Quiet Jihad

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - - the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
Donald H. Rumsfeld, Department of Defense news briefing, February 12, 2002US Secretary of Defense (1932 - )

"Shariah nations,"

Certainly, we didn't put up all those ballot boxes across the Middle East to mandate a rollback of freedom. But in failing to assess the ideology central to Islam that makes Western notions of liberty fatally heretical, this is increasingly what is happening.

Which gives a head-hurting circularity to our policy. Maybe such dizzying confusion should make us welcome the advent of the Iraq Study Group, a presidential advisory council created, as the New York Times put it, "to generate new ideas on Iraq."

But new ideas on "Iraq" are the last thing we need, particularly as generated by a bipartisan snooze of a group that includes James Baker, Vernon Jordan, Charles Robb, Sandra Day O'Connor, Alan K. Simpson and Lee Hamilton — I can hardly tap out the other names because they're so solidly and venerably uninspiring (with the notable exception of Rudy Giuliani).

Framing their study around "Iraq" reveals how blinkered government thinking is. Iraq is only a small piece of our troubles in this period of resurgent Islamic jihad, from Osama bin Laden's cave to downtown Tehran, from worldwide Danish cartoon protests to Tel Aviv falafel stands, from Paris banlieus to Zacarias Moussaui's courtroom hot seat.

Squeezing big brains for "new ideas" about winning Iraq is sort of like planning the Normandy invasion to win France. We need something bigger. We need new ideas about Islam.

My list of idea men and women would include Hirsi Ali, Bat Ye'or, Bruce Bawer, Andrew G. Bostom, Walid Phares, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq and other experts and observers unbowed by the strictures of political correctness that strangle debate on Islam — its teachings, its demands, its history.

Iraq would figure into such a curriculum, but from a broader perspective that would allow us to size up the global battlefield in terms of the two great threats to the Western way of life: the spread of shariah through active jihad (war, terrorism), and the spread of shariah through Islamization (demographics, multicultural correctness).

Of the two, the second — quiet jihad — is the more serious threat, as the continuing Islamization of Europe shows.

We need an Islam Study Group.

Information Warfare

Conservative bloggers around the world were attacked reciently from Saudi Arabia. The websites have these things in common; Truth/Critical of Islam, Mo Cartoons , Pro-American/Western Civilization.

Information Warfare

The Denial of Service attack is reported to have originated out of Saudi Arabia. The clash of civilizations is on, and we’re losing. The first bastion of truth in the war of ideologies - the conservative bloggers - is taken off line by what appears to be the Islamist threat.

The MSM(main stream media) has conceded through self-censorship - no bad words are printed about extremist Islam and the threat it poses. We are in a war - a big war. And few people seem to notice.

I’m sorry it’s an election year, but “ineffectual” is a term that applies to Republicans and Democrats. No politician can see further than the polling stations.

This DoS attack against us directly in the blogosphere only confirms our assessment. We are indeed at war - in the clash of civilizations, which right now is mostly an information war.

Let’s see if the MSM, the legacy media as they may be called, picks up on this DoS attack and identifies it for what it is - a demonstration of superior firepower in the information battle of the larger campaign against the free world.

Although this sounds sensationalist, if you look at current events through these goggles, many things become much clearer and the inexplicable disappears. Take a look with an open mind and you’ll see.

Priceless

Tourism: Space vs. Egypt
Posted by Laurence Simon

Okay, so it's been a while since I've dispensed any travel advice, I thought I'd do a little comparison shopping for you:

PRICE:
Space: Very expensive.
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you.

AVAILABILITY:
Space: Nearly impossible to get to.
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you.

HEALTH CARE ACCESS:
Space: Nearly all crew are well-versed in First Aid and medical procedures, trained on simulators and have a direct line to physicians planetside.
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you. Then, the ambulances will arrive late. Finally, the doctors will try to finish you off. Worst of all, none of it will be covered by your insurance carrier.

SIGHTSEEING:
Space: A unique panoramic view of Earth from orbit.
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you.

LODGING:
Space: Cramped quarters in vehicle and in space station.
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you.

TRIP PREPARATION:
Space: Extensive background check, fitness screening.
Egypt: A few shots, some bribes for customs officials, and - oh, I almost forgot - Muslims will try to kill you.

GRAVITY:
Space: None. Wheeeeeeeeeee! Uh oh. *barf*
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you.

SHOPPING:
Space: Okay, so there aren't any Gucci or Prada stores in orbit. Yet.
Egypt: After ripping you off with cheap knock-offs made in China, Muslims will try to kill you.

DINING:
Space: All food is vacuum-sealed, but water is machine-fresh.
Egypt: Muslims will try to kill you.

ATMOSPHERE:
Space: Outside, none. Inside, lots. Stay inside.
Egypt: Filled with blood, shrapnel, and body parts. Some of which may be your own. Why? Because Muslims will try to kill you.

WINNER:If you can afford it, Space.

And there you have it. Next week, I will compare Disneyland and Mecca.

Stuck on Stupid

Anger so clouds the mind, that it cannot perceive the truth.
Cato the Elder -Roman orator & politician (234 BC - 149 BC)

The Suicidal Left: Civilizations and their Death Drives
February 28th, 2006

For a long time now, the political Left has been a source of widespread puzzlement. Many people instinctively suspect its insidiousness, but are uncertain of its precise nature.

The confusion is further compounded by the apparent incongruence between the Left’s flowery rhetoric and the detrimental effects of its actions. Unable to grasp its nature, many have followed with uneasy apprehension its growth into a powerful force whose seemingly inescapable influence has been increasingly felt in virtually every sector of our society.

Duplicitous by disposition, the Left indeed does not lend itself to easy analysis. Although its corrosiveness has been intuited by many, the reasons for the misgivings are usually not so easily articulable. Yet the Left cannot be effectively contended with until we are able to grasp its essence. Effective action requires knowledge.

The Left’s devotees like to say that knowledge is power, and on this much at least we can agree. Let us begin, then, our quest for knowledge by rising above the political and cultural melees of the day to obtain a more rounded view of the battlefield forces.

Hatred of Western Civilization
Once we do so, we cannot but notice that the Left’s army is clothed in distinctly anti-Western colors. Marching to the beat of deep-seated hostility, the Left makes no secret of its contempt for western values, traditions and achievements.

It intensely detests Christianity, the West’s predominant religion.
Deeply averse to the West’s moral code, the Left contemptuously refers to it as bourgeois morality. It denigrates the West’s cultural triumphs, contending they are no more unique than those of other societies. It disparages the West’s past by painting it as nothing more than an amalgamation of oppression, exploitation and all-around ignominy.

Scoffing at the notion of the limited State, the Left rejects the climax of western political tradition. And the Left, of course, despises free market capitalism – the West’s economic foundation – which it claims to be inherently exploitative, unfair or worse.

The Left’s successes
The Left, however, does not confine itself to mere criticism, but aggressively seeks to transform its anti-Western attitude into reality. Even a cursory glance at some of its successes should give us an idea of just how effective its efforts have been.

Virtually demolishing the West’s traditional morality, the Left has managed to legitimize promiscuity, illegitimacy, abortion and homosexuality. This transformation has reached a point where in many quarters these behaviors are not only considered acceptable but outright commendable.

Through its aggressive atheism, the Left has succeeded in virtually eliminating Christianity from our public arena, and to a large degree from the private sphere as well. This trend has been especially pronounced in Europe where only some seven percent of the population engage in some form of regular religious observance.

The Left’s seemingly insatiable hunger for governmental expansion has bucked the West’s long-term trend toward the limited State. Dominated by large, all-intrusive welfare states, the condition of many European countries could be justifiably described as soft socialism.

The excessive taxation and regulation which are the inevitable byproducts of this have virtually strangled their free economic enterprise and induced long-term economic malaise. Diametrically opposed to the ideals of classical liberalism, this state of affairs represents a complete subversion of western political and economic tradition.

By teaching that the masterpieces of the West’s greatest creative minds are no more intrinsically valuable than artifacts of far less advanced societies, the Left has deprived westerners’ of their justified pride in their own culture. And by lying about the West’s past, it has managed to suppress our consciousness of historical greatness.

The Left’s successes have been largely due to its takeover of the two main channels for the dissemination of knowledge and information – the media and academia. Careful to avoid positive portrayal of the West in almost any context, they abound in aspersions and criticism. In the process, the Left has devised an ingenious and effective mode of censorship to further its ends. It is called political correctness.

Death Wish: destroying the West
The West’s moral decline, the collapse of its religion, economic sluggishness, and the indifference to its own historical and cultural achievements – all this is the Left’s doing. Ominously, it has succeeded in inculcating large segments of the western population with contempt for their own culture and heritage. This is a dire state indeed, for no society that is despised by its own people can go on for very long.

Regardless of its rhetoric or avowed objective, the driving force behind the Left’s every movement is to strike against some aspect of Western society. Environmentalism, for instance, hits at the West’s economic foundation of free-market capitalism. Multiculturalism seeks to unravel its cultural coherence.

The gay rights movement strikes at its moral underpinnings, and so on. The Left, of course, will deny the real reason for its actions. But to evaluate the true value of any act we need to look at its effect not the rhetoric behind it. And the effects of the Left’s actions are invariably – in one way or another – destructive to the West.

The Left’s gains have been greatly facilitated by its ingenious modus operandi, which is to cloak its destructive intent in the language of good causes. Civil rights, gender equality, ecological preservation are among some of its favorite ploys. The ostensible caring is not real, for these are not at all what the Left’s efforts are ultimately about.

The West’s greatest threat is neither Islam nor any other external foe. It is its own political Left. All the great ills and woes under which our civilization so agonizingly belabors – and under the weight of which it is slowly sinking – have been either brought on or inflamed by it.

By corroding the West’s moral, spiritual, economic and cultural foundation, the Left has wrought incalculable damage on our civilization. The fact that this assault has come from within makes it all the more astounding. The Left is a wholly western child, born and raised within its confines. It is as though the Left somehow embodies the West’s reaction against the West. It is as though under some suicidal impulse the West has turned against itself with a self-destructive intent.

As has been the case with all great civilizations – with the arguable exception of ancient Greece – the West has grown far too powerful to be brought down by an external enemy. It can only fall if it destroys itself. By gradually hollowing itself out, it has nearly succeeded in doing so. The Left’s relentless subversion has indeed brought us to the brink of breakdown.

History unambiguously shows that all great civilizations collapsed as a result of internal weakness. Coming to their end by self-destructing, they in effect committed suicide. Sigmund Freud posited the existence of a death drive in individuals. It is my contention that a death drive also runs through whole civilizations.

Everything we see around us indicates that the Left is the West’s instrument of self-destruction and, in fact, the incarnation in our time of the deleterious force that ultimately brings down great civilizations. The Left is the material manifestation of the West’s death drive.

Even as individuals commit suicide by drowning or shooting or some other such means, so the West is in the process of committing suicide by the Left.

A testable hypothesis
At first glance, this may appear too sweeping a thesis to account for all the complexities of political reality, but there a simple way to test its validity. To prove it incorrect all you need to do is to come up with one counter-example, one single instance from among the Left’s campaigns and advocacies which is not in some way injurious to western civilization. Try as hard as you may, you will not be able to do it.

The Left never errs – it always acts against the West. It never stands or fights for anything that may be good for the western world. It can’t, because it is a reaction against it. Opposition to the West is the very reason for its existence; it is its nature. A wolf can’t act like a hare or a lion like an antelope. The Left can never become the West’s friend, because antipathy towards it actuates its heart and infuses its soul.

The theory proposed here shows why this is so. But it does more than this – it also makes readily comprehensible even the Left’s most seemingly inexplicable rhetoric and behavior.

Explaining the inexplicable
As a quick illustration, let’s just look at the Left’s opposition to drilling in ANWAR. Many people do not know what to make of it, since it is difficult to conceive how drilling there could have any negative environmental impact, which, of course, is the main objection. It is a well-known fact that the latest technology enables us to extract oil with virtually no environmental damage.

Many Middle Eastern countries drill literally in the backyards of their communities with no appreciable harm to their people, animals or ecosystems. How drilling in a small patch of vast forlorn tundra could pose any serious danger to anyone or anything is beyond most people’s comprehension. On the face of it, the Left’s opposition indeed makes no sense.

But things will come into focus when we apply our axiom which says that the real reason behind everything the Left does is to inflict harm upon the West (represented by the U.S. in this particular instance). If this should be so, then the motive behind its opposition would not really be to protect the environment but be to deprive the U.S. of some benefit. Judging by the amount of money and effort the Left has invested in this cause, this potential benefit would be immense in its eyes. It is not difficult to see why.

We all know that oil is the fuel of the American economy. Drilling in ANWAR would give us more of it at a lower price, which would inevitably contribute to our economic well-being and growth. Significant as this may be, it is only of secondary importance in this particular controversy. Much more importantly, opening up ANWAR would be a vital step toward reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Foreign oil dependence is the greatest strategic weakness of this country, since it in a way holds America hostage to Middle Eastern regimes, many of which are our enemies. The problem is made worse by the fact that an appreciable portion of the vast amounts we pay for their oil is used to finance anti-American and anti-Western efforts. This produces a situation whereby our own money strengthens our enemies. Troubling as this is to most of us, it is precisely what the Left wants.

It is the Left’s desire to subvert the West that explains why in every conflict it invariably takes the side of our enemies. It sided with the Soviets during the Cold War, with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. It regularly sides with hostile dictators world over, and, predictably enough, it takes the Islamists’ side in the present War on Terror.

The only reason why it turned against fascism – a virulent anti-western force – was because Hitler attacked the Left’s great hope and friend the Soviet Union. Prior to the Soviet invasion, the Left viewed fascism as a friend.

[The Left cheers for our foes not because it is somehow stupid, as many people erroneously think, but because it wants us defeated. I have analyzed this behavior in some detail in a piece that can be read here.]

It is the desire to weaken America while building up her enemies that is the true motive behind the Left’s hysterical and seemingly irrational opposition to drilling in ANWAR. It, however, only appears so only as long as we are unaware of the Left’s real nature and goals. When we realize what the Left is truly about, its behavior will make perfect sense.

If you have ever wondered why the Left’s arguments in this controversy sound so absurd, the explanation is quite simple: These are the best arguments that anyone could come up with under the circumstances. Environmentalism is the only possible platform – however tenuous – from which the ANWAR project could ever be possibly objected to.

Being bogus through and through, claims in its support must by necessity ring hollow. But even despite their apparent weakness, these arguments have been effective so far. This is an ominous sign, since the political and intellectual climate that has allowed such weeds to take root must be afflicted indeed.

Hating America
Since we are already at it, we may as well explain the real basis of the Left’s virulent anti-Americanism. As almost everyone is aware, America is a thorn in the eye and the favorite whipping child of both the American and worldwide Left.

America is a country that every leftist worth his salt loves to hate. Many have been startled by this, especially given the fact that America seems to be good to all the groups and things that the Left claims to care deeply about. Its poor are the richest in the world, and on the whole better off than the middle classes of most nations.

America’s environment is among the cleanest on this earth. Its minorities enjoy more opportunities, earn more and achieve higher positions than minorities elsewhere, even in their own countries (which is why so many are eager to immigrate to the U.S.).

American working women are better paid and enjoy more access to power than their counterparts anywhere else. And we could go on. Needless to say – in the light of all this – America should be loved and applauded by the Left. So why this seemingly irrational hatred? Let’s turn to our theory for a clue.

Even though western civilization was not born in America, today she stands as the undisputed bearer of its torch. Being the most capitalistic of all western countries and having the least intrusive government (domestically speaking), it best embodies the ideals of classical liberalism. It is also by far the most
Christian among western nations.

In addition, during the last 60 years or so America has invariably spearheaded the West’s efforts against its enemies – it led the fight against German fascism, Soviet communism and now against Islamic fundamentalism. In short, America is the foremost practitioner of the West’s values, the guardian of its legacy, and the guarantor of its survival.

In the light of our thesis, can you now see why the Left hates America so? Being intransigently anti-western, its raging hatred of America is an expression of its implacable hostility toward the West.

Many have been likewise shocked and startled by the Left’s virulent hatred of George W. Bush. Seemingly boundless, the Left’s detestation of him is quite obviously out of all proportion to anything this decent and gallant man has done.

Even the blind must see that the driving impetus behind his presidency is ultimately the safety and security of our country. Doing all he can to prevent another attack, he is also trying to ensure that Islamic fundamentalists will not emerge victorious from this conflict.

This behavior will never commend him to the Left, and is precisely the reason why they hate him so much. George Bush is the West’s leader and champion in the current clash of civilizations. Bent as it is on the West’s destruction, the Left will never forgive him for it.

It is most telling that in its loathing of George W. Bush, the Left is in complete agreement with Islamic fundamentalists. So much so, that bin Laden and others even use leftist arguments in their doom-threatening missives to the West.

Is it any surprise, given that they both strive for the same goal and share the same enemy?

Equally bitter was the Left’s hatred for Ronald Reagan who led the West fearlessly against another ideology whose objective was our destruction – communism. To this day the Left has not forgiven him for defeating it.

So blinding and virulent is its odium that mere four days after his death, Ted Rall – a nationally syndicated cartoonist and one of the Left’s most outspoken defenders – told us on television that he hoped that Ronald Reagan was being burned in hell to a brown crisp.

This he said about the man who has done more for the good of this country – and for the good of the whole world – than any other individual in modern times.

Although on the face of it such sentiments may seem utterly irrational if not outright inane, they cease to be so the moment we look at them in the light of the thesis of a death drive.

Surviving the Left’s worst efforts
If the West wants to survive, it must recognize the Left for what it is – a subversive internal force bent on our destruction.

The incarnation of the death drive that runs like a black lace through the fabric of great civilizations, the Left is the originator of our most grievous ills and the gravest danger that we face. It is at the root of the strife and tribulations that are tearing down the edifice of the Western world.

Perhaps this recognition will give us the moral strength to swerve from the road to perdition along which we have been dragged for so long. There is every indication that its terminal point is not too far away. One can almost hear the echo of the abyss as one after another the great pillars of our civilization come crumbling down.

Mixed with the doom-bound calls for appeasement in the face of barbarism, it makes for a bloodcurdling sound. If we want to live we must take heed, for the next bend in this road may well be the last.

Vasko Kohlmayer defected from Communist Czechoslovakia at the age of 19. He lives in London and works in the publishing industry. He can be contacted at vasko_kohlmayer@msn.com.

Islamism

All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.

Sun-Tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)

Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values.

This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world.

But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present.

Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions.

We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Morons

"We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."

Franklin D. Rossevelt.
32nd president of US (1882 - 1945)

RoP: "The Mushroom Cloud is On Its Way!"

Demonstrating outside the Israeli consulate in Manhattan to gloat over the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, the Queens-based radical group calling itself the Islamic Thinkers Society

Excerpts: Leader (in Arabic):

With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!

[The rest also respond in Arabic:]

With our blood and our lives we will liberate al Aqsa!

Israeli Zionists What do you say?

The real Holocaust is on its way Takbeer!

Response: Allahu Akbar! Takbeer!

Response: Allahu Akbar!

Israeli Zionists, What do you say?

How many women have you raped today?

Israeli Zionists, What do you say?

How many children have you killed today?

Zionists, Zionists You will pay!

The Wrath of Allah is on its way!

Israeli Zionists You shall pay!

The Wrath of Allah is on its way!

The mushroom cloud is on its way!

The real Holocaust is on its way!

We are not your average Muslims, We are the Muslims of Was al Sunnah

We will not accept the United Nations, they are the criminals themselves. They get paid by the Israeli and the US government to do their job.

We don’t recognize United Nations as a body

We only recognize Allah

Israel won’t last long ... Indeed,

Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel Takbeer!

Response: Allahu Akbar!

* * * No wonder they call you sons of apes and pigs because that’s what you are.

We know many government services are watching us

Such as the FBI ... CIA ... Mossad, Homeland Security ...

We know we are getting on their nerves

And so are you.

So we say the hell with you!

May the FBI burn in Hell CIA burn in Hell

Mossad burn in Hell

Homeland Security burn in hell!!

Islam will dominate the world

Islam is the only solution

Islam will dominate the world

Islam is the only solution Takbeer! La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur Rasool Allah

* * Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!

Takbeer!! Allahu Akbar

Another mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!

So I guess they really don't want "their land" back?

Morons.

Media

Night Launch.

Jihadis Use Media as a Weapon

Jihadis place a great deal of emphasis on developing comprehensive public relations and communication strategies to aid their side in the media war.

That’s according to communication researchers at Arizona State University who studied recently declassified al-Qaida documents and other open source reports captured in Iraq and Afghanistan during U.S. military operations.

“Their strategies are crafted after careful audience analysis and message adaptation, two of the most fundamental rules underlying any communication or public relations campaign,” write the authors of a report released this week titled: “Communication and Media Strategy in the Jihadi War of Ideas.”

Contributing to the report are faculty members and graduate students in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Professor Steven Corman, who co-authored the report with graduate student Jill Schiefelbein, says that in his experience “people are surprised the jihadis think of media as a weapon.”

Yet, by using text analysis techniques to review nearly 300 documents, some recently released from the Department of Defense’s HARMONY database, the researchers concluded that jihadis place a great importance on media and public relations as part of their overall strategy.

“Their strategy is not hard to discern,” Corman says. “All you have to do is listen to what they say and what they worry about.”...

“During the Cold War, America had a robust academic effort to better understand the communist ideology. We are not seeing a parallel research effort today.

Scholars have been hesitant to engage in this conversation, in part because this is such a politically charged topic, and, in part because they’ve lacked access to data,” says Jarret Brachman, [an assistant professor and director of research at the center.

The Combating Terrorism Center is a Department of Defense entity, housed at West Point].

“ASU’s work in this area will hopefully catalyze more academic institutions to undertake similar research,” he says, “helping us to better understand and combat the radical ideology we face today.”...

Fools who sell us out

"We must as second best...take the least of the evils."

Aristotle.

Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist

(384 BC - 322 BC)

Fool's Paradise: Are You "Enjoying" It Too?
Dick McDonald

Some mornings I get up to find I am in an alternative universe. A universe populated with Marxist lunatics directing uneducated and misleading refugees of Pravda who in turn fill the propaganda pipeline with lies, deceptions and omissions. Spend a moment with me reviewing the present views of these moonbats:

1. Almost 60% of Americans believe the economy is in the tank. The reality is America's economy is blowing the doors off the barn. Guess who is misleading the public?

2. America is going bankrupt according to our moon bats. With a country worth $150 to $250 Trillion and a piddling, insignificant, smaller than a gnat $4.9 Trillion external debt, the deliriously misinformred are misleading the public.

3. Islam is believed by these loons to be a "Religion of Peace" irrespective of the fact that Muslims keep telling and showing us they are going to behead us all.

4. The loons fib that we can wait until 2042 before Social Security will go bankrupt; clearly ignoring the $13 Trillion unfunded liability presently hidden from public view. $13 trillion, almost three times larger our ENTIRE external debt. It is a fact the system is more than bankrupt right NOW.

5. One of America's two major political parties ran a traitor for President in 2004; and he almost won. Hailed as a hero in North Vietnam, he fictionalize atrocities and blamed his brother warriors for crimes they never committed. His testimony in front of Congress handed America her first loss in war. The depths to which our MSM will stoop is too far to measure.

6. Following Kerry's treason, I wake up each morning to an entire industry exclusively devoted to losing the Iraq war; never ending innuendos and lies with accompanying visuals. These are truly leftist traitors giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. And Hollywood's patriotism is so lacking, not one motion picture has been made supporting the war; just treasonous excuses and anti-American pap. And Americans are expected to be proud of their "Free Speech"; where exactly do I find that practiced in the good old USA?. 5. Democrats, led by their godless, Marxist, Darwinian loons are attempting to take God out of schools and all public places and installing gay and lesbian sensitivity training, anti-American multicultural teaching and the darkness of moral relativism. And who leads this charge? Oh the moonbats in academe and the atheists in the Democrat Party and their pimps in the MSM; anti-Americans all.6. The Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday that it would be implementing a new, revolutionary, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art approach to the illegal immigration problem. Believe it or not, the department declared that the U.S. would now be cracking down on employers who "knowingly and recklessly" hire illegal aliens. In other words, they are going to try a "new" program called "enforcing existing laws." How late, how sad. And we have the multi-cultural dreamers in America to thank for enforcing and embracing this effort to destroy America's culture by the use of political correctness.

7. Moonbats have accused the Administration of starting the Iraq War to secure oil. Boy that really worked well, didn't it. Prices are going through the roof.

8. Moonbats and assorted loonies believe oil companies not speculators set the price of oil. How uneducated can that Bill O'Reilly get.

9. Democrats, that seriously outnumber Republicans in the bureaucracy, are leaking top secrets to their Democrat conspirators in the MSM for treasonous purposes; to lose the war in Iraq just like they succeeded in Vietnam. In fact tap the tens of thousands of Democrats for a national secret and win the Pulitzer Prize. Traitors feeding traitors. We have one sick society that endorses treason in the time of War.

10. We never lost a battle in Vietnam. We still lost the war. We never lost a battle in Afghanistan or Iraq and still the left is determined to lose America those wars.

11. Unemployment is at 4.7 percent, lower than the averages of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. The economy is showing strong, consistent growth, without significant inflation. And the stock market is roaring along. And the MSM has propagandized the kool aid drinkers into believing these are the worst of times. You know, "a lie told over enough..." But here the "Golden Rule" applies. Those with the "gold" ( in this case the control of the media) rule. How tragic.

12. Liberals blame Bush for high oil prices yet it is Democrats who blocked the building of refineries for the last 30 years and drilling in Anwar and offshore sites that would have freed us from reliance on Middle East oil. Go figure.

13. There are 1.3 Billion inhabitants on Earth whose male element believe in a whorehouse in Heaven replete with 72 virgins for each believer. Can you believe a religion that claims that heaven has 47 Billion virgins waiting for just the male Muslims who haven't yet died? How many trillions of virgins must there be for 1,400 years of Muslim history? Bizarro.

14. I know it is hard to believe, but there is a large group of Americans that believe taking money (taxes) from those who generate jobs is good economics. They believe government creates jobs and wealth. How utterly delusional. That is the intelligence you get from a proagandizing MSM that omits reporting the real facts; a totally misled and dysfunctional population.

15. Since 1970, carbon monoxide emissions in the U.S. are down 55%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Particulate emissions are down nearly 80%, and sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by half. Lead emissions have declined more than 98%. All of this has been accomplished despite a doubling of the number of cars on the road and a near-tripling of the number of miles driven, according to Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute. Yet, the MSM and Al Gorific tout Global Warming as if we have done nothing about it. According to Goreman, it will swallow the planet next Wednesday at 3:00 P.M.

16. Americans continue to bend to the will of Muslims. The latest is in the USA Fitness gym where Muslims demand partitions and/or specific times for Muslim women to work out so men can't view their uncovered bodies. Has America gone berserk. Are we bending to a 7th. Century sexual modesty dictated by a "prophet" that practiced polygamy and pedophilia. Islam has us on the run. Our MSM's political correctness philosophy is the fast track back to the 7th. Century.

Tits & Ammo

"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun."

Al Capone

US gangster (1899 - 1947).

Pavement Art 3D

from the U.S.

Socialist Spain

Community of equels?

In Socialist Spain, Apes have equal rights as humans now. Italy next?

Socialists: Give apes human rights
Spain Herald

The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for "the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings."

The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

The party will announce its Great Ape Project at a press conference tomorrow. An organization with the same name is seeking a UN declaration on simian rights which would defend ape interests "the same as those of minors and the mentally handicapped of our species."

According to the Project, "Today only members of the species Homo sapiens are considered part of the community of equals. The chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutan are our species's closest relatives. They possess sufficient mental faculties and emotional life to justify their inclusion in the community of equals."

Hyper-Transport

New ZZR-1400

Kawasaki ZX-12R

Propaganda

Fitzgerald: Memo to the mainstream media: no more propaganda, please
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald takes the news agencies of the world to task for their tendency to explain it all for us -- in such plainly wrongheaded ways:

"Staunch U.S. ally Qatar..." -- the opening of a story in Reuters.

“Kuwait - a key U.S. ally in the Gulf…” – from an AP story.

“Egypt is a leading U.S. ally in the region…” – from a Bloomberg piece on the latest bombings in Egypt.

“Saudi Arabia, a close US ally…” – from Reuters.

Memo to Reuters, to AP, to Agence France Presse, Bloomberg, and all the other supposedly unbiased news organizations in the world:

Here is one way to increase Infidel comprehension of the world:

Don't tell your readers.

Don't impose a conclusion on them.

Don't open a story by calling Qatar "Staunch U.S. ally Qatar."

Don't tell us, repeatedly, over the past half century, that "staunch ally Saudi Arabia" is doing such and such to keep oil prices down, or up, or sideways.

Don't tell us that "staunch ally Egypt" or "Egypt, one of America's best friends" or "Egypt, America's best friend in the Arab world" or even "Egypt, America's best friend in the Middle East" -- every single one of which I have heard or read within the past few days, and so has everyone else who torments himself by reading or listening to the way the news is presented -- has done this, or has done that, against American interests.

Because if one reads that "Egypt, America's staunch ally" has :
1) blocked any discussion of the behavior of the Sudanese government in Darfur
2) prevented any discussion of effective (i.e. Western) troops going to Darfur

3) been found to have high-ranking officials in the pay of Saddam Hussein

4) done nothing to prevent the smuggling of arms into Gaza by "Palestinians"

5) allowed its government-controlled press to publish all kinds of false charges about American soldiers in Iraq and so on, then in what way is Egypt "America's staunch ally"?

And for that matter, the same question could be asked – and should be asked -- Qatar, the home of Al-Jazeera. That network, after all, is subsidized by the Al-Thani who rule Qatar, a family member of which tipped off an Al Qaeda operative about to be arrested by the FBI, so that he could escape.

Is that the way a staunch ally of the United States should behave?

Egypt is an "ally" in the sense that it receives, with no visible sign of gratitude, nearly $2 billion a year from American taxpayers.

Qatar, awash in natural gas, does not receive such aid. But the only sign that it is a "staunch ally" of the United States is the same sign that Kuwait and Dubai, other sheiklets in the area, rich but without military power, have given: they have allowed American ships to use their ports, or have offered the Americans a base.

This is not, in Qatar's case, not in Kuwait's case, not in Dubai's case, just as it was not in Saudi Arabia's case, because they are an "ally" or "staunch ally" of the United States.

The Saudis wanted Americans there to protect the regime against
1) Saddam Hussein and 2) internal rebellion, as a guarantee for the Al-Saud.

That is all. The ruling families -- Al-Thani, Al-Sabah, etc. -- who are willing, temporarily, to allow American soldiers onto their soil, are doing it for one reason only: to have some guarantee of American protection against the three big bullies in the neighborhood -- Iran, Iraq (if it remains one country), and Saudi Arabia.

And that is the extent of the "staunch ally-hood" of Qatar or the others.
It is outrageous that we are told what to think about this again and again by journalists who probably have no idea about any of this, and wouldn’t care if they did.

The Homeric epithet has its uses: grey-eyed Athena, wily Odysseus, rosy-fingered Dawn. It is out of place in news reports. Do not tell us what we should think of Qatar, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. Do not be so free with those fixed, and often wildly misleading epithets.

That is not the duty of mere reporters. We will take in the information, and decide for ourselves if the noun "ally" and the adjective "staunch" apply, or do not apply, to the people or polity being reported on.

We don't need Reuters to feed us its propaganda.

And we can't stand it from anyone else, either.

Blue Moon

Once in a Blue Moon ... is a common way of saying not very often, but what exactly is a Blue Moon?

According to the popular definition, it is the second Full Moon to occur in a single calendar month.

The average interval between Full Moons is about 29.5 days, whilst the length of an average month is roughly 30.5 days. This makes it very unlikely that any given month will contain two Full Moons, though it does sometimes happen.

On average, there will be 41 months that have two Full Moons in every century, so you could say that once in a Blue Moon actually means once every two-and-a-half years.

Military Scale Armour

1/35th scale precision model kit of a M1A1 ABRAMS with mine plow.

Defeatism

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk."

Thomas Jefferson

FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM
By Avi Davis

“This is my right, a right given by God

To live a free life, to live in Freedom

We’re talkin' about Freedom

Talkin' bout Freedom

I will fight, for the right

To live in Freedom"

Freedom (Paul McCartney)

So sang the former Beatle in October, 2001 before a packed audience at Madison Square Garden in New York City. That McCartney should sing so forcefully about a current event, something he is otherwise loathe to do, should have surprised no one.

At the time, the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering within a few miles of the concert venue and the senses of the entire American citizenry were keenly attuned to a fundamental change in the nature of warfare.

But McCartney, not known as a particularly deep thinker, had this time actually plumbed a profound sensibility within the West’s consciousness: that it was not the United States but civilization itself that had come under assault on September 11.

Sweeping across the spectrum of political thought, politicians, artists, entertainers, celebrities – almost the entire cultural elite, became obsessed with the view that an enemy had been identified and that our way of life, taken so long for granted, might actually require vigorous defense.

Sadly, it only lasted a few months. That forthright conviction very soon dissipated among the glitterati, to be replaced by a solipsistic sense of guilt. The phantom figures stalking behind the World Trade Center attack were replaced by the specter of an American government intent on destroying civil liberties; the war on terror transformed into an imperialistic adventure based on manufactured information and the greed of American capitalists; the imprecations of Osama Bin Laden were obscured by the exaggerated hubris of George W. Bush.

For all the urgent talk about American security and the terrorist threat to our urban centers, the deeper suspicions among our celebrities center today on the intentions of American leaders themselves.

Cynicism, negativity, defeatism and rejection of any notion of patriotism typifies their commentary when referring to their own country.

Their jaded attitudes echo across the land as a clarion call to arms – not against the leaders of a death cult who are sworn to the eradication of the very liberties they seemingly cherish - but against American corporations, evangelical Christians, conservative thinkers and the President of the United States.

A sample of the comments from some of these cultural icons, taken over the past five years, should be enough to testify to the kind of political posturing that panders to the far left and passes today as radical chic:

Harry Belafonte: “ I not only think that they [U.S. leaders] are misguided, but I think they know exactly what they are doing and I think that they are men who are possessed of evil.


"Sandra Bernhard: "The infrastructure of America and the world is caving in, and George Bush is a figurehead of that.

"George Clooney: I believe he(Bush) thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore. We can't beat anyone anymore.

"Sheryl Crow: “I think war is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.

"Janeane Garofalo: “This will potentially be one of the worst chapters in American history that will go on for twenty or thirty years, until democracy, in some fashion, is re-established.

”Larry Hagman: "[Bush is a] sad figure: not too well educated, who doesn't get out of America much. He's leading the country towards fascism.

"Jessica Lange: “I hate Bush; I despise him and his entire administration, everything he represents and everything he has tried to do, not only internationally, which is horrific, but domestically as well.”

Rosie O’Donnell: “You know [President Bush] invaded a sovereign nation [Iraq] in defiance of the U.N. He is basically a war criminal! He should be tried in the Hague!

Gwyneth Paltrow: "I think George Bush is such an embarrassment to America in the way that he doesn't take the rest of the world into consideration. And it all seems to be for him and his friends to keep getting richer at the expense of a nation, at the expense of the environment. It's like a full scale assault on the environment.

Sean Penn: “We now have a president who thinks in terms of good and evil, and that comes from watching too many Hollywood movies.”

Tim Robbins: “ In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom. Let us find a way to resist fundamentalism that leads to violence--fundamentalism of all kinds, in al Qaeda and within our own government. What is our fundamentalism? Cloaked in patriotism and our doctrine of spreading democracy throughout the world, our fundamentalism is business, the unfettered spread of our economic interests throughout the globe.”

Julia Roberts: "He's embarrassing. He's not my president. He will never be my president."

Susan Sarandon: "In the name of fear and fighting terror we are giving the reigns of power to oil men more interested in a financial bottom line than a moral bottom line. Oil men ready to expand their influence with new contracts on the soil our bombers have plowed…”

Martin Sheen: "Every time I cross the Canadian border I feel like I've left the land of lunatics. You are not armed and dangerous. You do not shoot each other. I always feel a bit more human when I come here."

Patti Smith: “The world right now is being run by a**holes like George Bush and pharmaceutical companies, these greedy people who don’t care about the environment, who don’t really understand the poor, who don’t understand other cultures.”

Oliver Stone: "Bin Laden was completely protected by the oil companies in this country who told [President] Bush not to go after him because it would piss off the Saudis."

Robin Williams: "We have a president for whom English is a second language. He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself.

Gore Vidal: We're not a democracy, and we have absolutely nothing to give the world in the way of political ideas or political arrangements. God knows, the mention of justice is like a clove of garlic to Count Dracula."


These words offer a window into a mindset that has regressed into its own form of group think. Insulated from the real world these doyens of political correctness slough off the absence of freedom in so much of the Muslim world.

They seem generally unconcerned about the ubiquity of female circumcision, honor killings, wife beatings, the murder of homosexuals or the rising militancy of disaffected Muslim youth in Europe.

They have little sympathy for the casualties of fundamentalist Islam – a fact given testimony by the enthusiastic Hollywood reception which greeted the release of the Palestinian film Paradise Now. There has been no suggestion of an international performance, such as the recently staged Live 8, by any major entertainment figure, to protest the genocidal slaughter of blacks in the Sudan.

Their self absorbed pieties are instead reserved for a home grown evil that they find much easier to both identify and castigate.Treason? Perhaps not. But it is unquestionable that they have given a measure of aid and comfort to the enemy.

With a global audience listening, their pontifications have contributed to the notion that not only has the United States abdicated its role as a purveyor of justice, but is also morally bankrupt.

This jaundiced point of view has in turn been readily exploited by Muslim dictators and even many European leaders, anxious to see the United States’ influence on world affairs weakened.

Moreover, as becomes clear from a reading of celebrity speeches and statements, there has emerged a disturbing moral asymmetry in their statements about right and wrong, good and evil.

Actions, even ones as shocking as suicide bombing, are to be comprehended and analyzed rather than condemned. “ There is no right or wrong on this issue,” said actor George Clooney about his recently released movie Syriana which deals with terrorism and, in part, corrupt US policies in the Middle East.

“ There is only understanding.” Yet no matter what they believe, the United States is a country at war against terrorism and an uncompromising jihadist culture. That war is principally taking place in Iraq where the world awaits an outcome.

A defeat, so it is widely recognized across the American political mainstream, could indeed mean the end of many of the kind of liberties we currently enjoy, even without further 9/11s.

In this desperate undertaking there should be little doubt that our celebrities have weakened and tarnished the image of the United States and jeopardized our own struggle for freedom.

During Passover we (had) several days to ponder the meaning of this freedom. Jewish slaves, convinced of their destiny as a free people, placed absolute faith in both Divine power and their leaders as they marched from Egypt into the desert.

The freedom they sought, as our rabbis have noted, was not simply national liberation but a form of personal emancipation as well - to expurgate the slave mentality in order to embrace an ethical structure establishing moral imperatives.

That personal struggle continues within each of us today. It is the struggle to repudiate our own slavery to materialism and egotism, to differentiate between right and wrong and thereby establish a path to righteousness.

Blurring the distinctions between right and wrong, as so many celebrities are wont to do, and to disregard the very real threats to life as represented by a nihilistic terrorist cult, plunges us into a gray zone where our own responses to that threat are frozen by the need to understand our enemies’ grievances or by fear of offending their sensitivities.

There can be no greater prescription for personal or national disaster.In the midst of the 1960s the music of the Beatles swept us away on a chorus of optimism, broadcasting a message of peace and love as an antidote to the turbulence of the time.

But the “peace and love” of yesterday has mutated into a ghastly moral relativism today. It is absurd to suggest that we should offer love or peace to enemies bent on our annihilation

– particularly those who have absolutely no interest in dialogue, tolerance or understanding.

McCartney might well have hit the right chords with his song, indicating a measure of political maturity. It is just too bad that none of his influential contemporaries have seen fit to follow that example with songs, movies or books that remind us that every liberty we value is imperiled – not by George Bush, Halliburton or Pat Robertson- but by the seething enmity of foes who will risk everything to ensure our destruction.

Avi Davis is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles.


---------

ANZAC DAY

Australian FM defies Osama
Alexander Downer is no Jack Straw. "Downer defies bin Laden," from News.com.au, with thanks to Rosie:

THE latest audiotape by Osama bin Laden only serves to remind the world just how dangerous and fanatical al-Qaeda and its leader were, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
Bin Laden has urged his followers to prepare for a long war against Western would-be occupiers in Sudan's Darfur region, according to the latest audiotape attributed to him.

In the tape, the Saudi-born militant criticises the Sudanese Government for agreeing to a US-backed peace deal for the south of that country.
He also criticises the Palestinians' Hamas-led Government for breaking what he said was a taboo against "joining infidel assemblies" and entering parliament.

But he points to the isolation of Hamas as proof the West is waging war against Islam.
Mr Downer today said the West would not be intimidated by such messages.
"My reaction is a reaction of defiance," Mr Downer said ABC Radio.

"These tapes from Osama bin Laden only reinforce my determination to fight these terrorists.
"It just reminds us all of the dangerous, fanatical people we're dealing with, and the last thing we should show in a circumstance like that is weakness and defeatism.

"This just reminds us that this is a tough fight. This is going on, it's going to continue to go on for a long time to come.

---------------

"The worst thing we should do is show weakness and hesitancy in the face of these kinds of threats."

Breaking the mould-
Appeasement never works with such people (Bin Laden and Co.)and only when the appetite of a fanatical tyrant who would impose his beliefs on others. The words attributed to Bin Laden condone genocide in Sudan's Darfur region and show a Hitlerite will to exterminate all infidels (especially Jews)and even other Moslems.

This whole Jihad-Matrix is very much in the mould of Hitler when it comes to questions of extermination in general and Jews in particular. Make no mistake of it, they are today's Nazis (they even have their version of the Hitler Youth)and only understand force when it is used against them with extreme prejudice.

Thanks to JihadWatch (and others) more and more people are waking up to the danger we face. However, the many Neville Chamberlains of our time in the so-called elites will be the last to see reality-but eventually they too will see.

Aussie war deeds told in Europe

John Hamilton

25apr06

AUSTRALIA is to spend $2.5 million to build two new visitors' centres on World War I's Western Front.

They will explain to a new generation about Australia's role in two great battles in Belgium and France.

Treasurer Peter Costello told the Herald Sun yesterday the centres would be built at Passchendaele and at Villers-Bretonneux.

In 1917, more than 78,000 Australians became casualties in battles such as Bullecourt, Messines and the four-month campaign around Ypres that became known as the Battle of Passchendaele.

The next year the Germans captured the French village of Villers-Bretonneux. Many Australians were killed re-capturing it on Anzac Day.

This weekend, Anzac Day commemoration ceremonies will be held at Villers-Bretonneux and at the nearby Australian National Monument, which has the names of the 11,000 Australians missing in wartime France.

"We want tourists from other countries and young Australians who visit the Western Front to know what Australia actually did in World War I," Mr Costello said yesterday.

He was speaking from his Melbourne office, where he is working on his 11th Budget, now only two weeks away.

"We have rediscovered our Gallipoli history, and I think a lot of young Australians will now move on from that to our history in Flanders field and in France.

"Gallipoli was a military failure, but the Western Front was marked by military successes such as Le Hamel, perhaps our greatest military victory under the Australian command of Sir John Monash -- probably our greatest soldier.

"Even Monash himself came from defeat in Gallipoli to form a corps that broke the German line in 1918, a decisive blow that eventually forced the armistice."
The Treasurer said more money is likely to be allocated in this year's Budget for other Australian memorials overseas.

On Budget preparations he said: "I've done all of the expenditures. Now I'm working on the revenues and then I'm trying to make them add up.
"I was dreaming about it in the middle of last night.

"In my dreams I go through many scenarios . . . we have got some tax relief already . . . but the object is to meet all the expenditures and still balance the budget.

"Things get complicated when something comes in from left field, like the Solomon Islands."

Wrong Number Asshole

Wrong Call

IBRAHIM AL MARKHUR, Iraq —

One misplaced cell phone and one savvy interpreter equaled one dead insurgent, several pieces of intelligence and a whole lot of captured weapons.

On a routine patrol, U.S. troops with 1st Battalion, 68th Armor came upon a house in the midst of dense greenery and at the end of a dusty country road.
Staff Sgt. Matthew Nicodemus, 33, said he immediately noticed that no Iraqi men were around.

Suddenly, a cell phone inside the home rang, said Nicodemus, of Altoona, Pa.
“The interpreter went in and answered the phone, and on the other end of the phone the person said, in Arabic, ‘Hey, coalition forces are here, go ahead and run away,’ and he specifically said, ‘Go and run into the palm groves all around here,’ ” Nicodemus said. ...

The interpreter kept the act going.

“He’s basically acting like, you know, he’s watching us ... making sure everything is fine,” Nicodemus said.

The U.S. troops knew the insurgents were coming back and decided to lie in wait for them.

Many troops said they were psyched by the prospect of killing the person on the other end of the phone.

“I love this [expletive],” said Sgt. Nicholas Hake-Jordan, 23, of Springfield, Ore.
The troops didn’t have to wait long.

Shortly after U.S. troops set up, the insurgents called the interpreter and said they would be by in about 10 minutes to attack the Americans, said Staff Sgt. Art Hoffman, 30.

When seven insurgents got to the house, they ran into a wall of U.S. fire, said Hoffman, of Baltimore.

“The first guy that came in the door just dropped like a rock. The other two guys behind him got hit pretty hard, too. The rest grabbed their wounded and just ran back off,” said Hoffman.

Moussaoui Trial

Failure to impose the death penalty will be seen as a

weakness of the West by the Muslim world.

NOW Do You Believe It?

Toleration is the Virtue of People who Do Not Believe in Anything.
G.K. Chesterton

The defense has begun in the death penalty phase of the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui, the Taliban conspirator who worked with the team of terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

We are being asked to show toleration and understanding for Mr. Moussaoui, a comprehension of his life and putative mental illness.

When asked by a lawyer whether he would be prepared to kill Americans, he said: "Anytime, anywhere."

"You are the head of the snake for me. If we want to destroy the Jewish state of Palestine, we have to destroy you first," he went on to say.

Zacharias Moussaoui was born to a 14 year old mother, who was abandoned by his father. She raised him while working as a cleaning lady in Paris, and later in other Muslim ghettos in France. His life experience and attitude towards western culture is not uncommon, as shown by the Parisian riots of last summer.

As the attorneys bob and weave, proffering his upbringing, his alleged mental illness and his desire to become a martyr before the jury as mitigating factors, one fact emerges ever more clearly.

Zacharias Moussaoui believes intently in radical Islam and jihad. His contempt for his lawyers and their stratagems, and his outbursts of indignant rage, demonstrate that his belief in the necessity of the destruction of Western culture is real and sincere.

Why is that so hard for us to comprehend? Our various attitudes are all equally ignorant of Muslim culture and sincerity.

We shouldn't give in to him. Since he wants to be a martyr, we should keep him in jail at taxpayer expense for the rest of his life.

Or, he was driven to his terrible acts by poverty and rage. We should reach out to the little ones in the Middle East, and educate them and teach them tolerance and brotherhood, possibly by expanding Head Start.

Or, the anti-Semitism expressed by some alleged terrorists is just a negotiating ploy to gain a real homeland for the Palestinians. The suicide bombers are desperate patriots, and we should tolerate their views.

How disrespectful. How condescending. How destructive. How foolish.

The religious zeal of Moussaoui is real, sincere and deadly.

If we fail to execute him, it will be percieved as a signal of our inherent weakness in the Muslim world, and will ultimately cause the death and destruction of millions.

We may have had a Reformation or Enlightenment in western culture, but Islam is a different path.

It is worth noting one of the Taliban's first acts was to blow up ancient Hindu statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, as they were graven images and an affront to Allah. The combined appeals of the world for tolerance, understanding of another faith, and respect for artistic heritage all fell on deaf ears.

There is no God but Allah. There is no answer but jihad. There is no tolerance of infidels.

Now, we must decide if we value our own culture enough to defend it.

Rammstein Live

Live from Berlin, NOT for the faint hearted:

"Buck Dich" - Rammstein

Go the Tigers!

Nice Kitty!

A joke

A man scanned the guests at a party

and spotted an attractive woman standing alone.

He approached her and asked her name.

"My name is Carmen," she told him.

"That's a beautiful name," he said. "

Is it a family name?""No," she replied.

"I gave it to myself. It reflects the things I like most

----- cars and men."

"What's your name?" she asked."

Beertits," he said

I'm an American

What is an American?

You probably missed it in the rush of news last year, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is so they would know when they found one.

(Good one, mate!!!!)

An American is

English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.

An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is! that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed.

These in fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families.

It’s been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did.So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world.

But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

Dumbing Down

Schools teaching rubbish, says PM
20apr06

THE English syllabus taught in Australian schools is being dumbed down by "rubbish" post-modern texts, Prime Minister John Howard says.

Mr Howard said he questioned some of the decisions made by state education authorities about literacy promoted to students.

"I feel very, very strongly about the criticism that many people are making that we are dumbing down the English syllabus," Mr Howard said on ABC radio in Brisbane.

"I think there's evidence of that in different parts of the country ... when the, what I might call the traditional texts, are treated no differently from pop cultural commentary, as appears to be the case in some syllabus."

Mr Howard said authorities seemed too willing to succumb to political correctness at the expense of quality traditional literature.

"I share the views of many people about the so-called post modernism ... I just wish that independent education authority didn't succumb on occasions to the political correctness that it appears to succumb to," he said.

"We all understand that it's necessary to be able to be literate and coherent in the English language, we understand that it's necessary to be numerate and we also understand that there's high-quality literature and there's rubbish.

"We need a curriculum that encourages an understanding of the high-quality literature and not the rubbish."

MOONBAT TEST

Are your attitudes working against the freedom of the West?

21 WAYS TO BE A GOOD MOONBAT


1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand

2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.

3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.

4. You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.

5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical documented changes in the earth's climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV's.

6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.

7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.

8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th-graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.

9. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.

10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.

11. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make The Passion Of The Christ for financial gain only.

12. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.

13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

14. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Edison A.G. Bell.

15. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.

16. You have to believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and is a very nice person.

17. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.

18. You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and a sex offender belonged in the White House.

19. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and beastiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.

20. You have to believe that illegal Democratic Party funding by the Chinese Government is somehow in the best interest to the United States.

21. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing conspiracy.How did you fare on the above checklist? I didn't pass the test.

Bubble Nebula

Multicultural World War

Tuesday, April 18, 2006
The Fall of France and the Multicultural World War

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.

In my essay about the retreat of the Western world order, I mentioned the possibility of civil strife in the West caused by runaway immigration. This is no longer just a theoretical possibility. It is pretty clear to anybody following the developments in Europe that the situation in France is starting to become rather serious.

President Jacques Chirac threw out part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions. The unemployment rate for youths under 26 is a staggering 22 percent nationwide, but soars to nearly 50 percent in some of those troubled areas with many Muslim immigrants.

French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. Nidra Poller, American ex-pat writer and translator in Paris, has written some appalling stories about aggressive anti-Semitism, such as the murder and brutal torture of French Jew Ilan Halimi early in 2006.

Muslim blogs are calling for violence against the Jews, the whites and the well-to-do.

They say, “We must burn France, as Hamas will burn Israel.” The growth of the Islamic population is explosive. According to some, one out of three babies born in France is now a Muslim. Around 70% of French prisoners are Muslims.

Hundreds of Muslim ghettos are already de facto following sharia, not French law. Some have pointed out that the French military are not always squeamish, but there are estimates that 15% of the armed forces are already made up of Muslims, and rising. How effective can the army then be in upholding the French republic?

At the same time, opinion polls show that the French are now officially the most anti-capitalist nation on earth. France has chosen Socialism and Islam. It will get both, and sink into a quagmire of its own making. Some believe France will quietly become a Muslim country, others believe in civil war in the near future:

The French Disease

Within 20 years, one person out of four in France will be Muslim, and almost certainly poor and angry. So the French disease progresses. It is chronic becoming terminal. On the way toward collapse, there will be no civil war, just moments of harsh violence. The population will change. People with a high level of productivity will choose exile. People with a low level of productivity will immigrate. Jews and Christians will leave. Muslims will arrive.

The unreported race riot in France

Fredric Encel, Professor of international relations at the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration in Paris and a man not known for crying wolf, recently stated that France is becoming a new Lebanon. The implication, far-fetched though it may seem, was that civil upheaval might be no more than a few years off, sparked by growing ethnic and religious polarization.
I’m not sure which of these scenarios is scarier.

People keep talking about the nukes that the Iranians may get, but what about the hundreds of nuclear warheads the French have? Will they be used to intimidate the rest of the West? How do we handle an Islamic France, still the heartland of the European continent, with Muslim control of hundreds of nukes? And how do we handle a Bosnia or Lebanon with a population much larger than either of these countries, and with hundreds of nuclear warheads at stake?

If Muslim immigration continues, the impending fall of France could mark the starting point of the Balkanization of much of Europe, perhaps later even North America. I fear this is a world war. Maybe future historians will dub it the Multicultural World War. Just as WW1 was caused by Imperialism, WW2 by Fascism and the Cold War by Communism, this one will be caused by Multiculturalism.

The term “the Multicultural World War” has been coined by Fjordman. I find this to be more accurate than “The Islamic World War” because what will cause this world war is Western cultural weakness, through Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration, rather than Islamic strength. As poster DP111 says, this world war may very well be in the form of a global civil war, where you get a succession of civil wars instead of countries invading other countries.

Multiculturalism and uncontrolled mass-immigration destroy the internal cohesion of the decadent West, which will slowly fall apart as it has lost the will to defend itself and the belief in its own culture. The wars in the Balkans in the 1990s will in hindsight be seen as a prelude to the Multicultural World War.

Rather than a Westernization of the Balkans, we get a Balkanization of the West.I guess there is some poetic justice in the fact that the country that initiated and has led the creation of Eurabia now gets consumed by its own Frankenstein monster, but we should not gloat over this. The downfall of France is very bad news for the rest of the West.

Again, what happens to their nukes and military resources? As stated in the book “Eurabia” by Bat Ye’or, the merger of Europe and the Arab-Islamic world has been encouraged by the French political elite in particular at least since the early 1970s, with a vision of creating a united Europe and Mediterranean basin under French leadership, in what has basically been a French dream since the age of Napoleon, the great hero of current French PM de Villepin. Several prominent French leaders stated quite openly in 2005 that the proposed EU Constitution was basically an enlarged France. Justice Minister Dominique Perben said: “We have finally obtained this ‘Europe à la française’ that we have awaited for so long.

This constitutional treaty is an enlarged France. It is a Europe written in French.” Education Minister François Fillon stated: “This Constitution allows the French ambition to assert itself in the big Europe that General de Gaulle hoped and prayed for.” The French dream of an enlarged France. What they may get is a France carved into tiny pieces.

My personal belief is not that we are witnessing the final triumph of Eurabia, but rather the last spasms of the Eurabian Union. There will be at least as big changes in Western Europe over the coming generation as there were in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall. There will be the downfall and disintegration of an anti-democratic, bureaucratic superstate, the European Union instead of the Soviet Union, and there will be the downfall of “soft Socialism” in the shape of the Multicultural welfare state in the West just as you had the downfall of the “hard Socialism” in the East.

The difference is that the downfall of Communism in the East happened through a relatively bloodless “Velvet Revolution,” whereas the downfall of Multiculturalism in the West may turn out to be anything but bloodless. And it will come, sooner than many people think. Multiculturalism, cultural Marxism and the idea of forced cultural equality, will collapse just as Communism, the idea of economic Marxism and forced economic equality fell.

The difference is that when Communism was discredited in Eastern Europe, it was still Poles who lived in Polish cities, Bulgarians who lived in Bulgarian cities etc. When the veil of Multiculturalism disappears, it will be Pakistanis who live in London, Turks who live in Berlin, Algerians who live in Paris and Moroccans who live in Amsterdam.

And then the show begins.Europe may not be finished yet, but she will go through a painful period of transition even if we do get a rebirth here. It should be noted that a revolution doesn’t usually come when the oppression is at its worst, but when the grip of the authorities and their totalitarian ideology, in this case Multiculturalism and Political Correctness, seems to be slipping.

This was the case with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and it will be the case with the European Union now. I see increasing signs that the idea of Multiculturalism is on the retreat. Even Germany’s and Europe’s largest newspaper ran a series about the collapse of Multiculturalism recently.

I am not alone in predicting such a turbulent scenario. Prominent critic of Islam in Denmark, Lars Hedegaard, is quoted in Bruce Bawer’s book “While Europe Slept, How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within” in support of this dark view:

“If there’s any hope,” Hedegaard suggested dryly, borrowing a line he knew I’d recognize from 1984, “it lies in the proles.” Yet we both knew that the “proles” – if they did take over the reins from the elite – might well lead Europe back down the road to fascism. He did admit that he was glad to be living in Denmark and not elsewhere in Western Europe: “If there’s any place where there’s hope, it’s got to be this country.”

But Hedegaard didn’t hold out much hope even for Denmark. “Unless they build up a cadre of intellectuals in Europe who can think,” he said, America “can kiss Europe good-bye.” The Continent’s future, he predicted, “is going to be vastly different than we imagine.. It’s going to be war. Like Lebanon,” with some enclaves dominated by Christians and others by Muslims.

There will be “permanent strife,” and no one will have the “power to mollify or mediate… It will be more gruesome than we can imagine.” When the horror comes, he warned, the journalists who helped to bring it about will “wag their heads and flee – and leave it to those who can’t flee to fight it out.”

The population movements we are witnessing now are the largest and fastest in human history. In Europe, they can only be compared to the period often referred to as the Migration Period, following the disintegration of the Roman Empire. However, during the 4th and 5th centuries, the total human population of the world was in the order of 200 million.

Today, it is 30 times larger than that, and still growing fast. We also have communications that can transport people anywhere on earth within hours, and media that show ordinary people how much better life is in other countries. On top of that, the Romans didn’t have human rights lawyers advocating that millions of barbarians be let into their lands.

Is it a coincidence that the last time we had migrations like this was when large parts of the European continent suffered a complete civilizational breakdown? Is that what we are witnessing now?

The second fall of Rome?

Both Thailand and the Philippines, countries where the Muslim population is not much larger than it is in some Western European countries, are facing war. Countries such as France, Holland and Sweden could soon reach a point where the Muslim population will create something akin to civil war, as it already has in the above-mentioned nations.

The Islamic world is now at war with most of the major powers on the planet at the same time, from the USA to India and from Russia to Western Europe. It is a real possibility that we will get a full-blown world war because of these events. If so, I don’t think this will happen 50 years from now, but within the coming generation.

There are several possible scenarios:
1. Eurabia

The EU continues its transformation into a continent-wide organization with clear totalitarian leanings, and a very pro-Islamic stance. Europe’s fate is sealed when Turkey is allowed into the Union, and becomes its largest member. Historian Bat Ye’or, who first coined the term “Eurabia”, thinks that Europe’s ties with the Arab-Islamic world are now so firmly entrenched and established that Eurabia is an irreversible fact.

Europe will cease to be a Western, democratic continent, and will become an appendix to the Arab world. Eurabia will become a global center for Jihad activities, as the dhimmi taxpayers and infidel Western technology give a boost to the Ummah.

Muslims will be heavily concentrated in the major cities, and the dhimmi native population will retreat into the countryside. The old nation states will thus slowly die, as their major cities, which constitute the brain and “head” of its culture, are cut off from the rest of the body. Europe’s decline into Eurabia will be speeded up by the fact that millions of educated natives with the means to it will move to the USA or other nations.

There will be no major war in Western Europe, as its civilization is already dead and very few will bother fighting for it.The only violence will be sporadic Islamic terror attacks to induce fear, and occasional Muslim mob assaults in European streets to remind the dhimmis who is boss.

It is conceivable that the center of European civilization will move from Western Europe to Eastern Europe, but even Eastern Europe will be put under severe pressure from Muslims, both in the Middle East and in the West. The basic rule is that the areas Muslims have taken into possession remain in Islamic hands, while the native population and culture is slowly eradicated.

If this holds true for us today, then parts of Western Europe are already lost, and will indeed become Eurabia as Bat Ye’or predicts. There are not too many instances I know of where areas once under the sway of Islam have been reclaimed by infidels.

The most obvious is of course Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, where the Reconquista took quite a few centuries. I know the Sikhs have kicked Muslims out of Punjab, India. Parts of present-day Israel could be counted, although Arabs and Muslims are trying very hard to wipe Israel off the map.

And maybe some of China’s Western provinces could be included. Islam has not been eradicated there, but it is visibly retreating as Chinese authorities are suppressing any signs of rebellion.What these examples have in common is that both the Christians in Spain, the Sikhs in India and the Jews in Israel were fighting Islam with powerful religious convictions of their own.

The Chinese are not usually very religious, but they have an equally strong, even ruthless nationalism and belief in their own civilization. If history is any guide, today’s decadent, bored, post-religious and post-nationalist Europe will be no match for Islam, unless it rediscovers a belief in its own culture and a will to defend it.

This will have to happen soon, or the Islamic demographic conquest of much of the continent will be an irreversible fact, anyway. The result of this will then either be Eurabia or a Pakistanization of Europe, the way we have already seen for generations in the Balkans.

2. War

Personally, I think this alternative is at least as likely as the above “Eurabia” scenario. It also contains several sub-scenarios, partly depending upon when the eventual war starts, and partly on whether there is still some Western pride and resistance left in Europe underneath the self-loathing and Multiculturalism:The Pakistanization of Europe Muslims aren’t numerous enough to control the entire continent.

In the event of war, there will be mutual ethnic cleansing and Muslims will seize parts of Western Europe. For instance, a belt stretching from parts of Germany via Belgium and Holland to France, but maybe even regions within certain nation states.

All of Europe will not be lost, but some parts will, and many others will be deeply damaged by the fighting. Many of our cultural treasures will burn. How things will go from there is difficult to predict. Perhaps this new “Pakistan” in the heart of Europe will be the source of constant instability and the staging ground for Jihad incursions into infidel areas, just as Pakistan is to India now.

Perhaps we will see a slow reconquest of this area, possibly taking generations or even centuries. Muslim de facto control of hundreds of French nuclear warheads will make the situation a lot more dangerous.Of course, it could be more than one Muslim region.

Kosovo and in part Bosnia are functioning as Islamic bridgeheads in Europe at this moment. There could be several mini-Pakistans created all over the place. In fact present day Kosovo walks, talks and looks like a mini-Pakistan.

The “zones” in France sound suspiciously like Muslim “mohallas” in India although the situation is not as bad as in France.Reconquista - The Second Expulsion of the MoorsMuslims strike too early, before they are ready to seize control over major chunks of Europe.

They overestimate their own power, and underestimate the strength that is still left in Europe. It will start, as these things always do, before anyone is ready. Everyone, the Islamists, the proto-dhimmis, the neo-nationalists, the sleepwalking middle class, thinks they have more time than they do.

It may start more or less by accident, like WWI, through the act of a fringe player unaware of the forces involved or the stakes of the game. Once a full-blown civil war starts in one country, it can, and probably will, spread to other countries. Given the European Union’s borderless nature, it is unlikely that war will be limited to one nation only.

This will create a domino effect, and Muslims will be expelled from Europe yet again, after major bloodshed and millions of dead across the continent. This will result in the collapse of the EU. The Arab world will support the Muslims and will prolong the war, but they won’t win it.

Cultures collide: Muslim immigrants will be expelled from Europe unless they reverse the growing perception of them as a social threat

The Muslims refused to assimilate. They were expelled. This was the story in Europe 400 years ago. We are watching the sequel today. In the clash of cultures between secular Europeans and extremist Muslims, there can ultimately be no compatibility or compromise, only loss by one side or the other of the absolute values it holds dear.

European capitulation on European soil, where they remain the dominant majority, is unlikely.

Global Civil War Europe has been the primary staging ground for one cold and two hot world wars. It could become a major battlefield in an Islamic or Multicultural world war, too.

A world war is already simmering, with Muslims clashes against Russia, Europe, Israel, China, India, the USA and Southeast Asia. Once the fighting starts in Europe, it could spread outside the continent and ignite a world war. This is the scenario of “global civil war”.

3. Western Rebirth in Europe

We should discuss the possibility of whether the Islamic threat will force the West to rethink its values and regain its strength. Can this be done, and how would this take place? Is it possible to avoid both major war and Eurabia or is this wishful thinking by now?

The growth of Eurabia is closely tied to the growth of the EU. Perhaps we could derail Eurabia by dismantling the EU? This would require that Europe regain her old, cultural and religious dynamic and repel Islam. Just as Islam isn’t the cause of Europe’s current weakness, but rather a secondary infection, it could have the unforeseen and ironic effect of saving Europe from herself.

By quite literally putting a dagger at Europe’s throat, the Islamic world will force Europeans to renew themselves or die. Europe will go through a turbulent period of painful, but necessary revival, and will arrive chastened on the other side.