The Zionist Organization of America's request to the NAACP to withdraw the invitation to Jeremiah Wright to address the organziation's Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday. Go to the original at the Detroit News Online to get all the live internal links.
Reverend Wendell Anthony
President
Detroit Branch
National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP)
8220 Second Avenue
Detroit, MI 48202
Dear Rev. Anthony,
We are writing to you having read reports that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has extended an invitation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ to address the 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner that the Detroit branch of the NAACP is holding on April 27.
We are appalled to learn of the invitation to Rev. Wright no less than we have been disturbed to hear of the rationale for the invitation that has been offered by your Communications Director, Ms. LaToya Henry. Ms. Henry has been quoted as saying that Rev. Wright “has challenged the nation, challenged our comfort zone and stimulated nation-wide discussion on the issues of how we must move forward together as both a nation and a people. We look forward to his participation.”
Rev. Wright's statements and record include the following:
“The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing, 'God bless America? No, no, no, God damn America that's in the bible for killing innocent people, God damn America for treating its citizens as less than human” (2003 sermon, quoted in Brian Ross & Rehab El-Buri, 'Obama's pastor: God damn America, U.S. to blame for 9/11,' abcnews.go.com, March 13, 2008; viewable at 'Barack Obama Pastor Jeremiah Wright NEW TAPES!!!!,' Youtube, March 15, 2008).
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant that the stuff we have done is now brought back into our front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost” (2003 sermon, quoted in Brian Ross & Rehab El-Buri, 'Obama's pastor: God damn America, U.S. to blame for 9/11,' abcnews.go.com, March 13, 2008).
“America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.” (Howard University address, quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).
“Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run” (Howard University address, quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama Minister's Hatred of America,'Newsmax.com, March 14, 2008).
“We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . .” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).
“We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . .” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).
“The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for almost 40 years now. It took a divestment campaign to wake the business community up concerning the South Africa issue. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community up and to wake Americans up concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism” (Quoted in Jim Davis, 'Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division,' Newsmax.com, August 9, 2007).
Wright's church website: “Our racist competitive society” ; disavows the pursuit of “middleclassness,” defined as a trap designed by America to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off” or “placing them in concentration camps.”
On black supremacist anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, upon whom Wright's Trinity Church conferred in 2007 a Lifetime Achievement Award, Wright said in the church's magazine, Trumpet: “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening … He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama and the Minister,' Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008).
Rev. Wright's church also posted a manifesto from the Islamist terror organization, Hamas, which calls in its Charter for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7). Obscenely, the Hamas manifesto, which defended terrorism as a form of legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter to America's Declaration of Independence.
[Paraphrasing the alleged beliefs of white Americans] “We believe God sanctioned the rape and robbery of an entire continent, we believe God ordained African slavery, we believe God makes Europeans superior to Africans and superior to everyone else” ('Barack Obama Pastor Jeremiah Wright NEW TAPES!!!!,' Youtube, March 15, 2008).
“When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, 'Obama Attended Hate America Sermon,' Newsmax.com, March 16, 2008). [Visiting Libya in 1984 was illegal under U.S. law]
This record of words and deeds does not challenge the nation - it defames it, not least the many who have fought racism and the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in a civil war that ended slavery. It does not challenge comfort zones - unless decency and truth are comfort zones that should be relinquished. It does not stimulate discussion - it precludes it.
Would the NAACP see nothing wrong if another organization invited a white supremacist pastor who railed regularly against blacks and accused them of bringing down civilization? How would the NAACP react if another organization honored with a major award white supremacist and hater of African-Americans David Duke? We do not believe that the NAACP would regard such an invitation as either proper or acceptable.
The demonization of America as an inherently racist society by Rev. Wright is nothing less than a repudiation of the NAACP's own commitment to advancing the cause of minorities, in the words of your own website, through a “deeper form of justice that derives from the very spirit upon which this country was founded.”
We are therefore appalled that the NAACP, an organization charged with fighting racism and bigotry, has invited a man like Rev. Wright, who promotes hatred of America, hatred of white people and hatred of Israel based on falsehoods to address its major fund-raising event. Surely, the NAACP should be publicly condemning Rev. Wright and shunning him, not honoring him with a platform to disseminate further his ugly views.
We earnestly urge you to rescind this invitation to Rev. Wright. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Yours sincerely,
Morton A. Klein
National President
Zionist Organization of America
Friday, April 25, 2008
Dearborn Heights Imam Says Wright Is on 'Mission of Jesus'
Our friends at the Zionist Organization of America wrote a polite but firm letter to Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, asking him to rescind the decision to honor Rev. Jeremiah Wright with a national forum at their convention in Detroit this Sunday.Wright is an outspoken anti-Semite who, among other things, lent his own Pastor’s Column in the church newsletter to a Hamas spokesman. The ZOA letter to Rev. Anthony lays out in detail the offending remarks of Rev. Wright. It is well worth reading for its own sake, and I'll post it separately.
Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, head of the Islamic House of Worship in Dearborn Heights, responded to the ZOA's request in the Detroit News by defending Wright, whom he calls “a shining light, bringing dignity and integrity to our nation. His voice represents the mission of Jesus and the call for freedom and justice.”
Elahi, with the sort of logical leap and moral relativism we’re many of us getting so tired of trying to answer, tries to accuse the ZOA of hypocrisy because, while requested the NAACP not to invite an anti-Semite to give a sermon at their Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner, the ZOA itself “didn't apologize for the huge betrayal of our national security when Ben-Ami Kadish allegedly passed classified U.S. nuclear weaponry documents to Israel.”
Ben-Ami Kadesh, for those of you who haven't heard of him, was reported charged by US authorities with espionage only two days ago. I would imagine that no one at the ZOA even knew who Kadish was at the time they wrote their letter to Anthony, let alone assumed moral responsibility for everything Kadish ever did or didn’t do.
Clearly Ali Elahi doesn’t know, nor care, whether what he says about the ZOA or Kadish is true, false, or ludicrous. His only interest in defending Wright now is to exploit Wright's useful-idiot value as someone who can be counted by Israel's enemies on to lend his voice—the voice that “represents the mission of Jesus”—for parroting Hamas propaganda and other Jew-hating misinformation.
How the CIA Created AIDS in Their Lab
Yesterday on WCHB’s morning talk show, Mildred Gaddis’s Inside Detroit, I happened to hear a reference to a story about “a Clinton pastor” who was just sentenced to 3 years in prison for child sexual abuse.
Ms. Gaddis, and some of her callers were wanting to know why the media was ignoring this story. After all, if the Clinton's own pastor just got sentenced for abusing a 7-year-old, that would take some serious wind out of Hillary’s sails after all the criticism she’s heaped on poor Obama for his refusal to denounce Rev. Wright.
As one blogger repeating the story wrote:
The blogs are talking about it, but the mainstream news is not. Still, this is interesting. Blogs such as AdvanceAmericablog, commondreams. org, the National Journal's Hotline, and wakeupfromyourslumber. com are talking about the scandal that has enveloped the former Pastor of the Clintons, but it appears only the Utica, NY newspaper is covering the story. The rest of the mainstream media is silent. Perhaps the story isn't divisive enough for the mainstream media to take notice. Of course, it is as unfair to blame Hillary Clinton for her former pastor's abuses just as it is unfair to blame Barack Obama for Rev. Wright. Still, that means the mainstream media is far more enamored of condemning Obama for his Rev. Wright's tirades about 9/11 and race than it is concerned with the plight of a seven year old girl abused by Hillary Clinton's former pastor.
Then I heard Ms. Gaddis mentioning it again this morning, and again with the emphasis on why no one in the media was talking about it.
Ms. Gaddis is very smart and runs a good talk show.
Which is why I was surprised she was still talking about it today. Because, based on what I heard yesterday on WCHB, I was able to find out before 8:30 am Thursday that the story is false, as it’s being told, and predicated on a pretty silly mistake.
It turns out the convicted pastor, Rev. William Procanick, 54, is a former pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God Church in Clinton, N.Y. So he is a "Clinton pastor" in one sense only, that he used to be a pastor in a town called Clinton. Moreover, it's fairly well known that Hillary is a Methodist. Nor does the original report even mention the former First Lady and her husband.
That’s it. No connection with the Clintons at all.
But the story of the Clinton pastor that Hillary must now denounce still has wheels, for now.
It was being told on a website called AlterNet, and it's appeared as a topic for discussion at Democratic Underground (no relation to the true Underground).
Sample comment on the posting: “Hillary sat in the pews for 20 years and watched this creep sexual [sic] abuse children?”
When I tried to get the details for myself after hearing it on WCHB, I soon found out why the media wasn’t covering it. The mix-up was briefly explained by Madison Times reporter George Curry. ("Wright’s words used for political gain").
It was a small-time story about a nasty crime--grave enough for the victims, but hardly a national story except when linked --erroneously--with the notion that it involves the former President and Hillary.
The interesting thing to me is the carelessness with which this story was picked up by people who should have known better, such as Ms. Gaddis, and the next thing you now it is a national "scandal."
Ms. Gaddis--who really is quite sharp, was still repeating it as a fact even after 24 hours, when it could have been easily vetted and debunked with minimal Googling and, in her case, she might have been corrected by a message from one of her thousands of listeners advising her of her error.
Also, on the discussion boards, I saw no posters either challenging the truth of the story, or even curious about the when, where, how, and why of a “Clinton pastor” emerging in a town the Clintons never lived in, and that no one had ever heard of before, nor why the story doesn’t even mention the Clintons.
This isn’t sloppy journalism, or at least not as far as I can tell. I don’t know if it was a journalist at all who first saw the phrase, “Clinton pastor sentenced,” and gleefully started calling his Obama-supporting friends about a story to good to be true.
But for some people in the country right now, the sentencing of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s pastor for a sex crime with a child is almost as solid an historical fact as the occurrence of their own birth.
That's how easy that can be. And this particular urban legend, in my estimation, was probably the result of an accidental misreading of the original report.
Now, imagine the opportunities for mischief from someone really trying to spread disinformation.
Ms. Gaddis, and some of her callers were wanting to know why the media was ignoring this story. After all, if the Clinton's own pastor just got sentenced for abusing a 7-year-old, that would take some serious wind out of Hillary’s sails after all the criticism she’s heaped on poor Obama for his refusal to denounce Rev. Wright.
As one blogger repeating the story wrote:
The blogs are talking about it, but the mainstream news is not. Still, this is interesting. Blogs such as AdvanceAmericablog, commondreams. org, the National Journal's Hotline, and wakeupfromyourslumber. com are talking about the scandal that has enveloped the former Pastor of the Clintons, but it appears only the Utica, NY newspaper is covering the story. The rest of the mainstream media is silent. Perhaps the story isn't divisive enough for the mainstream media to take notice. Of course, it is as unfair to blame Hillary Clinton for her former pastor's abuses just as it is unfair to blame Barack Obama for Rev. Wright. Still, that means the mainstream media is far more enamored of condemning Obama for his Rev. Wright's tirades about 9/11 and race than it is concerned with the plight of a seven year old girl abused by Hillary Clinton's former pastor.
Then I heard Ms. Gaddis mentioning it again this morning, and again with the emphasis on why no one in the media was talking about it.
Ms. Gaddis is very smart and runs a good talk show.
Which is why I was surprised she was still talking about it today. Because, based on what I heard yesterday on WCHB, I was able to find out before 8:30 am Thursday that the story is false, as it’s being told, and predicated on a pretty silly mistake.
It turns out the convicted pastor, Rev. William Procanick, 54, is a former pastor of Resurrection Assembly of God Church in Clinton, N.Y. So he is a "Clinton pastor" in one sense only, that he used to be a pastor in a town called Clinton. Moreover, it's fairly well known that Hillary is a Methodist. Nor does the original report even mention the former First Lady and her husband.
That’s it. No connection with the Clintons at all.
But the story of the Clinton pastor that Hillary must now denounce still has wheels, for now.
It was being told on a website called AlterNet, and it's appeared as a topic for discussion at Democratic Underground (no relation to the true Underground).
Sample comment on the posting: “Hillary sat in the pews for 20 years and watched this creep sexual [sic] abuse children?”
When I tried to get the details for myself after hearing it on WCHB, I soon found out why the media wasn’t covering it. The mix-up was briefly explained by Madison Times reporter George Curry. ("Wright’s words used for political gain").
It was a small-time story about a nasty crime--grave enough for the victims, but hardly a national story except when linked --erroneously--with the notion that it involves the former President and Hillary.
The interesting thing to me is the carelessness with which this story was picked up by people who should have known better, such as Ms. Gaddis, and the next thing you now it is a national "scandal."
Ms. Gaddis--who really is quite sharp, was still repeating it as a fact even after 24 hours, when it could have been easily vetted and debunked with minimal Googling and, in her case, she might have been corrected by a message from one of her thousands of listeners advising her of her error.
Also, on the discussion boards, I saw no posters either challenging the truth of the story, or even curious about the when, where, how, and why of a “Clinton pastor” emerging in a town the Clintons never lived in, and that no one had ever heard of before, nor why the story doesn’t even mention the Clintons.
This isn’t sloppy journalism, or at least not as far as I can tell. I don’t know if it was a journalist at all who first saw the phrase, “Clinton pastor sentenced,” and gleefully started calling his Obama-supporting friends about a story to good to be true.
But for some people in the country right now, the sentencing of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s pastor for a sex crime with a child is almost as solid an historical fact as the occurrence of their own birth.
That's how easy that can be. And this particular urban legend, in my estimation, was probably the result of an accidental misreading of the original report.
Now, imagine the opportunities for mischief from someone really trying to spread disinformation.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
McCain Attacks Bush in Shameless Pander to Black Voters
Every time I start to think I can stand this guy, he does something like this:
McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’
There's nothing honorable about disloyalty, even in a war hero.
Not a word, you will notice, about the utter failure of state and local Democratic leaders.
McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’
There's nothing honorable about disloyalty, even in a war hero.
Not a word, you will notice, about the utter failure of state and local Democratic leaders.
The UN Wondering If Free Speech Has Had Its Day
I suppose one advantage to being a small, insignificant blog is that we may escape the notice of the enforcement powers of the United Nations Durban II conference. Because according to Durban II’s definitions, since we are regular champions of freedom of expression, and regularly commit the crime of “Islamophobia.”
From National Review Online:
Redefining Anti-Semitism
At Durban II, only anti-Muslim racism counts.
By Anne Bayefsky
Geneva — Tuesday was Day 2 of the United Nations hatefest known as the “first substantive session of the Durban Review Preparatory Committee,” now taking place in Geneva. Delegates rolled up their sleeves, and the Jewish and Western-bashing exercise entered a new phase.
From National Review Online:
Redefining Anti-Semitism
At Durban II, only anti-Muslim racism counts.
By Anne Bayefsky
Geneva — Tuesday was Day 2 of the United Nations hatefest known as the “first substantive session of the Durban Review Preparatory Committee,” now taking place in Geneva. Delegates rolled up their sleeves, and the Jewish and Western-bashing exercise entered a new phase.
The Egyptian representative gave a good summary of most everything wrong with Durban II. He claimed the conference and its preparatory process should focus on criminalizing “racial profiling,” “racism in the media,” “the challenges posed by Islamophobia since the events on 9/11,” and “instrumentalization of democratic processes for racist applications.” In short, racism is an evil Western plot to victimize Muslims, who can only be protected by the undermining of democracy, freedom, and law enforcement.
The Algerian Ambassador took the U.N. Durban II platform to claim “anti-semitism . . . targets . . . Arabs who are also Semites, and by extension, the whole Muslim community.” Defining anti-Semitism this way has become a key component of the Durban II strategy, since once the concept has been Islamicized, Muslim states are happy to shout about taking it very seriously, confident that Western UN-ophiles still won’t catch on to their game.
While the European Union attendees stayed in their seats, the assault on democracy carried on. Algeria said “freedom of expression spread[s] hatred and violence and lead[s] to the burning of mosques in ‘advanced’ countries.” Syria ranted about “the crimes that are perpetrated in the name of democracy” and the “killers” that “are countries that advocate democracy . . . and give [a] free hand to perpetrate massacres.”
U.N. “expert” Doudou Diene from Senegal — whose name has been bandied about as a possible successor to the current U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who retires in June — worried about “groups that have instrumentalized the freedom of expression” and the so-called “ideological freedom of expression.”
According to Diene, “we should no longer use freedom of expression as the ideological tool [it is] . . . today.” The “Danish caricatures” cannot be tolerated in the name of freedom of expression “anymore.”
Though the United States is boycotting the forum, American taxpayers will be surprised to learn that — if the U.N. gets its way — they are still paying for it. The U.N. Secretariat revealed a new end-run around the U.S. promise not to fund Durban II. The secretariat announced that they had cut their original $7 million price tag for the preparatory side of Durban II in half. The other half will be “absorbed in existing resources” — a euphemism for using funds already in U.N. coffers, 22 percent of which are from American taxes. Washington is now faced with ensuring that this brazen attempt to avoid official American policy does not succeed.
— Anne Bayefsky is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She also serves as the director of the Touro Institute for Human Rights and the Holocaust and as the editor of EYEontheUN.org.
The Ambassador of Sri Lanka was more philosophical. In his words, “the relationship between racial discrimination and freedom of expression is a complex and dialectical one; more freedom of expression is not an antidote to racial discrimination.”
The Algerian Ambassador took the U.N. Durban II platform to claim “anti-semitism . . . targets . . . Arabs who are also Semites, and by extension, the whole Muslim community.” Defining anti-Semitism this way has become a key component of the Durban II strategy, since once the concept has been Islamicized, Muslim states are happy to shout about taking it very seriously, confident that Western UN-ophiles still won’t catch on to their game.
While the European Union attendees stayed in their seats, the assault on democracy carried on. Algeria said “freedom of expression spread[s] hatred and violence and lead[s] to the burning of mosques in ‘advanced’ countries.” Syria ranted about “the crimes that are perpetrated in the name of democracy” and the “killers” that “are countries that advocate democracy . . . and give [a] free hand to perpetrate massacres.”
U.N. “expert” Doudou Diene from Senegal — whose name has been bandied about as a possible successor to the current U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who retires in June — worried about “groups that have instrumentalized the freedom of expression” and the so-called “ideological freedom of expression.”
According to Diene, “we should no longer use freedom of expression as the ideological tool [it is] . . . today.” The “Danish caricatures” cannot be tolerated in the name of freedom of expression “anymore.”Though the United States is boycotting the forum, American taxpayers will be surprised to learn that — if the U.N. gets its way — they are still paying for it. The U.N. Secretariat revealed a new end-run around the U.S. promise not to fund Durban II. The secretariat announced that they had cut their original $7 million price tag for the preparatory side of Durban II in half. The other half will be “absorbed in existing resources” — a euphemism for using funds already in U.N. coffers, 22 percent of which are from American taxes. Washington is now faced with ensuring that this brazen attempt to avoid official American policy does not succeed.
And the EU is faced with the impossible task of keeping a straight face while speechifying that Durban II is good for human rights.
— Anne Bayefsky is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She also serves as the director of the Touro Institute for Human Rights and the Holocaust and as the editor of EYEontheUN.org.
'Won't Get Took Again'?
Anybody else hear a big cracking sound? That might be the backbone of the Democratic Party snapping. (Yeah, it doesn't make much of sound at that.)
Black voters in Detroit are angry at what, already, they consider the hijacking by Bill and Hillary’s team of Obama’s nomination for president.
Callers to WCHB this morning, (Detroit’s biggest black talk radio channel), were threatening to leave the Democratic Party, and either skip the election this year or vote “independent,” (presumably because folks aren’t independent enough to vote Republican yet).
Mildred Gaddis seemed to be stumping for a boycott of the presidential election so that Hillary loses. One of her callers described how she has always voted the Dem ticket, but now for the first time is going to vote “independent,” namely, make up her own mind based on a candidate’s qualifications—as if that is a novelty for American voters! (Unfortunately, it's too much of a novelty for black Democratic voters).
If blacks defect, I don’t see how the Democrats could win in November, nor recover as a national party.
The irony of it would be almost too much to take.
For nearly 40 years now Democratic leaders have counted on a loyal cadre of paid-for clergymen, corrupt local politicians, and other union and “civic” organizers/hustlers to feed a steady diet of sound-bites, rumors, half-truths and falsehoods into the black community to keep the knowledge base diluted and the electorate disinformed. The whole strategy was to persaude black voters that all that stood between them and the malevolent forces dying to push them back down into Jim Crow and second-class status was the Party of God and civil rights--the Democrats. It was bullshit then, and it's so far past bullshit now that it's not even funny.
But this is funny: Now, that same sound-bite machine is smoking and throwing off sparks, imploding with the news getting around in the black community that “they’re” trying to steal the nomination from Obama so they can give it to “Billary.”
And this time, “they” doesn’t mean Republicans, conservatives, or (as they are called by the precious black clergy) “the Bushies”: instead I’m hearing names being thrown around like Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, Jennifer Granholm, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The fact that Obama’s nomination, while it still seems a live possibility, is not yet his officially enough to be hijacked, is beside the point. Facts have always been the least of it in this kind of politics. We’re talking here about catechism by sound bite, about a voting block of millions with a knowledge of history and political science based almost entirely on rumors and interpreters like Wright, Farrakhan, and Sharpton. Thanks in part to the endless, deliberate racial baiting of black Americans by the Left, the black community—as a political block, anyway—has been conditioned to respond to all “injustices” by embracing conspiracy theories and echoing fables that forever after cannot be disproved.
Facts were equally beside the point in the OJ trial, in Florida in 2000, or after Katrina. In November 2000 the lie was spread in Florida, (Democratic operatives abandoned this lie within scant hours once they realized how much attention was going to get paid) that police barricades and guard dogs had been used in Broward County to prevent black supporters of Al Gore from reaching the polls. Farrakhan stole this lie and re-used it in slightly modified form after Hurricane Katrina, claiming that black residents fleeing high water in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans were prevented from crossing an overpass into a dry “white” neighborhoods by police barricades and machine-gun nests, leaving them to drown or starve to death.
The real lesson in the Jeremiah Wright story isn’t that one Chicago preacher is either racist or anti-American, (though he’s both), or that Obama proved his cynicism by attaching himself to Wright just to have a channel into Chicago’s black community. The real lesson is that there’s a voting constituency eager to defend Wright by defining themselves as sharing a common black “experience” that transforms fables about AIDS being invented in a laboratory to kill blacks, or about the US Coast Guard blowing up the New Orleans levees, or that there is a mother ship hovering above Planet Earth to rescue blacks, into historical truth. (Some may object that I am painting with too broad a brush by ascribing this level of incredulity to the entire black voting block. But for weeks I’ve heard countless black commentators explaining that Wright’s remarks are not only understandable—but substantially true--if you are a black person).
What gives these stories their power isn't their fantastic quality so much as their reuse of the theme of black victimhood at the hands of tricky whites, stories that always trace out the same pattern of racial malice and deception as laid down, in one of its Ur-versions, by Malcolm X, and then re-told about the White Man in every generation since:
“Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!
“Ya been took!
“Ya been hoodwinked!
“Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok!
“This is what He does….”
“He” being the White Man.
Except in this case, “He” isn't Dick Cheney or Don Imus, or Trent Lott.
"He" is Carl Levin, or Howard Dean. Or Billary.
In fairness to the ancient tale of bamboozlement, I guess the Democrats really have bamboozled the blacks. That's what Democrats do best. They even know how to hoodwink themselves. And the blacks really did get took. Run amock. No doubt about it. How else to explain the blind devotion of the victims of Jim Crow and the KKK to the party of Jim Crow and the KKK??
That is some first class example of bamboozle.
But Democrats, by managing now to make themselves the villain in this most recent Jena-Selma-Katrina-Lynching serial drama, (the one where Obama gets screwed out of his God-given entitlement to be President), have practically invited 20-some million potential black voters to abandon the party all together.
Which is exactly how the Democrats getting blown ass-over-teakettle by their own dropped racial grenade reaches its highest altitude of irony.
They've spent forty years spoon-feeding black voters on the politics of envy, anger, victimhood, and racial resentment. They worked things so bad for their black constituency that political goals in that community--more than forty years afte the Voting Rights Act--still haven't even evolved beyond using political office to spite imagined enemies or enrich corrupt leaders. As Detroit is the living, bleeding embodiment, black support is never the reward for a record of any measurable political or social gain. The reward is just getting it from them, and keeping it for us.
But the lack of clear political goals and social benefits has been a real benefit for the Democratic operatives working to keep blacks loyal, on board, or at least only manageably disaffected.
The lack of measurable goals spares Democrats accounting for why their policies fail to improve the lives of blacks. If the objects were better schools, for instance, or more jobs, or restored cities, Democrats would have to own up to being total failures. It bears little reminding that the places where the most Democrats lord it over the densest black populations are the places where the short end of the stick is shortest--places like, say, Detroit or New Orleans. If you sell people vacuous buzz phrases like “racial justice” in place of rational political metrics like better schools, or business investment that bring jobs, Democratic candidates need only ask every election time (like they’re asking now): “Are you more angry, frustrated, and suspicious now than you were four years ago? You are? Then vote for me, because we hate those people too!”
In Detroit, there’s a high school graduation rate somewhere down around 25% (we can’t be sure because no one here ever learned to do percentages). But there'll be no political consequence for this failure. That's because control of the cash-rich district is a “prize” all on its own, even if only a few district cronies get to enjoy it. A public school system's got little, or--in Detroit's case--nothing, to do with enriching and educating the city’s young people or making the city a more attractive place to live. The purpose of a school district is its value as a political fief, and a jobs and retirement program for teacher unions, income supplement for crooked preachers who get rich selling service contracts to the district, and general money trough for hangers-on of the city’s decades-old Democrat machine.
Now, because the national Democratic leadership are beginning to discuss, just maybe, throwing over the faltering and unready Obama in favor of a Hillary candidate in November, black voters who've grown very fond of Obama are getting that old hoodwinky feeling again.
The Democrats are facing the unintended consequence of Obama’s unexpected success: that black Americans would support Obama for their own independent reasons of pride and hope, reasons unrelated to reflexive obedience to long conditioning to just keep pulling that lever, regardless, for the ticket with the donkey picture at the top.
I think Howard Dean and Carl Levin were so jazzed at the idea of one of their most leftist Leftists in the Oval Office, enjoying unfettered tax raising power and Middle East partnering in Democratic 2009, they couldn't be bothered asking themselves if Conyers’s and Waters’s and Jackson-Lee’s compliant constituents would march in on Election Day and vote for whomever they were told to--just as they were trained to do—even if it meant turning their back on one of their own.
Meanwhile, without waiting to be ordered to do so by the national party, black Democrats adopted Obama, the smooth-talking handsome upstart, and started seeing him as “our” candidate. And in the politics of race, and envy, and mistrust, you just can't have an "us" without an enemy “them.”
And if there’s one thing Democrats have told black voters over and over and over, it’s: "Can't trust 'them.' They're tricky! Don't get took!"
Which worked fine, as long as the Dems got to define who "them" was.
But now the party that perfected the campaign appeal of
"vote for us, and we'll keep you from getting took by them,"
now is "them."
Even if Dean and the rest try to enforce party discipline (hah!), or explain the advantages of winning the White House with Hillary over losing it with Barack, it will sound (it already sounds, from what I heard today on Detroit talk radio) like nothing more than more wicked trickery laid down by one more doctor with an advanced degree in bamboozleology--trying to hoodwink us, again.
This can only get better for everyone.
Black voters in Detroit are angry at what, already, they consider the hijacking by Bill and Hillary’s team of Obama’s nomination for president.
Callers to WCHB this morning, (Detroit’s biggest black talk radio channel), were threatening to leave the Democratic Party, and either skip the election this year or vote “independent,” (presumably because folks aren’t independent enough to vote Republican yet).
Mildred Gaddis seemed to be stumping for a boycott of the presidential election so that Hillary loses. One of her callers described how she has always voted the Dem ticket, but now for the first time is going to vote “independent,” namely, make up her own mind based on a candidate’s qualifications—as if that is a novelty for American voters! (Unfortunately, it's too much of a novelty for black Democratic voters).
If blacks defect, I don’t see how the Democrats could win in November, nor recover as a national party.
The irony of it would be almost too much to take.
For nearly 40 years now Democratic leaders have counted on a loyal cadre of paid-for clergymen, corrupt local politicians, and other union and “civic” organizers/hustlers to feed a steady diet of sound-bites, rumors, half-truths and falsehoods into the black community to keep the knowledge base diluted and the electorate disinformed. The whole strategy was to persaude black voters that all that stood between them and the malevolent forces dying to push them back down into Jim Crow and second-class status was the Party of God and civil rights--the Democrats. It was bullshit then, and it's so far past bullshit now that it's not even funny.
But this is funny: Now, that same sound-bite machine is smoking and throwing off sparks, imploding with the news getting around in the black community that “they’re” trying to steal the nomination from Obama so they can give it to “Billary.”
And this time, “they” doesn’t mean Republicans, conservatives, or (as they are called by the precious black clergy) “the Bushies”: instead I’m hearing names being thrown around like Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, Jennifer Granholm, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The fact that Obama’s nomination, while it still seems a live possibility, is not yet his officially enough to be hijacked, is beside the point. Facts have always been the least of it in this kind of politics. We’re talking here about catechism by sound bite, about a voting block of millions with a knowledge of history and political science based almost entirely on rumors and interpreters like Wright, Farrakhan, and Sharpton. Thanks in part to the endless, deliberate racial baiting of black Americans by the Left, the black community—as a political block, anyway—has been conditioned to respond to all “injustices” by embracing conspiracy theories and echoing fables that forever after cannot be disproved.
Facts were equally beside the point in the OJ trial, in Florida in 2000, or after Katrina. In November 2000 the lie was spread in Florida, (Democratic operatives abandoned this lie within scant hours once they realized how much attention was going to get paid) that police barricades and guard dogs had been used in Broward County to prevent black supporters of Al Gore from reaching the polls. Farrakhan stole this lie and re-used it in slightly modified form after Hurricane Katrina, claiming that black residents fleeing high water in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans were prevented from crossing an overpass into a dry “white” neighborhoods by police barricades and machine-gun nests, leaving them to drown or starve to death.
The real lesson in the Jeremiah Wright story isn’t that one Chicago preacher is either racist or anti-American, (though he’s both), or that Obama proved his cynicism by attaching himself to Wright just to have a channel into Chicago’s black community. The real lesson is that there’s a voting constituency eager to defend Wright by defining themselves as sharing a common black “experience” that transforms fables about AIDS being invented in a laboratory to kill blacks, or about the US Coast Guard blowing up the New Orleans levees, or that there is a mother ship hovering above Planet Earth to rescue blacks, into historical truth. (Some may object that I am painting with too broad a brush by ascribing this level of incredulity to the entire black voting block. But for weeks I’ve heard countless black commentators explaining that Wright’s remarks are not only understandable—but substantially true--if you are a black person).
What gives these stories their power isn't their fantastic quality so much as their reuse of the theme of black victimhood at the hands of tricky whites, stories that always trace out the same pattern of racial malice and deception as laid down, in one of its Ur-versions, by Malcolm X, and then re-told about the White Man in every generation since:
“Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!
“Ya been took!
“Ya been hoodwinked!
“Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok!
“This is what He does….”
“He” being the White Man.
Except in this case, “He” isn't Dick Cheney or Don Imus, or Trent Lott.
"He" is Carl Levin, or Howard Dean. Or Billary.
In fairness to the ancient tale of bamboozlement, I guess the Democrats really have bamboozled the blacks. That's what Democrats do best. They even know how to hoodwink themselves. And the blacks really did get took. Run amock. No doubt about it. How else to explain the blind devotion of the victims of Jim Crow and the KKK to the party of Jim Crow and the KKK??
That is some first class example of bamboozle.
But Democrats, by managing now to make themselves the villain in this most recent Jena-Selma-Katrina-Lynching serial drama, (the one where Obama gets screwed out of his God-given entitlement to be President), have practically invited 20-some million potential black voters to abandon the party all together.
Which is exactly how the Democrats getting blown ass-over-teakettle by their own dropped racial grenade reaches its highest altitude of irony.
They've spent forty years spoon-feeding black voters on the politics of envy, anger, victimhood, and racial resentment. They worked things so bad for their black constituency that political goals in that community--more than forty years afte the Voting Rights Act--still haven't even evolved beyond using political office to spite imagined enemies or enrich corrupt leaders. As Detroit is the living, bleeding embodiment, black support is never the reward for a record of any measurable political or social gain. The reward is just getting it from them, and keeping it for us.
But the lack of clear political goals and social benefits has been a real benefit for the Democratic operatives working to keep blacks loyal, on board, or at least only manageably disaffected.
The lack of measurable goals spares Democrats accounting for why their policies fail to improve the lives of blacks. If the objects were better schools, for instance, or more jobs, or restored cities, Democrats would have to own up to being total failures. It bears little reminding that the places where the most Democrats lord it over the densest black populations are the places where the short end of the stick is shortest--places like, say, Detroit or New Orleans. If you sell people vacuous buzz phrases like “racial justice” in place of rational political metrics like better schools, or business investment that bring jobs, Democratic candidates need only ask every election time (like they’re asking now): “Are you more angry, frustrated, and suspicious now than you were four years ago? You are? Then vote for me, because we hate those people too!”
In Detroit, there’s a high school graduation rate somewhere down around 25% (we can’t be sure because no one here ever learned to do percentages). But there'll be no political consequence for this failure. That's because control of the cash-rich district is a “prize” all on its own, even if only a few district cronies get to enjoy it. A public school system's got little, or--in Detroit's case--nothing, to do with enriching and educating the city’s young people or making the city a more attractive place to live. The purpose of a school district is its value as a political fief, and a jobs and retirement program for teacher unions, income supplement for crooked preachers who get rich selling service contracts to the district, and general money trough for hangers-on of the city’s decades-old Democrat machine.
Now, because the national Democratic leadership are beginning to discuss, just maybe, throwing over the faltering and unready Obama in favor of a Hillary candidate in November, black voters who've grown very fond of Obama are getting that old hoodwinky feeling again.
The Democrats are facing the unintended consequence of Obama’s unexpected success: that black Americans would support Obama for their own independent reasons of pride and hope, reasons unrelated to reflexive obedience to long conditioning to just keep pulling that lever, regardless, for the ticket with the donkey picture at the top.
I think Howard Dean and Carl Levin were so jazzed at the idea of one of their most leftist Leftists in the Oval Office, enjoying unfettered tax raising power and Middle East partnering in Democratic 2009, they couldn't be bothered asking themselves if Conyers’s and Waters’s and Jackson-Lee’s compliant constituents would march in on Election Day and vote for whomever they were told to--just as they were trained to do—even if it meant turning their back on one of their own.
Meanwhile, without waiting to be ordered to do so by the national party, black Democrats adopted Obama, the smooth-talking handsome upstart, and started seeing him as “our” candidate. And in the politics of race, and envy, and mistrust, you just can't have an "us" without an enemy “them.”
And if there’s one thing Democrats have told black voters over and over and over, it’s: "Can't trust 'them.' They're tricky! Don't get took!"
Which worked fine, as long as the Dems got to define who "them" was.
But now the party that perfected the campaign appeal of
"vote for us, and we'll keep you from getting took by them,"
now is "them."
Even if Dean and the rest try to enforce party discipline (hah!), or explain the advantages of winning the White House with Hillary over losing it with Barack, it will sound (it already sounds, from what I heard today on Detroit talk radio) like nothing more than more wicked trickery laid down by one more doctor with an advanced degree in bamboozleology--trying to hoodwink us, again.
This can only get better for everyone.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Emailing Us
Due to the incompetence of our IT department, (me), our blog is often far from cutting edge, technically speaking, (while remaining steadily cutting edge in content).
For example, when I started the blog, for security reasons I arranged email to go through a blind third-party, but soon found out that incoming emails were also having their addresses blocked out, so I wasn't able to answer them.
Our official email is now through the EMAIL US link right at the top of our blog. But now and then someone emails me through the old link that I included in the Why Dearborn Underground? document. I finally caught that error, and I think it's fixed now.
Long story short, if you wish to write to us more directly than through the Comments feature, you can click on EMAIL US, or http://www.contactify.com/dd68d, and I will be able to see your address and reply. As always, public or private comments or messages are most welcome.
I mention it now because I received an email through the old third-party email server from a Toledo reader signing as "dm," and couldn't reply. I hope that person writes again, and I apologize for being so Delta Geek.
For example, when I started the blog, for security reasons I arranged email to go through a blind third-party, but soon found out that incoming emails were also having their addresses blocked out, so I wasn't able to answer them.
Our official email is now through the EMAIL US link right at the top of our blog. But now and then someone emails me through the old link that I included in the Why Dearborn Underground? document. I finally caught that error, and I think it's fixed now.
Long story short, if you wish to write to us more directly than through the Comments feature, you can click on EMAIL US, or http://www.contactify.com/dd68d, and I will be able to see your address and reply. As always, public or private comments or messages are most welcome.
I mention it now because I received an email through the old third-party email server from a Toledo reader signing as "dm," and couldn't reply. I hope that person writes again, and I apologize for being so Delta Geek.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Intelligence Allowed Here: 'Expelled' Is Worth Seeing
I went to see Ben Stein's new documentary today, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and I recommend it, for what that's worth to anybody. If nothing else, Stein is striking a blow for freedom of speech and thought, something that is dear to our hearts here at Dearborn Underground.
The same mentality that presumes to declare debates "closed" on things like abortion and global warming first found its domineering voice deploying to an irrestible effect the Darwinian theory. Strictly aside from its scientific value or lack of same, the thought control and persecution accompanying the protection and passing on of this theory is something to behold.
As I have repeated often, DU is not a religious blog, except when we simply can't help it, and none of the many knots into which my knotty innards are tied result from controversies over Intelligent Design. I'm a Catholic so I believe in an omnipotent Creator, as prominently mentioned in Article I of our Creed. Nor do I believe humands descended from apes, accidentally or otherwise.
But aside from that I'm a committed skeptic on the subject of scientism. I can't think of a worse class of persons for society to hand control of life-and-death questions to than scientists, especially doctors, who proved their moral unfitness for such a role in the Third Reich, and repeatedly since then in inventing partial-birth infanticide, insane theories about population reduction, and who believe that euthanasia falls within their competence because they've got medical degrees.
Ben Stein also remind his audience of the link between both Darwinism and Nazism, (the former being a conditiion precedent for the latter), and Darwinism and the Planned Parenthood movement of the arch-racist Margaret Sanger. National Review Online's David Klinghoffer reviews the Nazi angle of Expelled in "Don’t Doubt It. An important historic sidebar."
I also find Expelled's release yesterday uncannily timely to illustrate two issues we've all been following the last couple of weeks.
One is a brief cut in Expelled of the odious harlequin Bill Maher, in an appearance who knows how old now, declaring that when it comes to government restrictions on dangerous things, drugs and guns pose much less of a threat to us than religion does--and therefore needs to be closely regulated (prohibited). Obviously, the footage of Maher in Ben Stein's documentary was inserted without knowing in advance Maher would make his childish remarks last week about the Pope and the Church on HBO.
I believe Maher's a fallen away Catholic, and there's no novelty for me any more witnessing the lengths a lapsed Christian will go to escape (as Flannery O'Connor wrote), the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling."
In this regard Maher is just a bore, and he was probably a flop when he first tried out this material in third grade. But the point is that Maher stood before adoring fans and actually advocated for the demolition of the First Amendment--to applause.
He doesn't scare me--they do.
Second, there are the interviews with the spokespersons for Darwinism in Expelled.
If you thought Obama's remarks about ignorant, desperate crackers clinging to God and guns in bitter befuddlement that Washington D.C. hadn't sent them a return-to-work notice, you really need to see Richard Dawkins and other supercilious scientists explaining all opposition to Darwinism in nonscientifc terms like "idiot, ignorant, stupid, insane," etc., etc.
Last of all, there is the media's tacit collusion, (as damning a piece of evidence as any smoking gun) to refuse to even review, screen, or allow any worth to the film at all. The Detroit News's Tom Long had to invent a "Hall of Shame" to avoid having to deal with it, (excuse: no advance peek), and the Detroit Free Press relied on an Orlando Sentinel hatchet job. ("Deceitful 'Expelled' takes on evolution"). If you don't want to read DFP review, I'll clue you in that the reviewer never took time off from calling Stein names to actually identify a single thing he said that was "deceptive." Instead, we get this:
"Expelled" relies on the viewer's inability or unwillingness to wrestle with a complex corner of science, double-talking its way toward a "must be a miracle" solution to anything that science may not claim to have an answer for. Dismiss that for having no basis in fact, and you're infringing on "academic freedom."
Two which I have two comments as "the viewer":
a) me 2 dumm to rassle with $ciancE, and
b) Nowhere in the film does Stein come anywhere near stating existence "must be a miracle."
My suggestions:
Stick it to the man.
Question consensus.
See this movie.
The same mentality that presumes to declare debates "closed" on things like abortion and global warming first found its domineering voice deploying to an irrestible effect the Darwinian theory. Strictly aside from its scientific value or lack of same, the thought control and persecution accompanying the protection and passing on of this theory is something to behold.
As I have repeated often, DU is not a religious blog, except when we simply can't help it, and none of the many knots into which my knotty innards are tied result from controversies over Intelligent Design. I'm a Catholic so I believe in an omnipotent Creator, as prominently mentioned in Article I of our Creed. Nor do I believe humands descended from apes, accidentally or otherwise.
But aside from that I'm a committed skeptic on the subject of scientism. I can't think of a worse class of persons for society to hand control of life-and-death questions to than scientists, especially doctors, who proved their moral unfitness for such a role in the Third Reich, and repeatedly since then in inventing partial-birth infanticide, insane theories about population reduction, and who believe that euthanasia falls within their competence because they've got medical degrees.
Ben Stein also remind his audience of the link between both Darwinism and Nazism, (the former being a conditiion precedent for the latter), and Darwinism and the Planned Parenthood movement of the arch-racist Margaret Sanger. National Review Online's David Klinghoffer reviews the Nazi angle of Expelled in "Don’t Doubt It. An important historic sidebar."
I also find Expelled's release yesterday uncannily timely to illustrate two issues we've all been following the last couple of weeks.
One is a brief cut in Expelled of the odious harlequin Bill Maher, in an appearance who knows how old now, declaring that when it comes to government restrictions on dangerous things, drugs and guns pose much less of a threat to us than religion does--and therefore needs to be closely regulated (prohibited). Obviously, the footage of Maher in Ben Stein's documentary was inserted without knowing in advance Maher would make his childish remarks last week about the Pope and the Church on HBO.
I believe Maher's a fallen away Catholic, and there's no novelty for me any more witnessing the lengths a lapsed Christian will go to escape (as Flannery O'Connor wrote), the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling."
In this regard Maher is just a bore, and he was probably a flop when he first tried out this material in third grade. But the point is that Maher stood before adoring fans and actually advocated for the demolition of the First Amendment--to applause.
He doesn't scare me--they do.
Second, there are the interviews with the spokespersons for Darwinism in Expelled.
If you thought Obama's remarks about ignorant, desperate crackers clinging to God and guns in bitter befuddlement that Washington D.C. hadn't sent them a return-to-work notice, you really need to see Richard Dawkins and other supercilious scientists explaining all opposition to Darwinism in nonscientifc terms like "idiot, ignorant, stupid, insane," etc., etc.
Last of all, there is the media's tacit collusion, (as damning a piece of evidence as any smoking gun) to refuse to even review, screen, or allow any worth to the film at all. The Detroit News's Tom Long had to invent a "Hall of Shame" to avoid having to deal with it, (excuse: no advance peek), and the Detroit Free Press relied on an Orlando Sentinel hatchet job. ("Deceitful 'Expelled' takes on evolution"). If you don't want to read DFP review, I'll clue you in that the reviewer never took time off from calling Stein names to actually identify a single thing he said that was "deceptive." Instead, we get this:
"Expelled" relies on the viewer's inability or unwillingness to wrestle with a complex corner of science, double-talking its way toward a "must be a miracle" solution to anything that science may not claim to have an answer for. Dismiss that for having no basis in fact, and you're infringing on "academic freedom."
Two which I have two comments as "the viewer":
a) me 2 dumm to rassle with $ciancE, and
b) Nowhere in the film does Stein come anywhere near stating existence "must be a miracle."
My suggestions:
Stick it to the man.
Question consensus.
See this movie.
Today Gaza, Tomorrow Rome!
Somehow after watching Pope Benedict XVI through this week, Hamas's particular threat doesn't have me too concerned. But for those of you who believe there is a spiritual warfare going on, this does have signficance.
Muslim cleric proclaims Rome will soon be conquered by Islam
CNA STAFF, Apr 14, 2008 / 09:17 pm (CNA).- A high profile Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament gave a sermon last Friday [April 11] in which he declared that soon Rome, “the capital of the Catholics” will be soon overtaken by Islam.
Yunis al-Astal, the cleric in question, told his listeners that “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam…”
The diatribe was aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV and predicted that Rome would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe."
"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion," al-Astal declared, "so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world."
According to FOX News, Al-Astal preached last June that it was the duty of Palestinian women to martyr themselves by becoming homicide bombers.
"When jihad becomes an individual duty, it applies to women too, because women do not differ from men when it comes to individual duties," he said in a June 23, 2007 interview. Al-Astal also called Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs" who should "taste the bitterness of death” in the interview.
The parliamentarian returned to this slur on Friday, saying that Rome “has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.”
"I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them,” Al-Astal said.
"Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls – and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire at whose brink they stand."
To view video of Yunis Al-Astal go to: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1739.htm
Muslim cleric proclaims Rome will soon be conquered by Islam
CNA STAFF, Apr 14, 2008 / 09:17 pm (CNA).- A high profile Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament gave a sermon last Friday [April 11] in which he declared that soon Rome, “the capital of the Catholics” will be soon overtaken by Islam.
Yunis al-Astal, the cleric in question, told his listeners that “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam…”
The diatribe was aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV and predicted that Rome would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe."
"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion," al-Astal declared, "so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world."
According to FOX News, Al-Astal preached last June that it was the duty of Palestinian women to martyr themselves by becoming homicide bombers.
"When jihad becomes an individual duty, it applies to women too, because women do not differ from men when it comes to individual duties," he said in a June 23, 2007 interview. Al-Astal also called Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs" who should "taste the bitterness of death” in the interview.
The parliamentarian returned to this slur on Friday, saying that Rome “has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.”
"I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them,” Al-Astal said.
"Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls – and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire at whose brink they stand."
To view video of Yunis Al-Astal go to: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1739.htm
Carter Lies, Gazans Die
In the same Associated Press article where His Holiness, (I mean the other one), Jimmy Carter, explains his moral rectitude in honoring murderers of schoolchildren and ignoring the reasonable and lawful prohibitions of US citizens treating with terrorist organizations with an audacious claim that he is "immune from such restrictions," ("Carter slams Israeli actions in Gaza Strip"), the AP reports that
As Carter was meeting with Hamas officials, Israeli troops fended off Palestinian gunmen who assaulted a crossing on the Gaza Strip border Thursday, thwarting the third attempt by militants to infiltrate into Israel in a week.
One Palestinian was reported killed in the clash, which followed a day of fighting between Israeli forces and Gaza militants.
When the AP says "Palestinian gunmen," they mean "Hamas gunmen," that is, the people Carter went over their to cuddle with. Hamas is in complete control of Gaza, directs all its military operations against Israel launched from Gaza, and killed or otherwise removed from the equation any rival Fatah gunmen during their bloody coup last year.
Today, by way of divine confirmation of Carter's mission, Hamas staged a suicide bombing at a border crossing where food and humanitarian supplies come through from Israel, in order "to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that would lead to international pressure on Israel." The strategy will come at the direct expense of Gazans, of course. ("Palestinian Suicide Bombers Attack Gaza Crossing").
Carter has blamed all recent problems on the "apartheid" policies of Israel.
He is such a toad. Hamas hasn't blown up Egypt's humanitarian border crossing with Gaza, because Egypt shut their border with Gaza rather than let these creeps into their country, and they don't send humanitarian aid into Gaza! But will Jimmy accuse Egypt of gencoide and call them an apartheid state?
Hamas has also very publicly announced their refusal of Carter's pretty-pleases to stop firing rockets into Israel or to release Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, held hostage--or worse--since June 2006.
I shudder to think how, having tired of making a fool of Carter--for whom I can't imagine they have a sliver of respect--Hamas's thugs may feel inclined to turn to humiliating Carter's poor wife Rosalynn just to see if there is anything they can do to make that damned peanut farmer evince some semblance of manly self-respect.
As Carter was meeting with Hamas officials, Israeli troops fended off Palestinian gunmen who assaulted a crossing on the Gaza Strip border Thursday, thwarting the third attempt by militants to infiltrate into Israel in a week.
One Palestinian was reported killed in the clash, which followed a day of fighting between Israeli forces and Gaza militants.
When the AP says "Palestinian gunmen," they mean "Hamas gunmen," that is, the people Carter went over their to cuddle with. Hamas is in complete control of Gaza, directs all its military operations against Israel launched from Gaza, and killed or otherwise removed from the equation any rival Fatah gunmen during their bloody coup last year.
Today, by way of divine confirmation of Carter's mission, Hamas staged a suicide bombing at a border crossing where food and humanitarian supplies come through from Israel, in order "to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that would lead to international pressure on Israel." The strategy will come at the direct expense of Gazans, of course. ("Palestinian Suicide Bombers Attack Gaza Crossing").
Carter has blamed all recent problems on the "apartheid" policies of Israel.
He is such a toad. Hamas hasn't blown up Egypt's humanitarian border crossing with Gaza, because Egypt shut their border with Gaza rather than let these creeps into their country, and they don't send humanitarian aid into Gaza! But will Jimmy accuse Egypt of gencoide and call them an apartheid state?
Hamas has also very publicly announced their refusal of Carter's pretty-pleases to stop firing rockets into Israel or to release Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, held hostage--or worse--since June 2006.
I shudder to think how, having tired of making a fool of Carter--for whom I can't imagine they have a sliver of respect--Hamas's thugs may feel inclined to turn to humiliating Carter's poor wife Rosalynn just to see if there is anything they can do to make that damned peanut farmer evince some semblance of manly self-respect.
Carter States the Obvious
As reported Friday in the AP ("Carter slams Israeli actions in Gaza Strip "):
CAIRO, Egypt -- Former President Carter told a university audience here Thursday that the treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military was "a crime" while adding that there are "officials in Israel quite willing to meet with Hamas" and that might happen "in the near future."
Carter spoke to students and faculty at the American University in Cairo after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and a separate three-hour meeting with Hamas officials. The Bush administration and Israel have set rules not to talk to the militant Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip, but Carter said, "I consider myself immune" from such restrictions.
Didn't we already know that about JC?
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Another Preacher Heard From
"God bless America!"
Pope Benedict XVI to the United States Wednesday on the south lawn of the White House.
Could this be an example of what St. Paul said about overcoming evil with good?
Hearing Pope Benedict's heartfelt blessing on America made me realize just how easily a man of God can repair and undo the endlessly looped curses we've all had called down us by a false prophet.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Springsteen: Barack Knows All About the Darkness at the Edge of Town
From the LA Times:
Springsteen endorses Obama for president
You may remember that 70s-era TV ad where Robert Young, whose big show at the time was “Marcus Welby, MD”, had to explain to the audience that “I’m not a real doctor, I just play one on TV.” He was selling Sanka as being medically more beneficial than real coffee.
For some reason everyone alive from that era remembers that line.
Maybe it was the implicit insult we all felt that Madison Avenue thought we needed to be told that the guy from “Father Knows Best” wasn’t a real doctor; or maybe we all felt the same glum confidence that a lot of folks were going to start buying Sanka based on a hazy referral they’d been given by some guy with an M.D. after his name.
Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement of Barack Obama is the same kind of cynical thing. If you can't get a real doctor to hawk the health benefits of Sanka, get an actor who plays one; if you need a blue-collar spokesman to try to explain Obama’s idiotic remarks about small-town, working-class people, get someone who himself impersonates a small-town working class guy every night in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans?
"I'm not a real doctor," said Robert Young.
Just so, now Bruce is saying, “I’m not a real small-town, working-class American, but I play one on stage. I wear t-shirts, a leather, biker boots and jeans during all my shows, and I sing a lot about people worried about money and the police. I sing about fixing up cars, punching clocks, mean streets, giant Exxon signs--all that shit. Which is what qualifies me to reassure you--on behalf of all heartland America--that Barack Obama is not the priggish, out-of-touch Harvard snob that everyone can see that he is. Now who're you gonna believe? A guy like, me whose always got his hair styled to make me look like a greaser, or someone like Eva Longoria Parker, who plays a rich suburban housewife with a style she’s trying to maintain, and supports Hillary? What does Eva know about Katrina, or coming back from Vietnam to no job?”
Of course Bruce is entitled, as any other red-blooded American, to endorse and support the candidate of his choice. I just find it a bit hard to take having Senator Obama's blue-collar credentials vouched for by a guy who made his first million probably longer ago than Bill Gates did.
Springsteen endorses Obama for president
You may remember that 70s-era TV ad where Robert Young, whose big show at the time was “Marcus Welby, MD”, had to explain to the audience that “I’m not a real doctor, I just play one on TV.” He was selling Sanka as being medically more beneficial than real coffee.
For some reason everyone alive from that era remembers that line.
Maybe it was the implicit insult we all felt that Madison Avenue thought we needed to be told that the guy from “Father Knows Best” wasn’t a real doctor; or maybe we all felt the same glum confidence that a lot of folks were going to start buying Sanka based on a hazy referral they’d been given by some guy with an M.D. after his name.Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement of Barack Obama is the same kind of cynical thing. If you can't get a real doctor to hawk the health benefits of Sanka, get an actor who plays one; if you need a blue-collar spokesman to try to explain Obama’s idiotic remarks about small-town, working-class people, get someone who himself impersonates a small-town working class guy every night in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans?
"I'm not a real doctor," said Robert Young.
Just so, now Bruce is saying, “I’m not a real small-town, working-class American, but I play one on stage. I wear t-shirts, a leather, biker boots and jeans during all my shows, and I sing a lot about people worried about money and the police. I sing about fixing up cars, punching clocks, mean streets, giant Exxon signs--all that shit. Which is what qualifies me to reassure you--on behalf of all heartland America--that Barack Obama is not the priggish, out-of-touch Harvard snob that everyone can see that he is. Now who're you gonna believe? A guy like, me whose always got his hair styled to make me look like a greaser, or someone like Eva Longoria Parker, who plays a rich suburban housewife with a style she’s trying to maintain, and supports Hillary? What does Eva know about Katrina, or coming back from Vietnam to no job?”Of course Bruce is entitled, as any other red-blooded American, to endorse and support the candidate of his choice. I just find it a bit hard to take having Senator Obama's blue-collar credentials vouched for by a guy who made his first million probably longer ago than Bill Gates did.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Allah Created Dhimmitude, But God Created Brigitte Bardot
We see where Brigitte Bardot is on trial for the fifth time for insulting Islam, which she fears is ruining her nation, France. Islam in France, she says, is "destroying our country and imposing its acts".
Brigitte Bardot on trial for Muslim slur
Tue Apr 15, 2008 5:45pm BST
PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.
Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros (12,071 pounds) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts".
Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.
She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.
Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: "I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot."
Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.
French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation.
Muslims traditionally mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering a sheep or another animal to commemorate the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son on God's orders.
France is home to 5 million Muslims, Europe's largest Muslim community, making up 8 percent of France's population.
"I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts," the star of 'And God created woman' and 'Contempt' said.
Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the "Islamisation of France".
So not only has Ms. Bardot a dim view of France being invaded by Islamists, she also doesn't like gays. C'est terrible!
Brigitte Bardot on trial for Muslim slur
Tue Apr 15, 2008 5:45pm BST
PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.
Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros (12,071 pounds) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts".
Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.
She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.
Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: "I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot."
Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.
French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation.
Muslims traditionally mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering a sheep or another animal to commemorate the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son on God's orders.
France is home to 5 million Muslims, Europe's largest Muslim community, making up 8 percent of France's population.
"I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts," the star of 'And God created woman' and 'Contempt' said.
Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the "Islamisation of France".
So not only has Ms. Bardot a dim view of France being invaded by Islamists, she also doesn't like gays. C'est terrible!
I'm just a bit too young for Brigitte. I was only just being born when And God Created Woman was being filmed.
But even if not for the sake of images like the above, between Ms. Bardot and the Muslim immigrants who have created the no-go zones, I have to sympathize with Ms. Bardot. She must feel strongly about it, to take the same medicine five times.
The Gospel of Jimmah
According to Scroll Digest, an obscure biblical archeology monthly my doctor keeps in his waiting room, there’s lots of excitement about the discovery of still one more first-century gospel to compete with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Experts have dubbed it the Gospel of Jimmah.
Jimmah is the name of the narrative’s alternative Christ-figure. Unlike most Gospels, the document was also written by the character named Jimmah.
According to the Gospel of Jimmah, the true Messiah, rather than being a Nazarene carpenter, is a Georgia peanut farmer who, Moses-like, was elevated by an utter fluke to royal prominence as president of a major western democracy. But after four years in the seat of power Jimmah had to flee into the wilderness in disgrace, after many of the ungrateful countrymen he presumed to be ruler of spied him slaying what little was left of their national honor, and trying to hide it with sand.
Jimmah remained in the wilderness thirty years, all but forgotten, helping to build Habitat for Humanity houses, and occasionally making a self-directed sojourn into enemy nations to undermine the foreign policies of his successors.
Then, he heard God’s voice speaking to him from two burning towers. Jimmah resumed his mission to free the whole world by bringing his message of peace--the central theme of which was that Jimmah had been right all along. His ministry consisted primarily of roaming from town to town explaining how, when he was in office, his views were the most enlightened, and his actions the wisest. Multitudes and whole villages fled at the sight of him.
Similar to the other Gospels, this one has a temptation story. In it, when Satan comes to Jimmah to tempt him in the wilderness, he offers to give him all the glory he was robbed of during his one term in office in exchange for every last shred of his integrity. Jimmah immediately accepts.
The Gospel of Jimmah also has a wedding story, except in Jimmah when the host runs out of wine, Jimmah denounces the man for his alleged human rights failings, refuses him any assistance, and grins idiotically as the entire wedding party is taken captive and enslaved by a tribe of wicked Persians.
Experts say the Gospel of Jimmah has stylistic similarities to the other Gospels, but lacks practically every trait of the historical Christian documents.
Jimmah’s Messianic figure, for example, lacked humility, wise sayings, and a following. Nor could Jimmah work signs, wonders, or miracles. In fact, where the traditional Gospels often describe healings of the blind and the raising of the dead, the Jimmah narrative describes nothing so inspiring.
Instead, Jimmah describes how the crowds often were murmuring amongst themselves that the Farmer from Plains not only lacked miraculous powers, but did such a lousy job helping the poor and sick through ordinary means that he left them much worse off than before he came along. And yet, to the utter astonishment of Jimmah’s contemporaries, he continued to return to the Temple day after day expecting everyone to be entranced by his wild revisionism and insipid views on improving the human condition!
As one leader of the time was quoted in the Gospel of Jimmah: “Who could have imagined such a man!”
Biblical archeologist Professor Raymond Tittle says he’s puzzled at finding so little of religious value in the Gospel of Jimmah. He finds, at best, only a single supernatural doctrine in the whole ancient text, namely, an implicit teaching that, in one historical figure--Jimmah--there subsisted miraculously both a mortal human nature, and an impermeable smugness of a scale and scope theologians calculate could not be contained in an entity any smaller than the largest and most irritating Deity.
“It is unimaginable,” said Dr. Tittle, “that any sect embracing such a gospel could have survived for very long. I can’t think of any group of persons who would find Jimmah’s character something to be emulated, let alone admired.”
Unlike the historical Gospels, explained Tittle, the Gospel of Jimmah could never be the basis for any community of love, courage, mutual respect, and service to humanity, because “it emphasizes only self-loathing, dishonor, and self-delusion on an epic scale. It’s almost as if it were written by their enemies. Maybe that’s why we discovered it hidden where we did.”
Professor Tittle explained that the Gospel of Jimmah was unearthed accidentally, in Gaza, jammed into the bottom of what was the first century equivalent of a public toilet.
Jimmy Carter lays a wreath in honor of terrorist Yassir Arafat.
Experts have dubbed it the Gospel of Jimmah.
Jimmah is the name of the narrative’s alternative Christ-figure. Unlike most Gospels, the document was also written by the character named Jimmah.
According to the Gospel of Jimmah, the true Messiah, rather than being a Nazarene carpenter, is a Georgia peanut farmer who, Moses-like, was elevated by an utter fluke to royal prominence as president of a major western democracy. But after four years in the seat of power Jimmah had to flee into the wilderness in disgrace, after many of the ungrateful countrymen he presumed to be ruler of spied him slaying what little was left of their national honor, and trying to hide it with sand.
Jimmah remained in the wilderness thirty years, all but forgotten, helping to build Habitat for Humanity houses, and occasionally making a self-directed sojourn into enemy nations to undermine the foreign policies of his successors.
Then, he heard God’s voice speaking to him from two burning towers. Jimmah resumed his mission to free the whole world by bringing his message of peace--the central theme of which was that Jimmah had been right all along. His ministry consisted primarily of roaming from town to town explaining how, when he was in office, his views were the most enlightened, and his actions the wisest. Multitudes and whole villages fled at the sight of him.
Similar to the other Gospels, this one has a temptation story. In it, when Satan comes to Jimmah to tempt him in the wilderness, he offers to give him all the glory he was robbed of during his one term in office in exchange for every last shred of his integrity. Jimmah immediately accepts.
The Gospel of Jimmah also has a wedding story, except in Jimmah when the host runs out of wine, Jimmah denounces the man for his alleged human rights failings, refuses him any assistance, and grins idiotically as the entire wedding party is taken captive and enslaved by a tribe of wicked Persians.
Experts say the Gospel of Jimmah has stylistic similarities to the other Gospels, but lacks practically every trait of the historical Christian documents.
Jimmah’s Messianic figure, for example, lacked humility, wise sayings, and a following. Nor could Jimmah work signs, wonders, or miracles. In fact, where the traditional Gospels often describe healings of the blind and the raising of the dead, the Jimmah narrative describes nothing so inspiring.
Instead, Jimmah describes how the crowds often were murmuring amongst themselves that the Farmer from Plains not only lacked miraculous powers, but did such a lousy job helping the poor and sick through ordinary means that he left them much worse off than before he came along. And yet, to the utter astonishment of Jimmah’s contemporaries, he continued to return to the Temple day after day expecting everyone to be entranced by his wild revisionism and insipid views on improving the human condition!
As one leader of the time was quoted in the Gospel of Jimmah: “Who could have imagined such a man!”
Biblical archeologist Professor Raymond Tittle says he’s puzzled at finding so little of religious value in the Gospel of Jimmah. He finds, at best, only a single supernatural doctrine in the whole ancient text, namely, an implicit teaching that, in one historical figure--Jimmah--there subsisted miraculously both a mortal human nature, and an impermeable smugness of a scale and scope theologians calculate could not be contained in an entity any smaller than the largest and most irritating Deity.
“It is unimaginable,” said Dr. Tittle, “that any sect embracing such a gospel could have survived for very long. I can’t think of any group of persons who would find Jimmah’s character something to be emulated, let alone admired.”
Unlike the historical Gospels, explained Tittle, the Gospel of Jimmah could never be the basis for any community of love, courage, mutual respect, and service to humanity, because “it emphasizes only self-loathing, dishonor, and self-delusion on an epic scale. It’s almost as if it were written by their enemies. Maybe that’s why we discovered it hidden where we did.”
Professor Tittle explained that the Gospel of Jimmah was unearthed accidentally, in Gaza, jammed into the bottom of what was the first century equivalent of a public toilet.
Jimmy Carter lays a wreath in honor of terrorist Yassir Arafat.Thursday, April 10, 2008
Former President Jimmy Carter: The Moral Equivalent of Whore
Not content with his first-place record as our most-failed U.S. president, (full disclosure: I voted for him--twice), Jimmy Carter is working hard to guarantee he's America's biggest failure as ex-president, too.
God has told Jimmy, (or I think it was the other way around--which reminds me of a joke, 'So what's the difference between Christ and Carter? Christ doesn't think He's Carter....')--anyway, one Deity told the Other that Jimmy shall go to Syria and meet with Hamas's leader, Khaled Mashaal, whose group has been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. That's the American State Department. The country whose taxpayers have been paying Carter's salary for the last 32 years.
Carter kissing the American blood stains on the hand of the Hamas leader makes perfect sense in view of Jimmy's ongoing mission of undermining all U.S. foreign policy goals that didn't originate in his own enlightened administration (e.g., all the ones where our side wins).
It also helps him prove they didn't give him the Nobel Prize just because he was a useful idiot for Euro-snots who wanted a weapon to get at Bush, but because he really deserved to reign in that pantheon of modern peacemakers that includes Yassir Arafat, Al Gore, and the U.N. (And wouldn't you know it, being Carter, he even failed his Nobel mission as a useful idiot!)
If Carter simply must keep drawing attention to himself, I don't see why he can't find ways that are less destructive to the nation, but just as effective.
He can go on The View, say, and do an impersonation of a drunk Danny DeVito doing an impersonation of a five-year-old doing an impersonation of a real President of the United States.
Or he could hire Britney Spears's unemployed mother as his manager, shave off his hair, or get stopped by the LAPD for DUI, or pose nude for Vanity Fair, or start a tabloid relationship with a wigger rap artist.
Or, since he's already supremely confident that when he dies he's going straight to Heaven, maybe he could use what little time he has left to salvage some dignity for himself on Earth.
God has told Jimmy, (or I think it was the other way around--which reminds me of a joke, 'So what's the difference between Christ and Carter? Christ doesn't think He's Carter....')--anyway, one Deity told the Other that Jimmy shall go to Syria and meet with Hamas's leader, Khaled Mashaal, whose group has been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. That's the American State Department. The country whose taxpayers have been paying Carter's salary for the last 32 years.
Carter kissing the American blood stains on the hand of the Hamas leader makes perfect sense in view of Jimmy's ongoing mission of undermining all U.S. foreign policy goals that didn't originate in his own enlightened administration (e.g., all the ones where our side wins).
It also helps him prove they didn't give him the Nobel Prize just because he was a useful idiot for Euro-snots who wanted a weapon to get at Bush, but because he really deserved to reign in that pantheon of modern peacemakers that includes Yassir Arafat, Al Gore, and the U.N. (And wouldn't you know it, being Carter, he even failed his Nobel mission as a useful idiot!)
If Carter simply must keep drawing attention to himself, I don't see why he can't find ways that are less destructive to the nation, but just as effective.
He can go on The View, say, and do an impersonation of a drunk Danny DeVito doing an impersonation of a five-year-old doing an impersonation of a real President of the United States.
Or he could hire Britney Spears's unemployed mother as his manager, shave off his hair, or get stopped by the LAPD for DUI, or pose nude for Vanity Fair, or start a tabloid relationship with a wigger rap artist.
Or, since he's already supremely confident that when he dies he's going straight to Heaven, maybe he could use what little time he has left to salvage some dignity for himself on Earth.
The Better Counterterrorism
“In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.”
Interesting, isn't it?
As Andrew Walden at Pajamas Media writes, “Ex-Muslim Magdi Allam's very public baptism on Easter Sunday made headlines, but he is just one among legions converting from Islam around the world.”
Take a look at these encouraging facts. (“Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves”).
Interesting, isn't it?
As Andrew Walden at Pajamas Media writes, “Ex-Muslim Magdi Allam's very public baptism on Easter Sunday made headlines, but he is just one among legions converting from Islam around the world.”
Take a look at these encouraging facts. (“Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves”).
We Sang and Danced Forever and a Day....
I know one of my favorite Democratic talking points is the one about how an Obama presidency will restore the good opinion of the world towards the USA.
Like so many liberal promises of a return to the Garden, it relies on an utter forgetfulness of the last time that party was in power. Victor Davis Hanson helps us remember how good things were. (“Back to the Good Ole Days Before Dubya? How Obama will restore America's standing in the world.”):
The world between 1992-2000 is the model we are to emulate, it seems. The world was much safer then — before George W. Bush’s indiscriminate wars — and it can be so again. In those golden days, the U.S. rightly contextualized “random” terrorist acts — making the proper distinctions between war and “police matters.” Yes, it’s true that thousands of American soldiers died in those peaceful days — about 7,500 between 1993-2000 — but they did so in noncombatant-related operations. Back then, our experts appreciated the hard lines and firewalls that separated Hezbollah from Iran, Sunni terrorists from Shiite killers, and were always careful not to overreact and turn mere responses into needless wars. In extremis, we can employ tried-and-true tools like no-fly zones, oil-for-food embargoes, U.N. sanctions, and the occasional cruise missile — avoiding the mess of President Karzai’s Afghanistan or President Maliki’s Iraq, and the peripheral blowback involving a jittery Libya, Syria, and Pakistan’s Dr. A. Q. Khan.
Presently the United States does the world’s heavy lifting under a Texan who says “nucular.” But soon it may well be charmed and mesmerized by a smooth-talking icon who raises trade barriers, leaves the Middle East to the Middle East, gets tough on China and India, relaxes relations with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela, while redefining existing ones with Pakistan — and says to Europe, “We’re right behind you!” Let’s hope it will be as pleasant to see the results as it has been to listen to the utopian rhetoric.
Like so many liberal promises of a return to the Garden, it relies on an utter forgetfulness of the last time that party was in power. Victor Davis Hanson helps us remember how good things were. (“Back to the Good Ole Days Before Dubya? How Obama will restore America's standing in the world.”):
The world between 1992-2000 is the model we are to emulate, it seems. The world was much safer then — before George W. Bush’s indiscriminate wars — and it can be so again. In those golden days, the U.S. rightly contextualized “random” terrorist acts — making the proper distinctions between war and “police matters.” Yes, it’s true that thousands of American soldiers died in those peaceful days — about 7,500 between 1993-2000 — but they did so in noncombatant-related operations. Back then, our experts appreciated the hard lines and firewalls that separated Hezbollah from Iran, Sunni terrorists from Shiite killers, and were always careful not to overreact and turn mere responses into needless wars. In extremis, we can employ tried-and-true tools like no-fly zones, oil-for-food embargoes, U.N. sanctions, and the occasional cruise missile — avoiding the mess of President Karzai’s Afghanistan or President Maliki’s Iraq, and the peripheral blowback involving a jittery Libya, Syria, and Pakistan’s Dr. A. Q. Khan.
Presently the United States does the world’s heavy lifting under a Texan who says “nucular.” But soon it may well be charmed and mesmerized by a smooth-talking icon who raises trade barriers, leaves the Middle East to the Middle East, gets tough on China and India, relaxes relations with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela, while redefining existing ones with Pakistan — and says to Europe, “We’re right behind you!” Let’s hope it will be as pleasant to see the results as it has been to listen to the utopian rhetoric.
Pedaling As Fast as I Can
A new job and some other complications have me falling behind on blogging.
I'll be away from my computer most of next week, but back by the weekend.
I'll be away from my computer most of next week, but back by the weekend.
Pithy Enough
“We have our teeth in their jugular — and we need to keep them there.”
General Petraeus to Senator Lugar in response to questioning before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Noted by Peter Wehner at NRO.
General Petraeus to Senator Lugar in response to questioning before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Noted by Peter Wehner at NRO.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Al Qaeda/Obama Synchronize 'First Hundred Days'
This from Gateway Pundit:
Al Zawahiri Promises to Take Jerusalem After US Pulls Out of Iraq
For some strange reason this did not make any headlines...Al-Qaeda's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri released an internet video where he said that after the US leaves Iraq (The Obama Plan) Al-Qaeda will proceed from there and take Jerusalem.Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri in his "A Review of Events" speech promises that al-Qaeda will take Jerusalem just as soon as the US pulls out of Iraq. (SITE Institute)Bloomberg reported:
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al- Zawahiri defended insurgent attacks in Iraq, Algeria and Morocco that killed Muslims and blamed the West for using them as human shields, according to a U.S.-based intelligence group. Zawahiri was responding to questions posed to him over the Internet after announcing the online interview in December, according to IntelCenter, based in Alexandria, Virginia...Zawahiri said he expected the jihad, or holy war, to move to Jerusalem when U.S. forces leave Iraq. "There is no doubt that the American collapse has begun," he said.
"The raids on New York and Washington were identifying marks of this collapse, but I point out that the collapse of empires doesn't come in a single moment."
Laura Mansfield has the transcript of the Zawahiri speech.
Here is the segment about Iraq and Jerusalem (page 30):
First: I expect the Jihadi influence to spread after the Americans’ exit from Iraq, and to move towards Jerusalem (with Allah’s permission). As for the militias mentioned, they have failed to eliminate the Jihad with the help of what is called the strongest power in the history of mankind, so will they succeed by themselves or with the help of Iran?
Al Zawahiri Promises to Take Jerusalem After US Pulls Out of Iraq
For some strange reason this did not make any headlines...Al-Qaeda's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri released an internet video where he said that after the US leaves Iraq (The Obama Plan) Al-Qaeda will proceed from there and take Jerusalem.Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri in his "A Review of Events" speech promises that al-Qaeda will take Jerusalem just as soon as the US pulls out of Iraq. (SITE Institute)Bloomberg reported:
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al- Zawahiri defended insurgent attacks in Iraq, Algeria and Morocco that killed Muslims and blamed the West for using them as human shields, according to a U.S.-based intelligence group. Zawahiri was responding to questions posed to him over the Internet after announcing the online interview in December, according to IntelCenter, based in Alexandria, Virginia...Zawahiri said he expected the jihad, or holy war, to move to Jerusalem when U.S. forces leave Iraq. "There is no doubt that the American collapse has begun," he said.
"The raids on New York and Washington were identifying marks of this collapse, but I point out that the collapse of empires doesn't come in a single moment."
Laura Mansfield has the transcript of the Zawahiri speech.
Here is the segment about Iraq and Jerusalem (page 30):
First: I expect the Jihadi influence to spread after the Americans’ exit from Iraq, and to move towards Jerusalem (with Allah’s permission). As for the militias mentioned, they have failed to eliminate the Jihad with the help of what is called the strongest power in the history of mankind, so will they succeed by themselves or with the help of Iran?
What's Next, An Arab-Seeking Missile?
We’re all sick of hearing about Jeremiah Wright. But as long as Barack Obama is so close to winning the Democratic nomination for President, the goings-on at Obama’s Chicago church need to be brought out.
Now it is being reported that the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter has been used by Rev. Wright to reprint an “Open Letter to Oprah” by a Palestinian activist, accusing Israel of developing an “ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs.”
In another edition, Wright lent his reserved “Pastor’s Page” to reprint a manifesto from Hamas written by Mousa Abu Marzook, believed by intelligence officials to be the brains behind Hamas and attempting, among other terrorist acts, of trying to set up Hamas in the United States.
Obama-church newsletter: Israel making 'ethnic bomb'
Accuses 'apartheid' state of creating weapon 'that kills blacks and Arabs'
Posted: March 25, 20083:06 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein© 2008 WorldNetDaily
JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church published an open letter from a Palestinian activist that labels Israel an "apartheid" regime and claims the Jewish state worked on an "ethnic bomb" that kills "blacks and Arabs."
The letter, discovered by the blog Sweetness & Light, was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks prompted the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech last week.
"I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the white supremacists of South Africa," wrote the letter's author, Ali Baghdadi. "In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."
The June 10, 2007, newsletter, which is still available at Obama's church's website, identifies Baghdadi as an Arab-American activist, writer and columnist who "acted as a Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan."
The piece is titled "An open letter to Oprah," referring to talk show giant Oprah Winfrey, who last year accepted an invitation to visit Israel offered to her by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Winfrey had been a member of Obama's church but reportedly departed in 1986.
Baghdadi's letter originally was printed in the Palestine Times, a pro-Palestinian newspaper published in London.
Obama's church hosted Baghdadi's letter stating Palestinians face "genocide and ethnic cleansing ... every hour of the day."
"For many centuries, Jews escaped the discrimination and death they were subjected to in Europe, and found safety and refuge among us," writes Baghdadi.
But the activist doesn't address the more than 800,000 Jews who were expelled or left Arab countries under threat after Israel was founded in 1948.
Continues Baghdadi: "Muslims believe in Christianity and Judaism. The Quran states there is no distinction between Muhammad, Jesus and Moses."
In contrast to Baghdadi's declarations, Sheik Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian Justice and one of the most influential Muslim leaders in Israel, told WND during a recent interview Moses and Jesus were really "prophets for Islam."
"Your Torah was falsified," stated Tamimi during the interview.
Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Tamimi said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus were "prophets for the Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam."
Continuing in the church newsletter, Baghdadi writes: "During the Second Intifadah, the uprising against Israeli occupation, Muslim and Christian activists, chased by the Israeli death squads, were given refuge in the Church [of the Nativity in Bethlehem]."
Baghdadi was referring to an episode in 2002 when gunmen from several major Palestinian terror organizations holed up inside the nativity church while fleeing a massive Israeli anti-terror operation. More than 200 nuns and priests were trapped in the church after Israeli hostage negotiators failed to secure their immediate release. Following the ordeal, which lasted 39 days, scores of church clergy thanked Israel for securing their release.
Some clergy told reporters of deplorable conditions inside the church. Four Greek monks told the Washington Times the Palestinian gunmen holed up with them seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while the trapped civilians went hungry. They said Christians were forced to sleep in cold floors while terrorist leaders occupied the priests quarters and slept on beds and mattresses.
Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto
The latest revelation about published material from Obama's church follows the discovery last week by BizzyBlog that Trinity United Church of Christ reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence.
The Hamas piece also was published on Wright's "Pastor's Page." It was written by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the publication as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas."
According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S.
Obama e-mailed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a statement regarding the Hamas publication in his church newsletter explaining he "certainly wasn't in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin."
There shouldn't be very much room left for the explanations of Obama's defenders that Wright's comments are being taken out of context. This is the very meaning of the word "context."
Now it is being reported that the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter has been used by Rev. Wright to reprint an “Open Letter to Oprah” by a Palestinian activist, accusing Israel of developing an “ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs.”
In another edition, Wright lent his reserved “Pastor’s Page” to reprint a manifesto from Hamas written by Mousa Abu Marzook, believed by intelligence officials to be the brains behind Hamas and attempting, among other terrorist acts, of trying to set up Hamas in the United States.
Obama-church newsletter: Israel making 'ethnic bomb'
Accuses 'apartheid' state of creating weapon 'that kills blacks and Arabs'
Posted: March 25, 20083:06 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein© 2008 WorldNetDaily
JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago church published an open letter from a Palestinian activist that labels Israel an "apartheid" regime and claims the Jewish state worked on an "ethnic bomb" that kills "blacks and Arabs."
The letter, discovered by the blog Sweetness & Light, was published on the "Pastor's Page" of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks prompted the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech last week.
"I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the white supremacists of South Africa," wrote the letter's author, Ali Baghdadi. "In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."
The June 10, 2007, newsletter, which is still available at Obama's church's website, identifies Baghdadi as an Arab-American activist, writer and columnist who "acted as a Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan."
The piece is titled "An open letter to Oprah," referring to talk show giant Oprah Winfrey, who last year accepted an invitation to visit Israel offered to her by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Winfrey had been a member of Obama's church but reportedly departed in 1986.
Baghdadi's letter originally was printed in the Palestine Times, a pro-Palestinian newspaper published in London.
Obama's church hosted Baghdadi's letter stating Palestinians face "genocide and ethnic cleansing ... every hour of the day."
"For many centuries, Jews escaped the discrimination and death they were subjected to in Europe, and found safety and refuge among us," writes Baghdadi.
But the activist doesn't address the more than 800,000 Jews who were expelled or left Arab countries under threat after Israel was founded in 1948.
Continues Baghdadi: "Muslims believe in Christianity and Judaism. The Quran states there is no distinction between Muhammad, Jesus and Moses."
In contrast to Baghdadi's declarations, Sheik Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian Justice and one of the most influential Muslim leaders in Israel, told WND during a recent interview Moses and Jesus were really "prophets for Islam."
"Your Torah was falsified," stated Tamimi during the interview.
Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Tamimi said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus were "prophets for the Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam."
Continuing in the church newsletter, Baghdadi writes: "During the Second Intifadah, the uprising against Israeli occupation, Muslim and Christian activists, chased by the Israeli death squads, were given refuge in the Church [of the Nativity in Bethlehem]."
Baghdadi was referring to an episode in 2002 when gunmen from several major Palestinian terror organizations holed up inside the nativity church while fleeing a massive Israeli anti-terror operation. More than 200 nuns and priests were trapped in the church after Israeli hostage negotiators failed to secure their immediate release. Following the ordeal, which lasted 39 days, scores of church clergy thanked Israel for securing their release.
Some clergy told reporters of deplorable conditions inside the church. Four Greek monks told the Washington Times the Palestinian gunmen holed up with them seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while the trapped civilians went hungry. They said Christians were forced to sleep in cold floors while terrorist leaders occupied the priests quarters and slept on beds and mattresses.
Obama church published Hamas terror manifesto
The latest revelation about published material from Obama's church follows the discovery last week by BizzyBlog that Trinity United Church of Christ reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group's official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America's Declaration of Independence.
The Hamas piece also was published on Wright's "Pastor's Page." It was written by Mousa Abu Marzook, identified in the publication as a "deputy of the political bureau of Hamas."
According to senior Israeli security officials, Marzook, who resides in Syria alongside Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, is considered the "brains" behind Hamas, designing much of the terror group's policies and ideology. Israel possesses what it says is a large volume of specific evidence that Marzook has been directly involved in calling for or planning scores of Hamas terrorist offensives, including deadly suicide bombings. He was also accused of attempting to set up a Hamas network in the U.S.
Obama e-mailed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a statement regarding the Hamas publication in his church newsletter explaining he "certainly wasn't in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin."
There shouldn't be very much room left for the explanations of Obama's defenders that Wright's comments are being taken out of context. This is the very meaning of the word "context."
Things That Have Been Making Me Go--Hmmm
I was awful at arithmetic in school, and so I'm no stranger to that hopeless feeling of doing the operation only to find that the answer in the back of the book has nothing to do with the one I came up with.
I still get that feeling when things don't add up. Here are a few I've been frustrated by just the past few days:
1. According to 100% of the Democratic Party and 95% of the mainstream media, America's reputation in the world is at an all-time low because of the Hated One (GWB). The community of nations, or those who still allow prayer, are on their collective knees begging for new leadership in November that will allow the rest of the world to bestow on us the love they so desperately want to give us--but which we haven't deserved lo these past 7 years. (Barack Obama: "We all know that these are not the best of times for America’s reputation in the world. "; Hillary Clinton: "I propose a new American strategy to restore our moral authority, end the war in Iraq, and defend and protect our nation."
Now we see that NATO, whose principal European are members are demonstrably more diplomatic, wiser, more just, more peace-loving, greener, and just more fashionable than we are, has unanimously accepted President Bush's proposal of a missile defense shield in eastern Europe. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out on Special Report Thursday:
This is a remarkable success. The Democratic mantra is that the president has destroyed our alliances. Well, what's happened here in the summit is remarkable.
First of all, as you said, NATO has unanimously accepted a missile defense in the face of great Russian pressure against the NATO alliance, against Poland and the Czechs, in particular, and decided it would go ahead with this. And this is an issue that even the American left and a lot of Democrats oppose, so to get unanimity in NATO is remarkable.
Secondly, you have the French announcing that for the first tie since 1966 they will rejoin the structure of the NATO military command, which is, again, a huge step. It has not happened in 40 years. And also, adding additional troops in Afghanistan.
And, you know, another story that is sort of unsaid but is very important is that, for the first time in history, NATO is engaged in combat outside of the theater -- in Afghanistan -- another achievement of this administration.
I think it is remarkable what's happened, and this summit can only be called a success, despite the disagreement on Georgia and Ukraine, which I think is a minor issue. It was an issue that the Europeans would not accept. Ukraine and Georgia are too unstable right now, and you don't want to have a frontier with Russia, which is unstable and in part, almost at wars in Georgia.
So that I would have expected. But everything else is unexpected and extremely good news.
Another example, I suppose, of the Great Moron bamboozling world leaders. Hmmm?
2. Senator Carl Levin, (who received many an honorable mention for treachery in Kenneth Timmerman's "Shadow Warriors" for his efforts to undermine the Iraq operation and other national security measures), is redoubling his attacks on the al-Maliki government. ("Levin attacks Iraqi leadership"). He's unhappy that al-Maliki didn't consult with Congress for military advice first before lauching raids in Basra against the Mahdi Army. He also thinks al-Maliki has "shown himself to be a political leader who is excessively sectarian, who's incompetent and who runs a corrupt administration"--or, in other words, he's no worse than Ray Nagin without the benefit of Baghdad being a chocolate city.
But Levin's real beef is that
"The Iraqi government is awash in revenues from rising oil prices, Levin said, arguing it makes no sense for U.S. taxpayers who have to pay high gas prices to also pay for projects the Iraqi government can afford."
Which is what isn't quite adding up for me. It may be true that oil profits are not being turned into reconstruction costs fast enough, I'm hardly an expert on that. But even if they're not, as I said above, that makes al-Maliki's government no worse than, say, the all-Democratic Detroit School Board people have had to put up with for going on forty years.
What doesn't make sense is that there shouldn't be any Iraq oil profits, considering that Bush, Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz went into Iraq for the express purpose of stealing all that. Isn't that what Greenspan himself said? ("Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil"). Isn't that what all that chanting of "No Blood for Oil" from supporters of Levin's side of the aisle signifies?
Or didn't they mean it after all? Doesn't add up, you see.
3. It doesn't make sense that a Muslim group linked to terrorism, and an unidicted co-conspirator in a federal criminal cterrorism ase, is giving the FBI training in Islam.
There's really not much more to say on that one.
4. Nothing about the national adoration of Barack Obama adds up, and I know we're all sick of Jeremiah Wright, but here's something else that just doesn't make sense: Last June, before he got into all this hot water over Rev. Wright, Obama gave a sermon to the 50th anniversary convention of his denomination, the United Church of Christ("Faith Has Role in Politics, Obama Tells Church"), in which he blasted the religious right for having "'hijacked' faith and divided the country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer."
Obama admitted that American churches indeed had a
proud history of involvement in the American Revolution and the abolition and civil rights movements [no, really]...
"But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together,” Mr. Obama said. “Faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked.”
So preachers dragging up non-spiritual issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and school prayer are hijackers, but abolition, the civil rights movement, and, as is preached in Obama's own church, race politics and wild conspiracies about how AIDS was invented by the government has obviously been bringing us all together, are safely within the "proud history" of religious involvement. And as we all know, Jeremiah Wright's edifying religious viewpoints have done nothing if not brought the nation together.
Which makes no sense at all.
5. Then I see where Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's one-time chief of staff and mistress, Christine Beatty, has just been forced by Chief Magistrate Steve Lockhart to wear an electronic tether on her ankle, and reportedly scolded her for failing to provide proper notice to the court about travel plans. To make it even harsher, Lockhart banned Ms. Beatty from traveling out of state at all. ("Beatty ordered to wear tether"). The fact that Ms. Beatty, who says her small children are in Chicago, wanted or needed to travel out of state was laid out for this same court at her arraignment last Wednesday, so this was no news to the court.
(Meanwhile Kwame and his outspoken supporters are allowed to roam around untethered, in more ways than one).
Ms. Beatty is a black woman, and this punitive decision by the magistrate to force her to wear the electronic version of an ankle chain, especially on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, is something even a typical white person like me thinks may be going too far.
True enough, Ms. Beatty didn't strike a sympathetic figure for most of us, me included, back when she was high-horsing two traffic cops who stopped her for speeding, demanding, reportedly “Do you know who the (expletive) I am?” (DU is unable to confirm that the police report was inaccurate, and that she actually asked the officers, "Do you know who the (expletive) I am (expletiv)ing?")
Still, her association with the one of the country's worst mayors has already cost her dearly. Now that she's out of office, and while the Kingpin is still in, the power differential is completely transformed, i.e., she hasn't got any. And maybe she really does love the big lug. Which doesn't justify her destroying the careers of policemen, but it tends to cloud one's judgment.
Plus, something else smells about what happened in 36th District Court yesterday. Chief Magistrate Steve Lockhart insisted on closing the courtroom off to the public and the press while he berated Ms. Beatty, which is both unlawful and a sign he knew he was up to something he didn't want the public to witness.
But here's what really smells.
According to the Detroit News account, Ms. Beatty is now wearing a global positioning shackle because "she made plans to travel without giving proper notification." She's not being punished now because she snuck out of state without reporting it, but only that she made plans--after, as I said--putting the court on notice just last week that she was trying to get to Chicago.
According to her attorney, Mayer Morganroth, (whom I wouldn't trust any farther than I could throw his real client, Kwame Kilpatrick),
Beatty had been required under her bond conditions to seek court permission before traveling but had been told permission to travel for business purposes would be granted liberally, Morganroth said. She wanted to travel to Atlanta and to Alabama to look for work, Morganroth said. She gave the court's pretrial services notice of her planned eight-day trip and the names and phone numbers of attorneys in the two states who were going to help her make contacts in her job search, Morganroth said.
If the magistrate did not want her to take the trip, he could have sent Beatty word that he had denied permission, Morganroth said.
Instead, "the next thing we know we get a call to come down there, to get there at one o'clock," Morganroth said of the summons to the courthouse. "When we get there, we get this tirade.
"I would say he was a little harsh."
So would I, actually. Ms. Beatty said she didn't know the process, and may in fact have violated some jot or tittle of the court's notice rules. But that's why people have lawyers, to tell them those kinds of things, which is what else stinks. Her lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, should have been watching out for her interests in this matter. Still, if he chose to be negligent, this could easily have been the result: "Don't worry, Christine. The court's OK with you traveling. Trust me."
As to both the criminal charges, and the Tamara Green case, Beatty is clearly a key potential witness against Kilpatrick and the city. If she decides to make her own deal with Kym Worthy and stop protecting God's man for the city, she probably knows just about everything. It's unimaginable that Morganroth can look out for her and Kilpatrick, considering that Morganroth has such a gigantic conflict of interest. He was already one of Kilpatrick's attorneys, and is also representing Kilpatrick in the wrongful-death lawsuit over the murder of Tamara Green. But it took the court to make Morganroth step down from representing the city.
The tether on her leg is how good a job he's doing for Ms. Beatty, and that she's being shafted by her lawyer is not so far-fetched. Maybe while she's stuck at home with no place to go she'll figure out that sharing Kwame's attorney won't be quite as fun as sharing his hotel bed. (It's also a possibility that Magistrate Lockhart lies somewhere on that continuum of corrupt officials and friends-of-Kwame that compelled Kym Worthy to ask for a recusal of all 36th District judges: I don't know, I'm just asking. But locking his courtroom while he punished Beatty seemed less like how a legitimate court conducts business and an awful like like how Kilpatrick's city hall does business).
In the meantime, it doesn't add up that while Kilpatrick is getting handed around in mosh pits at the Black Madonna, his former chief of staff/comfort worker ends up tethered and banned from going to see her kids as a result of her own very experienced criminal lawyer failing to instruct her exactly what was required vis-a-vis notice to the court if she wanted to travel.
This kind of prank-with-a-message was how former Police Chief Jerry Oliver got notice it was time for him to quit and leave town--when he was "caught" with a loaded handgun in his luggage, resulting in his being publicly busted for it by airport screeners.
Or that's how some of this adds up to me.
I still get that feeling when things don't add up. Here are a few I've been frustrated by just the past few days:
1. According to 100% of the Democratic Party and 95% of the mainstream media, America's reputation in the world is at an all-time low because of the Hated One (GWB). The community of nations, or those who still allow prayer, are on their collective knees begging for new leadership in November that will allow the rest of the world to bestow on us the love they so desperately want to give us--but which we haven't deserved lo these past 7 years. (Barack Obama: "We all know that these are not the best of times for America’s reputation in the world. "; Hillary Clinton: "I propose a new American strategy to restore our moral authority, end the war in Iraq, and defend and protect our nation."
Now we see that NATO, whose principal European are members are demonstrably more diplomatic, wiser, more just, more peace-loving, greener, and just more fashionable than we are, has unanimously accepted President Bush's proposal of a missile defense shield in eastern Europe. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out on Special Report Thursday:
This is a remarkable success. The Democratic mantra is that the president has destroyed our alliances. Well, what's happened here in the summit is remarkable.
First of all, as you said, NATO has unanimously accepted a missile defense in the face of great Russian pressure against the NATO alliance, against Poland and the Czechs, in particular, and decided it would go ahead with this. And this is an issue that even the American left and a lot of Democrats oppose, so to get unanimity in NATO is remarkable.
Secondly, you have the French announcing that for the first tie since 1966 they will rejoin the structure of the NATO military command, which is, again, a huge step. It has not happened in 40 years. And also, adding additional troops in Afghanistan.
And, you know, another story that is sort of unsaid but is very important is that, for the first time in history, NATO is engaged in combat outside of the theater -- in Afghanistan -- another achievement of this administration.
I think it is remarkable what's happened, and this summit can only be called a success, despite the disagreement on Georgia and Ukraine, which I think is a minor issue. It was an issue that the Europeans would not accept. Ukraine and Georgia are too unstable right now, and you don't want to have a frontier with Russia, which is unstable and in part, almost at wars in Georgia.
So that I would have expected. But everything else is unexpected and extremely good news.
Another example, I suppose, of the Great Moron bamboozling world leaders. Hmmm?
2. Senator Carl Levin, (who received many an honorable mention for treachery in Kenneth Timmerman's "Shadow Warriors" for his efforts to undermine the Iraq operation and other national security measures), is redoubling his attacks on the al-Maliki government. ("Levin attacks Iraqi leadership"). He's unhappy that al-Maliki didn't consult with Congress for military advice first before lauching raids in Basra against the Mahdi Army. He also thinks al-Maliki has "shown himself to be a political leader who is excessively sectarian, who's incompetent and who runs a corrupt administration"--or, in other words, he's no worse than Ray Nagin without the benefit of Baghdad being a chocolate city.
But Levin's real beef is that
"The Iraqi government is awash in revenues from rising oil prices, Levin said, arguing it makes no sense for U.S. taxpayers who have to pay high gas prices to also pay for projects the Iraqi government can afford."
Which is what isn't quite adding up for me. It may be true that oil profits are not being turned into reconstruction costs fast enough, I'm hardly an expert on that. But even if they're not, as I said above, that makes al-Maliki's government no worse than, say, the all-Democratic Detroit School Board people have had to put up with for going on forty years.
What doesn't make sense is that there shouldn't be any Iraq oil profits, considering that Bush, Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz went into Iraq for the express purpose of stealing all that. Isn't that what Greenspan himself said? ("Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil"). Isn't that what all that chanting of "No Blood for Oil" from supporters of Levin's side of the aisle signifies?
Or didn't they mean it after all? Doesn't add up, you see.
3. It doesn't make sense that a Muslim group linked to terrorism, and an unidicted co-conspirator in a federal criminal cterrorism ase, is giving the FBI training in Islam.
There's really not much more to say on that one.
4. Nothing about the national adoration of Barack Obama adds up, and I know we're all sick of Jeremiah Wright, but here's something else that just doesn't make sense: Last June, before he got into all this hot water over Rev. Wright, Obama gave a sermon to the 50th anniversary convention of his denomination, the United Church of Christ("Faith Has Role in Politics, Obama Tells Church"), in which he blasted the religious right for having "'hijacked' faith and divided the country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer."
Obama admitted that American churches indeed had a
proud history of involvement in the American Revolution and the abolition and civil rights movements [no, really]...
"But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together,” Mr. Obama said. “Faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked.”
So preachers dragging up non-spiritual issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and school prayer are hijackers, but abolition, the civil rights movement, and, as is preached in Obama's own church, race politics and wild conspiracies about how AIDS was invented by the government has obviously been bringing us all together, are safely within the "proud history" of religious involvement. And as we all know, Jeremiah Wright's edifying religious viewpoints have done nothing if not brought the nation together.
Which makes no sense at all.
5. Then I see where Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's one-time chief of staff and mistress, Christine Beatty, has just been forced by Chief Magistrate Steve Lockhart to wear an electronic tether on her ankle, and reportedly scolded her for failing to provide proper notice to the court about travel plans. To make it even harsher, Lockhart banned Ms. Beatty from traveling out of state at all. ("Beatty ordered to wear tether"). The fact that Ms. Beatty, who says her small children are in Chicago, wanted or needed to travel out of state was laid out for this same court at her arraignment last Wednesday, so this was no news to the court.
(Meanwhile Kwame and his outspoken supporters are allowed to roam around untethered, in more ways than one).
Ms. Beatty is a black woman, and this punitive decision by the magistrate to force her to wear the electronic version of an ankle chain, especially on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, is something even a typical white person like me thinks may be going too far.
True enough, Ms. Beatty didn't strike a sympathetic figure for most of us, me included, back when she was high-horsing two traffic cops who stopped her for speeding, demanding, reportedly “Do you know who the (expletive) I am?” (DU is unable to confirm that the police report was inaccurate, and that she actually asked the officers, "Do you know who the (expletive) I am (expletiv)ing?")
Still, her association with the one of the country's worst mayors has already cost her dearly. Now that she's out of office, and while the Kingpin is still in, the power differential is completely transformed, i.e., she hasn't got any. And maybe she really does love the big lug. Which doesn't justify her destroying the careers of policemen, but it tends to cloud one's judgment.
Plus, something else smells about what happened in 36th District Court yesterday. Chief Magistrate Steve Lockhart insisted on closing the courtroom off to the public and the press while he berated Ms. Beatty, which is both unlawful and a sign he knew he was up to something he didn't want the public to witness.
But here's what really smells.
According to the Detroit News account, Ms. Beatty is now wearing a global positioning shackle because "she made plans to travel without giving proper notification." She's not being punished now because she snuck out of state without reporting it, but only that she made plans--after, as I said--putting the court on notice just last week that she was trying to get to Chicago.
According to her attorney, Mayer Morganroth, (whom I wouldn't trust any farther than I could throw his real client, Kwame Kilpatrick),
Beatty had been required under her bond conditions to seek court permission before traveling but had been told permission to travel for business purposes would be granted liberally, Morganroth said. She wanted to travel to Atlanta and to Alabama to look for work, Morganroth said. She gave the court's pretrial services notice of her planned eight-day trip and the names and phone numbers of attorneys in the two states who were going to help her make contacts in her job search, Morganroth said.
If the magistrate did not want her to take the trip, he could have sent Beatty word that he had denied permission, Morganroth said.
Instead, "the next thing we know we get a call to come down there, to get there at one o'clock," Morganroth said of the summons to the courthouse. "When we get there, we get this tirade.
"I would say he was a little harsh."
So would I, actually. Ms. Beatty said she didn't know the process, and may in fact have violated some jot or tittle of the court's notice rules. But that's why people have lawyers, to tell them those kinds of things, which is what else stinks. Her lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, should have been watching out for her interests in this matter. Still, if he chose to be negligent, this could easily have been the result: "Don't worry, Christine. The court's OK with you traveling. Trust me."
As to both the criminal charges, and the Tamara Green case, Beatty is clearly a key potential witness against Kilpatrick and the city. If she decides to make her own deal with Kym Worthy and stop protecting God's man for the city, she probably knows just about everything. It's unimaginable that Morganroth can look out for her and Kilpatrick, considering that Morganroth has such a gigantic conflict of interest. He was already one of Kilpatrick's attorneys, and is also representing Kilpatrick in the wrongful-death lawsuit over the murder of Tamara Green. But it took the court to make Morganroth step down from representing the city.
The tether on her leg is how good a job he's doing for Ms. Beatty, and that she's being shafted by her lawyer is not so far-fetched. Maybe while she's stuck at home with no place to go she'll figure out that sharing Kwame's attorney won't be quite as fun as sharing his hotel bed. (It's also a possibility that Magistrate Lockhart lies somewhere on that continuum of corrupt officials and friends-of-Kwame that compelled Kym Worthy to ask for a recusal of all 36th District judges: I don't know, I'm just asking. But locking his courtroom while he punished Beatty seemed less like how a legitimate court conducts business and an awful like like how Kilpatrick's city hall does business).
In the meantime, it doesn't add up that while Kilpatrick is getting handed around in mosh pits at the Black Madonna, his former chief of staff/comfort worker ends up tethered and banned from going to see her kids as a result of her own very experienced criminal lawyer failing to instruct her exactly what was required vis-a-vis notice to the court if she wanted to travel.
This kind of prank-with-a-message was how former Police Chief Jerry Oliver got notice it was time for him to quit and leave town--when he was "caught" with a loaded handgun in his luggage, resulting in his being publicly busted for it by airport screeners.
Or that's how some of this adds up to me.
This Will Be on the Final
The following column from Family Security Matters touches on many things we've discussed here before. But constant reminders about basic things helps. Thanks to Wendy Woodley for sending this link to us.
Jihad Means Offensive War to Spread Islam: Osama Bin Laden’s Warning to Europe
Clare M. Lopez
Just in case Europe didn’t catch his drift with one new message, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden launched two audio taped broadsides on the Internet during the third week of March 2008. In them, he specifically threatened Europe with Jihad, apparently in response to recent stirrings of self-assertion on the Continent. It would seem that the republishing of some of the Danish cartoons, the release of a short film about Islam by Dutch filmmaker, Geert Wilders, and a sterner approach to the expansionist Islamist agenda by a crop of tough new European leaders have sparked a yelp of protest from the al Qaeda leadership.
To the Jihadi vanguard, it must have looked like Europe was well on its way to slipping back into a dhimmitude last seen centuries ago, when Jihadi warriors overran much of southern Europe, white women were prized features on auction blocks across the Caliphate, Christians and Jews knew their places in societies dominated by Islam, and it was ransom and tribute that flowed out of Christendom’s kingdoms, not impertinent caricatures of their Prophet. France already had cordoned off over 700 no-go zones where neither Napoleonic Code nor police were welcome. Belgian bishops had permitted North African illegal immigrants demanding sanctuary from threat of deportation to hold Muslim prayer services in beautiful Brussels cathedrals. A German judge had refused the desperate plea of an abused Moroccan-born woman for an expedited divorce, because, as she intoned from the bench, in the culture of Islam, it is permitted for a husband to beat his wife. The Archbishop of Canterbury had urged Britons to just accept the coming of Sharia in the UK. Theo van Gogh had been shot and stabbed to death because he stood unrepentantly for free speech, and his colleague, Ayan Hirsi Ali, had been hounded from the Netherlands altogether. Taxi drivers in Norway, the UK, and elsewhere were refusing blind passengers with Seeing Eye dogs, because they said dogs are deemed unclean animals in Islam. The newest architectural trend from Oxford to Cologne was the building of mammoth, Saudi-funded mega mosques. Yes, the establishment of Eurabia must have seemed well underway.
But then Europe began to push back and a new Pope mounted the throne of Peter, a “Panzer Pope” he’s been called, and gave a 2006 speech at the University of Regensburg in the sturdy Teutonic heart of this continent. He didn’t actually say anything about a crusade; in fact, Pope Benedict XVI, at Regensburg and since, has sought quite sincerely to present Christianity as a vehicle for discourse and reason among faiths. The 2008 establishment of a permanent council for dialogue between the Vatican and Islam was meant to build bridges, not spark fury and menace.
This is where the well-reasoned temperance of the Enlightenment falls flat, however. For the Islamic Jihad is not about reason, or temperance, or enlightenment. It is about conquest. And right now, al Qaeda and its Jihadi cohorts both home-grown and international, including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Union of Islamic Clerics, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and their smooth-talking spokesmen such as Dr. Mustafa Ceric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Tariq Ramadan, have set their sights on Europe. Europe is too liberal, too free, too open, too outspoken, too rich, and also nicely softened up by decades of inroads by concepts like multiculturalism, a paralyzing antipathy to discriminating judgment, and an abhorrence of self-defense.
Make no mistake: Osama bin Laden’s threat is real. Al Qaeda and the Jihadis, whose cultural references were formed in the searing sterility of the 7th Century Hijaz, are coming for Europe. In the Arab desert where Islam was born, the code of the tribes demands challenge, honor, and spoils. A society raised on the values of the strong, where nothing is ever produced but only seized from the weak, where concession and compromise are met with contempt, and where revenge and retribution define human interaction – a society such as this cannot abide a civilization of uninhibited intellectuality and tolerance. In such a milieu, Islam developed, inextricably, as both socio-political system and monotheistic faith. Both remain hard, unforgiving, and bent on global domination. The sacred and immutable doctrine of Islam is laid out for all time in the revealed scripture of the Koran, the hadiths (or sayings of Muhammad), and the Sunna (or accounts of Muhammad’s deeds). There is nothing in any of these about turning the other cheek, loving one’s neighbor as oneself, or the inherent equality of all human beings. Neither will you find virtues of non-violence, self-sacrifice, or truthfulness applicable among any people but Muslims themselves. For the infidel, there is only the choice of three: convert, submit, or die.
Europe needs to wake up, and quickly. The obligatory Islamic warning has been given, the Continent put on notice that unless it agrees to compromise on its liberal lifestyle and legal system, al Qaeda will unleash its Jihadi attackers. The Vatican, too, notably accused of inspiring another crusade only after the conciliatory announcement was made about the new council for interfaith dialogue, will need to muster all the stern resolve and brilliant theological command of its current Vicar if nearly-spent Christianity is to help lead Europe’s defense. For in the end, while its population may well exhibit the studied ennui of a post-faith-based society, Europe nevertheless has much to be proud of and plenty to defend. And even though its advanced technology, orderly and educated native citizens, magnificent artistic expression, complex economies, and sophisticated political systems elicit scant acknowledgment from the savage Jihadis sworn to destroy it all, these are accomplishments that represent a pinnacle of human development. Europe is the well-spring as well as the front line of defense for modern concepts of liberal democracy now spreading inexorably the world over (except for the Arab/Muslim part of it).
Unless Europeans at every level, from the small village grocer to the leaders of academia, government, labor, and media, somehow grasp that the world view driving al Qaeda’s warnings shares virtually nothing in common with their own and adapt their defenses accordingly, it is completely conceivable that Bernard Lewis’s dire prediction about the likely Islamization of Europe by century’s end could prove true. Or, as Daniel Pipes put it some time ago, Europe must either somehow assimilate its burgeoning and increasingly hostile Muslim elements, adopt a draconian program of expulsion and immigration control, or acquiesce to Muslim dominance.
Islam does not really mean peace and Jihad is not inner yoga. Islam means submission: submission to Allah, to Islam, and to Sharia. The only peace being offered by Osama bin Laden is under the shade of the Koran and the sword. Whether by da’wa (preaching and persuasion), infiltration and destruction of faith from within, or the outright terror that al Qaeda promises its enemies, it is not just Europe that faces the Jihadi onslaught. It is every society that dares to be free to choose its own way of life, elect its own leaders, and enact its own laws. It is Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States of America.
Knowing the enemy, naming the enemy, and mastering the enemy’s culture, history, ideology, and tactics are essential to meeting and defeating his challenge. Only by frankly facing the Islamic Jihad and resisting every urge to dismiss it as primitive, already defeated, or somehow unequal to modern civilizations such as our own, will we have any chance of prevailing.
Jihad Means Offensive War to Spread Islam: Osama Bin Laden’s Warning to Europe
Clare M. Lopez
Just in case Europe didn’t catch his drift with one new message, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden launched two audio taped broadsides on the Internet during the third week of March 2008. In them, he specifically threatened Europe with Jihad, apparently in response to recent stirrings of self-assertion on the Continent. It would seem that the republishing of some of the Danish cartoons, the release of a short film about Islam by Dutch filmmaker, Geert Wilders, and a sterner approach to the expansionist Islamist agenda by a crop of tough new European leaders have sparked a yelp of protest from the al Qaeda leadership.
To the Jihadi vanguard, it must have looked like Europe was well on its way to slipping back into a dhimmitude last seen centuries ago, when Jihadi warriors overran much of southern Europe, white women were prized features on auction blocks across the Caliphate, Christians and Jews knew their places in societies dominated by Islam, and it was ransom and tribute that flowed out of Christendom’s kingdoms, not impertinent caricatures of their Prophet. France already had cordoned off over 700 no-go zones where neither Napoleonic Code nor police were welcome. Belgian bishops had permitted North African illegal immigrants demanding sanctuary from threat of deportation to hold Muslim prayer services in beautiful Brussels cathedrals. A German judge had refused the desperate plea of an abused Moroccan-born woman for an expedited divorce, because, as she intoned from the bench, in the culture of Islam, it is permitted for a husband to beat his wife. The Archbishop of Canterbury had urged Britons to just accept the coming of Sharia in the UK. Theo van Gogh had been shot and stabbed to death because he stood unrepentantly for free speech, and his colleague, Ayan Hirsi Ali, had been hounded from the Netherlands altogether. Taxi drivers in Norway, the UK, and elsewhere were refusing blind passengers with Seeing Eye dogs, because they said dogs are deemed unclean animals in Islam. The newest architectural trend from Oxford to Cologne was the building of mammoth, Saudi-funded mega mosques. Yes, the establishment of Eurabia must have seemed well underway.
But then Europe began to push back and a new Pope mounted the throne of Peter, a “Panzer Pope” he’s been called, and gave a 2006 speech at the University of Regensburg in the sturdy Teutonic heart of this continent. He didn’t actually say anything about a crusade; in fact, Pope Benedict XVI, at Regensburg and since, has sought quite sincerely to present Christianity as a vehicle for discourse and reason among faiths. The 2008 establishment of a permanent council for dialogue between the Vatican and Islam was meant to build bridges, not spark fury and menace.
This is where the well-reasoned temperance of the Enlightenment falls flat, however. For the Islamic Jihad is not about reason, or temperance, or enlightenment. It is about conquest. And right now, al Qaeda and its Jihadi cohorts both home-grown and international, including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Union of Islamic Clerics, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and their smooth-talking spokesmen such as Dr. Mustafa Ceric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Tariq Ramadan, have set their sights on Europe. Europe is too liberal, too free, too open, too outspoken, too rich, and also nicely softened up by decades of inroads by concepts like multiculturalism, a paralyzing antipathy to discriminating judgment, and an abhorrence of self-defense.
Make no mistake: Osama bin Laden’s threat is real. Al Qaeda and the Jihadis, whose cultural references were formed in the searing sterility of the 7th Century Hijaz, are coming for Europe. In the Arab desert where Islam was born, the code of the tribes demands challenge, honor, and spoils. A society raised on the values of the strong, where nothing is ever produced but only seized from the weak, where concession and compromise are met with contempt, and where revenge and retribution define human interaction – a society such as this cannot abide a civilization of uninhibited intellectuality and tolerance. In such a milieu, Islam developed, inextricably, as both socio-political system and monotheistic faith. Both remain hard, unforgiving, and bent on global domination. The sacred and immutable doctrine of Islam is laid out for all time in the revealed scripture of the Koran, the hadiths (or sayings of Muhammad), and the Sunna (or accounts of Muhammad’s deeds). There is nothing in any of these about turning the other cheek, loving one’s neighbor as oneself, or the inherent equality of all human beings. Neither will you find virtues of non-violence, self-sacrifice, or truthfulness applicable among any people but Muslims themselves. For the infidel, there is only the choice of three: convert, submit, or die.
Europe needs to wake up, and quickly. The obligatory Islamic warning has been given, the Continent put on notice that unless it agrees to compromise on its liberal lifestyle and legal system, al Qaeda will unleash its Jihadi attackers. The Vatican, too, notably accused of inspiring another crusade only after the conciliatory announcement was made about the new council for interfaith dialogue, will need to muster all the stern resolve and brilliant theological command of its current Vicar if nearly-spent Christianity is to help lead Europe’s defense. For in the end, while its population may well exhibit the studied ennui of a post-faith-based society, Europe nevertheless has much to be proud of and plenty to defend. And even though its advanced technology, orderly and educated native citizens, magnificent artistic expression, complex economies, and sophisticated political systems elicit scant acknowledgment from the savage Jihadis sworn to destroy it all, these are accomplishments that represent a pinnacle of human development. Europe is the well-spring as well as the front line of defense for modern concepts of liberal democracy now spreading inexorably the world over (except for the Arab/Muslim part of it).
Unless Europeans at every level, from the small village grocer to the leaders of academia, government, labor, and media, somehow grasp that the world view driving al Qaeda’s warnings shares virtually nothing in common with their own and adapt their defenses accordingly, it is completely conceivable that Bernard Lewis’s dire prediction about the likely Islamization of Europe by century’s end could prove true. Or, as Daniel Pipes put it some time ago, Europe must either somehow assimilate its burgeoning and increasingly hostile Muslim elements, adopt a draconian program of expulsion and immigration control, or acquiesce to Muslim dominance.
Islam does not really mean peace and Jihad is not inner yoga. Islam means submission: submission to Allah, to Islam, and to Sharia. The only peace being offered by Osama bin Laden is under the shade of the Koran and the sword. Whether by da’wa (preaching and persuasion), infiltration and destruction of faith from within, or the outright terror that al Qaeda promises its enemies, it is not just Europe that faces the Jihadi onslaught. It is every society that dares to be free to choose its own way of life, elect its own leaders, and enact its own laws. It is Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States of America.
Knowing the enemy, naming the enemy, and mastering the enemy’s culture, history, ideology, and tactics are essential to meeting and defeating his challenge. Only by frankly facing the Islamic Jihad and resisting every urge to dismiss it as primitive, already defeated, or somehow unequal to modern civilizations such as our own, will we have any chance of prevailing.
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