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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Naomi Klein, Howard Rotberg, and the fight for truth about Israel

I'm sorry I have been absent from IBA for a while as I devoted limited blogging time to trying to build up our little group in Vancouver dedicated to resisting the corrosion of our self-ruling nationhood. One visitor to our Covenant Zone has been the writer, Howard Rotberg, whom I want to tell you about and encourage to check out his book that has landed him in a Kafkaesque nightmare. I will be blogging more about the effectively banned in Canada book and the nightmare. But first, here is a post showing how our media is turning ever more delusional in its quest to appear "progressive", and presenting Howard's response to the invidious Naomi Klein....

Earlier this week, my colleague, Dag, quoted a Palestinian writer who is mightily disturbed that even those Jews who are, like him, politically to the left, may be under the impression that Jewish people have a right to exist as a somewhat compact national people in their own country, like say the Chinese, Pakistanis, or Saudis. In the writer's words:
Those on the "far left," who are [on] the brink of being classified as "self-hating Jews," including self-styled humanitarians such as Meretz MK Yossi Beilin, only serve to massage their own egos and consciences by portraying an image that they are fighting for peace. In reality, these people assign themselves to the same racist and exclusivist ideology that came into form long before the creation of the state of Israel.
Well, it might sound a bit deranged, but he's right, inasmuch as racially-bound and competing communities must have been around since the first human community split into two, some hundreds of thousands of years ago, and racial and/or cultural boundaries have always since remained a part of human life.

But the question he's really asking, while trying to appear authoratative, is this: is a utopian vision of "one-world" with no national or racial boundaries, just one big government, under the hand of, say, Islamic theocrats and/or the technocratic left, more likely to foster peace and harmony (and avoid bloody civil wars) than something like the current inter-national system where nations have a right and a responsibility to defend certain boundaries, including if they so choose (as most nations or states do), racial or religious ones?

The answer is apparent to us here at Covenant Zone, for a number of reasons we frequently discuss and won't recapitulate now. We believe that the blood on the hands of the utopian "one world" or "communist international" left reached around a 100 million in the last century alone (more or less, depending on the individual's brand of leftism - and let's not forget that Hitler was an incipiently post-national leftist), and shows no signs of stopping now with the growing alliance of the left and fundamentalist or Orthodox Islam, not to mention the left's sympathy for various third-world tyrants in the "post-colonial" era.

The horrors of the Western left in supporting angry anti-Western rhetoric, like that Dag uncovered, was again on display in the Georgia Straight last week. The Vancouver weekly reprinted an article by Naomi Klein that originally appeared in Britain's leading leftist paper, the Guardian. It is perhaps not surprising, if heart breaking, that faced with "avant-garde" Palestinian rhetoric in the arenas of "progressive" global opinion elites, rhetoric that now claims even leftist Jews are vile racists if they continue to show any support for Israel's existence as a particular nation (the only serious guarantor of the lives of half the world's Jews), we find leftist Jews, whose very lucrative careers are dependent on one-world leftist "cosmopolitanism", swinging against Israel, as Naomi Klein does.

Klein claims that Israel today has a booming economy because it can sell the world all kinds of security and military hardware and software that is tested on Palestinian "guinea pigs", leading to the implied conclusion that Israel doesn't want to stop its conflict with the Palestinians, which is of course nonsense. The vast majority of Israelis would love to live in peace, as a mostly (not exclusively) Jewish island in a reasonably friendly Arab sea. It's just that many no longer think it likely. The Palestinians, through rejecting peace accords, and enforcing orthodox Islamic opinion, have clearly revealed that they will only accept a peace in which Israel no longer exists in a land Islam claims as its own. Yet despite this, Klein paints the Jews of Israel as profiting mightily from bloodshed, instead of doing what every responsible state must do: provide its people with security, as much security as is necessary given the realistic threats against it and within it.

Klein writes:
All told in 2006, Israel exported $3.4 billion in defence products–well over $1 billion more than it received in U.S. military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.
As already noted, there is no secret why Israelis have had to become highly skilled in producing high quality military equipment: their much larger neighbours keep promising to wipe them off the map. Nonetheless, and even if Klein's figures are correct (and we doubt she would low-ball them), $3.4 billion in an economy whose 2006 GDP is estimated as $170.3 billion hardly justifies the portrayal of Israel as an economy built on war and blood, quite aside from the fact that spending on national security is uniquely associated with bloodshed only by nihilists who forget that any amount of peace and security must be defended, and who think that man's growing capacity to do evil must be equated with evil (as if, in a world with nuclear weapons and nuclear power, the outcome must be total devastation of the planet in nuclear war, not cheaper energy and all the social goods that go with it).

In fact, while Israel has the military or technological capacity to wipe out all the Palestinians, they do nothing of the sort. They are usually (with occasional modest and inevitable errors) the epitome of restraint when facing an enemy that vows to wipe one's people out and that increasingly allies with rogue states that will soon have the military technology to do so.

Klein concludes her outrageous diatribe thus:
Palestinians–whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan"–are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs.

So, in a way, [Tom] Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn't the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain, and target "suspects". And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.
There is, of course, no mention by Klein that much of what she says about Israel can be said about the Palestinians who massively prepare for war, though in somewhat less high-Tech forms, and who are thus rightly feared:
... Hamas was not using a random hit list. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs - a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member was to be beaten and released. Hamas patrols took the list with them to hospitals, where they searched for wounded Fatah officials, some of whom they beat up and some of whom they abducted.

Aside from assassinating Fatah officials, Hamas also killed innocent Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans from confronting the organization. Thus it was that 10 days ago, after an hours-long gun battle that ended with Hamas overpowering the Bakr clan from the Shati refugee camp - known as a large, well-armed and dangerous family that supports Fatah - the Hamas military wing removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood to send a message to all the armed clans of Gaza.
If Hamas will do that to fellow Palestinians, it's outrageous to claim that Israel shouldn't be afraid and that fair-minded people shouldn't see all the Israeli investment in security as an investment in saving lives. Of course, you might choose to disbelieve the above quote, because it appeared in a leftist Israeli paper, Haaretz, which buried the shocking details at the end of the story (hat tip: Boker tov, Boulder). However, you could find similar stories recently, though not given too much attention, in many news outlets. In any case, the stories of recent weeks are quickly downplayed by writers like Klein who belittle the coinage of "Hamasistan". Boker tov Boulder (Anne Lieberman), being in contrast a morally sound kind of Jew, writes:
Politically, I'm about as anti-Palestinian-Arabs as you can get, yet I am shocked and appalled at the deafening silence from the world - yet again - in the face of the rampage by Hamas in Gaza. I am shocked and appalled that in our time people are labeled with numbers and stars, and then abused and killed. That there is not worldwide condemnation is astounding.

Where are the pro-Palestinian activists now? Where are all those bleeding hearts who want Israel to see that the poor palestinians get a state, made up of Israeli concessions? It seems they have left it to us right-wing pro-Israel bloggers to raise a voice in defense of the Palestinian Arab population of Gaza. Ironic, isn't it? But I believe that no one anywhere should ever be treated like this. Not Jews, not Arabs, not any innocent population. Because it's wrong. Whatever the scale, wherever or whenever it happens. It was wrong when the Nazis did it and it's wrong now, when Hamas is doing it. And anyone who is silent in the face of this, is complicit.
Well, I don't expect Naomi Klein (a name presently receiving more than a million Google hits, btw) to be bad mouthing Hamas anytime soon. She seems to be preparing for the release of her new book - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which will no doubt prove as lucrative in the capitalist marketplace as her previous efforts - by allying herself, intellectually, with those forces that are creating disasters to which capitalism, and by extension its Kleins, must respond.

I remember a period of years when Klein's book No Logo was everywhere. You couldn't walk into a Chapters Bookstore here in Vancouver and not see stacks of them on the front tables. By way of contrast, consider the fate of a much better writer and a visitor to Covenant Zone (we hope to see more of him), whose book has been
effectively banned by Chapters-Indigo (read chapters 2 and 12 of Howard Rotberg's new online book to learn why), a book retailing giant that the Canadian left denounce for its owners' supposed pro-Israel stance, a business which controls something like seventy percent of the Canadian retail book market and which can thus go far in rewarding or silencing Canadian authors.

It is not a question of quality. I have just read Howard Rotberg's first, effectively banned in Canada, book (a novel which, by telling the story of a non-fiction author and his book, provides an excellent account of Israeli-Arab history and its misrepresentations by the Judeophobic opinion of the Western media and political elites who seem hell-bent on preparing the ground for the destruction of Israel in "the Second Holocaust") and highly recommend it. It is not high-brow literary experimentation; it is an accessible and excellent primer for anyone wanting to get their heads straight on why and how the state of Israel must be defended, packaged as an entertaining novel.

When Howard saw Naomi Klein's outrageous article in the Georgia Straight, Vancouver's long-established entertainment and news weekly that mixes leftist opinion (including somewhat pro-Hamas, i.e. somewhat pro-terrorist, articles) with pages mostly devoted to big colourful expensive ads for the latest products of consumer capitalism, he wrote an excellent reply. The Straight published a slightly abridged version of Howard's letter. One thing their editor didn't like was the explicit labelling of Klein as a Jewish anti-Semite. It is perhaps unfortunate that Judeophobia - i.e. resentment of the Jews for being too successful, or creative, and too resistant to competitive attack on such; for being first in discovering/receiving monotheism and all that has gone with that much-envied mark of firstness - is, in today's commonly accepted usage, still labeled "anti-Semitism" (a term which properly applies to a form of nineteenth-century European "scientific" racism and, as such, something Klein might reasonably deny).

But there can be little informed doubt that in this article Klein positions herself in a way that is inimicable to the security of millions of Jews who face a real existential threat against which they must responsibly defend. There is no doubt that Klein's case against Israel is that it is too successful in the inter-national marketplace, because it is too strong in defending itself. In other words, she ascribes to Israel the qualities the "anti-Semite" or Judeophobe (who generally wants the Jews to convert to his faith, or to disappear) traditionally ascribes to the Jew. It takes rhetorical humbug, and ignorance, to deny, as many do, that this kind of anti-Zionism is not also a form of antisemitism or Judeophobia.

So, with Howard's permission, I am pleased to provide the full text of his letter to the editor of the Georgia Straight:
So, Naomi Klein has come up with the original theory that Israel profits mightily from its situation of being surrounded by Arabs who want to destroy it. ("Israel thrives, Gaza suffers", June 21st regarding Israeli exports of anti-terrorism equipment and expertise)

No mention that Israel turned over Gaza to the Palestinians without any quid pro quo.

No mention that Israel is a leader in all aspects of high tech, with such inventions as the computer chip and cell phone technology, and a multitude of medical technology, having been pioneered in Israel. No mention that many large companies like Intel, Motorola, IBM, Microsoft, Alcatel and 3Com all have research and development facilities in Israel. Intel and Motorola also manufacture advanced products in Israel, and many other multinationals have purchased local companies, buying their patents and acquiring their human talent.

No mention that twenty percent of the country's workforce are university graduates, the highest proportion in the world after the U.S., compared with 17% in Canada, 12% in Britain and 8% in Italy. Israel has the world's highest percentage of engineers (135 per 10,000 people compared to 85 per 10,000 in the U.S.) and, with 28,000 physicians, by far the highest number of medical doctors per capita in the world. In addition, Israeli academics publish more scientific papers in international journals (110 for every 10,000 persons) than any other country in the world.

But Klein alleges that "the chaos in Gaza …doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv and may actually boost it." No mention of the dislocations to the Israeli economy of having to defend itself from periodic attacks, having to take reservists away from their occupations, having to periodically evacuate certain cities, as Iranian-backed terrorists lob missiles across the border. No mention of the threats from possible Iran nuclear weapons.

Why doesn't she mention any of this: Because to anti-Semites like Klein (even Jewish ones), the Israelis are the new Shylocks – driven like Shylock into a business Klein disapproves of, the Jew-Israelis are now making "profits" from the suffering (even the blood) of others. Thank you, Ms. Klein for yet another adaption of the anti-Semitic blood-libel, that Jews drink the blood of Christians/Muslims/whoever.

The "constant state of fear" which Klein alleges the Israelis to be profiting from, was the result of the actions of Islamists and their supporters in anti-Israel Europe. Israel has tried in various ways (the Oslo Process, unilateral disengagement from Gaza) to facilitate an independent Palestinian state, which is lot more than the Arabs ever did. Blaming the Jewish victims of terror for Shylock-like behaviour is despicable.

Klein's article first appeared in Britain's The Guardian. Britain is the world leader in appeasement of Islamist terrorism and intimidation. There is no need, however, for the Georgia Straight to be printing this kind of stuff in Canada. It sickens me.


Howard Rotberg

Islamofascists Prove, Once Again, How Out Of Touch They Are


Alright, so everyone knows, there was yet another Islamofascist attack on Western Civilization today.

Everyone is reporting on it, so I will just link.

But, I want to point out something that I never see anyone comment on.

And, I really don't want to give any asshole Jihadis any ideas, but let's be frank;

They attack airports and jetliners and subways and tall buildings because to their idiotic Islamofascist brains, those things are the height of Western Civilization.

Like I said, I don't want to give them any ideas, but if I were a fucking Jihadi, I would target Western Civilization where it would really hurt.

As much as the World Trade Center buildings did stand as a symbol of the dominance of Western Culture, they are nothing compared to the spread out industrial-complex style buildings which house Intel, and Microsoft, and Biogen.
But, the stupid Islamofascists probably don't even know what Biogen is.
I mean, in a way, it's so funny, I can't stop laughing.

If you really wanted to hurt us, you stupid motherfucking Jihadis (how does your mother feel, by the way?), you would hit us where it really hurt, at the mouth of innovation.

But, you are too stupid.

You, like monkeys impressed with baubles and shiny objects, are fascinated with airplanes, because you can't figure out how they work.

Oh sure, some of your people can learn how to fly them, and serve cocktails on them, and load luggage onto them, but you have no idea how to build them.

We, here in Western Civilization, have moved on to bigger and better things. Airplanes are only a means to an end for us. They get us from point A to point B. That is important because we need to travel in order to innovate and change the world for the better, as we have been doing, consistently now, for over 500 years.

You stupid motherfucking Islamofascists have no idea who, or what, you are dealing with!

Perhaps the funniest thing about this post is that very few Islamofascists would even understand what the accompanying graphic is.

You are like children trying to play house while the adults are actually doing all the work.

Grow up!


Burning Car Driven into Glasgow Airport by Two Men of "Asian Origin"


A car on fire has been driven at the main terminal building at Glasgow Airport, police have confirmed.

Eyewitnesses have described a Jeep Cherokee being driven at speed towards the building with flames coming out from underneath.

They have also described seeing two Asian men, one of whom was on fire, who had been in the car.
BBC News

I've Given Up On GWB

Dated February 27, 2006, and signed by Special Assistant to the Preseident and Director of Presidential Correspondence (my comments in red brackets):

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence. The President appreciates your taking the time to write. [As I recall, I sent to the White House some passages from the Koran and the Hadith to point out that Islam is not a religion of peace. I also explained the concept of abrogation of verses]...

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

Don't you know, it's a BUMPER STICKER..no it's not London either

See if you can figure this one out, this is like a story about Burma in WW2....

GERTZ: Al Qaida tunnels ferried insurgents to, from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon

NICOSIA — The Lebanese army reports that Al Qaida has constructed tunnels in Palestinian refugee camps to prepare for the current insurrection. Officials said the Al Qaida-aligned Fatah Al Islam has prepared tunnels, bunkers and mine fields throughout the Naher Al Bared camp in northern Lebanon for the offensive against the Beirut government. They said the tunnels are used to facilitate the flow of insurgents to and from refugee camps. The army has been searching for the tunnels during the 35-day Al Qaida insurrection. So far, more than 175 people, about half of them soldiers, have been killed in the battle for Naher Al Bared, the bloodiest campaign since the 1975-90 civil war.


So, we know that Hizballah (shia freaks, aligned with salalfi freaks of the Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS) want to kill the govt . Now we see that Al Qaeda (philosophical son of the Muslim Brotherhood, aligned with semi-ostensibly secular FATAH because HAMAS took $ from Shia) wants to kill the Lebanese govt as well. One would think that that puts the Lebanese govt on our iside and a friend to Israel, NO WAY. However since their priority is the well being of their citizens in this world, and not killing jews and satan's whelps (us), they are all a bunch of jew collaborators and Las Vegas bound scotch drinking fornicators. That's the only way I can see it.

Continue reading "Don't you know, it's a BUMPER STICKER..no it's not London either" »

I Got The Interview!

On Friday, June 29, 2007, I attended a lecture given by Dr. Tawfik Hamid at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The lecture was entitled "Radicalization of Young Muslims." Following the lecture, I got up my nerve and asked Dr. Hamid if he would be willing to be interviewed on The Gathering Storm Radio Show. He graciously agreed! The interview is HERE.

I also managed to get another interview for that same broadcast: Clare M. Lopez (Bio here) of The Intelligence Summit. Recently, Ms. Lopez, along with Ambassador Richard Carlson and Colonel Bill Cowan, taped a radio segment called "Danger Zone" for Washington, D.C.'s WMAL (630 AM). The show will air on Sunday, July 1, 2007, and should be available on line after it airs.

I will be posting a review of Dr. Hamid's lecture in a few days. His strategy to curb the violent practice of Islam centers around using a concept called "the relativity of Koranic verses."

Achtung Infidels!

This site has been going on and off now for two years and we do not have any formal rules or manifesto. Myself and Pastorius have been in discussion have decided it's about time.

I feel uncomfortable at some of the comments left here and feel that I am fighting a battle with those who should be fighting for other things.

Here's my draft Infidel Manifesto. Haven't come up with the rules yet - if there are to be any 'rules'.

Feel free to deride or complement, append or subtract as appropriate. All input is welcome!

1. We support Muslims who are in a process of awakening and enlightenment to modern day civilisation.

2. We oppose attempts to treat Muslims as one bloc of peoples, the greatest opponents of Islam have been those who have grown up as Muslim, such as the courageous soul Sir Salmon Rushdie.

3. We take pride in our culture and defend it's values, to not to do so would be to communicate weakness and to go down a very slippery road to self-abasement and appeasement.

4. We act wherever possible with pride, courage, intelligence, and of course humour, for these are the values that will ultimately win over souls.

5. We attempt to understand the nature of the battle of the Islamists so that we are always ahead of the game. Make no mistake, we will not sit idly by.

6. We support the modernisation of the middle east through economic reform, and following poltical and social reform. This can be achieved through removing the element of dependancy on oil.

7. We support the victims of Islamic rule and those who are subjugated in it's name.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Only in Britain: Car bomb illegally parked, given a ticket and towed away

The second device was found in a blue 280E model Mercedes. It was given a parking ticket at 0230 BST on Friday after being found illegally parked in Cockspur Street.

The vehicle was then towed to the Park Lane car pound about an hour later.

British authorities, ever vigilant for parking violations!!!

They towed a fucking car bomb. You couldn't make it up.

from BBC main article

Not only that, it was a gay transgendered Israeli official married to a dolphin, working part time in Las Vegas as a stripper

Hamas TV Kills Off Mickey Mouse Double
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - A Mickey Mouse lookalike who preached Islamic domination on a Hamas- affiliated children's television program was beaten to death in the show's final episode Friday.

In the final skit, "Farfour" was killed by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour's land. At one point, the mouse called the Israeli a "terrorist."

"Farfour was martyred while defending his land," said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed "by the killers of children," she added.

The weekly show, featuring a giant black-and-white rodent with a high- pitched voice, had attracted worldwide attention because the character urged Palestinian children to fight Israel. It was broadcast on Hamas- affiliated Al Aqsa TV.

Station officials said Friday that Farfour was taken off the air to make room for new programs. Station manager Mohammed Bilal said he did not know what would be shown instead.

Israeli officials have denounced the program, "Tomorrow's Pioneers," as incendiary and outrageous. The program was also opposed by the state-run Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., which is controlled by Fatah, Hamas' rival.

FATAH opposing this is pretty funny. They're just so moderate these days, you know ?

First the american envoy to the 'jews rule the world by proxy' racists of the OIC, and now..

U.S. approves contacts with Muslim Brotherhood: 'Region is going Islam'

WASHINGTON World Tribune — The Bush administration has been quietly engaging the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Officials said the State Department has approved a policy that would enable U.S. diplomats to meet and coordinate with Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other Arab states. They said the program would first be restricted to elected officials from the Brotherhood and eventually be extended to their political chiefs.

"The region is going Islam," an official said. "We see this in nearly every country in the Middle East. We either understand it and engage with it or find ourselves completely out of the picture."

MORONS, we live in Dar al Harb, and according to the MB, we make up laws out of our own heads instead of following god's ..WE ARE OUT OF THE PICTURE. We are the ESSENCE of what they want to rid the world of. The rest is salad dressing. Why is this difficult to comprehend?

The Brotherhood has been regarded as the inspiration for Muslim movements throughout the Arab world. The organization, founded in Egypt, spread through Saudi financing and has served as the inspiration for Al Qaida.

Many Arab countries have banned the Brotherhood. But in Egypt, a party composed of Brotherhood members has won 20 percent of the seats in the National Assembly and plays a major role in domestic policy.

In 2007, officials said, the State Department was quietly fostering ties with the Brotherhood. U.S. embassy staffers in Cairo have attended sessions led by parliamentarians from the Brotherhood and invited the Islamists to official receptions.

Continue reading "First the american envoy to the 'jews rule the world by proxy' racists of the OIC, and now.." »

Not only that, Kamarade Doktor Feodor Kondrakov actually invented continental shelves

Putin's Arctic invasion: Russia lays claim to the North Pole - and all its gas, oil, and diamonds

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic - so he can tap its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth.

His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia's continental shelf.

One newspaper printed a map of the "new addition", a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Putin Remakes Russia
 As Energy Superpower

Russia: Moscow Intensifies Its Energy Diplomacy

Well, this beat just goes on and on.

Diplomatic pressure, and economic blackmail in the Ukraine, the Central Asian States, new pipelines threatened or withdrawn ... collusion with Iran, threats over natural gas to europe, threats over missile defense, a threatened new cold war.

A new mobile land launched ICBM, this week a new SEA LAUNCHED SLBM and a new sub to launch it.

Sales of advanced fighters, subs and attack helicopters in this hemisphere to unfriendly powers.

Continue reading "Not only that, Kamarade Doktor Feodor Kondrakov actually invented continental shelves" »

Demonstration in Madrid in support of Israel

On Wednesday there was a demonstration in Madrid in support of Israel and to denounce the Iranian menace against Israelis. Photos here.

"Massive" Car Bomb found in Central London

A "massive" explosive device found in a car in central London has been defused, Sky sources say.

It is believed that a major terrorist attack in the heart of the capital has been thwarted.

Sky News

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Infidel Bloggers Alliance Radio Show






Look, my friends, the time to fight is coming closer and closer. Our enemy is wrapping his hands around our throats. What are we gonna do, just lay back and let them choke the life out of us?

Fuck that!

I, for one, reject the idea of handing over the keys to Western Civilization to a bunch of motherfucking barbarous savages.

If our governments won't do the work of defending us against the encroachment of Islamofascism, then we will have to pick up our torches and pitchforks and do it ourselves.



On the newest IBA Radio Show, we interviewed Aeneas, from the Center for Vigilant Freedom - UK (CVF-UK).


The CVF is, in my opinion, the European equivalent of the American Sons of Liberty who instigated the American Revolutionary War.


All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth are born endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights; we own our lives as our own property, and we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.



If the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then regime will become necessary.



The first step towards regime change is assembling the government which will take over from the failed regime.



If I were a member of the established Tory and Labor parties in Britain, I think I'd be picking my forehhead up off the bar for a few seconds and taking note.


You motherfuckers are going down.

Why Islamic terrorists are above criticism

News about Islamic terrorism is impossible to avoid these days, even in the sanitised Malaysian media. Unfortunately, it's highly unusual for Muslims in Malaysia to ever criticise their co-religionists, no matter how outrageous their actions are. Muslim terrorists regularly murder women, children, civilians, and non-combatants alike. They execute captured prisoners after the most vicious torture. Terrorists acting in the name of Islam also blow up mosques, murder imams, and even violate oaths taken on the Quran, such as when the Taliban captured the Afghan village of Qala Mussa earlier this year, after having sworn on the Quran to engage in negotiations with the local elders. And yet, there is rarely a hint of outrage in the Muslim world. Malaysia is no exception to this pattern.

Read the rest at Pedestrian Infidel or Malaysia Today.

Distaste for American-style democracy ?

Global poll shows wide distrust of United States

Wednesday, June 27, 2007, IHT

PARIS: Distrust of the United States has intensified across the world, but overall views of America remain very or somewhat favorable among majorities in 25 of 47 countries surveyed in a major international opinion poll, the Pew Research Center reported Wednesday.

"Anti-Americanism since 2002 has deepened, but it hasn't really widened," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. "It has worsened among America's European allies and is very, very bad in the Muslim world. But there is still a favorable view of the United States in many African countries, as well as in 'New Europe' and the Far East."

Nonetheless, majorities in many countries reject the main planks of current U.S. foreign policy and express distaste for American-style democracy, the survey found.

Respondents worldwide not only want Washington to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq "as soon as possible," but also seek a rapid end to the American and NATO military intervention in Afghanistan, now in its sixth year.

We are beset by FOOLS AND MORONS, and media which publicizes TRASH. This is an Ellsworth Toohey prize winner !

"Most of the citizens in the global survey agree the environment is in trouble and most blame the United States and, to a much more limited degree, China," Pew said.

Unfortunately, science does not grant to the perception of the masses the mantle of scientific fact, YET. But this whole thing gets better...

Continue reading "Distaste for American-style democracy ?" »

Everyman/Person: I will go the extra mile with thee like.

HERE BEGINETH A TREATISE HOW THE HIGH FATHER OF HEAVEN SENDETH DEATH TO SUMMON EVERY CREATURE TO COME AND GIVE ACCOUNT OF THEIR LIVES IN THIS WORLD AND IS IN MANNER OF A MORAL PLAY.

Messenger: I pray you all give your audience,

And hear this matter with reverence,

By figure a moral play-

The Summoning of Everyman called it is,

That of our lives and ending shows

How transitory we be all day.

This matter is wonderous precious,

But the intent of it is more gracious,

And sweet to bear away.

The story saith,-Man, in the beginning,

Look well, and take good heed to the ending,

Be you never so gay!

Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet,

Which in the end causeth thy soul to weep,

When the body lieth in clay.

Here shall you see how Fellowship and Jollity,

Both Strength, Pleasure, and Beauty,

Will fade from thee as flower in May.

For ye shall here, how our heavenly king

Calleth Everyman to a general reckoning:

Give audience, and here what he doth say.

Everyman is late-15th-century English morality play. Called by Death, Everyman can persuade none of his friends - Beauty, Kindred, Worldly Goods - to go with him, except Good Deeds.
Characters:


Everyman-------------------------Strength
God: Adonai---------------------Discretion
Death-------------------------------Five-Wits
Messenger-----------------------Beauty
Fellowship------------------------Knowledge
Cousin-----------------------------Confession
Kindred----------------------------Angel
Goods------------------------------Doctor
Good-Deeds---------------------Barak Obama
Fool---------------------------------Bill Moyers
Virgin Weeping-----------------
Marian Wright Edelman
Hypocritical Friar--------------- John Thomas
Morality Play Mummer-------Lynne Redgrave
Knight Errant--------------------
John Thomas
Goliard Abbott------------------- Kevin Phillips
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/everyman.html
****


[The Players assemble upon the stage. Let slip the tongues of Scorn:]

Barak Obama: "Our Morality Play begins with a dramatic monologue [truncated] by Dag:

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright and one that feared God and eschewed evil...."

More at
http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/ .

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The attrition of our enemies

Reasons to reexamine the Middle East’s negative prognosis.
By Victor Davis Hanson
The majority opinion is that the occupation in Iraq has been so bungled that the blowback has ruined American efforts at promoting positive change throughout the Middle East.
Perhaps. But for all the justifiable criticism of the Iraqi reconstruction, two truths still remain — the United States is taking an enormous toll on jihadists, and despite the terrible cost in blood and treasure, has not given up on a constitutional government in Iraq. The Sunni front-line states, who subsidized jihadists and still enjoy our misery in Iraq , , but they are now terrified that these killers, in league with the Iranians, will turn on them. The net result is not just that some Sunnis are helping us in Iraq, but that they are being urged to for the first time by those in the Arab world, who would prefer to see the Iraqi government, rather than the terrorists, succeed. And if Iraq is still a terrible disappointment, Kurdistan is emerging as a success few envisioned, refuting some conventional wisdom about the incompatibility of capitalism and constitutional government with Middle Eastern Islam.Theocratic Iran is not exactly as “empowered” as is generally alleged, but in the greatest crisis of its miserable existence. As the mullahs up the ante in the region, they could very soon not only lose Iraq, but also their own dictatorship. Trying to oppose the West in Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank is taking an enormous financial toll, as is the general isolation from the world community.With oil prices at an all-time high, Iran can't provide gasoline for its own people, who resent the billions spent instead on Arab terrorists abroad. If oil were to dip from near $70 to $50-55 a barrel, the regime would face abject bankruptcy. For all the criticism of the U.S. position, from the left and right, we have now found the right blend of military determination not to let Teheran go nuclear, combined with economic and political efforts at containment. There is an array of future options — stronger embargoes, blockades, and military strikes on infrastructure — still on the table. The social unrest the mullahs desire in Iraq is starting to spill over the border into their own Iran, and its magnitude and final course are still unpredictable.Syria for all its terror still can't overthrow the government in Lebanon, but has managed the impossible: Not only does the Arab world seek to isolate it, but France and the United States are cooperating to thwart it in Lebanon. The last thing we want to do is to give its terror industry the legitimacy it craves by sending any more officials over to Damascus.Hamas is high on victory in Gaza for now, but all it has accomplished is to further concentrate its nexus of terror into one small miserable — and quite vulnerable — locale in the midst of Jordan, Israel, and Egypt, while sacrificing the Palestinians greatest advantage: deniability of culpability. It will be harder now for the tired good cop/bad cop excuses, “militant wing,” etc. and all the other justifications for terror that the Palestinians use. Since Hamas bragged that it had routed (it matters less whether true or false) the Palestinian Authority from Gaza, the next barrage of rocket attacks from there, rightly or wrongly, will liberate Israel in its response from the past worries of collateral damage. For all the talk of losing the Lebanon War, it is Iran and Syria, not Israel, that are stuck with billions in reconstruction costs for their battered Shiite pawns on the front lines.After four years of war and acrimony, things are starting to reach a point of resolution. Both the resources of the United States and its enemies are becoming strained, but so far they are rioting in oil-exporting Iran over gasoline, not we in the U.S. Europe has gravitated more in the last four years to our views than we to theirs, especially in regard to the dangers of radical Islam. Israel lost some of its precious capital of deterrence in the last war, but ultimately the real loser was a bankrupt Iran who lost far more materially than did a far wealthier Israel. Iran unleashed terror in the region, but found its own terrorist credentials no exemption from what it wrought.Because violence per se is the only narrative from the Middle East, and often editorialized as deriving from U.S. blunders, we are in a state of constant depression. But things are not as bad as they seem, and could still turn out far better than anyone might imagine — if we give the gifted Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker the support and time they need to make the necessary military and diplomatic changes.

And it will be Bolton or Lieberman

As if .... President Bush Rededicates Islamic Center of Washington

To underscore America’s respect for the Muslim faith here at home, I came to this Center six days after the 9/11 attacks to denounce incidents of prejudice against Muslim Americans. (Applause.) Today I am announcing a new initiative that will improve mutual understanding and cooperation between America and people in predominately Muslim countries.

I will appoint a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. This is the first time a President has made such an appointment to the OIC. (Applause.) Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states and will share with them America’s views and values. This is an opportunity for Americans to demonstrate to Muslim communities our interest in respectful dialogue and continued friendship.

Who is this person? Who is educating him? What FOOLISH FOOLISH person thinks for an instant this will help anything ?

And when they give a standing ovation when some racist moron says the jews make other pay in blood for their secret ruling ways, will this ENVOY rail at them, denounce them, renounce them, and condemn the proceedings, the organization and the foundations of such racist tripe and hate, and incitement to violence murder and genocide?

Because Mr. Bush, if not, then it might as well be Carl Levin running the show, or Chucky S.

Iran: Kill The Fags!


The Left masquerades as the advocate of human rights, and yet they have nothing to say about the Islamic world (and, in particular, Iran), where gay people, alcohol drinkers, and adulterers are subject to the death penalty:

Iran Cited Over Execution of Minors
71 Child Offenders Are on Death Row, According to Rights Group

In a troubling report on the execution of minors in Iran, Amnesty International said yesterday that at least 71 child offenders are on death row and more than 24 have been executed since 1990, more than in any other country.

WaPo uses the word "troubling" - exectuing children is "troubling."

Defendants younger than 18 are being hanged after swift decisions and hurried procedures, said the report, "Iran: The Last Executioner of Children." Of the 24 child offenders reported executed, 11 were still younger than 18 at the time of their deaths.

The 41-page report lists names and details of each known case but says the actual number of executions was higher because many death penalty cases in Iran go unreported. In the last three years, only three other countries used the death penalty against minors: China executed one child offender in 2004, Sudan executed two in 2005 and Pakistan executed one in 2006.

All members in good standing at the UN.

Under Iranian law, capital offenses include adultery by married people, incest, rape, four convictions of an unmarried person for fornication, three convictions for drinking alcohol, or four convictions for homosexual acts among men.

The most prominent capital case is that of Atefeh Rajabi , who was hanged on Aug. 15, 2004, in the town of Neka, in northern Mazandaran province. She was 16 and had been sentenced to death for a fourth conviction of crimes against chastity. Her crimes included being alone in a car with a boy and being caught at a cafe without a chaperon. Officials claimed she was 22, but her birth certificate listed 1988 as her year of birth. She was arrested repeatedly as a child by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the first time when she was 13.

Amnesty calls on Iran to stop child executions AFP
LONDON (AFP) - Amnesty International appealed for Iran to stop executing children and those who committed their crimes before they turned 18, in a report published Wednesday.

The London-based human rights group said that 71 children, indicted for a variety of offences, were awaiting the death penalty in Iran, and added that Iran had executed the most minors of any country in the world since 1990.

In that time 11 children were executed while they were still legally minors, and a further 13 were killed after remaining on death row until they had reached their 18th birthday before being hanged, Amnesty said.

"Iran stands virtually alone as a country in which child offenders -- persons under 18 at the time of the crime of which they were convicted -- are put to death," Malcolm Smart, the director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme, said in a statement.

Speaking of passing the world's stupidest Immigration reform bill

STRATFOR : About

400,000

Mexican police officers are under investigation by the Attorney General's Office for corruption and suspected links to organized crime, La Jornada reported June 26, citing government sources.

Most of the officers are from Nuevo Leon, Sonora, Baja California, Guerrero, Michoacan and Mexico City

Euros Pitch In In The Fight Against Jihadi Terrorism

And, this help is originating in Belgium. I believe this proves that the Euros are feeling the heat of Islamofascism more than we are here in the U.S., where we actually have a "viable" Presidential candidate (John Edwards) who completely denies that there is a War on Terror.


The European Union has approved a deal allowing the Swift international bank transfer network to show US investigators details of transactions.

European and Belgian watchdogs say Brussels-based Swift has been violating privacy rules since it started sharing the data after the 9/11 attacks.

The new deal says the US can only use the data to fight terrorism, and can only hold it for five years.

A senior European official will also monitor how the data is used.

The deal is expected to be rubber-stamped by ministers on Thursday, after agreement among ambassadors.

The US says it needs the information, such as customer names, account numbers and amounts transferred, to crack down on funding for to terrorist cells.

EU and US officials are also holding talks on the terms of a new deal to transfer private data on air passengers to US authorities.

Iran and Syria behind attack on UN Spanish peacekeepers?

That's what some experts belief. Fatah al Islam has important links with Syria and the place where the patrol was attacked is traditionally a Hizbullah's one.

The Iranian Ambassador menaced Spain with a new virus after FM Moratinos protested about the words PM Ahmadinehad had done lately about "destroying Israel", once more, and he was called to give an explanation about them.

Zapatero was heavily critisized in the funerals.

We will see what he says today at the Parliament where he is going to be asked about it.

Read the rest here.

Holy Shia! Bush Goes Over to Darkside


Stolen from Pamela at Atlas Shrugs:

Is Bush nuts? Charles at LGF has a devastating item about incredibly stupid and deluded move by President. WTF is this man doing? What could he be thinking?

On September 17, 2001, six days after the worst Islamic terror attacks ever on US soil, President Bush stood next to CAIR's Nihad Awad at the Islamic Center of Washington DC, and pronounced ';Islam is Peace'.

Bush to Speak at Islamic Center of Washington DC

It was hopelessly naive back in September 2001, but knowing what we know now, it is unforgivable.

Nihad Awad is second from the right. Here's an excerpt from the President's speech:
The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war. ...

Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That's not the America I know. That's not the America I value.

I've been told that some fear to leave; some don't want to go shopping for their families; some don't want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they're afraid they'll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.

Tomorrow President Bush is returning to the Saudi-funded Islamic Center, to address its rededication ceremony—and further legitimize radical Islamic groups masquerading as "moderates," without once asking them to renounce their openly-expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah.

The Islamic Center Washington, D.C. holds its rededication ceremony with remarks by President George W. Bush.

The Washington Daybook June 27, 2007 Copyright 2007 Federal Information and News Dispatch, Inc. The Washington Daybook June 27, 2007

ORGANIZATION: The Islamic Center Washington, D.C. holds its rededication ceremony with remarks by President George W. Bush.

Charles has the rest here. We are doomed. Doomed I tell ya.

Fitzgerald: What the presidential candidates should do

Fred Thompson has denounced CAIR. Good. Now Thompson has to inject into the public discourse the word "Jizyah" -- he, or Tancredo, or others. That word, and what it means, has to be introduced into the national consciousness. Merely using it in a speech, or in speech after speech, and explaining its meaning, will do much to rectify the complete failure of the Bush Administration -- from which all Republican candidates, to be successful, should be distancing themselves as noisily and publicly as possible -- to educate, to instruct, the public about Islam.
Instead, Administration officials continue nattering on about how splendid Islam itself is. Only a "handful," they say -- oh, they're a handful all right – of the "radical wing of the Islamist wing of the extremist wing" (fill up the page, printer, with more of the same) have "hijacked a great religion." That is why we are apparently, as long as Bush and Rice and others are in power, condemned to being instructed that we are fighting a "war on terror." Read the
rest here.
Atlas reader Carl points out;

It isn't just Fatah and Hamas that teach that death is preferable to life. Read the Koran, it makes it very clear repeatedly that death is preferred to life. It says that the things of this world, including their families are a temptation to keep them from an honorable death killing non-Muslims.

Sura 8:28 "Believers, do not betray Allah and the Apostle, nor knowingly betray your trust. Know that your worldly goods and your children are but a temptation, and that Allah's recompense is great."

Sura 11:15 "Those that desire the life of this world with all its finery shall be rewarded for their deeds in their own lifetime: they shall not be given less. They are those who in the world to come shall have earned nothing but the fire. Fruitless are their deeds, and vain are all their works."

Sura 29:64 "The life of this world is but a sport and a diversion. It is the life to come that is the true life"

Sura 64:14 "Believers, you have an enemy in your spouses and in your children: beware of them. But if you overlook their offences and forgive and pardon them, then know that Allah is forgiving and merciful. Your wealth and your children are but a temptation. Allah's recompense is great."

The Koran makes it very clear that Islam is nothing more than a ruthless warrior cult that worships death and despises life. Allah was the war god of Sabanism (the Meccans) which is why the Muslims chant that "Allah is the god of the sword!" when they succeed in killing a non-Muslim. War gods hate peace, hate love, hate kindness and caring, hate treaties, and love killing, war, murder, slaughter, and butchering. The Koran makes it very clear that Islam is a ruthless warrior cult worshiping death and hating life.

IRAN: "RUSHDIE DEATH THREATS MUST BE CARRIED OUT"

Repeat verse, same as the first:the left's mantra: MAKE LOVE TO SAVAGES NOT WAR.

Ahmad Khatami: "Unfortunately, whenever negotiations begin, America's psychological warfare begins as well. Bush recently said, in one of his stupid and foolish statements[Ahmad is channeling the American leftard narrative- Atlas] : 'We are considering all options vis-a-vis Iran.' Thus, he hinted that a military option was possible. He should know that the Iranian people is also considering all options vis-a-vis America, including a strong punch in America's teeth."

I love how the mad mullahs evoke the mantle of human rights (!) - I thought those antiquated ideas of humanity, kindness, empathy were all but banned from the super advanced Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ahmad Khatami From the Iranian Assembly of Experts in a Tehran Friday Sermon: Fatwa Against Rushdie Must Be Carried Out, Fatah Staged a Coup d'Etat Against Hamas MEMRI TV
The following are excerpts from a Friday sermon by Ahmad Khatami of the Iranian Assembly of Experts, which aired on Channel 1, Iranian TV on June 22, 2007.
TO VIEW THIS VIDEO CLIP, GO HERE TO MEMRI

"The old, decrepit, and colonialist English regime presents itself as the defender of human rights, yet it awards a medal to such a wretched, bankrupt man [Salman Rushdie], who has offended the sacred values of more than 1.5 billion Muslims. Are these your human rights?"

Crowd chants: "Death to England.
"Death to England.
"Death to England."

Ahmad Khatami: "Is this your civilization? This old, decrepit government of England should know that the days of its imperialistic aspirations are gone, and today it is considered America's branded slave. They must also know that the wave of Islamic revival in the world has begun, whether they like it or not. Under these circumstances, awarding England's highest honor to a wretched man, who lacks any talent whatsoever... He is not considered a prominent novelist or author. They awarded him this medal only because he cursed the Prophet. Under these circumstances, awarding a medal to such a man entails a conflict with one and a half billion Muslims throughout the world, and you will gain nothing from this. The one thing that will happen is that you will see the Islamic world roaring together. In Islamic Iran, this revolutionary fatwa of Imam Khomeini still exists. It is unchangeable and with God's grace, it must be carried out."

There is more insanity here.




Bolton:"The Bush administration does not recognize the urgency of the hour"

What distant call has the man who quoted Jefferson about freedom being god's gift to humanity channeled?

Or has this administration concluded that no political support for the apparently compulsory actions required to stop Iran is to be had unless some terrible event occurs?

Bolton: I'm 'very worried' for Israel

Sanctions and diplomacy have failed and it may be too late for internal opposition to oust the Islamist regime, leaving only military intervention to stop Iran's drive to nuclear weapons, the US's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Worse still, according to Ambassador Bolton, the Bush administration does not recognize the urgency of the hour and that the options are now limited to only the possibility of regime change from within or a last-resort military intervention, and it is still clinging to the dangerous and misguided belief that sanctions can be effective.

As a consequence, Bolton said he was "very worried" about the well-being of Israel. If he were in Israel's predicament, he said, "I'd be pushing the US very hard. I am pushing the US [administration] very hard, from the outside, in Washington."

It may be the Iranian plan to turn Israel into a failed experiment via a Capone-ian threat racket, squelching immigration and by constantly calling for the extinction of the PEOPLE as well as the land by themselves and their henchmen, but imagine if we, several times a year called for the wiping out of Iran and persians since they really have usurped the homes of the Achaemenids, Baluchis and Kurds? Can you just hear the din?

Continue reading "Bolton:"The Bush administration does not recognize the urgency of the hour"" »

What Is GWB Thinking Of?

Today, President Bush is scheduled to speak at the Washington D.C. Islamic Center, which has ties to Wahhabism. Here, at Vigilant Freedom/910 Blog, in "Sir, Have You No Shame?" is what Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna had to say about what our President is doing today (emphases mine):

President Bush has been seduced by the dark side of the Force.

That’s the only explanation I can think of.

He will speak tomorrow at the Washington Islamic Center, the most prominent Saudi-funded mosque in Washington DC. Not to mince words, it’s a Wahhabist mosque.

The speech is at 11:30 AM, so time is short.

Dymphna [also of Gates of Vienna] posted on this topic earlier this afternoon, in an
open letter to the President. [Read it!]

Bloggers: we need to blog on this, and have our readers light up the phones at the White House tonight and tomorrow.

Readers: see the contact info at the bottom of this post. The important phone numbers are 202-456-1414 (voice) and 202-456-2461 (fax).

The Administration claims to want to shut down terrorist groups. The groups represented at the President’s speech include CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, etc., which are known cover groups and fronts for the architects and funding sources of the Muslim Brotherhood and related Islamic terror groups. The President must state his firm commitment to shutting down these terror groups.

The President must make the point that Islam as it is practiced by many of these groups is not a religion, but a political ideology which seeks to dominate the rest of us by force.

The groups invited to and/or sponsoring this event must disavow Hamas, Hizbullah, etc. specifically and by name and not just utter generalized mealy-mouthed condemnations of “all kinds of terrorism”. Those who will not join in such a denunciation are de facto apologists and supporters of the jihad groups.

The leaders of these groups have not addressed the criminal and immoral attacks on civilians by Islamic suicide bombers and terrorists. This must change. They must publicly and clearly denounce these attacks as unacceptable and un-Islamic.

Any effort to implement the above changes is routinely denounced as “racism” and “Islamophobia”. The President must make clear that opposing political Islam is not any of these things; it is an honorable, patriotic, and morally justified enterprise in defense of human liberty.

These groups must be compelled to acknowledge that extremist and violent Islam is a real, widespread, and serious problem, and not just a figment of the “infidel” imagination. They must be seen publicly to join in the movement to denounce and resist it.

The Islamic groups which encourage their followers not to cooperate with the police, the FBI, and other law-enforcement agencies are not just being unhelpful, they are breaking the law.

The groups involved in this event have routinely denounced the “Zionist lobby”. It should be stated explicitly that this is an unacceptable attack on the pluralism of American society.

The focus on Israel as the putative cause of all Islamic violence must stop.

We call on President Bush to state publicly and forcefully that the Muslim Brotherhood, which is behind many of these “charities” and lobbying groups, is a dangerous, violent, and subversive entity which threatens the security of the United States and the entire Western world. It must be delegitimized and put beyond the pale of acceptable social action.

Contact info:

George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington D.C. 20500

voice: 202-456-1414
fax: 202-456-2461
e-mail: president@whitehouse.gov



Get on it, folks! Let the President know that his dhimmitude is unacceptable.

Weekly Radio Show: June 29

Listen to The Gathering Storm Radio Show, of which I am cohost. The show broadcasts live every Friday for one hour at noon, Pacific Time.

The call-in number is (646) 915-9870.

Callers welcome!

Friday, June 29: This week's scheduled guest for the bottom of the hour will be Timothy Birdnow of The New Birdblog and formely of Birdblog. In addition to his blogs, Timothy also writes articles for American Thinker; an index of his articles is HERE.

I may be phoning in to the show from The Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where I'm scheduled to attend a lecture by Dr. Tawfik Hamid, Muslim reformer and author of The Roots of Jihad. HERE is Dr. Hamid's web site, and HERE is Google-search information.

Friday's lecture runs from noon-2:00 PM, EDT. If I can nab Dr. Hamid for an interview in the first half hour of the show, I will! In any case, I plan to call in with an immediate report on the lecture.

If you are unable to listen live to the radio show, you can listen to recordings of the radio broadcasts later by CLICKING HERE.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Three Islamists allegedly linked with AlQaeda, detained in Barcelona

Police has detained today in Barcelona three Moroccans, two of them this morning and the third afterwards, with alledged links with Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.

The first detained were 23-year-old Mohamed Laksir and 27-year-old Moulay Lahoucine Miftah Idrissi. The two are accused of an alledged crime of belonging to illicit association to prepare and commit terrorist attacks. The two belonged to a cell which made the job of recruiting, proselitising and taught the radical teachings of Islam.

[...] The police has also detained this noon in Barcelona to Mohamed Akazim, 32-year-old, Moroccan, accused of belonging to the organization of Al Qaeda for the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, according to the Interior Ministry.

Rick vs. The Godfather

Guest Editorial by Edward Cline:

What a difference sixty-five years makes – in the culture. When Warner Brothers released Casablanca near the end of 1942, America had been at war for a year. Everyone knew we were at war, and knew also that complete victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was an absolute necessity. Casablanca echoed that knowledge.

There was no thought of compromise, of negotiating a “peace,” or of “reaching out” to the American Nazi Bund for its help in reaching a trilateral rapprochement with Germany, Japan and Italy. There was not an ounce of angst over collateral casualties among the enemy population. When the U.S recovered from being attacked at Pearl Harbor, it eventually took the war to the enemy, and when it was victorious, and while the enemy’s citizens struggled to survive amid the rubble and ashes of their folly, the U.S proceeded to root out that enemy’s ideology of tyranny and conquest.

The U.S. is at war again. The culture, however, has not produced anything like Casablanca. (An exception is 300, an allegory on the war, which our enemies immediately protested as “insulting.”) It will not, cannot. The dramatization of moral values remains in the hands of Hollywood’s nihilists and subjectivists. What we get instead are insipid comedies, computer animated cartoons, the occasional “war” movie that denigrates our military, and a steady parade of forgettable movies. This is because while the U.S. rooted out the enemy’s ideology over half a century ago, it failed to eradicate the underlying philosophy that drove that ideology.

A philosophy that remains uneradicated, or is left submerged but intact, will resurrect itself, and take unexpected forms of expression. This is true of a rational philosophy as well of an irrational one. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, reason all but vanished from men’s lives as a norm. It began to rise again a thousand years later during the Renaissance. In the ensuing Enlightenment it gradually displaced faith and other forms of irrationality as a philosophical guide for living on earth.

But not entirely. Irrationality in its many forms remained on the periphery of especially 19th century Western culture and its political and intellectual life. It received a boost of energy to re-insinuate itself into men’s thinking and lives and policies because reason had no consistent advocates and defenders. The irrational gained more and more ground in Western culture in the 20th century and has certainly infected the 21st.

It has reached its ultimate absurdity: we are at war with Islamism – a political/theological ideology that seeks to either destroy or conquer the West, its proponents have made that abundantly clear – but the West’s political and moral energies are focused on irrelevancies elevated to global and domestic crises: AIDS, world hunger and poverty, global warming, the absence of universal health care, and so on.

One might think that our political leaders are in denial about the peril of Islamism, or Islamofascism, or Islamic imperialism. But denial is a conscious action – a refusal to acknowledge the reality of a thing. No, they are oblivious or indifferent to the peril. They are obsessed with other fish to fry other than our enemies. They wish to compel men to submit, not to Allah, but to their own brands of collectivism and tyranny.

Our leaders are paragons of compromise, they wring their hands over real, imagined or projected collateral casualties among the enemy’s population, and have no qualms about “reaching out” to organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Fatah to attain some kind of rapprochement with the enemies of the West – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea, to name but the larger enemies – in the pursuit of the Kantian ideal of “peace” for its own sake. 9/11 has not been forgotten by our leadership; it has been demoted to irrelevancy.

The irrationalism of President George W. Bush – his refusal to acknowledge the existence and nature of our enemies, because altruism has corrupted his grasp of reality – has played no little role in the creation of the absurdity. His political enemies in this country probably feel grateful that he has made a mess of the war; he has given them an excuse to demote it and abandon it.

But his enemies are also corrupted by altruism. It is through altruism that they wish to acquire and impose freedom-destroying power. Lord Acton identified that fact, and the fact will not go away.

What inspired this commentary was the release last week of the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 “greatest” American films, which is apparently compiled every ten years. Casablanca was number 3 on the list, Citizen Kane number 1, and The Godfather number 2. I could not help but note the significance of Casablanca’s ranking, which dropped from second place in 1998 to third this year. According to the Daily Telegraph (London) article on the list of June 22, the list “is determined by a jury of 1,500 filmmakers, critics and movie historians.”

Of course, a vote of hands cannot establish the greatness of anything, least of all the esthetic value of art. Greatness is something that can only be recognized and established by individual minds, not by consensus. But, one can deduce from the rankings of 100 “greatest” American films that some positive esthetic measurement remained in some of the balloters.

I won’t attempt here to second-guess the motives of the AFI balloters. Casablanca could have been appreciated by a large block of voters who valued its story and style. It is not the greatest American film, but it has an integrity to it that is effective and memorable. It is a war film, but the thing most absent in it is the war. The Godfather is virutally unparalleled in depicting the gradual corruption of an otherwise decent man. “It’s not me, Kay,” Michael Corleone tells his fiancĂ© early in the film, when she wonders if many of the men at the wedding party are really gangsters. “It’s my family.”

In the end, however, it was him; he had no argument against the family-tribal loyalty that passed as a moral code among the gangsters and which demanded his action. By the end of Godfather II (number 32 on the AFI list), he has betrayed or destroyed everything that ever mattered to him. In the poignant last scene of the sequel, he sits alone in a lawn chair, a shell of his former self, contemplating the desolation of his life, yet still in denial of the fact that he was in any way responsible for it.

Rick, the night club/casino owner in Casablanca, by the end of the story rediscovers the values he thought he had lost, a blow that had turned him into a pragmatic cynic who tolerated the corruption around him. It is in his power to destroy them – Ilsa, his former romantic interest, and Victor Laszlo, the Czech patriot on the run from the Nazis – but his old character reasserts itself and he acts to preserve them. He gives the couple the transit papers to freedom.

About Casablanca, Ralph J. Gleason wrote in 1973, “those were times where things were so much simpler; the good guys and the bad guys were so much more clearly defined and the struggle itself, the moral imperative for man, so much more easily seen.” (From the Introductory Note in Casablanca: Script and Legend, The Overlook Press, 1973.) That “imperative,” writes Gleason, “is rarer now and in the whole visible world has a kind of institutionalized concrete dimness.”

But, it was not a moral imperative that in the end moved Rick Blaine to action. It was a moral choice.

Americans, betrayed by their political and intellectual leadership over the current war, face the choice of becoming a Rick or a Michael Corleone. They can rediscover what it is to be an American, or they can surrender that identity and blame the world for their misery and just drift towards tragedy and an ignominious end. They can redeem themselves, or resign themselves to a logical and merciless fate.

The choice is: liberty, or the lawn chair.

Crossposted at The Dougout

Funerals for the UN Spanish peacekeepers

And anger from the Spanish Intelligence Agency which had warned:

a) that Spanish interests in foreign countries were in high danger after Al-Qaeda had menaced them 7 times. Specially Spanish troops in Lebanon and Afghanistan.

b) because the explosion was caused by 70 kilos of C4, 5 times more powerful than TNT. So, around 300-350 kilos of TNT. And not 50 as Spanish Minister of Defence, Alonso, said yesterday.

But Socialist Government keeps on behaving as ever. No official communication for soldiers' relatives. And blaming Iraqi war. And denying there is a war in Lebanon.

They DO NOT believe they can be beaten. They are fighting in the way of allah

Britain: Iranian forces are being choppered over the Iraqi border to bomb Our Boys, intelligence chiefs say.

If true, it means american ABSOLUTE command of the air has no meaning to those who must be

said to be convinced they can keep on pushing because a greater force protects their cause than their enemy, the anglo saxons and their planes.

Military experts claim this worrying move means we are at WAR with Iran in all but name.

Last night an intelligence source told The Sun: “It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran — but nobody has officially declared it.

“We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us.

“It is very hard for us to strike back. All we can do is try to defend ourselves. We are badly on the back foot.”

All they can do is try to defend themselves? Are they OUTGUNNED? OUTMANNED? Figure it out and kill them all. Display captured IRGC and shot down Iranian copters. Bring them to THE TOWER OF LONDON and put them on SKY 4.

Continue reading "They DO NOT believe they can be beaten. They are fighting in the way of allah" »

Islamic Punishment for Apostasy

Josh Scholar asks me to comment on this video.

Basically, the speakers say that the Quran does not lay down a punishment for apostasy. I think that is false. However, Islamic law and practices are not derived solely from the Quran. And when one takes into account the other sources, the punishment for apostasy becomes even more clear. (I wrote about this subject in 2005.)

Quran 4.89:

They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks.

See Ali Sina for the context.

The other source: Sahih Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 84, Number 58:

[...] There was a fettered man beside Abu Muisa. Mu'adh asked, "Who is this (man)?" Abu Muisa said, "He was a Jew and became a Muslim and then reverted back to Judaism." Then Abu Muisa requested Mu'adh to sit down but Mu'adh said, "I will not sit down till he has been killed. This is the judgment of Allah and His Apostle (for such cases) and repeated it thrice. Then Abu Musa ordered that the man be killed, and he was killed. [...]

One can argue that the Quran doesn't punish apostasy. But then what about the horrible precedent set by the hadith?

Here's another one: Sahih Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 83, Number 17:

Narrated 'Abdullah:

Allah's Apostle said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims."

Quite clear, innit?

Hey, what about that Quranic verse about "no compulsion" in religion. Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi has got something to say:

"There is no compulsion in religion" [Quran: 2.256] means that we do not compel anyone to come into our religion. And this is truly our practice. But we initially warn whoever would come and go back that this door is not open to come and go. Therefore anyone who comes should decide before coming that there is no going back.

Well, what about those who are born to Muslim parents?

[...] children born of Muslim lineage will be considered Muslims and according to Islamic law the door of apostasy will never be opened to them. If anyone of them renounces Islam, he will be as deserving of execution as the person who has renounced kufr to become a Muslim and again has chosen the way of kufr. All the jurists of Islam agree with this decision. On this topic absolutely no difference exists among the experts of shari'ah.

What conclusion does one make about a religion that practically imprisons every one of its adherents?

Simple: Islam is a decrepit system built on putrid foundations. It has to murder its opponents for it cannot survive in the arena of open debate. Terror is built into its DNA.

This ugliness presents a massive problem for moderate or "diet" Muslims. So, they pick and choose what they like.

An analogy would be a restaurant that serves the most disgusting courses. Authentic or "pure" Muslims gobble every single item to showcase their street-cred to the rest. The moderates show a bit of discrimination and pick the less noxious meals.

It's one thing to do that but it's quite another to then turn around and deny the existence of the filthier items on the menu.

It makes the moderates look ludicrous and intellectually lame.