Jeremayakovka

Tariq Hat Trick

David Solway's third recent article on Tariq Ramadan.

See also Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.

Kafir Caveat Again

David Solway again on Tariq Ramadan, whose memoir could justly be titled Dreams From My Grandfather.

Kafir Caveat

David Solway on Tariq Ramadan.

Barack Obama Hijacked Our Hope And Flew It Over Ground Zero

Last Friday evening the AP originally posted a story about the resignation of White House staffer Michael Caldera in the wake of President Obama's low-altitude fly-over of Manhattan in Air Force One, with an F-16 in tow. Purportedly a photo-op, the deliberate aerial maneuver caused panic on a scale unheard of since Ronald Reagan's inadvertently on-air microphone quip The bombing (of the USSR) begins in five minutes. By posting the story around 8:00PM, the AP did its part to help the public ignore the Obama Administration's embarrassment. But should it be ignored?

Like many Americans, I too have wondered just what contributed to this questionable and, to many, offensive (even outrageous) presidential decision. To wit, some speculations:

10. After a non-stop First Hundred Days of Honey, I Shrunk the Economy!, Obama ordered Air Force One's in-flight movie switched to United 93.

9. Obama was displaying a deap-seated weakness for believing that he possesses Superman-like powers. Unfortunately, he ended up being the cause -- for the second time in recent memory -- of New Yorkers shouting, Look! Up in the sky ... it's a bird! It's a plane!! It's ... It's a plane!!!

8. Whatever panic New Yorkers felt was nothing compared to what gripped Michelle Obama -- because never before has a man so blantantly hinted to his wife that he's on the down-low.

7. The White House says the fly-over's purpose was to take photographs of New York City for official use, which is only partly true. What it won't say is that Obama's gathering material for another feel-good memoir about the tribulations of completing half of one term in high office, this one to be called The Audacity of Fear.

6. Lending credence to right-wing suspicion that Obama truly believes -- as much of the world does -- that America is an evil empire that deserves to be humiliated violently on the way to being defeated utterly, The Audacity of Fear will feature a special chapter, "Thirty Seconds Over New York."

5. In a controversial development, the official investigation now underway will show that the Air Force One crew did not unanimously support the fly-over decision. Testimony purportedly will show that Obama was heard knocking on the door to the cockpit, while saying, Don't make me get out the box-cutters....

4. Testimony may also show that once the fly-over was complete, Obama knuckle-bumped Michelle and gave David Axelrod a high-five while boasting Mission Accomplished!

3. Consistent with what some perceive as his deferential posturing before Muslim and/or Arab interests, Obama was trying to demonstrate what sharia-compliant air travel might look like in the United States.

2. For some Muslims, however, the lower Manhattan fly-over doesn't count as "sharia-compliant." Some Muslim leaders say that if Obama is serious about showing respect to Islam, he'll fly over lower Manhattan again -- this time in the direction of Mecca.

1. Let's face it: on a scale of 1 to 10, Obama's presidential fly-over of lower Manhattan rates a Ground Zero.

(Directly inspired by Fausta's recent post, "Priceless," and a certain anti-Bush banner from c. 2004)

Déjà Lu - Dr. Phyllis Chesler On The Ottawa Honor Killing Trial

With Dr. Chesler's permission, posted below is a translation into French of her recently published remarks on the "honor killing" trial of Hasibullah Sadiqi now underway in Ottawa, Canada. For several years, she has applied her expertise in feminism and psychology to help explicate the intractable problems which Muslim immigration, and Islam generally, pose to liberal Western societies. More on Phyllis Chesler here. As a reference, some of her previous remarks on "Le Massacreur de Montréal" -- subject of the recent film Polytechnique -- are attached at the end (in English).

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Le Massacreur de Montréal et Hasibullah Sadiqi ont en commun un certain genre de père

(paru le 11 mai 2009 sous la rubrique "Chesler Chronicles" sur Pajamas Media) 

Écoutez, je m'entends bien avec un frère et une sœur afghans trentenaires qui me sont très chers. Ce frère préférerait  trancher sa propre main droite au lieu de faire de mal à sa soeur. Ils sont complétement occidentalisés, raffinés, charmants -- et pourtant, de plusieurs façons ils restent des Afghans. Ils sont dévoués à leurs parents, fréquentent souvent leur famille, les petits et les grands, mais aussi ils vont en boîte avec des non-musulmans de leur âge. D'habitude, ils font du souci chaque fois que les musulmans sont critiqués, blâmés, craints -- et pourtant ils sont avant tout citoyens du monde.

Ce frère et sœur très unis ont grandi dans l'Occident depuis qu'ils avaient cinq ans. Hasibullah Sadiqi, qui a assassiné sans pitié sa sœur Khatera et son fiancé, est venu au Canada quand il avait cinq mois. Pourquoi Hasibullah ne s'est-il pas intégré?

D'après une lecture de toutes les couvertages médiatiques, il existe un fait qui domine tous les autres. M. Sadiqi, a été tyrannique, un mari violent: il maltraitait des filles aussi. Cet homme (dont le nom et le sort j'ignore) a été tellement mauvais que sa femme, Nasima Fayez, a dû s'enfuir pour sauver sa peau.

Devant la cour, elle s'est décrite comme quelqu'un "à l'esprit plus ouvert" que son mari.

Mais le monstre à l'esprit-fermé s'acharnait à sa "propriété", à ses enfants. Il ne leur a pas permis de voir leur mère pendant six longues années. La maltraitance paternelle (non-spécifiée) "s'est aggravée". Dans le cas de la pauvre Khatera, son pére l'a poussée au moins une fois à tenter à sa vie et l'a causée finalement de s'enfuir chez sa mère à Vancouver. Fayez a envoyé des billets à ses trois enfants pour qu'ils la rejoignent. Ses deux filles sont venues. Hasibullah ne l'a pas fait. En fait, Hasibullah a essayé d'obliger Khatera de revenir auprès de leur père violent.

On ne peut que spéculer sur pourquoi Hasibullah n'a pas rompu avec son père. Peut-être il le traitait autrement, mieux, parce qu'il était un garçon, pas juste une fille. Peut-être M. Sadiqi l'humiliait et le battait également, l'a asservi. Mais en tout cas il est devenu le modèle masculin de Hasibullah.

Concernant les meurtres d'honneur à Dallas, Texas de Sarah et d'Amina Said, leur frère Islam restait fidèle à son père. Il était d'accord avec lui et persécuté ses deux soeurs au nom de son père et de l'"honneur" de la famille.

Aussi Hasibullah est devenu pour son père l'exécuteur et le vengeur. Il a démenti la version de la réalité de sa mère: "Ne me parle pas de mon papa ainsi." Sa mère a pleuré.

Souvenez-vous, s'il vous plaît, de Marc Lépine qui en 1989 a massacré quatorze étudiantes en ingénerie à l'École Polytechnique de Montréal. Lui aussi avait un pére (dans son cas Algérien) qui était un mari violent. Ce fait, que j'ai trouvé capital à l'époque, a été ignoré par la police et tous ceux qui ont écrit sur ce désastre. La police percevait cela comme un acte isolé d'un fou.

Lépine a été né "Gamile Rodrigue Gharbi" d'un père algérien et musulman et d'une mère franco-canadienne qui autrefois avait été bonne sœur. Le père de Lépine, Liess Gharbi, a brutalisé sa femme et son fils. Probablement il a appris à son fils que les femmes sont des esclaves qui méritent d'être battues même quand elles obéissent. Si elles n'obéissent pas, elles puissent être tuées. Peut-être Gharbi/Lépine a designé les femmes comme bouc émissaire pour les crimes graves de son père.

Si nous permettons aux hommes violents d'élever des enfants, nous récolteront ce même vieux tourbillon. Les filles de tyrans et de maris violents épouseront des hommes violents. Donc elles auront un sort semblable; elles sont "expérimentées", préparées à le faire. Les fils d'hommes violents - fils humiliés par leurs pères - deviendront des hommes violents eux aussi: mari violents et brutals avec les enfants, verbalement et physiquement et peut-être sexuellement.

C'est vrai pour n'importe quelle famille dans le monde. En Occident, nous avons certainement des pères violents. Et pourtant nous n'avons considéré les pères arabes, maghrébins et musulmans ni comme "malades" ni comme "criminels", s'ils battent regulièrement ou s'ils violent leurs femmes ou s'ils tyrannisent cruellement leurs enfants.

D'une certaine façon, ça doit changer. Sinon, rien ne changera.
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(traduit de l'américain par Jeremayakovka)

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From "Psychological Roots of Islamic Rage" (Nancy Kobrin, Ph.D., co-author), The Jewish Press, August 9, 2006; (see also "Open Season on Jewish Women", FrontPage Magazine):

What is important to note is that Gharbi/Lepine blamed women for the considerable crimes of his father, whose culture was Islamic and Algerian.

As Dr. Chesler recounts in her book, The Death of Feminism, in 2001 an angry mob of 300 Algerian men conducted a three-day pogrom against Algerian women in which they tortured, stabbed, mutilated, gang-raped, buried alive and murdered women in Hassi Messaoud.

In Dr. Chesler's 1978 book, About Men, she posited that the paternal abandonment of, and cruelty toward, sons may be a crucial component in mother- and woman-hating. Dr. Nancy Kobrin, in her forthcoming book The Sheik's New Clothers: The Naked Truth About Islamic Suicide Terrorism, suggests that the absolute degradation of Arab and Muslim women by a shame- and honor-society means that sons must perpetually rid themselves of the "contamination" that contact with women represents; and that sons must psychologically abandon their mothers even as they experience abandonment by their mothers. Many such sons are trained to mistrust, police, routinely batter, and sometimes even murder their female relatives.

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An American In Israel During The War In Gaza

Fred Siegel of the Progressive Policy Institute and notable contributor to City Journal (whom NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez calls "a prince of a guy") remarks about time he spent in Israel during the Jewish State's offensive against Hamas.

From the TELOSscope Blog:

The (2005) withdrawal from Gaza had produced a new moral clarity. And the Hamas coup against Fatah meant that there was no ambiguity about the options at hand to halt the rocket fire. The BBC, which had usually been taken seriously by Israeli doves, was mocked for talking about how Hamas had come to power democratically.

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Fred btw was never fooled by Barack Obama -- whom he termed "an extraordinary performance artist" -- as this piece from a year ago attests:

(Obama's record) appeals to Ted and Caroline Kennedy and the aging MoveOn.org boomers who have long nursed hopes for a renewal of Camelot. But now as then, a charismatic political personality carries more dangers than benefits. The “politics of meaning,” which emerged from the Kennedy years and has now resurfaced with Obama as its empty vessel of hope, is doomed to disappoint because it asks more from politics than politics can deliver.... The banality of Obama’s campaign is exceeded only by his unwillingness to challenge liberal orthodoxy.... It’s when Obama tries to show that he can also be tough that he most fully reveals his limitations....

"Why We Hear The Muslim World All Too Well"

Not Barry Obama, unfortunately. Instead, Professor Barry Rubin.
(posted with permission)

Why We Hear the Muslim World All Too Well

Message to New York Times: Read your own op-ed page.

The Times and other American media and educational institutions are giving increasing amounts of space to people from the Moslem-majority and Arabic-speaking states in the apparent hope of understanding better their world view. Sometimes, however, they have a hard time hearing what is being said.

Here is what the newspaper’s editorial for February 8 claims and urges:

“We don't know if there is any mixture of incentives or sanctions that can wean Iran of its nuclear ambitions. But we are certain that the Bush administration never tried to find it. This means not only direct talks, but also far more persuasive diplomatic incentives, including a credible offer of improved relations and security guarantees.”

And this, of course, is what the Obama administration is going to do with Iran and Syria. Others urge the same techniques are applies to Hamas, Hizballah, and even—though this is rarer—the Taliban and al-Qaida.

But to understand why this belief is so misguided one merely need read…the Times of February 8, within inches of the above-quoted editorial.

I’m referring here to the truly shocking op-ed by Alaa al Aswany entitled, “Why the Muslim World Can’t Hear Obama.”

A better title would be, “Why the Muslim World Won’t Hear Obama.”

The piece is overlong, convoluted, and not particularly well written. It should be noted that the author, a novelist among other things, is considered a moderate.

Alas, for moderation in the Arab world.

There are two themes: the one against Israel and the one against Arab governments. Because these have not been resolved, the author says, all of President Obama’s apologies and efforts are a big yawn.

So what would the author—and presumably all the Arabs and Muslims—want Obama and America to do? Well, to put it briefly, help overthrow all the Arab governments and help wipe Israel off the map.

I wrote the above sentence in a particularly blunt way but it really does not exaggerate the message here.

First of all, Egypt and other Arab states are dictatorships: “Here in Egypt, we don't have previous or future presidents, only the present head of state who seized power through sham elections and keeps it by force, and who will probably remain in power until the end of his days.”

Wait a minute, though! Remember the last president of the United States, the one who pushed for democracy and criticized the governmental systems? The Arab world didn’t seem too thrilled about him. Egyptian intellectuals screamed this was imperialist interference in internal affairs and so on. So after all those years of bashing Bush for—rightly or wrongly—proposing dictatorships be replaced with democracy are we to believe that they will now bash Obama for proposing to work with the existing regimes?

This, of course, is an unsolvable problem. Whatever the United States does here is going to be wrong. There is no way America can please Iran. Well, I take that back. If America helps it overthrow all those bad Arab dictatorships and replace them with Islamist regimes then Iran will probably be happy.

And Alaa al Aswany will be able to read the Times more easily, as a political refugee living in New York.

Then there’s point two:

“We expected him to address the reports that the Israeli military illegally used white phosphorus against the people of Gaza. We also wanted Mr. Obama, who studied law and political science at the greatest American universities, to recognize what we see as a simple, essential truth:
the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation.”

Regarding “essential truth,” isn’t the Times supposed to publish things that are factually correct? Israel has already been cleared of the phony white phosphorus charge. So why is this article allowed to repeat it? Here is indeed a lesson: people in the Arab world often lie about you. No matter what you do, how much aid you give, how many concessions you offer or implement, it will be said: you didn’t do anything. Give more. Pay more. Apologize more. Change more.

But perhaps the most important and chilling sentence of the op-ed is this, and if people were paying attention to such things nowadays they would be thoroughly shocked:

“We also wanted Mr. Obama, who studied law and political science at the greatest American universities, to recognize what we see as a simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation.”

What are the implications of this sentence: that the United States should endorse terrorism and violence in at least three conflicts. According to the terrorist forces, Afghanistan and Iraq are under foreign occupation. If Obama was to do as suggested, he would be backing attacks not only on civilians and governments there but also the killing of American soldiers.

As for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon, and much of the West Bank and still faces attacks. In 2000, Israel proposed to make peace based on a two-state solution with a Palestinian state having its capital in Jerusalem. The Palestinian side turned it down.

Since Hamas and other radical forces assert that Israel is an occupying power, attacking it—which includes firing rockets at civilian targets—is legitimate. Moreover, if there is any occupation left, it is due to the political strategy of the Palestinian Authority in rejecting a political solution.

Yet that is far from the entire problem here. For much or most of the Muslim and Arab world views all of Israel as “occupied territory.” The only way for occupation to end is for Israel to end. The author here does not make clear what land is being discussed, though the op-ed easily could have limited the territory in question to the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. Have no doubt how most Muslims and Arabs read the phrase about occupied territory: Obama must abandon Israel altogether.

So how can Obama appease or please the Muslim-majority world? We are told by this moderate: by backing the right of Hamas and Hizballah to attack Israel.

This, then, is the supposed moderate position, the minimum way by which Obama can make friends in the region. Clearly, the author here doesn’t speak for everyone. Certainly the relatively moderate Arab regimes and their supporters want more U.S. support for themselves.

Yet there is much truth in this article’s stance. The only way for America to “win over” this public opinion and the radical groups is to surrender to them or join them. President Obama and editors of the Times, please hear what you are being told here, and despair of ever satisfying such enormous and dangerous demands by some combination of charm and concessions.

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Former Hamas Member Sees The Light

Mosab Hassan Yousef, former Hamas "militant," now evangelical Christian convert, speaks about Hamas's culpability for fueling violence between Palestinian Arabs and Israel:

The Hamas leadership, including my father, they're responsible; they're responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization. I know they describe it as reaction to Israeli aggression, but still, they are part of it and they had to make decisions in those operations against Israel (for) which there was the killing of many civilians.

Mosab is profiled in "Escape From Hamas," which airs TONIGHT, Saturday, January 3 on Fox at 10:00PM. It will be rebroadcast Sunday at 1:00AM, 4:00AM, 9:00PM, and Midnight, and Monday at 2:00AM (EST).

Hamas In Their Own Words

Grandiloquent inquisitor of the Qatar-based Doha Debates, Tim Sebastian grills a top Hamas official. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, Part I
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Mahmoud al-Zahar, Part II
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 Here, in a 2004 interview, Sebastian goes round and round with another Hamas official, Izzam Al-Tamimi:

TS: And for that, continuing violence – that's what Hamas and your friends in Hamas speaks for?
AT: We don't call it 'violence'.  We call it 'legitimate struggle'; we call it 'jihad'.

TS: You call that 'struggle' – when a suicide bomber goes into a market and kills people indiscriminately, whether it's women or children – you call that 'struggle'?
AT: When you force people to ...
TS: 'Yes' or 'no'?  Please Dr Tamimi answer the question.
AT: Of course it is a struggle; of course it is a struggle ...
TS: It's murder isn't it?
AT: It is a struggle ...
TS: It's murder.

TS: When I asked one of your spokesmen, Mahmoud al-Zahar a couple of years ago in Gaza and I asked him what it would take to stop the fighting he couldn't give me a straight answer and in the end when I asked him a couple of times he said:  I'm telling you frankly the attitude of Islam is not to accept a foreign state in this area.

TS: Does Israel have the right to exist?
AT: No, as far as the Palestinian is concerned ...

TS: You said on an internet chat forum early in 2003: 'For us Moslems martyrdom is not the end of things but the beginning of the most wonderful of things'. If it's so wonderful to go and blow yourself up in a public place in Israel why don't you do it?
AT: Martyrdom is not necessarily suicide bombings as you call them.  Martyrdom is ...
TS: No, please answer my question.  It was a serious question.
AT: I'm trying to answer it ...
TS: Why don't you do it?....
AT: Unless you give me a chance to explain ...
TS: Please ... Please ...
AT: Not a single person of those who bomb themselves, bomb themselves because they are desperate or poor.  It doesn't happen because of this.  They do it because they want to sacrifice themselves for a cause....

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Global Caliphate Forces Anticipate, Interpret Obama's First Iraq Moves

From the Islamic Republic of Iran's Press TV: Taji Mustafa of the international, pro-global caliphate Hizb ut-Tahrir Party of the United Kingdom (!) is trying to cool somebody's jets in this recent, post-American election commentary.

Says Mustafa: Barack Obama is not Vladimir Lenin. He's not a revolutionary who has come with a new system to Washington DC, planning to overthrow the current system and turn everything upside-down.

Who? What rabble? To what revolutionary squads, cadres, kooks, and thugs is Mustafa speaking?

Thankfully, Jamie Kirchick  articulated the pro-American perspective. Note very well, in the final minutes, the confrontation between Kirchick and Mustafa. Kirchick, whom I respect for going on camera there, was way too polite (calling him, "Sir") - he should have tore Mustafa's (rhetorical) head off and spit his (rhetorical) brains into the camera....

(H/T Jamie)

Gaddafi Endorses His Arab and Muslim Brother Obama For President Of Racist Dictatorship of Amrikia

The vague "respect" some people think the United States should seek from other peoples consists of unending self-abasement that accepts those people's lies, slander, half-truths, and sworn animosity:
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We still hope that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith ... and that he will change America from evil to good.

 
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That "ignorant" old lady at a McCain townhall meeting - who called Obama, with grave reservations, "Arab" - wasn't that far off. She sensed the winds blowing, in her own way.

A diligent media corps would press Obama to respond directly to Gaddafi's claims, including to Gaddafi's demagogic distortions of American society, and probe Obama's opinions on how world opinion like this affects his foreign policy views.

Bore, Baby, Bore!

First, a detailed summary of the high points of last night's second presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain:
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Everyone clear on those? Good.

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Second, a .pdf file of Frank Gaffney's prepared remarks from last night's other debate - the one worth paying attention to - between Gaffney, as President of the Center for Security Policy, and Suhail Khan, as Special Assistant for Policy to the Secretary of Transportation. They squared off on the subject of  Islamic sharia law's stealthy spread through American institutions and society.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Infidel Crusader in Europe

As you can read below, political convenience rendered certain aspects of General Eisenhower's Orders of the Day for June 6, 1944 problematic. For example, that Soviet forces were "brothers-in-arms" and that the defeat of the Reich would guarantee a "free world." (Freer, yes, but hardly free.)

Unmistakable, however, is the Christian imagery of the Crusades in which Ike placed this unprecedented military campaign:
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Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

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No doubt the Prophet was "humiliated" and "insulted" by this awesome military campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny. One shudders to think how he feels about efforts to root out Muslim colonization of Europe today....

More Midcentury Virile Thinking - Romain Gary

This time, from Frenchman Romain Gary who in 1970 published a splendid, sardonic memoir about racism in America, White Dog (Chien Blanc). In the late 1960s he was married to American-born film star Jean Seberg and the two were living in the Hollywood Hills. She pursued her acting career while he served as French Consul in Los Angeles. Gary shows Seberg becoming radicalized and manipulated by the emerging Black Power movement (caught up in what later became known as "radical chic"), whereas he serves as a jaded witness to America's and Jean's upheavals.

In one of several instructive passages, Gary cuts to the quick about Islam's appeal to black militants -- how it provides, almost literally, a fantastic cover for their antisemitism, their racism, and their anti-intellectualism:

I find the idea of an antisemitic black very seductive. I'm inclined to observe that the blacks "need" Jews like everybody else does.

This antisemitism is due partly to the comedy of Arabism and Islamism which extremist blacks play out in search of a spiritual elsewhere. Ninety-nine point nine percent are completely unaware that that the Arab conquerors were their ancestors' unremitting slaughterers, destroyers of tradition and the true African religion which was animist. They don't know that the Arabs converted blacks to Islam by the power of the sword in the same name and at the same time that they transformed the least resilient into eunuchs and sold their human goods to Portuguese, British, or American slave traders...

It would be unfair and unworthy to bear a grudge against today's Arabs and to cause them grief for the crimes of their ancestors, which at the time weren't crimes. Nothing is more far-fetched than to want to judge past centuries through today's eyes. But to go from there to seeing in Islam the incarnation of the soul of Africa means covering quite a few light years. When Malcolm X writes about white people, "How could I love the man who raped my mother, killed my father, and reduced my ancestors to slavery?" that nevertheless is exactly what he did when he threw himself into the arms of the Prophet...

"Terrorists Must Be Treated Inhumanely"

Steven Plaut spits it out.

Update (07/29): Pamela jumps the shark to feed the crocodile: We cannot worry about what the world thinks about us; we have to protect our own people.

Joe Lieberman - The Last Vestige of Liberal Manhood in the U.S. Senate

While the media fans tensions over Jesse Jackson's subpar "cut [Obama's] nuts off" comment, here's footage of the last man standing among Democratic Senators. Joe Lieberman lays out the case for investigating, at the highest levels of government, enemy, jihadist Muslim cells active within the United States. The facts speak for themselves: in our time Islamic terror is "home grown," it is often engineered by fanatics who enjoy citizenship of the countries they seek to terrorize and destabilize, it is spreading rapidly in American prisons, and UK intelligence services have discovered over 200 such cells in their country. Joe tells the truth about the times we live in. He'd make a great vice president.

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Here's the trailer from an "oppo" documentary being made by Stalinist Democrats who want to complete the purge of Senator Lieberman -- an otherwise liberal legislator -- strictly because he is committed to a strong military offensive strategy in Iraq, against Iran, against Hamas, and wherever else it may be necessary:

Lieberman endorses John McCain for president:

Montrealistan

Fabrice de Pierrebourg's book profiling fanatic, violent jihadist networks in North America's premier francophone city appeared last year. Currently available only in French, it's received a few notices in English, including at Canada's The Hour and the blog Covenant Zone.

From the former:

In the book, he profiles 20 of the 30 so-called suspects, some of whom he has met and interviewed, and others whose lives he has pieced together using documents obtained via Access to Information laws and other sources. He told the Journal that "Montreal is a harbour, a logistic base to plan, prepare and to finance terrorist attacks."

And the latter:

The author has also succeeded in meeting the alarming persons living in Montreal. Among them: Fateh Kamel, presumed overseer of Ahmed Ressam many years ago. Kamel had played a “central role in the wave of terrorist acts” in France during the 1990s, according to CSIS. He had been described as an “executive in international terror […] whose boss was none other than Osama ben Laden.” Back in Montreal after leaving prison in France in 2005, the man condemned for terrorist acts earns his living at the wheel of a taxi, without being recognized by his Montreal clients.

Runagates Club weighs in on Canadian willed ignorance:

Here we now have a Canadian expeditionary force in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban and hunting the militant Sunni terror group Al Qaeda, and our news editors decide the first book of 2007 discussing Muslim terrorists in Canada is NOT worthy of attention? Isn't the taint of widespread journalistic appeasement too often the response to the bared terrorist blade?

Fabrice interviewed here (in French):

One Lifetime Feminist Writer To Another

I will honor and "hear" you even if -- especially if -- we disagree on particular subjects. You believe that Barack Obama can somehow save our country. You are moved by his oratory and character. I am bowed beneath the weight of tribal sorrows and fear for our country and our world no matter who becomes the next American President.

Read the rest of Phyllis Chesler's open letter to Alice Walker (where you can follow the links to Alice's original letter).

Samuel Coleridge, Romantic Poet Who Recognized Jihad

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Mahomet
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Utter the song, O my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed,
Prophet and priest, who scatter'd abroad both evil and blessing,
Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow'd slow persecution,
Soul-withering, but crush'd the blasphemous rites of the Pagan
and idolatrous Christians.--For veiling the Gospel of Jesus,
They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest.
Wherefore Heaven decreed th' enthusiast warrior of Mecca,
Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness.
Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol;--
Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid--the people with mad shouts
Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation
Flow, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river
Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder'd,
Rushes dividuous all--all rushing impetuous onward.
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-- Fragment of an intended longer work; composed c. 1799, published 1834.
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Curious to consider: while lamenting corrupted Christianity Coleridge not just marks Islam's fanatic expansion, but possibly also celebrates it....

More on S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) -- poet, critic, translator; with William Wordsworth founder of English Romanticism; enthusiastic, then disillusioned, observer of the French Revolution; opium addict.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Other links.

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Join the Christians Against Leftist Heresy blogroll
sponsored by Faultline USA

Australian Woman Asks Right Questions Re Bhutto Assassination - Plus, The Thot Plickens

* Update (01/03) *

A pathological and bizarre script, no? Or am I missing something here?;
Irshad Manji on the exceptional leader Bhutto wasn't.

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As a supplement to last week's visceral, visual, and musical reaction, here's Pamela Bone in The Australian of January 2:

If the fact that she was a Western-educated woman seeking power in lands they claim as their own was not reason enough, killing her meant they could disrupt the scheduled elections and maintain instability in Pakistan, which would allow them to continue using that country's territory to train the increasing numbers of willing martyrs, funded by trillions of dollars from opium sales.

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Fausta continues to round up probing links, video clips, including a link to the source of this image:

Show Us -- Not Your Tits, Hillary -- Show Us Your Blood!

(Update 12/31) Sen. Clinton, a candidate for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn't know the first thing about the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth."

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Benazir Bhutto becomes an unwilling (including far from perfect) martyr for representative democracy, and is it just me who thinks Ms. Rodham Clinton is out of tune with the day the Muslim music died?

If she had the right stuff, if she were a great leader waiting for History and not just a politician waiting for opportunity, Ms. Rodham Clinton would be making the Speech Of Her Life about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Muslim jihad, about the sanctity of the democratic process and women's eligibility for politics, about the savagery of the mortal enemies of freedoms we habitually take for granted, and about the shining moral, political, military compass that the United States of America is (or should be) to the entire world. She'd be making the Speech Of Her Life and the whole world would be watching. Instead of frigid heiress to the highest office she'd be an avenging Amazonian androgyne -- Jack Kennedy, Maggie Thatcher, and Athena rolled into one -- if Ms. Rodham Clinton had the right stuff.

But she doesn't, so she's not.

Instead she's calling for "an international, independent investigation" into the assassination. Yes, let's investigate al-Qaeda. That'll teach 'em! The leading Democratic presidential contender is a one-worlder machine pol who once a decade will wow a women's conference in an imperial capital, but ... chug upriver into the heart of History's darkness?

Not on your life -- and not on Benazir Bhutto's death.

In the wake of Bhutto's assassination every hour that passes without a great intervention by the woman being sold to the American electorate as a genius, as a compassionate heart, as a champion of children and the disadvantaged, etc. etc. is another reason why "Hillary" is indeed a brand name, is another reason why she's a cranky, overeducated, cuckolded White Hausfrau and not a majestic statesman.

On behalf of all prospective voters, I gotta say, Show us -- not your tits, Hillary -- show us your blood!

That's what Benazir did.

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Show us what you're made of, old gal. At this arresting moment in world history, we have a right to demand of The Woman Who Would Be Potent POTUS Over Us, What the hell flows through your veins? and What are you willing to do to prove it's for real?

While she's miscalculating an answer, waiting for a cooked up cue during a cardboard Q&A, I'm gonna cue up a little Tina ...

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... then a little T & A.

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Aside: Found at Andy Cooper's weblog, intellectual boytoy Reza Aslan speculates that the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein -- and Ms. Rodham Clinton's initial support for it -- led to Bhutto's assassination. Says who? Says Obama's people, says Aslan.

Related: Brando via Coppolla & Milius via Conrad, "Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared." (scroll down)

Lisa Schriffen @ NRO on the USSR's long shadow over, MSM's "deathwatch" in the subcontinent.

The most pitched and informative takes on Bhutto, Paki politics rounded up by Pamela and Fausta.

Bhutto Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Who Remembered Pearl Harbor This Year?

Anita Bryant, for one. Here's a swell, down home benefit she put on last summer for remaining survivors of the USS Oklahoma (sunk Dec. 7, 1941). I blogged about it previously here.

Deb Schlussel recaps the MSM's "nary a peep" lack of commemoration.

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To be victorious in the long run you need a tradition of fighting, you need myths and martyrs' haloes -- otherwise national character will fall into decay.

-- Edward Kuznetsov, 23 September 1971
(from inside a Soviet prison)

Pamela IS The Candle

Worthy of the first night of Hanukkah is Pamela's editorial "US: State Sponsor of Judeaphobia":

Under the auspices of a global "peace" conference, the White House sanctioned Jew hatred. The Jew is contemptible, inferior, ignorant, politically, socially disenfranchised. Separate entrance ways, service entrances for the Jews, refusal to  touch or shake hands with a Jew by the so called moderate members of the Arab world , refusal of members to wear the translation earphones when Olmert spoke.

Worthy of the entire tradition is Robert's "The Power of Hanukkah."

Reagan: The Struggle For Peace is Indivisible

Rummaging through an old box yesterday, I found some print articles I'd clipped back in 1983 about the Islamic Republic of Iran's and Hezbollah's suicide truck-bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut Airport. 241 American soldiers were killed in what was, up to that time, the largest single death toll of Americans at the hands of Islamofascists.

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Many Americans are wondering why we must keep our forces in Lebanon.

Well, the reason they must stay there until the situation is under control is quite clear. We have vital interests in Lebanon. And our actions in Lebanon are in the cause of world peace.... [W]e're part of a multinational peacekeeping force seeking a withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon and from the Beirut area while a new Lebanese Government undertakes to restore sovereignty throughout that country.

By promoting peace in Lebanon we strengthen the forces for peace throughout the Middle East. This is not a Republican or a Democratic goal, but one that all Americans share. Peace in Lebanon is key to the region's stability now and in the future.

To the extent that the prospect for future stability is heavily influenced by the presence of our forces, it is central to our credibility on a global scale. We must not allow international criminals and thugs such as these to undermine the peace in Lebanon.

The struggle for peace is indivisible. We cannot pick and choose where we will support freedom. We can only determine how. If it's lost in one place, all of us lose. If others feel confident that they can intimidate us and our allies in Lebanon they will become bold elsewhere. If Lebanon ends up under the tyranny of forces hostile to the West, not only will our strategic position in the eastern Mediterranean be threatened but also the stability of the entire Middle East....

In conjunction with our multinational force partners, we're taking measures to strengthen the capabilities of our forces to defend themselves. The United States will not be intimidated by terrorists.

-- President Reagan, from the press conference he gave on October 24, 1983

Barracks Bomber All Smiles

... all he could remember was that the guy was smiling.
-- said a surviving Marine about the sentry who watched the suicide bomber drive past his post, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1983

If It Was True Then....

One of the mistakes of the free world has been to prevent Israel from ridding Beirut of the remnants of terrorism.
-- Ariel Sharon, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1983

A Cassandra in Europe

* Updated (11/26) *

Gay expat critic, poet, and journalist Bruce Bawer appears to have recently launched a blog, Memo From Europe. The initial posts display political and cultural commentary, plus the occasional undying reminiscence. Check it out. If you like it, let him know.

* Update * Bruce emails that Memo From Europe has been up and running for some time. Here are links to MFE's archives from earlier in 2007 and from 2006. We should all feel fortunate that Bruce has a presence on the Internet (where I learned about him). The unique, erudite, and timely perspective of a gay American in Norway would have made Henry James and Orianna Fallaci equally proud.

His most current title is the National Book Award-nominated While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within. Other notable works include Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy (editor) and A Place At The Table. He's also written the best demystification of Edward Said I've yet come across.

September 11th Is A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Partisan liberals are gearing up for their "stop Rudy" campaign. I can feel it.

Here are some choppily edited video clips, found at Dana Goldstein's blog (who found it at Talking Points Memo), of Rudy Giuliani's frequent invocations of September 11th during interviews, debates, and campaign appearances. Dana calls this a tick (as in, a nervous tick), whereas I would say it's a tack -- a strategy to remind Americans of his own leadership, certainly, and by extension of the leadership of many other Americans on that awful and awe-inspiring day.

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People who take issue with a leading presidential candidate, one who oversaw the most intense locus of that day's crisis -- oversaw it more directly than either the president or vice president -- should have to answer the following:

"September 11th is a date which will live in infamy."
Do you agree , or disagree, with that statement? (Yes or No.)

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If recalling September 11th really is distasteful to the good folks at TPM, I guess I could placate them by trying to convince Giuliani to invoke some other date. Say ... February 26th? That day in 1993, on the watch of then-President Bill Clinton and then-Mayor David Dinkins (both Democrats), saw the first attempt by Islamic terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center. The savages' spectacular plan included the intended release of cyanide gas into the tower's ventilation systems -- plus the wishful thinking that the tower's collapse would bring down its twin. So one good that conceivably could come out of a ticky-tacky discussion of whether to invoke or to not invoke September 11th would be to connect it back to February 26th.

February 26th turned out, as a matter of luck, not to be catastrophic -- loss of life and property were minimal -- though it was a precursor to September 11th. For Khalil Sheik Mohammed, an uncle and adviser of one of the plotters, went on to become the chief coordinator of the September 11th attacks. The lessons KSM learned from February 26th were: Never send a fanatical homicide bomber to do a fanatical suicide bomber's job and America might send in spooks and prosecutors, but she won't send in the Marines. What was for the civilized world, at the end of the day on February 26th, effectively a reprieve from catastrophic terror should in hindsight have been a clarion call. Whereas for Islamic fanatics it was a casting call.

Something often omitted from remembrances of September 11th is that, like February 26th, only strokes of fate and luck made that day somewhat less catastrophic than it otherwise would have been. The desperate courage and determined outrage of a few dozen passengers successfully (if tragically) diverted United Flight 93, which had been piloted (targeted) at the Capitol or the White House. That many WTC employees hadn't yet arrived to work when the first planes struck (and that many who had also had time to evacuate) drastically reduced the number of human casualties on that day.

All this is to acknowledge (and perhaps the Talking Points Memo crowd will find common ground with me here) that Giuliani's leadership should not be permitted to eclipse the near unimaginable bravery and stoicism of the many thousands gone on September 11th. Where we diverge is that I believe Giuliani is within his rights -- moreso, his duties -- to invoke our national memory of it. Actually I welcome the kind and gentle, but firm manner by which he speaks for all of us -- he exhibits a fundamental remembrance and pride, plus the littlest hint of grief and a whiff of defiance. And of grapeshot.

I have to wonder, what would partisan liberals prefer Rudy Giuliani do than revive memories of September 11th? Do they wish that he discuss Ms. Rodham Clinton's unreliable mentions of her daughter Chelsea's whereabouts in lower Manhattan on that morning? If that is the case, there may yet be an occasion for Giuliani to do so.

As American Thanksgiving Approaches, Think About The Islamic Colonization of Europe

From "Fjordman's Farewell to Little Green Footballs":

The [European Union’s] policy of deliberately Islamizing the European continent represents one of the greatest betrayals in the history of Western civilization. There is no other continent on the planet today where the indigenous peoples are being systematically deprived of their heritage, displaced in their own cities and subject to violence and abuse with the active involvement of their own authorities, yet where this is celebrated as a good thing in the media....

Later in the same post:

Islam isn’t reformable. The only possible solution then, apart from a global war to the death which nobody wants, is to separate ourselves from the Islamic world as much as possible. And by “we” I mean non-Muslims in general, not just Westerners. This entails completely and permanently stopping Muslim immigration in any form. However, in the USA, Canada and Australia, and certainly in Europe, simply stopping Muslim immigration is no longer enough. Some of the Muslims who are already here need to be expelled. There is no way around this. No, I have never suggested expelling all of them, but the most hardcore ones who push for implementing sharia laws here need to be deported, yes.

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A related discussion underway across the Atlantic: In NYRB Ian Buruma critiques Norman Podhoretz and World War IV.

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And some Norweigian backbone:

As Europe’s Islamization proceeds apace, the gap widens between ordinary folks’ growing recognition of the outrages that are going on all around them and the movers and shakers’ cynical insistence on pretending that everything’s just hunky-dory....

Fortuyn’s murder should have put an end to the character assassinations of the advocates of freedom. Nope. Instead they’ve only grown more sophisticated.

"All The People In Iraq, Muslim and Christian, Is Brother"

(St. John's Church, Baghdad)
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As reported by Michael Yon in Iraq.
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(H/T JMK friend Carolyn)

Leftist Fascism Awareness During Islamo Fascism Awareness Week - Proud Danish Activists Targeted

There's the Left for you.

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Read the account posted at Stop the Islamization of Europe.

Click here for more info on Islamo Fascism Awareness Week.

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Related: Matthias Küntzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11 (click link to order), now available in English, beginning November 1. Review posted at Telos Press.

"They Are Ruining My Life"

Palestinian-born Nonie Darwish came to Berkeley, California to tell the truth about the blight of Islamofascism (click link for video). The only visual media organizations which covered her appearance were Incorrect University and Al-Jazeera.

Yet More Historical Footage of Attempted Left-Wing Intimidation of Right-Wing Speakers

From a talk delivered by Rabbi Meir Kahane in Minnesota in 1990 (less than a month before he was assassinated by a future al-Qaeda operative).

It's always a pleasure to see Arabs in Minnesota. And I want to tell you something, with G-d's help, we're going to give you a lot of your cousins to come here, too.

Bear in mind that when they clapped they were clapping for the murder of three Jews.

Previous: "A Pie For A Pie Makes Whole World Blind, Deaf, Dumb"

Rudy's Rumbles Felt On The Left

* Update *(10/19) * Daniel Pipes clarifies his departures from the Bush Administration's policies in "Giuliani's Fresh Start": I twice voted enthusiastically for George W. Bush, am proud to have been his nominee [to the United States Institute of Peace] in 2003, and predict historians will rate his presidency a success. But presenting Rudy Giuliani and his advisors as Bush administration clones is nonsense. News magazines might consider doing some research before spouting off.
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A prospective Giuliani nomination means a commitment to continue and refine the Bush Doctrine, to pursue a forward military and ideological strategy against Islamofascism. Unfortunately liberal opinion makers are viewing this with alarm. Scott Lemieux at The American Prospect's blog TAPPED quotes Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Michael Marshall, and Matthew Duss on the matter. In "STOP RUDY" Lemieux makes a hanky-grabbing point about the truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue were he to succeed at being elected, a policy that would kill millions of people. Makes me want to grab a hanky all right, and wipe a nether region with it.

Remember Noam Chomsky's October 2001 slander that invading Afghanistan would lead to genocide? Chomsky, it says in that link (scroll down), warned that millions would die within the next couple of weeks. I recall Norman Finkelstein's radio remarks in March 2003 comparing the imminent invasion of Iraq to Hitler's invasion of Poland. Yet supposedly mainstream liberal pundits think this way -- their talking points derive from the extreme left (and the Jewish extreme left, at that). Lemieux goes on to finger Giuliani's brain trust as the culprit in the persons of Daniel Pipes, who braves implacable Islamic ideology (at home even more than abroad), and Norman Podhoretz, who consistently rectifies the errors of contemporary American liberalism, most recently in World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. (WWIV reviewed here: "a bracing read, and a necessary one.")

Lemieux also poo-poos Giuliani's lack of foreign policy experience. As if Ms. Rodham Clinton has a competitive resume to put forward in that department. And as if her brief and undistinguished Senate career weren't made possible, arguably, by the prostate cancer that forced Giuliani in 2000 to stand down from a head-to-head contest with her for the seat.

The left's stubborn refusal to concede hawkish Jewish-Americans a place at the table, to consider the grave process by which they (we) have arrived at our convictions, has been and stands to remain the death knell (morally, if not always electorally) of the Democratic Party. Just ask Joe Lieberman -- and Rudy Giuliani.

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Previous: "Giuliani In San Francisco And His 12 (13?) Commitments For America"

The Banality of Evil - Iranian Edition

"Let Jews Move to Europe or Alaska," says Islamic Republic of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad on "al-Quds Day" (Arabic for "Jerusalem Day" -- that is, "al-Quds Day"). The rallies are massive, the demagoguery on full display, the demand clear: a "full referendum" on the future of the Jewish State, but to be voted on by millions from outside the Jewish State. Ahmedinejad's playing "chicken" with the West and the Arab nations on the issue of democracy. It's rhetoric and it's war at the same time.

Moving to Alaska is a euphemism. It's the same thing as, Pack one suitcase per household, leave everything else, and report to the train station at 700AM. We will be relocating you to recreational work zones in the east.... "Alaska" is a region of Ahmedinejad's mind. The hook for most American listeners is that "Alaska" is a region of the mind, too. A little like the way der Ost (The East) was a region of Hitler's mind, the near but nebulous territories he fantasized, lusted, planned, and attempted to conquer, colonize, and settle. All the way into Asia. The differences (roughly) are that America is a republic, Hitler had a reich, and Islam wants a caliphate.

Meanwhile Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder have their fingerprints on a new movie, Into the Wild, (book version) about a young, privileged, intellectually curious but at the same time completely intellectually lost young man (a recent liberal arts college graduate) who hikes into Alaska this time of the year with almost no supplies, tries to ride out the winter - and dies. (Reminds me a little of Five Easy Pieces, where in the last scene Jack Nicholson gives up his wallet and coat and bums a ride in a truck to Alaska while abandoning his girlfriend and their child she's carrying.) Give that man a Koran and he's John Walker Lindh or Adam Gadahn.

Time to go "into the wild" - but not to Alaska. Into the wilderness of a declining Western Civilization's political and diplomatic rhetoric.

How To Talk Back To Liberals And Conservatives (When You Must)

The following is an excerpt from Ann Coulter's new book, which could have been called How To Talk Back To Liberals And Conservatives (When You Must), but which instead is called If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans:

Liberals’ response to unbridled right-wing speech makes the Muslims look laid back. Reacting with stupefied indignation whenever someone disagrees with them—especially in a way that makes people point and laugh at liberals—they seem to be in a constant state of outrage. Liberals, and the conservatives who fear them, have a look of perpetual outrage, kind of the way Nancy Pelosi has a look of perpetual surprise.

About twice a year for nearly a decade, I have upset the little darlings with some public statement, and yet they manage to summon fresh outrage for each new offense. Each time they think I can’t “sink any lower”—I proceed to do so! And by the way, if they’re going to keep using the tired formulation “This time, she’s gone too far!”—can I get an admission that the last sixteen times were, therefore, not “too far”?

I’m almost at the point that I could put together an entire speech containing only lines that make liberals cry. It would be a rather disjointed speech, involving references to Muslims, Katie Couric, Bill Clinton, Max Cleland, Muslims again, Norman Mineta, Justice Stevens, the Jersey Girls, more on the Muslims, Jack Murtha, John Edwards, still more on the Muslims, and Lincoln Chafee—among many others.

To compensate for all the Republicans who go supine at the sound of liberal squalling, I would include a short section in my speech on Strom Thurmond’s contributions to America. I’d fire some of Bush’s U.S. attorneys. I’d have a few jokes about Abu Ghraib—which I think I’m entitled to. I suffered more just listening to the endless repetition of those Abu Ghraib stories than the actual inmates ever did. Then I would wrap it up by laughingly referring to a liberal in the audience as a “macaca.”

Of course, if I start going around making disjointed speeches that make liberals cry, Barack Obama might accuse me of stealing his act.

Liberal hysteria about conservative speech always follows the same pattern; I call it “The Five Stages of Conservative Enlightenment.” There are public denunciations, demands for apologies, letter-writing campaigns, attacks on the sources of your income, and calls for censorship. There will be lots of wailing, but no facts refuting the point behind your hysteria-inducing statement. Liberals prefer denouncing people with idioms—over the top, gone too far, crossed the line, beyond the pale—not substance. Whose line? Whose pale? It almost makes you think they don’t want to talk about the substance.
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Video: This is the funniest book you've ever done. -- Sean Hannity
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Michael Savage: "The Orthodox Jews Understand What A Gun Is"

Let this put the lie to the slander that Michael Savage is a "self-hating Jew."

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What Might Gibbon Say Today?

The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.

-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Ch. 31, "Invasion of Italy, Occupation of Territories by Barbarians"
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(partial transcript here)
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Plus:
Earth to Mike Bloomberg.....
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From DC to Anbar, CPAC Honoree Honors Martyred Sheik

Matt Sanchez, whose media spotlight earlier this year provided a great opportunity for me to "come forward" about homosexuality in a new, critical, and appreciative way, has been reporting for several months now as an embed from Iraq, the Gulf, and Afghanistan. As more proof of the need for and rise of the New Media, Matt conducted what most unfortunately became the last interview Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi gave to the press. Sheik Sattar, who apparently craved to live in a civil Iraq and for Islam to be a civil religion, recently received media when al-Qaeda savages assassinated him. Hopefully there will be more from Matt on the martyred sheik.

"You Don't Need To Know Arabic To Argue With A Muslim"

.You need only a critical sense, critical thought, and skepticism, says Ibn Warraq over at The New English Review.

Muslim Terrorist MDs Livin', Schoolin', Tranin' in the USA

* Updated * Wayne St. U. blog's pro-Hezbollah post

Islamic terror, an equal opportunity killer, is also an equal opportunity recruiter. And American medical schools are extending high-quality professional training and credentials to these killers and recruiters. Debbie Schlussel deserves a headline for this one (her post has several links and images):

Houssein Zorkot was caught, Sunday, in Dearbornistan's Hemlock park, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face. He was apparently training for some sort of terrorist attack on behalf of Hezbollah and its various Shi'ite splinter groups in Lebanon, all of whose "martyrs" he honors on his website....

[Zorkot's web site] is a pro-Hezbollah, pan-jihadist recruitment site for Jabal Amel and Zrarieh (apparently two Hezbollah offshoots), based right here on our soil and in my backyard.

Reminds me why I despise nerds who escape into comic books and science fiction to simulate adventure and heroism. The opportunity for the real thing is right here under our noses -- with evil enemies named "Zorkot."

Were stories like Zorkot's featured in Newsweek's cover story this past summer, "Islam in America"...? See "al-Newsweek" for critical takes.

Soon it will be revealed: Muslim Terrorist MDs Born in the USA.

"June the 30th, 1934"

From a previously obscure short story by Malcolm Lowry, "June the 30th, 1934," just published in the collection, The Voyage That Never Ends (Michael Hofmann, ed.):

"I stopped for a while at Crete on the way home," Goodyear said at length, thoughtfully. "A fascinating island! Many thousands of years ago they had a civilization strikingly like our own. A sporting people, but not religious. At Cnossos, which might be compared to London, they'd reached a position where they thought the human intellect, by itself, could solve all their problems. Perhaps Adam made the same mistake! Anyhow, the barbarians came, who really had a God -- an evil God but still one which was unanimously worshipped, the God of War that is -- who was all their culture rolled into one, and it was all up with the Cretans!..."

In a century whose greatest scientific achievement and marvel was to put a man on the moon, Malcolm Lowry, plumbed, as an artist, some of its most profound depths. He wrote in, of, and for the midcentury exclusively, but that was in so many ways the 20th Christian Century's pivot.... He was the last in a line of desperate, daring boys -- Melville and Conrad, especially; also, Traven -- who run off to sea to find (lose) themselves, in turn finding (losing) everything else, who survive, for a time, to tell the tale, for all time.

History, which often is scarcely more than high-brow hindsight (forgive me, Clio) or (in its postmodern variant) speculation, teaches us that pacifism -- both its pragmatic variant, by which war is believed to be rendered avoidable by negotiation or by appeal, and its cynical variant, by which "peace" is war by other means -- was high on the intellectual agenda during the 1930s. This was especially true in arts and letters.  This book by Virginia Woolf, which in many ways remains the touchstone for today's high-brow "antiwar" feminist pacifism, testifies to the former. The books by this bastard testify to the latter.

What's so good about Lowry is that, unlike so many "engaged" or "committed" writers (for the most part, now long forgotten), although concerned like any normal soul with the possibility of peace, he had no particular party line to parrot and propagate, no agenda to enact. His faithfulness was to observe Europe's frenetically disintegrating civilization. It's a faith that was, is, frightening, hair-raising, pulse-quickening. For the story of a civilization, our civilization, on the verge of having a nervous breakdown, read Malcolm Lowry.

IX-XI

What had been special ground is now sacred ground.
The line in the sand cut -- not drawn.
By force -- not by choice.

I'm off to a freeway overpass to wave my oversize American flag above rush-hour traffic for a few hours. When you hear horns honking out of the west, you'll know where they're coming from.

* Update 10:20 AM * Back from the overpass, was out there for two hours. A continuous breeze kept Old Glory flapping pretty much non-stop. Truckers and contractors -- i.e., our builders, movers, doers -- they're the greatest, the most generous and unrepressed when it comes to honking and waving. Lots of waves, some thumbs up, some #1's. One lady took her hands off the steering wheel to applaud.

Word of caution: one guy gave me finger and shouted some thing about Bin Laden. The jihad has landed....

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Print and read this at the dinner table tonight: If it is hard for Americans to forget September 11, it seems just as hard for Americans to remember that terrible Tuesday.

Here's my less summary, more reflective report from last year. (Note the animated comments.)

Gerard Van Der Leun reposts his across-the-harbor recollections of September 11, 2001 at American Digest.

Got a 9/11 story to tell? What are you doing to get your counterjihad on? Email me or leave it in the comments.

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The last pic is from Spiritual Oasis whose  Bill Williams volunteered as a chaplain in the aftermath. See his uplifting post, "From Ground Zero."

Jihadists Parade in NYC, Protected by Police, On Eve Of 9/11; Counterjihadists Out In Force

Summary, video, pics from the counterjihad's diva bravissima .
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Time to get your "counterjihad face" on: .

Trust Freedom - By One Righteous Gentile - Or, The Beginnings of a Rebuttal to Osama Bin Laden's Latest Jihad Video

Every once in a while the unabashedly Christian James Baxter leaves a long comment on the blog. This one is worth reprinting as its own post. I find it a stirring rebuttal to yesterday's OBL "convert, surrender, or die" video. Explicitly, it's about fighting for freedom; implicitly, it's a point in favor of the retaliatory "nuke Mecca" position....:

Every September, I recall that is more than half a century (62 years) since I landed at Nagasaki with the 2nd Marine Division in the original occupation of Japan following World War II. This time every year, I have watched and listened to the light-hearted "peaceniks" and their light-headed symbolism-without-substance of ringing bells, flying pigeons, floating candles, and sonorous chanting and I recall again that "Peace is not a cause - it is an effect."

In July, 1945, my fellow 8th RCT Marines [I was a BARman] and I returned to Saipan following the successful conclusion of the Battle of Okinawa. We were issued new equipment and replacements joined each outfit in preparation for our coming amphibious assault on the home islands of Japan.

B-29 bombing had leveled the major cities of Japan, including Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Yokosuka, and Tokyo.

We were informed we would land three Marine divisions and six Army divisions, perhaps abreast, with large reserves following us in. It was estimated that it would cost half a million casualties to subdue the Japanese homeland.

In August, the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima but the Japanese government refused to surrender. Three days later a second A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The Imperial Japanese government finally surrendered.

Following the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese admiral said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant..." Indeed, they had. Not surprisingly, the atomic bomb was produced by a free people functioning in a free environment. Not surprisingly because the creative process is a natural human choice-making process and inventiveness occurs most readily where choice-making opportunities abound. America!

Tamper with a giant, indeed! Tyrants, beware: Free men are nature's pit bulls of Liberty! The Japanese learned the hard way what tyrants of any generation should know: Never start a war with a free people - you never know what they may invent!

As a newly assigned member of a U.S. Marine intelligence section, I had a unique opportunity to visit many major cities of Japan, including Tokyo and Hiroshima, within weeks of their destruction. For a full year I observed the beaches, weapons, and troops we would have assaulted had the A-bombs not been dropped. Yes, it would have been very destructive for all, but especially for the people of Japan.

When we landed in Japan, for what came to be the finest and most humane occupation of a defeated enemy in recorded history, it was with great appreciation, thanksgiving, and praise for the atomic bomb team, including the aircrew of the Enola Gay. A half million American homes had been spared the Gold Star flag, including, I'm sure, my own.

Whenever I hear the apologists expressing guilt and shame for A-bombing and ending the war Japan had started (they ignore the cause-effect relation between Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki), I have noted that neither the effete critics nor the puff-adder politicians are among us in the assault landing-craft or the stinking rice paddies of their suggested alternative, "conventional" warfare. Stammering reluctance is obvious and continuous, but they do love to pontificate about the Rights that others, and the Bomb, have bought and preserved for them.

The vanities of ignorance and camouflaged cowardice abound as license for the assertion of virtuous "rights" purchased by the blood of others - those others who have borne the burden and physical expense of Rights whining apologists so casually and self-righteously claim.

At best, these fakers manifest a profound and cryptic ignorance of causal relations, myopic perception, and dull I.Q. At worst, there is a word and description in The Constitution defining those who love the enemy more than they love their own countrymen and their own posterity. Every Yankee Doodle Dandy knows what that word is.

In 1945, America was the only nation in the world with the Bomb and it behaved responsibly and respectfully. It remained so until two among us betrayed it to the Kremlin. Still, this American weapon system has been the prime deterrent to earth's latest model world- tyranny: Seventy years of Soviet collectivist definition, coercion, and domination of individual human beings.

The message is this: Trust Freedom. Remember, tyrants never learn. The restriction of Freedom is the limitation of human choice, and choice is the fulcrum-point of the creative process in human affairs. As earth's choicemaker, it is our human identity on nature's beautiful blue planet and the natural premise of man's free institutions, environments, and respectful relations with one another. Made in the image of our Creator, free men choose, create, and progress - or die.

Free men should not fear the moon-god-crowd oppressor nor choose any of his ways. Recall with a confident Job and a victorious David, "Know ye not that you are in league with the stones of the field?"

Semper Fidelis
Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC 
WW II and Korean War

Job 5:23  Proverbs 3:31  I Samuel 17:40
http://www.choicemaker.net/

Pim Pied

In a follow-up to the gay radical assault on Anita Bryant post of August 28, here's a video of a 21st Century twist on that tactic: a shit-filled cream pie hurled at gay, Dutch politician and patriot Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn, a firm opponent of Muslim immigration and the Islamicization of Europe, would eventually be assassinated by a fanatic leftist in 2002.
(H/T What Would Charles Martel Do?)

(If the video doesn't work properly, try this link on "The Myth of Liberal Tolerance." Am workin' on the vid....)

Courts (and Blogs) Expose Islamic Operatives in U.S.

Muslim Brotherhood operative a NASA technician, Iraqi diplomat, from Debbie Schlussel. Al-Haramain Surveillance Hearing, from Zombie.

Schnitt Listed

Last weekend JMK's August 16 post advertising Islamo Fascism Awareness Week (Oct. 22-26) was linked by Todd Schnitt. Todd (or "MJ") is Clear Channel radio's popular talk show personality in the morning and afternoon drivetime slots in the Tampa/St. Pete, Miami, Charleston, Biloxi, and Birmingham markets.

Thanks, Todd, for sending readers this way. May it send more college students to Islamo Fascism Awareness week, and may this mention send more listeners your way. (ftr, "Schnitt List" is his phrase, not mine.)

See also: The Schnitt Show's "Global Warming Files"

Fringe Left Filmmaker Makes Case for War With Iran

Left-wing "guerrilla filmmaker" Roger Greenwald, whom I first heard of when reading Byron York's The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, has compiled a series of clips from Fox News Channel with all manner of talking heads warning of the threat Iran poses to the West and its regional neighbors. Greenwald's purpose is to mobilize the nutroots to pressure other MSM networks to slant their news coverage against any possibility of intervention against Iran. The funny thing is, he ends up of conveying a reasonable case for waking up to the dangers Iran poses.

Talk about a broken clock being right twice a day. Thanks, Roger.
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