Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Condappeasa Strikes Again

Secretary of 'Let's Give 'Em a State' Condappeasa Rice arrived in Jerusalem today to check on the status of Israel's slow suicide, also known as the "peace" talks. The video of her press conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni can be seen here: Remarks: Israeli Foreign Minister

From her statement to the press:
I think it's no secret, and I've said it to my Israeli counterparts, that I don't think the settlement activity is helpful to the process, that in fact, what we need now are steps that enhance confidence between the parties. And anything that undermines confidence between the parties ought to be avoided.
Really? "Anything that undermines the confidence...."? Would that include calling for the destruction of Israel? Lobbing missiles into Israeli towns? Kidnapping, murdering, raping, or torturing Israeli citizens and/or military personnel? Homicide bombers in Israeli pizza parlors, buses, marketplaces? Just asking.

After her session in Jerusalem, she traveled to Ramallah, where she held a press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. See the video here: Remarks: Palestinian President Abbas

[snip]
We have discussed the progress that the parties are making in the negotiations toward a two-state solution. We’ve also had discussions of how to move other aspects of the Annapolis process forward, including improving life for Palestinians, the Palestinian people on the ground, as well as the Roadmap obligations. General Fraser is here and, in fact, as the Roadmap monitor, and General Fraser will stay on for a couple of days to continue the work on the Roadmap implementation.
[snip]
Yes, on the settlement issue, I think I’ve made very clear the U.S. position that the settlement activity is not conducive to creating an environment for negotiations, yet negotiations go on. We continue to press the Israelis about their Roadmap obligations and to work with the Palestinians on their Roadmap obligations as well.
[snip]

There can be no doubt about the direction this administration is taking. It is disturbing, disgusting and dhimmified. Why the American people and the government of Israel are complacent, and even complicit, in this madness is anyone's guess. Are we ALL asleep at the switch?

God cut a blood covenant (unconditional) with Abraham, (Gen. 12:1-3). “I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. I will make you a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you. In you all the families of the world will be blessed!” This has not been revoked. To this nation God will give a land; the land of Canaan (Genesis12:1, 7; 13:14-15, 17; 15:17-21; 17:8). God will bless those who bless this nation and curse those who curse it (12:3) God laid down a divine principle that has been seen and proven throughout history.

When you go against Israel (curse the people like Balak tried to get Balaam to do) you are going against the Messiah that she produced to be a blessing to all nations. Source

We abandon Israel, or encourage her to abandon her covenant, at our peril. Not because I say so. Because God said so.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Dog Shelters Abandoned Infant

So. It's official. Animals now have more respect for human life than do humans. Witness this story from Argentina about a newborn baby girl, abandoned by her 14-year-old mother - outdoors, in winter - being rescued and sheltered by a nursing mother dog.

Farmer Fabio Anze found the naked baby snuggled amongst his dog's litter of puppies and called authorities. The infant was just several hours old, according to a hospital spokesman. She suffered a few bruises but was otherwise perfectly healthy.

I know what some of you are thinking, dear readers. Grammy is heartless and cruel. After all, we're dealing with a 14 year-old girl here. She was trapped. She was scared. She was desperate. Perhaps she was all of those things. I don't care. Unless she suffers from profound mental disabilities, she knows it is wrong (aka murder) to abandon her naked newborn daughter. She knows her actions will result in the baby's death. I submit that it is her behavior that is heartless and cruel.

Then again, Argentina is a cosmopolitan country in touch with the rest of the world. Perhaps this girl had read some stories about a certain American presidential candidate. The one who said he wouldn't want either of his two young daughters "punished with a baby". The one who, as a state legislator, supported withholding medical treatment from babies who inconveniently survived an abortion, even after learning they were being left to die in the soiled utility room of a Chicago-area hospital. Perhaps she thought, hey...if Barack Obama, the messiah, the 'citizen of the world', says it's okay, it must be.

After Bill Clinton told the world that oral sex isn't really sex, the number of children engaging in that activity skyrocketed. Should we be surprised if similar trends are now reported in the number of babies left to die? God help us....

Friday, August 22, 2008

Friday Night Funnies

Somewhere near Fredericksburg , Texas (60 miles north of San Antonio), there is a large German-speaking population....

A farmer walking down a country road notices a man drinking from his pond with his hand.

The farmer shouts: "Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben dahin gesheissen."

The man shouts back: "I'm from Chicago. I'm down here campaigning for Obama. I can't understand a word you said. Speak English!"

The farmer replies: "Use two hands, you'll get more."

PS. "Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben dahin gesheissen." means "Don't drink the water. The cows have shit in it."

Thursday, August 21, 2008

A Political Party for the Rest of Us...Sense of Humor Required

These are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Kudos to the Republicrats for their ingenuity....power to the people! Eh, maybe not so much...

Introducing the newest political party in America: The Republicrats.







Wanted: Republicrat Applicants for First Lady






Campaign Speech, Denver

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Mark Steyn On Free Speech, Islam & Cultural Suicide


Lights Out on Liberty

On August 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.

Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression, which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise "prudence" on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter "I." At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci—after writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of liberty—was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other "anti-racist groups" who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.

In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called "flagrant Islamophobia"—filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress—attributes to me the following "assertions":

America will be an Islamic Republic by 2040. There will be a break for Muslim prayers during the Super Bowl. There will be a religious police enforcing Islamic norms. The USS Ronald Reagan will be renamed after Osama bin Laden. Females will not be allowed to be cheerleaders. Popular American radio and TV hosts will be replaced by Imams.

In fact, I didn’t "assert" any of these things. They are plot twists I cited in my review of Robert Ferrigno’s novel, Prayers for the Assassin. It’s customary in reviewing novels to cite aspects of the plot. For example, a review of Moby Dick will usually mention the whale. These days, apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the government’s human rights investigators (who have taken up the case) believe that describing the plot of a novel should be illegal.

You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. What’s to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a lot to write about.

These are small parts of a very big picture. After the London Tube bombings and the French riots a few years back, commentators lined up behind the idea that Western Muslims are insufficiently assimilated. But in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, they’re superbly assimilated. Since these are the principal means of discourse in multicultural societies, they’ve mastered all they need to know. Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what I’m facing in Canada. Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading "Behead the Enemies of Islam" and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected by a phalanx of London policemen.

Thus we see that today’s multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance. It’s been that way for 20 years now, ever since Valentine’s Day 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford wrote to me recalling asking a West Yorkshire policeman on the street that day why the various "Muslim community leaders" weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to "play it cool." The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to "Push off" (he expressed the sentiment rather more Anglo-Saxonly, but let that pass) "or I’ll arrest you." Mr. Rushdie was infuriated when the then Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. "I well understand the devout Muslims’ reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for," said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: "There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying."

And that’s the way it’s gone ever since. For all the talk about rampant "Islamophobia," it’s usually only the other party who is "in any danger of dying."

War on the Homefront

I wrote my book America Alone because I wanted to reframe how we thought about the War on Terror—an insufficient and evasive designation that has long since outlasted whatever usefulness it may once have had. It remains true that we are good at military campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our tanks and ships are better, and our bombs and soldiers are smarter. But these are not ultimately the most important battlefronts. We do indeed face what the strategists call asymmetric warfare, but it is not in the Sunni triangle or the Hindu Kush. We face it right here in the Western world.

Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. We now have Muslim "honor killings," for instance, not just in tribal Pakistan and Yemen, but in Germany and the Netherlands, in Toronto and Dallas. And even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York City or blowing up trains, buses, and nightclubs in Madrid, London, and Bali, we would still be in danger of losing this war without a shot being fired.

The British government recently announced that it would be issuing Sharia-compliant Islamic bonds—that is, bonds compliant with Islamic law and practice as prescribed in the Koran. This is another reason to be in favor of small government: The bigger government gets, the more it must look for funding in some pretty unusual places—in this case wealthy Saudis. As The Mail on Sunday put it, this innovation marks "one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world."

At about the same time, The Times of London reported that "Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank, after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims." Now, I’m no Islamic scholar, but Mohammed expressed no view regarding Knorbert the piglet. There’s not a single sura about it. The Koran, an otherwise exhaustive text, is silent on the matter of anthropomorphic porcine representation.

I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Pooh’s sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin Niemoller might have said, "First they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character, and if I was, I’d be more of an Eeyore. Then they came for the Three Little Pigs and Babe, and by the time I realized the Western world had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes, it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer, ‘Th-th-th-that’s all folks!’, and bring the nightmare to an end."

What all these stories have in common is excessive deference to—and in fact fear of—Islam. If the story of the Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europe’s population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent? In small but telling ways, non-Muslim communities are being persuaded that a kind of uber-Islamic law now applies to all. And if you don’t remember the Three Little Pigs, by the way, one builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and both get blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Western Civilization is a mighty house of bricks, but you don’t need a Big Bad Wolf when the pig is so eager to demolish the house himself.

I would argue that these incremental concessions to Islam are ultimately a bigger threat than terrorism. What matters is not what the lads in the Afghan cave—the "extremists"—believe, but what the non-extremists believe, what people who are for the most part law-abiding taxpayers of functioning democracies believe. For example, a recent poll found that 36 percent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 believe that those who convert to another religion should be punished by death. That’s not 36 percent of young Muslims in Waziristan or Yemen or Sudan, but 36 percent of young Muslims in the United Kingdom. Forty percent of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia—in Britain. Twenty percent have sympathy for the July 7 Tube bombers. And, given that Islam is the principal source of population growth in every city down the spine of England from Manchester to Sheffield to Birmingham to London, and in every major Western European city, these statistics are not without significance for the future.

Because I discussed these facts in print, my publisher is now being sued before three Canadian human rights commissions. The plaintiff in my case is Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a man who announced on Canadian TV that he approves of the murder of all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. He is thus an objective supporter of terrorism. I don’t begrudge him the right to his opinions, but I wish he felt the same about mine. Far from that, posing as a leader of the "anti-hate" movement in Canada, he is using the squeamishness of a politically correct society to squash freedom.

As the famous saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What the Canadian Islamic Congress and similar groups in the West are trying to do is criminalize vigilance. They want to use the legal system to circumscribe debate on one of the great questions of the age: the relationship between Islam and the West and the increasing Islamization of much of the Western world, in what the United Nations itself calls the fastest population transformation in history.

Slippery Slope

Our democratic governments today preside over multicultural societies that have less and less glue holding them together. They’ve grown comfortable with the idea of the state as the mediator between interest groups. And confronted by growing and restive Muslim populations, they’re increasingly at ease with the idea of regulating freedom in the interests of social harmony.

It’s a different situation in America, which has the First Amendment and a social consensus that increasingly does not exist in Europe. Europe’s consensus seems to be that Danish cartoonists should be able to draw what they like, but not if it sparks Islamic violence. It is certainly odd that the requirement of self-restraint should only apply to one party.

Last month, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of Sharia to the United Kingdom was "inevitable." Within days of His Grace’s remarks, the British and Ontario governments both confirmed that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions are receiving welfare payments for each of their wives. Kipling wrote that East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But when the twain do meet, you often wind up with the worst of both worlds. Say what you like about a polygamist in Waziristan or Somalia, but he has to do it on his own dime. To collect a welfare check for each spouse, he has to move to London or Toronto. Government-subsidized polygamy is an innovation of the Western world.

If you need another reason to be opposed to socialized health care, one reason is because it fosters the insouciant attitude to basic hygiene procedures that has led to the rise of deadly "superbugs." I see British Muslim nurses in public hospitals riddled with C. difficile are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Which is a thought to ponder just before you go under the anaesthetic. I mentioned to some of Hillsdale’s students in class that gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously "tolerant" cities in Europe. As Der Spiegel reported, "With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city’s gays."

Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the brain trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things: "Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity."

Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, don’t you think?

Our Suicidal Urge

So don’t worry, nothing’s happening. Just a few gay Muslims frustrated at the lack of gay Muslim nightclubs. Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you’d suggested such things on September 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn’t seem such a big deal, nor will the next concession, or the one after that.

The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to "hold the line"? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and who’ve just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvard’s Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what they’re conceding now and then try to figure out what they’ll be conceding in five years’ time. The idea that the West’s multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.

My book, supposedly Islamaphobic, isn’t even really about Islam. The single most important line in it is the profound observation, by historian Arnold Toynbee, that "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder." One manifestation of that suicidal urge is illiberal notions harnessed in the cause of liberalism. In calling for the introduction of Sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a long list of Western appeasers, including a Dutch cabinet minister who said if the country were to vote to introduce Islamic law that would be fine by him, and the Swedish cabinet minister who said we should be nice to Muslims now so that Muslims will be nice to us when they’re in the majority.

Ultimately, our crisis is not about Islam. It’s not about fire-breathing Imams or polygamists whooping it up on welfare. It’s not about them. It’s about us. And by us I mean the culture that shaped the modern world, and established the global networks, legal systems, and trading relationships on which the planet depends.

To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle.


Reprinted by permission from
Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.


Tuesday, August 12, 2008

"Science" Argues for Collectivism

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, opines on the ideals of the West vs. the ideals of China and collectivists everywhere. Emphasis added by yours truly.
The individualistic countries tend to put rights and privacy first. People in these societies tend to overvalue their own skills and overestimate their own importance to any group effort. People in collective societies tend to value harmony and duty. They tend to underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts.

[snip]

...individualistic societies have tended to do better economically. We in the West have a narrative that involves the development of individual reason and conscience during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and then the subsequent flourishing of capitalism. According to this narrative, societies get more individualistic as they develop.

But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops.

[snip]

The Glorious Collective, Comrade

For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.

[snip]

The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.
Really? A harmonious collective? Eh, no thanks. Call me crazy, but I'll take my unhinged, lunatic, individualism any day. In the words of William Wallace....FREEDOM!

Saturday, August 9, 2008

'Joe American' on Energy Independence

Self-styled "Joe American" addresses the Presidential candidates in this mostly spot-on video about American energy policy - just don't accept the premise that we are causing "global warming" or destroying the planet.




Visit the American Solutions web site and sign their "Drill here, drill NOW, pay less" petition.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Breaking News: Another Dead Terrorist!

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida confirmed Sunday the death of a top commander accused of training the suicide bombers who killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole eight years ago.
An al-Qaida statement posted on the Internet said al-Masri and three other top figures were killed and warned of vengeance for their deaths. It did not say when, where or how they died but said some of their children were killed along with them.

When Palis Attack...Each Other


UPDATE:
Hamas arrests Fatah men sent back to Gaza
About 30 pro-Fatah Palestinians who fled to Israel after fierce clashes in the Gaza Strip were sent back to the Hamas-controlled enclave on Sunday and the Islamist group said its forces immediately detained them.

Here's something we need more of: radical Islamists terrorizing each other for a change.

Hamas Releases Fatah Suspects, but Car Bombing Has Rival Factions on Alert
Hamas security forces fanned out across a tense Gaza Strip on Sunday, following a mysterious weekend car bombing that killed six people and sparked the toughest Hamas crackdown against its Fatah rivals in months.

Human rights groups said Hamas released over a dozen of the at least 160 Fatah men it arrested Saturday in connection with the bombing a day earlier, which killed five Hamas men and a 6-year-old girl. But Hamas police remained deployed in force around Gaza City, manning roadblocks and checking cars.

Fatah Arrests Hamas Activists on West Bank
Security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction rounded up dozens of Hamas activists, including university lecturers, in the occupied West Bank on Monday, Hamas sources said.

Tensions between the factions rose sharply after a bombing in the Gaza Strip killed five Hamas militants and a girl on Friday.

Palestinian rivals: Fatah & Hamas
Two parties dominate Palestinian politics: Fatah which has been at the head of the Palestinian national movement since the 1950s, and the Islamist movement, Hamas, which won the parliamentary elections in January 2006.