Manny Is Here

New Home

2006-12-31T18:46:00.000+11:00

Wow. I've moved up in the world. Well sort of.

Announcing.......AusPundits!

Men of No Appearance and a Jooooooo..ess

2006-12-28T15:53:00.000+11:00

Carefully documented (for eg. here, here and here) by Tim Blair, and reported by none other than the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Men of No Appearance have been hitting the streets of Sydney in rage. Note that they are the perpetrators of crimes.

Contrast this with how they describe the victim of a strangulation and disposal in a wheelie bin (moreover in the first sentence):

An elderly Holocaust survivor strangled to death and dumped in a wheelie bin was a "very timid and very kind" woman who never bothered anyone, neighbours say.

Also notice the description of the investigation:

Police have mounted an unusually big investigation, with a team of more than 20 detectives questioning local residents and shopkeepers about the murder.

No doubt, because the Elders of Zion have tapped the Commissioner on the shoulder. Maybe it is unusually large. But thats besides the point.

The SMH sees it fit to give a good description of the victim of a crime and the nature of the police investigation in this particular instance. The question I have is, why doesn't the SMH report the contents of actual police reports of incidents involving Men of No Appearance accurately to its readers?

For the dummies (dhimmis): it might be something to do with the ethnicity of the perpetrators/victims.

Update [28 December 2006, 5:49PM EST]: Notice how News Limited is reporting the story? No mention of an "unusually big investigation". More accurately they report that a Strike Force has been assembled to investigate the apparent murder:

Strike Force Miriam, comprising detectives from State Crime Commands Homicide Squad and Rose Bay Local Area Command, has been formed to investigate the death.

SMH still sticking with "unusually big investigation".
Update [29 December 2006, 9:51AM EST]: The SMH has dropped the "unusually big investigation" line. Instead it mentions that 20 detectives have been allocated to investigate this apparent murder:

Twenty detectives were assigned to investigate a death that was burdened by added sorrow once details of Mrs Schweitzer's life story emerged.

No mention of the Strike Force set up to investigate her death.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-24T10:25:00.000+11:00

From Gary Varvel:

Merry Christmas people. Some Christmasy links for your edification:

Walt Harrah on Christmas Carols on Hugh Hewitt
David Allen White on Handel's Messiah again on Hugh Hewitt (Three parts)
Mark D. Roberts on Dicken's 'A Christmas Carol' again on Hugh Hewitt
Christ the Contrarian: Who was Christ really? Cuddly babe? Postmodern, touchy feely bloke? Or the most unabashed Contrarian of his time? (A trilemma of sorts)
Give with a cheerful heart to those being oppressed this Christmas.

House Intel Chief: Al-Qaeda is Shi'ite

2006-12-11T21:59:00.000+11:00

Does this concern anyone? [H/T: The Belmont Club]:

The dialogue went like this:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about
predominately?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been
more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al
Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

Wow! The guy that will run the house Intel committee fundamentally misunderstand the most prominent enemy of his country (and of the West). So, just in case you think this gap in understanding is a partisan matter, consider Trent Lott, incoming Republican Minority Whip:

Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”
“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.
“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?
“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

We're in lots of trouble if this is the quality of people the U.S. electorate want leading them in a war whilst they discard someone of Rick Santorum's calibre:

Our growing challenge, however, is that Iran is not alone in its rhetoric, intent or capacity to threaten the security of the U.S. It is important for Americans to know that the threat is more complex, and has grown more complex.The enemy that has to be named is greater than Islamic Fascism.
Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do with the errors
of a single American administration, even of a single American president. Some even pretend that it will all go away if only the Democrat Party-including my opponent who did not even know the name of the former Iranian president whose presence kicked up a firestorm a few weeks ago by coming to America-is elected in November.

How do they propose to save us from these people? By negotiating at the United Nations? By removing U.N. Ambassador John Bolton office? By relocating American forces from Iraq to Okinawa? By abandoning the Iraqi people to Iranian and Syrian slaughter and domination? By engaging in more direct talks with a nuclear North Korea?

To be or not to be

2006-11-29T22:19:00.000+11:00

A debate is being contested over at PJM by Ralph Peters and Paul Belien over whether or not Eurabia is fact of fiction. The following two articles have appeared on the UK Telegraph's website today illustrating the inconclusivity of the matter (at least in the UK):

For (Islam flexing its muscle)

Islamic sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in parts of Britain, a report claims...Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, says there is an "alternative parallel unofficial legal system" that operates in the Muslim community on a voluntary basis... Faizul Aqtab Siddiqi, a barrister and principal of Hijaz College Islamic University, near Nuneaton, Warwicks...predicted that there would be a formal network of Muslim courts within a decade.

Against (Traditional Europe flexing muscle):

One in three people would support a ban on the Muslim full-face veil in public places, according to a new survey.The survey shows broader support for the prohibition of the veil under specific circumstances, with 63 per cent approving a potential ban in airports and at passport control, and 53 per cent saying the ban was a good idea in courtrooms and in schools.

I am a self-confessed agnostic which a strong conviction either way. I have read Oriana Fallaci, Robert Spencer and Mark Steyn all arguing for the Islamisisation of Europe. I have on the ground anecdotal evidence suggesting a growing resistance being put up by traditional Europe to Eurabia. I am not sure. This is definitely a wait-and-see situation.

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Update: Daniel Pipes has cause to rethink Eurabia...at least in the UK.

Haters of West

2006-11-29T22:10:00.000+11:00

Failing to have convinced the public of the coming apocalypse created by global warming, our friendly local Shrubs have sought a more appreciative audience: the courts.

Yesterday in Australia, a court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency needs to consider the effects that proposed coal mines would have have on global warming:

A COURT decision not to allow the development of a new coal mine near Newcastle was today labelled dangerous and disastrous by federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell.

The NSW Land and Environment Court yesterday ruled Centennial Coal had failed to adequately consider the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from its proposed Anvil Hill coal mine in the Upper Hunter.

This despite the, at best, murky links between global warming/climate change and industrial activity.

Well now the foreign Shrubbery and lefty US States seems to have gained heart in the US:

The Bush administration is defending its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new motor vehicles in the first case about global warming to reach the Supreme Court...Twelve states, mainly along the nation's Atlantic and Pacific coasts, three cities, a U.S. territory and 13 environmental groups are arguing that the EPA ignored the clear language of the Clean Air Act. Under the 1970 law, carbon dioxide is an air pollutant that threatens public health and the EPA must regulate it, they said.

Iraq: Children being cooked

2006-11-27T21:41:00.001+11:00

Just when you thought the bloodshed in Iraq could not be worse. I think, hope and pray we've hit rock-bottom. From the Barnabas Fund's email newsletter:

...Christians like the thousands of frightened Iraqis who face Christmas in the context of escalating anti-Christian violence. In the most shocking report from Iraq we have received, a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad in October 2006. The mother could not afford to pay the ransom, and so the kidnappers killed the child. They returned the body to the mother. The little child had been beheaded, roasted and was served on a mound of rice. In another incident a 14-year-old Christian boy was held down by his limbs and beheaded, or, as Iraqi Christians have described it, “crucified”. His Muslim attackers called him a “dirty Christian sinner” and chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is great).

This is the most barbaric of the events that the email discusses.

Stunned by the viciousness of this attack, earlier this evening, I called Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Fund. He is a world expert on political Islam and his organisation clearly understands the Eurabia and Dhimmitude concepts seeking to assist Christians in the Dar-al-Islam (from Dhimmitude) and Dar-al-Harb (from Suicidialism).

He personally confirmed the veracity and accuracy of this information. There seems to be a complete and total media blackout of these massacres. Patrick is not sure why this is the case. He also seems to be circumspect about the nature of blogs to help him get his message out saying, in his usual self-effacing manner, that they are not nice to him. So brilliant bloggers, unite. Bring this catastrophe to light and make people aware of the suffering of Christians in Iraq. Let's not have another Armenia/Aramean genocide on our hands.

For those with the means, please donate some money to the Barnabas Fund's Christmas Appeal 2006 - Iraq. For those that are not able to contribute financially, please pray, and pray ceaselessly for justice to be served on those driving the violence and pray for the protection of those on the receiving end of the violence.

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Update: Here is the newsletter and the email in full.

Update II: Healing Iraq has spot reports from around Iraq regarding the upsurge in violence. Mohammed @ Iraq the Model on the same. This is not surprising and should have been expected. The US is flailing around trying to find someone to "help" them reduce the violence. Think Iran, Think Syria. Well, it would be at precisely this time that Iran and Syria would push the US's head under the water, by instructing their Iraqi proxies to increase their attacks, increasing pressure on the US to acquiesce to their demands. (H/T: LittleGreenFootballs). Interestingly, no mention of the suffering the Christians are facing. This probably reflects how marginalised they have become, even in the eyes of supporters of peace and stability in Iraq.

Update III: I have been provided further information by the Barnabas Fund supporting the claims made above. Understandably, due to the security of the eyewitnesses, I have been asked to preserve confidentiality.

Steyn: Secular Humanism Dooms West

2006-11-25T20:19:00.000+11:00

In his fabulous book, "America Alone: The End of the World as we know it", gives him opinion of whether a society based on secular humanism can survive the Islamist virus:

Pre-modern Islam beats post-modern Christianity. In 2006, a dozen intellectuals published a manifesto against Islamism and in defense of "secular values for all." The signatories included Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian; Irshad Manji, the Canadian writer; and Salman Rushdie, the British novelist. All three are brave figures and important allies in the campaign against the Islamist tide. But they're making a mistake: secular humanism is an insufficient rallying cry. As another Canadian, Kathy Shaidle, wrote in response: "It is secularism itself which is part of the problem, not the solution, since secularism is precisely what created the Euro spiritual/moral vacuum into which Islamism has rushed headlong."

This is point is also emphasised by Ravi Zacharias many a time in his numerous lectures and talks:

I'll say this as kindly as I can: the last 22 years of my life have been spent in the West. The equal amount in the beginning was spent in the East. And Western civilisation is being rocked to its foundations because Western man does not know the point of reference for the value system that he wants to espouse right now. See the Middle East still espouses Islam: there is some transcedent leverage to the culture. We in modern times are daring the lines in the West and we actually think we can survive without the espousing of a Moral Law. History cries out against the experiment.

Here's a more abstract contrarian view from Nick Gillespie at Reason:

With the collapse of socialism as a viable alternative social system (as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in a great interview in the November Reason), it only makes sense that conservatives and libertarians would start to line up on different sides of the barricades that surround the battleground of individual choice and autonomy. Why? In part, because the libertarian doesn't fear change or blindly respect "established authority" the way conservatives tend to.

More fundamentally, though, it's because, pace Goldberg, libertarians do believe devoutly in something. They believe, writes Hayek, that "to live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal [libertarian] neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits."

Goldberg sniffs that such a world leads to--horrors!--"individualized, designer cultures" as opposed to, one presumes, mandated mass cultures that are forced on people whether they like it or not (substitute "religion" for "culture" to get a sense of whether more choice in human affairs is a good thing). He even quotes G.K. Chesterton ripping off Dostoevsky: "Chesterton pointed out that when a man stops believing in God, he won't believe in nothing, he'll believe in anything" and then neatly underscores his own flight from such a rigid, old-style world by adding, "God isn't necessarily the issue here." What a personalized reading of Chesterton.

So which position can assure West's ability to endure and survive? Well, from Gillespie et al. we should infer that, "reason will come riding on a horse" and save the day. The problem is that if Reason is riding the horse, who or what is the horse? Theists such as Steyn, Zacharias and Shaidle (and C.S. Lewis) answer that the horse is the Judeo-Christian God. His Moral Law is, pace Gillespie et al., the brighest light for the post-Christian world.

We mourn with you Lebanon

2006-11-22T08:09:00.000+11:00

Several weeks ago, I read an article in the Middle East Times quoting members of a Lebanese Christian Youth party. They were arguing for the rearming of Christian villages to defend themselves against Hezb'allah's oppression. More recently, there has been news that the Sunni and Druze are allying to mitigate the Shi'ite expansion supported by Iran and Syria.

Your country is once again on the cusp of civil war. May God protect you and your children, and may he grant the forces of evil a quick, decisive and catastrophic loss.

UPDATE: The forces of evil also targeted Michael Pharaon (H/T: Michael Totten) after the assassination of Pierre Gemayel. This would have toppled the Saniora government and given Hezb'allah an effective veto on government policy.
UPDATE 2: The WaPo reports on the deepening pessimism in Lebanon.

Australians Unite: Support Democracy in Iran

2006-11-19T15:15:00.001+11:00

Pajamas Media have just published an appeal by an Iranian dissident for help from the International Community.

Iranian dissident Zahra Kamalfar has been living with her children under unspeakable conditions in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for 73 days. A one-time demonstrator against the extremist theocracy with a lengthy prison sentence, she escaped from an Iranian prison when on a two-day furlough to visit her children. She ended up being buffeted from country to country. Now in imminent danger (possibly Monday, if the Russians cooperate) of being taken back to the Islamic Republic for the Mullah’s version of justice, Ms. Kamalfar speaks out in this dramatic video smuggled out of the airport to Pajamas Media.

I ask that Australian citizens contact the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, urging him to step in and support Zahra and her two children. In doing so, he will be supporting the democratic movement in Iran. I have sent him the following email (minister.downer@dfat.gov.au):

Dear Mr Foreign Minister,

I am writing to you to draw you attention to the plight of an Iranian woman and her two young children.
Zahra Kamalfar has been jailed (along with her husband) for participating in protests in Iran in 2000. Her husband is still incarcerated. She fled Iran whilst visiting her children for two days.
Currently, her and her children are trapped in Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow in the transit area. The Russians have just permitted the Iranians to come to the airport to arrest her. Her children desperately require medical attention and she will almost surely be the recipient of unspeakable horror if she is arrested by the Iranian regime.
Pajamas Media, an online blog collective, has published her appeal for help at You Tube:
http://politicscentral.com/2006/11/18/ledeen_on_the_kamalfar_video.php
As a concerned Australian citizen, I strongly plead that our country avail itself of all diplomatic options to ensure the safety of Mrs Kamalfar and her two young children. Our country is a strong proponent of democracy in Iran. Let us demonstrate to the world that we support those Iranians who desire liberty in their own country, who desire life without being subject to tyranny.

I urge citizens of other countries to contact the relevant government ministry to help Zahra.

Update: Seems like the US is interested in providing Zahra and her kids asylum in the US of A. This continues a recent trend of people fleeing Muslim oppression in European countries being aforded protection by North Americans: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, Wafa Sultan, etc etc.

Update II: Zahra and her children may be forcibly deported in the next few hours.

America Alone: Within and Without

2006-11-16T21:34:00.001+11:00

In his recent book, America Alone: the end of the world as we know it, Steyn argues that "Europe is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America Alone."

Unfortunately, America is also alone, einsam or lonely within. This loneliness is a product of its abandonment of God and his Moral Law. America was nurtured in this Moral Law. This was its anchor during its spectacular rise into an unrivaled - now and in antiquity - superpower. It has abandoned It. It has abandoned America.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophesied this in a lecture at Harvard in the late 1970s:

This debilitating dream [of the West] of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?
How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

Just over a year later, the US was attacked, it appeased, and its lack of moral fortitude revealed, its hollow anthropologic centre bared for all to see.

Skipping forward to the present....

In an article discussing reasons for the GOP's shock defeat in Election 06, John McIntyre points to an precipitous decline in the belief of Americans that they are in a War with a stubborn and crafty enemy:

A final, underappreciated dynamic of this year's midterms is what I have called "the fading 9/11 effect." The country's focus and concern over terrorism was a crucial factor that powered Republican gains in '02 and '04 as well as President Bush's own reelection. But five years of success in preventing terrorist attacks have bred complacency among the American public. The country simply doesn't take the threat as seriously when Bush pounds the table and insists we are at war with an enemy that is coming after us relentlessly. That is why the carefully orchestrated votes on detainee rights and NSA wire-tapping did not have the same electoral success they would have had 2-4 years ago.

In a similar vein and context, Thomas Sowell laments the passing of American will:

No amount of security precautions can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Mark Steyn quotes Niall Ferguson as saying that America is "...the world's first superpower with ADHD.

He is of course referring to the tendency of the United States short attention spans and snappish impatience for results:

...America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV. It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

He reinforces this idea in America Alone in a section called "Fighting Vainly the Old Ennui" by quoting Niall Ferguson as saying that the US is the "...clay feet of the colossus..." . Steyn continues with the following worrying sequence of thoughts:

In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away; maybe in the Middle East, it will only take 5,000. And maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 500, or 50, or not bother at all. Our enemies have made a bet - that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span.

War historian and scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, in only September 2006, posited that the leadership of the USA is in the capable hands of the President and that he would not succumb to a bout of majority sympathy:

The truth is that war is a constant ying and yang, of challenge and response, the side winning that reacts the more quickly to change and commits the fewer mistakes—and keeps its head. So far, by any historical standard of casualties lost, the ambition of the mission (Iraq is 7,000 miles and the home of the ancient caliphate), and success gained, this war is hardly a debacle and surely can be won. But it would have been lost years ago, had George Bush once, just once, listened to his litany of critics (pull out, postpone the elections, post a timetable, go to the UN, more troops still, invade Iran or Syria, trisect the country) watched the polls, or in depression at the venom, given in. We need to take a breath and remember that.

However, this certainty has recently waned with his consideration of Bush's constitution of the "Baker Commission":

For all the present gloom, if Bush hangs tough and gets Iraq stabilized, does not appease North Korea and Iran, and sees movement in the Middle East toward more reform, then in 10 years he will be seen as a rarely successful American President.

Fortunately, President Bush is looking elsewhere for strategic advice:

The Bush administration is conducting its own review of strategy and tactics in Iraq in parallel with an examination of U.S. policy by an independent panel, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said.
The work, involving the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and the White House National Security Council, has been going on ``fairly discretely'' for weeks, Hadley said aboard Air Force One as President George W. Bush traveled to an economic conference in Asia.

The Brontosaurus is being kept on life support by a President who is himself ill.

Update: The WaPo has reliably published a leak of the results of the President's alternate advice mechanism:

The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.

What is Truth?

2006-11-11T17:04:00.001+11:00

A couple of months ago, I wrote a fairly long post on truth and clarity in the context of the lack of truth and clarity by elements of the MSM and the respect of it by Donald Rumsfeld:

If Brookes has his head firmly wrapped around what the WIF is about, then Shields has a tinfoil hat glued to his head. He ends by rationalising his incoherent, inconsistent, contradictory babble with the following:

And now they say, "Well, what do we got? We've tried terrorism. We've tried -- the only thing we have to offer is fear itself."

Perhaps Shields was upset by the following piece of total non-nuance and political incorrectness from Donald Rumsfeld:
Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world.
I'm sure Shields response has the same philosophical backbone as that worn by Pontus Pilate when he replied rather condescendingly to Jesus, the bearer of Truth:
What is truth?

According to Ravi Zacharias, there are three tests of truth:

Logical consistency;
Empirical adequacy; and
Existential relevance.

Much of what is wrong with today's society is a result of people's rejection of one or all of these tests. For example, with regards to Shield's babble in the aforementioned Shields and Brookes session, Mark Shields has jettisoned the first and second tests and therefore made a mess of trying to test the third criteria.

So, if the West's agenda setters are unable to discern fact from fiction, what does this say about the existential survival of the West?

Lefties blame Elbridge Gerry, RIP

2006-11-07T23:33:00.000+11:00

Over at the New Republic, the Editors have published a statement to the effect that Elbridge Gerry, the chap who developed the Congressional Redistricting Plan, is to blame for their predicted lacklustre performance at the US polls.

First they claim that the much vaunted 30 to 50 seat sweep of the House by the Democrats will not emerge:

Democrats have run up double-digit advantages on major issues from Iraq to the economy. When voters are presented with a generic congressional ballot, Democrats win 53-39. But there's simply no way that this will translate.

Then instead of looking at the facts, they elucidate a conspiracy, a right-wing conspiracy. And who is to blame? Elbridge Gerry (RIP) of course, a dead Republican (but not really). You see, Gerry developed the Congressional redistricting scheme:

When voters are presented with a generic congressional ballot, Democrats win 53-39. But there's simply no way that this will translate. Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee, for instance, are hosting three of the nation's tightest Senate races. But travel a step down the ballot, and you will find only one close contest in those states' combined 29 house races. The entire state of California has only two somewhat tight contests--and it wouldn't even have those, except for a pair of GOP incumbents' associations with Jack Abramoff.

All this is the legacy of our least favorite Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, and the formula for rigging congressional elections that bears his name. Not that it's all Gerry's fault. The redistricting plan he signed in 1812--and the hundreds that have followed--merely exploited a massive flaw in our electoral system.

Yesterday, I claimed that the TNR is one of the few sane lefty collectives out there. This performance should lead us all to start doubting that.

Also interesting what one finds when trawling the feverswamp. Date stamped 4 November 2006:

So, at best (for the pukes), the polls are actually ACCURATE. At worst, they're underestimating our intensity...In summary, Hugh Hewitt is a f**king moron.

Deeerr. Got that?

For the nutters, my prediction from last night still holds: GOP narrowly lose House, retain Senate with slimmer margin. This prediction based on facts, not wishful thinking.

Sunday Ruined

2006-11-06T23:32:00.000+11:00

Looks like some of our sane lefty comrades have had there wonderful weekend ruined by some bad polls:

John Judis and I have been e-mailing about the alarming Pew poll that came out today. It reflects the same trends captured by that earlier Washington Post/ABC poll, except that the trends are, gulp, even more pronounced. Worse, the folks at Pew have graciously posted their cross-tabs, which makes it nearly impossible to rationalize the lousy results. As John points out, the fact that Democrats' 15-point advantage among white women last month has turned into a 2-point disadvantage today is incredibly ominous.

Had they listened to Hugh Hewitt's predictions, they would have been steeling themselves for the inevitable GOTV backlash:

There's plenty of reasons why the GOP should not be deterred by the numbers of many polls, and plenty of reasons why Dems have to fear another bit of secret sauce and echo-chamber-induced premature celebrations.

Unfortunately, neither TradeSports:

or Prediction Markets see much chance in the GOP retaining control of the House.

My guess is that the GOP will lose control of House by slim margin and maintain control of Senate.
UPDATE: Wrong on both counts.

AP - Moral Ambiguity

2006-11-05T18:00:00.000+11:00

Anything wrong with this?

AP infers by its sentence structure that a violent backlash (presumably by Sunnis and Baathists) against the verdict in Saddam's war crimes trial is equally morally egregious to Saddam's presumed death penalty.

What is wrong with this world? Has justice lost its meaning? Has victory for the victim become a vacant ideal?

Interestingly, this AP piece does not report that the verdict handed down by an Iraqi Court will be subject to an automatic review by another judicial panel.

The AP is seriously not interested in justice. It is interested in ensuring that it sticks up for the right-to-life of a murderous, unseated dictator.

Update: Saddam gets the noose. Automatic judicial review pending.

Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail, as the former leader, trembling, shouted "God is great!"

Sexy Ford

2006-10-28T13:04:00.001+10:00

This is the entirety of a letter that I wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald editor several days ago (it was not published):

Dear Editor,

I am disappointed by the lack of balance and accuracy in Michael Gawenda’s article “Senate fight about race a strain on southern comfort” (26 October 2006).
The Republican National Committee has produced and aired an ad depicting the Democratic challenger for a Tennessean Senate seat, Harold Ford, as someone who is in bed with the pornography industry (excuse the pun) and who is seduced by a white porn star. Gawenda’s notes that this sort of political advertising would “...shock even Australia’s seasoned political apparatchiks.”
Gawenda notes that the election is about “character”. Precisely. This is what the ad tries to address. The ad, among other things, mocks Ford’s policy position on the legal rights of illegal combatants in the War on Terror, his high tax policies and his dislike of US second amendment rights to possess firearms.
According to Gawenda, Ford is “handsome and charismatic” and wears “smart suits and two-colour shirts”. I suppose these are Gawenda’s benchmarks for “character”. On this basis, should we consider Ken Lay as an exemplar?
In an article about race and US politics, I also find it startling that Gawenda’s journalistic piece fails to report the “dirty tricks” perpetrated by the Democrats, particularly because of Gawenda’s extensive experience at covering US politics. A case in point is a Democratic TV ad funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee portraying a black Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia as a minstrel and referring to him as “Sambo”.
For the record, both ads were withdrawn. But Gawenda does not report that either.

So I was reading "The Inquirer" section of The Australian this morning. Geoff Elliott had almost one entire broadsheet page dedicated to covering the supposed racist smear against Harold Ford Jnr (can't find it online). This article again failed to mention the dirty racist smears being perpetrated by the Democrats in Election '06. It also failed to mention that the ad has been pulled or that the RNC (contrary to my implication above) has no control over the ad.

I'm not going to complain about the balance of Elliott's piece as it is not reporting, but opinion. But I would have thought that factual accuracy would still be a necessity. The World News/Opinion sections of the Australian need some serious looking over. First Chulov's significant errors and shifting accounts, now Elliotts mistakes.

Its good to see the Editorial teams of both major Australian newspapers up to the task of acting as Gatekeepers.

Hilal Cat Food

2006-10-27T17:22:00.001+10:00

I've been listening to Philip Clark on 2GB this afternoon just a bit after 4PM. Clark interviewed the chair of the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA) Tom Zrika. The LMA is the body that owns and has responsibility of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney, Australia. Lakemba Mosque is also the "home" mosque of Australia's Mufti, Sheik al-Hilali.

Sheik al-Hilali has in the last couple of days been subject to strong criticism from Australian leaders for a sermon he gave at Lakemba Mosque during Ramadan:

When it comes to adultery, it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.

"But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it."

Hopefully, Philip Clark will post the audio of his interview with Zrika. From his fairly probing interview, we can ascertain the following:

The LMA has NOT contrary to media reports, given the Mufti several months off from preaching sermons. Instead, in the words of the LMA, he has been given a three month holiday;
The LMA will not proceed with further action against the Mufti as a significant proportion of the board support him;
Zrika admitted that the Mufti has a sizeable and vocal following ;
THe LMA does not want to do anything concrete in response to the Mufti's sermon because it would tear the fabric of the community; and
Sydney Radio show 2ME conducted an on-air survey in which a majority of Lebanese Muslims supported the Mufti's comments and in which the overwhelming majority of Lebanese Christians reject his assertions (no links - via Clark interview @ 2GB);

I agree with Matt Price for once:

In Australia and around the world, Muslim women are under increasing pressure to abandon their veils and hijabs and make a greater effort to assimilate with Western culture.

Sheik Hilali’s draconian religious address helps us understand why this is no easy task.

Remember, these are not the ravings of a radical Islamo-fascist - Hilali is one of the most senior Muslim clerics in Australia.

In other news, the Mufti no longer requires the assistance of an oxygen mask.

For the record, Philip Clark concluded that with 400,000 Muslims residing in Sydney, based on the small surveys conducted, at least 200,000 Muslims condone and support the Mufti's comments. Clark ended by saying this is a big problem.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Here is some audio of Tom Zrika (or Zreika), explaining why Mufti has been let off (about 1 minute into interview with News.com.au).

UPDATE: For the Arabic speakers amongst us, here is the Mufti's controversial sermon.

GOP fighting back

2006-10-27T11:14:00.001+10:00

The POTUS and SecDef have come out swinging in the last couple days.

POTUS highlighted the enormous domestic battle that needs to be done in order to win the War on Islamofascism:

It's interesting, here in America, I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people don't believe we're at war. I not only believe we're at war, I know we're at war. My biggest issue that I think about all the time is the next attack on America, because I am fully aware that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing the American people.

And they're coming. And we've got to do everything we can to stop them. That's why I believe we ought to listen to their phone calls, obviously on a limited basis, one coming out of the country, and why I know we need to interrogate these people. That's why we need the Patriot Act. That's why we need to be on the offense all the time.

The SecDef on setting benchmarks for the Iraqis:

Now, you're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. This is complicated stuff. It's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.
So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult, that honorable people are working on these things together; there isn't any daylight between them. They will be discussing this and discussing that; they may have a change here or a change there, but it will get worked out. And the value of it, in my view, is that you are, in effect, establishing priorities.

The net sum total is the following (courtesy TradeSports):

Barring any other October Surprises, the GOP is tracking well to either lose the House narrowly or maintain a slim majority.

UPDATE: The GOP also has bigger coffers for the home stretch.

ABC Feels, AT Facts

2006-10-26T15:38:00.000+10:00

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has a web article on the how Michael J Fox is being "hounded" by conservatives in the U.S. with respect to his political ad on stem cell research. However, I haven't noticed a prominent piece on the claims being made by Michael J Fox in his ad. Instead, they cover this ad with the following touchy-feely:

In a heart-wrenching TV commercial, the once fresh-faced Canadian-born star writhes and twitches, struggling to hold his head still to look into camera.

Controversy has been stirred as a result of conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, claiming that Fox was faking while the ad was being recorded. He has since apologised. Needless to say, this sort of commentary is unhelpful.

However, this sort of commentary by a gynecologist and obstetrician published by the American Thinker is educational and does a much better demolition job of Fox's claims on embryonic stem cell research. For instance:

The plain fact is that embryonic stem cell research is proving to be a bust. There are currently 72 therapies showing human benefits using adult stem cells and zero using embryonic stem cells. Scientifically-minded readers can review this medical journal article on the status of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell therapies are already being advertised and promoted while no such treatments are even remotely in prospect for embryonic stem cell research.

Read it all if the facts interest you. The ABC isn't interested in facts.

Update: The ABC story is largely sourced from AFP. Interestingly, the ABC excerpt snips the scant factual critique contained in the AFP article:

Limbaugh's fellow conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity told ABC's Good Morning America Wednesday Fox was fair game.

The actor, who also starred in political drama "Spin City" had "a right to speak up, but he also has a right to be criticised," Hannity said.

"What's unfortunate and deceiving about the ad is that this is about the federal funding of embryonic stem cells," Hannity said, arguing members of Congress had no jurisdiction over the issue.

Christians and the Middle East

2006-10-24T19:06:00.000+10:00

Two good pieces of reading:

Robert Spencer gives us an update on Abdul Rahman and the jihadist attempt to have him repatriated to Afghanistan to a death sentence.
Tom Bethell @ Spectator on Middle East demographics and the waning Christian presence there and the weaking influence of Judeo-Christian values on Western Society.

Downer stands firm

2006-10-18T11:31:00.000+10:00

I was overwhelmed after catching the tail end of Tony Jones' interview of the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer. Downer presented a realistic picture of the situation in Iraq ("its tough") but defended maintaining troops in Iraq. He was very critical of the cut-and-run strategy proposed by the left leaning Opposition Party and rightly ridiculed Tony Jones' persistent and repetitive questions on whether being in Iraq has worsened terror. He also linked the jihadist threat to the West's health and survival in such terms that I have not yet seen from a public figure.

Mark Steyn must have brain-washed him.

Once the transcript is put up, I will link to it. However, you can watch the entire interview here (broadband) or here (dialup).

UPDATE: Transcript has been put up at Foreign Affairs.

An example of some of the FMs fine, poignant and sometimes sombre comments include:

JONES: Put simply do you now accept this is also the view point of the national intelligence assessment of the United States - that the war on Iraq has made terrorism worse?

DOWNER: Well, you know, that's rather like saying that if you - you know when we went to war with Japan or with Germany they were not going to like it very much and get angry about it. I mean it had to be done. I don't think giving in to the terrorists in the end is going to be in our long-term security interests.

But this response doesn't satisfy Tony Jones. No he has the NIE, the Commander of the British Army AND the former Commander of the Australian Defence Force AND he has a very important point to make (presumably as a reporter):

JONES: But this is the fundamental point - I'm sorry to interrupt you there but it's the fundamental point and I'm wonder if your own intelligence assessments are the same, because the national intelligence assessment of the United States - of all those agencies essentially saying the war on Iraq is making international terrorism worse?

DOWNER: No, look, we're not looking at intelligence assessments of the past, whether I agree with them or whether I don't.

JONES: This is an assessment of the present, isn't it?

DOWNER: No, it's not because the challenge for me as a policy maker is the challenge of what decisions we make now. Now I do not get intelligence assessments from Australia or from America saying that if we withdraw from Iraq, if we surrender in Iraq this is going to lead to the jihadist movement collapsing and everything will return to quiet. Quite the contrary. The assessments of the intelligence - the American intelligence agencies - are quite clear, that if the jihadists and insurgents are victorious in Iraq then that is going to be an enormous boost to their campaign around the world and it will lead to a substantial increase in the terrorist risks. So I've got to deal with the decisions that we face in the future and I am very focussed on - I'm very focussed on the consequences of defeat in Iraq. I think defeat and surrender in Iraq - and look, I don't mind whether it's popular or unpopular, I'm going to say it because I profoundly believe this and believe it to be right - I think that defeat and surrender in Iraq is going to do Western and international security enormous damage quite apart from the awful things that would happen to the people of Iraq in those circumstances.

Pope Stands Firm

2006-10-16T22:41:00.000+10:00

The Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI, will in fact be visiting Turkey. This is despite previous protests, demands for the cancellation of his trip and even the arrest of the Pontiff:

Turkish workers from a religious affairs union demonstrated in Ankara Tuesday, demanding the pope apologize or cancel his planned trip to Turkey. Some of the protesters called for the arrest of the pontiff when he visits the predominantly Muslim country in late November.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the failed assasin of Pope Benefit's predecessors, warned the Pope that by travelling to Turkey, his life was endangered.

Your [the Pope] life is in danger. Don’t come to Turkey — absolutely not!

The media's prognostications fortelling the cancellation of the Pope's trip, assisted by some representatives of Catholics, have all but proving incorrect:

A top Catholic Church official inside Turkey says the polemics following Benedict XVI's comments about Islam may cause the cancellation of his November visit to the majority Muslim country, which is nevertheless governed on secular principles.

Hurrah for the Pope! And just so we do not forget that there are sane elements in that other great denomination, the Church of England, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord William Carey, came out and supported the Pope's misunderstood speech by challenging Muslims to

...challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.

Let's hope and pray that his time in Turkey will be constructive and safe.

Iraq: A lucky turn of events?

2006-10-15T22:56:00.000+10:00

According to MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), in addition to the sectarian violence tearing Iraq apart, a serious rift has opened between Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq:

An Islamic website posted a 17-minute video cassette showing a masked man called "Abu Osama Al-Iraqi" who presented himself as one of the commanders of the jihad in Iraq. In the cassette, he addressed Osama bin Laden with accusations against Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its commanders, and threatened that the Iraqi mujahideen would fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A strategy of divide and conquer was employed fairly effectively by the British in their occupation of Iraq in the early 1900s. It is time that the US and its allies seize this strategic opportunity afforded so fortuitously and turn the Islamofascists on each other.

Iraq: Syrian-Orthodox Clergyman Decapitated

2006-10-13T20:29:00.001+10:00

No-one promised that being a dhimmi will protect your life [H/T: The Jawa Report via AINA]:

The Syriac-Orhtodox [sic] priest Paulos Iskandar was kidnapped this Monday, October 9, and beheaded today Wednesday October 11.

Christians are living a terrified life in Mosul and Baghdad. Several priests have been kidnapped, girls are being raped and murdered and a couple of days ago a fourteen year old boy was crucified in the Christian neighborhood Albasra.

Corroborated by Persection.org. Also being reported by The International Herald Tribune:

Relatives of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and found beheaded three days later said Thursday that his captors had demanded his church condemn the pope's recent comments about Islam and pay a US$350,000 (€280,000) ransom.

The Persecution.org piece linked above states that the motives for the kidnapping and murder are unknown. However, the AINA piece and IHT story linked above purport that the motive kidnapping and murder of Father Iskandar was in response to Pope Benedict XVI's infamous Regensburg address titled "Faith, Reason and Uncertainty".

In this speech, the Pope assailed the West's redundant approach to debate and discussion and challenged for other "cultures" to engage with the West with "logos" (or knowledge/reason):

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

This was his main point. It had nothing to do with slandering Islam. I will not do his fine speech the injustice of reproducing his quote of a quote of a Christian Byzantine Emperor that was widely quoted in the MSM and drew ironic angry and violent responses from the Ummah. Indeed, far from attacking Islam or inciting hatred of it, he was challenging the Ummah to engage in meaningful (ie. reasonable) dialogue with the West.

Note however, that being a dhimmi, did not spare Father Iskandar's life:

Before Iskender was kidnapped, his relatives said, the church already had put up signs condemning the statement and calling for good relations between Christians and Muslims. The message was posted again, they said, after the priest's kidnappers made their demand.

Since Saddam's regime fell, Christians of all stripes in Iraq, dhimmi and non-dhimmi, Catholic, Syrian-Orthodox or Reformed, have been attacked and harrassed. This has been covered in drips and draps in the MSM and other outlets:

The Guardian (6 October 2006)
ABC Lateline (2 October 2006)
ABC Lateline - again (3 December 2004)
Fox News (13 November 2004)
Al-Jazeera (2 August 2004)
The Christian Science Monitor (21 April 2003)
GlobalSecurity.org (Undated)

Clarity & Resolve states that:

This is the vicious, ancient religious behavior that Saddam kept in check with his vicious modern secular behavior.

Correct in that Saddam didn't annihilate Christian Iraqi villages, very incorrect in that he annihilated Kurdish Iraqi ones and was responsible for the murder of thousands Iraqi dissidents. That's why he is in the dock in Baghdad.

The irony of the coverage of the poor plight of Iraqi Christians is that the stories are published by a media that lusts for a withdrawal from Iraq. This will only serve to worsen their situation. This sort of logic was that which the Pope assailed in his Regensburg address. However, it is also this part of the Pope's speech that was stubbornly ignored by the West and the Ummah.

It has been my opinion for some time that Iraq was a major strategic blunder in the WIF.

But if this incident (and many others like it) demonstrates anything, it is this: the West should redouble its efforts in targeting and killing Islamofascists running amok in Iraq, not cut-and-run.

Disclaimer: I am a Christian with close (and friendly) links to the Syrian-Orthodox Church.

Rocket Strikes: What really happens

2006-10-04T11:30:00.000+10:00

In case some of you were buried under a rock during the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, there were claims by news wires that the IDF deliberately and maliciously struck a Red Cross ambulance with missiles fired from helicopters. There was also a significant rebuttal of this claim by Zombie Times. This is what the ambulance looked like afterwards:Well, the IDF struck a car containing Palestinian militants on the weekend. This is what it looked like afterwards:

Anyone still reckon that the IDF struck the ambulance? Read journalist Tim Blair's lowdown of media's complicity in this hoax.

Chesterton: Uncandid Candid Friends

2006-09-21T21:24:00.000+10:00

G.K. Chesterton in his book "Orthodoxy" (1908) on uncandid candid friends:

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back - his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly...what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens...A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is...what I have suggested: he is an uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor, for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it...

The personification of the uncandid candid friend changes over time, as do the characters traiterous to their own nation. Yet, their forked tongues and fake sympathy do not.

The global Left (with a few notable exceptions) are the uncandid candid friends of today. They pronounce our defeat in Iraq and wanting a retreat, not because of their care and concern for the soldiers on the ground, but because of their joy in seeing the US and its allies defeated.

Everytime I read Chesterton, I hang on his profound paradoxical statements, his ability to pierce complexity with his sharp tongue and the enduring lessons he teaches.

Western Media - Shills for Enemy

2006-09-20T17:32:00.000+10:00

Now let's see. We have AP summarising Ahmadinejad's speech as "Iran Leader says U.S. abusing U.N. power". In that article, we have the following statement regarding the U.S. President's speech:

Bush directed his remarks to the Iranian people in a clear insult to the hard-line government.

Two problems:
1. The U.N.'s cost of operations is overwhelmingly paid for by the U.S. When Iran starts putting more of its petro-dollars into the U.N. can Ahmadinejad squeel unfair.
2. Why would a free western media outlet use the speech of its enemy to denounce its leader?

We live in Orwellian times.

Psychology of the West

2006-09-19T20:44:00.000+10:00

Two brilliant articles have been published by two piercing journalists. Cal Thomas has penned a piece at RealClearPolitics discussing the naiive state of mind a large proportion of the West have with regards to the WIF. An excerpt:

And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word "naive": "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment."

He illustrates naivete in the example set by Ed Rendell, General Chair of the DNC. Asked about his strategy for Iraq if he were president, came his reply:

Rendell was asked what he would do about Iraq if he were president. He said he is not running, but if he were and he won, on the day after his inauguration, "I would go to Iraq and ask to be on TV throughout the Middle East and I'd say, 'We came here with the best of intentions and wanted to create freedom and democracy for all and 3,000 Americans have died. It is clear to me we have become the main problem. I'm going to ask the international community to develop a peacekeeping force and reduce our presence. We're going to help you build houses, provide aid and economic opportunity for your people.'"

Thomas quips that:

That isn't a peace plan; it's a plan for surrender. Does he seriously believe such a retreat would not be seen as surrender and weakness, playing into the hands of jihadists, who would be emboldened to keep on fighting until they dominated all of Europe and then come after America?

I point out that jihadists, in the past, HAVE been emboldened by the inadequate (or totally absent) responses of the US to events such as:

1979: Iranian Hostage Crisis planned and carried out by Shiite revolutionaries
1983: Beirut Barracks Bombing planned and carried out by unknown Shiite Islamofascists
1993: World Trade Centre bombing planned and carried out by Ramzi Yousef
1996: Khobar Towers bombing planned and carried out by al Qaeda
2000: Bombing of USS Cole as it was docked in a Yemeni port carried out by al Qaeda

So Thomas also has history on his side.

Meanwhile Thomas Sowell, has also penned a piece at RealClearPolitics discussing suicidialism of certain sections of the ruling elite when it comes to the prosecution of the WIF:

No amount of security precautions [as proposed by the Democrats and some Republicans] can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Compare that will John Kerry's "Immoral" speech.

H/T: Hugh Hewitt for inspiring some of this.

VDH: Crystal Clear Asymmetry

2006-09-17T16:47:00.000+10:00

Victor Davis Hanson at his crystal clearest on his blog:

We learned the now familiar rage with the Danish cartoons, Theo Van Gogh, the false flushed Koran story, the forced change of “Operation Infinite Justice” to “Enduring Freedom”, the constant charges of “Islamaphobia”, and a horde of other false grievances that so shook the West, traumatized in fear of having its skyscrapers, planes, trains, buses, nightclubs, and synagogues blown apart or its oil cut off.

So, yes, we know the asymmetrical rules: a state run-paper in Cairo or the West Bank, a lunatic Iranian mullah, a grand mufti from this or that mosque, can all rail about infidels, “pigs and apes”, in language reminiscent of the Third Reich—and meet with approval in the Middle East and silence in the West. But for a Westerner, a Tony Blair, George Bush, or Pope Benedict to even hint that something has gone terribly wrong with modern Islam, is to endure immediate furor and worse. In short, no modern ideology, no religious sect of the present age demands so much of others, so little of itself.

Warning: Hyperventilation and Double Speak

2006-09-04T22:33:00.000+10:00

I was listening to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on the way home tonight. Now, I have always been a fan of the Shields and Brooks segment, broadcast at the end of each week.

However, recently, I have found Mark Shield's ranting almost unbearable. I must say that David Brookes is a character who I don't always agree with. However he has his head firmly wrapped around what the War on Terror is really about. On Friday, 1 Sep 06 episode, Brookes comments that:

[The War on Terror] is an ideological conflict almost equal to the size of the fight against communism in the Soviet Union and fascism. If you look at a recent survey done in the Middle East, who are the five most important people in this region? It was the head of Hezbollah, the head of Iran, the head of Hamas, the head of Egyptian Brotherhood, all Islamists.

This Islamist movement continues to build and build and build, whether it's Sunni, Shia, Iran, Iraq. This is a big ideological fight.

He is of course commenting on Donald Rumsfeld's recent (and not-so-recent) speeches in which he is comparing America's slow and sometimes miscalculating steps in the "War on Terror" (WOT), or what is now called the "War on Islamo-Fascism" (WIF), to the policies of appeasement by Neville Chamberlain toward the rising forces of Nazi Fascism in the 1930s:

It was a time [1930s] when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last...

Rumsfeld continues by stating that:

I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today -- another enemy, a different kind of enemy -- has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history's lessons.

For the record, Brookes wants Rumsfeld to resign. But for all his efforts in trying to persuade Shields that Rumsfeld (shock horror) may have a point, he is wiped out by Shields' lies and hyperventilating double-speak. First there are his factual errors:

I mean, Hezbollah and Hamas are not the same thing, not as Iran.

I would consider the following: Iran has given millions to Hamas, and is the benefactor, trainer and supplier of Hezbollah. Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah all wish to see Israel either driven into the sea or wiped off the face of the earth. The Iranian Government, Hamas and Hezbollah are all Islamofascists. Nope they aren't the same thing.

He then sticks his head in the sand:

And let's be very blunt about this: al-Qaida had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein.

In contrast Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn bury their noses in data and check the facts:

Indeed, more than two years after the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was ousted, there is much we do not know about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. We do know, however, that there was one. We know about this relationship not from Bush administration assertions but from internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents recovered in Iraq after the war--documents that have been authenticated by a U.S. intelligence community long hostile to the very idea that any such relationship exists.
We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

Shields begins to screech (download the mp3 to confirm):

Now, what we have is we have a breeding ground, a recruiting station for terrorists in Iraq as a consequence of the United States occupying, occupying, invading and occupying the Muslim holy land.

So we shouldn't be there, cause that would be stepping on the sensibilities of our Muslim brothers. But here is the extraordinary double speak from Shields:

The president said, in particularly the Salt Lake City speech, that this was the ideological battle of the 21st century, the battle of Iraq, upon its outcome and victory there, dependent victory in the battle of the war against terrorism.
If that's true, what the hell are we doing with 130,000 troops there? We ought to have half a million. Why haven't we mobilized the home front? Why aren't we paying for this? I mean, why, seriously, isn't the country on a war-footing, if that's really what he's talking about?

Got that? We shouldn't be there, but we ought to have had half a million American boots "invading" Iraq and "occupying" the "Muslim holy land". This non-sequiter is only compounded by his accusation that the White House is hypocritical when it comes to the WIF:

And comparing this to battle against communism, the Cold War, and comparing it to the battle against Nazism? I mean, to me, you're making a statement like that, and then you just totally contradict yourself by saying, "We're going to continue with this failed policy and this failed approach."

And again:

I mean, who are -- we're against Neville Chamberlain. I mean, seriously, David [Brookes], you can't have it both ways.

If Brookes has his head firmly wrapped around what the WIF is about, then Shields has a tinfoil hat glued to his head. He ends by rationalising his incoherent, inconsistent, contradictory babble with the following:

And now they say, "Well, what do we got? We've tried terrorism. We've tried -- the only thing we have to offer is fear itself."

Perhaps Shields was upset by the following piece of total non-nuance and political incorrectness from Donald Rumsfeld:

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world.

I'm sure Shields response has the same philosophical backbone as that worn by Pontus Pilate when he replied rather condescendingly to Jesus, the bearer of Truth

What is truth?

UPDATE: The Belmont Club also contributes to the debate:

To be successful the "General's 'New Plan' to battle radical Islam" [read the article] must be consciously pursued by all the organs of national strength. However, it will not. Not until America reaches a broad consensus on the need to wage a struggle of culture, politics and arms against Islamic fascism.

Technorati Tags: Islamofascism, Iran, Newhour, Mark Shields, David Brookes, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Terrorism

The Big Bad Wolf

2006-09-03T11:33:00.000+10:00

Courtesy of Ben Zeff:

That is how propaganda worked in the 40s. Shame that we are now too nuanced, politically correct and self-hating to produce short films such as this one.

Technorati Tag: 1942, Propaganda, War

The meaning of "humility"

2006-09-01T22:45:00.000+10:00

Humility is something that I have always struggled to understand. What is the essence of humility and how is it properly demonstrated?

Well, G.K. Chesterton briefly comments on humility in his own way in his book "Orthodoxy" (1908):

Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man.

Technorati Tags: Chesterton, Humility, Orthodoxy

This goes with that - Iran

2006-08-29T23:18:00.000+10:00

Excuse my cynicism for a moment. But does this:

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Police are investigating the possibility that a Japanese manufacturer exported equipment to Iran that can be used to make nuclear weapons, an official said Tuesday.

have anything to do with this?

IRAN has apparently given a part-government-owned Japanese oil company an ultimatum to start the development of a giant oilfield within 17 days or risk losing it to the Chinese or Russians.
This looks like a painful wedge for the Japanese Government, which has been trying to both support UN Security Council efforts to force Iran to curtail its uranium enrichment program and retain its vital access to Iranian oil supplies.

Technorati Tags: Iran, Japan, Nuclear, Oil

The stories we don't hear

2006-08-28T21:38:00.000+10:00

This is a letter from a field commander to the families of his subordinates. Courtesy of the ineffably capable commentator Hugh Hewitt:

Dear Chosin Family,
As you all make your way back from summer vacations and travels, I
thought I would welcome you back with some great information about your loved ones' exploits over here in Operation Enduring Freedom.
It has been a long, hot summer here in AOR Chosin, but things are
going very well.

As you know, we have perhaps the most challenging area of responsibility in the division; the mountains are very high and very steep, the roads and the towns are very undeveloped, and the enemyis fighting hard to hold onto his most cherished safe haven.

It is a tough fight. To win, we have to defend the population from the enemy's intimidation, and we have to hunt the enemy in his hiding places and homes. This is not easy: our soldiers, unlike in other theaters, have
to live among the people we protect. Our soldiers have to spend
enormous amounts of time in the field, living daily without the
creature comforts most people consider necessities - running water,
phones, hot meals, beds.

Most of all, our soldiers have to spend enormous amounts of time in contact with the enemy, crowding him out of his normal stomping grounds and cornering him in places we can destroy him. And we are succeeding at this every day. This battalion has beaten more enemy in more places in six months than most brigades do in a whole year. We have forced the enemy out of his sanctuaries and we have run him out of his towns and we have closed off his escape routes.

Most of all, we have separated the enemy from the people. Every day,
we fight to convince the people of Afghanistan that their best future
lies with us and with the Government of Afghanistan. We have built
roads and bridges and clinics and schools. We have conducted medical
visits that have treated thousands and thousands of people. We have
handed out eyeglasses and bookbags and more pens than we can count. We have built hydroelectric plants, we have trained policemen, we have conducted classes on governance. We have spoken at schools, started sports clubs, and spent countless hours on street corners teaching kids to do high-fives. We have saved drowned children and cared for kids who have fallen out of trees and have worked feverishly to save the lives of people hurt in accidents or wounded by the enemy. We have created an incredible sense of goodwill toward us and toward the Government of Afghanistan in this part of the world.

When a 1-32 patrol comes by, people gather from all around to greet us and to interact. As we roll up in HMMWVs, we can see children running-sprinting-hundreds of meters across open fields just to wave at us or to ask for a Gatorade. It is impossible to visit AOR Chosin and not feel the affection of the people toward us. We are creating for them the first hope for a good future that they have had in more than thirty years.

All of this is possible first and foremost because we are protecting the people. The enemy preys on the local populace remorselessly, and intimidates and beats and kills those who don't go along with them. If we are to create hope for these people, the first step is to keep the enemy away from them. We can't roll out, do some good, and then head back to our bases, leaving the people to contend with the enemy for the rest of the night. If we were to do that, merely accepting our goodwill would bring people trouble, and believe me, these poor people can't afford any more trouble than they've already got in their lives.

So, the most important thing we do is stay out among the people and protect them. We are there with them - we are out in the rain and the sun and the wind, and we are in their villages and on their roads keeping the enemy away from them. And they know it. Over time, as the people have realized that we are there for them, that we truly are committed to our mission, they have come to trust us. They bring us food, they bring us "chai," and -most of all- they bring us information about the enemy. By being among them in the good times and the bad, we have earned their trust, and given them the confidence to side with us against the enemy.

The enemy sees what we are doing. He knows the people are turning against him, and he senses that his time is slipping away. He will strike back when he can, and he will strike where he thinks we are absent. This is the time for us to press the fight. The enemy will not just go away, he will need to be faced down and chased away - by your valiant loved ones, who will continue to show the people of Afghanistan and of America what it means to fight for right.

This doesn't come free. It takes incredible effort to remain as committed to the mission as we have. It takes sweat, and some tears, and -despite our best efforts-some blood. We have lost many soldiers here, fine young men and women whose patriotism and valor is exceeded only by the bravery they displayed in Always Placing the Mission First.

Their efforts and their sacrifice have been in the service of a just cause, and an important one. The enemy we fight is not some strange group of unknowns in a far-off land; this enemy is the direct enemy of the United States, the very groups and their associates who launched the attacks of 9/11, 2001.

When we fight here, dear members of the Chosin Family, we are fighting America's fight. We are defending the way of life we cherish for each of you, and we are carving out the future that we want our children to have. We are truly doing the Nation's work in 1-32, and I very deeply believe that our sacrifice - even the Ultimate Sacrifice - is not in vain.

We are winning. But we aren't there yet. Day in, day out, the soldiers of 1-32 continue to face and overcome obstacles that would stop any other unit. They are led by wonderful sergeants and excellent lieutenants, who lead by example and by their own bravery: of the dozens of Purple Hearts earned so far in 1-32, the vast majority have been earned by Team Leaders and Squad Leaders and Platoon Leaders who put themselves in front, who put their own lives on the line, that they might accomplish the mission and their men might live. And what men, what soldiers!

They succeed wherever they go and whatever they do, no matter what the odds. Your loved ones have earned for themselves a reputation as the
hardest-fighting battalion in this Division. It is impossible to take two steps in this country without hearing tales of the daring and valor of the soldiers of 1-32 Infantry. I hope you can understand even a small portion of the pride we feel for the job we are doing. Your loved ones are writing new pages in our Regiment's history, our Division's history, and, indeed, in the history of our Army.

If I sound proud, I am. I have never, in almost twenty years of military service, seen a battalion perform this brilliantly, for this long, under such harsh conditions. And it is clear where the credit is due: to the fine soldiers of this great unit, who daily display the finest qualities of military professionalism and American citizenship.

And the credit is due to our strong families, our rocks, who wait at home.
It is truly the deepest privilege of my life to serve among you all.

With Respect and Affection,

Chris Cavoli

CHOSIN

1-32 Battalion Commander

Technorati Tags: US Military, Heros, Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, Hugh Hewitt

"Dirty Kuffar" - Porn, Jihad Style

2006-08-28T20:08:00.000+10:00

While watching Obsession, I almost doubled over laughing after seeing this Jihad Porn: the video clip of a rap piece by "Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew".

It's comedy when you mix Christian doctrine with rap music. But when you stir Islamic Fascism and rap, the product is downright hilarious.

Believe it or not, the Main Stream Media picked up on this gag: in The Observer and The Sydney Morning Herald.

For those on slugband, some lyrics for your enjoyment (but you gotta watch the video, its hilarious):

The National Front man dem a Dirty Kuffar
The Ku Klux Klan man dem a Dirty Kuffar
The BNP man dem a Dirty Kuffar
Ronald Reagan he was a Dirty Kuffar
Prime Minister Tony Blair him a Dirty Kuffar
The one Mr Bush him a Dirty Kuffar
The National Front man dem a Dirty Kuffar
Throw them in de fire."

"From Kandahar to Ramallah we comin, sah,
Peace to the Hamas and the Hezbollah,
OBL cru be like a shinin' star,
Like the way we destroyed them two towers, ha ha!"

Shelby on the Money

2006-08-27T21:57:00.000+10:00

Shelby Steele has written a brilliant critique of Western self-hatred on OpinionJournal.com:

Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel's historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression.

He also lays into the Left's obsession with anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism:

...the international left is in its own contest with American exceptionalism. It keeps charging Israel and America with oppression hoping to mute American power. And this works in today's world because the oppression script is so familiar and because American power cringes when labeled with sins of the white Western past. Yet whenever the left does this, it makes room for extremism by lending legitimacy to its claim of oppression. And Israel can never use its military fire power without being labeled an oppressor--which brings legitimacy to the enemies she fights. Israel roars; much of Europe supports Hezbollah.

In case you haven't already been clued in, here's a primer on Western self-hatred and suicidialism.

Technorati Tags: Suicidalism, Islam, Terror, Oppression, Shelby Steele

Update: For those that will conclude that Shelby Steele has a vested interest in arguing against white guilt, think again.

More than Meets the Eye (TM)

2006-08-25T17:04:00.000+10:00

Yay!

The new Transformers Movie is coming out on 7 April 2007 (just a couple of days shy of my birthday!)

Go and watch the limited trailer here.

Technorati Tags: Transfomers Movie Mars Beagle 2

The Prophets of Doom or Prophets of Survival?

2006-08-24T23:40:00.000+10:00

Here is Victor Davis Hanson, prolific writer and naysayer:

So far, the U.S. has been able to dodge the latest terrorist bullets. So far, Afghanistan and Iraq are clinging to their newfound democracies. So far, Israel has been able to survive Hamas and Hezbollah, and these groups' state sponsors in Iran and Syria.

But unless we in the West adapt more quickly than do canny Islamic terrorists in this constantly evolving war, cease our internecine fighting and stop forgetting what we've learned about our enemies - there will be disasters to come far worse than Sept. 11.

VDH has led the ranks of those who have penned ominous warnings about the West's current direction and execution of the war on Islamic fascism:

Mark Steyn:

Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world.

Thomas Sowell:

It is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.

(and that was the opening line)

Gerard Baker:

It is hard for me to recall a time when the world was such a scary place. No one should rejoice at America’s weakness. The world is scarier still because of it.

Caroline Glick:

Our enemies give us no time for hesitation. They plan their next wars in broad daylight as our leaders squawk in the darkness of their ideological stupor.

Richard Cohen:

We can all sense war coming and a kind of crazy chronology forming like storm clouds for all to see -- 1938 becoming 1914.

Steve Emerson (on "Obsession"):

The deception is so high and so successful...that I'm afraid we're losing the battle.

And the list goes on.

We have a growing chorus of people with well founded pessimism about the West bid for survival.

The West has its "Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air". Lets hope it finds some solid ground before its too late.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Pessimism, 1938, History

The Koran: The Source of all Peace

2006-08-20T13:16:00.000+10:00

Cal Thomas writes a brilliant piece on the source of the zeal and hatred that pervades Islamic mosques and madrassas. It's called the Koran.

Technorati Tags: Islam, Koran, Mosques, Sam Soloman, Middle East, Terrorism

This War Started With Strategic Blunders - Part One

2006-08-17T22:20:00.000+10:00

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, it became clear that the symbolic carnage inflicted on a prominent part of the US's economic powerhouse, the gaping hole inflicted in the heart of the US military and the attempted strike at the head of the US Government were unprecedented in scale and effect.

President George W. Bush responded to a reporter's question on 16 September 2001, with the following:

We need to go back to work tomorrow and we will. But we need to be alert to the fact that these evil-doers still exist. We haven't seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time. No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society and then emerging all in the same day to fly their aircraft - fly U.S. aircraft into buildings full of innocent people - and show no remorse. This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil. And we understand. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I'm going to be patient.

"We haven't seen this kind of barbarism in a long period of time." Now what is the President referring to?

"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while..." What was the President alluding to?

"And the American people must be patient..." Have they been?

Nearly five years on, after experiencing many visibile and invisible changes to our lives, many billions of dollars later, a disasterous war later, several key dead or captured "terrorists" later, the wings of "terror" are spreading further and deeper.

We have a "terrorist" army at Israel's doorstep lobbing Katyushas and Zilzals into populated towns. We have had "youths" rioting in the streets of Paris. We have seen French "youths" torture a French Jew for days in a Parisian apartment without any neighbours coming to his aid. We have had a filmmaker almost beheaded in broad daylight in the streets of Amsterdam with a knife impaled in his chest by a "mentally deranged" man. We have seen pack rapes of young women of European descent by educated "youths". We have seen the murder/attempted murder of a married couple on the streets of Copenhagen, Denmark, by relatives of the couple for marrying without their consent. We have seen the attempted lynching of an Afghan "apostate" whose misdemeanor was to love the loveable teacher named Jesus. We have seen Danish residents ferment hatred, violence and destruction in foreign lands for cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. We have seen "terrorist" sympathisers march on the streets of the USA and UK calling the destruction of their own country. We have seen men of British descent decide that murdering hundreds of their own countrymen is righteous. We have seen Americans grow beards and fight soldiers from their own country on foreign soil.

The "War on Terror" has to date been executed with an enormous regard for the sensitivities of those most able to end the war but most unwilling to do so. This has been the greatest strategic blunder. We have Islamic leaders, scholars and adherents residing in the West who are unwilling to speak out against the treachery of some. Yet, we remain silent too. We do not demand that they stand up and be counted. We do not demand that they speak out as "moderates" against the "extremists" because to do so would not be nuanced.

But we compound this strategic error by inhibiting the ability to counter it. We silence those who have taught us about the Islamic tactics of taqqiya, Dar-al-Harb vs. Dar-al-Islam, hudna et al. by calling them "Islamophobes". These ad-hominem responses to critique are the degenerate children of the blaze of post-modernism that swept through our societies in the later 1900s. We have lost the ability to reason, consider and learn from history. Moreover, we blame ourselves, our own cultures and ideologies for the pain and suffering that blight the non-Western world.

Malcolm Muggeridge described this condition quite poignantly:

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down, until at last having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction he keels over a weary old brontosaurus and becomes extinct...

This is an ominous prophecy. Are we going to wake up before the barbarians sack our civilisation?

In short, as Mark Steyn puts it,

Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world.

Ste-y-n issues Ste-r-n warning

2006-08-13T23:56:00.000+10:00

Mark Steyn in his latest article issues a dire warning for the all of us. Something that Malcolm Muggeridge alerted us to years ago. Something which Ravi Zacharias is warning us about:

Absent a determination to throttle the ideology, we're about to witness the unraveling of the world.

Pink Lenses

2006-08-11T17:38:00.000+10:00

I’m beginning to believe that I wear pink lense glasses. Everything is fine and dandy. Etc etc. This despite my dislike of humanism.

Some recent events are shaking this mindset. I am worried about being skeptical of people’s intentions and motives. How does one relate to people when this is the case? How can one bear life if this is the case?

I think my emotions and psychology need rewiring and my emotional shield needs some reinforcement.

The Course of History – The Hinge

2006-08-09T21:26:00.000+10:00

Some context first. Read these posts: Necessity of the Moral Law Extinct Brontosaurus Christianity and Western Civilisation Existential battle for Western Civilisation Existential Battle for Western Civilisation – The detail So well put by Malcolm Muggeridge. Malcolm Muggeridge was a noted journalist who witnessed the enormous changes that the West experienced in the twentieth century. This is the man who took on Walter Duranty, the fraudulent journalist who now inspires the New York Times journalistic style. This is the man who, realising the stupidity of socialism, went right. This is the man who was party to an MI6 operation to rip apart a German spy ring in Brussels and in a fit of pride took credit for it. This is the man who, late in his life came to know Christ. This is the man who is responsible for some of the most piercing analysis of Western society in the twentieth century. Through his innate pessimism he makes one of the most high-level and profound summaries of twentieth century geo-polity:

We look back on history and what do we see? Empires rising and empires falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of 'the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.'

In one lifetime I have seen my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, 'God who's made the mighty would make them mightier yet.'

I've heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own assumption of power.

I've heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius.

I've seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range-scale of their conquests.

All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind.

England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.

Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy.

Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades.

America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

Behind the debris of our self-styled, sullen supermen, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope.

The person of Jesus Christ.

Self-Sacrifice

2006-08-05T23:42:00.000+10:00

The Christian’s “Jihad” (or self-struggle):

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.- Romans 12:1 (ESV)

Notice that this sacrifice is a living one, rather than a dead one:

Who can say even one word against this true jihad? House and young men must be sacrificed. Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered. This is the path to victory.- Saudi Cleric ‘Aed Al-Qami

“Fundamentalist” Christianity and “fundamentalist” Islam are not similar: they are systematically poles apart. Thinking otherwise is shallow analysis.

Contradiction of Skepticism

2006-07-28T22:22:00.000+10:00

Skepticism is a healthy thing. It is something that allows you to challenge your own ideas and something that allows you to reason with those who share in healthy skepticism.

But unbridled skepticism is destructive. It leads to a sort of nihilism that should make the hairs on the back of your head stand on end.

Here is how G.K. Chesterton put it:

The new rebel today is a skeptic that will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty. Therefore he can never be a true revolutionist and the fact that he doubts everything gets in his way to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind. And the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, then he writes another book, a novel, in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, then curses Mrs Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he cries out that war is a waste of life, then as a philosopher that life itself is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as though they were beasts, then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes onto a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short the modern revolutionist being an infinite skeptic is always engaged in undermining his own mind. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man’s revolt has practically useless for all intents and purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything, he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

This sounds cool (King Crimson):

Knowledge is a deadly friend,when no-one sets the rules.The fate of all mankind I see,is in the hands of fools.Confusion will be my epitaph,as I crawl a cracked an broken path.If we make it we can all sit backand laugh.But I’m afraid tomorrow I’ll be crying,Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.

Maybe.

The World Holds Its Breath

2006-07-23T18:27:00.000+10:00

Terrorists are commonly described as thugs, assassins, lunatics and extremists. Unfortunately the West’s nomenclature fails to capture and describe the cruel, calculated and methodical methods that these thugs employ. Moreover, the West’s quell of information, the Mainstream Media, is reporting on the “War on Terror” (another example of lack of vocabulary) in a manner that would put the Pravda
to shame.

I’ll cut to the chase. Soldiers of Islam are on a war of attrition with the West. They know no appeasement, know no restraint and know no morality. Their barbarity is without question and their methods are calculated. Appeasement is used only as period in which they rearm and regroup, restraint is a word they bandy around in front of the huffing glares of NBC’s cameras in order to get sympathy from a dumb down Western populace and morality is defined by how slowly they can slice through the neck of an infidel. The word “thugs” is entirely inappropriate.

Assassins is also an entirely inappropriate adjective for these Soldiers of Mohammed. Assassins imply the attack is targeted. In most cases their killing is indiscriminate, arbitrary and unjust, just like their Allah. And don’t think that this indiscriminate killing is a mark of their stupidity: it supports the view that these Soldiers understand the impact large indiscriminate attacks have on their targets...chaos, hopelessness and fear.

Lunatics implies some sort of stupidity or mental derangement. These people are not stupid and definitely not mentally deranged. The terrorists responsible for the largest attacks in the West were mostly university educated,

...more than half of the group we assessed attended a university, making them as well educated as the average American: whereas 54 percent of the terrorists were found to have had some college education or to have graduated from university, only 52 percent of Americans can claim similar academic credentials.

Furthermore, most of those educated at universities had technical or science degrees:

Two of our sample had doctoral degrees, and two others had begun working toward their doctorates. Significantly, we found that, of those who did attend college and/or graduate school, 48 percent attended schools in the West, and 58 percent attained scientific or technical degrees. Engineering was the most popular subject studied by the terrorists in our sample, followed by medicine.

Then consider the planning and coordination that we don’t often hear about. The current strife on the Lebanese-Israeli border was predicted almost two months prior to the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers by a freelance journalist:

“Any minute now something huge could break out," he said. "I am afraid to go home and leave my soldiers. When Hezbollah decides to do something, they do it. And they’re pretty good at it.”
"What do you think they'll do next?" I said.
“I have no idea," he said. "They could do anything. Kidnapping. Sniper.”

Lunacy can only be ascribed to these Soldiers of the Prophet in their idiotic belief that Allah will provide them with 72 virgins upon entering the gates of heaven for their “sustenance”.

Extremists is also a misnomer. Those who are willing to deliver their bodies to hell in order to blow off the limbs of a young Australian lady working in London (a kaffir), or dismember the body of an American Jew wanting to help Iraqis rebuild their country, or threaten the dismemberment of those who mock their paedophile Prophet Mohammed are simply following the text of their Holy Book, the Qur’an. Then there is the small matter of the thousands who turn out on the streets of the countries fighting the Soldiers of Mohammed who support the atrocities perpetrated by them. Are they extremists also? Where are the counter protests by the so-called peaceful Muslims who support their countries of residence, who support justice and freedom for all?

The world should hold its breath. What we are seeing now are the initial skirmishes before the outbreak of war. When this happens we will then be able to see if our civilisation lasts.

Update: Consider this article which demonstrates that despite their barbarity, Soldier's of Islam are well armed and ready to fight the Infidel forces. Next question: how did they get these weapons?

Stey-n the course

2006-07-03T08:29:00.000+10:00

Mark Steyn presents a penetrating analysis and critique of the Hamdan ruling by the US Supreme Court:

The U.S. Supreme Court has now blown a hole in the animating principle behind the Geneva Conventions by choosing to elevate an enemy that disdains the laws of war in order to facilitate the bombing of civilian targets and the beheading of individuals. The argument made by Justice John Paul Stevens is an Alice-In-Jihadland ruling that stands the Conventions on their head in order to give words the precise opposite of their plain meaning and intent. The same kind of inspired jurisprudence conjuring trick that detected in the emanations of the penumbra how the Framers of the U..S Constitution cannily anticipated a need for partial-birth abortion and gay marriage has now effectively found a right to jihad -- or, if you're a female suicide bomber about to board an Israeli bus, a woman's right to Jews.

Cox & Forkum – Dr. Seusses of 21st Century

2006-06-29T22:20:00.000+10:00

If Indonesia special forces ambushed an Australian army camp in Darwin and took one of our soldiers hostage, is that a declaration of war? What if we our intelligence agencies suggested that Malaysia supported Indonesia in preparing this attack?

What if Indonesia secret service operatives kidnapped a 19 year old university student, held him hostage, and demanded that Australian troops leave East Timor, is that a declaration of war? What if the Indonesian secret service denied responsibility for the attack, but lauded the efforts those who were responsible? What if, after the Australian Government refused to bow to blackmail, this hostage was executed? What would you feel, if the hostage was described by the ABC as having been “seized” as if he were a criminal and euphemistically and subsequently “found dead”?

If you would feel outrage in response or answered yes to any of these questions, I suggest that you will have no problems understanding, nay supporting, the Israeli response to the kidnap of one of its soldiers and execution of one of its citizens by Palestinian terrorists.

The illustration below is greatly lacking in this day and age. If you haven’t seen the illustrations penciled by Dr. Seuss during World War II, you do not understand how pitiful the cartoonists of our age are in comparison. Thank God we have Cox and Forkum.

I’m ahead of the News Cycle

2006-06-13T22:54:00.000+10:00

Heh ™. I’m ahead of the News Cycle ™.

Truthout.org left with lefty slim on its hands and no-one to fling it at.

Soon we’ll hear things like, “Fitzgerald was bought by the shadowy puppet masters that is the Zionist Israeli entity.” Chew that YearlyKossers!

Existential Battle for Western Civilisation – The detail

2006-06-13T22:17:00.000+10:00

Here I continue discussing the analysis presented by Rear Admiral Parry of Development, Concepts, Doctrine and Centre (DCDC) as reported in several
news
outlets. Not surprisingly, based on a quick Factiva search, The Guardian seems to ignore this story.

In summary, the DCDC have hypothesized the following:

Parry predicts that as flood or starvation strikes, the most dangerous zones will be Africa, particularly the northern half; most of the Middle East and central Asia as far as northern China; a strip from Nepal to Indonesia; and perhaps eastern China.
He pinpoints 2012 to 2018 as the time when the current global power structure is likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran will challenge America’s sole superpower status…

Also,

The subsequent mass population movements, Parry argues, could lead to the "Rome scenario". The western Roman empire collapsed in the 4th and 5th centuries as groups such as Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Suevi, Huns and Vandals surged over its borders. The process culminated in the sack of Rome in 455 by Geiseric the Lame, king of the Alans and Vandals, in an invasion from north Africa.

Well after spending a lot of time trying to find primary documents on this (via Google), I have finally found some online documentation at, surprise, the DCDC website. The analysis is delineated into to seven different dimensions: physical, social, science and technology, economic, legal, political and military.

In summary there are:

Fourteen conclusions in the analysis of the Physical dimension
Fifteen conclusions in the analysis of the Social dimension
Nineteen conclusions in the analysis of the Science and Technology dimension
Seventeen conclusions in the analysis of the Economic dimension
Nineteen conclusions in the analysis of the Legal dimension
Twenty-seven conclusions in the analysis of the Political dimension
Seventeen conclusions in the analysis of the Military dimension

Physical dimension

Some of the key points here are that the effects of global warming, ozone depletion, localised pollution, water and food scarcity will not result existential wars or “…direct threats to global security”.

The world will face greater energy strains as there will be “…little prospect of revolutionary breakthroughs in alternative supplies” and “global demand for energy will “…increase significantly”. The suppliers of energy will become increasingly concentrated as “OPEC will increase its share of world oil production to over 50% by 2015, enhancing its strategic leverage…” The result of these demand and supply powder kegs is that “…intervention abroad may be seen as increasingly legitimate if the source(s) of threat to supply are perceived to be external ones.”

Social dimension

Unstable regions of the world like North Africa and the Middle East will experience population explosions whilst developed, Western countries will experience the opposite. Large scale migration from North Africa and the Middle East to the developed, Western regions will possibly “…challenge social cohesion.” Importantly, “…relativism, pragmatism, multiple identities and reducing deference…” may result an inability to deal positively to this changing demographic future and make it “…more complicated…
to win and sustain national or coalition support in times of conflict…”

Controversially,

Fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is likely to continue for some years, both against Western and domestic targets, but Islam is not a monolithic entity and there is a considerable body of moderate Muslims open to dialogue with the West.

Science and Technology dimension

New technologies such as nanotechnology may result in innovative solutions in old technologies such as biotechnology, information technology that result in improved military capabilities. The United States and Japan will remain major players until 2015. China and India will be viable competitors by 2030. The modern battlefield will be a mix of artificial intelligence and remotely controlled weapons by 2030 for “…advanced militaries.” Asymmetric warfare will become increasingly important in an information driven battlefield.

Economic dimension

Globalisation will discourage warfare between states with open economies. Oil spikes will wreak economic havoc a la the 1970s. The growing Chinese and Indian economies will facilitate their greater role in world affairs, whilst Russia will experience significant problems projecting power into the future as their economy experiences “…limited growth”. The US and EU will continue to protect their defence industries.

Legal dimension

Contrary to Samuel L. Huntington’s thesis, the state will continue to be “…the principal entity in the future strategic environment in 2030.” States’ Legislative bodies will continue to maintain their political control over defence and security and maintain authoritative control over other areas. The United Nations will evolve to remain relevant.

Political dimension

Despite their eminence in strategy, “...state sovereignty will continue to be eroded or ceded…” The EU will not form a super-state but will remain the “…most closely integrated supranational institution until 2030” whilst the US will retain preponderance over international relations. NATO will increase its cooperation with Russia and will “…become more political and less military in its orientation.” In a cryptic reference to Islamo-facism,

Non-state actors will increasingly attract citizens into shared-interest groups that cut across state boundaries. Transnational, virtual communities and networks will require increasingly international and multilateral responses.

and

Terrorism is likely to become more widespread, extreme, international and autonomous. It will remain a key challenge to state power, particularly through its ability to use asymmetric attacks to by-pass military security and attack states ‘at home’.

Military dimension

The military will continue to have problems fighting urbanised Islamo-facism and will remain “…the principal security challenge…” Rogue regimes will have deployable (?) biological weapons by 2015. A more mobile US military is foreshadowed whilst China and some European states will obtain a global projection of force capability by 2030. Non-lethal weapons will become more utilised and Islamo-facists will “…acquire weapons of mass effect before 2015…and be much harder to deter than state proliferators…” The military will adapt to the modern battlefield by becoming more autonomous and informationally dependent through Science and Technological developments.

Conclusions

While the West will change significantly and be faced with new and old problems, it will remain the preponderant civilisation well into this millennia. However, it will face sporadic and costly conflicts with emerging states such as China and non-state threats such as Islamo-facism. Its ability to respond to the first threat is reliant on continue technology and economic development, whilst it will remain difficult to defend against the second threat.

This poses the question: should be adopt a defensive position to “non-state threats” or should we go on an offensive? The response of the media to offensive actions such as the Iraq War and the CIA’s rendition programs suggest that we are impeded in pursuing an offensive action by relativism and self-hating philosophy that pervades Western society. What we must do is win the culture wars to give our civilisation a hope of surviving.

Existential battle for Western Civilisation

2006-06-12T11:30:00.000+10:00

This article by Peter Almond reports on the analysis of Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the development, concepts and doctrine centre at Britain's Ministry of Defence. The bottom line is that:

If a security breakdown occurred, he said, it was likely to be brought on by environmental destruction and a population explosion, coupled with modern technology and radical Islam. The result for Britain and Europe, Parry warned, could be "like the 5th-century Roman empire facing the Goths and the Vandals".

He pointed to the wave of mass migration that disaster in the Third World could unleash. "The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns," he said.

"Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned ... (the process) acts as a sort of reverse colonisation, where groups of people are self-contained, going back and forth between their countries, exploiting sophisticated networks and using instant communication on phones and the internet."

The direct effects of Third World instability would soon lick at the edges of the Western world as pirate gangs mounted smash-and-grab raids on holidaymakers. "At some time in the next 10 years it may not be safe to sail a yacht between Gibraltar and Malta," he said.

The threat is imminent:

He pinpointed 2012 to 2018 as the time when the power structure of the world, much of which dates from World War II, was likely to crumble. Rising nations such as China, India, Brazil and Iran would start to challenge the US as the only superpower.

This would come as "irregular activity" such as terrorism, organised crime and "white companies" of mercenaries burgeons in lawless areas at the expense of conventional forces.

How can the West deal with this imminent threat?

The 52-year-old -- who used the slogan "old dog, new tricks" when he commanded the assault ship HMS Fearless -- said Western countries would have little use for large-scale, low-technology forces in responding to the new threats. He foresees wholesale moves towards robots, drones, nanotechnology, lasers, microwave weapons, space-based systems and even "customised" nuclear and neutron bombs.

UPDATE: A sign of the things to come. China uses Israeli technology to match US air superiority. Iran playing the blackmail game with the world.

Christianity and Western Civilisation

2006-06-05T23:07:00.000+10:00

This post at Gates of Vienna is interesting. It does several things:

Highlights the fundamental differences between Islam and Christianity (the fundamentalist sort),
“The first principle of the Bible is that man needs to be Free, and this comes before anything else. This is not at all a principle of Islam. In Islam, a good Muslim is to learn the Koran by heart, and to follow its rules by rote. He is not to be analytical, because his analysis can never add anything to that which Allah has already provided. The Koran, itself, is the final word of Allah to man. It is not to be amended or added to. It is to be followed only.”
The first statement is not quite correct from an orthodox Christian point of view. But, there is some truth to it. The reason for this is simple: God is a God of reason. He created humanity with decision making faculties. (Up until 50 years ago, these faculties often used a process called logic and deduction. These days, decisions are relative. But I digress.) In a Christian framework, humans are Free - they have been since the time of Adam and Eve.

Warns of the impotence of liberal Christianity:
Modern mainstream Christianity has put itself into a cage of its own making, a cage of radical non-violence. It has, in effect, repudiated two thousand years of its own history, forsaking all the heroes who gave their lives so that the work of Christ could continue unmolested.
There is a greater problem with mainstream Christianity: it is theologically and philosophically bankrupt. Its relativism and theological liberalism is gnawing at its ability to discern good from evil. It has no moral basis on which to defend itself militarily. C.S. Lewis, despite witnessing the horrors of WWI on the battlefield, makes a case for the stupidity of institutional pacificism:
This, then, is why I am not a Pacifist. If I tried to become one, I should find a very doubtful factual basis, an obscure train of reasoning, a weight of authority both human and Divine against me, and strong grounds for suspecting that my wishes had directed my decision. As I have said, moral decisions do not admit of mathematical certainty. It may be, after all, that Pacifism is right. But it seems to me very long odds, longer odds than I would care to take with the voice of almost all humanity against me. (Read to a pacifist society in Oxford in 1940, found in this collection of Lewis' essays.)

Warns the Church of impending disaster (a return to the “dark age” of Christianity), if it doesn’t seize the initiative needed to combat Islam on an intellectual basis.
The most important endeavor the Christian Church can undertake, at this point in time, is to understand that the defense of Western Civilization is of utmost importance to the existence of Christianity. Without the protection Western Civilization provides to Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, and Democracy, Christianity itself would go into a dark age.
On a political level, yes, the Church's survival is strongly correlated to that of the survival of the West. But, on a spiritual level, I disagree quite strongly. It would make the life of Christians harder. But one cannot escape the historical evidence that eras of history have thrown up: where Christian thought and influence has been strongest, it is where it is under attack (think of certain times in Roman era, the Reformation and the Church’s massive expansion in China).

Wake up, people Western Civilization is already collapsing. What we are fighting for is how much we can save and what will be built on its ruins.

Love and Loneliness

2006-06-03T00:39:00.000+10:00

This sequence of posts have been inspired by Ravi Zacharias and his talk "The Inner Ache of Loneliness". These can be downloaded:

I heard these talks at about the same time as two of my close friends had gone through the rigours of estrangement from people they both loved dearly. This has not been a particular easy patch in their lives: they feel lonely, isolated and undervalued.

I personally feel lonely at times: it is hard not have a companion whom you can share life's burdens, joys and struggles with, someone to love, and to be loved back in kind. I feel isolated: living a life the liberty which I hold dearly to is attacked by those who benefit from it, those who should know better don't and few who share my concern. I feel undervalued: I am ambitious, a young man looking for the next challenge, undervalued by one man albeit overvalued by another.

As these feelings sweep over me, I thank God for the rock that he is in my life. The following hymn is one of my favourites: its wording is stirring and raw, the accompanying music brings tears to my eyes...

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Hide me now my refuge be;
Let the water and the blood,
From your wounded side which flowed,
Be for sin the double cure;
Save me from its guilt and power.

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill your law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
You must save, and You alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to your cross I cling;
Naked, come to you for dress;
Helpless look to you for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eyelids close in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown,
Stand before the judgment throne,
Hide me then, my refuge be,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me.

As I get time, I will summarise my thoughts on the topic of love and loneliness, guided by Ravi Zacharias.

Where is the world's only remaining hegemonic superpower?

2006-05-26T22:35:00.000+10:00

Missing in action based on how the US, and the US administration, has dealt with several issues:

The illegal immigration amnesty bill
Revelation of covert Russian and Chinese assistance provided to Iraq to conceal their WMD activities.
Terrorism and the rising theocracy in Iraq
The quick nuclear march of Iran
US intelligence leaks to The New York Times, The Washington Post and the USA Today.
An intelligence agency undercutting the efforts of the US executive branch to wage a war.
Seditious activity of US academics such as Noam Chomsky

Over the next couple of weeks, if I get the time, I will investigate each example separately and look at how these demonstrate the US's current unwillingness to wear the yoke of leading the free, liberal and democratic world.

This post is inspired by Mike's post over at Mike's Noise on the defense of the US.

Europe may not be Eurabia

2006-05-22T01:50:00.000+10:00

The last three weeks have seen me enjoy the sights of Austria and Germany. Here are some of the recent views:
Cycled approximately 70km through some of the nice parts of Salzburg (Attersee actually):

One observation that I have made, is that Europe is not yet Eurabia. The Europe, or the more accurately, the nation states of Europe, despite all the accusations of dhimmitude, is not, I believe, going to be invaded by or yield to the hordes.

The nation states of Europe, and the examples of anti-dhimmitude relayed to me by close, conservative and wary friends are numerous and encouraging. I spent four hours discussing European anti-dhimmitude, amongst other topics, with a smart, sassy and young conservative lady. Her personal development and upbringing, which I will not discuss, place her in a position of learning and experience on politics and history of Europe. She displayed a strong sense of anti-Anglospheric rhetoric, a strong sense of distrust in the media and conveyed quite poignantly that Europe is aware of the threat within (and without) and that it will play the cards right at the right time. Note that this is one of the Fjordman Scenarios (Scenario 3 in fact).

Also spoke to a very dear and near aunt. She is also conservative, studied history for four years at university, has lived in Germany on and off for most of her life and who strongly dislikes the hordes. She has a strong conviction of Europe's ability to deal the invading hordes, a strong sense that the media is lying and betraying its people and a strong dislike of my pessimism of Europe's ability to survive the next century. The anecdotal defense of here positions where hard to argue. For example, there have been several instances where female Muslim teachers have been dismissed from the teaching roles for refusing to remove their headscarves whilst teaching students. Furthermore, there is debate in Germany regarding the tightening up of citizenship laws. Right now a church bell is ringing for 3 minutes marking 6PM.

As a result of these conversations, I think, that despite numerous examples of dhimmitude recently relayed by DhimmiWatch, JihadWatch and LittleGreenFootballs, the nation states of Europe should not be written off yet.

Update: This bit of news seems to confirm that at least Germany is anti-Dhimmi.

"Be careful what you wish for..."

2006-05-21T00:22:00.000+10:00

Victor Davis Hanson explores how a hands-off US would be beneficial to the the US. It would be a reality check for "cheap anti-Americanism":

America is the genitor and largest donor to the United Nations. Its military is the ultimate guarantor of free commerce by land and sea, and its wide-open market proves the catalyst of international trade. More immigrants seek its shores than all other designations combined — especially from countries of Latin America, whose criticism of the United States is the loudest.

John Howard, Australian Prime Minister, on the ramifications of a hands-off US:

The values for which the United States stands are the values for which Canada and Australia stands. They are values of spreading democracy, of individual liberty, of a society where free enterprise is the principle economic driver, but also a society where the less fortunate should be protected by a decent social security safety net. And they are values that I know that members on both sides of this House, as indeed on both sides of the Houses of the Australian Parliament share in common. And I would have for those around the world who would want to see a reduced American role in the affairs of our globe, I have some quiet advice and that is be careful in what you wish for because a retreating America will leave a more vulnerable world. It will leave a world more exposed to terrorism and it will leave a more fragile and indeed dangerous world.

Hat Tip: Dr. Sanity

The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-20T12:25:00.000+10:00

So I haven't really written anything about the Da Vinci Code. That is basically because I can't be bothered. I could just say that the book passes off fiction as fact, but that would be too easy.

I have read the book several times and have really enjoyed the read each time. It is a book that deserves credit for a gripping story line. However, it is a book that deserves alot of academic/intellectual criticism.
So instead of compiling some notes, I am linking to Mike's Noise's repository of Da Vinci criticism.

Christianity Today has also got some good resources on this topic:
Breaking the Da Vinci Code - Part I
Breaking the Da Vinci Code - Part II
Comprehensive Coverage

Da Vinci Code

The untold story: Iran declares war on the US

2006-05-13T20:18:00.001+10:00

Now before I go further, let me remind those who do not follow politics as closely as I do, that Ahmadinejad was elected, democratically and overwhelmingly, by the Iranian people and has a high regard amongst other Muslim nations such as our close neighbour Indonesia. I remind you because, I anticipate obligatory comments such as "...but he's an extremist and doesn't represent his people...", "...he's an international pariah...", "...noone should take him seriously..."

As I had previously posted, for all of his faults, Donald Rumsfeld was one of the few US administration figures who foresaw Iran's regional ambitions. Since then, we have had:

the US, the EU, Russia and China squabbling about how to deal with Iran's clear breach of IAEA nuclear safeguards and protocols (see Section 32 of IAEA Board of Governors Report),
Iran successfully enrich uranium,
The Iranian president consistently and unequivocally call for the destruction of Israel
Iran has possibly acquired a intercontinental nuclear deployment capability from North Korea
The MSM (Mainstream Media) and Nobel Prize winners unable to get their heads out of their arses to properly put into perspective the Iranian threat
The Iranian president effectively declare war on the United States in a "inspired" letter to the US President.
Iran may already have the nuke
The watchdog thinks that they have a right to nuclear weapons
Iran is supporting terrorist organisations financially and militarily to attack the US and Israel in the event of a US/Israeli attack
Iran declares willingness to deploy nuclear know how to rogue states
Iran having highly enriched uranium detected at sites linked with its defense ministry.

For a country hell bent on placating us all that they have no beligerent or nuke intentions, the aforementioned points make their affirmations of peace hard to believe.

So, how can we deal with Iran? All viable options are expensive.

For some comic enlightenment on this frightening topic, see Iowahawk and Lileks.

UPDATE: More comic enlightenment at Blame Bush!

By George!

2006-05-11T23:16:00.000+10:00

Uber-dhimmi, Islamified British MP, George Galloway, on Dateline last night (transcript AND video here):

MAN: Welcome to Egypt.
30 years spent working for the Arab cause has made Galloway a well-known and much loved figure here, a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia.
MAN: We consider you that you are Arabic, more than all Not all. the Arabian rulers. All the rulers, yes.
GEORGE GALLOWAY: This is definitely true.
With many here believing that the West is against them, Galloway is seen as an inspiration.
STUDENT: We are students from Al-Azhar and Cairo Universities, what do you say to Muslim Brotherhood students, and other students.
GEORGE GALLOWAY, (Translation): Struggle until victory.
Before a crowd that includes high-profile members of Hamas and other Islamist groups, Galloway delivers a message that would make George Bush and Tony Blair flinch.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: We now know, and the whole world now knows, America is defeated in Iraq - it is defeated in Iraq. The Americans do not control one street in one town or one city in a country they invaded and conquered three years ago. When their soldiers leave their base, they drive as quickly as they can back to the base. They know that this can be their last journey on Earth, and so I say, from the bottom of my heart, we salute the resisting people of Iraq, which has inflicted this defeat upon the superpower, the United States of America, in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Sumaria, in Najaf, in Kabullah, in Basra. All over Iraq, the Iraqi people have risen and spoken and fought and defeated this superpower which invaded them.
REPORTER: What about an operation, for example, where Iraqi insurgents blow up a US Humvee?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, there's no question that that's an entirely legitimate act of resistance that's enshrined in the Geneva Convention and in international law. The violent occupiers have invaded the country, illegally, on the basis of on a pack of lies and the Iraqi people are resisting them, and the kind of operation you mentioned, whilst a tragedy for the soldiers inside the Humvee, is an entirely legitimate act of resistance.

If Galloway's criminal, subversive and treasonous rhethoric wasn't enough, consider the reporting by SBS of George Galloway: the glorification of the man who was being paid off by Saddam & Sons and continues to lie (see end of post) about it. I had to change channels several times to prevent becoming ill.

The dhimmwhittery of Galloway is so clear in that it is now no longer the "powerful neo-cons" in the White House that want Galloway's head on a stick and set alight, it is also his left wing compatriate Christopher Hitchens:

For George Galloway, however, the war would seem to be over. The evidence presented suggests that he lied in court when he sued the Daily Telegraph in London over similar allegations (and collected money for that, too). It suggests that he lied to the Senate under oath. And it suggests that he made a deceptive statement in the register of interests held by members of the British House of Commons.

Cameron's Brain wonders where the Australian version of George Galloway is hidden. Obviously the brain is working too hard. Look no further than Tanya Plibersek: your one stop shop for self-defeating brontosaurial philosophy.

Hitchens on the media's treatment of this insult to our intelligence:

Yet this is the man who received wall-to-wall good press for insulting the Senate subcommittee in May, and who was later the subject of a fawning puff piece in the New York Times, and who was lionized by the anti-war movement when he came on a mendacious and demagogic tour of the country last month. I wonder if any of those who furnished him a platform will now have the grace to admit that they were hosting a man who is not just a pimp for fascism but one of its prostitutes as well.

Technorati Tags: SBS TV, George Galloway, Oil For Food and MSM.

I'm Back!!!

2006-05-10T22:50:00.000+10:00

I arrive home turn the TV on, and what do I see?

The SBS's Dateline program heaping praise and lavish on corrupt and disgusting English MP, George Galloway. The transcript should be up in the next few days.

Tim Blair et al: You reading this?

Whose side are they on?

2006-04-11T23:45:00.000+10:00

"They" are of course the MainStreamMedia (MSM).

I got quite angry listening to Mark Colvin on PM on Monday night.

Mark got his undies in a knot with regards to the claim made by Seymour Hersh in a "long" article (obviously well thought out) in the New Yorker, that the US was ready to use nuclear weapons against Iran, in order to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons:

Drop the bomb to stop the bomb. That's the peculiar logic of reported American planning to use aerial bombardment, including possibly nuclear weapons, against Iranian nuclear sites.

Mark Colvin dropped the following quote made by Seymour Hersh (who was quoting an anonymous source - anyone want to bet that this anonymous source won't be prosecuted from leaking matters of national security?) on CNN:

The people I'm talking to are very apprehensive about the attitude of the President and the Vice President, which seems to be that this is a Government that cannot be allowed to even get the knowledge of how to make a bomb. And they want it "almost messianic" is the phrase I actually quoted somebody as saying.

Oh no! George Bush is being all religious again and wanting to defend his country and allies from the Iranians Imams! My, my....

Mark Colvin then proceeds to interview an expert from the Lowy Institute and asks the following question:

But what about this nuclear option? Do you think that the Americans are really considering dropping nuclear weapons on a state with which they're not even at war?

First, before we proceed. Technically speaking the US could declare war on Iran legitimately. The Iranians are covertly supporting the Iraqi insurgency and thus supporting the people attacking US troops and Iraqi civilians.

Now back to the matter at hand. Mark is obviously horrified that the US would seek to strike Iran before it gets its hand on some nukes. The problem is this: A recent report has indicated that the Iranians already have 250 ex-Ukranian nuclear warheads. If that's the case, then first strike definitely needs to be considered.

And this is a really shocking tell tale signs of your heart being in the wrong place:

But the London Sunday Times has a chart involving those weapons in which it points out just how much, in terms of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of nuclear dust or contaminated dust would be thrown up even by one of these bunker busters. Would they really be thinking about this?

Also, the following exchange is disturbing:

ANTHONY BUBALO: We're talking, in all probability, about air strikes…

MARK COLVIN: A lot of them, according to this article.

So Mr Colvin is concerned about air strikes (I guess he wants an invasion), is horrified about the environmental fallout (as bad as it will be)? Why do I find a problem with this? Why should we worry about the Iranians Imams and President with nuclear weapons? Why should we act pre-emptively? (In case you forget, "we" means the West.) Read on...

Now, first: why should we not be nice to the Iranians, like we are to the Indians? Well for one, the Indians are not barking about wiping Pakistan off the map. Another reason is that the Indian Prime Minister isn't declaring that he is on a divine mission to hasten the End of Times:

The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad (Iranian President) now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?

And why is the environmental fallout not important in the scheme of things? Well, because if we don't hit them first, the Iranian Imams and President will at one point in time or another either kill millions of Israelis (as they themselves profess openly) or they will be able to hold the world to ransom as Hitler did thanks to the Allies' policy of appeasement prior to World War II.

So Mark Colvin in two segments devoted to this story (the story itself and then the interview with Anthony Bubalo), has failed to unambigiously enunciate the clear and present menace that Iran poses to HIS civilisation, to HIS society: The Iranians probably have the warhead, they are definitely able to weaponise it, and they definitely have a target.

Instead he focuses on the supposed religious fanatacism of the President of the USA, he frets over the environmental impact of bunker busting nuclear weapons the US may have to deploy in order to destroy the Iranians' nuclear capability and he slobbers over the LARGE SCALE air strikes the US will probably use in any pre-emptive action. Anyone smell an irate lefty?

No wonder our society and civilisation is unable to confront security threats in the 21st century with the same passion that Churchillians did in the last. We have blabbering idiots like Mark Colvin and Seymour Hersh betraying their own countries security interests for some else's. They are Muggeridge's brontosauruses.

Rahman has voices in his head and....

2006-03-29T20:10:00.000+11:00

According to recent wire reports, Afghan Christian convert (from Islam) was being tried in an Afghani court on the charges of converting to Christianity. He is an apostate and therefore deserves to be hung.

Anyway after belated diplomatic pressure from the United States, vocal support of Abdul Rahman by the Danes (as is expected), an Italian retort and a forthright condemnation by the Australians, the Afghani government of Hamid Karzi has soughts a political solution: have a doctor declare Abdul Rahman insane. After all, he does hear voices in his head.

Sound familiar?

Well, yes. Now that I think about The Prophet Mohammed also heard voices in his head. He was frightened by them and had to be comforted in the lap of his wife Hadija.

Abdul Rahman doesn't seem phased by them. Perhaps, it is the Holy Spirit talking to him? Perhaps he is mad. But based on what he says below, this is not likely - he seems totally sane and aware of the situation.

In any case, the result of his voices is quite different from the consequence of the Prophet hearing his: Abdul Rahman is (was) sitting in jail ready to be killed by a judge for his faith:

I don't want to die. But if God decides, I am ready to face up to my
choices, all the way," he was quoted as saying in Sunday's La
Repubblica newspaper.

The Prophet on the other hand, used the voices in his head to order the slaughter of a tribe of Jews, and the merciless plundering, pillaging and raping of innocent people. Some voice!

Technorati Tags: Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, Christianity, Islam, Mohammed

Lessons in Diplomacy

2006-03-19T14:48:00.000+11:00

From Israellycool via Gates of Vienna:

What happens if a fly falls in a cup of coffee?
Englishman : Throws his cup away and walks away.
American : Takes the insect out and drinks the coffee.
Chinese : Eats the insect and throws the coffee away.
Japanese: Drinks the coffee with the insect since it is a free bonus.
Israeli: Sells the coffee to the American and the insect to the Chinese, and gets himself a new cup of coffee
Palestinian : Accuses the Israeli of throwing the insect into his
coffee, Relates the issue to violence, Asks the UN for aid. Takes a
loan from EC to buy another cup of coffee and uses the money for terror.

Nice one!

To be a Prophet or not: that is the question!

2006-03-11T22:12:00.000+11:00

Several media outlets have decided to refer to "the Murderous, Thieving, Rapacious, Lying, Psychotic Pedophile Muhammed" as "the Prophet Mohammed".

Seems fair you know. That angel that the Prophet saw, was certainly angelic. It appeared to half of the New York Times, Washington Post and al-Reuters staff whilst meditating...after which they all ran home in horror and were comforted in the lap of their boyfriends/girlfriends...and were told that they had nothing to worry about: there is no supernatural world stupid! Just the one induced by all that coke you snorted off your secretary's ...desk.

And that message The Prophet received...certainly was divine: kill all Joooos and Crusaders! Its OK guys, she's nine and she's fine!

And to be sure, the media are real fearless with the truth and are unbiased. After all they refer to Jesus, as Jesus Christ!

Yeah right...over his dead body. They prefer the cornerstone of their civilisation in a jar of yellow urine...and call it art that is fresh and provocative...

Civil War in Iraq?

2006-03-04T18:29:00.000+11:00

This is the question on lots of people's minds.

Has it already started? What are the signs of a civil war in Iraq? What are the consequences of a civil war on Iraq and on the West? Is civil war in Iraq something the West should try to prevent? If so, how?

What about the media? What are they playing at with this "Iraq is descending into Civil War"? Why the contradictory reporting?

There should be no question to these answers after following these links.

In solidarity

2006-03-03T20:34:00.000+11:00

In solidarity with the Danes. And not because I agree entirely with their pronouncements.

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

12 signatures

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

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

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

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

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

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Chahla Chafiq

Caroline Fourest

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Irshad Manji

Mehdi Mozaffari

Maryam Namazie

Taslima Nasreen

Salman Rushdie

Antoine Sfeir

Philippe Val

Ibn Warraq

Presentations:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, from somilian origin, is member of Dutch parliement, member of the liberal party VVD. Writter of the film Submission which caused the assasination of Theo Van Gogh by an islamist in november 2004, she lives under police protection.

Chahla Chafiq

Chahla Chafiq, writer from iranian origin, exiled in France is a novelist and an essayist. She's the author of "Le nouvel homme islamiste , la prison politique en Iran " (2002). She also wrote novels such as "Chemins et brouillard" (2005).

Caroline Fourest

Essayist, editor in chief of Prochoix (a review who defend liberties against dogmatic and integrist ideologies), author of several reference books on « laicité » and fanatism : Tirs Croisés : la laïcité à l'épreuve des intégrismes juif, chrétien et musulman (with Fiammetta Venner), Frère Tariq : discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan, et la Tentation obscurantiste (Grasset, 2005). She receieved the National prize of laicité in 2005.

Bernard-Henri Lévy
French philosoph, born in Algeria, engaged against all the XXth century « ism » (Fascism, antisemitism, totalitarism, terrorism), he is the author of La Barbarie à visage humain, L'Idéologie française, La Pureté dangereuse, and more recently American Vertigo.

Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji is a Fellow at Yale University and the internationally best-selling author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith" (en francais: "Musulmane Mais Libre"). She speaks out for free expression based on the Koran itself. Née en Ouganda, elle a fui ce pays avec sa famille musulmane d'origine indienne à l'âge de quatre ans et vit maintenant au Canada, où ses émissions et ses livres connaissent un énorme succès.

Mehdi Mozaffari

Mehdi Mozaffari, professor from iranian origin and exiled in Denmark, is the author of several articles and books on islam and islamism such as : Authority in Islam: From Muhammad to Khomeini, Fatwa: Violence and Discourtesy and Glaobalization and Civilizations.
Maryam Namazie

Writer, TV International English producer; Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran's International Relations; and 2005 winner of the National Secular Society's Secularist of the Year award.

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen is born in Bangladesh. Doctor, her positions defending women and minorities brought her in trouble with a comittee of integrist called « Destroy Taslima » and to be persecuted as « apostate »

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is the author of nine novels, including Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and, most recently, Shalimar the Clown. He has received many literary awards, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Germany's Author of the Year Award, the European Union's Aristeion Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Mantova, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He is a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T., and the president of PEN American Center. His books have been translated into over 40 languages.

Philippe Val

Director of publication of Charlie Hebdo (Leftwing french newspaper who have republished the cartoons on the prophet Muhammad by solidarity with the danish citizens targeted by islamists).

Ibn Warraq

Ibn Warraq , author notably of Why I am Not a Muslim ; Leaving Islam : Apostates Speak Out ; and The Origins of the Koran , is at present Research Fellow at a New York Institute conducting philological and historical research into the Origins of Islam and its Holy Book.

Antoine Sfeir

Born in Lebanon, christian, Antoine Sfeir choosed french nationality to live in an universalist and « laïc » (real secular) country. He is the director of Les cahiers de l'Orient and has published several reference books on islamism such as Les réseaux d'Allah (2001) et Liberté, égalité, Islam : la République face au communautarisme (2005).

In particular the following part does not square with me:

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

The more time passes, the more I think the antithesis of the above statement will eventuate, however unfortunate and disasterous.

Sane Leftoid whom I respect

2006-02-26T12:20:00.000+11:00

There are not many lefties that I get along with. Their ignorance of reason and logic defies me. Their blatant self-hatred infuriates me. However, one lefty I have lots of regard for, Christopher Hitchens (because of his ability to reason, use logic and see an enemy rather than what we have done to provoke our enemies), said this to say about the western world's reaction to Islamic violence over our rights to freedom of speech and expression [Hat Tip: Gates of Vienna]:

The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability! A small democratic country with an open society, a system of confessional pluralism, and a free press has been subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized campaign of lies and hatred and violence, extending to one of the gravest imaginable breaches of international law and civility: the violation of diplomatic immunity. And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary—that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let's be sure we haven't hurt the vandals' feelings.

Indeed. I only hope that Hitchens illuminates the Left in a spectacular way. They are Muggeridge's Brontosauruses.

Technorati Tags: Mohammed Cartoons, Buy Danish, Muslims, Dhimmitude

Man's deepest longing

2006-02-22T21:32:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite poetic and touching passages of the Bible (Psalm 42 - NKJV):

As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say to me,
is your God?”
When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go with the multitude;
I went with them to the house of God,
with the voice of joy and praise,
With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me;
Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan,
And from the heights of Hermon,
From the Hill Mizar.
Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;
All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime,
And in the night His song shall be with me—
A prayer to the God of my life.
I will say to God my Rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

And the words of Christ (John 4:13-15):

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but
whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty
forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of
water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Apology No 2 - No Backdown

2006-02-19T21:32:00.000+11:00

Jyllands-Posten has just published a full page apology in a Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper regarding the infamous MoToons.

Note that JP has not apologised for exercising their right to publish whatever they want. They have apologised for the hurt and suffering it has caused all over the world.

It is an indictment on Muslims, and hopefully an eye opener to lefty apologists for Muslims, that JP has offered a second apology in an attempt to calm Muslim angst from London to Lahore.

These drawings apparently hurt millions of Muslims around the world, so we now offer our apology and deep regret for what happened because it is far from the paper's intention...

Technorati Tags: Buy Danish, Mohammed Cartoons, Motoons, Cartoons, Mohammed

UPDATE: The above linked news release and the ad in question is a hoax. Hat Tip: Agora. This is ironic. Before posting this, I actually went to the English website of JP and tried to find the apology, and couldn't find it. Yet I still posted this. I retract.
UPDATE: Pete is now eating Danish cookies.

The West is in Pain

2006-02-16T22:35:00.000+11:00

Just finished reading some of Michelle Malkin's posts on recent events in the past few days. I then recalled a lecture given by Ravi Zacharias, who said the following of Western culture:

Ladies and gentlemen, secularisation - no shame, pluralisation - no reason, privatisation - no meaning.

Secularisation lives under the illusion of neutrality - it isn't neutral.

When you produce a shameless culture, an irrational culture and a meaningless culture, Reality will stalk you and call your bluff...

Let's hope that the West perceives that Reality is the most successful poker player in history.

"We are being pissed upon"

2006-02-14T20:51:00.000+11:00

My feelings come together in this article published in Jyllands-Posten [Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs]:

I think it was the long departed H.C. Hansen, one of the great Danish statesmen of the last century, who – as the communists were demonstrating in front of Christiansborg [the Danish Parliament] – cast his gaze across the palace square and remarked: “I will not be pissed upon.”

Then he did what was necessary.

I feel that currently my beloved country is being pissed upon rather too much. Denmark has not been neglecting its duties on the international stage. We have supported poor people with acts and advice, we have worked for peace, we have sent soldiers, policemen and experts to all the far flung corners of the world. We have democracy, a rule of law and a welfare state. Not all is perfect, but we harbor no malice towards our fellow men.

And yet Denmark is being pissed upon. The spokesman of the US State Department is pissing on Denmark, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs is pissing on Denmark, the President of Afghanistan is pissing on Denmark, the Government of Iraq is pissing on Denmark, other Muslim regimes are pissing on Denmark. In Gaza, where Danes for years have provided humanitarian aid, crazed Imams encourage people to cut off the hands and heads of the cartoonists who made the drawings of Mohammed for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Excuse my choice of words, but all this pissing is pissing me off.

What is going on? I am not referring so much to the threats against Danish citizens and Danish commerce. Nor to the burnt down Embassies. I am thinking of a word that keeps popping up whenever the Mohammed cartoons are mentioned.

That word is BUT. A sneaky word. It is used to deny or qualify what one has just said.

How many times lately have we not heard people of power, the Opinion Makers and others say that of course we have freedom of speech, BUT.

They have said it, all of them, from Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, to our own Bendt Bendtsen [a Danish Politician]. Once we had to be sensitive to the easily hurt feelings of the Nazis, then came the Communists, now it is the Islamists. The reason I say ‘Islamists’ is that I do not for a moment believe all the world’s Muslims are pissing on us. I think we are dealing with thugs, fools and misled people. Those are the ones we have to deal with, and then the chickenshit politicians.

The cartoons are no longer something Jyllands-Posten can control. They have already been manipulated and misrepresented to the point that few know what is going on and fewer know how to stop it. This affair is artifically being kept buoyant in a sea of lies, suppressions of the truth, misconceptions, lunacy and hypocrisy, for which this newspaper bears no blame. The only thing Jyllands-Posten did was provide a pin-prick which has made a boil of nastiness erupt. This would have happened sooner or later. That it happened more than four months after the publication of the cartoons, raises a question of its own. Are we dealing with random events or with a staged clash of civilizations? One might hope for the former yet be prepared to expect the latter.

That is why I say: Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech. There is no but.

Initially I was doubtful of the timeliness of publishing the cartoons. Later events have convinced me that it was both just and useful to do so. That they are consistent with Danish law and Danish custom seem to me less important than this: that we now know that remote, primitive countries deem themselves justified in telling us what to do. Unfortunately we must also note that governments close to us are agreeing with them in the name of expedience.

It was right and just for this newspaper to launch an offensive for Freedom of Speech, and useful, as we have now acquired new knowledge. Welcome to a brave new world where even our Prime Minister – in spite of his laudable firmness – must gaze out upon a scorched political landscape. True, his friend in Washington, George Bush, has uttered the customary condemnation of the torching of our embassies, but his State Department alludes to us as being the guilty ones in this case. The suggestion that Danish troops might contribute to democratization is buried under the charred remains of our diplomatic representations in Beirut and Damascus.

Perhaps it is time we started mopping up this mess. Perhaps Editor-in-Chief Carsten Juste ought to remove his apology which has gone stale sitting so long on the front page of our internet edition and which does not seem to interest the madmen. Perhaps our government ought to announce to Mona Omar Attia, the strange Ambassador of Egypt, that she is persona non grata.

Perhaps the ambassadors that have been called home to fictitious consultations in the Middle East should be told that they may spare themselves the cost of the return ticket.

In so far as possible The Lying Imams probably ought to be expelled. And then we ought to make an effort to support those Muslims who in a difficult situation have proven themselves to be true Citizens.

We, for our part, have no wish to be a burden to the Arab governments. We will happily withdraw our soldiers, policemen and diplomats. If they think our money smells, we will retract our aid. Our trade must make do as well as it can. We promise to not bear a grudge and, in time, we will be glad to return, but we are through with the hypocrisy. We have better things to do than being pissed upon at our own expense.

Cut down our activities in the Middle East. The world holds plenty of other opportunities.

Danish Goods

2006-02-08T23:38:00.000+11:00

I had just shown some of my collegues the "offensive" pictures of Mohammed (upon their insistance). They remarked that the cartoons were very harmless and quite mild. So I suggested that I go and buy some Danish cookies during the lunch break. They all clapped and cheered me on.

One of my heavy drinking friends asked what other foods were Danish. I stated the obvious to which he slapped himself on the forehead.

Anyway, I meandered downstair to Coles. Coles don't sell Danish cookies. I seem to recall Woolworths selling them. Will walk past Woolies tommorrow morning to grab some.

Mmmm...danish cookies.

Technorati Tags: Buy Danish

Danish Goods

2006-02-08T23:37:00.000+11:00

Time for a name change

2006-02-07T00:06:00.000+11:00

Away with the long winded "Thoughts on Life, God and Politics".

Manny Is Here works well.

Aloneness

2006-02-05T21:03:00.000+11:00

Sometimes I really do feel alone.

Over the years, I have spent so little time developing strong relationships with people I studied with, people I worked with, people I live with. I spent (and stil do spend) so much time developing who I am, my knowledge and understanding of the things I love.

I have many good friends that I can relate to on some things but not on others things. Sometimes, like this evening, I yearn for someone I can relate to fully, in a physical sense (for the nymphs, I don't mean sex).

This is not an indictment on those whom I keep company with. To be sure, I love my friends and family. This is an indictment on how complex a person I am on every level: emotional, physical and psychological. I don't seek to fit in where I know I won't or can't or am not wanted. I adapt to situations, but the toll on me emotionally accumulates.

What keeps me going?

The unconditional love of God expressed in Jesus, hanging willingly for me on a tree.

Support the Danes!

2006-02-05T14:45:00.000+11:00

Here is the original cartoon of honourable Prophet Mohammed:

As you can see they are quite disgusting and disturbing. The one depicting Mohammed in a bottle of urine is quite over the top. What do you think?

Surprise, Bloody Surprise

2006-02-05T11:50:00.000+11:00

...says one of my friends after telling him that the Bondi stabbings were perpetrated by MOMEA (Men Of Middle Eastern Appearance for those that don't know).

The SMH has described the incident as follows:

The five males and a female were injured after one group, described as being of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance, set upon the other about midnight (AEDT), police said.

Some of the attackers were arrested in Chester Hill:

Police said two men were arrested in Chester Hill, in Sydney's southwest about 2pm (AEDT) today, in relation to the attack.

What would interest me, is some photos of these attackers. Anyone help here?

This stabbing occurs after the violence at Cronulla and the State Government's weak response, another incident suspiciously ignorned by the the MSM and Cartoon Rage.

Has nothing to do with Islam though.

UPDATE: As presupposed, one of the attackers was a certain Ahmad Elchami. Now...there's a common thread between all of these incidences....anyone care to help me pick it?

Wow!

2006-02-04T23:11:00.000+11:00

After the IAEA finally grows enough balls to refer Iran to the UN Security Council (yes I know that the resolution was a lilly livered referral),

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld urged America's allies to increase
their military spending to prevent the rise of a "global extremist
Islamic empire."

Furthermore, he states the obvious:

The Iranian regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism...

But it gets better and more intelligent:

"We could choose to pretend, as some suggest, that the enemy is not
at our doorstep. We could choose to believe, as some contend, that the
threat is exaggerated.
"But those who would follow such a course must ask: what if they are
wrong? What if at this moment, the enemy is counting on being
underestimated, counting on being dismissed, and counting on our
preoccupation," Rumsfeld said.
"The struggle ahead promises to be a long war that will cause us all
to recalibrate our strategies, perhaps further adjust our institutions,
and certainly work closely together," he said.

He said Islamic militants are on the move and have to be checked.

"They seek to take over governments from North Africa to Southeast
Asia and to re-establish a caliphate they hope, one day, will include
every continent," he said. "They have designed and distributed a map
where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist
Islamic empire."

The neocons have a least got this part of their analysis right. And I need not say more. This is some of the most solidly anti-Dhimmi material from the US Administration.

I now expect to see Daily Kos, Dowd et al to decry Rumsfeld as a saber-rattler, and the State Department to tone down Rumsfeld's rhetoric.

To all the Islamists

2006-02-04T09:19:00.000+11:00

The caricatures of Mohammed published by newspapers around the world was a mistake.

They should have instead published this accurate description of the Prophet:

Just to set the record straight, I was not making any sick jokes when I said "Mohammad Was a Murderous, Thieving, Rapacious, Lying, Psychotic Pedophile" I was deadly serious. Reasons:

Murderous? Bani Quereyza massacre, along with the poets and critics that he had murdered when their only crime was to make fun of him (hmm. That's ominous).

Thieving? His first political act after reaching Medina was to authorise the looting of Meccan caravans. Pluse there is a whole sura called "Booty". Its content concerns the correct acquisition of same. Summary: Yes piracy is a valid, indeed preferred Muslim lifestyle.

Rapacious? How many Quereyza women did he take as wives or slaves the same day that he killed their husbands, brothers and fathers ? What did he say when his men questioned him regarding using the withdrawal method on newly conquered women? And don't give me that "consensual sex" crap (as you did in a previous exchange). Yes, a woman who has just had her entire family massacred would really want to hop in bed on the same day with the guy who did it.

Lying? Hudna. Abrogation of Meccan passages by Medinan passages. Satanic Verses. Inconsistencies between older and modern versions of the Koran. Plus the whole religion itself. No miracles. Much talk of "Peace" by the most vicious, bloodthirsty prophet of the major religions.

Psychotic? Here is a guy told by God to lie, slaughter, rape, pillage. There are plenty like him. We lock them up. Plus there is the Satanic Verses bit. Could he really tell the difference between Allah and Shaitan ? (Canyou for that matter?)

Pedophile? Aisha. 9 Years old. Favourite wife.

[Hat Tip: Six Days]

Cost of Fighting Islamofascists and their Bedfellows

2006-02-04T00:06:00.000+11:00

The cost of twenty new F-22 fighter jets? $US2.2 billion.

The cost to the people of the US to fight against Islamofascists and their bedfellows? $US320bn.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $320 billion has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including $50 billion that Congress sent Bush in December.

The cost of freedom? PRICELESS.

And before the French and other European nations become extinct brontosauruses, they should heed warning of the Latvian President:

Throughout the years, in parts of Europe, intellectuals and even
politicians were enamoured with the idea of Marxism and even some
thought the Soviet Union was an embodiment of what Socialism and the
protection of the worker was all about. America was more realistic.
America looked on us as captive nations. We were captive nations, and
we are now free.

Technorati Tags: Buy Danish

Necessity of the Moral Law

2006-01-31T22:52:00.000+11:00

C.S. Lewis spoke for its necessity and was ignored in the 1940s.

Nietzsche, the son of a pastor and grandson of two pastors, spoke against it, but honestly understood the ramifications of his position:

God has died philosophically in the nineteenth century. The concept of God can no longer withstand the philosopher's blade. And God is bleeding, God is dead. (But now that) God has died two things will happen in the twentieth century:
The twentieth century will become the bloodiest century in history
A universal madness would break out.

Furthermore, he personifies himself as a madman and says this:

Have you not heard of that madman, who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, "I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!". As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. "Have you lost him then?", said one, "Did he lose his way like a child?", said another, "Or is he hiding?". "Is he afraid of us, has he gone on a voyage or emigrated?". Thus they shouted and shouted and laughed him to scorn.

But the madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances. "Where is God?", he cried. "I'll tell you! We have killed him, you and I, we are all his murders. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from the sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns maybe? Are we not perpetually falling backwards, sidewards and in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not more and more night coming on us all the time? Musn't not light lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything of God's decomposition? Gods decompose too you know! And God is dead. He remains dead, and we have killed him!

Aldous Huxley on why he discarded the Moral Law:

I wanted to believe the Darwinian idea. I chose to believe it, not because I think that there was enormous evidence for it. Nor because I believed that it had the power to give full interpretation to my origin. I chose to believe it, because it delivered me from trying to find meaning and freed me to pursue my own erotic passions.

Ravi Zacharias argues that the absence of the Moral Law has some "enormous manifestations in the Western world today":

I'll say this as kindly as I can: the last 22 years of my life have been spent in the West. The equal amount in the beginning was spent in the East. And Western civilisation is being rocked to its foundations because Western man does not know the point of reference for the value system that he wants to espouse right now. See the Middle East still espouses Islam: there is some transcedent leverage to the culture. We in modern times are daring the lines in the West and we actually think we can survive without the espousing of a Moral Law. History cries out against the experiment.

This is most clearly and visually apparent in the trembling knees of Western institutions now, as we oppose the "transcendant leverage" provided by Islam in the Middle East.

Let's hope and prayer that a restoration and rebelief in the Moral Law held so dear in the West prevents something far worse taking place.

SBS News pig headedly continues the lies

2006-01-30T22:14:00.000+11:00

The Jyllands-Posten "affair" has finally hit the biased video frames of SBS News (9:30PM edition), five months since the paper first published 12 cartoonists depictions of Mohammed. This was the paper's response to Islamic intimidation and violence against members of the Danish media and academia.

However, reporting on the Muslim world's backlash, an SBS reporter attributed a picture of Mohammed with a pig-head as being in the paper's cartoon list. A simple web search would reveal the fallacy of this. This was in fact a cartoon mixed in with the other twelve by a Danish Muslim group to stir up Muslim anger and retribution toward strongly anti-Dhimmi Denmark. Great journalism as we expect from the uber-Dhimmi, the SBS. Drum up further Muslim violence a la desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay Prison.

For its part, the Danish government has stood firm against the taqqiyah and pressure mounted by Islamists around the world. The Danish Prime Minister said the following:

“I am speechless that those people, whom we have given the right to live
in Denmark and where they freely have chosen to stay, are now touring Arab
countries and inciting antipathy towards Denmark and the Danish
people,”

Danish business groups on the other hand are falling over themselves to apologise for the West's freedom of speech.

"Time has come for Jyllands-Posten to use its freedom of speech to explain how
it views the fact that the paper's Muhammad drawings have offended large groups
of people..."

The sordid tale of greed over principle continues.

My opinion? Those peddling lies of the sort that the SBS is either deliberately or belligerently peddling deserve to be slapped with the "treason" tag.

Little Green Footballs has a way of us supporting the Danes.

******* UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has the original cartoons. *******

******* UPDATE: Viking Observer notes that the Muslim liars in Denmark may be expelled ********
[Technorati Tag: Buy Danish]

Suggestions for breaking Google

2006-01-29T14:01:00.000+11:00

Google has stirred the pot by censoring search engine results run from their Chinese portal. Little Green Footballs and JunkYardBlog have the disturbing results.

My suggestions:

If you want to use Google but not support them financially, use Dog Pile. It is a taps into the Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves search engines all at once without displaying Google ads.
If you want to use Gmail without getting the ads, configure your email client with Gmail's POP servers.

Boycotting Google won't work. I can't live without Google. Instead, make them bleed.

Can't come soon enough

2006-01-28T18:47:00.000+11:00

Courtesy of AP:

In a wide-ranging interview at the White House, Bush also took a
hard-line stance against the Hamas party, which swept Palestinian
elections on Wednesday. He said he'd emphasize the development of
alternative fuels in his State of the Union address on Tuesday and
shared his views on presidential powers.

If we ween ourselves of crude and use the volume of intellect that is so prevalent in the West (and not in say...Saudi Arabia), I am sure we could withstand pressure such as this and this in a more vigorous manner.

Extinct Brontosaurus

2006-01-27T23:18:00.000+11:00

Inspired by the podcasts by Ravi Zacharias and the three part series on the Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of the Left by Dr. Sanity:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

The West is on the verge of collapse created by its own hands. Between good and evil there is an irreconcilable contradiction. One cannot build ones national life without regard to this distinction. We the oppressed people of Russia watch with anguish the tragic enfeeblement of Europe. We offer you the experience of our own suffering. We would like you to accept it, without paying the monstrous price of debt and slavery that we have paid.

These words were uttered decades ago. Yet they are still as relevant today as they were in Solzhenitsyn's day. Solzhenitsyn's intellectual nemesis Arthur Schlessinger, said this :

The mystic prophets of the absolute cannot save us. Sustained by our history and our traditions we must save ourselves at whatever risk of heresy or blasphemy. We can find solice in the memorable human struggle against the absolute in the finest scene in the greatest American novels. I refer of course to the scene when Huckleberry Finn decides that the plain hand of Providence requires him to tell Ms. Watson where her runaway slave is to be found. Huck writes his letter of betrayal to Ms. Watson and feels "...all washed and clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life and I know that I could pray now..." He sits there for a while wondering how good it is all this happened so and how near I become to getting lost and going to Hell. But then Huck begins to think about Jim and the rush of the great river and the talking and the singing and the laughing and the friendship.

Then "...I happened to look around and sees that paper. Then I took it up and held it in my hand. I was a trembling because I'd got to decide forever between two things and I knowed that. And I studied a minute, holding my breath and then says to myself: Alright then, I'll go to Hell! Then I tore it up."

That if I may say so, is what America is all about.

I say, no Mr Schlessinger, this is what America has become. And it is weaker for it.

The conclusion of Malcolm Muggeridge is hard to escape:

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania and vulnerability out of his own strength. He himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down, until at last having educated himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction he keels over a weary old brontosaurus and becomes extinct...

The West is entering a defining period in history. Either it keels over and lets itself be overrun by people of stronger courage and conviction or it must stand up, return to its roots Christian inspired secularism, intellectualism and pluralism and be counted. The experience of C.S Lewis spiritual transformation (as is described in A Pilgrim's Regress) is powerful:

As I was making my search for the Truth, I entered many kinds of worldviews and philosophies and thinking that intuitively I felt were not right. I had no rational answer, I had no logical answer. But something in my intuition told me that worldview was not right. And so I rejected that purely on intuition, until I came to know Jesus Christ and picked up a regressive journey. For now I had the answer to why I had rejected all else along the way.

The testimony of Neo-neocon's political conversion is inspirational for those of us who feel overwhelmed by Chomskism, Frankenism et al.:

I'm a woman in my fifties, lifelong Democrat mugged by reality on 9/11. Born in New York, living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon. My friends and family are becoming sick of what they see as my inexplicable conversion, so I've started this blog to give vent to my frustration. I have a background as a therapist, and my politics make me a pariah in my profession, too. Little did I know that I moved in such politically homogeneous circles.

Listen to it all.

Last Action Hero

2006-01-27T19:33:00.000+11:00

Not for family consumption. [Hattip: JustOneMinute]

Some random facts about Jack Bauer:
1) If you wake up in the morning, it’s because Jack Bauer spared your life.
2) If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he’d shoot Nina twice.
3) Upon hearing that he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man.
4) Jack Bauer’s favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.
5) Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
6) Jack Bauer got Hellen Keller to talk.
7) Jack Bauer killed 93 people in just 4 days time. Wait, that is a real fact.
8) Jack Bauer was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer.
9) 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
10) Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
11) Jack Bauer doesn’t miss. If he didn’t hit you it’s because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.
12) Lets get one thing straight, the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.
13) When you open a can of whoop-ass, Jack Bauer jumps out.
14) If Jack says “I just want to talk to him/her” and that him/her is you… well amigo, you’re f***ed.
15) Killing Jack Bauer doesn’t make him dead. It just makes him angry.
16) When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer f***ing hates lemonade.
17) In grade school, a little boy punched Kimberly Bauer, and Kimberly ran home to tell her dad. That little boy’s name? Stephen Hawking.
18) Jack Bauer does not sleep. The only rest he needs is what he gets when he’s knocked out or temporarily killed.
19) No man has ever used the phrase, “Jack Bauer is a pussy” in a sentence and lived to tel-
20) In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.
21) Jack Bauer literally died for his country, and lived to tell about it.
22) As a child, Jack Bauer’s first words were “There’s no time!”
23) Jack Bauer’s family threw him a surprise birthday party when he was a child. Once.
24) If you are still conscious, it is because Jack Bauer doesn’t want to carry you.
25) If you get 7 stars on your wanted level on Grand Theft Auto, Jack Bauer comes after you. You don’t want to get 7 stars.
26) Guns dont kill people, Jack Bauer kills people.
27) Everytime Jack Bauer yells “NOW!” at the end of a sentence, a terrorist dies.
28) Jesus died and rose from the dead in 3 days. It took Jack Bauer less than an hour. And he’s done it twice.
29) If you send someone to kill Jack Bauer, the only thing you accomplish is supplying him a fresh set of weapons to kill you with.
30) Jack Bauer could get off the Lost island in 24 hours.
31) If Jack Bauer was gay, his name would be Chuck Norris.
32) After arguing over what was the better show, 24 or Walker Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris went to attack Jack Bauer with his trademark roundhouse kick. Jack Bauer caught it.

Hamas wins "Palestinian" elections

2006-01-26T18:59:00.000+11:00

So Hamas beats Fatah. How will the US and EU respond? Alot depends on this.

Update: The Belmont Club has a lucid analysis:

Hamas may have won the Palestinian elections, which may in turn make Benjamin Netanyahu the next Prime Minister of Israel. CNN is now reporting that the current Palestinian government has resigned. The election of Hamas taken together with the crisis in Iran suggests that that the world is being challenged by very deeply rooted forces which traditional international institutions may be incapable of handling. The way to safety is hangs on events that haven't resolved themselves yet. Whether the policy of democraticization has blunted the rush to madness -- Egyptian blogger the Big Pharaoah thinks Middle East democracy boosts Islamists ; whether Iran will acquire the bomb; whether Israel will draw its sword to prevent it; whether Syria's ruling dynasty will fall; whether Europe will break out of its demographic death-spiral. Because success relies so much on the exploitation of contingent events it's a dangerous time for America to be divided, with one side unsure of whether any real danger besides BushchimpHitler exists and the other in the grip of a half-articulated policy; both almost fatalistically slouching towards a future where there are no certain or even probable endings.

This sounds familiar...now where did this express itself last? Oh yeah, Iraq....Funny how it has recently been shown that Saddam ran training camps for Al Qaeda terrorists.

What car are you?

2006-01-26T15:24:00.000+11:00

I'm a Porsche Boxster!

You're stylish, nimble, and good-looking. When it comes to having fun, there are few who can surpass you. And yet, you suffer from a lingering inferiority complex. Maybe it's because you have an older relative who is always in thelimelight?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

I'm Back!

2006-01-22T22:16:00.000+11:00

How ya all doing in the Big Smoke?

Just got back from a nice weekend vacation. It involved the following: Sitting on the beach for many hours and getting a slight sunburn, swimming in the clean blue waters in the surf of a wonderful beach down south of where I live, drinking beer and Barcardi, eating lots of cake and icecream and fish and chips, reading the Bible with some Christian friends and making a sandcastle resembling an F1 race car.

For those that have noticed, my post rate has been down anyway. I am beginning to reconsider my blogging committment.

Will let you know of my decision in the next fortnight.

An appeal for Ethics and Transparency in Politics

2006-01-14T11:05:00.000+11:00

Although I live in Australia, I also call for ethics and transparency in U.S. politics - indeed in politics here also.

Why do I care? Well, first the U.S. is our closest allies in a geo-political sense. Second, political events and sentiment in the U.S. will almost certainly be adopted to some degree in Australia. If U.S. politicians clean up there act and make a big effort, then Australian politicians will need to do so also.

Politicians need to be reminded that they run their jurisdictions for their people, not for themselves. This is not some cliche statement. It has alot of meaning.

An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Signed,

N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber's Corner
Lorie Byrd / DJ Drummond , Polipundit
Beth Cleaver, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom
Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain's Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
The Anchoress, The Anchoress
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!!
Manny C, Thoughts on Politics, Life and God

Islam: Can it be moderated?

2006-01-14T10:39:00.000+11:00

I have heard numerous friends and commentators argue that Islam can be "reformed" and "modernised". The argue along the lines of: Take Islam, then take out the nasty bits which advocate war against the Kufar (infidels), the advocacy of marrying girls at the age of six (as Mohammed is recorded as doing in the Haddiths), the condoned abuse of one's wife....

You see where this is going don't you?

So can one reform Islam, like Luther and his compatriates did with Christianity? I dare say, that once you start removing all the nasty bits contained in the Qu'ran, Hadiths and Suras, you don't have much left. You don't have much of Islam left. You don't have Islam. The term "reforming Islam" is a misnomer.

Two interesting articles on this topic:

Dhimmiwatch considers the plight of a former Egyptian Muslim who has converted to Christianity. It summarises the way in which the teachings of Islam have contributed to harshen his plight. Pray for him.
The Sydney Anglican church has a feature article on its website on how a possible reformation of Islam can be done, if at all.

Read it all.

Barking mad Democrats

2006-01-12T19:34:00.000+11:00

The Democrats are a party of life, of love, of justice, of peace, of reconciliation, of equality, of affirmative action, of women's suffrage, of not being mean to a fellow human being.

Except when it comes to relating to conservatives.

In case you missed it, Alito was being grilled relentlessly in his confirmation hearing. Senator "I-am-too-drunk-to-speak" Kennedy was literally babbling away today. He had a go at Alito of course, as did his other Democrat acolytes. But what surprised me, was that he had a go at his Republican counterpart, Senator Specter.

But what really got my goat is that these worthless pieces of puppetry sent Alito's wife leaving her husband's confirmation hearings in tears. After being relentlessly attacked by Democrats for being a bigot, a racist (isn't that an irony) and trying to infer that he hates women, Senator Graham, one of the Republicans in the committee, gave a rousing defence of Alito. As he started, Alito's wife started sobbing, so quietly that only the video captured it. The lady sitting next to her seemed not to have noticed. Toward the end of his defence, Graham's voice seemed to be given way.

My friends, what brought this spectacle into a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court judge? The equality-loving, anti-discriminatory, anti-women hating party's uncompromising assault on Judge Alito's impecable credentials.

Let there be no mistake about it: Alito's character is above criticism. Even his philosophical detractors think that he is an impeccable man. The US legal profession gave him the highest rating. There has never been a wiff of well founded controversy over the guy.

Compare this with the debauchery of Sen. Kennedy's life: his unceasing drunkedness, how he was more interested in covering his own arse than saving the life of a women he had run over thanks to his drink driving, his continual traffic offences, his adultery, his treachery.

The Democrat's performance can only be put down to politics. Their criticism has no substance, no basis and should be given no air. I hope they suffocate (figuratively of course).

Two things to note from all this:

I hope that Alito IS the nasty conservative that Kennedy and his ACLU backer's think he is. I hope he is crucial in overturning Roe v. Wade and that he support the POTUS's executive power in time of war. I hope that Alito gives them their dues.
Kennedy has a habit of drowning women: he drowned a woman who worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign and he drowned Alito's wife in tears at a point in time where she should be jubilant for her husband's success.

UPDATE: RightWingNews has some Kos Action on the farce of a reception that Alito got from Democrats Kennedy, Schumer et al.

Break.

2006-01-11T21:21:00.000+11:00

I'm back from a blogging diet.

And I feel a little starved right now, so I don't feel like saying much.

Except to say, there may be something big happening over the next few months on the blog front.

In the meantime, I found this news/blog site real good: http://www.townhall.com/

The Fragility of the Human Condition

2006-01-09T22:22:00.000+11:00

Both Ariel Sharon and Dick Cheney are known to be hardmen, not known for having a heart - a least that's the way the media portray it.

Both have enormous power and enormous responsibility.

Both are looked after by some of the best medical practioners in their respective countries.

Both have been suffering heart conditions. One is dying from a severe stroke and resulting brain haemorrahge, the other has just been taken to hospital suffering shortness of breath. [Update: Link added]

Yes, both are fat and probably unhealthy.

But I think their current physical condition highlights something bleedingly obvious: humanity is fragile. Often we walk and talk confidantly about what we have and aim to achieve. It only takes a clot to form in the back of your brain, it only takes a twang in a muscle in the heart to bring all that to nothing. And then what?

Yesterday evening, I was walking down a leafy street in inner Sydney. Leafy, as in heaps of trees and heaps of spider webs. I walked right into one (a spider web that is). After walking through, I stopped to clear it off my face and hair. I looked back, and a friend who was with me at the time, started pointing back to where the spider web was. He pointed out the Red Back spider climbing back up the (remaining) web. I don't react well to spider venom (or whatever it is they inject you with). I would probably die from such a bite. Death (probably) brushed me by last night.

As we continued walking, my friend pointed out that I could have been dead. I responded with the following verse (probably my favourite in the Bible):

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philipians 1:21 - ESV)

Christ awaits me on the other side of this life. What awaits you?

Soldier shows up Rep., Rep. ignores soldier

2006-01-07T20:17:00.000+11:00

By Rep., I mean Democrat Representative Jim "Moron" Moran.

An injured infantryman, Sargent Mark Seavey, stands up at a Q & A session in the presence of "Moron" and "Bad Boy" and ever so politely takes offence at both numbnuts' assertions that U.S. troop morale is low. Seavey states simply that he has just returned from Afghanistan, that troop morale is high. So high in fact, that three of his soldiers will be going back to Iraq.

Then he really lets rip. He criticises "Moron" for ignoring 200 soldiers returning from Afghanistan. These 200 soldiers you see are from "Moron's" own consituency. "Moron" never shows up to these troops' homecoming, never visited these soldiers to thank them for their service and selflessness let alone wrote to them to thank them.

Instead the governor of their state sent them a letter thanking them for their service in Iraq when in fact they had returned from Afghanistan.

Now if the preceding wasn't bad enough, Rep. Moran, a former serviceman, responds to Sgt Seavey's polite rebuke with the following:

That wasn't in the form of a question, it was in the form of a statement. But, uhh... let's go over here.

That's ALL he said. He didn't thank Sgt. Seavey for his courage and his frankness. Nor seek the truth. Rep. Moran simply ignored Sgt. Seavey. These people have no self-respect, no demure - in constrast to the likes of Sgt. Seavey. My blood boils over such insularity.

Read and watch it all at Michelle Malkin.

Michelle Malkin exposes the deceit and depravity of the Democrats once again. And the MSM ignore this once again. More power to the blogosphere.

Prayers

2006-01-06T22:47:00.000+11:00

Ariel Sharon has my prayers. Despite his antagonists (and not a few of them either on either side of politics, both nationally and internationally), Ariel Sharon has been pragmatic in his approach to the Palestinian intifada. He has been extremely concilliatory, despite accusations otherwise, but pragmatic in ensuring the security of the Israeli people.

However, it seems he will not make it through the night. I hope and pray he does.

It seems fitting therefore, that the probable passing of this giant (excuse the pun) should be compared with the utter guttlessness of some others.

Ariel Sharon has been instrumental in suppressing Palestinian homocides against Israelis with his policy of walls and zero tolerance toward terrorist leaders.

On the other hand we have Jacques Chirac giving "dissenfranchised youth" $400 million (Euros?) in order for them to stop the car burning, the violence and the "social unrest". This was several weeks ago. On New Year's Eve, these "dissenfranchised youth" burned 425 cars and terrorised 600 passengers.

One leader protects his people, the other finances terrorists to savage his own people. One is portrayed as a bloodthirsty general and the other a promoter of peace and justice.

Yeah, and war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.

[Update: Please read the excellent round up of recent comments by Arab and Persian leaders regarding Ariel Sharon's health and how Ariel Sharon's passing will bring great uncertainty to the region.]

Coulter on the Left's myopia

2006-01-06T20:15:00.000+11:00

The last paragraph of Ann Coulter's book Slander:

Except for occasional safaris to the Wal-Mart or forays into enemy territory at a Christian Coalition dinner, liberals do not know any conservatives. It makes it easier to demonize them that way. It's well and good for Andrew Sullivan to talk about a "truce". But conservatives aren't the ones who need to be jolted into the discovery that the "bogeymen" of their imaginations are "not quite as terrifying as they thought." Conservatives already know that people they disagree with politically can be "charming". Also savagely cruel bigots who hate ordinary Americans and lie for sport.

Castro assasinated JFK

2006-01-04T23:47:00.000+11:00

And Firefox crashed on me. So I lost my almost complete post. And what a post it was...For the meantime read up here and (more comprehensively) here.

Here is a summary of the soon to be aired documentary on which the articles is based:

Castro uses anti-American, Oswald, to kill JFK after the CIA attempt to assasinate him. They hired Oswald, because
Oswald was a dissident: he hated his country. He possessed certain characteristics. There wasn't anyone else. You take what you can get...Oswald volunteered to kill Kennedy.
Probably the way CAIR thinks of the ACLU, the Iranians think of the Europeans...

One of the FBI's investigators finds traces of Cuban involvement and then is immediately cut loose from the investigation:
This was perhaps the worst investigation the FBI was ever involved in, I realised that I was used. I felt ashamed. We missed a moment in history.
Yep, and now Castro is still making those lovely cigars and encouraging lunatic scumbag like the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez.
JFK's successor, Democrat Lyndon Johnson learns of this plot and does not go public because:

He [Johnson] said 'we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president. And the reason was that there would be a Right-wing uprising in America, which would keep the Democratic party out of power for two generations. Mr Haig added:He [Johnson] was convinced Castro killed Kennedy, and he took it to his grave.

political survival over national security

Oh, and JFK and his brother Robert Kennedy (Attorney General at the time) had tried to kill Castro several times via a Cuban CIA agent.Turns out the Cuban was a double agent. The Cuban probably hired Oswald to kill Kennedy. And my, my. The Democrats certainly haven't changed their spots. They still don't know whom to trust.

Even if this documentary is a fraud, it has dawned on me, that if the Democrats, especially John "The Brave Soldier" Kerry, get the Whitehouse, the West will lose the war again Islamofascism.

New Criterion is down

2006-01-04T19:40:00.000+11:00

Go to the website. The webhost left a live message:

account suspended

Your account has been suspended. We have sent you an email explaining why. This email should also contain information on how you can unsuspend your account.

Anyone want to conjecture why this may be? Here are two possible reasons:

They didn't pay the bills
The host didn't like Mark Steyn's article (now offline at New Criterion. Find it here.)

Highly recommended blog

2006-01-04T18:51:00.000+11:00

Please go over to Six Days for a thoroughly enlightening and intelligent analysis of the dangers facing Western civilisation. In particular this, this and this.

Visit his/her (and no, I am not uncertain...just a cloak of privacy here) site often.