CUANAS

posted by Pastorius @ 7:16 PM Comments: 0

Ten Minutes Of Freedom


Snowboarding to Fur Alina by modern classical composer Arvo Part. What could be better?





I used to think about John Coltrane's Sun Ship album while I was surfing. These kinds of odd pairings of music and action help us to understand the deeper personal impact of action, and they help us to worship God in action, as much as in silence and solitude.

posted by Pastorius @ 12:55 PM Comments: 0

Fratres


More music by Arvo Part. This time, however, the subject we are contemplating is not the finding of God in action. This time we are contemplating the possibility of nuclear war "in the light of North Korea's recent nuclear weapons test."

A video from the New Pragmatist.

posted by Pastorius @ 12:07 PM Comments: 0

Mennonite Church
Unhappy Israel
Will Not
Meet With
Ahmadinejad


We Christians ignored the plight of our Jewish brothers and sisters in the days leading up to the Holocaust. As I was growing up, I was led to believe, by my fellow Christians, that they were deeply sorry for the fact that they had done almost nothing to stop the Holocaust of the Jews.

Now, I sit and watch the same types of events unfolding and I see that, once again, my fellow Christians are doing nothing to put a stop to the inevitable unfolding of events.

In fact, the situation is even worse than that. For my fellow Christians are not merely doing nothing. No, they are condemning the Jews for not submitting their necks to the gallows.

It was people like us who beat Christ along the Via de la Rosa. It was people like us who stood and laughed as the Jewish Messiah was mocked and whipped. It was people like us who drove the nails into his hands and feet.

And, we are still doing it 2000 years later.

Yes, the Mennonite Church has the audacity to condemn Israel for not wanting to sit down and talk with Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; the man who repeatedly calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map." (Thanks to Yid With Lid):


The Mennonite Church has never been a big supporter of Israel. A more realistic appraisal would be to say they have always taken the Palestinian side, never recognizing any Palestinian culpability for the violence. For example here is parts of a press release the Church issued in 2006.

Since occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, Israel - in clear
violation of international law - has built more than 200 settlements on
Palestinian land, providing housing for nearly 500,000 Israeli settlers. An
intricate system of bypass roads, tunnels and checkpoints further isolate
Palestinian villages from each other.

"We are seeing a process of squeezing the Palestinians that remain into
as small an area as possible," Israeli peace activist Amos Gvirtz told the
delegation. He said that the Israeli government, in a very deliberate fashion,
continues to claim more Palestinian land and demolish Palestinian homes, even
during the peace process.

No mention of why the security, no discussion of the terrorist acts that preceded the checkpoints--only the "suffering" of the Palestinians.Last week when the Iranian President Ahm-ashithead was visiting the US the Mennonite Church organized a little meeting between their Iranian friend and US Church leaders of all kinds. The were a bit Miffed that no Jew wanted wanted to attend.

Mennonites Organize Meeting With Ahmadinejad, Again

Prominent Christian leaders recently showed deference to the leader of a
regime that murders its opponents and practices Jew-bating on an international
scale at a low-profile meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The
meeting was organized by the Mennonite Central Committee, a group which, like
Ahmadinejad, openly questions the legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish State in the
Middle East.

While attendees went out of their way to extend courtesies to
Ahmadinejad, one participant obliquely chided Jewish leaders in the U.S. for
refusing to participate in “dialogue” with a Holocaust denier who has called for
Israel to be wiped off the map.

The leaders met with the Iranian president after he addressed the
United Nations on September 26. According to The New York Times, Albert Lobe, executive director of the
Mennonite Central committee told Ahmadinejad “We meant to extend to you the
hospitality which a head of state deserves.”

Lobe’s obsequiousness was an apparent counterpoint to the treatment
Ahmadinejad received at Columbia University on Sept. 24, when the school’s
president Lee Bollinger called him “a petty and cruel dictator.”

According to a report from the Church of the Brethren News Service, Ahmadinejad took questions from a panel that included a Quaker, a Catholic, an Anglican, a Baptist and a representative the World Council of Churches. The New York Times reports that the audience comprised of “about 140 religious leaders.” The paper also reported that the event organizers had tried to find a “Jewish leader to join the panel of questioners, but that those invited declined because they could not win support from Jewish organizations.”

The refusal of Jewish groups to participate in the dialogue prompted
oblique criticism from Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends
Service Committee. McNish told The New York Times that her “heart was broken
that there was so little support from other religions to be here.” She also
stated that “If we don’t walk down this path of dialogue, we’re going to end up
in a conflagration.”

But while there was oblique criticism of Jewish leaders for refusing to
participate, Iranian officials got a pass for insisting that representatives of
the Baha’i faith be denied access to the meeting. According to The New York
Times, representatives of the Baha’i faith, a persecuted religious minority in
Iran, supported efforts at dialogue even though they were not allowed to attend
the Sept. 26 event. The New York Times reported that “the Iranian side refused
to come if the Bahais were there, said Kit Bigelow, director of external
affairs, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of the United States.”

The meeting took place under tight security at the Interfaith Tillman
Chapel near the United Nations in New York City. The New York Times described
the meeting as “a friendly, even warm, exchange.” The Times also reported “Given
the furor over Ahmadinejad’s earlier appearances, there was no advance
publicity.”

This is not the first time the MCC has facilitated a meeting of Christian leaders with Ahmadinejad. In February, the MCC organized a meeting with the Iranian President in Teheran. The delegation held a press conference in Washington, D.C. upon its return to the U.S. Christian leaders reportedly challenged Ahmadinejad about his anti-Semitic statements, but their complaints had little apparent effect. Four days after the delegation's meeting Ahmadinejad appeared in Sudan, where according to Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran's official news service), he said "Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan."

One troubling aspect of these repeated meetings with Ahmadinejad is that they were organized by the Mennonite Central Committee, an organization that has openly and repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish State in the Middle East.


(Read the whole thing at Yid With Lid.)

So, what are you going to do, my fellow Christians? Are you going to put down the hammer with which you drive the nails into your Jewish God, or are you going to continue to crucify your savior for as long as He will forgive you?

Remember, He said, "As you do unto the least of these, you have done to me." Do you not think that when you treat the Jews as if they were occupying foreigners in their own homeland that you are doing a terrible deed unto the least of these? Are you really so confused? Are you really so twisted by sin?

Apparently so.

You should not test the Lord your God. You should know that He will not be mocked. You should know that "the gifts and calling of the Lord are irrevocable."


(The Book of Romans, Chapter 11)

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?

"Lord, THEY HAVE KILLED YOUR PROPHETS, THEY HAVE TORN DOWN YOUR ALTARS, AND I ALONE AM LEFT, AND THEY ARE SEEKING MY LIFE."

But what is the divine response to him? "I HAVE KEPT for Myself SEVEN THOUSAND MEN WHO HAVE NOT BOWED THE KNEE TO BAAL."

In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God's gracious choice.

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened;

just as it is written,

"GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR,
EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT,
DOWN TO THIS VERY DAY."

And David says,

"LET THEIR TABLE BECOME A SNARE AND A TRAP,
AND A STUMBLING BLOCK AND A RETRIBUTION TO THEM.
"(O)LET THEIR EYES BE DARKENED TO SEE NOT,
AND BEND THEIR BACKS FOREVER."

I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.

Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be!

But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry,

if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.

For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too.

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree,

do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you.

You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in."

Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear;

for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either.

Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God's kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.

And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.

For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?

For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery--so that you will not be wise in your own estimation--that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;

and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written,

"THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION,
HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB."
"THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM,
WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS."

From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;

for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

posted by Pastorius @ 8:11 AM Comments: 0

You Are Good


A song by Israel Houghton.

posted by Pastorius @ 10:35 PM Comments: 0

A Pillar Of Salt


A song by The Thermals.

posted by Pastorius @ 10:18 PM Comments: 0

Jettisoning
Christmas
In Illinois
The Avoid
Offending Muslims


You see, it offends Muslims when Christians celebrate their holidays. When Muslims celebrate, meanwhile, we're all supposed to be happy for them.


So long Halloween parade. Farewell Santa's gift shop.

The long-celebrated holiday traditions are facing elimination in some Oak Lawn schools this year after complaints the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students.
Final decisions on which of the festivities will be axed will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122's five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth said.

Parents expect the announcement to add to the tension that's been building since school administrators agreed earlier this month to change the lunch menu to exclude items containing pork to accommodate Muslim students. News that Jell-O was struck from the menu caused such a stir that officials since have agreed to bring the popular dessert back.


Jello is anti-Islamic too?

Read more, if you dare.

posted by Pastorius @ 3:33 PM Comments: 0

The United Nations:
Where Stating
The Obvious
Can Be
A Breakthrough


From LGF:


The flying pig remains in the hangar, because words are cheap: UN: We have criticized Israel unfairly.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has not managed to deal fairly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the council’s president Doru-Romulus Costea told a Spanish newspaper on Saturday, according to Israel Radio.

Doru admitted that he was dissatisfied with the fact the council had overly focused on the degree of human rights violations by Israel.

“The body which I head must examine the actions of both sides equally, and we have not done that,” said Costea. “Clearly, from now on things need to change.”

posted by Pastorius @ 3:27 PM Comments: 0

Leaving The Political Plantation


Here's an interesting video about the experience of blacks who are leaving the political plantation of the traditional Democratic party. You know, the party that throws out the feedbag of welfare and government services in exchange for votes, and then expects their constituency to keep their mouths shut while they sell them out for the next two to six years.

You know that traditional Democratic Party.

Anyway, check it out.

posted by Pastorius @ 2:46 PM Comments: 0

posted by Pastorius @ 2:48 PM Comments: 1

U.S. State Dept. Says,
No Israeli
Jews Allowed


From Yid With Lid:


Where was the ACLU? How come Congressman Ellison isn't screaming about profiling. Here we go again with another example of how the PC police only cares when things are convenient for them. According to Israel National News. The US State Department was funding a business training course for middle east residents, run by the University of California (no surprise there).

This program was initially open to citizens of "Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (limited to Israeli Arab citizens), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen."

That was of course until an Israeli Jew you checked the program out. When she saw the biased criteria, she took action via emails, and publicized this issue enough that individuals and journalists became interested too, leading to the changes made by the Beyster Institute.

INN picks up the story:

Univ. of
Cal. Backs Down from 'No Jews Allowed' Program

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(IsraelNN.com) A U.S. State Department-funded University of California
program which provides business training for residents of the Middle East
specifically excluded Israeli Jews - until Jewish journalists protested.

The University of California has now altered the program's eligibility
requirement that initially barred Israeli Jews. The turnaround in policy also
may have saved the State Department, whose Middle East Partnership Initiative
(MEPI) finances the program, from having to provide an embarrassing explanation.
MEPI also selects the participants.Jerusalem-based marketing specialist and
businesswoman Miriam Schwab uncovered the bias last week when she checked into
applying to the university's San Diego branch Beyster Institute program for
Middle East Entrepreneur Training (MEET). She discovered that the program was
open to citizens of "Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (limited to Israeli
Arab citizens), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen."

The Beyster Institute, which manages the program, offers three 10-day
seminars, each one with 20 eligible participants. The program includes
professional coaching and offers opportunities to make new contacts and "to help
promising leaders realize their aspirations to build successful [businesses]...
The participation of women is highly encouraged."

The Canadian-born Schwab, who moved to Israel 10 years ago, said she
was interested in the program because she employs two women in her Illuminea
company in Jerusalem. "This program sounded really interesting until I got to
the part about eligibility for application," she wrote on an e-mail
list.%ad%

The MEET program ostensibly "does not discriminate on the basis of sex,
race, color, age, religion, national origin, or handicap."

In response to an IsraelNationalNews.com question for confirmation of
the restriction in Israel, program manager Mona Yousry verified, "It is only for
Arab Israelis." A subsequent question as to why Israeli Jews are not eligible
for the program elicited the following reply from the Institute's Director of
Entrepreneurial Programs, Rob Fuller: "I’m sorry for the unfortunate
misunderstanding about eligibility for the new MEET program. To be clear, for
the programs for which we are now recruiting to be held in 2008, ALL Israeli
citizens are eligible to participate. Sorry for any confusion we may have
inadvertently caused."

Israeli Jews originally were excluded despite the program’s stated
advantage as "an important cultural exchange." Fuller did not explain the
initial "confusion" in barring Israeli Jews.
The programs are to be held in
Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, all of which have relations with Israel.

Following the e-mail complaints to Beyster, the US Embassy of Yemen
online document which announces the program was down for more than a day until
the words "limited to Israeli Arab citizens" were deleted. [View the document
announcing the program by clicking here. Link disabled

posted by Pastorius @ 5:37 AM Comments: 0

Ahmadinejad Meets
With Muslim Leaders
Denies The Holocaust


What's a little Holocaust denial between friends? From the Iranian Republic News Agency, via LGF:



Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that the US has turned to a large prison where the media are keeping the American people away from truth.

Addressing a group of US Muslim leaders, he said Holocaust was a pretext for occupation of Palestine and making over 5,000 innocent people homeless.

On dispute between the Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, the Iranian president said there is no difference between the real faithful people. The differences between Shia and Sunni Muslims have been created by enemies, he added.

As to the issue of nuclear energy, he said, “We are against nuclear weapons. We do not accept it and even believe that the big powers should be disarmed of nuclear weapons.”


Meanwhile, the Associated Press is blaming American dislike of Ahmadinejad on "the Israel lobby."


WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group.

The swift rebuke was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation in a Congress bitterly divided on the Iraq war. It reflected lawmakers’ long-standing nervousness about Tehran’s intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel—a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.


Got it? This is the same stuff that happened in Europe and America back in the late-1930's and early 1940's. This kind of media-fueled anti-Semitism was all the rage in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

Where do you think it will end this time?

posted by Pastorius @ 9:42 PM Comments: 2

Columbia University's Squalid Mistake


From the New York Post, by way of LGF:


COLUMBIA University President Lee Bollinger yesterday made some cutting criticisms while introducing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - but that doesn’t make the school’s decision to offer a platform to the head of a violent terrorist state any less abject, squalid or shameless.

“Abject, squalid, shameless” is how Winston Churchill described the resolution passed by Oxford University’s prestigious Debating Union in 1933 - the year Adolf Hitler came to power - that “this House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country.”

And Columbia’s event, like the 1933 Oxford resolution, sent (to quote Churchill again) a “very disquieting and disgusting message” to friends and enemies alike.

Many American’s won’t see that; their blindness goes to the heart of the “red-blue” divide in our country - much like the one in ‘30s Britain that split men like Churchill from the exponents of appeasing Europe’s dictators.

On one side of that chasm, there is outrage and incomprehension that anyone could extend an invitation to a sworn enemy of the United States to speak on an American campus (a campus, moreover, that bans its own military’s ROTC); that the head of the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism attacks be welcomed anywhere in the city that was 9/11’s principal target; that a Holocaust-denier be welcomed to a university that has so many Jewish students and alumni.
On the other side, again, there is incomprehension that anyone should be offended. And that is the problem.

President Bollinger argues that a university is above all a forum for hearing conflicting views and opinions - as if Ahmadinejad were some controversial social theorist, not the leader of the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. In other words, this is a matter of “free speech.”
Yet the real issue is not about words but actions - actions with consequences in an ongoing conflict in which American soldiers are being killed and Iranian dissidents are being beaten and tortured every day. And what Bollinger’s actions (as opposed to his words) reveal is that Columbia somehow considers itself neutral ground in the War on Terror.

Read the whole thing...

posted by Pastorius @ 9:40 PM Comments: 0

Ahmadinejad And
The Astounding Ignorance Of
The Global Community


Sorry to be cynical, but what an amazingly stupid world we live in:


If you’re tempted to think that Ahmadinejad’s Columbia appearance discredited him, and that most people around the world saw through his lies and evasions and now have a deeper understanding of Iran’s schemes as a result, think again.

The president of Iran had a wonderful chance at Columbia to act as the more
educated and civil person, and he used that chance.

America needs to
recognize that Iran’s hostilities will not falter as long as ours hold so high.
A little bit of trust could make them no longer have desire to use the weapons
they may or may not have. Unless the west intends on starting a war, it may be
beneficial to placate them, otherwise we won’t make any progress whatsoever.

Columbia wasted a good chance there.

Galen, Connecticut, USA

...

The reactions and actions of American unlearned society and
their institutional behaviour at Columbia University shows how arrogant
Americans are. American education is geared toward bully rather than the pursuit
of knowledge. By insulting Ahmadinejad Americans have shown the world their
shallow, hallow cognition. I had predicted this would happen. American politics,
civil administration and social institutions are intertwined. You are with us or
against us is the thinking. What a dementia hell

Obwota Omwony, Magwi,
Sudan

...

America attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and achieved
nothing! and you are calling the Iranian president a terrorist! America was all
too happy to snuggle up to Iran when the shah was in power and acted deaf dumb
and blind while he slaughtered his people! or did you all forget that, i suppose
you are all still hung up about the whole American Embassy fiasco! but your
quick to forget your government is responsible for deaths of 1000s of innocent
Iraqi civilians because of the so called war on terror

Kawther Al-Aaraji

...

This was not an invitation to embrace freedom of speech. It
was a propaganda campaign organized by Mr. Bollinger and co. - one which they
lost to Ahmadinejad. How can the president of a famous university be so
“astonishingly uneducated” as to take it upon himself to dictate to his audience
what to think of his guest? Is this freedom of thought, common courtsey?
Rather than insulting a nation by insulting its elected president, Mr.
Bollinger should take a look at his own president right at home.

hamid,
Toronto

...

The Iranian President’s visit to the U.S. has served
to help Americans understand Iran’s perspective on various issues and also
Iranians in general better. There should be more of these types of cultural
exchanges to foster understanding between the two sides. I think that the
Iranian President was bold in taking this step and I hope Americans recognize
this fact.

Brijesh Shah, New York, United States

...

Although Ahmadinejad (AJad) is no saint, he managed to score some very
good points. He stayed composed in the face of childish insults from
Bolwinkel:),he made some very good points on hypocrisy of US with regards to
terrorits & Nuclear issue. As he pointed out, US has designated the MEK as a
terrorist organization yet it harbors them in Iraq because they serve its
purpose. AJad’s speech showed the hypocrisy of the West and media that were
trying so hard to discredit him by spinning the outcome!

Bahram, San
Jose

There are currently 31 pages of this stuff at the BBC web site, overwhelmingly in favor of Ahmadinejad. The comments above are just from the first page.

posted by Pastorius @ 8:59 PM Comments: 0

John Bolton On Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad


John Bolton is the man. He always tells it like it is. There are no politics with this guy. I believe he will be President of the United States someday. He is probably this generation's Churchill.

posted by Pastorius @ 8:50 PM Comments: 0

Bill Evans Trio (1962) - Blue In Green


Bill Evans - Piano

posted by Pastorius @ 9:59 PM Comments: 5

Lester Bowie


One of the great trumpet players in jazz history.

posted by Pastorius @ 9:51 PM Comments: 0

Yom Kippur At Columbia University


From the New York Sun:


Jewish students at Columbia who went to their computers after breaking the fast for Yom Kippur were met Saturday evening with a link on the Drudge Report to an interview with the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs saying that he'd have been happy to welcome Hitler to the campus. The interview, aired on Fox News, was with John Coatsworth. He is seen in the Day of Atonement broadcast chuckling like a veritable Mearsheimer or Walt. Could he be oblivious to the impact his words were going to have in a Jewish community already on notice that its sensibilities were of little rank to either the president or the faculty of the university? Columbia, it seems, is bound and determined to honor the president of Iran and provide him with a platform to agitate against our country, and Israel, in midst of a war in which our GIs are facing Iranian backed forces on the field of battle.

Dean Coatsworth seems to be laboring under the illusion that had Columbia actually hosted Hitler in the late 1930s, World War II and the war against the Jews might have been prevented. The dean appears to be ignorant of history. The archives of the New York Times disclose that in December 1933, Columbia's president, Nicholas Butler, extended an invitation to Hitler's ambassador, Hans Luther. A protest was made by the Social Problems Club, which, according to the report in the Times, said: "Inviting the Nazi envoy to lecture on the foreign policy of his government and giving him an official reception means not only failing in our duty to oppose the Nazi onslaught on culture and in our duty to defend our German colleague but signifies, if not an open endorsement of the Nazi actions, at least placing their principles on the same level with other viewpoints."

In response, President Butler harrumphed something about how Columbia "does not ask what a man's opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, honest, and well-mannered in their presentation and discussion.


Well yes, of course. Certainly, we know that Hitler was well-mannered. Uh, except for that little tangent where he exterminated six million Jews.

posted by Pastorius @ 11:56 AM Comments: 0

posted by Pastorius @ 10:54 AM Comments: 0

Fascist Madman,
Ahmadinejad,
Poses As
American Leftist
On 60 Minutes


And yet, I'll bet the left has no idea they are being played like a ho' in Vegas.

Click here to watch the video at CBS.com.

Charles notes that Ahmadinejad hit "all the left wing talking points very nicely." He points out this, in particular:


“I think Mr. Bush, if he wants his party to win the next election, there are cheaper ways to go about this. I can very well give him a few ideas so that the people vote for him. He should respect the American people. They should not bug the telephone conversations of their citizens,” the president said. “They should not kill the sons and daughters of the American nation. They should not squander the taxpayers’ money and give them to weapons companies. And also help the people, the victims of Katrina. People will vote for them if they do these things. What I’m saying, I am being very sincere here. I’m a Muslim. I cannot tell a lie.”


You know, I have an idea.

Obama/Ahmadinejad for President 2008.

How does that sound?

posted by Pastorius @ 6:45 AM Comments: 0

Zawinul Syndicate - Indiscretions -
With Richard Bona On Bass

posted by Pastorius @ 2:03 PM Comments: 0

Weather Report - Black Market/Scarlet Woman


Weather Report play the songs Black Market and Scarlet Woman, with the great Jaco Pastorius on bass.

posted by Pastorius @ 1:30 PM Comments: 0

Surely, Our Country Has Gone Insane
Ahmadinejad To Address Americans On 60 Minutes
Columbia University Admits They Would Have Invited Hitler


Sigh:


Columbia Dean: We'd Certainly Invite Hitler

Columbia University dean John Coatsworth says if Hitler were in the United States he’d find “plenty of platforms from which to speak.”

And Columbia would be one of them; they would “certainly invite him.

The Ivory Tower has turned into an insane asylum.

Ahmadinejad Will 'Address the American People' on 60 Minutes

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s whirlwind tour of the US will include a stop on CBS’s 60 Minutes, to address the American people directly.

“Those (countries) who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran’s fast drive toward progress are mistaken,” said Ahmadinejad.

“Those who prevented Iran, at the height of the war from getting even barbed wire must see now that all the equipment on display today has been built by the mighty hands and brains of experts at Iran’s armed forces.”

He is expected to address the American people directly in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” airing Sunday, and through appearances at the U.N., Columbia University and several other events.

posted by Pastorius @ 8:26 PM Comments: 2

posted by Pastorius @ 8:34 PM Comments: 0

posted by Pastorius @ 7:33 PM Comments: 0

The Banality Of Evil


From Pamela, at Atlas Shrugs:


Snapshots. The human face of the worst evil. Take a look back. Shiny, happy people committing genocide. Look through the photo album.


Any of those men could have been you or me, couldn't they? Would you have said, "No"? Or, would you have gone along with the crowd?

posted by Pastorius @ 9:34 AM Comments: 0

Hamas: "Chunks Of Flesh Of Jews"


Hamas Television (remember, Hamas is the elected ruling party of the people of Gaza) ran a music video yesterday which featured masked terrorists and suicide bombings.

Here are the lyrics to the song:


Hamas, Hamas, Hamas the apple of my eye – Hamas
They destroyed the Merkava [tank]
the apple of my eye – Hamas
Repeated eight times

A bombing every minute
Soldiers are afraid
A bombing every minute
Soldiers are afraid
In black bags
Chunks of flesh of Jews
repeated five times

In retaliation for Yassin we want Sharon’s head
We want Sharon’s head
we want Sharon’s head!

Hamas, Hamas, Hamas the apple of my eye – Hamas
They destroyed the Merkava [tank]
the apple of my eye – Hamas
the apple of my eye – Hamas
the apple of my eye – Hamas

“Produced by AL-Aqsa TV, 2007”
Dedicated to the Arab and Palestinian community in Sweden


Click here to see the video.

posted by Pastorius @ 9:04 AM Comments: 0

HANDS AROUND GROUND ZERO -
KEEP AHMADINEJAD OUT!




This has to be organized.

People who love America must come together to Encircle Ground Zero, and keep Ahmadinejad the fuck out.

Let's roll!

posted by Pastorius @ 7:52 AM Comments: 0

Christians Under Attack In Merry Olde England

posted by Pastorius @ 6:08 AM Comments: 0

The Words Of The Prophet Robert Zimmerman


Or, better known as Bob Dylan:


Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw.
You were drawing water for your husband,
you were suffering under the law.

You were telling him about Buddha,
you were telling him about Mohammed
in the same breath.
You never mentioned one time the Man who came and died a criminal's death.

posted by Pastorius @ 10:40 AM Comments: 1

Jew Hatred
And
Jihad


From the Weekly Standard:


The idea of using suicide pilots to obliterate the skyscrapers of Manhattan originated in 1940s Berlin. "In the latter stages of the war, I never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in a delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame," wrote Albert Speer in his diary. "He described the skyscrapers turning into huge burning torches and falling hither and thither, and the reflection of the disintegrating city in the dark sky."

Not only Hitler's fantasy but also his plan of action foreshadowed September 11: He envisioned having kamikaze pilots fly light aircraft packed with explosives and with no landing gear into Manhattan skyscrapers. The drawings for the Daimler-Benz Amerikabomber from the spring of 1944 show giant four-engine planes with raised undercarriages for transporting small bombers. The bombers would be released shortly before the planes reached the East Coast, after which the mother plane would return to Europe.

Hitler's rapture at the thought of Manhattan in flames indicates his underlying motive: not merely to fight a military adversary, but to kill all Jews everywhere. Possessed of the notion that the whole of the Second World War was a struggle against an imaginary Jewish enemy, he deemed "the USA a Jewish state" and New York the center of world Jewry. "Wall Street," as a popular book published in Munich in 1919 put it, "is, so to speak, the Military Headquarters of Judas. From there his threads radiate out across the entire world." From 1941 on, Hitler pushed to get the bombers into production, in order to "be able to teach the Jews a lesson in the form of terror attacks on American metropolises." Towards the end of the war this idea became an obsession.

Sixty years later, it so happens, the assault on the World Trade Center was coordinated from Germany. Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian who piloted the plane that struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center; Marwan al--Shehhi, from the United Arab Emirates, who steered the plane into the South Tower; Ziad Jarrah, from Lebanon, who crashed United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and their friends Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni, and the Moroccan student Mounir al-Motassedeq had formed an al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, where they held regular "Koran circle" meetings with sympathizers.

What ideas propelled Atta and the others to act? Witnesses provided part of the answer at the world's first 9/11-related trial, the prosecution of al-Motassedeq, which took place in Hamburg between October 2002 and February 2003. One participant in the Koran circle meetings, Shahid Nickels, said Atta's Weltanschauung was based on a "National Socialist way of thinking." Atta was convinced that the Jews were striving for world domination and considered New York City the center of world Jewry, which was, in his opinion, Enemy No. 1. Fellow students who lived in Motassedeq's dormitory testified that he shared these views and waxed enthusiastic about a forthcoming "big action." One student quoted Motassedeq as saying, "The Jews will burn and in the end we will dance on their graves."

Amazingly, neither the American media nor the international press took much notice of this testimony, largely refusing to report on Atta's and Motassedeq's explicit Jew-hatred. The above quotations come from the weekly Der Spiegel and from the detailed notes of the trial taken by journalist Michael Eggers, who attended every session and wrote about it for Reuters. If this had been the trial of a Ku Klux Klan member or someone from the far right such as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, reports of Nazi-like dreams of exterminating the Jews would probably have made the headlines. But in this case, involving attackers of Arab background, journalists apparently found the issue irrelevant. Moreover, this Jew-hatred was no quirk of the Hamburg cell. Osama bin Laden himself declared in 1998, "The enmity between us and the Jews goes back far in time and is deep rooted. There is no question that war between us is inevitable. . . . The Hour of Resurrection shall not come before Muslims fight Jews."

Even the 9/11 Commission Report, the summation produced by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States in July 2004, falls short in this regard. Its chapter on "Bin Laden's worldview" makes no mention of his hatred of Jews. This silence is all the more surprising in that the commission quotes documents in which bin Laden unambiguously expresses his hatred of Jews. For example, in the "Letter to the American People" of November 2002, which the report repeatedly cites, bin Laden warns: "The Jews have taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense." Osama goes on: "Your law is the law of rich and wealthy people. . . . Behind them stand the Jews who control your policies, media and economy." Yet the report's authors inexplicably fail to see the significance of these words and the ideology behind them. The report also ignores the history of Islamism. It accords the entire pre-1945 period just five lines. Yet it is precisely this period that fostered the personal contacts and ideological affinities between early Islamism and late Nazism--the linkage between Jew-hatred and jihad.


Read the whole thing.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:33 PM Comments: 2

Israelis 'Blew Apart
Syrian
Nuclear Cache'


Last week, the Israelies sent jet fighters into Syriang airspace and opened fire on a convoy in the middle of the Syrian desert. Since then, the question has been, "Why?

The London Times Sunday edition tells us the reason:

Secret raid on Korean shipment

Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv, Sarah Baxter in
Washington and Michael Sheridan

IT was just after midnight when the 69th
Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s
formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles
from the Iraqi border was under way.

At a rendezvous point on the
ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser
beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day
earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers
were in flames.

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was
the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed
it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

The
Israeli government was not saying. “The security sources and IDF [Israeli
Defence Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,” said Ehud Olmert,
the prime minister. “We naturally cannot always show the public our cards.”

The Syrians were also keeping mum. “I cannot reveal the details,” said
Farouk al-Sharaa, the vice-president. “All I can say is the military and
political echelon is looking into a series of responses as we speak. Results are
forthcoming.” The official story that the target comprised weapons destined for
Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite group, appeared to be crumbling
in the face of widespread scepticism.

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State
Department official, said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from
“secret suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians”
in the country.

Asked if they could be North Korean, he replied: “There
are North Korean people there. There’s no question about that.” He said a
network run by AQ Khan, the disgraced creator of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,
could be involved.

posted by Pastorius @ 8:51 PM Comments: 0

Joe Zawinul Is Dead


It saddens me greatly to relay this news. Joe Zawinul, one of the great jazz composers of all time, has died:


VIENNA (AFP) - Austrian jazz pianist Joe Zawinul, the founder of the influential 1970s jazz-rock group Weather Report, died Tuesday in Vienna at the age of 75, his family said.

"Joe Zawinul was born on July 7, 1932, in earth time, and September 11, 2007, in eternal time. He lives on," his son Erich Zawinul told the APA news agency.

The pianist and singer, who had Hungarian, Czech and gypsy roots, was hospitalised in the Austrian capital on August 5. According to media reports, he was suffering from cancer.

Zawinul was born in Vienna but spent much of his life in the United States, recording several albums with the legendary Miles Davis in the 1960s.

In the early 1970s he founded Weather Report with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, guitarist Miroslav Vitous and bass player Jaco Pastorius.

One of their biggest hits, "Birdland", topped the music charts and the band also won numerous awards, including a Grammy.

In 2004 Zawinul bought a jazz club in Vienna, the Birdland, but continued to tour with his new group, the Zawinul Syndicate.

He was due to play this month at the La Villette jazz festival in Paris, but the performance was cancelled due to his ill health.

Over the course of his career, Zawinul was named pianist of the year 28 times by the American jazz magazine Down Beat.


Here is his most famous composition.

posted by Pastorius @ 12:39 PM Comments: 2

Remember the Firemen


They ran into the buildings, while everyone else was running out.

Remember the heroes.

"There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend."

"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."- Matthew 16:19

posted by Pastorius @ 5:24 AM Comments: 0

The Celebration

They celebrate.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:14 AM Comments: 0

Remember

What he must have been thinking. These are the important things. The last things.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:12 AM Comments: 0

On The
Turning
Away


A song by Pink Floyd.

"On The Turning Away"

On the turning away
From the pale and
downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won't understand
"Don't
accept that what's happening
Is just a case of others' suffering
Or
you'll find that you're joining in
The turning away"
It's a sin that
somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it's shroud
Over all
we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of
stone
We could find that we're all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the
speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are
strange
And mesmerised as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of
change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak
and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a
world that we all must share
It's not enough just to stand and stare
Is
it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?

posted by Pastorius @ 12:09 AM Comments: 0

"It's A Lot
Harder
Here Than
It It Is
Back Home"


A Muslima admitting that it is "hard" to wear the hihab.

Imagine being bound to the burqa.

And, think upon her words. She is telling you, it is a stuggle to wear the veil. If you listen to her words carefully, you will understand that she is another woman stuggling under the weight of Islmaic oppression.

This is not some crazy Islmaofascist bitch you are watching.

Instead, you are witnessing the enveloping of a real human being; a real soul within a real human body. You are witnessing a person being defeated. How sad.

posted by Pastorius @ 5:02 AM Comments: 2

Tom Daschle's
Mentor
Praises Terrorists
And Attacks Jews
On Hizballah TV


From Reliapundit at the Astute Blogger:

WATCH THIS UNBELIVEABLE VIDEO OF FORMER DEMOCRAT SENATOR ABOUREZK - TOM DASHLE'S MENTOR.

THIS IS JUST MORE VIDEO PROOF THAT THE LEFT IS THE HOME OF
ANTI-SEMITISM, AND ARE CODDLERS OF JIHADO-TERROR. FROM THEIR OWN MOUTHS. ON TAPE. ABOUREZK:

"WHEN THE COLD WAR ENDED THE ZIONISTS LOOKED AROUND AND
SELECTED ARABS TO BE THE NEW BOGEYMAN."

"CONGRESS IS AFRAID TO VOTE AGAINST ANYTHING THE ISRAEL LOBBY WANTS."

I MARVELED AT THE HIZBALLAH RESISTANCE TO ISRAEL IN THE LAST WAR."

As Reliapundit says, "You can't make this stuff up."

posted by Pastorius @ 6:02 PM Comments: 0

1) Pamela at Atlas Shrugs. My bud and inspiration.

posted by Pastorius @ 10:54 AM Comments: 5

JENA, La. (AP) - Attempted murder and conspiracy charges against a black high school student accused in the December beating of a white student escalating
racial tensions were reduced Monday to less serious charges that could mean far
less time in prison if he is convicted.

Mychale Bell still faces trial Tuesday on charges stemming from the Dec. 4 beating. But instead of facing sentences totalling 80 years, he now faces maximum sentences totalling 22 years if convicted.

Bell was one of five black Jena High School students charged in the beating, which occurred about three months after three white students were suspended for hanging nooses from a school yard tree.

Another juvenile, whose identity and charges were not released because
of his age, was also accused. They were dubbed the “Jena Six” by supporters who
say the attempted murder charges resulted from racism by authorities and were
far out of proportion to the seriousness of the crime.

• On Thursday, August 31, 2006, a small group of black students asked if they could sit under a tree on the traditionally white side of the Jena High School
square. [They felt it necessary to ASK. What does that say?]
• The students were informed by the Vice Principal that they could sit wherever they pleased.
• The following day, September 1, 2006, three nooses were found hanging from
the tree in question. Two of the nooses were black and one was gold: the Jena
High School colors.
• On Tuesday night, September 5, 2006, a group of black parents convened at the L&A Missionary Baptist Church in Jena to discuss their response to what they considered a hate crime and an act of intimidation.
[No laws were broken by hanging these nooses, nor should we have laws for motive
instead of action. But it certainly fell under the school disciplinary
category.]
• When black students staged an impromptu protest under the tree on Wednesday, September 6, 2006, a school assembly was hastily convened. Flanked by police officers, District Attorney Reed Walters warned black students that additional unrest would be treated as a criminal matter. According to multiple witnesses, Walters warned the black student protestors that, “I can make your
lives disappear with a stroke of my pen.” This was widely interpreted as a
reference to the filing of charges carrying a maximum sentence of life in
prison. [An assembly basically convened to tell the black students to “simmah
down, boy.”]
• On Thursday, September 7th, police officers patrolled the halls of Jena High School and on Friday, September 8th, the school was placed on full lockdown. Most students, black and white, either stayed home, or were picked up by parents shortly after the lockdown was imposed. The Jena Times suggested that black parents were to blame for the unrest at the school because their September 5th gathering had attracted media attention. [What would you do if your child was threatened?]
• Principal Scott Windham recommended to an expulsion hearing committee that the three white boys responsible for hanging the nooses in the tree should be expelled from school. [Very wise.]
• On Thursday September 7, 2006, asserting that the noose were merely a silly prank
inspired by a hanging scene in the television min-series ‘Lonesome Dove’, the
committee opted for a few days of in-school suspension. The names of the three
students were not released to the public for reasons of confidentiality.
[Teenage boys watch MTV, not Hallmark channel mini-series. Give me a freaking
break.]
• According to press accounts, on September 10, 2006, several dozen
black parents attempted to address a meeting of the school board but were
refused an opportunity to speak.
• At a second September meeting of the school board, September 18, 2006, a representative of the black families was allowed to give a five-minute statement, but school board refused to discuss the “noose issue” because the matter had been fully addressed and resolved.
•
Although few major disciplinary issues emerged during the fall semester at Jena
High School, there is strong evidence that several black male students remained
unusually agitated throughout the semester and that disciplinary referrals on
these students spiked sharply.
• On Thursday, November 30, 2006, the academic wing of the Jena High School was largely destroyed by a massive fire. Officials strongly suspect arson.
• Throughout the following weekend, Jena was engulfed by a wave of racially tinged violence.
• In one incident, a black student was assaulted by a white adult as he entered a predominantly white partly held at the Fair Barn (a large metal building reserved for social events). After being struck in the face without warning, the young black student was assaulted by white students wielding beer bottles and was punched and kicked before adults broke up the fight. It has been reported that the white assailant who threw the first punch was subsequently charged with simple battery (a
misdemeanor), but there is no documentary evidence that anyone was charged.
• In a second major incident, a white high school graduate who had been
involved in the assault the night before pulled a pump-action shotgun on three
black high school students as they exited the Gotta-Go, a local convenience
store. After a brief struggle for possession of the firearm, the black students
exited the scene with the weapon. [According to Mother Jones, the black students
were charged with aggravated battery and theft.]
• The Jena Times has reported that, in light of these racially-tinged incidents, several high school teachers begged school administrators to postpone the resumption of classes until the wave of hysteria had dissipated. This request was ignored and classes resumed the morning of Monday, December 4, 2006.
• Shortly after the lunch hour of Monday, December 4, 2006, a fight between a white student and a black student reportedly ended with the white student [Justin Barker, later arrested for having a rifle with 13 bullets in his truck in the school parking lot.] being knocked to the floor. Several black students reportedly attacked the white student as he lay unconscious. Because the incident took place in a crowded area and was over in a matter of seconds eye witness accounts vary widely. Written
statements from students closest to the scene (in space and time) suggest that
the incident was sparked by an angry exchange in the gymnasium moments before in
which the black student assaulted at the Fair Barn was taunted for having his
“ass whipped”.
• The victim of the attack is close friends of the boys who have admitted to hanging the nooses in September of 2006.
• Within an hour of the fight, six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated battery. [According to the Chicago Trib it was originally “attempted
second-degree murder and other offenses, for which they could face a maximum of
100 years in prison if convicted.“] According to The Jena Times, at least a
dozen teachers subsequently threatened a “sick-out” if discipline was not
restored to the school. According to the Alexandria Town Talk, District Attorney
Reed Walters responded to the teacher’s threat by upping the charges on the six
boys to attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree
murder—charges carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.

“I will not tolerate this type of behavior,” Walters wrote. “To those who act in this manner, I tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are convicted, I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you never again menace the students at any school in this parish.”

posted by Pastorius @ 6:22 PM Comments: 3