanistan?"

4) Afghanistan's elections were fixed.

5) The War on Terror is about money. Halliburton has already made billions. They will make a hundred billion dollars, before this is all through, just wait and see.

6) Our elections were fixed. The voting machines were hacked. I told him that it does seem reasonable to be concerned if the voting machines are networked on the internet (I'm not sure if they are or not) because they could then be hacked, but in that case they could be hacked by anybody, Democrat of Republican, Green, Al Qaeda. Anyone.) He said no, that's not the only problem. The CEO of Diebold came out and said that he would do anything to get Bush reelected. It was shortly after that that Diebold was awarded the contract to make the voting machines. Diebold has the keys to all the voting machines, and they are lock solid Bush supporters. That's how the election was stolen.

7) Bush lied about Iraq's WMD's. There was no threat. Iraq was about oil, not about the threat of the WMD's in the hands of terrorists. (I acknowledged that oil is a probably a factor in the war. He said we should all be driving Prius')

8) Nuclear weapons technology is getting easier and less expensive all the time. It's inevitable that terrorists will end up with nuclear weapons one day, so we should just get out of the Middle East all together.

9) Iran is the real threat. Why didn't we go after them. He doesn't care if we just turn all the sand in the whole country to glass.

How about that folks? This friend of mine, who is pitching scripts at major studios doesn't care if we kill every man, woman and child in Iran.

This, every bit of it, depresses me.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:53 AM Comments: 0

What Is Wrong With This Guy?


Screaming Memes.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:22 PM Comments: 1

A Patriotic Pledge Of Allegiance


Thanks to Daimnation for making me aware of this. Jeff Jarvis is proposing that we all take this pledge:


After the election results are in, I promise to:

Support the President, even if I didn't vote for him.

Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.

Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.

Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.


I agree.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:44 PM Comments: 0

If Kerry Is Elected


If Kerry is elected President I hope that we will get over the horrible partisan nightmare we have been going through ever since Clinton was elected. I am disappointed in my fellow Americans. We are killing ourselves with our own rhetoric.

It may seem like my rhetoric is partisan to the extreme as well. I want to restate, though, that I have said that a Kerry Presidency will not destroy the U.S. I don't really even pretend to know what kind of President Kerry would be. He hasn't told us. He might be a good President.

At worst, he will pull the troops out of Iraq and leave the Iraqi's to another thug dictator. That would be very bad for the Iraqi's. It would be a shame on our country, but it would only have a nominal effect on the USA.

Another worst case scenario resulting from a Kerry Presidency lies with Iran and it's program to develop nuclear weapons. I am pretty sure that Kerry would go the way of Europe on this one, that is he would try to negotiate a solution. I don't think that would work. In that case, Israel might very well make an attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear program. This could lead to a war, and the destruction of the state of Israel. That would, of course be horrible for the Jewish people, but once again, it would only have a nominal effect on the United States.

I am not worried for the U.S. in the case of a Kerry Presidency.

When I wrote yesterday that I am frightened by the idea that half of our citizens think that Kerry is a viable option for President, I wrote it because he hasn't actually given us a reason to vote for him. We don't know what he will do. He has given us two ideas on every issue, and in some cases more. Throughout the entire campaign he has been the all-things-to-all-people candidate. Like Prager says, if you want the war to stop, then Kerry is your guy. If you want to fight the Iraq War through to it's conclusion, then Kerry is your guy.

So, we don't know.

It is frightening that half of our citizens will vote for a guy who has made virtually no definitive statement of his positions.

The reason for this phenomenon is complex, having to do with party loyalty, fear of the war, knowledge of the fact that much of the world is mad at us, etc., but the major reason is that a large portion of our population have a visceral, though I think irrational, hatred of George Bush.

Similarly, a huge portion of our population had a visceral, though I thought, irrational hatred of Bill Clinton.

This hatred is frightening. I don't think people are seeing what is right in front of their eyes. People who indulge in this kind of hatred, in my opinion, have left the real world. That's why it is frightening, because it is a dangerous thing to have a large portion of our population thinking so irrationally. As Logic Monkey and Prager pointed out yesterday, such irrationality can lead to chaos and devastating results.

That's why I say it is frightening. Get it? It's not that I am frightened of a Kerry Presidency

Maybe this irrational hatred of our political figures has come about because we have become such a nation of children, so bent on instant gratification, that we want every politician to answer every one of our needs. We will not sit still and wait for things to come around to our way again.

The truth is, in America the way things work is we hire a man to be President and the country goes in one direction for a while, until we get tired of that direction, and then we hire someone with a different ideology. We didn't like Nixon, we got rid of him and put a different type in. We didn't like Carter, we got rid of him and put a different type in.

I know it's a very obvious thing to say, but jeez guys, that's democracy.

But of course I am rooting, and cheering, and doing the wave, and spilling my popcorn, and all that for Bush today. I will feel more proud of my country if we finish the job we have set before ourselves, and I feel more confident that Bush would see to it that we will.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:11 PM Comments: 0

Something To Think About When You Vote Today
Filmaker Theo Van Gogh, Great Granson of Vincent Van Gogh
Killed By Muslim
After Making Movie Critical of Treatment Of Women Under Islam


From AP:



AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A Dutch filmmaker who had received death threats after releasing a movie criticizing the treatment of women under Islam was slain in Amsterdam on Tuesday, police said.

A suspect, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after a shootout with officers that left him wounded, police said.

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh had been threatened after the August airing of the movie "Submission," which he made with a right-wing Dutch politician who had renounced the Islamic faith of her birth. Van Gogh had received police protection after its release.

Dutch national broadcaster NOS and other media reported that Van Gogh's killer shot and stabbed his victim and left a note on his body. NOS said witnesses described the attacker as having an "Arab appearance."

A witness who lives in the neighborhood heard six shots, and saw the man concealing a gun. She said he walked away slowly, spoke to someone at the edge of the park, and then ran.

"He was walking slowly, like he was trying to be cool," she said, describing him as wearing a long beard and Islamic garb. "He was either an Arabic man or someone disguised as a Muslim," she said.

Another witness told Dutch Radio 1 the killer arrived by bicycle and shot Van Gogh as he got out of a car. "He fell backward on the bicycle path and just laid there. The shooter stayed next to him and waited. Waited to make sure he was dead."

The slain filmmaker was the great grandson of the brother of famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, who was also named Theo. In a recent radio interview, Van Gogh dismissed the threats and called the movie "the best protection I could have. It's not something I worry about."

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called on the Dutch people to remain calm.

"Nothing is known about the motive," he said in a written statement. "I want to call on everyone not to jump to far-reaching conclusions. The facts must first be carefully weighed so let's allow the investigators to do their jobs."

Balkenende praised Van Gogh as a proponent of free speech who had "outspoken opinions."
"It would be unacceptable if a difference of opinion led to this brutal murder," he said.

Police spokesman Eric Vermeulen said the attacker fled to the nearby East Park, and was arrested after exchanging gunfire with police. Both the suspect and a policeman suffered minor injuries.

"They were conscious" when taken to hospital, Vermeulen said.

Van Gogh's killing immediately rekindled memories of the 2002 assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn who polarized the nation with his anti-immigration views and was shot to death days before national elections.

In addition to his film, van Gogh also wrote columns about Islam that were published on his Web site, www.theovangogh.nl, and Dutch newspaper Metro.

The short television film "Submission" aired on Dutch television in August, enraged the Muslim community in the Netherlands.

It told the fictional story of a Muslim woman forced into a violent marriage, raped by a relative and brutally punished for adultery.

The English-language film was scripted by a right-wing politician who years ago renounced the Islamic faith of her birth and now refers to herself as an "ex-Muslim."

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament, has repeatedly outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways.

The place of Muslim immigrants in Dutch society has long been a contentious issue in the Netherlands, where many right-wing politicians have pushed for tougher immigration laws and say Muslims already settled in the country must make a greater effort to assimilate.

Theo van Gogh, 47, has often come under criticism for his controversial movies. In December, his next movie "06-05," about the May 6, 2002 assassination of Pim Fortuyn, is scheduled to debut on the Internet.

Go to DhimmiWatch.org to get more revealing information, like this:


Incredibly,
First interview on Dutch television spends half of the time of an interview with an eye witness establishing that the killer "may have been disguised" as an arab.

posted by Pastorius @ 6:34 AM Comments: 1

Here's What The Hell Is Wrong With Our Country


Logic Monkey explains the mass hysteria:


... the radical left is utterly opposed to logical thinking. In fact, femminism (wymyn's ways of knowing) deconstructionism (words have no fixed meanings) and Marxisim (everything is a social construct) are by their very nature opposed to logic, which, I contend, has as it's foundation the following proposition- "There are things in the world and I can know them".

All those radical philosophies are, I contend, an attack on rationality. Now, I also believe that when you have abdandoned reason, you quickly become a mob. When you drop reason and embrace emtionalism, you quickly become dark and evil- you become a howling mob just ready to "stick it to" the rich, or the men, or the Christians, or whoever the radicals want you to hate.


Dennis Prager was trying to make the same point on the radio today. He was saying that the radical left, with their antipathy to values, paves the way for the extreme fascist right to come in and take control. He said he is worried that all this likening of Bush to Hitler is dangerous because it causes average people to lose their moral bearings, which will create chaos, and eventually lead to a truly fascistic thug in the power. He compared our country to the decadent rot of the late Weimar Republic.

I agree.

I see it all around me. When a BBC reporter like Barbara Plett admits to shedding tears for Arafat it normalizes such sentiment, which, of course, leads to more people who will be taken in by Arafat's Fascism.

But, of course, we are talking about America here, and yes, America is in danger as well as Europe. I am frightened by the fact that fully half the country thinks Kerry is a reasonable alternative to Bush. I am frightened by the evidence of massive voter fraud. I am frightened by the conspiracy theories, and examples of Jew-hatred that are bandied about in the media, and in polite conversation.

I am only heartened by the idea that, maybe, most of that 50% who will vote for Kerry just haven't really been paying attention.

I hope that's it, anyway.

posted by Pastorius @ 4:07 PM Comments: 0

In About Six Months We're Going To Find Out
Walter Cronkite Is Battling Alzheimer's


In an interview with Larry King a couple of days ago, Old Walter said two extraordinary things. This:


The only thing that could damage the turnout would be the threats that might be implied, as many of the new registrees are challenged as to their various things. Their spelling of their name and the state where they really come from, whether they're immigrants or not, do they have passports, all that kind of thing. If they are challenged at the polls, as they line up to go into the polls, they may fear having to answer all those questions. Particularly if they do have anything wrong about them and shouldn't vote.


and this:



Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape.

Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an interview on CNN.

Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is “inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”

Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the provocative election eve observation.


What the hell is wrong with our country? It seems like a mass hysteria.

Thanks to Power Line and Little Green Footballs.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:57 PM Comments: 0